Reign of Fire

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  Ghirra counted heads and called Susannah back to the wagon immediately. Up and down the line, guildsmen checked the fastenings of harness and canopy stays, and watched the sky. Conversation swelled as wagering and debate spread from wagon to wagon.

  “A little rain might be nice,” Megan remarked mordantly as Susannah drew up beside her, stuffing her notebook and samples into her field pack.

  “I don’t know.” Susannah peered at the still-cloudless green sky, then at the enclosing walls of the gorge, her sullenness set aside for something grimmer. “Not a good place to be,” she murmured. “Flash floods nearly got me once before.”

  Aguidran apparently had the same thought. On the heels of the PriestGuild alert came a phalanx of rangers to urge the drivers and the teams to maximum speed. Passengers piled out of the wagons to lighten the loads. The strongest lent their backs to push or pull. The brittle rock was treacherous underfoot. Thorny vegetation poked through the cracks to snatch at pant legs and the curly fetlocks of the hjalk. The beasts bent their broad high shoulders into the harness to haul valiantly against the stubborn drag of brush-bound wheels.

  The clouds appeared suddenly, as if by magic. The hot sunlight flickered and dimmed. Fat cushions of mist with ominous mouse-colored bellies gathered overhead, jostling about like an expectant crowd.

  Megan jerked a thumb at them darkly. “Valla’s army awaits her orders.”

  The Master Ranger halted the caravan and ordered the wagons drawn up against the side of the gorge farthest from the riverbed, where ledges and high piles of rock offered some escape. Rope coils sprouted like a plague of snakes as wagons and carts were lashed to everything available: rock, dead tree stumps, the rigid sword plants, anything solid enough to hold a line.

  Aguidran appeared in person to direct the Infirmary wagon onto a stretch of particularly high ground, helping her brother to fasten it down as best they could. Ghirra sent Megan and his four apprentices to climb the rocks in search of a safe niche to ride out the coming storm.

  Megan did not argue. “I’m not so quick on my feet as you,” she said, as Susannah, elected to stay with Ghirra and the others, on the canyon floor with the wagon.

  The clouds closed ranks abruptly, shutting out the sun. The ocher walls of the gorge darkened to dull shadow brown. As Megan pulled herself onto a perch at the top of a rockslide, she saw Xifa and Ampiar busying themselves at the rear of the wagon, checking the accessibility of supplies. Susannah waited with Ghirra as he soothed the anxious hjalk. Megan recalled her own more adventurous youth, envying Susannah’s ability to submerge panic within her physician’s emergency training.

  Silence settled over the gorge. No wind or thunder threatened Ghirra stared at the leaden brown sky, his mouth hard set, his long fingers tapping a quick rhythm against his thigh.

  He’s not afraid, observed Megan with some puzzlement, he’s angry.

  The first drops fell like buckets spilled from the sky, huge and scattered, exploding little dust puffs as they hit the dry rock. The ground was hardly wet when Megan was slammed against a boulder by a sudden jarring of the air, like the shock wave from an explosion.

  A spasm of cold turned the rime of dust and humidity on her skin to a chill sweat. The giant raindrops froze midair into a thunderous downpouring of hail.

  A mad scramble for shelter ensued. Many flattened themselves into the lee of the gorge wall or crowded beneath the overhanging ledges. Others dove under the wagons. The hjalk dropped their heads, skittering and wailing, unable to escape the merciless pounding of the ice.

  Megan struggled further up her rockslide to curl into a ball beneath the brush clinging to the wall. The branches broke the fall of hail on her upper body, but left no protection for her legs. The ice balls were as big as eggs and hit with the force of a stone flung from the top of the gorge. Megan turned her face into the wall as her whimpers joined the chorus of pain and confusion rising all around her.

  And then there were strong hands pulling at her roughly. A wiry ranger, her hard-brimmed hat deflecting the hail, dragged Megan from her perch and hauled her down the rockslide through the battering of ice. She was shoved under the belly of the medical wagon, where Susannah huddled with the others.

  Xifa received her with soothing hands as she wept in shock and relief. The hail roared down around them, filling the cracks between the rocks, piling up in the gullies, bouncing and rolling beneath the wagon in chill cascades. Thick clots of ground fog congealed above the ice and spread to isolate each wagon in a blind cloud of mist and noise. Through the din came the sound of shredding wagon canopies and the squealing of the hjalk.

  Xifa passed Megan a blanket, then helped her to wrap her shivering body. Megan did not see Ghirra anywhere. Beyond the sheltering curve of the wheel, she saw the booted calves of the rangers and some brave bare legs race among the tethered wagons to release the beasts from the prison of their harness. At the front of their own wagon, the four moaning hjalk broke away one by one as their straps and buckles were loosed. When the last had bolted off in terror, Ghirra ducked and skidded under the wagon to hunch beside the left front wheel. His usually tranquil face was twisted with righteous rage, as if he saw in the hail storm not just ill luck or the vagaries of a capricious climate, but a genuine maliciousness, directed at innocents.

  Megan was distracted from her own pain. She had thought stoic resignation to be characteristic of the Sawls’ attitude toward the lethal weather of their world, the classic victim’s acceptance of his lot at the hands of the gods. But Ghirra’s mask of outrage was anything but accepting. She remembered then that his parents had died in a storm-triggered mudslide on a similar trading trip long ago.

  No wonder he’s at odds with the Goddesses…

  The wagon vibrated with the drumming of the hail. The still-warm ground ran with melt water and grainy slush. The cold mist wrapped the canyon in a smoky shroud.

  And then the roaring abruptly ceased. The silence left behind was almost as painful as the noise. A gust of wind swept through the gorge, stirring the fog into spiraling tendrils. The sky lightened.

  The wailing of a child broke the silence. Ghirra levered his lean body out from under the wagon, squinted at the thinning clouds, then forward, looking for his sister’s all-clear signal. Xifa and Ampiar tumbled out after him and went immediately to unpack the medical supplies. The four apprentices climbed down from the shelter of an overhang, wide-eyed, checking each other for bruises and scrapes. Susannah helped Megan to a comfortable seat on a rock. Hjalk wandered dazed among the wagons.

  Rangers came and went, relaying damage and injury reports, their bootheels rattling the scattered ice like stones on a beach.

  The clouds vanished and the sun shone hot again. Steam rose glistening from the melting layer of hail. Megan thought of the mist burning off a summer dawn and wished for something as peaceable. The faint breeze was noticeably fresher and drier than it had been before the storm. Bringing a load of bandage from the wagon, Xifa paused, sniffed the air, then shook her head worriedly as she went back for another load.

  Susannah treated minor injuries for many hours without a break. Few had escaped some light cuts and scrapes in that first mad scramble for safety, and there was a great deal of serious bruising from the hail. The elderly had fared the worst, being the least agile and the most sensitive skinned. Ghirra set one broken arm and calmed the terrors of several messy broken noses. Susannah and Ampiar wrapped sprains and swabbed and poulticed and bandaged wounds, while the apprentices tended the fires, and Xifa brewed and dispensed her herbal teas as painkillers and calmatives.

  The material cost was higher. With the exception of the Infirmary wagon and the FoodGuild’s hard-topped giants, hardly a wagon was left with its canopy intact. Some, with tough double layers or a wicker understructure, had suffered minor puncturing. The worst were totally shredded, and the goods inside battered by the ice.

  The Potter guildsmen muttered and swore as they dug out the shards of countless jugs and bo
wls that had been packed uncrated to fill the excess spaces in the loads of all four of their wagons. The Glassblowers gathered silently around the second of their three blue-painted wagons, afraid to even look beneath the crumpled heap of tom, ice-damp canvas. Megan’s weaver friend Tyril had confided that the Glassblowers of DulElesi were considered the finest among all the nearby settlements and were always the prime attraction at the Ogo Dul market. But they would show little profit this trip. Most of what survived would be bartered for items the FoodGuild would take in trade for the standard food ration.

  But the real victims of the hail were the animals. The hakra, being little and quick-minded, had generally taken care of themselves. More than one frightened Sawl had shared his shelter with a small, insistent beast. The herd of prize hekkers had their frantic herdsmen to search out trees for their protection, and keep them from mindless panic.

  But the big hjalk had suffered greatly. They stood about on splayed legs, stunned and swaying. Ghirra set Dwingen to ferrying pots of infusion to the anxious herdsmen, to sponge clean the blood from the beasts’ golden coats. Several of the older hjalk had been driven to their knees by the ice. They lay moaning while their drivers washed and petted them and tried to coax them to their feet.

  Swabbing grit from her hundredth nasty scrape, Susannah found herself in tears. She was too busy to wonder much at this uncharacteristic display. She continued her cleaning and binding while the tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. She took comfort from the fact that she was not alone. The tears of the many hurt and confused let Susannah’s tears go unremarked, except by Ghirra, who watched her covertly as he worked at her side.

  When the line of injured had thinned at last, and the apprentices could give their attention to repacking the wagon, turned virtually inside out to cope with the emergency, Aguidran appeared to ask her brother’s prognosis in the case of a hjalk that had broken a leg in its frenzied attempt to climb the canyon wall.

  Ghirra crouched beside a weeping little boy, bandaging his thorn-ripped arm, softly talking him into a smile. When Aguidran touched his shoulder, he barely raised his eyes. He asked a few murmured questions, then merely shook his head sadly and went on with his work.

  Aguidran’s mouth tightened regretfully. She bent to her boot and drew out a razor-edged, eight-inch sliver of metal, mounted in an handle of age-dark bone. The blade was nearly two inches wide at the handle, narrowing toward the tip and wafer thin along the cutting edge from generations of sharpenings. It glittered darkly in the returned sunlight, a tapestry of ancient etchmarks and scourings. The handle bore on its butt the carved hallmark of the RangerGuild.

  The drawing of the shining metal caught everyone’s attention, those who saw it and those others who heard the collective intake of breath. The child in Ghirra’s arms shrank against him at the sight of it. Aguidran herself regarded it with respect tinged with distaste, though it rested in her hand with the ease of long familiarity.

  None of the life-threatening events she had experienced so far aroused Susannah’s sense of mortality as profoundly as Aguidran’s knife. It was the longest blade she had seen on Fiix, and the first true weapon. Its impractical length, its slim profile, its demon edge, all declared without apology that it had been forged for one purpose alone, the taking of a life. Its efficiency and sophistication brought to mind a sudden vision of Emil Clausen.

  “Ghirra, wait…” On impulse, Susannah fumbled at the bottom of her medikit. She dug out a syringe and laid it in his hand. Its plastic housing did not glitter. Ghirra frowned at it. He knew its workings. She had schooled him in its use.

  Aguidran shifted, gently slapping the long blade against her thigh.

  Ghirra closed his fingers around the syringe, then handed it back. He nodded to Aguidran, who strode off down the line of wagons. A crowd had gathered around the stricken hjalk. As Aguidran shouldered her way through them, a mournful chant was begun and soon spread along the entire caravan.

  Susannah watched the Ranger kneel, then turned her head away, her tears flowing again unbidden.

  Beside her, Ghirra said gravely, “The killing must not be ever easy.”

  “No,” she agreed, shaking her head and weeping. She pictured Stavros caught in the sights of Clausen’s gun. “No, it must not.” And then she whispered, glancing across at Megan on her rock, “And yes, Ghirra, you are right to try to stop those who think it ever should be.”

  7

  His eyes were open and alert but his mind dreamed of holding her in his arms. His empty hands remembered the pale silk of her skin. The pain he felt was physical. He could lay his palm against the place where it lived, deep in the soft tissue between heart and groin. Yet it was a different pain, his palms’ faint heat, whose summons he followed.

  “Ibi.” Liphar touched his knee gently.

  “I know,” Stavros replied. “It’s time.”

  They crawled out from under the low-hanging ledge, dusting dirt and crumbling twigs from their hair and clothing. The hail glistened like wet pearls on the battered grass. Steam misted the ruddy landscape with a golden haze as the sun renewed its hot glare. Stavros found the combination of debilitating heat and autumn-colored flora to be subtly disturbing to his body chemistry, sending mixed signals of Indian summer that had him anticipating the sudden cold snap that announced the advent of winter.

  But there were no seasons on Fiix, only weather.

  Their young ranger guide adjusted her pack and pointed across the brush-choked gully, where ground fog obscured their path. Edan was the Master Ranger’s protégé, as thin, hard and energetic as Aguidran herself, but with an overbearing arrogance that Aguidran had grown out of long ago.

  A thorny companion, but worth it. Stavros reflected, for despite the wild explosion of plant growth that had, to Stavros’ untrained eye, rendered Aguidran’s map irrelevant. Edan had found the Sled, the proverbial needle in the haystack of the Fiixian wilderness. She had kept them alive as well, the two tenderfoot adventurers, a university-bred off-worlder and a skittish apprentice priest. Stavros was not sure which task had required the greater effort.

  He squinted at the steep slope ahead as it faded in and out of the shifting fog. He had spotted the Sled before the hail, a bright sun-glint on a patch of white amid the tangles of reddish vegetation. The downed craft lay on its belly at the edge of a plateau backed by the northernmost scarps of the rugged Grigar, “Lagri’s Wall.” It was impossible from this distance to judge its condition, but Stavros felt sure that the hail had not done it any good. He hoped the plastic bubble over the communications equipment had withstood the bombardment.

  Edan and Liphar were not happy about the hail, either. While the young ranger strode ahead into the waist-high fog to scout out the trail, Liphar studied the skies with genuine anxiety and a tinge of priestly officiousness. He continued muttering to himself about this sign and that, long after Stavros had stopped listening. He worried the blue talisman bead on his wrist until his telling of its obscure rosary was no more than a reflex.

  His complaint with the hail, Stavros finally understood, was not its abrupt violence and peril so much as its abnormality. Applying his own definition of the word, Liphar explained that “normal” for the current progress of the Sisters’ conflict would be Valla Ired feinting with quick, light thrusts of rain, a mere flexing of muscles, good for the crops back home in DulElesi and not threatening enough to entice Lagri from the rest period gained by her recent successful skirmish.

  But, Liphar fretted, Lagri was clearly not resting. She was engaging in active counterattack. He rolled a handful of ice through his open fingers to illustrate how Valla’s soldiers froze in terror as they fell, and thus brought hurt instead of moisture to the ground.

  Edan called to them then, and Liphar shouldered his pack resignedly and crunched away through the rising patches of steam and the melting hailstones to descend the brittle ledges of the fog-bottomed gully. Stavros followed, adding Liphar’s worries to the long list of considerations jostl
ing around inside his head.

  He had done a lot of thinking since slipping away from the caravan, leaving Susannah asleep in the yellow grasses, a lot of thinking while they searched for the wrecked Sled. Walking away from the woman he had just won had been the hardest part, but as he let himself be lost in an alien wilderness with aliens his company, he had the distinct sensation of relaxing into the arms of his destiny.

  He meant nothing predetermined, nothing so melodramatic. Stavros did not believe in fate. But he did believe that for each individual, there is a given course to follow. Such life courses are never obvious, but for the lucky few who stumble upon theirs by accident, there is no refusing it, and thus it becomes a kind of destiny.

  And so it was with him, he was coming to believe, though what that destiny was to be, he was not sure. It was his scheme to foil Clausen’s claim and it was his promise to the Master Healer to discover the true nature of the Sister Goddesses, and it was more, unknown as yet, or unrecognized. But at the center of the mystery was the old Ritual Master, Kav Daven, and the miracle of the guar.

  Stavros considered his miracle as he crashed along the bottom of the fog-wrapped gully, ripped by finger-sized thorns and tripped up by entangling roots and undergrowth. He had felt the corrosive guar, the pure lithium from the bedrock, placed in his hands by the old priest during the Ceremony of Leave-taking. He had suffered the very real agonies of seared flesh and a touch of inexplicable Presence, yet his skin survived the ritual intact, unburned. Only a ghost of the heat remained, haunting the centers of his palms as a constant reminder of the moment of his “calling.”

  But Stavros had learned not to trust the evidence of his senses, so often too willing to be ruled by his imagination. To balance the strong evidence for mysticism, his personal proof of the Goddesses’ power, Stavros cherished the flame of Ghirra’s skepticism, far more grounding than his colleagues’ knee-jerk disbelief. Unlike the other Terrans, the Master Healer had witnessed the details of the “miracle,” but his response had not been to praise the goddesses as Liphar had done, but to imply that Kav Daven was somehow toying with Stavros, involving him in some private plan. He would not accept that a miracle had occurred.