by Patty Jansen
All his hair was gone, the skin on his face horribly burnt, peeling in places, black with soot and blood. Parts of his shirt were missing and the skin underneath burnt. Blood dribbled from a deep gash in his good arm.
“Tandor!” She wanted to touch him, but the thing that carried him turned its head. It was human, of a fashion, but consisted merely of a thin skin of dust, transparent in many places, ethereal grey in others.
As it walked past towards the sled, Loriane realised that it was Ruko, the invisible sled driver, covered in dust.
He put Tandor down on the furs in the back seat. His skin glistened with weeping burns. His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open. He breathed shallowly. Loriane took his arm and felt his pulse. It was regular but weak, although that could be because her hands trembled so much. Loriane and Myra wrapped him up and sat down on either side of him so he wouldn’t fall over.
The driver flicked the reins and the bear started off through the street.
They passed many other injured, some beyond help. People with limbs blown off. People so badly burned that their faces were a mess. Some walked, but many did not, bleeding their life’s blood onto the dirt-smeared snow. There were guards and Eagle Knights, all horribly burnt, trying help each other, or too busy simply with trying to stay alive as exposed skin grew blisters. The air hummed with tension.
You can’t see icefire, Tandor had once said. That doesn’t mean it’s not there and it can’t harm you. It just harms you less quickly than it harms others.
The buildings on both sides of the street were badly damaged. Glass blown out, floors collapsed, people’s furniture sucked into the street.
The number of people increased as they went. Streets flowed with a sorry tide of humanity. Previously well-dressed nobles clutching jagged scraps of clothing, carrying their loved ones, some of whom beyond help. Old people fell and didn’t get up. Sometimes, someone would haul the fallen back to their feet, but no one stayed around to make sure they remained that way.
The ground still rumbled; buildings shuddered with some unseen force. People shielded their eyes to light Loriane didn’t see. Exposed skin reddened with the blisters of icefire burns.
They reached the markets where a great number of people were crowded in the corner, with more people spilling into the square from the streets that led into it. Something Loriane couldn’t see seemed to block the other side of the square.
Myra gasped.
“What is it?” Loriane asked.
Myra pointed. “Over there! Can’t you see it? It’s a huge . . . person. Like—made out of light. And there’s another one, and . . . oohhh! Beido!”
Loriane stared where Myra pointed, and saw . . . nothing. No, that wasn’t entirely true.
It had started snowing, and steam rose off the place where the girl pointed. Then Loriane saw them, too: huge shapes, at least thirty of them, maybe even more, outlines made of steam.
They formed a circle, towering over the city. The figure facing the people in the square held out its steam-wreathed hands.
“Beido! Beido!” Myra’s voice barely rose over the screams of onlookers, but it seemed the figure heard her. A long tendril of steam curled towards the sled. Ruko tied the bears’ reins to the sled.
“Look, this is your son.” Myra uncovered the baby’s head.
Ruko rose from the driver’s seat, his hands planted at his sides, facing the steam figure.
Loriane said in a low voice, “Sit down, Myra.”
“But that is Beido!”
“Myra, please—”
Loriane couldn’t see the flash of icefire, but she could feel how it took her breath away. People around her fell . . . and died. Blistered faces froze in screams of agony. Eyes wide open stared at the sky.
Myra screamed, “Beido, no, don’t, Beido!” Then she grabbed Loriane’s arm. “He isn’t listening. Make him listen!”
“I can’t do anything. I can’t even see him. Sit down.” Loriane yanked Myra back into the seat.
But Myra continued to scream. “Beido, Beido! What are you doing? I’m here. Beido!”
A patch of steam grew in the sky directly overhead. Mist flowed out of the steam figures to join it and form a kind of dome, which was extending downwards.
Loriane reached for the driver’s shoulder. The dust was ice-cold. “Please, get us out of here.”
The sled remained where it was. People in the square were falling over, clutching burned faces, skin peeling from flesh, glassy eyes staring at the sky. The screams made Loriane shiver. This was hundred times worse than Myra’s screaming.
“Come on, Ruko, if you want us to live.”
Myra was crying. “I don’t know what they’re doing. It’s like . . . evil. Something has bewitched them. Get us out of here, Mistress Loriane.”
“I’m trying, but I think he only listens to Tandor—”
Ruko yanked the reins. The bear roared and raised itself on its hind legs, pulling the front of the sled off the ground. It charged forward, towards the steam figure, towards the crowd and the edge of the bowl-shaped steam shape that was growing fast in the direction of the ground.
Loriane shouted, “No, no not that way!”
Her shout was futile; neither of them could have stopped the animal.
The patch of steam in the sky had grown into a half-complete dome, blocking the view of the sky, but ahead, a path was still clear.
The bear growled. The sled jostled and bumped over the bodies, which flopped under the sled’s runners like rag dolls. They’re all dead. Loriane closed her eyes. It was so awful and they were not going to make it. The rim of mist was sliding towards the ground . . . They were not going to make it. They were . . .
The sled cut into the mist. Myra screamed. There was a gush of intense cold that took Loriane’s breath away. She clutched the seat, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.
They were going to die, they were going to die, they were . . .
And then there was only the sled, the padding of the bear’s feet and the swishing of the runners in the snow.
Myra cried, “Oh Beido. What happened to him? Do you think he let us go because of our son?”
Loriane looked over her shoulder to see the ring of steam shapes close the dome of icefire. For the life of her, she couldn’t recognise a face in the steam shapes. Her heart was still thudding like crazy.
“Maybe,” she said, but she had no idea what had happened. She stared, too numb to cry, at the destruction around them, at the people still running, many covered in blisters.
Ruko was urging the bear into a run. Much of the dust had blown off him, making him once again almost invisible.
No one spoke for a long time. Myra cried softly. The whole city was covered in the hideous mist, which was expanding outward, eating up shapes of buildings. The sound of shattering glass drifted on the wind. Loriane could barely breathe for the acrid smoke.
When the bear charged out the city gates, the Outer City came into view—a mass of fire, billowing smoke and flames.
Loriane felt sick. She muttered, “My house.”
Eagles swooped low over the festival grounds, and a crowd of people were throwing projectiles at them. But even some of them had become aware of the destruction in the city itself, and the outward expanding deathly cloud.
“My house,” Loriane said again. Her practice, her friends, her patients. Isandor. “What am I going to do?”
Myra touched her shoulder. “Bordertown should still be safe.”
Loriane bit on her lip to stifle tears. “That’s where he’s taking us, isn’t it?” She nodded at the invisible driver.
“It’s our home,” Myra said.
The bear veered to the r
ight, where the horizon merged with the sky.
Eagles whirled overhead, as powerless as she.
Getting to Bordertown would take at least three days. They had no food and no shelter. Their clothing was not good enough for such a voyage. Tandor and Myra needed care. She was exhausted and her belly felt hard as a rock. Every bump in the ice hurt.
But the bear knew the way. It ran and ran and ran.
BOOK 2
DUST & RAIN
DUST & RAIN
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 1
* * *
SADORIUS HAN CHEVONIAN dropped the pile of barygraph read-outs on his desk. Pages and pages of plotted squiggly lines slid over the wooden surface.
On top was a different sheet with a hand-drawn graph, a red line which jumped up sharply towards the right hand side of the page. He picked up that sheet, shook his head and frowned at the young man who had brought him these data.
“Up by this much?”
His new student, Vikius han Marossi, nodded. Silver embroidery glittered on the young man’s white tunic, showing the insignia of the Chevakian doga, the government assembly.
The young man had left the door open and sounds of voices drifted in from the hall, mixed with the slapping of sandals on stone. A breeze carried the tang of summer that ruffled the curtains and nudged at the lingering chill in the room, a hint of the fury of hot weather to come. As chief meteorologist, Sady knew all about the weather; he could feel summer in his bones. And yet . . .
He looked at the graph, as if staring at it would change that ominous red line, and shook his head again.
“What happened? When I checked a few days ago, sonorics levels were at three motes per cube, but now they’ve at twelve?” Three was normal for this time of the year; twelve was slightly above the highest average level in the middle of winter. He wiped sweat from his upper lip, re-checking figures in the table on the second page, in the idle hope that the attendant of the met station who had plotted the graph had mis-read. He hadn’t.
“It looks like we’re in for an interesting summer.” Sonorics dictated the weather patterns across Chevakia. Sonorics, the deadly rays that came from the southern land, an ice-covered plateau so mysterious that it didn’t have a name.
“I’m not sure I would call it interesting. I find it frightening.” Viki’s tone was timid. He held his hands clasped behind his back and stared intently at the desk.
“Viki, straighten your back and look up.”
The young man did as Sady told him, a startled expression on his face. Mercy, since when did the Scriptorium send him jackrabbits for students?
“Imagine you’re making an important announcement to the doga. They’re not going to listen to you if you mumble, and they won’t take you seriously if you slouch.”
“Uhm—I’m sorry, Senator.”
“Viki, if ever you’re going to be chief meteorologist, you will need to show more confidence. How else are you going to argue against selfish senators that no, their district isn’t going to get an allocation of maize production, because the air current predictions are wrong and the harvest will certainly fail?”
“Uhm . . .” Viki went red in the face and went back to staring at the desk.
“Stand up! Look me in the eye. Tell me what you’d say to them if you were in this situation.”
The young man straightened again, his eyes wide. “Uhm—I’d say that they were wrong asking for the allocation, Senator. I’d tell them about our high sonorics measurements and that they predict unseasonally cold weather in the south which means much less rain in the north. I’d show them the maps and show them how I calculated—”
“No, no, Viki.”
The student gave Sady a startled look. “But I have to—”
“You should always keep it simple. Don’t explain to them how you calculated the prediction. That not only bores them to tears, but it shows that you feel the need to justify yourself because you’re not sure of your calculations.”
“But—”
“Confidence, Viki. You’ll need confidence in your work or the farmers and the districts will howl you down, especially those in the North. They seem to think that the sheer act of predicting is going to make it happen.”
“But you can only predict rain when the circumstances indicate that there will be rain.”
“Exactly, but do you think they care? Rain is money to them. If I predict rain, the doga gives them money to plant crops, simple as that. Then of course, there is no rain, the harvest fails and the meteorologist gets the blame.”
“But that’s . . .” Viki’s eyes were wide.
“That’s how things go if you’re not careful.” Sady sighed and shuffled the papers on his desk. He felt no patience with his student today. Those data were really too worrisome to ignore. “Have you looked at any other border stations?”
Viki pushed another bundle of papers across the table; his hands trembled.
Sady leafed through the graphs. Same results. Automated barygraphs were all recording low pressure, and the manual measurements taken by faithful meteorology staff in the stations reported high humidity, low temperatures and out-of-season increases in sonorics. Not just one station, but Ensar, Fairlight, Mekta, all of them reporting levels of twelve, thirteen, even fourteen motes per cube.
Mercy, what was going on?
“Senator, begging your permission . . . I made this.” Viki put a roll of paper on the desk. Sady frowned and unrolled it: a map, showing isobars across the country.
It was a neat piece of work, impressively detailed. He gave Viki an appreciative look. “Now that is what I call initiative. That’s what I’d like to see more.”
The young man blushed.
Sady moved some papers aside and spread the map out over the table. Wavy lines ran parallel to the escarpment that formed the border with the southern plateau, a pattern that sometimes occurred in mid-winter, but even then the pressure lines were usually less crowded. There was a huge low pressure system building up.
Sady met the student’s eyes.
“Any idea what it means?”
“Uhm . . .” The young man’s cheeks went red.
Sady sighed. “Viki, this is not a trick question. I don’t know either. Nothing like this has happened before. This is not a seasonal pattern. At this time of the year, we’d expect the low pressure systems to retreat to the far south and the air flow to swing around to the north.”
The young man looked up, his lips forming the letter o. “Well, in that case, I was thinking . . . I mean . . . Low pressure is usually associated with a rise in sonorics, because sonorics tends to increase the air humidity.”
“Yes, but why?”
Viki hesitated. “What if . . . if the people in the City of Glass were releasing sonorics deliberately . . . Could they, if they wanted to?”
Sady shrugged, uncomfortable. They knew so little of the workings of the southern land and the source of its deadly rays that influenced far too much of Chevakia’s weather. Some sort of machine, the classic works said, somewhere under the City of Glass. No one knew if this supposed machine was a physical thing or a myth. Sady wasn’t sure the southerners themselves knew what it was. Then, fifteen years ago, after the border wars, the barriers went up and no one travelled to the south anymore. Right now, he certainly didn’t want to worry about whether southerners could manipulate it, although the thought chilled him. Sonorics were deadly to Chevakians.
“Viki, I want you to give the Most Learned Alius the message that I wish to see him.” Sady didn’t really expect much help from an academic who did not share his practical experience, but his old tutor had made an extensive study of sonorics and was without a doubt Chevakia’s most knowledgeable on the subject.
“Certainly, Senator.” Viki bowed and left the room at a trot.
Sady grimaced. Really? Am I that frightening? I must be getting old.
He shook his head. No need to worry too much over this student. After his traineeship, Viki would probably choose to move on in favour for a career in academia, or so Sady hoped, because the youngster really hadn’t the aptitude for a life as doga meteorologist.
Sady rose and went to the window.
Laid out before him in perfect geometric patterns, the splendour of Tiverius spread towards the horizon. Rows terracotta roofs basked in the sun. Perfect straight streets, stone buildings with columns. Trees bloomed along the roadsides, even numbers on both sides. Down in the courtyard, a man with a water truck was watering the flowers in the planter boxes.
A warm breeze stirred the curtains. A few moon cycles, and it would be mid-summer. Not at all the time high sonoric levels usually happened.
Sonorics levels wouldn’t need to rise that much before they caused trouble. At twenty motes, it would taint the harvest, at thirty, set off the first alarms, and affect exports to Arania. Chevakia couldn’t afford not to harvest in the southern border provinces. The northern region was too dry to produce much more than camels and the occasional crop of maize.