by P. C. Cast
Mari’s eyes widened as a man burst from the wall of smoke. He jogged straight for the stream, splashing the cold, clean water over him. But Mari paid him less attention than she did the creature by his side.
“It’s a Lynx,” Nik said softly. “His Companion is a mercenary.”
Even surrounded by danger, Mari was filled with curiosity. The feline was big—easily bigger than a Terrier. Even filthy and singed, her coat looked thick and soft. Her paws were enormous and reminded Mari oddly of a gigantic rabbit. The Lynx’s ears were tipped with distinctive black, feather-like fur, and when she glanced Mari’s way she was taken aback by the way the feline’s yellow eyes shined.
“Antreas has a valid point,” Wilkes said.
The man looked up then, and Mari was surprised to see that his eyes were the exact color of the cat’s. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his tunic before saying, “And just in case my point didn’t strike home, you should know that right behind the fire, which is right behind Bast and me, is a swarm that is devouring everything the fire misses.”
“Swarm?” Wilkes called to the Lynx’s Companion. “A swarm is on the move during daylight?”
“Yes, if you can call this daylight.” Antreas made a gesture that took in the smoke-filled sky and the shrouded sun. “You have no more time. If you can stop this fire, do it now. If you can’t, you are welcome to follow Bast and me. We got cut off from the Channel when the wind kept shifting, but we’re going to make our way around Port City to the Willum River.”
There was a huge explosion behind Antreas. Mari noticed that before the man reacted he looked to the Lynx. He nodded and then surged from the stream. “Or you can stay here and bicker like dogs. It makes no difference to me.”
“Bicker like dogs?” Thaddeus shot the question at the Lynx man. “You insult us in the heart of our own Tribe?”
Antreas paused as he and his Lynx walked past Thaddeus and Odysseus. Several inches taller than the rather delicately boned Hunter, Antreas looked down his nose at Thaddeus. “I don’t see a Tribe anymore. I see a group of bickering children.”
“You fucking cat lover—” Thaddeus began, but lightning quick, the Lynx leaped between her Companion and the Hunter. She arched her back and her yellow eyes flashed dangerously as she hissed a warning.
Antreas smiled as Thaddeus stumbled back. “That’s right, Bast doesn’t live by your rules. She won’t knock you over in a show of dominance—she’ll eviscerate you. Keep coming, dog man, and make her day.”
“Thaddeus, stand down!” Wilkes commanded. Then he nodded to Antreas. “I won’t ask you to stay. This isn’t your Tribe and this fire isn’t your fight. I will ask, though, that you mark your trail to safety clearly, so that the Tribe may follow if need be.”
“I will,” Antreas said, nodding respectfully to Wilkes before he and his Lynx faded away into the forest.
“Our guest had a valid point,” Wilkes said. “Mari, will you help us?”
Mari’s answer was swift and clear. “Only if you’ll grant safe passage from Tribe territory to Rigel and me, as well as Nik and Laru and any other person or canine who wishes to leave with us when the fire is out.”
Wilkes’s startled glance found Nik. “You intend to leave? With the Alpha canine of the Tribe and the woman you say can cure the Blight?”
Nik answered with no hesitation, “I go with Mari.”
Mari saw the effect of Nik’s words on the Tribe. They seemed confused and not sure how to react. She felt for them—their city was burning, their friends and families were in danger, and now they were faced with her, a girl who was a stranger and an intruder, and their only chance at salvation.
Yes, she felt for them, but she wasn’t foolish. Mari raised her voice to a shout that carried over the whining of the wind and the noise of the fire as it ate its way ever closer. “I will call down sunfire and save you. I will give you my word that I will also return and tend to your wounded, sharing the healing arts of a Moon Woman with the Tribe, but only if your Council rules to never again enslave any Earth Walker.”
“Her word means nothing,” Thaddeus said as he tore the sleeve of his tunic and began to bandage Odysseus. “If you let her leave, the only way we’ll get her back here is to track her and then truss and bind her like a wild boar.”
Mari looked into Thaddeus’s hate-filled eyes and spoke to him alone. “If you don’t shut up I’m going to silence you for good.”
“You dare to threaten me, Scratcher bitch!”
Rigel took two steps toward Thaddeus, growling ferociously. Mari felt Rigel’s anger—she fed off it. She let it fill her so that her own lips lifted in a snarl. Then her Companion’s anger shifted within her so that she was filled with heat, a yellow burning that seemed to be above, around, and within her all at once.
Nik dropped her hand as if it had burned him, but his smile was encouraging. “That’s it! You’re doing it again. You’re calling sunfire!”
“Everyone, get back!” Wilkes shouted. “Get across Badger Creek!” As the Tribe scattered, Wilkes went to Mari and Nik. “It isn’t safe for you to call down sunfire so close, not as much sunfire as it will take to stop this blaze. Nik, let’s get her up there to the raised side of the bank.” He gestured up where the creek wound lazily around and up into the heart of the Tribe.
Nik nodded and the three of them, canines following, hurried to the top of the bank.
“Nik, now what?” she whispered to him.
He spoke quickly and quietly. “The power to call sunfire is in your blood—it’s your birthright, just like calling down the moon is also your birthright. Accept what’s already filling your body. Let it use you, Mari. And then release it.”
Mari’s stomach felt sick with nerves, but she nodded and turned to face the direction from which the fire was making its way through the forest, devouring everything in its path.
She closed her eyes and breathed deeply once, twice, three times, grounding herself by focusing on her breath and not on the heat and smoke, fear and hatred, that surrounded her. Mari imagined the smoke clearing above her, and within her mind’s eye she envisioned a fat yellow sun beaming proudly from a perfect cerulean sky.
She could feel the heat and the power. It was definitely there. She lifted her arms, reaching up. Mari felt the golden filigree pattern that slept just under her skin awaken, filling her body with more of the unique yellow heat.
But it didn’t boil within her. It didn’t build and expand and ache to explode.
She opened her eyes and let her arms fall to her sides. “I can’t. It’s not working.”
“You can!” Nik said, taking her shoulders and turning her to face him. “I know you can. You did it before, at the creek, when your mother died.”
“I didn’t think then, Nik. It just happened—like a second ago when I threw it at Thaddeus. It starts heating inside me until it suddenly boils over, but I don’t know how to get it to start boiling.”
“How about like you call down the moon? It has to be almost the same thing,” Nik said.
“But it’s not! I know the moon, and she knows me. I’ve been calling her my entire life.”
“What’s happening?” Wilkes had stayed several paces off, allowing Nik and Mari some privacy, but now he approached, a concerned frown on his face. “What’s wrong?”
Nik began to speak, but Mari’s gentle touch on his arm silenced him. “I don’t know how to call down sunfire. Not really. I’ve only done it twice, and both times it just happened.”
“You mean the sunfire you threw at Thaddeus was an accident?”
Mari nodded.
“The other time was when her mother died,” Nik said. “I meant to ask Sol to train her, but…” His voice faded.
Wilkes closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them he met Mari’s gaze, saying, “Please forgive me.”
Mari was wondering what he meant as she watched Wilkes unwind the woven hemp belt from around his waist. Then, with a movement so fast his bod
y blurred, he struck, slipping the belt that was now a noose around Rigel’s neck, jerking it with such force that it lifted the young Shepherd off his feet as Wilkes pulled him up and back, in a tight, perfect choke hold, while Rigel struggled and gagged.
“Get your hands off him!” Mari shrieked at Wilkes, rushing at him, hands raised in claws, snarling her rage.
And that was when Mari saw the knife pressed against Rigel’s neck. She and her Shepherd froze at the same time.
“No! Don’t hurt him! Please don’t hurt him!”
“If you don’t call down sunfire I’m going to slit his throat.”
Mari would never forget how unemotional Wilkes had sounded. She looked into the Companion’s eyes and believed he would do it—he would kill her Rigel.
Anger, fear, outrage, and despair all flooded Mari. She could feel the breath being squeezed from Rigel—could feel her Shepherd losing consciousness as the knife pressed against his neck. It had already pricked through his thick coat so that drops of scarlet spattered the ferns at Wilkes’s feet.
Mari’s breath deepened. She followed the magickal, mysterious link that connected her to Rigel, allowing herself to be filled with the young canine’s fear and anger and pain.
The heat within her began to build and Mari embraced it—the anger, the fear, the pain, and the power that radiated, first from her Shepherd and then from above and around her, until she felt engulfed by it. Then Mari lifted her hands and screamed, releasing the yellow heat that poured into her, flinging it over Wilkes’s head, over the creek, so that it rained liquid fire past the felled-tree line, pouring like lava from the volcano that was Mari’s anger.
The force of the molten fire was like nothing Mari had ever imagined. It was not the cold, silver strength of the moon. This power—this liquid heat—was magnificent and terrifying. It poured through her, growing in intensity, as Mari watched, helpless to stop it. She saw the edge of the forest fire then. It seemed to be drawn, mothlike, to the tide of blazing sunfire come to earth. As the two forces met, Mari could feel the forest fire. It was ravenous, insatiable, and it struggled to absorb her sunfire so that it could go on feeding.
“No!” Mari screamed. She knew she needed more of the sun—more power, more heat. She closed her eyes and opened herself to eddies of sunlight that managed to slip through the smoke, accepting them as they entered her body with an eagerness that was foreign to her. The heat that had been pouring through her palms increased, with an answering roar from the deadly inferno that met it.
“You’re doing it!” Nik’s mouth was close to her ear. His voice was filled with pride and excitement. “When I tell you to stop, you must stop. Sunfire can kill just as surely as the forest fire.” There was a short pause and then Nik shouted, “Stop now, Mari!”
Mari opened her eyes. Tears streamed down her face as she tried to stare into the center of the waterfall of flame that continued to pour from her palms. Her body had begun to tremble violently and her knees felt as if they would give out at any moment. She tried to close her hands. Tried to stop the torrent of fire, but she couldn’t. She’d found sunfire, and now she had no idea how to control it.
“I—I c-can’t. It w-won’t stop,” she gasped through chattering teeth.
Then Nik’s arms were around her. From behind his hands traced along the outside of her trembling arms until they found her wrists and then the backs of her hands. He placed his hands behind hers, gently covering the backs of them, nestling them against the coolness of his palms as he spoke softly into her ear.
“Look to your right, Mari.”
She tore her gaze from the maelstrom of fire across the creek to see that Wilkes had released Rigel. The young Shepherd was pressing himself against her right leg, staring up at her and whining imploringly.
“Rigel is safe,” Nik continued in his calm, soothing voice. “You are safe. Laru and I are safe. You don’t have to be angry or afraid, Mari. Breathe. Relax. Then release the sunfire up—return it to the sun where it belongs.”
Mari kept her gaze on Rigel, focusing on the love that he was sending her. She drew a deep, full breath and then released it, along with her anger and fear, imagining that it geysered up and into the sky, along with the molten sunfire.
As quickly as that the sunfire left Mari. She staggered and would have fallen had Nik’s strong arms not held her upright.
“You did it!” He held her tightly. “You did it! The fire is out!”
Mari wiped her face as she turned in his arms. It was then that she saw he was holding his hands oddly—stiffly and away from her. “Nik, what’s wrong with—” she began, but her words choked off as she took his hand in hers and saw that his palm, both of his palms, were burned and bloody. Her body began to tremble again. “I did this. I burned you!”
Nik used the back of his hand to stroke her wet cheek. “Mari, I’ll take burns on my hands any day if the alternative is to have a forest fire devour the Tribe.” He laughed. “You are amazing!”
“But you are burned! From touching me.” Mari felt dizzy and a little sick as she grasped the edge of Nik’s tunic and tore strips from it, using them as makeshift bandages for his hands.
Nik was grinning as if he’d just been awarded his heart’s desire. “Well, Moon Woman, it looks like you’re just going to have to fix me. Again.”
Before Mari could answer, the air began vibrating. She and Nik whirled around to look with horror at the blackened, smoking mess before them. In the distance the land rippled and quivered as within the ashes of the incinerated forest the swarm lifted, departing the dark, secret places from which they slept and descended upon the Tribe.
CHAPTER 6
“Run! Climb! Get to safety! The swarm! The swarm comes!” Wilkes’s shout was a clarion call for the Tribe, and as one humans and canines ran.
“Mari! We have to climb!” Nik shouted as he pulled her with him, raising his voice over the cacophony of panic that surrounded them.
“Climb? No, we have to run and then burrow. Hide from the swarm.” She wiped a trembling hand across her unnaturally pale face.
Nik’s stomach clenched as he quickly assessed her condition. After calling down that amount of sunfire she should be resting. She should eat mounds of food, drink lots of herbal tea, and sleep for a day, maybe more. She’s not thinking straight. She’s too tired to think straight. But Mari didn’t have the luxury a Sun Priest would. Mari had to move or she wouldn’t survive—which meant Rigel would die with her. Then the truth blazed through Nik’s mind—it wasn’t just Rigel who would die with her. Nik wouldn’t leave her. Laru wouldn’t leave him. Ignoring the pain in his bandaged hands, he grabbed her shoulders and gave her a firm shake. “Mari, listen to me. We have to climb. We have to get up to the City in the Trees. That’s the only way for us to survive the swarm.”
Mari swayed as she shook her head. “Climb? But Rigel can’t climb. That means I can’t climb.”
Nik didn’t waste any more time on trying to reason with her. He looked at Laru. “Get us home! Up to Father’s nest! Now, Laru!”
The big Alpha barked, and then he sprinted away, Rigel on his heels.
“Okay, Mari. I’ve got you. Just lean on me and everything will be okay.” Nik put his arm around Mari’s waist and half carried, half dragged her after their Companions as other members of the Tribe raced past them, heading for the safety the big pines promised.
Nik caught Laru and Rigel easily. The two canines had come to a halt before one of the main lifts to the tree city. The decorative wooden cagelike creation was already full, but Nik pushed Mari ahead of him, trying to get her to squeeze on with Rigel before the door was latched.
“Back off!” Thaddeus had climbed on top of the lift and was perched there, crossbow pointed directly at Mari’s heart. “Take your whore and get to Scratcher territory. I’ll bet the swarm hardly ever goes there,” he said sarcastically.
Nik didn’t even glance at Thaddeus. Instead, his gaze touched each of the people crowding into the
lift. “She saved you. She saved all of you. She called down the sunfire that stopped the blaze.”
“She also caused the fucking blaze! And wounded my Companion!” Thaddeus shouted, angry spittle flying from his thin lips. Odysseus was curled up in the corner of the lift, shivering pitifully.
“You dropped the dagger that hurt Odysseus! You led the hatred that caused the fire to start on Farm Island. Bloody beetle balls! All of this is your fault,” Nik shot back at him.
The people in the lift looked nervously from Nik to Thaddeus.
“Let’s go, Nik.” Mari took his arm and, with surprising strength, pulled him from the group. “You can’t force people to accept me, and I’d rather face the swarm than Thaddeus and his hatred.”
Nik only took the time to grunt his agreement. He looked to Laru again. “Another way up, Laru! Fast!”
The Shepherds sprinted off, with Nik pulling Mari with them. The sound of the descending swarm surrounded them. It was a terrible unending humming noise, punctuated by shrieks of agony from the unfortunate creatures that the Swarm devoured in their path.
“Nik, I have to stop.” Mari staggered to her knees, looking up at him through a sweaty, tearstained face. “I—I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I can’t keep going. I’m sorry,” she gasped. “Take Rigel with you. Don’t let them get you, too.”
“That night-be-damned swarm isn’t getting any of you.” The voice came from above them, within the thick boughs of the pine Mari had collapsed against. Nik peered up to see that Antreas was crouched on a huge limb, his Lynx beside him, Bast’s glowing yellow gaze taking everything in. Antreas stretched out a hand to Nik and Mari. “It’s simple Lynx logic. Your Mari saved Bast and me. Now Bast and I are saving you and your Mari.”
“Laru and Rigel, too!” Mari said.
“Of course,” the Lynx man agreed.
Nik nodded his thanks to Antreas, telling Laru and Rigel, “Up! Go up!”
He saw Mari frowning and shaking her head, but Nik ignored her. He knew Laru and his son would do exactly what they had been trained to do—drilling over and over again in case of this kind of emergency. Nik bent so that his face was pressed against the bark of the pine. His arms were lifted, like the sides of an impromptu ladder, resting firmly against the tree. “Now, Laru!”