Chapter 7 of

Eyes of Fire

by Lauren Stinton

Hamal sat down right there in the middle of Chestirad’s cramped room, with everyone watching him.

He ignored their stares—which was hard to do, given that two of the people in here were seers—and considered his words and what he wanted to say. There were so many things he could say: about the dream itself, the way the air smelled, the strange tar pits, the monster-god, the desk, all the coins. He shuddered as he thought about the coins.

Simple was best, he decided and then laughed to himself. Simple was all he could do, wasn’t it?

Gripping the pencil, he began to write:

Grandfather, as you already know, we have found an oracle in King’s Barrow. This oracle is not like Hellan, and I need your help. You know more about the gods than I. How can I save this little girl from a bad god? I don’t know what to do. In two days, we will be in—

Hamal looked up. “Where are we going to be two days from now?”

Cale was standing next to the fireplace, his arms folded, his back against the wall. He was studying Hamal with a curious expression. Not an expression of curiosity, but an expression that Hamal didn’t recognize. In fact, he didn’t think he’d ever seen this look on Cale’s face before.

“Gallank Tree,” the seer answered.

“Good,” Hamal answered and finished his letter. He didn’t bother to sign his name—his grandfather knew his handwriting. Closing the book, he climbed to his feet and offered both the book and the pencil back to Gregory, who took them. Slowly.

“What would you like me to do with your note, Hamal?” Gregory asked, his tone helpful but his eyes frowning. “I can deliver it to the post for you. Even in a town such as Redsprin, they surely have a way to communicate with the rest of the country.”

But Hamal waved him away. “No, this is fine. Thank you for letting me borrow your things.”

Gregory hovered there, hands still extended, book and pencil lopsided in his grip. “Did you write a note for me?”

“A note for you? What? Oh. No, I didn’t. I wrote a note for my grandfather.”

Cale and Gregory looked at one another. Cale looked thoughtful but didn’t say a word, and it was Masly who finally said, “Hamal, would you not like us to make certain Shel Galen receives the note you wrote him?”

“No, that’s quite all right. He’s already received it.”

Gregory held up the closed book, with Hamal’s scrawled note inside it. Speaking more slowly than usual, he said, “I have your note here in my hand. It has not been sent to Shel Galen. Wouldn’t you like it to be sent to Shel Galen?”

Hamal looked at Gregory. Then at Cale. Then at Masly. Eventually, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say, he said, “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do we,” Masly replied in his boyish voice, a smile twitching his lips. “You wrote a letter to your grandfather, but now you do not seem interested in sending it to him. Why would you write a letter and not send it?”

They didn’t know, did they? How was it they didn’t know? Hamal turned to Cale and exclaimed, “Is this something you don’t know? I thought you knew.”

Cale unexpectedly grinned, something he did not do very often. He smiled on a regular basis, but this movement of his mouth was far too grand to be just “a smile.” There was laughter hidden behind it. “You thought we knew what, exactly?”

“My grandfather is a reader. All of you know my grandfather is a reader. He reads things.”

Gregory blew out his breath. “Yes, but how can Shel Galen read a letter that has not been sent to him? That is the question.”

Hamal glanced around at all the faces turned toward him expectantly, even Rosy’s. “Well, he can do it because he’s a reader.” When Gregory’s face twitched in a somewhat alarming manner, Hamal hurried on. “This is how I always write him. I just write the words, and then he comes to wherever I’m going to be. Once I didn’t have paper or a pencil, and so I wrote with ashes on the side of a house. He showed up then too. And another time I scratched out the words in a riverbank, and he still came. It doesn’t matter how the words are written, and I don’t have to send my letters to him, because he still reads them.”

For a long moment, no one in the room moved.

Then Gregory began to sound like he was being strangled.

Cale stared at Hamal. “What are you saying? If something is written—even in ashes on the side of a house or scrawled in the mud of a riverbank—Shel Galen can read it?”

“Yes. That’s exactly it.”

“So…what are you saying? If something is written down…? That is to say, he has read the plans of kings?” Cale’s voice grew tight, as if he had to push it through a very small hole that did not like movement of any kind. “The private matters of kingdoms and territories, secrets traded between seats of power—Shel Galen the sage has read all these things, simply because they were written down?”

Hamal frowned at the seers and at Gregory. “How do you not know this? He’s a reader. His gifting tells you what he does. I don’t know why you are surprised. He reads things.”

Cale blinked. And then blinked again. “No wonder the Theranians call him the most powerful gift on the continent.”

“I need…I need a chair,” Gregory said and began to look for one. When he discovered the room was thoroughly without chairs, he sank down onto the edge of the bed and cradled his head in his hands. Pushed against his skull, the book and the pencil stuck up out of his hands at odd angles that somehow made Hamal think of chicken feathers. “A reader. Shel Galen is a reader.”

He did not speak again for a very long time, except to mutter things about plans he’d written, and outlines and books, and Hamal didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Yes, Shel was a reader—but so was Gregory, and Gregory knew Shel was a reader. Was Gregory confused because Shel was also a sage, and so his gift was a little different? Was that it?

Sometimes readers could be quite mysterious—because of all the words. They remembered every word they saw with their eyes; their gift stored it up for them until they had entire books and even libraries in their heads. They carried around more words than Hamal knew or had even heard of.

He looked down at Gregory, still cradling his head full of libraries, and thought maybe this was a word problem, because Gregory knew so many of them.

A little more than an hour later, they left for Gallank Tree, taking with them, of course, a little child named Rosy, who didn’t want anyone to touch her. When Hamal held out his hand so he could help her down the steps, her eyes grew wide and she shied away. There was so much fear on her face just at his outstretched hand that he had to hold his breath. Someone had struck this child, so it seemed. When he’d healed her yesterday, Hamal hadn’t noticed any telltale bruises on her face or arms, but for her to react this way, she must have been struck at some point.

So, on the muddy path leading away from the inn, he squatted down in front of her and tried to explain things. “Rosy, I am not going to hurt you. All I will ever do is heal you. That’s my job, and healing is all I know about. I have very gentle hands, and you can trust me.”

A stare he couldn’t read.

Breathing a sigh, he tried again. “I have a horse, and his name is Sill, like a windowsill. I don’t know why that’s his name—I didn’t name him. But he’s a nice horse, and he’ll take us where we need to go. The problem is, you will need to ride with me. We don’t have another horse for you, so you’ll need to go on my horse. Do you think you could do that? I won’t hurt you, Rosy,” he said again, thinking the whole while, I am going to find a way to help you.

It took some coaxing, but eventually Hamal and Cale managed to get Rosy up into Hamal’s saddle, where she sat like a fabric-wrapped stone. Not moving. Stiff and awkward. Hamal tried to engage her in a conversation, hoping to win from her—not words at this point, but perhaps a nod. Maybe just a small dip of her head, but she did not do anything except sit there in an untouchable kind of silence.

At the edge of town, he pointed to an old building that used to be yellow, a color that seemed oddly out of place in a town like this one. It was like finding a flower garden in the middle of a cow field. Next he pointed to a rock that looked like a cow—he liked cows—and he told her everything he knew about cows and how their horns worked. He thought maybe she would like to hear about their horns, because she was a child and children often liked poky things, but she did not respond at all.

“I don’t know very much about children,” Hamal whispered to Cale when they stopped for a quick meal that afternoon in a quiet place off the road. Hamal was leaning against a gray boulder that stood about as tall as he did, while Cale appeared fully alert and prepared for anything that might happen. Head up. Arms folded. He wore his sword, and Hamal remembered what Cale had said about thieves in the North Territory.

“Why do I doubt that?” Cale replied.

“Well, I don’t. Sometimes they cry even when nothing is wrong. There’s nothing for me to heal, and they aren’t in any pain, and still they’re crying.”

Cale nodded toward Rosy, who was sitting on the ground a short distance away with her legs pulled up underneath her. She stared at the rough soil or possibly at the toes of the little boots Hamal had purchased for her before they’d left Redsprin. “Are her vocal cords beyond your ability to heal?” Cale asked. “Or is her silence a choice?”

“I’m not sure,” Hamal replied.

Cale glanced at him, brows rising. “How is it possible that you are unsure?”

“Well, she has vocal cords and they are in working order, but I can’t tell that she’s ever used them. Most people talk, you know.”

Cale nodded as if that information were new to him and very important.

“And when they talk, their vocal cords begin to show signs of use. A healer can tell whether someone is a quiet person or if someone is fond of words and talks all the time. But it’s different with Rosy.”

“How so?”

“I can’t tell that she’s spoken a single time in her life. Not even when she was a very small child who knew only how to cry. She didn’t even cry, and I can’t find a reason for it.” Hamal paused and lowered his voice. “Other than fear. Maybe because of the god with the desk. Maybe she was just a little, little child when he came and found her. It’s an old fear, something she’s been afraid of for a long time.”

Cale considered these things in silence. Voices drifted to them from their fellow travelers. Someone laughed and Rosy looked up at the sound but then soon returned to her toe-staring. Hamal wondered what she was thinking.

“She recognized the scene you described to her this morning,” Cale said. “The harsh desert land. The tar pits. The smoky ravine.”

“I know,” Hamal answered, his insides feeling as heavy as the rock he was leaning against. “I heard her heart jump.”

A line appeared between Cale’s brows. He looked at the little child sitting all by herself on the ground, and his gaze was so sincere that Hamal began to wonder if Cale already knew. Perhaps his gift had told him—he was a seer after all, and he knew things before other people did. But the time was still very early yet, and Cale hadn’t said a word about it. Surely, if the seer knew, there would have been words, because this was an important matter—something that had not been seen for many years.

Cale looked away from Rosy and, after a brief hesitation, turned his body so she was behind him, and he could no longer easily see her. Hamal was watching, and he saw her shoulders lower and the tension ease from her muscles. Ah, Rosy, he thought with sadness. Perhaps one day you won’t be afraid of seers anymore.

“How will your grandfather reach us in Gallank Tree?” Cale asked.

Hamal shrugged. “The same way he always reaches me. He finds someone to bring him. There’s always someone nearby. All he must do is find some water. If he’s still with Gray, it might be Gray.”

Cale grunted. “I wonder what Gray knows about the Dursen Head Mine.” A flicker of irritation went through his silver eyes, but then he paused, and in a much different voice, he added, “I wonder what your grandfather knows.”

Hamal laughed. “More than we do, I think.”

Cale’s brows lowered and stayed that way. Was he using his gift? Hamal peered at him, wondering, but before he could decide one way or the other, Cale said quietly, “Your grandfather is an unexpected situation in King’s Barrow, Hamal.”

What? Hamal didn’t understand.

In a voice barely above a breath, Cale murmured, “Hamal, I cannot tell you the number of secret things I myself have witnessed through the years. Secrets carefully recorded—not by a reader’s hand, but by a gift that will not so easily recall them. Since King’s Barrow’s founding, the throne has been careful with the secrets it keeps. Yet in one moment, you have undone all the throne’s efforts at secrecy.”

Oh, Hamal realized. I think he’s talking about my grandfather still.

Yes, he was. “What secret can endure if your grandfather knows it the moment it is written down?”

“All of them,” Hamal replied.

Cale looked at him.

Hamal nodded. “All of them. All the secrets. It’s my grandfather, Cale. He knows what to say and what not to say. He knows when to speak and when not to speak. He keeps secrets from me all the time. I never know everything he knows—he knows a lot—and even when I ask, sometimes he will not tell me.”

Slowly the stiffness began to drain from Cale’s face. His brows relaxed. He smiled slightly. “And that, my friend, is how I feel around you. Constantly. All the time. You remember, do you not, what I told you about the treasure buried at the mine?”

Yes, Hamal remembered. That it was for him. That it had been left there on purpose for him. “Aye.”

“We’ll see what your grandfather says about it. For I intend to ask him, and I fully expect him to confirm my thoughts on the matter.”

– H –

Comment below or click here to find us on Facebook. Copyright notice: © 2021 by Lauren Stinton. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.