Knight Of The Flame

by H John Spriggs

  He felt at once afraid and ashamed. As he listened to his own voice shout at him, he rose from the ground, taking to one knee in supplication.

  "You are not here to wage war on the insignificant specks that inhabit the spaces between the realms!" the voice said. Caymus tentatively lifted his gaze, looking about for the speaker. The flames around him seemed to be burning with greater intensity than before, but the source of the voice was nowhere to be seen.

  He was embarrassed at his actions. A part of him had known, when he had jumped through the wall of kreal, that he had been taking the attack too far. He was considering giving rise to some kind of apology when the voice spoke again.

  "You are here to learn, Caymus! You are here to understand how to defeat the kreal that is destroying your own world! Have you done that?"

  Caymus let his eyes sink to the ground again. There was no doubt that he had learned everything he could about the krealites that had been sent against him. He felt he'd been studying them for years, that he knew more about fighting krealites than he did any other single subject. Placing the sword on the ground in front of him, he said so.

  Then, as he gazed into the flames littering the ground around him, the words sunk into his fogged and addled mind: his own world. He had come from another world before. He had come from a place where there was more than just fire, more than just battle. He had a home, a family, and friends that cared out him.

  He remembered that they needed his help.

  How could he have forgotten? Was the experience of the Conflagration so intense than it had made him forget? Perhaps it had been the fact that he had lived for so long outside of his body, outside of the shell the held his memories? A tiny smile found a place on his lips as he remembered Be'Var, Milo, Rill, Gwenna. They were the precious things in a life that wasn't just battle. How could he have possibly forgotten them?

  How long had he been here?

  As he stared into his own memory, the sword before him vanished as though the flames themselves had stolen it away. "This is not your sword," the voice said, much calmer now, as though instructing, rather than scolding. "Your sword exists in the Quatrain," it continued, "and you must find it if you are to truly discover the skills you will require, to finally become the champion that we so desperately need."

  Caymus looked up again, and his eyes scanned the flames around him. He understood. The sword of the Knight of the Flame, a sword much like the one he had been using through so much battle, was infused with the power, with the will of the post. He had to find that sword, and he hoped he would remember that fact; he knew he would forget some things when he left this place, much as he had forgotten things about his home when he had arrived. "How will I find it?" he asked.

  Instead of receiving an answer, he found that that the edges of his vision were going black, that his mind was going foggy again. He briefly considered allowing panic to take him, but he was too weary. Somehow, he knew that he was going home, that his consciousness, once pulled from the Quatrain, was being allowed to pass through the void that separated the realms, on its way home.

  He thought of how glad he was going to be to see everybody, how much he had missed them, even though he didn't know how much time had actually passed. How would he even explain what had happened to him here?

  As he considered what he would tell Rill about his adventure, pain gripped him, taking hold in his forearm and radiating throughout his nerves and blood vessels, constricting his heart. Still, he didn't panic. The pain was one created from intense cold, and he knew it well: he had been touched by kreal, and he must defeat it.

  Where the challenge would once have been too great, it was no large thing now. As he felt breath pull into his lungs, heard a groan emanate from his throat, he reached out to feel for the kreal in his body. The majority of it, a residue which had coated the knife that had poisoned him, was still in the wound on his arm, though there were pieces of it throughout his body's vessels.

  He wondered if he was alone. He thought he could hear voices.

  Exhaling, then taking another deep breath, calming his mind further still, he used the skill he had learned over the past...weeks?…months?……decades? and reached out to feel for the soft spots in the kreal. Even the smallest grain of material had such spots: it was part of the makeup of the element, as natural as the fact that fire burned upward or that water felt cool against the skin.

  When he had located the spots he was looking for, he set to carefully heating them, opening tiny conduits into those places in order to apply heat to exactly the right points. These elements of kreal were so small that no blade would pierce them, so he had only his shaping ability to lean on. He guided the minuscule flames through the residue of kreal, shaping them and gaining their entry through the soft places, then using them to burn the tiny poisonous elements from the inside out.

  The entire process took several hours. As he burned more of the element away, he became more aware of his surroundings. He heard Be'Var's voice, and also Milo's. There were also two others that he recognized, but which he could not place.

  He wondered where Rill was.

  When the battle was over, when final trace of kreal had been eliminated from his body, Caymus took a deep, glorious breath and opened his eyes.

  Milo was there, his face hovering only a few inches above his own. Caymus could hear the rustle of the feathers on his arms. His friend, lost to him for a period of time he couldn't begin to guess at, smiled that huge, friendly smile of his.

  When Caymus returned the smile, Milo turned to look over his shoulder. "He's awake!" he said to whomever else was in the room, ecstatic joy in his voice. He turned back to Caymus and then, in a lower voice, said, "You are awake, right? You're not just putting me on?"

  Caymus, despite the weariness in his bones, couldn't help but chuckle. "I'm awake," he said.

  He turned to see another pair of faces in the small, candle-lit room. Brocke, the ambassador from that city up north, was there, his fleshy face affording him a smile warmer than Caymus had once thought him capable of. Present also was Prince Garrin, who was beaming and clapping Milo on the back.

  Caymus wondered what the prince of Kepren was doing in the room. Based on the voices he'd heard while he had been ridding himself of the kreal, he didn't think that he could have been there for very long. Perhaps he had come when Caymus had begun to stir? Would someone have summoned the prince?

  One more person was in the room. Sitting on a chair next to the bed Caymus found himself in, amidst several small piles of books, was a tired-looking Master Be'Var. The old man seemed pale and flesh of his face seemed to sag more than Caymus remembered, especially under his eyes. Still, Caymus's old master afforded him a small, relieved smile.

  "Welcome back, boy," he said. "I think you may be just in time."

  CHAPTER 15

  Caymus took a good look at his opponent as he deflected yet another clumsy attack. The young man couldn't have been any older than he, and was probably at least a couple of years his junior. His blonde hair looked as though it hadn't seen a comb in weeks, and a small wisp of a mustache hung over his lip. He and his two friends were all very thin. Their clothes were threadbare and their skins were pallid, as though they hadn't eaten in awhile.

  None of them seemed to know how to handle their weapons, either. The attacker in front of Caymus was the only one with a proper sword. The other two, a lanky lad who couldn't have been far into his teens and another, equally young, boy with red welts and scabs all over his face, had come at them with a scythe and a hatchet, respectively.

  Caymus had decided to take a shield with him on their journey south, and so was having no difficulty in blocking his opponent's ineffectual swings. He took a moment to glance at his companions, to see how they were faring. Milo had shoved his attacker, the one with the hatchet, back a few feet and now both he and Gwenna stood facing him, arrows leveled at him and bows drawn. Tavrin, the Falaar who was leading the party, was doing much the same as Caymus,
blocking the swings of his attacker with his barak sticks, but not pressing any attack of his own.

  Caymus, despite his unfavorable feelings about Tavrin, had to admit he appreciated the man's martial skills. The barak sticks, a pair of short, wooden rods, each about two feet in length and recently capped with iron, moved too fast for Caymus's eyes to follow sometimes. The footwork that the man used, too, was impressive. He seemed nearly to dance with his opponent, rather than fight him. The blonde teenager appeared to get more and more frustrated each time he swung with his scythe and discovered his target had moved somewhere else entirely.

  After Caymus's young opponent had taken a few more wild swings against him—he got the impression that the boy was actually aiming for the shield, rather than past it—he decided he'd had about enough. At the same time that Tavrin swept the scythe-wielder's legs out from under him, Caymus took an opportunity to lunge forward and bash his foe with his shield. He aimed for the major mass of the chest, rather than the face; he didn't actually want to hurt these boys.

  The young man fell backward with a shriek, his sword flying out behind him. Caymus took a step back to allow him some room to recover and get his wits back, but when he saw that the kid chose, instead, to scrabble back toward his sword, he stepped forward again and kicked him over on to his back.

  "Hey!" Caymus yelled, leveling his shortsword at the prone figure. The boy looked up at him, his eyes fixed on the sword point. There was genuine fear and panic in those eyes. "Perhaps," he continued, in a level tone, "you should look around and see how you're doing."

  The boy seemed momentarily surprised at the idea, but he eventually pulled his gaze from the sword and turned his head to look at his fellows. Tavrin had his foot on the neck of one of them, the boy's scythe in his hand, and was looking down with a stony countenance. The other boy was on his knees, his arms held wide, with both Milo's and Gwenna's bows, arrows draw, leveled at his chest.

  Caymus took a deep breath as the boy finally pulled his gaze back to him. He was amazed at his own restraint. A few days ago, he knew he would have gutted the boy already, his mind still consumed with endless thoughts of the battles of the Conflagration. "I think you should go," he said, in a steady voice. "Don't you?"

  The boy nodded quickly. Caymus dropped his sword point as the frightened adolescent scrabbled backward, picked up his own weapon, and joined the other two in making a quick dash away from the party they'd just attacked. They shouted insults at each other as they stumbled over small rocks and shrubs, making their way through the desert to a destination only they knew.

  Caymus took a good look at the sand and dust around him as he placed his sword in the sheath at his hip and strapped his shield on his back. He'd been told that, in the space of three months—the same period of time he'd lain in that bed, his consciousness trapped in the Conflagration—most of the Tebrian grasslands had begun to look like this. When he and the others had first made their way into Kepren, there had been at least some semblance of green scattered about. Now it was all gone, the withered stalks having crumbled to powder. Apparently, there was some hope that runoff from the Greatstones might keep some of the northern grasslands alive, but it was clear that this, the Great Tebrian Desert, was expanding every day.

  He watched as Milo, his bow already shouldered, inspected the saddlebags of their two horses. Caymus shook his head, absently. He couldn't quite believe the boys had actually attacked them.

  People seemed to be getting more desperate every day. They had seen two other groups like this, small bands of boys who had decided to try their hands at banditry, since they'd departed Kepren's South Gate two days ago. These, however, had been the first to actually come at them. Most were smart enough to back off after observing Caymus's sizable form, not to mention the fact that all four members of their party were armed in one fashion or another.

  Caymus knew it was more than just his size that made people afraid of him these days. Since he'd awakened in that room in Flamehearth, two weeks ago, several people had remarked that there was something different about him now, something in his eyes that spoke of experiences beyond his years. There had been a polished mirror in one of the common rooms of the mission, and Caymus had spent hours staring into it, taking stock of his reflection, trying to see what others saw, but to no avail.

  His hands had been another story entirely. For the first few hours that he'd been awake, he hadn't believed that his hands were his own. It had been as though he had found himself living in some kind of nightmare where he inhabited another person's body. The hands seemed to be too young; they should have carried scars and weather-beaten skin.

  Eventually, he'd had to hide the flesh from his eyes by covering them with leather gloves. He still hadn't taken those gloves off.

  "They must be desperate," said Gwenna. Caymus looked over to see her shouldering her bow and placing the unfired arrow back into the quiver at her waist. He'd seen the skill she'd attained with that bow on this trip, and had been well impressed. A particularly nasty-looking sand viper had surprised him on their first day out of Kepren, seeming to have simply appeared next to his shoe. Gwenna had put an arrow through it before he'd even had the thought to back away.

  Tavrin, tucking his barak sticks behind his belt, walked up to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "We will encounter fewer of them, the further south we go."

  "Is everybody alright?" Caymus asked.

  "He cut the leather!" Milo exclaimed, running his finger across a great gash in one of the saddlebags.

  "Which one?" asked Caymus.

  "The clumsy one with the hand axe," said Milo. "He took a swing at me and nearly hit the horse!"

  "I can't say I'm surprised," said Gwenna, inspecting the other animal. "They didn't really seem to know what they were doing, did they?"

  Tavrin came up behind her and also inspected their baggage. "I would say that they had never attempted such robbery before."

  Caymus smiled. "That," he said, "or we're the first that ever put up a fight." As he spoke, he noticed Gwenna turning to Tavrin and looking into his eyes with that same adoration he'd been getting so used to. Not for the first time, he wondered at the wisdom of this trip.

  He had learned the details about the relationship between Gwenna and Tavrin from his closest friend, soon after he had awakened. Unfortunately, Rill had been unable to get away from his duties as a royal engineer until two days after hearing the news that his friend was finally on his feet. Caymus had been very glad to see him when he'd finally showed up, and had marveled at his new uniform.

  Rill's main concern at the time had been how Caymus was handling the burgeoning relationship. Caymus had needed to consider the matter for awhile before finally having to admit that he didn't really know what to think. He and Gwenna had obviously been friendly and flirtatious before he'd been attacked, but they'd hardly been anything more than that. The fact that she was so openly enamored with Tavrin now did bother him, but the feeling had less to do with any possessive feelings he had about Gwenna and more to do with the fact that the relationship was evidence of just how much the world had gone on without him. It planted a lonely feeling in his gut.

  He was starting to enjoy Tavrin's company, anyway. This trip marked the only time the two of them had had any real contact with each other, and Caymus had found the young Falaar to be quiet, contemplative, and friendly, all of which were traits that he could identify with. Plus, there was no denying his respect and affection for Gwenna. He took any excuse to be near her, yet he didn't coddle her. Even now, they were standing in front each other, foreheads touching, hands on each others' arms, each checking that the other was alright. Though there was some pain in it also, seeing the two of them together like that was one of the few things that could make Caymus smile, lately.

  Tavrin turned to Milo, concern on his face. "The seed?"

  "It's fine," Milo said, waving the question off. "The kid made a good gash in the leather, but the sacks are still intact."

&nb
sp; Tavrin was visibly relieved. There were several reasons that the group was making this trip to the village of Terrek, and one of them was so that he could bring home a few bags of planting seeds, that he might try to see if he could make them grow in the desert. The Falaar knew of agriculture, but Tavrin had said they didn't have much practice at the Kepren way of it. The idea of losing any of the precious seeds due to the clumsiness of some foolish boy would not have been a pleasant one for him.

  Caymus was glad the horses hadn't bolted. He didn't know these two drab gray mares; Feston and Staven had been pressed into some manner of service in Kepren during his long sleep, which he'd been disappointed to discover; he'd gotten to know those horses well on their trip from the Temple, and he found that he was missing them.

  In short order, Milo had adjusted the baggage on the packhorse to account for the torn leather and Gwenna had checked the straps on the other animal. Satisfied that they were ready to move again, Tavrin pointed south with his chin. "Let us continue," he said. "We can make several miles by the end of today."

  Caymus regarded the afternoon sun, still high in the cloudless sky, and agreed. He let Gwenna and Tavrin walk in front with the first horse, and took the lead of the other. He and Milo walked together, several yards behind the others. Gwenna's position, holding the lead of her horse, brought back memories of their journey from the Conflagrationist Temple to Kepren, where she'd taken the same post.

  "You alright?" said Milo. Caymus turned to see his friend looking sideways at him. "You've been about a hundred miles away all day."