The Burning City

by Jerry Pournelle

  “They wouldn’t help,” he sobbed. “Only the one. Kreeg Miller. We could have saved Ilther—it was too late for Bansh, but we could have saved Ilther, only they wouldn’t help.”

  Mother’s Mother nodded and petted him. “No, of course they wouldn’t,” she said. “Not now. When I was a girl, we helped each other. Not just kin, not just Lordkin.” She had a faint smile, as if she saw things Whandall would never see, and liked them. “Men stayed home. Mothers taught girls and men taught boys, and there wasn’t all this fighting.”

  “Not even in the Burnings?”

  “Bonfires. We made bonfires for Yangin-Atep, and he helped us. Houses of ill luck, places of illness or murder, we burned those too. We knew how to serve Yangin-Atep then. When I was a girl there were wizards, real wizards.”

  “A wizard killed Pothefit,” Whandall said gravely.

  “Hush,” Mother’s mother said. “What’s done is done. It won’t do to think about Burnings.”

  “The fire god,” Whandall said.

  “Yangin-Atep sleeps,” Mother’s Mother said. “The fire god was stronger when I was a girl. In those days there were real wizards in Lord’s Town, and they did real magic.”

  “Is that where Lords live?”

  “No, Lords don’t live there. Lords live in Lordshills. Over the hills, past the Black Pit, nearly all the way to the sea,” Mother’s Mother said, and smiled again. “And yes, it’s beautiful. We used to go there sometimes.”

  He thought about the prettiest places he had seen. Peacegiven Square, when the kinless had swept it clean and set up their tents. The Flower Market, which he wasn’t supposed to go to. Most of the town was dirty, with winding streets, houses falling down, and big houses that had been well built but were going to ruin. Not like Placehold. Placehold was stone, big, orderly, with roof gardens. Dargramnet made the women and children work to keep it clean, even bullied the men until they fixed the roof or broken stairs. Placehold was orderly, and that made it pretty to Whandall.

  He tried to imagine another place of order, bigger than Placehold. It would have to be a long way, he thought. “Didn’t that take a long time?”

  “No, we’d go in a wagon in the morning. We’d be home that same night. Or sometimes the Lords came to our city. They’d come and sit in Peacegiven Square and listen to us.”

  “What’s a Lord, Mother’s Mother?”

  “You always were the curious one. Brave too,” she said, and petted him again. “The Lords showed us how to come here when my grandfather’s father was young. Before that, our people were wanderers. My grandfather told me stories about living in wagons, always moving on.”

  “Grandfather?” Whandall asked.

  “Your mother’s father.”

  “But—how could she know?” Whandall demanded. He thought that Pothefit had been his father, but he was never sure. Not sure the way Mother’s Mother seemed to be.

  Mother’s Mother looked angry for a moment, but then her expression softened. “She knows because I know,” Mother’s Mother said. “Your grandfather and I were together a long time, years and years, until he was killed, and he was the father of all my children.”

  Whandall wanted to ask how she knew that, but he’d seen her angry look, and he was afraid. There were many things you didn’t talk about. He asked, “Did he live in a wagon?”

  “Maybe,” Mother’s Mother said. “Or maybe it was his grandfather. I’ve forgotten most of those stories now. I told them to your mother, but she didn’t listen.”

  “I’ll listen, Mother’s Mother,” Whandall said.

  She brushed her fingers through his freshly washed hair. She’d used three days’ water to wash Whandall and Shastern, and when Resalet said something about it she had shouted at him until he ran out of the Place-hold. “Good,” she said. “Someone ought to remember.”

  “What do Lords do?”

  “They show us things, give us things, tell us what the law is,” Mother’s Mother said. “You don’t see them much anymore. They used to come to Tep’s Town. I remember when we were both young—they chose your grandfather to talk to the Lords for the Placehold. I was so proud. And the Lords brought wizards with them, and made rain, and put a spell on our roof gardens so everything grew better.” The dreamy smile came back. “Everything grew better; everyone helped each other. I’m so proud of you, Whandall; you didn’t run and leave your brother—you stayed to help.” She stroked him, petting him the way his sisters petted the cat. Whandall almost purred.

  She dozed off soon after. He thought about her stories and wondered how much was true. He couldn’t remember when anyone helped anyone who wasn’t close kin. Why would it have been different when Mother’s Mother was young? And could it be that way again?

  But he was seven, and the cat was playing with a ball of string. Whandall climbed off Mother’s Mother’s lap to watch.

  Bansh and Ilther died. Shastern lived, but he kept the scars. In later years they passed for fighting scars.

  Whandall watched them rebuild the city after the Burning. Stores and offices rose again, cheap wooden structures on winding streets. The kin-less never seemed to work hard on rebuilding.

  Smashed water courses were rebuilt. The places where people died—kicked to death or burned or cut down with the long Lordkin knives—remained empty for a time. Everybody was hungry until the Lords and the kinless could get food flowing in again.

  None of the other children would return to the forest. They took to spying on strangers, ready to risk broken bones rather than the terrible plants. But the forest fascinated Whandall. He returned again and again. Mother didn’t want him to go, but Mother wasn’t there much. Mother’s Mother only told him to be careful.

  Old Resalet heard her. Now he laughed every time Whandall left the Placehold with leathers and mask.

  Whandall went alone. He always followed the path of the logging, and that protected him a little. The forest became less dangerous as Kreeg Miller taught him more.

  All the chaparral was dangerous, but the scrub that gathered round the redwoods was actively malevolent. Kreeg’s father had told him that it was worse in his day: the generations had tamed these plants. There were blade-covered morningstars and armory plants, and lordkin’s-kiss, and lordkiss with longer blades, and harmless-looking vines and flower beds and bushes all called touch-me and marked by five-bladed red or red-and-green leaves.

  Poison plants came in other forms than touch-me. Any plant might take a whim to cover itself with daggers and poison them too. Nettles covered their leaves with thousands of needles that would burrow into flesh. Loggers cut under the morningstar bushes and touch-me flower beds with the bladed poles they called severs. Against lordwhips the only defense was a mask.

  The foresters knew fruit trees the children hadn’t found. “These yellow apples want to be eaten,” Kreeg said, “seeds and all, so in a day or two the seeds are somewhere else, making more plants. If you don’t eat the core, at least throw it as far as you can. But these red death bushes you stay away from—far away—because if you get close you’ll eat the berries.”

  “Magic?”

  “Right. And they’re poison. They want their seeds in your belly when you die, for fertilizer.”

  One wet morning after a lightning storm, loggers saw smoke reaching into the sky.

  “Is that the city?” Whandall asked.

  “No, that’s part of the forest. Over by Wolverine territory. It’ll go out,” Kreeg assured the boy. “They always do. You find black patches here and there, big as a city block.”

  “The fire wakes Yangin-Atep,” the boy surmised. “Then Yangin-Atep takes the fire for himself? So it goes out…” But instead of confirming, Kreeg only smiled indulgently. Whandall heard snickering.

  The other loggers didn’t believe, but… “Kreeg, don’t you believe in Yangin-Atep either?”

  “Not really,” Kreeg said. “Some magic works, out here in the woods, but in town? Gods and magic, you hear a lot about them, but you s
ee damn little.”

  “A magician killed Pothefit!”

  Kreeg Miller shrugged.

  Whandall was near tears. Pothefit had vanished during the Burning, just ten weeks ago. Pothefit was his father! But you didn’t say that outside the family. Whandall cast about for better arguments. “You bow to the redwood before you cut it. I’ve seen you. Isn’t that magic?”

  “Yeah, well… why take chances? Why do the morningstars and laurel whips and touch-me and creepy-julia all protect the redwoods?”

  “Like house guards,” Whandall said, remembering that there were always men and boys on guard at Placehold.

  “Maybe. Like the plants made some kind of bargain,” Kreeg said, and laughed.

  Mother’s Mother had told him. Yangin-Atep led Whandall’s ancestors to the Lords, and the Lords had led Whandall’s ancestors through the forest to the Valley of Smokes where they defeated the kinless and built Tep’s Town. Redwood seeds and firewands didn’t sprout unless fire had passed through. Surely these woods belonged to the fire god!

  But Kreeg Miller just couldn’t see it.

  They worked half the morning, hacking at the base of a vast redwood, ignoring the smoke that still rose northeast of them. Whandall carried water to them from a nearby stream. The other loggers were almost used to him now. They called him Candlestub.

  When the sun was overhead, they broke for lunch.

  Kreeg Miller had taken to sharing lunch with him. Whandall had managed to gather some cheese from the Placehold kitchen. Kreeg had a smoked rabbit from yesterday.

  Whandall asked, “How many trees does it take to build the city back?”

  Two loggers overheard and laughed. “They never burn the whole city,” Kreeg told him. “Nobody could live through that, Whandall. Twenty or thirty stores and houses, a few blocks solid and some other places scattered, then they break off.”

  The Placehold men said that they’d burned down the whole city, and all of the children believed them.

  A logger said, “We’ll cut another tree after this one. We wouldn’t need all four if Lord Qirinty didn’t want a wing on his palace. Boy, do you remember your first Burning?”

  “Some. I was only two years old.” Whandall cast back in his mind. “The men were acting funny. They’d lash out if any children got too close. They yelled a lot, and the women yelled back. The women tried to keep the men away from us.

  “Then one afternoon it all got very scary and confusing. There was shouting and whooping and heat and smoke and light. The women all huddled with us on the second floor. There were smells—not just smoke, but stuff that made you gag, like an alchemist’s shop. The men came in with things they’d gathered. Blankets, furniture, heaps of shells, stacks of cups and plates, odd things to eat.

  “And afterward everyone seemed to calm down.” Whandall’s voice trailed off. The other woodsmen were looking at him like… like an enemy. Kreeg wouldn’t look at him at all.

  CHAPTER

  2

  The world had moved on, and Whandall had hardly noticed.

  His brothers and cousins all seemed to have disappeared. Mostly the girls and women stayed home, but on Mother’s Day each month the women went to the corner squares where the Lordsmen gave out food and clothing and shells, presents from the Lords. There were always men around that day and the next. Later, they might be around or they might be gone.

  But boys appeared only for meals and sleep, and not always then. Where did they go?

  He followed a cluster of cousins one afternoon. As in the forest, he took pride in being unseen. He got four blocks before four younger men challenged him. They’d beaten him half senseless before Shastern turned around, saw what was happening, and came running.

  Shastern showed the tattoos on his hands and arms. Whandall had once asked about those, but Shastern had put off answering. They blended in with the terrible scars Shastern carried from the forest, but many of his cousins had them too. He never asked that kind of question of his cousins. Now Whandall did not quite hear what Shastern and his cousins said to them, but the strangers turned him loose and his cousins carried him home.

  He woke hurting. Shastern woke around noon and sought him out. Shastern was barred from speaking certain secrets, but some things he could say…

  Serpent’s Walk wasn’t just this region of the city.

  Serpent’s Walk was the young men who held it. These streets belonged to Serpent’s Walk. Other streets, other bands. The region grew or shrank, streets changed hands, with the power of the bands. They put up signs on walls and other places.

  Whandall had been able to read them for years. Serpent’s Walk had a squiggle sign, easy to draw. Dirty Birds was a falcon drawn wild and sloppy. Shastern showed him a boundary, a wall with the Serpent’s Walk squiggle at one end and a long thin phallus to mark Bull Pizzle territory at the other. Unmarked, one did not walk in Serpent’s Walk, or in Bull Pizzle or Dirty Bird either, if one did not belong. As a child Whandall had wandered the streets without hindrance, but a ten-year-old was no longer a child.

  “But there are places with no signs at all,” Whandall protested.

  “That’s Lord territory. You can go there until one of the Lordsmen tells you not to. Then you leave.”

  “Why?”

  “Because everyone is scared of the Lordsmen.”

  “Why? Are they so strong?”

  “Well, they’re big, and they’re mean, and they wear that armor.”

  “They walk in pairs too,” Whandall said, remembering.

  “Right. And if you hurt one of them, a lot more will come looking for you.”

  “What if they don’t know who did it?”

  Shastern shrugged expressively. “Then a bunch of them come and beat up on everybody they can find until someone confesses. Or we kill someone and say he confessed before we killed him. You stay away from Lordsmen, Whandall. Only good they do is when they bring in the presents on Mother’s Day.”

  Whandall found it strange to have his one-year-younger brother behaving as his elder.

  He must have spoken to Wanshig too. Wanshig was Whandall’s eldest brother. Wanshig had the tattoos, a snake in the web of his left thumb, a rattlesnake that ran up his right arm from the index finger to the elbow, a small snake’s eye at the edge of his left eye. The next night Wanshig took him into the streets. In a ruin that stank of old smoke, he introduced his younger brother to men who carried knives and never smiled.

  “He needs protection,” Wanshig said. The men just looked at him. Finally one asked, “Who speaks for him?”

  Whandall knew some of these faces. Shastern was there too, and he said, “I will.” Shastern did not speak to his brothers, but he spoke of Whandall in glowing terms. When the rest fled the forest in terror, Whandall had stayed to help Shastern. If he’d learned little of the customs of Serpent’s Walk, it was because he was otherwise occupied. When none of the boys would return to the wood but took to the streets instead, Whandall Placehold continued to brave the killer plants, to spy on the woodsmen.

  The room was big enough to hold fifty people or more. It was dark outside now, and the only light in the room came from the moon shining through holes in the roof, and from torches. The torches were outside, stuck into holes in the windowsills. Yangin-Atep wouldn’t allow fires inside, except during a Burning. You could build an outside cookfire under a lean-to shelter, but never inside, and if you tried to enclose a fire with walls, the fire went out. Whandall couldn’t remember anyone telling him this. He just knew it, as he knew that cats had sharp claws and that boys should stay away from men when they were drinking beer.

  There was a big chair on a low platform at one end of the room. The chair was wooden, with arms and a high back, and it was carved with serpents and birds. Some kinless must have worked hard to make that chair, but Whandall didn’t think it would be very comfortable, not like the big ponyhair-stuffed chair Mother’s Mother liked.

  A tall man with no smile sat in that chair. Three other m
en stood in front of him holding their long Lordkin knives across their chests. Whandall knew him. Pelzed lived in a two-story stone house at the end of a block of well-kept kinless houses. Pelzed’s house had a fenced-in garden and there were always kinless working in it.

  “Bring him,” Pelzed said.

  His brothers took Whandall by the arms and pulled him to just in front of Pelzed’s chair, then forced him down on his knees.

  “What good are you?” Pelzed demanded.

  Shastern began to speak, but Pelzed held up a hand. “I heard you. I want to hear him. What did you learn from the woodsmen?”

  “Say something,” Wanshig whispered. There was fear in his voice.

  Whandall thought furiously. “Poisons. I know the poisons of the forest. Needles. Blades. Whips.”

  Pelzed gestured. One of the men standing in front of Pelzed’s chair raised his big knife and struck Whandall hard across the left shoulder.

  It stung, but he had used the flat of the blade. “Call him Lord,” the man said. His bared chest was a maze of scars; one ran right up his cheek into his hair. Whandall found him scary as hell.

  “Lord,” Whandall said. He had never seen a Lord. “Yes, Lord.”

  “Good. You can walk in the forest?”

  “Much of it, Lord. Places where the woodsmen have been.”

  “Good. What do you know of the Wedge?”

  “The meadow at the top of the Deerpiss River?” What did Pelzed want to hear? “Woodsmen don’t go there, Lord. I’ve never seen it. It is said to be guarded.”

  Pause. Then, “Can you bring us poisons?”

  “Yes, Lord, in the right season.”

  “Can we use them against the enemies of Serpent’s Walk?”

  Whandall had no idea who the enemies of Serpent’s Walk might be, but he was afraid to ask. “If they’re fresh, Lord.”

  “What happens if they aren’t fresh?”

  “After a day they only make you itch. The nettles stop reaching out for anyone who passes.”