The Seekers of Fire Page 12

  She was interrupted by Desmond, who stared at her as if she were going to suddenly commit an unforgivable crime. "Nan, you assume too much for your position. Even a High Lord's wishes are not reason enough to break rules that are the foundation of Mierenthia—rules that for hundreds of years have assured the good of our House."

  Rianor quenched a new surge of irritation. For as long as he could remember, Desmond had placed the good of Qynnsent before everything else, and in truth his ploys had helped achieve the House's political position. Strategically, he was an indispensable First Counselor, but it was a little too often that his views of the world clashed with Rianor's own.

  "Desmond, the two of us can discuss the actions that need to be taken for the good of our House later," he said, "and if this conversation offends you, you may leave. The rest of us will hear what Nan has to say."

  Desmond said nothing, but his face darkened, and his sturdy muscles tensed. Then Linden started coughing and lost her breathing rhythm again, and Nan gently but firmly pushed Rianor away before he could bend over her. The nurse straightened the girl's back with one hand, the other hand slightly lifting her head. The gasps faded away.

  "Brendan, bring me some more water," she said, and as Brendan left she began unbuttoning Linden's blouse. Immediately, Linden tried to cringe back.

  "Mistress Healer, don't—"

  Nan's worried lips spread into a motherly smile. "I would first shoo these men out if I were to undress you, dear, don't you worry."

  The image of the small and chubby woman shooing the lords of the House out brought a smile to Rianor's lips before he could think about it, then this same image jolted his mind. This was Nan as he knew her, bossy enough to keep firm control over the whole household but always kind and considerate about everyone's needs. Ten years ago, she had possessed the bossiness and the strength to help an orphaned thirteen-year-old lord take control of his anguish and his anger, and the kindness to make him feel loved again.

  Rianor ran a hand through his hair, his eyes suddenly avoiding her face. She was not a Commander. There was no way Nan could have betrayed him like that.

  She seemed to have guessed his thoughts. Her next words were for both Linden and himself.

  "I am not a Mistress Healer," she said kindly with the tiniest hard edge in her voice. "I am Nan. I was a healer, but I lost the right to that title more than twenty years ago, when I refused the Well Lady's call to become what you call a Commander of Life and Death."

  Rianor was afraid that he might lose control of his voice.

  "Why, Nan?"

  For a moment she was silent, helping Linden's breathing by massaging her throat.

  "It is a hard choice, dear child, and one that I still cannot speak about to non-healers. I don't know what you have learned already, but there is a great price to being a Commander, and I was not ready to pay it. I chose to remain lady Eleora's servant, and only once in my life have I felt regret."

  A tear crept down her cheek, and cursing silently, Rianor approached and put his arms around her shoulders.

  "Don't. Those Commanders said that it was not possible to save them. There is no reason to think that it would have been possible for you." Then, glimpsing from the corner of his eye the way Linden watched him, he tried to chase his memories away and smile.

  "I suggest that I spare you the men-shooing. Nan, pick a nice suite close to my Science study. We will move Linde there, then please bandage her and help her with whatever you both think is needed. Do not wake anyone else. They need their sleep, and we do not need rumors about how bloody and ragged my new apprentice and I look. Me, you can bandage later. I will be talking to Desmond in my suite first."

  Nan wiped an eye with her sleeve before she disengaged from his embrace.

  "I am sorry—" he started saying, but she silenced him, a nervous smile on her face.

  "No, my child, you were right to question. You have always been a questioning one, and perhaps you have always been right for that." She smoothed a lock of gray hair behind her ear, which she only did when deeply worried. "It was my turn to sleep in the kitchen tonight. We attacked you because first I heard noises as if someone was trying to open the Healer's door—and there should never be such noises if a Commander is not expected—and because after that there were voices in the scullery as if someone had entered." Nan sighed, with a tired, old-woman sigh such as Rianor had never heard from her before.

  "Rianor, no one should be able to enter who is not of the House unless the Qynnsent High Ruler or First Counselor opens the door, or unless I open it myself (or unless my replacement does, for I won't live forever). And a Ber cannot enter through that door at all. I knew you had not yet come back home tonight, but I would never have thought ... We were not going to hurt anyone before asking questions. Even Brendan, the brash young fool that he is, would have only made sure they could not hurt us. Thank the Master that I had time to get only him, and that no one but Lord Desmond heard the commotion; thank the Master we did not bring any more soldiers."

  She swallowed, then her voice was the trembling one that did not suit her at all. "The Bers have gone wild on common people, and who knows when the Commanders will follow, and if they all will not turn to the Houses in the end. The world is not what it once was." Her voice faded. "We might all be losing our way ..."

  For a moment Rianor was at a loss of what to say. Was this woman, suddenly all wrinkles and dark-circled eyes, this woman of sighs and trembles, Nan?

  "Nan, go to sleep, take some rest, I will wake Master Keitaro instead," Rianor said just as Desmond snapped, "Stop rambling, woman, no one will ever harm Qynnsent!"

  "Desmond!" Rianor himself snapped, too tired to wonder at Desmond's atypical outburst, while Linden suddenly found the strength to jerk her head up and glare at the man.

  "Don't talk to Nan as if she were some sort of scum, my lord." She squeezed the woman's hand, and Rianor was amazed at how much contempt she could infuse into a form of address that sounded so sweet when directed at him. For a fraction of a second the lofty lord Desmond gaped like a surprised stable boy, and Rianor resisted a sigh. Most probably no woman had dared rebuke Desmond for years.

  "It has been a long and tiring night," Rianor said calmly, "and I am going to assume that any excessive expressions are due solely to that. I am also going to assume that such will not be repeated, and that all members of this household will address others, noble or not, with respect and civility. Am I clear, Desmond and Linden?"

  "Yes, my lord," both murmured, eying each other with suspicion and him with respect. In Desmond's case the respect was mixed with irritation, and in Linden's with amusement and something difficult to define.

  Rianor closed his eyes for a moment, for yet another time in his life assured how much he preferred Science to people. The thought only became reinforced as Nan insisted to perform a full rite to "seal the door." Obviously, she had never seen a Qynnsent person enter through that door, let alone someone who was not yet of Qynnsent and was not a healer, and she was uncertain of the situation and did not feel safe.

  The words Nan sang to the door were low and indistinguishable, aimed for the door and her own ears only. She had shared a secret tonight, but obviously she was not yet ready to share them all. That, together with the fact that the door had become invisible when closed physically—which was the cause of Rianor's feeling that something was not right earlier—made him feel a stranger in his own House. There were so many things he did not know.

  It was all the Bers' fault. They were the ones who hid everything.

  Tired of doors, Rianor looked at the ceiling, let his eyes wander. Nan seemed to be taking forever with her song, while beside him Linden seemed very interested in the Qynnsent banner over the stove. He would explain it to her, but not now. Now he needed a few moments of rest, of not talking, of simply watching how the firepipe and waterpipe criss-crossed the ceiling. The pipes went past the kitchen utensils that hung from the ceiling and walls, and down towards the
large metal tub in the middle of the room. The waterpipe ended just above the tub, but the firepipe twisted and plunged into the floor beneath, where it was safe to discharge its substance and make the tub's bottom hot when needed. Pipes. Bers' work.

  It was pipes and shapes on Rianor's mind when Nan was finally done, but he had to force himself to think of other things.

  "Come, my lady, let us find you a room." He lifted Linden again, not letting her walk and unwilling to give her to anyone else, and sent Desmond for the accounts that listed all of Qynnsent's taxes and other dealings with the Bers. Then, he braced himself for a long and tiring night.

  Chapter 5: Witch

  Esyld

  Day 78 of the Fourth Quarter, Year of the Master 705

  The witch slowly rose from the bed as the last visitor fled. Half-deaf she was, but still she could hear his steps—flap and then flop, as his mismatched shoes splashed in the mud below the staircase, and then again.

  Run, she thought, but thou can't escape the pictures. He had cursed her, he had cried, and he had begged. He'd tried to make the sign of the wheel, even, and she'd laughed at his wide, spooked eyes when he'd known she stood unscathed. "Make the wheel for the witch t' kneel," the simple and wretched knew: but they knew not that the wheel was not to harm a witch, but to help her lull to sleep the Bessove, the Powers That Be.

  The wind blew, and the door's rusty hinges creaked as it slammed. Esyld shivered. Slowly, she dragged her old feet to the window and nailed the cloth's undone, flapping corner to the frame with a pin and a stone. So many things undone, but not all could be mended. She'd had real glass, many years ago, but of the breakable kind, not the hard one. Shane the Shovel had stolen it for her when she'd been young and fair, so that she would choose him and not Bone Yorick.

  He'd been comely, Shane, but his head'd been thick and his mind shallow. He'd next nicked a silk dress from some fancy dame, and the Militia caught him. Esyld didn't know if he rotted in a Factory, or in a prison. Shane's mama had cried and cursed and torn the dress to ribbons, and would've made ribbons out of Esyld's face as well, had Esyld's own curse not served its utterer better.

  She'd called the wind then, long ago, when she was fair, young, and stupid. "Wind from my hand, make Shane's mama bend, wind from my eyes, make Shane's mama die!" Esyld had screamed while the woman's nails dug into her cheeks, and suddenly the wind had come—a howling one that had risen before Esyld's tumbledown shanty and thrown the street's dirt and stink in the air and at Shane's mama. Shane's mama had run, but died soon enough from the coughing sickness. Esyld never called the wind again, but from that day on, she saw true pictures in the window.

  The glass was broken now, but old and half-blind, Esyld still could see them. She saw the shadows, too, at eve's and daybreak's light, and some of them were living. It was her witch eyes that saw the strange woman's shadow now, even though her human, wretched eyes, struggled to shape her hooded figure at the door frame.

  A young human woman at first glance—tall, slim and quiet. At first glance, just one of them who sometimes came, lovesick fools or fretful mothers, weary wives and, once, a Factory runner.

  A crossroad stone picked at double Fullfire-Moons to bind a lover; a red thread for a child's wrist to ward off tallasumi and halli; red clover for her who wishes for a baby, tansy for the one untimely pregnant.

  She gave each what they wished, they gave her meager food and fire; she told them all their truths and whispered her one lie: that she would call the wind again if they betrayed her, that if one day the Bers came, she'd curse her slum wretches to a fate worse even than the one that would await her.

  Now here the Ber stood, the first one who had ever found her, and Esyld's old, tired heart suddenly tossed wildly in her chest and her feet wavered. For a long moment she was falling, and then young, graceful fingers gripped her arm and held her.

  "Careful, old Mother."

  Old Mother. Old she was, but Mother she never would be, for mothers lay with dull, wretched men to bear snotty little ruffians. She'd killed a mother once, with a wind that had come to heed her, and the wind had shown her many truths. One of them was that a witch shouldn't let just any dull, wretched man into her life, for one can't make you happy who's beneath you.

  "I apologize. I see that my words have upset you."

  Esyld blinked her human eyes at that and tried to stare at the young woman's face, fear suddenly giving way to anger.

  "You see, you say," she hissed, her feet regaining balance. "But can you see?"

  The young woman laughed. It was a special, bitter laugh that should have been tears; a laugh that Esyld knew all too well but had never before heard from someone else—a laugh that scattered in the room just as Esyld reached out, grabbed the hand still on her arm, and saw.

  Dark, red-tinted hair spilling over shoulders shapely but rigidly-held; a face with features finely-wrought but a mouth stiff with many words measured or unsaid. Black, long lashes above shiny brown eyes—beautiful eyes to a human sight, but a witch saw the fire inside.

  It burned behind the girl's eyes, inside her head, inside her veins—a fire both colorless and bursting with colors, hissing, crackling, reaching out with fingers both scorching and cold towards the old witch whose cursed, insolent eyes dared watch it. Wretches and others didn't know fire, for they only saw it imprisoned in metal and stone. They only saw wells, buckets, or pipes, never flames; most didn't know what flames were at all. But Esyld knew. Grandpap had told her about fire, long ago, and later she had seen it. Even wind could not help her against fire. The more the wind would blow, the more the fire would grow, leaping through the room, dancing in the air, until it had swallowed Esyld like once it had tried to swallow that girl, until all she could see was the bright blindness in her own eyes and all she could hear, taste, or feel was burning.

  The girl had burned, once, Esyld knew now. Into the past she saw and saw the stake, the flames, and the hard-eyed, crooked-nosed man in a red robe who had lit them. A young man for Esyld for he could be her son, an old man for the girl for he could be her father. His eyes never left the girl's while she wriggled, wide-eyed but never emitting a sound; never moved when she stilled, stared at him, and sent the flames bursting away from the stake and towards him.

  "Enough!"

  Esyld shivered as the girl's shout suddenly thrust her back into a Mierberian slum and a shanty house devoid of all flames. Pictures of others—a crying young man, a stone-faced older couple, and another, dying, man, all elegantly-dressed, as well as a donkey and an old man in rags—flickered at her sight's edge. They faded as the girl whispered "Enough," one more time and hid her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

  "Thou can't escape the pictures," as always Esyld said. She'd said the same to the father who'd left before the girl'd come—the father whose wastrel, useless son was to be taken to a Factory.

  The girl raised her head and the hood fell, her face so haggard now that Esyld noticed even with her human eyes.

  "So you are not just a reprobate and a fake," the girl said in a soft voice. "You do see memories." She tossed her head, and a lock of hair wiped a tear from her cheek; then the girl straightened and her large, restless eyes bore into Esyld's. "I felt you in my mind, witch. You have no right to go there!"

  "No right, you say?" Esyld felt the girl's eyes, even though hers were strained and blurred. Or, she felt what was behind the eyes, for she knew that eyes were breakable but sight endured. "If I ain't got no right, why did you come to me?"

  "To take you away," the girl could have said. "To burn you." Instead, she clenched the fingers of her two hands together in front of her breasts, and her sight touched Esyld's again. Restless, doubting, ashamed, prideful the girl's sight was. Confused and fearful. Searching.

  Slowly, Esyld's hand reached out and touched hers one more time. Slowly, she saw into the past again, but shrouded were now the well-dressed people and the old man, the donkey, and the burning.

  With half-burned hair and ch
arred clothes the girl lay on a simple cot, while the hard-eyed, crooked-nosed man stood at the door, his previously chin-length black hair shriveled and his clothes smoking. He nodded curtly once, and a woman approached the girl with a salve and a potion.

  The girl, black-robed, sat at a small table in a room full of many other young women and men. A school, Esyld knew, for she had gone to school, too, before her father had told her that if she wanted food from now on, she would start earning it. A yellow-robed older man stood before the girl and the rest. "Master's chosen ones," he was saying, and the girl wrote it in a book, "not reprobates and witches, but Mierenthia's salt, intellectual elite, those with the hardest path and the worthiest." "The worthiest," the girl wrote in her book, and then again. And then "the best," her eyes glowing with an almost stake-like flame, and then "my place."

  "My place," Esyld murmured, in the present, to herself.

  The girl had just made a spell more skillful than those of the rest, but when she went to her room, she found her newest book of spells violently shredded. The girl cried, angry at some black-robed young woman and a black-robed young man, but when she drank a potion the anger faded. She now felt little towards the woman and naught towards the man, for the potion was to make the mind sleepy and slow, and to make men ignore women and women ignore men in thoughts both vile and pleasant.

  Next time the girl deliberately made a spell less skilled, hoping that the other young Bers would like her better.

  She said nothing the first time she went to the firewells and her partner broke a common man's arm at a whim. She drank her potion and wrote "Ber novices all together—the best" in her little notebook that night, but after a few more times at the wells, despite the potion, her hand would tremble and the ink would not obey her.