The Fire Ascending

by Chris D'Lacey

  “Go back,” she hissed at him, scratching her ankle. The link around her leg had rubbed down the flesh. Blue ulcers were beginning to form underneath.

  “Back?” he said, puzzled. “But Stygg like thissun. Ain’t never seen no show o’ me, afore. You makee look strong.” He flexed his muscles till the blood vessels strained.

  “Sell it, Stygg. Or your mother will be angry.”

  “Bah, Muther.” He flapped a hand. He tucked the tapestry into his robe. (He had a fine robe now, made by Grella. She’d even inscribed it with her own mark.) “She don’t be missin’ one nibbly bit o’ cloth.”

  “Sell it, Stygg, or I’ll tell her you’ve got it.”

  That cast a dim shadow over his mood. He was about to respond when he saw me perched on the water trough, watching. “Darned squir’l,” he muttered. “Al’ays round ’ere.” He whipped out a knife, but I was under the trough before he could advance and from there up into the rafters of the barn. He thumped a post in frustration and blew aside his hair. He rolled the blade in his callused hand, then walked to the log pile and tipped it at Gwilanna.

  “Stygg? What are you doing?” Grella’s chain rattled in tune to her panic. She hobbled toward him as fast as she could. He stopped her at arm’s length and held her by the throat.

  “This babby be right unnat’rul,” he said. He tapped the blade against the lice-infested shawl. Gwilanna made gurgling noises. Her hands reached up for the shiny metal. Stygg allowed her pudgy fingers to grip it, not caring that the baby might cut herself. “Why don’t it grow? You bin ’ere ten moons ’n more an’ it ain’t spread a toe.”

  “She lacks food,” said Grella. “Let her be. I beg you.” She pushed against his hand. He held her back, squeezing a glugging sound from her mouth. Wisely, she relaxed and didn’t try to fight him. “All right, you win. Keep the tapestry. I don’t care.”

  “If I slit ’er,” he muttered, “what wud I see?”

  “You’d see her die,” said Grella. “Please, let her be.”

  Gwilanna gave a gentle yelp. Stygg pulled the knife back and held it vertical. A trickle of blood ran down the steel. “Black,” he said. “There be night in ’er veins.”

  “What have you done?” Grella squealed.

  “Nowt,” he grumbled. “It jus’ be a fingernick. Weren’t my doin’. Babby med its own mark on the blade.”

  At last Grella wrestled clear of his grip. Pushing him aside, she lifted Gwilanna out of the logs. The child had a minor cut on one finger. It was oozing a bubble of dark, dark blood.

  “Why izzit black …?” Stygg muttered again. He twisted the blade in front of his face. He put it under his nose and sniffed.

  Gwilanna started to cry.

  “Be quietin’ that!” a voice shouted from the shack.

  “Leave us,” said Grella, cradling the child. She looked grimly at Stygg, urging him to go.

  He sneered and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Suddenly, he pointed at a piece of cloth sticking out from under one corner of the shawl. “Whassat?”

  “Nothing. A wrap to keep her warm.” Grella tried casually to tuck the cloth back.

  But Stygg, for all his idiot ways, wasn’t going to be put off easily. He stepped up and tugged at the swaddling materials. “Thas a tap’stry, I reckun. Show it to Stygg.”

  “No,” said Grella, struggling with him now. “No. It belongs to Gwilanna. Get away.”

  But he was strong and he’d pulled the thing free in seconds. I scrabbled along the beam for a closer look. Stygg’s eyes popped as he unraveled the material. For he’d found not one, but two fine tapestries. And a new Taan dress.

  The first tapestry was the image of Gawaine in flight, the one Eleanor had given to me in the krofft and I had carried through the Skoga forest. The other was the Isenfier tapestry, complete.

  “Aar …,” breathed Stygg, as if he’d found a pure gold nugget in his teeth. “This be a pretty thing a’right.” He was looking at the roaring image of Gawaine. The Isenfier tapestry didn’t impress him.

  But he did like the dress. He let it dangle from his arm. A golden robe, fit for his beloved.

  His tongue squeezed out like a slug between his teeth.

  “Stygg, this is all I have of home,” Grella begged. She stumbled forward and fell at his feet. “Give the tapestries back. I can make others like them.”

  “Nah,” he grunted, with a shake of his head. “Stygg be doin’ good trade fer these.”

  “Please, Stygg. You can’t take them. You can’t.”

  “You ’iding any more?” He jabbed his knife.

  “No,” she said, turning Gwilanna from the blade. The baby cried louder still. The kachina doll dropped to the floor of the barn.

  “What’s squawkin’ that babby?!” Griss called out.

  Stygg grunted. A fair impression of his pig. “Tell ’ee what. Stygg cud trade wiv Grella?”

  “Trade?” She looked horrified. “What would I want of yours?”

  His eyes ran the length of the dress once more. “This be right pretty to be wedded in.”

  “Wedded?”

  “Aar.” His dumb eyes glinted with hope. He brushed his lanky hair aside, as if he might appear more handsome to her.

  Grella struggled to keep her revulsion at bay. “I wed you and you’ll let me have the tapestries back?”

  He nodded. “Aar.”

  She closed her eyes and gulped. “You’ll take me out of these chains as well?”

  He chewed a fat mole that was growing on his lip.

  “Build us a shack to hang the tapestries in?”

  He scratched a black spider off his neck.

  “Take me away from here? Away from Griss?”

  His left eye twitched. His shoulders shook.

  “You’d care for my baby? You’d treat her as —?”

  “I don’t be knowin’!” he cried. She’d rattled him now. He threw the dress down. Within seconds, the mice and the lice were at it.

  “You don’t be knowin’ what, you loaf?” his mother called.

  “Nowt!” Stygg shouted. “I not be knowin’ nowt!” He tucked both tapestries into his robe. “You be sayin’ no words to Ma ’bout this or I be soakin’ my blade wi’ yer rynkler’s blood.” He bent down and picked up the kachina doll. For one moment, I thought he would take that as well. But he threw it in the crib and backed away. “I’ll be thinkin’ on our weddin’ night, I will.” And he curled his tongue and licked the black streak of blood off his knife.

  “No!” I gasped.

  The fire stars brought me back to the window.

  Joseph immediately said, “You have witnessed a terrible thing. It’s recorded in the Is that Stygg has a trace of Voss inside him. This is the beginning of the end for the Nomaad.”

  “Does he kill her?” I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. Stygg could now be capable of all kinds of wickedness.

  Joseph studied his fingernails. “You can stop any time you want to, Agawin.”

  Having come this far? And not seen the truth? “Have I learned what I need to know about Gwilanna?”

  “No. Not until the very end.”

  “Then I have to go back. I must know what happened.” I looked at the timeline and thought about Stygg. A fresh group of stars began to sparkle. Once again, I reached into the Is.

  Within days, the eremitt was losing his mind. He began to argue with anyone near him, crashing dementedly around the shack as if a weevil had burrowed under his scalp. He shouted at corners, challenged shadows to fights. I watched him splash his face in the water trough, then push the trough over and scream at the moon. The turning point came when he bit a villhund. He’d been stomping around the barn with a rope in his mouth — chewing it as though it were a roll of bread — when he happened to see a rogue dog stalking the pig. He picked up a chain and whipped the dog’s back. The villhund was swift to get even. With one bite it ripped off the Nomaad’s toe (the big one that pointed through a hole in Stygg’s boot). A howl as long as the great Horst
e River came pouring out of the eremitt’s throat.

  Then it got serious.

  Any sensible dog would have run with the toe, spat out the nail, and enjoyed (if that were possible) the corn-ridden flesh. Instead, the hound dropped it and dived in again, hoping to get a whole foot this time. In a blood-curdling act of retaliation, Stygg fell upon its neck, sinking his teeth far into the juiciest part of its throat. The dog jerked, gave a rasp, and immediately went limp. Its yellow eyes rolled. It faded into death. Stygg drew back, shuddering a little. A dark light burned in his vacant eyes. Blood and fur were stuck around his mouth. He bit again. He ripped. He chewed. I thanked the universe I’d seen far worse on my Travels or I might have caused my poor host squirrel to vomit.

  When she saw the wretched dog, even Griss was appalled. Grella, out of goodness or pity or both, tried to warn the crone that Stygg was changed. Griss would not listen. She accused Stygg of drinking mushroom juice, a common cause of coarse behavior among the lonely men of Nomaad. “Gettee gone and do sum tradin’!” she barked, pushing him and his blood-spurting foot toward the trees. She kicked his backside soundly for his trouble. For the first time in his life Stygg turned on his mother, snarling as brutally as the dog he had slain. “Gettee gone,” she rapped again, completely unaware of the danger she was in. He lunged at her, but just a second too late. The door had slammed shut against his slavering mouth.

  Stygg tumbled down the steps that led to the porch. He rolled over, beat the ground, and picked himself up. But instead of getting to his feet as normal, he righted himself on all four limbs. Swaying a little, he shuddered again. Then a strange transformation began to take hold of him. His black hair extended down his back and fur began to thicken on his arms and legs. The boot with the hole in it split around the seam. Claws burst out where his toes should have been. His other foot and fingers went the same way. There was little change to his upper body, and his robe, despite ripping, covered him still. But Stygg was not a man anymore. With one more horrible bone-cracking twist his face took on the shape of a villhund.

  He roared at the moon and ran for the trees.

  I quickly came back to the librarium again.

  By now I had discovered I could ask the Is to filter the stars on different levels. If I instructed the matrix to compare the arrays of two individuals, the stars would change color where their lives overlapped. The colors gave no clue to the nature of the incidents, but significant events always showed up strongly. The last few stars of Grella’s array overlapped with Stygg’s, which warned me that her fate was tied up with his. But what about Rune? Was he involved? The Is moved in its strange, mysterious way and produced a new, and even more complex, array. Nearly all of the stars stretched into Grella’s past and her long family life with Rune and Eleanor. But a few of Rune’s hovered over her future. And nearly all intersected with the last days of Stygg.

  I touched one of those.

  I materialized at night in a thunderstorm, on muddy ground served by a scrubby patch of trees. Rain was drumming down, puddling the dirt. Up ahead, I heard the splash of a hoof, followed by the whinny of a horse being turned.

  “What is it?” said a voice.

  “Thought I heard something.” Rune of Taan glanced over his shoulder. His hair was plastered to his face in strands. His brow had gained a new furrow or two, but this was definitely the man I’d met in the krofft.

  The second man turned his horse. He was Taan also. I’d seen him at the motested, but I didn’t know his name. “Is that a katt?” he said, leaning forward in the saddle.

  A scraggy excuse for one, yes. My new host had been huddled up under a bush, trying to find what little shelter it could. I’d made it step out into the rain and its wail of dissent had reached Rune’s ears.

  Spitting water off his lips, he looked around. “Where there’s a katt, there’s usually a hovel.”

  “There,” said the second man, pointing.

  Rune narrowed his eyes to a squint and saw it. A single-story shack, held together by crossed, nailed planking. Faint yellow candlelight flickered inside.

  Rune tugged on his reins. “Let’s go and introduce ourselves.”

  The horses walked forward. As they approached the primitive doorway, the second man let Rune go on alone.

  Rune stopped his horse and bellowed through the rain. “You, inside. Whoever you are. I am Rune Haakunen, from the district of Taan. I seek shelter for myself and one companion.”

  I saw the companion lower his hand. It came to rest on the hilt of a sword.

  There was a pause that seemed like the end of time. The door opened a crack. A face peered out. “No sheltur ’ere. Ain’t no room to dizzy a katt. Be goin’. I want no truck with Taans.”

  “We’re soaked and we’ve traveled far,” said Rune.

  “No room,” said the Nomaad. The door began to close.

  “We have money.”

  A spike of lightning divided the night.

  As thunder clapped, the door creaked open.

  Rune reached into a purse at his belt. A silver coin tumbled through the moonlit air. It landed in the mud with a tidy splat. The eremitt was out like a ferret. His hand splashed around and fished it out. He looked at it and rubbed it and bit it to be sure.

  “Silvur,” he said.

  “For one night,” said Rune, nodding at the door.

  The man pulled his shabby rags around him. “There be two o’ yer.”

  Rune threw back his hair. The wet ends slapped against his riding jacket. “Very well. Two kroat.” He produced another coin and rested it on the nail of his thumb. The eremitt hopped and got ready to catch. But as Rune made to flip it he paused and said, “And food. Two kroat buys us shelter and food.”

  The eremitt wiped his blue-veined nose. “Ain’t got no food. Water. Thassall. Jus’ water, an’ a place to lie.”

  “I’ve got a skyful of water,” Rune said plainly. The rain was finding channels all over his face. “Bread. You give us bread, we pay two kroat.”

  The man sniffed and made a grizzling noise. “One pull. Thassall.” (He meant one hunk ripped off a long loaf.) “An’ I does the pullin’.”

  Rune’s horse snorted. He tugged his reins and considered the offer. “Very well. One pull and a place to lie.” He flipped the second coin.

  It tumbled into the Nomaad’s grasp. He bit into that one also. Satisfied it was genuine silver, he pushed the coin into a pocket of his rags and cautiously widened his doorway. While Rune and his companion tied their horses, I crept forward and managed to slip inside the shack, narrowly avoiding the eremitt’s kick. There were empty rabbit traps everywhere and foul-smelling skins hanging out to dry. No fire and only one grungy fur, which the eremitt draped around his shoulders. He swept some loose traps into one corner, giving me a place to hide and watch. As Rune stepped in, the eremitt pointed to the space he’d made. It was barely wide enough for one man’s bed, let alone two stocky travelers from Taan. None of this seemed to concern Rune much. He peered around, ignoring the eremitt’s grunts. Right away, he found what he was looking for. On a wall of the shack, pinned above a table knocked together from branches and barrels, was one of Grella’s tapestries.

  Rune was there in three slow strides. His fingers trembled as he touched the cloth. It was another of Stygg outside the shack — a pack of villhund crowding around him, begging for what looked like the leg of a pig. Grella had drawn the setting sun throwing its amber rays onto the roof. “A fine piece of work,” Rune Haakunen muttered, doing well to control his rage. “How did you come by this?”

  The eremitt wiped his scratchy mouth. His nerves were as high as the grim scent of rabbit. “You be wantin’ that bread now.” He tried to step past Rune to get it.

  Rune turned his shoulder, trapping this ferret of a man into a corner. “I asked you a question. Where did you get this tapestry?”

  The eremitt darted his eyes to the doorway, blocked, of course, by Rune’s companion. Thunder clapped again, driving a wash of rain
into the shack. The eremitt began to panic.

  “I ain’t dun no wrongin’, I ain’t. Murgo traded six skins fair. Nevur tricked on no one, I dint.”

  “Murgo. This is your name, yes?”

  “Aye,” said Murgo. “Whassit to you?”

  Rune Haakunen did not reply. He ripped the tapestry off the wall, sending bone pins scattering over the floor. “How long ago did this trade take place?”

  Murgo shrugged. “I don’t be rememb’rin’ easy.”

  “Well, let’s see if my friend can help you.”

  There was a glint of light by the doorway. Rune’s companion lifted a sword. It was as long as the space between him and the eremitt. He touched its point to Murgo’s throat, lifting the terrified man by the chin till he was on tiptoe to avoid being cut. The fur fell away from the captive’s shoulder. Unremarkably, his memory came back.

  “Two moons. Two moons it were.”

  “With a Nomaad trader?”

  “Nomaad, urr.”

  “Where did he get it?”

  “Wunt say whereun ’e goddit. Dint ask on it, I dint. You can ’ave it. Be takin’ it — bread an’ all. Murgo don’t want bother with Taans.”

  Rune examined the piece. In the bottom right corner was a knot of yellow wool. To the untrained eye it looked like a bunch of poorly stitched flowers. To a father desperate to find his daughter, it was a signature. “This place,” he said. “The shack in the drawing. Where can I find it?”

  “I not be knowin’.”

  The sword made a dent in Murgo’s throat.

  “I be truthin’,” he squeaked through a bubble of drool. Stupidly, he shook his head. A small nick appeared in his jaundiced skin. A trickle of blood burst out of a vein. One of his hands began to shake. “Nomaad be ev’rywhere, wide as thuh sky. Keeps usselves to usselves, we do.”

  For some reason, this angered Rune’s companion. He twisted the sword. The blood ran thicker.

  Rune laid a hand on his friend’s strong arm. “Easy, Truve. He’s no use to us dead.” He turned to the eremitt again. “My friend is a farmer, more used to plowing a field than torturing weevils who call themselves men. He’s traveled far and his grip is tired, his hand could slip at any moment. He wields the sword because his wife and son were murdered by a villain who raided his krofft and took sewing materials. The rogue answered the description of a typical Nomaad. For all my friend knows, it could have been you.”