Lesson of the Fire (22 page)

Valgird’s eyes went wide. Ari resisted the
urge to frown. He knew Robert well, but he had not quite expected
this.

“But Sven’s minor magocrats will be there,
so it will be better to draw out some of them. The wand-wielders
are no more than a distraction.”

“And if the Mardux returns?”

“Then he’ll taste Domin’s burning duxy, too,
and he will grovel before me.”

“He will mistake you for Domin?” Valgird
wondered. “What will you ...?”

Robert smiled poisonously. “It would be too
difficult to believe unless you experienced the Will-Breaker
first-hand. Are you truly curious, Weard Geir?”

He recoiled, shaking his head violently.

“I thought not.”

Chapter 17

“
Red is for Vitality. Vitality involves
the manipulation and mending of the body. It is very useful, but
also limited. It is far easier to heal surface wounds than internal
ailments. Most wizards can close surface wounds with ease, but have
difficulty repairing shattered rib or cracked skull. Only the most
skilled healers can cure disease or poison, and even for them, it
is seldom a swift or easy process.”

— Nightfire Tradition,

Nightfire’s Magical Primer

Sven’s condition worsened rapidly after his
collapse on the Chair. Neither Horsa nor the other skilled healers
in Domus Palus had ever seen a manifestation of Dinah’s Curse quite
like this, though they seemed intent upon hiding that from Erika,
claiming it was only a case of Seruvus’ Breath brought on by
exhaustion. She knew better, though.

She knew her husband was slowly dying.

Now he lay in their bed with drapes around
him, a priest in attendance keeping water steaming through the air.
He rasped when he breathed and his chest looked expanded and red in
the dim light. When his eyes opened, they were bloodshot and tight,
and when closed, Erika could see his eyeballs jerking around. Sven
had to be forced to drink water and broth every day, and if he
didn’t vomit it back up, someone had to help him relieve
himself.

Erika brought their daughter, Asa, to see
him every day when he was coherent, which was rarely, but she
seemed uncomfortable with him and would squirm until she was
allowed to leave.

Erika sat alone in the library where Sven
spent much of his time, quietly weeping in the shadows of the
bookshelves while she pretended to read the magical primer he had
written shortly after Asa had been born. Tears magnified a few
words of the Vitality entry as though everything Sven authored
wished to be larger than it actually was.

“Tell me about how you and Sven met,” Pondr
said behind her, and she jumped.

“What?” Erika tried to surreptitiously wipe
the tears out of her eyes as she closed the book.

“There are many holes in his story,” he said
seriously, his blue eyes catching a shaft of sunlight coming from
one narrow window. “How you two met, the situation in the town of
Tortz, and so on. You can fill one in for me. How did you
meet?”

She wanted to tell him to leave her alone.
She didn’t feel like telling stories just now.

Can’t he see that Sven is dying?

But she found herself blushing as she
remembered it. “It was a silly thing, really,” she said, and closed
the book in her lap.

* * *

Leiben was a town that had survived for
almost fifteen years in the forest shadowing the Morden Moors. In a
straight line, it was four miles from Zerst, the first town of the
Takraf Protectorates. But, so Sven had said later on, he had taken
four days to find it.

Erika Unschul foraged for root vegetables.
The town was bursting at the seams — a gobbel raid had destroyed
Horm, several miles away, and the survivors had fled to larger,
better-protected Leiben. There was a shortage of food. Even the
wild rice was in short supply. So she had gone out on her own
initiative, dressed in her black cloak and heavy leather boots.

Her thickly gloved hands rooted through the
mud, pulling up a patch of onions. She could see white worms
clustered around the root, all through the dirt, but she knew they
weren’t the ones she should fear. Konig worms were too small to
see, and if any attached themselves to your skin, you lost that
limb or died. It was safer to root through mud in water, because
the water might wash the worms off, but then you risked leeches or
Dinah’s Curse.

A splash to one side made her look up. Ten
yards away she saw a gobbel standing. She froze, but it had caught
her movement, and now the greasy pig-eyes turned and saw her basket
filled with the greens of plants.

If it’s just the one, I might be able to
fight it.

She tensed, steeling herself to grab the
knife at her belt and fly at the gobbel. It turned its head and
called out to some unseen companions, and Erika was off like a
rabbit. It could be a bluff, but she knew she couldn’t fight more
than one gobbel at a time.

She clutched her basket against her as she
ran, heading for a part of the woods choked with underbrush.
Gobbels were strong, but they had poor eyesight, so maybe she could
lose them.

A thousand tiny hazards covered the ground
in the tangled mass — roots, rocks, slick patches of mud. The
gobbels crashed through behind her, shouting as they tripped and
fell, but she seemed to be falling down almost as much. Once, her
foot got stuck and she fell forward on her out-stretched hands, the
basket tumbling out of her hands.

Erika stood up again. She was breathing
hard, tiring and sore from all the falls. But she grabbed the
basket and collected its scattered contents. The first of the
gobbels spotted her and called out to its companions.

Six of them,
Erika thought with dread.

Tears streamed down her cheeks as she drew
her knife and prepared to face them.

A wall of fire rose up in front of her, and
Erika cried out in surprise. Gobbel voices shrieked in pain as the
flames engulfed them. She ducked behind a tree and fell again on
the slick mud, but crawled up to have a look at what was
happening.

A Mar in a bright green cloak stood
confidently to her left, arms held out before him. One gobbel
rushed him, javelin rising into a throw, but the man didn’t flinch.
The gobbel’s back arched as if it had run throat-first into a tree
branch, even though there was nothing there. It fell backward and
did not get up.

A motion of his hand, and a gobbel ten feet
away from him crumpled as if a large rock had fallen on it. The
last two gobbels died in balls of flame.

The wizard, for that was what he must be,
had defeated six gobbels by himself. He had done it so quickly
Erika’s knife was still clean, and she felt ashamed for not
helping.

I probably would have just gotten in the
way.

He looked directly at her and smiled gently.
He had the most beautiful green eyes. He approached her slowly, as
if afraid she would run.

“Peace in the swamp,” he said. “I’m Sven
Takraf.”

She nodded, wiped her face
with her hand, felt the tears there. “I’m Erika Unschul.”
Sendala, let me not look too bad.

“Peace in the swamp, Erika. Do you live near
here?”

She nodded. “I live in Leiben. It’s not far.
I was lookin’ for food.”

His green eyes widened a little.
“Alone?”

Erika couldn’t tell if he was horrified or
impressed. She shrugged and deliberately set to collecting the
fallen food into her basket. “Yes. It needs doin’, an’ I can take
care of myself.”

She half-expected him to argue that she
clearly could not take care of herself, since the gobbels had
almost caught her, but he didn’t. He looked slightly wistful, as if
the situation stirred some memory for him.

She caught herself picking nervously at the
mud on her cloak. “I’ve some soup, Sven.”

He focused on her, and a grin lit up his
green eyes. “I’d like that.”

* * *

“I flustered a little, then, because I
thought he would want more than food because he saved my life, but
the look in his eyes had nothing to do with that at all.”

“What do you mean by the look in his eyes?”
Pondr asked.

“You’ve got the same look right now. That
earnest, ‘all I want to do is learn’ look. He just wanted to test
out some new hunting spells. Between the two of us, we fed everyone
in town, that night. Leiben was the second town to join the
Protectorates.” She looked aside and said more softly, “I never see
that in him anymore.”

* * *

In his sickness, Sven relived the past.
Bouts of semiconsciousness followed torrential dreams and
nightmares. What he thought about for the brief moments he was
awake haunted him through hours of sleep.

Days passed, and he could do nothing.

Every day, he prayed to his patrons to give
him back his health and strength. He just needed enough energy to
get out of bed.

You said you would give me more Energy than
any Mar who has ever lived. Why do you deny it me now?

There was no answer.

Are you punishing me, or is this the wrath
of Dinah and Domin?

Sven swallowed painfully and waited for an
answer in the darkness behind his heavy eyelids.

When was I last sick? When I helped Erika
feed Leiben, and I caught Seruvus’ Breath ...

* * *

Gudris, the mayor of Leiben, oversaw Sven’s
treatment personally, feeding him a gruel laced with bitter-tasting
medicinal herbs for several days before, at last, the illness
passed. Strength renewed, Sven went immediately to work on
implementing changes in the town as he had in Zerst. There were
three things the two towns needed first: defenses against Drakes,
land to grow food on and protection from disease.

He constructed a spell to warn the town of
impending attacks, allowing hunters a greater range. He used Power
to help drain the lands near the town, making it capable of
supporting vegetables. He carefully implemented a system of
sanitation. Following a meticulous purgation of skin parasites from
the townspeople, Sven established a magical screen to eliminate
mosquitoes and flies that entered the village and spread
diseases.

The people marveled at the magical wonders
Sven had brought to them, especially the last. The children would
spend hours watching the sparks flicker and crackle above the
buildings as insects were reduced to smoking husks. True, the moors
themselves were as wild and dangerous as ever, but at least the
town was safer and healthier.

Sven smiled as he watched the children.

The
future
.
And this
is just the beginning.

He sat with Erika one evening by the fire.
Since his arrival, she had not been very far from him. He would
return from a hunting trip and see her waiting for him. He would
turn a corner, and she would bump into him. He would stand up from
sowing seeds and see just her head behind a house.

The looks she gave him, the way she watched
him, her body movements were all obvious. But inside, he was
conflicted. On the one hand, they were of an age when most people
married. He himself was older than average. On the other hand,
involving himself with her would only tie him down, and this was
what he was trying to explain to her now.

“Leiben and Zerst are not the only villages
that would benefit from my protection. There must be other towns on
the moors, people who are suffering as Leiben once suffered. And
winter will be here too soon. That will mean frequent gobbel raids,
less food and more disease. The malaria will fade, but Seruvus’
Breath kills so many Mar ...”

“But you don’t know where any other towns
are. How’re you goin’ to fin’ them without leavin’ Leiben at the
mercy of the gobbels?”

Sven picked up a stick and made a mark on a
patch of earth. From the mark, he drew a slowly widening spiral.
“It will take time, but this will clear more of the moors of
gobbels. And no town will escape notice.” Sven’s eyes flashed red
in the light of the fire.

“Think of creating Leiben on a massive
scale! Hundreds of towns free of disease. Starvation defeated.
Gobbel raids just stories we tell children.”

He felt the glow spread from him to engulf
her. She could feel his energy and see his dreams before him.

She understands!
he thought, and when it came time to leave, in
private he pledged he would return to her.

From the fruitful womb of Sven’s mind, the
Takraf Protectorates was born.

He traveled from town to town, the spiral
nearly flawless except for little jitters here and there. On the
paths in between, gobbels and other Drakes who dared to stand
before Sven were blasted into ash, until among their communities
bright green became equal to red in terms of danger. After Zerst
and Leiben, word had spread among the Mar of the wizard who walked
the moors and demanded no tribute, who used his power to fend off
disease and Drakes. And as winter progressed, representatives of
distant villages met Sven in the wilderness.

By the beginning of spring, as Sven rejoined
Erbark in Zerst, the Protectorates numbered fifteen. At that point,
he had reached the limits of his ability to renew the spells, and
he knew he would have to find other ways to expand his protection.
After careful thought, Sven made efforts to introduce the mayors to
each other. Mar and Mar communities were generally unsociable
creatures, but, especially in the central communities, the lack of
diseases to cure and monsters to defeat left much free time. Erbark
had suggested using warriors from the inner towns to protect the
outer ones, and the mayors, after a few months of debate and a
handful of objections, eventually agreed.

And the travel between towns — safe, dry and
occasionally enhanced by Mobility — gave the mayors and elders a
taste of what magic could do for them. Sven added that as a bonus
to all the dealings, because those he had started to teach how to
read in Zerst were happily ready to teach others, in an effort to
reach the ability required by Bera’s Unwritten Laws — so they could
use magic themselves.