The Seekers of Fire Page 13

  A yellow-robed woman teacher hit the girl's fingers with a metal rod when she tried a slight modification to a spell; her classmates laughed when a man teacher punished her with two days without light because she questioned a truth he was teaching. One evening she poured the nightly potion away and cried till daybreak, then realized what she had done and in fear managed to weave her own, new spell, to conceal the potion's remains, and to present herself to others as not-so-sad, not-interested-in-men, not-so-angry.

  At a firewell, a yellow-haired girl, slightly older, openly defied a black-robed Ber boy, willing to fight or throw her life away rather than kneel to one she did not acknowledge as her better. The Ber girl watched the boy prepare for the killing blow, then suddenly what had been breaking inside her fully broke. She is like I was, the Ber girl thought. She is like I should be.

  She would have stopped the boy then, had not water stopped him first—had not the yellow-haired witch stopped him with her own Magic. That night, the Ber girl sought out the Ber boy and secretly added her nightly potion to his. "Master willed it that you should stumble before you could kill," she said. "I do not know why he spared her, but the Master's ways are unfathomable," she lied to him. "We do not go back for those the Master has spared himself. You shall not seek revenge against that girl." I will save her.

  The Ber girl was crying silently now, hunched on Esyld's three-legged stool, her head propped on her elbows over the crate that served Esyld as a table. Her pretty hair was wiping dirt that Esyld was nowadays too blind and tired to fight, her whole body trembling. Something flickered in Esyld's old, hardened heart, something made her feet cross the distance. Never had another witch crossed the threshold of the tumbledown shack, never had another girl brought such a sharp memory of the lonely, frightened, shunned girl who had once called the wind to her.

  Awkwardly, Esyld stroked the girl's cheek.

  "Why have you come?" she asked one more time, and silently, the girl reached into her robe and brought a stone out. It was a small stone, jagged and gray, plain to the eyes but warm in Esyld's palm, and heavy. In a moment it slashed the window-cloth open as she thrust it away, splashing in the mud outside while she made the wheel sign around the room three times, shivering.

  Wheel from the Wind Moon to blow the Bessove far away from this place; wheel from the Rain Moon to caress and appease them; wheel from the Sun to burn mischief already laid. And a fourth wheel, she knew but never shaped—wheel from Mierenthia's soil, life and stone to ask the Bessove for help with their fierce, heartrending wisdom.

  "Cursed old witch, why did you do that!" The girl jumped from the stool, and Esyld found herself gripping her wrist with surprising new strength, shoving her back before she could make another movement. Then Esyld screamed with a voice that, whenever heard, made her slum wretches feel chilled in their chests. Then she sagged.

  "There, they are gone now," she whispered in a voice so low that it was almost a thought. "They have gone far, for they know they are not welcome."

  "Who has gone where?" the fierce young woman hissed. "This is why I came, witch, so that you can tell me about them! About whatever it is that made me see things after touching that stone you just discarded."

  Esyld felt weary, and light in the head; she felt too weak to confront a heedless girl who thought she knew Magic.

  "Bessove, the Powers That Be," she quietly said, "them who are of Mierenthia herself, never to be welcomed, never to be worshiped, never to be angered. They'd been sleeping for long, my grandpap told me, long ago. They'd faded after the Master'd come to rule, his grandmam'd told him, as her own grandparents'd told her the old story. In the tall mountains of the West they slept, and east in the Mountains of Balkaene Province beyond the Blessedber Pass, where they'd been strongest. He was reckless, Grandpap, and znahar—a witch healer—as well, so he tried to wake one. He then hid in Mierber, the strong main city of the Bers, from the mor he thought he might have stirred. But then—"

  Esyld snickered as she waved towards the shack's peeling walls. "But then he had to hide here, for the Ber city was safe from Bessove, but znahari were unwelcome. So, did you bring your stone from the western mountains or Balkaene, little Ber girl? Why such a stone from you? They're waking, both the mountains and those who sleep inside, while day by day Ber fire in Mierber is dying. Where are you in this?"

  "I wish that I knew." The girl walked to the window, a silent black shadow in the room's gloom. Esyld's room was always gloomy, even at midday. The girl stared outside, then suddenly turned and Esyld's cold stove erupted with tall, crackling flames, light and warmth chasing the gloom and shadows. Flames. Now Esyld had seen them with her human eyes. They were burning on the metal of the stove, and not inside.

  "Esyld."

  Esyld jumped at that, for suddenly the name seemed unnatural. In a way it was; she had not heard it for many years. She was not Esyld to the world. Witch. Seer. Aberrant. Benefactor. Evil.

  "Esyld, I took the stone from a murder-accused boy this morning, just before I came to you. I think he came from Balkaene." The girl glanced at the stove, and the flames reached their shiny orange fingers out towards the ceiling. Esyld shivered. The boy. The boy panting over the heavy wheelbarrow he was pushing from the stone quarry and up the hill, this day like many days before that. The boy's frail, tired mother waiting at the threshold with her eyes dry and her face grim. The boy's mother was leaving him ...

  "I let him go, Esyld. I let him go moments before the man who once tried to burn me would have arrived at the Militia station, seen the stone, and burned him, too. So where does that put me, Esyld? Recently, I seem to be sparing the stake flames to reprobates, but"—she tossed her head and the stove flames leaped towards Esyld, swirling to avoid her just a split moment before they would have hit—"but my fire is not dying."

  The fire danced throughout the room, on dirt and metal, somehow sparing anything that burning could destroy.

  "But it is not only fire that is in me, Esyld. I saw Bessove, once, before I burned. I liked them. And five days ago, at the firewell with Arion and that water witch, my eyes seemed to open for the first time in a long time, and I saw something else, too." She raised her hand, and the flames slowly flickered and faded. The stove, however, emitted warmth. There was fire inside it now.

  "There are things flying in the sky high above Mierber, Esyld, things that do not belong in the sky. They resemble birds but are not. They are not Bessove, either. I want to know what they are, Esyld. And I want to know about Bessove, which, as you undoubtedly know, do not exist." She strode towards Esyld, grabbed her hands, and bore her eyes into hers. "Will you teach me, Esyld? I once ran away from being lady, I can run away from being a Ber as well. My fire is my own. Please. I can be a witch."

  Esyld laughed. Softly at first, then louder, and louder, until her whole body shook with laughter and her chest ached, while the girl watched her in silence, her eyes wide and hurt.

  "So you can be a witch, can't you? You like that shack so much? What is it that you like? The filth, the broken old bed? The previous owner's blood on the wall that cannot be fully washed? The muddy water that you need to cross half the slum to get, through streets full of crap, disease, empty-eyed women, half-naked brats and half-mad men? The bastards who at fifth drink may decide that a young witch is best on her back with her legs spread?"

  The girl's now narrowed eyes could have burned through Esyld and the wall behind her, without flame.

  "I can deal with these bastards well enough."

  Esyld sighed. "You probably can, fire girl. I could, myself. None succeeded the first time with me, and none was left with what he needed for a second. But can you bear to be alone ..."

  "I need no man!" the girl screamed.

  "But do you need no one, no human at all, stupid wench!" Esyld screamed back. "Do you need the whole accursed world using you when they can, but never being there for you! How will you like screaming at night, wasting in fever, drenched in sweat, surviving the coughing si
ckness by yourself—for a witch's sickness is both well-deserved and will kill all who dare help? How will you like cringing in fear at every single rumor of Mentors and Bers? Have you ever feared Mentors, my lady? I have. Or have you ever spent the night listening to a stomach that growls and cries in pain, pretending that it is not yours, my lady? Have you!? And don't you dare cry!

  "You want to learn about Bessove, you say. You want to learn about flying things. Well, my lady, leave the Bessove and flying things alone! The Powers That Be are not for the likes of you and me! I don't know about Bessove, my lady! I don't want to know! What I wanted to know, I know—how to protect myself, and the spells to ask the Sun and the moons for a little help. You Bers, with your book-Magic, pipes, and your Factories, you have angered the Bessove, and what I want to know now is how to live through it, not how to anger them more! Go back to your tower, little fire girl. Go back to where they will feed you and hide you behind cursed Ber walls. You may be misunderstood there. Here, you will be prosecuted and alone. Go back!"

  Esyld coughed, her voice abruptly failing. She was weary, her voice spent. How long had it been since she had last lost control with someone? Long ago. Too long ...

  "Go back to your tower," she barely whispered. "I have seen them coming—Bessove, and them humans who fly. Go beyond the walls."

  Esyld's eyes were as usual dry, but she still felt a tear fall on her hand, and suddenly the girl's arms encircled her and pressed her to the girl's chest. The girl was crying for her, Esyld suddenly knew. Had anyone but Grandpap ever done that? Esyld put her arms around the girl's waist, and for the first time in many years, she cried, too.

  Merley, the girl, asked Esyld to see her future before she went away. But when raging fire, armies, sorrow, flying wagons and heavy wagons that trampled the streets and land flashed before her sight, Esyld jerked her head and—for the first time in her life—refused to see.

  But she could not refuse to tell what she had seen.

  "Thou can't escape the pictures," she barely whispered to the girl, for she could not omit these words, either. It mattered not that this time Esyld did not want them to be the truth. Truth just was, and must be told. She always told it to those who came to her, even though it was rarely the truth that they wanted—and then they blamed her when the truth came to be, as if it were she who had made it.

  "You can't escape flames if they come for you, either, can you? That is what old people say. But I have." The girl laughed. "What are pictures, after all? Bers say that there are some paths you should walk and some that you should not. But if you did walk those paths, would the pictures perhaps not change? Do not worry for me, Esyld. And, I will not forget you. Some day you will need someone to care for you. I may come back for you then."

  "Go," Esyld whispered, "Go!" before she would have broken down and asked the girl to stay.

  * * *

  Could you change the pictures? Could the girl? The pictures of the future were, after all, pictures, possible truth, not truth come to be. Could the truth Esyld saw be changed, or a new truth invented? Esyld had wondered about that long ago, but then she wondered less and less as the years piled their weight on her. "Paths," the girl had said. Would the truths that Esyld told her wretches come to be only if the wretches continued on the same old paths they trod?

  Paths of broken shoes, tsarvuli, or ugly, bare feet. Master knew they were not easy paths to escape—and a noble Ber girl could never understand! Who was she to come and poke into an old witch's wounds! Who was she to make her cry and wonder, when crying was dangerous and wondering even more so?

  Was it you who chose the path, or did the path chose you?

  Esyld sighed, her gnarled hands on a stove warm for the first time in a long time. She listened to Merley's steps outside, and wondered.

  Chapter 6: Fireheart

  Excerpts from Introduction to Mierenthia, Fiftieth Edition, Year of the Master 680:

  Our Government's job is not only to make laws. Mierenthia's resources are allocated, justly and wisely, every year by our Government. Our Government consists of two Councils: the Council of Sovereigns and the Council of the Master. The Council of Sovereigns is comprised of the High Lords and Ladies of all twenty Noble Houses, together with other wise nobles and esteemed common citizens. The Council of the Master is comprised of a hundred and twenty of the Bers, our protectors, lifegivers, and Blessed Stewards of the Master. It is the Council of Sovereigns' task to make suggestions, and the Council of the Master's task to make decisions.

  A letter from Nelita, Daughter of Lisa and Karel, House Fredelbert, Year of the Master 703:

  Mother, I am writing to let you know that lady Kaitlyn of Fredelbert has accepted my application to become her maid. Please, do not disapprove. I know that you have heard terrible things about the lot of a servant, that you consider it a profession for delinquent types who do not care to go to school, and that you will fear for my wellbeing. You might have even been right, were this another House. However, rest assured that the average Fredelbert maid is better educated and leads a better life than a Clerks' Guild apprentice. I know, you would say that if I had but waited a few more years, I would have become a Mistress Clerk. But what for, I ask you? A Mistress Clerk, just as any Mistress or Master Crafter, is still accountable to Mentors. She is still whipped every thirty days and still lives on what fire is allocated to commoners in commoners' neighborhoods.

  House Fredelbert (like every Noble House, in case you didn't know) has Prayer for the nobles and Confession for the servants every thirty days, but Fredelbert's dedicated Mentor is so nice and lenient that servants are almost never whipped. The Fredelbert nobles, too, are nice; they rarely, if ever, beat servants or withhold payment. Yes, Mother, it is true that a servant (of a Noble House or of anyone else) is more dependent on her employer and more vulnerable than a person with a city job. But if the employer is nice, what is the problem? The servant of a Noble House, especially, might have a much better lot in life than many other people. And the fire—they have so much fire ...

  Kiss Father from me. I trust that you will both forgive me.

  Linden

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

  The first thing Linden realized when she woke up was that once again she was late for Mister Podd's Mathematics lesson. It was not a realization that warranted opening her eyes. She pressed her back to the wall and covered her face with the blankets, sleepily thinking that he might forgive her early-morning neglect of formulae that she had anyway learned by herself long ago. Especially when she told him that her new pulley system worked perfectly. For eight days now it had been hauling shopping bags along the outer wall to old Mister and Mistress Clerk's top-floor apartment, with only one insignificant accident concerning old Gara's window.

  The second realization was about the nature of walls. Hers was not supposed to be so warm in the morning, and no walls she knew about breathed. Her eyes still half-closed, Linden awakened just enough to remember that she had indeed slept in an unfamiliar place.

  Her muscles tensed, and a moment later she leaped in the direction of her uninvited bed partner and reached for his neck, ready to squeeze at the slightest counter movement. His reply was to incline his head with a mildly surprised expression, his cheek gently brushing her hand. She stared at him, then her fingers slowly relaxed and started stroking before her conscious mind could decide what to do. Then his ears perked and he licked her face, and suddenly Linden was fully awake and laughing, fondling the almost-grown-up puppy's ears amidst his happy barking.

  There was a knock on the door, and Linden wrapped the covers around herself, which the dog seemed to accept as a challenge. With an enthusiastic growl, he bit a corner of a blanket just as she called the visitor to enter, and for a moment they played a pulling game, until he seemed to sense her distress. She managed to wrap the covers again just as two girls appeared in the doorway, the puppy lying alert beside her.

  "Blake, you great monster, there you are
!" the taller girl exclaimed, and Linden flinched in sympathy as the other one shoved an elbow into her companion's ribs. The force was such that the tall girl wavered and the chest she was carrying dropped to the floor. Its exquisite metal lid rattled as it jerked open and twisted. The girl flushed in a sharp shade of pink, which contrasted strongly with her chestnut-brown hair. The other girl seemed to shrink, wriggling her hands, her wide green eyes fixed on the chest.

  "Please, forgive our clumsiness, my lady." The first girl's voice was choked, but her chin was lifted proudly, even if it took her some effort to not look at the chest and keep her own hands apart.

  Suddenly Linden understood. Hers was not the only new position in House Qynnsent. Whatever these girls had been doing so far, this was their first day as maids to a new lady with an unknown temper, and they had just broken a valuable item in her presence before even introducing themselves.

  She did not need more than a glance at the chest. The craftership was exquisite, the edges delicately beveled, the white metal flowing into a glittering flower pattern on the sides and the lid. Linden did not even know if something like this could come from the same Furniture Factory as normal items. At least, there were not any similar items in the stores that she had visited so far. It probably cost the quarterly wages of both of her parents—and who knew how much these girls earned and if they would have to pay for the damage.

  "Would you please close the door." After a second glance at the chest's twisted hinges Linden stood up, throwing the bed covers onto a pleasantly surprised Blake. In a moment a big ball of blankets, pale green sheets, and tan-and-black dog tumbled on the plush, dark-green carpet, and in another one silk and cotton were dragged all over the room. She stepped towards the girls, ignoring the mess and only slightly uncomfortable with the thinness of her laced nightgown. Well, they were women after all. She would look for clothes later, but right now there were more important things to do.