by CJ Brightley
After that, he kept on reading without comment. My nerves rose to fever peak, and I started braiding and unbraiding the fringe of a rug that appeared next to me.
When he finished the last page, he set it down and stared off into space. I was dying to jump up and down and beg what he thought, but I couldn’t get the words out. I waited, my throat constricting.
He turned around and put the sheaf of papers back in my arms. “Your tastes are different than mine,” he said slowly. “But I think it’s designed well. If you want to use it, you should use it.”
My heart leapt. “Do — do you think it would be dangerous?”
“Of course I do. I think most systems are far too dangerous. You’ll notice the one I built is exceedingly cautious and has no overt power.” He tapped the papers I was holding. “But you’ve thought it through enough. I don’t think it would be a disaster for this to exist.”
I gulped, my hands shaking. That didn’t seem like high praise. “Well — well, maybe I should rethink —”
“Raneh,” Xillon said, and he looked far more serious than I had ever seen him. “I may look like a young man, but I assure you, I am not. I was ninety-four years old when I died, and I have spent a good deal of my time here in study. What you have made will work. It is not a system I would make. But if it speaks to you, then you should use it.”
I stared down at my papers. I looked up at him. “What happens to you when I leave?” I asked in a small voice.
“Then I leave too,” Xillon said. He shrugged. “I don’t know if I go somewhere else. Probably. The ghost system seems to suggest there’s something else after this.”
I tried to blink back my tears. I felt like an idiot. “Maybe I’m not ready. Maybe I shouldn’t leave.”
“An extra year of study isn’t going to help you,” Xillon said tartly. “And almost any system is better than none. If there turn out to be problems, someone will pass laws to make unethical things illegal.”
I swallowed and gathered the papers to my chest. I started to step forward, then turned back. “Are you — will you be okay?”
“Go!” Xillon shouted, pointing his finger at the nebulousness, looking exasperated.
I took one last look back at him, and I walked out of the room, through one of the walls of nothingness.
A tight, uncomfortable sensation squeezed around me, and I gasped for breath, suddenly needing to. I stumbled as my knees appeared, and my left foot started itching. My fingers felt stiff, and my arms felt tightly clenched around the paper. When my hair returned, it tickled my neck, and my eyebrows felt weird.
The bright light blazed around me, and my eyes hurt. I shielded them with both my arms, which were now empty — the papers had dissolved behind me. But the contents still remained in my head. Bizarrely, so did lots of other things I didn’t remember learning.
But I didn’t have time to think about that, because suddenly, I was standing outside the light in the Ruler’s top floor, blinking. A man in front of me yelped, and six men from around the room converged on me. They all held what looked like knives on a stick. Four of them pointed those things at me.
“Uh, hello,” I said foolishly. “May I speak to the Ruler, please?”
One of them spun on his heel and marched through the door to the Ruler’s area. I waited, twisting my foot around, wondering why it was itchy. And how did people deal with having nose hairs? The feeling of air swishing past them was driving me crazy.
The Ruler burst through the door, a wormthread sleeping gown fluttering around her, her hair only partially arranged. One of the filias, not tucked in fully, tumbled from her ear and plopped near her feet. She didn’t seem to notice.
“You,” she said tightly, shaking the overlong sleeves off of her wrists. “Did you bring back magic?”
I bit my lower lip. “Um . . .”
The Ruler gave me a hard stare. Her jaw was set, and her eyes looked dangerously unforgiving.
I gabbled as quickly as I could. “Look, I know you thought we needed magic, but I have a new system that’s actually better long-term, I thought it through and it’s going to be great, and —”
The Ruler turned to her men. “Kill her,” she said.
The men jabbed forward with their knives-on-sticks. I yelped and jerked a ring of fire up around me. Two of the sticks burst into flames, and the men holding them dropped them and leapt back, shouting.
“You need me to explain how the new system works,” I called, raising my voice to carry over the crackling shield around me. I knew how to be fireproof, but they didn’t. Yet. Hopefully they wouldn’t figure it out in the next few minutes.
“I can find out from your successor,” the Ruler said coldly.
“I don’t have an heir!” I protested. “You’d wind up with someone random! It would take a lot of work to find them!”
The Ruler smiled. “I would much rather work with someone you didn’t choose.”
That smile chilled me. She is really, really angry, I realized.
“Have things gone that badly?” I asked in a small voice, tightening my fingers to increase the thickness of the burning ring around me. The heat roared up, incinerating another stick someone tried throwing at me.
Two more to go, I thought. Unless they have more someplace.
“Badly?” the Ruler bit out. “No, I wouldn’t say things have gone badly. The caravans take far more stinksap than carriages and run no faster, which makes them completely useless. I can no longer create or destroy status. Nobody dares waste resources to grow crops for wood, paper, or clothing, which means we’re desperately short on almost everything. And some people are still going hungry. Oh, and let’s not forget how many former magicians have turned to crime in the past two years!”
My mouth felt dry. My fingers trembled, and the flames flickered around me in rhythm with them. “T-two years? I’ve been gone for two years?”
“And now apparently you’ve started this . . . strange fire thing we don’t even need,” the Ruler said bitterly, waving her hand. “I told you what would happen if you lied to me about saving magic! I wish you’d paid attention to me!”
She’s cooling off, I thought, relieved. We should be able to have a rational discussion about this.
The Ruler turned to her six men. “She can’t possibly stay that way forever,” she said, sounding tired. “Kill her when she sleeps.”
“What?!” I gasped. “Hey, wait a minute!”
The Ruler turned her back on me, opened the door back to her rooms, and walked through it, shutting the door softly. She didn’t even have the decency to slam it.
I looked around at the six men, feeling lost. They were all eyeing my fire shield. They had the same look Mother did when she found a bed of weeds.
“Um,” I said, my voice only shaking a little, “look. I’ll teach you all how to use my system if you just let me leave —”
One of them picked up a charred stick and broke the knife part off it. Then he threw it at me. It whooshed past my ear, and I felt a sting of pain.
I clutched my ear furiously. Is the Ruler trying to provoke me or something? How could she possibly think that’s a good idea?!
I could easily have escaped if I’d been willing to kill the men around me. The Ruler had to know that. I was controlling fire, not thayflowers.
Maybe she knows what war is, I thought, my skin prickling. I could feel each of the tiny hairs on my neck raise. Maybe she thinks I’m a threat to the Rulership that way.
If so, I really couldn’t blame her for wanting to kill me.
I have to prove I’m harmless, I thought, swallowing. The men continued circling me, looking tense and jumpy. I have to prove my system is meant to be useful, not aggressive. Fireproofing is absolutely basic, so I could teach these men how to use it in just a few seconds . . . but then they’d kill me. It might prove my system relatively harmless, but I’d still be dead. Think . . . think . . . think . . .
I spun around slowly, searching for some idea.
My eyes fell on the hallway that had been behind me. At the end of the hallway was a window. A gigantically tall, very skinny window. With wood shutters so that nobody would fall out of it.
I yanked the fire in close and dashed straight down the hallway. The men let out a yell, and I shoved the fire behind me in a straight wall, which was easier to maintain. I heard a shout and footsteps running the other way, and I wanted to hit myself. Stupid! There were two other hallways branching off the central area that I wasn’t blocking!
As I reached the wall, I drew the fire in a semicircle around me, which required far more concentration than a circle or a wall had. I had just enough focus left to ease a flicker into my hand and toss it at the shutters behind me.
I heard the shutters start to crackle. Then I felt a searing sensation on my wrist.
Argh! I jumped back, frantically beating the end of my sleeve into my outer skirts. Fireproofing only worked for fire being currently controlled by somebody, and I didn’t have the concentration to handle both the burning shutters and the semicircle. I might be the Keeper, but I was still completely unpracticed at this.
A knife-on-a-stick appeared under my nose. I realized, to my horror, that the semicircle had dropped. I turned around slowly, my heart pounding.
The man hesitated, his hand wavering.
I looked at his eyes as I heard other footsteps running towards me from the either end of the outer hallway. Maybe he realizes that I could have killed them easily back there, and didn’t. Maybe he appreciates that.
“Bye!” I said.
I seized control of the fire behind me and squeezed hard. The heat flared, and the black lumps of wood blocking my path powdered to ash. The man shouted and fell back, shielding his face. I scrambled up into the fire I was now controlling, and looked down at the roof of the next floor down, which was rather far below me. I swallowed, focusing as hard as I could, and leapt.
A huge burning ball caught me. I breathed heavily, from terror and relief that it had worked, then ran to the edge of the second floor roof and did it again.
I peered over the edge down to the ground from the first floor roof, trying to see if anyone was there. I couldn’t see without leaning forward farther than I dared, though, so I contented myself with shouting, “Look out below! Move out of the way!” before throwing the fireball down to catch me.
I heard shouts from the top floor as I reached the ground, and lots of people were running around and crying out and pointing at me all around the Ruler’s garden.
Time to go, I thought.
I bolted to my feet, stumbled over my ankle, which I had apparently twisted a bit, and started running down the path I needed. I was panting in no time at all, and my lungs were burning in a way that had nothing to do with my system.
That’s right, I realized, gasping for breath as I bent over, stopped because I couldn’t keep on going. I was in terrible shape when I left, after weeks of being kept prisoner. Apparently that hasn’t changed.
My eyes blurred as I stared down at the smooth, smooth ground beneath me. If I couldn’t run, I couldn’t reach the Ruler’s Road. If I couldn’t reach the Ruler’s Road, I couldn’t get back to my family. Not to mention that the Ruler still wanted to kill me.
Wait. I felt my eyes widen. This is geo-made stone. Geo-made stone is virtually indestructible. I couldn’t damage it if I wanted to.
I can use fire on this.
I dropped to the ground, tucking my arms around my knees and my head to my chest, and expanded a ball of fire around me. Then I shot forward, spinning down the street inside it.
People shouted and dove out of the way. I had to slow down several times to keep from barreling into less observant members of the crowd, but I still made a lot more progress than I would have running, even if I had been in shape to manage it. I kept on going so fast that I almost didn’t notice when I reached the entrance to the Ruler’s Road I needed. I definitely didn’t slow down in time.
Wham! My rear end smacked against the hard stone, and I tumbled out of the fireball, which disappeared around me.
The crowd started to draw slightly closer, murmuring to each other. I scrambled up to my feet and waved my hands threateningly. Most of the crowd looked scared and drew back again.
I shoved the stone door to the Ruler’s Road, and it didn’t budge. I looked down, and my heart fell. I’d completely forgotten they were kept locked. I couldn’t break through the stone, and I certainly didn’t have a key. Not that a key would help, because I’d probably melt it anyway . . .
My eyes fell on the small keyhole. Oh, duh. The entire lock was made from metal. I sent a blast of white-hot flame straight through it, and red liquid splashed out the other end. I shoved the door, hard, and then fell through it, nearly tripping and landing in the pool of molten metal on the other side.
That would’ve been a disaster, I thought, wincing as I caught my balance. Already I was seeing a potential issue with my system. Being fireproof didn’t actually protect me from hot metal, unless it was inside a fire I was using. Gotta figure out some way to make people generally heatproof, I decided. It’ll probably be tough, but I imagine it’s possible. That might also prevent heat stroke during the hottest hours of growing season . . .
I hurried up the steep stairs at the closest end of the caravan. It wasn’t easy, since my legs felt as limp and floppy as squishwood, and people were already poking their heads through the door to watch me, which was aggravating. Do you mind? I thought.
I fumbled for the door at the top of the stairs, and lurched into the room past it. It was larger than the sitting room the Ruler’s heirs used in the middle, and it had one-ten-and-two seats around an engine in the center. I found a row of vials in a bracket screwed to the wall, about one-third of them empty. I slid out one of the full ones and swapped it for the almost-empty one inside the engine.
I pulled the lever at the side of the engine, which was just where it was in carriages, and the caravan rumbled to life. It began to move slowly, very slowly, about one-quarter of a carriage’s pace.
I heard exclamations and murmurs outside, and I gritted my teeth, knowing that I was moving slowly enough that a person could easily walk next to the caravan at a brisk pace and keep up with it. I couldn’t enhance the efficiency of the stinksap, or multiply the caravan’s speed directly. But I could make the caravan use its fuel more quickly in order to move faster.
I opened another part of the engine, and found the tiny flame that kept it going. I pushed it hotter, and the stinksap bubbled faster. I watched carefully to keep it steady, wary about overheating. Sunstream had had technology much like this, and I’d learned enough about how theirs functioned to figure out what would and wouldn’t work here.
The caravan picked up speed. Not as quickly as it would have before, and not as fast as it used to go. But it was sufficient.
Sitting in the dim room, focusing on keeping the flame burning at exactly the right temperature, I at last had time to think for the first time since I’d built my system. The caravan was moving at a steady pace, and I knew it would be over a day before I reached my family.
Sorting out my thoughts, I noticed something strange. A lot of knowledge about other systems kept flying into my head and out again. I rather thought these were the previous original Keepers’ memories. The older the system, the vaguer and less frequently the knowledge came to me, but I still caught glimpses of many things.
Xillon’s knowledge was in my head an awful lot. It seemed like I knew mathematics approximately one-half of the time, and not the rest. It was disorienting. Whenever it was gone, I knew I’d known it, but I couldn’t remember exactly what I had understood.
Occasionally, I looked out of the tiny windows, and the sight was eerie. Not once did I pass an open door, and the walls were strewn with color, signal after signal that hadn’t been answered in two years. In some places, they were piled on top of others. I wondered how long it had been since people had given up on the Rule
r’s heirs answering anything.
I found dry and tasteless snacks under the magicians’ seats, which I was grateful for because I was soon ravenously hungry. I kept the caravan going while I slept, even though it slowed down to its natural ponderous speed without me keeping the flame constantly elevated.
Curling up on the hard floor was uncomfortable, and I slept brokenly anyway, waking up every few hours to find the caravan had slowed to a stop and I had to replace the empty stinksap vial with a new one. There had been one-ten-and-eight vials, out of two-tens-and-four, on the wall when I left. By the time I had to slow down and start checking every few doors for some sign that I was near the area my family lived in, I had used all but three of them.
Finally, I reached an area that looked vaguely familiar. The air was crisp and cold, and it was darkening toward late evening. It seemed to be late growing season, because there were flocks of birds up in the sky. We only ever saw that many right before cold season.
Birds are all we have left, I thought sadly, watching black and gold wings flap through the sky. Birds and insects. I remembered the richness of the world during the taming system. Maybe someday, someone will invent a system that will bring our animals back again.
At the next door I opened, I found myself staring at the Childhome family’s land. My breath caught in my throat as I recognized it. They had cut down all their burrun trees, and many of their vassals’ allotments looked dry and scrubby. It was clear the harvest had been very poor this year. Still, I recognized it, and this was just down the road from my parents’ land.
I’m almost home, I thought, swallowing a lump in my throat.
I yanked a carriage out of the slot near the bottom of the caravan, and set it up awkwardly with one side sagging a bit. When I checked the carriage engine, I found its stinksap vial was almost empty. With a sigh, I climbed up the steep steps to the caravan’s other engine, and retrieved one of the vials that was there. There were only six on that side.
I trundled along the road in my carriage, which felt bumpier than I remembered, and looked out the window at our neighbors’ lands. They all seemed to be harvested bare, and there were very few birds hunting for food. Usually I would see whole flocks scratching for insects or gulping forgotten, overripe fruit.