Fire Sea

27

The time period was known as the dynast’s waking hour and, although the dynast himself was far away in the city of Necropolis, the household in Old Province was up and stirring. The dead had to be roused from their slumber time state of lethargy, the magic that kept them functional renewed, and their daily tasks urged on them. Jera, as necromancer in her father’s house, moved among the cadavers, chanting the runes that brought the mockery of life to the servants and workers.

The dead do not sleep, as do the living. They are told at slumber time to sit down and not move about, for fear of disturbing the living members of the household. The cadavers obediently take themselves to whatever out-of—the-way spot can be found for them and wait, motionless and silent, through the sleeping hours.

“They do not sleep, but are they dreaming?” Alfred wondered, regarding them with wrenching pity.

It may have been his imagination, but he fancied that during this time when contact with the living was forgone, set aside until the morrow, the faces of the dead grew sad. The phantasm shapes hovering over their physical husks cried out in despair. Lying on his bed, Alfred tossed and turned, his rest broken by the restless sighs of whispered keening.

“What a quaint fancy,” said Jera, over breakfast.

The duke and duchess and Alfred dined together. The earl had already broken his fast, she explained apologetically, and had gone downstairs to work in his laboratory. Alfred was able to obtain only a vague idea of what the old man was doing, something about experimenting with varieties of kairn grass to see if he could develop a hardy strain that could be grown in the cold and barren soil of the Old Provinces.

“The moaning sound must have been the wind you heard,” Jera continued, pouring kairn-grass tea and dishing up rashers of torb.[12] (Alfred, who had been afraid to ask, was vastly relieved to note that a living female servant did the cooking.)

“Not unless the wind has a voice and words to speak,” Alfred said, but he said it to his plate and no one else heard him.

“You know, I used to think the same thing when I was a child,” said Jonathan. “Funny, I’d forgotten all about it until you brought it up. I had an old nanny who used to sit with me during sleep-time and, after she died, her corpse was reanimated and, naturally, she came back into the nursery to do what she’d always done in life. But I couldn’t sleep with her in there, after she was dead. It seemed to me she was crying. Mother tried to explain it was just my imagination. I suppose it was, but at that time it was very real to me.”

“What happened to her?” Alfred asked.

Jonathan appeared slightly shamefaced. “Mother eventually had to get rid of her. You know how children get something fixed in their minds. You can’t argue logically with a child. They talked and talked to me but nothing would do but that nanny had to go.”

“What a spoiled brat!” said Jera, smiling at her husband over her teacup.

“Yes, I rather think I was,” said Jonathan, flushing in embarrassment. “I was the youngest, you know. By the way, dear, speaking of home—”

Jera set down her teacup, shook her head. “Out of the question. I know how worried you are about the harvest, but Rift Ridge is the first place the dynast’s men will come searching for us.”

“But won’t this place be the second?” Jonathan inquired, pausing in his eating, his fork halfway to his mouth.

Jera ate her breakfast complacently. “I received a message from Tomas this morning. The dynast’s men have set out for Rift Ridge. It will take them at least a half cycle’s march to reach our castle. They’ll waste time searching, and then another half cycle’s journey back to report. If Kleitus even cares about us anymore, now that he has this war to fight, he’ll order them to come here. They can’t possibly arrive in Old Provinces before tomorrow. And we’re leaving this cycle, once Tomas returns.”

“Isn’t she wonderful, Alfred?” said Jonathan, regarding his wife admiringly. “I would have never reasoned any of that out. I’d have run off wildly, without thinking, and landed right in the arms of the dynast’s men.”

“Yes, wonderful,” mumbled Alfred.

This talk of troops searching for them and sneaking about in the slumber-time and hiding completely unnerved him. The smell and sight of the greasy torb on his plate made him nauseous. Jera and Jonathan were gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes. Albert lifted a largish piece of torb off his plate and slipped it to the dog, who was lying at his feet. The treat was graciously accepted, with a wag of the tail.

After breakfast, the duke and duchess disappeared to make arrangements for the night’s decampment. The earl remained in the laboratory. Alfred was left to his own dismal company (and that of the ever-present dog). He wandered the house, and eventually found the library.

The room was small and windowless, light came from glowing gas lamps on the walls. Shelves, built into the stone walls, housed numerous volumes. A few were quite old, their leather binding cracked and worn. He approached these in some trepidation, not certain what he feared finding; perhaps voices from the past, speaking to him of failure and defeat. He was vastly relieved to see that they were nothing more alarming than monographs written on agricultural topics: The Cultivation of Kairn Grass, Diseases Common to the Pauka.

“There’s even,” he said conversationally, glancing down, “a book on dogs.”

The animal, hearing its name, pricked its ears and thumped its tail against the floor.

“Although I bet I wouldn’t find mention of anything like you!” Alfred murmured.

The dog’s mouth parted in a grin, the intelligent eyes seemed to be laughing in agreement.

Alfred continued his desultory search, hoping to come across something innocuous to occupy his mind, take it away from the turmoil and danger and horror surrounding him. A thick volume, its spine lavishly decorated in gold leaf, caught his eye. It was a handsome work, well bound and, although obviously well read, lovingly cared for. He drew it out, turned it over, to see the cover.

The Modern Art of Necromancy.

Shuddering from head to toe, Alfred attempted to place the book back on the shelf. His trembling hands, more clumsy than usual, failed. He dropped the volume and fled the room, fled even that portion of the house.

He roamed disconsolately through the earl’s gloomy mansion. Unable to rest, unable to sit still, he gravitated from room to room, peering out the windows at the bleak landscape, his large feet displacing small articles of furniture or stumbling over the dog, his hands upending cups of kairn-grass tea.

What is it you fear? he asked himself, his thoughts constantly straying back to the library. Surely not that you will succumb to the temptation of practicing this black art! His gaze went to a servant cadaver, who had, in life, cleaned up spilled cups of kairn-grass tea and who was mechanically performing the same task after death.

Alfred turned to stare out a window at the black, ash-covered landscape beyond.

The dog, who had been trotting along behind him, obeying its master’s last order, watched the man carefully. Deciding that, perhaps, at last, Alfred was going to stay put, the dog flopped down on the floor, curled its tail to its nose, sighed deeply, and closed its eyes.

I remember the first time I saw the dog. I remember Haplo, and the sight of his bandaged hands. I remember Hugh, the assassin, and the changeling Bane.

Bane.

Alfred’s face grew haggard. He leaned his forehead against the window, as though his head were too heavy for him to support.. .

... The hargast forest was on Pitrin’s Exile, an island of coralite floating in the air world of Arianus. The forest was a terrifying place—to Alfred, at least. But then, most of the world outside the comforting peace of the mausoleum terrified the Sartan. The hargast tree is sometimes called the crystaltree. They are much prized in Arianus, where they are cultivated and tapped for the water they store in their brittle, crystalline trunks. But the forest wasn’t a hargast farm, the trees weren’t small and well tended.

In the wild, the hargast trees grow to hundreds of feet in height. The ground on which Alfred walked was littered with branches broken off in the wind currents that swept this end of the island. He stared at the branches, stared in disbelief at their razor-sharp edges. Loud cracks boomed like thunder, splintering crashes brought to mind fearful images of the giant limbs falling down on top of him. Alfred was feeling thankful he was walking on a road running along the forest’s fringes when the assassin, Hugh the Hand, stopped and gestured.

“This way.” He pointed into the forest.

“In there?” Alfred couldn’t believe it. To walk in a hargast forest in a windstorm was madness, suicidal. But maybe that’s what Hugh had in mind.

Alfred had long begun to suspect that Hugh the Hand couldn’t go through with his “deal” to coldbloodedly murder the child, Bane, who traveled with them. Alfred had been watching the assassin’s inner struggle with himself. He could almost hear the curses Hugh was heaping on his own head, cursing himself for being a weak and sentimental fool. Hugh the Hand—the man who had killed many before this with never a qualm or a moment’s regret.

But Bane was such a beautiful child, ingratiating, charming . . . with a soul blackened and warped by the whispered words of a wizard father the boy had never met or seen. Hugh had no way of knowing he, the spider, was being caught in a web far more devious and cunning than any he could ever hope to spin.

The three of them—Bane, Hugh, and Alfred—entered the hargast forest, forced to fight their way through a tangle of underbrush. At last they came to a cleared path. Bane was in high spirits, eager to see Hugh’s famed flying ship. The boy darted ahead. The wind blew strong, the branches of the hargast trees clashed together, their crystalline tones harsh and ominous in Alfred’s mind.

“Oh, sir, shouldn’t we stop him?” the Sartan asked.

“He’ll be all right,” Hugh answered, and Alfred knew then that the assassin was sluffing off his responsibility, tossing the child’s death into the lap of fate or chance or whatever deity, if any, this dark-souled man thought might bear the burden.

Whatever it was had accepted it.

Alfred heard the crack, like the booming of the perpetual storm of the Maelstrom. He saw the limb fall, saw Bane standing beneath it, staring up in rapt shock. The Sartan lunged forward, but he was too late. The limb fell on the child with a shattering crash.

He heard a scream, then, abruptly, silence.

Alfred dashed forward. The fallen branch was huge. It completely covered the path. The child’s body was nowhere to be seen. He must be buried underneath the wreckage. Alfred gazed in hopeless despair at the broken branches, their edges sharp as spears.

Leave it. Don’t meddle. You know what this child is! You know the evil that brought him forth. Let it die with him.

But he is a child! He’s had no choice in his fate. Must he pay for the sin of the father? Shouldn’t he have the chance to see for himself, to understand, to judge, to redeem himself, and perhaps redeem others?

Alfred glanced down the path. Hugh must have heard the branch fall, must have heard the scream. The assassin was taking his time, or perhaps offering up a prayer of thanksgiving. But he would be along soon.

The gigantic branch would take a team of men with cables and ropes to move—or one man with powerful magic. Standing over it, Alfred began to sing the runes. They wove and twined themselves about the tree branch, separated it into two halves, lifted each half up, deposited each half on either side of the path. Beneath the shattered limb lay Bane.

The child wasn’t dead, but he was dying. He was covered with blood. Crystal shards had pierced the small body, there was no telling how many bones were crushed and broken.

Bring life to the dead. The Wave must correct itself. Bring life to one and another will die untimely.

The child was unconscious, in no pain, his life seeping away rapidly.

If I were a physician, I would try to help him live. Is what I am capable of doing wrong?

Alfred picked up a small shard of crystal. Hands, generally so clumsy, moved with delicacy and skill. The Sartan made a cut in his own flesh. Kneeling down beside the child, he traced in his own blood a sigil on the boy’s mangled body. Then he sang the runes and, with his other hand, repeated them in the air.

The child’s broken bones knit together. The torn flesh closed. The rapid, shallow breathing eased. The grayish skin grew pink, flushed with returning life.

Bane sat up and stared at Alfred with blue eyes sharper than the crystal branches of the hargast tree. . . .

... Bane lived. And Hugh died. Died untimely. Alfred pressed his hand to his aching temples. But others were saved! How can I know? How can I know if I did right? All I know is that it was in my power to save that child and I did so. I couldn’t let him die.

Then Alfred understood his fear. If he opened that book on necromancy, he would see on its pages the very rune he drew on Bane’s flesh.

I have taken the first step down the dark and twisting path and who knows but that I shall not take a second and a third! Am I stronger than these, my brethren?

No, Alfred said to himself, and sank down, despairing, in a chair. No, I am the same.