Knight Of The Flame

by H John Spriggs

  "I'll live," Caymus said, as he dropped the hand down to his side and stared at the doorway by which the girl in question had left. "What happened there, anyway?"

  Be'Var motioned that he should sit, and took the space on the bench next to him. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands together before himself. "Well," he began, exhaling the word, "in the Temple, especially when training a new disciple, we make a lot of allowances for the co-mingling of minds as they work together, for instructive purposes. It's not like that out in much of the rest of the world."

  Caymus kept up his suspicious gaze. "What do you mean?" he said.

  "It's a boundary that most people don't cross," Be'Var said, a near-apologetic tone in his voice. "Reaching out and touching someone else's mind," he sighed, "in some cultures, such as that of the people of Creveya, it's considered a rather intimate way to touch someone."

  "Oh." Caymus could feel his face turning red. "You don't mean I—"

  "Just made an advance on Kepren's ambassador from Creveya, the Summit?" Be'Var smiled and put a hand on Caymus's shoulder. "No, not exactly, but if I were you, I wouldn't go poking around anywhere near Ambassador Brocke again without his inviting you to."

  Caymus looked about the courtyard in thought, trying to make sense of this new city, with all of these strange, new people. "I think Aiella was more upset about it than he was."

  "I met Brocke once, many years ago," Be'Var said, in response. "He's a good man, but, like any Creveyan, his head is full of prejudice and suspicion. Having your worst enemy in the world living just the other side of a lake—albeit a rather large lake—does that to a person. He tends to rub people the wrong way." Taking his hand from Caymus's shoulder, he leaned back against the wall behind the bench. "Tonight was my first time meeting his daughter. For the brief time they were here before you and Rill came stumbling in, I got the impression that she's a bit protective of him." He gave a long, tired sigh. "If she's not careful, she's going to end up just like him."

  Caymus looked back at him. "What do you mean?

  Be'Var closed his eyes, looking as though their long days of travel had finally caught up with him. "Creveyans have been fighting about that over-sized pond for centuries. It's only in the last decade or two that there hasn't been actual open war between the Tower and the Summit. Brocke's generation, and all the generations before his, know only hate for the people across the lake." He shook his head, slowly, as he continued. "Aiella and the other youngsters have never known actual fighting, but it wouldn't take much for someone to ignite the spark of war again."

  "What's so special about the lake?" asked Caymus. It had been the only thing he hadn't yet figured out about the situation.

  Be'Var opened his eyes and turned to look at his student. "It's a lot like the Conduit," he said, "as far as I'm aware. You know the Temple started as a fortress, claiming dominion over our link to the Conflagration, right?"

  Caymus nodded. "I remember."

  "It's much the same with Creveya. It has something to do with the worship of the water element, and it's important to both the peoples of the Tower and the Summit that they have access to it. Don't understand it myself, but then I'm not a water worshiper." He leaned his head back again. "One day, it will all be settled, and I'm sure it will be a lot like the Conduit, but, for now, the battle for control goes on. I just hope they can keep the peace a little while longer. Hopefully the krealites helped with that a bit."

  Caymus didn't like Be'Var ascribing any kind of positive quality to the creatures they'd been fighting, but if the Summit and the Tower really hated each other as much as it seemed, then he supposed that their having a common enemy might, in fact, be a good thing. Something Be'Var said struck at him, though. "Why just a little longer? Is something going to happen soon?"

  Be'Var straightened at the question, turned Caymus toward him to look him in the eyes. He had a serious expression on his face, though his voice was gentle, "Caymus, I want you to keep this next part to yourself. Do you think you can do that? If you don't think you can do that, I'd rather not burden you with the responsibility."

  Caymus nodded. He was better than most at keeping secrets, though he wondered what could possibly be so sensitive as to be kept from everybody, but common enough that Be'Var would trust him with it. "I can," he said. "I will."

  "Good," said Be'Var. He leaned back again, though the tiredness was gone from his face. "While we were traveling, those friends of Milo's, the ones that were passing messages back and forth, kept on talking to each other. Have you heard of Albreva or Madd's Hollow?"

  Caymus had heard the names before. He vaguely remembered his father mentioning a ship in the yards that was destined for a place called Albreva. "I've heard of them," he said, "but I don't know where they are."

  Be'Var nodded. "Albreva is a long way north of the Greatstone Mountains, farther out that most Tebrians will ever travel. Madd's Hollow is many leagues further north than that, and I don't know anyone, other than one or two of Milo's friends, who's ever been there." Be'Var shifted a bit and smoothed out his robes. "Just after we left the Temple, Madd's Hollow went silent. Nobody's heard from it since."

  Caymus considered the news. "Couldn't it just be that the priest that was sending messages from there left?"

  "That's what they thought at first," said Be'Var, "but yesterday, the priest in Albreva stopped talking to us, too." He paused a long time before continuing. "The last thing he said was that the city was being choked in dust and that there was a mass of blackness coming from the North."

  Caymus frowned. Dust? Blackness? "What does that mean?" he asked. He noticed he was rubbing the back of his hand again.

  "I served in the Kepren physicians' corps for a long time," said Be'Var, who had shifted his gaze to the stars above the city. "The only things I know of that cause that kind of choking dust—blackness or no—are a sandstorm or a marching army." He paused. "Albreva isn't in a desert."

  "And the blackness?" said Caymus, growing concerned. "You think it's kreal, don't you?"

  Be'Var squinted as he spoke, as though trying to pick out a particular star. "An army would definitely look like a giant mass from a distance. Considering the enemy we face, I would expect that the force to be made in large part, if not entirely, of kreal."

  Caymus looked at the ground. "And they're still coming south." It wasn't a question.

  Be'Var nodded. "That's the thinking." He sighed and looked back to his student. "It's what the prince is thinking, anyway. You were right that he didn't come tonight just to say hello to an old man."

  Caymus managed a small smile and looked sideways at Master Be'Var. "Did you actually save his life?"

  Be'Var nodded, though there was no smile in it. "That I did."

  His brow knitting together, Caymus sat up straighter. "Why tell me all of this?" he said. "Why me and nobody else?"

  Be'Var met Caymus's eyes, looking at him a long time with a blank expression. Caymus could see the master's eyes darting slightly to the left and right as he stared. Finally, the old man reached down and took his left hand, then turned it over, palm down. He pointed to the mark upon his flesh. "That's why," he said. He let the hand drop. "I don't yet understand why, but the Lords of the Conflagration are telling us you're important. Therefore, I need you to know what's going on, even if we don't understand it all yet."

  Caymus brought the hand up again, staring at the sword and flame on his skin. "Why keep it a secret?" he said. "If there's an army coming, why not tell people so they can prepare?"

  "Some people would prepare," said Be'Var. "Many more would just panic. If it were a handful of people panicking, that would be one thing, but a whole city?" Be'Var shook his head. "We'd be dead before the army even got here." He looked at Caymus severely. "You understand?" The words were spoken with as much authority as Caymus had ever heard from the man.

  He closed his eyes, dropped his head, and nodded. "I understand."

  "Good." With that, B
e'Var stood and stretched. "Well," he said, "I'd better see if our guests are still here, and make sure Brocke isn't too furious with you."

  Caymus affected a slight, embarrassed smile. "I'll have to apologize to him when I get a chance," he said. "And to Aiella."

  Be'Var, who had been stepping away, turned and looked at him. "I know you won't listen, but I'd recommend keeping your distance from both of them. They're both the dangerous sort, and I think the prince has particular interests in Brocke's daughter, if you didn't catch on to that earlier." Be'Var smiled. "Garrin's an honorable man, but don't think he won't challenge you to a duel if he thinks you have the same intentions."

  "Don't worry," said Caymus, putting his hands up in supplication, "I don't. She's a bit icy, to be honest. I'll stay away."

  With that, the old man turned and walked away. Caymus wondered briefly if the two Creveyans were still inside, and hoped Be'Var would have a chance to make things right between him and them. He really should go find Gwenna and say hello. He'd lost track of time and didn't know how long it had been since he'd gotten back to the mission, but he was fairly certain that she should still be awake.

  As he stood to leave, though, he caught sight of the small hand pump, out of which Aiella and Brocke had just coaxed a few drops of water. As he stepped over to it, he thought to reach out and see if there was anything left of what it was Brocke had been doing. As he let his mind wander, he searched for the conduit-like sensation he'd felt before, but nothing was there. He had been hoping that there would be at least some manner of residue or other leftover evidence of power in the ground, but the dirt and the grass beneath his feet continued to feel resolutely normal.

  Disappointed, he squatted down next to the pump. The device was comprised of a large cylinder, with a small spout and a long handle on the top, which curved down the opposite side. He grabbed the handle the same way Aiella had and pumped it a few times, experimentally. A trickle of water came out, though not nearly as much as he'd expected.

  As he splashed the small handful of water on his face to wipe the day's grime and sweat from his skin, he wondered if Brocke's efforts had been worth such a small gain. He thought that his interference in the process might have caused it not to work as well as it had. He felt a bit guilty about that.

  As he pulled a dry part of his tunic up to mop his face, he felt the tingling on the back of his neck again. It was stronger now, uncomfortable, where it had only been a nagging sensation in the last couple of days.

  Expecting he might have some trouble, he turned around and stood. In the darkness before him, stood Callun, staring at him with an intensity that made him take an uneasy step back. "Callun?" he said, trying to keep the tension out of his voice. "Can I help you?"

  Something that was partway between a sneer and a smile played across Callun's face. His dead eyes, at long last, had come to life, staring at Caymus with a surprising ferocity, one which seemed to bore into his soul. He quickly took a step forward, and then another. "Mrowvain, actually," he said. In those two words, Caymus detected that the accent he'd been hearing for the last two days had suddenly vanished completely. "My name is Mrowvain, not Callun."

  The dark eyes registered disappointment when they realized that Caymus didn't recognize the name.

  Caymus only just caught the glint of the knife, the blade turned up in a tight fist, before the hand holding it quickly rose to strike him, aiming for his gut. Caymus reacted without thinking, turning to the side and reaching out a level arm to block Callun's forearm before the knife could make contact. He fended off the attack, but before he could move again, his attacker drew his arm back and the double-sided blade sliced across his wrist.

  Caymus grunted. He didn't think the cut could be very deep, but the knife seemed to burn his flesh. His entire arm, in fact, suddenly felt like it was going numb. Before the knife could come around for another attack, Caymus stepped off his back foot and threw it forward, planting a hard kick in his attacker's sternum. Callun—Mrowvain, if what the man had just said could be believed—would probably have been knocked from his feet, but he'd already been stepping backward in retreat. Instead, he stumbled back a few steps, then turned to run through one of the courtyard doors.

  Caymus moved to follow, but when he brought his foot down, the leg buckled under him, and he fell on his side. The arm that had been cut was now completely lifeless to him. He realized he was bellowing in shock and pain. What was wrong with him? He couldn't bring his arm up to see the wound; he was certain it couldn't have been that deep!

  With a grunt of frustration, he tried to stand. With great effort, he got as far as he knees, but he didn't have the strength to rise any further. His vision was starting to spin before him. His ears were ringing. Callun—Mrowvain—was gone. Caymus, looking at the doorway he'd escaped through—the same doorway through which Brocke and Aiella had left—tried to yell for help, but he wasn't sure if any sound came out. He couldn't understand why he couldn't hear, why his arms were both dead, useless weights to him.

  Hardly able to think, he managed to use what remained of his strength to fall to his side, rather than on his face. As he lay on the ground, struggling to breathe, he noticed a knife on the ground. It was the one that had just been used to cut him. The knife—a dagger, really—wasn't unusual-looking; it was constructed with a wire-wrapped hilt and a narrow guard, and had the general shape of a boot-knife. The blade, though, was a deep gray color, so dark as to be nearly black. It didn't look like metal. He thought, with childlike wonder, that it looked a lot like the armor of the krealites.

  Caymus knew that people were near him, yelling at him, and that hands were turning him on his back. He couldn't understand what they were saying.

  He wondered what they were so angry about as he felt himself take leave of his body and depart the world he had just been getting to know.

  CHAPTER 13

  Be'Var held his head in his hands, breathing deeply, trying to keep calm, to keep his thoughts from turning dark and getting away from him. He was actually frightened for the first time in what must have been decades. And tired. Flames, but he was so tired. He felt a great weariness in his bones, felt the tension of the last few weeks pulling at his tendons. How he was able to think straight lately, much less bend his mind to working with the Conflagration, was beyond his ability to comprehend.

  When he finally let out a long breath and looked up, he noticed that the one of the candles, sitting alone on the little table on his right, just to the left of his patient's head, had gone out, its wax having spilled out over the little brass candlestick that had held it for the last few hours. The room looked the way he felt: dark and dreary. Without thinking about it consciously, he reached into the table's drawer and pulled out another little wax cylinder. He'd conjured the conduit to light the wick before he'd even placed it in the brass holder.

  Burn him, but he didn't know how to help!

  He replayed the scene in his mind. Brocke and his daughter had left moments earlier, as had Garrin a short while before that. He and Elia had still been in the front room, discussing the evening's events, trying to decide what they should try to accomplish the following day, when Callun had burst like a thunderclap through the interior door, nearly knocking both of them down, then had disappeared out the front entrance. Be'Var might have followed after him if not for the screaming he'd been able to hear from a voice he knew all-too-well. The two had followed the sounds to the courtyard where Rill and Gwenna had been kneeling over Caymus's prone form, a dark blade lying in the dry grass at his side.

  After first checking that he was still breathing, and that he didn't appear to have any obviously mortal wounds, the four of them, working together, had carried him through to this small, dark room and into this bed. Be'Var had spent the time since then by his young friend's side, trying to figure out what had happened to him and, more to the point, what to do about it.

  He'd been optimistic at first. The first thing his healer's eye had noticed was a deep,
clean cut across the side of the boy's right wrist, which hadn't seemed a serious injury at all. The area around the cut, however, had been so red and inflamed that, if he hadn't known better, Be'Var would have assumed that it carried some deadly infection. Even the worst case of gangrene, though, took more than a few minutes to set in like that. Confused, not knowing what else to do about it, he'd closed the wound and bandaged it.

  Rill had brought in the dagger. The dagger, of course, had been the problem. Be'Var had recognized the color of kreal on it, though a bit of scratching had revealed it to be a normal, steel blade, with only a light coating of the sickly substance on its surface.

  What had that blade done to the boy?

  Be'Var held Caymus's wrist again. His pulse was weak, his breathing slow. His eyes didn't flutter under their lids, so he wasn't simply in some kind of deep sleep. Most alarming was his temperature: the boy's skin was cold to the touch, colder even than Be'Var would have expected from a corpse. The old master had spent a good deal of time gently coaxing the fire element into Caymus's body, trying to raise the warmth in his core, but the effort had been to no avail.

  Be'Var had been a healer for years, had come across every affliction or malady that had ever come upon a soldier, knew how to deal with every one of them. At least, that's what he had thought until now. This new element changed everything. It wasn't a part of their world, part of their bodies' makeup. He had no idea what kreal, rampaging through a person's body, would do to the flesh and organs, had no idea how to counteract its effects.

  So far, at least, the substance appeared to have reached the limit of the damage it could do; either that, or Caymus was just incredibly strong-willed. Be'Var allowed himself a small smile; he wasn't sure which option he most wanted to be true.

  Flames, but what was he going to do?