Brightly Burning

Lan squinted through his headache. 'Eighty stripes—I think—' I can't think... why won't they leave me alone? I didn't do anything!

The Herald interrupted. 'All right, you say that the older boys found you in the classroom and took you downstairs to the storage room to flog you.'

He hadn't said that, he hadn't said where they'd found him, but it was right, so he snapped his mouth shut and tried to think through a pounding headache that misted his vision with red. He just nodded, and the Herald continued.

'Then what happened?'

'Tyron—told me what I told you—and then he told the others to 'play with me' and they started to shove me around.' He could hardly speak now, torn between anger at his tormentors, and a terror as great as they had given him, but why was he so horribly afraid? What was it that the Herald's questions were pushing him toward? Why did the questions make him want to run away, howling?

Please! Leave me alone!

'So they tossed you about and slammed you into the walls. Then?'

'Then—that was when Tyron said—and they took me to the chair—and they tied—' The red rage and fear rose together, and the Herald wouldn't let him alone!

'Then what, Lan?' the Herald persisted. 'Then what happened? We have to know!'

He reached out and seized Lan's shoulder in an insistent grip, and the rage and the fear spiraled upward, out of control, and melded into a terrible whole.

'No!' he screamed, flinging himself away, dimly understanding that the unthinking rage and the animal fear would strike at whatever was nearest, whether the target deserved it or not.

He stumbled and fell to his hands and knees at the foot of one of the great torches as the maelstrom of emotion became the monster of flame—but this time, he did not touch anything living.

He sprawled at the base of the ornamental torch, and as his eyes glazed over with crimson, the oil above his head erupted in flame with a sound like the dull impact of a giant fist on flesh, or of something soft and heavy falling to earth. A wave of heat washed over him, and his trailing sleeves caught fire.

By this point, he was helpless; the fire held him in thrall. All he could do was let it rage around him, and hope nothing came within its grasp.

Forlorn hope.

Another torch went up, and another, and the nearest bush started to crisp and crackle with flames. The fire spread, and he could do nothing! He heard, as from a far country, the cries of alarm, and even someone calling his name, but he was no longer himself, he was the fire, and the flames were more intoxicating than wine, more implacable than a thunderstorm, all-consuming and all-enveloping, and in a moment or two he would be gone and there would be nothing left but the flames.

The little of himself that was left was nothing more than a dry leaf in the firestorm; tempest-tossed, not yet consumed, but doomed, surely doomed—

:Never!:

The word, clear and bright as a trumpet call in a still night, sounded above the chaos enveloping him.

There was a moment of total stillness. Lan, teetering just above the fiery abyss and about to fall into it forever, felt—something—reach for him, take him, and pluck him away.

The rage and fear ran out of him like molten metal poured from a cracked crucible. The ragged lightning piercing his brain with unbearable pain vanished. The crimson haze cleared from his sight, and he looked up, saw that the fire around him had died away, all but the flames rising from the torches; saw that he was not alone.

But it was no human that stood beside him, valiantly shielding him with her own body from the Herald and the spears of the two Guards and the Captain.

It was a Companion.

Oh— he thought vaguely, and looked into her eyes.

Once again he fell, but not to his doom.

He fell into a cool, blue world of light; he fell forever and never reached the bottom. But something reached out for him.

Something enfolded him, wrapped and cradled him in an emotion he almost didn't recognize. And when he realized what it was, he wept, and as he wept, he returned it with all his heart, and wrapped the giver in the gift, until it was no longer possible for either of them to have told where one began and the other ended.

They trembled together there, in an embrace so close that there was no room for thought, for a single, deliriously sweet moment. Then they parted, separating into individuals—but never again to be alone, never again without a bond beyond words, joined together by the strongest thing on earth or in the Havens.

He fell back into himself, still gazing into the most wondrous eyes in the world, and heard her speak for the second time into his mind.

:I love you, Lan. I Choose you. I am Kalira, and I will never leave you.:

'Well,' said the Herald, in a voice heavy with irony. 'This certainly changes things.'

*

POL had anticipated many possible outcomes from his confrontation with Lavan Chitward, but this was not one of them. Never in his wildest imaginings would he have anticipated that Lavan would be Chosen—or be a Firestarter who had nearly immolated himself along with his persecutors.

He managed to persuade Captain Telamaine that the boy was no longer a danger to anyone; he also managed to persuade him that the boy was in no way responsible for what the fires he had called had done to his