“Three times you managed to summon fire. Not terrible, but none of them as large as the first you showed me. That’s good. Your body has learned to restrain itself. You’ll need to keep at it to continue learning your limits.”
“For how long?” Draysky asked, remembering the columns of fire the day of the fake ritebald attack. Those had been far stronger than what he could produce, and the Keepers had returned on their feet, while now he knelt and struggled to regain his breath after only three.
“How long does it take for a miner to easily heft a pickaxe?” asked Balean. “Such a question depends on the person.”
“I want to be able to hold my own soon,” Draysky growled while forcing himself to his feet. “How else am I supposed to fight my way out when we reach the city?”
Balean looked at him, then snorted. “You really think you’ll just be able to waltz into the city and start torching Keepers?”
“You said they were weak!” Draysky exclaimed, and another spurt of flame flared from the rune as he crossed his arms.
“They’re weak to me!” Balean laughed. “Or, to what I was. For me, it’s like fighting a puppy. To you, it’s like an ant fighting a puppy.”
“I can lift my pickaxe just fine with or without magic. We’ll see if they can take a strike from that.”
“And I can watch you get shredded from a thousand different directions with or without a chair.” Balean leapt down, and Draysky finally caught his breath. Defiance forced him to stand up straight, a new energy coming through him as his finger tingled.
“You said you didn’t want to burn everything,” tuttered Balean. “Relax. Push that feeling away. It’s the fire talking, hothead. Your eyes shine with it.”
“How long until I can be like you? Until I can jump around like that or sneak around without being seen?”
“That’s not a fair question,” Balean said, and he waggled his finger. “You don’t want to be like me. I can’t draw runes, remember? Now, tonight you’re spent. We’re not squeezing any more out of you. Get some rest and prepare for tomorrow. I think you’ll find the mental harder than the physical.”
Waking the next day was almost as difficult as after a full day in the Grinder, and Draysky had to force himself out of the comforts of bed, the used straw no longer so disgusting now that it was warm.
“A week off the job and already sleeping,” Oliver remarked as he finished packing and Draysky trailed behind him. “There’s something you’ll need to learn in the outside world. Accountability. No Keeper out there is going to watch over you to make sure you’re productive. You’ll have to do that yourself.”
Draysky kept his mouth clamped shut as the Silver Keeper nodded in agreement.
“You know what they say: The successful are out of bed before the sun. The kernel burns the night through.”
Within the hour, they were back on the road, Draysky trying to ignore the sound of Balean shuffling around on the rooftop. Draysky shifted, and Oliver squinted in return, wrinkling his nose.
“Have you bathed since you fell into the Grinder?” he demanded. “You still smell terrible, like dusty smoke.”
“He has a point there,” said Balean’s voice from above. “Washing now required after lessons.”
Draysky jerked his head upward, then back at Oliver, prepared for the other man to stop the carriage. But his eyes only narrowed further as he looked Draysky over, then continued to speak.
“What, are you all jumpy now? And speaking of, I never did ask you about the Grinder. How exactly did you escape? I saw you fall in, and the Grinder stopped afterward. What in the heavens did you do?”
“Spat me up because it didn’t like my smell either,” Draysky said, relaxing as he realized Oliver had not heard Balean. “By then you had left, and I had to climb up the side on my own.”
“Come on, there’s no way it’s that simple,” pressed Oliver, putting his hands on his knees and leaning forward. “You fall into the Grinder, you emerge writing runes, making demands, and somehow with kernels hidden on you. You know how difficult it is to get kernels that far north? They cost a damn fortune.”
“You went to school, you tell me,” Draysky said, then he folded his arms back and closed his eyes.
“I’ll find out somehow. When we return to the Tower, you won’t be speaking to me like that.”
“I don’t see any tower,” Draysky answered while Oliver sulked and pulled the wine from his bag once more. Out front, the Silver Keeper egged on the horses, still upset his position inside the carriage had been taken. But the command had come from Weris himself. If a ridger was to be Keepered, he was to ride within the cart the entire way back. And if Oliver was no longer sentenced, the young man’s rank outweighed his own.
Besides, with the way the Silver Keeper looked at him, Draysky suspected he’d rather not share the same room.
“Now that we’ve done the easy part, on to mental!” said Balean, whispering through the rooftop, and Draysky cracked an eye open to see Oliver. But he hadn’t reacted to the sound, and Balean continued. “Oh, don’t worry about him. He can’t hear me; too closed-minded, that one. He can hear you though, so keep your own mouth shut. Now, you are in a unique situation here. You have your own internal kernel, and you’ve connected semi-permanently to an aurel. Usually, that other aurel would run out quite quickly, but lucky for you, my ember gift is top-notch quality. It won’t be running out any time soon, and that’s unique, or else people would embed kernels within themselves all the time. The thing is with kernels, once the energy runs out they’re useless, so they’d just be dead weight.”
Balean cleared his throat, then launched into a full lecture as Draysky listened, his eyes shut and head nodding in tune with the carriage’s bumpy path.
“It’s about time you became acclimated with yourself. Everyone is born with an aurel, everyone you’ve ever met. They start off weak, hardly noticeable. Their traits whispers. Perhaps someone can spend five more seconds than her friends underwater, or another can see better past dusk."
Now, we center you upon your kernel, your first essence. As you grow, you will collect more of these—for every level, a new essence to tame, though these you must find on your own. But for now, draw yourself in toward your center. To do this, let’s begin with your toes.
“I want you to focus your entire attention upon the tip of your big toe. I want you to feel its temperature, the coarseness of your boot against it, the cuticle that fights against the nail for space. Everything that would normally escape your notice, except when you focus all of your mental capacity upon it. Good. Now move to your ankle, sense it—all the aches and pains, the blood pumping around it, the edge of your boots. Right now, you are that ankle, and that ankle alone. Now, moving up again, to your thigh. Feel its soreness, how it complains to you still with its bruises from your fall into the Grinder. And keep moving, to your chest, to your beating heart, and stop there.
“Your primary kernel is located beyond your heart, in the interlocking piece where your body is tied together, the vertebrae just behind it. Where your arms connect, and your body, and your mind. When you are fearful, it prickles with the feeling you are being watched. When you are excited, it’s electric, and when you make yourself tall, you draw strength from it. Your kernel is there, at the very center of your existence. Seek it out, a tiny glimmer of light in the darkness. Center yourself there just as you did your toe. Feel it, sense it.”
Drayksy fumbled, trying to shift his attention, the bumping cart stealing his concentration whenever he isolated that spot. He rolled his eyes—this was like Balean asking him to find a third arm that had never existed. Surely, he would have felt it before, or seen it on others. For instance, when a ridger’s home burned down three years before, and the family was caught inside, nothing like a kernel or the fire aurel had been found among the bodies.
But as the minutes passed, he did sense something. Something small, a glimmer more than anything else, and when he touched it with his
mind, it rippled in response, like a second heartbeat.
“Yes! There! That’s it!” exclaimed Balean, so urgently that Draysky lost his grasp.
“And now it’s gone,” muttered Draysky.
“What’s gone?” asked Oliver from across the cabin.
“My appetite. This carriage is making me sick.”
“If you’re going to vomit, don’t do it in here.”
“Noted,” said Draysky, and he closed his eyes again.
“Don’t do it up here either,” said Balean. “Now, find the kernel again. What you have to do is connect your kernel to the fire aurel. Gently. Don’t let any power through it, just feel it out.”
Draysky focused once more and found the glimmer. He pushed on it, then teased it, dragging it out in a line toward the aurel on his finger.
“Slowly,” warned Balean. “What I am teaching you here is a meditation exercise for you to learn the nature of fire, so that you may command it. Within your finger is the anger of a volcano. I know, because I purified that aurel in its depths. Some mages prefer to immerse themselves in actual fire, but at your level, I think this is a better solution. And almost safer.
Almost? Draysky thought, and Balean responded to the unspoken question.
“Almost. This experience is mental, not physical. But often, it is the mental that damages more than the physical. Fire burns, Draysky, and it may take time for your mind to heal over. But no chef ever learned without burning himself on the stove.”
Drawing a deep breath, Draysky found his center once again and pulled the glimmer toward the aurel in his finger like a long string, nudging it just the tiniest bit to connect them.
Instantly, he felt the hunger, the desire. The carriage seemed too cold for his liking, as if the temperature had been dropped by ten degrees. Balean continued to speak, but his voice seemed farther away, diminished.
“Good. Now, you must enter the aurel though the connection. Push yourself through, but not with power. If you add power, this carriage will become nothing more than a scorch mark.”
Draysky edged forward mentally, the aurel a bright burning flame in his mind compared to his own tiny kernel, like staring into the open door of the wood stove at his home. Then there was a sensation like tipping over, of falling and being unable to regain balance, of scrabbling down a hill suddenly too steep. No longer was he sitting in the carriage next to Oliver.
Instead, he had leapt into a furnace.
Fire raged around him—angry fire in a deep red that colored his entire vision. Every inch of him burned, and he heard its roaring command unleashed as it tried to travel up and past him, to access his source of power at the Kernel. He resisted, battering it back, his skin charring.
Burn! Burn! The fire rejoiced as Draysky cried out, and the flames raced higher, swirling in a tornado of heat and destruction, their every effort driving to escape, to free themselves from this tiny prison that had contained them for so very long. A single-minded desire, a mission that could not stop until all was consumed.
Draysky threw himself backward, his eyes snapping open with a gasp and his hands feeling over his arms. Oliver jerked back at the sudden motion, shouting back at him as he spilled his wine over the book he was reading. West of the Walls, he had informed Draysky it was called, an account of those who had traveled to fight insurgent trolls.
“The heavens is wrong with you?” Oliver demanded, scrubbing red off the pages.
“Bad dream,” Draysky said, as he continued to feel over his skin. Gone were the burns, but he could still smell smoke, could still feel the blistering that had been there just moments before. He blinked, and other colors besides red trickled back into his vision, as Balean spoke once more.
“Longer than I expected, and no sparks. That is good. That is what you must control, what you must understand through experience, what no book or lesson can teach you. Desire, burning is only one face of fire. You must learn them all if you wish to stand against the Keepers.”
After his heartbeat slowed to normal Draysky reentered the aurel. Again his skin burned. Again, the fire cast him out to wake with a start. Again, his hands felt over his body in a panic. Six times he managed before he could muster no more. By then, they had nearly stopped for the night. When he rose after the others fell asleep, he shook as he looked at the embers of the dying campfire, and cringed at how he was to summon more of it.
“Why can’t you just teach me something powerful now? Something to destroy the Keepers? I can feel the energy within the aurel,” Draysky asked.
“Because it will burn you.”
“I’m already burned!”
“You’re singed. This would burn you to a crisp. Draysky, when you enter the city, you will realize that there are hundreds of Keepers. All of them are higher levels than you. With each level comes a new aurel—kernel, for you—and a new benefit with that, and some will have multiple aurels to naturally repel any attack you send their way. Your chance of survival is nil, your chance of success even less.
“You’ll need to be a higher level. You’ll need multiple kernels, and multiple runes, and the ability to string them together into more complex spells. True mages do not exchange blows with one fist, they attack with several and defend with several. You are bringing a knife to fight a company of swordsmen.”
“How long will it take?” Draysky asked again, and Balean sighed.
“Patience, boy, patience. The first time you were struck with Oliver’s glove, it nearly killed you. Now? Now that would be closer to a bee sting. You were tough in the Grinder, you were tough when that Keeper’s spear pierced you. Now you must be just as tough in this training. You must practice the rune I have taught you.
“The rune rise. For the fire, and for yourself.”
Draysky repeated his physical practice, making less ground than the night before. In the days he continued to meditate, and over time he started to find something else in the fire. A whispering beneath the anger and rage. Something that reminded him of the second rune his grandmother had taught him, the secret to coolfire. With each of the nights, he progressed slowly, sometimes managing one more blast of fire than the night before, sometimes barely able to conjure at all. Each time, the consistency grew until he could predict just how many would escape his fingers before he crumpled on the ground.
But something bothered Draysky, nagged at him every time he tried to fall asleep. For when Balean spoke, he had mentioned Oliver’s glove and the spear that had cut Draysky as a child, leaving him in a feverish state for days.
Yet Draysky had not spoken of that spear for years.
And never to Balean.
Chapter 46: Draysky
“Remember, one without the other is worthless,” said Balean, standing over the heaving Draysky. “Fire aurel with no kernel cannot burn. And a kernel with no aurel has no purpose, it wouldn’t understand the command burn. That is why we must strengthen the kernel within you, to greater match the strength of the fire aurel.”
“I know, I know,” said Draysky. In front of him, a steady fire licked around the rise rune. Under Balean’s command, he was to keep it burning as long as possible, no matter how weak—a task like holding his pickaxe above his head for extended periods of time. Easy for the first minute, and excruciating every one after that.
“How come I’ve never seen you doing any runes?” Draysky asked. “Back in the outpost, the best miners taught by example.”
“I told you, I lost that ability long ago.”
“I’m starting to suspect even back then you weren’t able to.”
“Me? I am the mighty Balean! Just because you haven’t heard my name in your backward outpost doesn’t mean others will have forgotten! I built the Grinder with my bare hands!”
“And you’re hitching a ride to the city on top of a carriage? Wouldn’t you want to ride on the inside? They should be honored you are in their presence.”
“‘Maybe I like fresh air,” said Balean, waving a hand under his nose and looki
ng at Draysky pointedly.
“Maybe you’re a liar,” Drayksy said.
Balean extended a hand toward the rune that Draysky had drawn. “Severance,” he commanded, authority in his voice, and the rune broke into two. The fire died as if snuffed out, and Draysky reeled back, the command like a physical blow. Rage backed Balean’s words, a growl as he took hold of Draysky’s hand by the wrist.
“I have agreed to teach you, but I have not agreed to be questioned of my own worth. I am not what I once was; rather, I am in a position where I need help. I have chosen you, but there is no reason I cannot choose another.”
Draysky’s finger grew uncomfortably hot, and Balean dragged it through the air, drawing a complex set of runes beyond Draysky’s understanding. When he finished, Drayksy felt his own kernel being yanked forward to complete and power the symbols, his energy surging forth. A whip of liquid fire unspooled through Draysky’s palm, lashing out at the trunk of a tree twenty feet in front of him, slashing into the trunk with a sharp crack. The tree split down the center, each half leaning over, the bark charred.
“Even with your tiny kernel, this magic is possible with the proper skill. What I show you here is the barest drop in an ocean of knowledge.”
He leapt back away from Draysky, the jump carrying him to the split tree, where he settled with his back against one half and his feet braced against the other.
“We’re in this together, whether we like it or not. Now, again.”
Draysky coaxed the fire back to life, his eyes still narrowed with suspicion at Balean.
Two days away from the city, the Silver Keeper pulled the carriage aside, departing from the road to a small town. There, they pulled into another inn, where another carriage was already waiting. Similar to their own, a Keeper and his servant waited in the front while the doors were shut. The Silver Keeper climbed out, shaking the hand of the other man and speaking to him in quiet tones. Then he motioned to Oliver and Draysky, who left the carriage.
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