Chris Evans - The Light of Burning Shadows

Konowa took some pleasure in noting that it didn’t sound as if the Suljak believed his own words for a second. It was small consolation. Konowa knew the Suljak was wrong. Whatever the night revealed, it was bound to be more than anyone had bargained for.

Alwyn opened his eyes and instantly knew some time had passed. The sun was low in the sky and already the air was cooling. He blinked several times and began to make out figures moving around him. He recognized Yimt and relaxed. Someone had removed Alwyn’s jacket, as he saw it lying on the sand beside him. The right sleeve was completely shredded. Gritting his teeth, he propped himself up on his elbows, expecting pain as he did so. Surprisingly, he felt none except for a throbbing at the back of his head. Miss Red Owl appeared before him and handed Alwyn his spectacles, somehow recovered, which he took with his left hand and put on his face. His vision blurred.

He took them off, buffed them on his sleeve, and had begun to put them back on when he realized that he could see fine without them.

He slowly raised the spectacles to his eyes, and as before his vision blurred. As he lowered them, it returned. He could see perfectly without them. Maybe the knock in the back of the head had fixed his vision?

Miss Red Owl came over and gently laid a hand on his wounded shoulder.

“You are fortunate to still be with us, Alwyn of the Empire” she said.

Alwyn looked at his shoulder and at first didn’t understand what he was seeing. Ugly, black scars criss-crossed the entire shoulder, each emanating from where the pond creature’s teeth had dug into his flesh. Instead of open wounds, however, frost fire had healed them with barklike grafts. The skin around the wounds was gray. He flexed his fingers. No pain. In fact, there was no feeling at all. He looked down at his hand. More black scars, but the fingers were still there and moving.

“I can’t feel anything in my right arm,” he said.

“I’m worried about what’s between your ears,” Yimt said, walking over to join them. He kneeled in the sand and looked Alwyn in the eye. “What in blazes were you thinking?”

Alwyn looked at his arm again. There was no point in keeping up pretenses. “I almost had it. The white flame was burning away the oath. I could feel it. Just a little more, and I would have been free.”

Yimt raised his hand as if he wanted to slap Alwyn, and then placed it on his good shoulder. “Free? Laddie, don’t you understand? One more foolhardy stunt like that and you’ll be dead.”

“No, it’s you that doesn’t understand. I can’t explain it, but I know.” He sat up a little straighter. “I felt a powerful magic hit me, just before I was going to break the oath.”

“Yes, well, it wasn’t so much magic as it was a three-pound rock,” Rallie said from behind Alwyn.

He turned and saw she had brought the wagon up to the edge of the oasis. The canvas cover was off and Rallie was opening the sreex cages. The large birds with their leathery, batlike wings squawked and flew into the air, wheeling overhead in a tight circle.

“You threw a rock at my head?” Alwyn asked, reaching up with his left hand to rub it. Sure enough, there was a large bump and the whole area was tender to the touch.

“I wasn’t about to wade into that water with those drakarri splashing around spitting fire, now was I?” she said.

“Drakarri?”

“Ancient creatures,” Rallie said, pointing at the ash piles around the oasis, “although these days, that term has come in for some abuse. Drake spawn, you’d call them, though they are unique even for that. These fellows are-if one believes legends, and it seems we’d be well advised to heed them-the most unfortunate offspring of Kaman Rhal and his damnable mating with a she-drake.”

Alwyn’s head tried to navigate around that image and failed completely. “He…mated with a dragon?”

“Apparently it gets rather lonely out here in the desert,” Rallie said. She looked around, but no one seemed inclined to laugh. “Ah, tough oasis. Again, legend has it that it was more a magical mating, a weaving of two powers that should never have been joined.”

A twinge of pain in the back of Alwyn’s head brought him back to the here and now. “And so that’s why you threw a rock at my head?”

Rallie brushed some dust from her cloak, making the cloth snap. “There was nothing else for it. Visyna tried to weave around you, but that didn’t take, so I had to employ a more…direct approach.”

If Zwitty had thrown the rock, Alwyn might have called forth the frost fire and burned him then and there, but looking at Rallie, Alwyn’s anger stayed in check. “How could you? You ruined everything.”

This time, Yimt did smack him on the side of the head. “You watch your manners, lad, that’s a lady you’re talking to. You clearly don’t see it, but she saved your life.”

Alwyn started to say something, then changed his mind. “How’s everyone else?”

Yimt sat back and looked at the sand. “Fine, I hope. Two of those skeleton things grabbed Harkon’s body and ducked down a tunnel entrance on the other side of the oasis before we could get to them. Tyul, Jurwan, and Jir went tearing after them, and Miss Tekoy went chasing after them. I sent Hrem, Teeter, and Zwitty to go bring them back. The rest of our little group is still here, and more or less in one piece.”

“We have to get going then,” Alwyn said, starting to get up.

Yimt held him down. “In the fighting, a couple of those drakarri things tried to get into the tunnel after the lads. We got the beasties, but their thrashing brought down the entrance. It’d take a day to dig it out.”

“Then why aren’t you digging?”

Yimt let go of Alwyn’s shoulder and pointed a finger at him. “We’ve got other problems, but right this second, we’re going to deal with yours.”

Alwyn shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“Really?” Yimt asked, his voice growing gruff. “Right, Rallie, show him.”

“No,” Miss Red Owl said. “He’s suffered enough for now.”

Yimt stood up. “Then he’ll suffer a little more. Private Renwar, on your feet.”

Scolly held out a hand and Alwyn took it. His wooden leg creaked ominously and he saw several of the limbs were cracked and broken.

“Rallie, your looking glass, please,” Yimt said, holding out his hand.

Rallie stepped forth and silently gave Yimt a small square mirror. He held it out to Alwyn.

Alwyn peered into it and then recoiled. Scolly kept a grip on him. Alwyn wiped his left hand across his mouth and then leaned forward and looked again. He didn’t recognize the face staring back at him.

One of his eyes was liquid black, the other white flame.

“I…I don’t understand. What’s happened to me?”

“You have both magics in you now,” Rallie said. “In trying to harness the white flame, you brought it into you. Think of it as if you took a second oath.”

Alwyn held out his hands and called on the frost fire. Black flames burst to life in his right hand, but in his left a pure white flame flickered and burned.

Alwyn screamed. Immediately, the two magics warred inside him, tearing and burning, twisting and ripping every fiber of his being. His lungs froze while his head burned.

Scolly yelped and let go of Alwyn.

The flames went out. Alwyn staggered but did not fall. He smelled smoke and looked down to witness his wooden leg smoldering. Terrified, he turned to see if he had accidentally lit Scolly’s shadow on fire. Alwyn was relieved to see that he hadn’t.

That’s when he noticed his own shadow. It was still there, but instead of the black denseness of everyone else’s, his was gray and insubstantial.

“This can’t be, I-I didn’t mean for this…” Alwyn was at a loss for words. What had he done?