For the next few minutes, Alyus gathered all the maps they had aboard the Featheflight. He returned to the gondola with a bundle of parchment scrolls in his arms, then set them down on a table in the middle of the gondola.
“We don’t need…that many maps, do we?” Pirin asked. He tapped the corner of one, and the old parchment dusted away.
“If we want to find all the small islands scattered around the Adryss Ocean?” Alyus shuffled through three sheets of paper, until he pulled out a small square etched with thin black lines. It was so stained that the page was nearly brown, and the edges were crumbling.
Pirin couldn’t read whatever was written on it. He glanced at Myraden and asked softly, “Can you read that?”
“It is an older tongue of the Dominion,” she said. Then, she looked pointedly at Alyus. “Carrying around old Dominion maps? Those are not exactly common. And…they are Dominion maps.”
“An airship ain’t common either,” Alyus replied. He reached up and rubbed his hand along one of his horns. “But if you want to know the nearest stop, you’ll need to trust these papers. Bit of a hard ask for a Sprite like you to trust anything of Dominion make, but hey, you came this far with me…”
Myraden huffed. “I only—”
“Guys.” Pirin stepped between them, holding his hands out. “We just need a place to set down and make repairs, right? So let’s look at that map already.” He glanced down. The little square of parchment was much more detailed than any map of the ocean he’d ever seen, and it only depicted a small slice.
“We’re around here,” said Alyus, pointing at the very corner of the map. “Give it a few days, and we can make it to Dulfer’s Reach.” He shifted his finger west along the map until he reached a small, lumpy speck. “Small island, nice weather. Just a single Dominion outpost there, a small military port, and their airfield is small. We shouldn’t attract attention.”
“What if they’ve been put on high alert?” Pirin asked. “For us?”
“There’s no way to send messages faster than an airship, elfy. And you’re riding on the fastest ship in this quarter of the world.”
Pirin chewed his lip for a second, then said, “Windstones?”
“Won’t work over long distances.”
That calmed his heart a little bit. The tightness in his chest faded. “Alright. Dulfer’s Reach it is, then. How long?”
“Three days.”
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When Pirin wasn’t helping sail the Featherflight, he was training. He spent his mornings practicing with his sword, trying to drill the patterns back into his body. Instead of just relying on instinct to swing the blade, he wanted to know what he was doing.
That was the easy part.
In the afternoons, he tried to use—and control—the Memory Chain. It was a Bloodline Talent, just like Myraden’s ability to control Ískan Silk. But he knew he hadn’t inherited it by blood. He’d told that much to Chancellor Ivescent.
He was missing a piece. Somehow, he had access to the Memory Chain, and somehow, he had been chosen to rule the nation of elves. But he barely knew what the Chain did, let alone how to control it.
On the afternoon of the second day, he sat next to Gray, running his fingers through her feathers. They were on the ship’s upper platform, buffeted by wind and scorching in the open sun. As far as he could tell, their course had taken them southwest.
His Umberstone mask clung to his face, its runes glowing blue. He cycled his Essence, waiting. Before, he had only activated the Chain sporadically and without him meaning to. Activating it when he wanted was the first step to controlling it.
You’ll get there, Gray said, her voice booming inside his mind. I hope. I don’t actually know, but it just sounded encouraging. Was it?
“Well…” Pirin shook his head. “I appreciate the sentiment, though.”
Elves are weird. Or should I say the race of men? You act like them, anyways.
“I don’t act like—” Pirin crossed his arms. His breathing technique had broken up during the conversation, but he resumed it. He had to try to empty his mind and let the thoughts bleed out of it, right? That always seemed to trigger the Memory Chain.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Have you made any progress?” Myraden asked. Her head poked out of the platform’s hatch, antlers first.
“None,” Pirin grumbled, trying to maintain his cycling pattern while talking. “I don’t even know exactly what the Chain does or how it works. Can I see everyone’s memories? Just elves’? Obviously it’s more than just mine, though I’d love to use it to recover what I lost. Well, I’d love to just use it in any way, ‘cause it makes my cycling so much more effective when I do get it going…”
Myraden climbed up the rest of the ladder, then walked across the platform and leaned against the front railing. “It gives you access to the memories of your predecessors—the ruling elven nobility before you. Their combat knowledge, their arcane techniques, their cycling patterns, everything.”
“You wouldn’t have an idea how to trigger it, would you?”
“I have been training my Talent since I was very young,” Myraden said. “Almost anyone with a strong Talent has been. I cannot explain the intricacies of using it. A push of Essence. A touch of willpower. Then the Ískan Silk bends to my whims. Which is—”
“—exactly why you can’t teach me,” Pirin finished. “Sorry.”
Myraden said nothing more. She reached up, brushing her antlers with the back of her hand. It was early spring, the sprites would be shedding their antlers soon—already, the velvet was starting to peel off, and the sight made Pirin’s stomach churn. He looked away.
“There is still much to worry about,” Myraden said. “You and Gray are at the Spark stage, now, correct?”
“I am. Or, we are. What exactly do we need to be doing? Like…if the Kindling stage was gathering up Essence and preparing a core, then what’s Spark?”
“You are building the base of your soul,” Myraden said. “When you build a fire, you set up a foundation of logs. The stronger those logs are—the thicker, the dryer, the purer—the better your soul will burn. They will be specifically tuned to your Path, and by the time you advance, you will not be able to use any Essence aspects except for pure Essence, and the Essence of your Familiar.”
Pirin nodded. He’d read about the concept of the foundation pillars in the sparrow Path manual, but it hadn’t elaborated much on the concept—only to call them Soul Timbers, specifically. “How many Timbers did you manage to form?”
Myraden offered a soft smile. “I formed six Timbers before I advanced past Spark. Two perfect, three slightly cracked, and one splintered.”
Pirin widened his eyes. “That’s…good, right?”
“Most wizards only form four or five, and it is rare to have more than one high-quality Timber,” she said. At that, Pirin thought he sensed a touch of pride in her voice. It was hard to tell; she rarely spoke with much intonation, and her thick accent masked most of what did come through.
“Congratulations,” Pirin said. That was probably why she had lasted so long against the higher-stage wizards in Greanewash. “Are you—”
“Not now,” she said, pushing herself up and walking back to the hatch. “Worry about yourself. You are still a king, whether by blood or not, and you have responsibilities to your nation. Without you at your full strength, Sirdia will fall.”
Before Pirin could respond, she dropped down the ladder and pulled the hatch shut behind her.
“Did I say something wrong?” Pirin asked Gray.
I think you’d be a better judge of that than I would. I’ve only been able to think full, non-bird thoughts for a few weeks.
Pirin chuckled. “Right…”
For the rest of the day, he continued to cycle Essence. He shut his eyes and imagined his core, a swirling ball of ashes with small glowing cracks in it. Before, at the Kindling stage, his Essence had hovered around his core like a cloud—unless he had used it. But now, it floated slightly below the core’s surface.
If he wanted the core to burn properly, fueling his techniques, he’d need more than just kindling.
As he cycled, he embarked on a process much like the advancement from Kindling to Spark—but he began to compress the Essence into a straight column rather than a tighter ball. Most of the arcane energy was brown-tinted with Gray’s influence, but there was also a touch of mossy green. That was the doing of the dragon wraith.
According to the sparrow Path manual, the process would take weeks—if he wanted to form proper Timbers. He vowed that he’d ask Brealtod about it later; the dragonfolk seemed to know a little about wizards—and certainly more than Pirin knew.
As Pirin cycled and concentrated on the Timbers, his mind began to wander. He recognized the faint wisp of nostalgia that came with the tug of the Memory Chain, and he didn’t resist it. He tried to concentrate on the specific feeling and the exact conditions in his core and Essence channels. He tried to focus on where the Essence was going and what exactly it was activating.
His cycling sped up, and he purified more and more Essence. In the front of his mind, he saw glimpses of Kerstel, the island he grew up on, and in the back of his mind he felt Essence swirling. It was fueling something.
He tried to send his consciousness inward and examine his core, but instead of a cracked, ember-y marble, he could only visualize flashes of Kerstel.
Mr. Regos had taught Pirin which herbs were most important to a healer. He had taught Pirin internal anatomy and made him copy books—though there had been no time to teach Pirin how to read what he was copying. He had used the sand of Kerstel’s beaches to make eyeglasses for Pirin.
The glimpses poured through Pirin’s mind faster and faster, until he lost all control of the Chain. He couldn’t concentrate on his Essence, nor could he put it towards forming Timbers. His blood slipped out of timing with the Ichor in his body. There was nothing he could do. The Chain dragged him further back in time, through the lives of all the kings and queens before him. They passed in a blink, whirling like leaves in the wind, until the technique destabilized. The runes in his mask deactivated.
It culminated in a boom. A massive Shattered Palm blasted out of his hand, flinging him to the edge of the platform. The wave of Essence had torn chips off of even the titanwood platform.
Pirin pulled the steaming mask off his face. His skin was hot, but not burnt, and his eyes were dry. He shook his hand out, trying to get rid of the forks of pain that shot right down to the bone.
“Whoops,” he muttered. He glanced at Gray. “Are you alright?”
But his Reyad wasn’t active, and no matter how much intent and willpower he put into his words, he couldn’t push them across to her. Gray nattered softly, but there was no understanding in her soft sounds.
Pirin shrugged. “Well…better keep practicing. Just…just give me a few seconds, yeah?”