Fallion considered this. It was said that anyone who gave himself to one of the greater powers eventually lost his humanity. Fallion’s father had done it, had traded his humanity in order to save mankind.
Fallion stared out to the open sea. Night was falling, but the sea was lit from beneath. Millions of luminous jellyfish stretched across the still water, making it look as if the sea were on fire.
“I understand,” Fallion said. “Will you teach me?”
Smoker hesitated, inhaled deeply from his pipe, and Fallion added, “Myrrima will be mad. I know. She’ll be mad at both of us. But I’m willing to take the risk.”
Smoker smiled. “I not fear her,” he said in his thick pidgin. His eyes suddenly blazed as if with an inner light. “But is danger if I teach you. And greater danger if I not teach…”
And so it was understood, Fallion would become his pupil.
Smoker inhaled deeply, blew some smoke, sending it into the air, and said, “Little fire, easier to control. Smoke sometimes easier than fire. You try make shape.”
So Fallion began his lessons in stolen moments. Fallion tried turning the puffs of smoke into the forms of fish or seagulls. He tried envisioning shapes while whispering incantations; he tried to force the smoke with his mind. He tried to surrender his will. But hour after hour, Fallion found that he had no knack for it.
“It will come,” Smoker assured him. “Must make sacrifice to fire. Must burn something. But not enough wood on ship. We wait. Maybe make huge fire on island. We wait.”
So they just talked. Sometimes they talked about how to serve Fire, and Smoker told Fallion some of the secret powers that he had heard about. Some flameweavers became so adept at sensing heat that they learned to see it, as if their eyes suddenly became aware of new colors in the spectrum. “We all flaming creatures,” Smoker assured Fallion, “if we had eyes to see.”
Fallion learned much in these conversations, but just as often he found that the lessons came as a complete surprise during the course of normal conversations. So it was that he came to what he thought was rather esoteric. “Why are children born now different from those born before the war?”
Fallion hadn’t expected an answer, but Smoker leaned back, pulling a long drag on his pipe. “The world was no balance,” he said at last, the smoke issuing from his mouth. “Now, great harmony coming.”
“How did it get out of balance?” Fallion wondered aloud.
“One True Master of Evil sought make it her own. That problem. The One World, the Great Tree, even One True Master of Evil-all shattered. All broken and twisted.”
Fallion knew the legends. He’d learned them from Waggit and others. But he’d never considered that he was living in a time of legends. “But why is our world changing now?”
Smoker shook his head, as if to say, “Some things even wizards didn’t know.” But then he drew long on his pipe, and eventually, when the coals were burning hot, it seemed that his eyes glowed with inspiration and he said, “Someone fixing world.”
“Right now?” Fallion asked. “Someone is fixing it? How do you know?” Everyone knew that the world had changed when his father defeated the reavers. But few seemed to notice that it was changing still.
“Many powers found in Fire. Not all destroy.” Smoker exhaled, and Fallion struggled to make something from the smoke that had formed. Smoker continued. “Light. Is great power in light…” Smoker took some puffs on his pipe, until the bowl glowed brightly. “All world is shadow, is illusion. Land, trees, grass, sky. But light pierces shadow, shows us the real.”
“So can it teach us new things?”
“Sometimes,” Smoker admitted, “like now. Fire whisper, ‘There is wizard at heart of world.’ That how I know someone changes it. Sometimes, light shows things far away, future. But mostly…it make sense of things. It pierce illusion. Watch.”
This is what Fallion wanted most right now in his life-understanding. He felt as if everything around him was hidden. There were loci on the ship. Smoker had told him so. But neither of them knew where. Was one in Captain Stalker? Fallion liked the man, but he didn’t trust him completely. Maybe that’s what a locus would want-for Fallion to like it. But Fallion wanted to pierce through the illusions, to see into men’s hearts, and so he eagerly drew near.
Smoker stoked the fire in his pipe, and together they peered into the bowl for a long time, watched the embers grow yellow, then orange, then develop a black crust while worms of fire seemed to eat through them.
“In light is understanding. You, you creature of light, so you drawn to Fire. But why you not touch Fire, use Fire, let it touch you?”
Fallion shook his head, wondering, wishing to know how he could unlock the powers that lay within him.
I’m afraid, he admitted to himself. I’m afraid that I’ll get hurt.
Suddenly the bowl of the pipe blazed all on its own.
“You keep light hidden,” Smoker said, “deep inside. You not let it out. But when fear is gone, when desire blaze like this bowl, you become one with fire.”
“How do you blaze?” Fallion asked.
“Many ways,” Smoker said. “Passion. Love, despair, hope. All desires can lead you to power. Rage. Rage is easiest. Let rage build. Must rage like inferno. That release fire in you.”
Fallion considered. A seagull cried out on the sea.
He must be lost, Fallion thought.
They were days out from port.
“Is that how immolators do it?” Fallion asked. “They let the rage in them burn?” Fallion imagined himself at the height of power, saw himself drawing light from the heavens, channeling it down into fiery ropes, until he too burst into flame, clothing himself in an inferno and walking unscathed, like the flameweavers of legend.
Smoker gave him a sidelong glance, as if he had asked the wrong question. “Yes,” he said. “But you not want be immolator.”
“Why?”
“Because, Fallion, is easy throw life away. Living, that hard.”
“But immolators don’t die.”
“Not live, either. When fire take them, when burst to flame, flameweaver’s flesh remains, but soul does not. His humanity turn to ashes. His heart goes to other.
“Must take care,” Smoker urged. “Fire whisper to you, beg you to give self. But once is done, cannot undo. You be dead, and Fire will walk in your flesh.”
“Have you ever immolated?” Fallion asked.
Smoker shook his head. “No.”
“Then how do you know that you can?”
“Power is there, always whisper. I know I can do. Fallion, immolation is easy. When rage take you, is not become fire that is hard.”
For long hours, Fallion had struggled to find any vestige of power. He’d tried shaping the smoke with his mind, imagining fish swimming through the air. He’d even tried pleading with Fire, seeking acceptance.
Now he peered over his shoulder, as if Myrrima might come walking the deck any moment.
And Fallion surrendered to rage. He thought about the past weeks, about how the strengi-saats had attacked Rhianna, about the fresh loss he’d felt over the death of a father that he hardly knew, about his terrifying flight from Asgaroth, his mother lying cold beside the fire, and last of all he imagined Humfrey the ferrin, broken and twisted like a rag.
The rage built as he considered the unfairness of it all. It became a hot coal in his chest, fierce and wild, tightening his jaw.
“Now shine,” Smoker said, exhaling, sending tenuous threads of blue smoke issuing from his nostrils. Fallion did not try to shape it, didn’t try to imagine anything.
He just let his rage release, like a light that burst from his chest.
A strengi-saat took shape in the smoke and floated up into the air, soaring, its visage cruel as its jaws gaped.
Smoker looked at Fallion with pride and gave a satisfied grunt.
Just then, at the back of the ship, Myrrima called.
Fallion whirled, caught a partial glimpse of her between the ropes and pulleys on deck.
Immediately he ducked, crawled over the forecastle, and went walking down the far side of the ship.
