To rob a man of his money is a foul thing, but to rob a child of his childhood is far more grievous.
Fallion lay beneath the boat with Rhianna, sweat pouring from him, and struggled to keep the flames at bay.
There was a fire in him indeed, he discovered. It glowed, and it was strong enough to light other fires.
He was feeling helpless and outraged at the fates that had tossed him here on the beach.
Why can’t the world just leave me alone? he wanted to shout.
But the fates would not leave him alone. Fate seemed to hunt him, shadowing him like wolves, and now he lay upon the beach with Rhianna beside him while Borenson bravely held off the strengi-saats.
Jaz had not hunted for firewood for more than three minutes before he raced back, his teeth chattering from fear, and proclaimed softly, “There are shadows out there.”
The strengi-saats had found them.
“Stay close to the boat,” Borenson whispered. “Watch my back, and when I tell you, dive under the boat with the other children.”
Jaz was silent for a long, long moment, and then whispered, “What good would that do?”
What good indeed? Fallion wondered. The strengi-saats were huge. If Borenson lost against them-and he surely would lose, Fallion believed, for he was but a common man now-then the strengi-saats would take them all, play with them, batting the children around, nipping at them with massive teeth, the way that a cat takes pleasure in tormenting a mouse.
And so the fear grew in Fallion, fear and a bone-crushing sense of helplessness. He peered at his little flame, one that had sprung to life not from any match or any piece of flint, but from his own heart, and he struggled to keep it from growing, to keep it from raging across the island.
For he was filled with wrath.
Rage is born from desperation, he thought. It came like a memory, and Fallion wasn’t sure if he was just repeating something that Waggit had once said, or if he had just heard it from fire.
But then he seemed to remember. “Whenever we grow angry,” his father had once said, “it is in response to a sense of helplessness. We all yearn to control our lives, our destinies. Sometimes we wish to control those around us, even need to control them. So whenever you grow angry, look at yourself, and figure out what it is that you want to control.”
Fallion remembered now. It was back when he was a child of four. His father had come home from his wanderings, from the far corners of Indhopal. He had brought Fallion a present of bright parrot feathers-yellow, red, green, and blue-to wear in his hats.
His father’s voice came clear now, almost as if he were still speaking. “Once you know what it is that you want to control, focus your efforts upon that thing.”
His father had always seemed so reasonable. He always took specific instances and tried to draw larger lessons from them. He was like Smoker that way, always trying to see beyond the illusion, to learn the lessons that he insisted “life” was trying to teach.
What had it been that Fallion was angry about? A puppy. A little hunting hound that he had brought up to his room to play with. The puppy had peed on the floor, and Fallion had grown angry, for even as he told the pup to stop, it stared at him with sad eyes and finished its business.
Fallion smiled at the memory, and his anger diminished somewhat. His rage shrank, along with his desire to make a furnace of this island, burn it and everything on it.
“Sir,” Jaz whispered to Borenson. “There’s three of them on the beach behind us, I think. Maybe four.”
Fallion heard the rustle of clothing as Borenson craned his neck to see. Fallion wished that he’d heard the clink of chain mail, but Borenson had been on ship too long, where mail was bound to get rusty or bear a man down into a watery grave. He wore no mail tonight.
“Just two,” Borenson said. “Those others are driftwood. Tell me if they come closer.”
So Jaz was imagining things.
Fallion’s heart was pounding. Rhianna squirmed a bit, and Fallion clung to her. He could feel her heart, too, pounding in her chest, like a bird fluttering against the bars of its cage.
The moon continued to rise; a silver light spilled out over the white sands. A ghost crab came scuttling under the boat as if seeking to hide under a rock, and Fallion watched it dully, then flicked it back out with his fingers.
At long last, Borenson breathed softly in resignation. “Fallion, light the fires.”
Fallion did not have to think about it. Light poured from him. He did not see it, but he could feel it. It raged from his chest, slammed into the pile of grass and driftwood, and suddenly there was a beacon of fire, blazing with light, sending oily smoke into the sky.
The light was far brighter than any normal fire, brighter even than a forge. Fallion wanted it what way. He wanted to flood the sands with light.
There was a snarl of surprise from a strengi-saat, and faintly Fallion could feel a pounding through the sand as one of the monsters leapt away.
“All right,” Borenson said with a chuckle. “You can stop now. They’re gone. For the moment.”
What Fallion didn’t know was that Borenson breathed a huge sigh of relief. He’d seen a shadow growing before them, knew that a strengi-saat was sneaking in. But he’d never imagined how close it had come. The monster had almost been breathing on him.
Fallion crept out from under the boat, and Rhianna followed. Both of them held naked blades, and it felt good to see the firelight reflect from them.
The little bonfire was still blazing, pulsing like a star. Fallion felt inside himself. His rage was gone. He felt spent, empty, like a fire in a hearth that is remembered only as ashes.
Rhianna took his free hand in hers, looked up at him with admiration and a hint of fear. “Your hands are very warm. You’re an incendiary now.”
Borenson grunted, peered down at Fallion with sadness in his eyes, as if Fallion had lost something dear. He hadn’t wanted to leave the boy here on the beach, trade him for a flameweaver. But that is what he had done.
And Fallion knew that next time that he needed fire, it would be easier. His master would heed his call.
Even now, he knew what he had to do. “Help me get more wood for the fire,” Fallion said. “We have to keep it burning.”
It wasn’t to keep the strengi-saats at bay, Fallion knew. It was more than that. He needed to show his gratitude, his reverence. He needed to feed the flames.
It was while Fallion was dragging driftwood to the fire that the soldiers came.
There were seven of them, seven men in dark chain mail that jangled as they rode.
Rhianna was the one who spotted them first, lances glinting in the moonlight.
At first, Fallion thought that he imagined them. They moved at a strange gait, leaping high and then floating back to earth.
They’re riding rangits, he realized. A rangit was like a hare or a jumping mouse in shape, but much, much larger. They lived upon the plains of Landesfallen among the sand dunes at the edge of the desert.
Like all mammals from Landesfallen, they were strange beasts. They laid eggs in late winter, as soon as the sun began to warm the sand, and guarded their nests through the spring until their young hatched. Then they nursed their young, though the mothers had no nipples. Instead, the rangits squirted milk from glands in their mouths, feeding their young like mother birds.
And so the men rode rangits, creatures broad of feet, that hopped like hares over the sand, racing along the beach much faster than any horse could have managed.
As they neared, Fallion saw that these were no common troops. They were handsome men and women, unduly so, as if they had stepped out of a dream.
“Force soldiers?” Fallion wondered aloud. But he’d never heard of anyone nowadays that granted endowments of glamour to force warriors. There was a time when forcibles were plentiful, in ages past, when vain lords would endow their honor guards with glamour. But blood metal was now too rare, and forcibles were put to
