Fire of Ages (The Powers of Amur Book 6)

by J. S. Bangs

  “I’ll be fine, my lord and king,” she whispered.

  “You’d better, my queen,” Navran said. And the women whisked her away.

  He watched her disappear into one of the huts. For a long time he stood, staring, then finally roused himself to return to the blanket where he presided.

  “Is there anything else?” he asked.

  Of course there was something else. The whole rest of the day was eaten up unloading the Amurans and placating the islanders, directing men from the boats to the town and the compound. It was sundown before he saw a face he wanted to see. Caupana and Srithi approached through the gate of the compound, and he felt a bolt of warmth. Little Pashman whined in a sling that hugged Srithi’s hip, and the mother stroked his head absent-mindedly.

  Caupana bowed to Navran. “I have a request, my lord and king,” the thikratta said.

  “Glad to see you and Srithi reached the shore,” Navran said. He touched Caupana’s hand, and Srithi bowed her head to him. He smiled at her. “What do you want?”

  “We were given a place in the city,” Caupana said, “but we would give it up to others. We request your permission to go into the interior.”

  “The interior?” Navran said. He looked up toward the jungle-clothed slopes of the island’s central peaks.

  “We need a place to meditate,” Caupana said. “We need solitude. And I would start as soon as possible.”

  Navran heaved a sigh. “Wait until morning and take a guide,” he said. “And don’t go to where I can’t find you. I want to know where you and Srithi are. I’ll need a thikratta’s guidance at times.”

  “We will need to become thikratta again,” Caupana said. “It is very hard on a crowded boat. My disciple has barely begun.”

  Srithi smiled in embarrassment and looked down.

  “And the boy?” Navran asked. “You’ll take him with you?”

  “Yes,” Srithi said. “At least for a while. We’ll see what happens when he grows older.”

  “Come here,” Navran said.

  Srithi came close and knelt in front of Navran, and he lay his hand on the boy’s head. The last child of Amur, who would never remember the place of his birth. Meanwhile, in the guarded building behind him, Utalni brought out the first child of the new world.

  “Go with my blessing,” he said. “And be careful with Pashman.”

  “We will,” Srithi said. She and Caupana rose and left.

  He heard Utalni’s cry come from the building where she birthed. For a moment he wanted to rush to her—but it was not his place. She wouldn’t sleep tonight, and neither would he. Both of them would be busy, she with her labor, and he with his.

  But in the morning he hoped he would rest with his wife and his child, in a place they might learn to call home.

  Mandhi

  Mandhi awoke to the sound of gulls in the air.

  She rolled over, half-asleep, and felt the warm place where Kest had been during the night. He was gone. Hrenge’s soft, warm body was slotted in on the other side of her, and Jhumitu dozed between them. She sat up and rubbed her eyes.

  The gull cawed again, and her woken mind remembered why she had stirred: Land.

  The cold slapped her as she rose from the warmth of the close-packed bodies. White frost covered the rails of the ship, and the sail overhead crackled with ice. Freezing mist on the winter wind bit her cheeks.

  Kest stood at the rail of the dhow. She picked her way through the bodies packed together on the deck and approached him. She put her hand on top of his.

  “I heard the birds,” she whispered.

  He kissed the top of her head, then he wrapped his cloak around her to share a bit of his warmth. His eyes didn’t move from a point on the horizon. The dawn was weak and clouded by the gray pallor that had scarred the sky since the star’s fall. The outlines of thicker, boiling clouds emerged dimly from the brightening dawn.

  “There’s no signal,” he said.

  “Signal?” Mandhi asked.

  “There should be a signal fire lit on the points to the west of Mabeg. We should be able to see it. Either the haze is too thick or the fire isn’t lit.”

  “Do they keep it lit in winter? I thought that few boats came during this season.”

  Kest let out a sigh. “Let’s hope that’s the only reason.”

  The fog swallowed the ship, so thick she could barely make out the prow from her position near the stern. They were alone in a quiet, white land of freezing damp. Noise dissolved in the mist. The low waves slapping the boat’s side. The quiet murmur of sailors. Kest squeezed Mandhi close and murmured in consternation.

  Eventually an order came back from the navigator: they would put down an anchor and wait. They couldn’t risk approaching the shore with no visibility and without any signal fire to guide them. The sun was still low in the east; once it rose, they hoped the fog would abate. The ship that carried the queen Jasthi drew close to them, and the sailor’s shouted the navigator’s decision across the gap.

  They passed a slow, cold morning. Hrenge woke, and Mandhi and Kest joined her, huddled together for warmth. They ate a little cold, dry roti. The last salted fish had been consumed two weeks ago, and the seas had given them nothing on their journey.

  Mandhi first felt the weak winter light growing bright overhead. The forward parts of the boat grew clear, and the cry went up: the fog lifts, the fog lifts. Jasthi’s ship became visible to their south with the rest of the fleet spread out on the white-flecked seas behind her.

  Mandhi and Kest rushed to the rail, and the other os Dramab on the boat gathered beside them, chattering eagerly in Kaleksha.

  A wind rose and dissolved the last of the fog. A silence fell over them.

  The shore was empty of human dwellings. The trees were blasted, burned into charred upright stumps. All around their bases lay a thick gray sludge of ash, riven by trickles of water, burying every scrap of green. A hardened river of black stone began at the edge of the sea, crawled up between the fields of ash, and rose through the burned forests toward the crown of the mountain Kaleg. A plume of heavy gray smoke boiled off the mountain’s peak, and at its base Mandhi saw flickers of lightning and a subtle red glow.

  Wails of dismay went up from the Kaleksha, and curses sounded on the lips of the Amurans.

  “What is this?” one of the Amurans asked. “What happened here?”

  “Kaleg awoke,” Kest said. His eyes remained on the crown of the mountain. “Not since my grandmother’s grandmother. Look, Mandhi, half of its dome is gone, blasted into ash and rolled down….”

  He gestured at the buried, smoke-colored shore. Cries of sadness and anger resounded forward and back through the ship.

  “Are we ruined?” someone asked. “Have we come to Kalignas to find it ruined more thoroughly than Amur?”

  Kest stirred. “No,” he said, addressing anyone that would listen. “This is just one harbor. We may go on—”

  “Danadl,” Mandhi said. “When I came here after my son we landed in Danadl.”

  Kest nodded. “And there are others beyond that if we must. And do not fear. Kaleg has been angry before, as we’ve heard in the tales of our grandmothers, and the Kaleksha have not perished.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Sail on,” Kest said, pointing to the east.

  “But our food—”

  “It will last us to Danadl!” Kest said. And then he repeated what he had said in Kaleksha, his voice rumbling with the Kaleksha syllables.

  Mandhi looked around. The Amurans—Uluriya, saved from Virnas and Davrakhanda, together with her os Dramab—looked at her expectantly. Their faces were wracked with worry.

  “We’ll make it,” Mandhi said softly. “Just a little longer. We’ll find a shore where we can land.”

  She remembered Danadl as a tiny village, barely big enough to handle the single dhow which she had filled with her mercenaries. How would they take in the seven over-burdened ships of their fleet?

  But th
ere was no other choice. They would find shelter in Danadl, or they would die.

  * * *

  The dhow bearing Mandhi and Kest rounded the point which let into the bay before Danadl. Kest was on the ropes, guiding the dhow through the narrow pass into the bay, and his joyous shout woke the sleepers. Here was the village: conical clay huts gathered together along crooked paths of frozen mud, a trio of long, stone-walled clan lodges, and a pair of little docks, rimed with frost. People in sheepskin cloaks and woolen hats stood in the streets.

  Shouting sounded up and down the dhow as they entered the bay. They were spotted immediately. Mandhi could see the people of Danadl pointing and waving, and shortly a tall, red-faced man appeared from one of the huts and marched to the end of the dock. He shouted at the Kaleksha, and Kest answered, and with shouts and hand signs they brought the boat up to the pier and threw their ropes to the men waiting on the shore.

  Mandhi pressed against the rail. All of the Kaleksha were gathered along the front side of the dhow, jabbering excitedly at seeing their homeland again, creating such a ruckus that Mandhi could barely hear what Kest was saying.

  There was a commotion on the shore. Someone pushed through the small crowd that had gathered and ran out shouting onto the wooden slats of the dock.

  “Mandhi!” the woman on the dock yelled. “Kest! I was sure I saw you!”

  “Is that…?” Mandhi asked.

  Kest in the prow bellowed down at the woman. “Shadle!”

  Hrenge, pressed against the rail next to Mandhi, shouted down at the bustling Kaleksha woman with as much gusto as Mandhi and Kest. The sailors tied the knots, and Mandhi was the first over the rail, down the rope ladders and onto the dock. Shadle crushed her in an embrace as soon as her feet touched the wood. Mandhi’s face was buried in the thick, heavy wool of the woman’s cloak, pressed against her great pillowy breasts by meaty pink arms.

  “Mandhi and Kest!” the woman bellowed. “How in the world—where did you—what happened?”

  Mandhi pushed herself free of Shadle’s embrace. “The stars upon you, Shadle. We were… stars above, where do I begin?”

  “You saw the star fall? I worried—”

  “For good reason. It fell in Amur. We barely got out in time. But if it hadn’t—”

  “Piss on a rock,” Shadle said, her face aghast. “In Amur? And what happened there?”

  “More than I can explain right now. The whole land is ruined. We came to Kalignas as our last hope.”

  “Well,” Shadle said. “And where’s that girl you had with you? I liked her….”

  “Aryaji?”

  “Yes, that was her name! Smart thing, already talking Kaleksha before you left last time.”

  Mandhi fell silent. Shadle watched her face for a moment, then her expression fell.

  “Oh. I see.”

  “We who escaped were a lucky few,” Mandhi said. She turned around and pointed to Jasthi’s ship, just then rounding the point into the harbor. “We have seven ships in all. We are desperate for food, and many are ill. Trying to cross the ocean to Kalignas in the winter—”

  “I understand,” Shadle said. Her gaiety evaporated in a moment, and she looked at Mandhi grimly. “But it is not easy here, either. Danadl is already swollen with the survivors of Mabeg—”

  “Yes, we saw it. What happened there?”

  Shadle grunted. “When the star fell, Kaleg awoke. His head cracked in two and he poured hot ash and molten rock all over Mabeg. Buried the whole place. He hasn’t gone back to sleep yet, either. Been shaking and sending up fire every couple of days.”

  “We’ll work,” Mandhi said. “Earn our keep. Whatever we have to.”

  “Well, it’s not mine to say. With so many clans dispossessed, the clanmoot is gathered here in Danadl.”

  “Listen, Shadle,” Mandhi said, grabbing the woman by the front of her cloak. “Anything you can do. We need food desperately, we need to care for the ill. We can’t stay any longer on our ships.”

  “I understand. We’ll make room for you.” She peered out at the second boat coming into the bay. “The rest of you are Amurans?”

  “Yes.”

  Shadle sighed. “It won’t be popular. But make yourselves useful, and I think we can make room for you.”

  * * *

  It sounded like thunder at first. Then the ground trembled, a quiver like a shaking leaf, lasting only a moment. The rumble rose in pitch and dissipated into a hiss.

  The Kaleksha looked up to the mountain. Mandhi followed their gaze: Kaleg’s slopes were unchanged, but a new plume of black smoke boiled into the air above its peak.

  Shadle standing next to Mandhi let out a long, slow sigh. “That was a little one,” she said. “Didn’t knock anything over.”

  Mandhi looked around at the Kaleksha and the Amurans working together on the shore. They were smoking fish on great racks of pine boughs with smoldering fires beneath them, but work stopped for a moment as everyone shook off the tension of the quake. Nervous chatter passed among the Amurans and the Kaleksha, and everyone watched the mountain.

  “It’s been doing this since the star fell? Is that normal?”

  Shadle shrugged. “Don’t know. It’s been a long time since Kaleg woke up.”

  Mandhi watched the peak of the mountain. Kest’s voice behind her made her turn. He and Adleg were walking up the shore accompanied by a group of the Uluriya of Davrakhanda, dragging a net full of fish behind them. He threw the corner of the net down when he reached Mandhi and bent over to kiss the top of her head.

  “You reek of fish,” Mandhi said. “Stay away from me until you’ve washed.”

  Kest grinned. “Hard work, fishing in the winter. But bathing is harder. Anyway, get these gutted and on the smokers.” He looked up toward the crown of Kaleg. “You all felt that?”

  “Yes,” Mandhi said. “I’ve never been in an earthquake before.” She bent down and grabbed one of the long, white-bellied salmon. She sighed and picked up the knife. Surely she reeked of fish as badly as Kest did.

  “Hopefully that’s the worst we’ll get,” Shadle said.

  Kest and the other men went back toward the boats. Mandhi sat down next to Shadle, and they took to gutting the fish, tossing the innards aside into a pot, and spreading out the bony fillets on the racks over the smoldering coals. Her fingers were covered with blood and numb with frost, and she had fish scales on her skin up to her elbows. She groaned.

  Kaleg was silent, and neither she nor Shadle seemed to be much in the mood for talk. Toward evening a cold wind rose off of the sea, stinging her face with frozen spray and the smell of the muddy shore. “Almost done for the day?” she asked Shadle.

  “Gotta finish this batch first,” Shadle said. She wiped her nose with the back of her bloody hands, leaving a smear of fish slime across her cheek.

  “I’d like to go to bed,” Mandhi said.

  “You’d prefer to have food.”

  “True.” Mandhi pulled the hood of her cloak around her face.

  That was how she saw it: a trickle of orange light creeping through the trees at the head of the valley where Danadl lay.

  “What is that?” she asked Shadle. She pointed at the place in the trees.

  Shadle turned and looked. Her eyes grew wide. She swore. “We have to go alert the clans.”

  “Alert them of what?”

  “The molten stone from Kaleg’s mouth. It’s coming down the valley.” Shadle plunged her hands into the sand on the shore and scrubbed the blood and scales with the frozen grit.

  Mandhi’s heart raced. She scrubbed her own hands as clean as they could be after Shadle’s example, and she followed her into the village.

  Shadle was shouting, alternating between Kaleksha and Amuran. “The stone river is coming! The stone river is coming! Get everyone out of the village!”

  Confused and worried faces appeared in the doors of the huts—Amurans and Kaleksha mixed, crowded together into stone conical huts, sleeping on benches in the c
lan lodges. Shadle pointed them at the valley up ahead. They poured into streets and stared, and their gasps turned into screams of panic.

  “Everyone out!” Shadle shouted. More Kaleksha.

  Mandhi dashed after Shadle and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Why do we have to abandon the village?” she hissed.

  “The shape of the valley will send the lava right over the top of us,” Shadle said. “Burn everything that isn’t solid stone. We get out with our lives.”

  Her thoughts went to the dozens of smoking racks currently placed along the shore, food for her people and for the Kaleksha in Danadl. Her throat lurched. “Is there no other way?”

  “You want to risk being swallowed by molten stone, you go ahead,” Shadle said. She tore herself from Mandhi’s grasp. “But you leave me alone.”

  She ran for Hrenge and Jhumitu. They were lodged in one of the conical stone huts, Hrenge, Jhumitu, Kest, Mandhi, and a half-dozen other Uluriya from Davrakhanda crammed into an uncomfortable circle. She met Kest at the door of the hut.

  “They want us to—”

  “I know,” he said. His face was stormy with anger and worry. “I already told my mother to prepare.”

  “But isn’t there anything we can do?”

  “The stone will follow the course of the river.” He shook his head and ducked under the lintel of the hut.

  “But we could divert it.”

  Kest paused. He stepped back outside.

  “We would have to….” he said, and grew quiet. “We only have a few hours. Stone flows slowly, but it doesn’t stop.”

  “If everyone worked together.”

  His face hardened into an expression of determination. “Go gather the Amurans. I’ll talk to the other clans. Meet me at the north side of the village.”

  She ran into the village. Jasthi, first. The queen had been engaged in cleaning fish with the rest of them, but Mandhi repeated what she and Kest had talked about, and she agreed to help.

  The Amurans were dispersed throughout the settlement, but Mandhi found everyone she could and ordered them to join Kest. She saw Kaleksha running past her to the north as well, talking to each other in low rumbling voices, faces etched with worry. Had she found all of them? Well, if anyone hadn’t answered the summons yet, they would have to hear from another. She went to the place Kest had mentioned in the north.