The Name They Burned

We stopped when the wounded could no longer pretend they were keeping up.

The elves gathered in a narrow clearing between two ridges, hidden behind shrubs thick enough to resemble walls. Those who could still stand guarded the perimeter while everyone else tried to keep the injured quiet.

The Imperial Order remained somewhere behind us.

Nimiwa released my wrists and bent forward, hands braced against her knees as she caught her breath. Her loincloth had torn sometime during the chaos. It was starting to slip, exposing more of one hip than she seemed aware of.

I looked away. Heroism continued demanding sacrifices no one wrote songs about.

She crouched to crawl beneath a fallen trunk, which brought the problem directly back into view.

“Nimiwa.”

She glanced over her shoulder without changing position.

“What?”

“Your outfit seems to be waging a different kind of war.”

A sharp gasp escaped her as she looked down. She dropped onto her knees and pulled the leather back into place, glaring at me as though I had personally caused the damage.

Her ears reddened as she retied the torn strap.

Keme shouted from farther ahead, causing Nimiwa to stand and hurry toward him. I followed more carefully, stepping where she stepped, managing it without requiring manual guidance. It was less enjoyable.

The surviving elders had spread one of the painted hides across a flat stone. It was the same one I had seen inside her lodge.

A red human figure stood at its center, surrounded by the symbols of what was likely to be different gods. None claimed the empty space over its heart. Painted lines ran outward, toward fire, moonlight, water, feathers, branches and shapes I did not recognize.

Tawa stood upon the stone beside it.

He had resumed his small masked form. His burning hair moved weakly behind him, and several of the feathers surrounding his wooden face had blackened at the ends and started to wilt.

The Life Mage’s spell had reached even a god.

Nimiwa knelt beside the hide. “Redborn,” she said.

Tawa’s carved eyes remained fixed on me.

“A Redborn enters unclaimed,” Nimiwa said. “No god lays path on soul.”

“Nullborn,” I said.

Her ears tilted back.

“That is Church word.”

“It is the word the gods laid on my soul.”

“It is a lie on soul.”

She said it without hesitation. The next part did not come so easily.

Nimiwa reached for the little leather book tied at her belt. She flipped through pages crowded with cramped human words and annotations in Elvish.

“You are not…” Her finger moved down one page. “Burdened.”

I glanced at the dictionary. “That doesn't sound good.”

Her brow furrowed. She checked another entry. “Restricted.”

“Better.”

“No. Not correct.”

She turned several more pages, becoming increasingly annoyed with the language.

“Other people are born with one road. One blessing waits inside, then pledge makes it…” She searched again. “Narrower.”

“Specialized?”

Nimiwa found the word and tapped it firmly.

“Yes. Specialized.” She looked relieved to have defeated it.

I looked at the symbols surrounding the figure.

“And?”

“A person is born with blessing. Blessing chooses class.” She paused, arranging the next words carefully. “Pledge wakes it.”

“Pledge to which god?”

“Any god who answers.”

That was not what the Church taught.

Nimiwa touched one of the painted symbols surrounding the red figure.

“Different god, different gifts. Same road.”

“And a Redborn?”

“No first road. May pledge again.”

“To another god?”

“To many.”

The answer came too quickly, as though she had recited it in prayer hundreds of times while never expecting to say it to the person described.

“Fire. Moon. River. Wind. Any who judge worthy.”

The bones of it matched what the Church taught. Every human was born with a blessing that fixed the class waiting inside them. Soldier, healer, blacksmith, farmer. A pledge awakened it and shaped which abilities came with it.

The lie was who could answer.

The Church insisted that humans could pledge only to the Seven Holy Protectors. Their gifts produced the purest classes. The strongest soldiers. The greatest healers. That was why only humans could be allowed to worship them.

The elves knew otherwise.

A blessing decided the class. It did not decide which god had the right to awaken it. Other gods could answer a pledge and grant different gifts along the same road.

I had no blessing waiting inside me. No class chosen at birth. No first road laid down before I could walk.

Apparently, that meant every god foolish enough to answer could lay down a new one.

They burned entire villages because a single child might carry too much possibility. If that was true, the Church was not cleansing the world of corrupted souls. It was eliminating the competition.

The forest disappeared. For one moment, I was eight years old again.

The basement had smelled of mold and the waste bucket my parents emptied when they remembered I existed. There had been no windows. Only a narrow crack beneath the door and whatever light came through when someone pushed food inside.

All I had was one book to keep me company.

Its cover had been torn away, half its pages swollen with water. Someone had thrown it into the basement before locking me there. Perhaps my mother. Perhaps one of my brothers. Perhaps someone had simply decided rubbish belonged with rubbish.

I had read it until the pages softened beneath my fingers.

Most of it had been stories about ancient classes. Sword Saints who split mountains. White Mages who drew sickness from kings. Black Mages who spoke with things beneath the earth.

And one faded illustration near the end. A man in a red coat stood before seven altars. No symbol marked his chest.

I remembered tracing the letters beneath him, sounding them out alone in the dark.

Red Mage.

The next page had been torn out.

I had always assumed the book was simply damaged. Now I wondered whether someone had feared what came after. What if they had not merely called us empty? What if they had burned the name that proved otherwise?

“Red Mage,” I whispered.

Nimiwa sounded the unfamiliar words under her breath.

Tawa’s feathers stirred. For the first time since meeting him, the little god looked at me without suspicion or judgment. He looked as though I had returned something he believed destroyed.

“Do not mistake possibility for favor,” Tawa said.

The little god stepped onto the painted figure and pressed one wooden hand over its empty chest.

“A Redborn bears no first road,” Tawa said. “He may stand before many gods. He may ask each for a blessing.”

“And what? Collect powers until he becomes inconvenient enough to be hunted?”

“He may ask for power,” Tawa said. “The gods may refuse.”

Nimiwa straightened. “He helped us.”

“He helped himself.”

“He warned Keme of blue mage.”

“Because the spell threatened him.”

“He showed warriors how to break light wall.”

“Because it stood between him and escape.”

Each answer came without hesitation. Tawa had apparently spent the retreat preparing a list of reasons I remained a disappointment. I had plenty more to add if he ran out.

Nimiwa’s hands tightened against her knees.

“He could run again. He stayed.”

Keme spoke from behind us. His voice was low, but every elf nearby went still.

Keme stood with one arm bound against his chest. Blue burns climbed his neck where the Life Mage’s spell had passed through the edge of his shield. He looked at me with no warmth whatsoever.

He spoke to Tawa directly and Nimiwa’s expression slowly changed as she listened.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Keme says you are weak.”

“I was worried blood loss had affected his judgment. Good to see he kept his senses.”

“He says you cannot use sword. Cannot run through forest. Cannot hear command.”

Nimiwa’s eyes widened slightly as Keme continued.

“But you saw what he did not. You knew white wall. You knew blue death. When escape opened, you wait for wounded pass.”

Keme struck his fist once against his chest.

“He says courage is not only strength.”

Keme looked directly at me.

“He says he does not trust you. But dislike does not change truth.”

That was considerably more support than I wanted from a man who had punched me unconscious.

Nimiwa faced Tawa again.

“Redborn is judged by gods. Let him be judged.”

Tawa stepped from the painted hide onto the flamberge lying beside me.

Keme must have carried it from the camp. The blade was blackened along one edge, and the leather around its grip had partially burned away.

Nimiwa lifted her head. “Keme spoke truth.”

“Keme testified to what happened.” Tawa placed one small foot upon the ruined grip. “He cannot make another man’s pledge.”

“You aren’t refusing because I’m unworthy. You’re refusing because I haven’t asked.”

“No god may lay a road through you before you choose to walk it. A gift given without pledge would not be a blessing. It would be a chain. You must choose which gods you approach, and each god must choose whether to answer.”

“So I need to beg.”

“You need to offer.”

“After 40 years of barely surviving, I have very little left.”

“You have your word.”

Tawa walked along the flat of the blade. His fire left no heat upon it, but the dried blood beneath his feet curled into ash.

“Why did you remain in the camp?”

“We established this. I was attempting to avoid death.”

“You had a path into the forest.”

I glanced toward Nimiwa. “Your oracle stripped me while I slept and painted every inch of my body. I stayed to learn whether it was truly for some ritual or a scholar’s interest in human anatomy.”

Nimiwa’s face went flush. “I learned from book.”

“Then I apologize for failing to match the illustrations.”

“You could have hidden while the wounded passed,” said Tawa.

“I owed them,” I said. They attacked the convoy. Pulled me out of chains. Fed me.” I glanced toward the wounded and decided not to specify what they had fed me. “Leaving while they died would have made the account difficult to settle.”

“You call courage a debt because you distrust anything that cannot be measured.”

“I distrust words people use to make dying sound attractive.”

Tawa’s burning hair rose behind his mask.

“I do not ask you to die. I ask what you will do while you remain alive.”

The wounded surrounded us beneath blood darkened hides. One elf held another’s severed hand against the stump as if stubbornness might persuade it to reattach. A Sun Brave lay nearby with white fire burns covering half his face. His breathing had become a wet rattle no one acknowledged.

Nimiwa had risked all of them because an old prophecy promised that someone like me might help.

She still believed she had been right. I was beginning to resent how badly I wanted her to remain right.

“I return what I’m given,” I said. “If someone stands between me and a blade, I won’t leave them alone when that blade turns toward their back.”

Tawa stopped at the guard of the sword.

“Promises have worth only because they have limits.”

The little god extended one hand.

There should have been a ritual. A sacred verse. An altar untouched by blood. Several hours for me to decide whether allowing another god near my soul was the worst mistake available.

Instead, I sat in the dirt with a taste of vomit in my mouth and an army somewhere behind us.

I reached for his hand and shook it. Tawa considered me for several moments, keeping his grip firm.

He let out a laugh from behind the mask like fire cracking through dry branches.

He pressed his palm against the flamberge and orange fire slowly engulfed the blade.

Tawa stood within the flames, his small body becoming a dark shape surrounded by sunlight.

“I bind this blade to the hand that chose to raise it. Call, and it will answer. Release it, and it will return.”

The flamberge began to disappear. The blade narrowed into a single line of fire before shooting into my right palm.

Pain climbed my arm. I tried to pull away, but there was nothing to escape from. When the pain stopped, I noticed a red mark on my palm.

It was a narrow flame surrounded by six short rays. Nimiwa leaned close to inspect the mark.

“Tawa blessing,” she said as her eyes rose to mine.

“First.”