Fire Dance

by Ilana C. Myer

  The moon was low and full that night, and tinged red, like a fruit ripe for picking. Some memories of past nights like this surfaced in Layne’s mind. Perhaps recalled by the red. He stilled his hands, which were trembling.

  I came here to make music, he thought. And then stifled the thought. At this he’d become adept.

  The rituals did involve music. Their singing combined in ways that would in time carry them away from this place, even from their bodies where they stood at the shore of the lake. They had become accustomed to this. To being transported, through whatever power of their music under the influence of Archmaster Diar, to a place where they faced shadowy figures. Where they gripped swords and axes in hand which they swept at opponents. These enemies were shadow-people, without faces. There was no sound in this other place; if there were screams, they were silenced.

  From boys who had been chosen earlier, Layne had heard that lately it was not so easy as it had been in the beginning. At first they’d faced opponents without weapons, or barely, who’d collapsed like stalks of wheat. But then came the first skirmishes with armed combatants. Then came the great city, after which two more boys had been sent home. Elissan Diar had replenished his Chosen after that, hastily training additional and younger boys to take their place. These had been selected by Etherell, who seemed to have an eye for talent, or perhaps for a quality of cold-bloodedness. It was hard to say.

  After all this time, Layne wasn’t sure what sort of talent was called for, here. He had come to the Academy to sing. At this he had, from boyhood, excelled. It seemed apropos for a younger son of a noble house with a talent for music to study at the Academy. He had not counted on the resurfacing of the enchantments, on being pulled into acts that felt wrong and gave him twisted dreams. But there was that high seat promised by Elissan Diar. There was that coldness in Etherell’s eyes. Layne did as he was told, as did all the Chosen.

  That night when their ritual song had reached its peak, they entered a place of battle once again. They faced armed opponents. Layne had the hazy impression, after stumbling down a staircase, of finding himself in a place of grass and trees. That was all he had time to notice, however; for everywhere they looked were more combatants who had clearly been stationed at the ready.

  Not that it mattered. The Chosen had a significant advantage against their faceless enemy: they couldn’t be killed. If one fell, he’d arise immediately in a new body. In that way it was like a game.

  * * *

  THE fight had taken Nameir and Mansur from the throne room to the gardens. So many bodies lay already under the moon, so much blood poisoning the soil, that Nameir wondered if they could be named gardens anymore.

  Mansur turned to her with battle-crazed eyes. “You’re sure Eldakar got out?”

  They were crouched behind a willow, a momentary lull. Nearby a man’s head rested on the ground on its side, staring at them. Nameir thought she recognized the man and turned her eyes away. “I forced him,” she said. It had almost been a physical act, the night before the attack: she had escorted the king to the tunnel entrance nearly by force of arms. “Mansur wants this,” she had said pointedly, when he had looked on the verge of refusing.

  “Nameir,” he said. “How is this not cowardice?”

  “You’ll return,” she said. “When this is over. Your people need you.”

  Now, observing the carnage of the garden, she couldn’t imagine that anyone would return to this place, where blood was soaking into the ground, where the marble fountains ran a rusted brown. Forever tainted, she thought, these works that had been the pride of Yusuf Evrayad.

  “My prince,” Nameir said now, “I see no option but to stall them for as long as we can. Until dawn.” Dawn, when their powers would lose their hold and they’d vanish, leaving corpses behind.

  He clasped her hand hard. “Let’s to it, then.”

  * * *

  IT was like a dash of cold water in his face when Layne found himself, gasping, pulled from the place of battle. He was back, abruptly, on the lakeside. This was not normally how these events would go.

  There was a disturbance in the center of the circle. The boys all backed away reflexively, as if to make more space for what was to come. There was, growing before them, a greenish glow that, as they watched, took the shape of a man. Stupefied, they stared as the figure of light took on features, became defined. A man with dark hair and clothes markedly different from their own, who stood across from Elissan Diar and the two who flanked him to either side.

  Elissan said, contemptuously, “What is this? Has she gotten to you?”

  “I’d expect a more courteous greeting from a colleague,” said the man. “Even if I intend to kill you.”

  Elissan waved his companions away. “Let me attend to this,” he said curtly. He stepped forward, towards the man who glowed. When he spoke it was in a smooth, honeyed tone. “So, Zahir Alcavar. You’ll doom all you love … for a woman?”

  The other man smiled, though it was more a baring of teeth. “Not exactly. It seems no matter what I do, I doom those I love. Either way.” He stepped nearer the other man, the space between them rapidly narrowing. “With no good choices, ridding the world of something monstrous seems the least I can do.”

  “And by that you mean me,” said Elissan. “Despite all you have done.”

  “Not despite. Not at all,” said Zahir Alcavar. “When I look at you, I see myself.” He barked an incantation, his hands together. A rent appeared in the air before them. That was how it appeared to Layne—as if the world itself was torn. What began as a streak of black grew wider, longer. It emitted a strange wind, hot and sulphur-smelling. “With the help of my companion,” said Zahir, “I can open portals to the lower depths. This seems an appropriate fate for you.”

  The wind became stronger, more insistent. Elissan was being drawn to it, inexorably. For the first time, Layne saw fear on the man’s face, a sight he’d have thought impossible.

  “It cannot be closed,” hissed the man who glowed, “unless it is fed. And it wants you.”

  What happened next was too quick for Layne to register. Elissan was leaping forward with a cry, of terror and rage. The next moment, another cry: this a scream of pure terror. High Master Lian, gripped in Elissan’s burly arms. His arms waved, his hands scrabbled at the air. It was useless. Elissan flung the older man with all his strength. The High Master tumbled through the black portal, headfirst. His scream cut off abruptly as the opening closed.

  “I have always wished for control of an Ifreet,” said Elissan. He was breathing hard. “How fortunate you’ve been, Magician. In so many ways. As I admit, I, too, have been fortunate. But your luck ends tonight.”

  The other man looked weary now, but stood his ground. “So we’re to fight, then,” he said. There were strange markings on his arms, Layne saw, that burned through his sleeves: black serpents, edged in flame. Up and down they coiled, as if of their own accord. “You with your weapons, and I with mine.”

  Elissan laughed. “Shall we take a wager, then,” he said. “Glass against the Winds.”

  * * *

  THE gardens were quiet. It had happened suddenly. One instant the enemy warriors were there, the next they had vanished. Mansur’s force was in disarray, confused. Nameir shouted to them. “Regroup!” she called. “Assume your positions.” Nameir looked to Mansur, who seemed as bewildered as she. She did not trust this sudden reprieve. “Until dawn, we must assume they will return,” she cried to the men. “Be ready.”

  * * *

  ON the hill by moonlight Lin sat and stared at Zahir. He had entered into a trance, his eyes closed. She knew this might be some elaborate scheme, a final betrayal. But if there was even a chance it was true …

  She had taken a risk. But she still had her knife to his throat. She remained in that position, dropped to her knees beside him where he sat cross-legged in the grass. She and Rayen, when hunting, had adapted to assuming such stances for long periods. If you stirred even an inch,
you might alert the prey.

  He had taken on the signs of the Ifreet: the green glow of his skin, the serpentine markings on his arms. His eyes were closed and he remained expressionless, but the markings writhed. As she watched, the glow seemed to fade, then grow stronger again. Lin was filled with dread for no reason she could have put into words. She felt relief, then, when he opened his eyes.

  Then he spoke. But it was barely a whisper. “Lin.” She leaned nearer to hear him. “I injured him. It may … it may have stopped the attack. May have … may have saved the Zahra, at least. It’s all I could do.” Black trickled from the corner of his mouth. As if from a wound inside. “Miryan, I’m sorry.”

  His eyes began to change as she watched. They were turning to pools of black, until the whites were obliterated. And then his lips stretched in a long, lazy smile. “Lady Amaristoth,” he said. This was not Zahir’s voice. It was a voice she’d heard once before, in the vision of the khave house that Julien Imara had shown her. The voice of the bright-haired Seer—Elissan Diar. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” he drawled. “You have, after all, played a fascinating part in this story. A part that is, I’m afraid, soon to come to an end.”

  She held the knife tight to his throat. “You seem sure of that.”

  He laughed. The next moment had flung her back, as with the force of a wind. She went flying, landed on her back. She immediately leaped up; he was still laughing. “Silly woman, do you think Zahir was ever in your grasp? He could have called upon the Ifreet for aid. He chose not to. In the end he was weak—too weak to take the reins of power as a man must, and do what must be done.” He stood tall now, and possessed of the green glow. He looked at her with the strange black-filled eyes and laughed again. “I have no need to fight you. You’re dead already, Court Poet—it’s clear in your eyes. Death was written into you with Darien’s spell. I have only one task here before I’m done.” His voice sank deep. “The Ifreet does Zahir’s bidding. And now he does mine.”

  Lin leaped forward with a shout, but it was too late. Zahir had drawn his dagger and, before she could stop him, plunged it into his own heart.

  As he tottered on the grass, tumbled back, she thought she saw a return to his features of the man she knew. But she was never to know.

  Lin kept watch that night beside the body as the stars faded above Hariya, and a new, cold wind blew from the west. The winds of home.

  At some point a deep tiredness such as Lin had never before felt came over her. As if every part of her were weighed down with stone. When she slept, she found herself riding a pearl-grey horse through the hills that overlooked the mountain range of Hariya. It was dawn and the air was sweet. Before her in the saddle rode a man, and she clung to him about the waist; she knew, without knowing how she knew, that it was Zahir Alcavar. The horse glided at an impossible speed, swifter than a gallop. She realized then: it was flying. A winged horse.

  * * *

  WHEN Lin awoke she was bound hand and foot and slung across a mule. “She’s waking up,” said a man’s voice. “Just as well. We’ll need her awake.”

  She tried to turn her head towards the voice. Still so tired she could barely form words. “What…?”

  “We got word you’d be here,” said the man. “The orders are to bring you north. It is time for the Fire Dance.”

  CHAPTER

  27

  JULIEN and Dorn spent the night on the hill overlooking the ruined city. Their guide had long since gone. Before leaving, the woman had had one more thing to say. The chill in her eyes intensified to hate. “Magic compelled me to bring you here,” she said. “To betray my son.”

  And then she was gone, and Julien had known at once what she needed to do. What at the very last Valanir Ocune had given her, and the use for which it was intended. She could not have said how it came to her, only that the new tatters of her had begun to take on a shape. That shape given clarity with the words of their guide and even the hate in her eyes.

  The mark of the Seer guided Julien Imara to the only other person walking the earth who bore the same mark. The person Valanir Ocune had desired her to find. She had ended up joining hands, briefly, with the Court Poet. Had felt a kinship deeper than she had with even her own sister. At the same time, the cold knowledge that this was someone on the edge of death.

  The weight of that knowledge was with her when she rejoined Dorn Arrin at the overlook above the ruin. He’d been waiting. They sat side by side under the trees. Below, the blackness of the ruin, the teeth of its towers, no longer seemed menacing. Now it seemed forlorn. A place of mourning.

  “You seem to know how to get us home,” he said.

  She leaned on his shoulder. The knowledge she’d brought back seemed too heavy to carry alone. “I think so,” she said. “But Dorn, if we do … we are walking into danger.”

  “Etherell…”

  “We can’t trust him, either. You know that.”

  He put an arm around her, sensing, perhaps, that she was chilly. He tried to make light of it. “Well, you’re the Seer. You’ll see a way for us.”

  She laughed shakily. “Maybe. In the morning, we’ll see.”

  * * *

  THEY had come to an open field. A bowl of a valley spread between the foothills and northern mountains, flooded in its entirety with grass and tall-growing wildflowers. An assemblage was gathered there. Lin recalled the scene in the crypt that she’d witnessed through Edrien’s eyes: the men in their fine clothes, the women in skirts vibrant as flame.

  There was a focus to the gathering. Her gaze was drawn immediately to it. A pile of logs with a long pole driven into it. She thought of Aleira’s grief in the place beneath the crypt; how Lin and Zahir had laughed together afterward. Making light of an old woman’s prophecy.

  For a shadow to be vanquished, there must be sacrifice.

  And Lin Amaristoth, who had known for some time that she was to die, now knew the means by which it would occur.

  At the center of the colorful assemblage was a man, imposing, wearing a long fur-lined cape and chain of gold links. A gold pendant hung from this chain in the shape of the ibis. His hair and trim beard were frosted grey. His face rugged, the dark blue of his eyes—so unusual as to be nearly violet—an answer to a question Lin had not even known she harbored. Ah. As she was dragged forward, still bound, Lin said, “This is hardly how a king greets a Court Poet of Eivar.” She risked a small smile. “I may not, in this manner, make proper obeisance.”

  “None is needed,” said the man. He appeared sober, even weary. “This gives me no pleasure. But it is what the Mistress has foretold.”

  “She saw two would go to the flames,” said Lin. “But the Magician is dead.”

  “Indeed. Perhaps the shadow overtakes even what prophecy requires. For I understand it is that which slew the man.” He drew nearer to Lin. She’d been raised to stand erect; they met at eye level. Though the men who held her were unyielding, they were not rough with her. This was not, indeed, the way heads of state ought to meet; she had a sense that the Renegade might have wished it otherwise. “As I understand it, the prophecy requires only one sacrifice,” he said. “I must do as the Mistress dictates, Court Poet. I’m sorry.”

  A murmur through the crowd. Lin could not tell if it was sympathy or excitement. She felt as if this were all unreal. But then, she had never been this sure of her own end as she was now. One could call it an interesting experience, she thought. She had lived so long with the expectation, almost she could see it that way.

  “How can you be so sure of this prophecy?” Lin asked—one last card, though a weak one.

  “I am sure of the decrees of the goddess Eret,” said King Sicaro, heavily. “The Mistress speaks with her voice. Understand, this rite has not been performed in centuries. Some believe it was never performed at all. We would not do this if not expressly commanded.”

  He barked an order over his shoulder. A man, likely a servant, came forward bearing a silver cup. As he neared L
in, she saw it was a boy, who looked awed and frightened at the sight of her.

  “Drink,” said the Renegade. “This way you won’t feel pain. We aren’t monsters.”

  Lin allowed the boy to hold the cup to her lips and tilt its contents into her mouth. He was clumsy but patient. He let her take her time, so the liquid would go down smooth. It tasted of honey and cloves. “I had not imagined death would be this palatable,” she quipped. She already felt a slight tingling in all her limbs. She was entering a detached state, as once she had with Rayen. This was happening somewhere else, to someone else. It was from a distance she watched as the men tied her to the stake driven into the log pile.

  Evening fell as they began the dance. It comprised five men and five women. Their air was sombre, and they were dressed in white. In this they contrasted with the brightly colored attire of the onlookers.

  Each dancer carried a torch.

  There were no musical instruments for this dance. There was only song. The dancers cried fiercely as if in mourning. As if already they grieved her death. They whirled about the pyre in perfect rhythm, caromed in circles as if they flew, each time landing without sound. All this as they bore torches and sang in torn lament. The fire made circles with them, a spectacular sight as evening deepened over the valley.

  Some time passed, and it might have been just that—a spectacle. Until one dancer, with a cry raw from the throat, tossed his torch onto the bier. Lin watched, with that same detachment, as the flame began to catch on the logs beneath her.

  He was the first. As each dancer reached that spot they would, with a similar cry, fling their torch. It would spin through the air, a whirling sphere, before it came to land at Lin’s feet. By this time the flames engulfed the logs and had begun to catch on her clothes. On her skin. The potion worked: Lin felt no pain. Only a warming sensation that was almost pleasant. She had been cold for so long, it seemed. Now it would soon be over.

  She thought of Aleira, her tears, and wanted to tell the Galician woman that she forgave her. She wasn’t certain why. But if there was one thing Lin had learned in her time on earth, it was that one often missed opportunities to say what most needed saying. This was another.