Dream of Fire

Excerpt from the novel "Dream of Fire"

Chapter 1

Kerebos Ikar stood alone on the northernmost cliff of Pangaea's only continent, gazing down at a boiling ocean. Incoming icebergs hissed in the steaming water and gave thunderous voice as they cracked asunder. The giant, black-clad warrior paid scant attention. He was too busy contemplating his own, internal fractures.

Cracked the length of my soul, he mused. Can feel it leaking out when I walk. It's been draining for so long I'm surprised I've any left to lose.

Kerebos eyed the nearest iceberg, saw the vapor rising heavenwards. Where are you going? he thought. There's no escape up there.

Seagulls piped piteously as dawn's gray fingers inched across the sky. Kerebos liked the little birds. They sounded as miserable as he felt.

"Land and I'll end your suffering," he muttered.

A gust of wind smacked the ikar and frosted his cropped black hair. He squinted dark eyes and a frown settled on his scarred face. An ethnic Chaconne from a warm inland region, he despised the cold.

The earth trembled between his feet and a tongue of magma spewed from the side of the cliff into the sea, igniting the oil which had seeped up from the broken depths. Kerebos reached for the distant flames as they spread across the surface, but another gust struck him, lifting the cape from his broad shoulders. Droplets froze on his black armor.

Merciless hell! he thought, shielding his face with a huge gauntlet. He half turned toward the Legion's distant campfires. I spend my life freezing. Except in my dreams...

Kerebos wrestled a sudden desire to throw sword and armor into the ocean.

I could leave these desert lands, he reasoned. Leave these men I hate. I need never wear iron again.

He trembled at the thought and pulled a stiff, green kraal leaf from a cape pockets. He munched the drug in silence, sighing as it strengthened him.

Don't dream the impossible, son, his father had often warned. Even the possible rarely comes true.

Kerebos rubbed his eyes. He had loved his father dearly, and every night since killing him, Kerebos had dreamed of fire.

Every night. The ikar heard a slow, heavy tread behind him but did not turn. "Good morning, Triskeles," he greeted the First Elhar without enthusiasm.

"Good morning, lord," came the Boru's barbarically accented Chaconni.

Triskeles sidled up to his commander and placed a booted foot on the edge of the world. "Some wonder of Wyrd, eh?" he asked.

Triskeles, a rawboned giant, doffed his black helmet and a blond topknot spilled onto his cuirass--men of the First Elhar traditionally wore knots. His thin, purpling lips curled into a mirthless smile as he inched a stone off the precipice and watched splash below. "A wonder, eh, lord?" he repeated.

Kerebos knew he had to answer or the elhar would just go on repeating himself. How I loathe him, he thought, but replied: "It is."

Triskeles chuckled to himself, cooed really, but did not reveal the source of his amusement. He often did that, which Kerebos particularly hated about him.

"Wyrd schicksal macht aus allem nichts," Triskeles hummed a proverb in his native tongue.

Kerebos translated: Fate makes nothing of everything. He studied the elhar, dubbed "Triskeles" because his great speed made it seem he possessed "three legs". Triskeles returned the stare with the icy blue eyes so common among his people.

There was that strange look in Triskeles' eyes again, Kerebos noted, but it had never been quite this overt. What was it? Adoration? Kerebos shifted uncomfortably and turned back to the sea. He shuddered with disgust at the thought of Triskeles watching him, wondering if he could afford to heave the Boru into the growling water. He came within a hair's breadth of the attempt, but concluded he would need Triskeles in the coming battle.