Clay Harmon’s Flames of Mira is an epic new fantasy in a world of ice, magma and magic! Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Flames of Mira, which is out now!
Among the volcanoes beneath Mira’s frozen lands, people like Ig are forced to undergo life-threatening trials that bind chemical elements to the human body. One of Mira’s most powerful elementals, Ig works in secret as an enforcer for the corrupt Magnate Sorrelo Adriann, but is cursed with flesh binding magic — magic that will kill him at the first sign of disobedience. His days are spent hunting down anyone who would oppose the magnate, a shell of his old self who clings to old memories and his budding friendships with the magnate’s son and daughter.
When Sorrelo is overthrown in a coup and the country is thrown into chaos, Ig quickly learns he can do far worse than what Sorrelo has asked from him so far. If he can’t rediscover the person he was and escape the flesh binding in time, he will have to kill countless innocents as Sorrelo and his allies seek to reclaim the throne, or sacrifice himself trying.
Tonight I would put an innocent man to death.
Magnate Sorrelo and his guards bulled through the crowd as I struggled to keep up. Commoners congesting the trade district did their best to clear a path for him—the heat in the magnate’s eyes made it clear he wanted blood.
We reached the epoxy shop’s front entrance, where light glowed in its dirty windows, broken up by the shadows inside. The guards pushed through the door, and Magnate Sorrelo paused, waiting for me to catch up. It’s him or it’s both of you, his glare said. So it had gone with the others. The air inside the shop smelled of citrus and warm earth, and two craftsmen behind a counter spoke with a group of customers, all of whom froze at our arrival.
The magnate’s cousin hunched over a vat of steaming resin near the back wall, bat-hide gloves covering his arms up to the elbows and sweat glistening on his shoulders. He turned at the sudden silence and realization dawned on him.
“Bolivar,” Magnate Sorrelo said.
Bolivar white-knuckled the stirring rod, and I readied myself to defend the magnate. Part of me hoped Bolivar attacked. If you had to die, best do it with your feet under you. “Please, Sorrelo,” he said, releasing the rod, letting it sink into the resin. “Don’t do this.”
Magnate Sorrelo swished a hand, and I forced myself to follow one of the guards behind the counter to grab Bolivar’s arm. “You are being formally charged with aiding and abetting in a plot to stage a coup to overthrow me,” Sorrelo said. He twisted a ring on his forefinger, as if dismayed by the difficult choice. All I saw was excitement.
“That’s ridiculous. You’re family.” Bolivar tried to pull away, but it was half-hearted, like he still refused to believe what was happening.
Sorrelo nodded, but not to him. With the guard’s help, I guided Bolivar to the exit while Sorrelo and his second guard followed.
A growing crowd waited outside. The epoxy shop sat in the heart of Augustin’s trade district, on the sinkhole’s first level where Bolivar’s arrest would attract the most attention.
The district’s torchlight danced on the faces of worried and angry Augustins, many of whom cared deeply for the magnate’s cousin. Bolivar always volunteered around the city, despite being an Adriann; his job in the epoxy shop wasn’t even paid.
“What now?” Bolivar asked. “Is it the Lid? Is that it?” The shaking words undermined the outrage he tried to project. Every political prisoner arrested over the recent months had stayed in the prison cells pocketing the top of the sinkhole—a week near the darkness of the surface and most lost a foot or two to hypothermia.
“No,” the magnate said. “Death by ash or by ice?”
Bolivar’s arm flexed under my grip. “I-I’m sorry?” he asked.
“You heard me. Pick now. Ash or ice?”
The crowd’s whispers faded, replaced by the faint roar of the chasm’s waterfalls. Sorrelo had never skipped a trial before, and I could feel the heated and horrified glares from hundreds of onlookers start to envelope us. Their attention dug into me, moving around the rocks of acid in my stomach. Fhelfire, but I always hated standing in front of an audience, and the feeling was multiplied a hundredfold knowing what they were about to witness. Nothing could be done about it, though. If I didn’t play my part in this arrest, the magnate would torture me to death before killing Bolivar anyway.
“I’m not trying to overthrow you,” Bolivar said. “And I’m no reformer. I want my trial.”
“Pick, or I’ll pick for you.”
“This is insane. You can’t just accuse someone of a crime and decide they’re guilty. It doesn’t work that way anymore.”
The lines in the magnate’s face deepened. “Ash it is, then.”
Bolivar yanked violently as the guard and I dragged him across the street toward the stairs leading from the first level ridge to the chasm floor, and he nearly slipped out of my sweaty palms. “Help,” he screamed, feet skidding over colorful mosaics—mosaics I’d watched him build for the city—but nobody intervened.
We reached the uneven volcanic rock of the chasm floor, and I nearly lost my grip a second time. I repeated to myself that this was no different from the others I’d killed for Sorrelo. Just another notch on the belt. Over and over I whispered it, working it in between labored breaths, the straining of my arms hiding how badly they trembled. Augustins crowded the railings rimming the sinkhole’s vertical walls, scrambling to catch a glimpse of the spectacle, and wooden platforms carrying goods between levels slowed as tradesmen paused in their work.
A river of lava waited for us on the field of black stone. Bubbles of gas ruptured on its surface, and as we came closer to the execution platform built against its shore, Bolivar craned his neck toward the crowds. “Please,” he yelled. “Stop him. Anyone. It’ll be the end of Augustin—”
The man restraining Bolivar’s other arm punched him in the nose. Bolivar stumbled and hit the ground, dribbling red spit on the platform before struggling back to his feet. I tried to help him up, my hand still a vice on his wrist.
“Please,” he croaked again.
The guard’s next strike landed under Bolivar’s armpit, hard enough to crack ribs, and I let go before I was thrown to the ground too. Bolivar whimpered, smearing blood onto the glassy obsidian, and the guard brought his steel-toed boot back.
I grabbed the guard’s arm while my foot pushed down on top of his boot, catching him off balance and rooting him in place. He twitched like he wanted to hit me, but had the smarts to avoid interrupting the magnate’s performance in front of half the city. All I could think about in that moment was how I would come for this man in some damp side alley, in the washroom of some backwater bar on the fifth level while he drank himself stupid, and the magnate would never find out.
But killing this guard wouldn’t help that awful feeling creeping into my body that worsened with each wheeze Bolivar squeezed out.
“Ig,” the magnate said. Sweat beaded on his brow, reflecting the lava’s light as he watched the two of us.
“Yes?” I asked, struggling to keep the resentment out of my voice.
“Don’t mess this up.”
He faced the people of Augustin. Waterfalls leaking from ice on the upper walls fed into the lava, the steam obscuring parts of the crowd. Sorrelo would draw this out as long as possible—at least until someone from the audencia showed up to stop him. Or at least try to. “Times are different,” the magnate boomed. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the toll these past months have taken on you. But consider this a moment of respite from my authority. Sometimes the decision of who lives and who dies shouldn’t rest on the shoulders of those in power, whether that be myself or the audencia.”
Bolivar’s quivering calmed as he watched his cousin. I could almost feel the hope coursing through his veins.
“My personal attendant has been called before the eyes of the city to make the final decision,” Sorrelo said. “Should he decide that Bolivar deserves life, all he has to do is say the word and my judgment will be annulled. Ig is a commoner living outside the politics of the court. A true voice of objectivity. If Bolivar’s life should be spared, no harm shall befall him or my manservant. The audencia will make sure I will be judged accordingly, should anything happen to either party. Accident or otherwise.”
Bolivar’s eyes shined, tears cutting into the dirt on his face. “Not like this,” he said to me. “My cousin is sick in the head.”
His hopeful gaze intensified, but he didn’t continue. To him, every moment I spent deciding the right thing meant more of a chance at survival. I experienced a near-overwhelming urge to knock the guard into the lava, throw Bolivar over my shoulder, and run for the main gates. I didn’t want to kill an innocent man. All I wanted was to keep him away from Sorrelo.
It didn’t matter what I wanted though. Sorrelo needed Augustin to think he wasn’t alone in believing Bolivar deserved death—a reformer in his eyes. The reformers had been hounding the capital for months, torching businesses, beating loyalists to the Adriann family half to death, planting the idea that it was time to put the monarchy to the sword. Now Sorrelo was in a kill-or-be-killed frenzy. Why he thought Bolivar was helping the reformers I had no idea, but I couldn’t expect him to be kind enough to tell me.
And knowing his reasons changed nothing. Before the arrest, the magnate had bound me with a Word to follow through with the execution. In truth, I could either kill Bolivar, or the flesh magic tying me to Sorrelo Adriann would kill me.
I gestured for the other guard to step away. This was mine alone to carry. Then, with all my strength, I pulled an innocent man to his feet and shoved him to his death.
A scream echoed up the walls of the chasm—the sound of someone encountering an unstoppable force. The viscous material ate into him, his skin rupturing and hissing from explosive evaporation, accompanied by pops of bubbling fat. His body convulsed until there wasn’t enough left of him to move around. The river swallowed him in twelve heartbeats. Hardly more than a few seconds. A whiff of meat passed over us, cleansed away by wind from the nearest waterfall.
