Fire Dancer

by Ann Maxwell

  She looked from her creation to Kirtn. The lines changed subtly as she measured them against his breadth and height. Frowning, she looked from the Bre’n to the cage again. She kept misjudging his size: it did not seem reasonable that even a Bre’n should have such wide shoulders. Yesterday she had singed his fur. She had wanted to make the cage out of cold light, but Dapsl had wanted the drama of living flames. She had told him—falsely—that hot fire was nearly impossible for her to make. He had told her that nothing was too much work for a Concatenation Act. She had given in with a silent prayer that the Loo-chim would not be upset by a few tendrils of flame.

  Still frowning, she scratched at her arms. The developing lines of power itched constantly, both irritant and warning. She should stop working with fire until her arms healed. A scratching fire dancer was an overworked fire dancer. Deva had pampered its akhenets for practical as well as altruistic reasons. A fatigued akhenet was often irrational, and thereby a danger to everyone.

  “A-one and a-two and—no, no, no! Lightly! Float, you kaza-flatching mongrels!”

  Dapsl’s demands were simply a buzzing around the edges of Rheba’s concentration. She flexed her fingers. Flames leaped upward, twining into the shape of a demon that was supposed to represent Kirtn. The demon’s mouth expanded like death embracing the audience. At this point, Fssa was supposed to give forth some truly curdling sounds, but the snake was too busy translating—selectively—for J/taals and Dapsl.

  She sighed and the demon vanished. Idly she began making cool, colored shapes, lithe manikins that imitated the motions of the J/taals. To one side she made a purple light that expanded and contracted with Dapsl’s exhortations. The little light bounced madly, trailing purple braids, foaming from its lavender mouth, bouncing higher and higher in an attempt to be impressive in its rage. Farther away, removed from the hubbub, she created a slim silver snake admiring itself in a golden mirror.

  Kirtn’s chuckle sounded beside her. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  She glanced up guiltily, caught playing when she should have been working. His hand smoothed her vivid, crackling hair.

  “I haven’t seen much mimicry since Deva,” he said, “when a master dancer would while away the icy night with laughter.” His eyes looked inward to a time when Bre’ns and Senyasi had lived in myriads on a world not yet ash.

  The figures winked out, leaving only memories like colored echoes behind her eyes. “Deva . . .” she whispered. “Children.” Her head bowed, she looked at her glowing hands and arms without seeing their intricate lines of power. “I’m afraid I’ll never stop seeing the people. All my potential mates, fathers of my unborn children, standing dazed while the sun poured down, burning . . .” She leaned against Kirtn’s hard warmth. “We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to find the boy Senyas and his Bre’n.” She looked up at him with eyes that had seen too much fire. “We’re akhenet. How can we live without children?”

  He pulled her into his lap, stroked her, giving her what comfort he could. Silently he cursed the overriding need for children that had been built into Bre’ns and Senyasi alike, instinct squared and then squared again, that akhenets would not become so bound to their cross-species mate that they refused to mate with their own kind. Bre’n and Senyas akhenets alike had nearly died out before a gene dancer had been born who could substitute instinct for personal preference. Myth had it that the gene dancer was neither Bre’n nor Senyas, but both, one of the few viable hybrids ever conceived between the two species.

  He wished he could share his knowledge with Rheba, giving her some of the history she had lost, helping her to understand the needs built into her . . . but she was too young. She had not yet discovered the depth of Bre’n/Senyas sharing. Despite her forced maturity since Deva died, she had shown no interest in him as a man, nothing but tantalizing flashes of sensuality that also were part of a fire dancer’s genetic heritage. It was possible that she would never turn to him as a lover. Not all akhenet pairs mated physically as well as mentally. But of those mismatched pairs, few lived long or easy lives. Bre’ns in rez were an indiscriminate destructive force.

  Pushing aside his bleak thoughts, Kirtn whistled sweetly, softly, coaxing her out of her despair. Another whistle joined his in sliding harmony. He felt Fssa coiling around his arm. The snake wove from there into Rheba’s hair and began singing into her ear. Some of the tension gradually left her body. She smoothed her cheek against Kirtn’s chest, shifting her weight until she fitted perfectly against him. Her hair lifted and curled around his neck, hair that was silky and warm and alive as only a fire dancer’s could be. Though she did not know it, the soft strands wrapping around him made a fire dancer’s caress that was usually reserved for lovers. She did not know, and there was no one left alive to tell her except Kirtn—and he could not.

  “If you’re quite through,” said Dapsl indignantly, “I need that bizarre snake. The J/taals pretend not to understand me unless that slimy article wrapped around your arm talks to them.”

  Rheba felt Kirtn’s muscles tense as he gathered himself to lunge. For an instant she was tempted to let him shred Dapsl into oozing purple fragments, but the instant passed. Even the youngest fire dancers learned that an akhenet never abetted Bre’n anger. She allowed electrical impulses to leak from her body wherever she touched Kirtn, disrupting his muscle control. At first he fought her, then he gave in.

  Deliberately, she stroked Fssa. The snake was dark where he had been incandescent. She had discovered that the darker forms of Fssireeme, as well as being a heat-conservation mode, indicated shame, embarrassment, or discomfort.

  Dapsl reached to snatch away the snake. Kirtn’s big hand shot out. Dapsl squeaked and tried to pull back, but the Bre’n’s grip on his lower arm was too firm.

  “If I squeeze,” said Kirtn conversationally, “you’ll lose your arm from the second elbow down. Stand still. Apologize to Fssa.”

  Dapsl stood. He apologized.

  “Now, tell him he’s beautiful.”

  “That thing? Beautiful? I’ve seen prettier mudholes! In fact—”

  Dapsl’s arm turned pale lavender where the Bre’n’s fingers were. “Tell him,” said Kirtn gently, “that he’s beautiful.”

  “You’re beautiful, lovely, perfect,” Dapsl said hastily. With each word he eased more of his arm out of Kirtn’s grasp. “You can’t help it if you were born without legs. Be grateful,” he said triumphantly, jerking free of the Bre’n, “you weren’t born with stinking fur all over your animal hide!”

  Rheba came to her feet in a lithe rush that reminded Kirtn of the J/taals. Fire blazed from her hands, licking toward Dapsl with hot intent.

  “Our bargain!” said Dapsl, backing away quickly. “Stay away from me!”

  “Fire dancer.” Kirtn spoke in Senyas, his words precise, his tone that of a mentor.

  She stopped. Flames licked restlessly up and down her arms, and her hands shone with dense lines of gold. With a long sigh, she released the flames.

  “If you hadn’t been so stubborn,” said Dapsl in a high voice, “about committing kaza-flatch on stage with your furry pet, none of this would have been necessary. The female Loo-chim would have leaped up onstage with you. Your problems would have been over! You and your pet would never be separated, because not even the Loo-chim would break up a Concatenation Act. But no, you have to hold out for group kaza-flatch, and I tell you right now, you tight-rumped little—”

  Whatever Dapsl had been about to say was forgotten in his rush to evade Kirtn’s feint. Rheba and the Bre’n watched as the small purple man raced back to the J/taals. After a few moments, Fssa followed, coiling through the dust like a cobalt whip.

  “If I cooked him first,” she said tightly, “do you think the clepts would eat him?”

  “They don’t eat carrion.”

  She sighed. “Even if I burned off his oily braids?”

  “Doubt it.”

  “Damn.” She scratched her arms absently. The elbows
were particularly itchy. She longed for some salve, but it was aboard the Devalon, as out of reach as Deva itself.

  “On the count of four.” Dapsl’s irritating command and Fssa’s soft translation came across the campsite. “A-one and—”

  “He may be a limp stick,” she said, “but he knows what he’s doing. Our Act would have been chaos without him. That doesn’t mean I like the cherf.”

  Kirtn’s long fingers rubbed through her hair, massaging her scalp until she sighed with pleasure. “Once we’re out of here,” he said, “we’ll shed Dapsl like a winter coat.”

  She arched against his strong hands. Her hair shimmered with pleasure, curling around his arms, mutely demanding that he continue. He laughed softly and extricated himself before she could sense his response to her innocent sensuality. “Back to work, akhenet. And this time, please, make the cage big enough.”

  She groaned. “How many more days before the buyers arrive?”

  “Three, if Dapsl’s memory is right.”

  “It would be the first thing right about him.” She stretched languidly, rubbing her shoulders against her Bre’n. “Itches.”

  “All the way up there?” he asked, concerned. His hands slid beneath her Fold robe. Gently he explored her shoulders and neck with his fingertips. Lines of power radiated faintly beneath his touch. “Too soon . . .” he whispered. “Slow down, fire dancer. Don’t burn so hard.”

  For a moment she leaned her weight against him, letting down barriers of instinct and discipline until he could sense the exhaustion and despair that lapped like a black ocean just beyond the shores of her control. He closed his eyes, accepting her emotions until the edge of his mind overlapped hers lightly, very lightly. Then he let strength flow into her, a coolness that washed over the intricate patterns covering her arms, calm radiating through her from the Bre’n hands touching her skin. The shores of her control expanded, throwing back the black ocean.

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” she murmured. “Thank you, mentor.”

  “I didn’t do it. We did. You’re changing so quickly, little dancer,” he said, his voice divided between hope and fear. “Sharing strength is just one thing a Bre’n does for a Senyas. Just one small thing.”

  “What do you get in return?”

  He hesitated, wondering if it was too soon, too much. In the end he gave her only half the truth, and not the most revealing half. “A channel.”

  “Channel?”

  “An outlet for Bre’n emotions, Bre’n energy.”

  “Rez.” she whispered, shivering beneath his hands.

  “No,” he said fiercely. “I’ll never do that to you.”

  She did not argue. Both of them knew that rez was a reflex, not a choice. Kirtn would do what he had to. He was Bre’n. And she was Senyas. She forced a smile.

  “Stand over there,” she said, pointing to a bush, “and I’ll see if I can build a cage big enough to hold a Bre’n.”

  XIII

  Rheba awoke with a headache that made her want to weep. Overhead, the Fold’s ceiling was dull gray with a hint of brass, an hour away from full light. She shivered, rearranged her robe, and snuggled closer to Kirtn’s warmth. He shifted in his sleep, gathering her against him. She rubbed her cheek against the velvet of his chest fur, wishing her back could be as warm as her front. It seemed that she had been cold since she landed on Loo.

  Her headache redoubled, faded, then returned. Kirtn awoke with a grimace, though his headache was but a shadow of hers. “Fssa. Where is that damned snake? Is he talking to Rainbow again?”

  She looked around, then felt carefully through her hair. “Gone,” she groaned.

  He sat up. “When I get my hands on that Fssireeme I’ll bend him into a new shape!”

  The headache diminished. She sighed and felt herself go limp in response to less pain. At the same instant, both she and Kirtn spotted Fssa coiling across the dark ground. He sparked silver and copper, gold and steel. He was beautiful—when he was not splitting her brain.

  “Fssa.” Kirtn’s hand swept out to scoop up the snake. “I told you what I’d do if you caused Rheba pain again!”

  Fssa turned black and hung limply from Kirtn’s hand. The Bre’n gave him an impatient shake. The snake remained limp and very, very black.

  “What is it about Rainbow that’s so irresistible?” demanded the Bre’n.

  Fssa’s whistle was pure and beguiling. “It’s so old, friend Kirtn. It’s older than my guardians’ memories. It’s older even than the Long Memory.” The snake’s body changed, more pearl than black, streaks of gold dividing the most dense areas of gray. The whistle became eager. “It knows more than I dreamed was possible. Languages,” the whistle soared ecstatically, “languages that were extinct before the Long Memory, and languages to me are like fire to you. And Rainbow knows fragments of other things, but I can’t make those fragments whole. The languages, though—I can make them whole for Rainbow and then it’s more at ease. It’s lost so much of its knowledge. It’s had pieces of itself broken off and scattered, made into baubles for two-legged idiots.”

  Rheba’s curiosity grew as her pain diminished. “How old is Rainbow? Is it one of the First People?”

  Fssa’s whistle was tentative, then slid into a negative. “I don’t think so. Its energy is similar in some ways, but it was created by man. At least it says it was, and I can’t think why a rock would lie.”

  “Created.” Kirtn frowned. “When? By whom? For what?”

  Fssa changed colors, becoming lighter, rippling with confidence now that his friends were no longer angry. “Rainbow was made by the—” An impossible sound came out, one that meant nothing to his listeners. The Fssireeme became darker with embarrassment. “Names are very hard to translate. I think you would call it Zaarain. Does that sound right?”

  Kirtn and Rheba looked at one another. “We know the name,” said Kirtn finally, “but are you sure?”

  “That’s the only possible translation of Rainbow’s frequency, especially since it used the kfxzt modulation. It’s a difficult modulation to reproduce,” whistled Fssa, his tone divided equally between earnestness and pride. “I’m the first one who has talked to Rainbow for a long, long time.”

  Rheba shook herself as though waking from a dream. “Zaarain . . . if the Loo-chim find out, Rainbow will be taken away.”

  “But—but—” Fssa writhed, then changed into his Senyas mode and spoke with precision, as though to be sure then could be no possibility of misunderstanding. “But no one else can talk to Rainbow. It needs to communicate.” Fssa writhed, so upset that he could not hold his Senyas shape. “It was made to be a—library? Yes, that’s close enough—library, and it needs to communicate with intelligent minds,” he whistled urgently.

  She winced and covered her ears at the shrillness of Fssa’s tone. “It may need to communicate, but that hurts! Shut up, snake!”

  Fssa’s volume diminished. “I, too, was lonely for a long time,” he whistled in oblique apology/appeal.

  Kirtn looked over to the lump of gleaming darkness that was Rainbow at night. “Library?” he murmured. “A Zaarain library? What wonders could it tell us?”

  Fssa sighed, a long susurration. “A fragment of a library,” he amended. “It used to be much larger. It was looted from an old installation and broken into trinkets for barbarians.”

  “How big was it before that?” asked Kirtn.

  Copper streaks rippled through Fssa in his equivalent of a shrug. “At least as big as the blue well. Perhaps bigger. Rainbow isn’t sure. It’s just a conglomeration of random fragments, not even a whole segment of the original library. It barely gets enough energy to hold itself together, now that it’s no longer connected.”

  “Still,” said Kirtn, “a Zaarain library. . .”

  “A Zaarain headache, you mean,” she said, rubbing her temples. “I hope the damn thing doesn’t talk in its sleep.”

  “It doesn’t sleep,” said Fssa primly. “And it won’t talk u
nless you ask a question or scare it to death by threatening dismemberment as those children did.”

  “Good. Then if I get a headache, I’ll know that it’s your fault for asking questions.”

  Fssa’s glitter faded into dark gray. “Could you . . .” His whistle was tremulous, then it broke. He started over again. “Would you include it in our Act? Otherwise we’ll have to leave it here, or some Loo will discover it and hack it up into jewelry and it will die. Please, Rheba? Surely a creature as beautiful and warm as you can find room in your emotions for a lonely crystal.”

  She stared at Fssa, then laughed. “Don’t flatter me, snake. When it comes to beauty, I’m a distinct fourth to you, Kirtn, and that Zaarain rock.”

  Fssa waited. Slow ripples of black consumed his brilliance the silence stretched into seconds, moments, a minute. “Ice and ashes!” snarled Rheba. “Brighten up, snake. We’ll fit that damn mind breaker into our Act.”

  “What will you tell Dapsl?” said Kirtn, smiling at how the snake had won.

  She smiled in return, but not pleasantly. “Nothing. If he objects, I’ll burn the braids right off his head.”

  Fssa suddenly shone with bright metal colors. He puffed out his most incredible ruff in a shower of glitter. “Thank you!” he whistled exultantly.

  Kirtn laughed. “Too bad Rainbow doesn’t have as many shapes as you—then it would be easy to put in the Act.”

  The ruff vanished in a flash of silver. “I think—” He began to change into his Rainbow communication mode, the: turned his sensors on Rheba hesitantly. “I think Rainbow can make different shapes. It’s just an assembly of fragments, after all. If it assembled itself, it can unassemble itself. Should I ask?”

  She groaned and glared at Kirtn. “What shape did you have in mind for the Act?”

  “Oh . . . a crown, a necklace. Something bright and barbarous for me to wear,” said Kirtn. “I’m supposed to be a vicious demon king, after all, according to Dapsl’s Act.”