Smoke in the Glass

by Chris Humphreys

  The Fire God.

  He moved past the dripping girl to the window, and stared up at the stars in the southern sky. This time, though, he sought none. Three weeks for Tolucca to reach the City of Women, he thought. Three weeks to return. So in six weeks I will know – and be free to love again.

  In six weeks I’ll be able to sleep.

  Intitepe should not have been looking south as the focus for all his fears. He should have been looking north. And not to a mountain top but to the sea …

  … to a part of his realm where, beneath towering, jungled cliffs, fishing villages lay scattered along beaches of black sand like ill-fashioned pearls on a chain. Off one of those villages, so isolated that its people only knew it as ‘the Place’, a vessel was drifting towards the reef. Its main mast was sheared, its few sails shredded, most of the oars that also could power it were snapped in half or lost to wave. Of the crew who’d set out six months before only half were alive, and those barely – and they had only survived by drinking sea water and eating their dead.

  If Intitepe were attuned to more than one danger at a time he might have seen, as his father might have seen, as Saroc, priest-king and last immortal rival would certainly have seen … a fisherman, who’d had a poor day and so was the last out on the evening tide. Seen him look up suddenly from his empty nets at the ruined ship. Mistake it for a moment for one of the giant tree trunks that sometimes drifted to their shores. Change his mind when a figure in black rags rose from the prow and beckoned to him.

  He paddled fast for the shore, threading the reef passage as the ship drifted closer to its doom. He roused the villagers and they had a swift debate. Some thought the black ruin was filled with devils. Some that it bore emissaries from one of their seventeen gods. All agreed that nothing this exciting had happened in the Place in even the oldest man’s living memory, nor in any tale passed from father to son.

  The canoes reached the vessel just before it foundered on the reef. They lassoed it, lashed it, pulled it with hard strokes of their paddles through the gap in the reef and into the calm waters of the lagoon where it grounded and tipped, ten canoe-lengths from the shore.

  Creatures – these black-ragged skeletons could not be called men, not yet – dropped into the water. Twenty made it to the beach, while three, who could not get so far, lay in the shallow sea, spinning in the slow circles of the drowned.

  The survivors lay face down on the sand until, watched by the entire village – men, women, children, babes in arms – the fishermen turned them over one by one. They were not devils, or if they were at least they had human form. Men then, most small and stringy much like themselves. Only one man was taller, wider, with strange scarification on his face and arms, and legs that bowed, as if he’d sat astride logs all his life. The second to last they turned was a woman. All were famine-thin and covered in scabs and welts.

  Only the last was different, and he was very different. His head was like a skinned coconut, his teeth blacker than burnt wood – as were his eyes. When he opened them, they shone like sable pearls in a red clam’s shell.

  He was a god, or he was a devil and they didn’t much care which. When he pointed at his mouth they gave him water. When he pointed at the others, they gave them water too. Then they brought them all mashed flesh of mango, and raw fish. At last the man spoke, and though they understood nothing, the sound was a song, beautiful as a bird greeting the rising sun and as compelling as breath. Finally when he brought out, from a fold within his rags, a thing the size of a coconut but that swirled with smoke within, they knelt as one in the black sand and worshipped him.

  All this Intitepe, the Fire God, might have sensed, if he had been facing north, not south; if all his intuition had not been consumed by five hundred years of peace, and a single prophecy. Yet it had been. To his and his realm’s eventual and perpetual sorrow.

  7

  The Race

  It was a sound that Ferros loved – the snort and stamp of horses on a cold, bright early winter’s morning. Three weeks of rain had ended and below the window of the room in which he studied, someone was preparing to ride.

  ‘The answer, young man, is to be found in the pages before you, not written in the sky.’

  Ferros turned away from the window and his longing, and back to the man on the other side of the desk. It was the first time in his three weeks of study that Lucan, leader of the Council of Lives, and the man he’d met in the Sanctum on his first night, had come to instruct him. To begin he had still worked with Gan, the tutor who had accompanied him on the voyage from Balbek. But Gan’s limits were soon reached, and specialists were brought in. One man had taught him of potions, of the plants of power. Another had lectured on geography. Neither subject thrilled him, though he found that despite leaving school at ten to join his regiment, he was swift to pick things up. He retained little, however, from two excruciating mornings spent with Streone, his first guide in the city, who spoke of festivals, of art and theatre, subjects in which the soldier took little interest. He also learned far too much about the man’s triumphs, first as an actor and poet then, once he’d discovered his immortality, of the producing of the spectacles that all immortals delighted in. He was, by his own frequent admissions, the greatest impresario that had ever lived.

  It was better when an initially taciturn general called Parkos had come to explain the development of the army, and the wars that had been fought to manage the tribes on each of Corinthium’s frontiers. Ferros had known some of this, especially the war histories of the Sarphardi hills where he’d served. His enthusiasm, and a jug of heated ale, had melted the older man’s reserve and the two had quickly dropped into the ease of the barracks. Alas for Ferros, the general had come for only two days, to be replaced … by the man who sat opposite him now.

  That morning, Lucan had told him of the history of immortality. How the gift had been brought to a village of squabbling peasant fishermen by ‘the visitor’ who was known thereafter as Andros the Blind. How anyone ‘gifted’ then journeyed across the seas to reach the place they turned into Corinthium.

  ‘May I meet them, these First Ones?’ Ferros had asked.

  ‘No. Because they came, stayed long enough to found the city about five hundred years ago, then vanished. No one knows where they went – though since immortals are born all over what became the empire, this indicates that they travelled widely after they departed from here. Sowing seeds.’ Lucan nodded. ‘Because aside from laws, and the first temples, they left that legacy in the blood. The birth of others like them. So rare. So prized. As are you, Ferros of Balbek.’

  The history lesson had taken a day – an overview of the history of Corinthium from that founding to its present glories. Now, another day had begun – with philosophy. But as he turned back from the window, from the sound of horses, and the sense of escape that it conjured, Ferros struggled to remember the question Lucan had asked him. ‘I—’ he said, looking for clues in the text Lucan had handed him. Five-syllable words rose meaningless before him.

  ‘I asked you …’ Lucan began, irritation plain in his tone.

  One of those words came clear. ‘Paradoxical,’ Ferros said. ‘You asked about how we deal with the paradox of Immortality. How even the ever-lived may die.’

  ‘I did,’ Lucan conceded. ‘And does your text explain it?’

  Ferros looked down. The text in question was from some mystic, an immortal called Hypethus who’d lived as a hermit in the caves near Cuerodocia for three hundred years. He’d tried starving himself to death – only to be reborn, famished. Thrown himself off a cliff – just once, the pain of reknitting so many broken bones an agony he chose not to repeat. Eventually, to spare himself suffering, he’d gathered a small band of similar immortal questers to die and live for him. Some had drowned in the sea – and swum to the surface and thence the shore. Some had been shot with a hundred arrows – and pulled each one out, an experi
ence Ferros recalled with a shudder.

  Seeking now, as Lucan sighed, he found the answer – in a paragraph he’d read and misunderstood, so couched was it in ancient terms of near impenetrable meaning. And understanding, he decided to speak with a soldier’s candour. ‘We can dissolve in fire,’ he said, ‘and we can have our heads hacked off. As long as they are kept away from the body for a time—’

  ‘That is all you glean from the intricate philosophies of Hypethus?’ Lucan interrupted. ‘Burning and hacking?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ Ferros replied, picking up the smooth stones that anchored the scroll open and flat, letting it spring back into its cone. He sat back in his chair and stared at the older man. ‘And it wouldn’t have taken me one hundred years of suicide in a desert to prove it either.’

  Instead of a frown or a word of chastisement, his usual response, Lucan smiled. ‘Ah, the soldier speaks! How bracing it is to hear bluntness again. Everything in Corinthium, and especially in the Sanctum, is always so … weighed. With truth a secret to be winnowed out of words.’ He looked to the window, to the world and its noises. ‘Little wonder my daughter finds you so … refreshing.’

  She does? Ferros wondered, keeping his expression bland even as his heart skipped. He had only seen Roxanna twice since that first meeting, the day he’d arrived in the city. Once from a distance, staring at her from this same window as the back gate opened and emitted her. Once closer to, as he took the Heaven Road up to the Sanctum from his lodgings near the port and she passed in a basket going down. She’d seen him too then, smiled and tipped her head. But before his dry mouth would let him raise some spit then try to form words she was gone. About what business he could only – and did – wonder. How does an Immortal occupy herself in Corinthium? Who does she occupy herself with?

  He stared at the man before him, his black skin, the trimmed grey beard. Saw nothing of her – except in the viridescence of the eyes. But his greenness was as still and calm as a pond. Hers held fire and—

  He shifted, under Lucan’s returned scrutiny, with the sudden and uncomfortable feeling that the man could read his thoughts. Maybe it was another of the benefits of immortality. He’d been told that there were several – apart from the obvious one. Some had been hinted at – to be revealed when he knew more of the basics. Which he realised, again, that he needed to do. His ignorance, his bluntness, however ‘refreshing’, was holding him back. From what, he was still not sure. From whom, he was.

  Then Lara replaced Roxanna in his mind. Unsettled, he unfolded another scroll, weighed it down. More long words to decipher. Someone whistled outside the window, a descent of musical notes. A horse snickered as if in reply. And in that moment Ferros did believe that Lucan could read the run of his mind because he said, ‘And speaking of my daughter—’ He rose, walked around the desk. ‘Come, young man,’ he said, and crossed to the window, pushed it all the way open, leaned out. ‘Greetings, child,’ he called.

  Ferros joined him. There were two horses in the courtyard below – a stallion, large, sleek and sheeny black, the other smaller, shaggy-coated, a mare. A groom was at their heads, holding the two sets of reins. At their rumps, a hand on each, stood Roxanna.

  ‘Greetings, Father. And Ferros,’ she smiled up. ‘A fine day for a ride, is it not?’

  Lucan spoke before Ferros could reply. ‘Our soldier is a student today, daughter. We are exploring the musings of Hypethus.’

  ‘Oh, you poor man!’ Roxanna’s laugh was as musical as her call to the horse had been. ‘Then do not consider this a ride. Consider this a rescue – from the third way to kill an immortal. Boredom!’ She took her lower lip between her teeth. ‘Do you want rescuing, Ferros?’

  ‘I would consider it an honour, lady.’

  ‘An honour? Hmm. You might not think that by the end of the day. And after all, Father, I am not interrupting his studies, just continuing them.’ She smiled. ‘Or did you want mere mortals to beat us in the race, yet again?’

  ‘The race?’ Ferros asked, turning to Lucan.

  The man shrugged. ‘Every year, at the festival of Simbala, various races are run, including one on horseback between immortals and mortals. They have many more to choose from while we have few who can ride. For myself, I can’t bear horses.’ He shuddered. ‘They delight in beating us and have for twenty or more years.’

  ‘Many more,’ said Roxanna. ‘So it may be worth seeing if Ferros is good enough to halt that run.’

  The challenge in her gaze switched back to him, stirred him. ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘I shall be delighted to prove that I am.’ He turned to Lucan. ‘Can you spare me for a morning, lord? Perhaps some air will clear my head and cure me of my … bluntness.’

  The leader of the Council of Lives studied him for a long moment – before he shrugged. ‘Go then,’ he said, and waved his hand. ‘But have a care for him, Roxanna. I need him at his desk again this afternoon, not lying in the infirmary with a broken neck.’

  ‘A gentle canter through the hills, Father, that’s all.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll have him back, barely sweating, by midday.’

  ‘I’ll come down.’ Ferros turned from the window, dipped his head to Lucan, left the room. What did she say? he thought as he descended the stairs. I’ll have him … barely sweating? ‘What are you?’ he muttered to himself. ‘Fourteen?’

  Still, he was grinning as he walked into the yard at the back of the palace. Roxanna was facing the door, had moved to the horses’ heads, taken their reins from the groom.

  The very first time he’d seen her she’d been dressed in flowing emerald silk. Now she was all dark brown leather. A strap of it across her forehead tamed her corkscrewing black hair, a long-sleeved laced jerkin contained – but only just – her breasts, tight trousers did the same for her long legs, ending in boots. She wore a short riding cloak. None of it was new, much of it frayed in places. Well used, supple, easy to move in. ‘This is Shadowfire,’ she said, and the black stallion snorted, and jerked its head up and down at the sound of his name, while she let the reins slide between her fingers without releasing them. ‘This,’ she said, turning, ‘is Serrana.’ The mare did not move – except for her long eyelashes, raised and lowered over her deep brown eyes as she regarded him. ‘You may choose either, Ferros.’

  Her tone was light, nothing but friendly. Yet there was something in her gaze that paused his reply. From the moment he’d arrived in the city he’d been tested. Every day in the room above them. Here, in some way, in this yard. For what, he still did not know. But it was there, challenge in those green, green eyes.

  ‘Do I choose for a gentle canter in the hills?’ he asked. ‘Or do we race?’

  ‘Do you wish to race?’ she replied, the challenge moving from eyes to voice.

  ‘Why not? I mean, if you are testing me … for this contest against the mortals?’

  ‘The mortals. Of course.’ She studied him then looked above him, to the window from which, Ferros knew, Lucan still watched. Her gaze returned to him. ‘Why not?’ she echoed him. ‘Let us race. So … choose.’

  He looked again at Shadowfire. The stallion was Sarphardi, bred in the same hills as him, used by tribesmen and cavalry alike, made for swiftness across sands and over dunes. The sort of horse that would run for ever and break its heart if you asked it to. He’d ridden such horses since the army had taken him in as a boy. ‘How long? Over what country? Do we gallop from this gate to the first hill beyond the walls?’

  ‘We could. But the first part through the streets would be dull. Anyway I prefer something more challenging, don’t you?’ She smiled. ‘Besides, the race against the mortals involves jumps as well as sprints and,’ she gestured with her head to the side, ‘javelins.’

  He saw them then, what he’d missed before: hunting javelins hanging in two quivers from Shadowfire’s saddle beak. He liked javelins. ‘And the distance?’

  ‘There is a valley cl
ose by. Fields, stone walls, streams, a forest.’ She shrugged. ‘It is easier to show you than explain. If you will only choose.’

  That gaze was on him again. He looked away from it, to the horses. The stallion was a natural choice for him, of a breed he knew so well. Bold, fiery, fast. And yet, from the moment he’d discovered his immortality, everything that had been natural no longer was. So he looked again at the mare, who continued to regard him steadily. She was a tawpan, bred for the forest and mountain trails of the north. Her coat was a shaggy contrast to the smooth-flanked stallion. And the type of terrain Roxanna had just described? After all that rain? Serrana was sure-footed, calm – a platform for the precise throwing required for javelins. And yet …

  All his yearning for the life he’d left behind made him wish to choose the stallion. But that was his life that was, and it was no more. So when Shadowfire tossed his head, and Roxanna calmed him with a word, Ferros knew. ‘I’ll take her,’ he said, stepping forward, reaching to stroke the starburst of white between the mare’s eyes.

  Roxanna’s eyes widened just a little, a betrayal of surprise. Yet all she said was, ‘Good,’ and nodded to the groom who came and took both sets of reins. Hands free, each rider turned to their mount, to adjust their tack, stirrups and bits.

  They rode from the yard, Shadowfire trotting in front in a sideways gait that showed how he yearned to gallop, Roxanna keeping him on a tight rein. Serrana followed slowly, head lowered, and for a moment Ferros wondered if he’d made a bad choice. Then he pulled back a little on the reins, moved the horse left and right with pressure at thigh and hand. Serrana was biddable – while beyond that Ferros sensed a contained energy within the mare, quite unlike the one the stallion ahead was demonstrating in his dance, and he was happier again.