Caymus winced as the prince indicated, with two fingers, a spot just below his sternum and off to one side, where his liver should be. "I was done for," he said, "crying out as I waited for the life to bleed out of me, when this cranky old physician marches out of nowhere, kneels down next to me, and says, 'Hold still and shut up, or I'll really make you cry'." He looked over at Master Be'Var, who had his hand over his eyes. "Wasn't even sure, at that point, if he was on our side!"
"You were still laid up," said Be'Var, "for several weeks, as I recall, so try not to oversell it, would you?"
Garrin ignored him. "I shouldn't have made it through that night." He flashed Be'Var a wide grin. "Master Be'Var's been my favorite ever since."
Be'Var shook his head. "Worst mistake I ever made! I never could get any proper work done after that, what with you and your father always keeping me around the command tents."
Garrin nodded, then looked at Caymus, pointing at Be'Var with his thumb. "You know, he actually quit the army just to get away from me?"
Caymus, and everyone else at the table, looked at Be'Var. "I did no such thing," was all he said.
"Your manners," said Matron Elia, who had sat quietly with her arms folded up to now, looked to each of the men in turn, "are truly awful. Do you know that?"
Caymus was a little stunned at the accusation, but Elia continued before he could ask what she meant. She held a hand out, indicating the girl in the blue dress. "Caymus, Rill, this is Aiella. She's the daughter of Brocke, the ambassador from Creveya, the Summit, and is staying at the Keep with her father."
Caymus quickly rose to his feet, managing to knock the chair out from under him as he did so. "I'm so sorry," he said, his face flushing. He felt all eyes on him, but wasn't quite sure what to do next. In the end, he gave the most gracious bow he could, with the table in the way. "It's wonderful to meet you, Miss."
Rill, too, stood up and gave her a small bow, though not with anything like the intensity Caymus had shown. As Caymus stepped back to pick his chair up, he looked back at her and thought he saw the faintest hint of a smile touch her lips.
As he sat down again, he addressed both of Flamehearth's guests. "So, can I ask why you're both here? You can't really have come just to meet us." As Caymus began adjusting his chair under him, he noticed, for the first time, that Callun was also in the room, though he sat apart from everyone else, in a padded chair in the corner. Callun's eyes were on him and so he gave the man a friendly nod, which he didn't return. Caymus turned away, back to the table, and as he idly scratched the back of his neck, he tried to shake the uncomfortable feeling that the man engendered.
It was Matron Elia who spoke next. "Ambassador Brocke, Aiella's father, is in the courtyard, investigating our broken, old water pump. He brought Aiella along because I've been wanting to meet her for some time." She glanced at Aiella, who gave her a small smile.
"You're saying," said Rill, narrowing his eyes, "that an ambassador is here to mend a pump?"
"No, no," said Elia, waving a hand, "he's helping us determine whether there is any water under it."
"My father," said Aiella, straightening a bit in her seat, "has been helping the crown to locate new sources of underground water since the drought began." Caymus suspected, based on the way that only the occasional word carried an unfamiliar accent, that Aiella must have spent some time learning to suppress it.
"The good ambassador's been helping Kepren a great deal over the past few months," said Garrin, addressing Rill, but looking at Aiella. "The man is a credit to the Summit." He gave Aiella quick smile, which she did not return, and turned back to the rest of the table. "If it weren't for his dowsing, a lot of the farmland along the Silvertooth would have dried up months ago."
Caymus briefly wondered what the Summit was as the Keeper continued. "I told him a few weeks back that we had an old well pump in our courtyard. It's been disused for as long as I've been here, but he told me he'd like to take a look at it when chance allowed." She turned to face the prince. "What you're doing here, I'm actually not certain."
Garrin's smile disappeared, his eyes followed his finger as it traced the woodgrain of the table. "To be quite honest with you, I needed to get out of the Keep for a time," he said. When he raised his eyes to look at Be'Var, some of the smile came back. "And when I heard that my favorite healer was coming back to Kepren, I had the guards keep an eye out for him.
Be'Var frowned at him. "Don't you have more important things to be doing than coming down here among us mortals and, more to the point, bothering me?"
"It's good to see you too, old man."
Be'Var scoffed, but Caymus noticed a very slight grin finding purchase on the old man's face.
Garrin turned back to Caymus. "So, Caymus, Be'Var tells me he's been teaching you the sword and shield. Are you any good?"
Caymus shrugged. "I don't know, to be honest. Rill's the only one I've had to practice with, and he's just learning too."
Garrin nodded. "I see. I may need to have you brought to the Keep for a sparring session sometime, then."
Caymus blinked. "Really?"
"Absolutely," said Garrin. He pulled the sword at his hip a few inches free of its scabbard, revealing a blade that was as black as the midnight sky. "Don't worry, I won't use this thing."
"Just watch your knuckles," said Rill, sighing and rubbing his hands.
Caymus scowled at him, but turned back to Prince Garrin. "I don't think I'd be much good for sparring, Your—Garrin, but I'll happily come to learn."
"Good," said Garrin, slamming the sword back into the scabbard. "I'll have it arranged for sometime in the next couple of days."
A quiet, dry voice drifted out of the dark corner where Callun sat. "Do you think he will be great?"
Everyone turned to him. He was staring at Caymus with those lifeless eyes of his, but his face wore what looked to be smirk.
"Great?" said Garrin, who then turned to look Caymus up and down. He shrugged, with a curious smile. "Perhaps."
Be'Var's eyes flitted between Caymus and the prince, a look of intense curiosity on his face. After a moment, though, he sighed, mostly to himself, and changed the subject. "Miss Aiella," he said, looking across the table at her, "do you know how long your father's been out there?"
Aiella looked over her shoulder, her long hair bouncing across her frame as her head turned. "It has been a while," she said. "I will go and check on him."
"Would you mind taking Caymus with you?" Be'Var said, rising as she did. Caymus, standing also, gave Be'Var a questioning look. Be'Var shifted his eyes to him, but nodded in the direction of the courtyard. "Keep your mouth shut and you might just learn something."
Caymus turned to Aiella, who stood as though considering. "Come along," she finally said, motioning with a small movement of her hand for him to follow.
After taking a moment to give the satchel of meat to the mission-keeper—she seemed genuinely delighted to receive it, saying they would be served for supper the following evening—Caymus did as he was asked. He followed Aiella out the door, then stepped up to walk next to her. He felt more than a little uncomfortable being so close to this girl. Even walking directly beside her, he felt as though her eyes were still on him, judging, looking for some form of weakness. He hoped she wouldn't actually say anything until they got to the courtyard.
"So, Caymus," she said, dashing his hopes, "Be'Var speaks of you a great deal." There was no warmth in her tone as she spoke, still looking straight ahead. "You are a priest, then?"
"No," he said, surprised that he didn't really consider his answer. "I was studying to be a master, but that's not going to happen anymore."
"You failed in your training?"
"No," he said, "not exactly." He paused a moment, wondering how to explain it all. He thought it a personal matter and wasn't sure he liked the idea of telling the whole story to a complete stranger.
"How does one 'not exactly' fail?" she asked. This time, she turned to look at him, her
eyes probing.
Caymus sighed. He decided that he might as well just tell her. "I stepped into the Conduit for my final test just after the krealites attacked. When I did, I was taken into the Conflagration and the Lords there told me that I was 'impure' and that I'd never be a master."
When he finished, her eyes moved away from him and she finally turned to face forward again. "Krealites?" she said. "Is that what you call the monsters that attacked?"
Caymus nodded. "Yes, the element they're made of: it's called kreal."
"You seem to know much about them."
"More than I ever wanted to."
She halted her questioning for a moment as they made their way down the corridor. As they turned into one of the rooms that held a door to the courtyard—this room appeared to be a small library, with deep blue paint and little suns painted on the walls that weren't covered in books—she spoke again. "I met a girl earlier, named Gwenna, who seemed to know you well. She is your woman, yes?"
Caymus nearly broke his stride in surprise. "No!" he said, with greater volume than he'd intended. More quietly, he began, "At least..." but then couldn't seem to think of a way to put it succinctly. "No," he finally said, "she's not my woman."
"You appear uncertain in the matter," she said. "It seems a strange thing to be uncertain of."
Caymus didn't have an answer for that. She was right, after all.
They stepped through a large double-door into the small, square courtyard at Flamehearth. The only light was the soft glow of a half-moon, and the only sounds were those played by a handful of crickets, a number of which halted their songs the moment the two figures intruded into their space. A narrow, stone path encircled the perimeter of the grassy area, along with small, stone benches, flower beds, and a few dry rose bushes.
Off to one side, a round-looking man was bent over on the ground, his hands and his forehead pressed into the dying grass. He wore a blue alb, the same color as Aiella's dress, with a darker-blue stole over his shoulders. Both were covered in bits of dead plant matter.
"Sit or stand, I don't care," came the man's voice, "just quit moving." Caymus could hear Aiella's manner of speech much more strongly in him, and now that he was getting a full dose of it, he realized that it wasn't an accent at all, but rather a very deliberate pronunciation of every word, as though each one held vast amounts of importance and meaning. He heard a fair amount of frustration in the voice, too.
Aiella grabbed Caymus and pulled him over to sit next to her on one of the benches. Caymus leaned over to whisper to her, "I didn't mean to break his concentration."
She regarded him with a frown, as though he wasn't understanding something obvious. She spoke without whispering. "It is not a question of concentration. He is searching for water and our bodies are full of it. If we are moving about, it makes the finding of other sources more difficult."
Caymus nodded. He hadn't considered that. He knew that the blood in their bodies was largely composed of water, but didn't think of it as something the man would have to intentionally ignore.
"You do not spend much time with non-fire worshipers. Am I right?" Aiella cocked an eyebrow at him, as though accusing him of something.
She had a point. Caymus had felt a little backward on more than one occasion since he'd arrived in Kepren. "You're right," he said. "I suppose I am a little out of my element." He grinned at the pun, not having intended it. Aiella just shook her head and looked back to her father.
Caymus remembered something Matron Elia had said. "Where is the Summit?" he asked. "The Keeper said you were from there. I hadn't heard of it before tonight."
She paused before answering, as though deciding the worthiness of the question. "Creveya lies nestled in the eastern arms of the Greatstone Mountains." She glanced over at him. "You know where the Greatstones are, yes?"
Caymus nodded. "We crossed them to get here. Is the Summit part of Creveya, then?"
"Creveya is a lake," she said with an exasperated sigh. "It is a holy place for those that live on and around its shores. Creveya, the Summit, covers the western shore, rising up to Gavran's Peak. On the eastern side is Creveya, the Tower, filled with people who wish nothing more than to destroy the Summit and claim Creveya for themselves, entirely."
"Destroy?" Caymus said, his face knotting in confusion. "I don't understand, what is it about this tower that makes the people in it want to destroy you?"
Aiella, her gaze narrowing, turned to give him a long, hard look, as though trying to decide whether he was foolish, ignorant, or simply mocking her. Her eyes were oceans of deep browns, flecked with islands of hazel, which threatened to drown him.
Finally, she looked away again. "There is no actual tower in Creveya, the Tower, not anymore. The city is so named because of a tower that once stood there, just as Creveya, the Summit was named for the view of the lake that Gavran's Peak used to offer. The Tower and the Summit have always been enemies, fighting for control of Creveya." She tilted her head toward the man in the courtyard. "My father is the ambassador for the Summit. Somewhere in this city, right now, is the Tower's representative."
Caymus considered her words. He had difficulty imagining the place she was describing: two cities, on either side of a lake, which were at constant war over that lake. It seemed preposterous. "And you fight over the lake?" he asked. "Why?"
Aiella sniffed. "As I said, it is a holy place for all that live there." She paused, reaching up to pull a strand of hair out of her eyes and brush it away. "There has not been much actual fighting for many years now, but the peace will not last. Sooner or later, one side will attack the other, and the Tower and the Summit will battle each other again." Her voice sounded sad as she said it, and Caymus felt, for the first time since he'd met her, that there might be a beating heart under the young woman's hard exterior.
"It sounds like a hard place to live," he said, not knowing what else to say.
Aiella seemed to consider this awhile, but didn't address the thought. "The Tower's ambassador, too, has been helping to find water in Kepren in the last months, trying to earn more favor for his people than my father earns for ours," she smiled, "but he is not nearly as good. My father is better at pulling water than anyone else in the Summit, certainly in the Tower."
"Pulling?" Caymus was intrigued by the word. On the few times he'd spoken to Milo about the way he summoned gusts of wind, he'd discovered that while the things fire and air priests did to work in their respective elements seemed, on the surface, to be similar, they used a completely different vocabulary, so it was hard to make real comparisons. The idea that water priests might 'pull' their element in the same way a master of the Conflagration would was very interesting indeed.
Caymus reached out with his mind, probing the area around the ambassador, trying to get a feel for what he might be doing. With some surprise, he found that he could, indeed, feel something opening up, very like a conduit, but very different also. Where he was used to opening conduits that extended from his world to the Conflagration, this one seemed to have both ends anchored nearby.
Very suddenly, Caymus's concentration was broken when Aiella smacked his face. "What is the matter with you!" she yelled. "Have you no decency!"
Caymus's cheek stung and his head rattled from the slap. He rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand, confused as to what had brought her ire down upon him. Before he could give voice to his confusion, though, the ambassador spoke. "Leave him alone, daughter," the man said, turning his head to level a gaze at Caymus. "The boy is a fool."
Caymus, still a little stunned, watched as Aiella rose and stormed off to go and sit on a bench that was closer to her father. He wasn't sure what had just happened.
"I am very nearly done, anyway," said Brocke. "My dear, would you pump the handle on that apparatus a few times for me?"
Aiella did as she was asked, getting up and grabbing the iron handle, then raising and lowering it a handful of times.
"Keep going," said Brocke, his head sti
ll pressed to the ground. Aiella obediently complied, pumping the handle another dozen times or so until a small trickle of water dripped down from the spout.
"Good," said Brocke, rising to his knees, "you can stop. Thank you, my dear." The man finished, pushed himself up to his feet, and then turned his gaze upon Caymus. With a stern look on his face, he walked right up to him. Caymus could see a look of hot anger in the man's eyes. His round face and short stature did nothing to diminish the menace in his countenance. Caymus felt the need to stand as Brocke place himself directly in front of him and stared, menacingly, into his eyes. He seemed about to say something harsh and angry, but then his face softened, just a little.
"You are Caymus, aren't you? Be'Var's student."
Caymus nodded, trying to keep the apprehension out of his voice. "Yes."
Brocke nodded and sighed deeply. "You are new to this ability and to this culture, child, so I will forgive your intrusion this night." He raised a finger, pointing it at Caymus's chest. "You should know, however, that where I come from, had you intruded on a man's mind like that, one of us would now be lying, bloody and broken, upon the ground." He put the finger away. "Do we understand one another?"
Caymus nodded in the affirmative. Brocke then reached up to clap him on the chest, nodded without a hint of a smile, and walked out of the courtyard. As he passed through the doorway, he brought a small box out of a pocket, drew something Caymus couldn't see out of it, brought it to each nostril, and sniffed.
Before she followed her father out, Aiella stood in the doorway and gave Caymus a long, cold look, as though she were trying to decide on what method she would use to torture him later. When he didn't speak, but only reached up to smooth his stinging cheek again, she turned and walked out.
"I'm afraid that was my fault." Caymus turned to see Be'Var standing in one of the several doorways that led into the courtyard.
Caymus eyed him suspiciously. "Have you been there long?"
"Long enough," said Be'Var, stepping across the courtyard with his hands clasped behind his back. He motioned at Caymus's hand, still rubbing his face, with a small smile. "The girl didn't hit you too hard, did she?"
Knight Of The Flame Page 30