But this dream was different. In this dream, Fallion was filled with a dull rage, and he had sent his consciousness throughout the prison, drawing heat from torches and the tormented bodies of the prisoners.
Not all of the heat, just enough to sustain him.
And then the torturer came stumping through the darkness. The jangle of keys, the thud of boots.
Even though Fallion’s head hung and his eyelids were so heavy that he knew that they would never open again, he saw the guard, saw him as he’d never seen anyone before.
The guard stumped past, his torch sputtering grandly. Fallion reached out to draw heat from it, but the guard did not look human in form. His body was there, but Fallion saw it now as if it were the body of a jellyfish floating among the waves. The flesh was clear and insubstantial, barely a hint of form. And there at the heart of the being, hidden beneath the flesh, was a dull gray-blue light, with tendrils shooting in every direction.
Like the jellyfish that I saw at sea, Fallion thought, radiating light.
The torturer stumped past, boots thudding, keys clanking on his chain, and was lost as he passed the stone walls of Fallion’s cell.
Fallion was left alone in the darkness.
Except now, there was no darkness.
There was a light inside of him. A light that hardly brightened the room, but which burned fiercely nonetheless. It was not a dim gray light, a shadow yearning to be seen. It was an inferno, a sliver of the sun.
I am a Bright One, Fallion realized. I am a Bright One.
His father had said that Fallion was an old soul. In the legends of Mystarria, there were stories of mystics and wizards who were said to be “old souls.” It was said that some folks chose to be born time and time again, accruing wisdom over lifetimes, wisdom that somehow came with them to each new life. Some of these old souls even claimed to recall bits of their past lives. “The body is a shadow,” they taught, “and the soul is a light that can pierce it.”
Fallion did not necessarily believe the legends. It seemed as good an explanation as any as to why some children were born with wisdom beyond their years.
But Hearthmaster Waggit had warned him against such notions.
“Those who claim to have old souls are mostly fakirs,” Waggit had said, “poor folk who pretend to be great, starving for applause.
“Some invent the tales because they can’t stand to be seen as the wretches they are. They tell themselves that only wise men suffer, and since they are in pain, they imagine that it must be because they are wise.
“Others use their supposed wisdom to gain money. Out in Indhopal, they prophesy to the poor about impending doom, and offer to use their ‘vast spiritual powers’ to deflect imaginary ills.”
“So all of them are frauds?” Fallion had asked.
Waggit had given him a deep, penetrating stare, one filled with respect.
“Some are genuine,” Waggit said softly.
At the time, Fallion had imagined that Waggit was thinking of some wistful encounter. Fallion had not been aware that his father had declared that Fallion was an “old soul.” Now he realized that Waggit had been referring to him.
Fallion observed the light within himself, radiating from a central point just beneath his heart.
This is a flameweaver skill, he realized. I’m drawing on powers that I didn’t know I had. But what good does it do me to see this?
Not much.
There was some comfort in it. Fallion expected his life to end soon, and he knew that if it did, he would come back again.
He peered inside himself, examining the light. He could see tendrils, thin filaments that stuck out from a burning center, like the spines on a sea urchin.
The spines did not flicker and sputter the way that the flame in a candle does, nor did they seem as if they could die. They were just there, like antlers on a stag.
Fallion twisted this way and that in his chains, and the spikes of light moved with him.
How brightly can they shine? Fallion wondered. I’m a flameweaver. I can nurse a twig into flame from nothing. What can I do with the fire within me?
He willed the light to come forth, and suddenly it blazed, astonishingly bright, so that it seemed to him that the whole room was alight.
He hung there, knowing that he was enveloped in total darkness, yet seeing the room in stark detail-the manacles that had held his brother hanging empty, the locks open, while a stain of sweat and urine darkened the stone wall.
Bits of dust and rubble threw shadows on the floor.
A rat gamely rounded a corner from another cell, the shadowy light within it bouncing as it moved, completely unaware of Fallion’s penetrating gaze.
Fallion was marveling at the sight when Shadoath came. He did not hear her, did not see a candle or torch. She came in utter darkness, as if she preferred it that way. Only her voice announced her presence as she rounded the edge of the cell.
“So,” she said cheerfully, “the sleeper awakes.”
Fallion peered through the darkness at the edge of his cell, and saw her behind the iron bars. Her flesh was as clear as jelly, a mere hint of form. There was a light in her still, a struggling little gray spirit no brighter than the rat’s. But there was something more, a blackness that seemed to be attached to the back of it, some creature of indistinct form, like a worm, and it clung to her spirit via a small mouthlike orifice, the way that a lamprey uses its mouth to hold on to a shark.
Fallion opened his eyes. There was no light to reveal her form, and so he let the light within him shine, and studied her by the light of his spirit.
She watched him with keen interest.
“I’m awake,” he said. “What do you want from me?”
Shadoath did not answer, not because she did not have one. Fallion could see that much in her eyes.
She opened the lock to his cell, stepped inside, then kept a steady pace as she came close. She did not stop until she touched him, stood leaning against him, her chest to his, peering up into his eyes.
She was beautiful, and Fallion stirred uncomfortably. He was a child still, and his fantasies about women consisted solely of holding hands or tasting a kiss, but he felt in small part what it must be to be a man, to want her more than life or breath.
“You should see yourself,” she said. “There is light bleeding from every pore of you, just as in days of old.”
Fallion had no idea what she was talking about. “The days of old?” Was she talking about the bright Ones of old, or did she mean him, in some previous life?
“Why are you here?” she whispered.
“You brought me,” he said.
She shook her head. “Not here in this cage. Why are you here on this world, now?”
Fallion shook his head, bewildered. He only wanted a drink. For a drink, he would tell her everything he knew and make up lies the whole day long.
“You do know the answer,” Shadoath said. “It’s there in the flames, inside of you. Peer hard enough and you will remember…”
But Fallion felt too tired, too weak, to peer inside of himself for the answer. He surrendered to his weakness, just let himself hang loosely. It did not matter if the chains cut his wrists. The fresh flow of blood that came streaming down his elbows didn’t matter.
He hung his head and fainted.
Hours later, he came awake again and tried to recall the conversation.
He was fully aware of the light inside him, and just as aware of the dark creature that dwelt in Shadoath.
Did it really feed on her spirit? Fallion wasn’t sure, but he recalled now that his mother called the locus a “parasite.” If that is what it was, then it clung to Shadoath like a bloated tick.
Yet if the locus had been feeding, Fallion had not seen it. He’d not seen a gut or some muscle that sucked
