The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,62
the tray. “Can you light the candle?” Kitarak asked.
“I left my flint and steel in Urik,” Jedra said apologetically.
“Hint and steel?” Kitarak said, sounding offended at the very idea. “Oh, no. Here. Look at the wick. Imagine it made of tiny particles, all of them wiggling about but never escaping. Now imagine them wiggling faster. Make them move faster and faster until they grow hot from the effort.”
Jedra concentrated on the candle for a moment, trying to see it as Kitarak had described. It was difficult, since he had never considered before what something as simple as a candle wick was made of, but eventually he managed to think of it as a long thread of fine sand held together by some kind of flexible glue. He imagined the sand flowing back and forth along the wick, surging from one end of it to the other…
…and the wick burst into flame with a soft pop, all along the length of the candle. The wax slumped into a puddle, and the wick snuffed out again in the liquid wax.
“Very good!” Kitarak said. “But next time, focus on just the part sticking out the top.” He held his upper hands around the cup and the wick lifted up again, then the wax flowed up to coat it and solidify in layers until there was none left in the bowl. “Try it again,” Kitarak said.
This time Jedra got it right. When the candle was burning normally, Kitarak said, “All right, now we amplify the candle’s heat and melt the glass.”
“Why don’t we just wiggle the glass particles until they get hot enough?” Jedra asked.
“Try it,” Kitarak said.
Jedra did. He imagined one of the glass shards as another bunch of tiny sand particles, imagined them moving faster and faster and faster…
The glass began to glow a dull red color, but no matter how hard Jedra tried to move the particles faster, that was as hot as he could make it. He was getting plenty hot, though; sweat ran down his forehead and dripped off the end of his nose.
Jedra took a deep breath and relaxed. “Why couldn’t I melt it?” he asked.
“Because that way isn’t very efficient,” Kitarak replied. He set the candle closer to the tray. “Amplifying, on the other hand”—he waved both hands on his right side for emphasis—“takes what is already there and simply makes more of the same. Much more efficient. Now concentrate on the candle and imagine its heat flowing into the glass. Then once you get that, imagine more and more heat coming from it until the glass melts.”
Jedra nodded, and they both began to concentrate. The candle flame flickered, grew brighter, then dimmer. It didn’t grow smaller, but the bright blue and yellow center became dull red, and after a few minutes the glass shards in the tray began to glow yellow. Jedra noticed that even with its reddish flame, the candle diminished at an alarming rate.
Another few minutes and the glass shards slumped into a puddle on the bottom of the tray. “Good,” Kitarak said. “Now we simply form it into the right shape and let it cool.” The molten glass bulged upward, inflating into a hemisphere, then crinkling into nooks and fissures to resemble the surface of a rock.
Jedra heard a thump from beyond the central room. It turned out to be Kayan closing the door; he heard her walk across the room to look in at him and Kitarak at the workbench. “Learning more tricks, I see,” she said.
“Yes,” said Kitarak. “Come, you may try it, too.”
“No thanks,” she said. “I’ve had enough disappointment for one day.”
She turned to leave, but Kitarak spoke sharply. “No. You came here to learn, so you will learn. Come try this.” The shell of glass hovered above the tray, then drifted toward Jedra. “Here,” Kitarak said to him. “Take this—not with your hands!—and go put it in place.”
Jedra levitated the fragile skylight carefully, conscious of Kayan’s smoldering anger at his ability to do so, but unwilling to disobey Kitarak. He backed out of the workshop with the glass and took it outside, where he carefully climbed atop the house and cleared the hole until the new skylight fit snugly in place. The whole time he was working on the repair, he could feel Kayan’s presence below him, her mind seething with resentment.
If anger could melt glass, he thought, she would have no trouble with this lesson.