Wild Magic

BURN.

The front lines of a mob of young Cheoshim marched around the bend, torches held high, black boots swinging and hitting the earth in unison. A STRIKER band, much bigger than the one that had chased her.

“Beehouse. I know it.” Faan groaned, pushed away from the wall. “Come on, Liki. We’ve got to warn them.” Cursing the clutter, she stumbled across the roof and climbed down, ran along the wynd to the back door of the Beehouse.

As doors always did when she needed to go through them, the back door sprang open, slammed against the wall. Faan caught it as it bounded back, ran across the kitchen and up the stairs. She kicked at Reyna’s door. “Up, up, there’s a mob coming.” She ran on, banged on Dawa’s door, Areia’s, hammered on the Kassian’s door. “Tai, Tai, they’re coming for us. We have to get out of here.”

She stood panting in the hallway, swaying with fatigue, blinking sweat out of her eyes as the bedroom doors opened.

Tai shouted the others to silence. “What is it, Fa? Where’ve you been?”

“Never mind that, tell you later. There’s a mob, I don’t know how many, Cheoshim, coming down the lane, coming here, I’m sure of it. STRIKER band. Yelling burn, waving torches. We’ve got to get away.”

Tai closed her eyes, grimaced. “Diyo, I can smell it. Areia, fetch Panote, will you? Reyna, you and Dawa collect bedding, clothes, any coin you’ve got stowed away. Fa, I know you’re tired, but get what you can. And be ready, totta, we’re going to need you. SHE has said. All of you, we’ll meet in the kitchen, five minutes, that’s all you’ve got.”

The mass of Cheoshim filled the Lane wall to wall, boot heels hitting the dirt in unison, torches waving. BURN BURN BURN.

A single man walked before them, a tall ebon figure in a torn and ragged robe, gray-streaked hair in a tangle, red eyes glaring over a gray-streaked beard, a staff in one hand, the other held out before him, palm out, fingers pointing to the sky, a bloody sky with a bloody sun just breaking free of the horizon.

In the wynd across from the Beehouse, Reyna stirred. “Faharmoy?”

“Diyo,” Tai whispered, “be quiet, Rey.”

Faan leaned against the wall of the tenement on the west side of the wynd, her eyelids sagging, her mind barely turning over. She wanted to be away from here, but Tai wouldn’t go.

The Prophet stopped in front of the Beehouse.

“ANATHEMA!” he roared. “BE CAST OUT. BE PURGED FROM THIS CITY, FROM THIS LAND.”

BURN BURN BURN, the mob roared behind him, male voices rumbling in their lowest notes, BURN BURN BURN.

The Prophet stepped to one side, folded his arms-across his chest.

A huge heavy youth in the front rank ran to the door of the Beehouse, an oiljar in his left hand. He booted the door till it boomed. “Out,” he bellowed. “Out, you kuashin guguns, out or eat fire!”

So angry she forgot her fatigue, tiny tongues of flame dancing along her arms, Faan took a step toward the road-stopped at Tai’s quiet “No.”

The Cheoshim booted the door again, then crashed the jar of oil against it, dropped his torch into the puddle and ran back yelling, “Burn burn burn.”

BURN, the Cheoshim chanted as they thinned into single file and trotted into the wynd on the west side of the house. BURN. They formed a circle about the Bee-house, stamping their feet and howling. BURN BURN BURN.

In Verakay Lane the Prophet lifted his staff, brought the butt down hard on the dirt. “Chumavayal’s Blessing”, he cried out, “LET IT BE DONE.”

Some heaved their jars high enough to get them over the roof fence so they crashed on the tiles, some aimed at windows or simply splattered the walls with the heavy oil. A howl blew like a gale around the house, the Cheoshim danced and whooped and waved their torches. “BURN!” they shouted, the sound ragged now, wilder and more terrible. “BURN!”

The Prophet tucked his staff under his arm and clapped his hands together, a single crack that broke through the other noise.

The Cheoshim swung their torches around their heads and hurled them at the Beehouse, then ran for the lane, arms crossed over their heads.

Like the jars, some of the torches flew up and up, turning in lazy circles, curving over the roof fence; others dropped into the pools of oil at the base of the walls.

The Beehouse burned. Flames leapt a hundred feet into the air, god-driven and terrible. In hardly a breath there was nothing but ashes left.