The Seekers of Fire Read online

  Copyright © 2011 by Lynna Merrill

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover artwork © 2011 by Lynna Merrill

  Map and title page artwork © 2011 by Lynna Merrill

  Also available as a trade paperback.

  http://www.lynnamerrill.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, concepts, and events are either products of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To my love, Alex

  Acknowledgements

  I thank my parents, grandparents, and great grandmother, for teaching me to love books and stories and for encouraging me to make them, and I thank my brother for sharing the stories of childhood.

  I thank my parents-in-law and grandparents-in-law for all their care and support.

  Most importantly, I thank my husband, Alex. He has been there for me in more ways than I can list, with love, support, inspiration, understanding, critique, example, ideas, insight. My love, thank you for pushing me forward even when I was not pushing myself, and for leading me forward. Thank you for being the most special and important person in my life, and for everything else. This book, as well as the whole series, is dedicated to you.

  Chapter 1: Coldness

  Linden

  Day 73 of the Fourth Quarter, Year of the Master 705

  Linden dropped the heavy metal bucket to the ground. The sound of its fall was only a tinkle, but a second later it grew as it reverberated through the rest of the buckets, while apprehension propagated through the people. Linden tensed. For several moments nothing happened, and then she felt a sharp jab in the ribs and smelled old Gara's foul breath.

  "Ts, ts," she hissed in her ear, "can't even hold the bucket properly. Always making trouble. Your mother should've—"

  Linden relaxed a bit and managed to ignore the pain in her head, stooping to put her stiff fingers around the bucket's cold handle. In a strange way she felt happy that old Gara was here, although anywhere else the woman hardly rose to the level of a nuisance.

  Linden smiled.

  "Well met, Mistress Gara. May the Master always shed his light on you."

  Perhaps Gara did not like more light than necessary being shed on her old and ugly figure, or she simply resented impertinent girls who answered her nagging with a common greeting. Whatever the reason, she had a speech prepared for moments like this, and the nervous silence and grim faces around would not stop her from saying it. For several minutes she muttered in Linden's ear anything scathing that she could fashion about Linden, her family, and the other families in the apartment house.

  Linden tried to listen, her neighbor's voice having a soothing effect for the first time in her life. This was old Gara behind her, nasty and meddling; old Gara who watched from behind her ground-floor window the comings and goings of every resident of the house and always had a bad word to spare for everyone.

  Imagine that you are at home now, Linden thought. Imagine that she has spotted you right after your Science experiment has accidentally broken her window. Imagine that she is now muttering the abuses that she is going to shout at you in a second, before she goes to yell at your mom. The thoughts made the pain in her head subside a bit. The mundane image of old Gara yelling somehow did not fit with Linden's pain and eased the eerie feeling at the back of her mind.

  The line moved slightly forward and then halted. Linden felt people's uneasiness grow, and even old Gara became quiet. A big man hurried past her, holding a full bucket, and the line moved forward again. This time a tiny surge of hope spread around together with the uneasiness. Linden knew what every person thought. Perhaps the well would hold long enough today. Perhaps this night they would all survive.

  It was winter now, but the firewells had already started failing in mid-autumn, about two hundred days after the firepipes broke. For most of Linden's eighteen years of life, there had been pipes in her family's apartment. They were small because her parents were not rich, but they gave enough fire for making two rooms comfortable in the cold days. The family even had fire to spare for more than one day candle, so Linden was allowed to read comfortably in the evenings, before night fell.

  This candlelight was meager compared to the light of the lan-terns that some people had, which could illuminate whole houses. Rumor had it that the Bers even made firefountains for the nobles, and that firefountains could create small images of Mierenthia with the Sun and moons, bringing day at night.

  Linden glanced at the beginning of the line. Meager or not, it had been her own light. For those of her social status and higher, shared community firewells had been a thing of the past. They belonged to places where firepipes did not enter, and neither did people who cared about their purses and their throats not being cut.

  The line moved forward again, as a woman stumbled away. She was thin and pale under the threadbare coat, and her hands were shaking with the effort of carrying the bucket.

  People were not used to this. Linden was not, either. Her own bucket was already too heavy for her despite its empty state, her fingers blue from clutching the handle. But then, perhaps the bucket would weigh just as much when filled. How much did fire weigh, anyway? Linden would not know. It was not a question that was asked freely, and she had not even touched a firebucket before today. Her dad would not let her. He feared that she would try to glean forbidden knowledge, that she would try to look inside the bucket like she had once, long ago, done with the candles and the heating stove.

  Dad. The pain in Linden's head throbbed anew, as the image of funny screaming old Gara was shoved aside by that of him. He had been dutifully getting fire for the family every ten days since the day the pipes stopped, assuming a cheerful face and trying to convince his wife and two daughters that it was all right. Or, trying to convince his wife and elder daughter, for they had sent little Eileen away to Grandma and Grandpa in the Sunset Lands soon enough.

  The last time Dad went to a well, the well was attacked by a local gang. They seemed to mind that normal people had begun frequenting their slums. The people in the line had put up a good fight, but it was not their specialty. Most of them were craftsfolk or clerks, with a few teachers or healers, like Dad. Two men had carried him home, together with the little fire they could spare, and for ten days now he had been in bed, restless with fever.

  Linden gripped the bucket more tightly, fighting a sudden urge to smash it to the ground. It was all because of fire! It was all fire's fault! A few of the people glanced at her, and she forced herself to slowly loosen her grip again and close her eyes. When she opened them again, they were close to expressionless. Somewhere else she might have cried, but not here with these people, not so close to the firewell and the gray rundown buildings next to it. She should not even think, for thoughts could easily be heard at a place like this.

  The line moved forward once again, but the current woman with a full bucket ran away as fast as she could. The others looked nervously around, themselves prepared to run. Linden glanced at the dark shadows behind the buildings and then forced herself to think clearly and fixed her eyes in the direction of the well. Slum gangs might come from the shadows, but people would not run because of them. Like Dad, these people would fight for their fire. If there was a danger great enough to make them run, it would come from the well itself.

  Another woman hurried away, and as the line moved forward, Linden saw it clearly for the first time. Somehow she had imagined it bigger, this thing that could mean the difference between death and life. It looked like a small metal hole in the ground instead, just big enough to fit in a bucket so that the plug at the bucket's bottom would connect to the outlet at the bottom of the well
. Indeed, the well looked not unlike the outlet where the bucket would be plugged at home to give its fire to the apartment. However, whereas at home the metal of outlets and fireswitches was still white and shiny, here it was dirty with rust.

  Rust. Had anyone even known, before this year, that metal could decay?

  The well's metal groaned as the next man in line said his fire rites, inserted his bucket, and pressed the fireswitch. The sound made Linden wince in anticipation of a new burst of pain. Surprisingly, it did not come, and she realized that her head did not ache any more. It is cold, she thought, and then the eerie feeling at the back of her mind started growing. Linden trembled and immediately knew that it was not because of the chilly air that had made her body numb. The firewell was cold, and she did not know how she knew that, or why she felt relief together with the anger and the rising worry.

  The line slowly scattered into a crowd as people drew back from the well. Linden thought she saw tears in the eyes of the man who had just pulled an empty bucket from it, so she turned her gaze away from him. It was somehow not polite to see a grown man cry. The crowd wavered, and Linden knew that the anxiety that had hung over the line was now plain fear. It would get dark very soon, and it would get colder, and without new fire some young children and old parents might not make it through the night. They were all at the mercy of the Bers now, and people had started whispering behind closed doors that Ber mercy, like Ber fire, was fickle these days.

  The anger in Linden's chest expanded to form a heaviness in her throat, and suddenly she could hardly resist it. It was so helpless, to depend on someone else's so-called mercy! And this shabby well ... Odious thing, she wanted to tread on it. Ugly, worthless holes, how could most people in Mierber depend on them!

  Some thought at the back of Linden's mind, something related to the eerie feeling, tried to raise an alarm. No person in Mierber dared think like that about fire and firewells outside of her home. Outside, thoughts could be heard and punished. Linden shut her eyes tightly, trembling, suddenly fighting to both protect her thoughts and to control her body and mind, even though she had never had to fight for that before. She usually controlled herself well, hid herself so well that she was one of the very few in the apartment house who did not fear the Mentor when Confession time came.

  Yet, now she felt uncannily insecure in herself, and when her legs suddenly weakened, she shook with fear of coldness and fire alike. Linden fought to keep herself steady, resisting her legs' urge to fall on her knees. Then, as a surge of cold slum wind hit her, she opened her eyes to see that she was the only one standing.

  No. Not the only one.

  A young man walked towards her, while a young woman turned back and bent over the well. Linden could not see her face, but she could see that of the man, and what she saw made her body shake even more. She had thought the old Mentor frightening, with his stern features and heavy whip. The face of the man in front of her was actually handsome, and as far as she could see, he did not carry anything in his hands, and there was no weapon visible over his heavy black robe and cloak, either.

  His eyes, however, had no mercy in them.

  "Kneel." The voice seemed normal, but Linden felt it brush at her mind and then penetrate her body, settling in her legs, trying to bend them. Ages seemed to pass before she got control of them, performed a curtsy, and stood up again.

  "Hail to the Master, who brought you here today, lord Ber. We humbly await the blessings of your fire."

  It was not the right thing to do or say, and she knew that. It was the right thing according to her books and the teachers, but the teachers had rarely met Bers before the pipes' breakage, and the books ... Who knew about books. The same books that claimed Bers kind and benevolent claimed Ber fire unfailing.

  "I told you to kneel, wretch."

  Linden quivered, then suddenly steadied her feet completely and looked straight into his eyes.

  "That you did."

  His voice had been loud. Hers had become very, very quiet, and yet, like a bucket's tinkle, it seemed to reverberate through the kneeling crowd as if she had shouted.

  "But I am not a wretch. I am a student, daughter of a librarian and a healer. I do not live in a slum, and neither do the others who are waiting by this firewell right now, so they should not be kneeling, either. I have given you the respect due to you from people of my social status, lord Ber. Now please do your duty and light the fire. There are children and old people waiting for it."

  She would die for these words. She knew it when the man stepped forward, his boots ominously grating on the dirty ice, his eyes fixing hers. It was not right. Her words were true. She had given him the respect prescribed by the books, and he did not deserve even that, for he had not given anyone fire. Could the others not see that, too? Would they not help her? People said that there were no longer rules, that after the collapse of the fire system, after the Bers had come out of their towers, Ber whims and Ber desires had become the only rules that mattered. But was it perhaps so because people so easily knelt? Linden might not die if everyone rose to defend her ...

  What felt like a blow forced the air out of her lungs, and the world swirled around her, spots of light and darkness drawing patterns before her eyes. They blended with the sign the Ber's fingers had drawn in the air. Linden jerked her head. Inadvertent tears stung her eyes, but she ignored them, gritting her teeth to dissipate the blurriness and to overcome her body's urge to crawl. Shakily, she remained on her feet. Everyone else was still kneeling.

  "Is this the best you can do?" she whispered and thought that she glimpsed someone else's movement at the end of the line, but then everything was still and quiet again.

  She was supposed to have fallen. People said that the Bers could steal your body, leeching your strength while your mind was reduced to no more than a watcher. A pathetic watcher. Linden glanced at the people around as the Ber's hands gestured before her. There were many people, their ages ranging from almost children to grandparents, and they were all silent and kneeling. The young Ber did not need to subdue their minds and bodies. They had done his job for him themselves.

  The middle-aged man beside her caught her eyes while some new invisible force battered her jaw. A second later Linden did not know what had hurt more, the Ber's blow or the man's fear and hatred. Damn you all. Her fingers shifted to mirror the Ber's gesture, just as the man looked away and the Ber glanced at his approaching colleague.

  Linden forced her lips into a mocking smile when she saw the Ber woman notice her action. Tears still threatened to wet Linden's eyes and anger stiffened her throat, but her smile was as unwavering as her fingers. Her enemies would see no more pain and anger; uncontrolled emotions meant weakness. Even if two Bers and their Magic could finish her off quickly, in no way would Linden help them. Besides, what she had seen from the gestures was not that intricate.

  Nothing happened. What had she expected? No one but Bers could do Magic. She had finished shaping a perfect image of the Ber's symbol while his attention was diverted, but he still stood unscathed. He had not noticed Linden's attempt to mimic Ber attack methods, but the woman had, and she was now watching Linden's hands with an inscrutable expression. Linden straightened. A moment might be all she had before they killed her, and suddenly time seemed to stretch, her thoughts coming as if from a greater distance.

  "Arion, put a stop to this nonsense," the Ber woman said, but Linden barely heard.

  Instead, details of the world not espied before stormed into Linden's senses. A strange bird was floating far up in the sky, and a tiny shot of grass had managed to grow on the ground, battling both concrete and winter. A single dark, red-tinted lock of hair had escaped the Ber woman's hood, and beside the dirty ice where the Ber man stood, a tiny square of clean ice wove shapes of crisp beauty.

  Linden's eyes lingered on the dirty ice while the man raised his hands. The woman reached towards him, her lips shaping urgent words.

  Linden should try the Ber sign again, bu
t of course she did not know how it worked, and imitation seemed to not activate its function. Swiftly she raised her own hands, but her mind refused to focus on the symbol, drifting instead towards the Ber's boots and solid water. The streets were derelict. It was possible that the dirty ice hid a hole and that down below the ice the water moved freely. No one would let water move freely, uncontained in a gutter, in more civilized neighborhoods. The tricky substance was an enemy of fire and as dangerous as vital. However, this neighborhood was not civilized—and if suddenly many drops of unfrozen water rose from below and aimed a little aside from the man's boots, the ice would break.

  But that was Science, and right now no Science could help her. Or water. She had neither time nor tools or vessels to make the water move. She could only think, think ...

  For a moment Linden considered praying, but dismissed the thought just as her strength drained and her body sagged; just as the Ber man cursed and wavered. The last thing she perceived was conflicting emotions in the Ber woman's eyes, and the sound of ice breaking.

  Rianor

  Day 73 of the Fourth Quarter, Year of the Master 705

  Rianor, the young High Lord of Qynnsent, shifted in the stiff clerk's clothes and for the hundredth time wished for better gloves. The cold bucket's handle was incredibly uncomfortable, although his fingers should not be feeling it too much, for they had become numb long ago. He watched the faces of the people who were hurriedly passing him by, their full buckets tightly clutched in their hands. Their expressions were a mixture of fear, awe, confusion and relief, and he wondered whether he could imitate them enough as to not stand out too much. Then he thought that it did not really matter; no one seemed to pay any attention to him. Rianor was certain that these people did not know what had happened. He was not sure about it himself, but he was going to find out.