The Seekers of Fire (6 page)

This was the last reply Linden had expected. Speechless, she stared at the young man. They had now halted at the crossing with the side tunnel, but this time no stones were falling, and the song seemed to be pushing away rather than luring. Young men usually laughed at her or ignored her in the rare cases she presented them with unorthodox opinions. Not such dangerous opinions, at that. He smiled and reached to remove a lock of hair from her cheek.

"You are an intriguing apprentice, Linde. Well, we are at a crossing—but you do realize that this might be a dangerous and foolhardy venture, don't you? We were warned to stay on the path if we were to stay safe. Any sensible person in my place would take you straight to Qynnsent."

"We were warned to stay on the path if all we wanted was to pass through here safe—and ignorant. Safe, even if ignorant, is what Dad wants, I am sure. The question is what
we
want." She smiled back at him. "I am sure you will take me to Qynnsent later, my lord."

He held her hand again, stepping into the side passage. "All right then. Continue to be careful with the stones and speak quietly. We do not want to announce our presence earlier than necessary, and we might decide to stay unobserved after all." He pointed at a pile of gravel at her feet, the candle in his hand spawning weird shadows. "And you may just call me Rianor if you want."

Linden hesitated, then leaned closer to him so that she would pass the pile safely. "I will do that—Rianor. Titles like '
my lord
' do not necessarily make me comfortable."

He smiled again, teasingly. "Is that so—my lady?"

She opened her mouth to reply just when the scream came, and for a long strange moment her mind thought that it was her who had cried out. Her body knew better. The mind immersed itself in the shrill desperate sound that came from their right, but the body sensed the danger and tried to leap away from it.

Rianor jumped just when she did. Later, she did not remember who of them landed first on the loose stones, or even if the stones had been loose before that. What she remembered was the ground giving away under her feet, and the realization that they had been walking on a raised level of ground. There was still a slight chance for Rianor to not fall with her, so she tried to push him back, but he locked her hands with his own. Then something hit her shoulders, forcing the air out of her lungs. In a moment her head was under the young lord's arm, and his body was entwined with hers, shielding her from most of the subsequent hits, as they rolled down the dark slope with the stones.

Linden

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

Linden dared open her eyes only when she was certain that she had lain still for some minutes. She lay flat on her stomach, her legs unnaturally twisted, sharp stones poking at her flesh. Patches of light and darkness were swirling madly around her head, but faded a little as she dragged herself into a crawling position. Muscles that she knew about only because of her unusual interest in Science introduced themselves now by acute jabs of pain. Linden tried to touch them, but her hands would not obey her immediately. She was probably bleeding, too, but there was not enough light to see. The light! It was some meters away from her, twinkling faintly next to what looked like a hand. Rianor!

Her hands obeyed her now, and so did her knees. Linden crawled to him and held the light to his face. His eyes were closed, and his skin was ominously pale. He did not appear to be breathing. She took hold of his shoulders and shook.

"Wake up—" She had meant to shout, but all that her dry tongue would set for was a whisper. She lifted his head off the stones and there was the feeling of something wet on her hands, which the tiny light revealed to be red.

"My lord, wake up ... My lord ... Rianor ... Rianor!"

Her shout did not seem to have any effect, and in the next few seconds Linden was overwhelmed by dread, which gave way to wild happiness when her hand felt the weak pulse at his throat.
Now stop screaming immediately. Think.
She had a flask of water with her. It would help if she wet his face and made him drink. And some of the medicine for the bandages, here ...

She gently put his head back on the stones, then removed her cloak and made a pillow out of it. Then she scrabbled through her pockets and felt shards of broken glass bite her hand. So much for the medicine. The flask of water was of the more expensive unbreakable glass, though—even her dad did not dare store water in something brittle.

But it was not on her body any more.
Find it. Find it now.

She strained her hands and feet and stood up. She stumbled back to where she had awakened, hoping that the small candle would give enough light for her to see if the flask was there. And if it would not ... She wanted to cry, but she must not. Linden gritted her teeth, and as a result something in her jaw gave her its share of a Science lesson, while her fuzzy mind decided that if she was going to ever pray, now was a good time.

"Master, please let him live."

Someone replied to her. The voice carried an almost imperceptible tinge of a tune, and when it reached her ears it detonated in a myriad of small tinkles.

No Master would hear her, the voice sang. Neither Master nor anyone else of them who had defiled the world could help her now, it chimed. If she wanted to kindle life in her young lord, she should seek the well and the one who dwelt in it.

"What do you mean?" Linden whispered, impressed with the obedience of her lips. "Who—Where are you?"

"As if I would tell you, my poor lost little girl. What a nice place for a rendezvous you and your young man have chosen."

It was a beautiful voice, like the ripples of running water and the melody of a gentle wind rustling through trees—until it laughed derisively and Linden shivered with the echo of a howling wind imprisoned in an empty room.

"So, little girl, where is the Initiator? You and that lord of yours alone, it is a new trap, isn't it?" The woman laughed again. "Oh, but you can see me without the Aid, I can feel it. So who are you, maybe the new Initiator? Your people are changing them too often these days. I almost miss Katrina."

She is playing games with me,
a small part of Linden whispered. It was the part fighting her anger, while the rest of her was unwaveringly scanning the shadows for the flask.
She is testing my feelings, interfering with my concentration, like in the fairytales, where they make you lose your way in the forest, until you are at their mercy.

"By any chance, my dear girl, is this what you are looking for?"

A faint light flickered straight ahead and then glowed stronger, until Linden could see the contours of a well and a woman sitting on the stony edge. Azure waves of long hair framed the woman's slender body over a flowing, almost transparent dress of bright whiteness. The dress rustled as the woman placed one leg over the other. Linden thought what a wonderful dress it was, and how subtly the fabric played with the light and twisted to accent just the right curves on the woman's body ...

Linden blinked. She did not have time to think about dresses. The woman laughed again, as if at Linden's very thought. The woman's body and her pale face did not seem older than Linden's, but then their eyes met and Linden stared into a violet abyss that held the sentience—and resentment and fury—of centuries.

Which did not matter right now. What mattered was that one of the
samodiva's
exquisite hands held the flask. She laughed one more time, then slowly raised her hand and let the flask go. The splash came from far away. Everything seemed far away and blurry, and Linden slowly shut her eyes—jolting them open immediately after. They were blurred with nothing else but the effects of a head injury and tears of rage! She
would not
fall mindlessly asleep, like fools in fairytales did when willed so by a
Byas
creature. She was in control of her own mind!

And this was not a fairytale. This was real.

"Give it back," Linden whispered, and if words were corporeal, hers would have been cold, sharp-edged, and lethal. "
Now.
"

"You all seem to want something back, don't you. Or hold something tightly. Or someone. How awfully drab. I am sorry, but your water is gone, and you will not give the Water of Life from my well to your man, either. Unless you can prove that you are the Initiator, of course, but I do believe that you are not even a healer." The
samodiva
twisted her mouth into what might have been a smile. "You have lied to me, and liars are punished."

"I never told you anything about myself, you made assumptions," Linden whispered, just as the
samodiva's
voice rose into a shrill alien song. At that same moment, Linden reached the well and leaped towards her.

The sound was overwhelming. Multiple tones rang inside Linden, some of them soft and caressing, others disruptive and sharp. Her knees trembled and she swayed, grasping the stone edge of the well to hold herself straight. It was slippery, and her hands glided on it until she bent sharply forward to balance her weight. Her head hit something, and the music wobbled inside it, jerking her pain awake. White mist engulfed her, and it was only a very fuzzy sense that told her she had hit a waterbucket. Her eyes closed of their own accord, and her body leaned further, stroked by the mist.

There is no mist here, and I am not going to faint just because this creature's voice is different from the voices of other creatures. This is all nothing but wretched music.

Linden opened her eyes just in time to snap her head back and avoid the swinging bucket. She felt weak. Unnaturally weak, debilitated beyond the obvious weakness caused by her injuries. She felt almost the same she had felt right after the Ber had attacked her. The bucket swung again, but this time she found the strength to grab it and thrust it down into the well. Now, where was the switch to make the bucket come back? Normal waterwells had those; you pressed the switch, you said your water rites, and then waited ...

This
well had a drum and a handle, and somehow Linden knew that water rites would not work. They still mostly worked, outside, unlike the fire rites, which failed so often even at the wells. The waterpipes inside homes did not work—but, unlike firewells, waterwells existed even in normal neighborhoods, and people still could use them without needing Bers.

They could not have used the well here. Instead of a switch, it had a pulley mechanism, taken as if from the
Science
books. Linden would have wondered at that if she had the time for it. But she did not have time—and she was only too glad that she knew what a pulley was.

She clutched the well's drum handle and rotated. Water. Rianor needed water to live.

Water. It was blue and green and transparent and breathing, and outside in the world it flowed and warbled and kissed and shaped lives and landscapes. "
My Water of Life,
" the
samodiva
had called it.

But it is not hers. It is mine.

This time it was the well that attacked her. The handle wriggled itself away from her grasp, wood cracking as the drum aimed at her neck, a rumbling sound rising from the deeps to encase her. Wood, and not metal, both the drum and the handle. The well was alive. Perhaps in some aspects the
samodiva
still controlled it, but it also had life and will of its own. It shivered as she thrust her dagger at the joint between the drum and the handle.

"Don't you dare delay me further. Don't you dare harm Rianor more! Begone! Begone where you came from, foul creatures!"

The
samodiva
stopped abruptly and laughed, her voice echoing in the well's rumble.

"Begone? I had not heard this in a long time. I wish that I could, little girl. You know not how much I wish that I could."

The water. Linden could make all these sparkling little drops in the well shoot up to her. They could also propel the flask, for she wanted the flask, too. She would need it to get the water to Rianor. Why had she not thought of all this earlier? Had this creature made her forget what she had learned to do with water in the last few days?

Now.

The
samodiva
tried to scream just as the flask hit Linden's hands, but only emitted an unintelligible sound as a torrent of water drenched her. Linden dropped the dagger. She had no strength left to hold both the dagger and the flask, and the flask was more important. Rianor was more important. But she still had to somehow manage both objects, for the
samodiva
had come too close, her eyes wild with hatred and fear, wet white sleeves flapping around her arms, water dripping from her dress and hair.

"Transgressor," the
Byas
woman's lips shaped, and something in her eyes pronounced that this was not a random insult, that it held a special meaning. Then, with a sigh that seemed to cut Linden's mind from the inside, both woman and well disappeared. A wanly light was the only lingering trace of them. And, the flask. Actually, the light was issuing from the flask, feint blue rays streaming from where the plug had become detached.

Linden shook the flask, her fingers weaker with the motion, and gave a sigh of relief as a gurgling sound revealed liquid inside. Water of Life. With a surge of new strength, Linden started running towards Rianor—and collided with something.

"No way, you wretched lowlife!" she hissed when this something tried to extract the flask, candle, and dagger from her torpid but clenched fists. She fought without seeing, her vision obstructed by hair falling over her face. Then, what felt like gentle fingers brushed the hair away, and a set of blurry contours floated together to form Rianor's face.

"You should not call your master names."

His eyes were hollow and his features pale, and there was blood on his skin and his previously neat coat. But he was alive and obviously able to walk and talk. Finally, Linden lost control. Her body shook and her feet dissolved beneath her, and she hardly heard the flask hit the stones just before she did.