Changer's Moon (43 page)

And she knew what she'd done, how much harm she could have done, and she snatched the power yet more from the Nor, though she could feel Ser Noris contesting with her for it, snatched it loose from him and fed it as gently and apologetically as she could back to the laboring Shawar. She sat back on her heels, smiling down at him through a skim of tears, her lips trembling.

13

He opened his eyes and saw her. She glowed terrible and wonderful, a green glass figurine in the charred rags of a sleeveless white robe, then he saw only Serroi with tears in her eyes, weariness in her small elfin face. He smiled and caught her hands, held them between his a moment, then reached up, drew his hand down the side of her face, traced the clean-cut elegant curves of her mouth. “There's half a world we haven't seen.”

“Yes,” she said. She swayed; her eyelids fluttered; she fainted across his renewed body.

For a moment he was afraid, but the pulse in her throat beat strongly. He eased her off his chest and sat up. His clothes were burnt off him, he'd expected that, but he was startled to feel hair when he brushed his hand over his head. “Very thorough, love.” He lifted her onto his lap and held her close, stroking his hand over the singed curls, then the gentle curve of her back. Through the windowslits he could hear muffled curses and screams and knew he'd have to get her down to help the others, but for a little while he was going to hold her and forget everything else.

In a few moments, though, his legs began cramping and the stone that had burned him was giving him chills in his bare buttocks while air through the window blew off ice. He shifted position, looked down to see her eyes open. “Cold as the slopes of Shayl,” he said.

She smiled. “They never last, do they, our moments, I mean.”

14

Julia tilted the stoneware cha pot over the clay mug and poured out the last trickle of lukewarm liquid. She set the pot back, sipped at the cha. “Getting low on ammo,” she said. “Remind me to snag one of the cycles and call in for some.”

“Um.” Rane scowled at the fragment of sandwich she was holding, threw it in a long lazy arc away from the wall and sat staring at the rag tied round her calf though Julia didn't think she saw it.

They were sitting in the sun, a winter sun that did not give much heat, protected from the sweep of the wind by the jut of the nearest ramp. No one went to the eating tent these days; time and energy were both in short supply. They slept in the lower floors of the gate towers, on call for reinforcement whenever they were needed. They were all weary and worn down to simple endurance, men and women alike, falling into their blankets on straw gone musty with the damp, sleeping as if clubbed, rising with only the top layer of tiredness gone, the residue of each day's weariness added to the last and the next until it seemed they'd never be free of it. Julia thought back to the days when she was grubbing out an existence and trying to write, when she was exhausted and depressed, tired of trying to cope with the complexities of her life and the complexities of her nature and the impossibility of reconciling the two, yet when food and warmth and shelter and privacy were there to take as she needed, when her horizons stretched beyond the visible edges of the world; she thought back to those times and found them curiously hard to visualize as if they were something she'd written in a novel she'd never managed to finish. She marveled at the difference between the Julia who'd lived then and the Julia sitting with a rifle beside her waiting to be called back into battle. Her edges had narrower limits these days, they chopped off five minutes ahead and stretched out on either side as far as the people she could see and name. She knew them all now, the meien and her own exiles, the mijlockers and the Stenda, knew names and faces, knew how steady or flighty they were in the face of danger, knew them intimately and not at all, especially the folk of this world; the novelist wanted to know their histories, to know the forces that had shaped them into the people they were. What had their lives been like? Who were their friends, their lovers, their acquaintances, their enemies? What were their hopes and fears, their ordinary eccentricities, their communal natures? What stories could they tell about themselves and others? What were the old, old stories all families accumulate and hand down through the generations? She knew nothing of that and she wanted to; she hungered to discover those things about them. But there was no time, you fought, you rested, you ate, you slept. Everything outside this time and this place was as remote for them as her past life was for her, for this reason and others they seldom spoke of anything but here and now.

There was a thump and a brittle crash above. Working the catapults again, Julia thought, then dropped the cup and sprang away from the wall as she felt a leap of heat, a drop of something that ate like acid into her thigh. She heard a scream that would echo in nightmare later, then a burning thing leaped out from the top of the wall. Rane thrust herself up and limped as fast as she could away from the wall. Julia took a few steps after her, then turned to stare at what lay huddled on the ground; it was charred out of its humanity, but the rifle clutched in a burning hand had enough of its shape left for Julia to recognize the carved stock. Liz. Her stomach churned and she looked away, desperately glad that Liz was beyond all help. A second later she brought her own rifle up and put a bullet in the skull of the burning thing. Rane came back and stood beside her. “All you could do,” she said.

Julia looked right and left along the wall, saw half a dozen fires. “Oh god, how many more?”

Rane cupped her hands about her mouth and shouted at the chaos on the wall above them. “Vuurvis,” she shrieked. “Don't let it touch you. If you don't know what it is, ask. Vuurvis. Don't try to put it out. If there's oil on you, don't touch it, you'll just spread it.” She walked along the wall, repeating those words and warnings until she was too hoarse to continue. Others among the older meien took up the calls and began getting the burned fighters down the ramp to wait for the medics and trucks to carry them to the hospital tent.

Julia looked down at her thigh. The vuurvis drop was smaller than a pinhead, but the pain was growing. It was bearable, so she shrugged aside her worry and limped up the ramp behind limping Rane, began helping her to get the burn victims down to the ground. The first time she saw the heavy flame crawling over the flesh of a living woman, she started to try smothering it, but Rane snatched her hand away. “No good,” she said. “All we can do is let it burn itself out. Or let the healwomen cut away the saturated flesh. Nothing helps, nothing will put out vuurvis, you'll just get it on you.”

She carried the moaning meie down the ramp and laid her on the ground beside the rows of the others, called the medic, a girl named Dinafar, to put her out until the truck came. An eerie hush was settling over the wall, muting the screams of the burned, the grinding of motors coming toward her, stopping, coming on, stopping as the trucks east and west picked up the burned. The medics had arrived swiftly at each of the burn sites but the girls knew enough about vuurvis to know there was nothing they could do but help bring the injured down to wait for the trucks, gently putting the worst sufferers out by pressure on the carotids. Over all this was that straining silence that Julia thought was in her head until she looked along the wall.

The west tower was no longer burning, it throbbed with the clear green light of the healer. Dom Hern, she thought. “Dom Hern,” she said aloud.

Rane grunted. “She wouldn't let him die.” Lifting her head, she sniffed at the air. “She's draining us for him.”

Julia shrugged, not understanding what Rane meant. She watched the tower glow, the light running in waves down the stone and into the ground, gasped as a thought seized hold of her. She caught the medic as she went past. “When the truck comes, take the burned to the tower and pack them in the lower floors.”

Dinafar's eyes opened wide. Not understanding, she turned to Rane. “What …?”

Rane looked at the verdant glow, then at the groaning forms stretched out around her. “Do it, Dina. Get hold of the other trucks and tell them.”

Dinafar pushed the hair out of her eyes, then her weary face lit with a hope she hadn't had before. She ran to the motorcycle that had fetched her from the hospital tent, spoke into the teletalk strapped to the handlebar, then trotted back up the ramp and worked with a greater urgency to get the last of the injured down.

Julia looked at her watch and was startled to see that less than a half hour had passed since the beginning of the attack. She looked down, looked away. There were five dead like Liz. Dead but their flesh still burning. Two of them with rifles. Exiles. Three of them clutching the burned remnants of crossbows. She couldn't recognize them, knew them only by figuring out who was missing among the wounded. She whispered the names to herself, a leave-taking of comrades, and tried unsuccessfully to ignore the pain in her thigh and the moans of the burned still alive. She turned her back on them and stared at the tower, grieving for both the dead and the living as she waited for the truck that might save the living.

15

Tuli lay on the hillside, mouthing all the curses she could recall, furious at herself for her complacent conviction that Ildas had destroyed all the vuurvis oil in that extravagant annihilation in their first raid. The fireborn snuggled against her and tried to comfort her. She stroked and soothed him but she was too angry and afraid to calm herself.

Coperic touched her arm. “Can you …?” He finished the question with a gesture toward the barrels where the Ogogehians gingerly loaded oil into clay melons and plugged the holes in them with wax and wicks, working slowly and with great care to keep the heavy oil from touching any part of hand or face. Three high Nor were there to protect them, the fourth was Kole's constant shadow. The rest of the norits were clustered about the seven catapults spaced along the wall from cliff to cliff.

Tuli scowled at the barrels, shook her head. “Too much Nor, Ildas couldn't get near.” She pulled the back of her hand across her face, felt the rasping of dry, chapped skin against dry skin. She almost couldn't smell Coperic anymore; she was about as ripe as were he and the others. He was gaunt and grimy, his hair lank and too long, the front parts sawn off with his knife to keep them out of his eyes. None of them had been out of their clothes for more than a passage, the only water available to them cost a day's trip along the road across the pass. She watched him, hoping the clever mind behind that unimpressive face would find a way to attack the vuurvis. His eyes were slitted, his mouth open a little, his hands were closed hard on a clump of grass.

“One spark,” he whispered, so softly she almost didn't hear him. He was right, a spark was all that horrible stuff needed. But it looked impossible. The Nor wouldn't let fire get near those barrels, and they were sticking tight as fleas.

Bella stirred, turned her face toward them. She was worn too, was brown and dark as damp earth now, her cousin Biel was brown and dark; dirt and oil and sweat and soot had dulled the fine gold patina of their skin, had darkened the bright gold hair to the color of last year's leaves rotting back into the earth. “We can get close,” Bella said. She chuckled. “Long as we try it down wind.” She sobered. “They're focused on the wall. Look at them. Gloating, I'd say. And the Ogogehians are staying well away from the barrels, look how careful those men are to keep the fumes from blowing on them. And look there. And there.” She began pointing out clumps of brush and cracks, working out a line of progress along the slopes that would take a careful crawler close to the hollow where the barrels were.

Coperic followed the darting finger. “Mm.” He watched a mercenary ride his macai at a slow walk away from the barrels, holding a net sling of clay melons stiffly out from his side. One of the Nor left the barrels and rode beside him, shielding him from anything off the wall. “Nekaz Kole,” he whispered.

Tuli took the words as the curse they were. “He don't miss much,” she said.

The two Nor sitting on the knoll above the barrels suddenly pulled their macain around until they were facing the mountains, their eyes searching the slopes. Hastily Coperic and Tuli went flat, the others ducking down beside them, shoving their faces into the dirt. Tuli felt the Nor eyes pass over her like an itch in the back of her neck. She didn't move until Ildas cooed reassurance to her. She lifted her head, exploded out the dead air and sucked in a hard cold lungful of new. The others sat up and began breathing again. “Seems like they don't want folk watching them,” Tuli said softly.

Coperic glanced through the screen of brush. “They calmed down now.” He eased around and went snaking down the slope into the small socket eaten out of the mountainside where they usually slept. Little sunlight got through the brush, so it was chill as any icehouse. He squatted at one end and waited until the others had crowded in and settled themselves. “Had a thought,” he said.

He let a moment pass, his eyes shut, his brows drawn together, fingers of one hand tapping on his bony knee. Shadow seeped into the wrinkles of his face and hands, carved heavy black lines into his flesh. The muscles of his face shifted just slightly, enough to turn his face into a changing web of light and dark around the strong jut of his nose. Watching him, Tuli measured the change in herself by the change she saw in him; as the days slid past, as tenday slid into tenday and the stadia dropped behind them, he had stripped away his sly bumbling tavern-host mannerisms, dropping one by one as they moved down the Highroad and settled above the army. Now he was a prowling predator, limited to a single aspect of himself, little left of the complex man she'd caught glimpses of in Oras. They were all narrowed by the hunger, the stress, the killing, the danger, with the softer sides of their natures put away for the duration of the war. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever see those times again, gentler times when she could laugh and smile and run the night fields, sometimes she wondered if she'd be able to slough the memories that even now gave her nightmares. She realized suddenly that tomorrow was her birthday. Hers and her brother's. Teras. Fifteen? How strange. She felt more like fifty.