Lesson of the Fire

by Eric Zawadzki

  On the recon stone, the column of Drakes moved closer.

  Chapter 44

  “Only a fool dismisses an enchanter. They might not be as skilled in combat as we are, but they are quite capable of protecting themselves against our attacks. More importantly, a skilled enchanter can decide which side of the battlefield you will stand on before the battle is even begun.”

  — Nightfire Tradition,

  Nightfire’s Magical Primer

  “Our eastern flank is beginning to fray again,” Sven commented to Fraemauna — Guthrun — pointing at the recon stone. “Send Swind’s legions to sweep those Drakes back into the Lapis Amnis, and bring Sendala’s legions out of the battle. Her children have fought valiantly for the past span and deserve a few days’ rest.”

  The Mardux barely noticed the concerned looks his escort priests shot each other. He hadn’t slept in four days — not since he had railed at Heliotosis — Weard Aesir Schnee — for wasting magic sending him into the Tempest to rest. They needed all the magic they could muster to keep the adepts armed with wands and Blosin gloves, and sleep was a luxury the Mardux could no longer afford. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had misread all the signs pointing him on his path.

  How could I have overlooked this possibility? I should have crushed Volund earlier. Horsa and the Domus wizards would be here to help hold the Lapis Amnis. I could have passed my amendment without dividing the Mar when they needed to be united.

  He enchanted a pair of morutdyjiton idly as he watched the seemingly endless battle unfold on the recon stone in front of him. Sven enchanted Blosin gloves whenever he had the magical strength to do so. Most days, a green could have slain him, though he suspected his escort reserved more of their strength than he did.

  “Another two hundred striped guer are approaching the ford near the midpoint. Make sure Niminth’s men are ready for them. The fighting has been intense, and I do not want them to run out of wands before the Drakes cross.”

  Sendala — Weard Frig Blauge — nodded once and vanished into the Tempest.

  “Mardux!” Bui shouted behind him. “Messengers from Domus Palus. Bad news.”

  Sven turned as the guerilla approached. Bui’s draxi acted as scouts and messengers between the far-flung Mar legions that now held a stretch of the Lapis Amnis five hundred miles wide. The army certainly was not spread evenly across that area, as they needed to focus their attention on parts of the river the Drakes could conceivably ford.

  “Bring them, Bui.”

  The guerilla was clearly out of breath. “They’ll be here in a minute. People’re fleeing Domus Palus an’ comin’ north. They say the Duxess of Pidel has seized Domus Palus. She’s goin’ to kill all th’adepts there for breakin’ the law.”

  The only indication of his consternation Sven gave Bui was a slight frown. When it became clear the Mardux was not going to respond, the guerilla continued talking.

  “The other part of the message is. An older couple claimin’ to be your wife’s parents say they’ve a message from Weard Wost.” Bui spat. “He’s got your family an’ wants you to meet him alone in Tortz, or he’ll sell them as slaves.”

  Sven’s face locked into a sneer, and his blind eye flashed in the sun.

  It always comes back to Tortz, doesn’t it?

  “This fire will end where it started,” he murmured as he stuffed several pairs of Blosin gloves into his vest. Bui squirmed in obvious discomfort.

  “Mardux,” Cedar — Weard Kiarr Bukaltar — said softly. “You need sleep. We are worried about you.”

  “Marrish, send me to Tortz,” Sven said imperiously to one of the priests.

  Rig Marspar looked at him with deepening worry.

  “Forgive me,” Sven murmured. “Rig, please send me to Tortz.”

  “I do not know where it is, Mardux. You are in dire need of sleep, and you are definitely in no condition to face the farl enchanter alone.”

  Sven casually removed a pair of gloves from his utility vest and slid them onto his hands. “I am never alone, Weard Marspur. The gods are with me always.”

  “If you wish to aid your family, we will go with you, but please sleep awhile first,” Cedar said.

  Sven touched Elements and felt the Blosin gloves seize the myst all around him.

  “Mardux, no!” cried Marrish, but Sven was already gone.

  On the recon stone near them, a new group of Drakes appeared to the north. Kiarr squinted at the symbol.

  “Those are not guer.”

  “Insero,” Rig said.

  * * *

  Eda stood in an open area between two hills and waved her arms at the damnen scouting party.

  Six of them this time. I think they are learning to fear us.

  They approached her with uncharacteristic caution, but they only stole occasional glances in her direction, clearly on the lookout for any Mar archers hidden behind the hills. As they came closer, Eda backed away slowly farther between the hills, drawing her marsord.

  Tryggvi would laugh at me, she thought. Here I am a wizard, and I’m just the bait.

  The damnens surged forward, thinking to catch her off-guard. Eda flickered, and she was suddenly several yards behind them. Suddenly, ten nonagons armed with javelins surrounded the Drakes and filled the air with wooden shafts guided with Power and hastened with Mobility. Even though the magic died before the javelins reached the damnens, the momentum drove the shafts home.

  One damnen survived the initial rush and attacked desperately, raking at the wizards with sharp claws. Eda rushed to join the killing frenzy. Magic could not touch a damnen, but her marsord was perfectly serviceable. Surprised and alone against a hundred opponents, the damnen soon fell to a flurry of spears and knives.

  When it was done, the Mar hacked off damnen heads and set about healing the wounded. They had only lost two this time.

  Just like in all the stories about mapmaker expeditions in the Dead Swamps, except this time, we’re the predators at the edge of vision, Eda mused with a feral smile.

  So far, Eda and her company of ten nonagons had killed fifty damnens in raids and ambushes like these. In the informal contest to take the most heads, her company was a long way from first place, but she was marshaling a force of Flasten and Domus wizards 10,000 strong, ranging from greens to cyans, and the damnens had worked together much longer. By striking the damnen slavers without warning from every angle at least dozen times a day, they had reduced the Drakes’ march to a veritable crawl. Even the mundane guerillas had made a few kills by emerging out of the mud and hamstringing damnens before they even knew the Mar were there, though the guerillas lacked the mobility of the nonagons and couldn’t cover as much ground.

  The only irritation was that the Mar still did not have a good estimate of the damnens’ numbers.

  The Mar presented the damnen corpses to her. Two greens improvised a comedy using the freshly severed heads as puppets. Eda shook her head in amazement.

  “Let’s get back to camp,” she said. “Two nonagons will take the severed heads and put them on spikes in the damnens’ path. The rest of you have leave to forage for food.”

  Eda called the myst and flickered across the landscape until she reached her base of operations in the south of the Duxy of Flasten. Other company captains waited for her.

  “Bad luck,” one Domus lavender — Olvir Bedaulich — spat. “Two of theirs and six of ours. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think they knew we were coming.”

  “One of ours, three of theirs. We’ve given them a tough choice,” noted an unusually perceptive Domus green. “They can stay close to their fellow damnens with the herd of mundanes where we concentrate our raids, or they can keep their distance to reduce the chance of being attacked while increasing the chance that any raiders that find them will kill them.”

  “Five of ours, eight of theirs. There is safety in both numbers and obscurity, but it is almost impossible to have both at the same time,” a Flasten auburn said, summarizing he
r fellow captain’s analysis.

  “Two of ours, one of theirs. They will adjust their tactics,” warned a Flasten cyan. “Damnens are terribly clever, and I am certain they recognize we do not know how many they are. They will find some way to use that to their advantage.”

  A Flasten blue arrived late to their daily meeting.

  “You look troubled, Weard Entsen,” Eda said, frowning. “What happened?”

  “None of ours, one of theirs,” he said automatically. All the captains had fallen into the habit of providing a casualty count before addressing all other orders of business. “But I bring troubling news. My company struck from the rear today, and while we saw only one damnen, it looks like they have left us a grisly gift of their own — eighty-six impaled and elaborately eviscerated Mar men.”

  Damnens are herders, Eda thought grimly. Men are less valuable to them than women.

  “The same as the number of damnens we killed yesterday,” Eda said softly. “They’re adjusting their tactics.”

  “It could be the ploy of desperation,” the same Flasten cyan said — Odveig Spitz, Eda recalled, was his name. “Or they are trying to distract us from their intentions.”

  Eda shook her head. “I’d say that’s a fair guess, Weard Spitz. Wizards wear bright colors to frighten away less courageous enemies, but their entire strategy does not hinge on their cloaks. They cannot catch us, and we cannot see them — at least not with magic.”

  “They might be sending scouts farther afield in search of our base of operations,” Weard Entsen suggested.

  “Unlikely,” the observant Domus green — Oysten Klarein — countered. “We can move our camp almost instantly. We could be a hundred miles away before their scout returned.”

  “Small scouting parties are more vulnerable than larger bands,” Weard Spitz said. “Even with surprise, we suffer far more casualties against fifty damnens than we do against five.”

  Eda chewed her lower lip, listening to the discussion. “They might be trying to force us to meet them in the field. The more damnens we kill in ambushes and raids, the more innocent Mar they torture and kill in retaliation.”

  “Then that is the last thing we should give them,” Weard Spitz growled.

  “I disagree,” Eda said. “That’s exactly what we should give them — or, at least, that is what we should make them think we are giving them. They don’t have a good count of our numbers, either.”

  “But why throw away troops on a pitched battle with damnens?” Weard Bedaulich asked.

  “Because we didn’t come here to kill damnens,” Eda reminded him.

  “A rescue,” Weard Klarein murmured. “Field one or two thousand wizards to hold the damnens’ attention, and while the battle is raging, the rest of the army snatches the mundanes away from them.”

  Weard Spitz snorted a laugh. “Sounds like we are paying them back for Despar Palus. I cannot argue against that. Once that thousand is engaged with the damnens, though, there is no escape for them. It is a terrible sacrifice to ask a Mar to make. After all, if the damnens win — and they probably will — some of those wizards will be taken prisoner by the Drakes. Everyone knows what damnens do to their captives.”

  “I’ll lead the diversion force,” Eda said. “I’d rather have volunteers than wizards who are only following orders.”

  “You’ll need naked eye recon to make sure the plan is working,” Weard Klarein said. “My company will circle around to see that they aren’t guarding their captives too closely when the time comes. If it’s too dangerous for a rescue, we’ll try to warn you before the battle is joined.”

  “I will be with you, Weard Stormgul,” Weard Spitz said, expression deadly serious. “I am not about to let a Domus magocrat make me look like a coward in my home duxy.”

  Other Flasten wizards voiced their agreement, and several Domus wizards, not wanting to be shown up by their old rivals, soon did the same.

  Eda tried to appear calm in spite of the deep terror threatening to strangle her.

  Diplomatically, that was the right move. Because I’m willing to die for their duxy, they will love the Mardux a little more. I wanted to be on the winning side, Sven, and so I will be, but I won’t be alive to see it.

  * * *

  Sven sailed through the Tempest, his mind swirling with visions and memories. Living and dead Mar spoke to him, whispering endless advice into his ears, and he had followed none of it. His patrons appeared to offer dire pronouncements about his failure.

  How wrong I was about the Mass! How terribly I underestimated Dinah and Domin! How badly I misinterpreted the signs the gods gave me!

  Then Sven heard a new voice in the murmurs of the Tempest’s dark as Pondr told his story for the first time. “Sven Takraf was born i’the wild’ress of Gunne, a secret child of Marrish an’ Fraemauna. Seekin’ to spare her lover from the wrath of his wife, Dinah, Fraemauna aban’oned her son. Seruvus, who sees all, took pity on the babe, blessed the boy with his own memory an’ gave him to Pitt Gematsud to raise as his son.”

  He knew my story before I told it to him. He knew everything … up to Tortz. He did not know the lesson of the fuel, that I am the fuel the Mar’s fire would feed on. And Katla … she said, “Fire is pitiless.” The Mar will not be pitiless. I brought Marrish’s gift of magic to the mundanes, I am the fuel their fire consumes, and each will be fuel for the next.

  “An’ Sven Takraf stepped forward an’ volunteered to pay Rustiford’s debt to Nightfire with his own life, never thinkin’ of his own fate, but only that of his people.”

  But is that wrong? Nightfire just said, “All Marrishland will burn because of you.” He thinks I am the fire, that our country is the fuel … He thinks it is the lesson of the fire. Katla does too. The country cannot be consumed; the fire will always burn.

  I did lose my way. I tried to sacrifice others to the gods as proof of my devotion, but it only proved my arrogance. As long as other Mar are out there, as long as Marrishland stands, I can still emerge victorious.

  He remembered Dux Fieglin huddled at the feet of Dinah, begging her to show mercy to his people.

  Dinah has called me out, too, but she will not bring me to my knees. If she lays me low, she will fall with me.

  Sven exited the Tempest and arrived in the ruins of Tortz. The air was so thick with the odor of wetness and slow decay that his nostrils flared.

  Have I forgotten what it means to live in the swamps and marshes?

  Most of the buildings had vanished under years of Marrishland’s winter and summer storms. The town wall was little more than a broad hurdle, and even the adobe prison had begun to return to the earth.

  All things in Marrishland fade away. Nothing we build ever lasts for long.

  “I have been waiting for you,” Robert Wost said, his red cloak seeming to glow in the morning mist. To one side of him, Ari stood, watching. “You are too late, Mardux. Your mundane rabble will be destroyed by your old friends, the Protectorates. You cannot defeat me.”

  Sven sent bolts of Energy at the red from seven sides. Elements appeared and dissolved each bolt.

  Robert laughed. “Did you really think it would be that easy?” His cloak became a halo of flame.

  It is not real. He excels at illusions.

  “Your efforts have been futile. I will swallow Marrishland, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”

  A shell of Elements surrounded Sven, blocking all but a few motes of the myst. Sven yanked the metal-studded gloves from the back of his belt and yanked them onto his hands. He summoned Elements with all the force he could muster.

  “Give up, Sven Takraf. You cannot break through my shell.”

  Sven dragged the tiny trickle of Elements to his fingertips. The magic concealed in the metal studs came to life, bursting forth and blending together to produce the most powerful attack magic any wizard could wield — morutmanon. Each finger sent forth a crackling bolt of raw magic built of each of the eight magicks. Without the gloves, Sven co
uld never have gathered so much myst, much less control it.

  Ari gaped and even Robert looked surprised as the rivulets of killing power lanced toward them. The black tendrils seared through Robert’s shell of Elements and passed through the enchanter’s desperate defense like water through air, wrapping itself around the two wizards. The two men evaporated at the touch of the magic, their bodies becoming as insubstantial as smoke.

  “I am the hand of the gods!” Sven shouted at the smoke, stripping off the spent Blosin gloves. “If I fall, you will fall with me!”

  “You are not my hand,” Robert’s voice said from the cloud.

  A creature with the head of an alligator stepped out of the haze.

  “Nor mine,” said Katla’s voice. A bald woman clad in layers of mud came forward to stand next to the alligator-headed creature.

  “Domin? Dinah?” Sven’s voice was unsteady. “But that’s impossible.”

  “You have already received visits from nine of the gods. Why should two more surprise you, Weard Takraf?”

  Sven drew his marsord and let out a scream of fury. “Marrishland is yours no longer!” He charged.

  Chapter 45

  “The source of Mardux Takraf’s incredible magical power introduced a fatal weakness. He became utterly reliant upon the takraf mystalton in his Blosin gloves. His long neglect of tordyn discipline meant he could barely wield three magicks at once, even as a red. The same tactic his Duxy of Domus army used to neutralize the gobbel invasion rendered him nearly as helpless.”

  — Weard Oda Kalidus,

  The Origin of Nothing

  Sven collapsed to the ground while Ari looked on in shock. “How did you do that?”

  Robert sneered and wiped his hands on his cloak. “My triggered spell countered all the magic in his gloves the instant he arrived. I am much more powerful than he is without those.”

  “He is a red, though. He still should have put up some fight.”

  “Perhaps it was teleportation sickness,” Robert suggested with a shrug. He gestured to Sven’s twitching form. “Regardless, he is now living the worst nightmare he is capable of imagining — a situation with no choices and no hope. Soon, he will surrender to terror and die, without ever waking from that dream. Nothing any Mar can do will break the spell without killing him.”