Prelude to Fire: Parts 1 and 2 (20 page)

“You’re no better than the priest.”

The woman smiled at him, the barest hint of amusement turning her mouth. “Indeed?”

“If I’m not tortured, I’m being told that I will serve Issa.”

“If you’re not here to serve, then why did you come?” She started toward him, shifting her hands to her hips.

Had he angered her already? Doing so would not help his need for information, but so far he hadn’t found anything useful anyway, nothing other than the fact that Incendin had an archive much like existed in Ethea.

“I came because I wanted to know fire.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and her sharp jaw clenched. “You cannot know fire without Issa, son of Nara. And you have been chosen if you passed the test.”

“What does it mean for me to be chosen?”

Her mouth pinched in a frown. “If you wish answers to these questions, you should ask Issa for enlightenment.”

Lacertin grunted. “And if Issa does not answer?”

She pulled on her cloak and started for the door. “Then you do what the rest of the Sunlands would do.”

“What is that?”

She glanced over her shoulder as she reached the door. “Ask the San.”

N
o one made
any attempt to stop him as he wandered the Fire Fortress over the next few days. The priest joined him for meals but was absent for much of the day, leaving Lacertin with the choice of either remaining in the room by himself or venturing out and exploring. Given the reason that he’d come, he often wandered.

Lacertin had learned that the servants would not speak to him. They all nodded respectfully but they never met his eyes and backed to the wall whenever he approached, attempting to speak.

The days confined in the fortress took on a certain normalcy, leaving him almost forgetting what had happened to him when he’d been confined to the cell. Lacertin learned his way around this level of the fortress, discovering that there were others he could not access, a set of stairs blocked from him.

Most of the time, he remained within the archives.

Partly he searched for answers, but partly he found the selection of texts impressive. The age of the texts was clear from the texture to the paper and the leather of the cover. Within Ethea, such texts would have been reserved for the archivists only. There seemed no such restrictions here.

The other reason he went to the archives was the hope that he might see the fire shaper again. When Lacertin had spoken to her, there had been something about her that reminded him in some ways of Jayna, and in other ways of Ilianna. Serving Ilton had prevented him from ever having the opportunity to have the chance with Ilianna, as much as both of them would have wanted such a chance. And Jayna… with her, there had been a connection, but the timing had been terrible.

Not that now was any better, but he felt a certain loneliness here, a sense that worsened the longer he was here, trapped within the fire fortress.

When he made it to the archives, he found it occupied.

Not by the fire shaper, though a part of him had wished that she had been there when he arrived, but the San. He sat at one of the tables and glanced up as Lacertin entered. The Book of Issa sat next to him on the table.

“Lacertin Alaseth,” he said.

“You don’t have to use my full name each time you see me,” Lacertin said.

The priest smiled. “Are you certain that Issa hasn’t requested that I show you the meaning of your name?”

Lacertin took a seat opposite him. The priest hadn’t seemed surprised by Lacertin’s sudden appearance, meaning that he either knew that Lacertin had been coming here, or that he didn’t mind that he did.

Was it strange that he’d been in the Fire Fortress for as long as he had and still had seen no sign of the lisincend? He would have expected them to be present within the fortress. More than the fire shapers within the palace, Lacertin feared what would happen when he encountered the lisincend.

“Why am I here?” Lacertin asked.

The priest smiled. “If you must ask, then you are farther from where you need to be than I realized, Lacertin Alaseth.”

Lacertin grunted. “You don’t care that I come here?”

The priest spread his hands and motioned toward the rows of shelves. “What is here that Issa would not reveal to you?”

“The archives in the university are restricted,” Lacertin said. He should be more careful and try to keep details from Incendin, but there was a part of him that wanted to share with the priest. The man had been nothing but friendly to him, and with his wire-framed spectacles and closely shorn hair, he seemed harmless rather than dangerous.

He realized the folly, even as he made it. Incendin would want to ease him into a sense of relaxation, and when he began to believe that they wanted nothing more than to work with him, to teach him how they shaped fire, then they would begin tormenting him again.

Only, he saw no sign of that from the priest.

“Why would knowledge be restricted?” the priest asked.

Lacertin shrugged. “The archivists feel that knowing what transpired in the past can be dangerous, and that there needs to be a certain level of understanding before you can see them.”

The priest set his hands on the table. A book lay flat in front of him, the edges of the pages curling slightly up, and he leaned forward to fix Lacertin with an amused expression. “If we fail to learn from the past, how can we avoid repeating our mistakes?”

Ilton had often had the same philosophy. It was because of Ilton that Lacertin made a point of studying the histories, learning as much as he was allowed, preparing so that he would be ready for what Ilton asked of him next.

“You sound like the king.”

“Indeed?” the priest asked.

Lacertin shrugged. He looked over the priest’s hands and at the page he had open, trying to see what the priest might be reading about. The page was written in
Ishthin
, and the language was difficult to read as it always was, but diagrams were fixed on the page about halfway down.

“What are you reading about?” he asked.

The priest glanced up from the page and turned the book so that Lacertin could better see it. He worked through the
Ishthin
, noting the parts of the language that he recognized, and realized that he studied elementals.

Lacertin smiled. “Does Issa think that you should learn to speak to the elementals again? Perhaps Issa has answers why we no longer can.”

The priest took the book back and turned it so that the writing faced him. He looked at Lacertin, and with the barest hint of a smile, asked, “Are you so certain that we no longer speak to them?”

Lacertin shrugged. There were stories of people still able to speak to the elementals, but he doubted that any of them were true. If they were, why wouldn’t the elementals choose to speak to someone with power and the ability to use the knowledge that they offered? Why keep the secret hidden?

“I think that we have lost much of what we once were,” he answered.

“Perhaps in the kingdoms.”

“And your lisincend? Do they serve Issa? Do they still even serve fire?”

The priest closed the book and pulled the Book of Issa back in front of him. For a moment, Lacertin thought that he might stand and leave, but instead, he started thumbing through the pages of the book. When he found the section he was looking for, he opened the page and began reading. He was otherwise silent.

Finally, he took a deep breath and closed the Book of Issa. “The creatures you call the lisincend serve Issa more than you will ever know.”

“Even with the hatred that surges through them?”

Lacertin didn’t have to struggle to understand the way that fire twisting the lisincend would draw them even deeper into the passions. They would be filled with lust, and anger, and rage, and passions of all kinds. It was the only explanation that he had for the way the lisincend were.

The priest nodded slowly. “They embrace fire,” he started. “And most feel they are called by Issa to serve.”

“Is that what you think of me?”

“Is that what
you
think of yourself, Lacertin Alaseth?”

Lacertin couldn’t imagine the desire to change himself with a shaping, to use such fire and turn it upon himself as the lisincend had done, but could not deny the power that they achieved in the shaping. He had wondered what would happen if an earth shaper did the same, or wind, or even water. Was something like the shaping the
reason
there were elementals?

Only, the lisincend were
not
elementals. They had enhanced power and strength with fire, but they were not the same as the energy that under laid everything in the world, the connections that together were accessed by the Great Mother.

“I could not,” he said.

“Then that is not how Issa will call you to serve.”

Lacertin laughed softly. “I thought that Issa had already called me. That it was the reason that I had been spared from my torture.”

“Test,” the priest said.

“Test. If you think that is what it was, then you should experience it.”

“How would I serve Issa if I did not know the strength and the power that could be given by following? No, Lacertin Alaseth, I think that you should understand the nature of the test.”

The priest reach across the table and grabbed his hands. He had moved so quickly that Lacertin had been unable to react. As he did, the steady sense of fire began creeping across his skin. He recognized it from the last time that he’d been tormented, only this was much more subtle and built slowly, steadily, until he felt it within his veins, as if trying to burn through him.

Lacertin had been ready for it. He thought that he could ignore it, but a part of him simply didn’t want to experience the torment any longer. He had known it often enough since coming to Incendin.

More than that, though, he had seen the way the priest had drawn off the effect of fire. Learning from another’s shaping wasn’t always easy, but for Lacertin, and with fire, he had never had much difficulty in seeing a shaping and understanding how to form it. This was no different.

As the shaping built, as the torture built, he pulled it away, sending it into the stone.

He didn’t dare pull the shaping into himself. From everything the kingdoms had learned, that was the beginning to the lisincend. Lacertin knew there was more to it—there had to be for such a shaping—but he wouldn’t risk himself.

The burning in his veins and along his skin faded, deflected into the ground.

“I’m tired of being tormented,” he said softly as the shaping dissipated.

The priest smiled. “How are you certain that this isn’t still all part of the test?”

Lacertin pulled his hands back, resisting the urge to jerk them away. The priest stared at him, watching Lacertin with knowing eyes, and smiled.

“You have shown the reason that Issa has chosen you, Lacertin Alaseth. There are shapers in the Sunlands who will study their entire lives and still not be able to pass the testing. There are shapers who will search for answers, never to find them. They will want to move with Issa, to be one with Issa, but they will not have the potential that you have just shown.”

Lacertin rubbed his hands together, keeping his eyes fixed on the table. “That is not Issa, priest. That is shaping.”

The priest smiled. “And where do you think the ability with shaping comes from?”

“I think that we’ve had this conversation before,” Lacertin said. “And my answer is no different now then it was then.”

The priest pulled the Book of Issa to him and smiled. “You think the Great Mother is the source of everything, but you will see, Lacertin Alaseth, there are things that even your Great Mother cannot explain.”

The priest stood and tipped his head to Lacertin before leaving him alone in the archives.

T
he nights
in Incendin were cool, much cooler than the day. Even on the edge of the waste, in his homeland of Nara, the nights would be much cooler.

Nights were when much work could be done, but they could also be dangerous. Everything came alive at night, from the desert fox to the gilander lizards that would pull themselves off the rock and begin hunting, to the smaller creatures like mice and even the insects. All would come out, coming alive in the cool of the darkness.

Near the Fire Fortress, much effort was made to push back the night.

The flames leaping off the top of the fortress did most of the work, burning brightly, like a torch that danced, though Lacertin could feel the strange stirrings of the shaping used within them. The shaping was complex, one that he had never seen before coming to the Fire Fortress. Strange that he would detect it now when he hadn’t noticed that it was shaped previously.

All around the city raged controlled fires. Lanterns burned along the streets, adding to the light of the flames. The brightness all seemed as if it attempted to push back the night.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” Lacertin said. It was the first time the priest had brought him outside the Fire Fortress since he’d clothed him. In the days… or was it weeks? …since then, Lacertin had come to know the fortress, but little else. He had not managed to leave his floor and had not seen any sign of anyone other than servants and the priest who brought him his meals. Even the fire shaper he met in the archives had not returned.

He shifted the long shirt that he wore, adjusting the way it wrapped around his body. The thin fabric was strangely cool but it clung to him. No longer did it feel so foreign to him, though he still marveled at the way it cooled him.

“No? And you still haven’t understood yours, Lacertin Alaseth.”

Lacertin carried with him the collection of clothing the priest had asked the tailor to fashion for him. Ishan had fashioned him a complete wardrobe, and maybe that was the only reason the priest had brought him from the fortress, but Lacertin enjoyed the change and the cool breeze, even the brightness of the fires burning all around him in the city.

Lacertin thought there had been activity earlier in the day, but the city was vibrant at night, loud voices and strange music coming from open doors they passed, the sounds more celebration than Lacertin would have expected in Incendin.

After picking up the clothing from Ishan’s shop, the priest had led him to what had initially appeared to be a tavern, but Lacertin had learned was something else. The priest had sat him at a table among a dozen others, all who had welcomed him without question, and served him a meal that consisted of meats and vegetables and soup that rivaled anything that he’d ever tasted before, even better than the food he’d grown accustomed to within the fortress.

The people had been strangely welcoming, nodding to him cordially and treating him with a hint of the same respect that he was afforded when in Ethea, but there that was because he was Lacertin, First Warrior to King Ilton.

Now he no longer knew what he would be. Even when he returned to the kingdoms, he didn’t know.

“You have clothed me and fed me. What now? Will you take me to a bathhouse and bathe me? Would you see me to a masseuse? Perhaps you have a brothel and would like to ply me with women.”

“Would any of those requests bring you joy, Lacertin Alaseth?”

Lacertin stared at him, wondering if the priest made some sort of joke. “I… I don’t understand what you’re doing with me. First I am tortured—”

“We have discussed that.”

“And now you dress me and feed me as if I am a guest in your house.”

The priest spread his hands out around him. “You
are
a guest in my house. Only, my house is all of this. You were tested by Issa and chosen to serve. That is enough.”

Frustration that had been building over the last few days bubbled to the surface. “But I’m a warrior of the kingdoms!”

The priest tipped his head toward Lacertin and frowned. As always, the Book of Issa was clasped between his hands. “Is that still how you see yourself, Lacertin Alaseth?”

Lacertin didn’t know how to respond. When he’d come to Incendin, he had done so needing to find Ilton’s killer. Incendin was responsible; he was certain of that. With hound venom used on the king, there could be no other explanation. Over the last few days, he’d searched with less and less intensity for information that might lead him to who might have helped Incendin, though he wondered if he would ever find that information in the archives. As far as he had discovered, there was nothing but stories about the elementals and the history of Rens, all written in old Rens. Lacertin could no more read that than he could understand why the priest had been so welcoming to him.

But the question still triggered something within him. Was that what happened? Did the priest think to dissuade him of the reason that he’d come? More than that, did he still see himself as a warrior of the kingdoms?

Always before, that had been his identity, even as he served Ilton, chasing impossible tasks that Ilton assigned to him, tearing him away from the rest of the warriors and separating him. Never before had that bothered him. Lacertin understood the purpose, had believed in the purpose, and known that he served as his king demanded.

What would he be once he satisfied Ilton’s last request?

Would he still be a warrior of the kingdoms, even after everything that he’d been forced to do to find Ilton’s killer, or would he be something else? Lacertin wondered if he would ever be
able
to return to the kingdoms.

He had never given much thought to that, but in the time that he’d been gone, Theondar and Althem likely had grown even more bitter about what happened. They would never welcome him back, and without the king and the First Warrior, there was little chance that he could serve.

And here, in Incendin of all places, he had fallen into a certain sort of peace. It was the kind of peace that he’d never been able to find while in the kingdoms, the kind of peace that he’d never been able to find while serving Ilton.

The priest smiled and held the book out in front of him. “Issa has answers, Lacertin Alaseth. You must only have the faith to ask.”

“What if they’re not the answers I want?” he asked.

“Want means nothing to Issa. It is the answers you need that will be provided.”

The priest led him through the streets, guiding him away from the fortress. The farther they went into the city, the more uncomfortable Lacertin became. He had grown accustomed to his place in the fortress and had grown complacent, knowing that the attacks on him had finally eased, but would they return? And if they did, would he be ready?

And did it matter?

He wasn’t wanted back in the kingdoms. Theondar had made that clear, and his escape had shown that he would not be welcomed back. The other warriors would be searching for him, looking for reasons to attack, but Theondar would have given them the reason. More than even losing Ilton, losing Ilianna would be devastating to the kingdoms.

There wasn’t anything that he could do that would change anything, was there? Nothing more than suffer. Here, the priest offered him something that had been missing for long enough that he hadn’t realized he needed it: peace.

The priest led him to the edge of the city, beyond orderly rows of houses, all with flames burning brightly within. Lanterns along the street gave more than enough light for him to see his way, and the farther they walked, the more the sound of waves crashing began to fill the air.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked after they had been walking in silence for so long that Lacertin’s dangerous thoughts began to return, those that told him that he didn’t need to find Ilton’s attacker, that he didn’t need to search for who within the kingdoms had betrayed them.

Peace was a myth, one that he had seen shattered time and time again while in the service of Ilton. Good intentions turned, and even the barrier wasn’t enough to keep the people of the kingdoms safe.

“You must see something for yourself,” the priest said.

They continued beyond the edge of the city, into the darkness, with the lights of the flames and lanterns fading behind them. They reached the rocks overlooking the water, the splashing of waves crashing far below, and nothing but darkness stretching away from them.

Only, as he stood there, Lacertin saw that wasn’t completely true. Bright moonlight trailed along the surface of the water, rolling with each wave. Starlight twinkled softly, casting a glow along the water. Hot wind battled with a cooler breeze that gusted in from the east.

Otherwise, there was silence all around him.

They stood for long moment, letting the sounds of the sea carry and wash over them.

“Even in the Sunlands, water allows you to forget.”

“What makes you think I want to forget?”

“You came to us, Lacertin Alaseth. Why would you not want to forget?”

Lacertin could think of dozens of reasons he would want to forget, and a few reasons to remember. Wasn’t that why he had come here? The longer he spent left alone, either in the Incendin archives or with the priest, the less he remembered the reasons that he had come.

Far below, as the waves crashed along the rocks, sending salt spray toward him, leaving his lips with a hint of the sea, he felt a strange sense of relaxation.

Why would it be here that he would experience such peace? If anything, he should know peace in Ethea, shouldn’t he? Shouldn’t Lacertin find a way to be more at ease within the kingdoms rather than outside? But strangely, over the last few days, he had felt more relaxed than he ever had before.

Standing on the shore, with the rocks below him, the sound of the sea washing in and out, he could
almost
forget why he had come.

“Why did you bring me here, priest?”

“Always questions, but never the right ones, Lacertin Alaseth.”

Lacertin let the sounds of the ocean sweep over him. “You don’t need to use my full name.”

“No? You would have me call you by another?”

The question was loaded, but he didn’t know quite what the priest implied. “I would know what you intend for me to see here.”

“What if it is not what
I
would have for you to see, but what Issa would have you see?”

“Because Issa didn’t guide me out to the edge of the city and lead me to the rocks.”

“Are you so certain?”

Lacertin inhaled deeply, savoring the way the salt smell filled his nose. In some ways, standing here reminded him of the best places within the kingdoms. Nara, his homeland, had much of the heat and the rocks that pressed on his awareness. Vatten, a place of water and spray like the ocean crashing below him, had always been welcoming to him in spite of the fact that he shaped water weakly. The cool wind was much like he knew in Galen, with the gusting wind blowing in out of the mountains. There was little of Ter other than a similar flat expanse.

“I’m not certain of anything any longer,” Lacertin said softly.

“That is a step,” the priest began. “The first one, but necessary to knowing what you would become.”

“And what is that?” Lacertin opened his eyes and met the priest’s intense gaze. Moonlight reflected off his glasses and out here under the darkness, there was less of Ilton to him than he seemed while in the Fire Fortress. “You think that I’m somehow supposed to serve Issa, that I will convert to your religion, but that’s not why I’m here.”

“Tell me, Lacertin Alaseth, why
are
you here?”

He almost shared, almost opened up to the priest, but that would do nothing other than reveal the fact that he still served his king, if he had not revealed that already. Instead, he turned and stared out over the water, listening to the call of the waves.

“Water is different here,” he remarked.

“The water of the Sunlands is different than what you are familiar with in the kingdoms, but the salt and the spray are the same everywhere.” The priest turned and looked at Lacertin, holding his gaze. “What is it you feel when you stand here?”

“I feel… at peace.”

The priest nodded. “That is not always the case for you, is it?”

Lacertin breathed out softly. “Rarely,” he agreed. “Never might be a better answer.”

“And why is that?”

There was something about the priest that drew answers out of him, even when Lacertin knew that he should be guarded. “You know who I am… was,” he corrected.

“I know that you are Lacertin Alaseth.”

“Then you know that I am a warrior of the kingdoms.”

The priest smiled with a soft sigh. “
The
warrior of the kingdoms, some would say.”

Lacertin felt drawn to the edge of the rock, and traced his foot along the edge. He could jump from here, take off on a shaping of wind and fire, and leave Incendin. Little they did truly confine him, he realized. Other than Ilton’s request—his final request—there was nothing that held him here, nothing that would tie him to Incendin. He could go to Doma, to Chenir, even across the sea to the Xsa Isles or beyond. And if he did, what would he lose? What would the kingdoms lose? Probably nothing now. They had already lost their king and their princess. What did it matter if they lost another warrior?

As far as the kingdoms knew, they had already lost him. Theondar had made that clear when he chased him to the borders. And now with the barrier in place, returning would be difficult, if not impossible. Lacertin could make his way around the barrier, bypassing Chenir, and come in off the sea. His travels to the far north had proven that he was capable of maintaining a shaping like that. But once he returned, what would he face?

Theondar and his bias. Other warriors and shapers influenced by him. None knowing how he had served, the sacrifices he had made over the years on behalf of his king and the kingdoms. And he had no one to blame but himself. Lacertin had been the one to set himself apart, he had been the one to hold himself away from everyone else, all in the name of service. It was that service that had prevented him from finding any true happiness, from having an opportunity with Ilianna, and even from the possibility—however remote—of something with Jayna. He was alone, but had none to blame but himself.