Read Online Lesson of the Fire by Eric Zawadzki - Free Book Online Page B

with the cloak Nightfire had given him.
He knew cloth couldn’t wipe away Dinah’s Curse, but it felt a
little better not to have mud on his feet.
    He tossed the cloak into a corner and
wriggled his toes, feeling the firm wood beneath his feet. He
rummaged through the dresser, which had clothes in many sizes. He
dressed hastily in a rough shirt and baggy breeches, which he
cinched tight with a length of rope. He searched the room for a
pair of boots and found none at all. He glanced at his bare feet,
bare feet that might already be filled with nests of konig worm
eggs, and gritted his teeth.
    “Is there a problem?” Nightfire called from
the other side of the door.
    Sven yanked the door open. “When’re you
replacin’ the boots you burned?”
    Nightfire regarded him mildly. “You will
have boots when you need them.”
    “An’ I’m to risk Dinah’s Curse until then?
Or am I cleanin’ floors with th’others?”
    “You will stay in this building until I have
a use for you elsewhere. As long as you obey me, I will protect you
from Dinah’s Curse.”
    Sven’s irritation rose. The wizard, for the
moment, had him trapped. He pressed the emotion away with
difficulty, reminding himself of Nightfire’s last demonstration of
power.
    “Come.”
    Sven followed grudgingly. Nightfire led him
up another flight of stairs and opened a door.
    “I will give you instructions,” the wizard
said as Sven peered into the room, which was lit just enough for
Sven to tell it was full of shelves covered in bottles. “You must
perform all the tasks I give you. You will move the fifth green
bottle in the fourth row on the third shelf on the west wall to the
second row of the first shelf on the north wall.”
    Sven nodded.
    “Do you want me to repeat it?”
    The young Mar shook his head, irritated. He
stepped into the room. Nightfire did not move, but something held
Sven back.
    Magic, he thought.
    “You will begin these tasks tomorrow.
Come.”
    Nightfire led Sven from one cluttered room
after another, pausing at each one to point out a single object
that needed to be repositioned — stools, tables, painted blocks of
wood, cloaks hanging on pegs, clay pots, metal pans. Each object
was different from every other, but Nightfire always pointed out a
specific one.
    “Move the copper cauldron to the fireplace.”
Sven repeated each of the more than one hundred instructions
quietly to himself, simplifying Nightfire’s instructions, still
amazed at the size of this building. “The green cloak over there
goes on the blue peg here.”
    The wizard didn’t comment on this. “Now,”
Nightfire said in a hard voice when they returned to the entrance
of Sven’s room. “I want you to do everything I told you to do
before I return. Is that clear?”
    Sven nodded, and Nightfire departed. When he
was gone, Sven set his mind to work.
    He’s testing my
memory. For what purpose, Sven was not yet
sure. Better treatment, perhaps, or maybe greater
responsibility. If I’m to get my boots, I
need to prove myself.
    Sven gave silent thanks to Seruvus for the
memory he had been born with: a mind that remembered everything it
heard. The next morning, he set to work, quickly completing each
tedious task. The other slaves made no mention of his confident
appearance late in the day.
    How could they know what I’ve been
doing?
    Nightfire didn’t return that night, so Sven
set out to meet the other slaves. He recognized only one slave from
Rustiford. Finn Ochregut, who had volunteered a year earlier,
scrubbed floors with the rest of them, his grumbles long and loud.
He gave a grudging tour to Sven, introducing people and explaining
the uselessness of their duties at great length. He hadn’t seen
anyone from Rustiford, but they might be in one of the other
buildings.
    The building housed twenty young tribute
slaves from towns like Rustiford who had taken Nightfire’s deal.
None of them had been there for less than a season, and none wore
boots, not even