Between the Lines, page 13
“Does this peace sound good to you?” She wondered if Rockcruncher wished he could also go and live with the Ashborn, still in Blaze but not under the thumb of the clan council.
He nodded his head vigorously. “Honestly, yes. Before I was inked I only cared about food, shelter. It’s pretty easy to remain in that mindset. Focused only on what I wanted. But now that I’m forced to live here, I find there are other wants.”
“Hmm, I can understand that feeling.” Fiona glanced at Soots. Since they had come into her life, her home felt less lonely. She hadn’t known how much she really wanted that until things had changed.
“So if you’re not inked and you can’t get out of Blaze to live someplace like this”—he waved his digits around—“then yeah, I can understand the thought of peace and plentiful food and no fighting sounding like paradise. I don’t know if the Ashborn can give it to anyone. But I haven’t heard any complaints yet.”
“Yes, well, I think the Ashborn feels if the Blackstone can be retrieved, then it could happen for more people.”
“I’m not sure why.”
“Which leads to my suspicion. I think the Blackstone has something to do with Blaze dying out,” she said slowly, watching him. If he didn’t seem surprised, she’d know the part about being ignorant earlier was untrue.
Rockcruncher scratched his face with a digit. “What makes you sure?”
“I’m not sure,” Fiona murmured. “It’s just a suspicion. The Ashborn said the Blackstone went missing last week. They’re clearly lying about that though. If it was missing longer than that, it might have coincided with the cooling of Blaze. I may be completely wrong, but if I can get it back, we’ll know whether it’s true or not.”
“I’ll help however I can,” Rockcruncher said, leaning forward, black eyes flaring up amber.
“For now just keep what I said to yourself. If the page is valuable unlit, then there may be others who want the stone to remain missing.”
“If the Blackstone does control Blaze, why wouldn’t the Ashborn tell you?”
Fiona had wondered the same thing. Rockcruncher was quicker than she had been. “Would you want to be the one who has been guarding an artifact that important, only to have it disappear?”
“You think they made a mistake and someone took advantage of it?”
Fiona nodded. “It’s one of the reasons I think they’re so impatient for me to find it.” She could see the Ashborn’s visits in a new light now. They had been scared, anxious. Not arrogant. Their haughty commands were what they thought would produce the quickest result. What must it be like to be the only one of your kind and have no one who understands everything you’ve seen and done over lifetimes? “Can you find out what your clan council knows about the Blackstone? I think it’s interesting that they mentioned it was missing and Obsidian’s Tooth when I didn’t.”
Rockcruncher smiled his thin-lipped smile. “Can do.”
She patted his hand and then rose gingerly, stretching her legs and being careful not to hit the ceiling with her head. “Well then, if you don’t mind, I’ll be taking my leave. I want to get through talking to the elementals in a few hours. See if they have anything valuable to add to my suspicions.”
“Good luck.”
She said her thanks as Soots climbed into the air. They flew ahead of her, only lingering in the archway a moment before lighting up her path back out of Fire Bowl. Fiona left Rockcruncher to his morning and walked back to the stone entrance. There was so much to consider, so much left to answer: whether the Blackstone had to do with Blaze cooling, what Obsidian’s Tooth really was, and why the Ashborn wasn’t raising the alarm about the stone to the Travel Guild. She knew why she wouldn’t—she didn’t trust them, as Dodger had reminded her. But why didn’t the Ashborn?
Thinking of Dodger gave her pause and her chest tightened. She hadn’t tried to reach out to him since the other day. What would she say? Dodger, you’re being a blotter, of course I know you’re not evil. He knew that, of course he did. But until she could figure out where the Guild lay in all of this and the smuggling, she didn’t wish to hear him defending them. And she didn’t want to argue with him. If she could prove that they took the stone, then she could show him that they were very different from him. That would settle it and he would forgive her blunders. With an uncomfortable mixture of drive and despair, Fiona prepared to turn back to Blaze.
“I’m telling you, we haven’t seen any Blackstone,” said the flarion sitting lazily in a small pool of boiling lava. Sitting was a generous way to put it. There was no telling where the elemental started and the pool ended. The inky crimson ichor running through their bodies seemed to be feeding into the lava and then back into them.
Fiona tried not to stare as she wondered what the back-and-forth flow between the lava and their body meant. Was it eating? Digesting? “Yes, that’s what the ragnis said too.” She waved her hand. “But then they pointed to you lot as possible suspects.” She didn’t even have to lie to get them mad enough to spill something. The ragnis accused the flarions the very minute Fiona had started to ask questions. She suspected that she could’ve asked to borrow sugar and the ragnis would’ve shouted that the flarions stole all the sugar. The tribe of metallic-boned quasi-flame creatures had not wanted to be bothered by Fiona in the least. They insisted that they had no knowledge of the Blackstone, that they had other things to worry about like becoming extinct, that they wanted nothing to do with anything the flarions were cooking up, and then they asked, nicely actually, for her to go very far away.
She suspected they didn’t trust Soots, but she wasn’t going to send them away again. So she had, with Soots in tow, made her way to the other half of Iasheoxus to see if she could get anything useful from the flarions. She kept to the outskirts of the crowded pools of magma and fire that, while dangerous to her, seemed small for the number of bright red and orange creatures within. As bubbles popped from the wine-red lake of lava, the air filled with an acrid smell Fiona was thankful didn’t literally burn her nostrils with the jelly breath in her system. The area outside of the pools was dark, crumbly, and flameless. It seemed miserable.
“Right,” the creature said, shifting in the lava pool moving away from Fiona, “those ragnis are a bunch of lava worms. Always accusing us of things. If I had a vapor rat for every time one of them came over to our side to complain, I’d have enough to eat for a solid month.” They rose from the lava, dredges of it dripping back into the pool, to shift to another pool only a few steps away. Fiona saw quite a few of them moving from pool to pool. They never stayed out for too long and they rarely shared. A singular society.
“Be that as it may,” Fiona started, unsure of what steamy rats had to do with eating, “if you do think of anything, let me know. I’m on Spine, of course, but give a message to any turner and I’ll get it.”
The flarion melted to the ground and poured itself back down into the lava pool. Fiona wasn’t sure if they heard or were dismissing her. Fiona pinched the bridge of her nose, headache forming. It had been quite the waste of her morning.
“I will say,” came a disembodied voice from the lava. Fiona stared down to see it ripple but no features. “I’d take a look at the salamanders. Those blundering lava worms would do just about anything to get rid of us so they can take our land. They send us messages constantly demanding we surrender or they’ll fight us. It’s as if they don’t even realize there’s a whole volcano in between us. What are they going to do with pools of lava?” The pool bubbled with a loud hissing and a pop. “Lava worms,” the creature muttered.
Fiona figured it must be their favorite, or only, insult. She wondered if they knew about the salamanders’ re-enthused plan to actually arrive and fight. “But without food to distract them, they just may reach here and fight you.”
A tennis ball–shaped blob emerged from the pool. “Come here? Really? The Ashborn wouldn’t let them.”
This was surprising. It was the first time she had heard anyone other than Rockcruncher speak of the phoenix with any sort of authority. “Why not?”
“They’re the ones who gave us these lands. They purposely said the elementals could live between the volcano and the spires traveling the great lava lakes. Or previously great,” the creature said sadly. “They wouldn’t go back on that and let the salamanders take it over.”
“Do you believe the Ashborn has the power to stop them?”
“Obviously,” the creature said in a tone Fiona was fairly sure was mocking. “They’re the hottest thing in this place.”
“Obviously,” Fiona repeated slowly. Apparently the level of scorching someone was meant everything here. That probably put salamanders low on the list. Probably made them, at least their council, angry as well.
“Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to eat in private.”
“Oh, of course,” said Fiona, averting her eyes. If they were eating now, what were they doing earlier? She whistled for Soots, who had been flying around in the vicinity watching some of the flarions as they chattered. The flarions had regarded Soots with open pleasantness, making the sprite’s time here a little easier than with the ragnis. They seemed as a whole less disturbed by the cooling of Blaze, but perhaps they put their faith in its restoration with the Ashborn?
Fiona rested far away from the elementals and their settlements of primordial fire and blackened islands. She needed to get to Radiance Peak before the jelly breath or her resistance spritz wore off.
“Oh, Soots, I wish for a moment I could be like you. It would make traveling higher in this place much easier.” She sighed. “If I could just turn it off and on again, that would be brilliant.”
:Up?:
“Yes, we’ll have to go up, although…” Fiona consulted the map of Blaze that Rockcruncher had sketched for her. Radiance Peak was the farthest the page went up and to what she would consider east. High above the cap where the realms of salamanders and elementals lay. Rockcruncher assured her there was nothing much in between, but it would take some time. It was also past the spindly twin towers known as Obsidian’s Tooth. “I’m curious what’s at the spires. Let’s take a gander there first.” The place had been mentioned several times, but the Ashborn had never brought it up. Her curiosity nagging at her once more, there she would go.
Since the ornithopter relied on the flapping of wings, a thing hard to do in a place like Blaze where the air was so thin, Fiona had to use chemical means to achieve flight. “Hopefully this concoction of Gaili’s will help.” The faun had assured her the potion would last for hours. Still, Fiona took precautions, putting on the ornithopter as a backup. She also dug out a small grappling hook, a gift from Dodger she hadn’t yet had the chance to use, and held it tight in her hands. She tied a length of leather, made from a type of bat native to this page, to it and then around herself. Once she was sure it was secure, she knocked back the potion and grimaced. It tasted like bitter burnt toffee. “I do hope that was just cloud and not mixed with sylph excrement.”
She waited. She had never tried to fly without a contraption before. But she had never spent so much time in Blaze before either.
:Friend?: said Soots, concern emanating from the small creature.
“Hmm? Oh yes,” said Fiona, looking about. She realized she had floated about a foot in the air. Laughing, she said, “Well, that’s a bit unnerving, but at least we know it works!”
A mixture of amusement and joy emanated from Soots and the heat around them sizzled hotter for a moment. Fiona shook her head, astounded once again at Soots’s ability to transform the temperature around them. She had felt the Ashborn do it too, but Soots seemed to manage it much faster.
She watched the ground move away from her as she continued rising up. The pools of lava where the flarions lived were visible along with some of the trickles that divided them from the ragnis. Soots flew right along beside her, shaping themself in a thin line. They curled and twirled as Fiona rose and rose.
Fiona waved her arms trying to change directions but found that she couldn’t manipulate her flight in any way. “Excellent. I can float but no controls. Honestly, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.” She gripped her cloak and grappling hook tight, looking for something solid she could throw it onto. That’s when she noticed the ashes.
Ashes in Blaze were nothing new. They’d landed on Fiona the whole while she had been interviewing the elementals. But she had never considered before just where they were coming from. The volcano a distance away bellowed fire, lava, smoke, and ashes into the sky. The air was thick with plumes of midnight-black smoke and particles of ash. Above her it gathered in a roiling froth like sheared wool. She was making a steady and quick ascent into the thick of it.
She didn’t see anything to connect the grappling hook to and slow down. Hoping to make some sort of hole, she waved her hands above her head as she entered the cloud. She grabbed the ash, powdery like fistfuls of ground spices. It swirled around her, getting into her cloak, brushing against her cheeks, and pushing in where it could.
Even with the glasses and jelly breath, her eyes were irritated. She could barely see a thing through the darkness. She had even lost sight of Soots’s amber glow. She kept her mouth closed, not wanting it to fill with ash, and frantically searched for a way out of this predicament.
A shot of light erupted from in front of her, followed by a sizzle and pop. Lightning.
She clenched her fists and started to breathe shallowly through her nose. Choking seized her and she could feel herself growing faint. She folded in on herself to be smaller, hoping the lightning would miss her until she could rise out of the ash. She tried to feel for where Soots had gone, but her hands only found more airborne grit. She closed her eyes, too dry now to be anything but painful. She was scared. Terrified. She let that feeling wash over her, hoping that somewhere Soots would understand. They seemed to catch on when she was sad or scared before. She wanted to believe she hadn’t been reading too much into the flame sprite’s connection with her. She let herself hope as she continued floating upward through the storm.
A warm force encircled her. She heard another pop of lightning close by and startled. The force propelled her upward, away from the lightning. She felt herself heating up, as if she was inside a fire like the ones that used to rage in Blaze. But she was moving. Faster and faster until she emerged from the ash cloud storm, the air around her finally free from powder and smoke. She took a breath and was immensely relieved that it wasn’t filled with grit. She let out a heavy sigh, tears pricking her irritated eyes. Soots.
Fiona peeked one open eye and saw that she was moving away from the ash cloud, no longer floating among it. Soots was encircled tightly around her, pulling her up and away. She didn’t know they had the force to lift her, but considering they could still fly when they were wearing their suit, she was surprised she hadn’t thought about it before.
“I was sure that was the end of my shenanigans,” Fiona said, throat dry and thoughts jumbled. “Thank you.”
:Friend,: Soots said, the crackle light and simple.
“Friend,” Fiona said and then fell silent. She had needed them, and they had been there for her. It was more than she could’ve asked for. She thought back to what Dodger said about having backup and sighed again. She didn’t want to think of what would have happened if she had been here alone.
The heat from Soots interrupted her thoughts as she began to sweat. While their surrounding her was working to move her, she might roast by the time they got to Obsidian’s Tooth.
“Why don’t I hang on to you and let you direct, eh?” She reached deep beneath her cloak and into her scarf to pull out a set of manacles. Though she didn’t enjoy the things she did believe they came in handy every once in a while. She slapped one side on her wrist and closed the other for Soots to loop through. Until she took them off she wouldn’t be able to turn the page, but she didn’t think she’d be doing that midair anyhow.
Soots wrapped themself around one of the manacles and propelled her quickly up through the atmosphere and toward the darkened spires in the distance.
Fiona tried to brush the ash off her face and out of her irritated eyes as best as possible. Jagged cliffs with small studded fires dispersed throughout them came closer into view. They looked sharp and dangerous to her squishy bits. She shouted up to Soots to propel her around to the middle of Obsidian’s Tooth.
Soots swung her around and drove her floating body in that direction. They moved around one spire and descended between them. The peaks were darkened shapes looming among a smoky haze, the only light the glow coming from a wide waterfall of magma that cascaded into a fast-moving stream of amber and bone-white fire below. Like cooking oil bubbling and ready. Here it was like nothing was wrong with Blaze at all. Molten crimson liquid like cherry juice gushed out of a cave in the second spire. Fiona shuddered at the thought of falling into it should her potion wear off.
Looking around for a good place to land, she spied small arched windows set inside the spire. Where there was a window, there was definitely a way in.
“A bit higher. Over to that opening,” Fiona shouted over the raging lavafall below.
Soots flew her through a window. The light from the flame sprite flickered on the walls to show an empty area that continued upward. Fiona could see no bottom in the darkness.
“At least it’s not filled with fire,” she muttered to herself. “Thank you, Soots, I can float up from here.” Unsure of what they could handle, she wanted to keep their exertion low in case she needed them again. “Let’s keep an eye out. We’re probably not the only ones who use those as ways in.”
:Trouble?: said Soots. Worry emanated from them.
“It is the only thing one can truly count on in life,” Fiona said.
Soots bobbed closer to her as they began floating up into the spire of Obsidian’s Tooth.
Soots’s light didn’t reach far. The crags that formed the gently sloped walls looked crumbly and rough. Fiona reached out a hand, straining to touch it. Breaking off a piece, she examined it. Pumiced lava rock filled with tiny holes that smelled of dry dirt. Different than the cap, where the cities had been built. She tucked it away into a pocket of her scarf quickly as she continued to float up.
