KNIGHT OF THE FLAME
Children of the Old War, book 1
by H John Spriggs
Kindle Edition | Copyright 2014 H John Spriggs
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Tebria
CHAPTER 1
Feel the flame.
The words echoed in Caymus's mind, again and again. Eyes closed, back straight, sitting cross-legged on the cold stone of the small chamber, he went through a ritual he'd performed dozens of times. He slowed his breathing, relaxed his muscles, and purged himself of thought. He stilled his body so that he could let himself see past its confines. As he reigned in his consciousness, he reached out beyond himself, trying, as he had been taught, to scan his environment, to see the room without using his eyes, to touch the elements that surrounded him with his mind, rather than his skin.
Feel the flame.
He felt the chill of the stone against his legs, felt it sap his warmth, felt the very air of the room pull the heat from his body, and then felt the warm core of his center radiating outward, making up for the loss. He envisioned the fire element pouring out of his body like some invisible gas, cooling his skin while warming the stone, the air, and the other bodies in the room.
He was keenly aware of the other students—six of them in all—standing around the perimeter of the small chamber. He could feel the heat of their bodies, hear them breathe, hear their feet scuff against stone as they rocked, unconsciously, from foot to foot. Most of the boys seemed anxious, their hearts beating much faster than normal. One was a little bit warmer than the others; Wrentyl had been working outside at seventh bell and must have exerted himself to be here in time for the lesson.
He could barely sense Master Be'Var, leaning against the opposite wall. The old man seemed to control how much heat he radiated, as though he had learned not to waste energy in keeping himself any warmer than necessary. His breathing was slow and easy, and Caymus thought he could actually sense the man's focus on the moment, on his pupil, on the lesson at hand. The old master was willing him to do as instructed, daring him to succeed.
Feel the flame.
The flame itself was small and timid. Had his eyes been open, Caymus wouldn't have been able to see by its flickering light. Having just gained purchase on the dry wood in the center of the room, it did not yet crackle or spurt. Instead, it held steady as it reached toward the ceiling and attempted to grow outward, to consume more of the fuel it fed upon. It did not dare burn too fiercely. Not yet. Not until it was larger and could draw enough air so as not to smother itself.
Caymus felt it, then…The Conflagration. Though every body, every surface in the room interacted, to some degree, with the element of fire, either soaking it inward or radiating it out, the flame itself was different. The flame represented a conduit, a gateway, a door to another place. He'd never been allowed to probe this far before, and so, as he let his consciousness drift closer and deeper into the flame, he began to truly understand the place the masters had been telling him of for so many years. The Conflagration was a realm where no living man dared roam, a place where flames burned eternally, where there existed nothing but searing fire in any direction one could think to travel, where vast and terrible flame-lords screamed their angry battle cries and dreamed of bloody victory. Some believed it to be simply an idea, a representation that allowed a mind to study the workings of fire; those who learned at this temple were taught that it was an actual place. Caymus knew which explanation was true, for the Conflagration manifested here in this very room, not two feet from the spot where he quietly sat, both terrified and bemused at his discovery.
“Can you feel it, boy?” Be'Var's voice was gruff and menacing, yet it conveyed the same genuine concern for his student that it always had. In his mind's eye, Caymus could picture the master furrowing both his brow and half his bald scalp while directing his piercing, gray eyes to stare directly into his student’s soul.
“I think so,” Caymus replied. His face began to tighten with concentration. A small bead of sweat formed at his forehead, ran the length of his left eyebrow, and made its way down his cheek.
He felt Be'Var move from the wall. “Don’t think, boy! You need to know. You need to be certain of your connection. The Conflagration is not forgiving. It feels neither remorse nor pity and will burn you to a cinder if you try to draw on it without a very firm grip.”
Again, Caymus felt and probed around the flame, searching for a hold on it, attempting to connect, somehow, with this conduit, to find his way through to the roaring inferno beyond. A master's trained mind would have been able to do this as an afterthought; this was Caymus's first time. He struggled with it as though a child on his first fishing trip, unsure what to do with lines, lures, or slippery, wriggling worms. His face tightened further, his expression a painful frown, and the large muscles of his exposed arms bunched as muscles tensed against one another.
“Relax, Caymus. Stop trying to force it.” Be’Var’s voice seemed loud in Caymus’s ears, as though the man were standing mere inches away. “You’re just going to push it further away if you keep that up.” Slowly, Caymus obeyed. Slowly, the muscles in his face relaxed and his breathing slowed and became gentle. Slowly, he felt the connection he'd been seeking, and his efforts began to take shape.
The sensation was sudden, as an unexpected storm in Spring, but just as grime and grit are washed away by the cleansing rains, his thinking became clear and even as his consciousness actually merged with the young flame. He could feel the warmth, the radiance of it. He could feel how it danced to every movement of air, and his thoughts danced in response. The sensation caught Caymus unprepared and he felt his eyes well up with tears as the utter joy of it hit him. He was completely aware of the flame, and though he knew it wasn't a conscious thing, it felt alive, happy, thriving.
His teachers had warned him of this. They called it “the glow,” and it was not something to dwell upon. More than a few students in the Temple’s history had reached this point and traversed no further, losing themselves in these feelings for hours at a time until their beguiled minds could think of little else.
Quickly, Caymus made himself move past the sensation and concentrate on what he was doing. The feel of the flame was incredible, but through it he could sense something greater: the enduring fury of the Conflagration and the primal power it represented.
Small, barely perceptible currents of air wafted across the growing flame, set it to flitting this way and that, as the students on the other side of the small, circular chamber made room for Be’Var to sit down. “Good,” he said. "Now, boy, I want you to make the flame hotter.”
“How?” Caymus almost lost his connection with that single word, but he managed to hold onto his tenuous grip.
“On the other side of that conduit is the Conflagration. The flame is a part of it, a tendril intruding into our world. If you pull, draw it out, you can bring forth more of its power. Be careful, though. What I said before about being incinerated hasn't changed.”
Caymus could see what the old man meant. Rather, he could feel it. The Conflagration flowed into his world thro
ugh this budding fire, and now that he was so intimately connected with it, he could sense the possibility of pulling more power through. With effort, he centered his mind, placing his consciousness in the middle of the flame, and pulled toward himself, expecting a torrent of energy to flow his way. The torrent didn’t come, though. The fire continued to burn steadily. It was slightly larger now, but it grew only naturally, as it would have done without his presence.
He hadn't been able to find a grip, to really get a hold on the stream of energy coming through the conduit. His consciousness was infusing the flame, was part of it now, but the stream itself, the connection to the Conflagration, had slipped away. Taking a deep breath, he tried again. In the back of his mind, his emotions screamed in terrified anxiety. The sensation was like that of reaching into a dark pit of snakes and attempting to draw out a glass bead without getting bitten, so he experienced some relief when he failed again; he hadn't managed to draw forth a marble, but he hadn't angered any vipers either.
With some consternation, Caymus assessed the situation. The rest of the process had felt fairly natural to him, but now that he was trying to actually pull more energy through, he wasn't even coming close to success. His body was relaxed and his mind clear. Infusing the conduit with his own consciousness had felt almost intuitive and he could easily detect the filaments of energy within, so why did those filaments seem to melt through his hands like tree sap whenever he tried to grasp them?
Then, he thought of another way. While he couldn't get a grip on the energy of the Conflagration, couldn't manage to pull more of it through, he did have a very firm hold on the conduit itself and should be able to bend and stretch it as easily as he flexed a muscle. If he simply narrowed the conduit around the filaments, the same amount of energy would have to flow faster, like water crashing through a rapid, and the faster flowing energy should make the flame hotter.
Was this what Be'Var wanted him to do? It couldn't be. The master was talking about pulling more energy through, and Caymus was considering moving and shaping the same amount of energy he’d started with. Still, the same end-goal should be achieved: a hotter flame. Perhaps this exercise was designed around getting him to figure this out? With that thought in mind, he engulfed the conduit completely within in his own mind, his own consciousness, and began to squeeze.
The results came quickly, much more so than he’d expected. The fire constricted slightly and deepened from a lazy, comfortable orange to an angry yellow, and the wood fuel gave a loud pop as the flame quickly burned through the layer it had been chewing on. The students gasped, impressed by the display. Caymus could feel the heat of their bodies crowding in around the hearth, but then he felt the same heat move backward again as Be'Var waved them away.
“Boy?” came the master's voice. “What are you doing?”
“Making it hotter,” said Caymus, his voice a bit more nonchalant than he’d intended. The flame was growing faster now, and he could feel the increased flow from the Conflagration as the flame began to require more and more energy to satisfy its growing appetite. “I think,” he continued, beginning to sweat with effort, “I think I can do better.”
Again, he squeezed, and again the fire grew hotter, angrier. The flame itself had turned to a much brighter yellow as it sizzled through the wood in the hearth, which popped and sputtered under the onslaught. In the small room, the temperature was beginning to rise noticeably.
“All right,” said Be'Var, “that's enough.” As he spoke, he couldn't quite keep the apprehension out of his voice. This was clearly more than the master had been expecting out of his pupil.
“Wait, Master,” Caymus's voice was trilling with excitement now, “just a little bit more.” He squeezed hard this time, and the results were immediate. The yellow flame melted away, leaving a roaring white beast in the center of the room. Gone was the sizzling sound of burning wood, and in its place was a furious buzz, like that of a swarm of hornets preparing to attack. The stone floor of the room had increased dramatically in temperature. Caymus even noticed his breathing getting difficult as the very air around him heated. The students, now pressed against the circular wall—some gasping for air—were beginning to panic.
There was nothing timid in Be'Var's voice now. “I said that's enough!” he yelled.
Whether he would actually have been able to relax his grip on the conduit and lower the flame's intensity, Caymus would never know. By then, the searing white fire had burned through the remainder of its fuel. It quickly sputtered and died, leaving only a smoking hearth and a darkened room. Caymus's body stung slightly as the conduit of energy was ripped away from him so suddenly. He opened his eyes. He was surprised to find himself sitting in total silence, and in a stark darkness, which lasted until Be'Var opened the wooden door to the hallway beyond, letting torchlight spill into the room.
Caymus looked at his instructor with a sheepish grin. “I'm sorry, Master,” he said. “It was just so incredible that I—”
The old man was livid. “Don't you ever do that again, boy!” Be'Var's eyes were hot with anger. Despite his years, his voice was loud and strong. Even the other students cringed at the sound. He pointed a calloused finger at his charge. “You, boy, may be the finest student at this temple, but that does not give you the right to just do as you please!”
Caymus cast his eyes downward and spoke very softly. “I'm sorry, Master,” he said. “It will never happen again.”
“It had better not!” said Be'Var, still yelling. “Do you understand that if that hearth had been furnished with even one more piece of everwood, you could have suffocated everyone in this room?” At that, Caymus glanced around and noted the abject terror on some of the faces of his fellow students. Be’Var seemed about to yell again, but instead closed his eyes, placed a hand over his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He then took a deep breath and waved the other hand around the room. “This is over,” he said, more calmly, addressing the other students. “I'll meet you all in the sanctuary in an hour.”
With that, the other young men quietly filed out the door, leaving master and student alone in the stone chamber. The room was small. It was cylindrical in shape and barely a dozen feet in diameter, though it stretched upwards for twice that in height, ending in six blackened ventilation shafts, which quickly carried the remaining smoke from the room. Be'Var watched the last student leave, then turned back to the chastised figure on the floor.
“Caymus,” he said, sitting down on the opposite side of the hearth and looking down at the ash and char between them. Caymus raised his head, slightly concerned that Be’Var was addressing him by his name, rather than the usual, “boy”. The master was shaking his head and silently moving his lips, as though searching for the right words. Then, he lifted his eyes and looked his pupil over. Caymus was suddenly very conscious of his unusually large size. At just under seven feet tall, the eighteen-years-old youth had broad shoulders and a heavily muscled build to go with them. His sandy-brown hair was cut short, as was the custom for disciples at the Temple of the Conflagration, little more than stubble atop his head.
Be'Var sighed and looked him in the eyes. “You and I both know you're the best student here. Lesson after lesson, you prove yourself more than capable. The fact that you're taking the Test of Faith more than a year before your twentieth is astounding and, I might add, unprecedented. All in all, anyone can see that you're going to make a very fine priest in this temple—or missionary, or what-have-you—yet here you are, breaking the rules, acting recklessly, and adding to the general confusion.”
The old man looked back down at the burnt-out hearth, a kind of sadness in his eyes. “I'm only trying to make a point about what a pity it would be if you found yourself expelled on grounds of insubordination, or were fried to a crisp because you couldn't control something you'd started.” Then, he looked back up, quizzically. “Just what did you do, anyway?” he asked. “Certainly not what I told you.”
Caymus thought for awhile before res
ponding. “I did try it your way, Master. I tried to hold on to those…to the threads of the conduit and pull more of it through, but I couldn't get a grip. Then, I noticed that I could do the same thing by changing the shape of the flame instead.”
“The shape?” said Be'Var, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes. The fire just got hotter then, and burned through the wood faster, which got more energy flowing through...” he trailed off, then shrugged. “I thought, maybe, that was the point.” He considered his next words very carefully. “I got carried away with the moment, Master. I really am sorry.”
Be'Var seemed to consider this. He shuffled backwards and leaned against the wall. His eyes were distant, as though he was remembering an old friend. “No,” he said. “It certainly wasn't the point. However, if what you say is true, we may have just learned something very interesting about you.”
It was Caymus's turn to look puzzled. “And what is that?”
Be'Var looked back and gave him a small grin. Caymus didn't know just how old Be'Var was—in his seventies, at the very least, if the creased, leathery skin of his face was any indication—but he was always surprised at how young and alive the man's eyes seemed to be. None of the other masters had eyes like that. “No,” Be'Var said, then stood up, dusting off his hands. “I've already said too much. But trust me: if I'm right, it's very interesting indeed.” He looked at the smoking remains of Caymus's handiwork and sighed. “I meant what I said, Caymus. Mistakes like the one you just made are exactly the reason the hearths aren't built any larger. Flame needs air to live, but so do people. You really could have killed somebody today—several somebodies, in fact." He pointedly raised an eyebrow. "Including me.” He glanced briefly at the door to the chamber. “The students will talk, of course, so the other masters will find out about the incident soon enough.” Caymus opened his mouth to apologize again, but Be’Var halted him with a wave of his hand. “Just promise me I won't have to raise my voice with you again," he said, "all right?”
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