In winter stories, Fire was their friend and savior, but even so, it burned and killed the unwary. “We don’t want the fire to be born.”
“No. But if the Summer that does not end comes to us, we will in the end pray for the Fire’s birth, for if it is not born, if it is not captured and made living, it will devour us; the field will bear no food, and the lakes will dry, and the animals will starve.”
“But in Winter—”
“Hush,” the old woman replied. “For there are other serpents, and other stories. Your story, child, is the Summer story. Yours, and the children who were born to the same signs. They will be your brothers and sisters for a short time.”
“What will happen to them?” These unknown brothers and sisters.
Her eyes were shadowed and hollow. But she did not flinch and did not stoop to lie; the winter was in her still, strengthening her against the coming of Summer. “The fire will devour them,” she replied, “all but one.” She caught her granddaughter’s face in her withered hands and said, “You must be that one, do you understand, Shahira? You must be that one.”
“Why?”
“Because if you are not, you will never come home to us.”
“And how, grandmother, can I be that one?”
“I have taught you about the Winter,” her grandmother said sternly, “and you must hold it in your heart. Let nothing melt it, and you will be safe.”
And the others? She thought, but she did not ask, for the Winter was in her grandmother’s voice and hands.
Two years passed, the first normal, and the second—warm. The passage of the winter season had been fast, and spring was heady, as it always was. There was song, in their long house, and celebration, and the spring songs were the songs that were best loved, although the old ones said it was not a true winter.
But the Summer that followed was long, and it did not end. Months passed, and in those months, the rain dwindled, and the heat grew; the ground hardened against their feet. And Shahira knew what it meant. Her parents knew as well, and grew somber; her brothers and sisters were somber as well, but it was hard to be happy when her parents were so grim.
They made offerings at the temple; all of the people did, although her grandmother resented it loudly and bitterly; of what use was this waste of food? The priests would eat it, and get fatter, and that was all that would come of it. The gods, after all, had no interest in food, no interest in these pathetic offerings.
And perhaps grandmother was right.
For at the end of a year, the priests came to the temple. They came, they said, from the city, speaking as if the villagers were so ignorant a city was beyond their comprehension. They had received the sign and the blessing, and they spoke of it in stern tones, their red robes so perfectly clean it looked as if they had never laboured a day in their lives. But their skin was smooth and pale, and in their fashion, unbent and unbowed by labour in the fields or in the small rooms of the long houses, they were beautiful.
But they came with armed men, men who wore steel instead of shaping it, and those men came to the longhouse of Shahira’s father, a priest by their side.
“We have come,” they said quietly, “for Shahira a’Lebann. She is to accompany us when we leave.”
Shahira was not in the longhouse, and it took them some time to find her, but when they did, she left off her weaving and came to where they stood, sweating in the dry sun’s heat. “Let me see your hands,” the priest commanded, and Shahira held them out for his inspection. But although his hands were perfect and clean, he caught hers, dirty and pale, and turned them over; he pushed back her right sleeve, and stared at the mark made their. “This is the child,” he said.
Her father was there, and her mother, and the swords of the men in armor—for it was armor they wore—were no longer housed in their sheaths. As if they expected a fight. They were grim, these men, and yet she did not dislike them as much as she disliked the priests; she could not later say why. The priest nodded, and one of these men came forward.
“We will protect your daughter,” he said, which was not what she expected, “while she lives, we will lay down our lives for her. But you must give her into the keeping of the priests.
“If you fight us, we will fight. I am a father,” the man added, with just a twist of lips, “and were there any other way, we would not now be called upon by the King to perform this duty.” He paused, measuring her father’s grim silence, her mother’s stiffness. “You have many children,” he said at last, “and they need you. There are those whom we have visited who have only one, and we have taken that child from them.”
It was a threat; she could hear it. But could hear more in it than threat. It confused her, but she understood some part of it clearly, and stepped forward.
“I will go with them,” she said, her voice quiet and clear.
Her father touched her shoulder. “Shahira—”
“I will go and I will return,” she continued. She searched for her grandmother, but she did not see her. It caused her some pain, because there was no good-bye she could offer. But she understood that her grandmother did nothing without reason: if there was no good-bye, then it did not exist.
She hugged her brothers, even Otto, and her sisters, younger and older, and then she added, “we need the rains, and an end to this Summer.”
And her father met her clear, calm gaze. He did not smile; he didn’t have it in him. But he said, “I see my mother in your eyes,” and nodded grimly. “Winter in your heart, Shahira mine.”
“Winter,” she whispered softly as she hugged him.
And the water that the sky would not shed, was shed then.
She was not the first child to be gathered, nor was she the last, but of the first—five in all—she was the oldest. The younger children were not so young as the baby; they could speak and think and walk, and they did not need to be fed or carried. But they were afraid, and she understood why: they had no home and no family here.
Remembering some part of her grandmother’s words, she knelt by them, learning their names: Ademi, and Kyle, Lorna and Kerri, and also the silent Eleni. She gathered them to her side and she said, “We were born on the same day of different years; we share a birthday, and also this journey.
“We are not family,” she added softly, “but we are like brothers and sisters here, because we bear this mark.”
“But what does it mean?” Ademi asked her, for he was quick with words and questions.
“It is the symbol of fire,” she told him gravely. “Be cause if we had no fire, we would be animals, or corpses. But fire in the dry time is the most dangerous thing of all.”
“Then we’re dangerous?”
“Us? No. No, we’re not. We’re the ones who—” she looked at them all. The priests had told them nothing, of course. “We’re the ones who can bring the rain,” she said. “If we’re good, and if we’re strong enough, we can bring the rain.”
“I’m not very strong,” Eleni said quietly.
“But you will learn to be stronger,” Shahira said, with a confidence she did not feel. “I will be your older sister while you learn this.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how quickly you learn.” She smiled at the girl’s frown. “But we will be together, I think, for as long as we live.”
“Promise?”
She nodded. She knew that she should have spoken of death, and of sacrifice, but she couldn’t; they were just children, younger than she, and they did not have her grandmother to give Winter to their hearts. If they didn’t, she would have to do.
They did not reach the city quickly, and the walk was long and dry. Everywhere they went they could see the evidence of the long Summer, and nowhere was it more evident than the burned and blasted stretch of land that had once been forest. Fire there, she thought, uncon tained. If there was life in the black lands, as she would ever after call them, it was theirs: they walked through the ash in a cold silence.
But surrounding the charred vale were other villages, and their number grew in ones and twos as they journeyed toward the capital. The priests were not patient with either thirst or hunger, and they hated tears; they were like the harshest of parents without the love of other actions to sustain them.
But the men with the swords did not let the priests’ anger grow too hot, and if the priests did not love the children, they little loved the men they seemed to command, and they were—as the man had promised her father, safe in a fashion.
That man’s name was Adelos, and in the evening light ten days after Shahira had said good-bye to her family, when the children gathered to be fed, and the men joined them—eating no more and no less than the smallest of their prisoners—he offered them his name.
As they were all very young, they were honored, and knew it. And they were fascinated by his armor and his sword, and asked him if he knew how to use it. He told them stories of war against raiders and bandits, and they watched him, willing captives. Shahira, understanding that some of his stories were outrageous—for she had her grandmother’s way about her, and thought much was nonsense—also understood why he told them, and she thanked him for it after she had seen the children to the tents and put them to bed. That was her job, the job she had undertaken. The new children understood it because the children she had first met expected it, and they, too, were told Shahira’s story about Summer and birth.
He looked down at her, for he was tall, and said, “it’s the least I can do.”
“Because you lead us all to death?”
His brows rose as he met her clear eyes, but he did not step back or falter, and he did not offer her false laughter or mockery. His silence lasted for a moment, and then he said, “Because I lead you all to death. And know it.”
“And will not turn from it.”
“How can I?” He said bitterly. “For I, too, have children, and the Summer will devour them all if it does not end.” But he looked at her for another long moment. “You are trying to protect them,” he said at last, “when you know that only one of you can survive.”
She shrugged. “None of us will live forever,” she said at last, her grandmother’s words. She borrowed a few more, and added, “And only a fool tries.”
“Aye, there’s truth in that, in the old tales. Only a fool,” he said, nodding. “But it’s bitter.”
“Death is,” she replied.
“Theirs and yours,” he answered. “For you’ve hardly lived at all. But the truth of it is, girl, that you remind me of my daughter, and the reminder both softens and hardens my resolve. She’s not lived either, not truly, and without this—” he held out his hand, lifting it from the pommel of his sheathed sword, “she’ll have no chance.” He left her then, but as he turned away, she said, “Come back to us. At the evening meal. The children are happy when you are here.”
“You place a burden on me,” he replied, with a slight smile. “But I will shoulder it.”
He could. She saw that clearly, who saw much clearly: he could bear the burden of loving these children who he was escorting to death. He was a strong man, and a kind one, not unlike her father. Memories could cut two ways.
At another time, she might have hated him.
“There is a great magic,” he told the children, “in the heart of the Empire, and it rests upon the shoulders of the King and his priests.” There was no fire here, but none needed; fire was a danger where the winds were high, and across the flats, they could be high indeed. Yet the lack of firelight did not dim his face; his eyes seemed to sparkle with reflected light, and if the light came from within, and not without, it was still bright.
“The King,” Ademi said, shoving Systeri aside in his impatience, “have you seen him? What is he like?”
“Aye, I’ve seen him, and do not shove Systeri.”
“She was sitting on my hand!”
“She is half your weight; a strong boy like you should be able to have her sit on your head without noticing it.”
Ademi’s expression was a mixture of sullen and eager, an odd one. Systeri took the opportunity to hit him. Very like younglings, Shahira thought, her lips pressed together in her grandmother’s stern frown. She separated them, putting them to either side of her.
Systeri instantly leaned into her side and looked up, and Shahira’s frown stayed only on her lips.
“What is he like?” Adelos said, pausing for a moment. “He is a man,” he said at last. “Older than I.”
“Very old?”
Adelos laughed. “He is not considered very old, no.”
“But if he’s older than you—”
“Ademi,” Shahira said, “if you interrupt Adelos you will never hear the rest of his story.”
“He is a stern man,” Adelos said, “But very handsome. He wears a great sword as if it were a dagger, and he fights like a demon. He can be kind, and he is always fair.”
A small voice said, “But he took us away from our parents.”
“And we will go back,” Shahira told Trystera quietly. She made a place on her lap for the youngest of the children, and put her arms around her when she crawled into it. “But I told you why we go, Trystera. I told you why we are important.”
“I don’t want to be important,” Trystera replied.
No, Shahira thought bitterly. None of us do. Not this way. But she smoothed dirty, dry hair around a winding part, and kissed the top of the girl’s head. “Sometimes we don’t,” she conceded. “But the King must think of every single man and woman in the Empire as if they were all his children.”
“And we’re the ones he doesn’t love?”
“No,” she said. “We’re the ones he will love more than any, because only we can save the Empire from the scorching Summer.”
“But how, Shahira?”
“I don’t know yet,” Shahira replied. Because it was true, because she was careful to speak only truth, Trystera quieted. “But Adelos was speaking of magic.”
“Aye, I was. When the first King lead his people to these lands, they were barren, or so it is said. All of them—like great, vast wastes, without even the burned trunks of trees to mark them. Nothing grew here, and nothing lived.”
“Then why did we come here?”
“It is not written,” he replied. “And I’m not a sage; I don’t know why. But I know that the first King brought with him the power to make these lands grow, and they offered life to those who followed him. Fields,” he added, “and forests. The animals came, and with them, much else.
“It was long ago.”
“And the magic is forgotten?”
“No, Ademi, it is not forgotten. All Kings hold the magic within them, with the help of the gods. But it is a hard magic, and sometimes—”
“Sometimes,” Shahira continued, when Adelos faltered, “the land seeks to take back its shape, and rid itself of life.”
“Why?”
“Because living is hard.”
“I’d rather be alive than dead.”
“The old ones say death is peace.”
“That’s because they’re old.”
She had no ready answer to that, and imagined what her grandmother would have said, discarding it. “Some times,” she said quietly, “the land takes Winter into its heart, and there is a long, long cold. The rains freeze as they fall, and everywhere you look, there is white, white as far as the eye can see.
“Then the men who farm must learn to hunt, in the cold, and many perish. And the people of the villages must cut down old trees, and make fires in the long-houses, and live very close together. They sing, then,” she added.
“Have you seen Winter?”
“I? I have seen a small winter, just like you. The long Winter, I have never seen.”
“But you’re older—”
“Not old enough.”
But Adelos was gazing at her, his eyes almost wide. “Shahira speaks the truth,” he told them softly, “for I lived in such a Winter when I wa
s a boy.”
“And—”
“And during the Winter, if it lasts long enough, the King summons his priests, and they speak with god, and he creates a great magic, a magic of warmth and sun, and he calls it Spring.” She looked at her wrist. “And there are children born, like us, who are also called to the King, and they, too, must leave their families and go.”
“And what happens to them?”
“They are born,” she said quietly, “in time of need and peril, as we were, and they must help the King to bring Spring to the rest of their people.” She ran her hands through Trystera’s hair. “Is this not so, Adelos?”
“It is, Shahira. Your wisewoman must be very wise indeed to have told you this.”
“She was my grandmother,” Shahira replied.
“But how can we help?”
“We are part of a great magic,” was Shahira’s careful reply. “Come. Let me teach you a song. It was a Winter song.”
In this fashion, Shahira kept Winter in her heart.
They were twelve when they reached the capital city, and twelve very dirty, very hungry children at that. Even Shahira found it hard to be cheerful; her feet were raw and her throat was parched, and the approaching city lay across the landscape like looming spires that spoke only of the shadow of death.
As well, winds brought unpleasant smells across the great furrow that had once been a river, and several of the children were sick with it. Three of the children who joined them were Shahira’s age, and she was happy to have their company, for the younger children grew more frightened and therefore more difficult as the days grew. Because Shahira was there, she greeted the newcomers, even the sullen Estavos, and asked them for help, giving them some of her work: the children.
Estavos was not particularly kind; he was used to field labor, and not the more subtle labor involved with the care of children. The priests disliked him, but not with the intensity of his own disdain for them. He spoke to her, as they reached the city, of escape, for the streets were many and the people unimaginable in number.
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