Blackflame (Cradle Book 3)

by Will Wight

  “Now, when the madra comes back in, spiraling from your limbs to your core, the stone wheel shifts. It slowly rolls back the other way, grinding your core again.”

  It was like letting the wheel roll downhill, only to haul it to a stop and pull it back up again. He poured all his madra into the effort, controlling his spirit with every ounce of his concentration.

  There was an instant in the middle where he felt like he was manually stopping his own lungs. He gaped like a fish, his lungs frozen as though the stone wheel sat on his own chest, before he finally got it moving the other way.

  Eithan waited for him to get himself under control before graciously reminding him that he still had to hold his previous cycling pattern. It took Lindon another half an hour to match the old timing, and by that time his soul felt like he’d pounded it flat. Only minutes of cycling, and he was more exhausted than he would have been after hours of practicing in the dummy course.

  But Eithan wasn’t finished.

  “Once you have a grip on that, you want your wheel to spin as slowly as possible without stopping. Breathing in the same pattern, I want to see how slowly you can move your madra, how heavily that wheel turns, how that huge stone wheel is almost stopped and your madra is just crawling along.

  “Then you exhale, and it goes back the other way.”

  Only two more minutes, and Lindon began to seriously wonder if he was going to pass out. He couldn’t wait for Eithan to leave so that he could take a real breath.

  “This technique is called the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel,” Eithan said, and Lindon felt his weight settle onto the end of the bed. “It has a long and fascinating history.”

  Lindon would have cried, but he couldn’t spare the breath.

  “I’ll spare you the details.” Lindon almost let out a sigh of relief. “But to reach Jade, you need to form a spiral in your core. The spinning motion will condense the quality of your madra, increase your receptivity to spiritual forces, speed up madra recovery, help your control…all sorts of benefits. Eventually, the suction force will become strong enough to contain a Remnant.”

  Though he itched to take notes, Lindon would lose the breathing technique if he so much as opened his eyes. And that would be disrespectful to the Underlord who had gone through the trouble of teaching him a technique.

  If only he would leave.

  “Every Path has their own Jade cycling technique, and it emphasizes certain aspects of the spirit. Some are particularly good at processing aura efficiently, others help you recover your madra in minutes, and so on. It’s a deep and varied field. But I selected this technique just for you!”

  Lindon tried to thank him, but grunting out a single syllable almost lost him control of the revolving stone wheel.

  “The Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel slowly grinds away at your core’s borders, focused entirely on improving your capacity to contain madra. It does what you tried to do by Forging and swallowing your own scales: it uses temporary power to push at the bonds of your core, expanding your ability to permanently store power. But while swallowing scales loses some energy in the Forging process, this keeps the entire cycle contained, so there’s no loss. It’s also slow, difficult to practice, and you will feel like you’re choking and dying.”

  Lindon nodded and almost choked.

  “But it works with any madra, including pure. If you fill your second core with another Path, this technique will work for that too. And your Path of Twin Stars breaks one normal-sized core into two smaller cores, so without special elixirs or a technique specifically focused on capacity, you’d never get even one of your cores up to its normal size.”

  Lindon finally lost the technique. His madra slipped out of his control, he gasped as though he were coming up for air, and the power he’d been damming up in his core surged through his body. His eyes snapped open, and he jerked to his feet like a puppet with strings pulled.

  Eithan nodded. “That can happen.” He rose, brushing his robe off as though preparing to leave. “All cycling methods have tradeoffs, so if after a few days you have objections, I can recommend a different technique. But control can be learned, quality can be improved with elixirs, collecting aura only takes patience, and as for recovery…why would you need to recover madra quickly when you have more than you could ever use?”

  Lindon was still trying to recover his breath, but he swiped his sleeve across his sweaty forehead and bowed slightly. “I won’t give up, Underlord. I trust your wisdom.”

  “Underlord isn’t my name,” Eithan said, before pointing to Lindon’s pocket. “You might want to avoid wearing that ring of yours for the time being. This technique is hard enough without hobbling yourself.” He touched his forehead and nodded. “Well then. A good night to you.”

  The door shut behind him.

  And then immediately opened again. Eithan poked his head back in. “You’re going to keep cycling, aren’t you? You’re not going to slack off while my back is turned?”

  “Your back is never turned,” Lindon said, voice dry.

  “And don’t forget it.” Eithan widened his eyes, staring at Lindon intently as he slowly shut the door.

  Lindon took a few moments to breathe before sitting down on the bed. He had started to picture the stone wheel before he slipped his hand into his pocket and ran into the cold circle of halfsilver.

  Eithan had said not to use the parasite ring, but Lindon was trying to push himself beyond what his teachers required. Then again, the thought of trying that cycling technique with the additional burden of the ring physically made him shudder. It was like wrapping his lungs in bands of iron.

  He was pulling his hand out of the pocket, leaving the ring behind, when he brushed past another small object: a slightly warm ball of smooth glass.

  Lindon gripped it in his fist, picturing the steady blue candle flame. Jade wasn’t his goal. Jai Long wasn’t his goal. Even Underlord wasn’t his goal.

  If Eithan could have saved Sacred Valley, then Suriel would have shown him a vision of Eithan. He had to reach further than Eithan thought possible.

  He settled into a cycling position and slipped on his ring.

  Chapter 7

  When the moon rose on their thirty-second night of traveling, Cassias Arelius walked away from the control board of Sky's Mercy. The script didn't need constant maintenance, but he felt better with someone watching the sky. If a Three-Horned Eagle rose out of the clouds, they would be in trouble without someone close enough and quick enough to steer out of the way.

  Not that any Arelius would miss the approach of a threat like that, even with his eyes closed. His web of madra showed him nothing but clouds and empty air for a quarter-mile around them.

  And the Arelius Underlord was aboard. Even the wind couldn't sneak up on Eithan.

  “Would you like to take the last shift?” he asked Eithan, who was sprawled out on the couch with a book in hand.

  In less than ten hours, they would arrive at Serpent's Grave. If he could have drained his core dry to push Sky's Mercy any faster, he would have—his wife and son were waiting for him down there. They'd left their home back in the capital to follow him, and then he'd abandoned them for two months to chase down their delinquent Underlord.

  This was his job now, however much it strained him to be away for so long. Eithan was the reason he'd been able to marry Jing in the first place; only an Underlord’s word had convinced their families to agree to the match. Even putting up with Eithan for the rest of his life wouldn’t be enough to repay that favor.

  Though he had taken Cassias’ place.

  Cassias was born to be Patriarch of the Arelius family. He was a direct descendant of the bloodline, his appearance and conduct were impeccable, and from an early age he had impressed everyone with his skill in the sacred arts.

  But none of that had been good enough for Jing’s family before Eithan took his side. He’d traded away his position as Patriarch’s heir with a smile on his face, but the occa
sional reminder could still…sting.

  Eithan yawned and shut the book. “Nothing but clear sky between us and a safe landing.”

  A web of invisible power stretched throughout Sky's Mercy, bringing Cassias little snippets of information: Fisher Gesha's sheets rustling as she turned, Yerin's eyelids crinkling in a disturbing dream, Lindon's chest rising and falling evenly. There was no privacy when an Arelius was around, but it was polite to act otherwise.

  Everyone knew what the Arelius could do, but they didn't know about the limitations. Publicly, the family liked to pretend they had none.

  Now that he'd confirmed the outsiders were asleep, Cassias spoke freely. “They can’t hear us. Tell me when we’re really close enough for you to guide our landing, please.”

  He’d known Eithan for six years now, and worked closely with him for most of that time. He could tell when the man was bluffing. Usually.

  And one of Cassias’ first tasks after Eithan’s arrival had been to determine the limit of the Underlord’s senses.

  Stretching, Eithan spoke through another yawn. “My father used to say the First Patriarch could watch over his descendants from another continent. Maybe even from…beyond the grave.” Eithan waggled his eyebrows up and down.

  “Do you often listen to myths?” Cassias asked lightly.

  “Yes. That's the secret to reaching Underlord: studying old tales. That, and bladder health.” Eithan headed to the back, to the side of the bar. “If you'll excuse me, the house can fly itself for a moment.”

  Cassias was left alone in the central room of Sky's Mercy. It had been his home for the last two months, and over the course of his life he'd spent even longer inside, but he'd grown up expecting it would belong to him.

  Now, it was Eithan's. Cassias was only borrowing it.

  Everything in life was a trade.

  Before heading upstairs to his own bedroom—there were six aboard Sky's Mercy, as well as the washroom, the bar, a training room, and a silent chamber for cycling—he stopped.

  Over the month since departing the Desolate Wilds, he'd built up a certain curiosity. Now that the other three were asleep, and the two children had both left the circle of wooden dummies alone, he had a perfect opportunity to indulge that curiosity.

  Eithan would know what he was doing, of course, but it was best to operate as though Eithan knew everything. The Underlord could stretch his web to a target miles away, if he was focused on a specific spot, but he saw everything within a hundred yards without even trying.

  Cassias pushed the door open, took two steps on cloud through the bitter, cutting wind, and entered the repurposed barn.

  Only slanting bars of moonlight cut through the shadows, but Cassias could see all eighteen dummies with his bloodline powers. An arm here, a slice of head there, a piece of a circle, but it was enough for him to fill in the gaps. As he moved, strands of his detection web swept through each of the dummies in turn. It was as though he could run his fingertips over everything in the room, slowly gaining a picture.

  He finished in a few seconds, confirming what he'd suspected. Because he knew Eithan was listening, he shook his head and sighed.

  “You're not trying to kill him?”

  When he re-entered Sky's Mercy, he found Eithan standing at the control panel. “Of course I'm not,” the Underlord responded. “When a mother bird pushes a chick from the nest, is she trying to kill her child?”

  “That's a Lowgold course,” Cassias said, his tone dry. “I trained on something similar until only a few years ago.”

  “It should be similar indeed. I took the plans from your training room back in the main house.”

  Cassias cast his web back over to the barn, sweeping his sensations through the dummies. It wasn't as quick or as detailed as it had been when he was standing an arm’s length away, but it was still thorough.

  With very little surprise, he realized Eithan was telling the truth: the two courses were virtually identical. It would be a relief if he ever caught the man in a lie instead of a half-truth, bluff, or exaggeration.

  “You're teaching a child to wrestle by locking him in a closet with a wolf,” Cassias said. His tone straddled the line between polite subordinate and stern caretaker.

  He had gotten to know Lindon over the last few weeks—the boy was earnest, quick, and almost entirely ignorant about the sacred arts. Cassias didn’t want to see him hurt.

  Someone had raised him completely disconnected from the real world, and he needed a thorough, solid education. It would take years to prepare him with all the knowledge he needed to face society, especially as a representative of the Arelius family. Their enemies would tear him apart, if he weren’t ready.

  Eithan seemed determined to cram those skills into him in a matter of months. That wouldn't help him or stretch him; it would burn him up like dry tinder.

  “Jai Long is dangerous, even for a Highgold. Best to start Lindon on something as safe as a wolf, wouldn't you say?” Eithan was sitting on the control panel, reading his book again as the night sky stretched out the windows behind him. He didn’t even bother to face the glass.

  “You really want him to fight against a former Jai clan heir? Still?” It wasn’t technically proper to question the Underlord, not even in private, but Eithan had never been one to lean on propriety. Besides, dealing with him was a trial that would stretch anyone’s manners.

  Eithan flipped a page. “You've been watching Lindon and Yerin both. What do you think?”

  “Yerin is a treasure vault,” Cassias said immediately. “I can't imagine completing a Lowgold training course using a Goldsign like hers, but she almost has it. Her madra is incredibly stable if she really reached Lowgold only a few months ago, and at this rate she could reach Highgold inside a year. She was born for the sword arts.”

  “Not just born,” Eithan said. “Made. And Lindon?”

  “He's...talented,” Cassias said hesitantly. In truth, he didn't know what to make of Lindon's ability. His mind and attitude were admirable enough, but his spirit...

  He had two half-sized cores filled with Iron-quality pure madra, a few very interesting trinkets in his pack that Cassias had respected his privacy enough to ignore, and an Iron body that was far beyond his capacity to support.

  He knew Eithan must have led Lindon to that particular Iron body, but he didn't know why. Lindon having to carry that body was like a child trying to control an Underlord's weapon; they might be able to flail it around a little, but in the end, it would do more damage to them than to anyone else.

  “He's a mess,” Eithan said, flipping another page.

  “I wouldn't put it quite like that,” Cassias said, but he was relieved he hadn't had to spell it out.

  “His Bloodforged Iron body takes too much madra to sustain, and he's weak as it is. No matter how physically resilient he becomes, he's no more than half a sacred artist.” Eithan looked over his shoulder and showed Cassias a grin. “Have I hit the mark?”

  Cassias lowered his voice. They were still all sleeping, but this was the sort of subject matter that should be discussed discreetly. “Why train him, then? The branch heads will worship you for bringing home the Sage’s apprentice. You don’t need a second disciple. And I can name you a dozen sacred artists Lindon’s age with twice his skill.”

  Eithan hopped down, tossing his book onto the control panel. He walked over and threw an arm across Cassias' shoulder. Then he turned so they were both looking out over the night.

  “Imagine with me, will you?” Eithan extended his free hand as though presenting a glorious future. “Imagine if he could restore each of those cores to full size and raise them to Lowgold. With pure madra in one, he'd be a unique resource, and he could still follow a combat Path in the other. That’s two full cores, so he could bring out the full capabilities of the Bloodforged body with energy to spare.”

  “It’s a delightful vision,” Cassias said. “He would throw the Lowgold rankings into chaos. In ten or fifteen years, he co
uld grow into a pillar of our Arelius family, and follow me and Jing to the top of the Truegolds.”

  Cassias shrugged out of Eithan's arm and turned to look him in the eye. “But he won't be ready in a year. Even if he were, he would be no match for the Jai clan exile.”

  Eithan's eyes sparkled. “But you haven't heard about his second Path.”

  When Eithan told him, Cassias was speechless for a moment. After a pause, he forced himself to start breathing. The Underlord was just needling him again, to watch him squirm.

  “Please don’t worry me like that,” he said at last. “I almost believed you.”

  “Then you were almost correct.”

  The horrifying possibilities of Eithan’s plan started to creep into Cassias’ mind one by one, but he refused to consider them. “He’s not born of the Blackflame line. He couldn’t handle the madra.”

  “Didn’t you wonder why I’d given him a top-grade Bloodforged Iron body?”

  “But you can’t get him the aura though, surely, unless you’ve tucked a dragon away…in the…”

  He trailed off. Horror dawned on him as he realized where they were going.

  Eithan beamed. “Serpent’s Grave. We’re heading right into the dragon’s mouth, as it were.”

  …that might work.

  Heavens help him, but that might actually work.

  “No,” Cassias said, still refusing to acknowledge the truth. “The branch heads will never allow it. The Skysworn will never allow it. The Emperor will never allow it!”

  “There’s an old saying about asking forgiveness rather than permission,” Eithan said, “but the essence of it is, ‘I’m going to do what I want.’”

  Cassias had given up his spot in the family for Eithan. He’d suffered for Eithan’s mistakes, taken the heat of the family’s anger over Eithan’s childish whims, and hauled his family halfway across the Empire to Serpent’s Grave…and then left them again, because Eithan had wandered off.