Calling Up the Fire

by Lori Martin

  Her strange, bewildering hair had grown, springing off her forehead and tickling past her ears to the back of her neck. She moved her head experimentally, side to side. The black strands glittered, here and there, with scattered sparks, stars flung across a midnight sky. But it was too long, and she was weary of the tarra-cloth.

  She opened the top drawer. With one hand she lifted a great tug of hair and with the other brought up the scissors. The mirror reflected the line of light that danced off the open blades. Scayna looked long and deeply. After a time she put the scissors away, unused.

  Chapter 17

  Spring was finally blossoming. They had reached the last of the spearhead camps in safety, where they waited tensely, fearing another discovery, but the news from MenDas was reassuring.

  The triumphant Mendales thought they had engaged the full Defier force, and were too smug to search out other hidings. They had had a good killing.

  It was only a reprieve, Paither knew, but he made the most of it. Gradually they reestablished stealthy communications with the far-scattered Defiers.They needed information on Mendale army movements, on the Assembly’s plans, on the patrols in the foothills, even on the whereabouts of each other. With luck, hard work and the help of Nialia, they might soon have an unbroken message line into Lindahne itself.

  Slowly the defeated young people were making their way back to their own country, as the relas had ordered them to do. What his own plans were, none of them had heard.

  In the camp itself speculation went on in low whispers.Paither drilled the remaining officers in Mendale battle techniques, to prepare them for enemy tactics. He was often startled at their ignorance of Mendale customs, which he considered a vulnerability, but then, as Samalas tartly reminded him, he alone had been raised here.

  On the second bright day of sunshine in a row, Mejalna found him dressed in a light hunting tunic, sitting under a tree. Two dead rabbits were bundled at his feet. She sat down beside him. He had that abstracted look again; after the first greeting they fell silent.

  The warm air felt wonderful. She pulled her robe up to her knees. Ants crawled over their bare legs. A heavy smell of mud and sweat was on him but above it she caught the scent of the opening flowers. From this side he was handsome. Thick lashes curled over the feeling grey eye. He turned to glance at her, revealing the ruin of the other side of his face.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked abruptly. “About this woman you think is your sister?” She knew he had been thinking of it.

  “Find her first, though the gods know how. I thought perhaps I could reach her...”

  “Yes?”

  “Reach her in my mind,” he admitted apologetically “I have a faint touch of Nialian. Yes, I know, men aren’t supposed to, but I do. My heritage is unusual, remember. And I thought if she has Nialian powers too, which she should, as the daughter of a Nialian woman

  – then she might somehow be able to feel me, hear my thoughts.”

  “I don’t think even full Nialians are capable of reading each other’s thoughts. Empathy, they say, when they touch: they can communicate feelings, even visions, but not more than that.”

  “Then I’ll have to find a more direct way.” He slapped at an ant on his knee.

  “What can she think? How can she be a Lindahne royal, and yet a common Mendale archer?”

  “I wish I knew. I wish I knew what was inside her. It seems strange, for someone to be so close to me, and yet be a stranger.”

  “That can happen with any kin,” she said in an altered voice.

  “Mejalna. I don’t mean to pry, but that night in the tent, your friend Renasi started to say something about a cooperator?”

  She paused, to swallow her anger. Finally she said, “Yes, my brother. The youngest, Daiv. My favorite. It seems I never really knew what was inside him.”

  A lasbird landed before them and cocked its head to eye them better. She spoke again and it flew off. “My father has a saying, that there are those with the wrong kind of strength. He was a priest of Armas, you know, before the War.”

  “Oh?” He shifted his position on the hard ground. Even her hands were beautiful. Her long tapering fingers lay inches from his own.

  “In fact, he knew your father. Your real father, Rendell Armasii. They served in the temple together. My father used to speak of him sometimes.”

  “I suppose your father thought ill of him, that he had disgraced the service of Armas.”

  “I don’t know. My father is a kind man. He did say once that if Rendell Armasii had made a mistake of the heart, at least he had had the courage to see it through.”

  Paither said, “It’s hard for me to realize that my parents are – notorious, would you say? Their names are bantered around in Lindahne, their actions are still argued over –”

  “Oh, I’ve heard the story told many times, from many people, and not always the same way. But it’s always told with sadness, Paither. Not with contempt.”

  Their eyes met. She corrected herself softly. “Relas.”

  Over the next few weeks they talked more and more of personal things, sometimes with candor, sometimes guardedly. Mejalna was ready enough to tell more of her girlhood, which had been both happy and busy. As she relayed a humorous anecdote, or acted out all the parts of a lively family argument, Paither watched with steadfast eyes, often losing the thread of what she said in his contemplation of the lovely way she said it. Her eyes flashed a deeper blue if he forgot to laugh at the right places, but her anger had no conviction in it.

  His soul had entered a new country, and was still caught in stunned happiness on the border, breathing the strange and wonderful air. His own childhood had been spent in a fortress of family, encircled by a wider world of hostility. The friends of his young years had pulled away in adolescence, when the full meaning of his disgrace as a “halfer” was made clear to them; by then he had not really missed them. He had begun to wage war within himself.

  Mejalna presented a startling example to him of one seamless life, marked by its own sorrows, perhaps, but one life all the same. She came from a true home, from an ancient family deeply rooted in the society of her Hill. Her very nerves vibrated in sympathy with the yearnings and hopes of her people. He envied her wholeness, and was drawn to it. It sometimes seemed as if he could possess everything he had been denied, if he could possess her.

  But he held back. He remembered this same clear voice cursing him as a halfer; he remembered the contemptuous way she had flung off his hands. When she told him of her broken betrothal, he nodded sagely, picturing her abrupt rejection of a man who had only wanted to love her. (Poor creature, he thought.) Even so he took care to notice if Renasi’s feelings towards her were really brotherly, and was reassured. But other men’s interest, as lover or friend, only confirmed his belief that he must not approach her. For long moments he forgot that power was settled now on his shoulders. He forgot that he had a sword-steel determination which had appealed to her even over the flash of a knife. His acceptance here was hard won. He would not submit himself again to judgment.

  One night at supper she burst without warning into a rambling account of the inception of the Defiers for his benefit. Paither listened, bewildered; did she think he knew nothing? Eventually, after many side issues and digressions, she expounded on Samalas’s standing ban on love affairs, adding her own agreement with his reasons in a high-pitched, unconvincing voice. Further down the table Renasi snorted into his drink, while Samalas (who had no taste for jests) actually laughed, harshly.

  What did she think, that every man wanted her beyond reason? Did she think he didn’t know how disfigured he was, or that this was hardly the time or place for such things? Angrily he turned the conversation to other topics. He told himself he had more important concerns.

  As it wasn’t possible for Scayna to be invisible, she took refuge in silence. For some time in the echoing building she managed to avoid anyone she knew, but one day her old friend Pirri hailed her
in delight. Pirri was glad to see her alive and unhurt and Scayna, touched, felt a relief in speaking to a simple, open face. Her occasional conversations with Tribune Haol brimmed with hidden meanings, and so far she hadn’t been able to understand his real aims. With his warnings repeated loudly in her ears, however, she gave Pirri a very limited account of her detention by the Defiers.

  Pirri didn’t notice. She was too full of MenDas and army gossip. Scayna, who seemed to know nothing herself but was willing to listen, was a perfect audience.

  For several days running Scayna let the rush of words flow over her. Pirri stopped by her tiny room often. When she grew too wearisome Scayna would refer to some errand or other she had to run for Tribune Haol; Pirri would nod quickly. She was awed, if mystified, by Scayna’s change of duties.

  Some of Pirri’s gossip was of interest. Former Tribune Nichos, missing under hazy and disreputable circumstances, had been officially stripped of his title by the Assembly. Tribunes Haol and Rhonna both nominated new candidates to succeed him and, Pirri added in a low whisper, they said Haol would be the one to lose. After all, as Tribune Rhonna frequently pointed out, Haol’s last nomination had turned out ill.

  “When they have a full Trio again,” Scayna asked, “what will happen to the Lindahne queen?”

  Pirri shrugged; it made no difference; she had heard nothing.

  With Tribune Haol’s grudging permission Scayna was finally allowed to send word to her parents of her whereabouts. She was even given the right to walk about unaccompanied by one of Haol’s guards.

  She took advantage of this one afternoon, when the thick stone walls of the Assemblage House oppressed her. Pirri suggested a walk along the roof, where they had once kept watch; since the defeat of the Defiers this precaution had been abandoned.

  She stared out at the Southwest Gates, fascinated. There she had first heard the Defiers attacking. There she had begun to run. And to the northwest there, that was the garden where she had been captured. “They were decent, you know, the Lindahnes,” she said suddenly. “Even kind.”

  Pirri rolled her eyes. Everyone knew some of the rebels had managed to escape. Reports from the Oversettle government in Lindahne were also ominous. Sporadic outbreaks of violence were cropping up. “We might be reassigned,” she said, meaning the Twelfth Archery Band.

  “Oh? Out of MenDas?”

  “Out is right. We may join the Oversettle forces, I heard.”

  “In Lindahne? You’re being sent to Lindahne?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, it’s not definite. I wish you were still with us. But then you never wanted to go to Lindahne, did you? Well, who does.”

  “I suppose,” Scayna said. She remembered, distantly, her old fear. Something else without a name had replaced it.

  “Do you mean you’d like to come?”

  “I don’t know why Tribune Haol wants me in his service,” she said fretfully. “He doesn’t seem to have much for me to do.”

  Pirri, who never tired of political intrigues, took this as a cue to relate the latest back-and-forth arguments between the First and Second Tribunes. Scayna had ceased to wonder how she got her information.

  She stifled a yawn. Pirri babbled on, her voice becoming one with the humming sounds of the capital’s afternoon. Scayna, making interested noises, watched the scurrying of artisans and tradespeople beyond the Assemblage House gates. The sun found the back of her neck and the freed mop of her hair; Pirri paused, then began again. She had never had the courage to ask Scayna about her hair.

  The sunshine was making her sleepy. She leaned on the parapet. The stone dug into her elbows. A crowd of women had stopped before the gates, a group of petitioners, perhaps. All in yellow, yellow robes... and singing ...

  She blinked. The women were only weavers, spreading out newdyed rugs on the back of a cart, and haggling over prices. They were wearing dark aprons.

  Fear rose in her throat. She was getting worse, then. Not just at dusk or at night, not just nightmare scenes during a dark – these things could come to her now without warning or pain, disguised as the truth under a spring sky. What if the day came when she could no longer distinguish between the real and the false?

  That was known as madness.

  “... and they say Tribune Haol’s called for an emergency Assembly session tomorrow morning. A lot of the members have been traveling and they all had to rush back for it. Did you see the caravan that came in this morning?”

  She could bear no more. “Let’s go in. I have some wine in my room if you’d like.”

  A short scroll was tacked up on her door, left by one of Haol’s guards or a message-runner. It was sealed by a clumsy splatter of wax. Pirri poured the wine while Scayna opened the scroll, expecting another mysterious demand from the Tribune. Instead the scrawling hand of her father jumped out at her. “By the roaring Valtah, they’re here in MenDas,” she said. “My parents.”

  Pirri held out a goblet; Scayna didn’t see it. She read, muttering to herself. Pirri heard, “– and all because you got yourself mixed up with that Nichos, you fool. I told you to stay away from him.” She let the scroll spring closed.

  “Take the wine,” Pirri said. She spat out her mouthful to the wine spirit.

  On the morrow Scayna considered not going, but if she didn’t they would probably appear at the Main Gate, demanding to see her. She belted her army robe with hard determined hands and set off for the inn.

  They were staying in the Farmers Quarters, an area popular with the transient sellers and buyers of the produce markets. Four battered inns marched down one side of the street, five on the other, with an ale-house at the center. Outside it, workhorses waited with dull patience for their masters to return.

  Scayna glanced down at her message scroll and back up at a faded sign. This was the one. “Quienos and Daana?” she asked the innkeeper.

  The man snorted. “Still sleeping it off, I’d bet. Second door on the left up those stairs. And tell ‘im he’s got an ale-tab to pay, if he’s trying to forget it.”

  It was past high-sun, but Daana was in her sleeping gown, hunched over broth and bread at a rickety table. Quienos was dressed, but sprawled on the narrow bed. The air was stale.

  Quienos leaped to his feet at the sight of her. She sidestepped him to give her mother a dutiful kiss. Daana demanded, “What are you doing with yourself? Your hair’s all grown and you’ve nothing to cover it.”

  “Good morn, Father. Are you well?”

  Quienos grunted, hands on hips. He looked sober, which might be worse. She perched on the windowsill away from both of them. Fresh sunlight silhouetted her. “You didn’t have to come. How did you get army leave? You weren’t dismissed from your positions, were you?”

  “Never mind all that. What did those stinking rebels do to you?” He peered at her, slanting his brows against the sun.

  “Nothing. I’m fine, I told you in my letter. You didn’t have to come.”

  Daana drained her broth noisily. Quienos retorted, “The way I hear it, you ignored everything I told you. You were with Nichos Ranking, weren’t you? What did he say to you? Why did you tell him you were my daughter?”

  “He said he remembered you.”

  Quienos shouted, “Why did you tell him, after I forbid you?”

  “He asked me, I believe. I really don’t remember.”

  Quienos was both furious and hesitant. She had a hard and unfamiliar tone, as if his words were nothing to her. He squinted into the light; he couldn’t see her expression. “What else? What else? Did he tell you anything? What did he say?”

  “Nothing. He remembered sending you on patrols.” She added, “There’s no reason to shout.”

  He lumbered closer, a threatening hulk of rage. “You did it deliberately. After I ordered you to stay away from him!”

  “And her hair,” Daana put in.

  “What did you do wrong back then?” she asked with detached curiosity. “Did you get drunk on duty or steal something?”

&nb
sp; At the words he made a rush at her. Then suddenly, with his arm upraised, he was close enough to see her eyes.

  He froze, absurdly, with his arm still in the air, spluttering. Scayna waited until he was quiet. Finally his hand fell. His mouth hung open, questioning. She gathered up her skirts and smiled at him. “I’m going to Lindahne. I volunteered this morning. Good morn to you, Quienos. Daana.May you keep well.”

  The door closed behind her. For a long time Quienos stood rooted, facing the window, while his wife exclaimed behind him. He saw Scayna’s sparkling head emerge as she left the building and walked away. She was never to see them again.

  Tribune Haol was a cards man from long back. Now he played his hand perfectly. Tribune Rhonna, glorying in the disappearance of Nichos and the subsequent damage to Haol’s prestige, had been sure of her win. Her candidate for Third Tribune was bound to be proclaimed, she believed. Haol had looked worried; he had hesitated over his hand, passed on his turns. Then suddenly he had called for the emergency session.

  To the horror and astonishment of the Assembly members, Haol announced a new and terrible Defier threat. The rebels had not been extinguished after all. They were harboring a new royal – a true blood royal, apparently, whose very existence would galvanize all the lins into further rebellion. Worse, they themselves had sheltered this criminal here, here in the Assembly, in their very midst!

  With a dramatic flourish he identified the new royal as the halfer once known as the son of Nichos. Outrage burst from his listeners. As he had anticipated, some of it was directed straight at him, at the podium: after all, he had chosen Nichos, he had befriended this lin-lover, he should have known –

  “My friends,” Haol answered sadly, “how true that is. I too was mistaken. I too have been wronged, deeply wronged, misled by spies and traitors. And so I have taken it on myself, at whatever cost, to rectify this evil, to protect our country...” Under the influence of his fluid rhetoric they became calmer. Haol smiled, and played his trump.