by Ann Maxwell
Burn me!
She did not answer him, could not, the cell was too small to hold more words, they had to get out, get out, get out. There must be a way out, a place where the air was cool enough to breathe and did not stink of burning stone, Bre’n rage, fire dancer fear.
An orange rectangle smoked and sputtered in front of her, a metal alloy door as thick as a Bre’n body. Behind her was only rez, killing what she loved, killing her and him.
They must escape.
The door must burn.
There was no other way.
Burn!
She no longer deflected his energy. She took. Random lightnings fused into a beam of coherent light that would have blinded any but fire dancer eyes. She pointed. Incandescence ravaged the door. She had neither time nor skill for finesse; rez battered at her, both feeding and demanding her dance.
Reflected fire washed back at her, heat like a hammer blow. She retreated from the seething door, pushing the body of rez behind her, trying to save Kirtn and herself from the backlash of the fire she must use. Akhenet lines raced like lightning over her, sucking up heat, returning it to her as energy to feed the deadly beam of light gnawing at the door.
Too hot. Too little air. Akhenet lines overwhelmed by unbridled energies. She would cook before the door melted, she and her Bre’n burned to ash by rez, ash and gone.
Her eyes were closed now, but she did not need them open to see. The image of the door was seared on her retinas, a rectangle that was orange at the edges and vapor at the center and white in between, but most of all hot, by the Inmost Fire it was hot, the core of light shriveling her flesh, she was burning alive, burning and dying . . . .
Behind her closed eyelids brilliance flared, followed by a cool shadow like a wall between her and the melting door. There was only one gap in the coolness, a hole through which poured her deadly coherent light, light eating the door, an incandescent hell that somehow did not reach her any more. The door collapsed in upon itself in a deadly molten shower that somehow did not touch her.
Perhaps she was dead already.
Fire died, leaving only the seething metal on the far side of the cell, streams of molten alloy that she could only see through the single hole in the shallow wall that had appeared in front of her. She touched the wall. It gave slightly. The hole closed, leaving her in darkness.
Weakness poured through her like another color of night. She fell to the floor, but it was Kirtn, not stone, that broke her fall. He did not move. She remembered the instant when she had taken his energy with a violence to equal his rez. For a moment she was frozen, afraid to see if he was still alive, afraid that she had killed him.
She spoke his name in a voice that was raw from screams and fire. She tried to speak again, but could not. Frantically her hands moved over him, seeking the least quiver of life. Her fingers told her that he was whole, burned in places but not maimed by the fire he had compelled from her. She reached out to stroke his face.
Her hands were solid gold, smoldering with the residue of power. She stared at them, unbelieving.
After a long time, Kirtn’s eyes opened, reflecting the akhenet fire of her hands. He looked around blankly. When his eyes focused on her he shook his head as though unable to accept that he was alive.
“What–?” His questioning whistle ended with a cough.
“You went into rez,” she answered hoarsely. “I danced. I don’t know why we didn’t die.”
Wonderingly, he touched her face. Beneath his fingers akhenet lines pulsed in traceries of gold so dense it was almost a mask. “You controlled rez?” he whistled, half question, half impossibility.
When Rheba tried to answer, her throat closed around its own dryness. With a small sound she threw her arms around him. She wanted to tell him how afraid she had been, how rez had begun with images from his mind, how the terrible core of rez was a power so deep that she had died swallowing it and then had been reborn as a sword edge of light slicing through metal.
“Coherent light?” He whistled as he stroked her crackling hair. “What a dangerous fire dancer I chose.”
His whistle was light, but it contained all the ambiguous harmonics of truth. Before she could sort out his many meanings, she realized that he had taken images out of her thoughts when she could not speak, as though rez had somehow forged a connection between Bre’n and Senyas minds.
“Rez?” she said hoarsely. “Did rez do that?”
“No.” He pulled her closer to his body. In the light shed by her smoldering akhenet lines, he saw her lips, cracked by dryness and bleeding. He licked them gently, giving them a healing moisture that her own mouth lacked. “Many akhenet pairs are minor mind dancers, but only within their own pairs, only when they are mature, and touching each other.”
Suddenly, blackness shriveled, collapsing in upon itself. Heat washed over them, but it was a bearable heat. Behind it came the suggestion of coolness from the burned-out door to the dungeon hall. Speechlessly, Kirtn and Rheba watched as the “wall” folded and refolded, getting lighter and smaller as it did so until it had become a mirror-bright creature slithering over the hot floor toward them.
“Fssa!” Kirtn’s hand went to his neck where he had draped the corpse of the Fssireeme. Nothing was there now but his own fur, scorched even closer to the skin than was normal.
Rheba reached toward Fssa, then jerked back her fingers with a cry. He was far too hot to touch. With an apologetic whistle, the snake backed out of reach of his friends. He stretched and flexed his body, leaving black marks on the gray stone floor.
“Are you really all right?” asked Rheba, disbelief in her raw voice.
“Oh, yessss,” whistled Fssa dreamily, a shiver of pleasure running down his mirrored hide. “No Fssireeme has lived like that except in a guardian’s memories . . . to be a glittering sail only a few molecules thick. It felt so good! It’s been so cold. It’s always been cold since Ssimmi.”
Bre’n and Senyas looked at one another, trying to absorb Fssa’s words. In response to heat that would have killed them, the Fssireeme had transformed himself into a sail that soaked up energy so efficiently its shadow had saved their lives.
“Ahhhhh,” whistled the snake, “it was lovely to really s-t-r-e-t-c-h.” As though sensing their bemusement, Fssa added, “Unless it’s really hot, Fssireeme freeze to death in their thinnest shapes.” He whistled a trill of pure pleasure. His sensors, darker now than the rest of him, turned toward Rheba. “That was a wonderful fire you made,” he said earnestly, “but you must be careful where you do it. You’re too fragile to survive fire like that in closed places unless there’s a Fssireeme around.”
She laughed despite the dryness of her throat. The snake’s whistle was an irresistible blend of complacence and concern. “Cool off, snake. I won’t carry you when you’re that hot. Or do you want to crawl all the way to the Concatenation stage?”
Fssa gave out a dismayed whistle. Reluctantly he expanded, releasing heat into the cell. He was careful to direct the heat away from them, however. The fragility of his new friends had come as a surprise to the Fssireeme. When he was within the temperature range they considered “normal,” he wound over to Rheba. She touched him hesitantly, then lifted him into her hair. Halfway there, her strength gave out. Her hands dropped to her sides.
Kirtn put the snake into her hair, then searched over her body with careful hands, looking for wounds. He found none.
“Just thirsty . . . tired,” she said, responding to his unasked questions. She tried not to groan as exhaustion swept over her in a tidal wave of weakness. “Tired.”
Kirtn tried to give her energy, but could not. Rez had drained him as surely as it had exhausted her. Yet they could not stay here.
“The Act,” rasped Rheba, echoing his thoughts. “How long have we been here?”
He did not answer. Rez was timeless. It could have lasted an instant or an eon. He had no way of knowing. Nor did she. The rebellion could have started while they fought to
burn out the stubborn heart of a Loo dungeon door. The rebellion could be over, won or lost, slaves dead or free or enslaved yet again. Loo guards could be coming down the stone hallways right now, guns in hand, to find a bright snake and an exhausted akhenet pair. Easy prey.
Rheba and Kirtn dragged themselves to their feet. They walked raggedly across the cell, staggered between lines of cooling metal and into the hallway. Neither of them spoke. They both knew that she was too tired to make small fires for the Act, much less set the Loo city ablaze in a bid for freedom.
“The amphitheater,” she said, her breath hurting in her raw throat. “Energy.”
“The weather shield,” agreed Kirtn.
Her breath stopped for an instant, then she accepted what must be done. If they were to escape Loo, she must risk losing the only person who could give her children.
Lheket would have to dance.
XXV
The Act’s room was deserted. The only thing moving was the finger-length fountain that delivered water to the slaves. Rheba drank gratefully. Kirtn found her robe in a corner. She pulled it on, put up the hood, and looked at him expectantly. He shrugged.
“It’ll have to do,” said the Bre’n. “It doesn’t hide your new lines, though. Keep your hands in the folds and your head down until we find i’sNara.”
A low sound passed through the room. She did not hear it, but he did. He cocked his head, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. Finally he decided it had been conducted by the rock itself. The sound came again, slightly louder. Her head came up. The new lines curling around her eyes flared gold.
“What’s that?” she asked, turning her head in unconscious imitation of him.
“We’re close to the amphitheater. It could just be the Loo making approving noises after an Act.”
“Or it could be a mob of rebellious slaves.”
“It sounds,” said Fssa softly, “like the memories of Ssimmi, heat and thunder.”
“Thunder? It’s the dry season,” said Rheba.
Kirtn did not say anything. He was already halfway out of the room, striding down the hall toward the tunnels that converged on the amphitheater. She followed, nearly running to keep up with the long-legged Bre’n.
His worst fear was disproved within minutes. The rebellion had not yet begun. The tunnel network surrounding the amphitheater was lined with Acts. The slaves were either too tired or too fearful to care who was pushing past them. Their Acts were over; now they had to stand and wait in cold halls until the last Act left the stage and the Hour Between Years began. Unlike old slaves, these were not free to roam Imperiapolis for that hour. They could not leave the tunnel until their new owners arrived and took them away.
Rheba could not help glancing quickly to the faces as she followed in Kirtn’s wake. Most people wore a look of barely controlled desperation. It was the hallmark of new slaves. Old slaves, like i’sNara, showed no emotion at all. Rheba wondered how many of the silent people knew about the rebellion, how many would help, how many would simply get in the way.
Ilfn’s whistle slid through the thick silence in the hall. The sound came from one of the many culs-de-sac that appeared at random along the length of the tunnel. The room was so small that Kirtn and Rheba had to crowd against Ilfn in order to get out of the hall. Pressed between wall and his Bre’n, Lheket stared sightlessly through them.
“You haven’t much time,” said Ilfn in urgent Senyas. “Your Act is next. They’re lined up just off the ramp, waiting for their signal.”
Impatiently, Rheba pushed in closer. Something about Lheket’s face, his stance, compelled her attention. With half her attention she listened while Kirtn told Ilfn what had happened—and what must happen.
“Lheket will have to dance,” finished Kirtn. “Rheba has to have an energy source to work with, and the weather shield is the only possibility within the amphitheater. Calling rain shouldn’t be hard, even for a first-time dancer. The ocean is so close, there’s moisture everywhere, all he’ll have to do is gather it.”
Ilfn laughed wildly, stopping Kirtn’s flow of words. “Are you as blind as Lheket? Look at him.”
They stared. A low rumble muttered through the rock again, just below the threshold of Rheba’s hearing. The Bre’ns heard it clearly enough, though. Kirtn looked more closely at the boy, peering through the very dim light given off by the fluorescent strips that divided all walls into two horizontal blocks. Vague blue-silver lines glowed across Lheket’s hands and chin.
Rheba gasped. When she touched Lheket, her hand flared gold. Sound trembled in the air. She looked up at Kirtn and then back at Lheket. Currents of shared power coursed between the two Senyas dancers. The boy’s eyes lit from within, green as river pools. Her hair lifted, rippling with invisible energy. “He’s dancing!”
“Of course he is,” said Ilfn. her voice low and ragged. “I tried to stop him but this time I couldn’t.” Her whistle was shrill with emotion, her dark eyes wild. “About an hour ago he changed. He woke up. All that had been sleeping in him came alive, as though he had been called by a ring of master dancers. I couldn’t hold him back.”
“Rez,” breathed Rheba.
“What?”
“Rez. He must have felt me channel Kirtn’s rez.”
Ilfn’s whistle stopped as though she had been struck. She stared from Rheba to Kirtn, then back to Rheba. “Impossible,” said Ilfn in Senyas. “No one, Bre’n or Senyas, can control rez.”
“Not control,” said Rheba. “Channel. I merely—” No easy explanation came to her. She made an impatient sound. “It doesn’t matter. Do you think that Lheket has called enough clouds to make the Loo activate the weather shield?”
Another rumble trembled through the underground tunnel. Ilfn laughed again, a sound that made Rheba shift uncomfortably.
“What do you think that is?” said Ilfn. “He has the clouds raging like Bre’ns in rez.”
“Thunder?” said Kirtn, looking at Lheket with new interest.
“Yes.” Ilfn’s whistle was both proud and harried. “He’s called a storm. It’s all I can do to keep it from being a hell-bringer!”
Kirtn made a Bre’n sound of satisfaction. The shield would definitely be up. Rheba would have all the energy she needed to work with. “Do you need help handling him?” he asked.
Ilfn hesitated. “On Deva, I’d need help. But here . . .” She smiled suddenly, a cruel Bre’n smile. “Here I don’t care if he drowns the whole city and every Loo in it.”
“We’re in it too,” pointed out Kirtn.
“I know.” Ilfn’s tone was curt. “I’m draining off enough of his energy to keep him under a semblance of control. It’s that or kill him.”
Rheba felt an impulse to stand protectively between Lheket and his Bre’n, then realized how foolish that was. The first thing anyone learned on Deva was never to stand between Senyas and Bre’n. Yet she could not help a whispered plea. “Don’t hurt him.”
Ilfn glanced up. The Bre’n’s expression softened as she realized that Rheba had some affection for the blind rain dancer. “I’ll hold him as long as I can,” she said simply. The air vibrated with sound Rheba could not hear. Kirtn bent over Ilfn, whistled softly, and was answered by a smile so sensual it made Rheba catch her breath. Then Ilfn changed before their eyes, smile fading, mind turned inward as her hands settled on Lheket’s shoulders. Only her eyes seemed alive, and his, lit from within by akhenet power.
Kirtn turned and pushed back out into the crowded hall, breaking a path for Rheba. He looked back, saw that her hood had dropped and pulled it up with a quick jerk. “Jal might be around.”
“You’re not exactly inconspicuous yourself,” muttered Rheba.
Kirtn shrugged. There were other large, furred races gathered in the hall. However, there were none whose hair lifted and danced on invisible currents of force. Even among smooth slaves, Rheba was as distinctive as a shout.
He stopped so suddenly that she stepped on his heels. The tunnel had branched
into two smaller halls and several culs-de-sac. M/dere stood at the point where the tunnel divided, as though waiting for someone. She saw Kirtn immediately. She found her way through the crowd to them with astonishing speed.
Rheba shook her head slightly. “Fssa?” she murmured. “You awake?”
A satisfied hiss answered her. Fssa was in his element when her hair pulsed with energy. If he had his way, she would dance all the time. He stretched slightly, creating a flexible whistling orifice. As M/dere spoke, a Bre’n whistle floated up from beneath Rheba’s hood.
“J/taaleri,” said M/dere, bowing her head. “I’m ashamed. I let you be taken without lifting my hand.”
“There’s nothing you could have done and no need to apologize.”
Fssa shifted behind her ear, making a different orifice with which to speak J/taal. She suspected that whatever he said was not quite what she had said. The speech went on long enough to make her restless, but M/dere listened with utter attention. At the end, she bowed again, but there was pride on her face.
“Thank you, J/taaleri. Do you want us to kill the illusionists now?”
Rheba looked quickly to Kirtn. He shrugged. “Whatever you want, fire dancer. Just make sure that they don’t get in our way.”
“Tell your people to be sure that the illusionists can’t escape or give warning,” said Rheba slowly, “but don’t hurt them. They may know something useful about the city. They’ve been slaves a lot longer than we have.”
M/dere concentrated for a moment. “It’s done. Come quickly.”
They followed M/dere into a small room just off the ramp that led up to the amphitheater stage. The illusionists were standing very still, J/taal hands over their throats and J/taal clepts snarling at their feet. At Rheba’s command the illusionists changed into themselves.
The male illusionist was slightly broader than the female, slightly more muscular, and had hair that was chestnut rather than black. Like her, he showed no expression. He looked at Kirtn with interest, as though comparing the Bre’n to the illusion that had recently been projected.