Flesh and Fire Read Free

and ready.
    “Scour, scour! Root and leaf, be clean! Go!”
    A basic decantation, useful to prevent infestations of bugs and rot. The heated sweetwater mixture turned it into a flaming torch, exploding from his hands at the grub.
    Magic that would have cleansed a midsized field of the most tenacious rot washed over the grub, making it scream like a horse in agony. The full body of the thing pulled out of the soil until it reached a man’s height, almost as thick around and thrice as ugly as the most deformed freak.
    And still it screamed, the ugly, bulbous head reaching through the flames to snap at the Vineart, the source of its agony. Blind, it still came dangerously close, aiming not for the Vineart’s head but his hands, where the flames came from.
    “Scour!” he cried again. “Root and leaf, be clean . Go!”
    The decantation was a basic one, but he was no apprentice to miscast it or underestimate the power needed. It should have been a matter of moments before this was finished. Still, the grub attacked, despite the spell, and Sionio found himself pushed back one step and then another, until his back was up against the row of vines behind him, and he could retreat no farther.
    What was this thing, he wondered, even as he grasped for another burst of magic, suddenly unable to concentrate through his fear. The thought occurred: grubs, even bastard monster grubs, did not appear alone. Was this nightmare beast an aberration? Or were there more, lurking below the fields, waiting to consume his entire crop? If he faltered now, might he lose it all?
    The firestone flared again, driven by his own fear and protective anger. The vineyard was more than the source of his power; it was his livelihood, his life. It was everything he had worked for, from the beginning of his training until now. The idea that something as ugly, as horrible, and as ordinarily defeatable as a grub might put that at risk drove him forward again, his hands flaming bright enough to match the sun overhead. His normally calm features twisted with anger and determination as he reached out with those burning hands, reaching through his disgust and natural aversion to touch the grub.
    The moment he made contact, he wanted to recoil, to let go, to wipe his hands clean of the taint. The skin of the grub was hot and slimy and wrong . This was no garden mutant, no horror of nature. This thing was magic , although how or why Sionio could not fathom. Such magic was not possible, could not be possible. . ..
    Even as Sionio thought those things, he was chanting a new decantation. Not an apprentice’s cantrip, but something far deeper, far stronger, and far more dangerous.
    “Wither and die, ” he ordered the grub. “Lack of moisture, lack of rain. Overheat, wither, and die. Go.”
    It was less a spell than a curse, the sort that should never even be whispered in any vineyard, much less his own. Sionio poured everything he had into it, and poured that in turn into the body of the beast grub. The remaining rosewater on his hands slicked onto the grub’s skin like pig oil; mixed with his spit, it had the same effect as setting a torch to dry grain.
    A huge, high shriek nearly shattered the Vineart’s eardrums at such close range, and the grub wavered, quivered under his grasp, and then collapsed, taking down an entire span of the vine-row with its fall.
    Sionio fell back, the monster’s death throes knocking him away, and he landed again on his back. He watched as the grub thrashed and writhed, and, finally, fell still.
    An eerie silence fell over the vineyard. Birds did not sing overhead, slaves did not chatter, and even the wind seemed hushed. Distantly, as though through water, he could hear the faint sounds of something rustling, and recognized it, barely, as the sound of human bodies. His slaves, who had run . . . but not so far away. If he called to them, they would come back.
    No. Not until he was sure the thing was dead. Slaves were not cheap, and good