The Burning City

by Larry Niven

  Hammer turned without surprise, one hand hidden. The other held a milk pot. "I want to get some tar," he said.

  "I can't let you go. Your sister would kill me."

  "No, not Willow. Carver might. We can sell it."

  "How do you know?"

  "Everyone needs rope!"

  "How much do you need?"

  Hammer showed him a milk pot. "This much. I don't think I can lift it when it's full. I'll have to get Carver."

  Whandall watched how they went about it.

  First they talked the problem to death.

  Carver and Willow tied a rope to Hammer's waist. Then, while Hammer danced with impatience, they tied another rope to the neck of the jar and let the rope trail.

  Hammer went over the fence. He walked with some care and, twelve paces out, found his feet mired.

  The coyote came out of nowhere, streaking for the mired boy. Whandall touched the beast with flame. A ring of flame flashed outward. Hammer shouted and ducked. The flame just singed him before it puffed out.

  Carver was cursing him. Whandall said, "Didn't think. Sorry."

  The coyote was gone. Hammer was still mired.

  They pulled on the rope. He shouted. They left off long enough for him to scoop a mass of sticky black stuff into the jar, waist deep now and still sinking. They pulled again. It was hard work. Whandall joined them on the rope. Hammer tried to drag the jar after him, lost it, then caught the rope that tethered the jar and dragged it a little farther. When he could stand he braced himself and began pulling. Carver went over the fence, treading in the shallow footprints Hammer had left before he sank. Together they pulled the jar out half full.

  "Enough," Carver said.

  It wasn't that much different from a raid on some shop in Maze Walkers. Lurk, spy out the territory, test the defenses. Then go for it, gathering what you can. Anything unexpected has to be fixed on the fly. Settle for what you can gather in one pass; don't go back for more.

  And this awful stuff, which had already ruined every scrap of clothing he could see, could be made into wealth by moving it somewhere else. How did they know? That was the hard part.

  Now the wagon stank of tar, not of bodies long confined. The ponies pulled more strongly as they moved northwest. Whandall waited until he was moving up the Deerpiss before he made the Ropewalkers and Millers get under the floorboards. Tar pot on top. A guard would think hard before he lifted that.

  The brick guardhouse was in sight, its gates closed. Opening them wouldn't be complicated...

  A guard popped out, saw him, shouted, "Staxir!" Two more stepped out to study his approach. They all wore armor, but on this hot day none of them were fully protected, though they all wore masks.

  They swung the gate open and retreated back under an awning.

  What were Toronexti doing here? Though they looked edgy, weapons drawn, it looked like he could just drive on through.. ..

  Nan. He stopped alongside the awning and, before any of them could speak, asked, "Staxir? What are you doing here? The vineyard's nothing but muck."

  They laughed. They were older Lordkin, and wiser. "We're not here for Alferth!"

  "We'll miss the wine, though, Stax-"

  "This is the path. The Toronexti have to be here if the kinless want to leave."

  Another surprise? Whandall asked, "The path goes right through the forest? Really?"

  "No, but kinless still try it," Staxir said. "The Burning could start any hour, and don't they know it!"

  "So we look in their wagons and take what looks good, and in a day they come back, and we take-"

  "What're you carrying?"

  Whandall said, "Stuff for cutting trees."

  "What is that stink?"

  "Tar. The woodsmen, they cover their hands with it to stop plant poisons. There're kinless out past here getting lumber, aren't there?"

  "No," Staxir said.

  Whandall scratched his head. "Well, there will be. The Burning is on, so I took this stuff. I can keep it in the wine house, day or two."

  Men who might have taken some of his good tools a moment ago thought again. Eyes turned toward Tep's Town. Staxir said, "We gotta be here. Kinless'll be trying to get out again with everything they own."

  "You don't need us all, Stax."

  "Safer here. Dryer."

  Sounds of disgust.

  Whandall waved and drove on. He could guess the unspoken: a wagoneer who came this way with heavy gear to sell would be back with shells for a tax man's pockets. But Whandall didn't plan to come back.

  Weeds were starting to cover the trampled vineyard. Whandall pulled the wagon behind the brick wine house. The roof wasn't brick; it had been timber and thatch, and it had burned. Whandall cursed. He was tired of being wet.

  He got the children out of the wagon. Two youngsters were beginning to cry without sound. Whandall helped Willow out. Carver rejected his hand. He was still looking at Whandall like a dangerous animal. It was getting on his nerves.

  A stub of blackened timber poked from the wine house roof. Whandall let a little of his rage leak into it. Against the black-bellied clouds it made orange-white light and a bit of heat.

  Willow looked around her and said, "We're at the forest."

  "What is this place?" Carver asked.

  "Wine house," Whandall said. "The roof's gone, but the walls are still up." Shelter. But it was not yet noon, and he didn't want to stop. He looked at the malevolent forest across his path. Could they really get through that?

  Carver walked toward the woods and into them.

  "Careful!" Whandall called. He followed, with Willow just behind him.

  The redwoods towered over them. These were young trees, though tall enough to cut the force of wind-driven rain. Deeper in, they would be

  much bigger. A hundred varieties of thorns and poison plants clustered protectively around their bases.

  Whandall spoke to Willow, hoping that Carver and the children would listen. You didn't lecture a grown man directly if you could avoid it. "Stay clear of this thorny stuff. It's too dark to see how close you are. At night you wouldn't move at all. These pine trees, they won't hurt you. Almost everything else will. Even the redwoods make you want to look up when you should be watching your feet-"

  "Where did you learn about the forest?" the twelve-year-old asked.

  "I used to watch the loggers, Carter. I carried water for them. Carver, do you think we can cut our way through here?"

  "You brought those cutting things."

  "Severs."

  "Severs. We can use those," Carver said. "But the plants can always reach farther than you think. You think you've got clearance, but-I'm worried about the children."

  "These leathers'll fit the older ones. And us." We could cut a path for children, Whandall thought, or a wider path for a wagon. But how far did the forest go? "It took an army half a year to get through, two hundred years ago," Whandall said.

  "We only need enough for one wagon," Willow said briskly. "We go around what we can, cut when we have to. Sell the lumber gear when we get to the other side, and the tar, if there's anyone to buy. Did you bring a whetstone?"

  "Whatever that is, I didn't bring it."

  Whandall hadn't thought in terms of buying and selling. Kinless would know how to trade, how to work, how to find work. On the other side of the forest, Lordkin would not have license to take what they wanted.

  He hadn't missed that point, but he was starting to feel its force.

  But he felt the warmth stirring in his belly, not unlike lust, not unlike the heat that rose from wine. Alferth was wrong to call it anger.

  "This was Yangin-Atep's path."

  His arm reached forward and the heat ran through his fingertips, feeling out the old path, far beyond what his eyes could see. Yangin-Atep's trailing tail. The dream held for an instant and was gone again.

  Brushwood caught. Vines and thorn plants burned in the rain. An eddy swirled the smoke around them and made them choke. Then the
wind steadied, blowing it north ahead of them.

  Chapter 36

  The land ran generally uphill. The flame-path didn't cramp them, but it wasn't quite a road. There were stumps Whandall had to burn out. The horses were grown visibly stronger. They pulled with little effort, but they shied at Carver's touch on the reins.

  Whandall tried it. Both ponies stopped and turned to look at him along spiral spears as long as a forearm. Willow took the reins from his unresisting hands, and the ponies turned and began to pull.

  That first night they stripped a dozen crabapple trees for their dinner. Children didn't need to be instructed to hurl the cores away: they did it by instinct.

  Carver suggested that Whandall sleep between the wagon and the vineyards. Lordkin might follow the scorched path, he said. Carver was trying to protect Willow. Whandall went along with that.

  But in the morning he told Carver, "We don't need a guard at night. Only a madman would walk through the forest in the dark." He pointed back down the trail. A blackened ruin, ash and mud, with a few flecks of green growing into it. It wasn't straight, and it certainly wasn't inviting.

  "That's odd," Carver said. He pointed ahead. The trail remained black, no traces of green at all.

  The redwoods stood like pillars holding up the black-bellied clouds. Their shadows made a twilight even at noon.

  Where Whandall's fire had gone, they saw nothing of predators and nothing of prey. They had to strike out sideways to their path to find anything to cut.

  Willow picked an apronful of small red berries for them. Delicious. Whandall watched her mind wrestle with itself before she warned him. "Whandall, don't eat these berries if they're growing near a redwood."

  "I know. We need to keep the kids away from any berry patch. The poison patches look too much like red berries."

  Carver made slings, a weapon new to Whandall. It would send a stone flying at uncanny speed. Carver was good with a sling; Carter was even better; Whandall developed some skill. They were able to feed themselves and the children and to fend off coyotes.

  Kinless with weapons. Kinless skilled with weapons. He half remembered the Lords talking of an old war fought against the kinless. How had kinless fought? Had they used slings? Why had they lost?

  He dreamed that night, of Lords with helmets and armor and spears leading a horde of Lordkin with knives. They fought a smaller, slimmer people who used slings and small javelins. The stones rattled against the Lords' shields. A few mad Lordkin held their hands out, and sheets of fire flowed into the kinless ranks.

  And every one of the fire-wielding Lordkin looked like Whandall.

  In rain they had slept under the wagon. They'd left the rain behind, and now they could sleep in the wagon, off the ground. Fire was easy: half-burned charcoal was everywhere. They dug a midden and laid a ridge of dirt from the midden to the wagon. In the dark a child could follow it by feel.

  Whandall watched them, studying how the kinless worked, how the kinless thought. How they talked. Always they talked.

  Their third morning brought them to the crest of the mountains. Downhill, the land was blackened and almost bare. Plants were growing back. Whandall hadn't done this; it was half a year old. But the going looked easy and the path was clear. Whandall's new burn switch backed through the half-grown plants like a black snake.

  "Whandall, this is easy traveling, and we don't need your fire. Let's go back for another wagon."

  "Who, Carver?" he asked, knowing Carver would never leave Whandall with Willow. Lordkin men (some, anyway) guarded their women no less than Carver did.

  "You and me. Willow, you can keep the wagon moving, can't you? The ponies won't mind anyone else anyway. If you get into trouble, just stop."

  Green creepers were sprouting everywhere along the path, poking through the ash of Whandall's burning. Between dawn and sunset Carver and Whandall retraced their path through the burned woods.

  A wagon had been left near the loading dock. One of the mares had wandered into view. She was smaller than the stallion ponies, and her horn was just a nub.

  They watched the wine house through sunset until midnight before they believed that it was deserted. Then Carver approached the mare and was able to put a bridle on her.

  They found hundreds of little flasks heaped against a wall. "Empty," Whandall pointed out.

  "Well made, though. They won't leak. Maybe we can sell them on the other side."

  They heaped the wagon with flasks and cut some grass for the mare too. They slept in the ruined wine house.

  In the morning Whandall rode facing backward, wary that something might follow, while Carver drove.

  Carver grumbled, "We didn't see anyone following us!"

  "Lordkin know how to lurk." Some half-suspected danger tapped at the floor of Whandall's mind. He watched their back path.

  It wasn't black anymore; it was green. "This ash must make wonderful fertilizer," he said.

  Carver turned around. "You can almost see it growing!"

  Ahead of them was only blackened dirt.

  "Yangin-Atep," Whandall said, "wants us gone."

  Carver snapped, "When did your fire god become a fertility goddess?"

  "Not Yangin-Atep, then, but something wants us gone. The forest?" Whandall remembered days in Morth's shop, Morth reading his palm, mumbling about Whandall's destiny. Could a god read destiny too? "I think that's it. I'm carrying fire through a forest."

  "We're being expelled," Carver said.

  Whandall shook his head, smiling. "You're escaping. I'm being expelled." And even as he watched the trail behind seemed to grow more creepers.

  Travel went fast. The mare grew stronger as they traveled, and larger, but she wasn't giving them any trouble. Behind them the trail's outline blurred with green.

  Coyotes had discovered the travelers' abandoned middens. That was scary. That evening Whandall and Carver crawled under the wagon to sleep, back to back and armed.

  A voice in the dark. "This magician who killed your lather. Did you try to kill him?"

  "No, Carver."

  "Good."

  Whandall believed he had nothing to hide from Carver: nothing so monstrous as the open truth of what he was. Still, sharing secrets outside the family seemed unnatural.

  Into the quiet dark Carver said, "Did you know that plague is a kind of living thing? Wizards can see it. Wizards can kill it and heal the client. Otherwise it grows. Without a wizard, other people get sick too, more and more. We need wizards. But wizards don't like the Valley of Smokes."

  " 'Course not. No magic."

  The dark was silent a while longer. Then Carver asked, "Why not?"

  "Kill Morth? Why?"

  "Your father."

  "Morth did what kinless do. Sorry, taxpayers. What we do too. If Pothefit caught a looker taking the cook pot from the Placehold courtyard, he'd've killed him."

  It was too dark to see Carver's expression. Whandall said, "The Burning killed Pothefit. In the Burning you can have anything you can take. They couldn't take Morth's shop."

  Silence from Carver. The woods stirred: something died violently.

  "That's what I was trying to remember," Whandall said suddenly. "Morth could follow us. I keep forgetting Morth. Carver, we wouldn't see him. That lurk spell."

  Near sunset of the next day they reached the crest of the mountains and found two dead coyotes near a dead campfire.

  Carver ran.

  Whandall watched him disappear into the rocks. He almost followed. Coyotes might menace Willow and the children! But Whandall was trying to learn kinless ways, and what about the wagon?

  Unhitching the mare wasn't easy. She tried to pull the rope out of his hands. He hung on long enough to tie it to a tree stump. The length of it would let her reach forage. She had her horn if coyotes came back.

  Then-but wait. What had killed these beasts?

  He stooped over one of the corpses. Not a mark on them. Wide blood-red eyes, mouths wide, tongues protruding. He touch
ed the slicked-down fur, expecting to find it wet, but it wasn't.

  He caught Carver far down slope at the next dead campfire. There they slowed to a walk, blowing hard. Willow and the wagon must have taken a full day to cover this distance. Carver's hands held his sling and a handful of rocks cracked to get sharp edges. He said, "I wish 1 had a knife."

  Whandall said, "With that you don't have to let them so close. I wish I had a sever."

  Day was dying. They smelled meat cooking, and they slowed.

  They saw the fire first, and a young looker standing tall and straight, backlit, with orange-red hair falling to his shoulders. Willow had the horses tied and a fire going. Then a whiff of corruption showed an arc of dead coyotes at their feet.

  Willow saw two men coming at a grim half-run, Whandall's knife point, Carver's whirling sling. She leaped up from her cooking and stepped quickly to the man's side.

  "He saved us!" she shouted. "The coyotes would have torn us apart!"

  Carver's sling drooped. He said, "Morth?"

  Morth smiled faintly.

  "Morth, you're young!"

  "Yes, I found this!" Morth held out a handful of yellow lumps. Whandall had never before seen the magician gleeful. "Gold!" he said. "In the river!" He stepped forward past Whandall's knifepoint and pushed the gold into Whandall's unresisting hand.

  Whandall said, "This is dangerous, isn't it? Wild magic."

  "No, no, this gold is refined. I've taken the magic," Morth said. "Can't you see? Shall we race? Shall I stand on my head for you? I'm young!"

  Carver backed up a bit, and so did Willow. Here was no lurking spell. Morth wanted to be noticed. He babbled, "Gold is magic. It reinforces other magic. Look!" He leaped straight up and kept rising until he could grasp a branch twice Whandall's height above him. He shouted down, "Not just young! I used to fly!"

  He dropped lightly. "Give gold to a wizard, most of the power leaches from the gold. After that it's refined gold, harmless. People use it as if it has value, but the original meaning was, I gave gold to a wizard to touch. A wizard owes me. Whandall, keep the gold. Morth of Atlantis owes you."