Born of Flame

by Oscar Steven Senn

  “Where are you bound?” he asked as they finally reached him.

  “Into the Keece Preserve area,” Spacebread responded.

  The Yesturian’s deep eyes glanced at her. “Then you’ll not be taking that side arm. We need no wars started with the Keece. Leave it here. The sword’s all right.”

  Spacebread and Gorsook gloomily gave up their weapons.

  “What’s in the box?” the official pointed.

  Spacebread kept her arm around the heavy cryo-box she had wrapped in her undercape. “A patient. We seek the healing powers of the blue fountain.”

  The Yesturian grunted. “Another one. Very well.”

  The scanning machines moved over them scrupulously, and they were allowed to pass with few more questions.

  The narrow streets of Yestupah muted the scorching wind somewhat, but they were nearly deserted and windows were shuttered. The three struggled against the blast, moving in the direction the customs official had pointed, and at last found themselves in a wide square fringed with hundreds of booths and kiosks, most of them shut tight against the gale.

  Spacebread steered them to one booth that was open, its awning flapping wildly, and pounded loudly on the counter. No answer from the black shadows within. Cursing, she drew her sword and cracked its hilt down savagely. At that a voice squealed and a small, ancient Yesturian hobbled out of the rear.

  “What is it, what is it!” He stopped and blinked at them, then laughed heartily. “I should have known! Aliens. Who else would be abroad during the Whurdoon?”

  “Where can I find a guide to the Keece territory?” Spacebread shouted angrily.

  The old Yesturian pointed across the square. “There. Old Geppu will guide you. He is half Keece and knows the place. He will ask for twelve. Pay him six.”

  Spacebread flipped him a coin and fought her way across the square. To her surprise, a mound of sand beside a booth blinked at her and extended a bowl.

  “Alms, kind stranger, for an old outcast?” a wheedling voice cried.

  She dropped one of Niral’s Plembite certificates in the bowl, and a stone to hold it. “There are twelve more of those if you can guide us to the blue fountain of the Keece.”

  Geppu danced out of the drift, discarding his bowl. “Ah. Yes, yes. You come to right fella now. Geppu know all Keece Preserve, take you to famous blue fountain in only two day.” He spoke as he held the note against the light, searching for signs of counterfeit.

  “Very well,” Spacebread shouted, then caught herself and finished in a normal voice. “Where can we rent a vehicle?”

  The wind faltered and died, leaving an eerie, sudden silence in its place. They glanced around nervously as shop windows were flung open again, awnings unfurled, and the square began filling with customers.

  Geppu giggled at their puzzlement. “Whurdoon over. Lasts same time every day. Come, we get bubble car this way.”

  Geppu cleared a way for them by waving his tattered robe like a scarecrow and gibbering Yesturian oaths. He cackled as the merchants and customers parted. The bubble car rental was in a large stone building with a beaded curtain fringing its front. Inside were a half dozen battered air cars and a grinning Yesturian who wore the smooth pastel suit of the interplanetary salesman.

  “Yes, madam,” he said eagerly. “May I interest you in a luxury transport? This model here will allow you to see the sights without awkward craning and leaning.”

  Geppu squawked at him angrily and slapped the hood of an ancient model with sandblasted dome. The salesman’s grin faded, and he barked back something in Yesturian. Geppu gestured wildly, as if he were being robbed. He made a counter offer. The salesman groaned and pretended to pound the flat of his head.

  Finally Geppu came to Spacebread smiling. “Geppu get bubble car for trip for only four yestis. Salesman try to cheat.”

  “Great,” Spacebread muttered. “Here. There should be enough there for you to get us provisions for the trip. You’ll know how much to get. Keep the change for yourself.”

  While the old beggar hobbled off, Spacebread carefully slid the cryo-box under the front seat of the bubble car. They stood in the shade of a wall, but only had to wait a few minutes before Geppu returned, loaded with supplies. He stowed them in the car’s rear compartment, then they all piled in. Spacebread drove, with Geppu beside her on the front seat. The car lifted out of the open air garage and hovered just over the rooftops and minarets of Yestupah.

  “That way,” Geppu pointed. “We go short way.”

  Spacebread carefully plied the controls, for they were unfamiliar, and headed between two climbing towers. In a few minutes they were outside Yestupah, and only yellow sand and red rocks filled the view.

  Geppu babbled, pointing out tiny caravans of sand crawlers below and describing ancient battles, offering to show them hidden ruins for only a few more certificates. He assured them treasures could be found and wonders seen.

  “Yes. All this once Keece land, Keece villages. Only Keece for million years. Then Yesturians come, push ‘em back, back. Much fighting. Too much. Yesturians get sick of trying kill little Keece. Them too mean. Fight too good. Finally Yesturians make treaty, let Keece stay on Preserve. Strangers like to see stone where treaty signed? Not cost much.”

  “Why don’t you just shut up and tell me where to turn,” Spacebread snapped, losing patience.

  Geppu flinched, as though expecting a cuff, then sat back and wrapped his filthy robe around him. He eyed Spacebread accusingly. “You no have to yell. You fellas no chummier than others, huh?”

  Niral started. “What others?”

  “Others like you. Aliens. Many legs. Come two days ago, look for you, ask plenty questions. Geppu see white cat, many-legged one, small figgy? They pay in fresh water, too, but Geppu know nothing. Not know you come. Too bad. Geppu could’ve been wet for long time.”

  The companions eyed each other grimly, silently realizing that they had missed a confrontation with Quan only by days.

  “He’s getting worried,” Spacebread said.

  “He must find me and get me back into the Korlann before his Abdication.” Niral sighed. “It is very near.”

  They were interrupted by a Preserve Ranger car, which swung into the air beside them and warned them to set down. Spacebread paid the entry fee and another small bundle to prevent the inconvenience of a body search. Then the Rangers waved them on toward the invisible boundaries of the Preserve.

  Once back in the air, Spacebread wriggled out of the straps that seemed to hold her cape on, and her Foldover bag tumbled onto the seat. She snaked one hand in, and in a moment it returned bearing a pistol.

  “In case any more drones are about,” she commented.

  Gorsook guffawed. “How the Green did you get that through customs?”

  “The bag,” she indicated. “Its field protects it from most snooping waves.”

  Niral leaned back and watched the ground flashing by below. He wondered, trembling, if he could smell drones in such a blistering heat. Then he remembered: fear is the ground from which valor grows.

  They traveled for hours over the boring dunes, turning at hidden landmarks to Geppu’s shrill bidding. Before long Yesturian’s sun had dipped behind horizon haze, and the world turned red. The colors shifted and ran together like pools of blood until Spacebread could guide the ship by Geppu’s word alone. All the world below was hot illusion.

  Another hour and darkness came in a purple wave across the sand. As suddenly as the Whurdoon wind, all was black.

  The landing lights picked out a smooth area with an outcropping of red rocks protecting from the wind. Geppu whisked the provisions from the trunk and soon had a roaring coal fire blazing beneath a pot of tea. There were biscuits to eat, and some sort of dried meat and ropy vegetables. These especially Geppu enjoyed. After knawing at hers for some time, Spacebread delighted him by tossing it his way.

  “Mmmm. Garbix. Geppu not eaten garbix in long, long time. Good.”

  Gor
sook shuddered, sympathizing with the plant.

  It did not occur to Spacebread then how rare plant stuffs, indeed all growing things, must be on this dry world. Her mind dwelt on other matters. She did not want to consider this Klimmit’s last chance for life, but it was all she could think of. The gritty black wind, which was now biting cold, seemed to embody all her doubts. How could healing come from such a barren place?

  “Do you think Quan left any men here to wait for us?” Niral asked, shattering Spacebread’s mood.

  “I doubt it. It was most likely a patrol. I’m sure Quan is searching for likely places we would take the figlet for healing.” She eyed the surrounding rocks. “Tell me, Geppu, are we near the Keece?”

  Geppu giggled around his garbix, showing his square yellow teeth. “Sure, maybe. They got many caves Geppu don’t know about. Could be one near here.”

  Spacebread got up and warily retrieved the cryo-box from beneath the car seat. It was still wrapped in her undercape to protect the mechanism from the Whurdoon. She placed it on the sand before her and unwrapped it. The firelight flickered off its polished wood inlays, danced off the clock in its side. The deadly numbers seemed to be the only thing she could look at.

  “Ooooh. Pretty thing.” Geppu’s eyes sparkled and he scuttled across the sand to gaze at it. One yellow finger reached out to stroke it, but he thought better of the move when he caught sight of Gorsook’s glare.

  “It’s the reason we came to this forsaken planet,” Spacebread mused idly, eyes wide. “I don’t want to risk some Keece sneaking up in the night and thinking it’s a ‘pretty thing’ too. Gorsook, will you take the first watch?”

  “If I might borrow your pistol, lady,” he answered.

  There was little other talk. The wind’s sighing and moaning through their rock shelter seemed to render conversation a rude interruption. It lulled them, one by one, to sleep.

  Gorsook alone patrolled, restlessly hovering at the edge of the rocks to peer into the wind, or humming vigilantly around their perimeter as if it were a village on Kesterole. He located the water container toward the end of his watch and dashed some over his surface, for he was drying dangerously in this climate.

  He awakened Spacebread at the proper time. She shook the chill sleep from her head and took over the pistol and the watch. A cluster of stars burned brightly overhead, through a high haze, but they did not interest her, for they were of the Home Worlds and their features well known. No unknown planets circled those stars, and somehow such places bored her.

  She leaned against the bubble car, humming softly to herself to pass the time, though she did not realize what tune it was. It was her old nursery song, the song of the fabled Flame. It seemed to lead her eyes to the campfire, where bright shapes shifted and melted and leaped like the details of her early life. Her mother seemed to sing along with her, though it was only the wind. She sat in the sand to ease her back, and it was in this position that sleep came for her without her even knowing.

  Dreams filled the darkness. Dreams of a distant kittenhood when the world was secure for her. Her mother took her to the river and told her stories of old Osghan, how the Flame would come and give them peace some day and end their poverty. Then, suddenly, she was alone at the river. A gaunt face with twisting tusks was rising from the swirling waters. It had frightened mother off and it had a box in its four hands with someone inside. And it was laughing, laughing …

  She was awakened, her shoulder shaken by a worried Niral. She blinked at him dully, blinded by the dawn.

  “Woe, milady,” he said. “Geppu is gone. He has taken our precious coffer.”

  [11]

  The Blue Fountain

  SPACEBREAD controlled her fury well until she discovered that the bubble car had been sabotaged. The filter coils were gone, and she had nothing in her Foldover bag that could substitute. She beat the side of the car with her fist until Gorsook subdued her. Then her shoulders sagged as the now familiar feeling of defeat washed through her. All too familiar of late. Her heart ached for Klimmit, and she feared the purpose for which crazy old plant starved Geppu had stolen him.

  “Hargh! I’m as black in mood as you,” Gorsook growled. “But it will do no good to bemoan us or attack the rocks. We have to think clearly.”

  “The Korlann teaches us to look beneath the appearance of things,” Niral said quietly, “to the constant reality that supports us.”

  Spacebread’s eyes flashed. “Yes, well your precious sayings haven’t done you much good this far, have they? I’m the one who went to sleep on watch, and I’ll set it right. That’s my reality.”

  Geppu had left them provisions, at least. All the garbix was gone, but there was other food. He had taken water with him, but Gorsook had kept most of it with him during the night. It would last them several days.

  “A wise move,” Spacebread commented, wishing she had made a wise move lately. “I propose we go forward with what supplies we have.”

  “Forward?” Niral looked across the sand to distant gnarled rocks. “But can’t we find a Ranger from the direction we came?”

  “The Rangers have no interest in what happens in here, as long as visitors pay to get in,” Spacebread said bitterly. “We go ahead.”

  “Aye,” Gorsook agreed. “It is for Klimmit we came here. Let’s get the magic water and then find him.”

  Niral fell in obediently behind them, wondering silently at the strength within both his companions. He hooded his bare head with his Korliss robe and tried to meditate as they walked.

  Yesturian’s sun grew bigger and hotter as it climbed into the sky, throwing long purple shadows ahead of them across the dunes. When the pools of purple were directly under them, at noon, they reached the far rocks and rested for a bit. Beyond was a broad baked plateau, its bricklike surface cracked into arid lacework. After a sip of water they made better time on this, since there was no sand to fight the feet. Spacebread also pulled her cape over her head for protection as the heat grew unbearable. But it was Uncle Gorsook who suffered the most in his clear helmet. Spacebread found an old decorative parasol in her bag for him so that he could carry his own shade with him.

  Night found them midway across the plateau, with no protection against the sweeping wind coming down from the mountains. Cold gnawed at them now, even as they gnawed at heated biscuits and meat, and the campfire was repeatedly blown out. The cold kept them all awake for the watches, the cold and the snuffling of some unknown creatures beyond their circle of light. Whenever Spacebread shined a light at them, they seemed to disappear into the cracks in the earth. In the morning more meat was gone than they had eaten.

  By noon they had crossed the plateau, and the twisting, grotesque foothills they entered gave them some shade. There were signs of life here, alien scratchings in sandstone boulders; Keece signposts they supposed. And occasionally a fragment of pottery or a discarded implement. But they could find no cave openings or structures of any kind, only the climbing tortuous sandstone that led them higher.

  Spacebread’s panting hid Gorsook’s whisper as they entered a new ravine. “Do not look, lady, but I think small eyes are watching us from that high rock to the left.”

  Spacebread waited a minute, then spun only to catch a suspicion of movement behind the rock. Three more times that afternoon this happened, until they were frantic to see the Keece. But each time one of the small yellow creatures was spotted, it seemed to melt into the stone, and their shouts of greeting echoed heedlessly.

  They camped in a nook between shoulders of rock, and the cold and wind were lessened. This time the one on watch held the stores of food and water, as well as the gun, and there was no less. But they could feel the Keece all around them, curious, silent, invisible in their home of rocks.

  Relentlessly the sun came looking for them, pushing them on their way though they were near exhaustion and short of water. Now they were high into the hills. Great sculptured cliffs rose on all sides, shaped by the wind into bizarre forms, but
painted by the Keece with moist, colored sand until the whole seemed a living castle. Stairs aided natural ramps, and climbing holes adorned sheer surfaces to show their way.

  Atop a high rock Niral collapsed. His breath chattered through his glackules, “I can go no further. It is better if you leave me. My sin has caught up with me at last.”

  “Nonsense,” Spacebread wheezed. She knelt and splashed a little water into Niral’s mouths, then turned to look at the next step in their journey, squinting. “It is time to cut this game short. And I think I know how. Gorsook, here, take my gun. If anything happens to me, continue. Find Klimmit and restore him for me.”

  “What are you going to do?” Gorsook gasped. He followed Spacebread’s gaze to the top of a near mesa. “Those clay figures? But we’ve seen them everywhere since we came into these hills. I told you, I went up and checked some. Just a few jars and feathers. Some kind of ritual.”

  Spacebread stood and wrapped her cape tightly around her face. “That’s right. A ritual. But why so high and out of the way? I think I may know a way to get the Keece to come to us. Watch.”

  She walked around the rock until she located what she had suspected she would find. Handholds, hidden by sand. She slid her Thorian sword between her teeth and climbed against the wind, reaching the top after an exhausting battle.

  Niral, somewhat revived, leaned up on elbow. “What is she doing?”

  Gorsook squinted. “I don’t know. Mysterious cat doesn’t confide in … why, what’s she doing that for?”

  One by one the thin statues shattered under her sword. Then she danced about as though stamping and kicking, but the swift wind carried none of the sounds. She seemed to move in silence. Suddenly figures appeared behind her, moving ones. As they closed in on her, she lashed out one last time with her boot, and a jar rattled over the edge of the mesa and crashed near her companions. Feathers blew away from the debris quickly, revealing the grim contents.