Lesson of the Fire (25 page)

Was there some reason why he shouldn’t let
Brand put himself in charge of the Protectorates, or was it just
his own pride in what he had already accomplished there? Of course
he didn’t want to surrender any control. He had friends there. A
wife. Neighbors who treated him like family.

“One condition,” Sven said finally. “You
obey the Unwritten Law in the Protectorates.”

“I’ve already told you. I’m not a very
patient teacher. Besides, forty towns are more conspicuous than
one, as you have already noted.”

“I want your oath. No matter what happens,”
Sven persisted, voice hard. “No matter whether I am alive or dead,
you will obey the Law.”

Brand looked at him with a curious
expression. A look of understanding crossed his face, then, and he
raised his right hand in solemn salute. “By the Oathbinder, and by
Cedar, my patron, I swear to abide by Bera’s Unwritten Laws when
visiting the lands under your protection.”

“Then let’s get started.” Sven took a deep
breath and explained the process for renewing the Protectorates’
defenses.

Brand scowled the whole time. The defenses
were complex to set up because they were so easy to maintain. An
apprentice with his first taste of torutsen could do it. Sven
didn’t bother explaining how to set up any of the spells.

An hour ago, you would have killed me to
keep the secret of Tortz safe. You didn’t really think I’d give up
the only leverage I still have, did you?

At the end of it, Brand simply nodded, and
they both began their new duties.

Chapter 20

“
Any Mar, be he weard or mundane, who
breaks my Law shall be put to death by fire, as shall any student
who wields power beyond his understanding. Any Mar, be she weard or
mundane, who breaks my Law shall be put to death by fire, as shall
any student who wields power beyond her understanding. Those who do
not obey these laws betray the shades of the dead, and the dead may
take vengeance upon them.”

— Nightfire Tradition,

Bera’s Unwritten Laws

I was right, and he knew it, but I didn’t
listen to my own arguments. His methods changed mine. How long have
I lived in the shadow of Brand Halfin?

Sven woke sweating, rolled on his side and
hacked into a bucket until the phlegm came out red. Someone was
rubbing his back.

“Erika?”

“Yes, my love?”

He turned to look at her, dizzy. His left
eye registered only a dark patch. “What time is it?”

“Early afternoon. Welcome back to us. Horsa
says your illness is passing now.”

He smiled at her beautiful
face, her wonderful face ...
How could I
have forgotten that beauty?
“The war ...
?”

“Is happening.” Her voice was too hard. “Get
some rest.”

She pushed him back down gently, and placed
a cool cloth on his forehead.

Then she was gone.

Erika ...

* * *

Sven took a piece of charcoal out of the
hearth and began to write the alphabet on a piece of wood for the
thirty Mar gathered in Brand’s large house. “This is ‘Wah.’ It
means ‘nothing’ in Middling Gien, which is what the Mar alphabet is
based on. This is ‘Zix.’ It means ‘darkness.’ And this is ‘Guel,’
which means ‘night.’ This one here is ‘Jah,’ which means day. Now,
the letters of the alphabet were arranged this way so that letters
with related meanings were grouped together. ‘Wah’ is all by
itself, but ‘Zix,’ ‘Guel’ and ‘Jah’ are grouped together because
they all have to do with light or the absence of light.”

“Um, Sven?” Askr Spertrag said hesitantly.
“Did you say that ‘Wah’ means nothin’? But all th’other letters
mean somethin’ else, right?”

“That’s why ‘Wah’s all by itself,” Geir
Tragget announced matter-of-factly.

Twenty-nine heads nodded at this, and it was
all Sven could do to stop himself from shouting.

They hadn’t all been this difficult. Three
hundred magic-wielding mundanes lived in Tortz, and some of them
had taken to education easily. Many were at least eager to learn,
which certainly made them easier to teach. Not so much these
thirty.

“No, ‘Wah’ is the word for ‘nothing,’ like
the word ‘nothing.’”

“I don’t think I un’erstand,” Askr said, not
hiding his irritation very well.

The others murmured their agreement. Sven
began to lose his patience.

“Never mind what it means, for now.” He
continued to write, the letters blurring as his left hand passed
over them. “Wah, Zix, Guel, Jah. Myst, Tor, Ues. Lets, Frov, Her.
Dih, Sen, Ud, Krah. Olf, Bik, Eep, Oud. Pleb, Nyp, Ahd, Rah. Oik,
Ym, Ak, Ait. Ies, Xil, Veks, Es. And then Wah again.”

They looked at him with a mixture of bored
expressions and sheepish smiles.

Sven understood now why Nightfire was so
careful about which mundanes he accepted as apprentices. In the
Protectorates, only those who wanted to learn had come to him.
Those who lacked self-discipline soon gave up and stopped coming,
and it was no concern of Sven’s.

“How do you know what order they go in?”
Geir asked after a moment.

“They’re grouped together by relatedness.
Each letter means something in Middling Gien. Imperial Gien was
pictographic, so the letters sort of look like what they mean. See
this triangle pointing up? This is ‘Sen’. It means ‘water.’ Can you
figure out why?”

Some of them weren’t even paying attention.
The rest stared at the charcoal lines, faces set in
concentration.

“A wave,” Geir tried.

“Exactly,” Sven said, pleased at this tiny
bit of progress.

In Tortz, though, Sven couldn’t allow any
magic-wielder to quit his classes. If any of them failed the
knowledge tests that came with an inquisition, he and Brand would
both be executed.

Askr pointed at the first letter. “What’s
that one mean, again?”

Sven restrained himself with difficulty.
“‘Wah’ can mean ‘emptiness’ or ‘a lack of anything.’”

Geir suddenly laughed triumphantly.
“Nothing! I see what you meant now.”

Sven breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, that’s
right, Geir.”

Bui Beglin burst in through the front door,
and thirty heads craned to look at him. “Weard Takraf! Brand’s
back. He says come right now.”

Sven frowned at the interruption. He cleared
his throat. “I want all of you to copy the alphabet until I get
back. We’ll learn to write your names tomorrow.”

“I don’t see much use in tellin’ folks don’t
know you how to say your name,” one of them muttered as Sven left,
and laughter followed.

Why would anyone in his right mind attempt
what Brand tried in Rustiford? Teaching apprentices who want to
learn is hard enough, sometimes.

When Sven got home, he found Brand was not
alone.

“Erika! What are you doing here?”

She flew into his arms and covered his face
with kisses before answering. “Brand says you’re goin’ … going to
be in Tortz for a long time, so I’m staying here, too.”

Sven shot Brand a look that could have set
wet wood on fire, but Brand seemed not to notice.

“Your wife wants to help you teach the
people of Tortz, and I agreed.”

“You should have asked me before getting her
involved in this,” Sven said in a tight voice.

“You can’t teach three hundred students by
yourself,” Brand said. “Nightfire has a staff of dozens, and there
are only about a thousand apprentices at the Academy.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking
concerned.

“Nothing,” Brand said at the same time as
Sven said, “Everything!”

“I memorized the Unwritten Law as an
apprentice,” Brand said with the air of a lecturer, “and it was
silent on pre-torutsen apprentices teaching post-torutsen
apprentices.”

“That’s because it’s never supposed to be
possible!” Sven raged. “Do you have any idea whether this will get
her executed for breaking the Law? Because I certainly don’t!”

“Executed?” Erika asked quietly.

“You didn’t tell her!”

“Neither did you,” Brand countered.

“Tell me what?” Erika asked, more loudly,
this time.

Sven and Brand looked at each other, and
then Sven explained their dilemma. Erika listened in silence.

“You should have told me, Brand,” she said
when it was finished, but Sven saw no fear in her eyes. “I would’ve
brought more teachers from the Protectorates.”

“Do you have any idea what
will happen to everyone here if the wizards find out?” Sven asked
her.
I can’t lose you! Not when I’ve only
just found you.

She shrugged. “I’ve some idea, but we have
to do it.” She gave Sven a serious look. “The longer it takes, the
more likely you’ll get caught, and I’m not going to let some wizard
kill you for something that isn’t your fault.” She said the last
fiercely, and he couldn’t tell whether she meant the wizards in
general or Brand in particular.

“She’s right, you know,” Brand said into the
silence that followed.

Of course she is. Did I really think I could
do this alone?

* * *

Erika ...

“Erika?” Sven woke again, haunted by his
dream of Tortz.

No one responded.

What time is it? What’s going on? How long
have I been sick?

He felt much better. Indeed, Horsa was not
present, the water in the air was diminished, and the bucket by his
bed was gone.

He felt weak, and just lifting his head to
look around was an effort. Finally, he fell back again, and his
dream continued where it had left off.

Tortz. I understand now. A single log cannot
sustain a fire forever. I am hindering the spread of my light by
not letting others add fuel to my fire. Now that I have solved your
riddle, Fraemauna, will I be healed?

The goddess did not answer.

* * *

Six other Protectorate teachers volunteered
for the task of educating the people of Tortz, which was most of
the literate population of the Morden Moors. Sven impressed upon
them the risks and warned them not to learn anything about magic
from the magic-wielders who lived in Brand’s renegade town. They
assured him they understood, but Sven couldn’t shake the fear that
they would overhear something they shouldn’t.

If you know too much about magic without
knowing enough about everything you are supposed to learn first
…

It couldn’t be helped.

Erbark stayed in the Protectorates as Sven’s
representative, and Brand spent nearly all his time wandering from
village to village renewing the defenses. None of them slept much
that fall. By the time winter crept in, Sven took over the defenses
of Tortz. They simply couldn’t afford to have so many of the
magic-wielders maintaining the crude spells Brand had taught them,
when a single recon stone could protect it much more
effectively.

The warm breath of spring brought returning
geese and ducks. By the midsummer holiday of Jaer’s Hunt, Sven had
mostly convinced the magic-wielders to stop brewing torutsen and
limit their use of magic to life-or-death dangers. The defenses he
had set up were more than adequate to keep Tortz safe and
healthy.

Summer passed in storms and heat with little
break in the routine of teaching, maintaining Tortz’s defenses, and
discussing the news from the Protectorates with Brand whenever the
other wizard came back from a round of spell renewal.

Wainat, the first month of fall, brought
visitors to Tortz less welcome than the icy breath of Heliotosis on
the air would be — a wizard dressed in amber, traveling with a pair
of greens. In Brand’s absence, Sven threw the gates of Tortz open
to them.

“Peace in the swamp, good weards. I am Sven
Takraf. I have some soup.”

The amber regarded him with suspicion.
“Peace in the swamp, Weard Takraf. I am Arnlaug Saugen. What is the
name of this village?”

“Tortz.”

Arnlaug looked around casually, sizing up
the people coming out of their homes to take his measure in return.
After a moment, he turned his attention back to Sven. “Your village
lies within the Duxy of Flasten. I have come to collect the dux’s
tribute.”

Sven felt the tension rise all around him as
eyes narrowed and muttered threats emanated from doorways. “I’m
afraid you are mistaken,” he said with more force than he should
have used. “Tortz lies on the Morden Moors, which is not a part of
any duxy.”

“The dux’s maps disagree, Weard Takraf.”
Arnlaug made an apologetic gesture. “I’m afraid I have no choice
but to collect his levy — twelve pounds of common metals or a
single slave.”

Is this a slaver like the one Brand warned
me about?

As if in answer, Tortz’s militia arrived in
a mob that formed around the wizards. Three wizards stood little
chance against a few dozen mundanes.

Sven frowned at the amber. “Weard Saugen, we
both know you owe no more loyalty to the Duxy of Flasten than I
do,” he said in a level tone. “I suggest you take your bowl of soup
and then leave before there is blood spilt. Slavers and thieves are
not welcome in Tortz.”

Arnlaug took a step forward but stopped as
the people of Tortz moved closer. He sneered at Sven in undisguised
fury. “You are making a mistake. There will be consequences!”

Sven didn’t raise his voice. “If you do not
leave, those consequences will involve your corpse floating
facedown in a river.”

One of the greens gasped, but the amber
actually smiled slightly. “You haven’t been in Tortz very long,
have you, Weard Takraf?”

Sven said nothing.

“Tortz’s magocrat owed fealty to the Duxy of
Flasten, but he stopped sending the tribute a few years ago. I
think you murdered him.”

“I really don’t care what a
slaver thinks,” Sven said as nonchalantly as he could
manage.
Is this wizard lying, or is Brand
holding something back?