Fire & Ice

by Patty Jansen

  He put a finger to her lips and slashed the leather straps which held the girl bound to the table.

  “Quiet,” he whispered. “You thought I would leave you alone, did you?”

  “They said you were dead.” She met his eyes. Oh boy, could he feel the Thilleian blood stir in her.

  He lifted the girl off the table.

  She almost fell into his arms. Feeling her bony arms and the filth of her skin, a great anger surged through him. “Where are the others?”

  Her eyes grew wide. “You can’t get to them. You must get out. They’ll capture you, too.”

  “I’ll take that risk. Quick. Where are they? Show me. I’m here to free you all. There will be no second chances.”

  The girl hesitated, but pointed at an entrance, a dark maw of a passage leading further into the building.

  “That way. There’s a room . . .” She shuddered.

  By the skylights, had they been treated that badly?

  “Let’s go then.”

  The girl stopped where the corridor ended in a t-intersection. Both ends of the new corridor vanished into darkness. Doors were set in the drab walls at regular intervals, all closed.

  She pointed at one of the doors, unremarkable as the others. Tandor didn’t need her directions; he could feel the presence of the children, enhanced by the strong glow of icefire beneath his feet. The Heart was close; and it was beating strongly.

  “Stand back.” He flung a burst of icefire at the door. It crackled over the smooth surface. The door vibrated and sprang open.

  Tandor burst in through the opening before the display of icefire had died down. It was dark in the room, and the stink of human waste made him gag.

  By the skylights! He stumbled back out into the corridor staring into that dark maw from which the stench now rolled into the corridor.

  There was a tiny pinprick of light against the back wall. He sensed, rather than saw, the children inside the room; he felt overwhelming pain and misery. They were stirring, mumbling, weak, confused.

  Tandor trembled with anger, because the children were not in any state to help him, or to run. Anyone to be turned into a servitor needed to be healthy and willing for the best effect. Tandor was prepared to compromise on the “willing” part, but these children simply weren’t healthy enough.

  “Any of you who can walk, get up and help the others.” He would get the Eagle Knights for this, oh yes he would.

  Sounds of movement—shuffling and scrabbling—came from inside the room. One by one, or in small groups, the children shuffled out. Rags, thin limbs, matted hair, many covered in their own filth. Many of them were wounded, sporting filthy bandages around arms and legs. They stood wide-eyed, blinking against the light. Tandor noticed a boy with a raw scar on his chest, and then another who had a filthy bandage in the same spot.

  “What did they do with you?”

  They didn’t reply.

  He examined the boy’s scar. When he passed his hand over it, a chill went through him. “There’s something underneath. What is it?”

  The boy shook his head. He couldn’t speak? Was he afraid to speak? He was not strongly Imperfect, just some of his toes were missing.

  He turned to the girl who had brought him here. “What’s been done to them?”

  “The Knights put something under the skin. It makes you numb, like him. They were going to do it to me just now, when you came, but I’m one of the last.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. One boy opened the wound and took the thing out.”

  “What did he take out?” Tandor breathed fast.

  The girl went back inside the room and came back with a filthy cloth. “We put it in here, so the men wouldn’t see, but the boy died anyway.”

  Tandor folded back the filthy fabric. A clear diamond-shaped piece of glass slid out. As it rolled into his hand, strands of icefire bent and curled, stretching to its glittering surface, and simply disappeared there. The strands tugged at him, at the very power of his being. A low keening sound grew louder and louder.

  Tandor snapped the fabric back over the stone. A sink.

  All the icefire the children collected would be stored in that stone from where you could mine it but where it was useless to him, unless he could remove the sinks . . . He grabbed his dagger, but knew too well that his grandfather used to neuter Imperfects with sinks. Once the stone was inside the body, removing it always killed the subject. The Knights had outsmarted him.

  While he stood there, wracking his brain for a solution, he realised that the children were shuffling in line, as if they knew where to go and were being told to go there.

  The Heart.

  It would come into full power today, and the sinks in their bodies meant that they were attracted to it.

  Tandor ran around the corner. The line already stretched into the darkness, slowly shuffling.

  He grabbed one of the children by the shoulders. “Stop, stop!”

  The girl, a skinny thing no more than twelve years old with empty eyes staring into the distance, pushed him aside as if he were an annoying pup. Already, icefire had made her strong.

  Someone had made half-servitors out of them without being properly in control of their minds. Now no one could communicate with them. They would run rampant. Like Ruko.

  There was only one thing he could do.

  Tandor closed his hand around the Chevakian powder gun in his pocket and pulled it out. The girl next to him gave him no attention. He raised the gun and pointed it at her head. She turned, showing her sweet young face. She had the fine curly hair that was common to the inhabitants of the border regions. Her skin was soft and pale with a few freckles, looking at him like a fox cub.

  Fifteen years he had lived as travelling merchant to provide for these children. Many he had saved personally by grabbing the newborn infants from before the hungry mouths of wild bears. While taking them to Bordertown, he had fed them, cradled them, kept them warm. In his mind, he had already assigned them positions in his royal guard, repaying their service, and that of their foster families, many times over.

  He loved “his” children. He left the gun sink; the girl shuffled on.

  By the skylights, he was too soft, he cared too much, for a job like this. For all his boasting, he was no killer and not even the direst need was going to change that.

  Mother, if you wanted this done, why didn’t you do it yourself?

  There had to be another way to stop the children.

  Find the Heart. Without protection, he would probably die from exposure, but he had to try, or there would be devastation on a grand scale.

  Tandor ran.

  Ahead in the corridor, the children were going through a doorway from where the smell of must and disuse mingled with strands of icefire.

  Tandor followed, into an eerie semi-darkness. In the dank room, the ceiling glowed with greenish light, casting harsh shadows on the walls. The floor sloped down in a spiral. Some time, a long time ago, someone had painted white stripes and arrows on the pale grey floor. There was a metal railing in the middle and flakes of coloured paint clung to some of the pillars that supported the roof. Others pillars had collapsed, or melted, causing the roof to collapse. In places, rust flakes piled up on the floor, mixed with bits of black that fell to dust when touched.

  Tandor wondered what the old people would have used this construction for, and why this chamber had survived at all.

  The call of icefire was stronger here than he had ever felt it in his life. His body sang with power.

  He ran down the ramp. Two rounds of the spiral, three. Down, down, down. The light became ever brighter. All the children he passed glowed like beacons. His own skin also glowed, including the hand he never had, superimposed over the pincers of the golden claw. He resisted a look in his trousers to see if that part of him had been restored as well. Then again, he didn’t need to check; he could feel it as he could feel his missing hand and rake his non-existent fingers th
rough his hair.

  Around the last bend and his target came into sight.

  About the height of two men, and much longer than it was tall, the thing that was the Heart of the City glowed so intensely white that it was impossible to look at. The Heart’s shape was vaguely rectangular, and plates of metal lay scattered around it—presumably the protection the Knights had installed and then removed. Some of the casing remained at the back, but all within was bright white. The air hummed so much that it vibrated in the light, creating an odd shimmering effect.

  A single Knight guarded it, clad in a heavy suit, absurdly with a torch in his hand. What blindness that someone couldn’t see this radiance!

  Tandor let icefire rise to the tips of his fingers, but it wouldn’t harm the man if he could stand here. He obviously had strong Pirosian blood.

  This would call for valuable bullets. He felt in the pocket of his cloak, shielding his eyes from the glow of the square in front of him.

  At that moment, a shape of light stepped past him. Through the blinding rays, Tandor saw the face of an adolescent man, strong-jawed. Dark hair flowed over his shoulders. The young man hit the knight on the side of the head. The Knight slumped, without having given an indication that he had seen the young man coming. His torch rolled over the ground and went out.

  Tandor was puzzled. Who was this young man? Ruko was outside and few of the other children had been older than thirteen.

  He turned.

  Behind him, all the children coming down the ramp glowed, no longer skinny and filthy, no longer crippled, no longer small. Some had tossed aside walking sticks. The girl he had rescued from the table had grown to adult size. Her skin was no longer scabbed and dirty, but milky white. Under his eyes, she pulled the tunic over her head and stood there, naked, inviting. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and gave him a mischievous look, very much like Loriane would do, a look that challenged him to do what he could never do. Except now he could.

  Loriane appeared in the air before him, naked, alluring. Tandor trembled, tossed by emotions he could by rights no longer feel. Once again he was a complete man, not a pale shade of his former self, damaged by the man he hated most in the world of the living and the dead. He closed the distance between himself and the illusion that wasn’t Loriane, ran his hands along her shoulders. She felt real enough. Goosebumps trailed over her skin.

  Oh by the skylights—what power!

  Then he stepped back, forcing the image from his mind. This was an illusion, no matter that it was a very realistic one. Loriane was several floors above him in the birthing room. He was here in a desperate attempt to take control of this device, not to let it take control of him.

  Several children sat on the ground, their bodies glowing, crying onto the shoulders of imaginary people they hugged.

  Tandor understood. This power shows us our deepest desires. The young man who had just knocked out the Knight had been a boy whose wish it had been to become a strong soldier.

  Wasn’t it just disgusting that his deepest desire involved carnal pleasure? He should do better than that.

  “Listen, everyone!” he called out. His voice barely rose above the humming of the device. None of the children paid him attention. He shook the shoulders of the nearest girl, who was so absorbed in her dream that she didn’t react, not even when he slapped her in the face.

  The young muscular man who wanted to be a soldier just stood there, staring at the brightness, eyes wide open.

  They still have their hearts, Tandor reminded himself.

  It was unlikely that he could still turn them into servitors, but he had to try. He fumbled for the dagger.

  The girl had grown taller than him. Tandor grabbed her hand. She glowed and her touch burned even in the hand he was not supposed to have. With his real hand, he wielded the dagger and stabbed.

  As soon as the knife made contact with her luminous skin, a surge of icefire went through him. It burned through his senses. He held up his hands to catch the heart, but too late, realised the icefire was flowing out of him into the girl. The scar on her chest glowed white.

  Tandor struggled, but couldn’t let go.

  A young man took hold of the girl’s shoulders. Another jolt shuddered through Tandor’s body. A third child joined. That figure, glowing too much in Tandor’s pain-stricken eyes to determine gender, grabbed the next person. Tandor braced for the jolt, and still screamed when it came. He was still panting and sweating when there was another jolt, stronger still.

  The rectangular shape of the Heart had lost some of its brightness. Still, the glowing figures were joining up, linking hands. Strands of icefire now flowed from the rectangular device into the children.

  They were sinks. The device was voiding itself, its power flowing into the children’s bodies.

  The next jolt was so strong it turned Tandor’s muscles to jelly. Shivering, crying, he fought to stand upright and found he couldn’t. The two figures on either side of him had grown so much that his legs hung off the floor. His hand burned with intense cold. His trousers were wet from where he had lost control of his bladder. And still the rectangular shape became more visible, less strongly glowing, but more silver, like a giant metal box, with leads, pipes and other protuberances on the outside. Some ancient device the function of which he could only guess. A weapon.

  Jolts of icefire made him scream, his voice raw. The pain made him sick, but his insides were empty.

  Then the jolts stopped.

  The circle of hands around the Heart was complete.

  The children, or the grotesque, glowing shapes that had been the children, held its power now. The thing itself was no more than an ugly dented metal container.

  No one moved.

  The surface of the machine trembled, and shivered as if someone had kicked it. Seams split apart. Shafts of light shone through, and expanded, etching into the ceiling. There was something inside it. The ground rumbled. The ceiling split open, hissing smoke. Debris rained from the stone and lit up where it intersected the beams. The children let Tandor drop to the ground.

  Tandor sat there, dazed, while a firework of icefire raged over his head. The children, now constructs of light, breathed icefire. Their mouths spewed it when they spoke. Strands snaked away from their circle of hands, pulverising stone. Pipes burst, spewing forth water that glowed with icefire, ice-cold water too contaminated to freeze.

  Tandor screamed. “Listen to me!”

  But his voice didn’t rise above the crackling and the rumbling. He gathered strands of icefire in his hands, tried to wind them around the legs of the grotesque figures. The strands fell away or snapped when the figures moved, as if they were simple threads.

  No control, no control over this monstrous creation.

  Too much exposure. The Knights shouldn’t have removed the protective casing. They shouldn’t have played with things they didn’t understand and couldn’t see.

  He shouldn’t have come here not knowing what the Knights had implanted in the children. He should have realised the danger. He should have shot the children.

  It was too late. The power was out of control and he was no match for it.

  Tandor ran.

  Up the ramp, as fast as he could. His legs ached, his lungs burned, but he didn’t stop. He ran and ran.

  At the door that led out of the twisting ramp, he almost crashed into a group of Knights.

  “Get out, get out!” His voice was hoarse.

  They just stared at him, their faces already peeling from exposure.

  Tandor ran through the experiment room, back to the stairs that led up to the entrance of the birthing room.

  Loriane! He had to get her out of here. He ran up the stairs.

  Blood pumped in his veins. His face was burnt; he could feel the sting of cold air on raw skin. The numbness of the injury was wearing off.

  Up, up. Black spots danced before his eyes. He missed a step and stumbled against the wall, bracing himself with his hand. By the s
kylights, the skin on his arm was peeling in big slabs, leaving raw and oozing flesh. The sight made him feel sick.

  While he stared at it, the ground rumbled deep below his feet. Tandor listened, holding his breath. The floor vibrated with a low keening. The sound increased in pitch, and increased until the metal-and-stone construction of the building sang. Tandor ran. He almost blacked out, but he ran. Up, up, up, into the corridor. Into the room at the end.

  “Loriane, Loriane!”

  The room was empty, beds abandoned, a trolley of medicines upended in an aisle.

  Tandor ran towards the exit.

  “Loriane!”