Relic of the Past

The spell is on the tip of my tongue.

Stiria. One word. A spike of ice, and it ends. That is what Cowan demands. That is what the Prelate would ask of me, were he here. That is what's best for the Order.

I have cast it so many times I've lost count. In practice. In defense, against criminals and people who would hurt me or others. And of course, whenever the Myriad attacks. I killed one of their Acrids only yesterday.

But I have never cast it at a boy who is innocent and defenseless.

"Sti—"

He whispers something. I don't hear what. It's barely a murmur, one small word into the dark.

And then his tears stop falling.

Not stop. Stop. They hang in the air beneath his chin, little beads of water, perfectly still. For half a breath, I think my own magic has gone wrong. That I have frozen them somehow.

Then they boil.

Hiss. Steam. Gone.

The ice at my fingertips goes with them before it can fully form. It melts and vanishes without a single drop touching the ground.

Ash stops shaking.

Every time I have seen this boy, he has been shaking. Not much. Just enough to notice, if you were paying attention. In the street. At the church. Even now, a moment ago, on his knees. A small, constant tremble, like a candle in a draft.

Now he is perfectly still.

He looks down at the stone wrapped around his ankle, the spike Cowan raised. He doesn't pull. He simply looks at it and murmurs a word I don't recognize, in a tongue I have never heard.

The stone glows. Red, then orange, then white. It cracks with a sound like a bone shattering, and crumbles into black sand around his foot. Yet the skin beneath it isn't burned at all. Torn and bloody from his struggling, but not even reddened by the heat.

He stands.

Slowly. Carefully. The way an old man stands, one hand on his knee. He straightens his back, rolls his neck, and flexes his fingers one by one, the pendant still glowing in his fist.

Then he slips the chain over his head. Against his chest, the glow begins to flicker.

"Hm," he says. "Weak. Very weak. But it will do."

It is Ash's voice.

It is not Ash.

***

He turns to look at us, and I see his eyes.

They were black before. Plain and black, like every other child in Brimhaven. Now they are gold. No, not gold. Burning. Like looking into the mouth of a furnace.

"Three," he says, glancing from Cowan to me to Mistral's body on the floor. "Well. Two, now. That one seems to have already been dealt with." His gaze drifts to the man pinned beneath the slab. Something crosses his face, too fast to read. "The miner did well. A pity."

Cowan raises his staff. His hand is steady, but his voice is not. "W-what... what are you?"

The boy tilts his head. It is the same tilt the Acrid gave him in the street.

"Just a relic of the past," he says, with a mocking little bow. "Please, go easy on me."

Cowan's jaw clenches. His lip curls back from his teeth, and he grips his staff so hard the wood creaks.

He strikes.

"Iner sheser!"

The air around Cowan grows thick with grit, and stone forms out of nothing. Dozens of shards grind into shape in a ring around him, jagged and rough-edged, dull as rock torn from a quarry.

He flings them.

I flinch. I can't help it.

The boy doesn't. He steps to the side. Just one step. The shards whistle past him and shatter against the shelves. Another step, a turn of his shoulder, and three more shards miss by a hair's breadth. He moves like he has already seen every throw before it leaves Cowan's hand.

Cowan clicks his tongue, his breath coming faster. He slams his staff against the floor.

"Iner seti!"

The smooth stone beneath us splits open with a deafening crack. The fracture races up the walls, splintering the old carvings, peeling the rock apart like bark. Behind it, black veins of coal glisten in the firelight.

This time, he doesn't make the stone. He takes it. Everything the walls give up tears loose at once: broken rock, jagged slabs, chunks of coal, all of it rising into the air around him in a storm of debris.

He doesn't aim. He doesn't choose. He just hurls it all.

The boy dodges a slab. A rock. Another. His eyes move fast, flicking from one piece to the next, like he's searching for something.

Then he stops dodging.

He reaches into the storm and plucks one chunk out of the air. Black. Crumbling at the edges.

Coal.

And for the first time since he stood up, he smiles.

"Earth," he says, turning it over in his palm. "Always so proud. You threw everything at me like it was all just rubble." He closes his fist. "But not every stone is the same, child."

He squeezes. The coal crumbles. Not in pieces. Into dust, falling from his fingers in a fine, dark haze.

"In your hands, it's nothing. In mine..." He blows the dust in Cowan's direction. "...it's everything I need."

Cowan's face goes white. "Djed!"

A spear of stone bursts from the floor where the boy is standing. Where he was standing. He's already two steps to the left, brushing the last of the dust from his hands. It hangs there, a dark cloud drifting toward Cowan on the warm, moving breeze.

"A lump of coal burns slowly," the boy says, as calm as a priest at a sermon. "Break it down, and it burns faster. Grind it fine enough..." The cloud settles around Cowan's shoulders. "...and it becomes hungry."

Cowan swats at the dust, coughing. "Djed! Djed!"

Spears burst from the floor, wild, one after another. None of them land. The boy is walking toward him now, unhurried, weaving between them.

"Fire needs three things, child. Fuel." He gestures at the cloud. "Air." He breathes in. "And a spark."

He raises his hand.

"Spinther."

He snaps his fingers on the word, and a single ember leaps from them, small but blinding, as if he had pinched off a piece of the larger sun.

***

I have never heard a sound like it.

It is not an explosion. It is the room exploding. The air itself turns to fire, a roar so loud I feel it in my teeth. The force throws me off my feet and slams me against the wall. Light, white and orange, swallows everything until all I can see is white.

When I can see again, Cowan is still standing.

For a moment, I think he survived. Then I see him properly.

His robe is scorched black. His skin is charred dark and cracked, smoke curling from it in thin grey threads. His staff falls from his fingers and clatters across the shattered floor.

He sways once.

Then he drops, stiff as a log, and does not move again.

The smell reaches me a moment later. Like meat left too long over a fire.

I press my hand over my mouth and try not to be sick.

The shelves are burning. The old books are burning. The air tastes like ash.

And the boy stands in the middle of it all, untouched. The flames part around him. His hair stirs in the heat. His worn shirt is singed at the edges, his trousers blackened at the hems.

But his skin? Not a single mark.

He looks down at his hand, slowly opening and closing it.

"Ah," he murmurs. "I had almost forgotten how that feels."

Then he turns to me.

***

I should run.

I know I should run. My legs know it too, but they won't obey me. I'm sitting against the wall where the blast threw me, my staff somewhere in the fire, and I can't move. I can only watch him walk toward me, slow and patient, the fire sliding out of his way.

"Please," I whisper. "Please. Ash. Ash. I know you're in there. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I didn't want to—"

He crouches in front of me. Up close, his eyes are worse. There is no boy in them at all. Only heat.

"Water," he says softly. He reaches out and touches my cheek, right where Cowan struck me. His fingers are warm. Gentle, almost. "I know this water."

I don't understand.

"You kept him alive. Did you know that? Every cup." Something almost like sadness passes over his face. "Without you, he would have died long ago."

"I... I don't..."

"No. You wouldn't." He sighs. "You're far too unimportant for your Order to tell you."

His free hand drifts to the pendant at his chest. For a moment, he almost looks regretful.

"The boy doesn't want you dead, you know. He's unconscious, yet even now his will is resisting me." His eyes come back to mine. "But his power has not yet awakened. His body is too weak to finish what I've started, and this"—he taps it—"is nearly spent. He needs your Essence."

Essence. I don't know the word. Not like this. The Order never taught us anything called that.

"Forgive me, little one," he says. "Or don't. It makes no difference to the fire."

And then I feel it.

It starts at my cheek, where his fingers are. A pull. Like the tide drawing back from the shore. Then it is in my chest. My throat. My eyes. My water, my water, the water I have carried inside me since the day I woke to it, is leaving me.

I can see it. Thin, glowing threads of blue rising from my skin and drifting into his open palm, where they vanish like rain into dry earth.

My lips crack. My tongue goes dry. My skin tightens across my hands like old paper. I try to scream, and nothing comes out but a rasp, dry as the dust that ended Cowan.

How? I want to ask. How are you doing this? What are you?

But I already know the answer. The Prelate had warned us about this. Something that was meant to stay asleep.

It was here all along. Drinking from my well. Smiling at me in the street.

Or maybe not him. Not the boy. Whatever is inside him.

The world goes dim at the edges, then dimmer. I'm going to die here. I know it.

And then the pull stops.

His hand jerks back from my face like it's been burned. He stares at it, frowning, as if it no longer belongs to him.

"...Stubborn," he mutters. "Very well. Have it your way, boy."

The threads of blue fade. What's left of my water stays where it is. A trickle. Barely anything at all.

But it stays.

The last thing I see is his face. Ash's face. For one moment, I swear, the fire in his eyes wavers, and I see something else. Black. Tired. Wet.

A boy.

Take care of yourself, Ash, I think.

Somewhere far away, I hear voices. Shouting. Lamps, swinging through the smoke.

And then I hear nothing at all.