The Seekers of Fire

by Lynna Merrill

  "Leave her and her father out of this," Rianor said quietly, "it is between you and me now." He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the steel had come back. "Where is the exit?"

  "Do you really expect me to let you go?"

  "I do." He stared at the well, his face almost blank, with the slightest trace of pain. "Because if you do not, you will always wonder what might have happened if you had. You hid from me, but I learned to see you. Who knows, one day I might learn how you can be free."

  "Ruler of Mierenthia, I have lived for too long to rely on a promise made by a human. Especially that of a High Ruler. Even I know that High Rulers are mad. You are."

  "Perhaps I am. You cannot know for certain—and, anyway, you do not know if it is my madness or my sanity that would work better for you. Perhaps only a mad human would free you, Byas." Rianor sighed. "I am not giving you a promise. Let us go, and I might forget you, and you might still rot here for eternity, a harnessed servant of the humans you hate so much. But I might decide to help you, too, and I might succeed. Your choice, Dimna. No promises, but you might gain a hope."

  Rianor sighed again, his voice slightly gentler and his face a little more pained when he spoke again.

  "I did not know. I am sorry. Despite everything, I am sorry for you."

  "I want none of your sympathy, human lord." She laughed, and it was like music, like the dejected song of a being who sometimes woke at night, if she ever slept, wondering if it were the world she resented more or herself. "Cunning creatures, humans. You wallow in your guile, but the day will come ..." She laughed again, quietly. "But I digress. What choice does my pitiful self have but to rely on you, who seem more cunning than the rest?"

  Water suddenly rose in the air and swirled, engulfing Linden and Rianor in white mist. Then the mist was gone, and a blue stairway of moving steps rose before them. A new step emerged from the stones on the ground every new second and gracefully floated up after the others, all of them seemingly connected in a common mechanism.

  Still weak, not quite realizing what was happening, Linden let Rianor lead her to the stairway and raise her on it, stepping beside her immediately after. Wretch the weakness, she could barely move.

  "What did you mean by her having had her share from you—" she started, but he hushed her again.

  "Not now, Linde. Just stay still now."

  "But—And Transgressor—And calling you mad—"

  Light and shadows span around Linden's eyes, and her body felt light and unreal. She was not sure if Rianor had not answered her questions, or if she had not heard his replies, as he gently drew her head to his shoulder. The only thing she heard before she drifted to sleep was, "It is all right, Linde, we are going home now."

  Chapter 3: Disquiet

  Dominick

  Morning 78 of the Fourth Quarter, Year of the Master 705

  The leaves were green and sprinkled with snow, glittering in the blazing sunlight. Mentor Dominick reached towards them before he could tell himself not to, and coldness burned his fingers despite the dry heat withering his lips.

  There were no seasons in this place unless they wished so. Neither were there true darkness and light. He should not blink, for the present illusory illumination would fade away quickly. Then there would be mists and twilight, and thunderous water falling out of great lakes—water that burned with wildfire, and wildfire that swam in the water and floated in the wind, in a world where mountains pulsed and trees sang.

  Dominick had seen this world before. It was not a world for a Mentor to be wandering in. "Run!" his body screamed, but what use was that when the ground could run with you? Besides, a Mentor never ran. Dominick gripped the whip's handle, its smoothness both scorching and freezing his hands.

  A faint scream echoed in the distance, as if a wretched quintessence's lament.

  The samodiva had not screamed when Dominick had tried to kill her. She had floated from between the apartment houses like an eerie shadow, her hair and clothes flapping around her body with no wind, her body whip-repellent, her throat soft and slender beneath his fingers. She had wounded him, then bewitched him here, where few could find their way out.

  But a Mentor could. A Mentor, who daily braved the foulness and decay of others' thoughts, could find his way out of here before it was too late. He should find it, for the sake of those who confessed to him—for those weak, wretched humans who needed him to shepherd and protect their quintessences.

  A way out of the shadows to which even Mentors' minds succumbed. Out, to the world of order and away from the Lost Ones' ethereal poison.

  "Master, guide my hand for what is good and right," Dominick whispered. Even though upon his words eldritch mist wrapped around his wrist, nailing it down with a great weight, he managed to raise the holy whip and hit the space before him.

  The Other World faded away.

  * * *

  Dominick opened his eyes to find his body on a stiff chair and his head on a cold metal table, in an almost bare room not unlike his own in the temple. Fading morning stars shone through the dusty window—normal, Mierberian stars, dimmed by the street lantern. Not hot masses of blazing matter that looked straight through him and into his mind and quintessence. Not aberrant stars, although their light cast eerie shadows over the two figures in the corner.

  One of the figures was kicking at the other one, which was smaller and grunted as its head met the wall and flakes of old paint sprinkled its body. Dominick winced, his own right thigh pulsing, the leg disobedient as he tried to push the chair back and rise. Slowly, he reached out and touched the leg, and his fingers became colored in crimson.

  The tall figure kicked again. "Confess your crime, scum!" it shouted in a woman's voice, and the small figure moaned.

  "I ain't dun nufink!" It was a boy's cry, Dominick could easily tell. A Mentor knew what specific nuances age and sex brought to a voice in pain. Children screamed differently from adults, women screamed differently from men.

  "I ain't—I haven't—I haven't done anything!"

  The woman laughed. "So you've caught on posh city talk, haven't you, little peasant. Pity you seem to forget it at times, it sounds so cute with your little accent. Now confess!"

  It felt wrong. Laughter meant pleasure, and pleasure was incompatible with punishment. A punishment was only necessitated by transgression, and if anyone, punisher or punished, was rewarded with pleasure during transgression's inevitable consequence, it meant a reward for the transgression itself.A Mentor who succumbed to that succumbed to the path of self-undoing.

  "Stop it." The words came low and coarse through Dominick's dry throat, but the others heard him. The woman turned towards him, light from the room's single candle flashing in her eyes and on the insignia on her shoulders. Militia. What on Mierenthia did the secular law enforcers want with him? Dominick blinked, his drowsiness suddenly dissipating, the traces of nightmares fading to be replaced by the night events' vivid sharpness.

  Maxim! Despite his numb leg, Dominick jumped, and saw the Militia woman raise a crossbow towards him.

  "I am sorry, Father. You shall remain where you are."

  She was perhaps forty or fifty years old, wrinkles marring her skin, shadows surrounding eyes that perhaps saw too many night shifts. At twenty, Dominick could have been a son to her, were he not a Mentor. As it were, however, he had responsibility for the quintessences of worthless creatures of her kind; for guiding their lives and taking their petty sins and concerns upon himself, for suffering in their stead. And she had the audacity to point a weapon at him.

  He stepped towards her, the complaints of his leg suppressed deep down inside where they would not interfere. Pain could be a nuisance. It certainly was for the piteous brat in the corner, who was bent halfway, trembling. Village boy. The full-bottomed breeches on his body and the pig-hide tsarvuli on his feet were as out of place in Mierber as Dominick was in this tiny local Militia station, with a crossbow thrust at his face. They brought memories, too.
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  With one flip of the whip, Dominick snatched the crossbow out of the woman's hands, "It is easy to fight those weaker than yourself, isn't it, Militia officer. But it has a drawback. It never makes you any less weak than you know you are.Or less of an aberrant torturer. You shall come with me, after you have told me where Mentor Maxim is."

  She hit him in the stomach, and he felt his body fall. He was unwell; he had already been wounded tonight. By a samodiva and a man he had not seen well. A samodiva. In his city. A samodiva and now a village boy, probably from Balkaene Province as per his clothes, in the same night. It was almost too much. Dominick blinked to chase the vertigo away while the Militia woman aimed her retrieved crossbow again, her hands shaking.

  "You are under arrest" she snapped so fast that the words almost blended together, "charged with attempted murder. Because of your condition you will be seen by the healer when he is done with tending to your victim, then you will be put into custody to await a court gathering and the righteous judgement of blessed Ment—" She stumbled, her learned speech interrupted by an overdue realization. A Mentor could not be judged by other Mentors. If she arrested him, she would have to surrender him to the Bers and answer their questions.

  Her face now terrified, she glanced at the boy. Dominick was meanwhile fighting the combined effects of physical weakness and sudden mental relief. Maxim was alive.

  "Father—"

  So he was "Father" again, even though she considered him a murderer. Even though it was her duty to prevent and protect, to constantly cleanse the city from the criminal scum that threatened its citizens' peace and prosperity. They were supposed to work together, Mentors and Militia: Mentors to sentinel people's minds and quintessences and protect them from themselves, and Militia to guard them against others. Militia chased assailants, vandals, or thieves, and Mentors judged them. Were the situation a bit different, it would have been her task to give him a murderer. Unless the criminal was a Mentor or a noble, of course, for then only Bers would be able to judge rightly.

  "Father, please, you can go. I am sorry for my momentary lapse of judgement. You cannot be a murderer, of course. This boy there, he found you and the other Father in the street, unconscious. A knife matching your sheath was in the other Father's body. These peasants, they come here uninvited, to only disrupt our city. How could he? Attacking, using your own knife to try to kill a Mentor. This is our city! They should all go back where they came from."

  Interesting why you are so righteously certain that Mierber belongs to you rather than to those who have made an effort to deserve it. Or if you know where your own ancestors came from.

  It was not the boy who had attacked Dominick and stabbed Maxim. The boy was probably harmless, some younger son of pitiful parents who had more sons than they could count, if they could count at all, a brat whose only luck in life was that he was not born a wretch. A ragamuffin seeking his own fortune in the big city. He could find it—Dominick should know. If the Master willed it, merit could sometimes overshadow birth.

  Dominick watched the woman's fingers tremble on her almost lowered crossbow. Funny how all bent and lost self-control when faced with a Mentor's silent stare.

  "Officer, your behavior demonstrates purposeful aberration. First, you torture an arrestee even though Militia have no right to impose punishment, then you offer to release another arrestee for your own perceived benefit, upon your own judgement. You have no right to judgement, either. We will await the healer, who shall then summon a Ber."

  It was an uncommon situation. Had she not arrested him and thus stripped him of his Mentor's duties and his citizen's right to walk away from the Militia station, he would have had to confine and interrogate her. But Militia did not usually arrest Mentors, and Mentors did not usually punish Militioners.

  She shot. The bolt pierced Dominick's arm as he leaped aside. Perfect, now he had a lame arm in addition to a lame leg. Something was broken; he could feel the pulsing of the detector inside his hand. He was bleeding hard, too. The world rotated before Dominick's eyes, but there was no time to be weak—she would not be armed with the crossbow only. He jumped again, grabbing the crooked chair he had awakened in, throwing it in her direction. The whip was gone, probably dropped when she had shot him. The woman fell as the chair collided with her knees, but she rolled in just the right way to still aim at him from the ground. He was not going to make it. She was too far for him to reach before she threw a dagger, and there was nothing to protect him; nothing but the table, which was too far ...

  The woman screamed just as Dominick made an effort to jump towards her, the dagger that should have hit him colliding with the ceiling. The village boy was hanging from her arm, pummeling her weapon hand with a fist-sized stone. The brat had just saved his life. Swiftly, Dominick punched the woman's temple at the same time that her other hand bloodied the boy's nose. Then he hauled her unconscious body towards the table, using his belt to tie her hands to the metal legs.

  Funny that she had not tied him before. Probably she'd had plans. It was too perilous to arrest a Mentor, but how about a hapless boy instead? Since it had not worked, she would have killed Dominick and probably accused the boy. Or maybe she would have killed the boy, too, and run away, for otherwise the Mentors judging the case would look straight into her dark quintessence and know.

  Or, would they? For the first time Dominick wondered why Mentors did not usually apprehend Militia.

  It did not feel right. Mentors were supposed to be just. Militioners were, after all, common humans. Dominick could not see how being permitted and able to handle a crossbow should be enough to lower someone's potential for becoming a reprobate. Or, a treacherous thought brushed his mind, how a detector in someone's hand could be enough for that same purpose. Doubt. It was another path to a Mentor's undoing. Nigel or Oliver would probably not be thinking so much in his place; they would be waiting for the Bers' decisions. Presently he held no responsibility even for this particular woman's quintessence, let alone those of all Militia. Or of Mentors.

  Maxim would understand. Maxim had been there for Dominick since that time long ago when Dominick had first come to Mierber. Maxim understood doubt—and questions.

  Now a samodiva had hurt him, and she would pay dearly.

  Dominick blinked the blurriness away from his eyes once again, retrieved his whip and limped towards the boy. The boy was sitting on the floor, his hands squeezing his stone, his eyes clouded as if looking far, far away.

  "Here." Dominick pulled a handkerchief from his robe's pocket. "Wipe your nose."

  He then tore the sleeve from his numb arm and wound it tightly below the shoulder to stop the bleeding, then treated similarly his leg. All the while, the boy was staring at the clean cotton handkerchief as if it were precious. Well, for the likes of him, it was. Dominick remembered. The brat even looked like he himself had some eight years ago, down to the pale eyes and the tangled, dirty blonde hair. Dominick tore another piece of sleeve.

  "Here, wipe your nose with this and keep the handkerchief. And may I see that stone of yours?"

  The boy extended his hand, gingerly, and Dominick took the stone with caution. He currently had no right to demand someone else's possession, even if this possession seemed to call to him, its inaudible voice tickling the inside of his mind.

  But he had not demanded; he had asked. The stone was warm and smooth in his hand. Then the warmth spread through his veins and caressed him from the inside, whispering to him, lulling him away.

  The leaves were green and sprinkled with snow, glittering in the blazing sunlight. Then the harshness of light and heat and cold was gone, and a pleasant breeze tugged at his hair and clothes, as well as at the grass on the green hill where he stood alone. Bright flowers spotted the meadow down below, while behind him Balkaene, the Olde Mountain, loomed. The air tinkled with the tunes of a shepherd's pipe.

  When the stone slipped from Dominick's fingers, in the small Militia station of a normal Mierberian neighborhood,
his bleeding had stopped. Slowly, he took a deep breath while the boy bent to retrieve his stone.

  It was just a stone. Probably just a peasant boy's piece of homeland, like those that many peasants brought with them, for Dominick could not detect any aberrant thoughts in the boy himself. Pride, he detected. And worry. Fresh worry, as well as a distant worry deep down inside, related to someone or something far away. But not aberration. Damn the Balkaene stone. Damn the samodiva. This world, the Bessove world, did not exist. Could not exist. Not in reality. Dominick took another deep breath.

  "Did the Militia officer say you were under arrest?"

  The boy could go free if she had not, although he probably did not know it. Civil rights education did not have priority in Balkaene villages. The education needed for toiling in the land did.

  The boy looked into Dominick's eyes now, and the young Mentor was surprised at how sharp the gaze meeting his had suddenly become. Perhaps the boy did know his rights. Perhaps he would try to lie to Dominick now, although no one, ever, had succeeded, even before Dominick had become a Mentor. Oh, just let the brat try it.

  "She did say so, m'lord. I am under arrest."

  "I am not a lord." I am currently not a Mentor, either.

  The boy stared harder. "She did say so, sir." He had almost no accent and used perfect grammar, although Dominick could tell he still needed a little time to think about the right words. A smart one with the potential to learn—if the Bers let him, if what he had was just a regular stone. The boy had said nothing more, but Dominick could hear the unsaid words. "I saved your life, and I didn't lie to you, so why aren't you letting me go?" Even though he was wounded, Dominick was still stronger than a little boy. The boy could not leave without his permission. Dominick gripped the whip's handle a little more tightly than necessary, fighting a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with wounds.

  "Because if I did, I would be no different from the torturing reprobate over there who trampled rules, honor, and integrity in the name of perceived personal benefit. If I broke the rules meant to preserve Mierenthia's order and let you go because you saved my life, or because you reminded me of myself, how could Mierenthia rely on me to maintain and protect order later? How could I rely on myself? No. I can't do it. And I am not letting myself go, either."