Changer’s Moon

10

Serroi straightened, rubbed at her back, smiled at the lined face of the woman who’d been something of a mother to her. Pria Mellit. She took her turn on the wall with the others, her strong wiry arms hurling the javelins with great accuracy; fed by her stable girls, she could get three or four of the short lances off in as many heartbeats, but that meant she stood for long stretches without much cover. The wound Serroi had just healed was Mellit’s fifth serious hurt. She endured the pain without complaint and went quietly back to the wall when her turn came, handling the pain-memory far better than the younger meien. Serroi helped her sit up, clucked her tongue at the deep bruises about Mellit’s eyes. “Get some rest, pria-mama,” she said gently, knowing Mellit would ignore her this time as she had before.

Mellit got to her feet, straightened her torn clothing. “Not here, child. You’ll need this pallet soon enough.”

Serroi reached out to help her as she stumped toward the tent’s door, but drew her hand back. Mellit would walk where she wanted on her own legs and when she could no longer do that, then she’d die. She wouldn’t appreciate one of her girls, old or new, hastening her toward that time. Serroi watched her look about then move off with that ground-eating stride her Stenda legs gave her and she took a moment to appreciate the old woman’s undiminishing strength, then she started to go back inside.

And froze, mouth open, eyes glazed. Pain. A pain so far beyond description it blanked her mind. Hern. In agony. With a low whining moan she stumbled around, stood staring at the burning tower. “Vuurvis,” she said. She heard it echo in her head, a soft plaintive denying word, then she shook off her temporary paralysis and ran for the only motorcycle near the tent. The rider was dismounting, coming off his shift. She grabbed his arm, pointed. “Take me there. Hurry.” Again the words echoed in her head. She wanted to scream at him, shake him, force him to move faster, but her words came out in a whisper. She hitched up her robe, swung a leg over the long narrow seat above the rear wheel and got herself set as the boy started the machine and roared toward the tower. Everything was floating around her, she couldn’t think with Hern’s agony burning in her. She felt the machine shimmy under her, felt the jolts and vibrations as it raced over the rough ground, felt the bunching and shifting of the boy’s muscles where she clutched at him. The tower came at her fast-fast, yet the ride seemed to go on forever. More vuurvis hit the tower; the heavy, greedy flames ran over the stone, eating pits in it. There were screams and shouts and crashes sounding all along the wall but she ignored those; her entire being was focused on the burning tower.

The heat was intense, the smell indescribable. The little healer was off the cycle before Wes got it stopped, running toward the tower’s door, toward the flames and smoke coming from it. He let the machine fall and started after her. She’s hysterical, he thought, killing herself, nothing she can do for him now, she can’t bring back the dead. He reached her before she dived into that mess of stinking smoke, lunged and caught hold of her arm.

Pain ran like fire into his hand and his fingers jerked open. He couldn’t keep hold of her though he tried again. She ran inside, flames licking at the loose robe she wore, at the bounding curls that made her seem such a child until you looked into her eyes. He backed away, coughing and spitting, looked around. There was more than the tower to worry about. Forgetting the food and rest he’d been looking forward to, he muscled his machine up and around and started toward the hospital tent to pick up a medic and supplies and begin doing something about the burned; he’d heard enough stories about vuurvis and what it did to flesh to be glad that his belly was empty and his body tired.

Serroi is burning with her own fire as she runs up the squared spiral stairs. Her robe is burning off her, her hair is on fire, but she feels none of that. Up and around and up and around and all the time Hern is dying, dying alone, his stubborn generous spirit burning out of his body. She will not let that happen, she must not, must not, must not, the words echo with the patter of her bare feet on the hot stone, she does not notice that where she steps, where her fingers touch the wall, she leaves a mark on the stone and the fire is quenched there. Hern hangs on, refusing to die. Reaching and reaching, she draws power to herself as she runs, her breath sobbing in her ears, up and around and up and around.

The upper room is awash with flame, but again where she steps, the flame dies. She runs to the blackened hulk, kneels. The fire retreats from her, leaving a circle clear about Hern’s body. She gathers her will and puts her hands on him.

The oil fights her and he fights her, maddened by the agony. She holds him down and pours all the power she has called into him. The Biserica means nothing to her now, Ser Noris means nothing to her, Hern is all, she will not quit until he is whole. She reaches out and seizes all power she can reach, draining the Shawar, draining the Norim, draining even Ser Noris, swallowing whole the fragments of the other norissim, the bits he’d left of them, all this she channels through her body and into Hern, into the blackened hulk that writhes on the stone and threatens to crush her with its uncontrolled flexings. The tower hums about her, turns grass green and translucent and the earth-fire, nor-fire, shawar-fire kills the vuurvis fire and reinforces the flickering glow of life in him, begins rebuilding the life as she stimulates the cells of his body to repair themselves, the dead charred flesh sloughing off, replaced by new, building from the bone out, cell by cell, nerve by nerve, layer on layer on layer of flesh all over his body until new skin spreads over him, but she doesn’t stop there. Eyes closed, body swaying, her will holding her, she keeps his body working until lashes grow back, eyebrows, body hair; his head hair coils out and out, black and pewter as before, until it is long enough to curl about her wrist.

The pale gray eyes opened and looked up at her, knowing her.

And she knew what she’d done, how much harm she could have done, and she snatched the power yet more from the Nor, though she could feel Ser Noris contesting with her for it, snatched it loose from him and fed it as gently and apologetically as she could back to the laboring Shawar. She sat back on her heels, smiling down at him through a skim of tears, her lips trembling.