A bar clanged into place on the outside of the door, a key turned in a lock. There were no windows. A small grate near the low ceiling looked out onto what was floor level in the great hall. We were in a storeroom, the kind of place that, in Aranyi, is used for dry goods, wood or weapons, things that need no air or light. Wearily, hopelessly, I made the inner flame, snapping the fingers of my left hand and willing into life the little jet of fire that crypta can create from a spark of the body’s own static electricity. I was proud of this ability to make the light without using a prism, a skill I had learned before my marriage, during six months of training in the uses and control of my gift. I had practiced it ever since, when I realized I would be spending the rest of my life in a world that depends on candles and torches, the occasional lamp filled with rendered animal fat, for all artificial illumination. The blue flame burned low and fitful with my waning strength, barely showing through the cupped fingers of my right hand that I used as a screen.
