The Lamplighter (Lamplighter Saga Book 0) Page 5

  “It did break,” Theseus growled. Pearl realized what she said and apologized immediately. “I can’t deny it. For some reason, the longer the barrel is, the more unstable they become after a shot is fired. Though I haven’t tried…” He trailed off, but caught him. “To answer your question, yes, I built the rifle. I built most of what you see.”

  “That’s truly impressive,” Pearl admitted as she looked at everything with a new perspective. “Who taught you how to build all of this?”

  “I taught myself.” Theseus made his way towards the door, beckoning for Pearl to follow. “Most of the years I lived here were spent alone. Beyond my regular training, I had plenty of time to learn a variety of skills. Failures revealed my mistakes, guiding me to success.”

  Back in the foyer, Pearl asked, “By yourself for years? Wasn’t it lonely?”

  Theseus glanced at his bedroom door. “No…no. I told you I had guests. Other Brothers of the Flame and the like. Now enough talk. The sublevels are vast and we have much to do.”

  Pearl had noticed the metal stairs in the corner of the room the night before. A small wooden wall guarded the edge of the opening. The lit tube, connected to the other lights in the house, ran down and through the central pole the stairs circled around, but when Pearl looked down, she saw nothing but darkness. Their clanking descent echoed up from the earthen depths like bells tolling from forgotten antiquity. Bony fingers of cold air crept up Pearl’s leg, a haunting shiver shaking her body, and she longed for the sword in her room.

  She only knew they had reached their first stop when six torches, hanging next to six doors, illuminated a circular metal landing at Theseus’s arrival. Five of the doors he waved off. “More bunks and two additional privies. All of which haven’t been used in years. But this room…” He gestured to the remaining door. “This is one of the more impressive rooms within Lightholme.”

  Sunlight blinded Pearl as it exploded out of the opening door. She held onto Theseus’s shirt to follow him outside as her eyes adjusted. When she could see, she found green grass under her and a blue sky decorated with thin, white clouds above her. The sun hid behind a cloud passing on the soft breeze, then returned to warm Pearl and the animals around her. Wooden fencing separated and penned cows, chickens, pigs, sheep, and even a few horses. Grazing on fresh hay and drinking fresh water, they took no notice of Pearl or Theseus. Beyond the pens, a variety of crops grew in a bountiful garden. A small orchard stood on the other side of the garden, the trees forming a lane to a natural incline uniform enough to act as a ramp. All around them, a sea of green grass, dotted with patches of colorful wild flowers, stretched to the horizon and rippled in the breeze. Pearl had never seen so much open space. All her life, trees had surrounded her.

  “Trees…” She turned to Theseus. “This isn’t real. We’re underground and even if we weren’t, the house is in the middle of the forest.”

  “Take a walk.” Theseus nodded his head at the fields to Pearl’s left. She studied him, suspicious of what might happen, then made her way towards the field, only to run into a wall a few feet from the pens. Theseus bent over laughing as Pearl nursed her face, which had taken the brunt of the collision, now flushed with hot embarrassment. Aware of wall now, she reached out and touched the wall. The scenery appeared painted on, but Pearl couldn’t tell how it could move.

  “Later,” Theseus dismissed her questions, wiping a tear of laughter from his eye. “The walls and the ceiling fool the animals, and some people, into thinking they’re outside. The ramp in the back lets them outside for some real fresh air and actual sunlight. I can’t stand to see them trapped in here, but they attract the Khaous. So, we built a Farm room.”

  “Why do you need all of this?” Pearl realized she could see the corners of the wall. “And who did you mean by ‘we’? I thought you lived alone.”

  “I did and do. Brother Gen would visit and help me with most of the house’s more…complicated rooms,” Theseus explained. He motioned for Pearl to follow him out of the room. “And why else would the house have a farm room? Where do you think the food comes from? Come, time to move on.”

  Theseus skipped the next landing, saying they would return there in the future. Pearl noted the strange, glowing symbols carved into the lone door. Skipping the next few landings, more storage according to Theseus, they stopped on a landing with a single door. Within, blocks of stone connected into pairs by thin metal rods, horizontal bars elevated on poles and other strange equipment rested on a thin, yet firm mattress-like covering on the floor. It gave under Pearl’s weight, though not by much, making it only somewhat softer than the stone beneath. “This is the gymnasium, where you’ll undertake most of your physical training and shape your body into a weapon.”

  The next landing had only three doors, but Theseus showed her that they all led to the same circular room. In the first part of the rooms, wooden crates held stockpiles of various metal near a stone smelter. A forge stood further along the circle, next to an anvil and rack of tools. The path ended at a collection of handmade armor and weapons, sitting next to the crates of raw material waited. “The connected room represent the cycle of blacksmithing. You smelt the raw metal into a more malleable state, then shape it with the forge and anvil, and once it is to your liking, you place it in the armory. Then you start anew at the beginning.”

  The woodshop and the workshop, rooms identical to the smithing room, took up the next two floors. In the woodshop, large piles of various woods awaited a carpenter to shape them at the work tables, each with their own box of tools. Theseus described the workshop as a place for ‘tinkering.’ Unlike the woodshop or smithing room, the piles of raw material gave way to drawers of components of varying sizes and shapes, some small enough to fit in Pearl’s palm. “This is where you would go to build a clock, for instance. Any mechanism built from smaller pieces.”

  “Like your rifle?” Pearl asked. “The one that broke—“

  “Yes,” Theseus grunted to interrupt Peal. “I would need to bring it to this room for repairs and to find out why I can’t get it to work, the stupid piece of junk.”

  After the workshop, they skipped the last few landings and continued down the staircase, deeper into the earth, where the air grew heavy and cold. The candles lighting the way became seldom, but regular, so Pearl counted them to measure how deep they had gone. Ten…twenty…thirty…She wrapped her arms around her body to fight the chill. A light beneath them grew brighter as they descended, from a pinpoint in the darkness to a soft glow. An eerie calm filled Pearl, relaxing and unsettling at the same time.

  No metal landing awaited them at the bottom, only a passage wide enough for two to walk side by side cut into the earth and stone. A layer of moisture on the walls reflected the dim light coming from the dying embers of the torches mounted on the wall. Sand thrown on the floor absorbed the water dripping off the wall and provided traction underfoot. Pearl followed Theseus down the passageway, which grew in size when it reached a set of giant wooden doors. Theseus stopped in front of the doors and looked back at Pearl.

  “Once you go through these doors, there is no path back,” he warned her. “Step beyond them and you’ve committed yourself to the Brotherhood. Understand?”

  “Open the door,” she commanded him. He smiled, then opened the doors with a strained grunt. The hinges groaned, then cried as rust fought against Theseus. From the room beyond, warm air rushed out, drying Pearl’s eyes as it flowed over her. Theseus gave each of the doors a final push, making an opening wide enough for the two of them to walk in together.

  “Wow,” escaped Pearl’s lips.

  “Wow,” echoed the smooth walls and the ceiling of the large cavern they entered. A single fire on the opposite side of the cavern illuminated the entire space, its glow reaching every corner. The walls showed no signs of carving, as though created in a single, uniform scoop. Pearl wanted to ask, but it felt sacrilegious to speak here, so she followed Theseus across the room in silence, until he stopped
in front of the fire.

  “This is the prize of the Brotherhood,” Theseus told her, his voice filled with reverence, as he stared into the fire with her. Pearl noticed nothing extraordinary about it. It burned on top a stone pedestal, surrounded on all sides, except the front, by small, hexagon-shaped metal plates. A series of wires attached to each plate came together as a single, thicker wire behind the pedestal and ran up the wall into the ceiling. A burning sensation grew within her the longer she stared at it, as though the fire was eating her. She looked for what fed it, and discovered it hovered an inch above the pedestal, a singular, smokeless flame burning on its own. Every time it flickered, Pearl saw something more within the flame, a construct strange and in motion, but outside her perception.

  “We are the Brotherhood of the Stolen Flame. This is our founding and our legacy. Our past, present, and future. Our namesake and our purpose. The first and last light in the darkness.”

  “What is it?” Pearl asked, not taking her eyes off it. The burning within her had stopped, replaced by a warm, comforting sensation, like wrapping oneself in blankets on a cold winter day.

  “This, Pearl, is the first fire. The Fire of God.”

  Chapter　5

  “I must preface the telling of the Brotherhood’s history with some notes on its philosophy and beliefs,” Theseus stated as he sat down in the dirt. He cast an expecting look at Pearl, who, after her confusion cleared, joined him while mouthing an apology. “First: every piece of text regarding divine beings and acts, from the scraps of destroyed scrolls to the massive tomes of religion, is part of a larger narrative, the beginning of which predates humanity, Earth, and perhaps all of creation. They’re united by their truths, but their fictions divide them and isolate believers. Second: in conjunction with my first point, the Brotherhood fully acknowledges that every ‘god’ exists and has some influence on the Earth. We do not deny them, but we do not worship them. For the most part, they have removed themselves from the day-to-day affairs of man.”

  “Do they answer prayers?” Pearl thought of her mother and brother. “What happens when someone dies?”

  “We don’t know. Communication with the dead is difficult unless one dives into dark magics, and even then their descriptions of the afterlife are vague and conflicting. As for prayers, no definitive proof has been found to support or refute their effectiveness, but the gods’ power is derived from belief, so answering prayers would be in their interest.” This gave Pearl a small measure of relief. “Those will be the last questions for now. We don’t have time to sit around, exchanging questions for answers. Your training is going to be rushed as is, so allow me to begin the admittedly abbreviated history of the Brotherhood.”

  Theseus cleared his threat. “When the gods created the beasts of the world, they bestowed each a gift, be it tooth, claw, stealth, or what have you. The first man and woman, who had been safe within the Gardens of Paradise until exiled for committing the original sin, entered the world with no such gift. By day, they struggled to survive among the beasts, eating whatever they could hunt and scavenge. By night, they hid, for the creatures of Chaos, the Khaous, roamed undeterred. The gods, their creators, now hated the humans for their lowly state, and turned their divine attention elsewhere. Luckily for mankind, there were those among the gods who pitied the plight of the humans. Three such gods united to steal the Fire of God, a light to break the darkness humanity feared. Loki, trickster god of the Nords, distracted the Flame’s Keeper, the Greek thunder god Zeus, with riddles. Crow, trickster of the North, retrieved it for Prometheus, a titan of Greece and humanity’s chief sympathizer. Prometheus journeyed to the mortal realm, arriving just as the Khaous were spawning during the twilight when the gods are blind. With the Fire of God, which shines like no other flame, Prometheus showed the first humans how to use it to repel the darkness. He taught them how to make their own fires and how to use them for cooking and heat, before returning to the Divine Spheres, leaving the Fire of God in mankind’s hands.”

  “Time passes differently for gods, so no one can say how long it was before Zeus or the Christian god Yahweh, the Flame’s gifter, realized the Flame was missing. The two gods searched the Earth for it, and the humans they met, the first children and grandchildren of man, wielded fire of their own creation. Their search fruitless, the Fire of God hidden per Prometheus’s instructions, Yahweh and Zeus returned to the Divine Spheres to find the thief. Prometheus, betrayed by Loki and Crow, suffered for his crime, chained to a rock where a giant eagle would eat his liver, which would grow back at night. The torment repeated each day, yet he refused to reveal the Flame’s location. Passed from one generation to the next, the Fire of God remained hidden from the gods. Only once was it mistakenly shown before the eyes of Yahweh, who flooded the Earth in order to destroy it. Yet the Flame survived, and an order of Keepers was formed to protect it, share its light with the world, and fight the Khaous with its power. The Brotherhood of the Stolen Flame has survived the rise and fall of empires, schisms and civil wars, treachery and zealotry. Now the Flame is here, in the new world, to vanguard the old world’s inevitable migration across the oceans.” Theseus closed his eyes, sighed, and then look into Pearl’s eyes. “Your training begins now.”

  “Now?” Pearl asked, surprised. Theseus patted the dirt off his pants as he stood. From behind the Flame’s pedestal, Theseus retrieved two swords, one he threw to Pearl. Metal flashed in the light and Pearl panicked, her hand shooting out on instinct to catch it and wrapping around the blade. She yelped, but didn’t feel the blade’s edge. Theseus bent backwards, laughing at the ceiling, as Pearl realized she had caught a scabbarded sword. She drew her sword, a rusty blade with a dull edge, and assumed her stance. Theseus’s laughing faded to chuckling, then he shook it away to ready for a fight. He studied Pearl’s stance, and grimaced in disappointment.

  “We have so much work to do,” Theseus grumbled. Pearl didn’t worry about his dissent. Since she was young, she had always been faster and stronger than her peers, and could even outrun several adults as a child. What could this old man do that she couldn’t match? She gave him a nod and prepared for his attack. Theseus returned the nod and lunged forward with a slash at Pearl’s side. Pearl leapt backwards, and brought her sword down at Theseus’s sword arm, embarrassed at how slow he moved. But her sword cut through empty air. Theseus had sidestepped the attack with practiced speed, and spun around on his heel like a top, slashing out at Pearl. She raised her sword as fast as she could and managed to parry the attack, but the force of his slash pushed her off balance and she stumbled backwards. She readied her guard for a follow up attack, but Theseus didn’t pursue her.

  “Try and kill me,” he instructed her, lowering himself back into his fighting stance. “I assure you, you won’t be able to.”

  “Just remember your words,” Pearl warned. “I was the best among the Lamplighter trainees.”

  “The best among children? Hardly a boast,” Theseus mocked. Pearl stepped towards him and brought her sword down at his head. His blade met hers and knocked it away back over her head. She stepped back to keep her footing, as Theseus chased after her with a cut to her stomach. Her strength, which could fell a tree in handful of swings, failed to bring her sword down fast enough. Pearl closed her eyes as the cold metal touched her side. However, instead of cutting her, the blade smacked her side like one of the wooden swords she used training with the Lamplighters. She let out a low, rather masculine “Oof” and staggered away from Theseus.

  “Too easy. Were it not for the ward around my sword, you would be dead,” Theseus teased. He held up his sword, and Pearl saw the distorted air around the blade, as though a haze hung on it. Pearl’s sword had no such distortion around it. “Like I said, you would be hard pressed to try and kill me.”

  He mocked her, and all she had done so far just encouraged him. The advantages she had enjoyed in New Bethlehem meant nothing here. Her arm shook whenever their blades clashed, and for every attack she managed
to block, three more would strike her arms and legs. His continual mocking irritated her, but his evident restraint for her sake made her seethe. Beating him to submission had become impossible, but landing a single blow wouldn’t satisfy her.

  Her blood boiled, burning her core, but fueling her body with new, wrathful strength. She watched him waiting for her, her vision red and her attention pulled to different parts of his body by some internal voice. He left shoulder exposed, attacking it would cause him to step away in defense. Attacking his left leg would leave him vulnerable to an upward slash. Theseus rushed her, and the internal voice revealed new openings. With his sword in his right hand, he exposed his left side, his neck in particular. Go for the throat, the voice growled with hunger. Pearl gave into the sensation, wanting bloodshed as much as it did, and swung her sword as hard as she could at Theseus’s jugular. He parried her blade as if he knew its target. He had some counter to this sensation, blocking or avoiding every fatal blow. With every jump, twist, sidestep, slide or subtle shift in his body, the voice within Pearl would shift, revealing his vulnerabilities.

  The voice screaming inside of Pearl brought her to her knees and filled her head with undecipherable chatter. Too much movement, too many changing factors. The screaming wouldn’t stop. Theseus knelt down next to her, his mouth moving, but the words drowned in shrieks. She looked at him and thought, Claw his eyes out, rip out his tongue, tear his throat. She wanted to listen, but she turned away to shut up the voice. Theseus wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close to him, and held her head against his chest. The screaming in Pearl’s head faded away, and she could hear Theseus humming and singing in another language, his voice soft as if he didn’t want to wake some sleeping child. With every word, Pearl’s body relaxed more and her vision cleared. The last of her rage dropped down her cheek as a tear, and she took a deep, calm breath.