Firehurler (Twinborn Trilogy) (19 page)

Brushing aside the need to figure out how best to
document his research, Kyrus figured on spending the rest of the evening
playing and practicing. There would be time to be a scientist and wizard later.
He might well wake up the next morning and find that his powers had disappeared
as swiftly as they had been discovered, or so he told himself; he ought to
enjoy it a bit at least.

Kyrus tossed the spoon in the air, quickly repeating
the incantation:
“Haru bedaessi leoki kwatuan gelora.”

He lifted his palms and finished the spell just before
the spoon touched the floor. With the spoon hovering a handspan above the
floorboards, he slowly continued to raise his hands, trying to get the spoon to
rise higher. The spoon did a fair impression of his own movement, moving up as
fast as he moved his hands, just as he had hoped. Kyrus extended his arms fully
above his head, then got up on his toes; the spoon was nearly waist high.

Kyrus lowered his hands again and was able to set the
spoon down on the floor. He repeated this game a few more times, finding that
he could move it not only up and down, but to the side as well. He kept at it
for longer than he had meant to and was interrupted by his light abruptly
winking out of existence.

“Aleph kalai abdu”
and a quick circle with his fingers, hardly given any thought, turned
the room to near daylight again.

“Hmm,” muttered Kyrus, “maybe that one would be better
to start with.”

With that, he sat down at the desk again and attempted
to write out the spell. Startled by the sudden disappearance and reappearance
of the light, Ash sneaked across the room and up into Kryus’s lap, seeking
comfort.

“Well hello there, old boy. Did not like that little
eclipse, did you?”

Kyrus reached down absentmindedly to pet Ash and
noticed something unusual. While he was aware that his own body gave off
aether, he was just noticing how much Ash emitted. It was considerably more
than Kyrus had seen other people produce, even more so if one were to consider
the size of his much smaller body. Kyrus had surreptitiously watched passersby
to see what they and so many other things looked like in the aether. A lack of
perspective prevented him from getting a good sense of his own Source’s output
of the stuff. He could not help but wonder if the fairy tales—with their talk
of witches’ familiars and keeping cats—did not hold some element of truth
behind them. He could easily see how keeping such a strong source of aether
around could be useful. It would be like a farmer working the most arable land
available, or brigands lying in wait on the most lucrative trade routes.

Still pondering this new revelation, Kyrus began
jotting down his trusty light spell on the paper in front of him. As Kyrus tore
his gaze from the lazy miasma of aether wafting out of the cat in his lap, he
decided to have another stab at notating spell gestures. He blinked at the
paper in front of him though, not immediately recognizing what he had just
written. There were strange, otherworldly symbols on the page that he did not
quite recall meaning to write. They were in no language he had ever written,
and yet he knew quite well what they said.
Aleph kalai abdu
, with unique
symbols that conveyed not only the sounds, but pitch, inflection, and relative
quickness of each syllable. Intermixed were other symbols that had no
pronunciation: these were the notations that described, in quite adequate
detail, the motions that were required for the spell. Kyrus’s hand had done it
nearly of its own accord, as if it were so rote an activity as writing his own
signature.

Kyrus was a scribe, and long years of practice had
long since dissociated the thought of writing from the act of writing. A word
existed in his mind, and when he willed it to paper, his hand knew what to do.
He did not concern himself over what strokes of the quill went into making a Q
or an F; he had progressed past the stage of having to consciously worry about
those minor details long ago. If he was copying something, he almost did not
need to think at all. His eyes would see the words, and his hand would repeat
them. This, though, was new. Not only had he not really thought specifically
about what he was writing, he wrote something he had never seen before. That
was puzzling. Even more puzzling was that it was so easy for him to understand
its meaning.

Slowly and deliberately, Kyrus lifted his quill.
Staring suspiciously at the strange text he had written, he attempted to
duplicate it just below where he had penned the original. His hand effortlessly
went through a series of sweeps and scratches, neatly and professionally. While
there were several lines to each symbol he wrote, there was a certain order
that just made sense, a flow to the quill strokes that seemed well thought out.

Kyrus was certain he had done this before. There was
no way this was the first time he had used this script, written these symbols,
practiced writing out that spell. Somewhere in his memory, memories of dreams
long since consciously forgotten, he had done this before, and by the ease with
which it came to him, he had done it a lot. The action was rote, unthinking,
and easy. Much the way he could knot the laces of his own shoes, his hands knew
better what to do than did his mind.

Initially the thought of a repository of knowledge,
contents unknown and cached away deep in the hidden nooks of his own brain,
disturbed Kyrus. But as he pondered it further, he realized that he was not
entirely guessing at this whole business. Some part of him, at some level, knew
what it was doing, what
he
was doing. Somewhere, sometime, whether his
dreams were real or a prophetic delusion come true, he knew what he was doing.
Kyrus had long enjoyed the diversion his dreams offered, but it was the first
time he had realized he may have been getting an education all his life as he
slept.

The hour had drawn late and Kyrus experimented and
pondered, and he was beginning to notice that his eyes had started to ache and
burn with fatigue. He slumped back in his chair and blinked hard a few times
and tried to rub the fatigue out of them with his fingers. He did not want to
sleep. There was too much new and exciting to discover.

Pushing back his chair, he disturbed an anxious but
comfortable Ash, who had been quite content to curl up in Kyrus’s lap as he
worked. Jumping to the floor as the lap he had occupied disappeared from
beneath him, the cat followed Kyrus as he headed downstairs to put on a kettle
of tea. Kyrus’s steps were a bit heavy and clumsy as he fought back the urge to
curl up in his nice soft bed and give up on wizardry for the night. Ash kept
back a bit out of prudence, lest he be stepped on.

Outside the bedroom, night had claimed the rest of the
residence. Kyrus had been up and down these stairs thousands of times, though,
and was not concerned, darkness and fatigue hardly registering. Nevertheless he
would need light to make tea by.

“Aleph kalai abdu,”
and most of the ground floor was lit.

The tiny rush of aether was refreshing, and Kyrus
paused just long enough to consider whether keeping up those little rushes of
exhilaration would be enough to keep him awake. He continued down the stair, shaking
his head.

No, I need a good strong tea; at least I know how that
works.

Kyrus poured a kettle of water and dropped in the tea
leaves, a mix of exotic herbs that Abbiley had introduced him to at a little
shop across town. It was a bitter drink, but it had a really invigorating
quality to it. It was imported from faraway Krang, where tea brewing was
supposedly elevated to an art form, with most respectable citizens having their
own personal blend of leaves and spices.

The stove was cold, and Kyrus had little patience to
start a fire. He held the kettle at arm’s length by its wooden handle and began
diverting aether into it. Slowly at first, and ever quicker as he got a feel
for it, Kyrus brought the kettle to a whistling boil in mere moments. Kyrus set
it atop the stove for a few minutes to let the tea steep, then poured himself a
cup.

The aroma of plants that Kyrus would probably never
see in his lifetime filled the room. The sharp, bitter flavor of the first sip
he took quickly began clearing his head, first with the hot, steamy vapors,
then with a burst of something contained within the mysterious mixture. Kyrus
had never met a Krangan, but he was sure the one who had concocted his tea was
a genius. Kyrus felt focused and alert by the time he finished the cup, though
there was a strange, almost disembodied ache throughout him—fatigue he was now
able to set aside and ignore for a while.

Kyrus walked over to the stove to pour himself another
cup to bring upstairs with him as he continued his work, when he caught sight
of his work desk. On the corner, stacked neatly, were his pages for the
shippers’ bylaws. The original was set next to them separately. Kyrus had been
almost interested enough to make himself a ninth copy earlier in the day.
Perhaps he had another diversion to keep his spell practice interesting. He
took his second cup of the Krangan tea, walked over to his desk, and sat down.
Picking up the eight commissioned copies, he set them aside, away from the ink
pot and where he intended to try his next experiment; it was far too likely for
some small thing to go wrong and he did not want to have to redo an entire
day’s work—or research how to remove ink from paper magically.

Kyrus set up a fresh sheet of paper in front of him
alongside the original copy. The original was little more than a set of notes,
not needed beyond Kyrus’s use of them, and if something were to happen to them,
it could be explained away, at least. Kyrus selected a quill and uncovered his
ink well.

“Haru bedaessi leoki kwatuan gelora.”

The quill lifted gently off the desk. Kyrus moved his
hand slightly, willing the quill to follow his motion, and ponderously guided
it through the air and dipped the tip into the ink. He pulled it out again,
even managing to gently wipe the excess ink from the tip. He brought it over to
the page and began painstakingly crafting letters on the blank whiteness of the
paper.

Kyrus held his hand crooked as if it actually held the
quill, rather than it being a handsbreadth away and suspended in midair by an
aether that only he, as far as he knew, was able to see. He took his hand
through the same motions he would normally use to write, though much more
slowly, still unsure of how well the quill and the magic would be able to keep
up with him. Letter by letter, though, word by word, page by page, Kyrus sped
his hand, and the quill kept pace.

Kyrus had not paid so close attention to the actual
mechanics of his profession in a long time. He was exaggerating his movements,
going through them as technically soundly as he knew in his head they should
be. He was aware that his hand had long practice and its own ideas how letters
ought to be written, but he was more keenly aware of the quill this time than
he was of his hand’s daily activity, and as a result, he was working his hand
in ways it was unused to. Halfway through finishing his personal copy of the
bylaws, his hand cramped up suddenly.

The quill kept going. Forgetting the pain in his
cramped hand, Kyrus watched in fascination as the quill ignored the movements
of his hand—now clenched nearly shut in a spasm—and finished the word he had
been in the middle of.

Kyrus grinned, working his left hand against the
knotted muscle in his right to ease the cramp, and concentrated not on the
movements of his hand, but on the movements the quill should take. It was
awkward at first, and the writing not so crisp and clear as when he had used
his own writing as a mental model for the quill to mimic, but he picked right
back up where he left off. Faster and faster, Kyrus pushed the quill to see how
quickly it could follow his thoughts, and indeed it was quick. Words flew down
onto the paper. Trips to the ink pot and back left tiny trails of ink flecks,
and Kyrus cared little. Letters were formed haphazardly as the quill was often
at a poor angle to write, but Kyrus chalked it up to something he would get
better at with more practice.

Within a short time of realizing his hand was not
needed to guide the quill, Kyrus had finished the extra copy of the shippers’
bylaws. Kyrus’s very own copy of the world-wise men’s view of life beyond
Acardia—and how to exploit it for profit—was now set out in front of him.

Kyrus was giddy. He poured another cup of his new
favorite tea and thought about what he should try next. He noticed his hands
were trembling with fatigue as he poured, though. He noticed also that his head
was feeling heavy and a bit fuzzy. While he might possess magic, the tea was
merely an extraordinary concoction of the mundane, and he had discovered its
limits. Finally giving in to practicality and the needs of the clumsy vessel
that carried around his brain, Kyrus set aside his cup of tea unfinished and
headed up the stairs.

Ash, who’d had enough of magical shenanigans with the
lights, chose to remain below and curl up atop the stove with the still-warm
kettle. As Kyrus ended the light spell illuminating the work area, Ash yawned
and quickly went to sleep.

Kyrus collapsed into his bed fully clothed. He ached
throughout his body and mind, but it was the exhausted ache of a victorious
gladiator. His battle had been fought and won, and he now needed rest before he
would be ready to begin anew. He had turned lights on and off, made tea, and
written a set of guild rules rather poorly, but he had done it with magic.