Lesson of the Fire (30 page)

There were several sharp intakes of
breath.

“Moreover, the defenses in every village
within ten miles of Zerst must be shut down completely. The farl
can certainly trace signs of large standing spells at a shorter
range.”

“But that includes Leiben.”

“The citizens will evacuate north with the
contents of the academy library. The wizards will fan out along the
lines of recon and break up the village defenses.”

“But what if there are Drake raids?”

“Repel them. You are all weards. You can
fight alone, too, and you know the secrets of the Blosin wand —
including those applications of it the Mardux never dared publish.”
Einar touched the gloves at his belt. “Hold the perimeter as best
you can and wait for Sven or me to contact you. Stockpile wands so
that if Flasten presses on after Leiben, you will have the means to
protect the people of the Protectorates. A lazy wizard is a useless
magocrat.”

“We are to be as magocrats, then?”

“As Sven was a magocrat, yes.”

“And what will you do, Weard Schwert?”

Einar smiled grimly. “Hopefully, I will be
able to convince Flasten that it must capture this bastion before
it can conquer the rest of the Protectorates.”

“You mean to fight.”

“I mean to turn Leiben into a fortress that
will serve as both trap and bait, and I intend for them to know who
defends this place. By the time they capture it, the network will
be broken and the army will be forced to wander aimlessly across
the moors in search of the other villages. With luck, they will
give up before long.”

“Attrition. Flasten has greater worries than
the Protectorates.”

“Yes.”

“Will Sven send us reinforcements?”

Einar wanted to lie. He wanted to comfort
these accidental magocrats somehow.

“There will be no reinforcements until after
the war is over. Your greatest consolation is this: Once Dux
Feiglin realizes the Mardux will make no effort to defend the
Protectorates, he will withdraw his force.”

“What of those Flasten takes as slaves?”
Asfrid asked softly.

Einar could almost smell the anger wafting
from all of them. Many of those in the room were deeply opposed to
slavery.

Reformers flock to Sven. They long to change
Marrishland the way he did. He never speaks of Tortz. Would they
embrace his ideals if they knew?

“By the Oathbinder, those who have been
taken will not be enslaved for long by Flasten. Weard Takraf will
win this war, and he will not leave his people to serve as
slaves.”

They nodded, accepting this.

“Give the word to the people. We have little
time.”

He watched them leave in silence, recalling
a time long ago when he had given similar orders.

I warned them of the dangers. I taught them
everything I knew. How could I have prepared them for the raids
they faced that year? None of us knew the insero and ravits had
formed such a powerful alliance.

He had lost his wife and all her children
but the youngest that year. Einar had been forced to organize and
lead an army of magocrats against the invaders mere hours after
losing his family. Ari had never forgiven him for behaving like a
magocrat when the boy thought Einar should have acted like a
father, for once.

He was fourteen already, and his siblings
were grown men and women when I married Freydisa. They were old
enough not to need a new father. How could I have known he wanted
me to be what he had lost as a young boy?

Einar wondered idly how his stepson was
doing, but he soon turned his full attention to dismantling the
recon stone and planning Leiben’s defenses.

* * *

“You are still here?”

Sven and Erika walked the halls of the
citadel daily so he could regain his strength. It had taken some
time, but after half a year, he felt stronger. He felt ready to do
something again.

At the same time, he had to keep himself
from touching his scarred face, and when he looked into Erika’s
eyes, he often sought disgust for his white, blinded eye. He never
saw any.

I must wait until the wizards of Domus and
its allies are fully engaged in their war against the Flasten
invaders. Otherwise, the magocrats may still have enough military
might to wipe out the adepts once they discover my ruse.

But as a kind of penance for the harm he had
done his wife, he felt he should spend more time with her and his
daughter. That was what he told himself when he smiled at them,
seeing in their eyes the fear that he would leave again soon.

The Traveller turned from the window and
grinned at them. “There’sa ter’ble storm brewin’, an’ I feel it’ll
be ba’ fra sev’al day.”

“Your effected accent grows worse by the
day, Pondr,” Erika laughed.

“Some Mar in the most rural areas have
unusual dialects.” He bowed outrageously.

Sven leaned against the wall next to him.
Erika’s mirth faded to a mix of concern and relief, which a quick
smile did not allay. He worried that she would stop him when he had
to go, but then dismissed it — how could she stop him? He grabbed
her hand and squeezed it, making her smile at last.

The Traveller went on. “You said there would
be bloodshed, and right enough, there is. Are you ready to lead
these people?”

“Are you playing my conscience?” Sven said
wryly. “You tell me stories that remind me of who I am. You torment
me with my past. Is there nothing else you can do?”

“Tell me why Flasten hates you so.”

“That should be a story
everyone knows. Tortz.”
And where will
this story take us? The point of Tortz is not that Flasten hates
me. The point is the lesson of the fuel.
He
thought about Eda, Horsa, Erbark and Einar — perhaps his first true
students — and the test they were going through.
Have they learned?

“Volund Feiglin is fairly closed-mouthed
about his defeats, Mardux. And the town was destroyed.”

“Except for me, Erika and Erbark.”

“Erbark Lasik? He was there?”

“Let us get something to eat,” Sven said,
taking his wife’s hand. “Brand lied to me about Erbark, among other
things.”

* * *

The two hundred remaining citizens of Tortz
continued their studies. Despite Sven’s urging them all to return
to their homes, Erika and three other Protectorate teachers had
refused to leave. They made great progress, under the
circumstances, but they had a lot of ground to cover, and not all
were as good students as Erbark and Erika. They could hope, at
least.

Just as winter came to a close — when it
seemed the magocrats had decided to leave Tortz alone until the
mundanes reached the proper level of education — Nightfire, Katla
and two reds arrived with Erbark. Sven didn’t recognize his friend,
at first, because he was clean-shaven for the first time since
before Sven had left Rustiford with Nightfire.

Unlike the dux’s wizards, Nightfire’s
entourage had no difficulty entering Tortz. They simply appeared on
the village green. Shackles of Power arrested the movement of
several surprised warriors who had charged forward to attack the
invaders. The eighth-degree wizards seemed unperturbed, looking
around casually at the town without fear and utterly in control.
Not one drop of blood fell in the brief struggle.

Sven marveled at this even
as he emerged from his home.
One red could
have pacified us with ease. What could possibly stand against three
of them?

“Askr, Geir, that will not be necessary. I
surrender.” He raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“Peace in the swamp, good weards. Come to my house. I have some
soup.”

He recognized Nightfire and
Katla immediately.
She wears amber
already?
The sour-faced man following was
probably Dux Volund Feiglin of Flasten Palus. But the last face was
unfamiliar entirely. This fourth was ancient, leaning on a cane. He
wore a ring of braided silver and gold on the first finger of his
right hand.

“Weard Takraf, you stand accused of a
serious breach of Bera’s Unwritten Laws,” Nightfire said, looking
very serious.

“I want to apply the fire to this wizard
personally,” growled the sour-faced red.

Definitely Volund.

Sven tried to match his teacher’s gravitas.
“Explanations are certainly in order, and I’m all too glad to
provide them.”

“All in the proper time, Weard Takraf,”
Nightfire said. “This is now an inquisition. Every person in Tortz
is to return to his or her home immediately. Once there, you will
surrender your boots and submit to a regimen of morutsen until the
inquisition is complete. Any attempt to resist or escape will be
tantamount to an admission of guilt, and that guilt will fall also
on your teacher. Erbark, you will stay in a separate home. I see
there are plenty that are empty.”

* * *

“The fourth man was?” the Traveller
prompted.

“Brack — the red who serves Dinah and Domin
among the Drakes of the Mass.”

“I’ve heard of the Mass. It’s a giant
monster that will come down on the Mar if there are too many
wizards, right?”

Sven smiled slightly, eyes turned to the
fire, the milky bulb of the left one flickering as though the flame
was within it. “You could put it that way. Some say it is more
magic-wielders, while others claim it is the amount of magic the
Mar use that brings the Mass.”

The Traveller gaped at him. “More use of
magic means more Drakes? And what are you setting up here? What
will happen when your army and Flasten’s army meet on the field?
Then you arrange for every Mar to learn magic. The adepts. Can you
see the army that will attack you?”

“The Mass is probably no more than a story
told to frighten young apprentices.” Sven smiled grimly over his
steepled fingers. “And if the Mass is real, it is too late for
anyone to stop it from invading.”

Chapter 25

“
Middling Gien was invented during the
Gien occupation of Marrishland by a Mar scholar. When spoken, it is
nearly identical to Imperial Gien. The Mar, however, transliterated
the Giens’ pictographic written language into a phonetic alphabet
based on magical concepts. For this reason, the Giens disparagingly
regarded the Mar scholars’ transliterations of their language as
Middling Gien, since it shared only a few qualities of written
Imperial Gien.”

— Weard Eira Helderza,

The History of Linguistics

Sven spent the days drugged with morutsen
and imprisoned in his own home with Erika, while Nightfire posed
question after question to each person in Tortz. For the first
several days, he heard nothing. Katla delivered their doses of
morutsen, staying only until they drank it and never saying
anything, though Sven thought she looked more worried with each
visit. Once a day, she also brought them food, water and peat for
cooking.

Sven only had a passing
familiarity with the inquisition, but he suspected his sister’s
silence reflected the rules of the process.
I never intended to break the Law, so why would I care how
Nightfire enforces violations of it?
He
wished a hundred times over that he had taken an interest in it
when he was an apprentice. It was nearly impossible to prove his
innocence if he didn’t even know how Nightfire would determine his
guilt.
And I am not entirely innocent, am
I? Brand made certain of that.

For the first span, they heard nothing at
all, and Sven allowed himself to hope. He and Erika made the best
of a bad situation. They discussed the future they would have after
the inquisition of Tortz. Sven continued her education — advanced
Middling Gien and myst theory. They talked about starting a family.
They told stories about their childhoods. They laughed and tried to
be happy. They carefully avoided talking about the inquisition.

I’ll beat it. My students know what to
expect, what knowledge not to admit and how to behave. When I catch
up with Brand, he’ll wish he had lost the duel with Tosti.

Four days into the second span, the first
villager failed the inquisition. Sven watched helplessly from his
home as Brack and Volund led Askr to the prison that had held Sven
on his first night in Tortz. They lifted Askr with Power and
lowered him inside. Then Brack summoned fire, and Askr began to
scream in pain.

Sven wanted to run out to them. To make them
stop. Any law that punished Askr for Brand’s crime was an unjust
one.

It would be useless. I have no magic, and
even if I did, I can’t fight them. Not even the gloves would make
me the equal of one red, much less three.

Behind him, Erika wept. Askr was her
student, even if Sven had known him longer. He wrapped his arms
around her and made noises he hoped were soothing.

If they found even one of my students
guilty, they will find me guilty, too.

But he said nothing. Gradually, Askr’s
screams faded away into silence, but Sven knew his perfect memory
would preserve that voice forever.

Or at least until they execute me, too.

But when Katla came that evening, she came
alone with the usual dose of morutsen. She said nothing, and Sven
could see from her bloodshot eyes that she had been sleeping badly,
weeping or both. As soon as he met her gaze, though, she looked
away, and she all but ran once her duty was done.

After Askr’s execution, Sven and Erika spent
every moment as if it would be the last they would have together.
The future was lost. The past was mere myth. Only now mattered.
Neither of them said it, but even if Erika survived the
inquisition, they both knew Sven would not. The execution might
happen today or tomorrow or in a month, but it would happen.