The Fire-Moon

by Isabel Pelech

  The lioness’s jaws already dripped scarlet. Probably, Teshar thought, it had gotten the vulture.

  Then that great face swung over her, beautiful, horrible, and drooling blood. As Teshar closed her eyes, a drop of it fell onto her lips. Without really meaning to, she opened her mouth and let it slide in.

  And it was wine.

  She had only ever tasted wine once, at a wedding, but she was quite certain.

  Her last memory, before the world became dreamlike again, was of licking her lips again and again, with a completely parched tongue, to lap up the precious, lifesaving red droplets.

  Teshar remembered getting to her knees—maybe all the way to her feet, she wasn’t sure—and stumbling through darkness.

  And then there was something beside sand, and it impeded her progress. It went crunch. It went crunch in such a special, invitingly wet way that Teshar chewed several stems of it to pulp before she remembered there was even better water—wine?—farther in.

  She wove through the field of crunchy stalks. Encountered a barrier.

  Recognized a very clever way to get through the barrier, something called a door, and used it. She fell forward on the threshold, but Teshar had been falling on her face for some time now. She barely minded.

  There were noises—words—and clatters, and finally a flame happened.

  Teshar looked up at human faces and felt her mind for its old, sane way of thinking, the one that involved facts and words and names.

  All these faces had names, and she knew them.

  She had barely managed to put one name with the face—father—before it contorted in rage and flew toward her.

  Someone kicked her right below the ribs.

  Someone else was screaming. Teshar squirmed away and looked up at the faces. “Mmoh . . . first-mother . . .”

  “Don’t call me that!” The face was crying as well as screaming, and Teshar couldn’t figure out how to get up and make it better. “He took them all, do you understand? My boys—your brothers—he couldn’t have his six, so he came and took them all!”

  Chapter Three

  Wildfire Light

  Teshar drew a line in the sand with the toe of her sandal. “You see,” she said to Aeret without looking at him. “It wasn’t just Uncle Beket’s idea, I don’t think. I’m not sure exactly who, but I think most of the adults knew about him—Utsepekt. And I’m not sure what sort of magic he did, or what he showed them, but it must have been really, really scary, because instead of calling for a priest or anything they chose six children, just like he asked them to. Come to think of it, maybe a priest wouldn’t have helped. He might be why Dejre died . . .” She took a deep breath. “Anyhow, he was really angry that he didn’t get his sixth sacrifice, and he blamed it on the people here. So he sent the ghosts of the five, and—and when they left they took ten other children with them. And the next night there were fifteen ghosts, and they d-did it again. I w-was only in the desert three nights—I’m not really s-sure how, it seemed longer—but by the time I came back, my brothers were already gone, and all my f-friends. Which is why I’m the only one my age in H-Hasmahi.” She realized she was crying. “They tried to talk to him, they tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen—and when I came out of the desert, they knew it was my f-f-fault. And then they noticed my eyes were this c-color, and my hair grew in r-r-red instead of black like it used to be, and some people started saying I was an evil spirit and not Siotesharet at all . . .”

  “Girl,” said Aeret in a very soft, ominous tone, “please be quiet. Immediately.”

  Teshar shut her jaw with a snap and stared at him. Oh, no.

  She hadn’t meant to admit as much as she had. It was from not talking for so long. She had started telling her story, and found that she had an attentive, deeply listening audience, who sat on the wall and nodded from time to time and interrupted not at all, and the words had spilled forth. As if the story had a will and had been struggling to be told, for the whole year since it happened.

  And all that time, he wasn’t listening because he understood. He wasn’t listening because he’s sympathetic. He was listening because he was judging you.

  Aeret got to his feet.

  What’s he going to do? I just admitted to murder—mass murder—am I going to die? Can he think up something worse? Is he going to . . .

  She blinked. Aeret turned away from her, stepped back over the wall, and was striding back through the barley field, paying no attention to how many stalks he crumpled. When he was about eight paces from her, he cocked his head and said, without turning, “Are you coming or not?”

  Teshar got up slowly and followed. Now what is he up to?

  By the time Teshar caught up with the priest, he was more than halfway to the house. “Ah, sir? You know they’ve barred the doors at night, ever since.”

  “Yes. And guarded them with amulets and symbols of protection. They told me, out of oozing concern for my supposedly sacred person. Or their own inconvenience.” Aeret’s voice was still cold and teeth-clenched furious, but Teshar heard a note of sarcastic humor in it. “Your family has never seen me be inconvenient.”

  He didn’t gesture or even break stride, but the front door exploded outward.

  Teshar yelped and ducked, but all the flying chunks of wood avoided her as deftly as they did the sorcerer-priest. She gaped at his back, at once shocked by the destruction—wood was expensive, good wood worth its weight in silver—and wishing rather guiltily that she could do something like that.

  Of course, she had been producing those anger-fueled burst of fire since she recovered from her desert ordeal, and she hadn't used them so directly against anything. It was partly because she was too frightened, of herself and of what everyone would do to her afterwards, but also because they were her family. Just because they had stopped loving her didn’t mean she stopped loving them; it just made it very painful to do so.

  The crash of the door had woken her family. As Teshar stepped through the doorway, she saw them much as she had that first night after the desert, frightened and deep-shadowed in the light of bedside candles and one oil lamp. She also saw Menib, who held the lamp, pressing his shoulders against the wall as if he wanted to back through it. Aeret advanced on him slowly.

  “Give me a good reason,” Aeret said, “that I should not transform your entrails to serpents and watch you die of it.”

  Menib gaped like a landed fish. “Your supreme . . . high holiness . . . radiance, I . . .”

  “If you give me too many titles, I might suspect you of being sarcastic.”

  Another gasp. “The . . . I pray you, do not believe the . . . the girl. It isn’t . . . it’s . . .”

  Aeret turned away.

  Menib screamed, an inhaling shriek rather than an exhaling one, and clutched his stomach. “Holiness, please—it’s a demon! A demon sent out of the desert to . . . to watch us, to . . .”

  “Spare me.” Aeret turned back toward him. “If you truly believed that, you would cast her out. Or else offer her coconuts and wine and the blood of innocents.”

  The women shrank back silently, in unison. It seemed that Menib was too frightened to catch the reference to Utsepekt. He blundered on. “But her eyes, milord Holiness, and her hair! My daughter had black hair—dark, pretty eyes—and just look at . . .”

  Aeret growled disbelievingly, deep in his throat. “She’s a daughter of Sephret now, oh prince among imbeciles. Of course she’s—”

  “What?” Teshar squeaked.

  Aeret cast her one of his you-are-a-moron looks. “Sephret. The goddess.” He turned back to Menib. “Of course she’s different. But that doesn’t mean—”

  “I know who she is!” Teshar shouted. “I just—I don’t—I can’t be!” Aeret raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m not! You’re wrong!”

  If there was anything worse than the priest’s impatient gaze, it was her own mother’s expression of horrified realization, and the fear from the other three. Any second now, they would
grab at her and start begging for forgiveness—not because they loved Teshar, but because they were afraid of Sephret. Teshar didn’t think she could bear that. And she knew she couldn’t bear believing it herself. She turned around and sprinted back through the doorway and into the night. For the moment, the possibility of ghosts, even very dangerous ghosts, was preferable to the presence of the living.

  The lamplight had ruined Teshar’s night-vision. She tripped over the donkeys’ wheel.

  For a moment after she landed, the sheer stupidity of the accident almost pushed her past mere rage, to that emotion where the fire came from. Then she thought about where the fire really might come from, and shook for a moment.

  Sephret, called the Wildfire. She ruled both unrestrained revelry and mad violence, and had as fearsome a history as Sutekh the Destroyer. Eons ago, even before Oseros had ruled the world, Sephret had made war on all mankind, devastating whole countries and bringing the Age of Reih to a savage end. If she had not been stopped, the legend said, she would have destroyed the world.

  To Teshar, that wasn’t the really frightening part. The really frightening part was that Sephret was also called the Lioness.

  I’m not. I’m not! I won’t be a destroyer, a—an uncontrolled thing that burns everything, anything that gets in her way—I can’t! I won’t! He’s wrong!

  An inner voice, more snide than the priest could ever be, murmured, but you wrecked your village. Killed your brothers and your best friend. You were good at it. Why wouldn’t Sephret reward someone who serves her so well?

  “Oh, gods,” Teshar whispered, and rested her forehead against one of the wooden bars that the donkeys pulled.

  —Star? That’s you, isn’t it?—

  Teshar scrambled to her feet. The voice was the same kind of not-heard sound that Utsepekt’s voice had been, but this one was female. And young, and very familiar. She knew she should be terrified, but what she actually said was, “Inoheni? Oh, gods, I’ve missed you, it’s so good to see—”

  And then she did see, and swallowed. Inoheni wasn’t exactly a ghost. She had a body, and Teshar was pretty sure it was her old one. Utsepekt had performed some sort of funeral rites on it, and embalming. A white robe, very much like the one he had worn, concealed most of it, and Inoheni’s face was covered by a featureless silver mask. But Teshar caught sight of one of her hands, dark and leathery, with stitching on it.

  “All right, it’s not good to see you like this. But I have missed you, Inoheni. You don’t know how much.”

  Inoheni shook her head. —You should have stayed near him, Star. None of us would have dared come close.—

  She was talking about Aeret, not Utsepekt. “Yes, but he said I—” Teshar cut herself off. “Listen. Utsepekt—”

  —Star, please don’t say his name. He might be listening.—

  I hope not, Teshar thought, because I only have one chance at this. “I know that he controls what you do, right? So first of all, I know that if you k—hurt me, it isn’t your fault. But the important part is, you can mess him up by obeying his orders exactly the wrong way.”

  Inoheni sounded as if she were ready to cry. —I know about that. He told us how you escaped. I don’t think he meant to; he talks to himself a bit. I think he’s a little crazy. But smart. He’s been working on the spell ever since.—

  “He fixed it?”

  —His thoughts go straight into my head now. And he has awful thoughts, Star. All wet and hungry, like crocodiles. They sort of slide around, and when they find a thought they don’t like, they . . .—

  Teshar felt cold. “They eat it.”

  —It feels like they’re eating me. I’m stretching it as far as I can, just talking to you instead of . . .— Inoheni made a thought-noise like a sob. —And I think he’s only letting me do it because he wants me to feel even worse when . . . when I kill . . .—

  Part of Teshar’s mind moved through rage and past it in an instant, but there was no fire.

  Instead, she did the only thing she could think of, and moved toward Inoheni. “Shh. It’s all right.” She kept her voice very gentle, even though part of her mind was shouting, kill him kill him kill Utsepekt I don’t care if he’s already dead I’ll by-the-gods kill him extra so it works this time! And part of her just wanted to cry. “It’s all right. Come here.”

  —Star, I can’t cry anymore,— Inoheni said miserably, pulling away.

  “So pretend.” Teshar put her hand on Inoheni’s shoulder, very gently, in case she was brittle. “It’s all right, ‘Heni. I’m here. I’m going to help you.”

  —You can’t. You shouldn’t be . . .—

  “Shouldn’t be what? Hugging my best friend?” As a matter of fact, Inoheni felt a bit unpleasant and smelled strongly of preservative resin, but Teshar wasn’t going to tell her. “It’ll be all right, Inoheni. You’ll see. I’m here.” And she rocked back and forth as if she were comforting a living girl, and repeated the same soothing phrases while the past-rage part thought about grinding Utsepekt into dust. She stroked the corpse’s hair.

  And the sun rose right behind Teshar’s head.

  At least, that was what it seemed like. Teshar straightened up without letting go of Inoheni and said, “What in the name of . . .”

  Inoheni gasped and stared at her. Stared with eyes. Through the mask, Teshar could see Inoheni’s face just as it had been in life.

  She could see, also, that the inner surface of the silver mask was covered with writing. Bizarre, sinuous writing that dissolved in the light even as she noticed it.

  The same thing was happening to the burial amulets all over Inoheni’s body. Teshar said, “Oh, no,” and reached out to rescue the nearest one, on her friend’s right hand—

  —stared stupidly at her own hand, which was shining golden-orange, bright enough to outline even the tiniest blood vessels—

  —and felt, not Inoheni’s corpse, but her real fingers, as she took Teshar’s hand in her own. “Don’t worry about it,” Inoheni said.

  Teshar looked up at her friend’s face. Inoheni clearly had been crying, but she was smiling now, smiling jubilantly. “I don’t know how you did it,” Inoheni went on, “but you did it.” She raised her arms and spun around, and then hugged herself. Teshar thought she saw a faint suggestion of feathers to the arms, just like the soul was always painted on the temple walls. “You did it. I’m—”

  The light became blinding. Teshar could feel the now-inert body crumbling away from her hands, and cried out.

  —. . . free. Oh, Star, this is amazing! You should see . . .—

  The light vanished. For a little while, everything vanished. But Teshar felt someone catch her before she hit the ground.

  She came back to consciousness to feel something cold and wet stroking rhythmically across her forehead. She thought, dog? and then no, don’t clean the hair and then memory returned.

  Teshar’s eyes snapped open. “You.”

  “Well done,” Aeret said. For once, there was no trace of sarcasm in his voice. Teshar didn’t notice.

  It was early morning, but she was almost where she had been. Her head was resting on the edge of the donkey wheel’s basin, where Teshar fetched water every day. She pushed herself to her feet. “Well done? Well done? I wrecked her burial amulets—I broke her body!” Setting her spirit adrift again, with no hope of proper rites this time. Dejre had never said what happened to spirits without rites, but the jeering voice inside Teshar thought it knew, and the answer had forever in it, in a very nasty way. Oh, red-hair, your goddess is going to be so happy with you! “And you—you!—were behind me all along, weren’t you? I remember you catching me. You could have stopped it—you could have saved her—”

  “Not much point, was there?”

  Teshar hit him.

  It was a good solid punch, and it might have bloodied the priest’s nose if he hadn’t jerked backward at the last instant. To Teshar’s shock, he actually grinned at her, a look of mingled surprise and delight, even as he p
robed his cheek for injury. “If you would let me finish,” Aeret said, “there wasn’t much point in me saving her. You destroyed Utsepekt’s enchantments—not burial amulets, by the way—sent your friend directly to the Hall of Oseros, and then destroyed all connections with her earthly remains. A very wise notion, by the way, since it means that no-one can summon her back.”

  There was a very long silence.

  After a while, Aeret added, “You look very like a flounder right now. Just so that you know.”

  Teshar shut her mouth. “I . . . um. Me?”

  “Quite.”

  Her eyes narrowed. You’re enjoying this, you camel’s rear. “You said that I was a daughter of Sephret. The Wildfire. As in death, and destruction, and that’s why I wrecked so many things. You said . . .”

  Aeret stopped smiling and looked at her intently. “You seem to be laboring under some misapprehensions . . . hmm.” He turned around. “This may take some time. Come along.”

  “Where?”

  “Somewhere that your family cannot eavesdrop on us. They offend me.”

  It had to be a gift, Teshar thought, to make her irritated on behalf of her family after everything they had done to her.

  Aeret turned south when they got to the western wall. He stayed on the farm side of it this time, striding less quickly than usual and checking to make sure she was keeping up. Teshar jumped up on the wall and walked along it until she got tired of balancing. “You know,” Aeret said, “that color actually looks quite good on you.”

  Teshar reached up reflexively to touch, or perhaps cover, her hair. He seemed to have gotten most of the mud out. Suddenly curious, she found a lock that was long enough to bring around and look at.

  “It’s really more orange,” she said after a moment. In fact, it looked like she thought copper would when it came right out of the forge, still cooling from molten. The very tips of it glinted gold in the sunlight. “And it’s . . . really bright.”