The Seekers of Fire

by Lynna Merrill

  "Your bandages. I ... I can try to fix them if you want—" She reached out to him, but his hand was on her mouth before she could finish the words. He flattened himself to the tunnel's wall, pulling her with him.

  "Someone is coming," he whispered in her ear, as she fought to breathe, her heart suddenly racing. "Don't move, Linde."

  Linden bit her lower lip, trying to not tremble. Darkness enveloped them. It was not like the darkness of night, when shadows danced both in the streets and in weak minds, and people tried to stay behind bolted doors. Night's darkness had street lights, sleep candles, and moons. Night's darkness, though feared and condemned by Mierberians and those who supposedly watched over their quintessences, still had light in it.

  This darkness did not. What had resembled ink before, now looked and felt like a wall made of nothing. It seemed to be shrinking; it brought the tons of stone, dirt, and the whole city above closer to her, way too close. Linden's hands clutched the lord's arm of their own accord, while she struggled to regain control of her thinking. At least the Passage was silent now; at least neither she nor the lord presently felt the urge to chase the stones to whatever doom lay in the Passage's deeps. At least nothing was tinkering with their minds, luring them astray. Perhaps it was not the darkness itself that they had to fear, but only what lived in it. Perhaps the darkness itself was no more perilous than the Master was real, for Linden only knew about both from Mentors, teachers, and books.

  Darkness might even be good, in a way. If fairytales held any truth, she who dwelt in the deeps had no love for darkness—and she was evil. Darkness might keep her away.

  "There is someone who lives down there," Linden's dad had said, "and you should not disturb her. You must believe me, though there is no time to explain. She is a samodiva, one of the Bessove, and she can heal people when no one else can. She can kill, too."

  At those words, Linden had sensed fear in Dad's voice, and the lord had looked at him in a certain way that had made Dad look away.

  "She is what gives Commanders our power," Dad softly said then. "We need her. She should not touch you if you stay on the path, heed no songs, and do not follow rolling stones."

  Now, in the Passage, Linden was trembling from fears that she had so far held at bay—and yet, irrationally, she feared the darkness more. But she and the lord still had the fire, albeit concealed, so was it really dark when you knew that there was light but could not see it?

  She realized she had said the last sentence aloud when the lord whispered, "Depends on whether it is light or darkness that you truly want."

  Linden did not have time to dwell on his words, for just then someone else's light floated in from a side tunnel. Yet another mobile candle, carried by a woman who walked bent and slowly, tripping at stones and careless of the clatter she was causing. Her cloak was drawn tightly around her, a low hood concealing her features. A stench of sweat and cheap alcohol drifted towards Linden and lord Rianor as she passed them by. Something else reached them, too, a hint of a sound on the edge of perception, a whiff of a melody and inexplicable grief. Linden trembled again and felt the lord's arms tighten around her shoulders, his own body rigid and still.

  The woman halted beside one of the doors that concealed stairs winding up to the higher level of the Passage, which was tangent to but never actually crossed the city sewers. She reached forward with her left hand.

  "In the name of Him who watches this abject world, open!" she screamed in a voice much younger than her walking manner had implied, and soon the door withdrew inside the wall. A clock-like ticking sound overwhelmed the passage. The woman jerked her hand back and stood motionless before the threshold, as if she hesitated whether to cross it. Then, slowly, she turned back as the last faint echoes of ticking ebbed and the distant woeful melody heightened. Pale candlelight glowed on red, tear-brimmed eyes that only this spring had been blue and shiny. Greasy locks of once lustrous raven hair fell over a pallid and swollen face.

  Oh, Katrina. Linden would have run to her, had Katrina not suddenly grabbed a stone and blindly hurled it forward, reaching for a second one as the first bounced from a wall before her. "Singing, Dimna?" The voice was shrill and unstable, nothing like the gentle and sweet voice of the friend who had once been like an older sister to Linden.

  "I will find a way to destroy you, Dimna. You can't hide from me always, you wretched, perfidious monster! Give my baby back!"

  Katrina stumbled through the portal just before the door clicked into its original position, and for a few moments of darkness and quiet Linden thought it had all been a nightmare. Then the monster's heartwrenching song was back, as was lord Rianor's candle. For a second he and Linden regarded each other in silence, before she had to look away, her vision suspiciously blurred.

  "I knew her. She was my best friend. She left Mierber to recover after she lost her newborn baby."

  "I am sorry." He retrieved a handkerchief from his coat's pocket and handed it to her. There were words embroidered on it, as well as a crest, but they blurred before she dabbed her eyes with it. Lord Rianor looked at the now sealed portal, then took Linden's hand and led her in the opposite direction. His words seemed to blend with the song, which sounded clearer as they neared a side passage.

  "So the Commanders did not save someone she loved."

  Linden met his eyes again and glimpsed a hint of an emotion, but it disappeared immediately. She wished her own feelings were hidden equally well.

  "She did not, herself. She was the best healer, even better than Dad, but she could not do anything. Or so I knew." She trembled again, and he squeezed her hand almost imperceptibly. She squeezed back, wondering if it was normal for his touch to make her feel so much better. She also wondered if the steadily growing desire to close her eyes, cover her ears, and not think of anything any more was a sign of immaturity or of going mad.

  "Believe it or not," she said after some time, "until tonight all I knew about Commanders was that they could heal people when no one else could. I thought "Commander" to be just a fancy title for those with more intelligence and skill than others. Indeed, I only knew the information you can find in books. And I thought that a samodiva was an invented forest creature from fairytales, not someone confined in a passage below Mierber, who somehow does the healers' job for them. Somehow!" Linden stifled a sudden urge to laugh. "What a convenient word! Don't people just love their convenient words! Do you know how exactly she does that? I want to know. I am so tired of being either cajoled or threatened into ignorance, be it for the sake of my safety or for someone's convenience, or for the supposed cleanliness of my quintessence! I want to know how the wretched healing—and everything else—works!"

  "Besides, I want to know if she kills babies," she whispered at the same moment when the lord said, "So we both want the same things."

  This was the last reply Linden had expected. Speechless, she stared at the young man. They had now halted at the crossing with the side tunnel, but this time no stones were falling, and the song seemed to be pushing away rather than luring. Young men usually laughed at her or ignored her in the rare cases she presented them with unorthodox opinions. Not such dangerous opinions, at that. He smiled and reached to remove a lock of hair from her cheek.

  "You are an intriguing apprentice, Linde. Well, we are at a crossing—but you do realize that this might be a dangerous and foolhardy venture, don't you? We were warned to stay on the path if we were to stay safe. Any sensible person in my place would take you straight to Qynnsent."

  "We were warned to stay on the path if all we wanted was to pass through here safe—and ignorant. Safe, even if ignorant, is what Dad wants, I am sure. The question is what we want." She smiled back at him. "I am sure you will take me to Qynnsent later, my lord."

  He held her hand again, stepping into the side passage. "All right then. Continue to be careful with the stones and speak quietly. We do not want to announce our presence earlier than necessary, and we might decide to stay unobserved after
all." He pointed at a pile of gravel at her feet, the candle in his hand spawning weird shadows. "And you may just call me Rianor if you want."

  Linden hesitated, then leaned closer to him so that she would pass the pile safely. "I will do that—Rianor. Titles like 'my lord' do not necessarily make me comfortable."

  He smiled again, teasingly. "Is that so—my lady?"

  She opened her mouth to reply just when the scream came, and for a long strange moment her mind thought that it was her who had cried out. Her body knew better. The mind immersed itself in the shrill desperate sound that came from their right, but the body sensed the danger and tried to leap away from it.

  Rianor jumped just when she did. Later, she did not remember who of them landed first on the loose stones, or even if the stones had been loose before that. What she remembered was the ground giving away under her feet, and the realization that they had been walking on a raised level of ground. There was still a slight chance for Rianor to not fall with her, so she tried to push him back, but he locked her hands with his own. Then something hit her shoulders, forcing the air out of her lungs. In a moment her head was under the young lord's arm, and his body was entwined with hers, shielding her from most of the subsequent hits, as they rolled down the dark slope with the stones.

  Linden

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

  Linden dared open her eyes only when she was certain that she had lain still for some minutes. She lay flat on her stomach, her legs unnaturally twisted, sharp stones poking at her flesh. Patches of light and darkness were swirling madly around her head, but faded a little as she dragged herself into a crawling position. Muscles that she knew about only because of her unusual interest in Science introduced themselves now by acute jabs of pain. Linden tried to touch them, but her hands would not obey her immediately. She was probably bleeding, too, but there was not enough light to see. The light! It was some meters away from her, twinkling faintly next to what looked like a hand. Rianor!

  Her hands obeyed her now, and so did her knees. Linden crawled to him and held the light to his face. His eyes were closed, and his skin was ominously pale. He did not appear to be breathing. She took hold of his shoulders and shook.

  "Wake up—" She had meant to shout, but all that her dry tongue would set for was a whisper. She lifted his head off the stones and there was the feeling of something wet on her hands, which the tiny light revealed to be red.

  "My lord, wake up ... My lord ... Rianor ... Rianor!"

  Her shout did not seem to have any effect, and in the next few seconds Linden was overwhelmed by dread, which gave way to wild happiness when her hand felt the weak pulse at his throat. Now stop screaming immediately. Think. She had a flask of water with her. It would help if she wet his face and made him drink. And some of the medicine for the bandages, here ...

  She gently put his head back on the stones, then removed her cloak and made a pillow out of it. Then she scrabbled through her pockets and felt shards of broken glass bite her hand. So much for the medicine. The flask of water was of the more expensive unbreakable glass, though—even her dad did not dare store water in something brittle.

  But it was not on her body any more. Find it. Find it now.

  She strained her hands and feet and stood up. She stumbled back to where she had awakened, hoping that the small candle would give enough light for her to see if the flask was there. And if it would not ... She wanted to cry, but she must not. Linden gritted her teeth, and as a result something in her jaw gave her its share of a Science lesson, while her fuzzy mind decided that if she was going to ever pray, now was a good time.

  "Master, please let him live."

  Someone replied to her. The voice carried an almost imperceptible tinge of a tune, and when it reached her ears it detonated in a myriad of small tinkles.

  No Master would hear her, the voice sang. Neither Master nor anyone else of them who had defiled the world could help her now, it chimed. If she wanted to kindle life in her young lord, she should seek the well and the one who dwelt in it.

  "What do you mean?" Linden whispered, impressed with the obedience of her lips. "Who—Where are you?"

  "As if I would tell you, my poor lost little girl. What a nice place for a rendezvous you and your young man have chosen."

  It was a beautiful voice, like the ripples of running water and the melody of a gentle wind rustling through trees—until it laughed derisively and Linden shivered with the echo of a howling wind imprisoned in an empty room.

  "So, little girl, where is the Initiator? You and that lord of yours alone, it is a new trap, isn't it?" The woman laughed again. "Oh, but you can see me without the Aid, I can feel it. So who are you, maybe the new Initiator? Your people are changing them too often these days. I almost miss Katrina."

  She is playing games with me, a small part of Linden whispered. It was the part fighting her anger, while the rest of her was unwaveringly scanning the shadows for the flask. She is testing my feelings, interfering with my concentration, like in the fairytales, where they make you lose your way in the forest, until you are at their mercy.

  "By any chance, my dear girl, is this what you are looking for?"

  A faint light flickered straight ahead and then glowed stronger, until Linden could see the contours of a well and a woman sitting on the stony edge. Azure waves of long hair framed the woman's slender body over a flowing, almost transparent dress of bright whiteness. The dress rustled as the woman placed one leg over the other. Linden thought what a wonderful dress it was, and how subtly the fabric played with the light and twisted to accent just the right curves on the woman's body ...

  Linden blinked. She did not have time to think about dresses. The woman laughed again, as if at Linden's very thought. The woman's body and her pale face did not seem older than Linden's, but then their eyes met and Linden stared into a violet abyss that held the sentience—and resentment and fury—of centuries.

  Which did not matter right now. What mattered was that one of the samodiva's exquisite hands held the flask. She laughed one more time, then slowly raised her hand and let the flask go. The splash came from far away. Everything seemed far away and blurry, and Linden slowly shut her eyes—jolting them open immediately after. They were blurred with nothing else but the effects of a head injury and tears of rage! She would not fall mindlessly asleep, like fools in fairytales did when willed so by a Byas creature. She was in control of her own mind!

  And this was not a fairytale. This was real.

  "Give it back," Linden whispered, and if words were corporeal, hers would have been cold, sharp-edged, and lethal. "Now."

  "You all seem to want something back, don't you. Or hold something tightly. Or someone. How awfully drab. I am sorry, but your water is gone, and you will not give the Water of Life from my well to your man, either. Unless you can prove that you are the Initiator, of course, but I do believe that you are not even a healer." The samodiva twisted her mouth into what might have been a smile. "You have lied to me, and liars are punished."

  "I never told you anything about myself, you made assumptions," Linden whispered, just as the samodiva's voice rose into a shrill alien song. At that same moment, Linden reached the well and leaped towards her.

  The sound was overwhelming. Multiple tones rang inside Linden, some of them soft and caressing, others disruptive and sharp. Her knees trembled and she swayed, grasping the stone edge of the well to hold herself straight. It was slippery, and her hands glided on it until she bent sharply forward to balance her weight. Her head hit something, and the music wobbled inside it, jerking her pain awake. White mist engulfed her, and it was only a very fuzzy sense that told her she had hit a waterbucket. Her eyes closed of their own accord, and her body leaned further, stroked by the mist.

  There is no mist here, and I am not going to faint just because this creature's voice is different from the voices of other creatures. This is all nothing but wretched music.

  Linden
opened her eyes just in time to snap her head back and avoid the swinging bucket. She felt weak. Unnaturally weak, debilitated beyond the obvious weakness caused by her injuries. She felt almost the same she had felt right after the Ber had attacked her. The bucket swung again, but this time she found the strength to grab it and thrust it down into the well. Now, where was the switch to make the bucket come back? Normal waterwells had those; you pressed the switch, you said your water rites, and then waited ...

  This well had a drum and a handle, and somehow Linden knew that water rites would not work. They still mostly worked, outside, unlike the fire rites, which failed so often even at the wells. The waterpipes inside homes did not work—but, unlike firewells, waterwells existed even in normal neighborhoods, and people still could use them without needing Bers.

  They could not have used the well here. Instead of a switch, it had a pulley mechanism, taken as if from the Science books. Linden would have wondered at that if she had the time for it. But she did not have time—and she was only too glad that she knew what a pulley was.

  She clutched the well's drum handle and rotated. Water. Rianor needed water to live.

  Water. It was blue and green and transparent and breathing, and outside in the world it flowed and warbled and kissed and shaped lives and landscapes. "My Water of Life," the samodiva had called it.

  But it is not hers. It is mine.

  This time it was the well that attacked her. The handle wriggled itself away from her grasp, wood cracking as the drum aimed at her neck, a rumbling sound rising from the deeps to encase her. Wood, and not metal, both the drum and the handle. The well was alive. Perhaps in some aspects the samodiva still controlled it, but it also had life and will of its own. It shivered as she thrust her dagger at the joint between the drum and the handle.

  "Don't you dare delay me further. Don't you dare harm Rianor more! Begone! Begone where you came from, foul creatures!"