The Fire Seer (26 page)

Taya laid her head in the crook of his shoulder, trying to calm herself, but she couldn’t do it. She was breathing like a bird, her breath darting in and out of her throat. She was going to die down here. It was her first Coalition mission, the beginning of her new, independent life after all the hard work of Coalition training. She was going to die in a hole with Mandir, and no one would ever find their bodies.

“Banana girl,” came Mandir’s soft voice in the dark. “I told you about my Year of Penance. It’s your turn to tell me something.”

She swallowed again, dry-mouthed. It was clear what Mandir was trying to do. He meant to distract her and take her mind off her fear. It wasn’t going to work, not with her trapped in the dark without her magic. This was the fire maze all over again, just without the fire. “What can I tell you? I’m a farm girl.”

“When did you discover your Gift, and how did your family react?” He rested his cheek against hers. It was rough with stubble, an indication that a fair bit of time had passed since they’d left the guesthouse. That scared her all over again.

Surrounded by Mandir’s heat and strength, she managed to quiet her breathing. What did she remember of her childhood? Those memories were so distant, and they hardly seemed relevant. “I’m not sure when my Gift showed up because I’d always been good with fires. I was the fire-minder of the family, and I can’t remember a time when my parents didn’t say,
Fire’s out—get Taya
. I would stare into the flames for hours.”

“Did Isatis send you fire visions?”

“Not at all, I just liked to watch the flames leap and cavort. They seemed such happy, carefree things. I had developed a talent for keeping a fire going with a minimum of fuel, and banking it just right in the evening, rousing it well in the morning. At some point I stopped using flint and tinder—it just didn’t seem necessary. I learned that I could call the fire, and it would answer. I had no idea I was performing magic.”

“Come, now,” said Mandir. “How could you not know?”

“Magic wasn’t something I thought about. Nobody from my village had ever developed the Gift, not in living memory, so why should I even consider the possibility? The day finally came when my mother caught me calling fire without flint and tinder. I thought calling fire was normal, something anyone could do with enough practice, but my mother knew better. She screamed and ran for my father. They had a loud argument, and when I tried to follow them and hear what they were saying, they closed the door and spoke in low voices. Two weeks later, a pair of Coalition
ilittu
arrived at our village and asked to see me summon fire. They tested me on some other things too, such as manipulation of water—”

“I went through those same tests,” said Mandir.

“They decided I was, indeed, blessed with the Gift, and took me from my family.”

“Do you miss them?” asked Mandir. “Your family.”

“Of course,” said Taya. “My parents were strict, hard-working people—I was the fifth of six children—but they loved me. In the good years, when the Mothers blessed our orchard, we were happy. In the bad years, we struggled, same as any farming family. I loved the feasts and festivals at harvest time—”

“And the banana beer, apparently,” put in Mandir, drawing his arm a little tighter around her.

Taya nodded. “And the banana beer. When life is hard, you take what pleasures you can.”

“Were you angry when the Coalition took you away?”

“Not at all. They saved me from a fate I dreaded. I’d had my first moon blood, and my father was negotiating my marriage contract. It’s all luck, you know, whether you end up with a man who will cherish you or one who will beat you. Even if I’d been one of the lucky ones, my life, once I was married, would have been proscribed for me from sunup to sundown and beyond. I’d have toiled through the day in my husband’s fields and cooked and cleaned for him in the evenings. At night, I’d have lain in his bed, taken his seed, and borne his children. By the age of thirty, my body would have been that of an old woman.”

“Sacrilege, to ruin such a body as yours,” said Mandir.

She shrugged. “It is the way of things now that we’ve fallen from the Mothers’ embrace. But I’ll always be grateful to the Coalition for offering me an alternative. I struggled and suffered at Mohenjo Temple, in part because of you—”

“Sorry,” put in Mandir.

“But it was worth it. The Coalition gave me my education and my independence. They gave me fine clothes and money. They gave me Pepper.” She bit her lip, thinking suddenly of the mare. What had happened to her and to the blood bay when Zash had taken them captive? “Perhaps it does not mean so much to you. As Tufan’s son, you would have already had all those things.”

“Joining the Coalition was life-changing for me as well,” said Mandir. “But not for the same reasons. May I tell you something I’ve never told anyone? You have to promise not to laugh.”

She nodded. His tactic of getting her to calm down by talking was working. Her breathing had slowed to its normal rate, and she was resting quite comfortably in his arms, with just a buzz of apprehension reminding her that they were still in danger. After learning about his Year of Penance and the way it had changed him, she found that she wanted to know more about him.

“Were you aware of my father’s reputation?” asked Mandir.

She shivered. “Without doubt. Everyone knew that Tufan raided farming villages, often picking out a young woman and taking her back with him. Those women were never seen again.”

“I know what happened to them,” said Mandir. “But let’s not talk about that. Tufan was a truly evil man, and he had the raising of me for nine years. The man looked on us not as his children but as his playthings. It amused him to set my half-brothers and me against one another and see who would emerge victorious. In his household, it was fatal to show weakness. He beat two of my half-brothers to death for cowardice.”

For the first time in her life, Taya did not roll her eyes at Mandir’s tale of woe. She was beginning to feel some genuine sympathy for the confused, unhappy child he had once been. “I had no idea it was that bad.”

“I’m not saying this to make excuses for myself,” said Mandir. “After that first year in the Coalition, I ought to have figured out that Tufan’s household wasn’t normal and what I’d learned there shouldn’t be perpetuated. I carried my cruelty with me into the Coalition. But you already know that story, all too well I’m sure. I want to tell you about my mother.”

Taya blinked. Now that she thought about it, she’d heard plenty about Mandir’s father, Tufan, but she’d never once heard him mention his mother. Whoever she was, she couldn’t have been Tufan’s wife. Mandir was a bastard. “Who was she?”

“I’m sorry to say she was one of those young women Tufan picked out at a farm village,” said Mandir. “Back then he didn’t take the women back to his mansion. He lay with my mother in her farmhouse, against her will I’m sure, and the result was me. I lived with her for six years before Tufan learned of my existence.”

She turned her head, wanting to look into his eyes, but in the blackness she could not see him. “Your mother was a farmer?”

“Yes.”

Were it not for their situation, trapped underground and perhaps soon to die—not to mention she had made a promise—Taya might have laughed. But not because it was funny. Only because it was unexpected. “All this time, you were a farmer’s child like me? What a charlatan you were! You despised me for being farmer caste.”

“Perhaps you have some insight now as to why my hatred was so vehement. It was personal.”

“Did you hate your mother?”

“Not at all,” said Mandir. “But I’m ashamed to say I was embarrassed of her. Tufan had impressed upon me that he was strong and farmers were weak. And to all appearances, that seemed true. He kidnapped and violated them regularly, without consequences. I didn’t want to be a victim like my mother. I didn’t want to be weak, so I pretended that my farmer half didn’t exist. Of course, that left only Tufan as my ancestor, and I didn’t particularly want to be him either.”

“You cannot deny all sides of yourself,” said Taya.

“Back then, I gave it a good try,” said Mandir. “When I came to understand that I was infatuated with you, it horrified me. I thought that was my farmer roots showing, my lack of quality. Don’t take offense—I thought that way then, but I don’t now. One of my fears was that my ruling-caste friends would find out who I really was. Another was that my lust for farmer women came somehow from Tufan. I had his blood, after all, and if I didn’t fight the urge, someday I’d be the one out in the villages raping farmer women.”

“I had no idea you were so troubled,” said Taya. “You seemed so confident, so together, at Mohenjo.”

“Appearances deceive.” He took a deep breath. She felt his chest rise and fall. “Look, I abused you a lot back at Mohenjo, and—”

“You tried to
kill
me,” said Taya.

“Not on purpose,” said Mandir. “There’s more to the fire maze story, but now’s not the time to get into that. What I want you to know is that the entire time I knew you at Mohenjo, I acted hateful and contemptuous toward you. But it was an act. In secret, I respected you deeply.”

Taya blinked. “How can you say that, when you laughed at me and smashed my homework tablets?”

“In private, I marveled. How could you be so strong? You had no advantages, no education, and no friends. Tufan had taught me that farmers were weak. I thought you wouldn’t last a season at the Temple, but not only did you survive, you began to excel. I found that reality deeply confusing and threatening. Farmers were supposed to be weak, but you obviously were not. You forced me to rethink the things I’d learned at Tufan’s knee. He was wrong, and you were the proof of it.”

Her mind felt upended. Light was dark, and up was down. Every assumption she’d ever made about Mandir seemed to have been wrong. He’d hated farmers, but was half farmer caste himself. He’d tormented her while secretly admiring her.

“It takes a weight off my mind that you know that now,” said Mandir.

Taya stiffened in his embrace. “Why? Do you think we’re going to die?”

“I think we should make some plans,” said Mandir. “I believe Zash left us both alive because he intends to use one of us as leverage against the other.”

“As leverage how?”

“Say he wants you to use your magic to heal his trees. For that to be possible, he must allow your
kimat
to wear off. But when the
kimat
is worn off, you can easily burn him to death instead of helping him. He knows this. He needs leverage, a way to control you. One way is to keep me prisoner and threaten to kill me if you don’t do as he says.”

“I’ll kill him and then go rescue you.”

“I’m going to assume he’s clever enough to have thought of a way to prevent you from doing that,” said Mandir. “When he comes back, I want us to make sure he uses me as the leverage—as the prisoner—and lets you go. Then, no matter what his instructions to you may be, you are to get on a horse and ride to the Coalition for help.”

“Won’t he kill you when he realizes I’m not going to do his bidding?”

Mandir half-shrugged. “Why would he? It does him no good once his bird has flown.”

“He might do it out of pique.”

“Let’s assume he’s rational,” said Mandir. “Killing me only gets him into deeper trouble, and he loses his leverage over you as well. On the other hand, if you follow his instructions, he’s not going to set either of us free. Why should he? Once he has what he wants, his best move is to kill us both and leave no witnesses.”

“If he kills us, the Coalition will come. They’ll investigate.”

“And by the time they figure out we’re missing and come looking for us, he’ll have had lots of time to hide the evidence. You
must
ride for the Coalition at your first opportunity.”

“It seems to me this plan gives me a much better chance of surviving than it does you.”

“I am your
quradum
,” said Mandir. “And you are a fire seer. It’s my duty to see that you get out of this alive.”

Taya could think of nothing to say. Over the past decade, she’d wished Mandir dead many a time. Now that his death was becoming a real possibility, she found it wasn’t what she wanted at all.

“Besides,” added Mandir, “after Mohenjo Temple, I owe you.”

“Not your
life
.”

“If you follow my instructions and run for the Coalition as I’ve instructed, you improve my odds of surviving.”

She wasn’t so sure. All she knew for certain was that she didn’t want him to die. Mandir was not quite the person she’d thought he was all those years. He’d made mistakes, serious ones, but he deserved a second chance.

Something he’d said before tugged at her consciousness. “What did you mean when you said there was more to the story about the fire maze?”

“It’s nothing.”

“If it’s nothing, then tell me.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “I cannot.”

“Of course you can.”

“I am forbidden by the Coalition elders.”

How odd. Why would the Coalition entrust Mandir with a secret and keep it from her? “Tell me.”

A creak, as of a trapdoor opening, made them both jump. Light glimmered from above.

Chapter 35: Hrappa

The torchlight almost blinded Taya as it came into view. She flung her hands over her face. She’d wanted light, but this was too much, all stabbing into her eyes at once.

“Isn’t that sweet?” came a mocking voice. “Not just partners, but lovers.”

Taya felt Mandir’s arm snake more tightly around her. “Zashkalim,” said Mandir, “if you harm either one of us, the Coalition will burn you alive.”

Zash dragged something out of the dirt—a chair or stool, Taya thought. Blinded by the torchlight, she could see little except silhouettes. He sat on whatever it was. “I am a desperate man, else I should not have resorted to such a dangerous game.”

“You needn’t be desperate,” said Mandir. “Give us back our tablets and our
kimat
. Let us go, and we will forget this ever happened.”

Zash laughed. “You, too, are a desperate man. I know better than to trust someone in your circumstances. But you
will
get out of this alive, provided you give me what I want.”