The Fire Mages (16 page)

As we were looking at the book, the door behind us shushed closed and vanished, except for two hand prints on either side.

“Do you think the mages can see them?” I said, but Drei only shrugged. It was hard to know what the mages were aware of, when we couldn’t ask them directly.

I opened one of the wooden doors and peeked out, to see an array of imposing golden buildings arranged around a large paved square. The morning’s rainclouds had cleared and the sun was gleaming through. An auspicious sign for the Sun Festival, but also good news for us.

“Shall we go out?” I asked.

He hesitated. “It’s supposed to be risky, but we don’t know why. We might just – vanish, or something.”

“And if we cower timidly inside, we’ll never find out anything,” I said impatiently. “No one will care a piece if
I
vanish. I’m not afraid to try.”

He nodded, half-heartedly. “I suppose we have to take a few risks.”

He gestured for me to go ahead. I pushed open the door and stepped out onto the portico. It was in shade, but most of the square was bathed in sunshine, and every building, every flagstone, every window shone with incandescent light, so brilliant it dazzled me. I stepped out into the light and lifted my face to the sun, feeling the warmth on my skin and the joy of freedom and fresh air bubbling up inside me.

I stretched my stride to descend the wide steps, built for longer legs than mine. At the bottom, the square lay enticingly before me. The paving slabs were grey and pink, in an alternating pattern, with no glow or feel of magic to them. Just stone slabs, nothing more. Dotted about randomly were plinths with larger than life statues of people in flowing robes and elaborate hats. In the centre of the square was a slender tower with open archways at the bottom and stairs visible inside.

“There!” I said, spinning round to face Drei. “Let’s climb the tower and see what the place looks like from above.”

He stood irresolute on the bottom step, looking about anxiously.

“Aren’t you coming?” I said.

“I – Kyra, I’m not sure. I have more to lose than you.”

“I’ll go by myself then, shall I? If I vanish, you can still get back inside.”

I strode out into the square, not waiting for a response, but before long I heard the slap of boots on the flags as he pounded after me. I turned and waited.

“Better to stay together, I suppose,” he said, glowering at me.

I laughed at him, and started off again, but I hadn’t gone two paces when I heard Drei’s sudden intake of breath.

“Something’s coming!”

At first I couldn’t sense anything, but casting my mind around I found it. A presence, in the air and moving towards us.

“What is it?” I hissed, but he was busy scanning the sky.

“There!” He pointed and I saw it – or rather, them. Two birds, lazily flapping above the rooftops and spiralling into the square. I was in no doubt that they were coming for us. We had gone outside, and someone – something – had noticed. Now here they were, looping above us, circling closer, raptors with beaks and claws, heads tilting first this way, then that, as they sized us up.

“I can shoot fire at them!” he yelling, taking up a stance with his hands raised. “If they’ll just come closer...”

“No, stop! I don’t think they mean us any harm.”

“Let’s not wait to find out.”

“Don’t hurt them! It’s all right.”

He lowered his arms and we both stood immobile as the birds slowly circled us; one flap of their great wings, a glide round, then another leisurely flap. I could see a ruff of golden feathers around their faces, bright in the sun against the darker brown of their bodies, and yellow eyes shining. They were so close I could see every feather individually, rippling in the movement of their flight, and their claws – I closed my eyes. It was all too easy to imagine those huge talons clasping me, knifing through my flesh, lifting me...

Even with eyes clasped shut, I could see them. In my mind, they were still there, still swirling round in predatory fashion, watching, but they weren’t feathered, just amorphous blobs of magic, the shape constantly roiling as they formed and reformed themselves. They were sending out – something, tendrils of energy, perhaps, probing. Then, an almost imperceptible touch inside my mind, the most delicate feather-light brush, like a butterfly wing. Then nothing.

I opened my eyes. They were gone.

“By the Moon Gods!” Drei said, his voice high with tension even though the birds had gone. “What was that about?”

“They just wanted to know who we are.
What
we are.”

“What are we, exactly?”

“Mages.” I smiled at him, relieved and triumphant. “Magic users. We’re allowed to be here. This whole place – all of it, it’s for us.”

“What the—?” He shook his head with an impatient flick. “Kyra, you do say some peculiar things.”

“It’s logical.” I was calm now, confident in my own ideas. “Look, here’s a city with no people. No one lives here, no one can even get in, there are high walls and no gates. Yet everything still works.”

“That’s just the residue of the magic that built it.”

“Perhaps. But those doors around the library – they only work for magic users. No, more than that, they can only be
found
by magic users. Even mages, perhaps, can’t see them. But
we
can! It’s too dangerous to go outside, they told us – but
we
can. Whatever test the birds set us, clearly we passed. Don’t you see? And I’ll bet that if we look carefully at the outside wall, we’d find those hand-shaped marks somewhere, and doors to let us in without traipsing through the sewers.”

His face brightened. “Oh! You think so? That
would
make sense, actually. It’s a magic city, so those with magical ability can move around freely.” Then he frowned. “You know, we really need a tame mage, so we can ask all these questions. Do they feel the power in the walls and that stone ball thing, can they see the marks for the doors?”

“The blue light when people lie,” I added. “I’d like to know if they can see that.”

“Very true. It’s so frustrating not knowing. I’ll have to see if I can corrupt a mage, so that we can find out.”

“Corrupt? Are you serious?”

“Well, you know what I mean. If they find out about us, they’re duty bound to report us, so we’d have to be very sure of anyone we took into our confidence. Let’s get up this tower, shall we?”

I was so distracted, I’d almost forgotten about the tower. There were no doors or windows, just open archways at ground level and a narrow stone stair climbing up and up around the inside, with air vents and a central void. At intervals, brass bells hung, still gleaming although they had been untouched, I presumed, for millennia. At the topmost level was a flat, open space with a high parapet, bare stone with a lofty arching roof. The flags were covered with a fine layer of gravel, drifted in on storms, and a small heap of dead leaves had collected in one corner. It was the first time I’d seen any debris in the city. The square below was as clean if it had been newly swept.

Drei made for the parapet to look out at the view, but I was struck by a different thought.

“This is perfect,” I said, grinning at him. “Nothing flammable here.”

For a moment he looked at me blankly, but then he got it. His face was washed by the most comical mixture of desperate hope and terror.

“Here?”

“Why not? There’s nothing at all to burn, and it’s private. Don’t you want to try it?”

He nodded wordlessly, and came slowly towards me, tentative and shy all of a sudden. I reached for him and began to unbutton and loosen and untie, sliding things off his arms and over his head. Helplessly he stood and let me.

“We’d look fine if I set fire to our clothes,” he said with a shaky laugh. “We’d have to walk naked through the streets.”

Good point. We abandoned any pretence of seduction and stripped everything off, leaving neat bundles in the stairwell on the floor below, well out of flame throwing range. Then we stood in the middle of the upper floor, while I guided his hands around to the bits of me that I thought he might like to explore, and tried to kiss him. He quivered from head to toe, whether from fear or desire I couldn’t tell. He had no idea what to do. When we lay down, I had to push his knees into the right place, then stop him lying so heavily on me that I couldn’t breathe. I even had to guide him inside me. After that he seemed to get the idea pretty well, and enjoyed himself rather a lot. It wasn’t so much fun for me. The gravel dug into my buttocks and all down my back, creating a rash of stabbing pains every time he moved. I can honestly say it was the most unpleasant experience of my life, but at least it was over quickly.

And no fire.

Drei was exultant, chattering away with glee and kissing me clumsily on the side of the mouth. As with all men, discovering what his equipment was designed for made him want to try it again, at once. This time, I insisted we spread a thick layer of clothing on the ground first, although I now had so much gravel embedded in my back that it wasn’t much more comfortable. Afterwards, we wrapped ourselves up against the cold and lay snuggled together in a haze of ecstasy and relief and optimism.

By the time he was ready to move on, the sun was well down in the sky. We dressed quickly, astonished that the time had disappeared so quickly. I’d almost forgotten the reason we’d climbed the tower in the first place, but Drei hadn’t.

“Look,” he said, peering over the parapet. “There’s the wall.”

I looked. Below us was the square, and a wide road leading down to some kind of ceremonial archway, and beyond it, the great golden wall. It was a little higher than us, but we could just see the flags of the Keep beyond.

“It looks as if there ought to be a gate,” I said. “We’re more or less in the middle of the city, there’s a very prominent road leading straight to the wall, but – no gate.”

“I daresay there are marks to open it,” he smiled, taking my hand. “Come on, let’s see what else there is.”

We moved round the top of the tower, peering down at an imposing building with the jagged outcrop of the mountain behind it. A little further round and the library’s golden dome came into view. Further again and—

I gasped. “A pillar!”

“What? Which pillar? There are pillars everywhere.”

“A pillar of
energy
, of magical power! Like at the renewal. There, see? That small, fat tower with the green spike at the top. I’ll bet that’s marble, and it goes all the way down and into the earth. We have to find it.”

There was no time that sun. We had escaped the worst of the Sun Festival celebrations, but there was a feast Drei wanted to attend that evening, so we scuttled back to the Keep to put on our finery again. I thought the gravel embedded in my back would be a problem, but by the time I’d soaked in the tub and Drei had dug out a couple of stubborn stones, the cuts had all closed over without a mark.

“You can heal yourself, too,” he said smugly.

“I don’t know how,” I said. “I’m not consciously doing anything.”

“I’ll bet you never got ill as a child.”

I was silent. It was true, I’d always been lucky that way. Even when the rest of the family had been struck down, one after the other, I’d always escaped. Was it possible?

Drei grinned triumphantly. “See? You’ve been doing it so long, it’s automatic. And I’ve been better, since you’ve been healing me. Have you noticed? I haven’t had a single headache, and although I thought I was going down with a fever last ten-sun, it passed off in a few hours. I really wish I could do that. It’s quite impressive.”

~~~~~

The following sun the scholars were back at the library and any kind of exploration of the city became much more difficult. Eventually we worked out a scheme. We went openly to the library each morning, then after a couple of hours we would make our farewells and disappear behind the far book stacks where the stairs to the sewers lay. If we were unobserved, we’d open the nearest door to the outside, explore for as long as we dared, and then sneak back into the library and duck down the stairs as quick as we could. It was incredibly risky. Any of the scholars might see us leave or return, or we might bump into someone in the sewers hours after we had supposedly left. A mage would be the worst, for they would be sure to ask questions we didn’t want to answer, and then we would be bound, I suppose; magically restrained and interrogated and in time executed as illegal users of magic. But we were both too exhilarated and reckless with excitement to care. I had nothing to lose, and Drei – I suppose Drei was in my thrall just then. Sex is a powerful bond, sometimes.

We searched with methodical determination for the low tower with the pillar, but everything looked different from ground level. Promising streets became dead ends or veered away in the wrong direction, likely buildings looked quite different from close up and more than once we found ourselves on a bridge crossing over the street we thought we were heading for. It was a maze, and we blundered around cluelessly. One time we were close enough that we could both feel the low, thrumming energy, but there was a wall blocking the way. We must have wandered up and down every street, in and out of every alley, even into gardens, still stocked with neatly trimmed shrubs.

“How do they keep these gardens so tidy?” I mused, as we sat, exhausted, on a bench backing on to an immaculately groomed hedge. “There isn’t a twig out of place. Who prunes the bushes, and weeds this gravel path?”

“Magic?” he said hesitantly, but he felt the unlikeliness of it as much as I did. The walls and doors and buildings were obvious candidates for spells and wards, but what mage would bother with self-weeding flowerbeds? The gardens around the mages’ house at Ardamurkan had been kept in order by a troop of outdoor servants, not spells. Even the top of the tower showed signs of neglect. But here at ground level, all was perfection. It was puzzling. But then there was much that was strange about the Imperial City.

~~~~~

I had an odd message one sun. I received few messages of any kind, just an occasional note from Deyria, the only one of the family who could afford to write, I suppose. My closest sister, Alita, used to write sometimes when I was at Ardamurkan, when she could charm one of the wagoners into carrying it for free, but she had no way to get a message all the way to Kingswell. But this note was not from either of my sisters, and it bore the public seal and stamp, proving that whoever sent it had paid the silver to convey it by the official messengers.

I carefully opened it and read.

‘My sweet Kyra, are you surprised? I hope so. I cannot come to you myself, so my words must fly to you in my place. I must be brief, for I can only afford one page. Mistress Tallyan died recently, quite unexpectedly, and the kind soul left me a modest sum of money. To set myself up, she said. I have no ambitions, Kyra, as you know, but Master Tillon is minded to retire from the inn before too long, and has offered to sell me the licence. All he asks is that I let him stay on there until his daughter’s children are grown and there is room for him at the saddlery. The Elders will agree, but it seems a companion is too disreputable to take charge of the inn, so they insist I take a wife. Naturally, I thought at once of you, my sweet Kyra, who has always been the flower of my heart. I know that your drusse contract is not long, and that you have been so cruelly deprived of your livelihood. It may be, therefore, that you will think kindly of your poor friend, and perhaps in the future will like to be my wife and partner for all our lives. I will wait as long as you wish, for I know we can be happy. Your adoring Bonnor.’

Bonnor! I hadn’t thought of him for an age. I was too astonished to laugh, but really it was too funny for words. Bonnor, whose manner towards me had never been more than lightly flirtatious, who had never so much as kissed me, now wanting to marry me. It was ridiculous, and for all his charming phrases – flower of his heart, indeed! – nothing could induce me to accept. The very thought of living out the rest of my life trapped in that little village, with a gaggle of children around my feet, made me shudder. I was tempted to write a frivolous reply, but at the last minute I relented. Bonnor might hide behind a facade of chivalrous flattery, but who knew what lay below the surface? It was just possible that he really had been yearning for me for years, unlikely as it seemed. So I refused him in the gentlest words I could manage. I didn’t want to encourage him to pester me, however, so I suggested he might find my sister Alita more receptive.

The message had one effect, however, for it made me face up to my future for the first time. I was already more than half way through my drusse contract with Drei, and when that came to an end, what under the moon was I to do? It was all very fine sitting here at Kingswell in my grand new clothes pretending to be a lady, but I was no nearer to finding work to sustain me for the rest of my life. I’d known exactly what my life would be since I was eight years old, but now my dream had been taken away from me. Bonnor’s phrase,
‘cruelly deprived’
, was apt. But cruel or not, it couldn’t be fixed, and I had no idea what to do. I could accept my lowered status as a scribe with no spellpage ability, or carve out a new career for myself, but neither option appealed. Despair paralysed me, and I was incapable of thinking logically about it.

I hadn’t made much progress with finding out about my magic, either. I understood the blue lights, and I could heal, but neither of those would pay the baker for bread, as Mother would say, since I could hardly use them in public. In just a few ten-suns, I might find myself without any means of support and no reason to stay in Kingswell. I wouldn’t exactly be destitute, and I could go back to Ardamurkan. I supposed, if I was honest, I was no worse off than I’d been just after my trial. I was no better off, either, except for a few expensive outfits I would probably never wear again, and the remains of my drusse allowance.