The Seekers of Fire

by Lynna Merrill

  The fair-haired girl had actually defied Bers and survived, which was not a small feat. Rianor had almost intervened in the end, which of course would have blown his cover, so all the better there had been no need. Now he was especially interested in how the girl had withstood spell attacks, and why the ice below the Ber man's feet had broken at the most critical moment.

  Rianor rubbed his eyes. He still could not believe it. And this was not all. After the rebellious girl had collapsed, the Ber lady had stood motionless and stricken for what seemed an eternity, her eyes cast down at the broken solid water, and at her fallen partner and the fallen girl. The Ber herself looked like a girl then and not like a mighty Ber; like someone way too young and perhaps way too scared. Then, she did not look scared any more. Suddenly her eyes flashed with an emotion that Rianor could not quite define, and suddenly everybody's bucket was full, including the girl's.

  Both Bers were gone as instantly and as stealthily as they had appeared.

  I need to contact the girl as soon as I can, Rianor thought. Her next encounter with Bers might not be so lucky if she went to fetch fire alone again. And he had better try to learn more about the Ber lady, for such fire mastery was unusual, at least at the wells. She looked oddly familiar, too, even though her hood hid most of her face and hair.

  Rianor abandoned his attempt to assume the confused expression of a commoner and allowed himself a wry smile. It was finally happening; the Bers had been out of the towers for too long now for Magic to remain as hidden as it had been. The endless waiting at cold and objectionable places had finally given Rianor a thread to follow.

  Still smiling, he approached the old woman whom he had heard talking to the girl earlier. He was quite certain that they were neighbors. The woman was struggling with the heavy bucket, so he reached over and tried to pull it from her hands. A second later he learned that old women could punch young men, and that it hurt.

  "My good madam," he said, his smile slightly wryer, "Would you let me carry your fire to your home for you?"

  Linden

  Day 77 of the Fourth Quarter, Year of the Master 705

  Four days after her dad's fever finally subsided, Linden ventured to go for a walk outside. Calia was already waiting for her, her cloak wide open to reveal a new silk dress. Calia smiled sweetly, and for a moment Linden's old woolen trousers urged her to throw something heavy at her friend.

  "What's with you, Lind dear? You look sour." Calia shivered as they crossed their hands, and Linden wondered whether it was the cold or the worry that, with Linden's sour face next to hers, people might not pay her enough attention. Linden decided to return the smile.

  "It is the cold, Cal." Linden drew the heavy cloak more tightly around herself and lowered her voice. "With Dad's sickness, we are almost out of fire earlier than normal. He is thinking of getting some today, but meanwhile the water at home almost froze."

  "Oh, Master! In your home!" Calia had the skill to squeal even with her voice hushed.

  "It is just ice, Cal!" Linden snapped, barely resisting the urge to raise her own voice, then slowly detached her fingers from where they had gripped her cloak. She should not display nervousness. Calia's exclamation certainly concerned lack of fire, and the common belief of ice bringing misfortune to a house. It had nothing to do with the ice of four days ago. Many neighbors would not come near "that chit that doesn't know her place," as if asserting your rights were a contagious disease, but they did not know about the ice. The ice was a most fortunate coincidence, and it had better stay like this.

  "Ice is dangerous, Lind! Mister Podd said so." Calia drew her own cloak tightly, the new dress temporarily forgotten. "Don't you remember? The Lost Ones used ice against the Master. Mister Podd said that although it was already raining fire, they made ice fall out of the sky!"

  She looked at Linden, beaming expectedly. Linden sighed. Cal was all too happy for once to point out what their teacher had said, since it was usually Linden who paid attention to his lessons. Had been, at least, until four days ago.

  "Cal, if you had read the Introduction to Science book when you had to, instead of going out with stupid males, you would know that there is no such thing as a rain of fire, and no one can make ice fall out of the sky." Linden herself had read all three Science books, even though only the first one was mandatory. "Ice falls only when—"

  Cal looked at her stubbornly. "Only three days ago Mister Podd said that it all happened."

  And you believed him, right? Linden pursed her lips before the words had a chance to escape them and closed her eyes for a second, to keep the thoughts in. A second was all she needed; she was getting better at it. Of course, Calia and all their classmates believed their teacher, although there were moments when the teachings contradicted each other. They were expected to believe everything, and any deviation was punished by the Mentor.

  Calia seemed to have just had a similar revelation.

  "If it is really written in the book, Linden dear, then fire cannot really rain." She laughed nervously. "And ice falls only when it wants, of course. But Mister Podd said that the Lost Ones controlled the ice, and the Master fought it, and fire rained, so—I know! It all happened before the Master gave us the Science book, but now that we have the book, it cannot happen any more!"

  Linden patted Calia's hand, then took it in hers and led her down the narrow street. She felt the girl's slight tremors and wanted to hit herself. She did not have the right to talk to her in this way. Calia tried hard to believe everything, but had already tasted the Mentor's whip when she had failed believing that thinking about the Master's glory was more important than reflecting upon the qualities of live young men.

  "Oh, ugliness!"

  Linden gave a sigh of relief. It was a typical Calia swear word, which meant that all thoughts concerning Science and scholarship, and even the Mentor, had left her head. Other, more urgent concerns had entered it, in this case regarding a high heel stuck between two cobblestones. She was hesitating between hiding behind Linden or revealing her trouble to the two young men who were passing them by. Linden was certain that it would be the young men and their potential help, so Calia clutching to her in tears and freeing her own shoe was a surprise.

  "What is it, Cal?"

  "Oh, Lind, I should spend more time with you in the next fourteen days," she sniffed. "I won't be seeing you that often after that, you know. I will be busy, and—"

  "It is all right. We will both be busy, but it cannot be that bad. We will be seeing each other."

  "You do not understand! We will be seeing each other only if and when my husband allows it!"

  "What!?"

  Suddenly Linden was not envious of Cal's new dress.

  "My family think that it will be best if I make someone want me now. You and I have seen some very suitable men looking for—for someone like me—so I shouldn't waste my time any more. Of course, I can't sign the contract with him before the Day of the Master, but he won't usually withdraw if he does tell us now that he is going to take me—"

  She was talking fast and stopped only to take a short breath, which did not give Linden time for more than a scowl.

  "Yes, I will become a concubine. Yes, I agreed. Because I don't want to go to the Factories or leave Mierber!"

  The Factories? Shivers crept up Linden's spine. Had it truly come to that?

  Unlike people from older generations, she and Cal had grown up without fearing Factories. The Factories had been mostly safe in the last fifty or so years. Most things that people used came from the Factories: clothes, tables and chairs, candles, dishes, buckets, stoves, toys, even canned food.

  The teachers said that in the Factories goods were made much faster and in much larger quantities than the Master Crafters of before could have ever achieved. Many of the people Linden knew worked in the Factories. They did the accounts, drove the heavy carts that delivered the goods to merchants, cared for the horses, or assembled almost-ready goods. However, these people worked outside
or in rooms near the Factories' entrances. They never saw how the parts for the goods were actually made. Only Bers and wretches went further inside, but according to hushed conversations behind closed doors, there was dark Magic weaved in the Inner Sanctums of Factories.

  "Oh, Cal." Linden was shivering constantly now, and not from the cold.

  "No one will choose me for anything else," Cal said in an unnaturally calm voice, and Linden clenched her fists, an odd feeling growing at the back of her mind. They were alone in the street now, the two young men having passed them by, and although she could see the small market at the next corner, right now it seemed far away. She blinked, but the feeling refused to go away. Poor Cal. She often acted like an airhead, but she was intelligent enough to become an assistant to a clerk, or a parts assembler. If her eighteenth anniversary had been last year, most probably she would have.

  For as long as Linden could remember, every year those eighteen-year-olds who were not nobility or slum wretches, and did not have a Noble House's protection as servants or others, were judged on the Day of the Master. On that day fairs were set throughout the city, and the Bers came out of the towers to decide, with the help of the Mentors, what would become of each of them.

  Before the fire failures, this had been one of the few times of the year when people saw Bers. It was a time of extreme emotions, of jubilant festivities mixed with inevitable fear. Most young people were deemed suitable to retain the same social status as their parents, or even to gain higher, and went into training for suitable professions. Yet, there were others, too, even though in the last decades they had been very rare, and Linden could see the fear in Cal's beautiful eyes. Those others were either deemed too dull for a profession, or the Mentors announced them to be people of constant conflicting thoughts. They were deprived of the privilege of a respected profession in Mierber and were sent to the villages to work in the Farms or Mines, or taken to the insides of the Factories or Mills. No one in their old environment ever saw them again.

  The unnaturally calm voice was gone. The girls sat on the edge of the street, and Cal cried openly. "I don't want to do it, Lind! I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to!"

  There were only two ways out for an eighteen-year-old girl who feared that she might be one of those people. The first one was almost impossible, for it required a Noble House's involvement. The second way was to find a husband with a profession who would claim her before she was judged, and enter an uneven union with him. She gained the title of concubine and became her husband's property, unlike the girls who trained for professions. Those were free Mierberian citizens, usually waited a few more years before they married, and their marriages provided equal rights for both partners.

  Calia's weeping voice gradually fell to a whisper, and she had enough sense to close her eyes as she put her lips closer to Linden's ear, to say what Linden already suspected. "I have to. There are talks at the Factory where Mom works. The Factory is deteriorating, they say. The Bers are angry and need more people inside, many more than before—"

  Linden hugged her silently and pressed tightly. Everything is all right, she wanted to say, but the words got stuck in her throat as Cal's silent tears dampened her shoulder. Nothing was all right when you thought that voluntarily surrendering the reins of your life to another was the least evil choice you could make. Nothing was all right when you agreed. And everything was wrong when you refused to kneel but happened to fall, and those kneeling beside you "accidentally" overturned a heavy bucket on your limbs so that you could not rise again.

  "You don't have to do anything!"

  Calia looked at her as if slapped, and Linden clenched her teeth, trying to control both the odd feeling at the back of her mind and her anger. After four days, she had decided that there was no point in being angry. Those at the well had just been afraid that her disobedience would reflect on them as well. There was nothing personal. She had been afraid herself, especially when she had finally lost control of her body. Yet, at that moment the water under the ice on which the Ber man stood had erupted. At that moment, too, Linden herself would not have had enough strength to stand back up, even without the impeding bucket.

  She was even more afraid now. Now, she had heard about the Factories and seen Cal make a choice that almost no one had made in generations.

  Things were worse than Linden had thought. People thought that the firepipe system was broken—but it was not just the system.

  The Magic itself was broken.

  Linden shivered, shifting her gaze away from Calia's tears. Ber Magic was broken, and yet ... The water had moved exactly as she had imagined, and even four days later, looking at the smallest liquid still made her dizzy. She tried to smile, stroking Calia's hair. No one knew. If they did, she would not be here.

  "Things will somehow turn out well, Cal. If you pray to the Master—" She stopped before she could add, "it will be useless." The old man did not listen, and Linden could not blame him. Perhaps it would help if people tried to think and act before resorting to prayers. And undoubtedly the Master would hear better if he existed ...

  Linden forced her eyes closed, sweat wetting her eyelids. Perhaps going for a walk had been a mistake. Even though the Bers rarely came back for those they had spared, the Mentors were around, and she was not in the best shape to keep her thoughts private.

  Then again, she was not in the best shape to be a self-imposed prisoner, either. Even if she were, there were still Confessions to be made, and even the smartest and most stable young people might not be safe on the Day of the Master. Sometimes, it was them the Bers sought.

  "I will pray for you too, Lind," Calia whispered as if in answer to her thoughts, then suddenly the girl's body shook with nervous tremors. If Linden did not do something fast, Cal was going to scream, and she could punch and bite hard during such moments, too, although it was "oh so unfeminine" otherwise. Linden jumped to her feet, pulling Cal's hand hard.

  "Stand up, Cal! Come on, move! We will freeze if we sit there a little longer!"

  It was true. The remains of Calia's tears had transformed into delicate ice spiderwebs on her face, and her hair was glistening with frost. It was like the hair of a misplaced winter lady from the fairytales that Linden, being a person older than ten, was discouraged to read.

  "I am frozen already." Calia huddled into her cloak, without obvious further intentions to move.

  As well as pouting and spoiled, waiting for me, or preferably someone male, to help you on your feet. Calia might after all do well as a concubine.

  Or perhaps not. It was Calia, not Linden's other acquaintances, some of whom had claimed to be her friends, who dared walk by Linden's side today. Linden pulled Cal's hand again, harder, feeling her friend's tremors even through their gloves. It was hard to pull. Cal's body was light enough, but Linden's was, too, and right now she lacked her normal strength.

  Linden closed her eyes. It would be easier if she did not look at Cal's tears, or at the water in the gutter on the edge of the street a few meters behind. Then, when the girl was up, Linden could rub her head and neck. Her healer dad had shown her the movements, and she had painstakingly searched his books for the explanation of why they worked. Rare as this were, there was an explanation. Most of the time Dad's books, like all books, only described what actions to perform; most of the time they, like all books, offered many "how-s" and few relevant "why-s."

  Massage worked because it increased blood flow and thus countered stress, hysterics, and even the feeling of cold—

  Linden's feet quivered. She had just imagined the exact workings of the blood-flow diagram she had drawn to complement the book. Blood could move exactly like water. And even Cal's mind—suddenly Linden knew that it might be possible to touch a mind with water.

  She was struggling to breathe now, and yet she would not stop thinking of this. A gasp. Another one. Faintness, her vision blurring—finally she might have tumbled into the gutter, if not for the unexpected strong hand gripping
her shoulder.

  "Suddenly feeling like dancing, Lind?" Calia's eyes were sparkling with both relief and mischief. The girl stood steadily on her feet, absentmindedly fingering her neck with her other hand.

  "Yes." Linden laughed, for the first time in four days. A tiny spark at the back of her mind urged that what she had just done warranted concern rather than merriment, but merriment it was.

  She could do Magic with her thoughts. She had done it twice in the last four days, and both times she had thought about Science and about how water moved. She had done Science despite the lack of tools. What did that mean? That Science was important, for certain, despite what people thought. That Science was indeed useful, not just a set of dry, stupid facts that children were forced to learn in school together with other dry, stupid facts, all of which they forgot at the first convenient moment. You did not use facts in real life. You cared not for the strange so-called laws of nature or rules of Mierenthia. You could not use them. Even if you were a Master Crafter, you could not. Perhaps even Mentors could not, for all Linden knew. What anyone could use was the rituals that the Bers made and gave, the rituals that Mentors taught children and their parents, or Master Crafters taught apprentices and helpers—the words to say, the motions to make, to make things happen. Safe words. Relatively safe motions. It had been a safe world—or so everyone used to say. The Bers made it safe, and the Mentors. They faced the unspeakable every day, so that other people could live in peace.

  But of course. As if she would believe something like this.

  Linden smiled to herself.

  There must be a way to investigate and discover the forbidden rules of Magic, as well as those rules of Science that the three tiny books did not give (she was certain there were many). It must be possible to use them all together, and do, make, something big and meaningful.

  To do Magic with Science, with the help of neither rites nor tools, by someone who was neither a Ber nor even a Mistress Crafter yet—it should not be possible.