Reign of Fire

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  A Ranger charged at him and caught his upraised arm. He jerked the stick away, shoving the man aside. The man screeched his outrage from the ground, then scrambled up and fled. The burning wagon was hauled from the ring, but too late. Its canopy collapsed in a wind-whirled shower of sparks. Flaming splinters spilled onto the second Papermakers’ wagon. The cargo underneath burst into an instant fireball as the guildsmen ran to rescue it. The heat made it unapproachable. The Rangers ordered it left to burn while the third wagon was cleared from the ring to leave a fire break. The Infirmary wagon was next down the line.

  Susannah found Ampiar kneeling beside a badly burned man. She took a quick look, then raced back to the wagon for her medikit. The wind beat at her, trying to throw her against the wheels. The third Papermakers’ wagon was now aflame. Hot cinders flew in Susannah’s face. She glanced upward to see sparks catching in the Infirmary wagon’s canopy.

  Someone brushed by her, running. The thick smoke and dust made it impossible to see. Someone small, a child, swung up on the wagon’s tall rear wheel and grasped at the exterior frame of the canopy, scaling toward the top.

  By the daylight brilliance of the next flash, Susannah saw Dwingen clinging like a monkey to the crossbar with a strip of canvas shoved into his belt. He grappled, his little legs scrabbling for purchase, then with an enormous effort, he hauled himself up onto the canopy’s rounded crown. He lay for a moment face down among the flying sparks, panting.

  Susannah screamed at him to come down, pleading into the wind and the fire roar until she thought her throat would tear and bleed. But Dwingen wrapped one end of the cloth around his small fist and struggled to his knees, swaying, fighting the gale. He beat at the burning cinders and the little nests of new flame rising from the bone dry wood. Lightning lit up the smoke billows around him, danced in hard blue threads above his head. He mistook Susannah’s screaming and glanced down with a wave and a bright brave smile. Then, intent on his mission, he braced himself and rose unsteadily to his feet. The lightning crackled, a forked snake’s tongue, searching. Susannah heard an anguished yell as Ghirra raced past, grasped the rim of the wheel and vaulted upward.

  “Get down!” Susannah screamed at the boy. “Ghirra, tell him to lie flat!”

  As Ghirra reached for the crossbar, Aguidran was there suddenly, a blur of motion out of the smoke. She threw herself at the wagon to pin her brother’s legs in the vise of her arms. Ghirra clung to the framework, raging at her to let him go, but she dug in her heels and pulled, breaking his hold. Ghirra called out desperately to Dwingen, his arms flailing. As brother and sister tumbled to the ground, the next searing bolt found the child standing erect and proud at the top of the wagon.

  Dwingen stiffened, frozen in light. His delicate face stretched into a mask of surprise. Blue diamonds danced in his ringleted hair. He hung spreadeagled in the air, impervious at last to the wind’s buffeting, held by a power greater than the wind, suffused with its blue-white dazzle.

  Then he crumpled to the canopy.

  Aguidran scrambled up, leaped up on the wheel rim and stretched to grasp a limp ankle that flopped down around the curving wagon top. She hauled the boy’s body into her arms and handed him down to Ghirra. The physician laid him gently on the ground. Though the boy’s eyes gaped open and empty, he put his head to his chest and his hands to the thin neck, searching frantically for a pulse.

  Susannah shook herself free of her shock and fumbled in her medikit for adrenaline while Ghirra began his own version of CPR. The boy’s hair was singed and smoking, his skin blackened with char. As she knelt with the hypo, Susannah knew it was too late.

  Crouched on the other side of the little body, Aguidran made no excuse or apology. She watched the tears wet Ghirra’s face as he strove to restore some small sign of life to his dead apprentice. Her stern eyes held only sad relief, recognition of a bargain made with fate, not happily but without question, unless it could have been herself given in Dwingen’s place in return for her brother’s life.

  At length, Ghirra slumped back, his hands fisting in exhausted frustration. As he reached to close the boy’s eyes, his touch was a gentle last caress.

  Susannah brushed at her own tears “A valiant try, doctor.”

  Ghirra stared at his hands as if they had betrayed him.

  Aguidran rose and left them without a word. The dust and smoke closed around her with weakening fury. The flicker of the flames dimmed as the softer pink of dawn penetrated the black haze.

  Susannah looked up, saw clear sky, and prayed that the storm was over. But it was not. Through the blackened ribs of a burning wagon, she saw the ranks of giant dust columns advancing across the plain like Moses’s pillar of fire in the wilderness.

  “Oh god, Ghirra… what do we do now?”

  21

  The wind fought to smash Stavros against the cliff face as he hurtled down the outer stair. Hot dust clogged his eyes and lungs, tore mercilessly at his skin.

  Surely they won’t let him out to dance in this?

  He risked a glance away from the treacherous sand-swept steps to gauge the dust legion’s yowling approach across the infant dawn. The brief pink light was fading behind a swirl of murk. Stavros mocked the futility of his bravura gesture.

  Save the crops? What’ll be left of them after this?

  He thought that the possibility of slow starvation in the shelter of the Caves might just be preferable to the certainty of being flayed alive out in the open, once the wind wound itself up to the strength promised by the massive towers thundering across the plain.

  The guar-fire pulsed gently in his palms. He could feel but not hear the slap of his bare feet against the gritty stone. He had the sensation of falling through the storm, wind-tossed, sinking through noise and turbulence, drowning in dust. The rough cliff threatened at his side. He imagined his limbs splashed flailing against the rock like a breaking wave. He raced past the first of the third-level entries. Edan’s throaty shout reached after him from above, echoed by Liphar’s shriller pleas. Stavros twisted onto the next descending switchback and continued his headlong free-fall down the stair.

  The tall, arching caves of the second level loomed ahead. The stable entries gaped emptily. The storm roared through every crevice, pelting Stavros with the odor of dried manure and a thousand tiny javelins of wind-driven straw. He slowed along the ledge, head lowered, running almost blind as the dust blotted out the last pale ray of dawn. He stumbled and slid several heart-freezing meters, found himself by fortunate accident at the head of the next stair.

  He caught a glimpse of the fields through the haze of sand. A handful of FoodGuilders scurried about below, bravely attempting a task that would have tried the resources of the entire Guild, were they present and available. Barely a third of the tall red stalks had been bundled into protective sheafs. The terraces reflected the ruddy cast of the air as the lower-lying crops were flooded with countless precious gallons from the irrigation reservoirs. Stavros was sure the pipes had burst, then understood that a layer of water was the only available defense against the dust-laden gusts that were already ripping at the leaf stalks and tearing up roots.

  He gained the first-level ledge where the widening stair took its final downward turn. A glance over his shoulder showed Edan gaining in her pursuit. But he hesitated at the head of the stair. A sound cut through the wind roar, a high-pitched reedy wail that snatched familiarly at his attention. Stavros let his ears follow it back along the ledge.

  Kav Daven.

  He turned, searching the first-level openings. The once-symmetrical shapes framed darkness with the ragged outlines of age and weather.

  Empty, empty… where is he?

  He followed the sound along the ledge, squinting into the murk. At the far western end, he discovered a small crowd gathered before the oldest cave mouth. From out of their midst, the wail rose and fell with the rush of the wind.

  Stavros ran toward them, reaching the outer ranks of the gathering just as Edan pou
nded up behind him. She scowled at him furiously, but he gave her only an abstracted nod and eased himself intently among the observers. He sensed her crowding at his back, herding him toward the safety of the inner cave, but when he could see into the middle of the gathering, he stopped and would not be moved further.

  Kav Daven danced in the center, his blind eyes closed. He was already well into the height of his chant-trance. His bony arms were raised high, as rigid as sticks. He whirled like a dervish in ever widening circles, chanting and wailing. A single anxious priest labored with three elderly FoodGuilders and a frantic apprentice girl to form a protective arc around the heedless ancient, keeping him from the edge and the worst of the wind’s ravages.

  A few of the watchers dutifully mouthed the priest’s chant, their brown fingers telling blue talisman beads. But their faces held little hope. Feeling the old priest’s familiar pull, Stavros edged forward. Edan’s strong fingers closed hard on his arm. He let her draw him back against the wall, knowing it would not matter where in the crowd he stood.

  Like iron to a magnet, he thought, myself the raw ore and he the source. For the first time since the Leave-taking, the ghostly heat in his palms flared into pain. He was unsurprised when the axis of the watchers shifted and the Ritual Master’s whirlings flowed in his direction. Though Stavros, repeated ponderings had not yet deciphered it, there was a message in Kav Daven s “choosings,” an unvoiced charge laid on him by the miracle of his unburned hands.

  Kav Daven danced closer. His brown face was serene but for the fluttering of his eyelids, as rapid as bees’ wings. Liphar arrived panting as the crowd backed off from the old priest’s whirling approach. Edan’s grip on Stavros’ arm relaxed hesitantly.

  Stavros stood as if rooted to the rock. His skin prickled to the faint brush of Power, come and gone as casually as if shouldering past him in the crowd. A scent of chaos remained behind, curling like smoke into his nostrils. The watchers remained silent, unmoved, and Stavros knew that this moment of mysticism was, like the last, between the old priest and himself alone.

  Kav Daven drew his astonishing circles tighter and tighter until his frail, knobby body spun like a child’s top, emitting a high, musical whine, his leaf-brown garments flying, his stick arms clenched to his ribs. His eyelids shivered. His lips drew back from his yellowed teeth. The dance was too frantic, too desperate. Though he knew the old man could not see him, Stavros raised his hands in front of him, palms erect, a silent ceremonial entreaty that he slow his mad revolutions.

  Kav Daven stopped, and faced him squarely.

  Edan’s quick intake of breath was as audible as if the wind had ceased with the old priest’s motion. Liphar murmured in awe. Stavros’ palms burned. He sensed the storm bearing down inexorably, felt it tear at his hair and clothing. But he was wrapped in a circle of quiet with Kav Daven at its center. The fire in his hands flared until he was sweating and rigid with pain. But he kept them raised before him as he knew he must. His instinctive gesture had stopped the priest’s whirlings. It was somehow correct.

  He had learned on the day of his miracle, as the guar seared into his flesh, to envelop the pain, to make it a part of him, as the priests did who carried the guar bare-handed from the mines. He knew he would bear the pain gladly for the sake of an answer, to win from Kav Daven a clearer understanding of his miracle. He felt a responsibility had been laid like a cloak on his shoulders, but could not read its size or shape.

  Kav Daven waited, milky blind eyes staring a clear plea into his.

  What does he want of me?

  His inadequacy devastated him, but he kept his hands raised, absorbing their increasing agony now as punishment, now as reward. The pain cycled through him like a feedback loop, building fire on fire but simultaneously energizing his resistance.

  Kav Daven approached. He flattened his own hands against Stavros’ palms. The silken scarred flesh was cooling to their heat. His pain drew back, as if in respect.

  “Tell me, Kav,” he murmured. “Teach me. Please.”

  Sudden fire seared past his cheek, a breath of pure lightning. Minute needles bit into his skin. Edan grunted. Stavros felt her shift and glance around in confusion. Suspicion nagged his brain, then wavered, as he blamed an oddity of the storm and held his stance, palm to palm with Kav Daven, willing calm and concentration to hold him fast to this long-sought moment of communion.

  The fire scorched past again, closer, too discrete and silent for lightning. Rock spatter sprayed the back of his neck. He smelled hair burning, his own. The suspicion bloomed, stupidly, too slowly.

  A Sawlish oath rang in his ear and the circle of silence shattered. Stavros dropped his hands and stared over Kav Daven’s bony shoulder. The crowd erupted in confusion as Emil Clausen shoved his way through.

  “Wait!” Stavros pushed in front of Kav Daven, his hands spread. “I’m here! Goddamnit, Clausen, you’ll kill someone!”

  Clausen eyed him incredulously over the laser’s silver nose. “How kind of you to oblige me, Ibiá,” he drawled, and levelled the pistol at Stavros’s head.

  Stavros was still framing his reply when Clausen fired. Edan’s arm whipped around his waist as fast as a snake strike, hauling him down and away. Falling, too startled to resist, Stavros looked for Kav Daven through the scrambling frightened crowd. The old priest’s arms reached out to empty space. Stavros stumbled and the needle beam nicked his ear. He smelled ozone and the reek of charred skin. Edan dragged him to his feet with a snarl. Her quick response astonished him. He was unable to remain so cool.

  “You goddamn maniac!” he raged at the prospector.

  But Edan shoved his head low and pulled him behind the bewildered crowd. He lost sight of the old Ritual Master, then glimpsed Liphar fighting through the confusion. “Lifa! The Kav! Get him out of here!”

  Stavros prayed that Clausen was not crazy enough to shoot through bystanders to get at him. He yelled again to Liphar and ran, ducking, for the rear of the cave, searching the darkness for a tunnel, for steps.

  Shouts collided behind him, Clausen’s warnings in bellowed Sawlish, a guildsman’s outraged reply. Loping at his elbow, Edan hissed a direction into his wounded ear. Stavros swerved left in automatic response. The rock wall beside them exploded in a shower of grit and light.

  Christ!

  Clausen had lengthened the laser’s pulse. Stavros ran for his life.

  The next bolt laid his left shoulder open, slicing deep through layers of muscle and bone.

  The force of the hit knocked him sprawling across the stone. Stavros tucked and rolled before he hit the wall and his momentum brought him staggering back to his feet, already running again, running for the dark of the stair ahead.

  Edan swore and pushed madly at his back. His arm flapped uselessly at his side, threatening his balance. He feared the pain might cripple him, but the shoulder stayed mercifully numb. His guar-fire had deserted him. He felt only a creeping weakness in his legs as he pumped desperately for the stairs. A wash of terror as cold as sea water knotted his groin.

  “Fucker’s gonna kill me,” he gasped to Edan, as if saying it made the unreal real and somehow comprehensible. “This time I’m gonna die.”

  The staircase was old and crumbling. The footing would have been perilous even in full light, but Stavros thanked the concealing darkness. The sounds of Clausen’s pursuit were submerged in the pounding of his own feet and heart. He could not see Edan, but her hand stayed firm against his back as they scrambled up the ragged stairs.

  At the top, she balked and veered aside, hauling him with her. Footsteps too frenzied to be Clausen’s clattered through the rock debris on the steps behind them. Stavros hoped it was Liphar, still in one piece.

  Ahead, a slash of light bled across a yawning stable cavern. It was faint but enough to illuminate them if they ventured into it, a barrier as effective as a moat. Edan drew him swiftly through the darkness along the wall. She grabbed him to point him across the cavern toward the warren of inner ba
rns, muttering at the ominous warmth wetting his tunic. Her whisper was harsh. She put a hand to his head to be sure of his nod, then shoved him forward and bolted into the open beside him.

  Laser fire lanced across the cavern, one, two deadly beams only slightly wide of their shadowy mark. Stavros ran a crooked path and gained the darkness of the warrens. The numbness was fading. Each jarring leap awoke a sharper pain. A stickiness clung to his back and ribs and pulled at his seared flesh. He wondered how much blood he was losing.

  He dodged blindly through the unlit corridors lined with empty stalls. He had lost Edan in crossing the big cavern. He missed the pressure of her guiding hand on his back. He listened for her step, heard only his own and that lighter following patter, now pulling breathlessly alongside him.

  “Lifa?”

  Liphar’s whisper was desperate. “Go fast, Ibi! No stop you!”

  “Edan?”

  “She wait, make surprise there for Clauzen.” The young man snatched at Stavros’ arm. “This way, you!”

  “Lifa, I’m hurt.”

  It’s not the pain, he thought. Pain I can deal with. But it’s too soon to feel this weak. Ah god, Susannah!

  “Who’s left in Physicians’? I need a doctor.”

  “Yes,” Liphar whimpered and hurried him along more insistently. They wound through the maze of stalls, turning finally onto a narrow upward ramp. The incline was slippery with dust, so steep that Stavros moaned through gritted teeth at the effort of climbing and slowed so as not to collapse. Liphar helped him struggle to the top, gamely supporting his weight, alarmed by the hollow rattle in his chest.

  The upper corridor was lit by a single lamp in a niche beside huge double doors. Through blurring eyes, Stavros recognized the carved portal of the Woodworkers’ Hall. Down the tunnel to the left, tall columns framed the entry to the PriestHall. Liphar shot across the corridor to haul on Woodworkers’ giant panelled doors. He gestured Stavros to hurry.

  Inside the hall, he barred the doors. Stavros leaned against them with eyes closed, resisting the blackness that reached out to him from within.