I was born inside an ever-burning lamp in the apothecary of Scorched-Earth Keep.
The lamp was the shop's heirloom — seven generations lit, they say, and never once out. The seventh-generation shopkeeper was a taciturn old man who fed the lamp its oil each night before closing, and after feeding it always spoke one sentence to the flame. Sometimes: healed three today. Sometimes: the child from the east lane couldn't be saved. He did this all his life.
The wick listened all its life, and listened itself into a soul. That soul is me.
So I was born knowing one thing: fire has a core.
Not the rush-pith wick — the core of intention. Every fire that is ever lit has its reason: a stove-fire's core reads the family must eat; an ever-burning lamp's core reads let the sick not fear the dark; a beacon's core reads tell the distance something has happened; even a naughty child's grass-fire carries a core scribbled with mischief. My eyes do not look at flame-color. They look straight at the core — one glance down a street of lamps, and why each one burns stands plain to me, like reading a street full of hearts.
What use is such an eye? An example: fires out of control. Ordinary firefighters douse the flame-front. I read the core first. A runaway stove-fire whose core still says cooking is easy — smother it and it dies. But when a fire's core has turned to grievance, that is arson: a held breath lives inside that flame, and water alone will never end it. Find the arsonist, release the grievance — then the fire consents to die.
Since the Keep's brigade took me on, they have not misjudged a single blaze.
Now — the Flaming Mountains.
Three years ago, eight hundred li reignited, and the whole Keep shook. The brigade veterans studied the fire's behavior. I studied its core. The first time I climbed the wall and looked out from the battlements —
I have never been so cold in my life.
Eight hundred li of fire joining earth to sky — and one glance told me: no core.
Not too many cores to distinguish. None. Every tongue of flame is hollow. It burns magnificently, and in its core there is not one written word. Can you conceive of it? A fire without a reason. Not for cooking, not for light, not for signal, not for grievance, not even for mischief — for nothing. It simply burns.
A fire without a core is not fire. It is a thing shaped like fire.
Later, going down the lava channels with the diversion corps, closer to those coreless flames, I made out one layer more: they are not coreless. Their cores are hidden. At the deepest point of every tongue there is a black point the size of a needle's tip, and around the point, a shell. A made shell — made precisely against eyes like mine.
Who lights a fire and armors it against anyone learning why it was lit?
Only one kind of fire-setter: the kind whose reason cannot bear the light.
I trained that one glance for three years, and last month — in the instant a wrongful flame guttered lowest and its shell ran thinnest — I saw inside. One instant only. Of the words in that core, I caught exactly two:
"For him."
For him. For whom? Doing what for him? Eight hundred li of reasonless fire, burning three years — and the reason hidden in its core is for him?
I brought the two words to the Holy Infant King. His face changed three times, and at last he said only: keep looking. The moment you see it whole, bring it to me.
Now I travel west with the medicine-basket boy. Along the road I read the human fires for them: the inn's stove-core says travellers need something hot — a good fire. The post-station's lamp-core says let the one waiting for a letter not fall asleep — a good fire. A whole road of good fires warms the heart.
But every night, I train that one glance —
and on the day it can pierce the wrongful fire's shell, I will read out the words of that core, every last one.
After "for him," there are more words.
And something tells me those remaining words burn hotter than the fire itself.