Feather in His Cap, Page 3

the sacred flame here to keep the magma from rising to a dangerous level. The dragon is drawing molten rock from the central chamber of the mountain, keeping it from building enough pressure to erupt. But the magma is supposed to go away, not gather here. Now it will just feed the volcano.”

  Amidst all the terror swirling in him, Myram had to admit a new respect for the followers of Fuerigos. Most religions, when faced with the prospect of a natural disaster beyond the wot of mortals, had tended to be satisfied trying to attract divine attention by throwing various members of the community — virgins, pagans, critics — into the gullet of the source of their doom until their deity stepped in and stuck an immortal thumb in the leak. The followers of Fuerigos were inspired to help themselves. Point in their favor in his book.

  “The sacred flame is missing and I must replace it. If I don’t, the burning heart of the mountain will be released with cataclysmic force. Everything for miles around will be destroyed. The town, the farms, your friend Prilla at the inn…”

  Myram felt a pang as he thought of Prilla, vaporized in an instant, her theatrical aspirations cut short in a single explosive moment.

  “What can I do?” he asked.

  “I just need my case,” she said, leading him back towards the tunnel where he had left the heavy bag.

  A sudden peal of wicked laughter thundered through the chamber, followed by a roaring blast of heat and wind that slammed Myram and Anni forward and down onto the floor of the platform.

  Anni’s flurry of coughs brought Myram out of a stunned daze.

  “Oh, drat! That explains everything,” she said. He could just make out her reddish shape through the cloud of syrupy smoke surrounding them. She reached out, grabbed her bag, and scrabbled back towards the tunnel.

  Myram tried to rise to follow, gulped at the thick air, and ended up convulsed with coughing.

  “I need a moment!” Anni shouted at him from the cave. “Keep her distracted!”

  Myram started to shout a question to Anni, but was ripped up by a whirlwind of stinging sand to hang floating in the air above the platform. He was flipped like a griddle cake and found himself face to hoof with an eight-foot tall winged demon, hovering above him.

  The demon was forged of molten rock and nightmare. Its glossy black skin was laced with red-orange veins that seethed angry fire. The entire creature seemed poised to burst into a million vicious shards. The demon was voluptuously female. An impressive bosom poured forth from a bustier of dark gray metal, and a pair of long, finely chiseled legs emerged from under a scalloped skirt of the same metal. Myram hung at eye level with the demon’s thick, horny hooves.

  The demon tossed back a wave of the shimmering hair that dripped like rivulets of copper from her head, turned shining black eyes on Myram, and flapped her giant membranous wings.

  “Hello, honey-lamb,” she said with a toothy grin. She tossed back a wave of shimmering hair that dripped like rivulets of copper from her head and glanced down at the bits of roasted caretaker scattered below Myram. “You really shouldn’t play with my food like that.” She winked lecherously at him. “Or did I invite you to dinner?”

  The tornadic hand gripping Myram relaxed and he dropped with a squelch to the platform. He stepped carefully out of the caretaker’s remains, scraping and scuffing them off his boots.

  The demon landed heavily next to him and leaned close to sniff at his ear.

  “Eh…pickled.” She gave him a sour look.

  Myram’s head snapped around towards her, sweeping her nose with the phoenix feather in his hat.

  “Ugh!” Her face wrinkled up and then exploded in a huge sneeze. The tiny sizzling specks of spittle felt like gnat bites all over his face.

  He gathered as much dignity as he could, covered in mud and who knew what else, aching, and now, spittled upon by a demon.

  “Who,” he said in a quavering whisper, “Are you?”

  The demon arched the stony equivalent of an eyebrow at him. “I am the Burning Queen, Eternal Elemental Empress of the Melted Lands, the Devourer of the World,” she declared, crossing her arms before her and spreading her wings wide. “You may address me as Lady Vulu.”

  “All of this,” Myram gestured around at the general volcanic havoc and chewed caretaker, “Is your… work?”

  She smiled like a mischievous child, the cracks in her cheeks glowing a deeper red. “Quite magnificent, don’t you think?”

  “The caretaker?” Myram gestured with a boot at what was left of the burned corpse.

  “The poor, lonely man. Left here, a peon of that candle imp, Fuerigos, to tend this…affront to nature.” She licked her crimson lips with a tongue like a fat, red serpent, then pressed a hand demurely over them. “All he wanted was a kiss. How was I to know he would be irresistibly delicious? All that juicy roasting fat.”

  “How terrible.” Myram shuddered.

  She leaned close to Myram, her breath on his neck like the steam from a tea kettle on the boil. “I am an elemental queen from the realm of fire, born with an unquenchable desire to devour and destroy.” She tugged at the front of his hat. “It’s what I do.”

  Vulu giggled and the ground shuddered beneath them. Myram stumbled backwards. His mind reeled with the hopelessness of trying to fight an elemental creature of limitless destructive power. Distract her, Anni had ordered. What was he supposed to do, bore her to death with that horrible speech from Act II of Buckrington the King?

  “I suppose, mortal, that you’ve come to beg for your life? Town? Farm?” She glared down at him, then heaved a put-upon sigh. “Tiresome, but since you are the first and I’m but peckish at the moment, I will hear your despairing pleas.”

  Myram felt the hot spotlight of her gaze. Every fiber in his body screamed at him to turn and run, that he had vamped long enough for Anni, and now it was time for him to find some safe spot in the blast shadow of the mountain. Then, he thought again of Prilla, the barmaid. Poor Prilla, shivering in the shadow of this giant beast of a volcano. And with that, Myram sighed and let loose the ridiculous amount of fear he had been gripping in a hard, straining knot in his stomach.

  “I am not here to plead, nor to despair,” he declaimed, stepping forward into the spotlight of Vulu’s glow, “But here to worship.”

  Vulu paused at this and fluttered into the air, her lips slipping slowly into half a smile. “Worship, you say?”

  He gave a quick, eager nod, never taking his eyes off hers to maintain his sincerity. “Worship your power, your beauty.”

  She gave him a squint that said, ‘You’re flipping me’, and Myram realized he would have to continue to tread carefully across the hot coals of her vanity.

  “I would gladly provide offerings,” Myram said. “A sacrifice to my lady.”

  “Your world is my sacrifice,” Vulu spread her arms wide. “It’s my job to re-establish the natural order of things around here, and teach you overreaching mortals some things. And lesson one is, I level this mountain and roast the lands surrounding it with the fury of an elder god.”

  She swept down and flipped him under the chin with a finger that burned like a branding iron, “But it was a nice try.”

  “My empress,” Myram lips stumbled and he offered a silent prayer to Figgen, the god of improvisational theater. He started speaking words as fast as his brain could form them. “Your fury is like a bonfire in the winter that is mortality. The song of our death will be a paean to the glory of your primal anger.”

  He knelt and reached out for her hand, to draw it up in a worshipful kiss, but snatched his hand back as it encountered a surface temperature more appropriate to a pot fresh from the oven.

  Fingers in mouth to soothe his burning flesh, he caught her frown.

  “Mortal, your flattery will get you nowhere,” she chided him, but Myram could see her cheeks glow almost white with the heat of a blush.

  “I deny flattery,” he declared, heating up in spite of himself. “I deny flattery and declare worship. My heart is carried away
on wings of fire. It will ignite and burn for you, and rain sad ash upon the dark surface of the world, and with your grace be reborn again in a conflagration that will last as long as love doth last, that has tasted of immortal grace and power.”

  “Oh…dear mortal,” Vulu appeared genuinely impressed. “You have touched a chord in me. I am impressed with the fire you summon.”

  “Though I am loath to share you, my most beautiful lady…” Myram hesitated. Here came the pitch to save the people below. “There are many in the lands below us who would see you as I do, who would worship at your…hoofs.”

  She gave him an arch look.

  “They would be most grateful for the beneficence you could offer them, by providing them with gifts of the deepest wells of the mountain to serve as fertile soil for their farms.”

  Vulu’s face turned darker, and Myram sensed she was not the kindhearted type, so he switched gears.

  “And, of course, the occasional eruption to punish enemies and the unworthy? A farm here…a…”

  And here he truly felt an evil thrill.

  “Possibly a troll warren there. Nasty folk, those trolls.”

  Vulu’s lips turned up in a glowing grin. “A little wrath of goddess type stuff. I like it.”

  She pressed a burning finger under his chin, lifting him to his feet. “Let us seal this pact, mortal. As the fire god has his concubines who preach for him, you will become mine, with the gift of a kiss.”

  She leaned forward, and the heat of her hit Myram