The Seekers of Fire (2 page)

"Arion, put a stop to this nonsense," the Ber woman said, but Linden barely heard.

Instead, details of the world not espied before stormed into Linden's senses. A strange bird was floating far up in the sky, and a tiny shot of grass had managed to grow on the ground, battling both concrete and winter. A single dark, red-tinted lock of hair had escaped the Ber woman's hood, and beside the dirty ice where the Ber man stood, a tiny square of clean ice wove shapes of crisp beauty.

Linden's eyes lingered on the dirty ice while the man raised his hands. The woman reached towards him, her lips shaping urgent words.

Linden should try the Ber sign again, but of course she did not know how it worked, and imitation seemed to not activate its function. Swiftly she raised her own hands, but her mind refused to focus on the symbol, drifting instead towards the Ber's boots and solid water. The streets were derelict. It was possible that the dirty ice hid a hole and that down below the ice the water moved freely. No one would let water move freely, uncontained in a gutter, in more civilized neighborhoods. The tricky substance was an enemy of fire and as dangerous as vital. However, this neighborhood was not civilized—and if suddenly many drops of unfrozen water rose from below and aimed a little aside from the man's boots, the ice would break.

But that was Science, and right now no Science could help her. Or water. She had neither time nor tools or vessels to make the water move. She could only think,
think ...

For a moment Linden considered praying, but dismissed the thought just as her strength drained and her body sagged; just as the Ber man cursed and wavered. The last thing she perceived was conflicting emotions in the Ber woman's eyes, and the sound of ice breaking.

Rianor

Day 73 of the Fourth Quarter, Year of the Master 705

Rianor, the young High Lord of Qynnsent, shifted in the stiff clerk's clothes and for the hundredth time wished for better gloves. The cold bucket's handle was incredibly uncomfortable, although his fingers should not be feeling it too much, for they had become numb long ago. He watched the faces of the people who were hurriedly passing him by, their full buckets tightly clutched in their hands. Their expressions were a mixture of fear, awe, confusion and relief, and he wondered whether he could imitate them enough as to not stand out too much. Then he thought that it did not really matter; no one seemed to pay any attention to him. Rianor was certain that these people did not know what had happened. He was not sure about it himself, but he was going to find out.

The fair-haired girl had actually defied Bers and survived, which was not a small feat. Rianor had almost intervened in the end, which of course would have blown his cover, so all the better there had been no need. Now he was especially interested in how the girl had withstood spell attacks, and why the ice below the Ber man's feet had broken at the most critical moment.

Rianor rubbed his eyes. He still could not believe it. And this was not all. After the rebellious girl had collapsed, the Ber lady had stood motionless and stricken for what seemed an eternity, her eyes cast down at the broken solid water, and at her fallen partner and the fallen girl. The Ber herself looked like a girl then and not like a mighty Ber; like someone way too young and perhaps way too scared. Then, she did not look scared any more. Suddenly her eyes flashed with an emotion that Rianor could not quite define, and suddenly everybody's bucket was full, including the girl's.

Both Bers were gone as instantly and as stealthily as they had appeared.

I need to contact the girl as soon as I can,
Rianor thought. Her next encounter with Bers might not be so lucky if she went to fetch fire alone again. And he had better try to learn more about the Ber lady, for such fire mastery was unusual, at least at the wells. She looked oddly familiar, too, even though her hood hid most of her face and hair.

Rianor abandoned his attempt to assume the confused expression of a commoner and allowed himself a wry smile. It was finally happening; the Bers had been out of the towers for too long now for Magic to remain as hidden as it had been. The endless waiting at cold and objectionable places had finally given Rianor a thread to follow.

Still smiling, he approached the old woman whom he had heard talking to the girl earlier. He was quite certain that they were neighbors. The woman was struggling with the heavy bucket, so he reached over and tried to pull it from her hands. A second later he learned that old women could punch young men, and that it hurt.

"My good madam," he said, his smile slightly wryer, "Would you let me carry your fire to your home for you?"

Linden

Day 77 of the Fourth Quarter, Year of the Master 705

Four days after her dad's fever finally subsided, Linden ventured to go for a walk outside. Calia was already waiting for her, her cloak wide open to reveal a new silk dress. Calia smiled sweetly, and for a moment Linden's old woolen trousers urged her to throw something heavy at her friend.

"What's with you, Lind dear? You look sour." Calia shivered as they crossed their hands, and Linden wondered whether it was the cold or the worry that, with Linden's sour face next to hers, people might not pay her enough attention. Linden decided to return the smile.

"It is the cold, Cal." Linden drew the heavy cloak more tightly around herself and lowered her voice. "With Dad's sickness, we are almost out of fire earlier than normal. He is thinking of getting some today, but meanwhile the water at home almost froze."

"Oh, Master! In your home!" Calia had the skill to squeal even with her voice hushed.

"It is just ice, Cal!" Linden snapped, barely resisting the urge to raise her own voice, then slowly detached her fingers from where they had gripped her cloak. She should not display nervousness. Calia's exclamation certainly concerned lack of fire, and the common belief of ice bringing misfortune to a house. It had nothing to do with the ice of four days ago. Many neighbors would not come near "
that chit that doesn't know her place,
" as if asserting your rights were a contagious disease, but they did not know about the ice. The ice was a most fortunate coincidence, and it had better stay like this.

"Ice is dangerous, Lind! Mister Podd said so." Calia drew her own cloak tightly, the new dress temporarily forgotten. "Don't you remember? The Lost Ones used ice against the Master. Mister Podd said that although it was already raining fire, they made ice fall out of the sky!"

She looked at Linden, beaming expectedly. Linden sighed. Cal was all too happy for once to point out what their teacher had said, since it was usually Linden who paid attention to his lessons. Had been, at least, until four days ago.

"Cal, if you had read the
Introduction to Science
book when you had to, instead of going out with stupid males, you would know that there is no such thing as a rain of fire, and no one can make ice fall out of the sky." Linden herself had read all three
Science
books, even though only the first one was mandatory. "Ice falls only when—"

Cal looked at her stubbornly. "Only three days ago Mister Podd said that it all happened."

And you believed him, right?
Linden pursed her lips before the words had a chance to escape them and closed her eyes for a second, to keep the thoughts in. A second was all she needed; she was getting better at it. Of course, Calia and all their classmates believed their teacher, although there were moments when the teachings contradicted each other. They were expected to believe everything, and any deviation was punished by the Mentor.

Calia seemed to have just had a similar revelation.

"If it is really written in the book, Linden dear, then fire cannot really rain." She laughed nervously. "And ice falls only when it wants, of course. But Mister Podd said that the Lost Ones controlled the ice, and the Master fought it, and fire rained, so—I know! It all happened before the Master gave us the
Science
book, but now that we have the book, it cannot happen any more!"

Linden patted Calia's hand, then took it in hers and led her down the narrow street. She felt the girl's slight tremors and wanted to hit herself. She did not have the right to talk to her in this way. Calia tried hard to believe everything, but had already tasted the Mentor's whip when she had failed believing that thinking about the Master's glory was more important than reflecting upon the qualities of live young men.

"Oh, ugliness!"

Linden gave a sigh of relief. It was a typical Calia swear word, which meant that all thoughts concerning Science and scholarship, and even the Mentor, had left her head. Other, more urgent concerns had entered it, in this case regarding a high heel stuck between two cobblestones. She was hesitating between hiding behind Linden or revealing her trouble to the two young men who were passing them by. Linden was certain that it would be the young men and their potential help, so Calia clutching to her in tears and freeing her own shoe was a surprise.

"What is it, Cal?"

"Oh, Lind, I should spend more time with you in the next fourteen days," she sniffed. "I won't be seeing you that often after that, you know. I will be busy, and—"

"It is all right. We will both be busy, but it cannot be that bad. We will be seeing each other."

"You do not understand! We will be seeing each other only if and when my husband allows it!"

"What!?"

Suddenly Linden was not envious of Cal's new dress.

"My family think that it will be best if I make someone want me now. You and I have seen some very suitable men looking for—for someone like me—so I shouldn't waste my time any more. Of course, I can't sign the contract with him before the Day of the Master, but he won't usually withdraw if he does tell us now that he is going to take me—"

She was talking fast and stopped only to take a short breath, which did not give Linden time for more than a scowl.

"Yes, I will become a concubine. Yes, I agreed. Because I don't want to go to the Factories or leave Mierber!"

The Factories? Shivers crept up Linden's spine. Had it truly come to that?

Unlike people from older generations, she and Cal had grown up without fearing Factories. The Factories had been mostly safe in the last fifty or so years. Most things that people used came from the Factories: clothes, tables and chairs, candles, dishes, buckets, stoves, toys, even canned food.

The teachers said that in the Factories goods were made much faster and in much larger quantities than the Master Crafters of before could have ever achieved. Many of the people Linden knew worked in the Factories. They did the accounts, drove the heavy carts that delivered the goods to merchants, cared for the horses, or assembled almost-ready goods. However, these people worked outside or in rooms near the Factories' entrances. They never saw how the parts for the goods were actually
made.
Only Bers and wretches went further inside, but according to hushed conversations behind closed doors, there was dark Magic weaved in the Inner Sanctums of Factories.

"Oh, Cal." Linden was shivering constantly now, and not from the cold.

"No one will choose me for anything else," Cal said in an unnaturally calm voice, and Linden clenched her fists, an odd feeling growing at the back of her mind. They were alone in the street now, the two young men having passed them by, and although she could see the small market at the next corner, right now it seemed far away. She blinked, but the feeling refused to go away. Poor Cal. She often acted like an airhead, but she was intelligent enough to become an assistant to a clerk, or a parts assembler. If her eighteenth anniversary had been last year, most probably she would have.

For as long as Linden could remember, every year those eighteen-year-olds who were not nobility or slum wretches, and did not have a Noble House's protection as servants or others, were judged on the Day of the Master. On that day fairs were set throughout the city, and the Bers came out of the towers to decide, with the help of the Mentors, what would become of each of them.

Before the fire failures, this had been one of the few times of the year when people saw Bers. It was a time of extreme emotions, of jubilant festivities mixed with inevitable fear. Most young people were deemed suitable to retain the same social status as their parents, or even to gain higher, and went into training for suitable professions. Yet, there were others, too, even though in the last decades they had been very rare, and Linden could see the fear in Cal's beautiful eyes. Those others were either deemed too dull for a profession, or the Mentors announced them to be people of constant conflicting thoughts. They were deprived of the privilege of a respected profession in Mierber and were sent to the villages to work in the Farms or Mines, or taken to the insides of the Factories or Mills. No one in their old environment ever saw them again.

The unnaturally calm voice was gone. The girls sat on the edge of the street, and Cal cried openly. "I don't want to do it, Lind! I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to!"

There were only two ways out for an eighteen-year-old girl who feared that she might be one of those people. The first one was almost impossible, for it required a Noble House's involvement. The second way was to find a husband with a profession who would claim her before she was judged, and enter an uneven union with him. She gained the title of concubine and became her husband's property, unlike the girls who trained for professions. Those were free Mierberian citizens, usually waited a few more years before they married, and their marriages provided equal rights for both partners.

Calia's weeping voice gradually fell to a whisper, and she had enough sense to close her eyes as she put her lips closer to Linden's ear, to say what Linden already suspected. "I have to. There are talks at the Factory where Mom works. The Factory is deteriorating, they say. The Bers are angry and need more people inside, many more than before—"