Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

These shackles cant be that different in construction than a door lock.

He gathered himself to cast the diagnostic spell quickly, but the rocks kept coming in a steady stream. He tried to ignore them, but it didn’t matter. The I magick meant to save his life was preventing him from escaping. There is nothing I can do !

Howling with frustration, he raised the rock in his right hand and smashed it down on the manacle on his left wrist. It rang loudly and produced a quick spark that died on the prison’s damp stone floor. The light hadn’t been much, revealing only grey stone and blond straw chaff, but he had seen it.

The rocks stopped flying.

It took Kerrigan a moment or two to accept that this was truly the case. Once he did, he smiled and started to cast the diagnostic spell.

Thwock!

“Stop it!”

“Soppit, soppit, soppit…” The sibilant voice repeated the mocking word in a pitiful tone. The origin point for the voice shifted around and around, with little clicks occasionally accompanying it, as his tormentor circled him. “Soppit, soppit, soppit.”

Kerrigan again tried to cast a spell, but a rock stopped him. He tried again and again, hoping that one rock might miss him and he might get his spell to work, but at that range his assailant never missed. In fact, from the high angle of some of the attacks, Kerrigan knew the invisible creature had raced in and hurled the stone down at him.

Not being stupid, Kerrigan realized that he wasn’t going to cast a spell unless he had respite from the stones. The only time he stopped was … Quickly the magicker hammered a manacle with a stone. It rang loudly, but the stones still came. Kerrigan hit it again, glancing it, and striking a spark.

The rocks stopped and silence again reigned.

Kerrigan hit the manacle again and another spark ignited. No stone flew. The youth allowed himself a smile that broadened quickly. With his left hand he swept straw dust into a little pile and struck a spark into it.

The spark survived just long enough for a small thread of smoke to drift up.

Again and again Kerrigan pounded the manacle with the rock. It didn’t matter to him that the glancing blows tore at his skin. His wrist was soon slick with blood, but still he struck, flicking spark after spark into his pile of tinder. He blew gently on it, getting sparks to glow brightly before they died. He learned now to avoid scattering the tinder, and between sparks he grabbed straw and crumbled it into more dust.

The hail of stones had stopped, but Kerrigan didn’t give a thought to casting a spell. Somehow the creature knew when he was invoking magick. How, he didn’t care. He just wanted the torment to stop, and it had. He didn’t know if the creature was afraid of fire, or fascinated by it; but if producing it would keep the thing occupied, he was determined to do it.

As he worked he thought back to the Okrannel campaign and the trip south from Fortress Draconis. Though Kerrigan knew very well the spell that would kindle fire, he’d not been allowed to do it on the trip. Orla had not wanted him to become some hedge-wizard in the eyes of the soldiers. On the retreat from Fortress Draconis the princess had noted that he had more important things to be doing than worrying about making fires since others could do that.

Others could. He’d even watched children kindle fires. Yet here I am, and I can’t do that . He wished he’d watched more closely, for it would have made the whole task easier. Still, as smart as he was, he slowly reconstructed the procedure.

Finally, a spark caught. He blew gently on it and got embers. Another breath and a little flame popped into life. Kerrigan fed a small piece of straw into it, then another. Carefully, gently he fed it, letting it grow. The fire ate the straw quickly, so he twisted stalks and knotted them to make them burn more slowly.

He smiled when he felt heat. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to remind him how cold he was. Still, it was heat, and there was light, some real light. Staring across the fire limited his vision, but he caught faint hints of the walls and clearly saw the iron ring into which his chains had been slipped.

Kerrigan sat up, his smile very broad as his little fire guttered merrily.

A wave of magick swept into the room. Kerrigan felt it and tried to study the spell, but its complexity defied casual observation. The spell sank into the chains that held him and locked their links. The chains tightened on his legs and held his arms to his thighs.

A very cool and low voice spoke from above and behind him. “Very good, Adept Reese, you have learned your first lesson. Magick is not life.”

“Who are you? Where am I? What do you want with me?”

“Three very good questions.” The voice remained even and calm. “You will have the opportunity to earn the answers to them.”

“Answer one now. I made a fire. That’s what you wanted me to do, wasn’t it?”

“No.” Another spell sped through the room and Kerrigan recognized it instantly. It was the first spell taught to every apprentice. It was the spell they learned before they learned how to make fire.

His fire went out.

“No, no! Not fair. I did what you wanted.”

“Listen, Kerrigan Reese. Very little in life is fair. You were born with vast potential for working magick. The world needs you, but you have been held apart from it. And because of your distance, you could easily do more damage than help. This must be determined.”

Something hit Kerrigan in the back. It was soft and slid down against his buttocks. He couldn’t see it, but it felt like a blanket.

“You now have some idea how desperate a man can be to create a fire when he is cold. Imagine those were not stones, but were raindrops or snowflakes. Imagine that the cold in your limbs made your hands numb. Imagine that huddled in the darkness was your family. Your wife, hungry and cold, your children terrified. The baby probably already dead. When you saw that spark, hope would soar. When it died, hope would die, and you would know your family was going to die along with it,

“You, Kerrigan Reese, might be that spark. If you don’t understand how important you are, you will be far too dangerous to be allowed to live.” The voice did not rise on that point, making it less a threat than a simple fact. “Think on what I have said. Cast no magick or you will be punished.”

“But I’m bleeding.”

“And how would one who has no magick deal with that, Adept?” The voice grew distant. “Remember first you are a man and then, perhaps, you will be able to save mankind.”

Will snarled and cursed as he kicked his way through brown slush. He didn’t care if it splashed up on him—his anger insulated him from the cold. As for the state it left his clothes in, he didn’t care about that, either. The clothes, titles, all that stuff was stupid and he hated it.

He spun around and looked back at the palace. The tops of the towers already hid beneath fluffy white blankets of falling snow. It looked very peaceful, which was ridiculous given who was in there at the moment. And the guards, all of them, should have been rushing to the palace to kill the sullanciri . That much seemed blatantly obvious to Will, but everyone else seemed to think a flag of truce meant something.

It means you’re missing a chance to kill Nefrai-kesh , that’s what it means .

Growing up in the Dimandowns wasn’t easy, but at least he’d learned some hard lessons. The slums of Yslin were a place where truces lasted for as long as it took someone to get more people on his side. If Nefrai-kesh had shown up there the way he showed up in Meredo, he’d have been ripped apart. And, given what he was, even if they hadn’t killed him, they certainly wouldn’t have believed anything he had to say.