The Sentient Fire (The Seven Signs)

by D. W. Hawkins

  Finally, as the moon shone brightly down on the little copse of trees, D’Jenn let the fire recede a bit and the companions all sought their blankets. Dormael gazed up at the stars and huddled deep into his blankets for warmth as another wind blew in from the sea, bringing smells of salt and long dried winter grasses. A smile tweaked the corners of his mouth as sleep wrapped him in its warm embrace, and he gladly sank into a deep and untroubled respite from the day’s long ride.

  The next few days passed by with the cold, gray light that accompanies winter. The sky was a mass of roiling gray clouds that seemed to be conspiring to hold back the warmth of the sun, and the colors of the land were washed out, giving Dormael the impression that the new winter had frozen the greens and browns right out of the landscape. To the west, the sky was dark and foreboding, promising the beginning of the winter storms out over the ocean. The Sea of Storms never failed to live up to its name.

  The softly rolling hills around them slowly became more and more barren as the forest receded eastward, away from the road. The small copses of maple trees that had dotted the landscape began to disappear as well, and soon there were only hills blanketed in brown winter grasses. The wind blew unhindered from the west, bringing the smells of the sea and blowing the long dry grasses in waves. As beautiful as it was, it was also very cold and uncomfortable.

  Shawna continued to learn more of the Hunter’s Tongue, and Bethany learned right alongside her. In the evenings the four friends would sit around the fire, Dormael and D’Jenn smoking their pipes, and talk of past experiences or family or just make small talk. Sometimes they would speak in the silent Hunter’s Tongue, when the conversation was simple enough for Shawna and Bethany to understand it. D’Jenn believed that it would help them learn quicker to teach them in this way, and Dormael completely agreed. To the wizards’ satisfaction, both pupils were learning fairly quickly, considering the circumstances.

  It was on the fourth day of their ride from Stormcoast that the first snowflake drifted lazily from the sky. It was around noon, though it was hard to tell with the sky constantly overcast, and by early evening the ground was carpeted in a silent layer of gleaming white. The horses plodded along through the shallow layer of snow, their breath misting in small clouds before their nostrils, while their hooves made soft crunching noises as they punched into the snow’s crust.

  Bethany giggled and reached for every snowflake that drifted close enough for her to grab, and even Shawna seemed to be enchanted by the weather. D’Jenn was accepting of it, neither happy nor sad about the turn of events, but Dormael was in a noticeably sourer mood. His face was dark and he grumbled every time a snowflake drifted down into his deep cowl.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Shawna asked D’Jenn, riding up beside him and thrusting a thumb in Dormael’s direction.

  “He hates the snow,” D’Jenn replied with a shrug, “never really understood why, he just does.”

  “Well that’s no reason to act like a child. He’s been snapping at everything I’ve said today. Maybe I’ll just have to pay him back in kind for it,” Shawna mused, narrowing her eyes and rubbing her hurt side.

  “How goes your healing?” D’Jenn inquired, turning his bright blue eyes toward her.

  “It’s been itching like fire lately,” she admitted, rubbing her wounded side through her thick winter clothing, “but all that magic you and Dormael throw at it each night has helped considerably, I’m sure.”

  “When we make camp tonight, I’ll take another look at the wound. Mayhap it’s time to forego the bandages. Itching usually means that the healing has sped up,” D’Jenn commented quietly, turning his attention back to the road ahead.

  The party set up camp that evening in the low places of the hills away from the road, as usual. The ground was covered in wet snow, and Dormael let out another series of grumbles as the horses were cared for, and he was surveying the site. D’Jenn watched him stand at the edge of the intended campsite with light amusement on his face for a time before speaking up.

  “You know, coz, you’re the only person I’ve met that will face down an entire squad of Garthorin with a smile on your face, but balk at snowy ground,” D’Jenn quipped. Dormael turned and regarded him with a raised eyebrow and an irritated expression on his face.

  “It’s cold, it’s wet, and sleeping on icy earth doesn’t really appeal to me this evening. I’ve never really enjoyed the snow, even when I was a child.”

  “Well stop sputtering like an old man and do something about it, then. It’s not as if you’re a wizard, now is it?” D’Jenn laughed. Dormael smirked at his cousin, and then shrugged lightly.

  “If you say so,” Dormael said. Suddenly the snow inside their campsite rose from the ground and flew up onto the hill next to the site with a quiet crunching noise. Shawna yelped in surprise and stumbled back from where she was laying her bedroll, then turned an accusing eye on Dormael. Dormael wasn’t done yet, however. Steam rose from the ground as the campsite was dried with magical heat.

  “There. Now it’s warm, and cozy,” Dormael smiled, and turned toward his mount to grab his gear. He got two steps before a snowball splattered into the back of his head. Stopping mid-stride, he turned to see D’Jenn standing there with his hands up, openly laughing, and Shawna just off to his left with a self-satisfied look on her face, deftly constructing another snowball with hands red from the cold.

  “I don’t know if that’s wise, dear. You do realize, I hope, that you’re starting a snowball fight with a wizard,” Dormael threatened. Shawna wasn’t impressed.

  “You’ve been moping about all day, grumbling at every little thing. You deserve a little snow down your tunic,” she challenged, and let the second snowball fly, right towards his surprised and disbelieving face.

  Dormael threw his hands up in front of his face to deflect the flying ball of snow, but Shawna’s hands had been faster. With a wet crunch, and a splatter of icy cool across his face, the snowball exploded right on his nose. Dormael stumbled back, spitting and spluttering from the snow that covered his face and neck, and shook it out of his eyes. As he was clearing them, another projectile struck him in the shoulder.

  D’Jenn was laughing uproariously, and Shawna was giggling like a schoolgirl. She was bent over in the snow, gathering more material for her next volley. Bethany was standing behind her clapping her hands and giggling almost as loud as Shawna. He suspected that Bethany would try and throw one at him next, so he had to stop Shawna quickly, before she could launch another snowball at him. Cheating a bit, Dormael drew on his magic once again.

  Snowballs rose into the air from the ground around Dormael and flew at Shawna one after the other. Raising her hands to fend off the onslaught, she shouted in surprise and dropped her own projectiles, falling on her rump. After she had fallen, Dormael let the rain of snowballs abate.

  “Well that’s just cheating!” she exclaimed, laughing as D’Jenn helped her up.

  “That, my dear, is exactly what magic is good for,” Dormael replied, bowing at the waist. They all shared a quick laugh and D’Jenn helped Dormael and Shawna dust the snow off of their clothes. Then, with a slight tinge of regret, they went back to setting up camp.

  As the gray light of winter retreated into darkness, they shared another meal of the venison and cheese. Bethany and Shawna sat through their lessons attentively, and the four companions settled back to watch the fire for a while.

  “Shawna,” D’Jenn said, “let’s have a look at your side, shall we?”

  “Of course,” the young woman replied, and she lifted her shirt up slightly to reveal the bandage that was wrapped around her slender midsection. Dormael scooted over to D’Jenn’s side as he slowly unwrapped the bandage to examine the flesh underneath. Shawna gasped slightly at D’Jenn’s cold hands, but offered no other complaints as the wrappings were removed. Her skin was milky pale underneath the bandage, and her once deep and painful wound had become a puffy pink scar.

  “Does it hurt?” D’Jen
n asked her, staring at the scar intently.

  “It’s a little sore, but I think that’s because it’s so cold out,” Shawna replied, looking down at the weal on her side, “It’s feeling a lot better than it was.”

  “It seems the magic has done it some good, after all,” Dormael remarked, “You’ve had a treatment every night.”

  “Indeed,” D’Jenn agreed, “We’ll keep up the treatments until the itching goes away, but it appears that you are quickly making your way back to being in top form. Try stretching it every night and every morning, if it gives you too much pain it will tell us just how far along the healing is.”

  “The good news, my dear, is that you won’t need these anymore,” Dormael said cheerfully, hefting her bandages in his left hand. Shawna smiled brightly and gave both Dormael and D’Jenn quick kisses on their foreheads, embarrassing both of them slightly.

  “Thank you both for helping me so much,” she acknowledged, and the two wizards uttered replies with slight laughs. D’Jenn once again treated her wound with magic, and the four companions sought their beds for the night. Dormael drew his blankets up to his chin against the cold, and chuckled softly as Bethany scooted her bedroll right up next to his. Closing his eyes, he drifted off into a deep, uncaring sleep.

  ****

  Dormael knew immediately that he was dreaming. A strange feeling of detachment infused him; as if he was not only inside his body, but also outside, watching events around him play out. He had felt this before, during his training at the Conclave, and he embraced it, welcomed it, and took control of himself so as to better understand what was about to happen in his own mind.

  The space that surrounded him was an endless, deep blackness. He could feel his heart thumping against his ribs; he could hear it inside his head, a rhythmic beat that seemed to go on for minutes before he silenced it inside his mind. He concentrated on the void around him, searched it with his consciousness for clues as to what was happening. For what seemed like an eternity, there was nothing. Then, he heard a rushing noise just on the edge of his hearing, and a slight pinprick of light appeared out in the black. It began to grow quickly, the light expanding into the void. Suddenly he realized that the light wasn’t growing, it was rushing at him at blinding speed. He braced himself for he didn’t know what, and in an instant the light surrounded him.

  He stood on a hill, where it was, he didn’t know. Tall green grass covered the hill, and danced in the whipping wind that rushed across it. Dormael checked himself; he was clothed in his normal attire, his mesavai and shirt and leather pants, but he had no weapons of any kind with him. After he had made sure he was intact, he took a look around.

  The sky was a surreal, roiling mass of gray storm clouds, but no rain was falling nor were there any other clues that the weather would take a turn for the worse. Assuming, of course, that it could storm here, wherever here was. There was a large range of forbidding mountains to what he thought was the north, though it was hard to tell direction with the absence of the sun from the sky. Their tops were capped in white, and some were so high that they were obscured by the roiling sky. The hills that he was currently standing in seemed to run right up to the edge of them, though he couldn’t really tell how far away they were. Distances were deceiving in dreams.

  The land seemed to smooth out and become plains further to what he was calling south, away from the mountain range. They ran to the edge of his vision, which instead of ending in what he could no longer see, as in the real world, faded into a white haze, as if this place were all that existed. It made Dormael feel a little claustrophobic to gaze at it, and he turned his sight away from it after studying it momentarily.

  Suddenly, there was a strange…ripple that ran across this world. As if everything he was looking at and feeling was the surface of a pond, and someone or something had dropped a rock into it. It happened again, and Dormael began to feel a little queasy. Shaking his head, he concentrated on controlling himself.

  Gazing off to the east, he spotted something, a strange rock formation atop a particularly high hill in the distance. As another ripple passed through him, he realized that they were originating from that place. Steeling his will against the nausea that the phenomenon seemed to be causing him, he took a few steps toward the hill.

  The land blurred around him, and suddenly he was at the base of the large hill. He stumbled for a second as his surroundings came to a blinding halt, and almost lost his stomach’s contents right there. Shaking his head again, he looked up at the formation atop the hill, and climbed the smooth face of the grassy knoll to get a closer look at it.

  The rocks weren’t rocks at all, but a stone grotto. Eight pillars rose from a hewn stone floor, each one carved in the semblance of one of the Gods. A temple, Dormael thought, a temple as the ancients constructed them. In the center of the primitive temple was a large stone bowl set on a dais that raised it waist-high. There were no carvings or renderings on the bowl itself, and it was full of clear and pristine water.

  Inside the water, Shawna’s armlet rested on the bottom of the stone basin, its fire-red ruby shining brightly, shooting prismatic colors through the water, though there was little light to reflect it. Dormael’s heart sank and he was filled with dread.

  Another ripple leapt from the basin and into the world around him, causing Dormael to stumble back into the pillar carved in the semblance of Neesa, Goddess of love and music. Pushing himself off of it, and cursing a little as he did, he stepped tentatively back to the stone bowl. Just what is it trying to tell me now?, he wondered irritably.

  When he reached the basin again, the armlet was gone. There was nothing but the clear, cool water. Dormael ran his hand through his short hair, confounded as to what it all meant. Just when he was about to turn around and examine the pillars, words of light appeared one after the other in the water. Biedurm, Minsda, Fiega, Orthum, Wethrim, Vingra, Liensdrim. Dormael’s eyes narrowed and he leaned over the basin as the words faded into nothing. The words were in the language of Old Vendon, the ancestors to the modern day Sevenlanders. Translated, they were body, mind, fire, earth, water, wind, and wisdom. Was this some new, strange message from the armlet, or the power that inhabited it?

  “I told you it was Fiega,” piped a familiar voice from behind him. Dormael nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the voice, and turned on the spot to see Bethany standing in the grotto with him. She was wearing a little blue dress, her hair undone and spilling out over her slight little shoulders, and she had a frightened and pleading look on her face.

  “Bethany? Are you really here, or are you just a part of my dream?” Dormael asked her.

  The little girl broke into sobs and ran to him, throwing her tiny arms around his waist, and burying her face against him.

  “I’m… really here…I promise,” she sobbed into his mesavai, “I’ve…been here every night…so scared…I don’t know what’s happening.” Dormael shushed her and ran his hand over her brown hair to soothe the little girl’s crying. He unwrapped her arms from his midsection and bent down to her level. Pulling a piece of his long sleeve over his hand, he wiped her tears, gave the youngling a quick hug, and brushed her loose hair out of her face.

  “It’s alright, Bethany, I’m here now. You say you’ve been having this dream every night?” She nodded in response, and Dormael went on, “Why didn’t you tell me, or D’Jenn?”

  “I don’t remember all of it when I wake up, just a little more every time,” she replied sullenly, “I’m sorry.” Dormael shushed her again and told her it was just fine before she could start sobbing again. Taking a deep breath, he looked around at the grotto.

  “Well,” he asked her, “what happens now? Do we wake up soon?”

  “In a moment,” she nodded, “I don’t know if he is going to come tonight. He doesn’t come here every night, only sometimes.”

  “Who, Bethany? Who comes here with you?” he inquired, a little nervous but intrigued to know more.

  “Just a ma
n. I don’t know who he is, but he’s very sad. I don’t think he can see me. When he comes, he kneels down by the bowl and just sits there for awhile, sometimes he cries. Then, he just gets up and walks away into the hills. I’m not sure what happens, but he’s not sad anymore when he leaves.”

  Dormael nodded and sighed. That really didn’t tell him much, but it was something new. He suspected that the man was just a manifestation of the dream itself. It sounded like a scene that played out, not someone who actually came into the dream. Still, it didn’t make Dormael feel any better about the entire situation. A peculiar thought struck him, and he asked Bethany another question.

  “Does this man speak our language, or a different one?” Dormael asked her.

  “Not ours, some other language. I can never understand him. I don’t think he’s coming tonight, though, he would have been here by now,” Bethany replied, gazing at the stone basin, “I think we’re going to wake up soon.”

  As if her declaration were a prophecy, the world around them began to fade into darkness. Dormael grabbed Bethany’s hand and held it firmly in a comforting gesture.

  “Don’t worry, dear, I’m right here beside you,” he told her, smiling. Her color-shifting eyes brightened as a childlike smile played across her face.

  “I know,” she replied.

  ****

  When Dormael awoke early the next morning, he held Bethany’s hand in the same comforting gesture he had shown her in the dream. She also wore the same contented smile on her face, and was sound asleep. Dormael tucked her arm carefully back into her blankets as he rose and stepped away from his own bedroll towards where D’Jenn lay in slumber. For once, he had risen before his cousin. However, the sun was still just a haze on the eastern horizon, and on any normal day D’Jenn would be waking soon and Dormael would still be dead in his blankets. This was no normal day.