Salvation's Fire

by Justina Robson

  Kula thought about it. “I guess not. Maybe it would mean it wasn’t his fault.”

  “Even if he could not help being as he was, he still was the one who acted and set so much in motion.”

  Kula thought of the Kinslayer and of the Tzarkomen necromancers who had enslaved her people. Caracu were a part of Tzarkand, but because of their unique ways they had been shut away from the world and kept in isolation by the other Tzarkomen clans. The clans had kept them to use and the Kinslayer had treated them that way too, as a resource, not a people. They were the same, in a way. They took power for themselves. “Why are the powerful ones so bad?” She was angry, but ashamed of her anger. It felt like it was the fuel that had lit the fires of the ones she hated and that it might be the cause. But she felt it anyway. She hadn’t felt things much before now. She’d only been surviving, but now something else was happening to her. It was painful and difficult but that didn’t stop her. She wanted to know the truth of how things were.

  “Because they believe they know what is right to do, and they use their power to make people obey,” Lysandra said. “They think they can fix the world.”

  “He wanted to make it all add up,” Kula said. “Like me. I want it to make sense. I want the horrible things to stop. Forever. I want to fight and kill all those in the way. I want them to stop hurting people.” She looked fearfully at Lysandra. “But that’s what he wanted. To fight and kill. Will I be like him? Will I make you like him?”

  Lysandra rubbed their hands together. “You have to choose,” she said. “You have to do what must be done. But you cannot do nothing. That’s what it means to be alive. Even if you sat your days away in a little house far from anything, that’s still what you did, and that would change everything else in the world. So, you can be the warrior, the friend, the priest, the wanderer, the fool—any of those things. But I can’t tell you. You have to feel the life in you and trust it to tell you what to do.”

  Kula smiled a little bit, to show she understood, even if she didn’t like it. She wanted security, but there was only this moment and the way it flickered and dipped between them, the people and the worm. “Are we a monster?” she asked as they slowed down to make a tight turn, the path weaving them ever deeper into the darkness.

  “Oh surely.” Lysandra gripped her fingers so tightly that they hurt, their hands laced together, full of vivid energy and the exhilaration of the ride. “Yes. Yes!”

  “Yes!” echoed Kula and then they threw their hands up in the air at arm’s length and laughed, the frigid, dry air as making their eyes burn like fire.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  BUKHAM TURNED AS he heard Kula laughing. He was so glad for the sound. The ride was terrifying and Murti had become so still beside him that he thought he might have died. He felt so far from home that it almost physically hurt. A part of him was exhilarated, and he tried to stick with that part and ignore the rest. At least that way he got to hold onto a shred of dignity and dry pants. The rigging creaked as they bent this way, that way, in huge sweeping curves. It was getting darker all the time as they went below the reach of light. He could barely see his hand in front of his face. He thought maybe through the forest of whiskers he could see Kula waving. He tried to wave but he wasn’t able to let go of the leather straps that he was clutching for dear life. He smiled, but then a jolt and drop made him have to face forwards, heart in his mouth. They were now plunging down at a steep angle. He watched the wall slowly vanish and then there was only the tremendous sound and vibration of the worm and the heat radiating off it as they dived into absolute night, the icy air streaked in sharp pain across his cheeks.

  Then just as he thought it would never end he felt the closeness of the tunnel break open into a huge space and at the same moment light showed him the grey shapes of his arms and hands, the fur of the worm and Murti, who was pulling off his gloves. The light was coming from his skin, a soft, golden gleam of distant sunlight, patched with the Oerni patterns in strange continental spots.

  The worm was slowing to a leisurely pace, easing its way now across a flat plane and, as Murti’s radiance increased to make much of it visible, his light acted like a beacon and new fires lit with the same glow, which suddenly became hurtfully bright as it refracted from a million tiny facets in the walls of the gigantic hall they had entered.

  The creature had come to rest at the edge of a vast circle with a flat, smooth floor. The roof arched high up and came to a vertex way above them, a hill or a mountain high, Bukham would have said, but every bit of it was covered in a resplendent mass of crystals in purple and blue and white. The light, which glowed in sconces at the floor, ran up through these so that they all shone upon one another and gave the space a gentle, submarine light. At that moment of wonder the worm chose to shake itself, like a wet dog, and its handlers and all of the party were violently jostled with cries of alarm and reproach as the ripple went down the long length of the beast and nearly shivered them into all their constituent bits, or so it felt. A ripe stink issued from its fur afterwards. After that he was so glad to disembark the thing he nearly kissed the ground.

  At the centre of this hall a stone circle stood, much like those he was used to visiting on the year’s turn as they took the caravan in pursuit of the seasons of plenty. This one was not hewn but grown, however, and it had no cross pieces and no marks of human making. Crystals the size of walls stretched up, three of them making slender pillars all the way to the roof; the rest bluntly ended, the light inside them cloudy with billions of fractures. But they made an unmistakable Wanderer’s Circle. A shape within them lay unmoving and ugly, at odds with the room. Once the worm had been soothed and set to rest Murti went out to approach it and Bukham followed him tentatively, not sure if he were doing so from curiosity or out of terror of leaving the old man’s side.

  It took them a minute of walking to get there, Bukham slipping a little on the smooth floor, trying not to put Murti directly in front but doing so anyway as if he was in the tracks of the master and not using the master as a deflecting shield. By glimpses he gathered that there was a creature before them, large and strange, made of some kind of crystal like the room. Murti sighed as he arrived and the last light of his skin went out.

  “It’s dead,” he said, to Bukham since everyone else had remained at the edge by his command. “I feared that might be the case. Of course. He would have had to kill it. Or it died trying to stop him.”

  “What is it?” Bukham asked as Murti went forwards to the gigantic corpse of… whatever it was. Limbs of some kind were folded and possibly wings, although what you would do with wings down here was a strange thought. A long body was coiled up and the head hidden in the general jumble. A good many spines and spikes adorned it and had broken and fallen in pieces all around.

  “It was the Guardian of this place,” Murti said. “I made it long ago, to ensure I was never followed when I came this way out of the—”

  “Out of the what?”

  Murti turned and Bukham saw there were tears in his eyes and that he was struggling. “The other place. It doesn’t have a name and it cannot be named. You’ll know it when you see it. From there.” He turned back and put his hand out to touch the gleaming, transparent shape. As soon as he was within a hair of it, it shattered suddenly and completely into a brilliant, glittering dust and fell to the floor. For a while it fell slowly in a great cloud and Bukham heard a sweet, distant ringing sound in it like many tiny bells. A tiny portion of it lingered, lit with a soft, blue glow that was fading as they watched.

  “Goodbye,” Murti said to it and it seemed to spin for a moment before it sped off and was gone. Upwards, Bukham thought, although it was also dissipating as it went so maybe it only seemed like up. He looked down, thinking he would be covered in it, but even the dust was evaporating as he looked and in a moment or two there was nothing left to see.

  “Here is where we will go inside,” Murti said and bent down to pick up the tiny handful of ash or grey e
arth that remained at his feet. “And here is where we will return. Bring the others. Tell them to be ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “Ready,” Murti said. “Really, didn’t you learn anything in all this time?”

  Bukham turned, feeling foolish and angry, but he went. The walk was long and when he reached the worm’s side where a camp was being set up in the warm lee of its bulk he had got back to his normal self and realised that Murti was right. He was being stupid. He was here on this journey because he had never said no to it and now that it was getting to places he had never wanted to go, being interested only in staying with the caravan and the Posts and being a good Oerni, making his family proud, now he was finding that maybe he was interested to know what was going on with this divine being and the gods. He wanted to protect the little girl, because she had come to his stall and somehow that had expanded out into all this because she was involved with it in ways that he didn’t understand. He wouldn’t pretend he was ever going to understand it but he had buried the children on that farm and their fates were tied into this too—he felt it, but he could not express how it was. He hoped that he could do something to make that better than it was, or if that wasn’t possible, that maybe he could come to a way of seeing it that didn’t make him feel hateful and despairing and sad. He felt it was selfish, only wanting to feel better. It would be something greater to do as Celestaine did and try to make things actually better. He followed Murti because he believed, or, no, he had thought he believed, that Murti knew how to do this. But now there was a sensation he got off the old man that he was actually as he had always said, wandering, and he did not know any more than Bukham knew. He just had greater powers of winging it. This refusal to answer a question but instead make Bukham answer it was not because Murti had the answers and wouldn’t share them. He didn’t have answers any more than anyone else did. But perhaps that was the point. Bukham would always be a follower and a hoper and a dreamer until he was able to answer for himself and not even ask Murti’s view any more. Bukham was lost, but he knew it for the first time, and there was a peace in that.

  He found Celestaine, Heno and Nedlam waiting for him expectantly. He looked down at Celestaine’s resolute face. “He says it’s time to go.”

  “Go where?” Nedlam asked, looking at the entirely sealed cavern and the crystal circle.

  “Wandering off,” Bukham said and smiled, feeling how true and how unhelpful it was at the same time. “He’ll take you where. I don’t know how, so don’t ask me.”

  “Where the Kinslayer went to cut off the gods, I assume,” Celestaine said, adjusting the girdle that held her sword straight and hefting the shield on her back, testing how it was carried so that she could get at it easily. She looked up at Heno, to see how he was taking it.

  The light was making everyone a corpselike shade, but Bukham fancied that Heno looked greyer than usual. “I have been there before. It’s where the Heart Takers were sent to gain their… power.” There was more, his expression said, but he was going to carry it by himself. He glanced across the top of Celestaine’s head and Bukham saw Lysandra and Kula, tightly coated and booted against the cold. He waved at them and Lysandra tapped Kula to get her attention and then they came across to join the rest.

  “We’re going,” Bukham said. “Do you have everything you need?”

  Lysandra smiled and shrugged. “We are ready.” She looked down dotingly on Kula, who was solemnly looking at each of their faces in turn.

  Bukham studied them. He felt a deep resistance at the idea of taking a child into danger but he was too afraid of Lysandra to entirely believe that Kula was in that much danger. But looking at them they seemed a picture of a mother and child, entirely ordinary. The fire. The dragon. He swallowed awkwardly.

  “Lead on,” Celestaine said sharply.

  “Oh.” Flustered, he turned and made his way back across the room, slipping a little in the melting icewater from his own boots as he hurried, so glad he was not in charge of anything.

  They reached the centre where Murti was standing alone. At this point the floor was a transparent sheet. Bukham looked down and almost fell over. They were standing on ice over a clear, deep lake. Its rocky-sided descent plunged down and down, defined by the crystal pillars that grew through towards the roof. They were suspended in mid-air.

  “This place is somewhat grandly named the Lenses of the Mind,” Murti said, his voice gentle and meandering in the manner of an old man beginning the telling of a lengthy fireside tale. “You will find that…”

  The world flipped. One second they were in the cavern, listening to Wanderer, the next they were standing on a strange, dust-dry ground the colour of ash. Of the cavern there was no trace, other than the pillars which were revealed in a sepulchral light to be the trunks of petrified trees, black, their bark glinting with a constantly running coat of water that sank down into the sand and vanished among their roots. Leafless branches stretched up towards where sky ought to have been but when Bukham looked upwards he staggered and hunched with sudden fear.

  Instead of space and air, the rippling surface of a lake stretched, inverted, as far as he could see in all directions. The grey light fed down through this water came from a long way above from some presumed distant sky. The trees were revealed not to be branching up there at all, but rooting, their reach mapping the depth of the water until murky gloom consumed them. The water barely moved, giving the light a constant soft and despairing quality, sometimes shifting just enough to create the illusions of movement here and there across the landscape they found themselves in, studded with lifeless stone trees, scattered with small rocks. In the distance hills were visible, and the broken towers and battlements of cities. The air, dry, and warm only in comparison to where they had come from, was motionless, odourless.

  “…the transition is entirely unremarkable,” Murti concluded and waited for them to gain their composure back. “This is where I believe the gods were sent.”

  “You couldn’t come on your own and get them?” Nedlam asked, hefting Lady Wall onto her shoulder and turning to get a good look at everything.

  “I could, but creatures roam here that are hungry for memory and I would likely fall victim to them faster than I found anything. That’s what you’re for,” he looked at Celestaine, Heno and Nedlam. “Your business is to protect us so that we last long enough to find what remains.”

  Bukham saw a flicker at the edge of his vision and looked. Shadows, so faint as to be almost unseen, flowed over the nearest low hill. They were small, two or three of them, and it was difficult to be sure of them because of the occasional ripples of the lakelight.

  “We’re fighting shadows?” he asked, wondering.

  “The shadows are something we must all resist,” Murti said. “No, you are to fight the monsters who are what the shadows long to become. I think traditional means will suffice.”

  “All right,” Celestaine said with determination. “Which way?”

  “It really doesn’t matter,” Wanderer said. “The gods, if they still persist, will find us. Their hunger will lead them.” He looked at Bukham with a gentle smile. “Pick a direction.”

  Bukham looked at the city far away. The walls at least promised some kind of protection. He pointed.

  “So be it,” Murti said, as though resigned to the walk as a needless expense.

  They began to walk, their feet raising small puffs of grey-brown dust that settled behind them such that it left no trail at all.

  “Why are you talking about the gods like they’re already finished?” Heno asked, and the tone surprised Bukham and even made Celestaine look at him with concern because its major tone was one of fear, raw enough that he could not cover it up.

  “Here the gods are prey for greater, stranger things,” Murti said. “They are being hunted. As are we all. What remains depends on how savage they have been or if they have fallen. Those that have been consumed may have changed beyond recognition. It is what the Rec
koner would have felt was a fitting adjustment, given that he could not kill them. He sent them here, to be eaten or dissolved and made again.”

  “And we’re here to what?” Bukham asked, very quiet so as not to attract the attention of anything nearby—it was impossible to see with any conviction beyond a short distance. As they moved a certainty moved with them in a ring, but beyond the reach of easy seeing the few features that there were seemed to dissolve into a mystery, with only suggestions of form remaining. It wasn’t that they couldn’t see. It was that they could not know what it was that they were seeing.

  “We’re here to discover what has happened and, I think, we must close the ways that lead from here to our own plane, regardless of what we find”

  “And the girl?” He had to know, not that he could stop anything. He just had to know.

  “Oh, I’ve no idea, but since she led us this way to begin with I think there is probably a good reason for her to be here.”

  “Crazy,” Nedlam said, but not in a way that suggested she was offended. “What about the other one?”

  “I think she has a purpose here,” Murti said. “In fact, I was rather counting on it.”

  Bukham heard Celestaine grinding her teeth. “Do you not think it might be wise to tell us your plans now while we still have time to hear them?” She had paused and was peering intently out to their left where something shimmered like a darker shape in the mirages, constantly returning from erasure with ever increasing frequency. She readied her shield and drew her sword, stepping in that direction as they continued to travel, slowly.

  Murti nodded in agreement, wholehearted. “My dear, if I had a plan, you’d be the first to know.”

  Heno pushed Lysandra and Kula behind him. Bukham did his best to keep position at the front, though all his attention was on terrified glances to the left. Aside from the sounds of their own voices and movements there was a deep and utter silence.