15 December 1029 P.E.
Northeastern Quarter, Darnan
Brand sat cross-legged on the edge of the cistern, eyes closed in the damp dark. The echoing cavern was silent.
Winter in this part of the desert had arrived with its customary severity, seeping into the stones and leaving a thick crust of ice over the water of the Great Cistern. Brand pulled his thin jacket closer around him to ward off the chill, but it crept up through the ice-cold bricks and into his legs.
He’d grown in the last several years. He was still young, but his lanky frame had grown taller and filled out with broad muscles. He guessed he must be about as tall as Alastair now.
The thought of his old guardian made Brand slump a little where he sat. He’d snuck over to visit Alastair’s machine shop one night about a year ago only to find it empty and bare as a tomb. That had been a harsh reminder that his past was meant to be left alone, forgotten. But Brand still missed the old man and thought of him from time to time.
Brand’s legs began to feel fidgety, but he took several calming breaths as William had taught him. Behind him, he heard the sound of his mentor’s boots as the pharmakon approached.
“Are you ready?” William asked behind the youth.
Brand’s eyes snapped open and he unfolded his long body into a standing position. He turned to his mentor.
“Let’s go over it once more,” the pharmakon said. “The Augmentation Trial is designed to make your body less susceptible to the various poisons that make our elixirs work. You cannot use these other elixirs unless you have completed the Trial. The way it works is that we will subject your body to a series of augmented poisonous elixirs. The combination of your spark with these poisons allows your body to quickly adapt permanently to the use of those same poisons.”
Brand had gone over this a dozen times with William, but he still had to hold his hands together to keep them from shaking.
“Nervous?” William asked.
Brand shrugged, but his smile wavered just a bit. “I can’t wait another week?”
“You could, but each week you wait, the less malleable your older body becomes. We want to catch you at just the right time when you’re young enough for your body to adapt but old enough that you’ll be able to survive. It wouldn’t do you any good to go through this and still not be able to use the new elixirs.” William patted the young man on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. Just remember: I’ll give you the augmenting elixir in a moment, then the other elixirs, one after the other. Then you hold on to the spark no matter what happens, right?”
Brand nodded silently, not trusting himself to speak.
“I cannot stress to you enough how important it is that you hang onto that spark at all costs. The augmenting elixir is going to make the others ten times more potent than they usually are, and if you aren’t holding onto that spark within you, the toxicity will kill you. Do you understand?”
Brand nodded again. His face was white.
“Do you need a moment?”
Brand shook his head stiffly.
William took the youth by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “I know this is nerve-wracking. I went through it myself when I was your age. But so long as you do exactly as I say, no harm will come to you.”
He patted Brand on the shoulders.
“Alright.” William gestured to a ring of lit candles on the brick floor. “Sit in the middle of these.”
Brand did as commanded, crossing his legs under him in the middle of the candles.
William handed Brand a large vial full of the familiar green augmenting elixir.
“This will allow you to use elixirs like me so that we may continue your training. Do you still want to go through with it?”
Again, Brand nodded stiffly.
Brand unstoppered the vial. Before he could change his mind, he swallowed the light green liquid in one gulp. He took a slow, steadying breath of dank, musty air. He reached down inside himself as William had made him practice so many times. He found the spark of light at his core and grabbed hold of it, focusing on it. The familiar warmth washed over him, chasing away the chill of the cistern. He breathed deep, savoring the coolness of the air, the cold vial under his fingers. He let the light fill him. He opened his eyes and saw the now familiar patterns of light emanating from his skin.
After a moment, William pressed a vial into Brand’s hand. He drank.
The elixir felt like a thousand razor blades scraping down his throat, then down into his belly. It spread, slashing at his insides. Brand doubled over, shaking and sweating.
What have I gotten myself into? William had warned him of the pain, but this was far beyond what he’d imagined sitting in the James’s kitchen. The pain slicing through his gut felt like fire. He groaned.
He hung onto the spark, and slowly, the pain eased to the point where Brand could draw a few ragged breaths.
William pressed the next vial into the young man’s hand.
“Quickly, before the first wanes too much! They must all be taken together.”
Trembling, Brand swallowed the contents of the new vial.
Instantly every bone in Brand’s body felt as though it were being torn apart. The pain made him lose focus on the spark, and the agony exploded tenfold. He gasped and collapsed face-first to the brick floor of the cistern. Brand cried out in panic, floundering, trying desperately to grab hold of the spark again.
“Focus!” he heard William yell at him. “Get it back!”
There!
He held the spark in his mind as tightly as he could, focused on nothing else, and the pain wracking his bones receded to a level that he could just barely manage. Tears ran down his cheeks.
“I can’t,” he moaned softly.
William’s voice was by his ear as the older pharmakon placed a reassuring hand on the youth’s back.
“Yes, you can. Keep going. Don’t give up!”
The next elixir made nausea course through Brand’s whole body, and he fought to not vomit. He squeezed his eyes tight against the sickness, more tears leaking down his face from the effort. It brought him to his hands and knees again. Drool dripped from the corner of his lax mouth as he panted.
“Can you continue?” Brand heard William’s voice faintly.
The nausea abated for a moment, letting Brand take a deep steadying breath. He forced his tortured body to relax, trying to get his rigid muscles to soften. Every inch of him, inside and out, burned and ached with sickness, but Brand wordlessly held out a trembling hand for the next vial.
The fourth vial made his head split. His sight left him, leaving him gasping in the dark. Pain radiated down his spine and out to his limbs like lightning striking a tree. He screamed and arched his back, then fell to the brick floor onto his side.
But then the darkness cleared and he could see William crouched beside him, his earnest face heavily creased.
“One more,” William whispered. After two ragged breaths, Brand held out his hand.
William pressed the final vial into Brand’s hand. He gripped it so tightly that he thought the glass might burst. He couldn’t bring himself to drink it. He lay there, on his side, curled into a ball hugging his knees, pain coursing through his gut, his bones, his back, his head. Sweat-drenched forehead pressed to the cold brick floor, Brand wondered how much more punishment his body would take before it gave up.
One more, he thought desperately. Just one more.
The final vial stole the breath from Brand’s chest. He panicked, trying to suck in air; but his lungs refused to work. His head ached and his thoughts became foggy. His muscles burned. Darkness flickered around the edges of his vision.
“The spark, boy! Focus on the spark!” Brand heard William’s urgent cries through the fog. And then his voice too faded.
Brand couldn’t hear anything beyond the blood in his ears, couldn’t see anything in the looming darkness, couldn’t even feel the floor beneath his body. His mind turned back to the spark and let it fill his mind with its warmth and light. The only two things he knew were pain and the spark, both brilliant and exquisite. He was poised between them, perfectly balanced, the poisons unable to kill him, and the spark unable to heal him.
But the strain of holding the spark up against the tide of death was too much for the young man’s tortured soul. He finally surrendered to the poisons, welcoming darkness.
* * *
Moira opened the front door to let William in, the limp form of Brand in his arms. William’s skin glowed slightly in the dim light from the kitchen. His face was grim and taut. Without a word, he carried the large youth into his room and laid Brand’s battered body out on the bed.
He closed the door behind him and returned to his wife, then gathered her up in his arms and buried his face in her hair. As she held him close, she heard his soft sobs.
“Did he survive?” she asked.
William wiped his face and looked Moira in the eyes. His shoulders and face relaxed. He nodded.
“Yes. He’s a tough kid. I thought he might not make it through the last one—I thought he might have passed out and lost the spark because he stopped glowing. But then he started breathing again.” William shook his head.
“It brought back a lot of memories,” William whispered. “Things I’d tried to forget. Perhaps it’s better that we are the last pharmakons. It’s not right that children be tortured like that.”
Moira’s lips brushed his. “He’s not a child anymore, William, and he chose it himself. He wants to help, just like you.” She chuckled softly. “He may not be your son, but he is a lot like you. He has a good heart. This world needs more men like you, not fewer.”
They stood there in each other’s arms for a long time. The darkness and silence of the night wrapped them in its embrace and yet gave them the space to breathe and relax in a way that the bustle of daytime couldn’t afford. Eventually, Moira pulled her husband to bed.
In the other room, Brand’s spark flared, burning away the last of the poisons, then quieted. His breathing grew deep and peaceful.
