Reign of Fire

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  The healer’s questioning of the Goddesses was the more compelling because it involved a moral why as well as a quest for the truth behind the myth. While the PriestGuild counseled acceptance of peril, suffering and even periodic extermination. Ghirra demanded an explanation for such godly negligence. It was not the goddesses’ existence he questioned but their right to rule his own life so capriciously. As a true believer must, he denied the Sisters their godhead to spare himself from the crushing possibility that the gods might indeed be blind to the fate of men.

  Stavros, in his willingness to blur the line between things that must be taken on faith and those possessing a confirmed reality, explored a third avenue: if something other than a freakish nature was at work in the Fiixian atmosphere, with the power of a god if not a god, could it be reasoned with like a man? Had Kav Daven’s ephemeral magic, the pure intensity of his faith, somehow touched this realm of Power when he danced the Tale of Origins or later at the Leave-taking, enough to shift the balance of strength from one Sister to another? Had Stavros himself, with the guarfire searing his hands, felt that Power singing through him?

  He stumbled, caught himself on an overhanging branch, then swore and jerked away a lacerated palm. The thick orange branch was armed with rows of needle teeth. Stavros stared at his own bright blood welling up from parallel punctures. What the guar had not harmed, a simple plant had shredded with ease. He was not immune.

  Remember that, he advised himself, feeling again the cold shock of Clausen’s pistol against his skin. He must not exaggerate the content of his miracle, even if he accepted it as such, with the ghostly fire still burning in his palms. It frightened him to imagine the recklessness it might lead him to, if he took on illusions of immortality.

  And remember what’s really at stake. The deity of the Goddesses, though an intriguing philosophical question, was not what mattered. Their actuality did. Science or magic, they must be proven to exist, for only then could they be used as an argument against the commercial development of the planet.

  Liphar fussed over his bloodied hand. Edan trudged back through the brush to give it a quick glance and a shrug, then waved them onward. She had nosed out a rocky access to the plateau via the scar of an old landslide where the spiked and knife-edged vegetation found less encouragement to grow. They struggled upward, using hands and knees as well as feet. Stavros left a trail of blood-stained boulders in his wake.

  Breathing hard at the top, he sluiced water from his canteen across his palm and bound it with a strip of linen that Liphar unearthed from one of his many pockets. The fog had dispersed from the open areas of the plateau. The hailstones had melted into the spongy ground. Edan waded into the dense growth enveloping the Sled. Stavros followed, wishing for a machete.

  Even close up, it was impossible to assess the flier’s overall condition. Broad-leafed vines already obscured most of the delta-winged body, insinuating fuzzy tendrils across the crumpled nose. The cockpit had been neatly secured with a tarp, covering the seats and control panel. A precaution of Clausen’s, Stavros was sure, one he must grudgingly admire. The open cargo hold showed signs of habitation, more tarps, some clothing hastily tossed inside. Beneath the tilting wing, the damp ground was still barren, packed down from the weight of bodies seeking shelter from the storm. Stavros crouched and peered into the pocket of dank shadow, imagining them stuck there together, Clausen agile and restless, Danforth crippled, fevered, eventually delirious.

  He straightened with a shudder, and pushed through the grasping vines to the rear of the Sled. The bent tail fin poked up through a tangle of prickers, looking much as Aguidran had drawn it. High on the upper curve of the hail-scarred hull was the transparent com blister that housed a high-gain grid inbuilt to receive the operating power beam transmitted from the Orbiter, plus high data rate com for navigation. It could be removed in pieces but was too much to carry and more trouble to repair. But tucked along one side of the blister was a slim metal whip, the omni-directional antenna that Stavros sought, his potential link to CRI, to the legal files stored in her memory, and eventually, to the authorities back home.

  Though his instinct was to call CRI immediately, his faith in McPherson’s ingenuity stayed his hand. If she or Clausen had managed to fix the antenna at the Lander and were in contact with CRI already, the computer would give away both his position and his purpose before he had time to accomplish it. He must also do his salvage hastily and be well away from the site by the time Clausen returned with the rangers to haul the Sled hack to base.

  He set his pack down on the hull. The omni’s electronics were Inside the blister. He would need them too. He had purloined a few items before he’d left with the caravan, the appropriate tools from the Lander’s general repair kit, and McPherson’s own well-thumbed Sled manual. He had taken a few other precautions as well, most of which would not make him popular with the remaining crew of the Lander.

  He beckoned Liphar to his side, his extra, clever pair of hands, then drew out his tools and set to work.

  8

  Weng stood vigil at the edge of the clearing, in mute sympathy for the handful of Sawls striving to restore order to their battered fields. Sadly, the fastest growing of the plantings were the most damaged. The younger shoots were already drawing themselves upright on their own, but those closer to harvest were more brittle. The Sawls were lovingly splinting weakened and bent stalks, but entire rows had been snapped clean in two. The broad once-graceful leaves were riddled with holes and hung limp on their stems like red-gold lace. In the terraces, the succulents wept from fist-sized punctures, their precious juices evaporating into the building heat.

  The Sawls sang softly as they worked, and Weng’s silver head faintly acknowledged the rhythm. Her family hadn’t seen the inside of a planted field for many generations, but a lingering farmer’s instinct had her debating an offer of assistance.

  The drumming hail had woken all of them out of restless, heat-dreaming sleep. On the far side of the clearing, McPherson yanked the silverfilm sheeting off the high-gain dish, fussing and cursing to herself over the minor damage sustained before she’d gathered the wit to cover it.

  Clausen joined her, checking first his watch and then the sun, now beginning its low drift toward the horizon. “Our salvage help should have been here by now. Ibiá better be dealing straight with me on this.” He glanced at the dish. “How’d she do?”

  “Mother Nature sure ain’t giving us much of a break.” McPherson folded a tarp and tossed it brusquely to the ground. “We’ve got holes here and there. Could be worse, I guess. Could be like that.” She jerked her thumb at the fields.

  Clausen took in the frenzied activity as if he had not noticed it before. He stroked his newly bearded jaw speculatively. “Yes, I suppose this might seriously cut into their food supply.”

  “And ours, if we can’t ever get ourselves outa here!”

  “Tut, McP. Nary a discouraging word.”

  She tossed the last tarp on top of the others and dusted her hands. “I was kinda hoping to get some of those guys to help me lift this thing in place, now the base is finished. But I guess I’ll search up the cable we need first. They’re gonna be busy a while yet, I’d say.”

  In the darkened cave that had been home for three cold wet weeks, McPherson searched through the supplies that had not yet been hauled back down to the Lander. She found clothing, utensils, medicine and some packaged food. She stumbled over the edge of the sleeping platform and smashed a small Sawl oil lamp into smithereens. She found the utility racks that had held the back-up computer and electronics components, the extra monitors and several reels of cable. The racks were empty.

  Puzzled, she flashed her battery lamp around the cavern. She knew there had been equipment left after Stavros brought a load down to the Lander for Danforth’s use. She sucked her cheek. She guessed it was possible that he’d taken it all down and stowed it away in the Lander’s upper levels while she was distracted with the dish.

&nb
sp; She let the lamp beam droop. Without the cable, all her obsessive efforts to repair the dish would be useless. The power and com links would remain severed. There would be no words of reassurance from the Orbiter, no force field to restore climate control to the Underbelly, no hot water…

  McPherson fought an upwelling of dismay.

  “Emil’ll be real pissed at this one,” she muttered. But worst of all, Danforth would get a little angrier and more depressed, as he did each day that there were no new data coming in, and no master computer to help him solve his mysteries.

  She turned from the cave resignedly and went down to search the Lander.

  “Sixteen feet?” said Clausen with deadly calm. “That’s all you could find?”

  “Yah. And we need at least a hundred.” McPherson shuffled, planted her hands on her hips in unconscious imitation of the prospector’s stance. “You think the Sawls might’ve taken it?”

  “What would they do with it, eat it?” Clausen’s eyes narrowed as he contemplated subtle mayhem. “No, I’d say this is our young friend Ibiá up to his tricks again.”

  “Why him?”

  “You tell me, McP., you tell me.” He regarded her owlishly. “But no, you’re fortunate enough not to be afflicted with that particular sickness of youth.” When she blinked at him uncomprehendingly, he chuckled. “The disease of idealism, I mean, McP.”

  “Oh. No, I guess not.” But McPherson found herself frowning gently.

  Clausen stood utterly still, thinking hard, then shut his eyes convulsively. “Jesus! The Sled! The antennas on the Sled!”

  Already moving, he grabbed her arm. McPherson hesitated, taken aback by his sudden ferocity. Clausen jerked her forward. “No more waiting for our native guides to show. We’re wasting daylight. Round up your gear. We’ll find the fucking Sled without them!”

  9

  Within a day’s journey of DulElesi, distinct trail signs reappeared, old cairns and ranger blazes chipped into the sides of boulders. Stavros made Edan turn aside, to lead them across a stony rise where the harder surface would hide their tracks. The young ranger’s sharp face was shadowed into obscurity by her wide-brimmed hat. She grumbled, because it was her nature, but agreed that an unused route would be wisest.

  Stavros squinted down the trail they had left behind. “I’d hate to run into them on their way out here to pick up the Sled. Clausen’s sure to be with them.”

  Liphar nodded dutifully, absorbed in his own concerns.

  The nearness of their goal renewed Stavros’s flagging optimism. “Don’t worry that hail to death, Lifa, We haven’t seen a cloud in two whole cycles.”

  But the hail had upset Liphar badly. He used every excuse to point out that the heat was increasing steadily, even as the afternoon sun reddened and sank between the teeth of the mountains. He straggled along at the rear, his eyes on the salmon-stained sky, muttering and stumbling until Edan threatened to abandon him in the wilderness if he did not watch where he was walking. Stavros silenced her impatience with a rare stern glance. Though Liphar’s unrelenting caution was exhausting to listen to, as a priest-to-be he was trained in the details of weather prediction. Stavros lent at least half an ear to his mumblings and insisted that Edan do likewise, as well as keeping her sharper ranger’s eyes open for the signs of a change.

  As they trudged among the rocks and brambles, Stavros tried to pin Liphar down to a specific prediction. This was difficult, for he tended to lapse into abstraction and priestly hyperbole when approaching the subject of the weather. He quoted the PriestGuild records, his version of scripture, and unraveled long histories, couched in the quasi-archaic language of the tale-chants.

  Hearing the OldWords again made Stavros think of Kav Daven and of the questions he longed to put to the old priest.

  Meanwhile, Liphar muttered about impending Devastation, maintaining that the signs were right, as recorded in the oldest books. During the storm and flood, he had feared a final victory for Valla. Now tho building heat had him worried about Lagri’s continuing domination.

  Furthering his quest to prove the Goddesses real, Stavros probed the specifics of the myth. If the Sister deities were actual physical beings, and Ghirra and the priests agreed on at least this point, then they must have shapes, sizes, places to live. Liphar’s chants and legends were colorful but hopelessly metaphorical on the first two counts—Lagri was as tall as the mountains, Valla’s veins ran with icy sea water. Lagri’s voice was the desert wind. Valla Ired’s white hair trailed for a hundred throws along the sea bottom. Stavros took it all with a grain of salt.

  But the chants and songs and records were unanimous and very clear on the issue of habitation. Lagri dwelt in a high-walled palace of rock that dominated the very heart of the southern desert, far beyond the three ranges of the Grigar. There her sun fires burned perpetually and nothing mortal lived.

  Liphar recited the tale-chant of the Building, when Lagri’s parent sent a stupendous bolt to upthrust the desert rock. The rubble fell back to earth as a magnificent cave complex, vaster than a thousand settlements, with endlessly intertwining corridors and the finest carving, and great-halls so high that the night lanterns drifted through the clerestories to light the Goddess’s solitary banquets, leaving the surrounding desert in darkness.

  Valla, on the other hand, as her name suggested, inhabited the bottom of the great northern ocean, called DulValla in her honor. This wonderful home was also created for her by the mysterious unnamed parent, in the same mighty gesture that housed her sister Lagri. Valla’s halls were jewel-encrusted, Liphar sang, and the giant barbed fishes kept watch when she went out to war with her sibling.

  The desert and the ocean, mused Stavros as he lowered himself down the sheer face of a boulder, nearly losing his grip on the rope. Edan waited at the bottom, coiling her own rope and Liphar’s, impatient to move on.

  It shouldn’t be hard to check up on, he decided. I’ll have CRI scan her remote sensing data, see if anything shows up in either of those places. Something concrete, something real…

  At last, the bulbous spire of the Red Pawn appeared above the hillocks and rockslides. The travellers came down out of the mountains onto a stony plateau whose gradual slope fell away abruptly several miles ahead to form DulElesi’s cliff. The plateau supported a rich garden of cacti and gorse, nothing tall enough to hide a man. But along the rubbled southern border was a scattering of hidden tunnels, entrances to the cave complex itself. Most were known only to the RangerGuild, the secrets being passed down through the generations as closely guarded guild lore.

  Edan led them to a nearly invisible cleft masked by a jumbled rockfall and boasting the additional camouflage of a thicket of sword plants and brush. Though invisible from the cliff top, across the plateau, the site afforded a panoramic view. Grimly, Stavros reflected that a situation advantageous to observing the weather lent itself to detecting approaching enemies of another sort as well.

  He dug his small battery lamp from his pack and showed Edan how to use it. She rewarded him with a brief, delighted grin when he gave it to her to carry. He squeezed after her into the narrow cleft, realizing once he was in its shadow how oppressive the heat outside had really become, He longed to sit down and absorb the coolness, but the tunnel was too confined even to crouch. After hairpin right and left turns, it appeared to dead-end in a confusion of crevasses and burrowings.

  Edan flashed the lamp around unnecessarily. The tight directable focus of its beam fascinated her. She let it linger on a random crevice, then suddenly twisted sharply, inserted herself sideways into the wrinkled rock and vanished. Darkness descended. Stavros felt Liphar tugging at the straps of his pack, urging it off his back, pulling him toward the wall. Then the pack was gone, Liphar’s hands were gone, and Liphar’s thin voice was calling him through the invisible crack.

  Stavros turned sideways in the darkness and eased his body into the tiny crevice. Rough rock embraced him front and back. With his head twisted, his chest presented the broa
dest obstacle to passage. Momentarily, he knew the horror of being pinned for life by the weight of a mountain. Then with a final skin-scraping wrench, he was delivered into the inner tunnel.

  Liphar lay collapsed against a wall, mopping his sweat-drenched face with the hem of his tunic. Edan had lowered herself to the floor in what passed for a willingness to rest.

  Stavros crouched with his head sunk between his shoulders like a tired horse. But letting the fact of arrival at his goal sink in meant he could not sit idle for long. He stood wearily, gazing around to orient himself, then padded down the corridor to reach into a high niche in the wall. He hauled out a thick coil of cable, stashed there by ranger allies a week before. Reclaiming his pack and lamp, he sat down on the stone floor to refit the whip antenna of the Sled’s omni to a scavenged mount. He cabled it, then made up the connections to the electronics box.

  Then, with the antenna in hand, he squeezed back through the entry crevice to string the cable to the outer entrance. Outside in the heat again, he scaled the rockfall, careful to keep out of the line of sight from the cliff top, just in case. He tied the antenna in a high clump of brush, buried the cable with stones and dirt and retreated into hiding.

  He told Liphar and Edan they could go on to their home caves to clean up and rest, as long as they kept out of sight. Liphar looked hurt and Edan’s sour smirk suggested that her guild master would have her head for dereliction of duty if she left him unchaperoned. Stavros was relieved. He had not relished the prospect of sudden solitude. He grinned at them, gathering the last dregs of his energy, hooked the cable coil over his shoulder and headed down the tunnel, reeling out the line as he went.