"But, Daddy, is it true that when you were little you could also see good, Ber fire? That it wasn't always hidden in buckets like it is now? I'd like to see it myself—"
"Hush, Arlene, lest the Mentor hears you! You should never want anything like this! You don't know how perilous it is! May the Master bless the Bers even more than he already has, for they care for us so well! Bless them that they found a way to hide all fire from us, that they now can give us warmth and food without letting us burn ourselves! You don't know what it was! Oh, Master." Daddy shivered again. "You don't know what it was."
Mierber, Year of the Master 450:
"Mommy, what does "burning" mean? I know that the Master is always saving us from it—but what is it?"
"Something bad, Cormack dear. Something that could happen in the kitchen, with fire—if the Bers, our Blessed Stewards of the Master, had not put Aunt Keisa there to be Master Cook. But don't you worry. We are all safe."
"But you don't know what it is? Will Aunt Keisa know?"
Arlene did not know. Did children never stop asking silly questions? Where was her purse? She was almost late for work, and she had to drop Cormack at daycare before that. She turned the heating stove's dial switch down; these days fire was so expensive. "Come on, Cormack, my love, hurry, put on your cloak. We really have no time for this. Don't bother Aunt Keisa, either. She is so busy herself, the poor love."
Excerpt from the writings of Ber High Adept Justinian, Adept Humanist and Artificer, Mierber, Year of the Master 500:
We have done our best to make people afraid of wildfire, and ignorant. There is not much in Mierber that could feed wildfire these days. Oh yes, clothes and carpets and curtains and the occasional wood table would burn, and so would people themselves. Yet, if people in this city—or any city—wanted to heat themselves, if they wanted to use wildfire in any way, they would not find much to burn. Wildfire cannot exist without burning. Unlike our own good and clean fire, wildfire needs to destroy in order to exist.
The ways of making wildfire, too, are few and difficult, and whatever of those we have not yet discouraged, we are working actively to discourage. The Mentors are controlling people's minds, and the Adept Sagacitors and Catechists and Humanists are working, with the help of other adepts, to make it impossible to light wildfire at all. I am predicting that, in a hundred years, wildfire itself will have become naught but a fairytale. It has almost become one even now; at least, it is halfway there. This is because, almost a hundred years ago, we finally acquired the skills and resources to make it happen.
I would like to make my opinion very clear, though. I do not believe that it is because of fear, be it fear of wildfire or fear of us, that people do not seek wildfire these days. They feared wildfire before, too, and yet there were always the troublemakers. I think that the best that we did in the last century was not that we extinguished the Great Fire; it is that we finally gave people enough fire, and fire safe enough. It is that people do not need wildfire any longer. This is more important than even the Sagacitors' work.
Threatening and oppressing people works, but only to a certain extent. Magic works, but it is not always enough. Giving people easy, convenient lives works best of all.
Linden
Night 26 of the First Quarter, Year of the Master 706
She woke up that night, like the previous three, from the Rain Moon glaring at her window. Linden glared back. Since three days ago she would glare at anyone, and a moon was no exception.
Since three days ago she would avoid them all, too, for she could not bear to see anyone's face. Or, rather, if she would barely see Rianor, she could not bear to see anyone else.
Her experiments with symbols were not working. Even Science tired her too much—and nothing could fill the wretched hollowness inside her.
Tonight, however, there was a heaviness in addition to the hollowness, a physical sensation that seemed to press her to the bed, and she could almost believe that she would never get up again.
That was too much. She must be making herself sick. She thrust the blankets aside, got up, dressed, and left her suite. Perhaps she could find something in the library to divert her. She walked all the way to the tower and then up the western stairs, but the heaviness stayed in her chest, and the air in the corridors felt stuffier than usual. For some reason, the shadows cast by the lanterns on the wall frightened her.
Almost, she screamed when a taller, longer shadow suddenly shifted before her.
"You walk at night." That was Inni's voice, calm and emotionless as usual.
It was an accusation nonetheless.
"Well, you do, too, don't you!" Inni was more than what Linden could tolerate right now. "This is a wretched corridor where I am meeting you, while I am walking at night. And why should I not be, anyway? I still have feet, at night. Because your wretched Master said so? Do you really think that this is reason enough?"
Inni clasped a hand to her mouth. The lanterns' light had flared while Linden had been shouting her last words.
Now the light flickered—and died. Even the sleep candles interspersed amongst the lanterns were not glowing now. The curtains on all the windows were drawn, so there was not even moonlight.
There was no light at all.
Inni screamed. And screamed. And again, her shrill, oscillating voice the only sound in the darkness with the two of them.
Whence such a voice from her? It permeated the darkness; it imbued the very air Linden breathed. Linden herself could not even scream.
"I can't see! Oh, dear sweet Master, I can't see!"
Of course she could not see. What had she expected?
Nothing, perhaps. Inni must have never seen darkness. Linden herself had not, until that day in the Healers' Passage. And Inni was not a Scientist; she would not have cared to remember that humans could not physically see in the dark; that they would see again when the light returned.
"It is cold! Oh, Master! Give it back! You ... You took everything. You took everything away from me! Give it back!"
Linden stared at the darkness, even though she, too, could see nothing. She should say something, perhaps; that it was not her who had taken the light away, for example. But she did not feel like talking. She felt smaller, weaker, trembling. It was so cold here, now that the light was gone. Cold in this darkness full of peril, full of treason, of worlds that did not exist but lurked close. You could lose yourself in darkness ...
Linden gripped her own shirt and clenched tightly. Wretch her, she almost had lost herself right now! Teeth gritted, she slowly trod the five dark steps to where she knew the stove was—the wall-embedded one that served to heat the corridor.
Yes. It was still warm.
Some heating stoves—the stone ones—were made so that they retained warmth for a few hours after being turned off. Linden's family, being a family of moderate means, had used that every winter. You never left the stove on while you slept, even though fire was cheaper during the night. It would also be weaker, and the warmth that the fireless but heated stones would emit would not be much worse.
The Qynnsent corridor was not cold now. Not yet. Inni's hand, when Linden gripped it, was warm, too, and became even warmer when Inni tried to wrench it away.
Lose yourself, indeed. These were the Bers' exact words, not "darkness would engulf you," or "the Lost Ones would take you," or anything else that at least would assume outside intervention.
But you could lose yourself only when, in unthinking panic, you ignored who you were and what you knew—when, because you did not pay attention to your own mind, you became a wretched fool.
"Here, Inni, touch the wall. Stone stoves reserve heat, you must know that, it is in the first Science book. You have read it, right? Come on now, we are going down to—"
"I don't know anything about any Science book! I don't care! The Master—" Inni tried to pull her hand away from Linden's again, and when she did not succeed, sagged, quiet wordless sobs the only sounds from her now.
> Linden slapped her. Hard.
"If you don't know, be quiet!" Linden snatched the other woman's shoulders and shoved her up. "If you don't care to know, follow me and do as I say!" The sobs broke off. Inni remained on her feet and did not fight when Linden gripped her hand again.
"Because I know!"
And I can give you your light back.
* * *
Linden gave light to them all—to the heedless ladies, to the mindless servants, to all who could not give light to themselves.
To all who had no light of their own.
It was a total chaos. There were many screams by the time she had dashed down to the hallway. She leaned on a wall to catch her breath. Her feet were shaking, and sweat was dropping from her forehead. She had thrown Inni over her shoulder and lugged her all the way down the stairs. She could not have left the lady in the tower all alone. Yet, she could not have made Inni run together with her, either, for Inni would not know where every single stairstep was and how it was situated in relation to the others. Inni would not know where the whole wretched staircase was! She would have fallen and broken some limb in the darkness.
Perhaps that was why some of the others were screaming—because they had.
"Inni, this here is a wall alcove. Get inside it. Hug your knees. Do not extend hands or feet into the hallway lest someone hurts you or you hurt someone. Stay still and wait for me."
Inni's only response was the prayer she had been chanting under her breath.
"Nancy! Oh, my sweet Nancy, I can't get to her!" This was another woman's voice, and its owner collided with Linden as she made a step away from the wall. "They've taken her! I've seen them! They take babies and the darkness eats them!"
"Where was Nancy when you left her? When?" Linden gripped the servant's shoulders, but the woman only wailed and then stared at her, her eyes wide and unseeing. But Linden could see now. Gone the fire might be, but the moons were still out in the sky, and pale, greenish light was trickling in through the hallway's windows. There were open curtains here.
Perhaps that was worse than total darkness. In total darkness, there were no shadows. There was no faint, fickle pretense for light that drew its own pictures on everything, only to fade away because a cloud had passed through the sky—and then to reappear a moment later and draw new ones.
In total darkness there was nothing, so Linden could fill it up with her own memory of what and where everything was, of how the world should be. But moonlight and shadows made a world, or worlds, of their own.
Linden snapped the curtains of the nearest window closed and forged ahead towards the kitchen stairs. She drew every curtain on her way; brought the darkness back and took the delusive light away.
The servants in the hallways were quieter in the darkness than in the shadows. There were not many of them in Linden's way, and most of those did obey her when she gripped their bodies and ordered them to stay still and wait.
They wanted to be still. They had done enough already. Rarely did servants walk in the hallways at this time of night, so the ones here now were those who had known the location of the stairs in the servants' wing and used them to escape and seek fire here—for, as someone sobbed to Linden, the elevators would not move at all. These here were the servants who had found their own way in darkness and shadows—stumbling, falling, bleeding, breaking limbs. They had done their utmost and now were grateful that there was a noble lady to take care of them. They needed her.
What the noble lady herself needed was a bucket of fire and to know why she was the only noble here, not counting Inni. Where were Desmond and Jenne?
But Jenne would be useless, just like Inni. Linden did not need Jenne here now. She needed Desmond, though, and also Nan and Master Keitaro, for those were the people beside herself who might know what to do. But Nan was at least a kilometer away, in a servants' cottage, spending the night with the expectant mother who had shed her water in the evening and thus needed a healer beside her in the night.
And, of course, Rianor would know what do do—and she needed him most of all. Where was he? Was he all right?
Her foot slid. She started falling—and stopped only because she managed to lash a hand and grasp the edge of a stair above her head.
She had been thinking of Rianor and thus she had not been counting the stairs; neither had she noted how tall and steep they were. Had she even known that she was on the kitchen staircase already?
Fool! She could not afford this! She could not afford to not know where she was going only because the thought of a man had distraught her so! She should push him out of her mind now, like she had before, up there with Inni when the fire had first stopped! Linden lost a few precious moments now on the stone steps, panting, trying to bring life back to her aching shoulder. She had dislocated it, probably—and what good was that to Rianor? She should help him, not create new problems for him! Let him come back to a House under control, not one in turmoil that contained, besides everything else, a heedless apprentice lying on the kitchen steps!
She gritted her teeth and trudged on. She had only passed these stairs once in her life, on her first morning in Qynnsent, and she had been carried by Rianor then. The kitchen was not her place.
But it was the place for backup firebuckets, and she did know the way, so she was there a minute later.
It was dark here, too, and it was still warm, but not too warm. Not like it had been on her first morning, when she had trembled and huddled into Rianor, the brightness of the lights and the heat of the stoves heavy and pressing, suffocating her, as if assaulting her very quintessence.
By the time they had passed through the kitchen on that morning, a Master Cook had already arrived. There had already been a big pot on one of the stoves, and it had suddenly hissed, its cover rising a few centimeters in the air, hot fog drifting away from it, filling the room. The fog was called "steam," Rianor had later told her; it happened regularly when water was heated on a kitchen stove. He thought that steam was related to the fog that sometimes happened outside and turned the world into a blue-gray blurriness.
Whatever it was, it had reminded her of the smoke in her Healers' Passage visions; at that moment Linden had been almost more afraid of the steam than of the Healers' Passage itself.
But there was neither fire nor steam now, only darkness (for the kitchen's windows, high by the ceiling, had their shutters on) and lingering heat—but there should have been active light and heat.
"What is wrong? Why haven't you started a candle and a stove? Has the fire in the buckets failed as well?" Good that the Master Cook on duty had been sobbing in the corner very close to the stairs. Linden had been able to find him in this way, and had been able to walk to him without colliding with anything. The kitchen was enormous, and she only knew to walk between the stairs and the scullery.
The cook whimpered.
"It is all fine. Just tell me."
The cook whimpered again.
Linden slapped him. "Talk to me! What happened? Where are the buckets?"
"Here—Here they are, m'lady, right beside me. But they're cold ..."
Now what was she to do?
"They've always been cold, m'lady, just staying here in the corner. Always! What use are buckets, after all ..."
That reached through Linden's own rising panic, and she scrabbled by the cook's side. Yes, this here was a bucket. This, too.
"You fool! Of course they have always been cold, that is how buckets are! You need to connect them to an outlet so that they will transfer fire to the corresponding fire system. The bucket won't become warm even then, but a stove can be turned on, and the lights. Don't you know?"
He did not. And why would he? The commoners outside in Mierber knew, for they had been using buckets in that past year, but a year before that most of them had not known about buckets, either. People did not know anything. People did not care.
"There, I have plugged the bucket into the outlet. You turn a stove on now." At least one stove in
a kitchen should always be on, was that not right? Linden knew that from somewhere.
A small sleep candle was glowing in the vast kitchen space now; it had started by itself the moment Linden had plugged in the bucket. The cook's face looked twisted in that candle's tiny light, and the stoves, of which there were at least three, cast enormous shadows.
"I can't, m'lady! Please, I can't!"
"And why is that?" Linden's voice was deceptively calm. The man's face became even more twisted.
"I am just a Cook, m'lady. I just cook, m'lady! I put food on and in the stoves and take food out. I don't touch the stoves themselves, m'lady! They have fire in them!"
And you sleep in the kitchen at night in order to protect the rest of us from fire run amok? Hundreds of years ago there had been a Great Fire.
Somehow Linden did not shout that at the man's face. It would not do. The man could not think now, and shouting could only make it worse. And perhaps the cook only knew how to protect the others from too much fire, and not from too little ... But no. Linden shook her head. She was lying to herself now, giving herself false hopes. He knew nothing. Sleeping here at night was, like everything else, just a ritual, just something the man did because it had to be done. The world had been safe for him so far. He had not had a need to actually see this world.
Linden should find a way to turn the thing on, herself ...
But why should she? She had been reaching towards a cooking stove but now snapped her hand back. The stove might even be on already just because she had plugged the bucket—the sleep candle was on because of that.
But, more importantly, she did not want the stove to be on. Her own knowledge that a stove should always work was no better than the cook's own mindless rituals—she did not know why a stove should work. What she did know was that the bucket, plugged where it was, could only give fire to the kitchen's lights and stoves, while the people upstairs remained in darkness and cold. That much was written in the Emergency section of the Qynnsent Housekeeping book; a bucket outlet only served the room where it was located.
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