Brightly Burning — Mercedes Lackey

A CURSE OF FIRE

When Archer and Nel Chitward moved their family from a small rural village to the bustling city of Haven, it was cause for great celebration. After all, their textile skills had made them leaders among their Guilds, welcomed into the highest of Guild social circles.

But not everyone in the Chitward home was happy about this "improvement" in the faly's position. Lavan, their middle son, had no desire to be a cloth-merchant, needleworker, cloth-dyer, or anything related to his family's Guilds. He didn't really know what he wanted to be--except back home in Alderscroft! To make matters worse, his parents had enrolled him in an "exclusive" private school. It was a place where the arrogant older students were expected to keep discipline, and as a lanky, undersized, sixteen-year-old newcomer, Lavan quickly became the primary scapegoat.

It didn't help that whenever the older boys caught him he turned a bright-scarlet with suppressed rage--a rage which left his skin feeling sunburned and tender, and so filled his mind that he was unable to see, hear, or even to think. For days on end, Lavan was overwhelmed by blinding headaches and was unable to attend classes, yet even his pain was a welcome respite from the daily torture he suffered at school.

But nothing could have prepared Lavan or anyone in Haven for what was to come. For from his rage a Gift unlike any known in Valdemar would be born in a fiery conflagration which Heralds and Healers alike would be hard-pressed to contain....