Demons of the Flame Sea

by Jean Johnson

  “He manages just fine,” Rua replied primly. “And he’s quite healthy and vigorous for his age. If you must look for a reason why he manages just fine, stare at Jintaya. She keeps everyone very healthy, here.”

  Caught by the truth of it, Jintaya shrugged and spread her hands. “That, I do . . . but on the subject of sending people, if Kefer, Krue, Jinji, Muan, Ban, and Zedren all go, the only one of the original pantean will be Ban.”

  Rua wrinkled her nose. “I’d go, because I could go as a consultant even without being considered an option for an inheritance clause, but I have those new seeds to watch over, and the growing season is about to begin.”

  “I have a new child to nurse,” Fali demurred, shrugging.

  An idea crossed Ban’s mind. He spoke up, addressing it. “I think Éfan should go, instead of Zedren. He has a lot of seniority in the pantean, as Jintaya has always considered him her second-in-charge. And he is an eligible male.”

  “He doesn’t have the maintenance experience that Zedren and I have with the sky barge,” Adan pointed out. “And more to the point, Zedren is not pre-soaked in the local anima. Éfan’s restrictions on how much magic he can use at any one time are heavier than Zedren’s.”

  “But he has more seniority, more experience with this world, and has more of the subtle control over his magics than I do,” Zedren countered. “That, and there are several repair projects awaiting my efforts, but I still haven’t fully configured my workrooms because you wanted the sky barge put together first. It’s been very inefficient, not having a place for everything and everything in its place.”

  “He’s fussy that way,” Muan agreed, supporting her brother’s assertions, “but once he’s organized, he’s extremely efficient.”

  “I’d much rather stay,” Zedren agreed. “The sooner I know if something is missing from my inventory, the sooner I’ll be able to requisition it when the Veilway is reopened. Or craft a replacement, if I can.” He glanced at the chief mage hopefully.

  “Enough. For your sake, I will go,” Éfan stated, holding up his hand to forestall any more discussion on the matter. “With Jintaya’s permission, and if Kefer and Jinji agree. I do believe it would be appropriate for a second-in-command to examine the enemy camp, so to speak, and preside over some of the initial negotiations. It will be a proof that we take the presence of the Efrijt seriously, though I shall not presume to involve myself in any of the initial discussions beyond merely giving my approval as they begin.”

  “That would be acceptable, yes,” Kefer said, nodding. “You have the rank to discuss matters with their triumvirate if they insist upon it, plus the experience and seniority from having lived here all along. Shava, I presume you will be staying here?”

  “Of course,” Krue’s mate agreed. The educator gestured at Kaife. “I have just been waiting for Kaife to finish shaping the teaching space I requested, then I will begin working in earnest. The slate boards and chalk he dredged up out of the earth have already been useful, but if the winter season is coming, and with it the wind and rain, we will need to be indoors instead of trying to hold classes and evaluations in an open garden. I’ll admit I was leery of how quickly the humans here have taken to writing and reading since the pantean was established, but it was reassuring to know they already had the rudiments of it in place.”

  “They already had different tally marks for different sizes of numbers, and a concept of sound-based hieroglyphs,” Jintaya dismissed. “The rest, they worked out or refined for themselves after watching and talking with us. The only thing we really taught them was the concept of using a symbol for zero . . . and that was an accident.”

  At the arched brows from both Kefer and Jinji, Ban cleared his throat. When the newcomers looked his way, he confessed. “I did not realize they lacked a symbol for it, and answered Animadj Zuki’s questions. She was still mostly a child at the time, so I thought she had simply not been taught that level of mathematics by her own people, yet. She absorbed every word of my explanation, and had taught everyone else by the end of the day.”

  “She still hangs on your every word,” Adan teased dryly. “And teaches whatever she learns.”

  “Yes, but now she has the wisdom and experience to argue with me,” Ban reminded him.

  “. . . That brings us to the humans,” Jinji stated. “For the Fae and Shae, we have Éfan as the expedition seniormost, Kefer and myself for negotiators, Krue and Ban for Guardians, and Muan as our healer and possible free female, alongside Éfan as the free male. Who should come along from among the Flame Sea humans?”

  “At least three hunters trained as warriors,” Krue stated, “so that their senses will be sharp and their reflexes trained for possible threats, and at least one animadj, if not two, so that they can speak with some authority among their fellow humans. Unless I am mistaken about how they honor their animadjet?”

  Éfan dipped his head. “No, you are correct. Even the most quarrelsome tribes will include an animadj among their negotiators, not just their war bands. The animadjet of this world often fill in the role of shaman, to use an archaic term. The spiritual adviser for a people. I think taking Taje Tulan on the first trip would be as inappropriate as taking Jintaya, but Toruk would be a good choice.”

  Krue nodded. “He is wise and very skilled with the weapons he knows. There was also another human who volunteered . . . Talgan? I of course do not know much about him, but I do know he keeps watch on the cliffs in the late evenings, and that Toruk has praised him for his diligence, his wits in observing and thinking, and his skill as a hunter and fighter.”

  “That’s a good choice,” Adan agreed. “Talgan tends to be far more thoughtful than impulsive, but he has a very quick wit when quick action is needed.”

  “Of course, he’ll probably report back whatever he sees to his mother, Grandmother Siffu,” Parren pointed out dryly. “But he’s never been as troublesome about things like that as she has been. I think it might be good for him to see other outworlders. Maybe it’ll help convince her to stop thinking of us as ‘gods,’ if her own son tells her that people from ‘far distant lands Elsewhere’aren’t godly beings, either. Even if they’re rather advanced compared to the locals.”

  Jinji quirked her brows at that. “. . . You have indigenous worshippers?”

  Jintaya wasn’t the only one to roll her eyes and throw up her hands, but she was the one who answered the question. “Not by choice! I promise, I will speak with her again this week about her mistaken beliefs. And to the rest of her rather prolific family.”

  “Prolific?” Shava asked, curious.

  “Remarkably prolific,” Rua explained. “The locals have a plant the women can take to reduce fertility temporarily, so they rarely have more mouths than they can feed comfortably, but she begat twelve children before she lost her fertility, with two sets of twins. Very prolific, considering she’s also never had any Dai-Fae offspring. Somehow, she’s resisted the pheromones of our men.”

  “She is a remarkably stubborn and strong-willed woman,” Jintaya told the new members of their pantean. “For all she seems rather mild-mannered and gentle, that is.”

  “Then we will just have to show her that the Efrijt and the Fae are not very different from the native humans, and put an end to any worship,” Kefer said.

  “Well, don’t try to take her along with you,” Kaife warned him. “Siffu’s in her seventies, and is not nearly as hale and healthy as the chief animadj is—and I wouldn’t take him along, even if he is still vigorous in some ways.”

  Ban noticed Rua blushing again. A strange urge, the temptation to tease her, washed through him. He decided to ignore it. She had been his friend almost as much as Jintaya had, all these years.

  “Whatever Talgan believes, he is stable and reliable as a hunter and a fighter,” he said instead. “Zitta is a bit old for a long journey, but Zuki is still fit enough to handle it, and is the seco
nd-ranked animadj for the tribe. I think she should be included, along with perhaps one apprentice. Someone young, who can engage the other youths of the Red Rocks, and get them to open up to him or her, as they might not open up to someone older and higher in perceived rank.”

  “We’ll have to give that some thought—not to Zuki,” Éfan added. “She’s an excellent choice. But she has a lot of apprentices, since most of the Dai-Fae can wield the anima with ease.”

  “Not like a Fae can, I trust,” Shava said quickly, giving him a worried look.

  Jintaya shook her head. “No, they are not nearly as strong as a Fae, not by even a tenth of how easy we find it to wield the local magic in this realm. But they do tend to find it palpably easier to manipulate than most humans.”

  “I’ll mix and mingle with the younglings, then,” Jinji told her. “And try to figure out which one would be a good match for bringing along.”

  “Do not pick young Seda,” Ban told her. “She believes at least a little bit of what her grandmother, Siffu, preaches about the Fae.”

  “Duly noted,” the negotiator reassured him.

  ***

  “Ban-taje? What are you doing?”

  Ban looked up from where he crouched, scooping up another panful of sand. The sight of young Tuki eyeing him in bemusement, one sandy blond brow arched, his curls in disarray from the wind, bemused Ban in return. He shrugged and stated the obvious. “Sifting sand.”

  “That . . . Well, of course you’re sifting sand,” the youth asserted. Crouching beside him, he eyed the two hexagonal wooden frames next to the pan, and their gem-studded meshes, glittering in specks of various shades of red, green, and blue. “That much is obvious. But why are you sifting sand?”

  Considering the question, and considering what he knew of the teenager’s sometimes impatient nature, Ban shrugged. “Do you want the long answer, or the short?”

  “Short. I’m tracking a desert fox that has been bothering the geese in the western wadijt, and I detoured only because I saw you. I need to get back on the trail before the marks in the sand blow away.” Tuki lifted his bow, not bothering to nod at the quiver slung at his hip. “Mother wants a lot of goose feathers and goose meat, rather than bits of mangled handfuls of feathers and no meat. So . . . the short version?”

  “Saving lives,” Ban stated.

  Tuki’s brow furrowed and his mouth opened. He hesitated, blinked, then asked, “. . . What?”

  Apparently, the impulse to tease someone had not gone entirely away. He had spared Rua his rusty sense of humor, but, well, Tuki could handle a bad jest. “That is the very short version. Go catch your fox.”

  Again, his mouth opened, then the youth shook his head, his curls bouncing around his sun-brown face. “. . . No. No, you have to explain that one. I insist. How could sifting sand possibly save lives?”

  Ban finished filling the pan, made from thin strips of woven wood lashed and glued to a frame, and shrugged. “Jintaya wants a special device made in order to spy on the tribe of the Efrijt from so very far away, but it must be made with a minimum of anima. Yet without anima, it is very difficult to make fast enough and well enough for her to use it in time to figure out what they are really doing, and advise the others on how to handle them. I need to get it made before we leave for the Red Rocks area.”

  “So . . . ?” Tuki asked. “Making things fast with anima is easy for a Fae, and they draw anima out of anything they concentrate on. Why isn’t Éfan doing this?”

  “Éfan is making special bracelets so that everyone who goes with us on the trip will be safe from harm while we travel,” Ban told him. “And Éfan’s use of the anima is not the kind of magic that is needed for this device. My magics are more what it can use best. The Efrijt apparently cannot use the anima like a human can, never mind a Fae. But the kind they do use blocks the anima somewhat successfully. Using anima to spy upon them would not be efficient, even for a Fae.”

  Frowning, Tuki watched him carefully lift pan and frame. The youth mulled over his words while Ban focused his inner energies through his tattoos . . . and breathed a stream of air as he poured the sand from the pan into the mesh of the frame. He did so aiming off to the side, for when he breathed and poured, over half the sand flew off and away, sorted by his spell. Pale cream and white quartz poured into the mesh and down through the openings between the hundreds of tiny gems. He breathed four, five, six times, slowly pouring only about half the panful, then gently shook the frame so that the last, larger pieces nestled against the gems for a long moment, before bouncing them out and away with a shake of the frame.

  “I know the Fae dislike using up all the anima, because they want the rest of us to have access to it,” Tuki finally said. “But that does not explain why you are pouring sand onto that thing you’re holding.”

  “The gems in the mesh are tourmaline. In this region, Éfan told me that quartz drains anima and even draws out other forms of magic from tourmaline. Quartz usually has a cleansing effect, in most regions. Here, it works in small ways, but does so enough to gradually cleanse the stone. Sifting sand past it, the quartz gradually scours away the magics I used to set the gems quickly and neatly in the mesh, rather than taking forever doing it by hand.

  “And to make it go a little faster, my breathing spell sorts out everything but the quartz grains in the sand—my magic touches everything that is not quartz, so that the quartz does not absorb too much magic to be effective.” Setting down the first one, Ban picked up the second hexagonal frame. Another six long, slow breaths sorted and spilled the rest of the quartz from the flat woven basket onto the tourmaline in that meshwork. Bouncing the frame, he cleared it, then picked up both frames and lifted his chin. “Time to find new quartz.”

  Tuki moved with him, following the taller male. “So . . . how long do you have to do this?”

  “Six or seven hours more. I have been doing it for three.” He tipped his head behind him, indicating the little patches of darker and lighter grains, the lighter ones the quartz and the darker ones the other kinds of stone and debris that had been turned by wind and weathering and time into desert sand. Those patches stretched behind and to either side in a back-and-forth pattern that covered more space than the typical cavern-carved home held, back in the valleys of Ijesh. “A little time spent in boredom now, cleansing these materials of magical taint, may bring the information Jintaya needs to save a lot of lives later. Which is what she wants.

  “For her, even saving just one life would be enough to justify this much effort. So. I am saving lives. For her sake.” He scooped more sand, unsorted and untouched sand, into the pan, picking out what looked like a bit of shed snakeskin and tossing it behind him, into the downward side of the wind.

  Tuki eyed him thoughtfully a long moment. Then he asked, very quietly, “. . . You love her, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” There was no reason to hide it.

  The youth lingered a bit more, his fox apparently forgotten. He waited until Ban shifted to a fresh patch of sand, then asked rather daringly, “Have you slept with her?”

  Ban slanted him a dark look. Tuki quickly shrugged and spread his arms, hoisting his bow. “What? You’re a man! I’m a man! She’s a woman, and she’s rather attractive. All the Fae are rather attractive. Even the males. Kaife has the cutest rump . . .”

  Personally, Ban could have gone a few more decades without speculating once on the Fae’s backside. Sighing, he started scooping sand again.

  “What, you haven’t slept with her yet?” Tuki asked. “Forty-six years we’ve been here, and you haven’t . . . ?”

  That thread of mischief came back. Ban felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward. On the side away from the youth. “I have slept with her.”

  “And . . . ?” Tuki asked, leaning in a little closer, avid to hear the details.

  “What else is there to say?”

  “. . .
Was it good when you slept with her?” Tuki pressed, gesturing impatiently at the tattooed male.

  “Every time she moved or made a faint sound as she slept, I woke back up . . . so no. I did not get any good sleep with her.”

  “AAAGH!!” Spinning away and keeling over backward rather dramatically, Tuki flopped into the half-sorted piles of sand behind him. “That’s not what I meant!”

  A rusty laugh huffed out of the older male. Chuckling, Ban lifted the pan and the first of the frames. Tuki growled and kicked a little at the sand, throwing a mock tantrum. Unable to stop his grin, Ban set both objects down. “You asked if I had slept with her. You did not mention sex. Do not blame me for answering your question accurately.”

  Another cry, and Tuki thumped his fists into the sand. Growling, he sat back up, shook a finger at Ban, huffed and glared . . . and broke down laughing, himself. Finally, he scrubbed at his hair and his shoulders, dusting off some of the sand grains, and sighed. “You are tricky, Ban-taje. Just when no one expects it of you. Have you had sex with her? Was it good? Everyone says it was good, but she only indulges when the palraca comes out, so it could be the palraca . . .”

  “The wind is blowing your fox tracks away,” he pointed out, avoiding any sort of answer. “You have spent more than enough time questioning me. Go track down your goose-eating fox. Give Soki the pelt, so that she knows her supply of geese will be safe.”

  “Fine, I’ll go track down that fox!” Rising, he dusted off his leather trousers and wool-spun shirt. They were already an indeterminate shade of light brown from the wool and the smoke tanning that had made them, so the dust and dirt of the desert did not show much. Ban suspected the youth simply did not want sand rubbing against his skin as he walked.

  “Your fox probably went toward a shallow wadij in that direction,” Ban told him, pointing off to the southwest. “It looked too shallow to flood when it rains, and is far enough away that human activity would not bother the beast or its kin. It’s about half a selijm that way, maybe less. I haven’t been there in two years, but it looked like a good place for wildlife to hide, with bushes that survive the heat of high summer along the valley floor, and some holes that could have been fox dens. They could still be in use.”