Salvation's Fire

by Justina Robson

  “That’s am—” Ralas began but Celestaine was already talking across him.

  “What’s a mazagal?” she said.

  “Oh, it’s a special creation made by necromancers where they put several spirits into one body to create a being with extra abilities, usually because they want to send it back and forth between the realms of the living and the dead.”

  They all looked at Lysandra, snoring slightly as her head lolled against the round ribs of the centaur, Kula safely nestled in her lax embrace. In the firelight they looked exactly like any ordinary mother and child, peacefully resting after a long day.

  “Dead and evil?” Nedlam asked after a moment.

  “No,” Tricky said. “Even Reckoner wasn’t… well, he wasn’t until later but I think he’d been across too many borders, went too far and something, in one of those places, kind of changed him. You know that’s why they make mazagals.”

  “If she’s going to excuse that bastard I’m leaving,” Ralas declared firmly.

  “Nobody is excusing anything,” Murti said. “But there is some truth there. Before he was the Kinslayer he was the Reckoner and he wasn’t always as you knew him.”

  “My heart bleeds for your loss,” Ralas said coldly. “Meanwhile, what is this mazagal thing now? Is it dangerous?”

  “They are made with a purpose,” Tricky said, fishing around in her pockets for something. “So they are always kind of… what’s the word… on the lookout for doing that thing that they have to do. But they’re usually bound to the sorcerer that made them. There’s something that makes them serve. I don’t know. I’m thinking she was the price that the Tzarkomen wanted to pay to stop him wiping them out and for some reason he was willing to take it. Which is weird because he was well beyond deals at that point.”

  “I remember,” Celestaine said coolly.

  “Yeah, yah,” Tricky yawned. She had found what she was hunting for—a stick of birch—and began chewing on it vigorously, talking in between gnawings. “So, whose idea was it to go look for the gods?”

  “It was Deffo,” Murti said.

  “Wait, no. He said it was you,” Celestaine retorted. “He said that you had found a clue about how to reach them.”

  “Did he?” Murti scratched his head and shrugged.

  Tricky was watching them both like a hunting cat. She settled on Celestaine, “So, what? You just heard the clarion call of glory and went trotting off without a thought?”

  “No!” Celestaine said firmly. “Maybe. What’s your point?”

  Tricky waved her chewed stick at them, pointing at each in turn. “My point is that something… is afoot here.”

  “You see meanings where none exist,” Murti objected. “You’re always paranoid.”

  “Kind of a given where the dear old gods are concerned,” Tricky said, unrepentant. She fixed her gaze on Bukham, to his surprise. He’d been so fixated on following what everyone else was saying and doing he’d almost forgotten that he existed. “You,” she said, stabbing in his direction with the twig before jabbing it back in her face and fussing around, speaking with her mouth full of improvised toothbrush. “Yo’re un bit of it I don’ un’nerstand. You don’ fit.”

  Bukham said, “I only came because my uncle made me.”

  There was a pause.

  Tricky rolled her eyes. “Great. A wild card that’s a mummy’s boy.” She looked at Murti. “Where do you find them? No, don’t answer me, it was rhetorical. I know where you found him. We all found him.” She chewed the stick, grilling Bukham, then Murti, then Kula with her gaze. “Three’s the charm, eh?” She spat into the fire and listened to the hiss of sizzling spit with her head cocked. “Even fire agrees. So, that’s cooked.”

  Murti watched her with paternal amusement as she sighed, replaced the remains of the twig into her pocket and stood up with vigour. “So, I need to see for myself. Where is it? Up the hill there? No, don’t get up, you all look like you need some rest. Bags under your eyes could hold a dragon’s hoard. Know what I’m saying? I remember where the fire was well enough.”

  “You should,” muttered Heno, audibly. “You were there when it started.”

  “Yeah, funny story about that, but it’ll have to wait.” She turned with purpose and took one stride and then, even though the firelight reached a good four or five steps she was gone from sight. A few seconds later there was a rustle, a crack and a couple of sharp curses about damned boots, stupid invisibility charm, and then quiet returned.

  “Ah, that’s how I know her,” the centaur said in her mellifluous alto, breaking the strange spell they had found themselves under. “She was the one who held his cloak.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  KULA WOKE UP to the smell of something delicious mid-toast and the smoke of a wood fire. Beneath her cheek the soft form of her mother’s chest was steadily breathing and under her outflung hand the ribcage of the centaur was rumbling in a way that she thought funny, though the funny didn’t make it near her face. She opened one eye cautiously, then the other. It was dawn. The figures she remembered from the night before were busy breaking camp. A skillet was over the campfire and the fat stallholder was bent over it intently, watching bubbles pop in the top of pancakes, a machete held aloft, ready to flip them over.

  To his left the pale woman and the two monster people were busy in conversation as they polished and attended various weapons. She kept a long gaze on the painted tusker but he seemed engrossed in what he was doing, softened by his association with the warrior at his side, and none of them were paying attention to her. Carefully she pulled her hand off the centaur’s side and moved a bit to show that she was awake. A sense of disquiet and urgency kept colouring them all, but she thought it was different for each one of them.

  Her mother sighed and went to get up. Kula stuck close. She was able to hear a little, through her mother, and as she concentrated this ability grew. She wasn’t used to listening but she thought it must be useful and her mother was still not awake, not properly. She was only a little bit aware and she had almost no understanding of what was going on, so Kula had to lead her out to the security of some bushes to make water and show her how to manage the clothes, then back to the camp to get something to eat. She didn’t have to have the food herself but she knew how not eating made these people suspicious and anyway, the smell was very good. It had been that smell, among others, which had brought her out of the fields to Taib Post in the first place.

  She accepted two cakes from the stallholder, who gave her a well-meaning smile, a weary look that she knew meant she’d caused him trouble. She handed one on to Lysandra, shuffling the hot things in her fingers and trying not to laugh when Lysandra copied her as if it was an important part of the process. She copied the laugh too. Kula pulled a piece off her cake and popped it in her mouth. Lysandra mirrored her and then Lysandra’s eyes widened in surprise and she started grinning as she was eating and then she leapt up with joy and jumped around as Kula wanted to do but hadn’t, making noises of appreciation that startled everyone and pointing at her mouth and holding up the cake and shaking it as if it were the totem of a mighty spirit. The sun was just rising and it caught all the jewels in her hair and on her dress so that for a time she was a gyrating dancer of brilliant colour, graceless and exuberant, like a peculiar bird.

  Eventually she spun to a halt and toppled down, sitting, smacking her lips and making much of the cake. When her eyes met Kula’s gaze they were so full of life and fiery joy that Kula felt her heart catch it too. She had been right. Her mother was not gone, she had only been missing for a while and now they had found one another again. She smiled and ate her cake, filled with happiness.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  AS THE BREAKFAST was being made and served Ralas had noticed the strange, dark little woman come down through the trees from the hill summit. He paused and his heart skipped a beat with a strange lurch compounded of guilt and excitement, making him scowl. Quickly he flipped to another page of his journal,
away from the sketch he’d been making in an effort to capture the peculiar qualities of her appearance, so beguiling at certain angles and so hard at others. It was quite impossible and he had the smeared chalk of his efforts all over his fingers.

  He closed the leather bindings on second thoughts, and cleaned his hands on his ink rag, pretending great care over it as he peered through his ragged fringes to watch her strut—yes that was definitely the word for her gait. She was swinging a bag on long cords back and forth and walked right into the middle of breakfast with an air of satisfaction, picking a cake off the skillet with finger and thumb and juggling it as the big, gentle giant, Bukham, chided her and impotently waved his machete. In turn he got a reproachful thump off Nedlam who didn’t enjoy sharp things being wafted around her shoulders.

  “Mind your manners, boy,” she grunted. “I’ve killed men for giving bad haircuts before now.” She ran a hand through her inch-cropped hair, forking it stiffly into spikes and guffawed briefly. In fact, the atmosphere was incredibly pleasant all around and Ralas found himself smiling. He was still smiling when Celestaine caught his eye and raised her brow as if to say, “Oh yes? What’s up with you?”

  He quickly stared at his boots and heard her chuckle again. His face was not his friend again, it seemed, giving everything away. He brought a few verses of something he was working on to mind but was cut off his train of thought by the return of the centaur. In the light of morning she was astoundingly large, her horse parts mighty, her hoofs revealed now not to be single but tripartite, with something that looked very much like a spur at her heels, hidden by the heavy long feathers of hair that shrouded her from just below the knees. Something that large shouldn’t be able to move so quietly through thick woodland as she did.

  She was staring at him too: no, he was staring at her. He sighed and shrugged and she made a horselike expression of equanimity, furred ears flicking one forward one back, and tossed him an apple. He fumbled the catch with his pain-stiffened arm and watched it bounce off his thumb. Then he then fell off the rock he was seated on as he tried to grab it and heard Tricky snicker. For a few moments he lay in the grass, and then decided the sky was quite nice to look at and took a bite of the apple. It was only just the start of the season but it was sweet and good, not even a worm hole. His back ached and his legs and hands were their usual ruinously awful selves, but for a few minutes he could pretend that things were quite nice.

  That reverie was broken by Celestaine’s command voice saying with disbelief, “You’ve done what?”

  “Negotiated with the Draeyads for the box she came in,” Tricky said, through a mouthful.

  Ralas stretched his hearing as far as he could, holding the chewed apple against his teeth quietly.

  “And it’s where?” Celestaine sounded confused.

  “In here.” A patting sound of hand on pocket, or something like that.

  “How’s it fit in there?” That was Nedlam.

  “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” Tricky replied airily. “Point is, it’s covered in writing and I think I know the very people who could read it, thereby telling all of us exactly what’s going on here. Knowledge is power, and power is power and you’re about to take a strange, powerful thing to a strange, powerful place so don’t you think you should cut me a little slack. I am helping you.”

  “Yes, but why?” Celestaine said with all the puzzlement and distrust that Ralas wanted to feel but didn’t. Instead he felt a balmy, charmed kind of feeling that boded very ill. He made a couple of quick chews and swallowed.

  “Reasons,” Tricky said. “Like yours no doubt. And his. And hers. You know. Reasons.”

  “You’re a Guardian,” said Heno, “but what is your calling? Tricks are not a guardian kind of a thing.”

  “What would you know? It is so a thing. In fact, I’m not a Guardian. I’m more of a go-between, freelancer operative. Specialist. In a broad sense.”

  “Where’s Deffo got to?” Celestaine.

  “He’s looking at boats on the river. For when you’ll need them to get to the Freeport. He’s good with boats. Not much else. But boats, he’s good at. Or any other kind of general escape vessel. You’re best keeping him moderately terrified if you want him to be any use but I’d’ve thought you were well aware of that by now. Speaking of, what’s your interest in all this god business?”

  Ralas had never heard Celestaine short for a reply before but now he felt a distinct gap in which he imagined her composing herself and putting her chin down as she re-asserted some authority. But instead she said, “I can’t sit around at home. I’m in the way. I need something difficult and dangerous to do.”

  “Yeah, got to keep busy, eh?” Tricky said. “I heard you got the wings back for those birdy people. Not much you could do there but nice try. And that is why I am helping you. I’ve got my own paybacks and we share a common set of needs and businesses, as you might say. You want to see what happened to the gods. I want to see that too.” There was a definite edge to her voice which reminded Ralas of a steel for sharpening blades.

  “All right,” Celestaine said, in the way that meant she’d go along with it but not an inch further than she had to. “So, where are you taking the box?”

  “Catt and Fisher’s of course,” Tricky said. “And I’ll need someone with me for—well, I’ll need someone with me since me and the old Fish don’t quite see eye-to-eye. I’ll take him. He’s not doing anything for you.”

  Heno laughed and Ralas felt his ears go hot. He took a bite of the apple and let the noise of his own chewing drown out whatever else was being said as he wondered if there was some chance that there was more interest in him than simply the need of a stooge for whatever she had planned, if she wanted his company specifically for reasons. He wasn’t sure if he hoped that was true or not. He did. But then again, she was obviously terrible trouble in any imaginable sphere. It occurred to him that maybe he ought to voice an opinion about it all and not lie there like a dumb ox being traded at the market but then again as soon as he got up the world would go back to the business of being unpleasantly real and in need of painful actions and he was enjoying it from the position of not really bothering. Left alone he would have stayed there all morning, turning over little dreams and phrases, fitting them into a story of his own liking and a tune that suited.

  “It’s up to him,” Celestaine said with extra volume, so he took it as his cue and sat up.

  Everyone was looking at him.

  “I…” He hadn’t actually had any plans but now it seemed like he should be making an objection so that he didn’t look like a complete fool, but his only sense of a future event beckoning was the possibility of re-starting the Festival that bards had attended in the autumn at Cinquetann Riverport and since the start of the war that had been out of the question, and was now only slightly a question since he had lost track of everyone he knew and was afraid to find out their fates. “I can always go there and leave some messages. I was going to anyway. It’s a good place. Everyone goes there. We can rejoin you at Ilkand. If that’s still where you’re going to get the boat north. I mean I can rejoin you. There.”

  He kept his attention on the small woman though he looked straight at Celestaine. Beside her Heno was doing the slow blink he did whenever someone talked very fast. Celestaine herself had a curious look and she gave a sideways glance at Tricky. “All right. I was just thinking it might be better to try to hide these two—” she indicated Lysandra and Kula. “Rather than drag them around the countryside.

  “I don’t think you should let them out of your sight,” Murti said, belching after one too many pancakes. “I certainly won’t.” His voice was mild but his resolve unwavering.

  “Fine. Then let’s get moving.” Celestaine looked at Horse. “Are you coming or will you turn back at the edge of the trees?”

  “I am coming with you. We wish to see the evolution of this matter and also the Forest itself has been destroyed in large part; by the war an
d by people wherever they go. Now that I am free to walk again it is my duty to repair and replace, seed and nurture, to keep the Forest connected as one. I will go with you to the coast. Ilkand fell more than once and every time the armies destroyed more. It will be a good place to start again.”

  Lysandra, hands slimy with butterfat, lips gleaming, glanced up from where she was attempting to clean Kula’s hands on some broad leaves. “Me go. Me see too. We. We see.” At her side the girl kept her head down, frowning as if she was concentrating though her hands weren’t moving. Ralas felt a shiver run over his arms.

  Those standing shared a look that acknowledged they hadn’t known she could talk. Tricky stood up slowly, joining in, and said quietly. “See, the girl is her sorcerer. She can’t hear. But the mazagal can hear. She’s teaching it.” She snickered and tossed back her curly black hair. “Now we need to get that fortune off her before she has ideas about it herself. This expedition isn’t going to come cheap.”

  Lysandra stood with a swift, elegant movement that startled all of them. Ralas felt his hand go for his dagger hilt automatically. She pulled hard at a diamond secured to her skirt and ripped it clear of the embroidery. She held it out and then with a swift flick tossed it to Celestaine. “Take. I pay. Pay all.”

  Celestaine swiped it out of the air and looked down at the jewel in her palm for a moment. She held it up in her fingertips and they were all briefly dazzled by the brilliance of rays shooting from its many facets. “Most people’s homes are worth less than this stone.”

  “Nobody has any use for rocks right now,” Tricky said. “But there’s enough small ones to use in trade. Keep the big ones for other things. I’ll have a few. Scholarship of the kind I need doesn’t come cheap.”