Fireborn

  Perhaps she would remain in Genora. Perhaps ... Hallow sat up and turned to look at Exodius, the old man’s words finally having filtered through his own thoughts. “What are you talking about? For what do I need a clear mind?”

  “Kelos, of course. The ghosts are sure to object, and then there are the arcanists. Have you ever seen a bumblepig? They’re all over Genora. Small, shaped like a furry potato, little round ears, and black spots on their coats—you know them, yes? Trying to get the arcanist collective to do what they should is just like training a bumblepig: impossible.”

  “Are you talking about taking me on as your apprentice?” Hallow asked, wondering how he could gracefully refuse the offer. He was flattered that someone as important as the Master of Kelos would want him as an apprentice, and he was sure there was much he could learn, but he felt his time of apprenticeship was over. He had things to do, one of which was to find Allegria and make sure all was right between them.

  “Why would I do that? You’re clearly not at all apprentice material.” Exodius’s voice was filled with scorn.

  Hallow ignored the insult and leaned back against one of the kegs, relieved.

  “You’ll want to take one yourself, no doubt, to pass on all of the tiresome tasks, but that’s your business and not mine. I did not insult you again! You know full well the only reason you took me as an apprentice was to give me all the unpleasant tasks. Bah. Another lie.”

  The staff, which was leaning against the back of the front bench, shook with what Hallow imagined must be impotent fury. He was amused by the idea that the staff talked to Exodius, amusement that faded with his next words.

  “I’m ignoring you. You’re not my problem any more than the ghosts or the blighted arcanists are, and if the lad chooses to toss you into the nearest fire, he won’t hear a world of condemnation from me.”

  The staff banged around a few more times, almost hitting Exodius in the head.

  Hallow shot up so fast that his chest screamed in agony. “What are you talking about? Why would I want to burn Thorn?”

  “The question is more, why wouldn’t you? But that is up to you. The Master of Kelos may do as he pleases.”

  “The Master ...” Hallow’s throat closed. “You’re mad. Or I am. Or I’m hallucinating. It’s that, isn’t it? I’m dead, or very near it, and am having delusions.”

  “All arcanists are mad to some degree,” Exodius said blithely. “It goes with the magic. As to the other, I couldn’t say.”

  “You are talking about making me the Master of Kelos, aren’t you?” Hallow asked, desperately hoping for a negative response.

  “Yes, yes, I heard. He is quicker of wit than I first supposed, although much good that will do him. I suppose learning will come with time. He’s certainly more willing than I was when you took yourself off to the spirit world.”

  Panic grasped Hallow’s insides with cold, clammy fingers. Although he wasn’t an overly modest man, he was not given to grandiose ideas and plans, and never once had he thought of obtaining such a high post as Master of Kelos. All he wanted was to have his freedom, to serve where he could, and to continue gaining knowledge in the arcane arts. Being the leader of a bunch of solitary mad arcanists ... he shook his head in horror at the thought. He never sought leadership, and the bonds that came with it. “Master Exodius, I am cognizant of the honor you do me, but I cannot accept. I have neither the experience nor temperament to lead the arcanists’ order, and—”

  “You’ve no choice in the matter, lad,” Exodius said. “I made the decision two days ago. I’ve done my time; now it’s your turn. Ha! You can say what you like, Thorn, but when I get to the spirit realm, I shall do more than plague my old apprentice. There is much learning to be found amongst our predecessors, and Eagle and I shall enjoy not being bound to earthly constraints anymore.”

  “Eagle?” Hallow said, his mind desperately turning over to find some viable reason why Exodius couldn’t carry through this plan. As an arcanist, he was bound by the code to accept whatever the Master of Kelos demanded, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find a way to get out of it. “Your dog?”

  “Passed on to the spirit realm just after that battle in Starfall, poor little mite. But he’s waiting for me, and I promised him it would only be a short while. Now you see why you can’t go chasing after that girl.”

  The next six hours dragged by with Hallow throwing every argument he could think of at Exodius, and the old man, wily and far more cunning than Hallow imagined, deftly turned away each one.

  By the time they arrived at Kelos the following midday, Hallow was more or less resigned to the inevitable.

  “I will do as you command,” he said, slowly and painfully unhitching Penn from the harness that the horse so obviously felt was beneath his dignity to bear, and led him over to a post. “But you must give me two or three spans of Bellias before I take up your mantle. I have to find Allegria—”

  “There’s no time,” Exodius said, gathering up the staff and one of the small kegs. He nodded toward the wagon. “I must be off to the spirit realm before Bellias lights the sky tonight. Bring in the rest of that, will you? It’ll all be yours after tonight, and you don’t want the captain finding it. He has a special love of beer, and will want to impose a tax on the goods you brought in.”

  “But I didn’t bring them—you did,” Hallow said, a sense of hopelessness filling him.

  Exodius said nothing, just entered the tower, leaving Hallow standing with his tired horse, a wagon filled with goods, and, if the glimpses of movement from his peripheral vision were accurate, a ruin full of ghosts.

  “If I asked you to run over me a few times to put me out of my misery, would you do it?” he asked Penn.

  The horse turned and snorted on him, blasting his chest with snot.

  Hallow sighed. “That’s about as accurate an assessment of my life as could ever be made.”

  The ceremony that marked the leadership of the arcanists being passed was not at all the impressive ceremony Hallow had conjured in his mind.

  “Here. Thorn is yours now,” Exodius said. He shoved the staff into Hallow’s hands, then filled his own with various books and scraps of parchment, topping it all off with several small boxes the size of a man’s hand, and the stuffed parrot. He peered over the top of the parrot and, with a pronounced waggle of his eyebrows at Hallow, added, “I’m off now. Don’t let the ghosts get the better of you—it’ll be a nightmare to regain control. Farewell.”

  “But, Master Exo—” Before Hallow could finish the sentence, Exodius spoke a few words that Hallow had never heard, stepped forward, and was swallowed up by ... nothing.

  Hallow looked at the spot where Exodius had disappeared. “What—I have never—what was that?”

  Summoning the entrance of the spirit world, a voice said into his head.

  Hallow blinked a few times and angled a glance up at the wooden bird atop the staff. “You really do talk? It wasn’t just Exodius being ... eccentric?”

  Of course I talk. I would be a very poor Master of Kelos if I couldn’t do something so simple as imbuing a staff with my presence and lending my support to the current master. Now, listen well, young Hallow, for there is much for you to learn. Exodius was a horrible master, and let all sorts of my regulations and policies slide. You shall instill them again, and order will be brought to the arcanists. First is your apprentice. Every Master of Kelos must have an apprentice. Exodius refused, but pay that no mind. While you were insensible, I arranged for your apprentice. He should be here in the morning. Then there is the general state of decay in Kelos. You need to restore it before you summon all the arcanists to acknowledge your leadership.

  Hallow sighed for what seemed like the fiftieth time that day. He had a feeling his new position was going to be even more taxing than he’d imagined.

  It took a full week until he was able to move with any sort of ease, and more than two weeks beyond that before he tracked Allegria to a ship that had sailed a mo
nth before. He didn’t return to Kelos after finding that information, instead taking passage on the same merchant ship, and arriving at Deacon’s Cross a few days later.

  “Blessings of Kiriah and Bellias upon you. My name is Hallow.” He made a bow to the priestess who stood at the gate to the Temple of Kiriah to which he’d been told Allegria was bound. “I have come a long way, an exceptionally long way, to see a priestess. Allegria is her name. Would it be possible to have a message sent to her?”

  “No.” The woman turned her back, clearly done with the conversation.

  “Might I ask why not? If it is against some temple rule—”

  The woman clicked her tongue in annoyance. “She sees no one. She has gone into hermitage, and has contact only with a custodian.”

  “I’m sure she’ll agree to see me if you could but take a message that I’m here. Not that it is of importance, but I did come all the way from Genora to see her—”

  “She sees no one,” the porter interrupted.

  “By her own choice?” Hallow asked, suspicious that the head of the order might have locked her up for her conversion to Bane of Eris.

  “Of course! We do not force our priests into solitude. Hermitage is an honor, not a right, and certainly not a punishment.”

  The porter made it quite clear she was done speaking to him. Hallow considered his options, but short of barging into the temple and searching it for Allegria, he had no idea how to find her.

  He spent three days in the small town outside the temple, trying three more times to see Allegria, even going so far as meeting the head priestess, but every time he was met with the statement that Allegria wished to see no one. At last, before he had to leave in order to catch the ship sailing back to Genora, he paid a small girl to smuggle a letter into the temple and deliver it into Allegria’s hands.

  “If you find her, give her the letter, and tell her it’s from me,” he told the girl, a child of one of the cooks. “Tell her that I will return at any time if she needs me. Can you remember that?”

  “I think so,” the girl said, her eyes on the small bag of coins Hallow held before her. “My mam will know where she is. Can I buy anything I want with those coins?”

  “Anything that your mother wouldn’t mind you having,” he replied, hoping he wasn’t bringing down upon his head the wrath of an irate mother. “Mind you deliver the letter first.”

  The girl snatched the bag from his hand and ran off, scattering promises behind her.

  Hallow felt as if his body were deflating, hope having slipped away from him, leaving him as flaccid as an empty wineskin.

  “And that is that,” he told the horse he rented at the stable, and prepared to ride back to Deacon’s Cross. “I can only pray to the goddesses that she reads the letter.”

  Eleven months later, he was still waiting for a response from her, one that he finally admitted to himself might never come.

  That thought was uppermost on his mind one morning.

  “Master Hallow! Master Hallow, wait! I have news!”

  “The morning looks to be a fresh one,” the captain of the guard noted sourly when Hallow emerged from the run-down stable, where he had been attending Penn.

  “Master, it is a message!”

  Hallow paused to look up at the sky. It did indeed appear to be the start of a cloudless day. “Is it the good weather that annoys you, or the fact that the sun makes you so transparent that you can barely be seen?”

  The ghostly captain of Kelos glowered at Hallow. “I see you’re in a mood.”

  “Master, it is of much importance!”

  Your apprentice wants you, Thorn whispered into Hallow’s mind.

  Hallow smiled at the captain of the guards. “Indeed I am. The light of Kiriah is always welcome in Kelos.”

  He’s chugging toward you at quite the pace, the staff continued. Hallow wondered if, when the day came to leave his physical form behind, he’d imbue his spirit into an inanimate object, as Thorn had done. Lad has to stop filling his piehole with sweets. His face is almost as red as his hair.

  Definitely not. He didn’t want to blight whoever was unlucky enough to be named Master of Kelos after him.

  Now he’s fallen. Oh, he’s up again. Boy’s got pluck, I’ll give him that, but he’s not master material. You know that, don’t you?

  “I do know that, but thank you for pointing it out. I don’t suppose you have anywhere else to go? One of the ghosts to visit? A small child to frighten?”

  Hahaha. I like you. You’re much more interesting than that apprentice of mine. Exodius was mad, quite mad.

  “I’m going to be lucky if I’m not the same in a very short time,” Hallow muttered. He continued toward the tower, ignoring the labored breathing and dull thump of running feet behind him. It would do Selwin good to get a little exercise. The boy spent too long cloistered in the apprentice’s quarters, gaming with the spirits of soldiers long dead.

  “Mast ... mast ... er ...” Selwin was clearly at the end of his breath now. Hallow briefly contemplated running up the stairs to his quarters, but decided to take pity on the boy. He paused at the doors, one hand resting on them with a familiar sense of mingled possession and weariness.

  He looks like a tick about to pop, Thorn mused.

  “Master ... a ... a ...”

  “A message, yes, so I gather.” Hallow held out his hand, waiting patiently for the boy, now doubled over with his hands on his thighs, to catch his breath.

  “Came from ... a messenger ...”

  “Messages so often do,” Hallow replied, and sighed to himself when the boy just looked blankly at him. It had been a long week with no one for conversation but people long dead and a new apprentice whose round freckled face spoke of a boy who was not the sharpest arrow in the quiver.

  What’s it say? Is it something about Exodius? If he’s dead, tell him he can’t haunt you. I was here first.

  Hallow broke the wax seal and quickly scanned the message.

  The words were written hurriedly, the letters standing out starkly against the cream of the paper. As he read it, Hallow shivered, feeling as if the sun had suddenly gone behind a cloud. He glanced upward, but the sky was still a pale washed blue.

  “There’s blood on it,” Selwin pointed out breathlessly, nodding to the paper.

  Oooh. Blood? Who is it from? What does it say?

  “So I see.” Hallow turned and entered the tower, the sound of his boots on the stone stairs tapping out a rhythm that seemed to echo in his brain.

  “Master Hallow, is something wrong?” Selwin dogged his footsteps. Hallow didn’t have to see his apprentice to know the boy’s face would be twisted with worry—except when gaming, Selwin always wore a worried countenance. It was one of the reasons Hallow regretted taking on the lad against his better judgment—Selwin clearly did not have his heart in magic of any form.

  “Something is always amiss somewhere. Remember that, and you stand a fair chance of holding on to your sanity.”

  Pfft. We’re arcanists. We live for the battle and strife.

  “Maybe you do, but some of us have seen enough fighting to last for the rest of our lives,” Hallow told the staff before continuing up to the room that had once belonged to Exodius.

  It had taken a good six months before Hallow forgave the old man for dumping the responsibility of Kelos upon him.

  Selwin looked momentarily startled at Hallow’s words, but everyone in Kelos knew that Thorn spoke only to the current master. With a hesitant glance at the staff, Selwin hung around the doorway, clearly torn between curiosity and the desire to escape any potential work that Hallow might assign him. The curiosity won, and the boy followed him into the tower room.

  Hallow had made few changes since Exodius left, although he did clear out the vast quantities of paper, leaving it to Selwin to sort through them. The books Hallow kept. He went directly to a small writing desk and sat, writing a few lines quickly.

  “Is it bad news, Master Hallow?” br />
  Yes, what is it that had you turning so pale?

  Hallow looked up, his eyes on the apprentice. The boy was thirteen, stocky, prone to gaming when he should be studying, and obviously uncomfortable in his surroundings. He would never be an arcanist, not one of any ability, and it was far kinder to release him from a profession he didn’t enjoy than try to teach him the wonder that Hallow found in manipulating arcane magics. “Do you want to go home, Selwin?”

  The boy’s face lit up with joy. “For a visit? Can I do that? My father said I have to wait until harvest time—”

  “Go home for good, I meant.” Hallow sealed the scroll with a blob of blue wax, pressing the Kelos signet ring he wore on a chain around his neck into the soft wax before getting up to face the boy. “It’s clear to me that while you have tried your best here, your heart isn’t in it.”

  Good for you. Send him home and get a worthy apprentice. He isn’t at all what I thought he would be. I’m sure I can find another one, a better one for you.

  Selwin’s face blanched. He stammered, “Ma-Master Hallow, if I’ve done something wrong—”

  “You’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing that you could help.” Hallow put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, giving him an encouraging pat. “Not everyone is meant to be an arcanist. It’s an exacting profession, one that takes centuries to learn, and a lifetime to master. There is no shame in trying and deciding it’s not for you.”

  “My father—” The boy’s eyes were still frightened.

  “I’ll tell him I am about to go into battle, and I can’t have an apprentice now. Give him a little time, and then broach the subject of you apprenticing yourself to ... what do you like to do?”

  “Dicing,” the lad said promptly. “And eating.”

  “Perhaps there is a publican you can assist,” Hallow said. “That would be a much better life for you than if you stayed with me.”