Page 48 of The Source of Storms

El waved a hand drunkenly. She had one elbow propped on the table and was leaning hard on her hand. Even in this state, she was more poised and elegant than any human I knew. “I’m exhausted. I’ll see you back at the house.”

“And I’m going to make sure she gets home and doesn’t spend the night in the bushes,” Crow said, helping her up.

We made our way out into the night. The spring air was comfortingly cold on my skin after working up a sweat dancing. The warm orange light of the tavern patio and larger square perfectly complimented the ethereal blue glow of huge mushrooms that towered in alleyways and leaned out from tree trunks. Fire and ice.

Our feet thumped on the wood of the bridge over the river, planks worn smooth with the footsteps of thousands of years. We walked to the crest of the arch and leaned on the railing just downstream from the spiraling fountain. Blue and orange light danced on the water’s surface as the spring-swollen current whooshed and rumbled on the labradorite stones that rose from the river around it. I could feel the power of it all, the magic concentrated in that spire of water, those imposing dark stones. It thrummed through me, begging me to answer the call, to impose my will on its potential.

“It’s stunning,” I said.

“It is,” Byrgir said. “Can you feel it?”

“It’s all I can feel this close to it. You can feel it too?”

He nodded. “I’m sure it doesn’t feel the same to me as it does to you. But I can feel it. I know my way around Source too, you know.” He smiled that disarming smile. My heart pounded.

“You mentioned you use it when you fight?” My inflection turned the statement into a question.

“Yes, just in a different way. Nothing as flashy as all those spells the real Sourcerers use.”

“And is that usually drunk or sober? I’m confused about this rule of yours.”

He chuckled, and the low rumbled of it was delightful. “Alright, settle down. I don’t fight drunk that often. At least not anymore.”

“More than one good tavern brawl in your past though, I bet,” I teased.

He smiled and shrugged. “You know, sometimes when you really master a skill, you’re always looking for a chance to show it off.”

“Is that why you always make me dance with you? Just showing off the skill you’ve mastered?”

“Mastered? Wow, you think I’m that good?”

“Alright, now you settle down, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“But that’s how you said it. And no, I make you dance with me because I enjoy dancing with you.”

His blatant compliment caught me off-guard and I fumbled for a witty response, but the truth came out instead. “I enjoy dancing with you too.”

Our arms touched where we leaned on the railing.

“How did you learn to dance?” I asked.

“When I was learning to fight. It’s a great way to improve your footwork, and more fun than just running drills. Did you dance much, growing up?”

“Not a lot. I always enjoyed it, but I didn’t get out to many bonfires or parties. We lived far from town, and my father was always too worried to let us go out much.”

Byrgir nodded, eyes on the fountain in front of us. “It’s getting a lot more dangerous outside the villages than it once was.”

“How long did you live here? Before you moved to Skeioholm?” I asked.

“Until I was nine,” he said, eyes on the spiraling water. “We left when my father died. My mother couldn’t stand to be here without him. But I’ve always had friends here, El and Crow, and others. And when I was old enough, I came back to join the Ironguard, like my parents.”

“Your parents were Ironguard? I thought your father died in a shadowfiend attack?”

“He died defending a village from shadowfiends as a Keeper. He and my mother were both in the Ironguard, but she was a Ranger. When he died, she was devastated, and terrified. She retired from the ’Guard that day. Said she couldn’t risk leaving my brothers and me all alone. So we left, moved to Skeioholm, bought a small steading that my older brothers ran, and she learned silversmithing. My brothers used the profits from the steading to buy her a small workshop. I helped work the steading until I was old enough to join the Ironguard.”

“How does she feel about you being a Keeper now?” I asked.

He shrugged. “She hated it at first. We had a bit of a rough time for a while. I know she was just scared to lose me, and I think I made it worse with my shitty teenage attitude, you know how it is. But she has accepted it now. I took the post in Skeioholm to be closer to her and my brothers, and it was apretty safe place to be. After I moved back there she didn’t mind it so much anymore. I think she sees how well-suited I am for it. And I like that it keeps me connected to my father, in a way.”

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