by R. Lee Smith
“Like what?”
An emergency blanket blew suddenly and noisily between them before being yanked up into the sky and lost.
“You were saying?” Amber prompted.
“Smart ass.” But Dag cupped his mouth and shouted, “Remember to pack up your blankets if you don’t have a tent, people! Keep your stuff together! Let’s go!”
They made their way down to the water in the dark. And it was dark, much darker than it had been up on the apex of the ridge, where the sullen red glow of the smoldering ship had been their nightlight. It was a lot steeper on this side as well, so they went slow. It seemed like hours before they actually reached the water’s edge and saw with their own eyes that the many tracks left in its muddy bank were all made by their own boots. Even after they spread out and searched, just exactly the way Scott had assured them they would not do, they found nothing.
“Well, we might see something in the morning,” Eric began as he and Dag slogged their groups over to join with Scott’s. He said something else after that—Amber could see his lips moving—but he made no sound.
All the sound was gone. Even, for that split-second, the wind. But that was all the warning she got. And then she was in the water.
She thought she’d been pushed—the name Everly Scott leapt to the top of a short list of suspects—and while that thought certainly brought out a lot of anger, outrage and confusion, it didn’t come with fear. She didn’t gasp or try to scream; she knew she was underwater, even as she was curiously unable to process that the water had lit up brilliantly orange and churned out of all visibility.
Then something struck her in the back of the thigh and she realized that she wasn’t the only one in the water. She arched instinctively, trying to surface, and instead bumped painfully into a rock. Her world spun; she was upside-down, absent all sense of gravity and perspective. She twisted clumsily and got her feet against the ground, knowing that the water couldn’t be very deep this close to shore, that she should be able to just stand up, but although her legs straightened out, she remained submerged.
It was then that several revelations came to Amber: the slight ache of her lungs as they began to make their first complaints for air, the orange murk that had been perfectly normal water just an instant ago, the shadowy figures of other people struggling in the pond around her—any one of whom might be Nicci—and over all things, the terrible roar that was not merely the sound of water in her ears after all, but something else, something bigger.
Something burning.
Underwater, she had no idea how deeply, Amber jumped. Her feet left the ground, but her reaching hands did not break into the air. She’d never learned to swim, never had the opportunity and never really felt the lack, but now here she was and she had the rest of her life to learn. Amber kicked upwards, directly into the path of a flailing arm that punched into her stomach. Bubbles spilled out of her mouth in a watery cry, but there was no new air to pull in. Panic flared, hot and tight inside her aching chest. She lost her last hold on calm and began to thrash, clawing at the water above her without any sense of rising, right up until her face broke out into the wind.
The hot, glowing, smoke-thick wind.
Amber gasped in new breath, but it burned in her lungs. Her second was mostly water. She sank briefly, came up fighting again and was driven under a third time by some screaming lady trying to use her as a float. She didn’t want to hurt whoever it was holding her down, but she was underwater, where restraint meant drowning. She broke free with several clumsy punches and grappled her way to the surface once more.
Only now did she see that she had not merely fallen into the lake, she had somehow been thrown in and thrown pretty damned far. She oriented herself to the shore through a screaming mass of splashing limbs, but managed only a few clumsy strokes before she stopped again and this time, turned around.
The light. The smoke. The roaring.
The ridge they had crossed over was burning. The flames blew sideways in the wind, flapping like party streamers, beautiful. The sky—the whole sky, as much as she could see in the treeless expanse of the hilly plains—was on fire. Heat blasted at her face, chapping her lips and searing at her eyes even as she choked on water.
Like the moment between standing on the shore and finding herself submerged, the next little space of time just seemed to melt away. Amber was not aware of swimming, but she must have done so because she had been ten meters or more out into the lake when she breached and at her next dim moment of awareness, she was only knee-deep and sloshing her way onto the bank. She grabbed the first duffel bag she saw and then two more before she found the one that was probably hers, but she didn’t let any of them go. Their weight and the wind made her stagger at every step, but she fell only once and landed with her face in some kind of rough, smelly hole. Pushing herself awkwardly up in the mud, she could see dozens of short, pipe-like openings all around her that she was pretty sure hadn’t been there before.
They were boots, she realized. Everyone’s boots, stuck in the mud. Her own boots included. They had all been blown out of their boots.
Her first steps were toward the ridge, but she made herself stop. There would be nothing left to see, not if the whole fucking sky was on fire. There would be nothing left to see and she knew it.
She knew it because there was nothing to hear beyond the ridge except the roaring of the fire. No screams. No cries for help. No coughing. Just the fire.
In the crowd, in the panic, she heard Nicci scream her name. Even when she could make out no other single sound, she heard that. Hearing it pushed all the rest of the world out of focus and into it at the same time. She turned her back on the burning sky and fought her way through the tangle of wet, panicked people, shoving them into the water or into the mud until she could catch at her baby sister’s arms and pull her protectively close, just as if her arms were some shield against the heat that had already dried her hair and her clothes and wouldn’t need more than a few minutes to boil away the water in the lake and burn the skin off all their bodies.
But she held Nicci anyway, bellowing into her ear that it was all right and she was there and to close her eyes and keep them closed. She knew it was all over, but she wasn’t scared. There wasn’t time. The same numbness that kept her from understanding how she’d gotten into the water or how she’d gotten out kept her nicely cloaked against the horror of being burnt alive. She could only hope it wouldn’t take long.
But the wind changed. Suddenly and forcefully, it blew back against the ridge, pushing both the heat and the smoke entirely away and replacing it with choking cold.
Amber staggered in the wake of this new wind, trying to clear her lungs of the sediment made by water, smoke and heat. She didn’t feel very successful and the effort left her throat, chest and, oddly, her eyes feeling scraped and bruised. Cold, clear air cut at her lungs, making her cough even harder.
“What happened?” Nicci’s hands dug painfully at her neck, but Amber didn’t push her off. If anything, she pulled her sister closer, so that Nicci’s next frantic shout rang out painfully right in her ear: “What happened? Oh God, what is this?”
“It’s the ship,” Amber croaked, even though she knew Nicci couldn’t hear her through her own panic just yet. There wasn’t much point in talking, but Amber said it all anyway, just to hear it out loud and know that it was real. The waiting was over; the worst had happened. “The ship blew up.”
BOOK II
MEORAQ
In the city of Xheoth, in the state of Yroq, in the world and the hour of Gann, a pillar of fire rose up in the east, reaching like a desperate hand to heaven. It was a cool night, but not a cold one, and rainless although the wind was strong over the city, and so there were many who saw this miraculous sight. Uyane Meoraq, Sword of Sheul and well-honored in His sight, was one of them.
He supposed that was a smallish sort of miracle in itself. He spent enough time under the open sky that, given his leisure, he preferred a closed hall for his evenin
g meditations. But the hall was engaged this night for the young initiates of Xi’Xheoth to take their oaths of ascension and so Meoraq took himself to the rooftop courtyard instead. He saw the fire that he might otherwise have never seen and therefore, there must have been some significance to the vision meant only for him. He meditated upon that as he watched it burn.
The sky had been filled with omens for many years, they said, but this was the first Meoraq himself had seen and he was a Sheulek—God’s Striding Foot—who had spent most of the past twelve years in the wildlands. And this, this was far more impressive a sign than the occasional glimpses of light or colors that some claimed to have seen behind the ever-present clouds. For hours, that blazing arm strained upwards and its many fingers grasped at salvation, but though it fell with each strong gust of wind, it always rose again.
Behind the low walls that separated the temple’s courtyard from those of the city’s ruling Houses, Meoraq could see smaller flames spark to life as braziers were lit, until it seemed all Xheoth had come out to see. As a man who often went many days without seeing another living man or hearing any dumaq voice but his own, sights such as these still had power over Meoraq. He admired the city as he admired the fire in the sky. Walls a quarter-span thick, now alive with lights, formed a perfect ring around the protected fields where cattlemen and farmers labored. In the daylight, from this same vantage, he would be able to see the lush colors of living crop against the dead wastes of the world outside the city walls. But at night, on this night, the fires of so many braziers seemed a wondrous proof of life, a miracle in itself, and as precious as any burning pillar Sheul had sent to be seen.
Meoraq bore it a reverent witness, keeping his own company as the rooftop over the temple-district filled with on-lookers. Although they kept a respectful distance, every backwards glance showed Meoraq more priestly robes: acolytes, monks, scribes, oracles and even the young candle-wards came to stare until it seemed there could not be a man left in the rooms beneath his feet.
Hours passed, each one marked by the tolling of bells throughout the city, not quite in sync with one another. It began to rain, dampening not only the fields below—the sweet, green smell of freshly-wetted manure billowed up at once and Meoraq breathed it in, still thinking of fields, of farms, of life—but the enthusiasm of many of those watching. Braziers all across the city roof began to gutter and die, breaking the perfection of the ring they had so briefly formed, but some stayed regardless of the discomfort. Meoraq was one of these. There would always be rain and he would always have days when he had to walk through it and nights when he had to sleep in it, but this fiery arm might never come again and he still had not determined its meaning.
As he meditated, one of the acolytes was jostled suddenly forward by the crowd, stumbling hard against Meoraq’s back. Meoraq spared his immediate bows and apologies a distracted grunt, but the damage was done. With a few shouts and clapped hands, the courtyard was cleared of all but the highest members of the priestly caste. The next man who drew near to speak apology was the abbot, whose name escaped Meoraq for the moment, but who seemed an amiable sort, for one of his caste.
They watched the fire together in comfortable silence. The rain and the wind both grew stronger, making the gesticulations of the flame wilder and more desperate even as it began to die down.
“It seems to be beckoning,” the abbot remarked.
Meoraq acknowledged him with a grunt, but his interest intensified. It did look like a beckoning arm now, less like the clutching one he had first imagined it to be.
“How far away would you say the fire burns?” asked the abbot.
It was a fair question. Meoraq was one of perhaps a hundred men in Xheoth this night who had ever been beyond the city’s walls. To speak in measurements of distance had only the most abstract meaning to most citizens, but this man had surely made pilgrimages in the past to be in a position of such authority now and so Meoraq considered the question fairly.
“The shadow of the Stepped Rise stands before it,” he said at last. “And is not illuminated by it. It could not be less than thirty spans.”
The other man grunted thoughtfully. “To see a flame at thirty spans…What city lies in that direction?”
“Tothax,” Meoraq replied at once. He knew every city that fell within his circuit well, and quite a few others that did not. Tothax, he knew better than most. He had received an urgent summons to that city half a year back, a summons not merely for a Sheulek but for Meoraq himself, and refusing to name the charges. This had so annoyed him that Meoraq deliberately made Tothax his last stop upon his circuit and he made certain the courts of Tothax knew it. Indeed, upon his arrival in Xheoth, he had found another summons waiting for him, even more tersely worded than the last. And if there was a reason why he had perhaps overstayed himself in this city many days after the last dispute had been heard and the last trial judged, there it stood. He was a Sword of Sheul, greatest of the warrior’s caste, a Sheulek. He took orders from his father and from God and no one else. He would move on in his own time, and he fully intended to make himself obnoxious in the House of whoever wanted him so damned badly right up until the last lick of autumn.
Ah, but then it would be home, home to Xeqor and House Uyane. Familiar faces. A bed more myth than reality. His father’s company in the evenings, and perhaps his brothers’ as well, if they were home from their own duties. Well…Salkith would be there; he was a governor’s guard and entitled to a room in their barracks, but he preferred to sleep at home where he could punish those who joked about his infamously slippery brain instead of force himself to laugh along. Nduman was a Sheulek with his own circuit and his visits were infrequent enough, but he was also keeping a low-born woman and several children in Vuluth, outside of conquest and without formal marriage, although he thought it a great secret. Thus far, their father had seemed strangely inclined to tolerate this, but Rasozul was lord of Uyane and steward of the bloodline and could not ignore the scandal forever. As for Meoraq himself, he was what he was: the eldest son of a legendary man, the heir to a glorious name and a proud House of Oracle Uyane’s own lineage, a servant in the favor of great Sheul, and a man who was perhaps not as humble as he’d ought to be. He was working on that.
“Tothax,” the abbot mused, bringing him roughly back to himself.
“If somewhat to the north.”
“So it is not Tothax that burns.”
“No.” Regrettably. “There is nothing there that should burn for so long.”
“Without moving,” agreed the abbot, tapping the back of one hand broodingly with his fingertips. “A plains-fire would move in this wind.”
“And swiftly die in this rain,” added Meoraq. His clothing was now plastered unpleasantly to his scales. “And no plains-fire would ever burn so tall.”
“Yet still it burns. And beckons.”
Meoraq grunted.
“It is a true sign of Sheul, then.”
“So it would seem.”
They watched. Another hour was tolled and the fire waved, feebly but still with some life, as it slipped lower and lower.
“He has set a mighty banner,” the abbot remarked. “But for whose eyes, I wonder?”
Meoraq flattened his spines. The elderly priest gazed benignly straight ahead and did not acknowledge his narrow glance.
“I should have journeyed on to Tothax many days ago,” Meoraq admitted at length.
The abbot bent his head at a polite angle, flexing his spines forward with interest. “Perhaps the message is meant for you.”
“Perhaps.” But now he felt certain it was. Meoraq had trained a lifetime to hear Sheul’s voice and feel His touch. Now he saw His waving arm. It would be a foolish thing to pretend he did not know what it meant.
Or what he had to do.
“I leave for Tothax immediately,” he said. And naturally, it was raining. “I require provisions for the journey.”
“Name them and be met, honored one,” said the abbo
t mildly. “Shall you take a bed until the morning?”
“No.” Meoraq turned away as the burning arm, its work done, finally slipped behind the horizon and returned the night to uninterrupted black. “Sheul has lit His lamp for me at this hour. I can only trust it is the hour He wishes me to follow. It would seem I have lingered too long already.”
“We shall pray for you,” said the abbot, bowing. The other priests remaining on the rooftop bowed as well. “Go in the sight of Sheul and serve Him well.”
* * *
Meoraq descended the stair and beckoned indiscriminately to the crowd of youths and low-born priests still clustered in the upper halls hoping for a glimpse of the miraculous fires. Several came forward at once. He took the first to reach him for his usher, made his few demands to the others, and allowed himself to be led back to the room he had been given for his own upon his first night’s arrival. He did not have many preparations to make, but it was the polite thing to give the temple’s provisioner time to arrange his supplies so that they would be at the temple gate when he did leave. Rushing out at once only to wait around where all could see him would only embarrass Xi’Xheoth and those who lived there. Meoraq knew he was not always as patient as he ought to be, but he tried not to be rude. Sometimes he tried.
The boy bowed in ahead of him and lit the lamp, then waited, his small head pressed to the floor and back stiff with pride at being made usher for so prestigious a guest. Meoraq dismissed him with a silent tap to the shoulder and, knowing that little eyes would be on him and little ears listening, kept his back to the door until he heard it shut and catch.
He was alone.
“Fuck,” said Meoraq, and gave the cupboard where he ought to be sleeping even now a solid kick. He hit the supporting framework rather than the lower door as he’d intended, so that instead of a resounding thump as his boot struck home, he damned near broke a toe. He swore again, limping over to the simple chair provided for his simple needs.