Heir of Iron

Chapter 21

(The Athpula bridge in Lodhi Garden in Delhi. The Emperor's Bridge is much bigger than this, but this is the best picture I could find that represented the idea. Image originally from here: http://www.remotetraveler.com/lodhi-garden-delhi/.)

Gocam's eyes were closed, his chest barely moving with his breath. Mandhi watched Navran with eyes so emptied by horror and grief that he couldn't tell if she hated him or pitied him. His mother covered her face and wept quietly in the corner.

"There is a way," Gocam said at last.

No one responded at first. The rain thrummed against the thatch overhead and pounded against the mud streets. Finally Navran said, "A way to do what?"

"A way to remove Ruyam's mark. Let me see it."

Navran lifted his shirt. The tips of Ruyam's fingers had left circular burns at five points on Navran's chest, and ragged lines of seared flesh like lightning bolts joined them. The shape was like a warped and blasphemous pentacle.

"What will it do?" Mandhi asked. Her voice was gravelly with the aftermath of her sobbing.

"I don't know yet," Gocam said. "But Navran cannot go to Virnas with it."

Navran's heart lifted. He could be free of the Heir's ring and of Ruyam's mark. "You can erase it?"

"Erase?" Gocam shook his head. "A mark like that cannot be erased. But it can be taken." He rose to his feet and strode across the room to Navran. "Lie down."

Navran stretched himself out on the reeds on the floor. Gocam's dry, thin fingers probed gently at the scars on his chest. They bloomed with heat at the brush of his fingertips, as if the fire that made them was ready to burst into flame again beneath his skin. He drew in his breath sharply at the pain. Gocam pressed his palm against Navran's breastbone, and a ripple of liquid chill quenched it.

"This is how Ruyam followed you to Ternas," Gocam whispered. His hand remained on Navran's chest. The chill that began in Gocam's palm began to spread through Navran's veins, like little trickles of cold water dribbling beneath his skin. "Yes, I see his art. He locked the fire within you. At the moment you laid eyes on the Heir, it would have spilled out and consumed you and the Heir alike."

Gocam grimaced in pain, and the tips of his fingers dug into Navran's flesh. Navran cried out in agony, then Gocam hushed him. He continued to speak in a soft voice. "If you had gone straight to Virnas, Ruyam would have had no need to pursue you. But in Ternas he feared someone might free you. The mark which he placed on you is not an art which most thikratta learn, but a few of us have heard of it, and might know its cure."

"I brought Ruyam to Ternas."

"And Ruyam was the one who burned it. You bear enough guilt rightly. Don't imagine further debts for yourself."

The sensation of cold reached his palms. It tingled pleasantly in his fingertips. "Ah," Gocam said. "That is the extent of it."

"You're done?"

"Done? I've reached the point where I can begin."

A bolt of pain shocked Navran rigid. Half a scream fled his lips, only to be choked into a whining gurgle as his throat locked. The same burning, the same fiery immobility as when Ruyam had marked him---but not the same. Alongside the glowing copper in his veins was a countervailing force, a cold as piercing as the snow, a darkness, a negation, a silence into which the heat dissipated and was nothing. The pain of both in his body at once was greater than the pain of the fire alone, but even as he thought it, he felt the pain lessen. The fire cooled and retreated, and with it the cold withdrew. His lungs came unstuck and he gasped for air.