Knight Of The Flame

by H John Spriggs

  Milo frowned at the cliff. "I see." He shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose there must be a good reason for it," he said. "I'd do what he says."

  "My thoughts, exactly," Caymus replied, stifling a sudden yawn. "For now, though, I just want to get to sleep and not have to think about it."

  Milo cringed. "You might want to sleep under the stars tonight," he said. "When I left the hut, Gwenna and Tavrin were making kissy noises with each other."

  Caymus sighed. "Thanks for the warning," he mumbled.

  Milo clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't mention it," he said. "I left your pack outside, in case you wanted to make a quick getaway."

  "Thank you, Milo," Caymus said with a warm, appreciative smile. "Once again, you've saved my life."

  Milo grinned at the gratitude, if not the hyperbole.

  "Where are you sleeping?" Caymus asked.

  "Don't know yet," Milo said, looking around at the buildings about them. "I'm not tired. I'm going to do a little exploring before I settle in."

  "Don't explore too long," Caymus said. "It's late enough as is."

  "I make no promises," Milo said. He clapped Caymus on the shoulder again. "Goodnight Caymus," he said, then he jogged off into the darkness.

  "Goodnight, Milo," Caymus said quietly, as his friend disappeared. He'd lost a lot of himself when he'd spent all that time in the Conflagration, but traveling with Milo was helping him regain some of his good humor, at least.

  Milo had been as good as his word. When Caymus arrived at the hut, he found the horses tied and bedded down and his own pack propped up against the wall, near the doorway to the group's assigned hut. When he reached down to pick it up, he heard the distinctive sound of Gwenna, giggling inside.

  Caymus rolled his eyes, then slung his pack over his shoulder and walked along the cliff wall, a little annoyed at the behavior of the two in the hut, but also glad for them, that they were getting some time to themselves. He realized he didn't feel any anger or jealousy about the matter, and decided he was happy about that.

  After a few minutes of walking, he found he had moved past the buildings, to a place where the cliff wall was much lower, maybe two stories high. Only a few more minutes of travel, he assumed, and he would find a place where the cliff was low enough for him to begin the climb up in the morning. This spot, then, would be an ideal place to bed down for now.

  Taking deep lungfulls of the cold night air, Caymus unrolled his mat and blankets and lay down to a sleep more peaceful than any he'd known since the day he'd received the strange mark on his hand.

  ***

  Caymus took another drink from the waterskin at his pouch. The late autumnal air was cold about him, but it was still dry, and he was surprised by how often he was thirsty.

  He was nearing the top of the hill, in which was set the cliff-face that overlooked the village of Terrek. He wasn't sure how much sleep he'd actually gotten, but he'd risen before the sun had fully appeared in the sky. Now, the same sun was barely an inch above the horizon, and he was feeling invigorated, eager to meet the day.

  He had just left Milo, who, along with Tavrin's younger brother, Elon, was just beginning the process of speaking the place, so that messages could be sent to the Falaar from Kepren.

  Elon, a serious-looking young man, had asked to be involved so that he could try to get a firmer understanding of what Milo was doing, hoping it would facilitate better communication in the future. Milo could send his messages to anybody in the immediate vicinity once he knew the area well, but Elon had been designated as the primary recipient of Milo's, and later other air priests', messages.

  Milo had explained to Caymus that the process of speaking a place, of becoming intimately familiar with a location, was a long and arduous task. Once a priest understood a place well, however, it was relatively easy for him to communicate the relevant details to others, allowing them to send their wind whispers there, also. He'd said it had something to do with the language of the winds, that the difficult part was translating a description of the place into that language; once translated, it was a relatively simple process to communicate that translation to somebody who understood it.

  The actual procedure involved had been a strange one to Caymus. Indeed, a sizable crowd of the Falaar had begun to gather around Milo in the middle of the village, watching with great fascination as he'd wandered around and around, in ever-expending circles, pausing every couple of steps to turn in some direction or other, point at things, close his eyes, and speak quietly to himself. The whole process seemed highly ritualized, and appeared to require more concentration than Caymus had thought air worshipers capable of.

  When he'd left, Milo had been on the second of his expanding circles and Elon had relegated himself to making sure nobody got in the priest's way.

  Caymus smiled as he climbed, remembering a group of children who had started mimicking Milo's actions. As he thought about how much bumping into each other the children had done, walking around with their eyes closed, he realized there was a large blot of green growing in front of him, at what appeared to be the top of the ridge.

  As he drew closer, he was surprised to discover that the green blot was actually a rather large tree. The tree was a healthy-looking conifer, brimming with thick bunches of dark green needles, and standing at about three times his own height. Caymus was momentarily dumbstruck by the sight. A tree like this one had absolutely no business growing here, out in the middle of the desert.

  When he reached the tree, he gingerly put his hand to it, certain that it must be some sort of illusion. He felt the bark, pulled some needles through his fingers. It was real. What was it doing up here?

  Reeling at the discovery, he turned around to discover he was, indeed, at the highest point of the cliff face. The tree was growing about two yards from the edge. This was it, then: the brow of the Watchman. This was where Kavuu had told him he should be.

  He started to sit down, but first gave the tree a sidelong glance. He'd suddenly thought to wonder if 'the Watchman' referred to the hill or to the tree itself. He tried to remember how the word had been used the previous night, but couldn't recall the exact phrasing. Had they not arrived so late at night, he wondered if he might have been able to see the tree and ask.

  He turned around, deciding to leave the question of the oddly-placed plantlife for another time, and sat down, cross-legged, on the ground, about a foot from the edge of the cliff. The ground beneath him was hard stone covered by a sprinkling of fine sand. It felt cold against his legs and he briefly wished he'd brought his blanket with him, to lay over his lap.

  Taking a deep breath, letting the cool air invigorate his senses, he set his gaze to the vista before him. He could see quite a lot from up here.

  The Tebrian desert—now the Mael'vekian desert, he supposed—stretched out before him in a flat, endless nothingness. Off to the West, down below, he could see what looked to be plots of farmland, though nothing seemed to be growing there. Tavrin had been right. The Falaar seemed to know something of how to raise crops, but the fallow plots of land showed that they lacked the knowledge and experience to really be called farmers. He saw some movement down there, but the distance was too great for him to make out any detail. He imagined the shapes were Tavrin and Gwenna, planting the seeds they had brought with them.

  He'd encountered the two of them, briefly, after he'd left Milo. He'd been surprised, days ago, to discover that Gwenna had adopted some of the style of dress of these people, wearing leather leggings and an overshirt of light, brown material. She'd even been wearing leather moccasins, rather than the boots she'd traveled down in. If not for her blonde hair and fair skin, he might have thought she was one of the Falaar.

  "You seem pretty comfortable in those," Caymus had said.

  Gwenna had smiled. "Thank you," she'd replied. "I am." She'd turned around to gaze at the village, at the huts, at the nearby cliff, at the children playing games of chase through the lanes that ran between the buildings. "It's a won
derful place, isn't it?"

  Caymus had to agree.

  He briefly wondered where the Falaar got the leather they used in so many of their materials. There were no cows or other farmed animals to be seen, and he didn't expect there was much hunting to be had out in the sands. For that matter, where did their food come from, if they weren't already experienced farmers?

  He gazed across the village itself. Now that he could see the entirety of it, he estimated between four and five hundred of the small buildings rested in the shadow of the hill. If most of those held families, then the population of this place could very well be in the thousands.

  Something picked at the corners of his attention as he gazed across the village, and he found himself trying to tease that something out of what he saw. A crowd was still gathered around Milo, which he found amusing, but there was nothing really unusual there. Whatever it was that his subconscious had noticed, it was to do with the buildings, rather than the people. He was too far away to see any real detail in the mud and clay huts, though, so what could it be?

  The realization hit him suddenly. There was something about the buildings as a whole, not about the individual huts, something about the way they were laid out. He had thought the placement of each hut to be random and haphazard until now, but he was starting to see that there was actually some manner of pattern to it.

  The pattern was difficult to discern, but the buildings appeared to be arranged in crooked lines, lines which seemed to fan out from the cliff face, from directly below the very point where he sat, out into the desert. Upon further examination, it wasn't even the buildings themselves that made these lines; it was the spaces between them. The pattern was strange and more than a little bit surprising.

  Caymus closed his eyes, taking his eyes off of the sight before him, and considered what it might mean, not with his sight, but through the filter of his memory. Were the lines really there? Might his imagination simply be trying to force order out of a random process? As he thought about it, thought about the sand between the structures, he noticed the feel of the sun on his face. The air around him still held a morning chill, but he could still sense the slight heat against his skin.

  He sat there, his hands on his knees, his face turned up to the sky, reveling in the sun, in the cool, in the desert all around him. This place was peaceful, serene. He hadn't felt so calm since the day he'd left his home to travel to the Temple as a child. Gwenna was absolutely right; Terrek was a wonderful place.

  Caymus felt, more than heard, the presence approaching from behind. "I have always loved this spot," the presence said. The voice was Kavuu's. Its tone mirrored the serenity of the moment.

  Caymus didn't reply, choosing instead to remain sitting, quietly. He heard the rustle of clothing behind him, and the scraping of sand over stone. He suspected that the chieftain of the Falaar was also sitting down, taking a place under the branches of the strange tree. The man had the same deliberate way of moving that Caymus has detected in the other Falaar he'd encountered, and he felt he was, somehow, able to discern that movement by sound alone.

  A few minutes after the rustling stopped, Kavuu spoke again. "There is a power here that few understand, an energy in the land itself." He paused a moment. "Are your eyes open?"

  Caymus tilted his head down and opened his eyes. "They are."

  "Do you see the paths?"

  Caymus nodded, again looking at the strange arrangement of the small buildings below him. "They all seem to lead here."

  Kavuu was silent a long moment. Caymus imagined the grizzled face considering him. "You are perceptive, Conflagrationist," he finally said. "The power, the fire, it burns throughout the land. The sun pounds down on the sand, baking the soil, turning it to clay, making it hard and infusing it with flame."

  Caymus let his mind drift across Kavuu's words. He'd never before considered the idea of the land itself containing the fire element. As far as his instruction had ever gone, the land was of earth and nothing else, except for possibly water, in the case of soil. He wasn't sure he quite believed the reality of what Kavuu was describing, but he did like the idea of the Conflagration having a foothold, an actual home, in the desert.

  "My people, the Falaar," Kavuu continued, "discovered this power many generations ago. To begin with, we did not know how to use it, how to harness it, how to turn it to our need. Over time, however, our ancestors learned that the power could be shaped, could be channeled, gathered into a place.

  "That is the pattern you see. Our homes, built of the land itself, bear the power of the sun to a point, here, at the Watchman's brow."

  He stopped again, letting the words take hold in Caymus's mind. Caymus gazed out at the village. He could see the logic of it, now. If the land were thought of as water, flowing toward the cliff face, the huts themselves were placed in a way that would channel, corral the water to the point directly beneath him.

  "That power, the power of the lands of the Falaar, it nourishes us, feeds our people. It is why this tree grows here. It is why we come here to learn."

  Another long pause. "You must find this power, Caymus. You must feel and understand it, let it flow into you, here, in this place, if you are to understand what you wish me to teach."

  Caymus closed his eyes, wondering how Kavuu expected him to do that. Not knowing any other way, he reached out with his consciousness, trying to feel the power the chieftain spoke of.

  He felt the ground beneath him. It was still cold, lacking the element of fire almost completely. He felt the ground behind him, in front of him, and to either side. There was no significant heat there, no trace of the Conflagration's fury.

  He reached backward to feel the tree. There, he discovered a strange thing: the tree was warm. The exterior bark had the same, unsurprising feel that his fingers had touched earlier, but the core of the wood, just below the surface, was hot, as though a fire burned inside.

  Caymus reveled in the sensation. The tree felt more alive than any other plant he'd ever encountered. He could sense that what he was feeling beneath the bark of that tree was more than just heat: it was an actual manifestation of the fire element, as though the organism was filled with the Conflagration's energy.

  The sensation was breathtaking. Caymus felt himself inhale sharply as he gained a small glimmer of understanding as to what the chief had meant.

  Curious and elated, Caymus moved his conscious attention to the base of the tree, to the point where it met the ground. There, he felt the same force, the same energy, trickling up into the living wood from the rock and sand. He could feel it now, the channeled power Kavuu had described. All at once, he was holding the entire landscape about him with the same ease with which he would hold a single grain of sand.

  He let his attention drift further downward, tracing the flow of power backward, down the cliff face, into the earth at its base. He was following the path of energy the same way he traced a conduit back to the Conflagration, following a stream of the fire element back to its source.

  Opening his eyes, Caymus let his attention wander across the ground below him, flitting between the streams of energy, feeling the way that they fanned out, backward, until they became a slow, steady hum that permeated the desert.

  There was another sensation, too. Beyond those streams of the sun's power, there was something else, something grand in the earth and stone beneath him, something which collected that power as though it were nourishment. He felt as though he barely skimmed across the surface of that sensation as he followed the fire out into the sands.

  He'd never known that such a power existed right below his feet. He began to wonder if the Conflagration manifested itself this way in other places: back in Kepren, in Krin's Point, or even the Saleri Forest that surrounded the Temple.

  For the first time since he'd awakened from his long slumber, Caymus knew pure joy. "I have it," he said. "I feel it." He wasn't able to keep the rapture out of his voice.

  "Good," came Kavuu's voice. The voice seemed
more distant than it had before. "Now, you must take that power into yourself. You must let the power of the land flow into you, let it make you strong. You must accept it into yourself as you would accept the love of a companion or the pride of a parent."

  Closing his eyes again, Caymus brought his mind back to himself, to the brow of the Watchman. He felt, once again, for that stream of energy, probing its edges and its limits until he had a complete sensation of it.

  With the same effort he'd used when shaping a conduit, he tried to move the flow of power, attempting to redirect it from the tree to himself. Nothing happened. The stream of energy did not waver.

  "No," came Kavuu's distant voice. "You cannot force it to come to you," he said, "any more than you could force the affections of a lover. You must open yourself to it, be a receptacle for it."

  Caymus let go his grip on the stream, though he kept his attention on it, making sure not to lose the thread. He tried to understand what the chieftain was saying, how he could accomplish what the man wanted.

  He considered the tree into which the energy was flowing now. Why did the power flow there, to that spot? Why did it not simply continue on into another place, or dissipate completely? The only answer Caymus could think of was that the tree was a living thing and that the energy, concentrated as it was, somehow sought out living things.

  Why, then, did it enter the tree, rather than himself or Kavuu? What made the tree special? Caymus considered the nature of the tree, of a plant's need for the warmth of the sun, of the way it seemed to absorb the very light of the day. Kavuu said this power originated with the sun. Might the process be the same? Might the power flow into the tree because the tree was so open to receiving it?

  How, then, could he shift the flow of energy from the tree to himself? Was it as simple as Kavuu said, letting himself be open, of making himself a willing receptacle? Could he possibly be more receptive of the sun's energy than a tree?

  He could only try.

  Caymus let his attention stray from the energy flowing through rock and brought it back to himself. He thought on Kavuu's words, how he equated the flow of the power to the affections of a lover. Was it that simple? Experimentally, he tried shifting his thoughts, trying to imagine the power, flowing through the land, as someone he loved, tried to accept the power as he would the affections of such a person.