Caymus frowned. He could understand the first part, that the elemental realms gave the world its form. The second part, though, that his world gave life to the elemental Lords, was more of a mystery. Obviously, there had to be some reason that the kreal element was so bent on getting a foothold into his world, but how could something that wasn't alive in the first place actively seek life out? He considered pressing the issue, but he had a strong suspicion that he wouldn't understand, that the concept of life, for a being from an elemental realm, was completely different from his own.
He watched Milo’s fingers as they separated and began picking at a little tuft of grass that grew in the clearing. After he tore off each individual blade, he raised it slightly then released it, then watched as it flitted back down to the earth. Milo had frequently done the same thing when the two of them had been here before. As he pondered his next question, he began to wonder how it was that this Lord of the Conflagration knew Milo so well as to ape his mannerisms, as well as his voice and image.
“Why me?” he said. The image of Milo raised its eyebrows at him. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” he continued, realizing the question might carry some hint of resentment, “but there must be a lot of people who could carry the responsibilities you’re talking about. Surely there are others who could have filled a knight's post?"
The eyes turned away from him. Caymus was surprised at the anguish he saw in them. “Three,” Milo's image said. "There were three of you before. Three shapers. Three young people once lived in the Quatrain who had the innate talent necessary to take on the mantle of knighthood.” The stolen eyes looked back, narrowing. “One drowned when she was still a little girl, many years ago, a victim of tragic circumstance. The second was murdered while he slept by an agent of the kreal, in a fashion that you would likely find quite familiar. That was only a few weeks ago.”
Milo’s eyes softened. “That just leaves you, Caymus. You must live to be the champion of the Conflagration. It is not because you are the strongest of all shapers, nor is it because you hold special favor with us.” The eyes closed. “It is because you are the only one left who can do it.”
“What of what you told me before?” asked Caymus. “What about the ‘impurity’ that you said I had? Was it something to do with my being partly mitre?”
Milo nodded, his eyes open again. “Only a human can be a master of the Conflagration. It is not a question of preference or of prejudice; it is simply the way that the masteries work.” He picked up another few blades of grass, placing them in the air as he continued. “A knight, however, has no such restrictions.”
Caymus squinted. “Why?” He couldn’t make sense of what he was hearing at all.
Milo’s eyes darted back from the grass, as though surprised to see Caymus there. His hand hung in mid-air as he answered. “Humans are a part of the Quatrain. They began there, are as much a result of the alliance as is the world you live in. As such, they represent a balance of all the elements that exist in the Quatrain. As such, they are able to properly affect a conduit and manipulate it with the necessary skill.”
"What about mitre?" Caymus said. He couldn't help feeling the image of Milo was holding something back. "Aren't they part of the Quatrain too? Shouldn't they be able to do the same thing?"
Milo shook his head. "No," he said. "The mitre are a part of the Quatrain, but they did not begin there. The beginnings of the mitre race, many millennia ago, were conceived within the realm of elemental earth; each member of the race carries within a small portion of the lords of earth. It is why they have such an affinity for that element, are able to shape it to their will so completely."
Caymus couldn't quite comprehend what he was hearing. Did that mean that he, too, had a piece of an earth elemental in him? What would that mean, if it did?
Milo put his hand down. “The first Knight of the Flame, your ancestor, was human. He could have been a master, had he wished, but his mind also contained the Aspect of shaping, which is what is needed for a knight to perform his duty. That Aspect is the only qualification, and you,” Milo was pointing with an insistent finger, “are now the only living thing left in the world that is capable of it.”
Caymus didn’t say anything for a while. He thought about the other two shapers, people whom he’d never known, but whose lives had apparently been inextricably linked with his. Hesitantly, he asked a difficult question. His mind had made a small leap of logic, but he didn’t really want to confirm it. “So, if one of these other two had still been alive, you’d have left me to die today?”
Milo’s face was unreadable. “We, the beings that live in this place, what you call ‘the Conflagration’, have almost no power in your realm. It is nearly impossible to convey the effort, the centuries' worth of accumulated energy, that it took to bring you here. It is unlikely, now, that we will have the power left to take another such action before the war is decided.” He paused, looking at Caymus with eyes that seemed almost accusatory. When he spoke again, it was paired with a long exhale. “Yes, if we'd had another option, we likely wouldn’t have brought you here, and you would now be dead."
Caymus sat in the silence, listening to the sound of his own breath, trying to understand what had just happened to him, or even to figure out how he felt about it. He’d been excited about this Knight of the Flame business up to now, but it was feeling more and more like duty, a responsibility, rather than a gift.
Trying to calm his mind a bit, he attempted to shield his emotions with a more mundane question. "Why do you look like Milo?" he asked. "He's not even a fire-worshiper."
The figure seemed almost to laugh. "We don't know who this Milo is," he said, looking at the unbroken stone plinth in the center of the clearing, "but he must have something to do with this place." The eyes turned back to him. "Is that right?"
Caymus nodded. "This is where I first met him, years ago."
The image nodded. "The Conduit brought you directly to us, showed you our realm as it is. The process by which we brought you here, without the Conduit, is slower. You are having to fill in a lot of the details yourself."
Caymus was confused. "So this isn't actually the Conflagration? This is just a memory?"
The figure before him spread its arms wide and slowly spun to take in the entirety of the setting. "A traveler must feel safe in this place. It is not often that one from the Quatrain is brought here, but when it happens, the mind seems to wrap itself in a cocoon of familiarity, somewhere it feels comfortable, able to cope."
Caymus followed the image's gaze. That made some degree of sense, at least. He thought about the small house he'd grown up in and about the drafty dormitory he'd shared with Rill and Sannet, wondering why he wasn't in one of those places instead if he was supposed to be somewhere he considered safe. He had to admit, though, that Milo's clearing was probably the single calmest, quietest place he could think of, the place where he'd always felt most at peace.
"So," he said, "I'm not actually in the clearing, but in the Conflagration."
Milo's image raised a finger and pointed it at Caymus's head. "Is your mind clear yet? Are the cobwebs gone?"
Caymus had been asking himself the same question for the past few minutes, or, at least, what had felt like minutes. He had been hard-pressed to maintain clarity considering the fog that had clouded his mind when he'd first awakened, not to mention the shock of finally figuring out where he was. He felt clear now, though, and said so.
"Good." The image leapt to its feet in a very Milo-like way. "Then the instruction can begin." The image of Caymus's friend then turned and began walking out of the clearing, fading as he approached the tree line.
Caymus rose quickly. "Wait, where are you going?" he shouted after him. "What instruction?" The frustration of it all was making him angry. Here he was again, thrust into a situation not of his choosing. He hadn't asked to be here, to be whisked away from his world, and now this thing that was wearing his friend's face said there was going to be instruc
tion?
"There are things you will need to know, to understand. You were to have the time to learn these things in your own world, in your own time. Now, you must learn them here," said Milo's voice. As the image reached the trees that ringed the clearing, it drifted into nothingness, seeming to evaporate into the air. As it did, the voice stopped emanating from any particular spot, and seemed to come from all around him again. "You will need to understand your enemy if you are to defeat him in the Quatrain. You will need to know how to defeat the kreal if you are to survive even a single moment when you are returned to your home."
Caymus was turning, looking around for a face, a pair of eyes, anything that would help him get his bearings and free him from the torment of this disembodied voice. As he turned, he felt the heat of flames dance across his side, and he spun to see the plinth erupt into fire, bursting into a wall of flame that leapt up the stone surface. When he brought his hand back down from shielding his face, he found himself staring at the blaze, momentarily caught up in the beauty of the orange tendrils, rising up the length of it in burning waves.
As he watched, he noticed small pieces of stone and ash falling away from the plinth, to the ground. He had only a moment to wonder what was happening before large chunks of rock were cracking away from the top of the object, falling through fire into the surrounding area. Quicker than should have been possible, the plinth seemed to crumble away in the heat, first from the top, then the sides, until the entire edifice seemed to simply break away into nothingness.
In its place was a sword, its blade piercing the ground. It seemed familiar to him somehow, though he knew he'd never seen its like before. The grip was wrapped in red leather that spiraled from a V-shaped pommel to a large, heavy cross-guard that was ended on each side with another V-shaped protrusion, though these points seemed to fade backward toward the pommel as though mimicking the flames of candles reaching up to the sky. He couldn't determine the blade's length, buried as it was in the dirt, but its edges ran in parallel lines all the way from the cross-guard to the ashes below, with a slight furrow between them.
"Take it, Caymus," said a new voice. It was no longer the voice of his friend, but one that was deeper, richer than any he'd ever heard.
Caymus stepped toward the sword, extended his hand, but hesitated before touching the hilt. What was he doing? Was it wise to do what the voice said? Would he really ever be able to go home again?
For a moment, he entertained the notion that he might be losing his mind. Absently, he noticed that he didn't feel cold anymore.
"Take," said the voice, this time with a harder edge to it, "your sword."
His sword.
It was in that moment, in the frustration and confusion of everything, when his very notions of reality were being tested, that Caymus made a decision. As his hand wavered, inches from the grip, he considered everything he'd learned of the krealites, of the fear and death they had caused, of the mark on the back of his hand, of the very idea of a knight.
He would do what the Lords of the Conflagration told him to do. If they would offer him instruction, he would accept it. He'd already effectively promised his life, his very soul, to the Conflagration on the day he'd first stepped into the Conduit. Even though that had been another life, another set of circumstances—he'd wanted to be a master then—he would honor that promise.
For the first time, Caymus consciously accepted the post, the duties of the Knight of the Flame. He didn't even know what those duties might entail, but whatever he didn't know, he would learn, and he would achieve. He would make Be'Var proud, make his father proud, make himself proud.
He reached out, wrapped his fingers around the grip of the weapon, and pulled it from the ground. As the blade slid free of the soil, he accepted the authority of the Lords of the Conflagration, these beings that had brought him here from the brink of death, to teach him how to survive. As he turned the sword around, raising the blade in an arc in front of him, he tightened the fingers of both hands around the leather grip. It would have been a two-hander in most men's hands; in his, it was a hand-and-a-half.
Feeling the leather under his fingers, and the hard iron beneath it, he closed his eyes and steeled himself, breathing deeply, preparing to accept whatever these beings might send his way.
His hands gripping his sword tightly, his mind clear and ready, Caymus opened his eyes.
The clearing burned away in a flash, and he found himself, at last, standing amidst the roiling flames of the Conflagration.
***
Rill frowned and sat back on his haunches, staring hard at the machinery before him, trying to get a better understanding of its workings.
The hand-pump in the courtyard of Flamehearth Mission had become a problem, one that he very much wanted to solve. Nearly a month had passed since that blue-dress-wearing diplomat Brocke had first come here and, presumably, brought groundwater to a level that the pump's well could reach. Barely a trickle had resulted from pumping the handle though, and even that trickle had lasted only a couple of days. Now, no water emanated from the device at all, regardless of how hard or how fast one pumped the handle.
Rill supposed he shouldn't be so hard on Brocke. The man had come back the next week, after all, when he'd learned that the pump had failed to produce water after his visit. Rill didn't know just how busy an ambassador's day generally was, but he figured that coming to the mission twice in as many weeks was a bit out of the ordinary. He was fairly certain, though, that he'd only returned as soon as he had due to his daughter's insistence.
Be'Var had forged some kind of working relationship with Aiella since that first night. Rill didn't know the details of it all, but she seemed to have been running errands for him lately, something he'd thought was probably a bit beneath the social standing of a diplomat's daughter. Whatever it was that she was doing for the master, she was frequently in and around Flamehearth, a fact which Rill didn't care much for. He wasn't particularly fond of the girl; she seemed to think she was better than him, somehow.
She did frequently ask after Caymus's health, though. Rill liked that much about her.
Flames, but he wished Caymus would wake up. He wished that the city guards had caught that Callun fellow so that Rill could have the singular pleasure of watching the man burned at the stake for the attempted murder—possibly the actual murder—of his best friend. He missed his friend, missed his company. The fact that he was only a few yards away, lying in a bed that was too small for him and unable to speak or even open his eyes, just made things worse.
Rill shook himself, trying to dislodge his depressing thoughts, and directed his mind back to the task at hand. Brocke had told them, after some crawling around on his hands and knees, that the water was definitely in a place where the pump's well should be able to reach it. Assuming the man had been telling the truth, and wasn't just trying to avoid admitting to them that he'd failed the first time, the logical conclusion was that something was wrong with the pump itself. Rill had never seen one disassembled, didn't know how it was supposed to work, but he was starting, with no small amount of enjoyment, to piece things together.
He was also in a bit of a hurry. The Keeper had made an official request of the Royal Engineers to come out and have a look at the device, and one of their number was due to arrive today. This, then, would be Rill's last chance to get a really good look at the mechanics of it, and maybe to learn something, before all the mystery went out of it, peeled away by the expertise of another.
He'd begun, early in the morning, knowing only that when the handle was pumped, no water came out of the spout, just a faint gurgling sound. The obvious conclusion was that the machinery was broken, internally. He also knew, however, from what Ambassador Brocke, Aiella, and a couple of the children had told him, that it had worked, pumping out small dribbles of water, for those first couple of days after Brocke had pulled the water. Rill had a suspicion that the children themselves might have had something to do with the damage, but he was
trying not to let that affect his thinking.
That was something Ventu, the mitre engineer, had told him to always bear in mind when fixing machinery: act on facts, validate assumptions, ignore suspicions. Rill had liked the way Ventu's mind worked.
He'd first started with the most obvious things he could think of. He'd checked for blockages in the spout itself, finding nothing. He'd checked the bearings that connected the top of the handle to the rod that delved into the cast-iron cylinder, wondering if perhaps the rod might not have been moving the way it should. From the outside, everything looked like it was working properly.
Now, Rill was sitting back and thinking about the problem, trying to picture the way the internal machinery must function without actually taking it apart. Something had to be happening inside that cylinder, but he hadn't figured out what the process might be. He knew that the purpose of it was to draw water out of a hole in the ground, so there must be some suction involved, but he didn't know how pumping an iron rod up and down could lead to such a thing.
He tried to think of an analogous process and pictured how his own mouth must appear on the inside when he'd drunk water straight out of the stream near the Temple, or when his parents had let him use those fancy, glass drinking straws. How did he do that, create the suction? It seemed to him that he was basically opening more space at the back of his mouth, and since there were no air holes in that closed system, the water was obligated to rise and fill the resulting void. Could the pump before him work the same way? It certainly didn't seem like the cylinder had a way of getting any larger.
Rill smiled. He liked this part of solving a problem, trying to couch an unfamiliar problem in terms he could understand until the point where inspiration struck and he found himself reveling in a brand new concept. He'd had a fair amount of practice at that, lately. Be'Var had been busy taking care of Caymus ever since they first arrived, so the responsibility of the needed repairs and maintenance to their wagon had been delegated to Rill. He'd begun by replacing the spoke that had cracked, but while he'd been working on that, he'd noticed that the connection between the axle and the wheel they'd replaced was so loose that it had been a wonder they'd made it all the way to the mission without the whole thing falling apart.
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