Fire Within: Book Two of Fire and Stone (Stories of Fire and Stone 2) by Stephanie Beavers

difficult to distinguish between individuals by heat signature than by sight. Fortunately, he could make it really easy for them.
    One incantation later, a fiery steed stood beside him. Its mane and tail were aflame, but its body was like a large, ashy black coal, cracked to reveal a molten center beneath. Its hooves left ashy scuffs on the ground and its eyes burned like beacons in the darkness. Yet for all its fiery ferocity, its body wasn’t hot enough that he couldn’t mount and ride the summon down the tunnel. The Nadra would recognize him from a long way off this way. Sure enough, he was a minute or two in when he was noticed.
    “Hail, Summoner!” a female voice called ahead. Esset got the fire horse to pick up the pace until he could see the Nadra calling to him.
    “Tseka, is that you?” he asked. By way of an answer, the scarlet Nadra launched herself at him, tackling him off the back of the fire horse. Amazingly, Tseka managed to contort herself before impact so that Esset landed atop her. The fire horse pranced to the side, and Esset sent it tearing back up the tunnel the way he’d come—although the requirements for summons were apparently no longer in place, he still felt better following them as guidelines. By the time the fiery being reached the exit, it would be banished. In the meantime, he had a mass of scarlet scales and sinew to deal with.
    “Tseka!” he protested, but his voice came out stifled as he was mashed against her ample chest. Struggle as he might, Esset couldn’t escape Tseka’s enthusiastic embrace. The Nadra had deceptively powerful bodies; they looked like a cross between snakes and humans. In the end, Esset only got away because Tseka let him go. Esset scrambled upright and straightened his clothes while Tseka laughed and righted herself with a fluid sliding of scales on stone.
    “You were always awkward and scrawny,” Tseka remarked, standing him upright and looking him up and down. “But now you’re even scrawnier.” To Esset’s relief, she retrieved a lantern from the darkness and opened the shutter on it so he could see.
    Tseka was striking, even for one of the Nadra. Like all Nadra, she was a mass of slithering coils from the waist down, and from the waist up she was mostly humanoid, though still scaled. As a warrior, her scales were burnished to be dull instead of painted bright, but even so, her scarlet scales were a vivid hue. Not as vivid as her eyes though—her irises were blood red, adding to her fierce image and demeanor. Tseka’s hair was red-orange, and in female Warrior fashion, it was grown long and braided about her upper body to fashion a kind of harness around her breasts.
    Tseka yanked Esset toward her for another quick hug; he made a startled noise that, thanks to her squeeze, came out as a squeak.
    “You’re also awfully squeaky for a dead man. What happened?” she demanded. She was a friend, one made in the midst of their fight to save Salithsa two and some years ago. Every Nadra was an ally thanks to that struggle, but Tseka had specially adopted them when the fighting had ended.
    “It’s a long story,” Esset replied, not really wanting to have to tell it more than once. Tseka prodded him in the side to suggest he tell her anyway. The other Nadran sentry came up behind Tseka. He smiled and nodded at Esset and placed a hand briefly on his shoulder. Esset didn’t recognize him, but that wasn’t surprising; there was a whole race of people in this underground city. Esset nodded back anyways as the sentry resumed his post, tacitly allowing Tseka to accompany Esset down to the city.
    “Well, the short version is, we fought Moloch and lost. I used a magic that should have cost me my life—instead it only took two years of it. Now I’m trying to find out if Toman is still alive, and if he is, I’ll need the help of your mages,” Esset explained.
    “Mages. Definitely a matter for the Council then. It will be no problem convening them, at