by Patty Jansen
“By the skylights, look at that cloud,” Nolan said, pointing at the horizon.
Carro looked.
At the horizon, sitting atop the platform was a huge black roiling mass of cloud. Lightning arced across the top.
“Some bad weather, that is,” said Farey.
“Do we have to go through?” Carro asked. There was an uncomfortable chill in his bones and he felt a strange disconnect between what his eyes saw and what he experienced, as if the world wasn’t real.
“We may have to shelter until it blows over.”
Nolan had his hand above his eyes to shelter them from the biting wind. He squinted at the cloud. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Agree it’s not normal for this time of year.” Farey’s voice sounded far off.
Carro shook his head to banish that disconnected feeling, as if he was about to get a vision, but the cloud morphed into vaguely human shapes, and one had the face of his stepfather.
By the skylights, already those damn visions were returning. He glanced aside at Nolan, who looked at him. “You all right?”
Carro nodded, his face stiff like a death mask. He noticed his dangling harness and knew he should clip it on before a full-scale vision struck, but Nolan was watching and would think him a weakling, having learned how to ride without a harness just recently. A tough hunter didn’t use a harness, storm or no storm.
But as they came closer, it turned out that the blackness wasn’t just a cloud. Along a long storm front, the trees were on fire. Entire trees exploded, spraying embers everywhere.
The embers whirled and formed human-like figures made solely of fire threaded with lightning.
Carro shook his head. He was surely imagining things.
“Stay together!” Farey yelled somewhere in the distance.
Next to Carro, Nolan struggled to keep control of his bird. It flapped and bucked, threatening to throw its rider off.
Farey steered his eagle into the cloud and disappeared from sight. Jeito followed, but Nolan’s eagle refused to obey its rider’s command.
Carro went in after Jeito. The moment his bird plunged into the roiling mass, something hit him that made his entire body tingle. All around him, human-like figures roiled.
“Stop,” he yelled, fighting to keep visions at bay.
But he couldn’t see Farey or Jeito, and he couldn’t see Nolan behind him.
He yanked at the eagle’s reins. But the bird was plummeting down.
* * *
Carro knocks on the door and walks into the room.
Standing by the window, Rider Cornatan turns. Do you bring me the fugitives, son?
Yes, Carro says, and somehow he’s come in carrying a stretcher, and on it is a hunk of bloodied meat. It barely looks human except dangling from it is a ponytail of black hair.
How do I know that this is him?
It is Isandor, because of the hair clip.
* * *
Isandor. He and Jevaithi had been staying with the old farmer. He hoped they were safe. The south would gain nothing from their deaths.
Smoke trailed past him. Still, the eagle was going down.
“Up, up!” Carro pulled the reins, but the bird took no notice.
* * *
Carro knocks on the door and walks into the room.
Standing by the window, Rider Cornatan turns. His face twists into a sneer. Do you bring me the fugitives, son?
They escaped, Carro says. I think we know where they are.
Within a heartbeat, Rider Cornatan’s face twists into a snarl. You know? What good is knowing alone? If you know, what are you doing here and why don’t you bring me their bodies? I thought you would do me proud, but you’re as useless as the rest of those weaklings.
His hand flicks out and slaps Carro hard in the face.
* * *
Ow.
Carro ran his hand over his cheek. It burned like fire. He looked down his tunic to see a trail of black. He must have been hit by an ember.
The eagle was still descending in slow circles. The mist had become acrid smoke from the flames below. A strong breeze carried the sound of exploding trees.
“Carro!” someone shouted in the distance. “Carro, where are you?”
Carro gave up trying to control the eagle. Some strange voice in his head told him that the bird knew the way and that whatever fate awaited both of them, it was inevitable.
He squinted through the shards of smoke and when a breeze cleared the air, he could see the burning forest. Amongst the exploding trees walked a huge, human-like figure made entirely of fire.
The moment Carro saw it, the figure turned its head up. It pointed a flaming hand and a bolt of lightning shot into the sky. It missed Carro and his eagle. The bird swooped, leaving Carro to clench its labouring body hard to stay in the saddle.
He laughed and punched the air.
“You can’t get me!”
The figure on the ground ripped a tree out of the ground and swung it in a great arc while fire spread over the crown. Then it let go of the tree, which flew into the air, but rose far short of Carro’s eagle. Again, the bird swooped.
But as Carro hung onto the saddle, he noticed two more flaming figures plundering their way through the forest. One was smaller than the first one, the second one much bigger. His laugh fell flat.
He yanked the eagle’s reins again. “Up, you stupid bird!”
Too late. The large figure pointed, lightning gathering around its outstretched hand.
Carro dug his heels into the eagle’s sides. “Up, up!”
Carro’s vision went white. The reins slipped from his hands.
* * *
Carro knocks on the door and walks into the room.
Standing by the window, Rider Cornatan turns. His face is triumphant and his smile chills Carro. Are the fugitives dead, son?
Yes, Carro says, and somehow he’s come in carrying a stretcher, and on it is a hunk of bloodied meat. It barely looks human except dangling from it is a ponytail of black hair. The carcass is a Chevakian goat’s and the hair is Carro’s own.
Rider Cornatan walks around the stretcher. How do I know that this is him?
Look at the hair clip, Carro says, clutching the dagger behind his back.
Rider Cornatan bends over and at that moment, Carro jumps, plunging the dagger deep into his father’s back, so that the point comes out on the other side.
Rider Cornatan staggers, a surprised look on his face. He tries to speak, but blood oozes from his mouth. His eyes unfocused, he slumps forward over the goat carcass.
He whispers, “Why, son, why?”
* * *
Carro was flying, flying, like an eagle. He spread his arms and legs and the wind flapped past him, roaring in his ears.
The thought crossed his mind I’m falling, and I’m going to die, but he didn’t care. He’d done his duty and rid the world of a great evil.
He was a hero.
Historians would sing his name.
He was dead.
* * *
“What the fuck were you doing?”
That voice sounded far too real and it sounded far too much like Nolan.
Not dead, then.
Carro opened his eyes with a great effort.
He was on the ground in a forest clearing where dark pine trees rose around him. Directly above him was a face, the features blurred, but clearly Nolan’s.
Carro tried to speak, but he couldn’t. Everything hurt, even breathing.
“You would kill us all leading us into that fire?”
&n
bsp; Carro shook his head. He didn’t honestly remember what he had done. He only remembered his father’s eyes as he stabbed the dagger into his heart. He remembered his father’s rasping voice. Why indeed.
“That was the most stupid thing I’ve ever seen anyone do in my life,” Farey said. He poked into the fire, sending sparks flying.
“Where . . . where are we?” Carro’s throat hurt.
“Back in well into Chevakia. We can’t get home that way.”
“At least now we know why the gull came back,” Nolan said.
Farey glared at him.
“Did you see those fire devils?” Jeito asked. He had his arms clamped around himself.
“Yeah, what are they?” Nolan said.
“Fire devils are constructs of icefire.”
“But those things looked human.”
“They are human.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Jeito shook his head. “I’ve read about the old king’s creatures. He had servitors, but he had ones that were way worse than that. There were beings that could change their shapes at will.” He stared into the fire. “They could fly. Some people said that eagles were descended from these creatures.”
For a while the silence lingered. Carro wasn’t sure what to say. A few months ago, he would have laughed at such tales. The fact that they were in the old books meant nothing. Books were full of stories, but now he had seen the working of icefire, shown to him by his father, and he had seen human figures made out of fire. There might be some truth in these old tales. There were other things in these books: shape shifters, crossbreeds, living ice. Who was to say what was real and what a myth?
“Well, since it’s clear we can’t go to the City of Glass, what do we do now?” Nolan said.
Jeito gave him an irritated glance. “Is that all you worry about—what do we do now, what do we do now? Can’t you think for yourself?”
There was a haunted expression in his eyes. Worried about family, Carro guessed.
Farey reached out to his lover and squeezed his shoulder. “We’ll find a road of some kind,” he said. “There are a lot of people travelling. I’m not sure where they’re going, but they’ll be going somewhere. Meanwhile, stick to our orders: try to find the fugitives and kill them. Also, follow where everyone is going and find any of the senior command. We’ll confiscate one of these vehicles and send the eagles to roam. They’ll attract too much attention. If we travel by road, we can remain hidden. One of us goes with the eagles each day.”
Chapter 23
* * *
THE LIGHT HAD turned orange, and the pine forest cast long shadows over the road. The haze amongst the trees shrouded the straight trunks in a veil of purple.
Milleus drew a hand over his eyes, while steering the van with the other. Up ahead, the van they’d been following since the last village crested the hill and became a silhouette sharp against the yellow sky. The van that had followed them had already stopped for the night, and they’d passed a few camps along the way, where people were making fires and children huddled in blankets against the biting southern wind.
“I’m tired,” Milleus said to no one in particular. He cast a glance over his shoulder, where Nila lay across the back seat, half asleep, a slice of bread still on her lap. She had been hungry; he had given her the bread, and she hadn’t eaten it. He didn’t know what to think about that and only intensified the feelings of unease in his own stomach. He had been contaminated with sonorics. With less severe contamination, it always took a few days for the effects to show. Was he feeling nauseous because of that, or from the worry about his health? Rumours of the barrier having shattered were coming in too frequently for them to be untrue. The same was true for the many reports of huge birds circling the sky.
He had tried to contact Tiverius in a few of the villages they had passed through, but the lines were either busy or out. Or there were huge queues at the stations that did work; he was too impatient to wait his turn. Meanwhile, he looked for signs that people were falling ill from sonorics poisoning and found no evidence.
The only one who seemed off-colour was Nila.
On the seat next to Milleus, Isandor unrolled the map and traced his finger across the line that represented the road. Amazing, how quickly he learned. Milleus would have sworn that the boy had attended some form of tuition in Chevakian.
“There’s a village a bit further down the road. We can stop there.”
“No, we stop here,” Milleus said. “There’s a glade on the other side of the hill. There’s a spring nearby and plenty of firewood.” He knew the place from his hunting days.
Isandor threw him a sharp glance. “Why you always stay away from people?”
“I’m not staying away from people. We need grass for the goats.”
But the boy was right, and by the looks of things, he knew it. Two days they’d been on the road, travelling in a loose convoy of trucks. Normally, it only took a day to get to Ensar, but they had to stop frequently to let the animals graze. Isandor would collect handfulls of grass and heap them on the floor of the trailer. The goats had to be milked by hand. It took a lot of time, more than he wanted, and people passed them on the road.
Nila would set up a roadside stall to sell milk to other travellers. Milleus would stay with the goats, avoiding the looks people gave him.
They recognised him. Closer to Tiverius, that happened more often. Old men came up to question him about politics.
Are you going to fix things in the capital?
The doga should send the army across the border.
Why isn’t anyone doing anything?
Milleus made non-committal responses, going over excuses in his mind. He was too old to become involved. The rumour that he was returning to the city, however, travelled faster than he did, and he felt like he was caught up in an unstoppable wave that was outside his control. It seemed people expected him to return, whether they wanted him to or not. He still hadn’t burned the letter in his pocket. Damn Sady. Return to Tiverius.
Well, he’d do no such thing. They were merely on their way to Ensar to get out of immediate range of the border. When they got to Ensar . . . what then? He knew no one there. His only family was Sady—in Tiverius. Well, the only family still talking to him, that was.
The van reached the top of the hill and the turnoff to the glade, where he had camped so often in his younger days, with Sady and some senators, or with foreign ambassadors. He could still hear the laughter and the baying of the dogs. He could smell roasting meat over the fire, he could hear the Aranian ambassador telling his tall tales. Memories.
Milleus killed the engine and leaned on the steering wheel. Rest. Food. Sleep.
Isandor pushed himself out of the van. The grass was knee-deep and lush green and Isandor left a track when he limped out of sight to the trailer.
The goats must have seen him coming. They were bleating and jostling each other, making the van rock.
Isandor opened the tailgate with clangs of metal and then the whole herd rumbled out, with much bleating and jingling of the chains that held them together. Isandor whistled and they quietened.
Mercy, the boy was good with animals.
Milleus pushed himself out of the driver’s seat. He’d best make a fire for cooking while Isandor set up the tent. In his hunting days, they always left a pile of firewood under the trees. He wondered if it was still there.
Nila emerged from the van, rosy-cheeked and with mussed hair.
“Sleep well?”
She looked better now.
“Yes. I’m hungry. Do you want me to get water?”
Milleus pointed her in the direction of the spring and for a while, everyone went their way. Milleus making the fire,
unpacking the cooking pot and peeling vegetables, Isandor milking the goats. He had learned this trick yesterday and seemed to enjoy it; his young hands were certainly much better suited to it than Milleus’.
Nila was just coming back from the creek for the second time, with bottles to fill the goats’ water trough, when the putter of an engine disturbed the peace.
The last rays of the sun glittered in the window of another van entering the glade.
Oh mercy. Milleus didn’t want company.
The van stopped on the other side of the glade. A young man came out, followed by a toddler and a woman. The man greeted Milleus briefly, but then went about his business of setting up a tent.
Well, that was fine then. They were nice young people, looking for quiet.
But while he was lighting a fire, another van came down the road. This one with four passengers, youths all. They stopped on the far side of the glade, almost amongst the trees. They had no tent, but unrolled bedding onto the forest floor. Three of the youngsters had glossy back hair and one curls which glowed golden in the light of the fire.
Foreigners. That was fine with Milleus, too. No one who would pester him about his plans to return to Tiverius. He didn’t point the group out to Isandor. At least two of those youths looked awfully southern, and one Aranian. But Isandor must have seen them, too, and made no move to talk to them. In turn, the foreigners kept to themselves and mostly sat behind their van where they made a fire out of sight of the glade.