Lesson of the Fire

by Eric Zawadzki

  “Good. Volund’s son is keeping Domus’ real army quite busy, if the two have not destroyed each other by now. With the ten thousand wand-wielders we already have, we would crush any dregs Weard Takraf may have left to throw at us.” Robert’s pale face twisted in a silent snarl that turned into a knowing smile. “Eventually, he will have to deal with us personally, and that is a confrontation I have been looking forward to for a long, long time. There will be no Nightfire to spare him from me this time.”

  Ari took a deep breath to say something, but Robert’s dark eyes bored into his own.

  “Have no fear that I will hesitate to kill him. He was my pupil once, but I will not lose my stomach for revenge as you have.”

  Ari glanced at the silent mundanes all around them. “Once you kill the Mardux, will you set the people of the Protectorates free?”

  “Why should I? With the Mardux dead and Flasten’s power broken, how will I make my way in the world? Nightfire will no longer have me at his Academy. Wasfal will give me sanctuary, but he will exact a price.” Robert laughed. “The Protectorate slaves are the last currency left to me.”

  “Stop talking,” Ari said softly. The laughter — it seemed inappropriate.

  “You asked to be my apprentice. You swore to obey me in exchange for my knowledge. You are every bit as under my control as they are. Are you still true to your oath, or will you betray me as Sven did?” Robert’s eyes shone with challenge.

  I can still think on my own, for now. How much longer before he takes that away from me, too?

  Ari swallowed. “I obey you, Weard Wost.”

  Robert smiled. “Good. Now, I will show you how the Mardux defeated three challengers for the Chair with such ease.”

  * * *

  The magic died in Nightfire’s study. The fire went out. The old wizard looked up from the book he was editing when the room suddenly filled with a brilliant white-green glow. He raised his arm to shade his eyes and closed the book.

  The figure slashed at Nightfire with its marsord, but his arm, clothed in Power, blocked the blade. All the same, the fire set his clothes ablaze, and Nightfire was pushed out of his chair against the wall. He opened his eyes to face Marrish, the Lord of Wind and Fire, father of the gods and lord of magic.

  “Do not resist,” Marrish said, striking at him again. “Your death is inevitable.”

  Were he truly my patron, I would already be dead. Nightfire pushed his arm back against the blade, encasing himself in Vitality.

  “Am I supposed to confuse you for Marrish?” Nightfire said angrily. The marsord hurt as it bit deep into his arms, but he healed almost immediately and maneuvered out of the way. “I have done nothing but my duty as arbiter, and you owe me your life twice over. Striking me down would be the end of your rule in the eyes of the Council. They could not forgive that.” He ducked a vicious blow aimed at his head.

  “The Mardux’s order will prevail. I will see to it.”

  Nightfire nodded. He was certain who it was now. “When have I stood in your way, Sven? What have I denied you? Are you as ungrateful as Domin to threaten your master?”

  The marsord drew away from Nightfire. The glow faded, and Sven stood there, marsord in one gloved hand.

  Nightfire suppressed a sigh of relief, waited for the pain to subside and let down his shield. “It seems a waste of its energy to keep that fire burning. Look at what you did to my floor.”

  “Nightfire, I swore an oath for you twice before. Now I need you to swear an oath to me.”

  “May I ask why?”

  Sven did not move. This time, Nightfire did sigh.

  “Then let me guess. You wish your order to prevail. What is your order? Teach the mundanes magic. You have done that. You have changed the Unwritten Laws. Seruvus knows the truth. But you may also know that this will bring the Mass upon us. How will you win this war you have started?”

  Sven raised his gloved hand in mute response. His eyes burned.

  Nightfire nodded, thinking fast. “Can you handle a million Drakes? For if there are more than twenty million Mar in the southern half of this subcontinent, there are certainly as many Drakes in the north. No matter, you have this in your plan.”

  “The Mass is not real.”

  Nightfire sat down. “It is very real, and your sister cannot quench its thirst for blood.”

  The Mardux hesitated, back stiff. “Brack is dead?”

  “No more than the Nightfire Tradition is. Katla is Brack now.”

  Sven’s eyes widened, but then he set his jaw. “Then I must kill her before she can order the Drakes to march.”

  Nightfire stared back at him in shocked horror for just a moment before shouting at him. “Are you my apprentice, Sven Takraf? Sven Gematsud?” His face was purple with rage. “Did you learn nothing of reason or ethics at my Academy?”

  Sven said nothing.

  Have Katla and I made an enemy now, like Volund and everyone but Einar seems to have? Nightfire thought.

  Nightfire regained some of his composure. “Killing her would not help. That Brack sometimes has the ear of the Mass is the closest thing to a treaty we have with the Drakes. Correction, had. They have crossed the Fens of Reur by now.” He clasped his hands together on the desk and met Sven’s one-eyed gaze with his own two green eyes. “You had nobler goals when you started. There was no talk of changing the Law. Remember our conversation when you became a green?”

  Sven threw his marsord into the charred wood of the floor in irritation. “Another story! I know my life!”

  Nightfire spoke evenly. “Then tell me about it, Sven. Remind me why you became a wizard.”

  Sven’s stillness answered Nightfire’s question.

  “The Mass is real and invading,” Nightfire said. “How can you move the army to intercept it?” The aged wizard sat down heavily. “Becoming my student meant you would not be a slave. And you had a larger goal, one which I did not entirely approve of.”

  “I taught my people to read,” Sven said quietly.

  Nightfire nodded and began to talk.

  Chapter 34

  “The mentor-student relationship is one of the most important. If it is strong, the student never forgets the mentor’s advice. If it is poisoned, the student still remembers the lessons, but may look upon them with disdain.”

  — Nightfire Tradition,

  On Apprenticeship

  Sven finished packing, readying himself for the journey home. At last he was ready. At last his debt had been paid. Shortly after dawn, he would be a wizard. As soon as he donned the green, he could return to Rustiford.

  “Are you sure you will not consider staying on as one of my assistants?”

  Sven jumped. He had not seen Nightfire step into the room.

  “You know what I have decided, master. I go now to my people, to defend my home from the Drakes and Dinah’s Curse.”

  “You have the potential to be a powerful wizard, perhaps wear a red cloak one day. Your contribution to scholarship could be a great one, Sven. You think ... differently than most other wizards.”

  Sven grinned, but Nightfire did not. He rarely did.

  “You excel at finding uses for the information that already exists. I look at a series of observations and draw the conclusions to which the data point. You, however, see results that seemingly have no bearing on those observations. With the discoveries of others, you are capable of constructing new practical applications.”

  Sven beamed at the compliment. “Thank you, master.”

  “Innovation is not your only gift. You discovered how to see the myst without the aid of torutsen. Most wizards do not use such magic. It is almost unknown among apprentices.”

  Sven shrugged. “A crutch. It took me a long time to abandon it and to trust timing.”

  “Yes, but a very unusual crutch. It seemed to your teachers that your skills were undiminished in spite of the additional strain of calling Knowledge. Either you are stronger with Knowledge than most Mar or you have greate
r stamina wielding the myst than many.”

  “Knowledge has more uses than simple reconnaissance, master. Weard Wost speaks of farl applications common to enchanters but nearly unknown to us. Not all of his hints can be exaggerations.”

  “It sounds like an interesting area of specialization for a student pursuing higher education,” Nightfire said, smiling encouragingly now. “Weard Wost speaks fondly of you. I am certain you could learn much from him if you stayed. We are also losing three of our adjunct faculty to other pursuits, and we have more applicants this year than in the last four. If you would like to teach a few classes at the Academy, we would welcome the help.”

  “I have other people I want to teach. They need my teaching more.”

  Nightfire sniffed dismissively.

  “Rustiford is my home. I have friends there, a family.”

  “Do you intend to become a magocrat over your own family? They may not welcome you as warmly as you might expect. In truth, I can assure you they will not. You will be wasting your time and energy.”

  Sven rolled his eyes. This was not the first time Nightfire had tried to turn his determination. “I will not be a magocrat. I will teach them to read, master. I will take apprentices from among them.”

  “I wish you would consider staying on as a teacher or research assistant or something. You are very talented. Do not waste your education on a handful of mundanes who may not appreciate your efforts.”

  Does he intend to keep talking until I give up?

  Sven’s voice hardened. “You exacted no oath of fealty from me in exchange for your knowledge, Nightfire. You taught me because I showed promise as a wizard, not because I shared your interests.”

  Nightfire matched his tone. “And I encourage you to follow your own path, wherever it may lead. I am merely offering my advice as I would to any of my students. You are not the only one of your peers I have invited to stay at the Academy, you know.”

  Sven felt a pang of frustration that his master could not see his vision.

  “We are wizards, master. We are a tiny minority of the Mar population, yet we rule wherever we go in Marrishland.” He tried to keep calm, but his passion burned too fiercely. “Mundanes fear us. We are little more than Drakes and Dinah’s Curse to them, yet another obstacle for them to survive. Most are forced to pay tribute to a magocrat, and in turn magocrats do little to improve the quality of their lives. They live in communities built of sweat and blood. And they survive it all without magic. Yet, despite their tenacity, they will go from the cradle to the grave without knowing anything of the world beyond their home towns.”

  “And they will never miss it,” Nightfire added. “Did you? You wanted to live the life of a mundane — never wielding the power of magic and never leaving home until Domin at last called you into his burning duxy. Do you know why I test mundane apprentices?”

  Sven said nothing.

  “Those mundanes who pass the test have a chance of success, and even they struggle. The others lack the curiosity and determination to become serious students,” Nightfire said. “Having struggled so desperately in your own first battle with ignorance, can you honestly believe that you can rescue an entire town as easily as one might rescue a friend from quicksand?”

  “At least I will try.”

  Nightfire grabbed him by the shoulders. His green eyes flickered with fury. “Do you think that I have not tried, Sven? Every professor in this school is fighting the ignorance of his or her students. Many will produce students with a new understanding of the universe and their place in it. But the battle leaves many casualties. As a mass, people do not want to be enlightened. If you attempt to expose them to a new understanding, they will reject it.”

  “What do you suggest I do?” It seemed important to ask, though Sven felt he knew the answer.

  “Do as I do. Help the ones who want your help. Enlighten those who seek enlightenment.” Nightfire was preaching now. Here was his passion. “As a healer cannot bring life to the dead, so even the greatest teacher in the world cannot bring life to the mind that is dead. Help those who can be helped, or you will merely end up wasting a lot of time fighting a losing battle against someone’s comfortable ignorance. One at a time, Sven. Bring enlightenment to one person at a time. Nothing else works. Trust me.”

  Sven turned away, looking out the window of his room at the enormous kalysut that grew at the center of the Academy. Its branches were bare — stripped by the hands of a hundred apprentices and the cold winds of the coming winter.

  He is partially right. I will have to be patient.

  “Eight years ago, you were wrong about me, master. Becoming a wizard has not made me forget what it means to be a mundane. I will return to Rustiford to serve my friends and family.”

  Nightfire stared at him for a long moment before nodding slowly. “So be it. Some lessons can only be learned from hard experience. I must finish preparations for tomorrow’s ceremony. I will see you at the temple in the morning.”

  The open-air temple sat in a broad clearing, on a rise of land just west of Nightfire’s Academy. A long, broad trunk split cleanly in half served as the altar. A circle of tall, lacquered wooden statues of the gods surrounded it. The trees beyond them were not the cypress and cedars which were the most common in Marrishland, but kalysuts — hardy, thick-limbed trees that seemed almost out of place here in the swamps, despite the myriad stilt-like roots protecting the trunks from rot.

  Kalysuts grew everywhere, in every nation, across the planet. They thrived in the warm, wet climate of Flecterra. They endured the dry, barren heat of Turuna. They broke the otherwise treeless landscape of the Aflangi plains. They even survived the cold deserts of the mountains of northern Huinsy. The huge trees managed to grow tall and thick in the depths of the swamps and marshes of Marrishland.

  Their presence here, in a temple to the gods, was no accident. The eight-pointed leaves, once dried and boiled in water, produced torutsen — the bitter brown drink that allowed an apprentice his first glimpse of the myst. Its sap, a golden liquid extracted by trimming branches or drilling a hole in the trunk, was morutsen, which, when consumed, prevented the wizard from using any magic.

  Power and powerlessness, beginning and end.

  More than eight years had passed since Sven had begun his apprenticeship. He stood before the altar with nearly fifty other first-degree apprentices, most excited to receive their green cloaks. Heliotosis’ icy breath tugged at their black cloaks and dragged the heat away from their bodies as the sky spat icy rain at them, but they endured it without complaint. It was nothing compared with the years of apprenticeship and grueling tests of their magical and mental abilities.

  Nightfire stood opposite the apprentices on the other side of the altar, the wizards who lived and taught at the Academy spread out around him. There were also several graduates who had returned to attend the ceremony and wizards who belonged to the families of those assembled for promotion. Their cloaks were every color of the myst.

  The master of the Academy spoke. “Today we recognize the graduation of forty-eight apprentices to the rank of wizard. It is a time of endings and of beginnings.

  “Long ago, when this temple was new, before Weard Darflaem discovered magic, the Mar made sacrifices at this very altar. It began as sacrifices of food — a symbol of the Mar’s willingness to trust the gods to provide for their needs. By surrendering more food than they could afford to lose, the Mar placed their lives in the power of forces beyond their control and comprehension. If the gods did not answer these prayers, the Mar would die. As eighth and seventh-degree apprentices not yet worthy of your first taste of torutsen, you were forced to have faith that your instructors — who could slay you with a thought — were wise and merciful, and wished for you to prosper and learn.

  “As the Mar grew less dependent on the gods for their basic needs, the sacrifice of food lost meaning. Live animal sacrifices replaced food gifts. A Mar could not capture a deer or rabbit alive unless the gods
brought fortune and wisdom to his hunt. The flesh of the sacrifice was not burned, as before, but roasted and given freely to a neighboring family. The gods became providers again, and the Mar tradition of hospitality was born. As sixth and fifth-degree apprentices, you tended the mundane needs of the entire Academy, giving generously to your instructors and fellow apprentices without expecting them to repay you.

  “Over time, the Mar forgot the truth behind the sacrifices they made out of habit. Some priests argued that no sacrifice without surrender was worthy of remarkable intervention. They demanded human sacrifices — children, friends, wives, those dearest to the Mar. A supplicant was made to suffer great emotional loss to receive an answer to his prayers. Though it was a dark chapter in Mar history, we can learn something about ourselves from it. As fourth and third-degree apprentices, the lessons you received were almost universally harsh — demanding so much of your time and energy that it was no surprise to see tears on your faces. You grieved over lost sleep, over surrendered time with friends, and over the term breaks you sacrificed to long tomes and elaborate projects.

  “By the time the dark period of human sacrifice ended, Weard Darflaem had received the gift of magic. Within a few generations, wizards became the rulers of Marrishland and set about learning the secrets of magic — inventing the applications that are now standard instruction for apprentices. As second and first-degree apprentices, you learned those applications and many more. You observed less experienced apprentices and brought bad behavior to the attention of your instructors for disciplinary attention.

  “After many centuries, Marrishland’s magocracy emerged. In it, the Mardux ruled the duxes. The duxes ruled the magocrats. And the magocrats ruled the mundanes. Wizards do not seek to bribe mysterious gods with gifts of food. The wizard seeks to become like the god or goddess he or she serves. As new wizards, you will shed the trappings of a mundane Mar and swear your allegiance to your immortal patron.”

  Nightfire joined the other observers beyond the ring of statues. The graduating apprentices removed their boots and walked to the altar as one body, stripping off their cloaks and clothes as well. Even though all of them knew the ground had been purged of Dinah’s Curse, including konig worms, there was some hesitation as they removed their boots.