The Arkanist

Chapter Ten: Interlude-White Flame

Chapter Ten: Interlude-White Flame

Hale woke with the book on his chest and the sound of fire outside his window. He did not remember falling asleep, but he had, soft and easy, his world consumed by an infinite darkness when before there was light.

            Outside, the flame burned white.

            He hadn't noticed it at first; his eyes were still foggy from sleep. He'd heard it, a muffled sort of humming, flickering in its low growl, but paid it little mind. It was probably just the torch on the wall, or a crack of lighting in the distance. Such was common in his time.

            He rubbed his eyes clear and sat upright, setting the book on the bedside table, looking it over wistfully as he breathed in the cold, moldy air of his small room. He put a longing hand to the leather cover, remembering all that had happened, all he had learned, and all he wanted to know, but there were things to do. He'd slept late, and true, and he was hungry.

            Hale rose then, stretching so as to expel the morning stiffness, and laced his boots, and looked once out the window for good measure.

            The sky glowed pale as a witch's teat, and the clouds wore heavy upon the grey, poised in their fury, eerily. Woodhearth lay in ruin.

            What was left of the town stood in forlorn shambles, all burned and broken like a city put to the torch, charred black as coal, alive with a weak, white fire, still brooding from the night before, it seemed.

            Whatever had happened, Hale knew, it was the work of daemons. Everybody knows their mark: white fire, burning cold as ice.

           

            The white fire announces,

            And the enemy renounces.

 

            It was a child's rhyme; nobody believed it. Hale didn't. He didn't even believe the outlaws the day before, nor the innkeeper last night. Folk speak often of things, many of which never happen, or will ever happen. That's how story works, that's how tale works: hyperbole and exaggeration all, a lost truth, riding in the shadows of the common man's fear. This time, though, it was true, and the fear was real.

            Hale left his belongings, what few things he possessed, in his room, and made his way into the taproom. He kept the dagger in his cloak, just in case, fingering the leather hilt.

            There was a hole in the wall, by the door, the wooden planks shattered like glass across the floor, burned at the edges. A cold wind passed and Hale shivered. It rattled his spine and sent a chill down the length of his body, making the hairs on his arms stand upright. The ash followed grey and drear in its procession, settling like sand across the floor.

            The door was no longer a door, but a single wood slab, burned and charred, like most else, moaning in the wind, but that was all. The bar had somehow survived, remarkably, as had the tables and the chairs, preserved, and as Hale saw the wall of untouched bottles and food, he caught the innkeeper, hunched behind a crate, his face in his hands.

            Hale kneeled beside the man with the auburn hair, his clothes slashed with dirt and blood. "You're bleeding."

            "Not mine," he said to his hands, curt.

            Hale didn't push him. He knew it would only make it worse.         

            There was a silence for a time, long and solemn, broken as the innkeeper dried his face with a slow deliberation, coughed, and sniveled away the last of his tears. He kept his face in his hands. "I tried to save her, I did. Truly. Tried as hard as I could, but it wasn't enough." He dropped his hands and Hale stared into those strange green eyes. "She's gone," he whispered, short of breath. "And I don't know where she's gone...The gods, they're all dead, even Aylar. Who knows where the dead go now. Who knows where we go?"