Chapter 28: The Fading Furnace

It was hot work at the smithy, and Miro seemed to handle it much better than Shurik the blacksmith; if the sweat pouring off the blacksmith’s brow was any indication, as Miro had hardly broken one. This was either due to the flame originating from Miro himself and thus having no effect on him, or because Shurik was hard at work with the hammer, while Miro was busying himself moving some metal rods from one end of the smithy to another; truly a mystery Miro would never be able to solve.

“I kid you not, Shurik, that oxhawk was almost the size of this house,” Miro said, putting down a pile of rods by the blacksmith. Words like “almost” did a lot of work in Miro’s stories. “Without warning, it burst into our camp at dawn, knocking down trees in its wake. I have to hand it to those guys; whoever they were, they put up a good fight. Especially that one with the ice powers, real epic stuff. None of them were from a farm it seemed, since we know that the best kind of chicken is a roast chicken. So while the others had it distracted, I lined it up and boom, we were in possession of a meal big enough to feed a village.”

A lot of words did a lot of work in Miro’s stories. Who knew how long he was going to be stuck in East Bolot for, so building a little credibility wouldn’t hurt. And though Shurik didn’t look like the kind of man who’d stop for idle gossip in the town square, news of Miro’s exploits should have spread one way or another.

Miro never had a chance to see his strategy through, as not half an hour into his new career, Shurik said, “Miro, fire’s getting dim, can you give it a boost?”

He hadn’t counted on this – when the flames stabilized he assumed that it would be enough. Why had the voice in his head that chastised him for thinking that somehow the effects of his powers were infinite sounded so much like Hima’s? He’d only built up enough mana for a single fireball, and it had better have been enough.

“Sure thing, Shurik,” Miro said, banishing any panic from his voice, and strolled over to the furnace. He knew it was called a furnace now because Shurik, in the gentlest way a man of his stature could muster told him, “Miro, you seem like a nice kid, but if you call it a stove instead of a furnace again I will box you about the ears so hard your grandkids will know what it’s called.”

Now faced with the furnace, and definitely not a stove, Miro tried to aim into the very heart of the flame that remained there. The fireball rekindled it somewhat and he presented his handiwork to Shurik.

“One more maybe ought to do it,” the blacksmith said, his bushy chin in his hand.

“Uh …”

“What?”

“That’s all I’ve got for now.”

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“What do you mean ‘for now’?”

“I need to wait for my mana to recharge, I’ll be able to do one more in about twenty minutes.”

Shurik blinked, not in anger or astonishment, but a neutral portrait of a man who at this point just wanted to get on with his weird day. And then he laughed, not the worst thing that could have happened to Miro, but it didn’t exactly make him feel great.

“Oh, Miro, kid, I appreciate the attitude, but what am I supposed to do with that?”

“Develop an inordinate amount of patience for the sake of a feel-good story about a kindly but destitute blacksmith?”

Shurik snorted with his mouth closed and put his massive hand on Miro’s shoulder. “Come on, go run along and let me get back to my work.”

All out of ‘buts’ and ‘pleases’, Miro accepted defeat, hung up his apron, and stepped out into the cool refreshing morning air.

Outside the smithy, there was a small yard separated from the street by a low wooden fence, and a single chicken strutted around this yard pecking at whatever it could find between the grass. “Roast chicken,” Miro grumbled under his breath, “Stupidest thing I ever said.” Miro perched himself on the fence and watched the passersby visit the other shops on the street. There was a baker and a tailor and no one out here at this hour looked in dire need of an hourly fireball. Even here, all his powers were a parlor trick, much like those of Ludvik, the lightning mage from the neighbouring village – something that amused the local kids but would ultimately lead to being eaten by a bear.

“Damn it,” Miro muttered to himself.

“Perhaps next you should try the baker,” a familiar voice, just barely above a whisper, spoke next to his ear.

“Damn it,” Miro groaned, burying his face in his hands and rubbing his eyes. “How long have you been following me?”

“Since the inn,” Peteri answered, “You don’t exactly walk lightly, Miro Kaldoun.”

“Ugh, don’t use my family name. It still sounds like someone else’s.”

“It is someone else’s,” Peteri said, in one spry move hopping up and landing softly to sit on the fence beside Miro. It always surprised Miro how unencumbered Peteri seemed to move despite his age. “It’s your father’s, and for a lesser time, your mother’s.”

“Yeah, best not mention them either. They feel like borrowed from someone else, too.” The archer took a long breath through his nose and looked up at the morning sky. “This whole thing seems borrowed,” Miro continued, “And not really mine. It’s as if a couple of weeks ago someone showed up to my door and went ‘hey, here’s a new life, it’s a little bit worn and set in its ways but you’ve got no choice now. What’s that? It’s a little tight? No worries, I’m sure you’ll break it in in no time’. Somehow everyone just expects me to put it on and be exactly like the last guy who wore it, but that’s not me.”

“Your father didn’t think it was him either.”

“He didn’t?”

“It’s one thing to be popular at the local fairs. Another to be expected to carry the Kingdom on your shoulders.” Peteri looked down at the back of his hands, then turned them and looked at his palms. “I don’t think any of us enjoyed that part, except maybe for Nydra.”

“The way Nydra talks, my dad sounds like he was an unstoppable ultra-mage.”

“Sometimes he was, sometimes he wasn’t.” The sound of metal striking metal came from behind them and Miro wondered if Shurik had started on those swords. “Nydra prefers to focus on the positive things, especially back then, and it works for her. Me, my talent is watching, and when I watch, I see, and I could see that on the inside what your father was the most, was scared.”

“That’s hard to imagine, having those kinds of powers and still being scared.”

“Only a fool has power and thinks they’ve got nothing to be afraid of. He didn’t want to let us down, didn’t want to let the Kingdom down. And even you. Letting down you and your mother was probably the thing he feared the most. Though there was something else that troubled him.” Peteri hesitated. “Though I could never figure it out.”