Southern Fire ac-1

by Juliet E. McKenna

  Risala looked at Kheda, face drawn. 'There's nothing we can do?'

  'We can bear witness,' he said harshly.

  To what all Daish fates will be, if I do not find some way to defeat these evil savages.

  Having ransacked the huts, the wild men turned to breaking down the remnants of the stockade and dragging out their terrified captives. Cowering and wailing, Chazen islanders were forced on to the improvised rafts with blows and kicks, women dragged by their hair, men by their beards. Once across the strait, they were thrown to the ground in front of the wreath-crowned wizard. He nodded with perfunctory approval to the cringing savages now pledging their allegiance with fervent obeisance. His original followers were pulling apart the walls of their own prison enclosure, driving the new captives inside to join those already there.

  'They're not going to have room to breathe,' Risala murmured with growing concern as another raft load were forced within the wooden walls.

  'Much these savages care,' muttered Kheda wrathfully. 'Haven't we seen enough?'

  'No.' Dev shook his head determinedly. 'I need to get down there, see what's been done to the ground, to that mage, if I'm to get any measure of their magic'

  Kheda looked at Risala, who shrugged helplessly. They sat beneath the bushes and waited. The wreath wearer got the pick of the plunder his men brought over from the dead mage's camp. His only interest was in small coffers that disappeared into his own hut. The savages lit fires with kindling bows and threw grain, fruit and meat all together in the biggest cook pots they could find. The smell of food made Kheda's belly rumble but the sight of the dead mage below being devoured by the insects the wreath wearer had summoned effectively killed his appetite.

  Risala nudged him some while later and proffered a water skin. Kheda drank deeply, gratefully, and thanked her with a smile.

  'Looks like they're on the move.' Dev hadn't taken his eyes off the scene below.

  Kheda looked down to see the savages making more rafts from their log boats and crudely split planks. The loot from the wreath-crowned mage's hut was piled high on the biggest and the wizard stepped aboard to lounge idly on a heap of plundered quilts. The rest of his enlarged retinue made ready to leave, breaking open the stockade and dragging out the stumbling, sobbing captives. They were lashed into groups of five and six with vines tied around their necks and forced aboard the other rafts. A sizeable number were left behind, either moribund or dead. The savage warriors boarded those log boats that remained, standing upright and long paddles in hand. They surrounded the flotilla as it moved off.

  'I don't know how they do that.' Kheda shook his head.

  'A fair amount of it's magic' Dev pointed to green-tinted water flowing against the run of the tide to carry the wreath-crowned mage's boat away down the strait. The rest followed, the savages barely having to make a stroke. Before long, they all disappeared around a jutting angle of the undulating shore.

  'Dev, scry for him,' Kheda said urgently. 'We have to know where he's going.'

  'I can find him again, any time I want to.' Dev gazed at the body of the dead mage with an avidity that raised the hairs on the back of Kheda's neck. 'I need to work out what he was doing with his magic before I try mine against him.'

  Kheda gripped the wizard's arm with a firmly restraining hand. 'We wait till we're sure they're not coming back.'

  They waited. The day began to cool and the scatter of clouds above merged and thickened. A spatter of rain fell and then drifted away. The birds of the jungle chattered softly in the trees as they gathered to feed. Sudden rustles in the underbrush turned Kheda's head, Dev's too. Kheda gripped the hacking blade; Dev raised a hand outlined in ruddy light. A rounded hump of brindled hide briefly broke through the dark glossy leaves of a berry bush.

  'Just a hog.' As Kheda spoke, a couple of striped hoglets emerged from the underbrush, little noses rooting in the leaf litter.

  'Good eating, if you can catch them,' observed Dev. The hoglets startled at his voice and darted back into cover.

  Dev looked at Kheda. 'Our friend with the leaves isn't coming back and I want to see all I can before dark.'

  'All right.' Kheda nodded reluctantly. 'Risala, stay here, keep watch for us, please.'

  She didn't object. Dev was already heading down to the village and Kheda had to hurry to catch him.

  'What are we looking for?' he asked, drawing level with the northern mage.

  'Give me the blade.' Taking it, Dev dug the broad, square tip into the soil. 'How much rain has this place had over the last run of the moons?'

  Kheda rubbed earth dry as dust between his fingers. 'You'd think it was the end of the dry season.'

  'One or other of them drew all the water out, as part of his spell casting. If you can call it spell casting,' Dev commented thoughtfully. 'Their magic is pure instinct.'

  That meant nothing to Kheda so he moved to look more closely at the dead wizard, now a rotting sprawl of slack limbs beneath the crawling insects. The corpse looked as if it had lain unburied for days. 'How does magic do this?'

  'Not sure. Effective, isn't it?' Hefting the blade, Dev cut deep into the meat of the corpse's thigh. The squelching sound and the stink made Kheda's gorge rise and he backed away.

  Going pale enough to betray his barbarian blood, Dev nevertheless held his ground, prodding the dark slime oozing over the thirsty ground. 'There's no bone in here, just spongy fragments and bits of sinew.' Retreating, he studied the smears and nameless scraps sticking to the blade for a moment before stabbing it into the dusty soil to clean it as he stared across the water to the other beach. 'But that's not what he did to our friend in the wreath. His leg bones snapped, turned all brittle. How did he do that, I wonder? How did our friend in the leaves undo it?'

  Kheda looked at the ground all around him, scattered with broken pots, discarded cloth, twisted lengths of wood. He frowned and bent to pick up a dagger. The blade was pitted and stained with rust, eaten clean through in places. 'Dev, what about this? This isn't just suffering from the rains.' He held the hilt in one hand and pressed on the tip of the blade with careful fingers. The metal twisted and crumbled.

  'An Archipelagan would go bladeless before he'd carry something like that.' Dev looked around and retrieved one of the invader's stone-bladed axes. 'Obsidian,' he remarked.

  'Why?' demanded Kheda. 'They could have gathered all manner of blades from Chazen by now. Why still use fire-hardened wood and stone shards?'

  'Magic,' grinned Dev. 'If fire and water rust the blade in your hand, you're dead meat. If cold shatters a piece of stone, chances are you'll still be left with enough sharp edges to cut someone's throat. A wooden spear or a club will still gut someone or bash out their brains even if it's warped or split.'

  'Oh,' said Kheda.

  So however many swords Daish, Redigal and Ritsem can raise against these savages, they'll most likely be useless unless we can rid the invaders of their wizards.

  'Have you seen what you needed to see?' he demanded savagely of Dev. 'Can you tell me how to fight these people or not?'

  Dev strolled back to the contorted corpse of the savage mage. 'This is a strange magic, my oath on it. As near as I can make out, it leeches the essential strength from the natural elements around the wizard.'

  'What happened to him?' Kheda gestured towards the foul remnants of the invading wizard.

  'Our friend in the leaves has a natural power over water.' Dev sounded fascinated. 'Once this fool lost his concentration, or whatever was protecting him from the other man's magic, his lungs, his brain, every tissue in his body filled with fluid.'

  'Will knowing this help us defeat them?' Kheda asked. 'Can you tell us how to fight them?'

  'You can't,' Dev said bluntly. 'I told you that before and I'm even more certain now. You need magic to fight magic and you people have none, thanks to your age-old folly and prejudice. Didn't see this coming, did you, with all your fancy predictions?'

  Kheda barely managed to stop himself hitt
ing the barbarian wizard. He wheeled away instead and stared out across the water.

  'Besides, it's not enough to know how to beat these people. A wizard would have to know how they lose, how not to lose himself.' Dev took one last look at the fallen wizard and began walking back towards the rise where Risala waited. 'They all seem very closely tied to their inborn element. That could be a weakness. Most can only use one or two elements and really struggle with what-ever's antithetical to their affinity. It's only the lads at the top of the pecking order who can use all four elements from what I've seen, the one wearing the lizard and that bastard in the dragon-hide cloak. That's not to say the others can't, of course, and I've no idea if they can manage blended magics, quintessential enchantment.'

  Kheda let the wizard's meaningless words wash over him as he looked up at the sky, still cloudy but with no rain falling. 'We have to come up with something before the end of the rainy season.'

  'Like I said, pal, you can't fight magic, not without magic' Dev laughed unpleasantly.

  Kheda halted and seized the barbarian mage by the shoulders. 'Can you do it? You talked of testing your magic against these mages. Could you defeat them?'

  Dev knocked Kheda's hands aside. 'Give me one good reason why I should.'

  'You wanted payment.' Kheda struggled to keep the distaste out of his mouth, for this foul, venal man and for the unforeseen impulse that had driven him to ask for Dev's help.

  'Truth often speaks through chance-heard words.' I hope you were right, my father. I hope I'm right. We talked of fighting fire with fire, back in Derasulla. I never thought it would come to this but now it has, can I step back, when I have seen the fate that waits for my people?

  The libraries are full of dire warnings of wizards cutting down armies with their magic. These savages did as much. Are these wizards of the north stronger? Have I just wasted my efforts in seeking out this Dev, risking my future, even my life on a false omen?

  'All the gems and pearls in the Archipelago won't do me much good if I'm not alive to trade them,' Dev was saying. 'Even if I live through a fight with these mages, if word gets out I'm as good as dead. I don't reckon much to my chances of fleeing the length of the Archipelago.'

  'I could see you safely to the unbroken lands,' Kheda insisted tersely. 'I can send you on a fast trireme, with your body weight in pearls.'

  And burn the ship to the waterline once you're off it.

  'That's a handsome offer.' Dev laughed and waved an airy hand in the direction the leaf-crowned mage had taken. 'How do you hope to make good on it? Even supposing I come up with a means to fight these wizards -' he raised a warning hand to silence Kheda, '— besides provoking them into fighting each other, because I don't imagine that will work again, there are still hordes of these foot soldiers on every eyot and rock. Who's to say they won't spring another mage from somewhere, wherever they came from in the first place?'

  'We will find some means of alerting Daish's allies to sail south as soon as the wizards are dead,' Kheda insisted stubbornly. 'Once they have no magic, we can kill the wild men and their blood on the tides can warn any they've left against sailing north.'

  'That'll be a good trick if you can do it,' said Dev scornfully.

  Kheda waited until they had rejoined Risala before speaking. 'I have something to tell you.' He hesitated.

  'He wants me to fight these wild mages for him,' said Dev with spiteful pleasure.

  Risala nodded slowly. 'I thought he might.'

  'You did?' Kheda looked at her astonished.

  'You have no choice, I can see that.' He saw his own desperation mirrored in her pale eyes. 'What else can we do? How can we fight this magic without magic? If we can stop this madness before it destroys the Archipelago, even if our lives are forfeit for it…' She fell silent.

  'I've no intention of forfeiting my life to anyone,' Dev said aggressively. 'And if you two reckon to sail to your doom, you can do it alone. If we're doing this, we do it with a plan that sees us all coming out of it with a whole hide and, as far as I'm concerned, as much payment as the Amigal can hold.'

  'Can we do it?' Kheda demanded. 'Can you do it?'

  'Can you beat that mage in the dragon-hide cloak?' Risala challenged him.

  'That's what I want to do. I've a few notions that might set us along that path,' replied Dev with a secretive smile. 'But I can't cut down hordes of savages for you. You have to find some way of bringing the Daish and Chazen forces down on them as soon as the wizards are out of the balance.'

  Kheda nodded slowly. 'I need to speak to Janne Daish and find out exactly what the southern warlords are thinking. There's a place in the Daish domain where we agreed to meet. I sent her a message when I arrived back in the south. If she's got it, she should be there for the full Greater Moon.'

  'We should be able to make that.' Risala looked dubious. 'Can we afford such a delay though? What will these savages be doing in the meantime?'

  'They'll be doing whatever they please, my girl,' said Dev with amusement. 'And there'll be precious little you can do about it, or me, come to that, not for the moment. Don't get your braids in a tangle. There's still plenty of rain to come, so I don't suppose they'll be moving north any time soon. Besides, the longer we wait, the more of them will kill off their neighbours, if we're lucky. The more of their battles I can see, the better idea I'll have of their weak spots. I'm more concerned about what you do, Daish Kheda, if your lady Janne doesn't turn up. What are you going to do, come back from the dead and try rallying the domains on that account?'

  'That would certainly get everyone's attention.' Kheda grimaced. 'The trick would be getting them to fight battles for the Chazen islands instead of clamouring for explanations and accusing me of bad faith and each other of sharing in some conspiracy. I'd rather have the savages safely killed before I have to get caught up in all that.'

  'You are going to have an awful lot of explaining to do when this is all over,' commented Risala thoughtfully. 'Not least how you managed to find the means to defeat these sorcerers.'

  Kheda heaved a shaky sigh. 'That will just have to be our secret, won't it? To save all our skins. Agreed?'

  'Absolutely,' said Dev robustly.

  'Risala?' Kheda looked at her, beseeching. 'Would you keep such a secret from your master?'

  'To save my own skin?' She smiled at him but he could tell she was trembling. 'Don't worry. I saw what happened to Kaeska Shek. I've no wish to suffer her fate. I'll die on the day appointed to me but I've no wish to bring it forward.'

  'Come on then!' Dev startled them both with a sudden clap of his hands. 'Let's get aboard the Amigal and find a safe and sheltered anchorage where we can come up with a decent, detailed plan that might have a hope of success.'

  Chapter Eighteen

  'Do you think he'll be there when we get back?' Risala looked across the empty ocean towards the Chazen anchorage where they'd left Dev. 'Five days' sail, he could be anywhere by now.'

  'What'll you wager on it?' Relishing the dry warmth in the stone wall at his back after the drenching they'd had overnight, Kheda hugged his knees. 'No, I'll scrub every barnacle off your skiff's hull if he isn't sat just where we left him, peering into his bowl of inky water.'

  'You trust him?' Risala sounded wholly sceptical.

  'I trust the way the puzzle of these savages intrigues him,' Kheda said candidly. 'What they're seeking and how their mages rule them.'

  'I don't see a puzzle.' Risala shivered despite the sun nearly at its zenith. 'Fear and brutality keeps them all toeing the wizards' line.'

  'Dev's adamant that's not the way of it in the unbroken lands.' Kheda stretched his legs out in front of him. 'He wants to know what these southern wizards have that his own people don't.'

  'So he can set himself up as some tyrant backed by sorcery?' Risala scowled in the direction of the wizard, long since lost over the horizon.

  'I'll make sure he can't try anything like that,' Kheda promised fervently.

  I sw
ear it by the tower of silence within this wall. I'll kill him before he can do anything of the kind.

  'And if I can't, it's up to you to make sure Shek Kul sees him dead, one way or another.'

  Kheda smiled reassurance at Risala. She didn't see it, studying the scraps of green-crested, white-rimmed land sparsely dotting the waters to the west, brilliant against the clean-washed sky and the darker blue of the peaceably undulating sea. 'Your people find these islands too far out, do they?'

  'It's not so much the distance as lack of decent land for growing anything to eat. If you did manage it, some storm coming in off the ocean would probably blow it out of the ground. Supplies of fresh water are indifferent too, once you're more than halfway through the dry season. There's enough through the pearl harvest but once that's done, few people stay on.' All the same, Kheda scanned the horizon for any other vessels, great or small.

  The last thing we want is some Daish pearl diver reconnoitring the reefs. I cant afford to be discovered, have to explain myself, and leave Dev to his own devices.

  'Do you think she'll come today?' Risala turned to look at a chain of islets just visible on the horizon, leading away into the heart of the Daish domain.

  'If she got my message,' Kheda said lightly.

  And what if she didn't?

  Risala opened her mouth doubtless to ask that very question so Kheda jumped in with one of his own. 'Did your picture scroll survive last night's wetting?'

  'It did.' Risala's smile was relieved as she rested her head back against the white stone wall.

  'I'd like to have a proper look at it,' continued Kheda casually. 'It looks a fine work.'

  'One of the best Shek Kul's library could supply.' Risala grinned wickedly at him.

  Kheda spread rueful hands. 'You can't blame me for finding you as much of a puzzle as Dev.'

  'If you want to know something, you could just ask me.' Risala shifted to sit facing him, feet curled up beneath her.