Conquest of Avalon

Fernan VI: The Witness

“Here.” Fernan held out his arm in front, showing the path forward. “But remember to be respectful.”

“I know!” Aubaine ran ahead, nearly tripping over some of the rocks resting on the mountain trail. Sun Sages in the past had used it for ascending the mountains to contact Soleil, but now the towers of the Temple were deemed sufficient in height, so the path went largely unused.

Fernan whistled once he was sure they were out of earshot of the Temple, calling the enormous gecko down from the upper reaches where she had been hunting. Mara seemed so large when she was inside with him in the city, but in her nearly vertical scramble down the side of the mountain, she looked so small by comparison, a quickly approaching green blur against a towering backdrop only faintly distinct from the noonday sky behind it.

Aubaine’s eyes went wide, his mouth agape. “Lizard!” He ran up to her before Fernan could intervene, wrapping his arms around her front leg.

“Fernan, what is this creature?” Mara’s tongue flicked to her eye then back. “Is it dangerous?”

Shit. That was what he got for not warning her in advance not to speak.

“He’s human, just like me. We start smaller too. Call him Aubaine.” Fernan bent down next to the child, placing a hand on his shoulder. “No one else in the Temple knows that Mara can talk, so that will have to be our secret, alright? I’m trusting you here. Even your father can’t know.”

His head nodded up and down so fast it looked like it was going to disconnect from his body. “You can trust me Fernan! I’m great with secrets! I’ve never even told anyone about the secret passage to the roof of the Temple.” How encouraging.

Hopefully it wouldn’t matter. Few of the Sun Sages even had familiars, and even among the rest, familiarity with them seemed fairly low. Florette had insisted that they couldn’t talk because they were just animals with whom a sage shared their power, but reading adventure stories hardly made her an expert anyway.

“How many winters have you seen, Aubaine?”

“‘How old are you,’ she means,” Fernan explained.

Sticking out his chest, the boy put his hands to his waist. “I’m seven and a half!”

Mara’s glow flared out. “And you’re still a child? Anyone in our nest who has seen six winters has to hunt on their own.”

“We don’t consider someone adult until they’re sixteen,” Fernan supplied. “Part of not growing as fast.”

“Fascinating!” Mara wiggled her slowly growing stump of a tail, then flashed bright green. “Fernan, could you put him on top? I can’t, right now.” The disappointment was impossible to detect from her hissing alone, but with her flaming aura and body language it was plain to see.

Fernan nodded, grabbing Aubaine under his armpits and hoisting him up. “Ready to go for a ride?” He set him down on Mara’s back, feeling her surprisingly smooth skin as he did.

“Yay!” Aubaine wrapped his arms around her neck as Mara began walking slowly in a circle. “I’m flying!”

She’s practically big enough that I could do that.

“To fly, you would need to soar through the air like a bird, right? Right now, you’re still on my back. Oh, maybe I could launch you over the edge of the mountain! Just make sure to land on your feet.”

“Absolutely not.” Fernan darted forward and grabbed Aubaine, lifting him off of Mara’s back. “I think that’s enough for today.”

“I wanted to fly!” The boy bit his lip.

“Can’t we just try once, Fernan?”

He tilted his head back, facing the sky with a silent plea. “Not until Aubaine learns how to land without hurting himself.” So, never. “Come on, I think it’s time to head back to the Temple anyway.”

Aubaine frowned. “Do we have to?”

“Your father will be expecting us.” In truth, Lumière already might be less than pleased about this little venture, but at least it meant that Aubaine was happy and kept track of. Besides, Fernan had promised. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up in a second.”

Nodding glumly, Aubaine started slowly walking back down the mountain trail.

“Have enough food?” Fernan asked.

Mara nodded. “The prey is so much dumber out here. It’s like they’ve never had to run from a gecko before.”

“They probably haven’t.” He flicked his eyes up the hill, though he couldn’t see the glowing bag he had given her. “I was talking about coal though. I found some of the other villagers here, so I might be able to buy some if you’re running low.”

“Please. I have enough for another quarter moon or so at most.”

Fernan nodded. “And you’re doing alright? I know you wanted to explore the city more, but I… It could be dangerous for both of us.”

“I understand.” Her aura dimmed to a faded orange. “There’s still plenty to explore out here! And all of these sages glow more normally too, which is interesting in its own way.”

“I’ll try to be quick, so it shouldn’t need to be for too long. If the duel goes well, we could be back at Gézarde’s lair in just a couple weeks.”

Mara nodded again. “I’m going to stay out here a bit longer. I found this large bird with a suppressed black glow, and I want to see if I can catch it.”

“Enjoy.” Fernan gave her a wave. “I’ll see you when you’re finished.”

Short as the boy’s legs were, catching up to Aubaine was trivial, which was good. Being alone with his thoughts after seeing Mara was always difficult. While the sundial seemed closer and closer to his grasp, he was no further towards finding another way to deal with the geckos.

It would save the village, but it would do nothing for the geckos deprived of food, nor the tensions between them and the villagers. Abusing the letter of Gézarde’s deal to break it in spirit was likely to make things worse, if anything.

Why did he have to threaten everyone? If the spirit had simply presented the problem, finding a solution that could satisfy everyone wouldn’t have been nearly so difficult.

“She’s nice!” Aubaine announced after Fernan reached him. “I can see her again, right? At the Temple?”

Probably not there, since she only passes through at the end of the day. But doing this again would probably be fine. “I don’t see why not, as long as you’re there for all of your lessons. The more you run off, the less likely your father is to approve of trips like this. Stay on your best behavior.”

“Ok…” After he trailed off, his glow brightened up. “Oh! I want to show you something too. Follow me!” He took off running, passing through the back doors of the Temple as Fernan lightly jogged to keep up, careful to watch the faint glow of the ground in front of him outlining the rocks. It was getting easier as the weather warmed up, at least.

The main chamber was as empty as it usually was around this hour, with all of the sages too busy managing their papers and satellite temples or preparing pyres for sacrifices. Aubaine scrambled blithely through all of it, past the altars with their burning incense and candles, until he reached the corridor at the opposite corner, close to the front entrance. A little ways down the corridor, part of the wall was made of a different material.

Fernan blinked, trying to take it in. Rubbing his hands against the wall, the wooden feeling made it clear it was wood, but where the doorknob ought to have been was a bulb of thick glass, with some liquid inside. What was this? They would be right underneath one of the towers flanking the entrance to the temple, but he had never seen anyone use it.

“Father told me I would only have the power to go through once I was a sage, but now I have you!” Aubaine tapped the glass. “Just make it glow!”

“We’re not going to get in trouble for this, right?” Camille had told him to do whatever it took to win Aubaine’s trust, but that had been easy enough so far just by being himself. This kind of thing was probably unnecessary.

“We’ll be fine! I promise!” Aubaine bounced onto the balls of his feet and back. “No one said I shouldn’t, just that I couldn’t. Father even smiled when he saw me holding a candle next to it, but it wasn’t hot enough.”

It probably just leads up into the tower. Easy enough to explain, if anyone finds us.

With a shrug, Fernan placed his hand against the bulb, channeling his spirit energy through his wrist and out his fingertips. Mara preferred to breathe fire out of her mouth, and that had been what much of her teaching had focused on, but this felt easier, like he was already habituated to enforcing his will through it.

He did have to be careful not to burn himself, forcing the fire ever outward and preventing the heat from returning to his hand, but that seemed better than the risk of setting the door on fire.

The liquid inside began to bubble, glowing against the door and throwing the whole thing in sharp relief. As the warmth spread, more and more of the mechanisms within became visible: a pipe leading up from the glass, with some kind of wheel stuck halfway into it, followed by a matching bulb at the top.

Wisps of steam trailed up the pipe, growing thicker and thicker as more of the liquid boiled up. As it did, the wheel slowly began to turn, moving increasingly faster as it too grew warmer, until a click sounded.

With a jerk of his head to make sure that no one was around, Fernan pushed lightly against the door, sending it open with a loud creak. “You should probably tell your father to oil this.”

Aubaine blinked, but ignored the suggestion. “Come on! We have to see it!”

They stepped through, Fernan closing the door behind them. It was already beginning to cool, warm droplets forming in the upper bulb and sliding down. Each nudged the wheel back ever so slightly each time it did, which would probably replace the lock once it returned to liquid. Clever, but it wouldn’t stop Camille.

The whole thing must have predated those hostilities, or been used only ceremonially. Any sage of flame could do as he had, which didn’t amount to much security.

Past the door was a narrow staircase spiralling up, clearly leading to the top of one of the towers. “One look at the top, and then we’ll come back, alright?”

“Ok!” Aubaine started running up the stairs two at a time, nearly slamming into the walls at every fifth step. Fernan followed behind, ready to catch him if he tumbled, but that didn’t turn out to be necessary, fortunately.

The roof of the tower felt much larger atop it than it had looked from the ground.

Fernan breathed a sigh of relief when he spotted braziers burning at the front edge; Lord Lumière would hardly be lighting those himself, which meant that at least some lower level sages were permitted here.

Walking up to that edge, he could see the whole city laid out before him, the Merchant Quartier between the Spirit Quartier and the western wall, the sea beyond them. Each had a different warmth to them, a different distribution of dots milling around. The mountain blocked most of the north end of the city, but he could still see some of the harbor, ships warming in the sun above the cold, cold water.

This far back, it looked almost like someone had built a model of the city with twine, the edges of warmth coalescing into a whole that even his eyes could comprehend. Turning his gaze south, he saw the braziers atop the other tower, with two figures standing atop it. One’s fire was extremely bright, the other a very familiar shape. Even at a distance, their glows were unmistakable: Magnifico and Lord Lumière. “Duck!” he hissed to Aubaine, crouching behind the crenelated wall.

Aubain simply tilted his head. “Why?”

Because they didn’t go there for a public meeting. “Nevermind. We should be getting back anyway. Now.”

“But I don’t want to go!” he cried out.

Fernan pulled him close. “Be quiet, please!”

“Why should I?”

“It’ll be a fun challenge. Who can stay quiet the longest? We’ll only stay up here as long as you can manage that, and then we’ll have to head back. So make it count.” Fernan’s voice was barely above a whisper.

Aubaine nodded firmly, sitting down against the wall next to him.

Staring through the stone, Fernan could still make out the two glowing auras on the opposite tower, Lord Lumière’s far brighter and stronger.

But it began to dim as he held his hands to the sky, seemingly saying something, though it was hard to tell at this distance. Magnifico simply stood there, arms folded in a posture that looked almost bored.

Following his gesture, Fernan turned his gaze upward, towards the sun above them. These days, nothing stopped him from staring into it to his heart’s content, which made it easy to tell that it was changing color, dimming ever so slightly as it seemed to concentrate into a point.

That point extended, stretching down further and further until its shape was clear: a towering golden man, rays of light radiating out from his head and right shoulder. Each feature was visible, crisp, unlike every face Fernan had seen since the incident. He looked ten feet tall, utterly smooth, without a single hair on his body, his face inhumanly flat.

The statues had been accurate, apparently.

He landed opposite Lumière and Magnifico, towering over them without bothering to look down.

Lumière bowed, throwing himself at Soleil’s feet, while Magnifico remained standing. The sage set a small fire in front of the spirit, dipping his head again as he did.

Soleil scowled, responding with venom on his face that sent Lumière scurrying backwards past Magnifico.

Soleil sighed, then nodded his head, prompting Lord Aurelian to stand. They spoke more, the spirit’s brows furrowed all the while, until Magnifico stepped forward, giving a performer’s bow with a twirl of his arm. The bard said something, and Aurelian nodded, his glow returning to a measure of its former strength.

Magnifico gave a lazy wave, then stepped back down the stairs, his glow visible through the walls as he spiralled down.

Thank Soleil we picked the other tower.

Soleil rotated slightly, extending an arm without turning his head. Lord Lumière walked in that direction, almost facing him despite the stone between them. The Sun spirit spat out another disdainful word, and Lord Lumière’s head drooped.

That was the end of it, apparently. Soleil began rising, a blurry column of light left behind as he rose higher and higher, brighter and brighter, until even that receded and only the sun in the sky was left.

Lumière crouched down, his head still bowed, as his fire grew warmer. The aura flared brighter and brighter, until it surpassed his normal tone, then far surpassed it. In an instant, the pressure was released. Lumière stood and began running in one motion, then leapt from the tower straight towards them.

There was one last chance to send Aubaine away, but honestly it was less suspicious with him still here. He had been supervising him more and more lately, after all.

Fire spat out from the bottom of Lord Lumière’s hands and feet as he crossed the gap, propelling him up enough to pass above their heads and land on the tower roof in front of them. He turned around to face them an instant later. “It’s good that you’re here actually. It’s about time you beheld Soleil in person.”

Fernan blinked. “What?”

“And you”—he bent down to put Aubaine on the head—“appear to have finally ascended the tower of your forefathers. Go tell your instructor that I said you deserve a candy.”

Aubaine beamed, scurrying off down the stairs the instant Lumière finished talking.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Fernan tried to assure him once the boy was gone. “Really.”

“Bah, I know that. It’s too far away for that to be possible.” Lumière sneered slightly. “Do you think my ancestors would be stupid enough to build an eavesdropping tower next to the place they convened with Soleil? I assure you, the design is very deliberate.”

Fernan exhaled a loud sigh of relief. “And Aubaine?”

Lumière’s glow flared out. “The test was intended to teach him patience, waiting until he made his compact with Soleil before he could see what was here. But I suppose cooperation will suffice, under the circumstances. I posed him the challenge of scaling it, and he did so, however that was accomplished. He need not rely on spirit power for everything in his life, anyway.”

“I’m glad. I wouldn’t want to do anything against the doctrine here, or run afoul of anyone. Least of all you, my lord.”

“An admirable trait.” He nodded. “I must say, Fernan, your provincial background belied your utility. Most of your ilk are coarse and rude, but you’ve well acquitted yourself here even in such a short time. Adrian sings your praises to the Sun above, and you handle Aubaine like none before. I think it’s time you were rewarded for it.”

“The sundial?” Fernan’s eyes flared out, bulging out of his face as they did.

“The what?” Lumière blinked. “No, not a mere artifact. I’m offering you a place in Aubaine’s personal guard. You would be doing much the same as you have been, supervising him and keeping him safe, but I would have the assurance of someone around him at all times, even when he runs off.”

“Oh!” Fernan raised an eyebrow. “Um. That is quite an honor, my lord.”

“You’ll need to swear your loyalty before Soleil, of course. How you’ll never leave his side save at his or my command, how you serve the Sun Temple before all else, save Aubaine himself. You’ll defend it from heathens, fight on our behalf, and keep our secrets. Fairly standard assurances, really. Then I’ll see about having Adrian find quarters at the temple for you.”

“Uh, my lord, that truly is a generous offer, and I am very fond of Aubaine, but… I need to return to my village, and soon. It’s imperative. I can’t dedicate myself to the Sun Temple until it’s protected from something terrible.” Or ever, unless you stop burning people. But he didn’t need to say that part out loud.

The glow of Lord Lumière’s face pinched in what Fernan recognized as a frown. “Ah yes. That. Terrible indeed.” He sighed. “Well, I can hardly begrudge even you from dealing with evil spirits. So many are nothing more than petty tyrants, or harbingers of destruction. In the Winter Court, they eschew rule by sages at all; instead, they reign over humanity directly as their royalty. But even here, in more civilized lands, the world is rife with them, pushing us around like ants.”

Lumière clenched his fists, before abruptly changing the topic. “Aubaine… He’s young, and I’m sure he can grow into the task. I’ll have many years to train him. But Soleil is most exacting of those beneath him. Being a sage, a high priest especially, it’s often more a burden than a boon. I worry he’ll chafe under it.”

“He’s a good kid. I’m sure he can handle whatever the world puts in front of him.” I really hope so, since Camille might kill you in a few days. The mere thought put a pit in his stomach. “I’m sorry, would you mind if I went home now? Aubaine really wore me out.”

“Of course not. You are excused.” He turned his head to the side, looking out over the water. “Talk to me about this again, after the duel. Perhaps we can get you what you need. As soon as Leclaire is dead, a whole world of possibilities opens up to all of us.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

He shook his head with a smile. “There isn’t a doubt in my mind that I will prevail. I’ve made it impossible for me to lose.”