Knight Of The Flame

by H John Spriggs

  "Is he any better?"

  Be'Var turned to see Gwenna standing in the doorway, a stack of folded towels and blankets in her arms. Be'Var was glad to see that, unlike Bridget, she wasn't crying. Gwenna was a sweet girl, generally, but when it came to taking care of the sick and injured, she was all business.

  This, of course, wasn't the first time she'd seen Caymus laid up like this, either.

  "I don't think so," he replied. "Come in, please," he said, waving her in. "Let's get those blankets over him."

  The two of them worked quietly, piling the soft materials over their patient. He'd already been covered with his own travel blanket and with the rug that had previously lain on this room's floor, so by the time they were finished, he appeared as though enveloped in some kind of cocoon.

  "Master Be'Var, what's wrong with him?" Gwenna asked as she placed the last item, a rather threadbare-looking towel, over the boy's chest.

  Be'Var looked down at him with a scowl. "I wish I knew. It has something to do with this flame-cursed kreal." Heaving a big sigh, he rubbed the top of his head as he looked about the room. "We know that it can pass through earth, that it barely reacts to fire, and that it has some kind of negative effect with water," he said, "but the body is a complicated thing, with a mix of all four elements. Those four, the ones that are supposed to be there, are trying to deal with a fifth, that isn't. I can only imagine the havoc it's wreaking."

  Gwenna, standing on the other side of the bed, looked toward the door and smiled. Be'Var turned to see Tavrin, the Falaar boy, standing in the doorway, holding his own stack of sundries. He was smiling, too.

  Be'Var managed to suppress an irritated sigh. Young people were always so willing to be the causes of their own trouble. He was sure Caymus had noticed the pair when the boys had met the Keeper, earlier that day. The stares between the two of them had only become more pronounced after he and Rill had left. Burn me, Be'Var thought, if I weren't so tired, I'd be bloody well irritated on your behalf, boy.

  "The Keeper found these," Tavrin said, holding up the bundle to Be'Var. "Are they needed?"

  Be'Var waved toward a corner of the room. "Put them there for now," he said. "We just put another handful of layers on him. I want to see if they have any effect before we go suffocating him any further."

  As Tavrin obediently placed the linens on the floor, Be'Var reached under the sheets to feel Caymus's arm. It was still cold. Flaming dog-spit, but he didn't seem to be making any difference.

  "Is there more I can do now?" said Tavrin, looking at Caymus's still form.

  "No!" said Be'Var. He tried to keep the anger out of his voice but—confound it—he was angry, and, in the moment, he didn't care whom he took it out on. "No," he said again, more gently, then looked at the boy out of the corner of his eye. "Thank you, Tavrin."

  "What about me?" said Gwenna. She knelt down next to the bed. "I'll stay up with you, if you like."

  Be'Var looked up at her and saw the concern in her face. The girl did, at least, have the makings of a good nurse, and he had to admit he wouldn't mind the company. "A little while, yes, thank you Gwenna," he said. "If this doesn't end soon, we'll have to start watching him in shifts but, for now, it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep two pairs of eyes on him."

  Gwenna nodded, a serious look on her face, and stood, grabbing a stool that had been placed against the wall. As she moved, she looked toward the doorway. "I'll see you later, Tavrin?"

  Be'Var didn't see the boy leave, but assumed he'd nodded in agreement. Gwenna smiled just the smallest amount, then drew the stool up and sat on the other side of the bed from Be'Var. She turned her face down to look at Caymus, but then shifted slightly to look up at Be'Var. "Caymus saw it, you know? He told Milo that he didn't like him."

  Be'Var nodded. He wasn't surprised to hear it. He, too, had held concerns about Callun from the start, especially when Caymus had started complaining about that odd sensation on his neck. Burn him, but why hadn't he just listened to those concerns and gotten that man as far away from Flamehearth as possible? Why hadn't they just left the dead-eyed creep to die out in the desert?

  Idly, he wondered if Caymus's neck had reacted to the man himself or to the dagger he carried. Could the bastard's haggard look have had something to do with some amount of kreal in his makeup?

  "We couldn't have just left him out there though, could we?" said Gwenna, interrupting his thoughts. "I mean, we had to give him the benefit of the doubt, didn't we?"

  Be'Var groaned. "We didn't, but that's what we chose to do. Ninety-five times in a hundred, it would have been the right decision."

  "And five times in a hundred, it gets Caymus killed." She barely choked out the last word. Be'Var looked up at Gwenna to see an unacknowledged tear running down her cheek.

  "He's not dead yet, Gwenna." He tried to manage a look of optimism. "And I think that if he were going to die, he would have done so by now."

  Gwenna didn't respond to that. Be'Var didn't blame her. Why had he been so careless with that man? Now that he'd seen Callun's true character, he wondered who he really was, whether he had actually been dying out in the desert and happened upon them, or whether the whole thing had been staged, a trap for Caymus from the beginning.

  He also wondered if the man was entirely human. If he was infected with kreal somehow, would the word 'human' even apply anymore?

  And now, Caymus, even if he was managing to recover from the dark substance's invasion into his body, was out of commission, unable to learn more about the Aspect of shaping, to spar with the prince, or even to get angry about Tavrin. He wondered again about Gwenna's feelings for the boy. In his long years, he'd known women who were careless with their emotions; she'd never struck him as one of those. He wondered, too about Brocke's daughter, Aiella. He'd noticed her taking a greater-than-usual interest in Caymus when he'd walked in the door. Caymus had seemed surprised when he'd warned him about staying away from her. That made Be'Var smile. Bless the boy and his oft-oblivious nature. Then, the smile vanished. Obliviousness might just have been the thing that had gotten them here.

  He wondered how much time it would take, how long he would have to wait by this bed, before he would finally find out if this young man who was becoming like a son to him—perhaps a grandson, come to think of it—even stood a chance of waking up. He'd seen Caymus out cold before, had forced him into the situation that had put him there, but he'd known what to do in the days after the attack on the Temple, had known the boy would eventually rise.

  He took another deep breath. The helpless feeling was rising in him again. Between the news from Madd's Hollow and Albreva, and now Caymus, the feeling of loss was becoming unbearable.

  "Flames," Be'Var exclaimed, startling Gwenna, "how am I going to get my research done if he stays like this?"

  Gwenna wiped her cheek. "Research?" she said. "About Caymus?"

  Be'Var nodded. "About shaping, yes." He knew that finding out more about the ancient elemental war—he'd heard Gu'ruk call it the Old War—about shaping, about this new enemy of theirs, was tremendously important. He also knew that if Caymus continued this way, his own plans of dredging through Kepren's various libraries were likely to be impossible. He considered the problem a long moment. "I'm going to have to find someone to do the research for me, I suppose."

  ***

  Caymus was alone.

  He didn't remember waking up, didn't remember anything between the moment he'd fallen to the ground and the moment he'd suddenly found himself here, in this strange place. Although, maybe it wasn't so strange: the trees around him had a ring of familiarity about them, as did the night sky above him. He'd been here before, but when?

  Rising to his hands and knees, he put fingers to his forehead, trying to clear his mind. He felt as though there was some impairment to his vision that was stopping him from seeing the place clearly, but that the impairment had nothing to do with his eyes. He felt as disoriented as if he'd been driven from a sound sleep.

 
He held himself still, trying to focus on the stone in the middle of the clearing, trying to clear the fog from his mind. He knew that stone, reaching high up into the sky, but there was something wrong about it, something that didn't make sense. If only he could figure out where he was.

  With the severity of a hammer strike, the realization hit him. He was in Milo's clearing! He looked around, remembering each tree, each rock and encircling blade of grass. Every piece seemed to have a strange way of falling into place the moment he remembered the way it should look, as though he were creating the place with his own recollections. He couldn't shake the feeling, though, that he was missing something; even the smell of the grass was right, but there was still something wrong with what he was seeing.

  When he took another glance at the stone plinth, he had it: the plinth was whole. He had thought he and Milo had ruined it with their lance of fire, hadn't they? He wasn't sure. He had the strange sensation that he was somehow out of his own time, that it wasn't that somebody had repaired the plinth, but that he had returned to a time before he had destroyed it. Did that make sense?

  He closed his eyes, focused on his breathing, tried to bring the thoughts in his head into some kind of order. Finally, he pushed the thoughts away, treating them as distractions, and just tried to think about breathing in and out. After a moment, he noticed the feel of the dirt under his hands, the way it felt cool against his palms. His mind was coming back to him, slowly, in pieces. The clearing was coming into better focus in his mind.

  He was cold. As the world around him came back into order, he realized he was shivering. Cautiously, he opened his eyes, looked at the branches and leaves of the vegetation about the edge of the clearing, checked for evidence of the biting wind that must be sapping the warmth from his body. There was no movement in the trees, though, no sound at all. Whatever was making him so cold, it wasn't wind.

  The most startling thing happened when he looked up. He discovered there were no stars in the sky, that no moon hung over his head in the night. Above the tree line, there was only an endless blackness.

  "Do not let fear take you, Caymus."

  Caymus's head whirled around, looking for the source of the voice. At the same time, his eyes widened and his pulse raced. He knew that voice, knew the last time he had heard it: it was his own, and he had heard it when he had stepped into the Conduit. He expected at any moment to see the glowing eyes of the Lords of the Conflagration float into place before him. After what seemed like ages of waiting, however, they failed to appear.

  "Where are you?" he yelled.

  "We are always here," replied his own voice. It was calm, thoughtful, as though telling him a story.

  "Here?" said Caymus. His feeling of being displaced in time was evaporating with each moment, and he was becoming quite certain he wasn't actually in Milo's clearing. "Where is here?"

  "Your body is dying, Caymus," said the voice. It seemed to be coming from no particular direction, yet it was definitely emanating from somewhere outside his own head. "We have brought you here in order to save it."

  Caymus shuddered. He remembered the knife now, remembered the icy chill of its bite into his flesh. He lifted his arm up to examine it, but the wound wasn't there. Where was the cut? Why was he so cold? "What do you mean, 'my body'?" he asked, knowing he was sounding defensive. "I'm right here! I'm cold, but I'm not dying!" He kept turning around, hoping to catch a glimpse of the speaker that was using his voice. "Where are you!" he shouted, again, into the blackness.

  An eternity seemed to pass as Caymus stood there, his eyes drifting over the edges of the clearing, waiting for someone to answer him. Then, he caught sight of movement: something was coming through the trees, something that made no noise.

  Caymus took a couple of steps backward, reflexively. He reached for the sword at his belt, and discovered it wasn't there. He fought off the feeling of panic as a figure finally emerged from the trees of the Saleri Forest and strode into the clearing.

  Caymus gasped. He had been expecting an image of himself, but it was Milo that strode up to him. At least, it was almost Milo. The light blue clothing was there, the bow and quiver were at his back, even the feathery wings hung from his arms. Milo's ready smile, though, was absent. In its place was a stony demeanor that betrayed no hint of expression or emotion. The effect was ghastly.

  "Who are you?" Caymus asked the image of his friend.

  "We are those who tested you." The voice was still Caymus's. The effect of Milo speaking with his own voice was disquieting. "We are those who marked you." The image of Milo gestured toward his hand. Caymus found the familiar sword and flame mark there. "We are those who must now depend on you." As the figure spoke, its expression turned from a complete lack of emotion to that of resolute determination and seriousness.

  "Depend on me?" Caymus, confused and freezing, was getting frustrated, feeling like he had been placed in the middle of some kind of game, and that he didn't know the rules. "What is going on?" he said, angrily. "Where am I?"

  The serious look on the image's face turned to one of sympathy, and it inhaled deeply before speaking again. "You'd probably better sit down, Caymus." The voice was now Milo's, the expressions and mannerisms becoming more like the real Milo by the second. The figure indicated the space between the two of them.

  Caymus considered arguing, but after another shudder racked his shoulders, he decided against it and dropped to sit, cross-legged, on the ground. After the image of Milo did the same, its expression turned serious again, almost somber. "You're dying, Caymus," he said. "You were stabbed with a kreal-covered blade by one through whom the kreal works. The element is coursing through your body as we speak. Do you remember the knife?"

  Caymus, feelings of suspicion rising, nodded slowly. "I remember," he said. "The man we picked up in the desert, Callun—no, he called himself Mrowvain just before he tried to stab me!" He looked at unbroken flesh of his arm again. "So how did I get here?"

  "You didn't," said Milo. "Or, at least, your body didn't. Your body lies in the Quatrain, fighting the invasion of the kreal, but losing." Milo's lips pulled to one side. "Your body is dying a very slow death."

  Caymus, about to balk at this, was stilled when Milo held his hand up, begging silence while he continued. "We brought you here, to the Conflagration, partly so as to slow the battle raging in your blood, and partly to give you what you will need to learn to win that battle.”

  Caymus looked around at the all-too-familiar clearing. "I stepped through the Conduit once," he said. "I've been to the Conflagration. This is not it."

  Milo smiled. He'd picked up a small stick and had begun spinning it with the fingers of one hand. It was almost like having the real Milo there. Caymus wondered if he might just be confused, whether this was the real Milo. "What you call ‘The Conduit’ is a direct path from the Quatrain into the Conflagration. It is the only such path that exists.” He waved an arm about them, indicating the clearing. “This is the Conflagration, but the fact that we had to bring you here without the benefit of the Conduit means that you’re coming to see it slowly.”

  Caymus looked around again, trying to make sense of it in his mind. “Last time I was here,” he said, “my whole body was here.” His eyes turned to fix on the image of Milo. “You’re saying that’s not the case this time, that my body is still...where I left it?”

  The image nodded. “It takes power and effort you cannot begin to understand to bring you here the way we did, but we couldn’t bring you completely, not without the Conduit. If you had been here completely, we would have been able to remove the kreal from your blood ourselves.” The image frowned. “But that wasn’t possible.”

  “So, it’s...what? My mind? My spirit that’s here instead?”

  The thing wearing Milo’s face smiled and tilted his head. “In a sense, yes. You know that part of you that you send beyond yourself in order to sense the elements around you?”

  Caymus nodded. The image was even starting to talk like
Milo now.

  “It’s the same thing. It's the part of you that exists without your body, lives independently of the flesh.” Milo broke the stick in his hands and held one half of it up before him. “That’s the part we brought here.”

  Caymus blinked at the piece of stick. “Why?”

  Milo put the stick down, heaved a huge sigh, and placed his hands on his knees. “Because you must live.” His eyes took on a serious, almost angry countenance, much more severe than any expression the real Milo would ever have worn. "We don't know how the denizens of the Sograve, the realm of kreal, found a way into the Quatrain, but they are pressing their attack and are gaining ground. The alliance of the Quatrain, the one that ended the Old War and formed your world into what it is now, prevents us from taking direct action, and so we must choose new champions to act on our behalf."

  “Knights,” said Caymus.

  The figure betrayed a small smile, but then gazed off into the distance, as though reliving some ancient memory. “In the Old War, there were two: The Knight of the Stone, called the Earthwarden by his companions, and the Knight of the Flame. They were the true champions of their realms, beings that were born with the ability to channel the power of their element into martial weapons like no others. It was through their efforts, and the efforts of the other members of the Quatrain, that the war was won. Their posts have been vacant, unneeded, for millennia.”

  Caymus considered the figure’s words. What he was saying seemed consistent with what he’d learned amongst the relics of Otvia. He had so many questions, though. “The Quatrain,” he said. “That’s your name for our world?”

  Milo’s image picked at the small stones around him as it spoke. “The Quatrain is the name of the alliance between our realm and those of earth, air, and water. It is also the name of the result of that alliance, the world that you know.” The figure brought its hands together, intertwining its fingers. “The two are intimately linked, the alliance and your world. We give you substance. In return, you give us life."