Memory of Fire

by Holly Lisle

  Pete dropped to her side. "Oh, shit. Thank God we were just shooting to stun."

  "We can't shoot it, can we?"

  "Looks like no."

  The bubble was slowing. Lauren sat up. Now that it was closer, she could see through the radiance to a woman and a man who knelt inside. Not human, either of them. But dressed in fine clothes, and not bearing anything that looked like weapons, and both waving wildly at her and Pete, as if they were all good friends.

  Lauren said, "Maybe we shouldn't shoot them—if we get the chance."

  "Maybe not."

  The bubble settled to the ground outside the shield, and Jake burst out of his tent and ran to Lauren yelling, "Oz witch! Oz witch! Oz witch, Mama!"

  Lauren's leg remained numb. She wanted to stand, but it wasn't going to happen. So she sat there on the icy ground, with pebbles digging into her rear end and snow melting into her jeans, and watched the beautiful woman and the man stand up, and watched the bubble shimmer away into nothingness, and watched them walk over to Eric's shield, stop, then walk right through it.

  Jake was giving the woman the fishy eye. "Good witch? Or bad witch?" he muttered. "Good witch, or bad witch?"

  "Not a witch at all," Lauren told him. He would have liked the woman better if she'd been wearing a pastel pink ball gown with huge puffy sleeves, Lauren suspected. And a huge crown.

  "Hey," the woman said, and she had a Southern accent. Lauren's sort of Southern. It didn't sound right coming from someone with slanted eyes and faintly gold-tinged skin and metallic copper hair that nonetheless managed to look natural. "Lauren, I know this is awkward, but we really don't have a lot of time, and I had to meet you. I'm Molly. Your sister."

  * * *

  Molly found herself looking into a face very much like her own—or at least, very much like her face had been when she'd been on Earth.

  Lauren stared. "Molly? They said you'd changed, but…You're really Molly?" She struggled to rise, and Molly noticed that her right leg wasn't moving at all. "I'd stand up and say hello, but I can't." She managed a smile.

  "What happened?"

  "I was trying to shoot you and the shield that's surrounding you sent our shots back at us. I didn't get out of the way fast enough. When they ricocheted, one of them hit me."

  It was Molly's turn to stare. "I…I'm afraid I don't quite know how to take that."

  "Not too badly, I hope. We were shooting to stun, which is why I'm still alive to say hello, and we had no idea who you were, but with everything going on around here, we assumed you were something on its way to kill us." Lauren hugged the little boy who was using her to shield himself from Yaner and Molly, and said, "We aren't in a position to give everyone the benefit of the doubt."

  "You aren't going to shoot us now, are you?" The man standing at Lauren's side had lowered his weapon, but hadn't removed his finger from the trigger or taken his eyes off them once.

  "You here to kill us?" he asked.

  "No."

  "Then we won't shoot you."

  "He's one of the reasonable ones," Yaner told her. "I think his name is Pete."

  Lauren and the man gave each other wary looks, and the man said, "My name is Pete. You seem to have the better of me, sir. I would have said we'd never met."

  "We haven't," Yaner told him. "I followed you through the gate back at Copper House and spied on you in Lauren's house. That's how I found out that Molly had a sister, and that…those people"—he pointed to the semicircle of men and women who all stood facing the traitors' castle—"wanted to kill her."

  "They aren't going to," Lauren said, her face abruptly grim. "They aren't going to touch you. I made them swear and sign a paper." She held out her hand to Molly. "Give me a hand up, will you. I feel like an idiot sitting on the ground—maybe I can make myself a chair or something, so that we can talk comfortably."

  Molly reached down a hand to Lauren…

  …and their palms touched…

  …and light erupted behind Molly's eyeballs, and pain screamed into her head like a heat-seeking missile that had found its target.

  She thought she screamed, but she couldn't be sure; the deafening roar inside her skull drowned out all sound. She knew she was falling, but her body no longer seemed to belong to her; she couldn't throw out her arms to stop herself. But someone caught her and lowered her to something soft. And someone pressed a warm cloth to her forehead and held a cup of water to her lips. She couldn't see. The light behind her eyeballs blinded her as effectively as complete darkness would have.

  Couldn't see.

  Couldn't hear.

  Couldn't move.

  Couldn't speak.

  Almost couldn't think.

  And then the pain began to ebb away, and like a high tide, it left things behind.

  Memories.

  Memories that didn't belong to her. Her mother and stepfather were suddenly inside her head, and she knew. She knew them as well as if she'd spent her whole life with them. She knew what they'd planned for her. She knew what they'd planned for their magic, for the world. She was part of something big—bigger than she could have ever imagined.

  Her eyes cleared, and she looked at Lauren, who was sagging forward, her skin pale and beaded with sweat. Their eyes met, and Lauren said softly, "You got that, too, didn't you?"

  Molly nodded, and the two of them hugged, and in Molly's ear Lauren whispered, "Sweet Jesus, are we in trouble."

  They pulled apart, and both Yaner and Pete were at them immediately, wanting to know what happened.

  Lauren shook her head at Molly, the tiniest possible "no."

  Molly looked up at Yaner and said, "That was a spell left for us by our mother. To make sure we knew each other."

  Lauren agreed. "Gave me back memories of my parents and Molly when she was born, told me she was my little sister and I'm supposed to take care of her." Lauren rubbed her temples. "Loudly, too. Feels like the top of my head is still going to blow off."

  Molly looked at Yaner and Pete, wishing she could get rid of both of them. She and Lauren needed to talk. Badly. Some of the plans her parents—her human mother, her human stepfather, and her Orian father—had made for her and Lauren didn't mesh well with the plans she'd made for herself since coming to Oria. She could feel the importance, even the urgency, of her parents' carefully designed plan. She could see the necessity. But she had found a life for herself now, and she needed to discuss how she could keep the life she'd found and still carry out the enormous duties that waited for her.

  But neither Pete nor Yaner was going anywhere. They were, instead, looking toward the Sentinels' circle, and they looked worried. Scared, even. So her talk with Lauren was going to have to wait for a time when the two of them could find a moment's privacy.

  Lauren did a lovely job of moving the conversation in a safe direction. She said, "I'm thrilled to meet you, but, honey, you have to get out of here. There are people here who want to see you dead, and even though they promised that they wouldn't hurt you, I'd rather trust a flock of politicians than the lot of them." Lauren rubbed her right leg and winced. "We'll get you out of here as fast as we can. But, damn…I really am happy to meet you. I found out about you just yesterday—I can't believe I have a sister. I've been alone for a while."

  "I know the feeling," Molly said, and meant it. She gave her sister another hug. "I'm glad I came here."

  The little boy said, "Mama…biteys. Please, biteys. And truck."

  Molly looked down at him. "Your son?"

  Lauren nodded. "Jake."

  "He's beautiful. And that's his father?" She nodded toward Pete.

  Lauren said, "His father is dead. On his way home from Pope Air Force Base, took the wrong bus…he was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

  Molly winced. "I'm sorry. I was in the Air Force for a number of years. I lost a few friends. It's…ah…there's just no way you ever can make that sort of loss right in your mind."

  "Brian was a wonderful man, and he deserved better than
what he got," Lauren said. "And I don't think I'll ever get past feeling like the place where he's still supposed to be is this giant hole in my life."

  "Jake has to be a blessing. He's a darling little boy."

  Lauren said, "He's everything I have left of Brian. And he's wonderful all on his own…even if he is a huge pain sometimes." She smiled and ruffled her son's hair, and Molly felt a quick stab of envy that transformed itself into a sense of wonder. Perhaps someday she and Seo would have a child. Or children.

  Molly realized Lauren was scrutinizing her closely.

  "I can see a resemblance between us, even now," she said. "They—the Sentinels—they told me a little bit about you. About the fact that you were Mom's daughter, but also the daughter of one of the Orians here."

  Molly nodded.

  "You didn't look like this on Earth."

  "No. I didn't tell anyone in Cat Creek who I was, because…well, my parents gave me up for adoption. That's not the sort of thing you want to go back and broadcast. But the librarian told me I looked exactly like your…our mother looked when she was young."

  "Makes sense," Lauren said. "If only Earth genes could express themselves on Earth, then it would be the same as if you just had Mom's genes. I'll bet you did look just like her." Lauren said, "I wish I could have seen you there." She smiled sadly. "I miss her."

  "I never knew her. She and your dad had been dead for a number of years before I even managed to find out that they were my real parents. Well, my parents of record, anyway. I still haven't met my actual biological father."

  "Mama and Dad were good people."

  Molly smiled. "So I've heard. According to the veyâr, they were practically gods."

  "Mama!" Jake yelled. "Biteys! Play! Truck! Water!"

  Lauren rubbed her leg hard and wobbled to her feet. "Damn, that hurts," she said. But she gingerly put her weight on the leg that had been hit and didn't fall over. "Please excuse me," she said. "I have to do mom things for a little bit. And Pete and I have to watch the Sentinels over there to make sure nothing takes a shot at them while they're undoing the traitors' spell. But we'll talk later."

  "Count on it."

  * * *

  "Track the mouse lead," June Bug suggested. "There has to be a reason for it showing up. It has to be tied up with the spell that's causing the problem somehow."

  "It seems so…irrelevant."

  "Insignificant," Bethellen said.

  "That could be the reason why we haven't had any luck finding it until now. Maybe even little spells have been big enough to hide it."

  Jimmy Norris said, "I've been working on my disentangle spell. I think I can handle this."

  None of the Sentinels mentioned how much they missed Granger, with his quiet confidence and unquestionable competence at unraveling even the most complex of spells. That sort of comment would only make Jimmy's work harder, and decrease his likelihood of success. But Eric thought it, and he would have bet that every other Sentinel in the circle thought it, too. Most likely, Jimmy was thinking it harder than any of them—he'd been only too happy to relinquish that particular duty back when Granger and Debora had first joined the Cat Creek nexus.

  Now he pulled the autographed copy of Tom Sawyer that was his talisman out of his kit bag, and held it in front of him, closed. He slid his thumbs back and forth across the worn leather cover as he closed his eyes, licked his lips, and began to focus. When the book glowed green, he said, "Mouse. Unravel."

  The Sentinels braced. The spell would go out and start undoing whatever the traitors had done—and as it did, the magical backlash would start to build. Everyone was ready to ground the energy that hit them; Ernest had his tripod-mounted bit of pipe going so hard it glowed white.

  Nothing happened. The wait grew agonizing, because the longer it took to unravel and the longer it took to come back, the worse it was going to be. Nancine's clock ticked in front of all of them, and one minute became two, then three, then four, in appalling slow motion. Eric's gut knotted watching-a-train-wreck tight. Five minutes. Six minutes. Good God, he'd never seen a spell take this long to unravel. Seven minutes. Eight. If they had twenty Sentinels, they wouldn't be able to absorb the rebound from this thing safely. What the hell was it? What had the traitors done? Nine minutes.

  "Oh, God," Jimmy whispered. "Here it comes."

  Eric tasted ashes, smelled his own rancid sweat, shivered from cold and dread, and suddenly, desperately needed to piss.

  The first part of the rebound slid into them all—a soft, light, pillow of a crash that almost caused them to fall over. It was nothing—nothing. They'd been ready for the sun to fall blazing on their heads, and instead, someone started pelting them with paper cups.

  "Mousetrap," Jimmy said, but unnecessarily. They could all feel what the spell was. A tiny little steady-stream spell to rid the traitors' castle of mice; a throwaway; a piece of nothing. It used almost no energy, almost no magic—all it did was give a single mouse a disease contagious only to other mice, and then keep him alive until he had infected at least one other mouse.

  Eric would almost, almost have thought that they'd tracked down the wrong spell; that this little bit of fluff couldn't be the thing that had already snuffed out more than two million human lives back home, and that stood, within the next week or two, to eradicate half of the species from the face of the planet. Almost.

  But for all that it was tiny, the spell had one inescapable bit of poison in it. It was a spell anchored in death. It killed—and magic that killed on the way out killed on the way back. No one, to his knowledge, had ever devised a spell based on death that didn't move out of the channels that had been devised to keep it in bounds.

  And it wasn't finished with them. The second part of the rebound, the tiny twist that made the spell lethal to mice—the part of the spell that had metamorphosed into something massive and deadly and ugly to humans in Oria's upworld of Earth—came slipping in then, point first, like a dagger between ribs, and even though they thought they were ready, even though they had braced themselves and grounded their magic, it caught them unprepared. They thought they would be facing the blow of a mace—a loutish swing that would be the logical rebound to level Earth's human population. They were braced for the big blow, so the stiletto was through their magical chain mail and into their ribs before they knew it had arrived.

  Lethal. Bethellen Tate had prepared least. Her son Tom had cast the spell, and she had read his touch in the magic, and she had been unable to believe that anything her boy would do could come back to haunt her. The rebound hit her, and she gasped once, eyes flying open wide in horror and dismay, face a picture of betrayal realized at last. And she dropped to the ground, stone dead.

  Lethal. Nancine Tubbs, plump and still rather pretty at fifty-one, the cheerful owner of Daisies and Dahlias, whose main magical contribution, aside from keeping track of the Sentinels' time on site was simply to act as a buffer for rebound magic, never saw the rebound coming. The gentle strike of the first half of the spell had put her off her guard. She'd let herself believe "mousetrap," even though she knew in her heart that the spell's big brother, turned loose back home, had already killed millions. She was thinking they were unraveling the wrong spell—such a simple bit of self-deception. And the second half of the spell dug into her and dropped her to the ground so fast she didn't have time to cry out. One instant she stood there checking the Sentinels' running time, and the next she was dead on her feet. She toppled to the ground with her eyes open, flopping.

  Her husband, Ernest, had been better braced, better grounded, less put off his guard, but he saw her fall, lost his focus, and lurched forward to catch her, and the rebound took him in the space between breaths, between heartbeats, and he crashed to the ground beside her.

  "Steady," Eric shouted. "Steady! Ground it. Channel it. Don't let it get away from you!"

  With Ernest dead, his energy-channeling spell died, and suddenly the rebound wasn't even coming in at them from a predictable direct
ion. It swirled like a dervish, buffeting them from all directions, while they stood with feet planted in the ground, arms outstretched, trying to make themselves the lightning rods that would conduct it through their bodies and harmlessly into the earth.

  George Mercer held. Battered, scared, he nonetheless stood his ground. He'd seen action in Vietnam—he'd survived too many firefights in his two years in the jungle, had watched men to either side of him blown apart time after time, had, one very bad night, taken a bullet through the thigh. Had kept firing, laying down heavy cover that let his surviving buddies regroup, and had put the fear of God into the enemy; had, when the enemy backed off, wrapped a rag around his wound and pulled his wounded and dead buddies to a staging area, where the choppers could get in. In his drawer, a purple heart in a box attested to his courage. As he watched his friends and neighbors fall, the man who loved numbers, who delighted in the steadying influence of the accountant's life, fell away, and the warrior who had stood his ground shimmied out of the shed skin of quiet respectability and fought.