Lesson of the Fire

  What about the third? Sven thought, but he said nothing.

  “The others leave none the wiser. We don’t exactly show off our magic when we have guests.”

  “You certainly didn’t hesitate when you spotted me.”

  “You scouted Tortz with Knowledge. We had no way of knowing what you were looking for, but we didn’t want to take a chance that you were looking for illegal magic-wielders. Even then, we would have just driven you off if you hadn’t called the myst.”

  “If I had been an agent of Flasten, you never would have gotten close enough to keep me from escaping. You met me too far from your town walls. I already suspected a wizard.”

  Brand nodded his acknowledgment of the point. “That’s certainly a more rational reason than I expected. I was all set with a counter example to the ‘dangerous tool’ argument.”

  “Magic is a dangerous tool, and giving it to mundanes who don’t have enough knowledge to wield it wisely only puts their lives in danger,” Sven summarized. “And your response would involve the knife you’ve carried since you were a child — a tool whose utility outstrips the danger involved in carrying it.”

  “I’ve always been fond of the fire variant, actually, but yes.” Brand grinned as though Sven was an honored guest and not a prisoner held captive with morutsen.

  Sven hadn’t forgotten that detail, but he had missed the company of other wizards since leaving Nightfire’s Academy. He had enjoyed the heated debates over theory and practice where the best arguments won out, and no one had any hard feelings about being proven wrong.

  He shook his head. “This is a real mess. You can’t exactly un-teach them magic, and even if they swore off using it until they had the knowledge, the wizards wouldn’t care. Under the Law, this is a capital offense for everyone in the town.”

  Brand looked at him hard. “What brought you here?”

  Sven, certain that evasion of any sort would result in more suspicion, took a deep breath and began. “I have been systematically aiding towns, villages and homesteads on the Morden Moors. My assistance comes in the form of healing, sanitation, reconnaissance and parasite removal.”

  “And what do you demand in exchange?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  Sven shrugged and spread his hands. “Education is simply one more service I offer. I started by proving how useful magic can be. I keep them safe, and they have more time for luxuries like learning.”

  “And how many villages are under your protection?”

  “A few spans ago we added our fortieth.”

  “Forty towns!” Brand breathed. “And do you have other wizards helping you?”

  “No. One green is unlikely to take orders from another. Erbark helps where he can.”

  “Apprentices?”

  Sven wasn’t sure where this line of discussion was going, but he liked it less and less. “A couple. None ready for torutsen, yet.”

  “How can you possibly protect so many without any help?”

  Sven smiled mysteriously. “I’ve had to become very efficient.”

  “Dinah’s shriveled teat! There has to be more to it than that.” Brand waved a finger at him. “You’re hiding something from me.”

  “Yes, I am,” Sven admitted in a flat tone. “I think you can understand why.”

  Brand rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I have been in Tortz for less than three years, and I no longer need to maintain the spells protecting this town, but you already know how I did it.”

  Sven shrugged. “Even if you knew my secret, you can’t expand beyond the walls of Tortz for fear you will be discovered by the wizards.”

  “What if you die before any of your apprentices become wizards? Who will renew your spells? No one. And the lives of every person in those forty villages will be worse than they were before your arrival, because they will remember a better time. Everything you have done will come to nothing.”

  Sven considered arguing the point. The villages worked together now, but it would be harder without their only wizard. He waited for an opening.

  “You go into the wizards’ garden and pick its fruits for those villages, but you refuse to give them the key to the garden’s gate. You will take the key with you to your grave, and then the fruits will cease to arrive.”

  “A colorful metaphor, Brand, but you’ve done even worse to Tortz. You may be elevating a few Mar from their mundanity, but the education you have given them is still far inferior to that of a wizard, and wizards are the opponents you will undoubtedly face once your crime is discovered, and you know it will eventually be discovered. Your handful of mundanes, while adept at a few applications, is not numerous or powerful enough to fight a force of true wizards.”

  “The wizards won’t necessarily discover my adepts.”

  “Oh no, this is much worse than that,” Sven assured him. “What is magic? It is an abstract energy form composed, to the appearance of one under the effects of torutsen, of eight concrete parts, none of whose function is discernable to the eye. A physical tool’s purpose can generally be intuited quickly and with minimal experimentation. Unless the student knows the name and the color of each variety of myst, he must, in essence, reinvent the canoe. Moreover, unlike a physical tool, any application he discovers but does not pass on leaves no evidence of it ever having existed. Thus, magical knowledge gained without a reliable means of recording that knowledge is easily lost and, even in the best possible scenario, only very gradually increases. This is precisely why literacy and the development of a rational mind are so essential to the learning of magic.”

  Brand considered this for a long minute. “You’re right,” he said, at last. “I have been thinking in years when I should be thinking in decades, in generations.”

  Sven said nothing. He had the sense that he was no longer in danger of being murdered, but his chances of being executed for breaking the Unwritten Laws were rising by the minute.

  I should turn him over to Nightfire for judgment. It is the only way to avoid being Brand’s accomplice. If I so much as keep my silence about Tortz, I will be complicit.

  “Secret or no secret, you must have difficulty finding time to teach your apprentices with forty towns to defend,” Brand said conversationally, and Sven knew the renegade wizard had seen right through him.

  He could already tell the course the conversation would take, the observations, the offers of compromise. And he knew he could refuse none of it. He had stretched himself too thin, and he needed Brand’s help every bit as much as Brand needed his. No, even more than he needs mine.

  “In that I fear you are correct,” Sven said, jaw tight.

  “I propose a compromise. Teach me your secret. I will renew the defenses of your Protectorates if you will stay in Tortz to teach my apprentices. Perhaps we can cover up my legal indiscretion before it is brought to light. Once they are wizards, they can teach the people of your benevolent little duxy.”

  Sven hesitated. What if the magocrats find me in Tortz? They would hold me responsible for Brand’s offense and might not believe me if I implicated him. In my absence, Brand could claim the Protectorates as his own. And will the wizards of Tortz be loyal to Brand or to the ideals he shares with me? Brand could seize control of the Protectorates that way, too.

  Was there some reason why he shouldn’t let Brand put himself in charge of the Protectorates, or was it just his own pride in what he had already accomplished there? Of course he didn’t want to surrender any control. He had friends there. A wife. Neighbors who treated him like family.

  “One condition,” Sven said finally. “You obey the Unwritten Law in the Protectorates.”

  “I’ve already told you. I’m not a very patient teacher. Besides, forty towns are more conspicuous than one, as you have already noted.”

  “I want your oath. No matter what happens,” Sven persisted, voice hard. “No matter whether I am alive or dead, you will obey the Law.”

  Brand looked at him with a cu
rious expression. A look of understanding crossed his face, then, and he raised his right hand in solemn salute. “By the Oathbinder, and by Cedar, my patron, I swear to abide by Bera’s Unwritten Laws when visiting the lands under your protection.”

  “Then let’s get started.” Sven took a deep breath and explained the process for renewing the Protectorates’ defenses.

  Brand scowled the whole time. The defenses were complex to set up because they were so easy to maintain. An apprentice with his first taste of torutsen could do it. Sven didn’t bother explaining how to set up any of the spells.

  An hour ago, you would have killed me to keep the secret of Tortz safe. You didn’t really think I’d give up the only leverage I still have, did you?

  At the end of it, Brand simply nodded, and they both began their new duties.

  Chapter 20

  “Any Mar, be he weard or mundane, who breaks my Law shall be put to death by fire, as shall any student who wields power beyond his understanding. Any Mar, be she weard or mundane, who breaks my Law shall be put to death by fire, as shall any student who wields power beyond her understanding. Those who do not obey these laws betray the shades of the dead, and the dead may take vengeance upon them.”

  — Nightfire Tradition,

  Bera’s Unwritten Laws

  I was right, and he knew it, but I didn’t listen to my own arguments. His methods changed mine. How long have I lived in the shadow of Brand Halfin?

  Sven woke sweating, rolled on his side and hacked into a bucket until the phlegm came out red. Someone was rubbing his back.

  “Erika?”

  “Yes, my love?”

  He turned to look at her, dizzy. His left eye registered only a dark patch. “What time is it?”

  “Early afternoon. Welcome back to us. Horsa says your illness is passing now.”

  He smiled at her beautiful face, her wonderful face ... How could I have forgotten that beauty? “The war ... ?”

  “Is happening.” Her voice was too hard. “Get some rest.”

  She pushed him back down gently, and placed a cool cloth on his forehead.

  Then she was gone.

  Erika ...

  * * *

  Sven took a piece of charcoal out of the hearth and began to write the alphabet on a piece of wood for the thirty Mar gathered in Brand’s large house. “This is ‘Wah.’ It means ‘nothing’ in Middling Gien, which is what the Mar alphabet is based on. This is ‘Zix.’ It means ‘darkness.’ And this is ‘Guel,’ which means ‘night.’ This one here is ‘Jah,’ which means day. Now, the letters of the alphabet were arranged this way so that letters with related meanings were grouped together. ‘Wah’ is all by itself, but ‘Zix,’ ‘Guel’ and ‘Jah’ are grouped together because they all have to do with light or the absence of light.”

  “Um, Sven?” Askr Spertrag said hesitantly. “Did you say that ‘Wah’ means nothin’? But all th’other letters mean somethin’ else, right?”

  “That’s why ‘Wah’s all by itself,” Geir Tragget announced matter-of-factly.

  Twenty-nine heads nodded at this, and it was all Sven could do to stop himself from shouting.

  They hadn’t all been this difficult. Three hundred magic-wielding mundanes lived in Tortz, and some of them had taken to education easily. Many were at least eager to learn, which certainly made them easier to teach. Not so much these thirty.

  “No, ‘Wah’ is the word for ‘nothing,’ like the word ‘nothing.’”

  “I don’t think I un’erstand,” Askr said, not hiding his irritation very well.

  The others murmured their agreement. Sven began to lose his patience.

  “Never mind what it means, for now.” He continued to write, the letters blurring as his left hand passed over them. “Wah, Zix, Guel, Jah. Myst, Tor, Ues. Lets, Frov, Her. Dih, Sen, Ud, Krah. Olf, Bik, Eep, Oud. Pleb, Nyp, Ahd, Rah. Oik, Ym, Ak, Ait. Ies, Xil, Veks, Es. And then Wah again.”

  They looked at him with a mixture of bored expressions and sheepish smiles.

  Sven understood now why Nightfire was so careful about which mundanes he accepted as apprentices. In the Protectorates, only those who wanted to learn had come to him. Those who lacked self-discipline soon gave up and stopped coming, and it was no concern of Sven’s.

  “How do you know what order they go in?” Geir asked after a moment.

  “They’re grouped together by relatedness. Each letter means something in Middling Gien. Imperial Gien was pictographic, so the letters sort of look like what they mean. See this triangle pointing up? This is ‘Sen’. It means ‘water.’ Can you figure out why?”

  Some of them weren’t even paying attention. The rest stared at the charcoal lines, faces set in concentration.

  “A wave,” Geir tried.

  “Exactly,” Sven said, pleased at this tiny bit of progress.

  In Tortz, though, Sven couldn’t allow any magic-wielder to quit his classes. If any of them failed the knowledge tests that came with an inquisition, he and Brand would both be executed.

  Askr pointed at the first letter. “What’s that one mean, again?”

  Sven restrained himself with difficulty. “‘Wah’ can mean ‘emptiness’ or ‘a lack of anything.’”

  Geir suddenly laughed triumphantly. “Nothing! I see what you meant now.”

  Sven breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, that’s right, Geir.”

  Bui Beglin burst in through the front door, and thirty heads craned to look at him. “Weard Takraf! Brand’s back. He says come right now.”

  Sven frowned at the interruption. He cleared his throat. “I want all of you to copy the alphabet until I get back. We’ll learn to write your names tomorrow.”

  “I don’t see much use in tellin’ folks don’t know you how to say your name,” one of them muttered as Sven left, and laughter followed.

  Why would anyone in his right mind attempt what Brand tried in Rustiford? Teaching apprentices who want to learn is hard enough, sometimes.

  When Sven got home, he found Brand was not alone.

  “Erika! What are you doing here?”

  She flew into his arms and covered his face with kisses before answering. “Brand says you’re goin’ … going to be in Tortz for a long time, so I’m staying here, too.”

  Sven shot Brand a look that could have set wet wood on fire, but Brand seemed not to notice.

  “Your wife wants to help you teach the people of Tortz, and I agreed.”

  “You should have asked me before getting her involved in this,” Sven said in a tight voice.

  “You can’t teach three hundred students by yourself,” Brand said. “Nightfire has a staff of dozens, and there are only about a thousand apprentices at the Academy.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, looking concerned.

  “Nothing,” Brand said at the same time as Sven said, “Everything!”

  “I memorized the Unwritten Law as an apprentice,” Brand said with the air of a lecturer, “and it was silent on pre-torutsen apprentices teaching post-torutsen apprentices.”

  “That’s because it’s never supposed to be possible!” Sven raged. “Do you have any idea whether this will get her executed for breaking the Law? Because I certainly don’t!”

  “Executed?” Erika asked quietly.

  “You didn’t tell her!”

  “Neither did you,” Brand countered.

  “Tell me what?” Erika asked, more loudly, this time.

  Sven and Brand looked at each other, and then Sven explained their dilemma. Erika listened in silence.

  “You should have told me, Brand,” she said when it was finished, but Sven saw no fear in her eyes. “I would’ve brought more teachers from the Protectorates.”

  “Do you have any idea what will happen to everyone here if the wizards find out?” Sven asked her. I can’t lose you! Not when I’ve only just found you.

  She shrugged. “I’ve some idea, but we have to do it.” She gave Sven a serious look. “The longer it takes, the mo
re likely you’ll get caught, and I’m not going to let some wizard kill you for something that isn’t your fault.” She said the last fiercely, and he couldn’t tell whether she meant the wizards in general or Brand in particular.

  “She’s right, you know,” Brand said into the silence that followed.

  Of course she is. Did I really think I could do this alone?

  * * *

  Erika ...

  “Erika?” Sven woke again, haunted by his dream of Tortz.

  No one responded.

  What time is it? What’s going on? How long have I been sick?

  He felt much better. Indeed, Horsa was not present, the water in the air was diminished, and the bucket by his bed was gone.

  He felt weak, and just lifting his head to look around was an effort. Finally, he fell back again, and his dream continued where it had left off.

  Tortz. I understand now. A single log cannot sustain a fire forever. I am hindering the spread of my light by not letting others add fuel to my fire. Now that I have solved your riddle, Fraemauna, will I be healed?

  The goddess did not answer.

  * * *

  Six other Protectorate teachers volunteered for the task of educating the people of Tortz, which was most of the literate population of the Morden Moors. Sven impressed upon them the risks and warned them not to learn anything about magic from the magic-wielders who lived in Brand’s renegade town. They assured him they understood, but Sven couldn’t shake the fear that they would overhear something they shouldn’t.

  If you know too much about magic without knowing enough about everything you are supposed to learn first …

  It couldn’t be helped.

  Erbark stayed in the Protectorates as Sven’s representative, and Brand spent nearly all his time wandering from village to village renewing the defenses. None of them slept much that fall. By the time winter crept in, Sven took over the defenses of Tortz. They simply couldn’t afford to have so many of the magic-wielders maintaining the crude spells Brand had taught them, when a single recon stone could protect it much more effectively.

  The warm breath of spring brought returning geese and ducks. By the midsummer holiday of Jaer’s Hunt, Sven had mostly convinced the magic-wielders to stop brewing torutsen and limit their use of magic to life-or-death dangers. The defenses he had set up were more than adequate to keep Tortz safe and healthy.