Lesson of the Fire (47 page)

Nightfire stopped abruptly. Sven only barely
kept from running into him. The wizard held the marsord out to him.
“Here. Show me what you have learned. Clear our path.”

Sven looked at the weapon
in surprise, unsure of how to react.
Is
this a test to see if I will attack him? A trap to make me break
some law so he can extend my slavery?

“Take it.” The face had hardened in
challenge, daring Sven to disobey or attack him.

Sven took the weapon
cautiously, almost as though he expected it to transform into a
poisonous snake. When it did not slither in his hands, he held it
firmly in his left hand. He swung the blade experimentally at a
patch of vines. The clump shuddered with the first swing and came
apart on the second. He smiled to himself.
No one in Rustiford has ever held a weapon like this
one.

“You will regret having it soon enough,”
Nightfire said with a smirk, rubbing his arm through the sleeve of
his cloak. He pointed forward. “Keep moving. Night is coming.”

Sven moved forward and took an experimental
slash at the underbrush in their path. The vines and thorns gave
way. He raised his arm again and brought the blade through the
vegetation. Soon, he was moving through the swamp almost as quickly
as Nightfire had.

The wizard talked endlessly as they walked.
He identified every tree and herb they passed, explaining their
medicinal properties in great detail. The only exception was the
kalysut, which he simply named without further comment. Nightfire
did the same with the animals they encountered, describing each
one’s anatomy, habitat and behavior.

Weary from the lack of food and the exertion
of walking through nearly a foot of water, Sven barely heard him.
His boots were caked in thick layers of mud, adding several pounds
to each step.

He will stop soon for sure.

But the wizard did not pause for a rest and
made no suggestion of doing so in the near future. So Sven
continued leading him, sweating, gasping and waving away insects
futilely. The sun set, and the wizard’s ceaseless explanation of
the world around them only grew more spirited.

Sven cut through underbrush and sawed
through vines more slowly, praying to Marrish for a second wind of
his own, one that would make the journey end before he died of
exhaustion. Dinah must have been jealous, for at that moment, black
spots clouded Sven’s vision, and his head grew light. His knees
buckled and he fell earthward.

When Sven woke, he could not tell if he was
awake. He saw nothing, heard nothing, smelled nothing. He felt no
hunger or pain; he had no physical sensation at all. Not only could
he not feel the ground beneath his body, he could not discern up or
down. He was disembodied thought floating in darkness. Time had no
meaning in this non-place, but Sven thought for sure that days had
already passed, if not years or centuries.

Then the hallucinations began. His family.
His friends. They worsened. Ravits and gobbels. Drakes without
names. They changed. Faces of gods. Mysteries of a world unfolding
before his blinded eyes. There were voices, too — the whisper of
Swind, the thundering voice of Marrish, the laughter of the Bald
Goddess.

Am I dead?
Sven thought.
Is this
Domin’s duxy? Is that why Brand didn’t return?

But no. There was no cleansing fire here, no
pain. Broken images and breaths of sound pressed in on him like
memories of dreams forgotten even by Seruvus. Sven’s consciousness
flickered like lightning in a storm — sometimes aware and sometimes
not. Sometimes he dreamed, and sometimes he merely saw and heard
things that were not there.

Years later, Sven would recognize it as his
first experience with teleportation. The darkness through which he
had passed was the Tempest, whose deprivation sometimes inspired
visions in those traveling through it. He would recognize the
intense overstimulation of the senses and resulting disorientation
and nausea that seized him when he returned to the material world
as the symptoms of teleportation sickness.

Nightfire provided him with no such
explanations as Sven dry-heaved on hands and knees, however. “Rest
for awhile. It will pass.” Then the wizard took a seat under a tree
and calmly sharpened his marsord with a small whetstone.

Once his stomach settled, Sven noticed he
was no longer hungry or tired. He lay on his back and looked at the
sky through the canopy above. The moon and stars were too bright
tonight, their colors too vivid. He blinked, waiting for the
sensation to pass, softly reciting the names of the constellations
he knew to keep his mind off the strange experience of having a
body again.

He could see Kaliher, the brightest of the
stars, quite clearly from here. Kaliher never moved in the sky the
way the others did, showing travelers the way north. The Guardian
had just begun to rise in the east, most of its stars still well
below the trees of the swamp. The Lone Thief wandered across the
autumn sky. Right behind it chased the Corrupt Judge. The other
constellations were foreign to Sven. He knew the Wild Prince and
the Generous God were somewhere in tonight’s sky, but he wasn’t
sure where to look for them.

Every star had a story, and he had heard
almost all of them. His flawless memory could recite them for him
at will.

A dark shape flickered across Niminth’s
green face, and a cold wind blew from the north. He could not help
but shiver in the icy breeze. He pulled his cloak tightly around
his neck. A tree creaked overhead in the wind, and leaves plummeted
from the treetops.

Then Kaliher winked out as an approaching
storm consumed the night sky. Niminth’s light disappeared. The Lone
Thief faded away and the Corrupt Judge vanished. Even the gleaming
stars of the Guardian submitted to the growing storm clouds as they
seemed to heave with their burden.

A flash of lightning lit the clouds, their
light burning the image of a face into Sven’s vision. A few seconds
later, a distant rumble sent ripples through the still pools in the
swamp. The wind grew stronger, and leaves began abandoning their
homes by the thousands — just in time, for a fork of lightning
struck a tree on the horizon and laid it low. The first raindrops
fell heavily, helping the wind bring the trees to their knees
before the power of the storm. Many of the trees acquiesced,
bending low in preparation for the god who would soon walk among
them. Those that rebelled were slain by forks of lightning from the
storm god’s fists.

Sven lay in silence — fascinated, afraid,
invigorated. Water streamed through the opening of his hood,
dousing his face and hair, the concreteness of it like sweet pain
against his nose and cheeks. Wind tore at his cloak, trying to rip
it from his body. Lightning arced into the ground from the clouds,
threatening to burn him to ash. Then the storm’s fury subsided, and
it turned its attention to the lands to the south and east, leaving
the land changed by its passage.

Sven said nothing, merely
gasping for breath and willing his heart to slow its terrifying
pace.
Was that Marrish’s face? What
interest does the Creator have in me?

A bright white light bathed him, and this
time Sven didn’t wince. He lifted his head and saw Nightfire
standing, his red cloak the source of the light.

Imagine what it must be
like to wield power like that,
Sven
marveled, and for a moment he wasn’t sure whether he meant
Nightfire or Marrish.

“What happened?” Sven asked. “We weren’t in
a clearin’ before.”

Nightfire quirked an eyebrow at him. “You
fainted. I brought us elsewhere.”

“Those dreams … that was
magic, wasn’t it?” Sven’s tone was almost accusatory.
Like the passage from my birth town to Rustiford,
with the wizards helpin’ us move faster.

“Why do you think that?” Nightfire asked
with the hint of a smile.

Even though Sven’s eyes had adjusted, it was
difficult to look directly into Nightfire’s aura of white light.
“If you’d walked to Rustiford, there’d be a path to follow, an’ we
wouldn’t be cuttin’ a new trail through the swamps.”

Nightfire’s smile crept farther into his
cheeks, but he didn’t answer Sven’s question. “It is not far now.
Follow me.”

Sven stood up, only a little dizzy, and
staggered after Nightfire. The trees and underbrush seemed to bow
down before the glowing wizard, making a straight path for him and
the slave who followed in his wake. An hour passed, and then two.
The swamp abruptly gave way to a rise of land. Nightfire’s cloak of
light made it difficult to discern distant shapes, but Sven could
just make out the massive shadow of a large, walled town far to the
west.

Nightfire stopped, and whirled on Sven, all
secret smiles replaced by an imperious frown. “You have sworn by
the Oathbinder to serve me as a slave for eight years. Is this
correct?”

Sven was a little taken aback by this sudden
challenge. “Yes.”

“Address me as Master Nightfire,” the wizard
commanded.

“Yes, Master Nightfire,” Sven said.

“Remove your cloak and throw it to the
ground at my feet.”

Sven couldn’t keep the confusion off his
face, but he did as he was told. The cold of autumn bit into his
already chilled flesh.

“Now kneel before me.”

Sven did as he was told,
but it rankled him.
Doesn’t he trust me
enough to believe I will keep my oath?

“Now take off your boots.”

Sven hesitated, not certain he had heard
correctly, Seruvus’s memory or no. “What, Master Nightfire?”

“Your boots. Take them off. Then you will
walk on the earth with bare feet. I command it of you.”

“But Dinah’s Curse,” Sven stammered,
suddenly afraid.

Nightfire pointed down at Sven, expression
imperious, voice cold. “Does your oath mean nothing to you?”

“Please, Master Nightfire. I’m your slave,
but you’ve no reason to take my boots!”

“If you will not obey, you will suffer,”
Nightfire said sharply.

Sven felt a great pressure around his body
as though a huge hand had grasped him. Suddenly, he was kneeling
several inches off the ground.

“And even as you suffer, you will still
obey.”

A gout of flame burst from the earth below
Sven, engulfing him. His clothes caught fire. His boots burned
away, the leather peeling away from his feet like wood shavings.
With a foul whiff of smoke, his hair burned and the skin all over
his body blistered from the heat.

Sven screamed in pain. The flame vanished.
The invisible hand released him. He fell naked to the ground,
writhing in pain through the mud. He moaned in agony. The blisters
burst, sending new fires of pain along his nerves.

“I am an eighth-degree wizard!” Nightfire
thundered, pointing down at where Sven squirmed on the ground. “I
can reduce you to ash with as much effort as it takes you to
scratch an itch. If you displease me, I can inflict such pain as
you cannot even imagine.” The wizard crouched down and whispered
into Sven’s ear. “But I am not without mercy. I can heal as well as
kill, soothe as well as torment. This is what it means to be a
wizard — choosing how to wield power.”

Sven could only manage a whimper as he
quietly prayed for death. He had heard that a deep enough burn was
painless, but these certainly were not.

“Will you obey me as a slave should obey his
master?”

“Yes,” Sven managed, and his blistered skin
became whole again. The pain vanished.

Nightfire touched his shoulder. He no longer
glowed, but the first rays of dawn lit his face. The black cloak in
his hand was clean as though newly washed. He no longer looked
imperious and terrifying. If anything, he looked slightly
embarrassed.

“Come with me, Sven,” he said gently. “We
will reach my home before nightfall.”

Sven pulled the black cloak around his naked
body and obeyed.

Chapter 39

“
I think everyone who spent time around
Sven Takraf experienced what I did — the unshakeable feeling that
your presence in his life is part of a plan to guide him on the
path to his destiny. From the first time I heard a story about him,
I knew I wanted to be a part of it, even though I didn’t know what
role I would play.”

— Pondr,

Collected Journals,
edited by Weard Asa Sehtah

Glancing at her six companions, who were by
turns scanning the horizon and fidgeting, Erika turned her eyes
ahead and walked away from camp, toward the town. Shadows moved in
the mist within fifty yards of the open gate. As she drew near,
they became black-clothed Mar.

She grinned. Perhaps Einar had driven off
the invasion the way Sven had claimed, and only a few towns had
fallen.

“Peace i’the swamp,” Erika called to them,
raising her hand in greeting.

The approaching Mar did not respond.

Maybe they can’t hear me.

She trotted ahead of her escort a few yards
before coming to a sudden halt. Something was not right here. There
were too many of them. It was difficult to count them in the fog,
but she guessed at least a hundred Mar had appeared. They
approached without conversation. A lone hunter or forager might
remain quiet to avoid attracting the attention of gobbels, but a
hundred Mar had nothing to fear from Drakes in a Protectorate town.
There would be no reason for silence.

She squinted at them, trying to discern what
might have brought them here.

“This’s strange,” one of the adepts
whispered. “We should leave, Weard Unschul.”

The Mar moved as though chained with whips
lashing their backs. They moved as if defeated. All of them held
twigs, their hands shaking. Two of them attracted her eye.