For Remembrance
an excerpt

Trembling, and now beginning to get dizzy, Addy looked around. “Fire is chaos, and heat, and light,” she said, thinking aloud. “It’s dangerous – this whole maze is. I don’t know how to get out.” She felt her eyes burn with unshed tears. “God damn it to hell!”

Fire. Fire was chaos and heat and light and danger – and tool, and protection.
I use you! she thought as “loudly” as she could, wondering if it would have any effect on the walls. I take you and I create you from nothing, from cold and lightless wood! I use you as light and heat and protection, to ward me against the cold and the darkness! I control you with your opposite and enemy!

The walls dropped away in front of her, and she stepped into a room brilliant as midsummer noons.

A creature – a genderless, brilliant creature the color of fresh blood and lit incandescently from within, standing in such a storm of ruby sparks as to make Addy’s eyes stream tears, which mingled with the sweat that poured down her face and dripped from her eyelashes – stood at the far end of the room, behind a brazier that glowed crimson with heat. Addy walked down the length of the room very, very slowly, at last stopping to kneel before the feet of the creature. The High Essential.

It was vaguely human in form, but with the golden shadow of a dragon behind it, and she sensed instinctively that this was not its natural shape, but rather one it took to speak with her. It was only a few inches taller than she, and scarcely wider, but had such a presence that she dropped to her knees as she reached it by the purest instinct.

~Rise~, it said. ~Rise, daughter of man, Adara who is called Addy, creature of many names and many doubts. Rise and look on me, if you would ask my aid.~

Fire is for courage, Addy thought, and rose and looked the creature directly in the face. Its eyes were blue as gas-jets, and they seemed to pierce through her head. “I seek your assistance, High One, in a matter which concerns your children most intimately.”

~How so?~

“Because,” she told it, “there is one among the humans who seeks to use magic to aggrandize herself, or gain her own ends – I don’t know what her purpose is, High One, but she’s doing it in a way that threatens to expose the entire magical world.”

~Say on,~ the High One told her.

She swallowed. Her mouth and throat were dry as deserts, and she seemed to have stopped sweating. She didn’t feel cooler, though – quite the reverse. The heat in the room was crippling, blinding, simultaneously numbing and agonizing. “She has used magic where others may see it, others who have no idea of it. If she is allowed to continue, she must surely expose the entire realm of the seven secrets” – was that the right wording? – “which will lead to human magicians being enslaved, in a sense, by the ones we have chosen to lead us, and by the ones who tell us the news – it’s complicated; I don’t know if I can explain—”

~I know of the dangers of exposure.~ Its eyes brightened on her, and she quailed at their brilliance.

“High One, I beg you – I humble myself before your power—”

~As you should.~

“I…” Addy’s words trailed off. She really wasn’t used to being told that she was right to abase herself, although admittedly she didn’t do so often. “I do, then. I do not pretend I have a right to whatever assistance you may choose to give. I only ask, as a favor, as a gift to the descendants of the magicians of today, that you will assist me.”

~Who is this woman to you?~ it asked, eyes blazing into her. Addy felt her knees tremble, then buckle, and she fell to the ground again.

“She is… she isn’t anyone, to me. An enemy, maybe, because of what she seeks to do.”

~Is that all?~

She sucked in air through her teeth. It was like swallowing fire, and she wondered how the circus-people did it. “She, yes. The – what she did – she stole a man. That’s what the other problem is, High One. I love this man, and I want him back. I want to get him back from her and allow him to make his own life, instead of living enslaved.” Fire was freedom. “Please.”

Tears slid thinly down her cheek – one tear only, she rather thought. It felt cold, and then it felt like nothing, and she guessed it had evaporated.

The fire essential bowed its head in thought. ~I will consider aiding you, daughter of man. But you must have courage.~

“I do,” Addy said. “I will. I’ll do whatever you need me to if you can help me stop her.”

It indicated the fire at its feet. ~Here. You must place your hand into this fire and pull out the dagger within.~

Addy looked warily at the fire. “Will it burn?”

~Yes.~

“I mean, will it… will it burn me badly? Will it hurt?”

~Yes. Is it worth it?~

“Yes.” Gritting her teeth, Addy reached into the fire. The pain tore at her hand, ripping through her consciousness, and she only managed to brush her fingers against the hilt of the dagger before black veils began dropping across her vision. Fighting it, she grabbed the dagger by the blade, and then passed out for real.