A Flash of Sparks

By Emile Bienert

The first smoke of industry is visible in certain parts of Arkana, but most of the country is in the thrall of superstition, magic, and religious conviction. Over the eastern border, the Carrowind, a vast and unexplored wilderness stretches to the limits of imagination. Between the mighty Korsks, who threaten war from the north and seemingly endless sea to the south and west, our story unfolds:
Vekaya wakes up in the dim light of a storeroom, alone and with no memory of who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Investigator, rebel, and her very own hero, it is not long before she runs afoul of the forces in charge of the religious orphanage where she has been living. Though Vekaya does not yet know it, time is running out, and the fate of all Arkana hangs in the balance.
Not far away, a mysterious and deadly force causes the town of South Hall to destroy itself. Two young brothers, Gyrath and Caedrus, flee the violence to a world equal parts unforgiving and unpredictable. Taken from a stable and easy life, they must now confront wolf packs, shape-shifters, will-bending shamassons, and a nefarious cabal bent on world domination.
The first book in the Flint and Steel series, A Flash of Sparks plunges headfirst into a world of magic, monsters, and mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emile Bienert
• Release date: Mar 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9780463368299

Emile Bienert

I am probably not a wizard.

Book preview

Prologue: Dear You

They are upon us. It will be tomorrow or perhaps the next day, but it will not be long now. My age shows in my beard, and I cannot say what will happen when they arrive. Though I will fight to my last breath to keep them from you, that may not be enough. When they arrive, it will not matter what you see or hear. You must run. There are no words powerful enough for me to express that statement as strongly as I need to: you must run. All that I can tell you is that there will be a time for bravery, but you must stay free until you are wise enough to see it and strong enough to seize it.

I did not want to give this to you, but because we are no doubt parting, there is no other way. This story should not be. And if it must be, then it should be me telling you face to face. But as you grow older, you will learn that there are a great many shoulds. That is why these pages exist. These are my notes, my journals, perhaps the only record remaining of your story – the truth of it.

These pages – and I am sorry that there are so, it is the only thing I can do to be fair to all those involved – will reveal to you what has brought us to these bits of wreckage, sticking up like the ribs of decayed giant, through weeds and vermin and many, many years. Though looking back at my life frightens me more than I can say, I was once taught that it is not the path of honor to shy away from a task because it is difficult or frightening. We haven't much time, and it would be foolish to ignore the realities of our present situation. We are close enough to the spot.

Once, many years ago, this was a failed experiment. It was, for a very short while, a town. And though this town plays a big role in our story, it is neither a start nor an end. No, there is a true beginning for all of this business.

My name is Gyrath Bolingard, and this story – one of a regret so powerful that it curls my lips and gnashes my teeth – is both yours and mine. You should understand why I sometimes scream out in the night. You should know the source of my nightmares and vivid, horrifying daydreams. Before all of that, before this town, and long, long before you, I was also young and my world was so very small.

Chapter I: The Desire of Something Left in a Storeroom

Our story, like all stories, needs a hero. I am not that hero. Though her story began not far from my own, I did not know her at the beginning. She once told me all that I am telling you, but she cannot be here to tell you of these things now. So, the responsibility falls to me to give you this piece of your own story. I will do the very best that I can to make her words come alive in the way that she might. Vekaya was her name, and at the start of what we know – of what she knew – she was more confused than I hope you shall ever be.

The very beginning was when three things happened all at once. Air filled her lungs as though for the first time. Breath came in gasps and gulps. Vekaya breathed as if it might be taken away from her. Her eyes opened, unbidden, and flooded her mind with unfamiliar surroundings – there were things in the dim light. She knew what they were. But where was she? Lastly, confusion and fear swept over her like the frigid air. The place was dark, and she did not know where she was.

When Vekaya told me this, I can remember thinking that I would have wanted to cry out, to ask for help. But, when you don’t know for what or to whom you should be calling out, it is difficult to have an instinct for it. And, Vekaya was not one to beg or even to ask for help. As frightened as she was, the dark was the dark, and she was herself.

The dimly lit things around her, they were barrels and boxes. The light was coming from a single point in the darkness. It looked like a star, floating by itself. Vekaya exhaled. Vekaya, she thought the word for a moment. It was her name. She knew that. What else did she know? Like the breaths she had taken, the knowledge filled her only enough to realize that she needed more. What was the enormity of this small room? Why was she here? What was this place? Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and she saw that the small light was a single… a single… a single, lonely candle. Candle was the word for the tiny little star in the darkness. It was sitting on a small round table a short distance from the straw cot where she was sitting up.

Crates stretched off into the darkness around her. Barrels. Innumerable sacks. Sacks everywhere. A few had dark markings on them. Many did not. This place. This was not for things that were being used. They were being stored. A storeroom. It’s a place for storing things that are extra, things that are unnecessary. She knew that, like how she knew that her name was Vekaya. Like how she knew how to breath. Like how she knew that the thing with light was a candle. And even though all she could see was the dimness of the storeroom, Vekaya knew that there was a world outside of this.

The words and ideas poured in. She had fingers. Hands. Toes. Feet. She was wearing a dress that came down to her upper shins. It was coarse fabric and too thin. It was white and had two golden emblems on it. What were they? She knew them. It didn’t matter right then. The air around her crackled with fear. Why was she here? Who was she? What was happening? She was cold. She had hair that went down to a little below her chin. It was difficult to see what color it was in the darkness, but she estimated that it was brown.

Vekaya saw what she could see in what light there was. Her hands travelled to every surface that they could find. All of it was new but not surprising. Vekaya found that the feel of a sheet was the feel of a sheet and nothing at all new. But for some reason, this was the first sheet. It was new. She needed to know all of it, to see it, to feel it, to hear it. And there was so much more of it out there. That was where Vekaya needed to go. The newness beckoned her, and she stood.

Then, a noise came from that world. A noise like another person talking. It caused her to stop. Why? Of course, there was another person. Just like the whole world couldn’t be a storeroom, she couldn’t be the only person anywhere. Why did the very idea of another person make her hesitate? What part of her desired to avoid the source of that voice?

Before she could even look for an escape, before she could hide, before she could even think, the door opened. In walked a figure whose robes and skin were so white that they glowed in the darkness. Vekaya stared. Like her name, the feeling of the sheet, or the word, storeroom, Vekaya recognized the figure. She struggled to conjure its name. As the word escaped her grasp, the memory felt more like the chill of the dim air than the familiarity of the sheet. Whoever this was, they were not… warm?

Who are you? asked Vekaya. The sound of her own voice frightened her for a moment with its unfamiliarity, with its authority, with its fear.

Hello, Little Girl, responded the figure. The voice echoed. It hummed and throbbed and pushed back into Vekaya’s head.

And suddenly, Vekaya was in the storeroom of her mind. The view from her eyes was distant. She was unnecessary. The voice of the figure was all. It was comforting. It was easy. It was so easy to hear, to follow, to let. Just… Let…

Vekaya could see very clearly that this was a woman. A woman in glowing white robes. Very tall. She smiled a smile that was not at all a smile, but rather, it was a command.

Do you know where you are? she asked.

No, said Vekaya before she could quite stop herself. The woman’s voice pulled the sound out of her. The answer came like water drawn from a well – no, like a fish, drawn from a pond… on a hook. In the storeroom of her mind, Vekaya watched herself answer. She felt nothing. The numbness was cold but the same sort of cold as one of the crates across the room. It didn’t matter. Everything was perfectly fine, though. There was no reason to be upset. There was no reason to not answer. There was no reason to… There was just no… There just wasn’t... In the storeroom of her own head, Vekaya could feel the voice smothering her under a soft, fluffy, feather pillow. It was so warm.

Her pulse quickened.

No.

No, she thought.

Vekaya strained against the voice. She wanted to take any action that she could. She wanted to do something: flip over the straw bed where she had been sleeping, kick over the storeroom’s crates and barrels, punch the woman in her smiling white teeth, anything. She fought and fought. What could she do?

The woman’s smile did not so much as shudder.

Little Girl? she said. Are you quite all right?

The words gave her brain a bath and pushed her head under the water. It was so easy, though. The voice just stole away the definition of the world around her. Everything was soft. Everything was so easy again. She didn’t have to think. She didn’t have to do. Vekaya could just… She could just…

Are… started Vekaya, are you… she paused again, Are you alive?

The sentence took lifetimes to say. Everything was slow. The smile’s lip shivered for just a moment. Just a moment. Was she offended, or was it something much worse? Everything felt like it was straining, fighting, strangling.

Am I alive? Why, yes, of course, said the woman. Every time she spoke, the cloud descended. Calm like death. She tried to run, but all she could do was turn. The turn went too far. She turned all the way around and looked at the woman again. The woman – she was… What? What?

...a shamasson!

I am a—

Shamasson! said Vekaya.

The smile returned. The teeth were perfectly shaped, perfectly white. What was a shamasson? Why did she know that?

Very good, Little One, droned the shamasson, Civius smile on you.

Who… started Vekaya.

The shamasson’s smile ebbed for just a moment. There was a second of something – it was not an emotion. Not love or fear or hope or even excitement. Was it expectation?

Who is Civius? stammered Vekaya.

Civius is… Well, my child, he loves you, said the shamasson, and you’re going to love him, too.

Still in her trance, Vekaya was led up out of the storeroom. The air was cool and the stones underfoot were very smooth and cold. The walls were bare brick the color of a raincloud. She walked down hallways and found a group of children. She wanted to stop them. Vekaya wanted to ask them if they knew who she was, but her body wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t stop. So, she watched them go by. The group became something larger as the hallways teemed with children. Some were younger than her. Some were older. They walked, almost marching, across the impossibly shiny stone floor. The basement’s bare walls gave way to bright red cloths and shiny metals objects decorating the walls in loud bursts of color. And though they weren’t dusty – there was no dust anywhere – she could tell that the many girls and boys around did not so much as touch them. Ahead, some children were mopping up, and they stared at Vekaya for a long moment before averting their eyes and mopping for all they were worth. Other shamassons, indistinguishable from the one she had met in the storeroom, monitored the progress of the children through the hallways. Light flickered out from the dozens of pairs of eyes in the hallway as she bid them, Go to class. A few normal adults passed. The hallway ended at a staircase. Following that same figure clad in white, Vekaya ascended stair after stair. Eventually, she arrived at another hallway. At the end of this one, there was a modest looking door, behind which, a woman sat at a table. She was saying something to a person on her right, but when Vekaya tried to get a sense of them, her uncooperative focus kept pulling back to the woman at the desk. Seeing Vekaya, she waved the other person away, saying, ...put the enterprise in jeopardy. Preposterous! This city likes us best when our children do not make a sound. You know as well as I do that my records are the only ones that exist in this place.

Vekaya’s eyes didn’t follow whoever it was that left, but when the woman’s head turned toward her, the gaze that fixed on the two figures arriving at her door consumed the rest of the hallway with the indifference of bottomless pit. It washed over her. She was a chair, a crate, a stone.

Ah, our little follower of Terre is washed clean, I see, she said, grinning in a way that was not unlike the shamasson. Vekaya’s brain was trying to tell her something. There was something important. Something dangerous. Who was this woman?

She knew what I am called, said the shamasson.

Shamasson? said the woman, The girl must have some words, musn’t she? Here, we’ll see.

Vekaya looked at the woman behind the table. She was not dressed in the glowing, spectral color of the shamassons, but her robe was white and bore the same scales.

Vekine? said the woman.

Vekaya stared at her for a moment.

Yes? she replied.

Who was Vekine? The name meant something. But, fighting to stay in control of her own brain was like trying to bend iron with her hands. She placed the name on a box in the storeroom of her mind. Vekine. Vekine. The woman and the Shamasson were exchanging looks that meant nothing to Vekaya, but they were still worrisome.

Hm. Your voice isn’t working on her like it should, said the woman.

As I said- started the shamasson.

Vekaya, do you know where you are? asked the woman.

I’m- I’m- Vekaya started.

The woman and the shamasson exchanged looks. Vekaya’s very short memory played back everything that it knew: storeroom, shamasson, barrels, sacks, crates, bed, straw, smile, pale, skin, Civius… It snapped into her head like a joint popping back into place. They were in the House of Civius!

But, Vekaya still did not know who that was or what that meant. She remembered, and thought important, the look she had gotten from the children who were mopping. There was something there. She needed to be very careful.

My child, do you know where you are? repeated the woman.

She was unsure of what to do. Something in her brain told her not to say anything. The woman was someone she did feel she should trust, and at that moment, her feeling, deep, deep down, was all that she could use to make decisions. Then, a decision was made for her because she had hesitated too long.

You see? She’s as blank as a clean piece of parchment, said the woman.

Yes, I see, said the shamasson.

Take Vekaya downstairs, said the woman. She’s probably hungry. I think that she could also probably use a nice cup of tea.

Vekaya wasn’t, but she thanked the woman.

The woman smiled so broadly that it looked like her mouth was trying to contain something behind her face. As Vekaya turned around, the woman said, You’re welcome dear. You are to address me as Mrs. Praner. Icthis.

Icthis, Vekaya repeated, not knowing why.

Follow me, the shamasson commanded.

Vekaya was led – she did not make the decision to follow – down more hallways and staircases until she arrived in a kitchen. A man and a woman were there, looking at her. Or rather, they were pointedly not looking at her. The way that they turned their heads and spoke, almost whispering, it seemed like they might throw themselves to Vekaya’s feet and beg for forgiveness for some unremembered crime. She wanted to rage and scream and shout and strike at the people around her. What was going on? What was happening? What was the House of Civius? Why was she here, and why did she feel nervous about every single thing going on around her?

There was one clear thing: Mrs. Praner had some sort of authority and treated Vekaya’s loss of memory like a thing that came as a matter of course. It was completely expected. The only conclusion Vekaya could make, from the storeroom of her own mind, was that this Mrs. Praner, whoever she was, knew more about Vekaya’s past than she did. And that was not right.

Drink this, said the shamasson as she handed Vekaya a cup of tea. It was pink and smelled very faintly like metal.

As Vekaya obeyed, her head swam. She screamed out from the storeroom of her mind. She willed herself to put down the tea. Concentrating with all of her mind, she could just barely feel the muscles of her arm lifting the cup. She tried. She forced herself. Her fingertips faltered. The tea cup tipped ever so slightly, and some of the hot liquid inside came close to its edge. But no, her fingers brought the drink to her lips, taste of water left inside a pipe too long invaded her mouth, and she swallowed it.

The tranquility of the void came down like a curtain. Like the interior of a grave. The more tea her mouth consumed, the heavier the curtain was. It was like being blind and deaf. It was like being nothing. It was, she sensed – for she could not really think clearly – the same as death. She stood, looking at the floor of the kitchen, and did exactly all that she could: nothing.

Chapter II: Real as Memory

Where Vekaya’s story begins with fear and confusion, mine began with the simplest of understandings. Unfortunately for me and those closest to me, that understanding was like many simple understandings of the world: completely but comfortably incorrect. My village was called South Hall, and it sat on Arkana’s eastern border. I doubt whether any of my neighbors could have found our tiny collection of farms and streets on a map, even after they finished what little education the small King’s School provided. Few could read. Few needed to. Those who lived in South Hall rarely traveled any farther than the provincial capital of Hammercleft, two days away on foot. They were farmers, smiths, bakers, herbalists, carpenters, and hunters. There was a time when I probably could have named every single field hand and candle maker in the entire town, told you who their relations were, and how quickly they might tell my father that I was getting into mischief if they had seen me. But, that was a long, long time ago. You have never been to South Hall. You will never go there. What little I remember of it is all that exists.

It was, I suppose, like many other small towns. The problem with gauging the experience of one’s youth against that of others is simply that we can only ever know our own. It all seemed so normal to me. It all seemed so real.

Many days’ travel to the north, Korskovyr's frozen tundra was the setting for tales of the last two long wars there. The Korsks were fierce in battle, and our little town would certainly have been considerably larger if more of our young men had returned. It was as if those who did had been infected with a sickness of the world. Having seen the world, they could not stay in South Hall any longer and left. Or, they succumbed to drink, accidents, horrors of the mind, or some combination of all three. Few actual veterans remained by the time I was your age. Of course, we didn’t know it at the time, but more wars would make widows of wives and orphans of children soon enough.

The steaming jungles of Ossyphia several weeks’ travel to the southwest were still largely unexplored. What had been charted had been done during the constant state of battle with what were thought to be tribes of savages, bent on stopping Arkanians from spreading the word of Civius and his so-called justice. You can form your own opinion as more of these pages pass. Honestly, no one in Arkana really knew anything about those people or their lands at all. Any maps or histories from that period are certainly full of errors or guesswork.

To my knowledge no Arkanian had ever laid eyes on ground that wasn’t in those three places. Lonia was a completely unknown word to us, though we did know of dragons. A lot of people believed that they were myths. Sailors and adventurers who claimed to have seen them we often seen as mad. We knew nothing of the homeland of those great winged beasts, its people, or anything beyond. The substance phoesalia was largely unknown in the countryside, though I now know that scholars at the Misarine Idz in the capital had been studying it for years already. But even if I had known about any of these things, they wouldn't have been real to me. How do you tell a cave frog about the stars? How do you teach a mouse that the book where she has made her nest contains entire lifetimes of knowledge?

For me, the hills, meadows, and forests surrounding South Hall were real. The houses of wood and thatch were real. Our worship at the House of Civius, the god of our civilization, was real to me. My parents' promises and descriptions of Caelum, Civius' reward to his faithful followers after death – they were real to me. Many of my earliest memories involved a constant refrain from my father:

If you are faithful to him, Civius will bring you through any challenge. Do not deny Civius. Any who deny him deserve whatever comes to them. Theirs, eventually, will be the harshest of punishments. You must have faith that everything happens for a reason, and that reason is only known to Civius. You must have faith in this. You must have faith. You must have faith. You must have faith.

My father would go on to extol the virtues of our god, saying that everything in the world exists because of Civius, and it is all ordered the way that he sees fit. Even if there is difficulty, he has put it before you to see you through it. Disorder is an illusion because Civius orders all things. Disorder is a lie and a twisting of reality. Order is real. Planning is real. Everything happens for a reason. Everything happens because it was meant to happen. I was told all of these things, and I believed them because I had no reason not to.

The sights of wind rippling through farmers' crops and cows returning from grazing were real. My father’s constant tirades about Arkana’s poor and the disservice that they did to themselves and their country were a reality. My mother’s sighing and weathering of these unaimed barrages was real. My brother, Caedrus, who at the time was eight, and his candril companion were a constant, unrelenting responsibility. Should they have come to harm or even the possibility of harm, the suggested consequences of this were as much a reality as the brittle herbs that my father dried on nails at the back of our house. I can still smell them now if I think hard enough.

My friends and I played rough games, wrestling each other to the ground or battling with sticks we imagined as swords. We talked about who would be apprenticed to whom, what we would do in our lives, who we might marry – though we were at an age where talk of that could still color our faces. We all had dreams of grandeur beyond South Hall. We spied on the tavern to see whenever any of the very, very few travelers would pass through town. Rumors about people with what we called the Power of Aizo were as real as their narrators could make them sound. There were wild stories of mysterious men and women who could burn things with tongues of flame that leapt from their hands, speak to animals, soar through the sky with the speed of a falcon, or anything else that you can imagine. Again, you know much more than I did when I was your age. You know of this power, its truths, and a great deal more.

What you may know but cannot possibly yet understand is the simple fact that people of every size and shape are afraid. They are terrified of a great many things, but the greatest of these is the unknown. Your mother and father have surely told you about the treatment of people with the Power of Aizo. It’s true. I have seen wielders treated with devoted admiration and the ugliest suspicion and malice that a race can muster. When I was your age, rumors about people with such powers generally involved their having made deals in opposition to Civius; these people were somehow trying to upset the balance of his great scales. They had denied his plan. Simply because of how common the power is now, I feel somewhat certain that there were more people with the Power of Aizo in South Hall, but while its gates were still standing, I never met a single one. If they were there, they kept it hidden. After all, the fear of them was real.

We had a school. I remember it being a white, wooden building near the center of town. Boring lessons at the small Arkanian government building were real – we learned to read, write, add, and subtract. We learned the history of our country’s kings and about the races that inhabited this kingdom and of the Korsks, Volprins, Lanerres, and such. I had seen a few of them in Hammercleft, on trips with my father. My father told me that all races that were not men were not to be trusted.

Evil is what they are, he had told me. Civius has only plans for men. Men, and men alone.

All of these things were real to me because I believed in them.

I know that this must seem so strange to you, so silly. You are surely wondering how a person could trust or mistrust another simply because this one is a Korsk or that one is a Lanerre. But this was the world where I grew up. That world was the one that gave birth to this one. It is my only hope that you will find truth and strength and reason in these pages to help you create a world that is better than the one to which you have been born. Many have fought for it. Many are fighting for it. And, many more will fight for it. As for our story, here, at last, is something you will recognize...

There were those things, and there was the Carrowind. The Carrowind was a vast, mostly flat, vacant steppe that stretched from the Vo River to, for all anyone knew, the sky. The Vo flowed southward from Korskovyr, and during the last war there had been an expedition to see if an open flank could be found, using the Carrowind. No soldiers ever returned from it. For all anyone knew the Vo was the eastern border of not just South Hall, Arkana, or Korskovyr, it might have been the border of everything. It flowed past our town all the way to the great Sea of Chaleef. There were shallower parts that could be crossed easily on foot at most times of the year, but rarely did anyone ever think of breaking its cold clear surface to do so. I had never heard of any explorers that had returned. The closeness made it real, but everything else was like some great unimagined terror.

My friends and I had a spyglass that my father sometimes used to watch his workers from afar. Its polished brass surface was a constant reminder of the fact that I was not supposed to have it at all, let alone outside of my parents’ house. We used it to spy into the Carrowind, and sometimes to light things on fire, as Kabil had shown us. It was probably the only benefit that had ever come from his father being Instructor Dofa.

Once in a great while, shapes would appear in the distance. They were always watched vigilantly by any townsperson who had a spyglass until they disappeared again, but raised all manner of questions and theories. Everyone was too afraid to go look. What were they? How big were they? How far away were they? Were they coming closer or going away? No one I had ever met to that point was intrepid enough to try to find out. Again, that will sound familiar to you, no doubt.

Some talk held that the shapes were strange beasts, all of whom had names and characteristics that were as real to us as if we had seen them, though none of us ever had. Some said that the land curved up ever so slightly and that there was a valley not far into the Carrowind, dipping down suddenly, and making it so that we couldn't see that far. Towns and people thrived on the other side, just beyond our view. There was even talk that Caelum was just on the other side. Regardless of what they believed, everyone in South Hall was afraid to check.

All of South Hall's livestock was kept on the western side of town. There was more to the Carrowind's danger than just rumor. Twice that I can remember, Farmers lost animals and the entire town spent days speculating and inspecting enormous claw marks on the wooden fencing or looking at huge footprints in the dust. There were plenty of tales of travelers and livestock being eaten by monsters from the Carrowind. It would be difficult to say how many of these stories were true, but what could be seen in the flat expanse to the east did less to make people curious than it did make them afraid. You know of the Carrowind. When I was young, this was what we thought. This was what