Torchlight

by Theresa Dahlheim

  He glared at the afterglow in the sky, at the black shape of the island in the water. He muttered words that his parents didn’t know he knew, and he deliberately dropped his hold on Audrey’s hand. He wouldn’t be going camping this year, then. And it wasn’t just the camping, it was everything else his father wouldn’t let him do yet, and everything his mother said he couldn’t do anymore now that he was going to school.

  Boring school. Stupid chores. Nothing lucky or fun or interesting was going to happen to him this year. Probably nothing interesting would ever happen to him in his whole entire life. He might as well go live under a rock.

  His anger felt alive, a fierce burn from the center of his chest, through his arms and down his legs, even climbing to his face. He knew it was ridiculous to be angry at the stupid sun for not turning green for him, but he couldn’t help it. He clenched his fists, wishing he could hit something, beat something, tear something apart—

  His eyes clouded in a strange mist that seemed to swirl from the middle of his head down to the center of the earth. His fists were pulling at it, heaving it up to fill his helpless rage, feed it, drive it deep into his bones until—until—

  Audrey screamed and yanked his arm, and his mind snapped back to her and the beach and the crowd around them. He was dizzy, and he thought he was going to fall over or be sick. He crouched to steady himself, but then he heard shouts from other people, shouts that sounded afraid, and he raised his head again.

  His breath caught in his throat. The little waves of the lake tide were joined into a single big, long roll, warping the surface of the water, rushing for the bank, climbing higher and higher—it would swamp the beach, it could go all the way up the hill—Audrey couldn’t swim yet—

  Graegor scooped Audrey up in his arms and ran for higher ground, nearly falling as he tried to keep from bumping into other people. He got to the top of the slope and spun around to see the huge wave crash into the bank.

  Shouts and screams rang in Graegor’s ears as he watched the water crash down, then swirl up to the knees and waists and necks of the grownups and children and dogs who hadn’t been able to get out of its way. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his whole body, hot and cold at once, every hair standing on end.

  But then, as quickly as it had rushed up to them, the water rushed back into the lake again. Graegor stared in disbelief as people picked themselves up out of the mud and looked each other over. None of the children had been swept away, but some of them were crying. Most everyone else had started to laugh—except Ted’s sister, who was staring in horror at her soaked wedding dress. One of the retrievers shook itself off right next to her and splattered her with mud.

  The acolyte who had been holding the silver bowl was chasing it into the lake. The priest’s feet and robes had gotten wet, but he spread his arms and smiled up at the townspeople. “A special blessing from Lord Abban on this special day!” Then he quoted from the holy tracts: “‘With water I touch you, My people, and with water I give you the sign of My presence!’”

  “Let it be!” many in the crowd shouted back, and many cheered. Graegor did not. Not only had he not seen the green flash, he also hadn’t gotten God’s special blessing. He shouldn’t have even bothered to go down to the lake at all.

  He turned away, dropping Audrey’s hand. “Let’s find Momma.”

  Audrey ran to keep up with him. “Are you sick?” she asked.

  “What? No. Why?”

  “You were sick down there.” She pointed back toward the bank.

  “I’m not sick,” he snapped. He didn’t know what that dizziness in his head had been, or why he’d felt sick after it, but he didn’t care. He felt fine now, just thoroughly disgusted.

  At last, practically all the way back at the town’s main street, they saw the wine-red skirt of their mother’s best dress. “Momma!” Audrey shouted, and their mother turned to smile and extend her arm.

  “There you are!” She picked up Audrey and held her on her hip. A few locks had escaped her swept-up hairstyle by now, and Audrey curled her fingers around one of them. “I see you weren’t on the bank when that wave hit.”

  “I got us out of the way since Audrey can’t swim,” Graegor told her.

  “I’m glad you were watching out for her. You could have brought her back to me before sunset—I know you wanted to see the green flash. It was so bright!”

  “You saw it?” She was a grownup! She didn’t need any more remarkable things to happen to her.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, honey.” She reached out, probably to smooth his hair, but he ducked away. It wasn’t right that she’d seen it and he hadn’t. He twisted the toe of his shoe—his dry shoe, his completely dry and unblessed shoe—into the soft ground, holding his arms over his chest.

  Audrey put her head on their mother’s shoulder. “Momma, can we get Dolly?”

  “Where’s your dolly, sweetpea?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s at the schoolyard,” Graegor said before his mother could ask him.

  “All right.” She started walking back up the slope toward town, following the crowd, carrying Audrey. Graegor fell into step beside her.

  “Why did you have me when nobody else was having babies?” he asked her suddenly. He’d been wanting to ask that for a long time.

  She frowned, clearly finding the question strange. He explained: “Nobody else is ten. Nobody. Some of the boys act like I’m too young, and sometimes when I’m with the others I feel really old.”

  This time she laughed. “Really old?”

  “I just think you should have had me sooner, so I’d be, like, twelve now.”

  They went a few more steps before she said, “There were three other babies born here in the few months before you were. But they weren’t healthy, and they died.”

  “Oh.”

  “You have lots of friends, though.”

  He shrugged. The games had been fun today, and no one had ever actually said he couldn’t play with them because he was too young or too old, but it still bothered him. Maybe everything was bothering him right now. Stupid green flash.

  Maybe everyone was making it all up and there never was any green flash. Except he didn’t think his mother would do that to him.

  “... and you were born the spring after the Sorcerers’ Star,” his mother was saying. “That’s special.”

  “You’ve said that before.” He didn’t know if she meant that that made him special, or just that the year he was born was special. “Do you really think I’m Telgardia’s new sorcerer?”

  She smiled indulgently. “You were born at the right time.”

  That meant no. Which wasn’t surprising. “I can’t do magic.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She was teasing him, but he wasn’t in the mood. “I’m sure.” He’d tried before—all the boys and girls he knew had tried to do magic. Maybe only one person at a time could be the kingdom’s sorcerer, but there were lots of magi—well, maybe not lots, not around here. But being a magus would be almost as fun as being a sorcerer, even if they weren’t as powerful.

  He had sat for nearly half an hour one day staring at one of his mother’s candles, trying to get it to light. Another time, he and Ted had tried to charm a deer into taking sugar from their hands, and one day in school when the master had stepped out, all the boys had played a game where they’d tried to read each other’s thoughts. But his mother would think all that was silly.

  “Honey, for heaven’s sake, you’re getting too upset. It’s Solstice! You don’t have to go to bed tonight. You shouldn’t waste that by moping.”

  “I’m not moping.”

  “You really are.” She started to say something else, then noticed Audrey asleep on her shoulder. “Oh, dear.” She veered left of the fountain, toward the baker’s shop. “I’ll go and get her settled—could you ... ?”

  “I’ll get the doll.” He wasn’t moping. He turned away from her and started back across the squar
e. He darted around some people to pass the fountain and trotted down the lane, toward the schoolhouse—repainted bright blue just when he’d first started going a few months ago—and to the yard where he had made that perfect throw. He hoped he could throw like that all the time from now on. Except his shoulder still hurt a little.

  Craig and another boy were throwing the ball back and forth across the field when he got there. He waved at them, and they waved back, but although he stood there for a while, they didn’t invite him to join them. Finally he gathered up the blue blanket and Audrey’s doll.

  The single street of shops stretched from the top of the slope near the lake, past the fountain, out to where the dirt road out of town met the paving stones. Right at that spot, Graegor could see Ted’s brothers dragging the trestle tables around to outline the dance square, while some other older boys fastened unlit torches to overhanging roofs. Ted’s mother and sisters were re-weaving long ropes of ivy into bunting for the tables, and other women were putting the leftovers from the festival onto wooden trays so the plates and pots could be taken back home and stay unbroken. On the tavern porch, the tanner and his bride—still in her damp wedding dress—were talking to the troupe of musicians who had arrived that afternoon.

  Graegor’s eyes traced the peaks and valleys of the two-story roofs, down the street and back again, and his gaze reached the last shop in the row just as a torch blazed to life. In the first high flame he could clearly see the fine needles on the evergreen trees looming behind the buildings. But then the torch steadied and the trees faded into solid dark green, very dark, almost black.

  He turned back around and saw his father coming down the street with Sheriff. Sheriff was a big, bearded man—like sheriffs in stories were—and his red mantle was still bright in the lowering dusk. His nod to Graegor was curt, since the sheriff didn’t have much use for children. Which was fair. Graegor doubted he himself would have much use for children if he ever became a soldier.

  Sheriff moved off toward the dance square, but Graegor’s father stopped. “Where’s your mother?”

  “She took Audrey to the baker’s.”

  “Those are hers?”

  Graegor looked at the blanket and doll. They sure aren’t mine. “Yes.”

  “Then go on, she’ll want her things.”

  Graegor nodded and hurried to the baker’s shop. Chains of bluebells lined the windows and lintels, and delicious smells told him that there would be handcakes that night. There were at least a dozen children upstairs in the stifling, low-beamed room, and the baker’s wife and daughter were rolling out some blankets and folding more into pillows. His mother was talking to two other mothers in a corner, still holding Audrey on her shoulder. She didn’t seem in any hurry—grownups never were when they were talking—so he found a place for Audrey and spread out her blanket. With some patient tapping at his mother’s arm, he got her to follow him, and at last they got his sister curled up with her doll, still asleep. How she could with all this racket, Graegor couldn’t even guess. Next year she wouldn’t even want to sleep—she’d be nearly five, almost old enough to stay up all night like he did.

  Not that he’d ever made it through the whole night. Last year and the year before, he had fallen asleep in the schoolyard with the younger boys. This year he wouldn’t, though. He hadn’t seen the stupid green flash, and he hadn’t gotten God’s special water-blessing, but he would stay awake all night.

  By the time he and his mother got back outside, it had grown darker. The torches at the dance square jumped and flickered in the breeze while the musicians tuned their instruments. The tavern keeper was tapping another keg, and people nibbled at the strawberries and smoked fish and all the rest of the food. Graegor paused by a tray of dough-rings, but the frown from his mother told him he had had enough sweets that day. Instead he took a handful of strawberries and sat down with her and his father at one of the tables at the dance square.

  He put one of the strawberries in his mouth, then suddenly wondered if he should recite a meat-thanks prayer. It was hard to tell, since he was eating at a table, but he wasn’t exactly at table. He decided to be safe, and quickly traced the Godcircle and mumbled the short prayer around the strawberry in his mouth before swallowing it.

  The music started, a bouncy tune with flutes, gitars, and drums. Ted’s sister and her new husband led the reel that stretched across the square, and the townspeople clapped in time. When the tempo increased, the dancers tried to keep up, everyone’s clothes drying off fast in the warm night. The girls were very pretty, with their flushed cheeks and dark hair, their bright skirts twirling about. The older boys weren’t at all clumsy like Graegor was when he tried to dance.

  Miriam was dancing with Hagan, which was a surprise. Graegor hadn’t thought she liked him. Hagan was his father’s senior apprentice in the woodwright shop, and Miriam was his mother’s senior apprentice in the chandlery. She was probably the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, with deep red hair like copper—her grandmother was from Khenroxa. She was nice, too, and always smiled when she talked to him, but in all the time they’d lived at Graegor’s house, he’d never seen her smile at Hagan. She was smiling now, though, even laughing, and Hagan said something in her ear before they parted hands at the end of the line to make way for the other dancers.

  Well, over the years Graegor had noticed that weddings made girls silly. Solstice weddings might make them even sillier. He shrugged, swinging his legs from the bench as he finished his strawberries.

  After several reels, jigs, and court dances, Graegor realized that the smoky scent of the torches was making him drowsy. If he stayed longer he would be in danger of falling asleep. He slid off the bench, and his mother asked, “Where are you off to?”

  “Nowhere really.”

  “Come back every so often so we know you’re all right.”

  He edged around the table and headed for the street beyond the dance square. When he got to the fountain he found some children playing chain-toss on a board drawn in chalk on the paving stones. He paused to watch, but one of them said, “You’re in the light,” so he kept going.

  Some small children were playing Sorcerer-Says not far from the tavern porch. Two of the boys were arguing over who got to be Sorcerer Contare, and one of the girls was insisting that she was Sorceress Josselin. Graegor smiled to himself when he heard the girl’s sister tell her that she couldn’t be Josselin because she wasn’t from Khenroxa. He’d tried to tell Audrey the same thing yesterday, and she hadn’t wanted to listen either. He swerved to get out of the way of the rest of the children as they bumped into each other on purpose while pretending to be under mind control.

  A group of older men were sitting along the tavern porch, and Graegor heard most of them urging another one to “tell the story, tell the story,” since he told it so well. Curious, Graegor drifted closer, staying in the shadows so that no one would ask him to run over to the keg and fill up their steins—he didn’t like how kegs smelled.

  The storyteller, a bearded vegetable farmer in town for the holiday, cleared his throat noisily and said, “I’ll tell you the story, since you asked for it. It’s the story of how King Breon, of the line of Saint Carlodon Torchanes, stopped the Medean invasion and saved our land.”

  This was one of Graegor’s favorites, and he had to force himself to stand still and not bounce up and down with excitement. He peered past the shoulders of the men in front of him so he could see the old farmer, who spread his arms to encompass the country around them. “We call this Lakeland, for there are a hundred lakes, big and small, that set the patterns of our lives. We have lived here since the Arrival and we will live here until the One comes again. We are of the Telgard race and the Telgard blood, freely giving our loyalty to our king in Chrenste by the sea. He rules us in Lakeland as he rules all of Telgardia, east to west along the hundreds of leagues traveled by the great river.

  “But no king has ever done for us what King Breon Torchanes did hundreds of years ago. Ha
d he not stopped the Medean magus-prince in his advance across the grasslands, Lakeland, our home,” he stabbed his finger toward the earth below, “might even now be under the rule of foreign tyrants, cruel men who have refused to know the path of our God, our kindly Lord Abban.”

  Graegor’s fingers automatically curled into the sign of the Godcircle, and he could see some of the men doing the same. The farmer himself made the double sign, both hands tracing the four circles in the air. Then he went on: “The invasion began in high summer, when the spring runoff from the mountains had ended. With a rain of fire, the Medean warrior-magi and bowmen overwhelmed the Telgard garrison at the mountain pass at Rohrdarre. They then led their pikemen east ...”

  A series of lesser battles came before the main one. Graegor didn’t have much patience for these. The Telgards lost them all, for one thing, and King Breon wasn’t in hardly any of them. It was agonizing to have to wait through this part of the story, but it was almost an enjoyable agony, like watching a piping-hot apple pie cool down, or like holding a winter Solstice gift in his lap before tearing off the paper.

  “When day broke over Falcon’s Rock, the Telgard sentries could see that a line of men had come over the southwest horizon. The Medeans advanced toward them across the plain, dividing to flow between bushes and around hillocks—” and he moved his arms like two snakes, sidewinding apart, curling back together— “and then joining again, a flood of steel coming to sweep away the Telgard army.”

  Here it was, his favorite part! Graegor listened with every bit of his ears.

  “The enemy halted no more than half a mile away, and drew into formation. Our army stood and stared at the unbelievable numbers of the Medeans and their orange-robed magi. King Breon had only healer-magi standing with him, who refused to lend their power to the fight. His allies from Khenroxa would not reach the field in time. Nevertheless, determined to retreat no longer, the king had carefully planned his order of battle. A phalanx of infantry with swords and axes was to stand behind a line of pikemen. The cavalry would ride at the wings, hinged to the main body by the archers, who would first target the enemy magi. The reserve columns were in a position to wheel inward in order to reinforce any point in the line that proved weak.