Fire World

by Chris D'Lacey

  “But I am, dear Primrose. I’m perfect. I’m Petunia. You can’t even set your tie straight.”

  “You want the auma for yourself. Well, you shan’t have it!”

  “I shall!”

  “You shan’t!”

  And for once, Aunt Primrose was absolutely right. With a burst of light as powerful as the flames around them, the pad lit up and a visible ribbon of violet energy flowed out of it. But it did not go to either of the squabbling Aunts. It flew around them both and in between the cages and dissolved into the wound on Rosa’s arm. Her head jerked violently as if something had bitten her. And though she did not wake, the wound began to burn with a blue-white flame.

  “What have you done?” coughed Primrose, backing away.

  “What do you mean, what have I done?”

  “Look at her arm, at the marks you gouged. You’ve branded her with the symbol of Agawin.”

  Aunt Petunia shook her head in fear and confusion.

  Primrose let the auma pad fall from her hand. “Run, dear,” she said. “We’ve got to run away.” She hurried to the door, pulling her sister with her. Such was their haste that her foot struck the auma pad and knocked it under the burning bed. But it mattered not to the Aunts anymore. They had failed. The only thing now was escape. Primrose opened the door and dragged her sister out.

  Almost immediately, two things happened. The cages surrounding Aurielle and Azkiar de:constructed as quickly as they’d formed. Both birds were now free, but too dizzy to fly. To Aurielle’s relief, she heard wingbeats through the crackling flames. She looked up expecting to see a host of firebirds coming through the window to quench the fire. But only one had landed on the sill. Her heart rate tripled and her ear tufts rose. Aubrey? she said. The bird in the window had its features, but there was something horribly wrong about it. There was no color in the feathers. No kindness in the eyes. And why was there a line of fresh green blood congealing around the ruff of the neck?

  Suddenly, it twisted its head to one side, clearly aware of something coming. Only then did Aurielle see that it was carrying an item in its beak. It looked as if it might be a nesting twig, but she was too far away to be sure. The bird was gone before she could decide. And after two or three secs of empty sky, David Merriman scrabbled through the window.

  “Rosa!” he yelled. He came powering across the floor, using his arm to shield his face from the flames. He didn’t even look at Azkiar and Aurielle as he dropped to his knees to lift Rosa up. But the two firebirds were busy in their own right by then, barking orders at the twenty or so more that had just flown into the room. David turned, with Rosa in his arms, to see the fire being consumed by a host of brightly colored birds.

  When it was done and the birds were settled, on any (cool) perch they could find, David looked at them all and spoke the only word of dragontongue he knew. “Sometimes.” Every bird sat up, their ear tufts raised. One by one they set their gaze on Aurielle, who spread her wings and hovered in front of the humans. She replied, in her own form of dragontongue. And though David did not understand her little rrrh he knew from its tone it was a kindness, a greeting. He nodded at Aurielle and she at him.

  Welcome back, David, the firebird had said.

  Now the librarium was his.

  PART THREE

  WHICH HAS ITS

  BEGINNINGS ON THE

  ISLE OF ALAVON,

  A LONG-FORGOTTEN AREA

  OF THE DEAD LANDS

  ALSO MARCH 7, 032

  1.

  Harlan Merriman and Bernard Brotherton were transported to the Dead Lands, at night, by penal taxicar. They were escorted there by two Re:movers (Pinstriped and Plain). The prisoners were not allowed any possessions, only the minimal clothes they were dressed in. And though neither man was formally bound, the Re:movers ordered them to sit with their hands clearly visible on their knees. All speech was forbidden. The use of fain, the prisoners were warned, would be considered a grave violation of the terms of their re:moval from the Grand Design. When Bernard rather foolishly asked, “What terms?” he was rewarded with a bolt of charge from a scanner. The shock of it left his four limbs shaking and froth bubbling from the corners of his mouth. Harlan, careful not to show any form of dissent, gathered the wounded tech:nician in his arms. The Re:movers let this pass. It was the only concession they made to either captive throughout the remainder of the journey.

  When the taxicar finally slowed to a halt, the doors opened with a crisp whoosh and the man-machines stepped out in perfect synchrony. They ordered the prisoners to move. The scientists stumbled down a short metal ramp, onto a dark, desolate, odorless wilderness very similar to that which Eliza Merriman had encountered. The land was mostly flat in all directions and barely seemed able to sustain a blade of grass. Here and there, thanks to the few rays of moonlight finding outlets through the clouds, a rough cast of stone could be seen jutting out of the sterile surface. There was no sign of water, certainly no food. Nothing on any horizon but the promise of loneliness.

  Bernard began to shiver. It was cold here. Very cold. Nothing like the carefully controlled environments either man was used to in Co:pern:ica Central.

  Pinstriped spoke. “Harlan Merriman, Bernard Brotherton, your citizenship of Co:pern:ica is revoked. You will remain in the Dead Lands until you expire by any means. This is by order of an Aunt Su:perior. This is the will of the Higher.”

  With that, the Re:movers climbed into their taxicar and were gone.

  Bernard dropped to his knees, sinking his bones into the gluey earth.

  “Come on,” Harlan said, touching him gently on the shoulder. “We have to go.”

  “Where to?” Bernard begged, throwing his arms wide. “Look around you, Harlan. Everywhere leads to nowhere. We’re doomed.”

  “You’ve heard the stories,” Harlan said. “There are communities here. People survive. If we stay where we are, the cold will kill us. We must walk, Bernard. It’s our only chance.”

  The tech:nician dropped his stubby hands flat against his thighs. “In which direction? We can’t even use our fain to guide us.”

  “I’d say our best bet lies that way.” Harlan nodded at something shimmering in the distance.

  Bernard squinted for a focal point. “Are they … torches?” he whispered, gathering hope into his voice. He scrabbled to his feet for a better look. Away to their right, on one of the rolling parts of the landscape, several specks of light were dancing in the darkness.

  “Let’s find out,” said Harlan. And he began to pick his way across the turf to meet them.

  “What if they’re hostile?” Bernard stood his ground. There were many rumors about life in the Dead Lands. Not all of them were kind.

  “There’s little point in running,” Harlan replied. “They’ll catch us if we try. Whoever they are, they’re used to this terrain; we’re not.”

  “We could wait. Lie low. Assess them as they pass.”

  Harlan flicked his eyes toward the lights again. “They’re heading this way. They know we’re here. They probably saw the taxicar or monitored its flare.”

  “Then I suppose our fate is sealed.” Bernard sighed. And without another word, he fell into step behind his colleague.

  It wasn’t long before the approaching lights began to illuminate the shapes of men. There were six in total, but three were carrying two torches each. Harlan found this reassuring. It suggested to him that these people were used to taxicar drops and had brought extra torches for newcomers to hold. As the group drew close, a youngish man at the head of the party doused a failing torch in a puddle of water. The sudden fizzle made Bernard jump. The young man quickly put him at ease. “Friends, we mean you no harm.” He signaled to a shaggy-haired member of the group, who stepped forward with two bundles of clothing. All the men were wearing shin-length robes, tied at the waist by a short brown cord. “I recommend you undress,” the young man said.

  Harlan, not questioning, took off his jacket.

  “Leave it on th
e ground,” said the man with the clothing.

  “Why? What’s the point of this?” Bernard demanded.

  The young man stabbed his torch into the ground, took a robe, and let it fall open in his hands. “This will be considerably warmer, trust me. Regular clothing offers little protection to you here, and it will deteriorate quickly.”

  “And it’s probably full of tracers,” a man with broken spex put in.

  “To monitor our movements?” Bernard asked.

  The young man looked at him kindly. “No, friend, to take bets on how long you survive.” He offered the robe up. This time, Bernard took it.

  “You’ll also need these.” An older man with cheekbones as prominent as his nose stepped forward. He handed Harlan a pair of sandals. They were basic and fairly shapeless, with a toe post between the big toe and the next. “Traveling the marshland is tiring without them. They will help to spread your weight and keep you balanced. In the morning, we’ll find you a better fit.”

  Lastly, the young man gave Harlan a torch. Harlan received it well. There was something oddly comforting about the weight of the wood and the scent of fire in his nostrils. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Renegades, like you,” the young man replied. “Left here by a dying society that wrongly believes we were the cause of its ailments. My name is Mathew Lefarr and we are the Followers of Agawin. Let me lead you to our shelter. We can talk along the way.”

  He signaled to the shaggy-haired man, who put his torch to the bundle of clothing. When the fire had taken, the group moved off in the direction from which Harlan had first seen the lights. “Agawin?” he asked, having to work to keep pace with Lefarr’s trained stride. “I’ve heard that name before, but I don’t recall where. Is he the leader of your tribe?”

  Lefarr considered the question for a moment. “What’s your name?” he asked quietly.

  “Harlan Merriman.”

  “And your companion?”

  “Bernard Brotherton.”

  “Colleagues or friends?”

  “Both,” said Harlan, looking back. Bernard was relaxed now and moving freely, aided by the man who had given out the sandals. “We are scientists — were scientists — from the Institute for Realism in Phys:ics.”

  “At what level?”

  “Professor. Bernard was my tech:nician.”

  Lefarr nodded, taking this in. “Do you know where you are, Professor? Did the Aunts or Re:movers tell you where you’d be dropped?”

  “The Dead Lands. That’s all they said.”

  “The Dead Lands are vast,” Lefarr explained. “You are in a sector called Alavon, which we believe was once home to the seer, Agawin, whose legend we follow.”

  Harlan glanced around him. This dreadful, inhospitable place offered little promise of “home” to anyone. Even so he said, “Sounds like an interesting story.”

  “You will learn more of it in time,” Mathew said.

  They slogged on for another few paces. Despite the cold he could feel in all his extremities (the toes were probably the worst), Harlan could detect his body warmth building and feel it being retained by the fabric of his robe. “How do you know the name of this region? I’d always assumed that everything outside of Central was uncharted.”

  A frail smile broke across Mathew’s face. “The Dead Lands were mapped many spins ago.”

  “Oh? How do you know that?”

  Lefarr looked sideways at him. “It’s the reason I’m here.” He took a larger step over a pool of water, urging Harlan to copy what he did. “Take care. The ground here is very boggy. It can suck a man down in a single draw. Go in too far and we have no way of pulling you out. Don’t talk, just follow. Till we reach the higher levels.”

  Harlan looked up. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, the contours of the land were easier to see. Some two hundred paces ahead the ground curved up in a gentle, extended slope. The men behind Harlan were preparing for the climb by organizing themselves into single file. At the risk of annoying his host he asked, “What’s over the ridge?”

  “History,” said Lefarr. “Now concentrate and follow.”

  The next fifty paces were some of the longest of Harlan’s life. Twice he was stopped by shouts from behind when one or other of the men — thankfully not Bernard — lost their footing and had to be rescued by their companions. Lefarr, who seemed to cope better than any with the treacherous conditions, went back on both occasions to offer his help. If he wasn’t a leader, he deserved to be. That made Harlan think again about the origins of the name Agawin. It was reverberating around his skull like an echo, yet he could not put a time or a memory to it. An answer lay over the ridge, perhaps? That intriguing promise, as much as the threat of submersion in the marsh, sharpened his attention for the last part of the trek. The slope was reached without further incident, and by the time they could walk and talk again at leisure, Harlan’s mind had drifted back to the latter part of his conversation. “You said you were involved with the mapping of this area. Are you a scientist as well? Did you work for the Geo:grafical Institute?”

  “Not exactly,” Lefarr replied. “I used to make t:coms for the broadcast networks. I had a promising career, a reputation for being thorough. One day, I was assigned to a top secret project whose object was to quash an uncomfortable belief that was gaining strength among the citizens of Co:pern:ica.”

  “Something to do with Agawin?”

  “No. It ended here, with Agawin, but it began with the Grand Design.” Lefarr extended a hand to help Harlan over a crumbling rock. “A covert poll, arranged by the Aunts, indicated that over sixty percent of the citizens of Central felt their lives were ‘missing’ something. I was given the job of finding out what. During my research, I heard the name Agawin for the first time. It ignited something in me that I never knew existed: a crushing desire to step into the past, to understand where I had come from. This feeling of insecurity, for want of a better phrase, was the root of the problem in Central. So I began to ask questions I wasn’t supposed to ask. All of them turned my investigations here. I’d heard rumors that the Dead Lands were very far from dead and were beginning to spontaneously regenerate. But when I sought permission to explore beyond Central, to my amazement the Aunts denied it. So I went to the Geo:grafical Institute — which, as you know, is controlled by the Aunts — looking for evidence.”

  “You broke in?”

  “At the time, it seemed like a worthy thing to do. They caught me, of course, and sent me here, to a region where they send all the worst — or depending how you look at it, the best — offenders. This party of men are some of the finest minds to come out of Central. You may not think so yet, but you’re in excellent company.” He crested the ridge and pointed with his torch, releasing a shower of cinders from its tip. “Welcome to the Dead Lands’ best-kept secret. This is the Isle of Alavon.”

  Some way ahead, about three times farther than the distance they’d walked, a small and almost symmetrical hill was rising from the base of a natural valley. “That’s amazing,” said Harlan, shaking his head in wonder. “I’d always assumed the Dead Lands were flat. Do you live on the hill?”

  One of the approaching men said, “We keep to the lowlands around it.”

  But on the peak, Harlan could see a small tower — or maybe the ruins of one. Pointing to it he asked, “Is that inhabited?”

  “No,” said Lefarr. “Not anymore.”

  Bernard drew up alongside. Out of breath, but equally transfixed, he panted, “Wind.” He laughed. “Actual wind, in my hair.”

  “What there is of it,” one of the tribe joked.

  They all laughed, including Bernard. “I haven’t felt this for years,” he said. “Real air blowing through my lungs.” He opened his mouth and took a deep breath in.

  “And it’s fresh,” said Mathew. “Not like the filtered environments in Central.”

  “It’s beautiful,” said Harlan, “in a rather grotesque kind of way. How do you men survive here?”
/>
  The six Followers looked at one another as if they weren’t entirely willing to give up the answer. Once again, it was left to Lefarr. “Look carefully at the hill. Tell me what you see.”

  Harlan studied it in detail. Dawn was beginning to break across the valley. In the gathering light it was possible to see that the mound was composed of three or four tiers of earth, defined by upwardly spiraling terraces. At first there seemed nothing remarkable about them. But as the light began to flood the lower slopes, Harlan’s gaze was drawn to a shoulder of land near the foot of the hill — and something rather peculiar on it. He stepped forward to be sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. “Color,” he said.

  “Crops,” said Mathew. The men around him placed a hand across their hearts.

  In among the blackness lay a field of green.

  2.

  Firebird!” one of the men shouted suddenly.

  Harlan let his gaze run across the skyline and quickly picked out the familiar shape. The bird was circling toward the valley floor, barely moving its bright orange wings. It tipped a little as it caught the sunlight, resembling a soaring ball of flame.

  Two of the Followers dropped their torches and began to sprint down the hill. The other three looked to Lefarr for guidance.

  “What’s happening?” asked Harlan.

  Lefarr, who’d been carrying a small backpack made from the same rough cloth as his robe, let it fall to the ground. He threw his torch aside. “Do you run, Harlan?”

  Bernard looked at Lefarr in horror. “You’re not hunting it, surely? It’s illegal to take the life of a firebird.”

  Mathew Lefarr grunted quietly. “In the Dead Lands, Bernard, we make our own rules.” He nodded at two of the remaining men, who quickly went in pursuit of their friends. To the other man he said, “Roderic, will you stay and guide Bernard to the Shelter?”

  “I will,” said Roderic. He was the man with the cheekbones. The oldest of the group by far.