Lesson of the Fire (31 page)

Nightfire did not come for Sven in the next
span, which he at first considered a mercy. It meant he could spend
more time with Erika before she lost him forever. Then Brack and
Volund escorted six more villagers to the prison, and Brack brought
forth a chorus of their screams.

It is not a kindness. This is the way Dinah
punishes pride. She misses no opportunity to hurt me, for she means
to crush me utterly. When they come for me, they will find me
broken. I will have no pride left. I will be eager to confess
quickly so I can die.

This time, not all the people of Tortz
obeyed Nightfire’s instructions. Nirta, one of the teachers from
the Protectorates, rushed out of Brand’s house barefoot, howling in
rage. The blade of the knife in her upraised hand shone white in
the sun, as if she wielded light itself as her weapon.

Volund smiled as he struck her with fire
that engulfed her. The heat and pain should have laid Nirta low,
but she kept running, her clothes trailing flames as if she was a
burning star. She struck the wall of Power the dux erected and took
a step backward. Volund didn’t give her time to recover. A pillar
of fire descended on Nirta, and when it vanished a moment later,
she was gone. Not even the knife remained intact. Volund gave the
scorched circle of earth an alligator’s satisfied smile.

He loves death as only
Domin should,
Sven thought, hands shaking
in rage at the spectacle.
As only Domin
can.

Erika touched his shoulder. “Pray with me,
Sven,” she said softly, fighting back tears.

He knelt with her on a rug facing the
fireplace, and they held hands. The fire had begun to go out. Sven
fed it more peat, and it crackled and hissed.

“Watch over us, friends. Shelter us with
your darkness and guide us with your light. By your sacrifice, we
are warmed. By your sacrifice, we can see. By your sacrifice, we
live on.”

Sven recited the words, but his heart was
not in them. These deaths had not been sacrifices to the gods.
Magocrats had murdered them to punish Brand’s crime, and Brand
walked free. He would break the Law again, and maybe he would find
another way to escape justice. The apprentices he wielded and
expended like myst, however, would not. They would die by fire like
Askr, like Nirta, like Sven.

They came for Erika in the middle of the
night, waking them both up from a dead sleep. She screamed Sven’s
name as Brack lifted her out of the bed with magic, while Volund
held Sven down on the bed. The dux sneered at him the entire time
as he crushed the breath out of Sven with Power until his vision
grew dark.

When Sven came to, Erika and her screams of
terror were gone, but the memories of her voice echoed in his mind.
Another familiar voice shouted in the darkness outside his
house.

Erbark!

The shout faded soon after, leaving another
terrible echo. Sven clutched his head and groaned.

Everything I have done in my entire life has
been for nothing! It would have been better if I had died during
the passage to Rustiford. It would have been better if I had not
been born.

He looked at the fire again, held his hands
between it and his face, blocking its light.

What need do I have for fire anymore? I will
be dead soon and yet not soon enough. Its heat is wasted on me. I
cast nothing but shadows. I should let it go out.

Sven looked at his hands suddenly, saw them
again for the first time. He opened and closed them. They seemed
larger, the light of the fire casting huge, distorted shadows of
them on the walls. They could kill from miles away now, strike down
Drakes and Mar alike with equal ease. Yet they had been too small
to save Tortz, too small to aid Erbark and Erika, too small even to
keep himself alive.

My dream was always impossible. If I had
hands as large as Volund’s, I could not have achieved it.
Nightfire’s hands are too small, too. A Mardux’s hands could not do
it. How could I hope to do it as a mere green? How big would my
hands have to be to create the Protectorates throughout
Marrishland?

Sven looked at the trunk of Blosin gloves,
all useless, now.

With those my tiny hands can slaughter
hundreds. If I had, could I have done it? But imagine how many
people I could destroy if my hands were big enough to change the
Law. Thousands? Tens of thousands? Millions? And with hands so
large, how could I help but slaughter a hundred here, a thousand
there?

Sven knew he wasn’t thinking clearly. He
hadn’t slept soundly in nearly a month. Every day brought a new
grief, a new horror.

What does it mean that Nightfire has kept
Erbark away from me?

Sven ran a hand through his hair and down
across his unshaven face.

They want me to know I am utterly alone —
like the final stick of firewood in the house. Once I am used up,
the fire will go out.

But who are they? And why are they doing
this to me?

A thousand fragments of stories from his
youth and a thousand histories from Nightfire’s library flooded him
with replies.

Even alone, I still have Seruvus’s
memory.

The thought hung in his mind for a long
moment, hummed like a single plucked string.

Seruvus knows I am innocent. My enemies are
no more worthy to judge me than Weard Darflaem’s murderous
apprentices.

Suddenly, he knew. Sven rose to his feet and
started pacing, his thoughts a blur of fragments that he had to
draw into a pattern like myst.

This happened to Weard — the first wizard,
the first Guardian. He gave Marrish’s gift to anyone who came to
him for instruction, and the magocrats killed him for it. The Law
came later. The magocrats made it to keep the other Mar weak enough
to control.

Sven saw shapes floating at the edge of his
vision — flickers of color and movement like after images of the
myst. He hadn’t tasted torutsen in spans, and the morutsen should
keep him from seeing the magic, but here it was. Green motes spun
around cyan, pulled away and gathered together into the shape of a
man.

Sven blinked, and the vision vanished. Had
it even been there?

“Who serves the mundanes serves the gods,”
he murmured, reciting a passage from Weard’s teachings. “To serve
the gods, the Guardian must serve the mundanes and bring them
Marrish’s gift.” Warmth spread through Sven’s limbs as the words
left his lips. He fell prostrate before the fire. “I will serve you
if you will make my hands big enough,” he whispered. “I will serve
you.”

Sven slipped out of consciousness. In his
dreams, he saw nine gods, but they all spoke with Brand’s voice.
Try as he might, Sven couldn’t understand what they were saying, so
they kept talking louder and louder until they were screaming
nonsense at him. Were they warnings? Threats? Demands? He couldn’t
tell, and he suddenly realized he had shut them out of his house,
refused them his hospitality.

An unseen hand knocked on Sven’s door. His
eyes opened. Outside, the sky was grey with coming dawn.

“Enter, immortal patrons. I am ready to
receive you,” Sven said without stirring.

The door opened, and Katla stood in her
amber cloak. Fraemauna’s full moon hung over her shoulder, the
goddess’s yellow face looking down at him.

“Sven?” Katla called in a measured voice
that betrayed fatigue. “Master Nightfire wishes to speak with
you.”

“How many times must I offer myself as
tribute to him before I am worthy?” Sven asked through dry lips
even as he stood up.

Katla looked startled to see him this way.
She spoke gently. “You should shave before you meet with him.”

“Wizards shave because it was a way to curry
favor with the Giens back in Imperial times. The Giens could not
grow beards, so the wizards chose not to,” Sven told her, and then
he burst out laughing. “Is that not ridiculous? The Gien Empire
fell centuries ago, and we are still shaving! Why?”

We cling to old ways we no longer understand
— like Bera’s Unwritten Laws. But the magocrats trust the
traditions and will kill anyone who breaks the laws the traditions
have spawned.

“I will help you, if you need it,” Katla
said slowly.

Sven tilted his head and
studied her face.
You are no more a slave
to tradition than Brand was, but do you think you can make a
difference in a fight against three reds?

“I will not refuse you. I will need all the
help I can get in this battle against Dinah and Domin.”

Katla looked confused, but then her eyes
widened. She smiled at him — the secret smile of siblings
collaborating in mischief. “It is not yet the time, Sven.” Her
smile grew feral, full of hate long fermented and well-nurtured.
“But they will pay for Mother and for Tortz. Of that you may be
sure.”

Is that what this is about — revenge? No. If
I would serve the gods, I must serve the mundanes as Weard Darflaem
did.

Katla led Sven to a chair and started
shaving him, the razor cold against his trusting throat. He sensed
his vulnerability, then, knew she had him completely at her mercy.
He yielded to her unpracticed hand even as she cut him half a dozen
times. She winced at every mistake, but he did not.

She is doing the best she can with the hands
the gods have given her.

Sven watched the fire in the hearth burn as
the blood trickled down his neck. The bottommost block of peat sat
on the ashes of its predecessors. The flames licked the blocks
above it experimentally.

“I should not tell you this,” Katla
whispered as she wiped the blood off his face with a hot towel,
“but Brand returned to Tortz last night. He confessed. He defended
you. He … ” Her voice cracked.

He burned, she meant to
say.
Sven looked at her with wide
eyes.
His screams were more than a dream.
They were a message.

Sven looked back at the fire, and she
followed his gaze silently.

When peat burns, it brings warmth and
illumination to the people around it, even as it is used up. For
what purpose do Mar burn?

Her green eyes fell, and her voice softened
as if she was embarrassed to speak words of comfort in the face of
his loss. “You have nothing to fear from Volund, now that I am
here. He has wasted too much of his energy on this
inquisition.”

“What a waste of energy,” Sven murmured.

Katla nodded.

Heliotosis’ icy breath moaned as it passed
over the prison entrance outside. Katla stood and helped him up.
Sven followed her numbly, took the boots from her hands and
clumsily stomped them on.

The lesson of the fuel. Sacrificing itself
to warm and illuminate others — being a source of energy. The name
my colleagues gave me at the Academy, the name I took when I earned
the green — Takraf means energy. And I am the fuel for the
fire.

His own name struck him
like a cold wind. It came from two words that had been a part of
the language since before the Gien Invasion — tat and kraft.
The first meant “act” or “deed.” The second meant
“divine or magical strength or power.”
Sven
nodded as he began to understand.

Katla sighed, eyes wet. “Brand was the sort
of idealistic fool who once thought he could get away with
anything. He chose a path he could not leave. He knew it, but he
did the right thing, in the end.”

Everything in Sven’s line
of vision had faded away to a blur.
The
lesson of the fuel. The lesson of the fool. Brand, brand — “a mark
made by fire.” Marking the Mar with the gift of magic.

Uneheilich gave Marrish’s gift of magic to
Weard Darflaem.

Darflaem: “Flame in the darkness.” Flame in
the darkness: “Night fire.” Nightfire.

Weard Darflaem taught the Mar to use
magic.

A flame in the darkness, bringing warmth and
illumination to all. A torch. A brand. A Brand. Weard Darflaem was
the first Guardian. He died without completing his mission.

“He passed the tests,” Katla told him as
they left his home.

Sven was unsteady as he walked. He couldn’t
remember the last time he had eaten. “He?”

“Erbark. Nightfire raised him to three
degrees of apprenticeship away from the green,” Katla said, clearly
abandoning the pretense that he was still under an inquisition.
“All your apprentices passed the tests. Only some of Brand’s could
not.”

My hands will be large enough to finish what
Weard Darflaem began. I will serve the gods by serving the
mundanes. I will be their Guardian. My apprentices will pass the
gods’ tests.

A warmth spread through Sven’s limbs. He
looked up at the sky, thought he perceived a face in the clouds.
Her, the sun, shone down, setting the snows on fire with her light.
He had the distinct sensation of being surrounded by friends and
allies.

“There are lessons to be learned from
fuels,” Sven told her.

“Yes,” Katla murmured, her green eyes
suddenly distant, sad. “Fire is pitiless.”

Green is for Energy.

Sven laughed suddenly, stupidly. “What a
waste of energy!”

Katla looked at him, her face a mask of
concern. He detected anger there, too, but not directed at him.
“You have been through a lot, Sven. You may wish to let others
speak on your behalf today. Come.”

She led, and he followed
calmly, at last understanding the purpose of his life. Softly, he
whispered a prayer of thanksgiving to Marrish and his other
patrons. It would not be easy, but at least he would know the
reason behind the trials.
More tests sent
by the gods.

Chapter 26

“
When one wizard kills another, the local
dux receives the power of life or death over the wizard. If the
crime took place beyond the borders of the duxy, however, the only
compensation a dux may demand is a weregild, which is monetary
compensation paid by the murderer for the loss of a vassal, the
maximum value of which is directly proportional to the rank of the
deceased magocrat.”