Firebirds Rising

by Sharyn November

  Her brother and cousins were asleep very soon, but she could hear Sinja and Mininu moving about the rest of the house, and then the murmur of their voices, and then silence. Some time passed. The air sliding through the open windows became cool, the leaves of the oak trees rustled, and finally, caught in their branches, she saw the tiny bright curve of light that was the waning moon. She got up carefully. Golly stood up from his position at her feet and settled onto her pillow while she was still looking for her slippers.

  Even after such long staring into the dark, she could not see very much. It was fortunate that on account of the food’s disagreeing with her in the first days of her visit, she had been told to change beds with Numa so that she might sleep nearer the door. She made her way very slowly, if not patiently, to the kitchen, mostly holding her breath. She had pumped a cup of water after dinner and left it behind a stack of bowls in a lower cupboard. She got it out with only a single ring of pewter against earthenware. It sounded like the largest gong owned by the Red Temple to her, but nobody seemed to stir after.

  Dri tilted the cup, and stopped, wanting very much to laugh. She had forgotten that she would need light. What a pity I never invested my luck, she thought. Almost any street magician can make a little light. She put the cup down on the table and groped in the table’s drawer for a candle. The fire in the stove never went out; Mininu had told her so, during that first day when it had been permitted for the cousins to ask about Liavek and for Dri and Kiffen to ask about the house. She opened the oven door. A red glow came out, but no heat. She hoped it would light her candle. It did, with a whoosh that made her jump back, feeling glad that she had laid hold of a long, new candle rather than a stub.

  Finally, finally, she was able to sit firmly on the worn stone floor with cup, candle, and marble, and make her investigation. The flickering thread of water moved, unsurprisingly, toward the hollow worn in front of the stove by several generations of cooks. The marble followed. Something white streaked through the candlelight, pounced on the marble, and knocked it with an enormous clang into the iron base of the oven. Dri muffled her squeak of surprise. I thought cats were stealthy, she thought at Golly. He was waiting for her to pick up the marble, and she did so, and put it in her pocket. Luckily for her, he was not a talkative cat and merely stared and followed her when she went to sit down at the table and get her breath back.

  The big squares of the windows were pale. Dri looked up and out, over the flat land with no intervening towers or hills, and saw the crescent moon, now a thin curve of red, disappearing beyond the edge of the world. It would be dawn soon. Her startlement had thoroughly woken her up. She would go out with her cat and watch the sun rise.

  There was a welcome chill in the air. All the grasses and little trees were drenched in dew. Golly came out of the grass after a single exploration, shaking his paws and ears, and thereafter stayed on the path with Dri.

  In Liavek, if you wanted to watch the sun or moon rise or set, you went up a hill, or if you did not want to walk so far, you went up on the roof of any building you could get to, preferably one with a garden and seats. She was not sure what to do here. The sky was so much larger that perhaps it hardly mattered. The apple orchard was on a south-facing slope of what passed for a hill. The eastern slope of that hill was a garden of onions, in raised beds. She could sit on the stone edge of a bed and have a good view.

  When she had settled there, in the strange half-light, Dri felt exposed. It was as bad as the sea and somewhat worse than the desert. It was so very flat. Parts of Liavek were flat, but there were buildings and trees breaking up the sky, providing shade and concealment. She didn’t know what she thought was going to catch her, but here, whatever it was, if it wanted to come out of the sky and pluck her up as a hawk does a mouse, where could she hide?

  At least, she thought, sitting straight on the cold stone of the garden edge and glaring at the huge colorless bowl above her, she would hear the hawk coming. The silence was as enormous as the flatness. And yet her ears were so unattuned to it, perhaps she would not after all hear the hawk. Because she had always lived in the City, she knew how to listen for voices, footsteps, drunken brawls and drunken revelry; wheels, hooves, paws; windows opening, nails going into wood, water sloshing in buckets, students of music practicing the flute and professionals playing the drum; the clatter of dishes and tiles, the shriek of the train whistle and the singing rumble of the train. Here in the country, she knew that the wind was making a sound in the grass, but her ears dismissed it as a barrier to hearing the sounds that she wanted, which were not there.

  But we are there, she did not hear but heard somehow, and then, not believably, If we were there, she would hear us, so whereare we? Or where is she? It was the kind of thing she thought all day long, taken out of her head and put into the rustle of the dry grasses in the ceaseless breeze. Was this how it was to be insane?

  This thought upset her so much that she took a great breath and spoke to the grass and the apple trees and the empty air. If one were going to be mad, one might as well do the thing thoroughly. Mundri was always intent on doing anything thoroughly. “I want to know who you are,” she said.

  The wind stopped making the grasses hiss. Now it was truly silent, a silence that made Dri feel even more as if she might fall off the unsafe flat surface of the earth and into the great beckoning sky. Her cat had disappeared. She wanted to clear her throat, to shout, to scuff her boots in the dry grass. But something was waiting to speak; she felt it.

  When it spoke it was much more like a voice, alive in the chilly moving air. “The stranger should rather say than ask.”

  Oh, thought Dri, is that why it is so hard to ask anything? They might have said something before. She said, “I am Kisandrion Dorlianish, and I come from the City of Luck.”

  “Ahhhhh,” said the voice, said several voices, unless it was only the wind.

  “You sound as if you know my city,” she said.

  “We are exiles therefrom.”

  “So am I,” said Dri, and sighed.

  “Why so?”

  “My mother thought it wasn’t safe for my brother and me to stay.”

  The wind began again, hiss, rustle, whisper, scratch. It sounded like a gigantic grassy conference. Maybe it was. Dri did not know what lived out here that was not people or domestic animals and birds. In the mountains were the shy gray mountain folk; in the sea were Kil; in the desert were trolls. But here among the farms, all the stories were simple and prosaic. Magical beans, golden duck eggs, cows that gave an endless amount of cream, talking goats, silver apples, geese that riddled and pigs that sang. But wait, the wind voice was not a thing native here; it had said that it was an exile from the City. She frowned, thinking. The City was full of everything, of course, from far and near, and an exile might not mean a native creature, just an accustomed one. Still, what had the City itself that might speak with the voice of the grass, unseen? Chipmunks, she thought, and giggled.

  The wind stopped at once; the grass was silent. The sun had come up; she had not noticed. Dri’s impulse was to speak, to repeat her question, to explain why she was laughing. But people hereabouts did not seem to use speech as she and her family used it. She hugged herself in the chill and tried not to think of chipmunks. The oldest, most luck-soaked things in Liavek were all remnants of the older city on whose site Liavek was built; but older than that were the chipmunks. They had their own god, Rikiki, who was blue, and irresistibly funny as long as you stayed out of his way. Her imagination peopled the brown and green and golden landscape around her with blue chipmunks, and she giggled again.

  “Is exile a matter for laughter?” said the voice.

  “No,” said Dri hastily.

  “What is, then?”

  “I was thinking of chipmunks,” said Dri, feeling somewhat helpless. She was so tired of not being able to ask questions that it was a relief to answer anybody who did.

  “Do you follow Rikiki?”

  “No,” said
Dri. “But I like the chipmunks in the Levar’s Park. Once one of them ran up my leg and stole a roasted potato from my hand.”

  She felt entirely foolish as soon as she had made this childish remark, but the voice said, “A wise denizen, indeed,” and did not seem sarcastic.

  Dri put her hand to her forehead in formal acknowledgment, and said, “I thank you.”

  There was a brief pause in which the sky seemed less full of threats.

  “We had hoped for better news,” said the dry voice suddenly; Dri jumped. “We had hoped to hear that the City was safer.”

  “Well, mothers have particular ideas, you know,” said Dri. “The City seemed just the same to me. And if Resh was so dangerous, I would think the City was safer without him.”

  The drooping grasses around her stood up straight, like the hair on a cat’s back when the cat is angry. “Do you tell us that Resh has left the City?”

  “He’s dead,” said Dri.

  The grass crackled. Dri was tolerably sure that it was not supposed to do that. She stood up.

  “Rumor hath many tongues,” said the voice.

  “I know, but I work for the Red Temple and I was told this by my brother, who was in His Eminence’s special guard.”

  The grass around her still crackled. She took a few steps, looking around her. She saw the small trees on the little hill shake, and then all the grass flatten as if a huge invisible beast were striding across the fields from west to east. All the grass within her view lay down. Dri sat down on the path herself, feeling it prudent, and just as she did so, a wall of air pushed her backward. She lay there for some time after it had passed, because it smelled of home. Not the dry grass, warm earth, leaf-mold smell of the plains, but wet stone, cold metal, hot oil and spices, roasted potatoes and roasted nuts, flowers grown out of season and put out in their pots on warm days, even a faint whiff of sewage unmodified by the application of luck—all flowed over her and lingered in the air when it was still again.

  In time, the smell of home wore thin and vanished. Dri sat up, and stood up, and stood still. Everything was the same, and not the same. She turned slowly in a circle. The orchard, the onion garden, the small hill with oak trees and the mass of trees that marked the strange low farmhouse were all there. They looked the wrong color. She took a step or two, and a mouse ran across the packed dirt in front of her. Two more followed it, and another. Dri went on cautiously, wishing for her cat. She called him, but he did not appear.

  Before she reached the house, she had seen several more dark-colored mouselike animals with short tails, several rabbits in several sizes, something that might have been a rat, and a smooth brown blunt-headed animal larger than a cat.

  The house, like the landscape, looked as if some sparkle had gone from it, although it was basking in early sunshine. Inside, it felt stuffy. Dri went into the kitchen. Everyone was there, sitting around the big table peeling apples. They looked as they often had before, and yet they did not. Dri slid into her assigned seat. Wari passed her a knife and bowl. They knew that she did not have the knack of peeling apples, but some feeling of invisible pressure in the air made her forbear to speak. This sensation of having inquiry stifled was much harder to bear after the free speaking in the orchard.

  She made a slow careful start on the nearest apple, but had to stop. The atmosphere was so strong that she felt she must keep a close eye on everyone. Kiffen looked as she felt, alert and wary. Mininu and Sinja had serene faces, but they kept exchanging glances. Dri felt that in a more outward family, they would be talking at the tops of their voices and gesturing. All three of their children were watching them, and had a general air of injured virtue.

  “Dri,” said Sinja, in her usual gentle tones, “I have not seen Golly these two hours.”

  “He was in the onion beds just now.”

  Sinja smiled at her, and finished removing the peel from an apple in one long curling piece.

  “I hope he hasn’t done anything bad,” said Dri.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “I could go and fetch him.”

  “No, I think he will manage on his own.”

  “There was a very large wind just now,” said Dri. When nobody made any reply, she pulled in the air for the enormous effort necessary and asked, “Did you feel it?”

  “This is a very windy place,” said Mininu.

  If Sinja had said that, Dri might, she thought, have had the courage to describe the wind and how it was different from the ordinary wind of the plains; but Mininu was truly formidable, all without even raising her voice.

  That was the most conversation they had all day. Dri had thought it a house devoid of conversation already, but that day even the nods and raised eyebrows and smiles and half sentences were absent. The faint pressure she had always felt, oppressing her desire to ask a thousand questions, to question every statement, and to dissect every definition, had grown heavier and firmer, and sat on her chest like an older brother in an evil mood.

  When Dri went to take her bath, the tub was full of spiders and there was a mouse on the windowsill. She backed out slowly. Not much later she heard Numa cry from the big room, “Min, Min, there is a snake in my chair!” Mininu came striding past Dri and toward the big room, but no other words passed.

  Dri sank down on her bed, checking it for previous occupants first, and marveled at a family that could be silent in the face of this invasion. After she had marveled, she felt grateful. Her conscience was not easy. Mininu had asked her not to tell anyone about Resh’s death, and she had blurted it out the first chance she got. Whether a disembodied voice could be defined as “anyone” might be open to debate, if anybody ever would debate in this house, but she still was not easy. If the exiled Liavekan spirits had kept the spiders and other creatures away, and if they had gone back to the City on hearing that Resh was dead, the invasion of all the vermin was Dri’s doing.

  She wanted to lie down and take a nap, but somebody might think to ask her some pointed questions at any moment. Without thinking much about it, she climbed out of the window and went away toward the hill with the small oak trees atop it. There were piles of last year’s leaves there, nicely dry by now. She could sleep and return to the house with more of her wits in working order.

  It was a still day with no wind, but Dri kept hearing sounds anyway, rustlings and scrapings and slidings. She supposed the grass was full of spiders and mice and snakes now, just like the house. This made her think twice about curling up in a pile of leaves. When she got to the top of the hill she perched herself on a protruding boulder and tried to examine her intended bed from a safe distance. She was distracted from this pursuit by the sight of Sinja, Mininu, Kiffen, all the cousins, a flock of chickens, and some five or six goats, who were all gathered at the back of the house. Mininu was talking vigorously. Everyone looked very solemn, even the chickens. After Mininu had spoken, Sinja sang a song that sounded Ombayan, and then Mininu sang a song that Dri recognized. She could not make out the words, but the tune was that of “Potboil Blues,” which Mininu had once irritably referred to as “that all-too-typically-Liavekan catch.” Dri was afflicted with a desire to giggle.

  A striped snake slid across the rock at her feet, which was not so funny. She watched the group near the house narrowly. If they went far enough off, perhaps she could sneak back in and sleep in her bed. A bed seemed unlikely to hold as many snakes as a pile of leaves, so she had better settle for that.

  With luck, whatever they were doing would send the snakes and other creatures back to where they had been before, before, before Dri had told the exiled Liavekan voices the secret that Resh was dead. If others undid the results of one’s choice, how did that affect the figures striving to keep one’s self upright?

  The party below was marching around the house rightward, scattering clouds of yellowish matter, except for the chickens and goats, who were eating it. Therefore, it must be grain. Numa had a shining object in her hand and might have been pouring water from it
.

  “Oh no,” said Dri. Perhaps it was not her speaking to spirits, but her going about the house pouring water, that had let all the creatures arrive. Even ordinary Plains water. Perhaps it was both. She could not unpour water, she could not unspeak secrets. As Atliae had taught her, the only way was forward.

  “I hope you are here,” she said firmly. “Spirits of my city, I hope that you are.” She was being as foolish as the people below, but at least nobody could see her.

  “They are all gone into the world of stone,” said a furrier, cracklier voice. Dri’s breath unlocked. She could speak in her native language. I must be careful, she thought. She said, “Do you mean the City?”

  “Verily.”

  “Oh, but the City isn’t only stone. It’s wood and tile and water and grass and trees and what it really is, is people.”

  “Do you taste and smell stone when it is by, does it dazzle your eyes and befuddle your mind?”

  Dri, sorting swiftly through a number of remarks about jewels and avarice, finally answered, “Not entirely.”

  “To us, the City is the world of stone.”

  “I’m sitting on a stone.”

  “You appear as a voice from a burning light.”

  Dri got up and moved carefully to her left, since she thought that the voice might be more leftward than not.

  “What am I now?” she asked.

  “A voice in the quiet air.”

  “Who are you? Can I see you?”