The De'Nauguath Chronicles - Book 1: The Summoner's Daughter

Chapter 20: Unravel

I'd blacked out. I reckoned it hadn't been long. I had to think hard to make my eyes move where I wanted them to. The room was empty, except for Michen.

He was kneeling. My head was in his lap. I didn't want to be there, but I also couldn't move. If it had been someone else, I would've scrambled up, but I wasn't sure if I could've scrambled just then.

We didn't say a word. He watched my eyes in the way that healers did sometimes. Maybe I'd hit my head when I'd fallen, or maybe he reckoned I'd burst into flames somewhere other than my feet. I looked inside myself for the quiet stone. It was still there. I tried to think about it instead of the fact I was on the floor at someone else's mercy.

When my head stopped spinning and burning, I struggled back up like a horse from the mud. At least the flames were gone. Michen glided to his feet and kept a hand ready if I stumbled, but the feeling had passed. I nodded and he withdrew across the room. There was a half-finished drink on a table by a wall. I went to it and downed it in an instant. I couldn't face him yet – not in that way.

Michen gazed into a hearth. I paced. I heard a dim noise outside – thunder? Why would there be thunder in wintertime? It rolled on for a few moments.

"You made fire before now." There was disappointment in his voice.

"You read me again?" A pang of something rippled through me for a moment. I told myself it was petty, but I didn't swallow it back.

"There was no need. A display like that would only ever mean skill."

"I didn't mean to. The music, I – aye. I've done it before. It was small. I started a fire so an old man could warm himself in the woods."

"Fire is a dangerous element to favor."

"I don't. I didn't. I was cold and hungry. I didn't even mean to do it. I was cross about something, and it just happened. And why are you shaken? This is proof I can use magic."

"Using one element more than the others will shape your character."

"Eh?"

"Fire is treacherous. If you summoned it even once, it will always be easier to use than the other elements."

"No, I – it wasn't the first one I – summoned." What did he even mean by that? What elements? He turned around and waited for me to explain. "The shewla put my hovel on fire. I moved a river to put it out."

"A river?" There was a quaver in him – just barely, like a happy sort.

"Taller than the trees. It broke me to do it, but I did it."

"Good." He paced and nodded. The movements kept a rhythm to each other. "Water is a very strong element."

"Why would it come when I danced?" I swallowed. I looked around. There wasn't anything else to drink. "I – I didn't think about it. I didn't want to do anything. I just danced."

"Moods control a great deal of magic. Desperation or anger can draw it out faster, but happiness can do it if the moment is profound enough."

"I don't think I've ever danced like that in my whole life."

"You haven't."

I guffawed. "How would you know?"

"You were unrestrained. You absorbed into the moment. Few people can do that more than once or twice in a lifetime."

"I wonder if that's what the tag was supposed to mean."

He waited.

I shook my head. "The first day I woke up in Krócia, there was something pinned to my shirt. It had my name written on it. No one could read it, so I said my name was Lightfoot. Never reckoned I gave myself the wrong name." It felt like a cheap thing to say. It was a shadow of something else. I chuckled. "I lived up to it today, innit?"