Firesoul

  Jiri, go." On the muddy bank, Oza was reaching for his necklace. "Run!" he shouted, and the word slipped into a roar as the shaman changed, grew claws and fangs and black-striped fur.

  Jiri clutched her spear, paralyzed.

  But we're winning.

  Tentacles wrapped the demon, and the great tiger Oza had become slashed its claws between them, spilling stinking gouts of blood. If Jiri stayed—

  The demon threw back its head, and roared a word.

  The twisted, evil power of it broke the air. It tore through Jiri's body like poisoned hooks, filled her lungs like filthy water. The world shuddered around her, dimmed, and Jiri felt herself being ripped away, sent into darkness.

  No.

  She held on with all that she could, straining for light, for heat, for life, and suddenly she was back in her body, sprawled retching in the mud. Dully, she could see the demon, laughing as it tore limp tentacles off its hide. The massive tiger crouched before it, his gray-shot muzzle bent and dripping blood.

  "Oza," Jiri groaned.

  The cat raised his head and his eyes met Jiri's, old and stern. Then he turned and leapt at the monster, roaring, even as the demon wrapped its claws around him...

  The Pathfinder Tales Library

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  Firesoul © 2015 Paizo Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

  Paizo, Inc., LLC, the Paizo golem logo, Pathfinder, the Pathfinder logo, and Pathfinder Society are registered trademarks of Paizo Inc.; Pathfinder Accessories, Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Pathfinder Adventure Path, Pathfinder Campaign Setting, Pathfinder Cards, Pathfinder Flip-Mat, Pathfinder Map Pack, Pathfinder Module, Pathfinder Pawns, Pathfinder Player Companion, Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Pathfinder Tales, and Rise of the Runelords are trademarks of Paizo Inc.

  Cover art by Bryan Sola.

  Cover design by Emily Crowell.

  Map by Robert Lazzaretti.

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  ISBN 978-1-60125-741-3 (mass market paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-60125-742-0 (ebook)

  Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

  (Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

  Kloster, Gary.

  Firesoul / Gary Kloster.

  p. ; cm. — (Pathfinder tales)

  Set in the world of the role-playing game, Pathfinder and Pathfinder Online.

  Issued also as an ebook.

  ISBN: 978-1-60125-741-3 (mass market paperback)

  1. Adoptees--Fiction. 2. Druids and druidism--Fiction. 3. Mercenary troops--Fiction. 4. Jungles--Fiction. 5. Pathfinder (Game)--Fiction. 6. Fantasy fiction. 7. Adventure stories. I. Title. II. Series: Pathfinder tales library.

  PS3611.L678 F57 2015

  813/.6

  First printing February 2015.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  For Brin, for everything...

  Chapter One

  Beyond the Mango Woman

  Jiri crouched motionless beneath the emerald shadows of the undergrowth.

  Listening.

  A breeze sighed through the high canopy. Birds sang, fruit bats shrieked, and insects droned, but underneath it all came that scrap of noise again. The scuff of feet against the ground, somewhere close.

  Jiri slipped the handful of bloodfern that she had gathered into her pouch. She had left Thirty Trees at dawn hunting these curly green shoots, so useful for clotting blood. Traveling a slowly widening spiral, she hadn't come that far from her village.

  It's probably someone out hunting.

  Probably. But Jiri's hand went from her pouch to the hilt of her knife. Being close to home, close to all that she cared about, meant she should be more cautious, not less. Hidden in brush, she drew her kni
fe and parted her lips, ready to whisper the words that would bring the spirits and their magic to her.

  Then she heard a voice.

  "Boro, hold up."

  Hadzi.

  So, her lover had finally rolled out of his hammock to go hunting with his brother. Or Boro tipped him out. Letting her knife go, Jiri shook her head and started to straighten, but stopped when she heard Hadzi continue.

  "I need to piss."

  Maybe I won't pop up and say good morning, Jiri thought as she made sure Hadzi wasn't too close. Maybe I'll work on my leopard impression instead. She smiled and drew a deep breath, but held it when Boro spoke.

  "It won't work."

  "Again with this," Hadzi muttered, finishing his business.

  "You overestimate your charms, brother," Boro continued. "Jiri may be swinging a hammock with you, but—"

  "Trust me, it's more than that for her."

  Really? Jiri let her breath go, listening.

  "I've got Jiri like a snake with a monkey. When I tell her tonight how Father has found me a girl in Kibwe, when I tell her how much I love her, but oh no, a shaman can't marry and my family needs this alliance...She'll fall apart, and I'll hold her and cry, too. It will be so tragic, she'll never be able to forget me."

  The undergrowth that hid her kept Jiri from seeing her lover's face, but in Hadzi's voice she could hear his smile. That stupid, cocky smile that made him so handsome.

  "I promise you, Jiri will be slipping off with me less than a year after my marriage. I'll have two women, and—"

  "A lot of trouble?"

  "No," Hadzi snapped. "Strength. When Thirty Trees chooses a new wara, I'll be husband to the niece of the biggest fruit merchant in Kibwe, and the lover of the girl that old Oza claims might be greater than him someday. With those two by my side, I will be the new wara."

  "Or dead," Boro muttered.

  "Right. Better I spend my life worrying like old man Boro, too scared to..."

  Whatever else Hadzi said was lost in the ruckus of a monkey troop swinging overhead. When the animals had passed, the men were gone.

  Jiri rose and wove through the undergrowth until she came to the trail the brothers had been traveling. Hand resting on her belt knife, she stared down the narrow path.

  "Like a snake. With a monkey." Jiri took one step down the trail, but a rustle of leaves and a flash of motion stopped her. A monkey dropped from the branches arcing above, landing light on the ground before her.

  Jiri frowned at the animal. "How much of that did you hear?"

  The monkey cocked its head then blurred, stretching up and out until it was a man. He stood taller than Jiri, and his gray braids were shorter, but like her he wore brown mud cloth patterned with black designs and a necklace. Instead of her bright beads, though, Oza wore a menagerie of tiny animal fetishes, each carved from bone.

  "Enough to know that you shouldn't be talking to Hadzi right now." Oza touched the carved monkey hanging from his necklace, a gesture of thanks. "You're a bit too hot at the moment."

  "Hot?" Jiri said, proud of the levelness of her voice, the easy way she held herself.

  Oza didn't say anything. He just looked down at Jiri's hand.

  Jiri followed her teacher's gaze and saw the smoke slipping out between her fingers. She let go of her belt knife and stared at the black marks she had branded into the blade's leather grip.

  "Well," she said, blowing on her fingertips. "Maybe a little."

  The old shaman raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything.

  Heaving out a sigh, Jiri brushed back her braids. "I shouldn't have trusted that dog, but I thought I knew just what he wanted from me. And that was fine, because that's what I wanted from him." Hadzi had broad shoulders, a handsome face, lovely hands and lips that...

  Jiri shook her head, shoving those thoughts away. "I was fine with him using me for lust. That's what I was using him for. But for him to think he could use me to get power...Gods and crocodiles!"

  "There are reasons shamans don't marry," Oza said. "And why we usually don't climb into the hammock of anyone from our own village."

  "Then why'd you let me climb into Hadzi's?"

  "Because." Oza sighed. "You've never truly felt a part of Thirty Trees, Jiri. You've always been uncertain here, and wary."

  "That's because everyone in Thirty Trees has always seemed wary of me." Except you.

  "I know. I thought you being with Hadzi might help." Oza looked her in the eye. "If you can't learn to trust anyone but me, the village will never trust you. And a shaman must have her people's trust."

  "So you keep telling me," Jiri said. "I don't think this helped though." Like a monkey. Hadzi, no one's that handsome. "I wish you would have forbidden it, now."

  "And how well would that have gone?"

  "Do you think I would have gone against you?" Jiri's voice rose, and she pulled her anger back. This wasn't Oza's fault. This was Hadzi's, and every time she thought of his name her fingers itched with heat.

  "You're a good student, Jiri. If I'd told you not to dance in front of his drum at the Orchid Dance, you would have listened to me. You wouldn't have tried to sneak into his hammock behind my back. But I think your frustration might have burned hot enough to turn our home to ash."

  "I would never—"

  Oza leveled a finger at her charred knife. "You were born in fire, Jiri. That bright spirit will always be too eager to serve you. I pick our battles carefully." The shaman folded his arms. "Besides, that boy might be handsome, but a sloth has quicker wits. I knew that if he did get up to anything like this, you'd figure him out before there was any real trouble."

  "Another lesson."

  "Life is nothing but," Oza said. "You'll have to find an answer now, for Hadzi and his schemes."

  "Something that doesn't involve my friend fire," Jiri muttered.

  "That would be best."

  "I knew you'd say that." Jiri tapped her gathering pouch, thoughtful. "I did see some fireweed this morning."

  He planned to come to me, weeping? A little of that rubbed into his loincloth, and he'll weep for a week.

  "That poor, stupid boy," Oza said. "I think—"

  Distracted by her thoughts of petty but satisfying revenge, it took Jiri a moment to notice her teacher's sudden silence. When she did, she found him staring into the jungle, eyes blank, face hard.

  "Oza?"

  The shaman's eyes snapped back into focus. "Jiri. Get my leathers and my spear and bring them to the Mango Woman. Run." Oza touched his necklace and his form twisted, shrinking down into a blur of green-and-scarlet flight.

  Spear and leathers.

  The words sank in and Jiri started running back to Thirty Trees, trying to move her legs as fast as the bright wings of the parrot her teacher had become.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Gasping, Jiri ran over the hard-packed red dirt that surrounded Thirty Trees' homes, the sun flashing off the blades of the spears she carried. Those blades dimmed when she reached the shadows spreading beneath the mango grove that gave her village its name. Clutching her burdens close, she dodged the children sitting beneath the trees, their slings and stones ready to drive any raiding monkey bands away from the ripening fruit. When she caught sight of the ancient statue that marked the far boundary of the grove, she finally slowed.

  "Jiri, what's happening? Why do you have those spears? Why—"

  Jiri whirled to glare at the chattering crowd of children that had followed her. "Go back."

  "But—"

  "Now, spirits take you!"

  The children stared at Jiri for a moment, then ran. Muttering thanks to her ancestors, Jiri stepped out from beneath the last mango tree and set down her burdens, looking around. No parrots, no Oza, no anything but the Mango Woman.

  That statue had stood here for countless years, long before the mango trees it was named for had even sprouted. Carved of dark soapstone, the beautiful woman held one hand out, and her eyes were stern. Even before Oza had taught Jiri h
ow to decipher the runes carved into the statue's base, she had understood its purpose.

  A command to go no further.

  A warning.

  A whirring of wings pulled Jiri's eyes away from that stone face and she spotted a green bird flashing through the trees toward her. Cursing her slowness, she reached down and began to sort through the things she had brought, jerking out the pieces she needed.

  She was pulling her leathers on by the time Oza had landed and traded feathers for skin. His eyes met hers, and Jiri could see the grim fear that deepened the wrinkles of his face.

  "There's trouble," she said.

  "There is." Oza picked up his armor, sliding into it with practiced ease even though Jiri could count on one hand the number of times she had seen him don it. "Someone has opened the door into the Pyre."

  The Pyre. Oza had only ever told her one story about the ruin that lay in the jungle beyond the Mango Woman: that the ancestors had built it to guard not a tomb or a treasure but a mistake, a piece of bad-luck magic that was meant to be forgotten.

  The Pyre was forbidden, and Oza never allowed anyone to venture more than a stone's throw beyond the Mango Woman, not even Jiri. She had asked Oza, once, when he would take her there and teach her how to guard it. Not yet was all he had said, and for weeks after he had worked her on nothing but meditation and self-discipline.

  "Who?" Jiri fumbled with the straps that pulled her leather armor tight across her chest. No one from Thirty Trees. But who else would know of that place? Even the children know not to speak of it.

  "The spell I bought was too simple," Oza said, his straps done already. "Just an alarm, to let me know when someone came too close. They were already inside when I got there. I don't know who or what they are." He picked up his spear, the broad metal head of it flashing in a narrow sunbeam. "It doesn't matter. I mean to see that they don't come back out."

  Jiri nodded and grabbed her own spear, a simple hunting weapon, not the war blade of her teacher. She began to whisper to the spirits.

  "Jiri."

  She met Oza's eyes and finished the spells. The air around them stirred, suddenly cooler, and the sweat that had already started to pool beneath their armor's thick leather began to dry. "I will fight with you."

  "I don't doubt it. You look fiercer than the Mango Woman." The shaman shook his head. "But I don't want to fight these raiders. They opened a door they shouldn't have, and I mean to shut it. With them on the other side, more than likely. You can come with me, Jiri, but not to fight."