Category: Poverty

A tale from the firekeeper’s hearth.

By the time the boy was dragged into the fire-circle, Solaris already knew what the verdict would be.

The child barely ten summers old had stolen from the Emberhelm kitchens three times in as many weeks. This last time, he’d taken smoked venison, enough for three mouths.

It wasn’t a clever theft either; he’d left claw-marks in the ash like some wild cub. They’d found him crouched behind the root cellar with a bone in one hand. His little sister clutched to his side, shaking from fever.

Taranis sat high above, throne of blackened oak behind him, his blade resting point-down in the dirt. His eyes storm Grey and quiet met Solaris’s across the fire.

“Third offence,” the warlord said, not unkindly. “You know the law.”

Solaris bowed his head.

He had known it would come to this.

The fire crackled between them amber light dancing against carved cairnstones. The gathered clan murmured like wind in the pines. Some looked away. Others watched with cold detachment.

From the shadows near the far cairn, Boldolph crouched in wolf-man form, eyes glowing red in the dusk. Morrigan stood beside him, silent and still, her white fur streaked with soot from an earlier hunt. Neither beast moved.

The boy trembled, snot running down his nose. His sister was nowhere in sight.

One of the younger guards bristling with duty dragged the child ahead. “What’s the order, High Warlord?”

Taranis looked not at the boy, but into the flame. “Three thefts. All marked. The hand goes.”

A stillness fell. Not outrage. Not shock. Just a silence.

Solaris stepped ahead.

He didn’t ask permission. He never had.

“My lord,” he said softly, “I speak?”

Taranis’s jaw tightened, but he nodded.

“Come.”

Solaris walked slowly into the circle, his linen tunic soot-streaked, hands calloused from tending both fire and blade. He stopped beside the boy who flinched at his nearness then turned to face Taranis directly.

“You talk of mercy, sir,” Solaris said. “Of giving your people hope. Of forging something better than the clans before us. Yet you would take a child’s hand for hunger?”

“It’s not the first time,” the warlord said.

“No,” Solaris agreed. “It’s the third. Which tells me we failed twice already.”

Murmurs rose again uneasy, uncertain.

Taranis said nothing.

Solaris went on.

“Do you remember when we met, Taranis? You were half-starved. Barefoot. Curled between two wolves like a dying branch in the snow.” His voice cracked, just a little. “You think Morrigan would’ve taken your hand? Or Boldolph watched you bleed?”

Boldolph’s snarl low, thoughtful rumbled through the circle.

“Do not compare me to that child,” Taranis said, but the edge was gone from his voice. “I was cast out by my own blood. He broke a law.”

“So did you,” Solaris said, gently. “You stole from death. You defied exile. You bonded with a dragon.”

The flames snapped high.

Behind them, Lore stepped quietly into the circle’s edge, arms crossed. Drax lingered further back, sharpening his axe with deliberate rhythm.

“The law is clear,” Taranis said, but softer now. “What’s your counsel, Solaris?”

Solaris exhaled.

“The hand stays. Cut his rations. He works the ash pits. But let the sister be seen. She’s burning from within.”

A pause.

Then: “Do we have a healer who treats the children of thieves?”

Solaris gave the barest smile. “We have a Flamekeeper who remembers that fire burns all the same.”

Taranis stood.

He turned to the guards. “The child’s hand stays. Halve his meals for two moons. The sister—tend her.”

“And after that?” the guard asked.

Taranis glanced to Morrigan.

“We watch,” he said.

Later that night, Solaris sat by the embers of the great hearth. The kitchens had long since emptied. The scent of root broth clung to the stones. He stirred a mix of wildfire oil and willow sap in a clay bowl, preparing a balm.

The door creaked. Taranis entered, shoulders still dusted with ash.

“She’ll live,” Solaris said, not looking up. “The girl. The fever broke at dusk.”

“You were right,” Taranis murmured.

“No. I remembered something you forgot.”

He set the bowl down and finally looked up.

“You’re not a tyrant, Taranis. But you are tired. Tired men return to old laws.”

Taranis sat across from him, resting his blade beside the hearth. “They look to me to be strong.”

“Then be strong enough to bend.”

They sat in silence a moment.

Then Taranis said, “What would you have me do? End the slave laws? Free them all?”

Solaris’s eyes softened.

“I’d have you start with one.”

A pause. Fire popped.

“My children,” Solaris said. “You let them stay with me. You feed them better than the others. You trust me with your fire. But still, by law, I am bound. My collar is light, but it is still iron.”

Taranis didn’t speak.

“I do not ask for release,” Solaris said. “I ask for meaning. If I am to be your Flamekeeper, let it not be as your property. Let it be as your kin.”

Taranis rose slowly.

He walked to the wall, lifted a flame braided chain from its hook, and placed it at Solaris’s feet.

“I will ask the cairn council to rewrite the bond,” he said. “You’ll take no collar again.”

Then, softly: “And neither will your children.”

Days passed. The fevered girl recovered. The boy, now under Solaris’s quiet supervision, took to the ash pits with a haunted gaze but steady hands.

At dawn, he brought Solaris firewood without being asked.

At dusk, he left a hand-carved wolf at the hearth.

Taranis watched from the upper cairn, Morrigan seated beside him.

“He’ll never steal again,” Taranis said.

“No,” Solaris replied, stepping beside him. “Because now he belongs.”

Taranis looked at his old friend, the man who had once been enemy. Then servant, then brother in all but blood.

“Thank you, Solaris.”

The Flamekeeper only smiled and added another log to the fire.

That evening, Solaris’s eldest son, Nyx, approached. He carried a plate of meat and grain, handing it to his father before setting his own aside.

“You scorn the meal, boy?” Taranis asked.

“No, sir,” Nyx said. “But it’s not right I get meat and grain while my father gets broth.”

Taranis tilted his head. Then smirked.

“Bring your father a plate from my stores.”

Then added, almost as an afterthought

“And Solaris it was never one dragon, was it? Two stood beside me all along.”

One Week Later Postscript to The Flame That Counsels

“He’s gone mad. The Highlord’s either broken or possessed.”

The guard’s words hit like ash in the lungs. Solaris said nothing, hands deep in the roots he was cleaning for poultice. He’d heard rumors all morning that Taranis had dismissed the old slave branders, torn the punishment scrolls in half, and ordered the cairnstones rewritten.

Another voice joined the first: “They say he talks to the dragons now. Not just rides them talks. Pendragon flew south and turned back. Refused to land in Gaedrix’s old territory.”

Then came softer steps. Young Nyx, barefoot and breathless, ran across the ash-warmed floor of the kitchen hall.

“Uncle Solaris!” he grinned, waving a carved wolf bone. “Father says you can visit him. No chains. No guards. Just you. He said it’d be good to see you without your collar.”

Solaris froze. Slowly, he turned — not to the boy, but to the collar hanging near the forge. Empty. Cold.

“Why now?” he asked, kneeling.

Nyx beamed. “He says the laws are wrong. That you helped him remember who he was. That it’s time to make them right.”

The fire cracked behind him. Solaris closed his eyes.

Later that dusk, in the central hall of Emberhelm, Taranis stood before his people — not in war-gear, but in storm-black robes, his sword sheathed at his back, Morrigan and Boldolph flanking him like ghosts.

A hush fell.

Then he spoke.

“I was cast out as a child chained not by iron, but by fear. I lived. I burned. I changed.

So hear me now.

From this day onward, Stormborne law changes:

First crime: a warning, carved in cairnstone.
Second: servitude, no longer than a season’s moon.
Third: magical judgment the storm or the shadow will decide.
No child shall ever be born in chains.
Dragons will not fly over lands where children are enslaved.
All who labor shall eat. None shall go hungry.
The broken, the maimed, the soul-wounded they will have a place.
We are not the Clawclan.
We are Stormborne.
The fire will not consume us. It will make us whole.”

Lore lit the cairnstones behind him. Solaris stepped forward and cast his collar into the flame. Pendragon circled overhead.

Taranis met his gaze with quiet steel.

“You are no longer mine,” he said. “But you are still my kin.”

Solaris bowed low, not as slave but as Flamekeeper.

And above them, the wolves howled, and the fire did not flicker.

Taranis turned to Morrigan and Boldolph, who stood unmoving beneath the runestone arch. A chant had begun low in their throats a strange, old language from before the cairns were raised.

“That is, if you’ll stay, Solaris?” Taranis asked quietly.

Then to the wolves:

“Boldolph. Morrigan. You’ll be free of this too. The curse ends with fire and brotherhood. You’ll walk again in human form.”

The chant rose.

The fire roared.

And somewhere in the high wind above Emberhelm, the storm broke not in rage, but in light.