Calling Up the Fire

by Lori Martin

  His tactic today had gained Nichos some time, but it wasn’t a rescue. So long as the Defiers believed this play of their cards to be their last chance, Nichos was in danger. Baili knew, too, that the Lindahnes had nearly given up. Once he had heard a tattered Lindahne here on the streets of the city say, “When the royals return.” It was said as a proverb: it meant a long-for but impossible blessing.

  As a child he had been caught up, almost accidentally, by the goddess, and he had never forgotten the power and purpose in that divine grasp. After all these years he felt the grip again. Yes, it was time.

  He walked away from the daily business, the documents and scrolls that no longer mattered, and would probably never matter again. He walked away and went to find Pillyn. It was time to talk.

  Paither couldn’t bear the crush of the House’s supper hall, nor the smells from the heavy tray the servant brought to his room. His mother and Baili had avoided dining with him, giving vague excuses. Now, he knew, they were closeted together. Was it some news of his father? Couldn’t they share it with him? Why was Baili – again – standing in a place that should be his?

  It’s time she realized, he thought. It’s time for her to see that I am a man.

  He lifted the lace napkin on the tray and examined the supper with distaste. A river of brown-red gravy over pink flesh... The hair across his arms lifted in a violent shiver. His fingers went cold and numb.

  A river of blood and pink flesh. Pulsing. ... blood... pushing... pushing...

  “By the gods,” he said out loud. A spasm of fear went through him. Uncertain dark images formed and fled through his mind, while his shivering continued. Nialia’s touch? But it had never made him feel so – so ill.

  “Paither. Paither?”

  His mother was in the room. The door was closed. How long had she been standing there?

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  She looked small and young, her fair hair loose down the front of her robe, her hands clasped timidly before her. “Are you all right? You don’t look well.”

  He picked up the plate with deliberation and moved past her into the adjoining apartments, where he tossed it on to a side table. He came back to her; for a few moments they stared in mutual incomprehension. Then he turned his eyes on the room, searching, and suddenly he began to gather things up. Nichos’s cloak. Three forgotten toys of Calli’s. A half empty glass of wine, a glass Baili had used: everything that was not of himself. He flung each object outside, without ceremony, letting them crash, and slammed the door on them.

  Pillyn hadn’t moved; she watched him. He moved along, pulling the draperies across the windows, shutting out what was only the half-light of dusk, closing the westward door that led to her own apartments. As he lit the night candles, one by one, Pillyn knew he had closed her in. He had trapped her in the moment she had always feared.

  “How did you know?” she whispered.

  He faced her, mouth dragged down by the damaged muscles, shoulders squared for a burden. “Tell me,” he said. “Whatever it is, tell me.”

  There had been too many echoes in his mind, too much confusion in his heart: why could he make no sense of his life? The fear shivered through him again, and he almost shrank back, almost believed that he did not want to know. He held to the only thing of which he was sure. He cried out, “Mother!”

  She heard his child’s voice, gone these past years; she heard even the reminder of the boy’s high quaver. “No,” she whispered. The little boy had sometimes asked, “Do you love me?” Yes and yes and yes. “I am not your mother.” He strained forward at her. Her voice was too low. “I love you with all my heart and goddess-given soul, but you are not of my flesh. I am not your mother. You are not my son.”

  Nothing changed on his face. She waited a moment. Nothing moved, not a muscle worked. “You are not my son,” she tried again, “but we are kin. Blood kin.”

  He heard this as a factual statement, connected to the physical world, not an impossibility of moving earth. The scar seemed to grey while the rest of his face drained of blood. He turned his head and regarded the far wall in shadows, the dark tapestries, the cracked basin on the night table, the footstool with its faded cushion. She felt the shock when his eyes traveled up to her face.

  “If that is true, then tell me who I am.”

  “You’re asking for more than you realize,” she said, finding a smile, which died quickly. She sat on the bed and patted the coverlet beside her, inviting him, but he was unmoved. Her hands groped to the sash of her robe and played with it, twisting it in and out of a knot. To her fingers she said, “You’re my brother’s son.”

  “Your brother. Your brother? Not –”

  “Not Temhas, no, no. Of course not. My brother Rendell. He died before you were born.”

  He rocked a little on one heel. Warily, he moved towards her and sat on the very edge of the bed, poised to flit away. “So you raised me. But couldn’t you have told me?”

  “Paither, there’s more to it than that.”

  “You should have told me, not raised me like this, on lies. Father’s

  – Father’s – oh Nialia. He’s not my father. He’s not my father. He’s not even my kin?”

  “Please, Paither, listen to me –”

  “Rendell,” he repeated. That mythical figure of his childhood, his mother’s dead heroic brother (and why had he been heroic? Why had he died?) was now to be his father. He stared at her. “Then you’re my aunt,” he said. He looked as if he had never seen her before. Perhaps, she thought, he had not. “What happened to him? He must have been young. Did he fall ill?”

  “No.”

  “And you took me in? You took the place of my mother and –” Finally he had reached it. The widened eyes took on a frightened look. “My mother. My mother, where is she? What happened to her?”

  “She’s dead, my dearest. She died when you were two moons old.”

  “Who was she?”

  Pillyn took both his hands in hers; by sheer force she pulled him closer. “Be calm,” she told him quietly. “Listen. Your mother’s name was Dalleena. Dalleena-relas. She was the only child of the last royal couple of free Lindahne, the daughter of Queen Ayenna and King Raynii. Dalleena-relas was the successor to the Chair, and if – if there hadn’t been the War – if they hadn’t – they –” she almost broke, and caught herself. “Your name is Paither, given to you by your mother, and I never let Nichos change it. But your true name is Paither Lista relas, son of Dalleena-relas and of Rendell Armasii. Do you understand?”

  He made no answer. She waited, while long moments went by. She could see the wax dripping down from the candle beside them, crying velvet tears that grew hard and cold. His fingers, held between her own, stirred; a tremor went through his hands. But he had gone somewhere inside himself.

  Had some part of him known, somehow? she wondered. Was this a relief, the truth coming finally as a gift of release – or had she crushed him with a dreadful burden? “You have to tell him now,” Baili had insisted. “Everything will depend on him. Including Nichos’s life.”

  She felt a deep calling, which was the urge to pray. But her heart did not reach for the goddess. Instead she thought, Rendell, help me. Help me, I loved you. Help your son, who never knew you.

  His chest rose. Finally he would speak. “Nialian and Armasii,” he said. She thought his voice was too level, his looks too calm. “That was the relas’s great crime: she loved an Armasii priest. She broke the oldest law of the Mother. The Book of the Gods says a union between a Nialian woman and an Armasii man would result in – a demon. A mortal creature who knows the past and present as an Armasii, and the future too, as a Nialian. A mortal creature with immortal knowledge: a madman. A madman.”

  “Paither –”

  “She broke the oldest law of the Mother and conceived a forbidden child. She was exiled by the king and his council, forever banished from Lindahne.” He paused. “That’s our history as I know it. Is it true?”

/>   “Yes,” she answered, “but –”

  “Your brother, then, was the evil man who brought her to such a crime?”

  “Evil!” For a half-breath she was furious. “You don’t understand.”

  “And I – I am the result? This is where I came from, this is who I am? A living sin against Nialia?”

  He shot up suddenly from the bed and began to pace around it, swirling back and forth, a blur that passed from one side of her to the other. “I see. I understand. Of course you hid me – an abomination – too kind to tell me – to put me in such shame –”

  She flung herself to the end of the bed just as he reached it and grabbed at his sash to hold him. “No, no! Listen to me!” On her knees on the bed sheets, with her small hands digging into his shoulder, her breath burned on his cheeks. “Dalleena-relas was the most gifted Nialian priestess of her generation. She was devout. She said you were the will of the goddess, that Nialia commanded her to have Rendell’s child. And Rendell, my brother, my brother, was a good and courageous man, he – he gave his life –” She gasped for air. “Don’t you understand? Can’t you see what I’m telling you? Paither, you’re the heir our people have looked for! You are the rightful relas of Lindahne.”

  “The queen –”

  “She’s not the blood heir. You are. You’re the grandson of King Raynii, son of King Reenis and Queen Leita. You’re the blood descendant of the royal line.”

  He gave a smothered sound almost of fright. Their frantic eyes searched each other.

  “Why didn’t you ever – how did I – Mother – How can you not be my –?” He strangled on his questions. He drew in two long, deep breaths. He felt the world had crumbled into ash beneath the hot fire of the truth, and vanished into smoke.

  She drew him down. They sat close together, but he was stiff to her touch; she withdrew her embrace and began to speak. For Paither it was a rebirth, a hard frightening passage from the close safety of the dark to the beckoning void. She told the story as she knew it, from Rendell’s first meeting with a woman on a Hill, and his shock of feeling. The goddess had brought them together, over the warnings of her own divine prophecy, and had sustained their swift profound love under a cloud of deceit and against all betrayal. And there had been great betrayal...

  Paither lifted astonished eyes: here was the answer to the riddle of his bitter uncle. But Temhas no longer seemed important.

  Pillyn’s tears welled up in earnest. It was soon known the relas was with child, a child conceived against the prophetic warning; she and Rendell were branded criminals. Then the relas fell ill; Rendell had taken the only way he knew to save her. “You see,” she whispered. “You see the man he really was. After that, even with the stain of his crime on him, his name was spoken of with honor.”

  “And my mother?”

  They both paused at the word. Pillyn continued, with a tale of hard living and a hard birth; Dalleena-relas had brought two children into the world.

  His eyes swiveled sideways at her. She could see the thought cross his mind, that perhaps she was simply mad, and the whole tale a delusion.

  “You were born of Nialia’s will,” she said “Dalleena said your life had a purpose and we believed – I do believe – that you were given to our people, so that someday Lindahne could be restored to its sovereignty. To freedom.”

  “But how could –”

  “I know, no other mortal woman has given life to two children at one birth in our history. But Dalleena was like the Mother, giving life to the Twain. Do you remember the story in the Book of the Gods? ‘Two is the immortal number.’ That was the answer to the prophecy.”

  “And the girl? You’re telling me I have a sister. Where is she?”

  “Gone. Murdered. We never found her body, poor little infant. I could never give her the proper rites.” This had gnawed at her. “I only had you left to me. You see, don’t you, why I hid you away? Why we raised you in silence? You’re the last of them all, a Lindahne royal. Nichos and I were afraid for your life. You’re the greatest enemy Mendale has. They’ll kill you if they ever know of you. But as our child you were safe, just a halfer. But I couldn’t,” she stumbled, “I couldn’t raise you to think of yourself as a Mendale. I couldn’t hide you from the gods.”

  Two of the candles were flickering, burning down to the end. With final weariness she said, “I have your ring, and some of Dalleena’s papers.”

  “Ring?” he echoed vaguely.

  “The relasii ring. It was your mother’s.” From a hidden pocket she produced a frayed and faded roll of blue silk. She unrolled it carefully, and placed a flash of gold into his palm.

  The pink jewel, carved in the shape of the royal relasii flower, glittered up at him. He knew it, though he had never seen it before in life or in stone; the relasii flower would not grow in Mendale soil. The jewel sparkled with brilliance, flashing with the candlelight, glowing pink and rose and red. An inscription ran along the inside, but in the half-darkness he couldn’t read the elaborate script.

  “‘Forever past,’” she quoted for him. “‘Forever to come.’ The motto of Lindahne.”

  “Please go,” he said, in the tone of a stranger.

  She told herself that he didn’t mean to be brutal. Her hands fluttered. At the door she said, “I have loved you as my own. More than my own.”

  When she had gone he pushed the ring up to his knuckle, but it was too small; it was a woman’s ring. How had it been remade each time, how many generations had passed it on?

  He carried a candle to the mirror above his washbasin and placed it carefully beside the glass. He fumbled at his sleeve. After all, then, it wasn’t another scar, not a remembrance of destruction but a sign ...

  His exposed shoulder was very white, and the mark stood out clearly. A blue seal: blue for the royals. Sealed by Nialia. A sign of his long-ago joining to the lost sister who should have shared his fate.

  He stood motionless by the mirror. Slowly the remaining room candles died away. The one beside the mirror spurted smoke and was finished; he could no longer see the mark, except in his mind. The deep darkness closed in around him. He stood and stayed, still staring, waiting for the light to reveal him, like a monument or statue, as if the dawn would break in the glass before his eyes.

  Chapter 12

  Renasi, Mejalna’s brotherly friend, didn’t like the headquarters camp. He gazed with irritation at rocky, sloping ground, which led up to a cluster of sickly trees. Samalas had particularly liked this spot, as he thought the tree barrier gave them excellent protection from Mendale eyes; no doubt it did; but Renasi had grown up on the Fifth Hill by the Sea, and he longed for sharp clean air to breathe.

  He was standing near the “edge,” the point at which the hidden sentries, watching against intruders, took up their vigil. Behind him men and women were hard at work, pitching tents and building a few new shackhouses to accommodate the arrivals from the disbanded spearhead camp. With his wounded shoulder still bandaged tight, Renasi had nothing to do.

  A distinctive tread came up behind him. Without turning Renasi said, “I thought all of Mendale was flat, one long spread of earth without relief. But this is almost a little hill.”

  “The vantage point is convenient,” Samalas answered. “Is she very overdue?”

  “Who? What?”

  “Mejalna,” Samalas said. “You’re waiting for her.”

  “What if I am?” he demanded belligerently.

  “If you’re waiting here, it’s because you’re worried, so she must be overdue.”

  “By the gods, the things you know and notice... yes. She’s not just late. She went out to the Bread Bakers Guild again.”

  “I know. She’s supposed to be bringing back more news, if there is any. But I didn’t give her a deadline on returning.”

  “She told me she’d be back by yesterday.”

  “Oh, I see. Maybe she’s heard something.”

  “Maybe she’s in trouble.”

  “If she is
, standing here won’t be of any use to her.” Renasi’s spine stiffened, then relaxed into defeat. “I know.”

  “They’ve been very clever, you know,” Samalas went on, in an abrupt shift of topic characteristic of his conversation. A listener had to follow behind, snatching up words, until understanding came. “But I wonder if they haven’t been too clever even for themselves? It seems a deadlock. I hadn’t looked for this outcome... Success, yes, someday by Nialia! Perhaps a defeat today. But not a draw.”

  Renasi, bewildered, hazarded, “The Assembly?”

  “They’ve refused to negotiate.” Samalas counted out a finger. “They refuse to exchange the queen for the Third Tribune.” He raised another finger. “Yet they’ve decided not to execute her, we’ve accomplished that much. What options, then, are we left with?”

  “There are those,” Renasi said carefully, “who think we should kill the Tribune and be done with him.”

  “Yes. And then of course we’ve solved this legal problem of theirs, whatever it is, that the Assembly claims to have. My understanding is that the Tribune’s death would leave his office unfilled, and then they’d be free to take their ridiculous vote. To murder the queen.”

  “I didn’t know that... Well, that’s obviously not what we –”

  “But let’s say we admit defeat in the matter of the abduction and return the Tribune to them. Then they’ll be free to take a vote, with Nichos there.”

  “Tribune Nichos may vote to spare her.”

  “He’d still be outnumbered. Do you see? Let him live or let him die, we lose. And the longer we keep him with us, the more at risk we are.”

  With his good hand Renasi rubbed anxiously at his chest, as if patting his heart. “Samalas. What are we going to do?”

  The leader of the Defiers counted off his remaining fingers in silence, then drew them in to form a hard fist. In his coldest voice he answered, “I’m going to see to it that the godless Mendales don’t defeat us again. That’s Mejalna now.”