Lesson of the Fire (46 page)

As soon as word got to the general populace
that the Mass was approaching, the riots began. Tens of thousands
of slaves quit working, stole, looted and tried to flee. Finn had
asked the adepts to stall them, to put them back to work harvesting
kalysut leaves to make the torutsen the adepts needed. Several
thousand on both sides had been injured, and hundreds killed,
before someone decided to just let the slaves go, unprepared for
the trek before them.

The Black Road leading to Pidel Palus was
flanked by so many funeral pyres for those who had died in the
panicked flight south that it must have appeared to observers a
hundred miles away as if Domus Palus was burning down.

Not much later, the desertions began. A
sizeable group of adepts left en masse after raiding the torutsen
and Blosin glove supplies. No one knew where they had gone. Most
deserters took only the cloaks on their shoulders, luckily. Finn
listened tiredly to the argument in the room, estimating what they
had left and no one suggesting they actually count. He had tried,
surely. It was just his throat got so dry and too swollen to speak
sometimes.

Just when things had seemed under control
again, when the worst of the riots were quelled and most of the
adepts were staying, someone brought the news that Verlren had
escaped or been freed. That was yesterday. Finn had not slept.

He’s going to kill me! I don’t want to
die.

The great doors at the far end of the room
swung open, and a wizard in a red cloak swept inside. Shocked and
relieved adepts as well as mundanes followed in his wake.

“Mardux Takraf!” Finn said, leaping to his
feet.

Sven marched up the stairs of the dais until
he was standing before Finn. The mapmaker stepped to one side
before the glare, taking a moment to wipe off the seat before the
Mardux sat down in it. Instead, the red-cloaked weard turned to
face the suddenly quiet room.

“How many adepts do you have?” Sven
barked.

“I don’t know,” Finn said.

“How much torutsen?”

The mapmaker shook his head.

“Blosin gloves? Surely some have been
prepared.”

“Since the slaves left ...”

“How many weards are around?”

Finn felt his throat go dry and swell
again.

The Mardux turned his eyes to the rest of
the room. “Find out,” he said quietly. “Our lives, our country
depend upon intelligence, and I see little of it in this room.”

Finn slunk to a corner of the vast room to
watch and listen. As far as he could tell, Sven was pleased with
the number of adepts there were in Domus Palus, and the Mardux
seemed delighted to learn they had made Blosin gloves for the
defense of the city. Sven was much less cheerful about the looting
and lack of discipline, and he seemed genuinely concerned about Dux
Verlren’s mysterious disappearance.

The Mardux never asked about Pondr, Erika or
Asa, however, and Finn did not want to risk his wrath by mentioning
them.

* * *

A mist rose in the evening on the western
edge of the Takraf Protectorates. Erika rose and peered through the
dreary twilight at the empty walls that had once been the village
of Erscht, water droplets forming on her chilled face. A sip of
torutsen confirmed its defenses no longer scanned and protected it.
By the look of it, the town had been abandoned for at least a
month.

What is left of my
home?
She stared east in the gloom.
Oh, Sven, how could you have let this
happen?

It was worse than Erika had imagined. They
found the burned and savaged bodies of the militia in the last
town, and adepts had spotted bands of gobbel raiders at least three
times since they crossed the border into the remnants of the
Protectorates. The Drakes had kept their distance. The adepts on
perimeter duty wore a strip of bright green cloth around each arm,
and the gobbels of the Morden Moors still feared Mar wearing that
color.

Around her, the camp stirred to life. Adepts
started fires, often fueled entirely by magic. Forcing them to use
magic for nearly everything had led to incredible growth in their
ability to use the myst. This close to the Fens of Reur, it was a
necessity. Drakes were certainly not the only reason only the
maddest mapmakers braved the Fens.

Power shielded legs from Dinah’s Curse when
they were forced to wade or dried and cleaned clothing splashed
with water. Even with good boots, foot rot could force amputation.
Vitality, then, helped heal blisters, scratches, rashes and other
results of daily hazards. Without wood or dry peat, the adepts were
forced to cook with Energy. In the desolate, war-torn landscape,
magic fed them and sustained them.

“Weard Unschul, there is smoke to the
east.”

Cook fires or funeral
pyres?
Erika wondered with a
shudder.

“Shall we investigate?” one of the adepts
asked, her wiry grey hair snarled from spans of travel.

Erika quickly placed the face with its
name.

“I will go, Nanna. The Protectorates are my
home, and even if I do not know everyone who lives here, everyone
on the Morden Moors will know me as Sven Takraf’s wife.”

“We should all go, Weard Unschul.”

Erika shook her head. “I will take six
adepts. More, and they might think we are with the invaders who did
all this. Asa, honey, you stay here with Pondr until I get
back.”

“Okay, Mom, but when are we going to stop
walking?”

“Soon, I hope.”

“How about if I tell you the story of your
father’s trip to Nightfire’s Academy from Rustiford, Asa?” Pondr
asked.

How does he know about
that? Sven never even mentioned it to me,
Erika thought as she left them.

Asa leaned forward attentively.

“Nightfire came early i’the mornin’, a year
after Sven told his father, Pitt Gematsud, he’d offer himself as a
tribute slave to Nightfire for savin’ Rustiford ...”

Chapter
38

“
Choosing an apprentice is serious
business. Magic is power, and not all people are capable of
employing power responsibly. Before choosing an apprentice, it is
essential to learn something of the potential candidate’s
character. To do otherwise is as irresponsible as leaving a large
stockpile of weapons in Drake territory.”

— Nightfire Tradition,

Ethics of Magic

A hand touched Sven’s shoulder. His head
stirred and rose up to look at the cold ashes in his hearth. An
empty pot hung on a hook in the chimney.

“He’s here, Sven,” his father told him,
voice soft. His green eyes did not brim with tears, but tears were
not Pitt’s way. All the pain of his loss lay in the circles under
his eyes from lost sleep.

Sven’s black hood bobbed once, and he stood
up slowly, the hem of the cloak sweeping down to his booted ankles.
He turned slowly to look one more time at his home, committing its
appearance to memory.

He had given away everything he could not
take with him except for his plain rocking chair, and that would be
his father’s now. Someone else would live here soon. There was no
reason to leave a house empty for eight years.

Sven picked up his travel pack and marched
through the open door and outside.

The people of Rustiford waited for him on
the green, keeping a safe distance between themselves and the aged
wizard in red. Sven walked along the aisle in the crowd that had
been created for him. As he approached Nighfire, he realized Erbark
was not there. For a moment, anger flashed through Sven, but it
passed.

He probably feels guilty that I’m going in
his place. Lori and Hauk can’t even look me in the eyes.

A great deal had happened in the last year —
ravit raids and fatal accidents, weddings, births and homebuilding
feasts. Sven had seen more joy than sorrow in his last year of life
in Rustiford, but some sorrows fell harder than others.

Lori had not fallen in love with Erbark as
Sven had expected, despite Sven’s advice to Erbark and pleading
with Lori to reconsider. Looking back, he had embarrassed himself
in front of the entire town, but no one criticized him for it. They
knew why Sven had volunteered to go with Nightfire, knew that this
seemed to invalidate his reason for offering himself as tribute.
They also knew Sven was too stubborn to reverse his decision and
too proud to ask anyone else to go in his place when he had already
let others know his choice.

Sven passed the village green where the
remains of the Weardfest bonfire still smoldered and occasionally
released a flickering tongue of flame.

Nightfire stood before him expectantly, red
cloak spotless in spite of the mud that permeated Marrishland. Sven
thought back to previous tribute slaves, recalled how terrified
they had been of this moment. Eda had practically poisoned Vitharr
mere days before her Weardfest in order to go in his place, but she
could not hide her fear that morning. He understood that now.

Every step was a burden. The weight of cloak
and boots threatened to pull him to the ground. He wanted to flee,
to run into the swamps — away from this wizard, away from the altar
upon which he was about to sacrifice himself.

Sven never fully understood what kept him
moving forward. Perhaps it was the men and women of Rustiford,
faces beaming with pride at his courage. Perhaps it was the
children who peeked at him with curious eyes, begging him to teach
them by his example to be brave. Perhaps it was his father — green
eyes red from sleeplessness — who helped steady his son’s steps. Or
maybe it was the force of the hardened eyes of Nightfire himself —
eyes that concealed untold knowledge and power — drawing Sven to
himself with unspoken promises of new experiences and adventures he
could never have here in Rustiford.

For whatever reason, Sven moved forward
resolutely until he stood a few steps away from Nightfire.

“This is Sven Gematsud,” Pitt said. “My son
who comes to pay Rustiford’s debt to you.”

Nightfire nodded slightly and beckoned Sven
to follow him away from the green and through the gate. As they
reached the edge of earshot, Sveld, Rustiford’s elder, cleared his
throat.

“Let’s remem’er Sven Gematsud volunteered to
go with Nightfire to pay the debt we owe i’the ninth year after the
Foundin’. We’ll never forget his love for his frien’s.”

Sven only barely heard the last sentence,
but it was enough. He pulled the hood of his cloak close to his
face to hide the tears that slid along his unshaven jaw line as he
left everyone he knew behind. He had told himself he would not look
back, but his resolve broke as he followed Nightfire into the
swamp. The black hood turned and looked at the walls of the town he
was leaving.

“You will never see your town like this
again. We will be traveling far from here. Keep your eyes focused
on where you are going, not where you have been, or you will
fall.”

I will never forget where
I came from,
Sven thought fiercely. An
unsettling thought occurred to him. “Where’s Brand?”

“He is making his own way home,” Nightfire
said simply.

Sven waited for the wizard to elaborate, but
he didn’t. Nightfire made no other remarks that morning. He nimbly
climbed over and crawled under fallen trees, ignoring the mud and
briars that clung to his cloak. Sven struggled to keep up, even
though he was younger and smaller.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, Sven’s
stomach growled, and he realized he hadn’t eaten since before the
Founding Festival the night before. Confident Nightfire would call
for a midday halt, he said nothing.

Nightfire led the way through a much more
tangled part of the swamp. Trees were less common here, giving the
underbrush a better chance to flourish. The wizard produced an
unusual sword from a shin sheath beneath his cloak. It had two
blades, one on each side of the pommel. The front blade was more
than a foot long and about two inches wide, curving in at the very
tip to create a very sharp and abrupt point. The second blade was
considerably shorter, about three inches, with the same abrupt
point. One edge of the longer blade was toothed, while the other
was smooth and sharp.

He only had enough time for wonder before
Nightfire raised the weapon and sliced through a patch of thorny
shrubs. Again the cloak stirred as the blade moved upward and then
the arm of the red cloak brought the blade into the brush on the
other side. Nightfire began cutting a narrow path into a deeper
portion of the swamp.

“It is called a marsord,” Nightfire
explained in a lecturing tone. “It is the weapon of powerful
wizards forged entirely by mundane means. No magic may go into the
creation of a marsord.”

Why is he telling me
this?
Sven wondered.

Nightfire instructed Sven on the best way to
use the dual-bladed weapon so as not to cut himself. He described
the ideal angle for swinging to chop brush down with the sharp
side. He explained how to saw through thick vines with the toothed
edge. He emphasized the angle of the wrist so the shorter, gouging
blade would not cut the wielder. He illustrated all as they
went.

The water grew deeper, and the mud stickier,
sucking at their boots and dirtying their cloaks. The mosquitoes
and biting flies became bolder, flitting up sleeves and down hoods
for a chance to eat. For almost three hours they traveled in that
manner, swatting away insects as they progressed deeper and deeper
into the wilder parts of the swamp. Sven followed Nightfire
closely, uncomfortably looking over his shoulder for any sign of
Drakes.

Perhaps the wizard’s red cloak would keep
them at bay, but it might also attract the attention of an
over-confident ravit with steady aim and poisoned barbs. Sven felt
a dull stinging sensation between his shoulder blades at the
thought.