The Memory of Fire

by Callie Bates

  “You’re wrong, Jahan,” Madiya says coolly. “You do need my help. And Lathiel’s.”

  But Lathiel’s shaking his head. His face is peaked, and I can see the tremor when he lifts his hand to touch her elbow.

  “You haven’t been giving him the laudanum, have you?” I say. “Do you even know why he’s shaking?”

  Madiya just pushes Lathiel behind her and lifts her chin. “He’s going to be the greatest sorcerer the world has ever seen.”

  “Oh? And what about Rayka and me? It was going to be us when we were—”

  “Jahan!” Elanna’s shouting at us from the street ahead. “Come on! There’s no time for arguments!”

  Another quake rocks the earth. She’s right. But still I hesitate, looking at Madiya and Lathiel. I don’t know how to prevent her following us, short of physical violence. And I don’t want Lathiel to see me punch her, even though it would be damned satisfying. At least, if she insists on coming, he seems to be pursuing her. Then I’ll know where he is.

  So I turn and run, compressing space to catch up with Elanna. When I look back, Madiya and Lathiel are on our heels.

  We race across the Middle Bridge, dodging trees now swaying in the rising wind. The sky has turned pitch black and more ash is falling, sticking in our mouths and eyes, filtering into our lungs. All four of us are overtaken by coughing. Somewhere in the distance, despite the falling ash, I catch the red gleam of fire spewing from the mountain.

  “Hurry.” Elanna grasps my hand. Then we’re running through the streets, past the university. Here, more trees crowd the cobblestones. But these have begun, strangely, to fray around the edges, like shadows exposed to light. El pants an explanation: “Tullea’s illusions. She made trees to supplement my trees. I couldn’t do enough alone. The ones on the bridge are real—they had to be, to frighten the imperial soldiers. But otherwise they’re mostly illusion, with a few real ones mixed in.”

  No wonder they were able to terrify the city into submission. To all appearances, the trees not only marched like an advancing army, but multiplied beyond belief. I nearly laugh as we turn the final corner to find the bulk of Solivetos Hill before us. The steps have been put back into place—Rayka’s doing, I suppose—and we pant up to the top and collapse in the upper temple. My limbs are shaking with exhaustion; I feel as though I could sink into the floor.

  But then the power of the well pulses into me. It’s like waking from a dream. My tired muscles feel bright with sudden life. My mind clears. Even the ash feels less sticky in my lungs.

  I glance at Madiya. She’s staring at the font, her hands open in front of her. Even she must feel its power.

  “How is Alcibiades doing this?” I demand. If she’s here, she might as well answer some questions. I want to ask how a sorcerer has gotten to be the grand inquisitor, but it will have to wait.

  “He can’t be a Caveadear,” Elanna says. She looks a little ill at the thought.

  “Oh,” Madiya says, as if everyone knows this, “he doesn’t need to be. You can create a similar effect with a knowledge of physics. That is,” she corrects herself, “it is possible to make it look like the same thing, to the untrained eye. And all eyes in Ida are ignorant when it comes to sorcery.”

  “You never taught us how to do this,” I say quietly. “I don’t know how to make a volcano erupt.”

  “Well, you…” Then Madiya seems to think better of denigrating my abilities. She glances at Lathiel, but he’s sunk to the ground beside the font. Shivering. “He can do it.”

  I stare at my little brother, whose enormous, hollowed eyes stare back up at me. “No,” I say, “he can’t. He’s sick.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Madiya says impatiently. “He’s stronger than you ever were.”

  I stare at her. Lathiel is now her favorite, the one who will be the greatest sorcerer in the world, and this is how she treats him? As if he’s a toy she can rewind and make perform again?

  In two strides, I cross to my brother and pull off my coat. I kneel beside him and wrap it around his shoulders. I whisper to the linen, Warm him. His skin feels cool, clammy to my touch. When I clench his shoulders, he seems to struggle to focus on my face. “Stay right here,” I whisper to him. “Hang on. I have to deal with this mountain, but I’m coming back for you. Don’t let her take you anywhere.”

  He blinks dully at me. But then he nods, and my heart squeezes with relief.

  I stand, folding my arms, facing her. Blocking her access to him. “You’ll just have to deal with Elanna and me, I’m afraid. Tell us what to do—if you know.”

  Madiya’s gaze shifts back and forth. She takes a step forward, as if she thinks I might let her touch Lathiel, but I hold fast and she sighs.

  “It’s simple enough, if one has the power,” she says. “The mountain appears dormant, but there are always forces working within it. Igniting a lava flow is the same principle as lighting a candle, only on a grander scale. The volcano holds the memory of eruption. The potentiality. All one must do, in theory, is unlock it.” She’s got her professorial voice on, educating us with her usual alarming competence.

  And I can see it. I can see how one might cause a volcano to erupt, the same way one might light a candle. If the candle has been lit before, it holds the memory of fire. A volcano that has erupted holds the memory of erupting. The potential to erupt again.

  Elanna has bowed her head. Now she lifts it and strides over to the font. She puts her hands into the well; her back arches. A pulse of panic rises in me. But then she turns around, holding her hands up. Sparks of light seem to flare around them, there and gone.

  “I’ll try to soothe the earth,” she says, “but I don’t know if it will listen. It’s so far gone, and I’m not the steward of this land.”

  Gathering herself, she walks out of the temple. With a last glance at Lathiel, I start to follow, but Madiya snags my sleeve.

  “She can’t do this,” she says.

  I stare at her; her eyes are level. Serious. “You don’t know Elanna.” I yank my arm out of her grasp. She has no right to touch me.

  “Listen, Jahan. You can help her. It’s the same principle as any fire, or anything that moves.” Madiya’s voice is stern, but there’s something pleading in her manner. A hunch to her shoulders. “Take the power in the font, and use it.”

  I study her. The woman who once, I thought, ruined my life. The woman who tried to shape me and my brothers into something we never asked to be. The woman who, when all things are considered, did the most to make me what I am. Not who I am—credit for that goes to Elanna, Aunt Cyra, the friends I’ve made in Paladis and Eren and Caeris, and most of all to myself. But Madiya is the one who made it possible for all of me to be standing here now. If not for her, would Ida even be welcoming reform, or legalizing sorcery? Would I be saving the city from Alcibiades and the Saranons?

  Maybe not. But it doesn’t excuse what she did to me. Or Rayka, or Lathiel, or my mother.

  I hesitate. Wind bellows around the temple, and ash pours in through the cracked roof. I don’t have time to waste.

  So I decide to do what she says. Just this one time.

  “Go out of the temple and don’t touch Lathiel,” I order her. “If you do, I’ll know. And I’ll make you regret it.”

  She actually flinches. But she does as I demand. I wait until she’s retreated through the doors. Beside me, Lathiel still shivers, though less now that I’ve wrapped him in the coat. I can’t stand leaving him here, but I have no choice. This time, I don’t think Madiya will cross me.

  I plunge my hands into the font, letting the power surge into me, the rich light buzzing in my skin. And then I walk outside to find Elanna.

  * * *

  —

  SHE STANDS BY the wall in her greatcoat, barely visible through the spiraling ash and the vicious thrum of the wind. I fumble to her side,
and when I brush her hand, the humming power inside me seems to recognize and mingle with that inside her. She turns to me, her eyes luminous.

  “It’s not enough,” she says. “I can’t call the eruption back. The ash…” She starts to cough.

  I breathe in, feeling the ash drift into my lungs. Somehow, with Tirisero’s power, I can spread my mind wide and feel what Elanna’s already done. She’s whispered to the land, trying to soothe it, but it won’t be soothed. The land north of us is slowly shifting, redirecting the lava flows away from the city, but the lava itself is still flowing and the land is moving too slowly. And then there is the ash muffling the air, filtering into our throats. “Tell me what to do.”

  “The ash.” She coughs again. “Move it out—bring in a wind.”

  So I reach for the wind itself, wild and high and fierce. I feel its potential, a strong and elusive thing. I tell the wind to sweep the ash in great gusts high into the atmosphere, away from Ida, but it’s already blowing so strongly that at first it won’t obey me. I dig my heels in, opening my arms wide, and let the well’s power pour out of me. The wind jerks and snaps. Ash falls into my mouth and lands on my eyelids. My muscles are straining. The ash is smothering my nose; I can’t breathe deeply enough. I don’t know if I can do it.

  But I pull more power into me, until I am as overspilling as the well itself, until my body hums. Away north of the city, where Aexione must be, I can feel another source of power, like a distant throb. It must be the well Alcibiades found. Its power runs like a river through the earth, up into Mount Angelos. Unstoppable.

  Yet Alcibiades isn’t trying to command the wind or the ash or the lava flows. He’s poured all his power into the mountain itself and the fire within it. If we can contain its effects, we can fight back.

  I reach again for the wind, and this time it obeys me. The first gusts are too low, nearly sweeping Elanna and me off the ledge. But they catch the ash, and I squint my eyes open to see it dance into a great black cloud. I’m more careful with the next, reaching for a higher layer of atmosphere, kicking the ash up and up, out to sea, up toward the lowering sun. The wind is cantankerous, difficult to hold, not particularly obedient.

  But it does its job. The ash disperses slowly. It’s lifted in great sheets off the top of the erupting mountain, piling high into the sky, away from Ida, away from us.

  “Water!” Elanna gasps. “The sea!”

  I can almost breathe now. I feel for the sea shoving up against the shore, the tension in the waves gathering, surging out from Ida. I reach for the potential in the water particles, but they slide away from me. Then I sense, strong and fierce, Elanna’s power dart past my own into the waves. It’s as if she’s holding up the wall of water, letting it trickle slowly through her fingers. Beside me, she’s gasping with the effort. Shaking. But she holds.

  I don’t know how to help and, besides, with so much of the ash lifted, I can see the spitting fires now on the mountain. The lava is still flowing down, spilling over the folds El has coaxed into the land. I stare at it, feeling the sweat cooling on the back of my neck. But Tirisero’s power still thrums in me, and I find myself thinking, What is lava but streams of molten rock? If Alcibiades can make a mountain erupt by reminding it that it has the potential to do so, then I can make it cool by reminding it that the rock, though now liquefied, also has the potential to be solid.

  But it’s running—fast—and Alcibiades is still pouring his power into the core of the mountain itself. Perhaps, once again, I can slide past him. I draw in a breath—tasting the lingering ash in the air—and reach under the ground, to the pores in the earth through which the lava is seeping. I remind them that they have the potential to be solid. Sealed up, solid rock, cool as marble. I talk to the flowing lava, reminding it that it doesn’t have to run: that it can grind, slowly, as rock, down to the sea. It is also reluctant, but again I insist.

  And at last, it slows to a few rivulets of fire that seem to scald through my own body. Then even these trickle into nothing more than memory, into hardened, blackened rock.

  The earth trembles, and subsides.

  The mountain is still shivering, but Alcibiades’s grip on it has slackened. Small tremors still run through the earth, but they’re aftershocks, not the main event. Ash might still linger in the sky, but the wind is slowly blowing it away. Elanna soothes the rushing water and now releases a final stream away from Ida, out into the Middle Sea.

  It’s over.

  I fall back into my body. I don’t know how long we’ve been standing here. My feet are cold and numb. My hands feel hot, scorched, as if by fire.

  Elanna sags against me. It’s an effort to reach my arm around her waist. The power still hums inside me, irrepressible. My heart seems to beat too fast. But the mountain has quieted, though it will never be the same shape again. It’s elongated now, a massive, square ridge rather than a dome. Through the dusty, darkening sky, evening stars seem to drift overhead, spun with the faintest ash.

  Footsteps scrape the stones behind us. Rayka’s running up the stairs. He’s got a neckcloth wrapped around his nose and mouth, and for once he seems afraid rather than smug. When he sees us, he rips off the neckcloth. “You didn’t help anyone!”

  My head throbs, and shaping words with my mouth seems a foreign task. “What?”

  “People, all over the city!” He gestures angrily, stabbing the air with his hands. “Ash in their lungs! Dogs! Cats! They’re going to die from it!”

  I push myself onto my feet, swaying. Elanna also stands. Madiya watches us from a short distance away, her arms folded. Lathiel’s come out of the temple. I look between my brothers and the sorceress who raised us, and I understand what’s wrong. I dispersed the majority of the ash, but I couldn’t remove it all; some still dances in the air. And the wind could hardly sweep away what had already been inhaled by people and animals.

  My brothers don’t know how to heal anyone except themselves. Do I have the power to heal all the people in the city and the surrounding land? Can I do it, without touching them? Hundreds, thousands of people?

  “Rayka, Lathiel,” Madiya says, “give Jahan your power.”

  “What?” I say.

  Rayka’s chin comes up. “No!”

  Lathiel just blinks.

  “You two reach into the font, and let Jahan take the power through you,” Madiya says, impatient. “It will work.”

  I stare from her to my brothers. Maybe she’s right. Maybe it would work. But doing it—taking my brothers’ power, at her orders—makes me no better than her.

  Quietly, I say, “You have no right to force them to do such a thing. I’ll do it myself.”

  I turn back to the parapet and stare over the city, feeling the power still buzzing in my hands. I draw in a breath. I don’t know if I can do this alone, truly. I might save everyone, but drain myself. Most likely I will. But better me than all the thousands of people living in Ida and the peninsula. Better to lose myself than steal my brothers’ power at Madiya’s orders.

  I gather myself. But just before I act, there’s a light touch at my elbow.

  Lathiel’s looking at me, his gaze still somewhat unfocused, his hands still unsteady. But sparks shine in his hands. “I’m going to help.”

  “You’re not well,” I protest. I glance at Madiya, but she’s retreated toward the temple, Elanna glaring at her. Did she put him up to this, somehow?

  Lathiel shakes his head. “It’s all right. She’s not making me. I want to.”

  “You do?”

  He nods.

  A heavy sigh comes from my other side. “Let’s get this over with.”

  I swing around to face Rayka. Light jumps in his hands, too. “You, too?”

  “Why is that so hard to believe?” Rayka says crossly. “I don’t want everyone to die. Just the people who deserve it.”

  I roll my ey
es. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes,” Lathiel says.

  Rayka practically implodes. “All the gods, Jahan, just start already!”

  I’m smiling, I realize. I reach out, gathering their hands in mine. It’s the first time we’ve been together like this since I was fifteen.

  “Kyros’s shameful descendants, all gathered in one place,” I say drily.

  “And Mantius’s,” Lathiel says, and the hope in his voice makes my throat tighten.

  I think of the vision I had of Mantius, sacrificing himself to seal the Tirisero font. My hero. Our hero. I want to be worthy of the man who gave himself to protect the city.

  So I close my eyes, and I feel my brothers’ power electric in their hands, pouring into me. I reach for it. I surrender into the power. The world seems to transform into flame. Into light, and the deep beat of water.

  I reach for the nearest person—Elanna. I feel her familiar shape, and the ash coating her throat and lungs. She’s still coughing. I whisper to the ash. Release, come out.

  It’s slow. Too slow, at first. But then I hear her gasp aloud, though I don’t open my eyes, and I know the ash has seeped out through her very skin.

  I reach for the next person. Rayka. The ash comes swiftly out of him. Lathiel’s lungs are more reluctant to release it, but they do. Now, with them healthy, we can turn to the rest of the city. Many now, humans and animals alike. Time seems to have slowed; perhaps the god, or Mantius, is with me. I seem to sense a presence larger than my own or my brothers’, though when I reach for it, it’s not there. I stretch myself out into my city, to the poor and beggars crowding the streets, the university students, the shopkeepers and bankers, the rich huddled in their fine Vileia mansions, the militia and the rebels. The sheep and hens and cattle, the dogs and cats and birds. Every living thing. I feel them all, like thousands of shining lights dampened by the gray dimness of the ashes.

  “Release,” I whisper, “come out.”

  Power surges through me. It blinds me. Deafens me. Gold light envelops my eyes; I waver like a candle burning a flame it can barely control.