Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (13 page)

I really need to find something from my dreams. That
is where they know how to deal with this.

*
* * * * * * *

Kyrus shook his head to clear the last memory, and
found himself seated on a small stool in a room with stone walls. There were
young children, perhaps half his age, seated to his left and right. There were
roughly a score of them, all told, seated in a semicircle around a middle-aged
man in very important-looking clothes. All the faces seemed somehow familiar,
though he struggled to put names to them. The movements and sounds seemed as
strange to Kyrus as they had on the battlefield, but there was something else
that felt odd as well.

Kyrus looked around the room, which seemed to have
especially high ceilings, then at the children all around him, then
up
at the man who was apparently some sort of tutor or instructor.

How short is this stool?
Kyrus found himself thinking, looking down at it.

When he looked at the stool, he also noticed that he
was no larger than the children seated to his sides; he was a child just like
them. He was one of the students.

The lecture being given was nearly incomprehensible to
Kyrus. The teacher spoke at length of something called “aether,” which he did
not explain well enough that someone who had never heard of it could gather
much use from his instructions. But as he spoke of the dangers of the “aether,”
Kyrus began to grow interested. The teacher told of how harmful it could be to
hold onto more than one could handle without releasing it immediately, and then
proceeded to demonstrate the proper and safe way to vent excess aether.

The teacher drew the students’ attention to a very
large basin of water, nearly as wide as a grown man is tall and deep enough to
bathe in, which stood in a corner to one side of the room. Kyrus had not thought
much of it when he glanced about the room upon discovering himself there, yet
it seemed to be central to the teacher’s point. The teacher then muttered some
nonsensical syllables under his breath and waited. After a moment of tense
anticipation experienced by all the children watching, sweat beaded on the
older man’s brow and he gritted his teeth in apparent exertion. The children
were startled to hear the water in the basin suddenly begin to bubble and boil,
filling the room with steam and obscuring vision.

When the steam cleared, the teacher stood, at ease and
unharmed, with a superior look on his face of someone who has just proven his
point beyond argument.

Aha!

*
* * * * * * *

Kyrus rolled around on the floor, trying to find the
release for the so-called aether that he realized he had trapped within
himself. His eyes were squeezed down into narrow slits as he fought back the
pain, but he could see clearly enough to notice that the floorboards were
scorched. He knew what would happen to him if he set the building on fire in
the condition he was in.

Scrambling awkwardly to his feet, he stumbled out of
Davin’s room and across the hallway into his own. There he found what he hoped
would be his salvation. The washbasin that he kept on his dressing table was
still half full of water. At a loss for any other means of ridding himself of
the aether he had drawn in, he focused on the water and imagined it boiling. He
thought of the flows of energy he had pulled into himself and tried to push
them back out towards the basin. It was difficult and painful, far harder than
it had been to pull it into his body, but he saw steam rise from the water and
could feel the pressure easing within him. The aether burned all through his
body on its way out of him, but it felt ten times better than the ever-growing
feeling of a tea-kettle boiling over that it had replaced.

Kyrus breathed a long, ragged sigh of relief as the
last of the aether was purged from him. He cautiously peered into the
washbasin, which was now steaming gently like a fresh bowl of soup. The water
was nearly all gone, and the bowl was too hot to touch when he experimentally
put a finger to it. Sucking on his mildly burned fingertip, Kyrus crossed the
hallway back toward his original problem: the magical lights he needed to be
rid of.

To Kyrus’s great relief, there was only one remaining
when he entered the room. The first one he had created was gone, most likely
having expired of its own accord. Kyrus calmly and prudently waited several
minutes until the other light abruptly vanished as well, and then went about
setting his morning back on path.

The washbasin had cooled enough to handle again by the
time Kyrus got back from the well with fresh water to refill it. He hurriedly
washed and combed through his hair—carefully avoiding the painful lumps he had
received the night before. He decided against any attempt to trim his beard.
His hands still trembled slightly, reminding him of the scare he had just
experienced a few moments ago. Kyrus just was not used to being nearly
incinerated.

The newest expert of the Scrivener’s Guild made little
attempt to perform actual work that morning. His hand was not yet steady enough
to be trusted with any work on behalf of his patrons. Instead he bustled about
the shop, tidying things up that had been put in some disarray when Davin had
removed his personal belongings from among the vast mess of the shop. The two
of them had come to an understanding when it came to clutter. Both had agreed
not to move anything from where the other had left it. Since Kyrus and Davin
were both gifted with excellent memories, they were able to find anything they
needed, so long as things stayed where they were put. The system worked
marvelously, but in the process of vacating the shop, Davin and the king’s
steward had been forced to dig through piles that contained things both had
left there. Kyrus figured that it was as good a time as any to go about finding
where everything had ended up.

Working with an efficiency borne of a desire to drown
his turbulent thoughts in the reality of his task, Kyrus set about sorting and
stacking the innumerable loose pages that covered nearly every available
surface. He found more than a few pages that he had long since given up as lost
and since rewritten, as well as the remnants of a number of small projects he
had rather forgotten having worked on. There was a collection of ruined
invitations to the wedding of Lady Clarissa, which Kyrus had doggedly worked
through an awful cough several months ago to complete; many of the invitations
had splashes of ink or suddenly scratched lines across them. Another whole
stack contained manuscripts that were never meant to be finished works, but
rather they were pages Kyrus had written as practice during his early
apprenticeship and then could not bear to part with, despite the raw script and
poor spacing that his first works exhibited. It served to remind him just how
much he had learned from his old friend, when he looked back at how
undisciplined his calligraphy had looked just a few short years ago. Kyrus
smiled to himself and sighed, then carefully set them aside in their own
separate stack where he would not lose them again … at least for a few months
anyway.

A knock at the door startled Kyrus into dropping
several leaves from a history text Davin had written before Kyrus had even been
born, sending yellowed pages fluttering to the floor. Normally the door to the
shop was kept unlocked during business hours, but Kyrus had been too
preoccupied to remember to do so that morning. Quickly gathering the fallen
sheets in a pile and putting them back more or less where they had come from,
he made his way across the room to see who was calling.

“Sorry, Ash,” he said to the cat as he stumbled over
Davin’s old chair, where the plump feline lay curled in the morning sunlight
that washed in through the window. Ash gave him an imperious look, but only
briefly, before squeezing his eyes shut again and resuming his repose.

Kyrus slid back the bolt from the door and took a deep
breath, trying to compose himself and present a professional demeanor. Smartly,
he pulled the door open.

“Good morning. Sorry about the door—” And Kyrus
stumbled over his words as he saw that it was Abbiley at the door, come to see
him. “Um …”

“Good morning to you as well, and it is no bother. How
is your head?”

“Um … much better, thanks. Lots better. Um …you would
hardly know it was a pole I had walked into; would not think I had hit it on
anything more than a bedpost.” He smiled at his own self-deprecation.

“Well, your wits do not seem
too
addled.”
Abbiley grinned back at him. “Let us get you something to eat, shall we? They
say you should not try to mend a wound on an empty stomach.”

Kyrus had never heard that before, but he was
certainly willing to let the idiom pass unchallenged. He had not been prepared
for her visit and was surprised to have made it this far without making a fool
of himself. He saw she was carrying a cloth-covered basket in her hands. The
basket was fairly large, the kind one might carry a day’s shopping in from the
market, and had a delicious smell wafting from it, though he could not quite
place it.

He held the door aside and allowed her in. She smiled
as she walked past him, surveying the room as she entered.

“Oh my,” she said, idly stopping to pet the shop’s
elder resident. “Ash, how did you let this place get in such a state?”—the
latter spoken in the tone of voice many people use when addressing animals or
small children.

“Oh, I was not aware you two had met.”

“You see that painting up on the wall?” Abbiley asked.

Kyrus glanced over at the wall and nodded. There was a
painting of Ash, curled up in repose on a window sill.

“I painted that.”

“Really? That is remarkable. It is the very image of
him. I had always known it was a portrait of Ash—it is too exact a likeness to
have been a painting of another cat that Davin had found—but I had not realized
you were the artist. Do you paint much?”

“Indeed. It is what keeps a roof over myself and my
brother. I had been having some hard times when Mr. Chartler asked if he could
commission that portrait of Ash. A kind old man, your Mr. Chartler was. He had
been a friend of my pa before he passed, and did me the kindness. Bragged to
his friends about it for months after, to boot. Got a lot of work after that …
and have ever since.”

“That is wonderful,” Kyrus said. “I hope I am not too
forward in proclaiming your artistic prowess on another front as well: that
basket gives off the most sumptuous aroma.”

“Well, I had hoped to make sure you got a good meal in
you at midday. Seems like there is not a fit place to set it down in here,
though. I know Mr. Chartler had always kept the place in a bit of a state of an
old bachelor, but it has seemed to have given up under the care of two of
them,” she said.

“Hmm, then perhaps we can find a more suitable place
for a picnic. Shall we have a walk down to the sea-wall and watch the ships
come in?”

Kyrus was not sure where this was all coming from,
having never spoken more than a brief exchange of greetings or a professional
conversation with a pretty girl. He certainly hoped he could stop dwelling on
it long enough, though, that he would not ruin a good thing that he had gotten
started on.

Abbiley smiled. “What a wonderful idea. Let us do that
… if you are feeling up to it, of course.”

Thoughts of work and head injuries stepped gracefully
aside, knowing their services would not be required for a while.

“I think I ought to be able to manage.”

He extended his arm, and she took it. Kyrus had never
felt more pride than he did escorting Abbiley down to the waterfront, grinning
like a fool the whole way. The door to the shop was not locked and possibly was
not even properly closed all the way. Those thoughts were less graceful and got
themselves shoved rudely into a closet, as Kyrus was well and determined to
have a singular focus at that moment.

The lunch was delicious. It consisted of sandwiches of
a sort, a nice cheese made by someone just outside Golis who was the father of
one of her brother’s friends, and a nice ale that Kyrus did not recognize as
one of the ones he normally drank. It was almost a shame really, the wonderful
food, since all Kyrus remembered afterward was the prettiest pair of blue eyes
and the sound of her voice.

Chapter
9 - A Walk in the Woods

He felt stiff all over but was more refreshed by far
than he had been the previous night. Brannis rolled over onto his stomach and
pushed himself up to his hands and knees, stretching out his limbs and working
out the tightness that had set in after resting from the long day of fighting
and hiking. Climbing to his feet, he looked around the impromptu camp that he
and his men had set up the night before. He was the first of the group to
awaken—not so uncommon an occurrence, as rising before dawn was far more to his
habit than his recent oversleeping—though a few men had begun to stir at the
noise Brannis had made in getting up. Brannis made a quick count of his men and
found none missing—no small blessing considering the losses they had suffered
yesterday. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he walked as quietly as he could to
the cottage to see how Iridan was faring.

The door to Rashan’s cottage opened outward and had a
ratty bit of rope for a handle. Grasping the rope, Brannis slowly pulled the
door open and peeked inside. Within, he saw Rashan bent over Iridan’s resting
form, his back to the door; he showed no reaction to Brannis entering. Brannis
stepped inside and closed the door behind him, taking care not to shut it too
loudly and disturb Iridan. He leaned over the hermit’s shoulder to see what he
was doing.

“Brannis … who … is this?” Iridan’s voice called out
weakly, little more than a dry-sounding whisper.

Brannis smiled down at his friend, whose eyes were
open just a crack, but who was awake and aware enough to have recognized him.
Rashan brushed a few strands of Iridan’s longish blond hair out of his face,
then turned to Brannis. He allowed his patient’s friend to introduce him as he
saw fit.

“He is a hermit who lives in Kelvie Forest, north of
where we were camping. We carried you from the site of the battle after you
fell, and happened upon him. He offered to help take care of you, and we
accepted, since none of us really knew how to treat aether burn,” Brannis told
him. “By the by, that was quite the light-and-fire show you put on back there.
Please do not do it again.”

“I felt like I was floating. I know it was probably
just a dream, but I feel like I was just drifting along. It was nice … My head
did not feel like someone was stabbing me in the temple every time I blink.”
Iridan winced as if even talking was causing his headache to bother him.

“Well, we carried you for the better part of yesterday
on a litter we made from one of the tents you did
not
incinerate. That
probably explains the floating. I feel like I have been trampled by a horse,
though. I have scant practice at carrying sorcerers around, and my muscles have
decided to rebel in protest.”

“Probably. Hey, Brannis …”

“Yes?”

“Remember just before the fighting started, I told you
I would get you back for that comment about me looking like a zombie? Consider
it payback.” Iridan smiled weakly and closed his eyes for a moment. “Can I get
a little more water, please?”

“Of course,” Rashan answered softly.

Brannis noticed the half-empty bowl next to the
hermit. Rashan lifted Iridan’s head and brought the bowl up to his lips. The
sorcerer seemed to drink very little, for there was nearly as much in the bowl
after his drink as before. He licked his lips afterward, as if to moisten them.
They were cracked and dry, and looked as if they might split and bleed just
from the dehydration. It was understandable, of course; Iridan had baked much
of the moisture from his body during the episode yesterday when he had been
overcome by drawing in more aether than he could safely control. He was lucky
he had not burned away more than just water. It would not have been the first
time an overreaching sorcerer was charred to ash by his own power.

Iridan laid his head back down and sighed. As he
drifted into sleep or meditation—Brannis could not tell which—Rashan told him
that he had forbidden Iridan the use of aether until he recovered fully.
Brannis nodded at the wise precaution and left to see about getting his men
ready.

“Do you still plan to leave today?” Rashan asked in a
low voice, catching Brannis by the arm as he exited the cottage.

“Of course, all the more so now that Iridan has
awakened. There should be no doubt now that he will recover. He just needs to
build his strength back up. We can still carry him,” Brannis replied, sounding optimistic.

Rashan looked back at him, nodding to himself and
looking pensive, as if the response had been expected. The hermit followed
Brannis outside.

“Very well,” Rashan replied, “I will accompany you,
then. I do not approve of your decision, but I will come along to see that he
is properly tended.”

“What? Why? No, we will be fine on our own, though I
thank you for taking care of him. Iridan is a dear friend of mine, and I am
grateful for all you have done, but we cannot ask you to come along.”

“Fine, then it is settled,” Rashan replied, smirking,
and turned to walk away.

“Huh? What? Did I just miss something?” Brannis asked,
confused.

“Oh, I am going to see about finding you something for
dawn feast besides those hideous field rations you have brought along,” Rashan
told Brannis, ignoring the intent of the question.

“That is not what I meant, and you know it,” Brannis
called after him.

Rashan turned back to look at him, frowning, and
brought a finger up to his lips. Brannis had not realized how loudly he had
just spoken.

Brannis asked again in a lower voice, “What do you
mean, ‘it is settled’?”

“Well, you said you could not ask me to come. I had
already decided to come before then, and I had not sought your permission, nor
had you said I was not welcome, so it sounded like a closed deal. Do not worry,
I am very little bother, and I can find my way quite well. I am sure that
before you reach the safety of your home, you shall be glad I was along.”

With that, he once again turned his back to Brannis
and headed off deeper into the woods. Brannis frowned at Rashan’s back but did
not say anything, watching as the hermit receded from view. There was something
that bothered him about Rashan, but he could not quite say what it was. His
demeanor was light and casual, and he seemed to ignore anything he found
inconvenient—things like not being asked to accompany Brannis’s men, but
deciding to anyway. Brannis could not help but wonder at the quick mind the
hermit had displayed, subtly manipulating him into a situation where he would
feel silly objecting to Rashan’s offer to stay with Iridan until he had time to
recover. Rashan was certainly right about one thing: he was little bother.
Since they had arrived at the hermit’s cottage, Rashan had probably not said a
handful of words to anyone besides Brannis and perhaps Iridan. The hermit did
not partake in meals with them, kept out of sight for the most part, and seemed
to prefer wandering the woods to their company. He wondered what in the
hermit’s past might have engendered such an aversion to human companionship.

*
* * * * * * *

They broke camp near noontime, which was later than
Brannis would have liked, but all of them seemed to have needed the extra time
to recover from the aftereffects of their long day of fighting and carrying
heavy packs through the woods. Iridan was conscious and able to sit up on his
own by then, but his legs wobbled under him when he tried to walk, so it was
resolved that they would still have to carry him for the time being. The young
sorcerer was feeling well enough to crack a few jokes at his own expense,
promising to return the favor and carry each of them in turn once he had
recovered. The very idea of Iridan carrying anyone was rather comical. The
sorcerer had long been the object of jests regarding women having thicker arms
than his, most often at times when he seemed a bit too full of himself or
started showing off with his magic. Given Iridan’s weakened state, though, the
survivors let his boasts pass unchallenged.

Brannis led them east from the hermit’s cottage. The
trees of Kelvie Forest were sparse enough in that region that no blazed path
was needed for them to make good progress. True to his word, Rashan was little
trouble to the soldiers. He hung back a ways, staying rather near to the pair
of men who carried Iridan at any given time, never letting the sorcerer out of
his sight. Still, there were whisperings among the men as the day wore on. Some
had begun to take note of the unnatural silence that surrounded the hermit’s
footsteps despite the din every other pair of feet made among the twigs and
small plants that were in abundance on the forest floor. He also had a strange
look in his eyes whenever one of the soldiers happened to meet his gaze. All
who noticed this seemed to find an unusual intensity there, staring more
into
them than
at
them, though his expression showed no such emotion to
match. Brannis, at the head of the group, did not see any of it, though.

The forest was easy terrain for trekking long
distances on foot, gently rolling hills graced with trees spaced far enough
apart that one could walk a straight line at most times. There was a refreshing
breeze that cooled the early afternoon air as they searched for a spot to rest
and take a meal. All of them seemed grateful for the pause, when finally they
came to a low hilltop shaded by tall oaks and deemed that the time for an
afternoon meal had arrived. The soldiers were tired from bearing the weight of
their armor and, at turns, carrying the recovering Iridan, and Brannis was
carrying the swords of the fallen knights in addition to taking his turn in
bearing his injured friend.

From the hilltop, they could hear the murmuring of a
stream not far off, and throughout the afternoon, men drank deeply from the few
canteens that had remained after the battle against the goblins.

“Denair, Kun, come with me,” Brannis ordered,
selecting two of the remaining conscripts from his battalion. “Gather up the
water skins and let us go find that stream.” Brannis loosened Massacre in its
sheath in case they encountered any trouble while isolated from the main group.
“Sir Lugren, you are in charge in my absence. I hope not to be long about
this.”

“Mmm,” Lugren grunted in reply, nodding brusquely in
acknowledgment.

The older knight watched as Brannis and the two
soldiers left camp laden with all the water skins they had salvaged from the
battlefield. The hermit, who seemed no worse for the day’s journey, moved to
check on Iridan.

The sorcerer was feeling much improved since he had
first awakened earlier that morning. His headache had subsided and his thoughts
felt clearer than they had since before his accident. Sitting up, he took one
of the pieces of hard tack that the soldiers were eating and nibbled at it,
trying both to placate his grumbling stomach and not to upset it by putting too
much in after having eaten nothing for over a day.

“Well, it is good to see you feel like eating. Your
body is recovering,” the hermit commented, crouching down beside Iridan.

“Mmm, I know I must be truly hungry. This awful stuff
is actually tasting good,” the sorcerer replied between bites.

“Not to destroy your illusions, but you are just
imagining—those rocks you call rations do not taste like anything at all. Hmm,
maybe it is time we saw whether your mind is recovering as well as your body
seems to be.”

The hermit grabbed a twig from the ground nearby and
broke off all the little forked branches that split from it, making it into a
crude implement for writing in the dirt. He drew a square on the ground in
front of Iridan, large enough to stand both feet in, and then divided it into
smaller squares—a grid eight squares by eight. Iridan watched curiously, his
eyes widening in understanding as the hermit began drawing symbols in the two
rows of squares closest to each of them.

“Your move,” he told Iridan, and handed him the stick.
The hermit had drawn a chessboard on the ground. “Let us see what is left in
there.”

He pointed a finger at Iridan’s forehead. The sorcerer
smiled, amused.

“Oh my, how does one play this game?” Iridan replied,
his too-innocent voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Oh, I think you shall pick up a rough idea within a
few moves,” the hermit said with a chuckle. “It is common knowledge that they
teach young sorcerers to play this game to sharpen their wits. Let us see if
this ‘crazy woodsman’ can best one of the Academy’s finest.”

Iridan said nothing in reply but scuffed out one of
his pawns and then redrew it in another square. He handed the stick back to the
hermit with a smug look on his face. Iridan fancied himself a rather expert
player of the game, even if Brannis had begun to trounce him regularly in
recent summers. It was something of a mark of honor at the Academy to be a good
player. There were few opportunities to test magical skills in direct
opposition—dueling and anything of that sort was strictly regulated—so the game
became a sort of proxy duel that allowed students, and occasionally masters, to
engage each other in battles of wits.

The hermit took the stick and casually sketched a new
pawn of his own, erasing one with his thumb, mirroring Iridan’s play. It was
the sort of bland, unimaginative move that Iridan would have expected of a
merchant or tradesman—someone not much practiced at the game. He planned to
enjoy beating the hermit and tried not to let his smile show, with limited
success.