His gaze hardened and he placed his hands on either side of the knife to keep them from trembling.
He sat at a table in the center of a meeting chamber of the Order of Aielan, at the heart of Caercaern. His staff leaned against the back of the chair beside him. Ancient tapestries depicting scenes from the Alvritshai religious Scripts lined the walls, a few small tables set beneath them at odd intervals, surrounding the large central table where he waited for the arrival of Lotaern and a few other members of Aielan’s Order. One of the acolytes had already been sent in search of the Chosen, the youth’s eyes widening when Colin blurred into existence in what, a moment before, had been an empty corridor.
Colin smiled as he remembered the expression on the youth’s face, but the amusement was fleeting. He shouldn’t have startled the boy, but he’d needed to find Lotaern as quickly as possible and he’d been too exhausted to conduct the search himself. The acolyte had recognized him after a moment and had led him to the meeting chamber to wait while he searched for the Chosen.
Now, as Colin sat and waited, he suddenly wished he’d asked the acolyte to bring him something to drink, perhaps something to eat. He didn’t know how long he’d spent within the depths of the Alvritshai catacombs, in the heart of the mountain, but this last excursion might have been days, maybe even weeks. He found that he lost his sense of time too easily now, especially when he was working alone.
Yet, he thought, perhaps this particular project was finished.
He reached out to touch the knife, but his hand paused above it. He could feel it even so, could feel the multiple energies within it, mingling with each other. Flames from the numerous sconces that lit the room flickered on the bright sheen of its wooden blade, the gloss a consequence of the process he’d used to shape it.
He let his hand fall back to the table.
The shaping had been… difficult.
Colin stood at the edge of a room within the dead city of Terra’nor, sweat dripping from his nose, his chin. He held metal tongs before him, stared into the seething red-orange-white embers of the forge. A misshapen form of heartwood rested on the floor before him. He’d already destroyed three pieces by attempting to carve them with a knife, had intended to make another attempt with this one until Osserin had found him.
The gift of the heart of the forest can not be carved with so blunt an instrument as another knife, the Faelehgre had murmured, light flaring in agitation, as if this were obvious. The life-force that inhabits the heartwood—that gives it the power to affect the Shadows as if they were made of cloth, instead of passing through them like other weapons—will die as soon as any regular knife cuts too deeply into the grain. You must find another way.
And then the light had drifted off.
So Colin had set up the forge. It had taken him days to build it, days more to stoke the fire to its current intense heat. If the heartwood couldn’t be carved, then perhaps it could be molded and shaped, like metal.
The fire would never be hotter.
“Now or never,” he said to himself.
Reaching down with the tongs, he lifted the heartwood up and thrust it into the heart of the bed of coals, sparks whirling upward as flame rose with a hiss. Pain prickled his skin as the embers landed against his exposed face, but he held the tongs steady, gasping as the heat stole his breath and burned his throat and lungs. He pulled the heartwood out, noted the scorch marks along its sides, felt the pulse of the forest still residing within. Yet the wood hadn’t softened; he could sense it through the tongs.
“Too soon,” he hissed through clenched teeth, and thrust it back into the inferno. He counted slowly in his head, removed it again, the wood beginning to char, thrust it back with a curse.
The third time he pulled it from the coals, it burst into flame. As he stumbled backward in surprise, he felt the life-force inside it die. Before he could drop it, before the disappointment of this new failure could sink in, the length of wood hissed and then exploded, like the boles of trees at the heart of a raging forest fire.
He cried out, dropping the tongs as he protected his face and lurched out into the white ruins of the city surrounding the Well. The coolness of the forest air seered his lungs as harshly as the heat inside the forge, and he fell to his knees. He bellowed at the sky, his clothes flecked with smoking splinters of the heartwood, his chest constricted with raw frustration.
Osserin and the other Faelehgre found him there, head bowed forward where he knelt, sobbing. They calmed him down and after he tried the forge again with the same results, he gathered another length of wood from the heart of the forest and traveled to Caercaern, to speak to Aeren.
The Lord of House Rhyssal held the heartwood in his hands, turned it in the firelight of his inner chamber. He ran his fingers over the reddish wood, flecked with striations of burnt yellow and ridged like bark. “Have you taken it to Lotaern?” he asked.
Colin grimaced. “It’s one of the reasons I’ve come, to see if he has any insights into how to mold it. But since my arrival with the Winter Tree and the disastrous gathering of the Evant that ended with the planting of the Tree in the marketplace, he and I have barely spoken.”
A smile touched Aeren’s lips as he set the heartwood down and rewrapped it in the cloth Colin had carried it in. “He did not appreciate the responsibility of the Tree being thrust upon him, no. But he has managed to wield the unexpected responsibility to his advantage. My expectation that it would deter his rise in power in the Evant was, perhaps, incorrect.”
“What has he done?”
Aeren glanced up, one hand on the supple cloth that now covered the heartwood. Behind him, Eraeth stood near the entrance to the chamber. “You haven’t been following the events in Alvritshai lands since the quickening of the Tree?”
“I’ve been busy, Aeren, trying to balance the awakening of the Wells, battling the sukrael in the lands not protected by the Seasonal Trees, battling the Wraiths.”
“Battling Walter, you mean.”
Aeren frowned at the interruption of his Protector, Eraeth’s voice barely a murmur. But then he focused on the bundle nestled among the stacks of papers and other detritus of the maintenance of a House of the Evant. “Is that who this is for? Walter?”
“For all of the Wraiths and the Shadows,” Colin said, and heard the defensiveness in his voice. He sighed. “But yes, this is for Walter.”
“It’s been seventy-two years since the battle at the Escarpment and the signing of the Accord. Walter and the Wraiths have caused little problem since the planting of the Trees thirty-three years ago.”
“Not here on Alvritshai lands, or where the other two Seasonal Trees hold sway, but outside of their influence…” Colin shook his head. “Walter and the Wraiths are only biding their time. The Trees were not meant to last forever.”
“How long will they last?” Eraeth interjected.
Colin shrugged. “I don’t know. I suspect hundreds of years, or longer, because of the Lifeblood they are imbued with. But we will need a way to defend against the Shadows and the Wraiths no matter when the Trees fail.”
Aeren’s eyebrows rose. “And this has nothing to do with Walter and what happened between the two of you?”
Colin said nothing, his brow creasing in irritation. For a moment, he felt the wooden bars of the penance lock across his neck, biting into his wrists. He felt Walter’s foot connecting with his stomach, Walter’s arm pressed into his throat, choking him.
The memories caused his hands to clench into fists.
Aeren sighed, and Colin saw Eraeth nod knowingly. “Eraeth, have someone bring us some wine, perhaps some bread and cheese.”
Eraeth moved to the door as Aeren motioned Colin to the balcony. They stepped out into the night air, chill even though it was nearing summer. Nights in Caercaern were always cold, and the temples of Aielan had rung the chimes for cotiern hours ago. Colin moved to the edge of the balcony, hands resting on the lip of stone, and glared out over what he
could see of the tiered city. The streets of the third tier were empty, only a few windows glowing softly with lantern light. From the second tier, the Winter Tree cleaved the cloudless night, its silver leaves shimmering in the moonlight. Colin kept his eyes on the Tree, a new wall surrounding the marketplace where it had been planted.
“Does this mean that you won’t help?” he asked. His breath fogged the air with bitterness.
“No. You and I both know how dangerous the sukrael are, how deadly the Wraiths. But I will not help you out of any need for vengeance. I’ll help because, as you say, the Wraiths and the sukrael—including Walter—have not vanished. They will return at some point to plague us. You are letting your personal feelings blind you. I can see the tension in your shoulders, in your stance.”
Colin’s hands gripped the edge of the stone hard enough he could feel grit scraping free beneath his fingers. He drew in a deep breath… and then exhaled sharply, releasing the stone and pushing back from the edge, trying to calm himself. He caught Aeren’s gaze where the Lord stood in the half-light coming from the inner room and shook his head with a troubled smile.
“You’re right. I’ve been working on the heartwood and practically nothing else for too long. I’ve lost myself to the effort, the failure upon failure.…”
“You are too hard on yourself. You’ve done more than expected in our efforts to fight the sukrael and the Wraiths. You brought us the Winter Tree—even if the gift was unexpected and, perhaps, unwanted by some. And you’ve managed to halt the preternatural storms that plagued the plains, as well as the occumaen, by balancing out the power of the Wells.”
“None of that has solved the real problem. It’s only bought us time.”
Before Aeren could answer, Eraeth appeared behind him, accompanied by a servant with a platter of wine, bread, and cheese. Aeren motioned for the servant to set the platter to one side and then dismissed him. He poured each of them a glass, Colin raising his wine and drinking without really tasting it, still thinking about the heartwood, about Walter, about the Shadows.
Aeren joined him at the balcony, stared out at the Winter Tree, then said casually, “Perhaps you need a different kind of fire for this heartwood… a different kind of forge.”
“Like what?” Colin muttered in frustration.
“What about Aielan’s Light?”
In the confines of the meeting room within the Order of Aielan, Colin grunted and shook his head. It had taken him a moment on that chill night over forty years ago to understand that Aeren did not mean the metaphorical Light that the Alvritshai used as a representation of Aielan, but the literal white fire that lay in the depths of the Alvritshai mountains of Hauttaeran. Every acolyte of the Order of Aielan must at some point immerse themselves in the white flames hidden in the catacombs and halls that riddled the mountains behind Caercaern before they could become true members of the Order. Aeren had done so before the deaths of his father and elder brother had forced him to ascend as Lord of his House and give up his ties to the Order. Occasionally, he wore the pendant that signified his passage. Colin had entered the white flames himself in the years following the Accord, after studying the Scripts of the Order as if he were an acolyte himself, although he had never officially been part of the Order. He couldn’t become a true member, since he wasn’t Alvritshai.
But he should have thought of Aielan’s Light on his own. After all, he’d used the white flame to create the seeds that had become the Seasonal Trees. He’d only immersed the seeds in the flame then, so that they could absorb some of the properties of the fire itself, so that they’d be imbued with its power and be more resilient and harder to destroy. But attempting to wield the flame, to use it as a tool to shape the heartwood.…
He hadn’t known if it had ever been attempted, hadn’t known if it could even be done.
But if it could be done, then Aielan’s Light would be perfect. A natural flame, but completely unlike the fire of a blacksmith’s forge. It would not burn like the fire of a forge; it would not incinerate the heartwood or cause it to explode. It was a fire like the power already resident in the wood he needed to mold, alive and somehow prescient.
It was a fire under the control of Lotaern, the Chosen of the Order.
As if the thought had summoned him, the door to the meeting room opened and Lotaern stepped into the room, followed by two members of the Order of the Flame, the guardsmen taking up positions on either side of the door as Lotaern halted at the edge of the table. The stylized white flame of the Order stood out on the chests of the two guardsmen, signifying they were members of the Order’s internal Phalanx. Lotaern wore the robes of the Chosen, a subdued dark blue, flames stitched into the sleeves and collar. He carried no visible weapons, but both guardsmen rested hands on the pommels of their cattan blades. All three were tense, but it was the weariness in Lotaern’s bearing—even though the Chosen stood tall, back straight—that caught Colin’s attention. He appeared tired and worn, and with a start Colin realized that he had to be nearly two hundred years old. No. Two hundred was too young. If Lotaern had been the Chosen when Aeren was merely an acolyte, it meant that Lotaern had to be closer to two hundred and fifty. Perhaps more.
And for the first time, Colin saw that age, as if it had been draped around his shoulders like a blanket. The changes since the Accord and the planting of the Winter Tree were subtle, yet striking. Wrinkles had appeared around his eyes and mouth, breaking the usual smoothness of Alvritshai skin, and his dark hair had lost some of its sheen, appearing dull and somehow brittle. It suddenly struck Colin that he had not thought the Alvritshai would age. Aeren and Eraeth, Moiran and Lotaern, had been such a constant part of his life since he emerged from seclusion near the Well that he’d assumed they’d remain with him forever, unchanged.
The fact that they wouldn’t, that eventually even the Alvritshai he knew would die—as all of his human acquaintances had—hit him like a sharp jab to his heart. It left a deep hollow in the center of his chest, a coldness upon his skin.
Lotaern stirred, and Colin shoved the sudden pall of loneliness aside. He stood slowly, his hands resting on the table on either side of the knife for support. He still felt weak and wasn’t certain he was strong enough to reach his staff without stumbling. He didn’t want to show such weakness in front of Lotaern.
“I did not realize that you were in Caercaern,” Lotaern said, and even the timbre of his voice was raspier, although it still throbbed with the power he had accumulated for the Order over his lifetime.
“No one knows. Not even Lord Aeren.”
Lotaern’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Then why have you come?”
Colin shifted back, lifting his hands from the table, testing his strength. As he did so, Lotaern’s gaze dropped to the knife.
He drew his breath in sharply and locked eyes with Colin. “You’ve been down to the cavern, to Aielan’s Light. Without my knowledge.”
“You gave me permission to seek Aielan’s Light in my studies whenever necessary.”
Lotaern’s eyes narrowed. “So I did. But that was over forty years ago, when you first arrived with the request.”
He began moving around the edge of the table, the two warriors of the Flame shifting uncertainly behind him. When they started to step forward, he waved them back in irritation. The anger and guarded tension in his shoulders fell away as he approached, replaced with a blatant curiosity, but he halted a few paces away, even though Colin could see the urge to reach out and touch the knife, to inspect it, in the way he clutched his hands at his waist, as if restraining himself. It was the same curiosity that had overcome Lotaern’s wariness the first time he’d approached him about the heartwood. His anger over having the responsibility of the Winter Tree thrust upon him had faded with the challenge of molding the heartwood, although it hadn’t completely vanished.
“I thought we’d decided that Aielan’s Light was not enough,” he said. “Every attempt we made to mold the wood—by either o
f us—caused it to crack as it was reshaped. How did you manage to overcome that?”
“I didn’t know how to at first,” Colin said, watching Lotaern closely. “And then I realized what we were doing wrong. We were treating the heartwood as if it were inanimate, merely a block of wood waiting to be molded. Carving it, forging it like metal, even shaping it with Aielan’s Light—all were attempts to manipulate it with tools. But it’s not inanimate. It’s a living thing. Attempting to work it with something as primitive as a tool literally caused it harm. Even Aielan’s Light cracked its skin. It has no blood, so cannot bleed, but the effect is the same as if we had cut ourselves open from groin to throat. The heartwood could not survive the trauma.”
Lotaern frowned down at the knife. “So what did you do? How could you shape it as a living thing without harming it?”
Colin turned away, grabbed his staff, comforted by the life-force he felt pulsing through the wood. “It required the knowledge of the Faelehgre, the Lifeblood, and the cooperation of the dwarren.”
Lotaern looked up, startled. “The dwarren? How could they have been of help?”
Colin closed his eyes at the taint of derision in Lotaern’s voice. He’d been expecting it, although he’d hoped that enough time had passed with the Accord in place that emotions would have changed.
Except that the Alvritshai were long-lived. Unlike the dwarren and humans that lived today, Lotaern had been at the battlefields of the Escarpment, had lived during the vicious attacks that had preceded it, Alvritshai and dwarren killing each other over a misunderstanding and a territorial dispute about lands and the plains. Lotaern had had family and friends killed by the dwarren. Such memories were hard to forget.
He sighed. “The reason the heartwood was cracking during the molding process was because it couldn’t heal itself fast enough under the changes we were requiring it to undergo. I needed a way to keep it alive long enough that it could heal itself after I shaped it. The Faelehgre suggested I immerse it in the Lifeblood, to prolong its life, but even though the wood is alive, the Lifeblood did not affect it the same way as it affected me or the Faelehgre. It absorbed some of the Lifeblood’s power, making it hardier, but it still cracked and died during the shaping process. I suspect that the reason the forest surrounding the Well is as… aware as it is, is because of the Well. The trees have absorbed the Lifeblood’s power over time, which is why the Lifeblood did not affect the heartwood as expected—it already contains some of the power of the Well. I needed something different.
Leaves of Flame Page 4