Sword and Sorceress XXVII (31 page)

The baker thought. “You say he has fine
wheat in plenty, but less of the common barley than last year?”

“Yes.”

“The wheat he can sell to sea-traders
who ship it to the islands, far dearer than he can sell it close to home,”
Selah mused. “Or maybe he simply thinks to drive the price higher by
withholding it.”

“If all the grain we grow is being sent
to the islands, maybe I could stow away on a ship,” Nima said. “But even if I
could, it’s still all wrong. Why should a few men hoard what many sowed and
harrowed and harvested? What will happen to everyone here, if they keep on?”

“We’ll have to shake lose some of their
hoard,” Selah said.

“How?” Nima demanded. “What can we do?”

“Maybe nothing. And yet. . .” The baker
hesitated. She looked into Nima’s face as if appraising her. “When my mother
taught me baking, she also taught me certain secrets. No one thinks of bakers
as powerful, but every day we hold in our hands the force that grew the world.”
She laid a hand on Nima’s abdomen. “You hold the spirit of growth, too. Maybe
between the two of us, we can raise more than bread.”

#

At moonrise they stood in the back garden
between the bakery and the ovens. It was too hot and arid to grow much there,
but Selah had nursed along a few herbs, mint and basil and rosemary.

“Place your hand on the rosemary, but
gently,” Selah commanded. “Don’t pluck it. Feel the living stem between your
fingers.”

Nima did as she bade. For a sower of
seeds and reaper of grain, it was familiar, yet unfamiliar: she was used to
handling growing things, but unused to standing still, doing nothing to them,
neither gathering nor pruning nor weeding nor mulching. The stem between her
fingers was like a cord binding her to earth.

Reverently, Selah placed one hand on the
dough and let it sink slowly in, the springy mixture pillowing between her
fingers. Then she dipped the tip of one finger of the other hand into the
yeasty mix, carrying away a little of it. She touched it to Nima’s head and
lips, and then to her own. Finally, she rested her hand, still bearing a trace
of the rising, on Nima’s belly. She breathed in slowly, and Nima felt her own
breath fall into rhythm with Selah’s.

“Source of life, source of growth,

Source of the yeast that raises us,

Breathe into us the lightness to rise,

Culture us with the yeast of your mouth,

Revive our dry earth with the rains of
growth,

Sprout us like barley. Raise us like
wheat.

Grind us like grain for our neighbors’
need.

Try our hearts in the heat of your
ovens.

Our people hunger for bread. Here we
are:

Leaven us. Let us arise for them.”

As Selah chanted, Nima felt the stirring
inside her, the child fluttering in her womb, more active than ever before. She
felt the blood rushing in her veins, the milk flooding her newly swollen
breasts. She ceased to be hungry, as if she drew sustenance directly from the
earth.

Something seemed to bubble up within her
from the ground, through her bare feet, through her legs and hips, through her
womb, through her heart, through her throat, till she had to speak, though the
words were nothing she had ever thought of, though the voice that issued from
her lips was not her own: “Daughter of yeast, kneader of dough, baker of bread,
I know you. From your first beginning in your mother’s womb I know you. From
the soles of your feet to the crown of your head, from the inmost marrow of
your bones to your outmost lock of hair, from your soul to your flesh, I know
you. I hear you. I have come for you.”

“Thank you,” Selah breathed huskily. “Oh,
thank you.”

“Do you know what you undertake?”

“To be yeast,” the baker said.

“You shall be yeast, if you can bear it,”
the voice spoke through Nima.

“I will bear it.”

“Then rise, Daughters of Yeast. Rise,
Kneader of Bread. Rise, Sower of Seeds. Rise, Reaper of Grain. Rise, my
children, and leaven the world.

Nima felt thin threads of living matter
flow through her from the lips that spoke these words up into her brain, down
into her womb. They flowed through her feet, down into the earth like roots,
like runners connecting her to Selah. She felt, as if it were her own, the
strength of the baker’s hands, her fingers that worked the dough, her arms that
shifted the heavy baking-stones, her broad shoulders. The tiny threads of life
grew and multiplied, and she felt herself grow and rise bigger and bigger until
it did not shock her to find she could step over the little mud-and-timber
bakeshop—as, indeed, she must, for the garden was too small for herself and the
baker to stand together.

“I’ll raise the people in the streets,”
Selah told her. The baker, too, had risen up tall as the proudest house in the
City.

“I’ll go back to Lord Gessig’s fields.
My people are there,” Nima said.

The road from the fields to the City
that she had trudged painfully all night long, she now retraced in a swift
series of leaps. Wherever her feet struck the ground, she could feel the spirit
of increase working its way through the soil, spreading and multiplying.

She came to a granary where Lord Gessig
stored his harvest. With a touch of her hands, the grain within it swelled and
burst its wooden sides open. Wheat fountained up out of the earth like a
spring, more than the greatest barn could hold.

With glad shouts, the field hands left
their evening chores and ran to catch the sudden bounty.

An overseer and a guard came running to
restore order. “You dogs! That’s Lord Gessig’s wheat. Don’t think of taking a
grain of it for yourselves! Help us contain it.” They seemed not to see her: as
large as she had grown, Nima found, she was as invisible as yeast in a loaf.

She bent down and took the overseer and
guard each in one of her gigantic hands. She spoke to the grain in their
bellies, and it swelled and rose inside them till they doubled over with
cramps. The overseer dropped his whip, the guard his spear; Nima picked up
their weapons and broke them before moving to aid the field hands.

She did not know all of them, but she
recognized Elishua, an old friend of her parents. Here was someone she could
trust. “Rise, Sower of Seed, Daughter of Yeast,” she murmured, touching Elishua’s
hand.

The old woman grew to match Nima’s
stature.  “What must I do, young prophet?”

Nima’s heart quaked at the title Elishua
gave her, but there was no time to argue about something so unimportant as a
name. “You and I must raise the people in the fields. I’ll go north.”

“Then I’ll go south,” said Elishua. They
moved through the lands of Lord Gessig, swelling the grain in the silos,
bursting the locks of strongholds, raising up more and more companions to join
the Rising.

She reached the wheat field she had once
worked. There was Haxal the Overseer, holding the bag of wages and ordering the
workers each in turn to strip for inspection before he doled out their daily
pay. She bent to him, unseen, wondering if she might make the marrow in his
skull swell up until his head burst, like poor Nash’s. But the thought put a
bitter taste in her mouth: that was not how the spirit within her wished to
work. Instead, she touched the sack of wages; the coins swelled until the sack
burst, spilling coppers everywhere. While Haxal scrambled to gather them up
again, she took the hands of two of her old companions, Rush and Mara, and
raised them up. “Children of Yeast, Sowers of Seed, arise and help me. Raise
the land.”

When they came to the barley field, Nima
found she could sense in her feet the seeds that had not sprouted. The spirit
of growth in her stirred them, and they rose: a late crop to save her people.
But it would not save them if Lord Gessig were free to hoard it to make it
dearer, or ship it far off for profit, leaving none for them.

A knot of field hands stared at the
miraculously growing barley in wonder. This time, when Nima took the hand of a
bent-backed laborer, the yeast found its way into his heart. Instead of raising
him up a giant, it swelled his soul, banishing fear. He began to speak to the
others in urgent tones. Nima did not stay to hear him, but hastened to other knots
of workers, raising the spirit within them. Soon, throughout the estates,
slaves were striking off each others’ iron rings, and a growing army of field
hands advanced on the lord’s hall.

Nima walked by their side, gigantic but
unseen, her feet leaving no prints in the earth. When they reached the hall, a
guard stood in the doorway, refusing to let the workers pass.  Nima’s invisible
hands thrust the guardsman aside, so the crowd poured into the stronghold.

“Who are you? What are you doing in my
hall?” Lord Gessig demanded of the advancing crowd.

One whose heart the yeast had raised, a
woman called Lem, faced the lord boldly. “Don’t you know us? We feed you every
day. We built this hall of yours. We are the workers in your fields, and we are
tired of starving. We want our fair share of what we harvest.”

“Guards!” Lord Gessig shouted. “Seize
these unruly peasants.”

The guards plied whips and fists, but
the field hands were so used to blows and beatings that they could not be
daunted. One of them raised a spear against the field hands; Nima found a spot
of mold on its shaft and let the spirit of growth spread the decay until the
weapon shattered.

“See?” Lem said. “The Great God shatters
the weapons of your henchmen so you will hear us.”

Another guardsman looked beseechingly at
his commander, as if he longed to break off the fight, and only sought
permission. Nima reached out with the touch of the rising, and the spirit
within him grew. He lowered his sword. “I will not stand against the Great God.”

The lord glowered at him, but behind the
mask of anger, he was trembling. Nima saw her former master as she had never
seen him before: a coward who even at the height of power feared the people he
commanded, and even at the height of wealth desperately feared becoming poor.
Nima reached a hand toward the lord. If the yeast grew within him, might he not
grow big-souled enough to give of his abundance? Or would he only grow bolder
in greed, and send his people away hungry?

Whatever the risk, she had to give the
yeast what it needed: a chance to breed and grow within another human soul. She
loosed the spirit of growth to find its subtle path into Lord Gessig’s heart.
But, as if an iron ring closed around it, his soul would not stretch and grow.
She watched in dread and awe as the lord’s face turned red, then gray, then
blue, as a heart that could not grow choked and died.

Yeast breeds, yeast grows, yeast dies
.

#

In the morning, Nima found herself
shrinking back down like dough well kneaded, returning to human form again. But
with the power of the rising still in her veins, she sprang along the road with
strength, all the way to the City, to the baker’s shop.

“Selah!” she cried. “Selah, the famine
is over, the lord is dead, everything is new!”

“Everything is new,” said a weak and
weary voice.

The baker lay in her back garden, too
spent to care that her head was on stone. Nima ran to her, cradled her head: it
was hot as a loaf just taken from the oven.

“You’re fevered,” she said. “Let me find
you a healer.”

Selah shook her head. “No use. Yeast
grows, but yeast dies to make bread for others. I knew that when I asked to
become yeast.”

Nima’s heart lurched. “I touched people
and made them rise. And now, will they die of what I have done?”

“Never fear,” Selah said. “Some die, but
some remain and breed, like the rising left for the next baking. So it must
always be: but without the rising, many would have died of hunger before long.
This time, I will pay the price of the rising; you and the others will live and
breed and grow. And you, Nima, will keep this shop, and tend the rising, in my
place.”

“Me! I’m not a baker.”

“You will be,” Selah said. “Did not the
spirit of yeast whisper its secrets to you in the night?”

Nima opened her mouth to deny it, but
realized that Selah was right: though she remembered no teaching, she knew what
to do with the dough just as she knew how to breathe and the child within her
womb knew how to grow. “Yes,” she said. “I will keep the rising alive.”

Ghost Pyres

by
Jonathan Moeller

Here is another
of Jonathan Moeller’s stories about Caina, one of the Emperor’s Ghosts. In this
case, the ghosts are still alive; they’re the spies and Intelligence corps.
Caina has been a Ghost for nearly two decades, yet she still encounters new and
different magical threats  to deal with. At least her life is never borning.

Jonathan
Moeller is pleased (and astonished) to return to SWORD & SORCERESS for a
sixth time with “Ghost Pyres.” He is also the author of the sword-and-sorcery
novel DEMONSOULED, which was published by Gale/Five Star in 2005, and is now
available as a free eBook in all major eBook formats.

Visit
him on the web at www.jonathanmoeller.com, where you can find, among other
things, five years of interviews with SWORD & SORCERESS contributors, and
CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, a free full-length novel set in the world of “Ghost Pyres.”

****

Caina doubled over and threw up.

A cramp shot through her limbs, and her
skin prickled as if she had been stabbed with needles. Caina grabbed at the
wall for support, and felt Lucan Maraeus’s strong hands close around her
shoulders. Which was just as well—she didn’t want to fall on her face in the
street. They had come here hunting spies from Anub-Kha, and collapsing in
public was hardly a good way to remain inconspicuous.

After a long moment the nausea and the
pain faded.

But the tingling sensation remained.

“Are you ill?” said Lucan. He was a lean
man in his middle thirties, and with his fine clothes and ready smile affected
the manner of a wealthy, idle lord of the Empire. Yet now the smile had
vanished, and his right hand twitched toward his sword hilt.

“No,” said Caina, wiping her mouth. “No.
Not sickness. Worse.”

His grim expression darkened. “Sorcery?”

Caina nodded.

When she was eleven, a sorcerer’s spell
had slain her father and left her scarred. Ever since, she had possessed the
ability to sense to presence of sorcery. With seventeen years of practice, she
could now sense the distance and intensity of arcane spells. It had come in
handy, more than once.

“Someone just cast a spell nearby,” said
Caina, looking around. She and Lucan stood in one of the main dockside streets
of Caer Belaen, a small town southwest of the Imperial capital. A few passing
sailors cast odd looks at the nobleman and his indisposed companion, but no one
stopped to offer help.

Sailors had a good eye for trouble.

“You’re sure?” said Lucan.

“Aye,” said Caina. “A powerful one, too.”
Another wave of sharp prickles crawled over her skin. “And it’s still active.”

“No magi live in Caer Belaen,” said
Lucan.

Caina nodded. “Then we investigate.”

She would have investigated anyway, even
if an entire chapter of the magi lived in the town. She was a Ghost
circlemaster, one of the leaders of the Emperor’s spies, and she had sworn to
defend the people of the Empire from those who preyed upon them. And very
often, magi and sorcerers were the predators.

Gods, how she hated them.

“This way,” said Caina. Caer Belaen was
half-abandoned, most of the merchant ships preferring the larger harbors at
Caer Marist and Malarae. So abandoned warehouses lined the streets of the
dockside districts, crumbling and dilapidated. The tingles grew sharper as
Caina approached one of the abandoned warehouses.

She stopped, frowning.

“Do you smell that?” she said.

Lucan blinked. “Is that...burned meat?”

Caina saw red light leaking through the
boards of the abandoned warehouse’s doors.

“I don’t think that’s pork,” she said.

She took a deep breath, drew a dagger
from her belt, and pushed open the door.

A gruesome scene met her eyes.

The abandoned warehouse was empty, but
strange, swirling symbols and odd glyphs had been painted across the walls. A
heap of coals stood in the center of the room, glowing with eerie light. The
flames burned too bright to be natural, and Caina felt waves of sorcerous force
rolling off the fire.

A burned corpse lay atop the coals. To
judge from the half-melted jewelry clinging to the blackened fingers and neck,
Caina suspected the corpse had once been a woman. Fury burned through her,
almost as hot as the sorcerous flames. Yet another life torn apart by sorcery,
another victim murdered by a spell.

The world would be a better place if
every last sorcerer perished.

And whoever had done this would pay.

“Gods,” said Lucan, taking a step
forward.

“No!” Caina grabbed his arm. “Don’t
touch it. I don’t think it’s safe. Let me have a look.”

She took a cautious step, examining the
strange designs painted on the walls. A ring of the sigils had been painted on
the floor, encircling the pyre. Caina knew far more about sorcery than she wished,
and she recognized many of the symbols.

“Pyromancy,” said Lucan. “Sorcery that
draws its power from flame.”

“It also tends to drive its
practitioners mad,” said Caina, voice quiet. “Literally burns away their
sanity.”

“Those symbols,” said Lucan. “I think
they’re designed to summon and focus the power.”

“You’re right.” Caina gazed at one of
the glyphs. It showed a stylized flame encased within a heptagon, the seven
points marked with stars.

“Damn it,” she whispered.

“What?” said Lucan.

“This spell,” said Caina. “I recognize
it. It’s called the Sevenfold Pyre. It’s a ritual to pull the spirit of a slain
pyromancer into the world of the living.  The caster burns seven victims alive,
using their lives as fuel to summon up the dead pyromancer.”

“But pyromancy is extinct,” said Lucan.

“Not quite,” said Caina. “The Ghosts
killed a pyromancer in Caer Belaen decades ago, a murderer named Ravodan. He
burned his victims alive to fuel his power. I think whoever did this is trying
to summon up Ravodan’s spirit and learn his secrets.”

“Seven victims?” said Lucan. “You mean
seven people have been slain like this?”

Caina blinked as the realization came to
her.

“No. Not yet. The Sevenfold Pyre burns
its victims one after another, in sequence.” Her mind raced, her hands closing
into fists. “If we can find the others, we can stop the summoner.”

“How?” said Lucan.

Caina pointed at the heptagon glyph. “Do
you see that? It’s not just a glyph. It’s also a map. The stars on the points
of the heptagon...”

“Represent the victims,” said Lucan. “Who
will be arranged in this pattern within Caer Belaen.”

“Yes,” said Caina, scrutinizing the
glyphs around the pyre and the dead woman. “And these symbols around the
heptagon...these symbols point to the other stars. The other victims.” She
stared at them for a moment, and then pointed. “There. The next point on the
heptagon will be five or six hundred yards north of us, if I’ve read this
right.”

“Why not go right to the center?” said
Lucan. “The sorcerer behind this is probably waiting there.”

“No,” said Caina. “The actual summoning
itself can take place anywhere within the heptagon. We’ll make our way along
the edges. If we hasten, we might catch the sorcerer.”

And save his victims.

Lucan nodded. “Lead the way.”

Caina looked once more at the twisted
corpse atop the coals. That someone would dare to commit such atrocities in the
name of power filled her with a fury like a storm. She would find who had done
this and make him pay...

A flicker of motion caught her eye.

A man in a hooded cloak stood in the
doorway to the street, beckoning to her.

Caina hissed in alarm and drew her
daggers.

“What?” said Lucan, raising his sword. “What
is it?”

The doorway was empty.

Caina hurried though the doorway. The
street was deserted. She saw no trace of anyone, and certainly no one in a
hooded cloak.

“I...don’t know,” said Caina. “I thought
I saw someone.”

“The smoke, perhaps,” said Lucan. He
sighed. “I shall smell that poor woman for days.”

The rage shivered in Caina’s mind.

“Aye,” she said. “Let’s go.”

They hurried north.

#

Due north took Caina and Lucan to a
neighborhood of mid-sized houses, no doubt owned by merchants rich enough to
live away from their shops. But like the rest of Caer Belaen, the houses looked
run-down. Were their inhabitants desperate enough to use sorcery to restore
their fortunes? To summon up the shade of a long-dead pyromancer?

“You should go back,” said Caina. “This
is dangerous.”

Lucan lifted an eyebrow. “Of course this
is dangerous. And I have hunted down rogue sorcerers before.”

He had. And he would have hunted this
pyromancer, with or without Caina’s help. But that wasn’t why he was here now.
She saw it in his face, in the way he watched her.

He was in love with her. It was going to
get him killed. And she did not need his help. She had been taking care of
herself for a long time. But only a fool turned away help in the face of
dangerous enemies.

And she did not want to send him away...

“Here,” said Caina, pushing aside her
doubts. “I think the next pyre will be here.” She pointed at one of the larger
houses, its whitewashed walls topped with a roof of red clay tiles. The small
garden ringing the house made it look more prosperous than the others.

“That one?” said Lucan. “I know the
fellow who lives there. A minor noble named Mauldron. He has a sinecure
overseeing the harbor. He hardly seems the sort to meddle with pyromancy.”

“No offense, my lord Lucan,” said Caina,
“but I’ve known nobles of the Empire who murdered their children for political
advantage.”

“Then you’ve met my father. Do you feel
any sorcery here?”

“No,” said Caina. She stepped closer to
Mauldron’s house. Could she have been mistaken? If she had misread the glyphs,
the other pyres might lie elsewhere within the town. And innocent people would
die because of her mistake...

A faint tingle brushed against her skin.

Caina cursed. “It’s starting. Someone’s
casting a spell in that house. Go!”

Lucan raced forward, Caina following.
They reached the house’s front door, only to find it locked. Caina reached for
the lockpicks hidden in her belt, but Lucan solved that problem by putting his
boot to the door. It splintered and swung open.

Only a fool turned away help.

She flashed him a quick grin and ran
into the house, dagger in hand.

They entered a deserted atrium, the floor
paved with elaborate mosaics of the Empire’s history. Beyond was a dining room
with a long table, statues standing in niches along the wall. There was no
trace of anyone, whether nobles or servants.

Yet the tingling grew stronger.

“It’s here,” said Caina. “I’m sure of
it. We...”

She heard a scream.

“The cellars,” said Lucan.

They raced into the kitchen. The door to
the cellar stood half-open, a red glow shining from within. Caina hurried down
the stairs and into the cellar. A forest of squat brick pillars supported the
vaulted ceiling. Five men in ceremonial black and red robes stood around a pile
of firewood, their arms raised, chanting in low voices. A young woman in the
dress of a washerwoman lay upon the wood, her wrists and ankles tied, a gag stuffed
into her mouth.

Good. They were not too late. They...

One of the men shouted and clapped his
hands, and Caina’s skin crawled with the presence of powerful sorcery.

The heaped wood erupted in sorcerous
flames, the roar of the fire drowning out the woman’s screams.

A red mist fell over Caina’s vision.

The man who had clapped his hands looked
at her, eyes glinting within his crimson hood. “Intruders! Kill them!”

Caina’s free hand dipped into her belt,
came up holding a throwing knife. She stepped forward, her arm plunging back,
and flung the blade, her entire body snapping like a bowstring. The knife
hurtled through the air and buried itself in the throat of the nearest robed
man. He fell, choking.

The others drew swords from beneath
their robes and charged.

Lucan met them, his sword a blur of
steel. The robed men converged on him, seeing him as the greater threat, which
gave Caina all the opportunity she needed to act. A second throwing knife
buried itself in the calf of the nearest enemy. He stumbled, and Lucan finished
him with a quick slash. Another man turned towards Caina, robes billowing, and
launched a thrust for her head. She ducked, sidestepped, and stabbed for his
side. The man dodged, sword coming back for a swing.