Fire Dancer

by Ann Maxwell

  Rheba closed her eyes, gathered light and concentrated on a nearby bush. Her hair shook free of its knot and fanned out restlessly. After several minutes the bush quivered as though it were alive. Sweating, she concentrated until the bush ignited. She wove its flames into arches connecting other nearby bushes and held them until there was an arc of burning shrubbery warming the woman and her children. After the first bush, the others burned quickly; it was always easier to use existing fire than to weave random energy into heat.

  Kirtn uprooted other bushes, limiting the spread of fire and feeding the flames at the same time. He did not complain that she was spending her energy on a dying woman. He did not say that Loo’s period of Adjustment was designed to kill the weak, not to succor them. If you were not strong, lucky, smart and vicious, you died. On Loo, compassion had about as much survival value as a broken neck.

  But he kept his conclusions to himself, because he knew what drove his dancer. She had seen too many people die on Deva—and so had he. The need to help others was as deep in her as her akhenet genes.

  “Should I cauterize her wound?” asked Rheba in Senyas, her voice trembling with effort and too much emotion.

  “No,” he said softly. “Soon she won’t hurt anymore.”

  “The children.”

  “Yes. After she dies.”

  Wordlessly, Rheba sat down on the trail to wait Gray mist moved against the multihued grasses. A vague breeze brought the clean scent of burning leaves. The woman slipped into semiconsciousness, moaning as she would not have allowed herself to do if she were awake. Her children crept back to her side.

  Kirtn ached to end the woman’s suffering, but did not. She had chosen to cling to life for the sake of her children. Perhaps she hoped for a miracle, perhaps not. All he knew was that he had no choice but to respect her decision ... and to grind his teeth at her futile pain.

  “Someday,” whispered Rheba, “someday I’ll meet the Loo-chim again. Then I’ll share with them the hell they created.”

  Kirtn smiled a Bre’n’s cruel smile. “Save a piece for me, fire dancer.”

  “Rare or well done?”

  “Ash,” he hissed. “Ash and gone!”

  Her fingers laced more tightly with his. “I promise you that.”

  The woman’s body slumped suddenly, seeming to fold in upon itself. Only that marked her passage out of pain. Kirtn and Rheba rose to their feet and crept toward the children huddled unknowing against their mother’s cooling body. A stick shattered beneath Rheba’s feet with a piercing crystal sound.

  The two small children woke from their daze of cold and hunger with yelps of fright. They saw the forms looming over them and panicked. With a speed born of survival reflexes, both children leaped up and ran away before Kirtn could intercept them.

  “Come back,” shouted Rheba in Universal. “We won’t hurt you! Please, let us help you!”

  The children never hesitated. They had learned too well the Fold’s brutal lessons. They trusted no one. They raced down the trail and into the shelter of a thick grove of whiplike trees.

  “No!” yelled Rheba, recognizing the trap of the Second People. “No!”

  Disturbed by the two small bodies scrambling over their roots, the trees shivered and stretched. Their limber branchlets hissed through the air.

  Rheba raced desperately toward the grove, calling for the children to come back. The first child reached the edge of the gleaming pond and drew away, confused by the acrid fumes, He turned and pushed his sister back from the evil liquid. But when he tried to follow her retreat, the roots that he had used as stepping-stones humped up suddenly and sent him staggering into the acid pool.

  The boy screamed, warning his sister to flee, then words became agony as the acid ate into his living flesh. The little girl stood frozen for a moment, her eyes like silver coins in the half-light. Then her brother’s terror drove her back. As she turned to flee, her thick fur shed light with a ripple of silver that echoed the deadly pool.

  Rheba saw the second child stumble away from the pond, dodging to avoid the writhing roots. The first child’s terrible screams bubbled and drained into silence. The little girl hesitated again, looked over her shoulder, and saw nothing but ripples on the sullen silver pond. Her brother had vanished into the Second People’s communal stomach.

  Limber branches whipped down suddenly, scoring the girl’s body, driving her back toward the waiting acid. Her dense fur cushioned the blows, but not enough. She screamed as acid-tipped tendrils found her unprotected eyes. Blows rained down on her, jerking her about, disorienting her. Inexorably she was beaten toward the oily shine of the pool.

  Screaming with horror and helplessness, Rheba tried to force her way back into the hungry grove and drag the child out. Kirtn held her back, grimly accepting the burns and bruises she gave him in her mindless struggle to follow the child. Any other man would have died trying to hold her, but he was Bre’n, and very strong.

  A pale, nimble branch uncoiled, blindly seeking the child’s warmth. It found her, wrapped around her body and dragged her toward the fuming pool.

  Rheba changed beneath Kirtn’s hands. Raw energy enveloped her, as uncontrolled as her rage at losing the child. His hands burned, but still he held her, his mind struggling to channel her fury into the disciplined responses of a fire dancer.

  Then she heard him, felt his presence, understood his restraint and his rage equaling hers. Energy leaped at her command, raw lightning that split a pale tree from root to crown and sent thunder belling through the air. The other trees thrashed helplessly, trapped by their own vegetable necessities, unable to flee their most ancient enemy—fire.

  Lightning slashed and seared, trunks bled, fragrant blood flowing down pale smooth trunks. A thin cry sprang up from the grove, a sound as painful as the continuous rolling thunder. The Second People keened and writhed and yanked their prey into the pond.

  For an instant Rheba and the child and the trees screamed in unison; then all sounds were subsumed in the sheet of lightning and simultaneous thunder that exploded over the grove. The Second People twisted and heaved, tearing out ancient roots, branches flailing so violently that they broke and sprayed purple fluids that vaporized in the instant of release. But there was no escape from a fire dancer’s revenge and a Bre’n’s savage skill.

  The grove of Second People died, and the smoke of their cremation was a thick fragrance over the afternoon.

  Rheba breathed in the ashes of her dead enemies and choked.

  VII

  With a hoarse cry, Rheba jerked free of Kirtn’s grip and ran away, her eyes dry, blinded by fire. She wanted to run until she was free of feeling and memory, responsibility and revenge. But she could only run until her body convulsed from lack of oxygen, and then she crawled into a concealing thicket.

  She wrapped her arms around her knees, shuddering and gasping until her breath returned. With breath came memories, Deva and Loo and children burning, a man breathing fire and Second People screaming, dying. She wanted to weep and scream but could not. Her eyes were wild and dry, the color of flames. She sat without moving, holding on to herself in the mist. She heard Kirtn’s urgent, questing whistle, but her lips were numb, unable to shape an answer.

  And then softly, ever so softly, she heard the velvet murmur of a hunting brushbat. Behind her, the thicket quivered as though at the passage of a large hunting beast.

  She remembered Jal’s dry voice describing the Darkzoi, certain death on clawed wings and nimble feet, an animal voracious and invulnerable except for eyes and genital slit. She knew she should run or walk or crawl away, should do anything but turn and stare over her shoulder into predatory eyes. Yet she turned, and stared, too numb to do more than see what kind of death had called her name.

  The sounds continued, sly velvet rustles, hiss of air over wings, muscular windings of flesh and bone through branches. She stared, but could see only the dark wood of the thicket, its many branches as tangled as her hair. Against the sil
very backdrop of the sky, she should have been able to see an animal as big as her hand, much less one fully as long as Kirtn.

  Yet she saw nothing except a slight thickening of a branch overhead, a subtle flexing that was too sinuous to be wood.

  She leaned closer. Gradually the shape of an animal longer than her arm and as thin as her finger seemed to separate from the angular brush. The snake quivered and enlarged. The brushbat sounds came closer.

  “You’re not a Darkzoi,” she whispered. “You’re as frightened as I am, aren’t you? Hiding behind brushbat noises and scaring everyone. You should be ashamed.” Her words were sharp, but her tone was gentle, as beguiling as a Bre’n whistle. “Come to me. I’ll protect you. You don’t have to be afraid.”

  As she spoke, she slowly reached up toward the branch where the snake wound helplessly around cold wood. It opened its mouth and hissed threateningly. The sudden movement revealed delicate scales tipped with metallic copper, silver and gold.

  “You’re a beauty,” she murmured, “and you can’t scare me. If your bite was as bad as your hiss, you wouldn’t have to hide.”

  With a deft swoop, she captured the snake. It stiffened, stared at her out of opalescent disks, then gave a soft cry and went limp. She looked at the dark, slender animal dangling lifelessly from her hands. The snake was much heavier than she had expected. And very still.

  “Snake?”

  With utmost care she searched for a sign of life. There was none. Her touch had frightened the timid creature to death. As she held the animal, she felt its warmth drain into the damp air. She stared at the small corpse and then at her own hands . . . everything she touched died. She sank down to the ground and began to cry, shuddering and coughing, weeping for the first time since Deva burned.

  The ragged, tearing sounds of her grief drew Kirtn to the thicket. He slid into the brittle shrubbery quietly, sat near her and took her hand, sharing her unhappiness in the only way he could, for Bre’ns lacked the gift and curse of tears.

  While her sobs slowly diminished to little more than an occasional quiver, Kirtn whistled soft consolation in the Bre’n language. It was a language of emotion and evocation, as Senyas was a language of precision and engineering.

  “Death is the pause between heartbeats,” whistled Kirtn. “The children will live again someday, and someday you will love them again, and cry for them again, someday.”

  “I know,” she whispered in Senyas. “But that is someday and I am now. In this now everything I touch dies! This shy creature never—harmed—”

  Her words became ragged. Her hand traced the outlines of the snake. For the first time, Kirtn noticed the motionless coils in her lap. He whistled a soft, undemanding query.

  “It was in the thicket,” she answered in Senyas, controlling her tears. “Hiding. It made sounds like a brushbat. You remember the noise Jal described, like velvet on satin, only stronger?”

  Kirtn’s whistle was both affirmative and encouragement.

  “The poor animal imitated a brushbat to scare me away. But I just didn’t care enough to run.” She drew a deep, broken breath and spoke in a rush. “So I looked and looked and all I saw was a snake hugging cold branches and I thought it must be frightened and I thought I could help it even if I couldn’t help the children—the children—”

  He waited, fluting sad counterpoint to her words, crying in the only way a Bre’n could. After a time she spoke again, her voice drained of everything but exhaustion.

  “So I lifted the snake out of the branches. It hissed at me, but I thought if it was dangerous it wouldn’t have to hide behind brushbat noises. I was right,” she said hoarsely. “It wasn’t dangerous. It was just very, very shy.” Gently she gathered up the cool body of the snake. Metallic colors rippled, intricate scallops of light thrown off by quasi-reptilian scales. “This beautiful, nameless creature died of fright in my hands.”

  The snake’s sensors brightened to opal as he said, “My name is Fssa. Do you really think I’m beautiful?”

  Rheba was so startled she nearly dropped him. She felt warmth radiate from the sinuous body and sensed the life invigorating him. “You’re alive!”

  “Yes,” said Fssa, ducking his head, “but am I beautiful?”

  She received her second shock when she realized that the snake was whistling fluent Bre’n. “You’re whistling Bre’n!”

  “Yes,” gently, “but am I beautiful?”

  The snake’s wistful insistence was magnified by his delicate use of the Bre’n language. Kirtn smiled and touched the snake with a gentle fingertip.

  “You’re very beautiful,” Rheba said in Senyas, divided between tears and laughter. “But where did you learn to speak Bre’n?”

  “And to understand Senyas,” added Kirtn, realizing that she had been too upset to whistle Bre’n’s demanding language.

  “You taught me,” whistled Fssa.

  Rheba and Kirtn looked at one another.

  “Do you mean,” said Kirtn in precise Senyas, “that you learned to speak Bre’n and understand Senyas just by listening to us?”

  “The whistle language was more difficult,” fluted Fssa. “So many colors in each note. But the thrills are exquisite. It’s one of the most exciting languages I’ve ever used.”

  “Do you understand many languages?” asked Kirtn numbly, beyond disbelief.

  “I have as many voices as there are stars,” Fssa said, watching the Bre’n with luminous sensors. “Even among my own people, I was called a genius. Fssa means All Voices.”

  “Not only beautiful, but modest,” she said dryly.

  Fssa did not miss the nuances of her voice. He wilted. “Should I be modest? Is modesty necessary for beauty?”

  Kirtn chuckled, moving his fingertip the length of Fssa’s resilient body in a soothing gesture. The muscles he felt were very dense, very strong. Despite Fssa’s timidity, measure for measure the snake was far more powerful than even a Bre’n. “Modesty is necessary only for fire dancers,” he said with a teasing glance at Rheba. “Do you speak any other languages, Fssa, or can you only make musical notes?”

  “I can imitate any sound. Languages are merely sounds ordered by intelligence.”

  Rheba stared at the shy, immodest creature looped around her hands, and said, “Speak Senyas to me.”

  Fssa’s sensors darkened. “If I do, I won’t be beautiful anymore.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Speak Senyas.”

  “You won’t drop me,” pleaded Fssa, “even when I’m ugly?”

  “I won’t. Now, speak to me.”

  “All right,” whistled Fssa in sad resignation. “But I enjoyed being beautiful . . .”

  Despite her promise, she nearly dropped the snake. Before the last quiver of Bre’n language had faded from the air, Fssa changed in her hands. Sparkling gold quills unfolded along his spine, then fanned out into a flexible ruff. Openings winked between the quills, sucked in air, distributed it to chambers where it was shaped and reshaped by powerful muscular contractions.

  “What do you want me to say?” asked Fssa, his Senyas as perfect as hers.

  “By the Inmost Fire,” she breathed. “He can do it. Do you speak Universal, too?”

  The pattern of quills changed. Vanes sprang up, flexed, thickened; other metallic folds of skin opened out, platinum and copper, silver and steel blue. Fssa was like a magic box she had had as a child—once opened, the box unfolded into myriad shapes, each larger and thinner and more beautiful than the last.

  “Every educated snake speaks Universal,” said Fssa in that language, “but,” wistfully, “I would rather be beautiful.”

  Rheba looked at the glittering, incandescent fantasy looped around her hands. “Fssa, it’s impossible for you to be anything but beautiful. Where did you get the absurd idea you were ugly?”

  “I have no limbs,” said Fssa simply.

  He folded his vanes and ruff, returning to a more conventional snake shape. Passively, he hung from her hands, w
aiting for her judgment. She stroked him with her cheek and thought what life must be like for an intelligent sensitive snake in a world ruled by leggy bigots.

  “Poor Fssa,” she murmured. “Poor, beautiful snake. Would you like to come with us to the well? We can’t guarantee safety, but we’ll tell you you’re beautiful twice a day.”

  Metallic glints ran like miniature lightning down Fssa’s long body. His answer was a liquid ripple of Bre’n joy. Smiling, Kirtn rose to his feet and held his hands out to Rheba. She looked up, weariness in every line of her body. “The well isn’t far,” offered Fssa.

  She licked her lips, but her tongue was too dry to do much good. Thirst was another kind of fire burning in her body, like hatred and memories of death. “I could hate the Loos, Bre’n mentor.”

  “I could help you.” He looked at the snake. “We may have a new language to teach you.”

  Fssa whistled a query. “What language?”

  “It’s called revenge.”

  Fssa’s laugh was a sibilant sliding sound. “I’d like to learn that one. Yesss. That would be fun.”

  Rheba smiled grimly as she coiled Fssa around her neck. After a few moments, the peculiar snake vanished into her hair, an invisible presence balanced around her skull. Silently, she and Kirtn walked back to the trail. Soon it became broader, smoother, almost a road, and the mist thinned in the slanting afternoon light to little more than a golden veil. On each side of the road small shelters appeared, inhabited by slaves who plainly preferred to live beyond the concentric rings of sanctuary surrounding the well.

  The slaves were of many races and sizes, but there was only one type—shrewd, strong, and as hard as necessary to survive. They ignored the road and the new slaves who wearily walked on it.

  Rheba stepped over a blue tile line that curved off on both sides of the road. Just beyond it was another strip of tile, curving in parallel to the first. She hesitated, then remembered Jal’s words. When you’re inside both concentric circles you’re safe.

  Safety? Did such a thing exist in the Loo-chim Fold? Perhaps not, but the well did. She could hear it calling to her in liquid syllables. She quickened her stride, hurrying toward the chest-high cylinder of the well. Half of it was blue, half was white. Random patterns of holes spouted water.