Reign of Fire

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  Danforth thought Weng’s control admirable, but reminded himself that her dignity was her only remaining weapon, her persistent calm in crisis the only parameter left with which to define her command.

  “Mr. Ibiá will return when his business in the Caves is done,” she replied without undue insistence. “I do not believe I have misjudged the value of his word.”

  “His word!” Clausen was incredulous. His hands clenched as if he would like to grab Weng and shake her. “What is it about that boy that you’re all so blinded? You, Tay, what are you thinking of? Ibiá won’t be back here of his own accord, not for a minute!”

  “He came down willingly enough just an hour ago,” commented Megan.

  “He came down here to find out what we know!” Clausen shouted. He paced the length of the empty table, then swerved back to stand over the chair Stavros had occupied. His whole face narrowed as craft displaced the rage straining his eyes. “Because he knows something he’s not telling us.”

  “Right,” scoffed Megan.

  “Mark me,” Clausen returned ominously.

  “What?” asked McPherson, ready to believe him.

  “Something they’ve told him.” Clausen continued around the table. “Something he’s not even telling you, Meggies. You, his own mentor in conspiracy.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Megan disgustedly.

  Danforth did not offer his support but decided privately that the idea was not too farfetched. He’d watched Ghirra carefully He’d seen the fear of discovery behind the Master Healer’s eyes when the issue of the power source came up. But Danforth was sure that whatever secret they held among themselves, it offered them no answers, only further questions. He also guessed that Megan as well knew more than she had told him, but that he could now convince her to enlighten him further in return for a declaration of full support.

  “If Ibiá knows so much,” he said tiredly, “why would he risk his life down here to find out what we know?’ It all began to sound like the worst of cheap spy thrillers.

  “You don’t want to see it,” Clausen declared, “None of you! You’re so stuck in your sentimental visions that you don’t understand he’ll sacrifice any of you, not just me, even Susannah, for the sake of his precious Sawls! I’ve seen them go native before and get that look in their eyes!”

  He pulled the handkerchief away from his throat, screwed it up into a bloodied lump and threw it down on the table. “Fuck it. I’m tired of all this shit. Let him go on playing out his fantasies. I intend to beat him at his own game.”

  He strode to the computer terminal. “CRI, work up an equipment manifest for me—one Sled, one passenger, two weeks minimum duration.”

  “Yes. Mr. Clausen.”

  McPherson bolted to her feet. “You’re going without me?”

  Clausen smiled nastily. “You are confined to quarters, believe.”

  “Commander!”

  “You can’t stop me, Weng. You have no legal authority to stop me from doing the job I came here to do.”

  Weng stared back at him blandly. “I had no such intention, Mr. Clausen. When there is a Sled working to your satisfaction, by all means be on your way. Lieutenant McPherson however will remain behind to continue repairs to the second vehicle, and to pilot it once it is functioning.”

  Clausen’s outburst of temper seemed to have restored his good humor. He shook his head at the sullen pilot in mock sympathy.

  “Now, McP, you don’t want Tay to be the only one left to pilot, do you? Look what happened the last time he went flying…”

  Susannah had never been in the PriestHall before. She had expected something grander, or darker, or more austere, a further extension of the FriezeHall perhaps, something that better fit her notion of the religious. Though Megan tried continually to impress her with the secular nature of the PriestGuild, Susannah’s early experience in Lagri’s storyhall had formed indelible expectations to the contrary. And now there was the additional influence of Stavros and his ‘miracle’.

  But the PriestHall was columned and busy like any other crafthall. The tiled floor was warm and tracked with dust. Every possible lamp was burning, every double sconce on the columns, every wick in every chandelier, every individual lamp in the scholars’ niches along the wall. The long hall trembled with feverish golden light and the steamy heat of bodies. Priests hovered in groups of two and three enlivened by animated debate that stilled into ambivalent silence as Stavros paced by.

  Drawn along in his wake, Liphar’s small hand guiding her elbow, Susannah contemplated Ghirra’s image of the priests as preservers of the ancient weather science. She pictured each lamplit niche stacked high with the familiar gauges and dials, monitors, oscilloscopes, spiderwebs of cable and flatwire, graphics and halo displays, the only sort of equipment she could comprehend in relation to something so high-tech as climate control.

  How did they do it and where did it go? Is technology so easily forgotten?

  She thought of the SkyHall engravings, evidence of advanced science unrecognized even by Ghirra, that most sophisticated of Sawls. She peered into each brightly lit recess of the PriestHall, scoured the curve of every column and the surface of every wall for similar signs.

  It may have been here all along and we just haven’t noticed it yet.

  A notion had occurred to her, before the meeting at the Lander had been so abruptly interrupted, a suspicion, really, the kind of mental alarm bell she was used to noting and logging onto her mental priority list for later study: her suggestion of a genetically engineered inner ecology protecting the Sawls at its center had not caused the stir that it should have done.

  I must have presented it badly.

  It seemed to have settled into her colleagues’ minds as just one more bit of evidence. But restructuring of living systems on a global level was far more significant than that, certainly more far-reaching than fancy ceramics or even astronomy.

  Even the Druids could predict eclipses and the like.

  Ghirra’s weather machines had fired everyone’s imagination, and rightfully so, but Susannah’s own intellectual knees weakened in awe of the brilliant genetic achievements she had proposed. Clausen apparently could imagine conquering climate control within his lifetime and with minimal advances in technology. Susannah could not credit a parallel accessibility to her hypothetical genetic miracles.

  It broke her heart that such genius might be lost in the mists of time. She wondered what guild’s dusty, crumbling volumes preserved those secrets, in a form and language the guildsmen themselves no longer understood. Physicians’? The FoodGuild? How and where to begin the search?

  The bustle in the PriestHall thickened, slowing their progress as they approached the farthest corner. Here the murmuring groups included men and women from other guilds, relatives of the old priest. Susannah surmised, his children and their children.

  Stavros edged through the waiting crowd, his head low in unconscious imitation of Ghirra’s self-effacing stoop. Susannah watched the many questioning eyes follow him. She saw reflected in them an image she did not recognize, never could recognize until she had sunk herself into the Sawl gestalt as deeply as Stav had. To identify with Ghirra, she realized, was not enough. The Master Healer was atypical. His mind ranged freely in ways that had allowed her to gloss over some of the most fundamental differences between Sawl and Terran.

  It’s this notion of no border existing between the real and the mystical. That’s what’s alien to me at its very base.

  Her intellect would stretch to encompass any scientific possibility. Her heart would admit to the possibility of a miracle. A commingling of the two derailed both her rational and irrational processes, as in the case of the subtle healing in Ghirra’s hands. It was nothing flashy. He could not cure fatal disease or bring life where there was none, but there was undeniable power there, consistent, real, inexplicable.

  She knew Stavros would call it a “connection,” and liken it to his own. How did Ghirra explain it, if he t
hought his goddesses were machines?

  The Stavros that Susannah observed through the eyes around her was likewise an unsettling mixture. For all the brilliance and Goya-esque beauty she saw in him, to them he was overlarge, fleshy and pale, a little clumsy, clever but vulnerable, something precious to be protected, like an overgrown child in danger from its own earnest impulsiveness. But the child could grow into its potential, and it was that expectation the Sawls protected, all expectation that even Stavros himself could not define.

  The crowd cleared for them around a deep alcove in the back wall. Heavy curtains were drawn to either side around a raised bed of cushions. The Master Herbalist Ard crouched over a oil-fired portable steamer by the foot of the bed, each circle of his spoon sending up clouds of rose and cinnamon scented dampness. Ampiar waited at the head with a scowling Kav Ashimmel. Xifa stood behind them, holding Kav Daven’s youngest great-grandchild. Others, his sons and daughter, his grandchildren, sat in solemn observance. There was little hope in their eyes, but few tears either.

  They’re wept out, with all that’s happened lately, Susannah told herself. And the Kav has had a long and vital life.

  Ashimmel seemed more disturbed than anyone, but when she glanced up at Stavros’ arrival, Susannah saw her distress was less sorrowing than confused and disapproving, and a tinge resentful.

  Stavros moved to the Kav’s bedside like a sleepwalker.

  “What’s with Ashimmel?” Susannah whispered to Ghirra.

  “This Kav has no apprentice to follow,” he said. An odd note of private speculation distanced his reply.

  “What about the child, the girl who takes care of him? Isn’t she…?”

  Ghirra shook his head gravely. “She is his daughter’s daughter. The master’s apprentice cannot be of his family.”

  “Oh.” She watched Stavros lower himself stiffly at the head of the bed. Ashimmel offered only the slightest withdrawal to make room for him. Susannah bent her head closer to Ghirra’s. “And Ashimmel thinks this fixation with Stavros is less important that the Kav naming his successor.”

  “She is GuildMaster,” said Ghirra tolerantly. “She must think of the business of the guild. They argue about this always, yet the Kav has not teach one to be his apprentice. Ashimmel does not like that she will have to make the choosing.”

  Stavros knelt, with eyes for no one but the old man on the bed.

  Kav Daven lay nearly invisible among his pillows, a fragile brown skeleton cushioned in deep mounds of russet and tan. Between protruding ribs, Susannah could see the flutter of a strained heartbeat. His eyes stared open, blind white eyes whose small unseeing movements searched the shadowed vaults and seemed to follow the ascending billows of steam from Ard’s medicinal. His lips quivered in a soundless spasmodic chanting.

  Stavros took the priest’s papery hand between his own.

  “Kav. Kho jelrho.” He leaned forward, kissed the hand and bent his head into the pillows beside it.

  Kav Daven’s lips ceased their convulsive movement. His eyes drooped shut. The hand that Stavros held lifted free of his gentle grasp to feel along his cheek and settle on his bowed head. The knotted brown fingers buried themselves possessively in Stavros’ hair. The ancient lips shivered with more deliberate purpose.

  “Raellil khe,” Kav Daven muttered.

  A rustle ran through the attendant crowd. Susannah guessed that Kav Daven had only spoken out of his coma to summon Stavros, and now to greet him with this mysterious word. She felt the chill that too-perfect coincidences arouse. She tried to read Ghirra’s bemused frown as he studied Ashimmel. The Master Priest shook with unconscious negation. Susannah wondered if Ghirra worried for her health.

  “Raellil khe.” Kav Daven spoke more clearly than before, his fingers gripping Stavros’ skull. Stavros remained motionless, though a soft moan escaped him, like a sigh.

  He’s hurting, Susannah fretted, bending like that with his injury. But she knew he would not be thinking of his pain.

  “Lij, raellil,” said the Kav. “Rho lijet.”

  Ashimmel shot to her feet in dismay. Her fellow priests gaped and murmured in surprise. Stavros stirred, as if wishing to rise but loathe to disturb the priest’s hand, resting on his head in benediction.

  “Kho lije?” he mumbled incredulously.

  Susannah edged closer to the Master Healer. “What’s he saying?”

  Ghirra touched her arm, bidding silence. Liphar leaned against her for comfort, enrapt by the drama unfolding in front of him.

  Ashimmel turned and paced away. The crowd cleared a path for her. She fell into muttered conference with three of her most senior priests, who looked equally as dumbfounded and outraged as she.

  “Rho lijet… rho lijet… rho lijet…” murmured Kav Daven. Each repetition of the phrase grew fainter until it was an escape of breath barely sculpted into sound and meaning.

  Stavros lifted his head and the priest’s hand slid limply along his neck. His eyes were wet. His voice pleaded. “Kav, I don’t know how!”

  The withered hand closed tightly on Stavros’ bandaged shoulder. Stavros’ back stiffened against the pain. His eyes clenched shut, his jaw jerked in a quiet gasp. Then, as his mouth stretched wide in agonized joy, he extended his hands as if in supplication, palms up.

  Susannah’s chill rippled through her again. She, who had seen his face suffused with the ecstasy of orgasm, understood less the nature of his transport than his Catholic ancestors would have at a glance.

  “Rho lijet, raellil!” Kav Daven commanded with sudden strength. The stringy sinews of his torso bunched as if he might sit up. Stavros laid restraining hands on the old man’s chest.

  “Kav, I will,” he answered hoarsely.

  The grip on his shoulder eased. The crooked fingers, hardly more than naked bones, unbent as if in sleep. The hand slid slowly along Stavros’ arm to rest in the curl of his elbow, limp as a rain-sodden leaf.

  Susannah glanced reflexively at the skin drawn tight across the old man’s ribs. The drumming flutter of his heart had stilled.

  “Suzhannah!” Ghirra moved quickly forward, drawing her with him. They crowded in to either side of Stavros, their professional urgency violating the peaceful spell of the moment.

  Susannah knew there was little hope of reanimating the faint life spark that had already burned far beyond expectation. She gave up before Ghirra did, but at last he too sat back, with the universal head shake of a doctor admitting that final failure. At the foot of the bed, Ard sighed and capped the little oil flame of his steamer.

  Ghirra rose, signaling Ard and Susannah away from the bedside. Susannah heard no weeping. She saw many faces as curious as they were solemn, as they watched to see what Ashimmel would do next.

  Stavros waited, slumped back on his heels, his eyes inwardly fixed. His hands rested palm up on his thighs. In the silence, Liphar crept forward to kneel beside him.

  Slowly, others of the PriestGuild apprentices, including the Kav’s young granddaughter, slipped out from the crowd to join them. Susannah had the sense of an ancient tradition reasserting itself.

  “Ghirra, what is going on?” she whispered urgently.

  “He says to Ibi many times, you must dance, you must dance.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She thought he looked back at her rather sadly, not for the event or the death, but for her. “This means, Susannah, that Kav Daven names ’TavrosIbia his apprentice.”

  Susannah stared down at the kneeling linguist.

  Ghirra added gently, “And Ibi says to this, yes.”

  BOOK THREE

  “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;

  They kill us for their sport.”

  King Lear

  Act IV, sc, i

  37

  Stavros held Susannah close in the blue dimness of the StoryHall, wishing only to soothe her. But she was full of questions and the need for answers.

  “It’s a sweet gesture of ecumenicism on the old man’s pa
rt,” she declared hopefully, “but Ashimmel will never buy it.”

  Sweet? Swallowing his protest, Stavros smoothed her long hair down the length of her back. “Because Kav Daven’s choice was so… irregular, the guildmaster will submit it to a guild vote. If it passes, she must accept it.”

  “But the guild would never agree to this. You’re no priest. You’re not even…”

  Raellil.

  Apprentice.

  What else…?

  He touched his fingertips to her lips, then kissed her lightly. “The old Kav was well-loved, and I am not without support within the guild.”

  She seemed to understand something for the first time. The querulous edge in her voice expressed the one fear he could not dispel for her. “Then you want this.”

  “There are many in the guild who feel that in a time of crisis, extraordinary measures are required…”

  Susannah pulled away from him and sat up. “Stav, I asked, do you want this?”

  “At the moment all I want is you.” He tried to deflect her with an amorous smile.

  “No.” She drew her tunic tight about her and her knees up to her chest. For the first time since he had won her, Stavros worried that he would lose her.

  “Ah, Susannah, don’t stare at me like I was some kind of stranger.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re doing!”

  “Well, neither do I, really, if that makes you feel any better. But I do know it’s what I have to do, and that I will do it without you, but it would be so much better to have your support. Ghirra once said the Kav had a plan for me, and he was right. Problem is, the old man died before telling me what it was.”

  He wanted to reach for her but feared that if she pulled away again, the distance might grow too great to bridge. The fire in his palms, his mystic goad, had burned fiercely since the old priest’s death. He needed the distraction of her, her reality, to keep himself centered. “Susannah, I love you. Believe that. Believe in me. Believe that I know what I’m doing is right.”