SpringFire

by Terie Garrison

Shivering, she nodded.

  I took a double watch, thinking she needed the extra rest to get over being chilled. When I woke her to relieve me, it felt good to lie down and fall asleep in a warm room.

  I dreamt of Anazian. Watching me. Laughing at me. My mouth was dry, and I felt thirsty deep in my soul. Oh, so thirsty. A rattling noise, and then something shook me, hard, as if to tear my flesh from my bones.

  But, of course, it was only Shandry shaking me. It must be time for my next watch. The dream had been disturbing, and I didn’t feel at all rested as I sat up.

  “Sorry to wake you so soon, but it’s Traz,” she said. “He’s mumbling in his sleep.”

  I scooted over to him. His lips moved, and random, unintelligible sounds came from his mouth. His voice grew louder and stronger, as if it were getting used to speaking aloud again after a long silence, but the words were no more distinguishable than before.

  Then, without any warning, his eyes flew open and he sat up. If his leg hadn’t been immobile, bound to his staff, I was sure he would’ve sprung to his feet.

  “What?” he cried out. “Where? Who?”

  I am trapped like an animal in a cage. I pace round and round in an endless circle. To my surprise, I find I’m crawling on all fours. Have I become an animal? Tears stream down my face, and I lick them, their saltiness filling my mouth and increasing my thirst.

  “We have only just begun,” says a voice nearby. Is he speaking to me? Of me? My thoughts are vague and dim. “All will be well, and you will learn the error of your ways. Then we shall dance together with joy. You will see.”

  But I cannot dance; I cannot even stand. I can only pace. Round and round and round I go as that which makes me human flees.

  I put a hand on Traz’s shoulder, trying to convey a sense of calm to his spirit. His eyes lost a little of their wildness.

  “Donavah?” he said, peering at me. “Is that really you? I thought … but no, that must’ve been a dream.” He rubbed his face. “What happened? Where are we?”

  Shandry went to Traz’s other side and handed him a steaming cup. “Here. Drink this. You need it more than I do.”

  Traz took the cup and sniffed it, then sipped. “I still don’t understand. Where are we? What is this place?” He made a move as if trying to stand. “And why is my staff tied to my leg?”

  We told him what had happened.

  “But,” he said with a frown when we’d finished, “I feel fine. My leg doesn’t hurt at all.”

  I examined it again. It did indeed feel perfectly normal. But even if we’d managed to set it properly, Traz should still be in a great deal of pain. “Well, I’ll take the splint off,” I said. “I can check it over better that way, anyway. But if it hurts, you tell me immediately.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll shout.” And his impudent grin flashed in the firelight. If I hadn’t known better, I’d never have believed he’d just awakened from almost a full day of being unconscious.

  Shandry and I worked together to unbind Traz’s leg. We went slowly and carefully. About the time we reached his knee, Traz winced loudly. We both froze until he started giggling. I swatted his arm, then went back to work.

  “Now, don’t bend it,” I said when we’d finished. “Just sit there until I say.” I felt his leg, paying special attention to his knee, but as before, nothing at all seemed wrong. “Are you sure it doesn’t hurt?”

  “Why would I lie about something like that? Now would you please just let me get up? I’m kind of stiff, you know.”

  Shandry and I shared a confused look. “Start by trying to bend your knee,” I said.

  He drew both legs up to his chest. “There. Are you satisfied?” And before either Shandry or I could say anything more, he rose to his feet and started walking around the hut. He stretched out his arms and swung them around, then raised them high over his head. I could almost feel his spine pop.

  Still sitting facing me, Shandry whispered, “It’s not possible. It’s just not possible.”

  I agreed, but still hadn’t found my voice with which to express it.

  Traz came back to the fire, picked up the cup of tea, and drank some more. “Now,” he said, “is there anything to eat in this place? I’ll cook it myself if you two are just going to stare at me like a couple of noodges.”

  I almost burst out laughing.

  The next few days we made good progress. The weather held reasonably fine, the hunting was good, and we hadn’t come close to running out of supplies. Every day, I got better and better at husbanding the use of my maejic so that I stayed comfortable but didn’t use too much, and each afternoon’s meditation refilled me. Traz went on as he’d started, walking ahead of us twirling his staff in ever more complicated patterns, and now I didn’t begrudge a moment of it.

  Shandry and I never talked about the argument we’d had and the revelations she’d shared. I felt uncomfortable knowing these intimate things about her life and wished I could just forget them. She, in turn, grew distant from me, as if she wished she hadn’t spoken up, especially as events turned out.

  Three days after Traz’s accident, we passed a stone marker. The four-sided obelisk stood about waist high, and on each face, carved in relief, was a dragon whose impossibly long tail swirled into complex curlicues. The design somehow tricked the eye, making it appear as if the dragons were in motion.

  Shandry stood in the middle of the road, arms crossed over her chest and a closed expression on her face, while Traz and I examined the marker, laughing in fascination at the illusion.

  “C’mere and look at this,” Traz said, trying to coax some interest out of Shandry. “It’s just about the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

  She gave a stiff shake of her head. “I don’t need to see it.” Her words came out tight and clipped. “I know what it is.”

  I looked at her closely and asked, “And that would be?”

  “Can’t you guess?” Her eyes were black as well as bleak.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it before. What is it?”

  She let out a hiss of exasperation. “It’s the marker for Rennirt’s lands. Now, can we please get moving? It’s three days to the other marker, and the sooner we get there, the better.”

  Traz scowled at me in frustration when I agreed with Shandry that we should be going. I could only hope he wouldn’t question me about it later. I didn’t want to lie to him, but I couldn’t tell him Shandry’s secrets, either.

  We didn’t come to the next way station until well after dark. When the sun set, Traz complained and said it was warm enough to camp, but though he was right about that, Shandry and I both wanted to push on.

  When we finally reached the way station, we followed our usual routine. Shandry unloaded and stabled Dyster, I gathered more wood so we wouldn’t have to do it in the morning, and Traz started cooking the meal. Shandry hadn’t wanted to let Traz out of sight in the afternoon, which is when he’d typically do the hunting for our supper, so we had to settle for porridge. Traz started to complain again, but I quelled him with a look. Shandry was taut with tension, and I was afraid she might come completely undone at any moment.

  After the meal, I went into a corner, which was as much privacy as I could get in the way stations, to meditate.

  At first, it had been hard to meditate in such close proximity to others, but I was growing accustomed to it. I slid through the steps easily this time. I’d not used much maejic during the day, so wasn’t in need of refilling. Instead, my spirit soared through the openness of the ether where lights of every color shot like falling stars across the sky. A warming sense of welcome enclosed me like a mother’s embrace.

  “What have we here? Well met again, indeed.”

  The words, spoken in that same quiet, melodious voice as before, froze my blood. And as before, I didn’t reply.
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  There was a soft gasp of sharply drawn breath, then, “Ride like the wind!”

  Everything went black, and I fell to earth.

  I came to myself with a bit of a start. I blew out the candles but remained sitting where I was. Pondering. I’d been so sure that it had been Shandry back on that first day. After all, she’d admitted that she’d been seeking me, and I hadn’t encountered that presence while meditating since then. I glanced surreptitiously over a shoulder to see what she was doing, only to find her engaged with Traz in a quiet conversation. Just as they usually did while I meditated. It didn’t make any sense. For the first time since arriving on Stychs, I missed Yallick. Surely he would’ve been able to explain what these strange meditation sessions meant.

  Eventually, unable to make any sense of what had happened, I put my meditation kit away. I felt sleepy and yawned.

  Shandry said, “I have first watch tonight. If you’re that tired, why don’t you go to sleep?”

  “I think I will,” I said with another huge yawn.

  I rolled up in my cloak, and the crackling of the fire and the soft voices of the others sent me to sleep.

  Later that night, it seemed as if I’d scarcely fallen back to sleep after my watch when I was awakened by the door of the hut slamming against the wall, followed by a rush of people inside. I sat up, blinking my eyes in the dim light of the low fire. Beside me, Traz was doing the same.

  Someone shouted, “Don’t move!” and kicked Traz in the ribs.

  Before I could move a muscle, someone else swept into the hut, bowing his head so as not to strike it on the door frame. Fear spread out from this man, filling the room like a black fog and gripping my heart. I shrank back, wishing there were something to hide behind.

  His presence reeked of power; I could practically taste it, and its flavor was sour and rancid. I tried to get my breath as magic used up the air in the room.

  Traz let out a moan and vomited, drawing the attention of the man, who stooped over him and prodded him with a toe.

  “Ah, interesting.” The man dragged a finger across Traz’s brow. Traz cried out in pain, and I scrambled to his side. The man held up a hand, freezing me in place. He looked through my eyes and straight into my soul.

  I couldn’t breathe. My heart stopped beating. I closed my eyes, struggling against panic. My thoughts grew cloudy. Then he released me, and I fell to the ground before him, gasping for breath.

  “This one,” he said, pointing a long finger at me, and this time, I recognized his strong, melodious voice.

  Hands grabbed me, lifting me to my feet. The man took my chin in his hand and forced my face upward. With his other hand, he traced my lips with a finger. Something tightened in my throat. He passed his thumbs over my eyes, and everything went completely black. I cried out in surprise, but no sound came out. He chuckled.

  “And something to keep you from using all that luscious power. Open your mouth.”

  I wanted to resist. I intended to. But as if I were being controlled by someone or something other than my own will, my lips parted and my mouth opened.

  Something hard and round was shoved in. It had a bitter flavor that made me gag and try to spit it out.

  “Now, none of that,” said the man, and a moment later a strip of cloth was wound around the lower part of my face. “I leave her to you, now. I shall expect you before sundown tomorrow.”

  With an evil laugh, the man stepped away. A moment later, he and his magic were gone.

  When Oggam learnt that his daughter, Dayrina was with child, he was livid. For Dayrina—his only offspring—had no husband, nor would she tell him who the father was.

  Oggam went to the herb woman and demanded she make the strongest abortifacient possible. The herb woman objected that the efficacy of the potion was related directly to the desire of the one who consumed it, but Oggam was not to be gainsaid.

  He forced Dayrina, who was all unwilling, to drink deeply of the potion. When days and days passed with no sign of miscarriage, Oggam grew angrier than ever.

  He tried other methods, grim and cruel, to loose the baby from Dayrina’s womb, but to no avail. Dayrina held fast to the soul who grew within her, and in the fullness of her time, she brought forth a healthy baby son, bearing the same clover-leaf birthmark on his shoulder that Dayrina had and as had her mother before her.

  Oggam, however, took the babe and, locking Dayrina in the pantry, took him to the village green, leaving him in the appointed spot to die or be taken, howsoever it was meant to be.

  Dayrina beat upon the door, pleading with her father not to do this thing. She worked to loose the hinges until her fingers bled. But Oggam’s heart would not be softened toward her, this daughter of his old age, this girl who reminded him in so many ways of her long-dead mother.

  The next afternoon, a village elder arrived with the news that the baby had been taken, no one knew by whom. Oggam sighed in relief while Dayrina wept for sorrow.

  Not wanting to risk another unwanted grandchild, Oggam sold the house and removed far away, to a distant village where he had kin. Surely now life would return to its former happy routine.

  But Dayrina pined for her lost son. By rights, the day he turned six months old should have been his naming day. Then his first birthday, which should have been a day of celebration, passed. But Dayrina did not recover from her grief as these anniversaries passed, and on the eve of her son’s second birthday, she died of a broken heart.

  Finally, belatedly, Oggam grasped the error of his chosen way. He wept at Dayrina’s grave, beating his hands on the earth and tearing out his hair. When the worst of his grief had burnt itself out, he resolved to right what he had done wrong: he would find Dayrina’s son and bring him up himself. Let the child take his mother’s place as Oggam’s heir, that his despair might be relieved and his line not come to an end.

  He returned to his village and began to seek in earnest. Word went far and wide that Oggam sought the child who’d been taken from the village green two years before. But every clue he chased, every faint path of hope he followed, all came to naught.

  Then one night a dark figure came to his door. Oggam could not tell whether it was a man or a woman, neither by appearance nor by voice. This person, who claimed no name other than “wise one,” would not set foot across the doorstep, but from the shadows offered to find Oggam’s grandson. It would take, promised the wise one, nothing more than a simple ritual of finding, one that was known to only a few. The cost: everything that Oggam had—his gold, his property, all that he valued. And yet all this, set against keeping his name alive, was as nothing to Oggam, who willingly agreed to the price.

  As instructed, at midnight nine days later, Oggam arrived at the place the wise one had told him, a secret place deep in the bosom of the mountains, a place of mystery and of magic and of marvel. The black-cloaked wise one stood at the head of a large, flat stone on which lay a covered bundle. Oggam crept nearer, fearful yet curious to see a ritual the like of which he’d never heard of before this.

  The wise one muttered words in a language Oggam did not know, whilst candles, magically suspended in the air, flickered. With an unexpected movement, the wise one whisked off the covering from the bundle to reveal a small human figure bound to the stone, gagged and unmoving. Oggam recoiled from the sight but felt compelled to keep watching, anxious that this ritual of finding succeed.

  With an unearthly cry, the figure raised a knife above the stone. Its blade glittered in the moonlight, capturing a beam and reflecting it onto the figure below.

  In which Oggam saw, only a second before the knife plunged into the child’s heart, Dayrina’s clover birthmark.

  ~an ancient tale from the deeps of time

  Before I could gather my wits, a woman with a sharp, nasal voice said, “Tie ’em up.”

  Moments later, my
hands were bound securely behind me.

  The woman who’d given the order whispered in my ear, her breath warm and sour on my cheek. “Rennirt is well pleased. Oh, yes, very well pleased indeed.”

  Rennirt! Shandry’s father!

  “Shove them off into the corners. And make sure they can’t move.”

  The guards holding me dragged me to a corner and forced me facedown to the ground. They tied my ankles together, then, to my horror, pulled them up behind me and tied them to my wrists. My leg muscles cramped up against the awkward position and tears sprang to my eyes.

  In a miasma of fear and pain, I lay there, unable to do anything—not even move—except listen to the guards’ long carousing. From their voices, I concluded they were all women. The sound and the smell of them filled the room.

  I couldn’t tell if the thing in my mouth was a stone of some kind, or perhaps the pit of a strange fruit, or what. It no longer tasted horrible; it had no flavor at all for it had numbed my tongue. Swallowing was making my throat grow numb, too. Stranger than that, though, was the numbness that blanketed my maejic. Anazian had cast a spell on me that made me believe I’d lost my power, so I knew that feeling well. But this was different from that time.

  I withdrew deep into myself. The laughter and bawdy conversation of the women became so much sighing of wind in trees. I couldn’t be bothered to give a drop of attention to it.

  I sought my maejic. When at first I couldn’t find it, I tried not to panic. Anazian, for all the effort he’d put into trying, hadn’t been able to take it away; surely neither could Rennirt. I must simply go deeper to find it. I slowed my breathing, calmed the beat of my heart. Being unable to move or to see seemed to help, to strengthen my inward focus.

  And there it was, so deep in my soul I almost missed it. It was hard and cold, like a lump of ice. I touched it, gingerly, not wanting to damage it. It burned like fire yet left frostbite behind. Its heart was still aflame, just waiting to be loosened. Once the stone was out of my mouth, I knew my maejic would burst forth into life again. I need only be patient.