That was heresy, and we both knew it. If I repeated her words to Conor, Cara might be the one who burned. Though my mother said there hadn't been a burning in our village for a long time, not since before Conor had come here. Either way, I knew well enough I wouldn't repeat anything. Yet still I said, defiant, "I'm not afraid of fire." "I am," Cara said. "So promise. By Vkandis' light."

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All my life, fire has danced through my dreams.

Orange and red, yellow and white--I hold flames in my hands. They caress my skin and melt on my tongue, sweet as sugar on festival days.

But only in dreams. I am a farmer's son. I am no fool.

I know well enough what fire is like.

When I was small, I told my parents about my dreams. I thought they'd be pleased. We worshipped the Sun, after all, saying prayers morning and night to the round stone pendant above our hearth. (The merchant's daughter, Cara, said her family had a gold pendant, but I didn't believe her; no one had that much gold.)

Yet as I spoke my father's face grew hard as the frozen winter fields. "Don't talk of such things, Tamar. Try to dream happier dreams."

It was a happy dream, I thought, but before I could say so, my mother looked at me, and the fear in her eyes turned the memory of bright flames to cold ash.

"Yes," I told them both. "Yes, I will try."

We cannot hold fire. We cannot taste it. But we can use it.

Fire cooks our food, heats our rooms, lights our homes. After a cold winter night, fire welcomes us to morning.

With fire the day--and the day's work--begins.

When I was older, I called fire into the waking world.

One gray winter dawn the year I turned nine, I crouched in the loft where I slept, longing for the warmth I'd held in my dreams. My palms grew hot, and a tiny orange flame sprang to life in my cupped hands.

From below my father called me down to milk the goats. The flame disappeared in a wisp of smoke, leaving behind only a small red welt.

This time I told neither of my parents what I'd seen. I told myself they were afraid I'd burn myself. They didn't understand that I was older now, and knew how to be careful.

I didn't call the flame back again that day. I longed to, though, even when the small welt blistered, even when the blister broke and wept.

The day begins with fire. And fire begins with Vkandis, our God.

Every year the Sun's bright rays light the wood our village priest, Conor, piles on the sacred altar. Every year we carry some of that holy fire home to light our own hearths.

As the flames burn in our hearths, they reach upwards, yearning, always yearning, to return to the Sunlord once more.

Three days after I first called fire, Cara walked up to me in our village church. "Don't be stupid," she said.

I made sure no one was looking, then stuck my tongue out at her. It was a worship day, and we were supposed to be on our best behavior, but I knew well enough it was girls who were stupid.

"I mean it," Cara said. She was nine, too, but she rarely spoke to me. My mother said that was because she was rich and we weren't.

I didn't care what the reason was. I stuck out my tongue again, then ran off to sit with my parents near the back of the church. Soon Conor entered the sanctuary in his brown homespun robes and the service began.

Conor's sermon that day was about witchpowers, and I fought not to yawn, because of course I'd heard it all before: how in faithless realms to the north demon-kin welcomed unholy witchpowers into their lives and rode ice-white demons sent from the coldest depths of Hell. Not here, though--here people with witchpowers were cleansed by holy fires that destroyed the powers, yet left the soul intact. As for demons, only trained priests called on them, and only as needed to protect our people.

As Conor went on and on, my gaze strayed from the altar fire to my own hands. I remembered the fire that had burned in them, and I wondered if I could call it back again.

I looked back to the altar. From her seat at the front of the sanctuary--because her family could afford to tithe more than mine--Cara glanced at me. I saw fear in her gaze--the same fear I'd seen in my mother's eyes when I told my dreams. Cara turned swiftly away, but not before I wondered whether I really was stupid.

For until that moment I hadn't realized that something as pure as flame--and hadn't Conor just talked of cleansing fire?--might be a witchpower, too.

For a fortnight I wondered whether I should tell Conor. The priest said we must always report witchpowers, in others and in ourselves, for the sake of our immortal souls.

One spring evening I stood alone in the fields my family farmed. Winter's ice had melted at last--soon it would be time to plant turnips and carrots and beans--but I barely noticed the mud coating my shoes. I watched as the setting sun turned the clouds to molten fire.

I cupped my hands together and imagined a tiny orange flame. My palms grew warm; the flame appeared, looking like a bright sliver of evening cloud. It danced over my palms, taking away the evening chill.

I blew softly, and the flame went out. Could such warmth truly come from an unholy power?

Conor would know. I should ask him.

"Don't be stupid," someone said, as if reading the thought.

I whirled to see Cara trudging through the fields. I'd been so focused on my flame--on my thoughts--that I hadn't heard her coming. Her shoes and the hem of her embroidered dress were stained with mud, and sweat made her dark brown hair escape its braid to curl around her face. I'd never seen Cara dirty before.

"I'm not stupid," I said, even as my heart began to pound. Had Cara seen that flame? Would she tell Conor?

"You need to be more careful," Cara said. "It won't save you in the end, but it'll at least buy you a little more time."

I scowled, even as I realized she had no intention of telling. What if Conor was right, and I was putting my soul in danger by keeping this power secret?

Cara kicked a stone, splattering mud on us both. "Don't you dare tell. Promise you'll be careful, Tamar."

"You're asking me--" I spoke slowly, even as I wondered why Cara had come here at all-- "to keep a secret from one of Vkandis' priests."

Cara nodded soberly. "Even a priest can be wrong."

That was heresy, and we both knew it. If I repeated her words to Conor, Cara might be the one who burned. Though my mother said there hadn't been a burning in our village for a long time, not since before Conor had come here.

Either way, I knew well enough I wouldn't repeat anything. Yet still I said, defiant, "I'm not afraid of fire."

"I am," Cara said. "So promise. By Vkandis' light."

You couldn't break an oath made by the God, or else you wouldn't only burn in this world--you'd freeze in the next. "You have to promise you won't tell either," I said. What was the use in my keeping secrets, if Cara only turned me over to Conor herself?

"I never tell," Cara said. "How do you think I've lived this long?"

I had no idea what she was talking about. "Promise anyway," I said.

Cara bowed her head, like in church. "I promise I won't tell about your power or mine, not so long as I live."

"What do you mean, your power?"

Cara laughed, a bitter sound. "Didn't I just promise not to tell?"

I hadn't meant not to tell me. I let that go. "And I promise I'll be careful, all right?"

Cara nodded sharply. "By Vkandis' light," she said.

"By Vkandis' light," I agreed. Then, because Cara had just sworn an unbreakable oath, I carefully scanned the fields--no one else was anywhere in sight--cupped my hands in front of me, and called the small flame back again.

Cara looked into the light, and her expression turned incredibly sad. "Of course they're not witchpowers," she whispered. "Of course we're not cursed. But they won't know that, not for hundreds of years."

By the fire's light we tell stories. We pray. We dance. On a cool night, the flicker of flames is like laughter, welcome and warm.

Yet if we don't add wood, if we forget to bank the coals, even the strongest fire burns out by morning.

We were careful, Cara and I. I didn't call that small flame to my hands again, not even alone in the gray light of dawn, and Cara never, not once, spoke of what she saw. We hardly spoke to each other at all, either, just like before.

Once a year, Conor gathered all the village children together. He looked at each of us in turn, searching for witchpowers. Yet his gaze was always kind, and it never lingered for long before he declared he saw nothing in any of us save for Vkandis' own light. For three more years after Cara and I swore our oaths, no one was taken for the fires.

The fourth year was different. That year a red-robed priest visited our village. Conor called us together as always, but then the red robe himself began looking us over, one by one.

I told myself everything would be all right--only then I glanced at Cara. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and her face was icy pale. All at once I realized what Cara's power was; realized, too, just how much trouble we both were in.

The red robe's eyes held no kindness, just a long searching gaze I was sure could see down into our very souls. When he touched Cara on the shoulder, she didn't even look surprised. She just shut her eyes a moment, then followed Conor to the waiting carriage as the red robe continued examining us. He tapped my shoulder next, just as Cara must have known he would.

I felt a spark of anger. I could fight the priest. I could kick, scream, maybe even call flame--but Cara's words echoed through my head. Promise you'll be careful. I'd sworn a sacred oath, and attacking a red-robed priest wouldn't be careful at all. It would be, as Cara said, stupid. Stupid enough that the priest just might burn me right there.

I forced my anger down, dousing it as surely as I'd once doused the flame I'd called into my hands. It's not a witchpower, I thought defiantly, but I spoke not a word as Conor led me away. I caught a glimpse of my parents, both of them fighting not to cry. I heard Conor whisper, so low none but me could hear, "I'm sorry, Tamar." Then I entered the carriage. Conor shut the door behind me, leaving me alone in the dark.

No, not alone. I heard Cara sobbing softly. As my eyes adjusted she looked up at me, her eyes bright with tears. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm trying to be brave. Only--"

"Only you knew what was going to happen." Her power was invisible, yet no less forbidden than mine. She could see the future.

Cara nodded, not denying it, but not speaking the nature of her power aloud, even now. "It's not so bad. We still have some time, I know." Yet the bleak look she gave me made the carriage seem suddenly cold.

I had nothing to say to that, so instead I drew her close, not caring that she was a girl. She let me, not caring that she was a merchant's daughter and I was a farmer's son.

"I wish we could have lived in some other time," Cara said. "There will be miracles in other times. But not for us."

Later I learned they often drug the children they take away, but Cara and I were so quiet, the priest saw no need. We didn't say anything more as the carriage began to move, taking us away from our homes and all we knew. We just held each other in the dark, cut off as we were from the Sun's bright rays.

The surest sign of last year's fire is this year's bright green field. If flames scour the land one season, new growth sprouts the next.

There are seeds that cannot grow without fire.

Twice during our journey the carriage stopped and another child joined us.

The first was a girl, drugged and bound, who thrashed and moaned as if from bad dreams. Yet once, for just a moment, she opened her eyes and looked up at us. My own eyes were used to the dark by then. I saw how still Cara grew as she returned the girl's gaze.

"It's not your fault," Cara told her. "Truly it isn't."

I didn't know what Cara meant, but the girl did. She sighed, closed her eyes, and slid into quieter sleep. The priest didn't drug her again.

The second child was a boy, bound only, trembling from head to toe. "It's all right," Cara told him. "They won't hurt you. You'll be a priest one day. Only try not to speak up in geography class. Nothing good will come of it if you do."

The boy nodded, and his trembling eased. Beside me, Cara sat up a little straighter, all sign of tears gone. As the carriage began to move once more, she whispered, "I know now, Tamar."

"Know what?"

Cara's smile was sad, but real. "What I need to do."

It was some time before I knew what Cara meant.

In the meantime we arrived in Sunhame--that great city, said to be designed by Vkandis himself, which I never dreamed I'd see--and were taken to the Children's Cloister. There I realized one more thing Cara must have already known: that no one meant to burn us, not yet. They meant to train us--to be priests if our studies went well, or else to be servants to priests if those studies went poorly.

We still have some time. I remembered Cara's words, yet still I felt a small spark of hope. Maybe we had more time than Cara thought.

To my surprise, I enjoyed my studies, even though I'd never been much of a student at the village school. I enjoyed improving my reading and writing. I enjoyed studying Vkandis' writ. I enjoyed learning my own history and reading glorious accounts of times my people had turned invaders away, or else invaded and claimed some land of their own.

I learned, too, all the things that priests did. Red-robed priests might take children from their families and black-robed priests might light fires in which children burned, but priests of all colors also defended our borders, looked after the sick, and tended to families who lacked food or clothing. They brought Vkandis' wisdom to the smallest villages, just as Conor had. And sometimes they spoke with the Sunlord directly, in order to gain wisdom and carry out His will.

Alone in my small room after evening prayers, I listened for Vkandis' voice, too, but I never heard it. If I felt any anger at that, I forced it down, just as I'd forced my anger down when the red robe took me away. Instead I prayed harder, and I kept listening.

I longed, during those lonely evenings, to call flame to my hands, but I forced that longing away as well. Only in dreams did I set my power free, where none but Vkandis could see.

No matter that the God never spoke to me; he also never betrayed me to the priests with whom he did speak. I took some hope from that, too.

Maybe, if I studied hard enough and prayed well enough, the Sunlord would decide to spare Cara and me after all.

We can put a fire out, by smothering it or by mixing it with water.

Yet it only takes one missed coal to keep a fire alive. Fire will wait, invisible and silent, for tinder or anything else that can catch.

I didn't see much of Cara at the Cloister. Girls were taught apart from boys, and there were fewer of them, just as there were fewer female priests. We shared the same dining room, though, and passed each other in the halls between classes.

Once in those halls I saw Cara lean close to a girl who walked beside her and whisper a few words. I thought nothing of it.

Then another time, I saw nudge a girl's foot beneath the dining room table, just as that girl was about to speak.

A third time I heard a soft knock on the door across the hall from mine, late at night. When I opened my own door I saw Cara speaking to the boy who peered out of his room, though girls and boys were forbidden in one another's quarters.

I don't know what Cara told them. I don't know who else she spoke to. I only know that for all of my first year at the Cloister, there were no burnings. The priests remarked on how unusual that was. They thanked Vkandis for blessing us so.

Yet I knew we weren't only blessed by the Sunlord. We were also blessed by Cara, who had figured out indeed what she needed to do.

As the first year gave way to a second, though, I grew uneasy. Be careful, I thought, whenever I passed Cara in the halls.

But she hadn't sworn an oath to be careful. Only I had done that.

Fire starts small. A spark, the scrape of flint on steel, a candle's flame. Any of these can burn the world.

Any can be extinguished by a gust of wind or a human breath.

Halfway through our second year, the youngest children began whispering about a bright spirit who looked after them. When I heard that, I broke the rules myself to sneak up to Cara's room.

She opened the door before I knocked and drew me inside. "I know what I'm doing," she said. "I never tell them how I know what I know. I've broken no oaths."

I opened my mouth and closed it again. She'd already answered all I meant to say.

Cara brushed a strand of dark hair from her face. Her unbound hair fell past the shoulders of her gray nightgown, making her look like a spirit indeed. She was beautiful, I realized, and wondered why I'd never noticed before. I reached for her, then drew away. Visiting one another's rooms wasn't the only thing forbidden to male and female students.

Cara drew me close instead and brushed her lips gently against my hair. "I've always had so little time, Tamar. So I do what I can, while I can, in Vkandis' name."

Her words sent ice down to my bones. I drew back a little. "The priests don't know it's in Vkandis' name. If they knew they'd say demons guided you, not the Sunlord."

"The priests are fools," Cara said. "Or maybe they're just afraid. Do you know I pray every night, just like we're supposed to? I pray to the God my courage won't fail me in the end."

I didn't want her to say that. I wanted her to say that of course Vkandis wouldn't let us burn, that he would spare us both in the end. "If Vkandis gave us these powers, if we can use them to do his will--why would he let us burn for them?"

"I don't know. But I think I'll get to ask him very soon." The quiet acceptance in her voice made me shiver.

I wasn't ready to accept anything. "You could run away," I said. I knew better, though. Guards watched the Cloister by day, demons by night. "If you can see things, don't just use that to protect everyone else. Protect yourself! I'll help you, any way I can, I swear it by--"

Cara shook her head. "No more oaths. Not now." I started to protest, but she sighed softly and took my hands. "You don't understand. When I see things--I never see myself."

"Then you don't know what's going to happen," I said stubbornly.

Cara shut her eyes, as if my words pained her. "It's not myself I see at the end, Tamar. It's you. Only you." She opened her eyes again. "The matron will be by soon. You should go to bed."

I rested my face against her shoulder, just for a moment. The heat that rose in me had nothing to do with my power.

Yet I was good, by then, at dousing heat. I drew away once more, even as I thought about how, if not for the priests, things would have been different between us.

Then again, if not for the priests, perhaps Cara and I never would have spoken at all.

"I'll be as careful as I can, for as long as I can," Cara said. "I can promise you that." But though I begged her, she would not make it an oath.

Protect her, I prayed to Vkandis as I returned to my room. Yet I was a student still. My God did not answer me.

Fire burns, but there's no need to say that.

Everybody knows that.

Two weeks later, Cara was betrayed by one of the students she tried to help--a girl in love with one of the novices, whom Cara had warned not to speak her feelings aloud. The girl was so angry Cara knew those feelings at all that she ran right to the priests, though Cara warned against that, too.

When the black-robed priests came for her in the dining hall, I wanted to fight them. Only the oath I'd made in Vkandis' name long ago stopped me.

I wanted Cara to fight them, but of course she didn't; she just let the priests lead her away.

For three days she was locked away so that she could pray and prepare her soul for the fires. During those days, the priests said, she'd be allowed neither food nor water, in order to focus her prayers.

For three days I prayed, too--prayed to Vkandis for Cara's life. The God was silent as always, but I told himself that didn't mean he couldn't hear. I prayed that He would hear. Vkandis was a God who answered prayers, after all. I'd learned that in every one of my classes, and from Conor back in my village, too.

Yet after three days I was led with the other students into a barren gray courtyard. A single stone pillar rose out of the ground at its center, and dry wood was piled high around it. Looking at that wood, I felt suddenly ill.

A red-robed priest led us in prayer. My lips moved to the ritual words, but I scarcely heard them. I heard only my own silent pleas. God of Light, please, spare her. She's done so much in your name.

Too soon, a hush fell over the courtyard, and a black-robed priest led Cara out. Dressed in undyed white, she looked like a spirit indeed, though I knew white was meant to be the color of hell's worst demons. Her feet were bare, her hair bound above her head, her hands tied behind her back. Her lips moved in silent prayer.

Vkandis was a God of miracles. I'd learned that in my classes, too. Sunlord, please.

Cara uttered no sound as the priests tied her to the pillar, not even when another black robe crossed the courtyard, holding a burning torch. He brought the torch around her.

Vkandis, no!

The wood didn't catch. I caught my breath. Yes, Sunlord. Thank you, Sunlord.

The priest's hands moved, a subtle gesture. Wood roared into flame. The flames licked at Cara's feet, and she screamed.

She kept screaming as she spasmed against her bonds. Her robe caught fire; gray smoke billowed around her. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

Heat rose in me, the heat I'd spent years learning to hide. Anger rode close behind. I could send that heat into the black robe's torch, commanding the flames to consume him. What use was being careful now?

But killing the priest wouldn't save Cara. Nothing would save her, not even Vkandis' own power.

So I sent my power into the pyre instead, turning orange flames to a brilliant white fire.

That fire consumed Cara in an instant, putting an end to pain and leaving behind nothing but ashes and silence.

I am no God. It was all I could do for her.

I stopped praying to Vkandis. I spoke the required phrases at public services, but those were words, nothing more. My heart was cold as a dead hearth a midwinter, before it is relit from the sacred fires. I had nothing in me left with which to pray.

Cara's cries haunted my dreams, the same dreams where flames had once danced. No God worth worshipping would allow this. Whatever the Sunlord cared for, it wasn't us.

When a black-robed priest came for me a week later, I was only surprised it took him so long. Surely the priests had ways of knowing that it was me who made Cara's pyre burn so bright. Couldn't they see into our very souls?

Yet the priest didn't lead me to a locked cell to prepare for the fires. He led me to his own rooms and made me take a seat there. His name was Andaran, I remembered--he was the priest who'd lit Cara's pyre.

"Your performance at the burning was--impressive," Andaran said. "There were no hand motions to give you away."

I suddenly remembered that Andaran's hand had moved, right before the wood had burst into flame. He'd made that wood catch, I realized with a sick feeling.

His next words made me feel sicker still. "You are ready for the next stage of your training as a priest. At the next burning you will stand beside me as my assistant. After that, I will teach you all the subtleties of calling Vkandis' fire."

It wasn't Vkandis' fire. It was ours. Only ours. Or maybe it was a witchpower after all, if it was granted to priests who used it to kill.

Maybe Cara and I had both been wrong all along.

We think we can control fire. We see it chained in our hearths, and we think we've bound it to our will.

But when a brushfire roars through the fields, we flee. Or else we dig firebreaks, but fire can jump any obstacle. A burst of wind, a flash of lightning, a season without rain--any one of these can wrest a fire out from our control.

No one ever knows for certain what fire will do.

The next burning was only a week later, and the accused was the same girl who'd reported Cara to the priests. She'd been tainted by Cara's unholy words, they told us.

This girl didn't go quietly. She kicked, she screamed, she cursed us all as they tied her to the stone. Yet she hadn't been drugged. She wouldn't be cleansed unless she felt the flames, the priests said.

I stood by Andaran's side, wishing I could run. Yet even if I got past the priests and the guards, where would I go? To the north, where demons rode beneath the open sky and creatures worse than human priests called horrors out of the night? There was nowhere to run and no one to pray to. I waited for Andaran to light the fire.

Instead he turned and handed me the torch. I was so startled I took it.

Andaran's lips curled into a thin smile, and I knew this was a test. "Light the pyre," he said.

Sweat trickled down my face as I stared into the torch's flames. Careful, a voice--Cara's voice--whispered. Be careful, Tamar.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I told myself it was only the memory of her voice, but my hands trembled as they held the wood. There might be time, yet, to keep my oath--not to Vkandis, who had never listened to me, but to Cara, for whom the oath was made.

Be careful. But careful of what--my own life? Or of what I did with it? If Vkandis would not act, that left only me and my own human choices.

For a heartbeat I hesitated, because I was human and I was scared, because I remembered Cara's screams. But then I stepped back from the pyre, drew the torch to my chest, and called upon its fire.

White-hot flames exploded around me--only me. No one could force me to make others burn. My clothes and skin and hair all caught, yet hot as the fire was, there was time enough for pain.

Through that pain, I saw a vision: a man made of white fire and crowned in white flame. He reached for me, and I knew that when I took his hand, the pain would end.

I didn't take it. Instead I cried out to Vkandis, Lord of Sun, of Light, of Fire: "What took you so long?"

And my God spoke to me at last. "Have you not read your writ, Tamar? I cannot interfere with the free will of my people, not until the fate of the very world is at stake."

Why should it take a whole world to move Him? Cara had died. Wasn't that enough? "Aren't our lives enough?" I knew that if Vkandis withdrew his hand, I would burn forever, but still I cried out, "What kind of God are you?"

"Indeed," Vkandis said, and his smile was terribly sad. "So what are you going to do about it? What choice will you make now?"

It is hard to see clearly by a fire's light. Shapes distort and blur; shadows reach out of the night. The sun lights the world much more clearly.

But it is not always day. And fire is the only means we have to see in the dark.

One day, Cara says, the entire world really will be at stake, and then Sunlord will act. But that won't be for hundreds of years.

I did not take Vkandis' hand. Yet still he took the pain away anyway, but not the fire. He respected my choice, if nothing else.

Not all priests are killers. Priests also heal the sick, and comfort the poor, and overlook signs of power in their village children to try to protect them. Sometimes these priests have visions that speak through a cloud of flame. When they do, sometimes I am the flame. I am the light by which true priests see.

Sometimes, too, I am the fire that is slow to catch, the moment's hesitation that gives a priest the time to find his courage, to say No, I will not do this, though it means my life.

But maybe you are not a priest. Maybe you only hear a whispered voice offering advice, or else urging you to do what you already know is right.

That would be Cara then, warning you to be careful with the choices you make.

I still do not understand why Vkandis waits. I still have not forgiven Him, although he is my God. Perhaps he does not need my forgiveness.

But I am no God. I am a farmer's son. I will do what I can, when I can, until the very world is at stake.

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