The Silver Fire

"Complete and total failure!" Tumetu Gambold pounded his desk with each word. He was a broad man, aging but still powerful enough to crack men's skulls with his hands. He hadn't taken well to the transition. Two years ago, he had led a Tumen of ten thousand into Zar as part of a conquering force. For his reward, Gambold was granted leadership of the Powzan, the Zar institute of research. The Khagan wanted every interesting thing the institute had to offer, old and new. The Khagan told the Orlok, the Orlok told the Tumetu, and now Tumetu Gambold was in the ravine without a rope.

"The Orlok will have my skin nailed to his wall! And yours too! How could you let this happen?"

Mingghan Bartjagaal did not quail before the Tumetu's threats. The empire didn't skin anyone alive: their leaders looked down on such barbarities. Mere incompetence warranted a demotion; Negligence, a flogging; Treason, a swift death. At very worst, if you were the vilest kind of traitor, then maybe you would be rolled into a carpet and trampled by horses. But that hardly ever happened.

"Are you finished, my Tumetu? Shall I give my report, or do you want to continue your rant?"

"Gha!" The bigger man stood heavily from his chair. "Not here. I can't think in this …," he made an angry face at the office with its soft furniture, carpet, and books "… this bedroom."

They exited the administration building together, swords in hand, and took horses from the stables. Fearful Zarians glanced at them and looked away. Not a single family in Zar was untouched by the invasion, and the conquerers liked it that way. Bartjagaal kept his tongue to himself while they rode the shy streets, once washed with Zarian blood, until Gambold's mood improved. A proper Lomong was most alive astride his horse. The cold, hard air, the pounding of hooves, the grip of a good sword, and the fear of lesser people soon put him right again.

It was good they had come in person. Some things had to be seen to be understood. A pall of gray dust was settling on the area, cutting vision to under a hundred yards. They had to guide their horses slowly, around rubble and fallen trees, until the grayed-out forms of people were close enough to be seen.

The summoning complex was dominated by a massive circular building, The Pit, six stories of stone cut and ensorcelled by three hundred mages. Or, it should have been. The once-imposing building was blasted to pieces, its blocks of stone sent flying hundreds of feet, much of it turned into the dust they were trying not to breathe. Most of the support buildings, barracks and library and mathamarium and such, had been wrecked by flying wreckage.

The second thing they noticed, after the haze and the ruined Pit, was the heat. The destructive force had been so great the area was still hot. People, healers and mages mostly, roaming around looking for signs of life under the rubble, had stripped down to their undershirts.

"Now Bartjagaal, you can give your report."

"They were attempting to summon The Silver Fire, so-called because the last time they tried to summon him, the mages got a face full of raw mana. They think it was mostly their own mana, turned back on them."

Tumetu Gambold smiled wickedly. He wasn't above using mages, in fact he took good care of his. But they tended to be haughty. It was good for them to get punched in the face, to bleed like soldiers once in a while. "This I know. Tell me what went wrong."

"What I think went wrong? It was crazy to try and summon him again. I can see why we'd want him, if he can pull a feat like that, but if someone doesn't want to cross and they have the power to strike back at us, the better course is to leave them alone. Why force the dragon off its hill, when it's minding its own business?"

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"But the Oracle is never wrong,"

"She was wrong about this. I mean no disrespect to your wife, but I think she was wrong. I won't bore you with the written list: you came here to look at the place. At least they took precautions this time. They used thirty times the usual mana, and built layers of additional protection. They moved the casting and control to a different building, so the main summoning arena was empty of people. If they hadn't, the mages would have been annihilated. If you want to look for the good news, that's it. The Powzan still has a mage corps. Most of one, anyway."

"The knowledge to conquer all awaits the summoner," quoted Gambold, "call forth the master to obtain the lesson." He shook his head at the costs of rebuilding the complex. The utility buildings were trivial to replace, but the summoning arena would take time and incur massive costs. "The only lesson I see here is not to tickle sleeping dragons."

"I disagree." A woman approached them, unafraid in spite of being a Zar. She wasn't beautiful in a conventional way, but the spray of freckles across her face held some powerful fascination for Gambold. She was Bolormaa The Oracle, given to him as spoils for his role in Zar's conquest. The Orlok would have taken her for himself, but she prophesized that giving her to "the skull crusher of Powzan" would greatly benefit the Khagan. The Orlok had five wives, and his best Tumetu had only one living in a yurt in their far-away homeland. That was how Tumetu Gambold gained a wife for his bed and an oracle for his work.

She bowed gracefully. "True prophecies are never wrong, nor can they be evaded. From the moment it was revealed, The Silver Fire became entangled in Fate. As did the Khagan, the Orlok, my Tumetu, and all of Zar. You will summon this knowledge and use it. Nothing is over."

"It looks over to me." Gambold was gruff with his wife, but not insultingly so. Those two had come to know each other well in a short time. Bartjagaal felt a stab of jealousy, at not being the only person he spoke to thus.

"This time, he didn't respond in the same way at all," continued Bartjagaal, "he forced the mages to use much more mana than planned, fully depleting the stores, which weakened our defenses. When the summoning completed, the Pit exploded. It wasn't mana but something else. No sign of the person we think we were trying to summon. Like you said, a complete and total failure."

"It is not a failure," Oracle Bolormaa said serenely. "Shall we look into the Pit, and see what we've caught?"

They had come this far, so why not? Mages were called over, protective spells cast on the party of three, and they picked their way into the ruined arena. Inside, it truly was a pit, hollowed out down to the second basement. A line of mages followed them, each as eager as the next to see the very center of destruction. Bartjagaal was fluent in the Zar language, but the mages spoke something else entirely. He could tell the mages were impressed, but that was all.

The building wasn't just hot: the basement was shining red and silver with a great roaring fire. The curious had to pick their way to the very edge of the hole to look inside.

"Is that …?" stammered Gambold.

"It can't be," Bartjagaal answered.

The Zar mages started talking all at once.

It was a ball of fire, constantly exhaling a hot wind. Fine particles beat against their mage's shields hot and fast and then, having lost momentum, fell in slowly accumulating lines at their feet. Heat and light beat against their protections. It looked to be spinning, this new sun. Most of the sand was ejected along the sun's equator, hit the sides of the basement, and fell to the floor where it slowly melted. They couldn't get closer without specialized protection, so ocular devices were deployed and the phenomenon was examined from a distance. Soon the mages were shouting back and forth, all trying to be heard over each other. Two of them scooped up traces of hot sand at their feet, rubbed the substance between their fingers, and started another round of jabberings.

"These are all useful metals," Bolormaa translated, "they say this is the fire of creation. Mana and matter are made by it. What is it made of? How does it work? Can we duplicate it? There is much to learn. Now Powzan has many years of great discoveries ahead of it." She listened for a few seconds before continuing. "They want to capture the mana for the Orlok's armies, but there are challenges. Also, a small part of this dust is gold."

The oracle allowed herself a vindicated smile. "The lesson has arrived. If we learn all we can from it then your Khagan will have the power he needs to conquer the world. As I have said, dear husband, prophecies are never wrong."