The Icefire Trilogy

by Patty Jansen

  “Put me down! Stop!”

  The men kept walking, jostling her and yelling at the people ahead, presumably for them to get out of the way. A woman came to walk next to her, holding her shoulders and gibbering words which she took as soothing.

  “Stop! Where are you taking me—aaahhh!” Another stab of white-hot pain. Loriane grabbed instinctively for the spot. By the skylights, what was this? The bump had moved to the side.

  “Loriane!” Myra came running from behind.

  “Tell . . . them . . . to . . . put . . . me down.” A surge of bile burned in the back of her throat.

  In between fighting to get the words out and struggling not to throw up, Loriane realised she’d screamed, something she’d sworn was for first-timers.

  Myra spoke in halting Chevakian; the men put Loriane on her feet, and scrambled out of the way as she threw up her lumpy jelly, and a second time more jelly, bile and blood.

  By the skylights.

  Cold with sweat, shivering and very afraid, Loriane stared at puddle of vomit. Blood. This babe was eating her from the inside.

  “I told you that you needed to see a healer,” Myra said, behind her.

  “I don’t know what a healer can do. I’ve tried all the things a healer can to make this child move, but it’s bewitched. This is going to kill me.”

  Myra went white in the face.

  Loriane swallowed a further surge of bile. “Myra, we need some place away from people. Not a guesthouse, a barn or some such. I’m going to have to ask you to do something very unpleasant.”

  She retched and coughed. By the skylights, the vomit went up her nose. She coughed, but that only made it worse. Her stomach cramped.

  Myra nodded, her face white. It seemed she understood.

  Loriane bent over and retched. More blood. Retched again, and again, until it felt her head would explode. She grew dizzy and fell to her knees.

  Oh, by the skylights! She leaned over, panting. For a moment her vision went white.

  It was a number of heartbeats before she realised the world had stopped.

  No one moved to pick her up.

  No one moved at all.

  No one spoke.

  Everyone stood still, eyes wide, staring at the sky.

  There was only one sound: the same mournful keening she had heard when they passed the barrier, and it was increasing in volume. A woman screamed.

  One of the brown-uniformed men shouted something and all around people started running, hurling themselves at doors.

  The volume of the keening increased.

  People screamed, crowding before doorways, pushing each other in, scrambling over the fallen, punching others out of the way.

  Loriane scrambled up, clamping her hands over her ears, looking at Myra for a clue what to do, but Myra’s face was just as bewildered.

  Windows shattered, showering glass into the street.

  Then there was bright flash of light, a moment of intense silence, a gust of wind and an enormous bang that shook the ground. Roof tiles flew into the street. The entire facade of a house collapsed. A cold wind tore through the street, ripping washing off lines, overturning market stalls and rubbish bins.

  And there was silence.

  Chapter 20

  * * *

  IN THE PLACE between life and death, Tandor shook awake when Ruko laughed. He sat up, a lingering chill of a cold blast still clinging to him.

  “What was that?”

  “Didn’t I tell you we’d win?” Ruko said. “The stupid Chevakians put up their silly walls, but we’re much stronger than that.”

  Tandor tried to look outside that place, and recognised none of the twisted shapes that he could make out. He didn’t even see his own body, nor that of Ruko. All he could see was some sort of valley with on both sides hills made out of rubble.

  Where were they, and how long had he been asleep?

  Had he even been asleep?

  He now remembered the pain that made him pass out. They’d passed the barrier, which meant that they were now in Chevakia and the fact that he was conscious in this place meant that icefire had penetrated . . . that the barrier had shattered.

  Now he realised what he saw: those were not hills, they were the remains of houses reduced to rubble. Those were not boulders in a stream bed, they were dead bodies in the street.

  “No.” He tried to push himself up, but he was still tied to the chair. “Loriane!”

  There was no movement.

  “Loriane!”

  The child. He needed her child. The hybrid would be the only way he’d be able to control the onslaught of icefire.

  If Loriane had been killed, all was lost.

  “She can’t hear you,” Ruko sneered.

  “Shut up.”

  Ruko laughed.

  Tandor twisted on the chair, and all of a sudden a rush of icefire found its way into the place between life and death, and ripped the bonds. He was free.

  He jumped off the chair and landed in the real world.

  The smell of rubble. An overwhelming smell of fire. Moans from people caught under the rubble.

  People with burned skin peeling off exposed limbs.

  “Loriane!”

  Something grabbed him from behind.

  “Loriane!”

  It was Ruko, pulling him back into that prison. The real world faded. Tandor swung around, and hit Ruko with his clawed arm. The metal went straight through him.

  “Let me go!” He had to find Loriane. He had to rescue her and the child. He had to stop her going to Tiverius.

  “You will do as I say,” Ruko snarled. He tied Tandor back to the chair.

  Chapter 21

  * * *

  LORIANE UNCURLED herself, sucking lungs full of air with a familiar tang. She was lying on a pavement of a street with tall houses on both sides.

  She would have sworn she heard someone call her name. A voice that sounded like Tandor.

  A haze of dust hung in the air. The ground was covered in glass and debris, and, underneath that, dusty bodies, unmoving. Close to her, a couple of burly men in uniform, eyes open and glassy. Further away, a whole heap of people in front of a door. There was no blood, but no one moved, and the coating of dust made it look like they had turned to stone.

  Loriane scrabbled up, awkward and top-heavy, but no longer in pain. Then a fleeting thought: does this child inside me feel impending icefire? She patted her stomach, but couldn’t find the sharp bump anymore.

  The breeze that went through the street was icy cold.

  Where were the others?

  Several houses had lost windows or parts of walls. Straw roofs had been blown off, and the entire town had gone eerily silent.

  “Loriane!” That sounded like Myra.

  Loriane turned around and almost tripped over a body behind her, half-buried under a piece of wood that had fallen off a shop awning. Every bit of exposed skin on the villager’s face and hands was red and covered in blisters. He stirred and moaned, his eyes half open and showing only white. She had seen that before, after the explosion in the City of Glass.

  Icefire.

  That was the familiar feeling in the air.

  “Myra, girl, you be right?” Ontane emerged from the dust of a collapsed façade of a house, with the camel in tow. Tandor still sat on it, dazed, his hair rimed in dust, but otherwise unharmed.

  Myra ran to embrace her father. The baby in the sling made muffled cries in the tight space between them.

  What remained of Tandor’s hair had turned white with a fine riming of white dust. His eyes were open, and Loriane noticed that the skin
on his face had started to peel.

  “Tandor? Did you just call me?”

  He didn’t answer, but when she took his hand, he moved his and squeezed her fingers. His blue eyes stared into the distance.

  “Tandor, can you hear me?”

  He squeezed her hand again.

  “Please, talk to me. Tell us how to find your family.”

  But he didn’t respond to that. His face contorted into frightening expressions. She swore she could hear someone laughing.

  On the cart, Ruko sat up. A piece of debris had struck the side of the cart, and the wheels were out of alignment. Ruko glared at her over his shoulder. Somehow, his expression seemed less detached than before.

  “Ruko? Do you know where Tandor’s family lives?”

  But he still wasn’t speaking. He was looking at Tandor, though, and she wondered if they had a means of communication.

  “We need to get out of here,” Ontane said. “Before the Chevakian army turns up and accuses us of destroying this town.”

  “Where to? That was their accursed barrier that just exploded, dear husband,” Dara said. “Haven’t you noticed that we live on the other side? We might as well go home now.”

  “And what do you think we’ll find up there, huh? If the icefire down here is strong enough to kill everyone, it will be strong enough to kill us up there.”

  She didn’t reply, but her face was set, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “Is there anything we can do without you arguing about it, woman? I tell you now, you be free to go back home, but I’m not coming.”

  Dara snorted, but didn’t leave either.

  Ontane held out his hand to Loriane, not noticing that he stepped in the puddle of blood-stained vomit, and helped her clamber over the debris of a collapsed shop awning. There were several people underneath.

  With Ontane leading, they picked their way through the street, which had turned into an unrecognisable mess. Stalls had been ripped apart. Houses collapsed. Bodies were everywhere, covered in blisters, some still alive, most of them dead. In fact apart from Loriane and the family, not one person was walking. A sickening scent of dust mingled with that of burnt meat hung in the air.

  “What do we do now?” Myra asked.

  Ontane shrugged. His face was haggard. “See if we can find another camel and cart for mistress Loriane, and keep going. Don’t ask me where.”

  Well, damn it, there went her chance to leave this bickering family behind.

  Dara still had her arms crossed over her chest in a don’t ask me anything expression.

  Loriane was just so tired. “Please, I want to find a quiet place, away from the town.”

  “I agree,” Dara said. “We wait until it’s safe to go back.”

  “I don’t mean that. This child is killing me. It’s not normal. I want someone to cut it out.”

  “Mistress Loriane!” Ontane’s face turned white.

  “Is that . . . is that really necessary?” Dara didn’t look so happy herself.

  “It’s not coming out by itself, and it won’t, because it’s too big. I can tell Myra what to do. I’ve done it a couple of times.” More often than she cared to remember. There was a reason girls were made to wait until sixteen before being allowed to take part in the Newlight Festival.

  “I’m not letting my—”

  “You can’t ask Myra to—”

  Ontane and Dara started speaking at the same time, then stopped and looked at each other.

  “Congratulations. The first time you two agree on anything is when it’s something that has to be done.”

  “Myra, I don’t want you to do such a horrid thing,” Ontane said. “I’ll do it.”

  Dara said, “What do you know about women’s things? I’ll do it.”

  They glared at each other.

  Myra stepped between them. “Right then, if we can all agree, let’s go and find a safe place.”

  With great difficulty, they made their way back to the market square. They saw no survivors.

  They stopped to consider which way to go and of course Ontane and Dara argued over it.

  Ontane said, “I think we keep going that way. The other way’s the road we came—look!” His eyes widened.

  Loriane turned. Over the rubble of collapsed houses, she could see the hillside that led up to the plateau. She didn’t see anything—wait, she did. Higher up the slope clouds of white whirled, covering the green trees. Snow.

  There were also clouds of steam, or smoke rising from between the trees.

  “Is there a fire?”

  “A fire? Can’t you see it, Mistress Loriane? The trees be alive with blue flames. It be following us.”

  Loriane stared up the slope but could not see any blue flames.

  “Icefire,” Myra said.

  “Great, and what now?” Dara said. “So much for all your wonderful ideas.”

  “You, woman! You’re full of talk about what to do, but when you actually have to make a decision—”

  “Yes, it’s always my fault, of course. It’s not like you ever make any mistakes, mister know-it-all? I still think we would have been just fine at the hunting shack, but no, you—”

  “Stop fighting!” Myra screamed.

  Silence.

  Dara and Ontane stood facing each other, both glancing sideways at Myra.

  “Hadn’t we agreed to help mistress Loriane first?”

  Ontane grumbled an unintelligible response. Dara looked the other way.

  Loriane just wished they’d stop acting like little children. Honestly, if this was what having a family meant, then she was glad she had never married.

  “Look,” she said. “I appreciate your help in getting down here, but don’t feel like you have to stay with me. I’ll ask Ruko to help me.” Her child was important to Tandor, and no doubt Ruko would protect it.

  “Well,” Ontane grumbled, “it looks like there will be no time for that nasty business. I vote we be getting out of here as soon as possible.”

  At that moment, there was a harsh whistle somewhere in the distance, and a sound like Loriane had never heard before.

  Myra’s eyes widened. “A train! Let’s go to the station.”

  The building Myra called the station was on the other side of the markets. Once it might have been painted white, but half of the entrance had collapsed, showing exposed bricks and timber. Getting there was a struggle. The camel was jittery. Loriane guessed it could feel icefire. The cart was too broken to be pulled with ease; the ground was covered in rubble.

  In front of the building, they halted and Ontane untied their packs from the cart. The moment he touched Tandor’s trunk, Ruko pushed him aside.

  “Hey, you,” Ontane yelled out. “Behave yourself, for all you’ve been a parasite on us for the last few days.”

  “Let him,” Loriane said. What Ontane said wasn’t true. Ruko had come along to protect Tandor, and had never eaten from the family’s supplies. She added more quietly, “Ruko, we’re going on the train here. We’ll have to leave the camel, but we need to get Tandor up into that building.”

  Ruko said nothing, but turned back to the cart and took care of Tandor’s enormous trunk

  Ontane slipped the headgear off the camel’s neck. “We’ll turn the beast free. It may find its own way home, if it knows where home is.”

  Loriane followed the family up the rubble-strewn stairs into the station. She’d be prepared to walk all the way, or ride in the cart. She thought setting the camel loose was a bad idea, and didn’t like the sound of the word “train”.

  After clambering underneath a half-collapsed arch, they came onto a paved area,
from where two very straight strips of metal led towards the horizon. Rails, Myra said. For the train, although the train itself was nowhere to be seen. Taking in water, Myra said.

  So there was no train at the moment, but there were unharmed seats under the awning of the roof and Loraine sank down gratefully, ignoring Dara and Ontane’s bickering over the absence of a train, and whether it would or would not leave. Ruko sat next to her, guiding Tandor. It was the first time he had come close.

  She glanced at him and wondered what went through that head of his. He was staring ahead, the light from the field on the other side of the tracks reflected in his eyes. There had to be some secret to speaking with him.

  “Ruko, have you ever been to Tandor’s family?” Loriane asked.

  As usual, Ruko said nothing, but a big tear tracked down his cheek. He reminded her of Isandor and she wondered where her son was. Ruko was just another boy, broken and turned wild by living in the wilderness for years.

  Loriane took his hand. It was warm. They sat silently, while Ontane and Dara bickered and Myra rolled her eyes while feeding the baby. Loriane’s other hand was on her stomach, feeling the movements of the baby’s feet through her belly. The child was facing the right way, and everything felt normal again. One ride in this train, and she would be safe. Maybe everything would be fine after all.

  Voices echoed in the entrance of the building, and a group of five young men arrived. Strong and healthy all, with dark hair and wearing fur cloaks. Southern men without a doubt.

  They nodded at the family, but didn’t approach to talk. Deserters from the lower ranks of the Knights, Loriane thought, and knew that other refugees would have no love for them. They sat in the far corner of what Myra called the platform.

  Soon others came in, all southerners. Families, silent children, women with haggard faces, and then the physically wounded. Burns mostly, but also broken limbs and frostbite from those who had fled in the clothes they were wearing.