Flame's Shadow

by Anna Eluvae

  "I'm reasonably confident that by the time we arrive in Meriwall, Dravus will be able to stand toe-to-toe with any normal man, one-on-one, in a fair fight," said Nemm. She circled slowly, stepping with care. On occasion she would leave an opening for Dravus, and that was his cue to attack. These openings were wholly by her intent, and he was sure that he was missing half of them, if not more. "That's good - better than expected. We should work more on etiquette and social skills."

  "There is civil unrest in Torland," said Lexari. "The odds that we will be forced to fight are high. It is entirely possible that our first visit to the Flower Queen's court will result in her asking us to take care of some problem. Given that we're, ahem, short-handed, Lightscour needs to be able to defend himself at the least, not just against a background character, but a major player."

  Dravus was becoming doubtful that this would happen. His strength, speed, and resilience would give him an advantage, but there was far too much to learn. Nemm had let him tag her once or twice now, but there was little doubt in his mind that she could kill him with ease if she had the motive for it. He felt strong, and his command over his domain had grown from the day before, but his confidence had been shaken by these combat lessons.

  "Let's take a break," said Nemm. She folded her glass sword in half with ease, and clamped the glass down onto her wrist to make a bracer. Dravus dismissed his shadow sword, and felt like a faint weight had been lifted from his mind.

  "Mimicry is in the nature of shadow," said Lexari. "Every shadow is a duplicate, in its own way. Armor will come easily to you, I think."

  "Better sooner than later," said Nemm. She sat cross-legged on the deck of the ship. "If it's possible to get something in place before we reach Meriwall, that would be ideal."

  Dravus held his hand out, and tried to force the shadow into a bracer like the one Nemm had given herself. Nothing happened until he held his hand slightly above his forearm to cast a shadow there, and after that it was easy to make the shadow a solid thing. He clamped the hard shadow into place around his arm, and held it up for inspection. He could feel the same faint tug of attention there, and wondered what the upper limit of his power would be. He'd heard a story of Lexari outfitting a hundred men with spears during some large battle.

  "The question is whether it will make good armor," said Nemm. She touched the bracer and frowned. "We'll have to test how easy it is to penetrate or shatter. Lexari's is nearly as strong as steel, though steel isn't too strong in the hands of an illustrati." Dravus briefly thought of her fist crumpling Cerulean Bane's faceplate, and her bare hands tearing into his armor. She should have torn her hands up doing that, but they were perfectly fine, slender and delicate save for the calluses her daggers gave her.

  "How likely are we to have to fight in Meriwall?" asked Dravus. "I'll be ready for it, whatever the challenge," he added.

  "Civil unrest is a nasty thing," said Nemm. "And somewhat outside our purview, come to that. Our arrangement with the Flower Queen is that in the event of a defensive war we'll be called in on their side, along with a few of the other major players. I believe she hopes to quell dissent merely by having us present for a month or so. We're an implied threat to her would-be enemies."

  "The Queen is a gentle soul," said Lexari. "We would protect her anyway."

  "She's important to the balance of power," Nemm replied. "There will be a succession crisis when she dies, which will give the Iron King an opening, and that's not good for anyone."

  "They went to war before," said Dravus with a shrug.

  This was greeted with silence.

  "We all played our part in the Peddler's War," Lexari eventually replied. "It will be a point of contention when we reach Torland. It would do best not to mention it. The Sovento States were neutral, and you would have been eight years old when it ended, so I don't expect you to know, but it was a brutal thing. Thousands of corpses littered the killing fields. Men starved within their forts. There's some threat of it happening again; nine years is too long to go without one of the major powers making a play against the other. This is not a matter to be met with a shrug."

  "I'm sorry," said Dravus. "I only meant … I don't know. That it wouldn't be the end of the world."

  "This is why your lessons are a priority," said Nemm. She stood up from the deck and touched her glass bracer. "Combat is all well and good, but it's words that will sink us. There are a number of gaps in your knowledge that need to be filled in as quickly as possible." She turned to Lexari. "Four hours of combat training a day, nothing more?"

  "Agreed," said Lexari. "I see the wisdom of your approach now."

  "Good," said Nemm. The smile she gave Dravus was sharp. "Now, Lightscour, let me give you an abridged history of the Peddler's War …"

  * * *

  Halfway through their trip, Dravus began to have second thoughts about becoming an illustrati.

  He was growing more powerful with every day that passed. He could see perfectly in the dark now, and read the books he'd been assigned without need for a candle. He could make a number of pieces of armor for himself, including a rather sturdy breastplate which could almost match the strength of metal, but with none of the actual weight. He could leap at least fifteen feet into the air now, though he'd put a stop to that particular line of experimentation after almost landing in the sea. He was on the verge of being able to move around with his eyes closed, going by the feel of the shadows alone.

  That was all well and good - those were the parts that he liked.

  Unfortunately, there was an enormous quantity of learning to be done. There were two hundred people on Nemm's list, and each of them had at least two names, a domain, and some small bit of personal history. He had been given a rundown on the major nations that ringed the Calypso, their dispositions towards each other, their forms of government, principle trade goods, major cities, and recent wars (where "recent" seemed to stretch back at least fifty years). Worst of all was etiquette, which had numerous rules that followed little in the way of internal logic, and which seemed especially pointless. All of that was what Nemm called "the essentials". A small fraction of it he had already known, but most of it he had not. He would have slammed his head against the cabin wall in frustration, but was worried that he would leave a dent.

  The combat training was almost worse. Every time he began to feel that he was doing well, some new aspect would be introduced that seemed to set him back to square one. On the sixth day, Nemm had said, "Alright, I'm going to speed up a little bit," and he had nearly thrown his sword down and quit for the day. He'd thought he was doing well, but she was operating far below her limits. Every time he seemed to be matching her capabilities, she simply began using some hidden reserve that he hadn't even known was there.

  "Oh come on," said Nemm over dinner. They were eating together in her cabin, a stew of lamb and peas, and she had her bare feet propped up against the cabin wall. "Don't look so glum."

  "It's just frustrating," said Dravus. "I feel like I'm not getting any better."

  "You are getting better," said Nemm. "You just didn't realize how much further there was to go."

  "But it was easier for everyone else," said Dravus. "They didn't need to so much time and effort."

  "Like me?" asked Nemm. She speared a piece of lamb and plopped it in her mouth, then continued talking around the food. It was terrible etiquette, but in private Nemm didn't put up many pretenses. "I know the stories that they tell, of the girl who was laying in a goose-down bed. She was woken up with ruffled hair and went out to see what the commotion was about. She made some daggers for herself and walked right into the melee, taking to killing like it was what she had been meant to do. Does that sound even the least bit true to you?"

  "I suppose not," said Dravus. "But I don't know what the real story is then. You trained for years beforehand with some secret master?"

  "No, the truth is that I was terrified, and I wouldn't have fought back against the attackers if I had thought I had a
choice. I nearly died, and I broke down afterward. The story started out as a lie for my benefit. It was a kindly officer who found me crying next to the two men I had killed. He told me that I had turned the tide of the battle, that I had inspired the troops and turned a sure rout into a triumphant defense. I believed it for a full two years. After that first battle, I received my training. The stories never mention the training, or if they do, it's glossed over, or corrupted into something like a search for a mystical technique, or a romance. Mostly, it's not even that. 'Time passed', and all the sweat, tears, and frustration of getting better are nothing but that single sentence. It's amazing how much of your life a bard can sum up in a sentence." She caught his eye. "And yes, I understand that you want to skip over all of the boring bits and become a perfect gentleman of society without first learning the rules that society operates under. You want to skip right to being a fearsome warrior without having to learn your footwork or how to put up a proper guard. But you're already skipping far ahead of everyone else, and that should be enough, shouldn't it?"

  "I suppose," said Dravus. Nemm was right though. He wanted to skip over the hard work. Yet knowing that this was what he wanted didn't make him want it any less, it only made him feel worse.

  * * *

  "I want to fight you at your best," said Dravus. It was the last full day at sea; the sailors were saying that they'd be through the Angel's Mouth shortly after sunset, and in Torland by evening.

  "Why?" asked Nemm. She arched an eyebrow, but kept circling him carefully all the same. Her defense was not quite ironclad, but the flaws she'd put into it were subtle, and difficult to see.

  "Lightscour means to test himself," said Lexari with a laugh. "He wants to see whether he is worthy of a place among us."

  "More or less," said Dravus. He had never really felt that he wasn't worthy of a place on the ship. He only wanted to know how much further he truly had to go. There was a strong element of masochism in his request.

  "Fine," said Nemm with a shrug. "We'll pretend it's an exhibition match. I'll only hold back enough to prevent your death." Her stance changed slightly, and the small imperfections which Dravus had been on the edge of seeing disappeared entirely. Her daggers were blunt, but he knew from experience that they still hurt. His own sword was as blunt as he could make it, but he didn't wager that it could go all the through glass; whatever method Lexari used to slice straight through armor had not yet been taught to him, if it was even a trick that shadow could do. "Whenever you're ready."

  Dravus stepped slowly. The more they'd practiced, the more he found the ship constraining; there were too many obstructions, and too many people nearby. Nemm had said that real fights often took place in cramped quarters, and that this was good training, but pacing the same section of deck for hours on end had only increased his yearning to run. Still, there were peculiarities to this landscape, and he could use them. You couldn't step too close to the mast, or risk being backed up against it. He had been proud of himself for seeing it some days earlier before he realized that Nemm meant for him to see it. He could force her to put herself in a position where she had to change direction though, and that might be enough.

  She easily parried his first attack with one of her daggers, and stabbed him in the gut with the other, hard enough that he was sure it would bruise, even with the armor he was wearing.

  "You're dead," said Nemm. "Sorry."

  They backed away from each other, and began circling again. He waited until she had to change direction, and brought his shadow blade down hard. She dodged to the side, as though his attack were the most predictable thing in the world, and slammed him against the temple with the butt of one of her daggers. "Dead again."

  Dravus's head swam briefly, and they were back to circling. He was beginning to regret asking for this, but it was better to know his limits. She was right though; it would have been easy enough for her to drive the blade straight into his brain. The daggers could be made sharp enough to slice a falling hair lengthwise; sharpness was part of the nature of the domain of glass.

  He came at her hard the third time. He swept his sword in from the side, an uncontrolled hacking motion that was calculated to seem like it was borne of frustration. When she saw his fist it was too late, and his punch landed right on her mouth. She swore and stepped back, then rubbed at her jaw. When she pulled her hand back, Dravus could see that her lip was bleeding.

  "I'm sorry," he began.

  "No," replied Nemm. She smiled, and touched her lip. "You did better than I had expected."

  His heart swelled at the compliment, and at the fact that he'd been able to land a single hit against one of the most powerful illustrati in the world. His excitement was ungentlemanly, and he tried to hide it, but he wasn't quite able to hide his smile. Nemm was going to make him pay for that.

  "We'll call it quits for today," she said. "I don't want to risk going before the court too badly marked by you, and there's still a wealth of review for you to do. I think you're almost ready for polite society."

  Dravus didn't even complain.

  * * *

  Torland was just past the Angel's Mouth that separated the Calypso Sea from the Pensic Ocean, a large island that sat within view of the civilized continents. It was known for its mountains, though the few flat areas with wide meadows were where the vast majority of its people lived. In recent years, as the colonies to the west had begun to flourish, the capital of Meriwall had become a bustling port for every ship that sought to pass from within the Calypso Sea. It was the last place a ship could stop at if they wished to cross the Pensic with full supplies, or needed to fix a last-minute problem with their hull, mast, or sails. The mountains at the heart of the island towered over the fields and towns that clung to the outer edges of Torland. The largest of them was a dead volcano, and while Dravus had heard that there was a sleeping demon at its heart, he had long thought that this was merely another legend. Looking at Tor Craighorn looming above the island, almost impossibly tall, it was easy to see why people felt the need to tell tales about it.

  The first thing anyone leaving the Calypso saw of Torland was the Face. It was an immense figure carved into the mountain at a massive scale. His expression was enigmatic. His lip was slightly curled. One eyebrow was slightly raised. He seemed to be looking at you no matter where you viewed him from. Some people found the Face to be looking out on the continents with disgust; others thought it was bemusement. He could seem paternal or oppressive, and sometimes both at the same time. The scale was so large it practically beggared belief. The entire city of Genthric could have been turned on its side and laid across the carving, and it wouldn't have reached from cheek to cheek.

  The Face was King Liath's; he had sought to make himself immortal. Fame made you stronger, faster, and better able to recover from wounds, or simply not take them in the first place. When Liath had begun to age, he had thought that the solution was simply to acquire more fame. He wasn't the first of the illustrati, but he was the first of the modern era. He paid far-flung missionaries to spread his image and name across the known world, and funded expeditions to seek out peoples who had never had contact with civilization. He ordered his subjects to worship him for two hours every day, kneeling before his image and singing songs of adoration. And on the mountain that gave Torland its name, he carved the image of his face, so large that it was a miracle that the project had ever been completed.

  King Liath had died all the same.

  "Laith said he'd return one day," said Lexari. His eyes were fixed on the stone face, still miles away from them. "On his deathbed, he knew that all the fame in the world couldn't save him, so he cast his hope in another direction. He had heard stories of reincarnation, and souls unhooked from their bodies. He gathered up people who would tell him what he wanted to hear." Lexari shook his head. "Laith is another of the wasteful dead that siphon from the pool of fame."

  "Is fame limited like that?" asked Dravus.

  "You've been lazy abou
t your reading," said Nemm.

  "There was a lot to read," said Dravus. Mostly he'd stuck to the biographies, and then only the ones that entertained him.

  "Well, the answer is yes," Nemm replied. "Fame is limited."

  "The are several schools of thought," said Wenaru. "I know quite a few men who would argue over these things. Nemm is right, but she cuts the debate down to only its conclusion, and there are those who would disagree with her stating it so bluntly. It's actually one of the Five Questions, what happens to the so-called fame directed at the fictitious or deceased."

  "If Laith has ensured his legend, he has diminished ours," said Lexari. "We are robbed of power, power to do good, because Liath was afraid of death. That is that."

  After that, the waves lapped against the ship in silence.

  Lexari took flight when they were a mile out, against Wenaru's advice. The red-headed doctor had frowned at the sight of those enormous wings sprouting from Lexari's back, but Dravus had felt a rare sense of wonder at seeing a man fly through the air. The ship was tacking against the wind, and Lexari flew on ahead of it. He could be seen swooping down over Meriwall, passing over the people in order to announce their arrival.