Calling Up the Fire

by Lori Martin

  As soon as Scayna arrived back in MenDas, travel-stained and white with fatigue, she was hustled into Tribune Haol’s offices. The Second Tribune was absent, and she had not been seen by any other Assembly members. Haol wanted her to himself.

  She gave her report in a dry, husky voice, wishing the Tribune would offer her wine or water. He didn’t even bother to invite her to sit.

  She knew something of import lay behind this “relas” word, and Haol, ignorant himself, wasn’t long in finding out what it was. He sent for one of his men, someone who had spent years in Lindahne and had studied the foreigners’ ways.

  “It means the royal heir,” the man said readily. “The relas is the man or woman next in line for the Chair.”

  “Ah,” Haol said, sounding relieved. “This queen of theirs would be more important than such a person, then.”

  “Your pardon, Tribune, but no. Not really. The present queen is not a blood royal. A relas has to be of royal blood, to continue the line.”

  “Do you mean,” Haol said sharply, “a relas could begin a new dynasty?”

  The man nodded. “When the royals return.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir. It’s nothing. Just a saying they have.” Haol cursed and dismissed him. Scayna swayed on her feet.

  The First Tribune fired questions at her. She didn’t know where Tribune Nichos was now? She hadn’t seen his wife at the camp? She had seen this relas person? Had she spoken with him?

  “No,” she faltered. She couldn’t bring herself to tell this man of their encounter – certainly not of her terrible fire vision.

  “What did he look like?”

  This she could answer readily. During the nomination of Tribune Nichos for Third Tribune, she had been posted in the balcony, and she had only glimpsed Paither from far above and behind. She didn’t know who she was describing now to Haol. When she mentioned the scar, she couldn’t understand the throbbing red flush that suddenly spread over Haol’s face.

  “By the roaring, screaming, thundering wind,” he spluttered. “He’s been in the Assembly all these years – and a traitor to us, a miserable, lin-loving... and I’ll be held to blame for him. Me!”

  “Sir?”

  “Who else have you told?” he roared at her. “Who else knows about this?”

  “No one, Tribune, I’ve reported only to you.”

  Haol retreated into silence and sat brooding. Startled out of her weariness, she eyed him. He was trying to make some kind of decision, and the outcome looked certain to affect her. It was almost as if she were being blamed for something. Not this time, she thought fiercely, and had a bitter and comic vision of herself trapped in the Tribune’s claws, a field mouse in defiance of a great looming cat. His next words astonished her. “I’m taking you out of your Band.”

  “Tribune? But I –”

  “You’ve served so well, I’d like to take you into my personal service. I’ll arrange it with your commander.”

  “Yes, sir.” Since this was supposed to be an honor, she forced herself to add, “Thank you.”

  “I’ll see you’re housed properly in the Assemblage. We’ll discuss your duties later. For now, you are not to speak with anyone who knows you, or to discuss what you’ve learned. Not with your chilhi, not with your archer companions, not with your family, no one. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, Tribune.”

  “I’ll have something for you to do tomorrow. Good day.”

  The next morning the army returned, bearing the dead of both sides. Scayna found out what her first task in the Tribune’s employ was to be soon after.

  A large open-air yard behind the Hall of Merits was turned over to the grisly show. The Hall workers, rushing to clear the space of its normal seats and benches, complained bitterly over the dubious honor. Never mind, the disgusted soldiers answered. You’ve been spared the worst of it.

  The lin corpses had to be laid flat, face up and uncovered, in neat rows for inspection. “Neat’ll never be the word for this,” one soldier snorted. “How long do they think this can go on?”

  Scayna stopped before the gates and looked back at Haol’s guard, who shrugged his shoulders. The stink was penetrating, even out here on the street. The hecor ointment’s preservative power was wearing off. A white cleancloak, borrowed from a washroom servant, was belted over her army uniform. She lifted a cuff of the wide sleeve over her nose and mouth. They entered.

  She halted just within the door. The guard bumped into her. Every single one of them, the Tribune had ordered. Search every face. He’d neglected to mention how many there were.

  She set off in a determined walk down the first row. At least the soldiers had obeyed their orders; it was easy to scan a face, scan a face, scan a face and move on; she didn’t even have to glance at the women. She didn’t need to see the white-grey bloated flesh, the staring eyes, the matted clotted blood covered with buzzing insects...

  She took two shallow breaths through her mouth and turned to the next row. The guard was muttering behind her. “Couldn’t have dragged me if I had had a choice, but people actually came here this morning to see this on purpose,” he said.

  She risked a sound. “Mmmm.” Her eyes jerked back to a blond head, paused, and moved on.

  (Can’t you feel who I am?)

  “Heard some of them threw stones. At the dead, if you please.” In his indignation he had breathed in too deeply. He gagged.

  Eventually they were done. She shuddered away, with a particular relief she did not recognize in herself. “I guess he escaped,” she said. “He isn’t here.” Tribune Haol would be disappointed. The guard escorted her back to her hidden room.

  She was housed in a backroom of the House, down a long cold corridor. It had no window, and she suspected it had once been a pantry. She wondered if Haol’s precautions were to protect her or himself. Did he think someone would try to harm her? Let them try. It would be a welcome change, to have a real and physical opponent to fight. Her darks were a more difficult enemy.

  When she closed her eyes she saw the young man’s face, wideeyed and vivid. She knew her vision had been a knowledge of him: a memory of his own, of his near-death in childhood in a fire. She had felt the agony of the wound that had caused his scar. She wondered again, fearfully, if he had received any knowledge of her.

  Nichos and Pillyn arrived safely at the estate, and found not only Temhas and their daughter Calli there but Baili as well. “Good,” Nichos said. “You’d not be welcome at the Assemblage anymore.”

  Unknown to any of them, Baili had been unable to elude his pursuers. He had been followed on his return home, and since then a steady guard of watchers had been placed around the grounds. They moved stealthily around the outskirts of the estate, and ventured on occasion close to the main house, without detection. These watchers hadn’t yet received new orders from Tribune Haol, but they sent back word of Nichos’s unexpected arrival.

  Nichos waved away the effusive greetings of his servants. Old Jensin the overseer was delighted to see him alive and safe, but his joy quickly turned to consternation. The master called them all together, thanked them for their loyal service, and fired them all on the spot.

  They gaped. By way of tiding them over, he went on, they were each to take some of the horses; as he was ending the estate’s breeding work he wanted them all to have a share of the valuable animals. Nobody moved. He ordered them to get their things and get off the grounds.

  Jensin clasped his shoulders, weeping. Nichos disentangled himself gently. “You go on to your cousins, the ones you’ve always told me about. I’m sure they can use a good man like you. Now don’t go on this way. Let me have a happy farewell with you. Will you take Hayseed with you? I can’t look after a dog now.”

  To a body the workers fled to Fiyas-town, where they bewailed their wrongs over wine cup after wine cup. Nichos had outstripped the news; no one here had heard of the defeat of the Defiers. They supposed the master had gone mad,
what with being made a Tribune and then getting mixed up with those rebels lins. Everyone knew politics could turn a man’s wits. The townspeople heard with alarm of the loss of an important patron. They joined in the lamentations.

  Nichos and Pillyn worked all night, stripping the house of any small valuables that could be sold or bartered. Baili packed food, clothing, and wine for the road; they wouldn’t be stopping at any towns until they were well past their own home region. They would go south, perhaps as far as the Sea Cliffs. There was good grazing land there; they could start a new farm, under new names.

  Temhas had superior knowledge of the stock, so he chose the two dozen horses they would take as a fresh start. “No flighters,” he said. “You need haulers now to journey with, and the flighters are harder to breed. A new farm can’t afford a gamble.” His eyes were veiled. Some secret thought was moving in his mind, but the others had no time to spare for him. Baili did notice, momentarily, that he had taken little from his apartments, just his sword and a few change of clothes. He almost asked, but just then Pillyn called to him for help in moving a trunk, and he forgot it.

  They were ready to leave at dawn.

  “But you’ve got a flighter,” Pillyn said to her brother. “Yes. I want to travel faster.”

  Baili moved suddenly away and stood fussing with the saddlebags. But since her parting with Paither, she had been enveloped in a hard wrap of ice. She said only, “You’re not coming with us?”

  “No, I’m going to Lindahne. No, I know, I don’t know what I’m going to do exactly.You said Paither would be going there?”

  “I think so. What of it?”

  “He might be able to use me. I’ll try to find him, and help him.” Almost under his breath he added, “I never helped Rendell.”

  “Oh, Temhas –”

  “Besides, it’s no use my going with you. You’re going to become a true Mendale now, aren’t you? Wherever you end up, you’ll never be able to admit to being a Lindahne again. I can’t do that.”

  “I’m afraid that’s true,” Nichos said. A listtel who arrived in any town with a lin-wife would make a good story. Tales would spread, tales that would too clearly identify them.

  Pillyn said, “I know.” She opened her cloak. She had cast off her family colors. She was dressed in the bright silks her husband favored.

  Their partings were quiet. They murmured farewells and blessings, keeping their eyes averted from one another. Pillyn lifted up her Mendale daughter and rode out behind her Mendale husband in the grey half-light. The horses were strung out behind them. At the gate Baili turned the lead horse south, but Nichos shook his head.

  “There’s one stop to make first,” he said.

  Quienos and Daana, known as Scayna’s parents, were arguing again. Daana flounced out of the tent, followed by a shower of cooking pots thrown by her husband. Quienos cursed to himself and reached for his wine flask. He put out a dirty boot and kicked viciously at the table. It toppled sideways with a satisfying smash of pottery.

  A shadow fell across the floor. He looked up. A nobleborn listtel, in his muddy tent? “Who –” his jaw went slack. His wet eyes widened, showing the white and flecks of red.

  “Now that I see you I remember you better,” Nichos said. “You were actually serving in the Band of Teleus, my old friend. He used to say he kept you for an evil pet. Like a dog who bites.”

  Quienos cleared his throat in preparation to spit, and stopped himself. “Herald. Or no, Tribune now, aren’t you? But we’d heard the filthy lins had you.”

  “I’m back.”

  Quienos shuffled his feet on the dirt floor and glanced around vaguely. “Chair there, if you’d care to sit.” He added, “Sir.”

  Nichos remained motionless, hands on hips. After a few befuddled moments Quienos remembered himself. He lurched to his feet and gave an awkward bow. The insolence Nichos remembered was missing from his movements; he was sloppy with drink. He pulled over the hardwood chair, avoiding the mess of the table’s spill, and offered it to Nichos as an honored place. “Sir?”

  Instead of sitting, Nichos put a foot up on the seat and leaned across his knee, so that he was both closer to and still above Quienos, who was hunched over. Quienos looked down. Nichos watched as his confusion turned to fear.

  “You’d better tell me.”

  “Tribune?”

  “Tell me.”

  Quienos took two steps back and collided with his own abandoned chair. “I don’t know what you –”

  “After the surrender, your Band was with my own in Lindahne,” Nichos said loudly. “I sent you out on patrols in the Lindahne woodlands, I remember. After that time I never thought of you again. But just recently I spoke with a young woman – a woman who called herself your daughter.”

  Quienos had gone white; perhaps he was about to be sick. He muttered, “I warned her –” and broke off.

  “I have good reason to believe that the girl is no daughter of yours at all. In fact, she’s not even a Mendale. She’s –” But did Quienos know himself, what the blue mark meant? Not likely. “She’s a Lindahne.”

  “She’s no lin! She’s ours, m’wife and me, much good it’s done us.”

  “One night of all those nights in Lindahne, and for a full day after, I sent patrols out looking for – a particular woman. Two Lindahne women, it was really, and an infant. They were being pursued; I wanted to rescue them. But we were too late. I ask you now, were you in that patrol? Was it you I sent?”

  Quienos said roughly, “What if it was?”

  Until this moment Nichos had not really believed it. He stammered, “So you – you did – you found the baby? She was alive?”

  Quienos stared at a space between his boots. He looked like a thief caught with his hand on the silver.

  “You – but no one reported – I was led to believe the infant had been killed! But you knew better. You kept her, by the pelting rain, you kept her and raised her as a – a Mendale commoner?”

  Quienos’s hand groped out for the wine, and fell back to his side. “Knew she’d never be right. Something always wrong with her.”

  “Why did you do it? Why?”

  Quienos was suddenly self-righteous. “M’wife had lost our firstborn! The healers said we wouldn’t have another. And there I was, off at war, and her back here crying misery everywhere. Ours was a good baby, you know, a pretty li’ll girl, but it was never strong. Died right away. Then I found Scayna. I found her! Nobody else, none of those others, just me. She’d have died if I hadn’t. And she was just the same age as ours’d been, only stronger. And what did you want, anyway?” he shouted in Nichos’s face. “What did you want with some lin baby? What was it about her? What’s wrong with her?”

  Nichos shot out both hands and took him by the throat. Quienos crumpled. “Did you tell her? Does she know who she is?”

  “No, no – wife said we’d make her ours –”

  “Where is she now? Answer me. Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. I swear, sir, I swear! They sent her to MenDas with her Band. And all of a sudden, no letters, no word. Daana’s in a heat about it, it’s true, Tribune. I don’t know where she is!”

  Nichos released him. “You half-wit! You wine-soaked, blundering –” He knew if he stayed he’d do murder. He turned on his heel and left Quienos, who was slobbering threats in an undertone. Daana, returning, saw him leave. She shouted. When he did not respond she tossed a cooking pot after him.

  Tribune Haol’s watchers, still faithfully on the trail, took note of this visit. They sent back a quick report to the First Tribune. So far Haol was content in having his eye on Nichos; he’d take no action against him or his family just yet. It was a talent of his, to know when to hold his hand. As for this strange visit Nichos had made to the archer’s parents, it was obvious he was trying to find Scayna. Probably hoped to stop her mouth, prevent her from being a witness against him and exposing his so-called son. Well, it was too late for that.

  Scayna had
a dream of Feimenna, the uncharted land beyond the raging Valtah river. Alien faces swam in and out of a mist, babbling, incomprehensible. Then they were different. They were the faces of the Lindahnes, stretched out in rows forever to the horizon, and she was flying above them. Their dead mouths opened and wept. “To Lindahne, to Lindahne,” they wailed.

  The dream changed. Tribune Haol was speaking. “Soon I will announce a new relas.” He seemed to be speaking sideways, through a hidden seam in his throat. “We must take immediate steps to capture this man and bring him to justice.” Mendale justice! the dead mouths wept, the dead mouths jeered. Mendale justice! “Since he is not among the dead he’s almost certain to be going to Lindahne...” To Lindahne, they sang, to Lindahne. “You are the witness, Scayna. Only you know. I’m sending you to find him. I’m sending you to Lindahne.” The corpses roared with laughter; bony skeleton hands slapped her on the back. She’s the witness, they repeated to each other, laughing. She knows, she knows, she knows.

  You know me, cried one grinning skull. You can feel who I am. Feel the burning! The burst of sudden flames...

  She cried out, and woke herself up. Her bed sheets were wet with sweat. The stifled windowless room threatened to close over her head like the final slam of a coffin’s lid.

  She pushed away the sheets and stumbled in the dark to the washing basin. The tiles were cold under her bare feet. She poured water from the jug into the silver bowl, which was heavy and deeply scratched with long use. A crack of flickering light from the hall torches shone under her door. The water rang against the bowl’s sides as she splashed her face.

  Parts of her dream floated back to her. She fumbled for the night lamp and used it to kindle the standing torches. When the light flared up she could see herself in the hanging mirror. Her eyes were wide and startled, ringed with smoke at the edges; her dark brows fluttered down protectively. The moving shadows found the hollows of her cheeks and caressed them softly. Her finely formed lips, so often pressed hard together, opened and trembled. An astonishing thought came into her mind. I’m not ugly.