Taming Fire

by Aaron Pogue

  Three times I fell into the dark without quite letting go. Three times consciousness held me too tightly, and though the agony tried to swallow me up completely, I felt something else there in the darkness with me. There inside my head. It was immense and powerful. It bumped like the slow, patient heartbeat of the mountains. It danced like a thread of black fire. It held me up, and I could not fall.

  There was a strength within me, something wholly inhuman, and it alone kept me in the world of living men. It knit together broken bones. It stitched shredded muscles back to meat. It prodded me, forever, back toward the light. And after timeless days of blistering agony, it began to heal the light as well. I opened my eyes one weary morning and saw the fisherman kneeling over me.

  I saw him. Not just his general shape, but his sunken cheekbones, stringy gray hair tied back in a knot. His weathered skin tanned like leather and the severe slash of his lips pressed into a frown. I couldn't quite follow his eyes, couldn't make out the wrinkles that I knew must mar his hard-worn face, but it felt a miracle to see his face at all.

  I smiled. He finished tending a splint around my arm then turned to go—and stopped when he spotted my face. He came closer and tilted his head to one side. "Which one of you's in there this time?"

  "Just me," I said. "I can see you."

  He pressed a hand to my forehead, warm and strong, and shook his head. "Fever's broke," he said. "First your heart and then your bones and now your sight. Get one more of those and I'll have you hauling nets."

  I frowned against his palm, and he pulled the hand away. I sucked in a careful breath, but it was more from habit than need. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt the angry stab behind my ribs. I let the breath out and took a deeper breath, and this one too came easily. I pressed with an elbow and raised my shoulders an inch higher so I could stare toward his eyes. "What are you talking about?"

  I saw him scanning my face for a moment, then he rose and left. I saw the shape of the slatted-door behind him as it swung open, and he passed into the firelight of the little room beyond. He came back with a yellowed glass bottle filled with water and a crust of hard brown bread.

  "Time to try some bread," he said. "If you can sit up like that, you'll be needing more strength than broth'll give you. Fillet you a fish first of next week and see how that goes down."

  He offered me the bread and I took it, but I did not eat right away. I looked toward his eyes. "You asked me who was in here," I said. "Why? What do you mean about me healing?"

  He rocked back on his heels and took a long drink of water. Then he heaved a sigh. "Saw it happen," he said. "Lots of stars that night. The azurefin run by starlight, you know, and I was out making a mighty catch. Saw a shadow across the sky, heard it scream like a horror squall, and then I saw you falling."

  I swallowed, and I felt that same old panic and fear bubble up inside. I remembered my helpless fall, remembered the shock of hitting the water. I saw him shaking his head.

  "Spent three days looking for you," he said. "Ended up near twenty miles upshore of where you fell. You know that? Should've been dead. Should've been dead a hundred times over."

  I nodded. I knew it for the truth. For a while the only noise in the cabin was the crackling pop of the fire in the other room. Then he took another drink and shrugged. "You lived. Times there, I doubted it. Times there, you started to rave. Day I brought you in, your skin burned with a fever like I've never seen. And I've seen sickness. Fever like that can break a man's mind, so it didn't seem so odd...."

  He trailed off, and my heart thundered in my chest. "What?" I said.

  He shrugged again. "Times, in that fever, you spoke. With a different voice. A hateful voice. Like there was a demon inside you."

  I trembled, and it hurt. Not the explosion of pain I'd known before, but discreet blossoms beneath my collarbone and to the right of my stomach. I coughed and groaned, and when my vision cleared I saw him nodding at me.

  "Horrible," he said. "Never made a lick of sense. Words that weren't words, you know? First fever lasted seven days, and I figured any morning I'd be hauling you off for the carrion birds."

  I closed my eyes. If not for the pain, I probably would have chuckled. Instead, I only nodded. "I felt that way, too."

  "Then the fire was gone," he said, and spread his hands in wonder. "Fever was gone. And after that you were still all shattered, but you had a pulse steady as the surf."

  "Seven days?" I asked. "And three, you said." He nodded, but cut me off.

  "More than that," he said. He chuckled and offered me the water bottle. I took it and drank deep, and he watched me with care. When I finished he nodded again. "Ten days for the first fever," he said. "And then it got bad."

  "Then?" I said, and a laugh escaped me. It hurt.

  "That's when I started trying to get food in you."

  I blinked, startled. "After the fever? After ten days?"

  He shrugged. "You were never awake. On and off. Took another week just to get you sitting up—"

  "I remember," I said. "I hadn't known it took so long."

  "Ten days before your first taste of broth, four before your second. And third." His mouth twisted, and I knew the night he was remembering. He shook his head. "Next day we tried again. And then your skin began to burn again."

  I shook my head. "I don't remember."

  "You wouldn't," he said. "You weren't there. The voice was back. Your brain was all on fire. Twelve days this time—"

  "Twelve?"

  "Twelve," he said again. "Thirteen when the fever broke, and after that I thought perhaps you were really going to live. Got a real appetite then. Started breathing easier. Stopped coughing blood." He wiped his hands unconsciously, as though washing them clean. "You were mighty broke when I pulled you off that beach," he said. "You know that, right?"

  I nodded. He rose and turned away. I twisted, despite the pain beneath my collarbone, and found a little window set into the wall above my bed. He leaned on it, staring out at the sea. "Twelve days of fever when he wouldn't even let me touch you. He raved. He spat at me. He tried to bite me."

  I felt a blush rise in my cheeks. "I'm sorry," I said, but he shushed me with a wave of his hand.

  "Weren't you," he said. "Times, you spoke to me, too. Not much. But times. And you were always quiet. Like you are now. Little bit afraid. He was different."

  I swallowed. I closed my eyes and remembered the great black presence in the darkness. I remembered the furious rage of the beast that I'd felt within my head. I remembered the dragon I had faced. Terrible. Indestructible.

  I shivered.

  Above me the fisherman nodded. "Brought you broth, but you didn't touch it. Wouldn't let me close enough to feed you. Brought you water, and if I left I'd come back to find it empty. Best I could do for you, and that fever burned hot and long."

  "Twelve days," I said.

  "Twelve days. And then he was gone again. And you were back. And your ribs...." He sighed. "I've seen a lot of things. You know? I've seen a lot of things. Never seen damage like yours healed by starvation and a fever."

  I didn't know enough to tell him what it was. I had suspicions, fears, but even if I dared to give them voice, I didn't know a tenth of what I'd need to make any sense of it. So I held my tongue, and after a time he shrugged again.

  "Second fever mended bones," he said. "Shattered legs and broken ribs and an arm I'd've sworn you'd never use again." I grunted as though he'd hit me, and he nodded. "But then it was just a matter of time. Blind and weak and quiet as you were, I figured I could bring you back from death by then. Took four weeks—"

  "No!" I shouted, and I saw him twist to look down at me, then back out the window.

  "Sure enough," he said. "More than a month of slow and steady from one fever to the next, and then the third one broke my heart."

  "Worse?" I guessed.

  He shook his head. "Nope. Quieter. Never heard a word from the other one. Could've cooked a fillet on your forehead.
Poured the water and the broth into you, listened to your moans, and watched the fever slowly climb. It was worse, but only because it was normal."

  "Oh," I said. I nodded.

  "Mhm. Figured this one had nothing to do with magic demons. Figured after everything we'd been through, you and me, you were going to die of something stupid."

  I chuckled, and I could feel him grin down on me. He sank back down on his heels and nodded toward the bread still in my hands. "Eat," he said. "Eat. Then tell me your name. Been waiting nigh on three months just to ask you that."

  "Daven," I said, without starting on the bread yet. It felt rough and real against my fingertips, and I was cherishing it.

  "Just Daven?" I shrugged. He frowned. "I expected something grander."

  "Everyone does," I said. But then I understood, and I nodded. "I'm a student of the Academy," I said. "I was."

  "Ah. Yes." He nodded back at me. "Thanks. Had to be that, huh?"

  I shrugged. It was an answer to the things he'd seen. It wasn't really an explanation, it certainly wasn't the truth. But it made sense. People needed sense. Claighan had told me that.

  "How long?" I asked, after a while. "Altogether. How long has it been?"

  "Eighty days, give or take." I felt his eyes on me, burning, and realized how very little he had asked. How little he had demanded. I felt my cheeks burn again.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "Eighty days? You've spent all this time taking care of me?"

  "I had the time," he said, and he chuckled. "Not a lot goes on, this corner of the world. Brought a little story with you. That's worth the cost in soup."

  "And time?"

  He laughed again, a shade darker this time. "Got nothing but time, Daven. Daven." He tasted the sound of it. "Waited weeks just to put a name to you."

  "Daven Carrickson," I told him. "Of Chantire. Of Terrailles. And recently a student of the Academy."

  He whistled soft and low. "Been all over," he said. "And Joseph." He jabbed a thumb at his chest, then leaned forward and patted my right knee gently. I felt an answering jolt of pain up in my hip, but I concealed the wince. "Get some rest," he said. "Eat that bread. Maybe try you on fish sooner than I thought."

  He turned to go, looked back at me, shook his head. "Can't believe you're still alive."

  I shrugged one shoulder. "Magic," I said. I made my voice lighter than I felt, and he chuckled back at me.

  "Magic. Hah." He pulled the door closed behind him, and the room grew dark again. I tried the bread—one idle bite—and the taste of it woke a hunger in me that I had almost forgotten. I devoured the little bit of crust and longed to call to the fisherman for more. But I restrained myself. Everything in its time.

  The light through the slatted walls faded, and after a while the fire from the cabin's other room flickered down to coals, and I lay in deep darkness, thinking. For the first time in months, I could think. I remembered the fisherman's words—first heart, then bones, then sight—but as I lay there I thought probably this fever had given me more than my vision back. I had clarity. I could think.

  And I did. I stepped back through the fisherman's story, counting out the days again. Eighty days. Eight weeks on this miserable little bed. Broth could not have kept me alive that long. And no matter what I'd told him, it wasn't magic either.

  I thought of the dragon. It came to me in flashes of memory. I saw myself strung up in the air, the immensity of the beast flowing by me on the wing before it struck at Archus. I thought of it reared to its full height, towering over the arrogant apprentice as he called down lightning. I thought of the beast's immense head blocking the mouth of the cave I'd used for refuge. And I thought of the shadow high above me, dwindling with distance, a thin trace of red dancing through its shadow.

  Blood. I trembled at the thought but refused to shy away. Blood magic. They'd spoken of it at the Academy. There's power in earth and stone, power in wind and sky, but there's a special magic in living blood. In spilling blood. I'd given some to the dragon, and it had given some to me, however unwillingly.

  Something had happened then. I remembered the dragon's confusion as it raged within my mind. What have you done to me? it had asked. Nothing of my own intent, but after what I'd seen—after what I'd survived—I suspected there was something in the trading of our powers.

  The blackness of it mattered. The emptiness. The magic of man is order. It's power built on reason, understanding, focused will. Dragons, though...dragons are primal creatures. Theirs is the magic of chaos, the underlying powers. It was not the trade of blood that had mattered. Not on a physical level. It was the exchange of power, alien power, conflicting powers mingled together.

  I hadn't learned a single spell in my time at the Academy, but I had learned boatloads of theory. I nodded slowly to myself. I would not have believed a description of it, but I had experienced it firsthand. No one should have survived what I'd gone through, warrior, wizard, or king. No one. But I had faced a dragon and lived!

  And then I blinked, a new memory bubbling up. I had worked a spell, hadn't I? I remembered the cave, the close blackness so like the terrible closet Seriphenes had locked me in. But there in the darkness I had summoned a light. And even as I'd fallen to my death I had managed some working of air. It hadn't been strong enough, soon enough, but perhaps it had kept me from dying outright.

  I closed my eyes and tried again. There was pain still, an ache as familiar as my own smell, but it was dull and distant now. I stepped through the exercises Antinus had taught me and opened my eyes. And then I licked my lips, suddenly nervous.

  Because it was there. Reality laid bare. I could see the fisherman's pathetic little shack, battered and broken upon the shore, a frail speck beneath the maelstrom of energies around us. The ocean churned, deep and bitter and wholly unpredictable. I could feel its power as a threat, a promise of destruction, straining against the leash and pounding its frustration with the collapse of every froth-tipped wave.

  I narrowed my focus, drew down my eye, and suddenly I looked down on myself from less than a pace away. I could see the power in me, the weary ebb and flow of my lifeblood, but it lay in heavy contrast against a bed of perfect black. Shadow spread out beneath me and wrapped around the edges, and I trembled. The dragon's presence stained me.

  I pushed the thought away and looked more closely. I became aware of old bandages and clumsy stitches and in several places splints fashioned of driftwood and twine. There had been a time when that was all that held my shattered bones in place, but I could feel the truth of the fisherman's tale. I could feel bones grown whole again, and in my second sight I could see the flashing shadow that bound the broken edges like mortar.

  I stared down at myself for a while, life energy dancing like a kitchen fire, and then I cast out my awareness until I found the fisherman sleeping beneath a threadbare blanket in the outer room. He burned strong, clean, with the strength of his arms and the sturdy power of hard labor. He roared like a bonfire, strong enough to shape his world without a touch of magic, and I felt sadness settle over me when I turned my eyes back to the shadowy, fitful glow of my own survival.

  I needed to be stronger. I raised up on an elbow as I'd done before. I tried to heave myself upright, but the strain across my abdomen sent a stabbing pain into my right hip and I fell back. I shook my head and tried again, and once again I fell back panting.

  Bodily strength would have to wait. Still, I was pleased with the second sight, and I reached out again as I had done in the cave and found the fragile memory of sunbeams and firelight. I remade my vision of the room, drawing out the light, building it until it shone, and then I spoke a soft word and opened my eyes to find my room as bright as day.

  I smiled, but my head throbbed with the effort of it. I found myself straining to hold the image, fighting against the reality I knew was there, and after four hastening heartbeats I let it go, and darkness fell again. Still, I knew that I could do it. I could work magic by my own will. I would have given much to s
how that skill to Seriphenes.

  Seriphenes. The dark wizard's face swam before my vision, and I remembered him as I had seen him last, sweeping through a portal to lead dozens of students against the dragon that had tried to kill me. What had become of them? I held precious little fear for the master wizard who had defied Claighan's every warning, but what had become of the students? What had become of Themmichus?

  I imagined the worst and hoped for the best, and through it all I poured my hate on Seriphenes. On Leotus, who had so happily gone along with the scheme. On Archus, who had dragged me away from all the others and offered me up as bait. On the rebel Lareth, who had made that necessary.

  I thought of Lareth for the first time since I had left Seriphenes's office, and my mouth twisted in a frown. I owed him more venom than Seriphenes. He was my enemy, true and deep, and I would have given much to face him in vengeance.

  But not now. Not like this. I had the second sight, but the extent of my magic was a pathetic little flare of light, and my body was weak as a newborn lamb's. I took up the water bottle the fisherman had left me, drank it to the bottom, then curled onto my side and looked for sleep. There would be work to do at dawn.

  12. Chaos Magic

  It was another week before I could stand unassisted. The pain persisted, but with some dedicated effort and a far richer diet than I had known in months, I slowly gained my strength. Whenever my body failed me—and in those days it failed me often—I bent my attention to training my mind instead. I worked through my mental exercises again and again, until I could take on the second sight in the space of a breath. I wasted days trying to speed my healing with magical will, trying to imagine myself stronger. But order magic works on expectation, and I felt my weakness far too dearly to believe it gone.

  Whenever I faltered, whenever my legs could not quite hold me, I thought back on the spell Archus had used to march me like a puppet across the Academy grounds. He'd woven armor of solid air, and I often thought a trick like that could serve me well. But I didn't know the first thing about that manner of working, and whatever clumsy efforts I made at it ended in failure.