Dragon's Mage (An Advent Mage Novel), The - Raconteur, Honor (22 page)

Even from this height, I could hear the roar and crackling of the fire from the ground, and as we worked, the wind picked up in force, spreading it even further north at furious speed. The smoke started to climb up the mountain slopes, like a fast-moving fog. It slid along my exposed skin, hot and formless, the cloyingly sweet scent of wood smoke filling my head. I swore all over again when I realized that that hot smoke would likely set the trees up there on fire at the slightest provocation. This part of the season had more moisture to it than the beginning, but that didn’t mean that everything around us was
wet
. It just wasn’t as dry.

I worked faster, at a more furious pace, half-panicked that if I didn’t stop the fire next to the mountains that it would catch fire and spread faster than I could react to. Mari kept a strict eye to the area around us and caught several spots that I missed, or didn’t stamp out as harshly as I should have, and every time that we had to turn around to get those spots, the panic grew a little more.

“Krys, flare-up southeast!”

Wait, what? We’d already been over that section three times! How could there be another flare-up over there? Even as I thought this, Kaya turned toward it, not waiting on her master to give her directions. She turned just enough for me to see it, so I wiped it clean in a moment and then urged her back to our original course. Something about that spot bothered me, briefly, as it was in an area that shouldn’t have had anything left to burn. I couldn’t focus on it now, though. Maybe later I could investigate.

We finished the mountain section, and I turned Kaya around, heading for the forest border on the other side. At this point, my throat felt scratchy and overused from all of the smoke, and my eyes were constantly watering, begging for some relief from the relentless heat. I didn’t dare stop, though. Mari didn’t even suggest it. We both knew that we had to get this done now and worry about ourselves second.

As we flew southward, I found that the firefighters had suppressed and contained the fire very well. It hadn’t spread any further north or south. Phew. All right, maybe I shouldn’t have been panicking.

The ground crew waved at us and…did I hear cheering? Yes, I did! They were cheering at us. Smiling under my handkerchief, I waved back. Their obvious delight to have us up here encouraged me. I redoubled my efforts to get the fire properly extinguished, but really at this point very little was left. I had Kaya fly through the area one more time, but none of the hot spots had rekindled. Without turning, I croaked, “Mari, do you see anything?”

“Just smoke. I think we can land, Krys.”

“All right.” I tugged at Kaya’s reigns and she banked right, turning back toward the firefighters. With the fire gone, the smoke became nothing more than light grey wisps that curled through the air. I pulled the kerchief down, letting it hang around my neck, and started taking deep breaths. Ack. I’m going to sound hoarse for the rest of the day. Maybe even tomorrow. I just know it. Not to mention hacking black gunk from my lungs for the next few days. I learned that after the Mellor fire. I’ve really, really got to devise something aside from the handkerchief for firefighting like this.

Kaya found a clear space to land, a stone’s throw from the water wagon, and she set to ground gently with several backflaps of her wings. She barely had her wings folded up against her body before several men rushed us, all in the heavy black jackets and pants of firefighters, exposed skin dark with soot.

“Magus Haikrysen?” One of them, a slightly older man in his forties, asked in a tone that made it obvious he knew who I was.

I sketched him a half-bow from my seat. “I am. Behind me is Mari Wansguard and my familiar, Kaya.”

“Good to see you all,” he responded with obvious sincerity. “I’m Stancliff, Chief of Venkant’s 405 Fire Division. Is the area clear?”

“I think so, yes.” As I spoke, I unbuckled the straps and slid to the ground, turning enough to give Mari a helping hand down. After being in the saddle for most of the day, her legs were likely pins and needles (like mine) so she took the hand gratefully. “There’s a few hot spots still,” I warned the chief as got our feet back onto solid earth. “Some of them might cause us some trouble.”

“We’ll keep an eye out for them,” Stancliff promised. “For now, how about some water?”

“Sounds heavenly.”

Chapter Sixteen: Investigation

It took all of about ten seconds for Kaya to win over the local firefighters and soon they were climbing in and around her just as comfortably as the kids in Mellor would. She became fast friends with anyone that offered her food or water, and soon joined in with helping them dig some line, clearing out any lingering embers. Of course, with her claws, she could do the work of three men with one stroke. Still, it looked a little odd to have this huge dragon in line with twenty other men, all of them digging at the ground in sync with each other.

Mari and I paused long enough to eat lunch and chug two gallons of water from the nearby meal wagon that someone had thoughtfully provided from the city. Then Mari got up and went to find the coordinator for this area, reporting in for the first time that we had arrived. We’d rather flipped around protocol doing it this way, but…well…things like this happen. I think everyone appreciated that I’d acted first and reported second.

Me, I sat on the upturned log I’d found for a moment longer and took a good look around. Something about this fire bothered me. The strange flare-ups that happened south, after I’d already passed through the area, didn’t seem right. I was in a hurry, sure, but not so much that I’d carelessly miss whole sections. And why would a flare-up happen again
south
of the main fire when the wind blew everything north? Any wayward sparks should be going north or east of here, not further south. It made no sense.

Someone had this force well in hand, though, I could see that. Judging from the patches on the sleeves of the men, at least three different divisions had responded to deal with the fire, but no one was confused on what to do. They all focused on one task, and did it very well.

I had no training in what they did, just a general knowledge of it, and at this point my expertise wasn’t really needed. These men were better versed in what to do to clean up the forest and promote its re-growth. I could almost justify going home, if Kaya and Mari weren’t so obviously wrapped up in being here. But with them busy, it gave me the opportunity to do a little investigating.

Maybe I should check with someone first to see if I could do that, though. I stood, setting my empty plate aside, and looked around for one of the chiefs. From near the water wagon, Stancliff raised a hand and waved, hailing me. I obeyed the summons and went directly to him, dodging other firefighters as they hauled buckets of water, axes, and wheelbarrows to and from the forest.

As I came closer to him, I took a good look at him. He’d been here before I arrived, and I’d been working for nearly a full day since my arrival. The fatigue of being up so long showed on his face in long lines around his eyes and mouth, the soot deepening the creases and making him look a decade older. But I probably appeared the same—we all were covered in soot, sweat running down our temples and plastering our shirts to us even as we moved around like creaky old men.

“Magus,” he greeted, voice raised over the din around us. “You’ve done good work, you and your dragon.”

“Thank you,” I rasped. “I’m sorry we didn’t get here sooner.”

He waved this away. “As much damage as we have, it could have been worse. If you weren’t here, it
would
have been worse. Can’t complain. But can we ask you to stay on another day and help with some of the cleanup?” A hand motioned to Kaya, who sat nearby. “If we could draft her to move the heavier logs, the ones that are too heavy for us, the work will go much faster.”

“Of course,” I assured him. “I think Kaya would be glad to help.”

“Good, good.”

I almost turned to go to my familiar but curiosity had me pause and ask, “How did this fire start?”

“Dunno,” he sighed wearily. “We clear out the underbrush as much as we can to prevent this sort of flare-up, and we’ve got trenches dug all around the forest so it can’t spread. Or at least, that’s what normally works. This one…” he trailed off to stare at the scorched trees, everything still steaming with residual heat. “I can’t explain this one. This late in the season, fires don’t flare up as bad because there’s not as much to burn and we have enough rain to keep things fairly cool. None of us thought a fire like this would appear now. We weren’t expecting it.”

Yes, the whole situation was beyond odd. I’d talked with the firefighters in Mellor and done some research, and everything I knew told me that this fire shouldn’t have happened. It didn’t make any sense.

“Stancliff,” I said slowly, “I think while Kaya helps you, I’m going to investigate this fire.”

The Fire Chief looked at me, eyes narrowing. “You think this is deliberate?”

“It smells that way.” I too looked at the forest, wheels in my mind turning. “I couldn’t see much from the air because of all the smoke, but what I did see didn’t look quite right. Fire moves in a certain way, depending on the wind and the fuel around it.”

“True, this one moved unpredictably,” Stancliff agreed thoughtfully. He rubbed at his chin, smearing soot everywhere in shadowy trails on his skin. “We were scrambling to keep on top of it. But how do you expect to find the source? Fire burns all evidence away.”

I shook my head even before he finished the sentence. “I can tell the source of fires, if I get close enough to its ignition point. Give me some time. I’ll find it.”

“All right,” he agreed. “Report to me on your findings. You won’t need Kaya, will you?”

“Ah, no. She can stay and help you. I have to be on the ground anyway to see.” In fact, it would be easier if she understood that she should be following Stancliff’s orders. Turning, I hailed her with a wave of the hand. Kaya, being as large as she is, carved a path to us much easier than I had.

“Kaya,” I put a hand on her nose and rubbed it gently as I spoke. “Stancliff needs your help. He needs you to carry heavy things. Can you do that?”

“Can,” she assured me. “Krys will?”

“No, I’m going to look for the source of the fire,” I corrected. “But you stay and help them, all right?”

She regarded me with one eye for a long moment, deliberating this. Finally she said, “If Mari go too.”

I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “Kaya, I will be perfectly fine walking around the forest by myself.”

“Mari go too,” Kaya insisted stubbornly.

Stancliff choked back a laugh behind his hand. Yes, yes, it was funny that my familiar didn’t think that I could be trusted to walk around on my own.

“Something funny, Chief?” I drawled.

Coughing in a poor attempt to hide his chuckling, he shook his head. “Just a bit of smoke in the lungs. Well, Magus, your dragon has a point about going in there alone. If you collapse in there from lack of air, we won’t know where to find you. Better to go in pairs in case something goes wrong.”

The man sounded far too reasonable. He was in cahoots with my dragon. I wouldn’t believe otherwise. “Fine,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “I’ll go get Mari.”

 It took a minute to find her, as she had been sidetracked helping someone to unload some equipment from one of the wagons that just arrived. But when she saw me, I waved her over. Mari listened to my request silently before saying simply, “Yes, I’ll go in with you. But we need a few things first.”

I couldn’t think of a single thing we’d want to take in there aside from maybe a canteen of water. But I didn’t have a lot of experience in this sort of thing either. So I stood there and waited as she went to a nearby wagon of firefighting equipment and took out a few things. She commandeered a shoulder bag and started stuffing things inside—two flares, a terrain map, rope, a lantern, two canteens and a whistle that she put around her neck. Then she paused, taking a look at everything she had packed, going through some sort of mental checklist as she counted things off to herself on her fingers. Apparently satisfied, she nodded and started to sling the bag over her shoulder.

Reaching out, I caught the strap and tugged the bag from her hand, slinging it on to my own shoulder instead. She looked surprised that I would do this (probably because the bag wasn’t that heavy) but I’d been better raised than to let a woman carry anything in my presence. After that split second of surprise, she gave me a quick smile.

“Thank you.”

Not knowing really what to say, I shrugged and waved her forward. “Let’s go for a little walk, shall we?”

Mari fell into step with me as we started for the still smoking remains of the forest. “I’m a little surprised Kaya is letting you out of her sight.”

“I am too, honestly.” I looked over my shoulder for a quick glance, but Kaya wasn’t even looking in this direction. All of her attention rested on the tasks in front of her. “I guess it’s a sign of maturity. She’s done this before, to a lesser degree. But Garth told me that he had the same thing happen with Night.”

“Night?” Mari repeated blankly.

“Ah, his nreesce familiar is Night. See, Garth was actually the midwife for when Night was born, so he was basically parent and Rider from day one. He raised Night, which I understand was quite the task, and they’ve never really spent more than a few hours apart from each other. At first, Night was very clingy—he wouldn’t let Garth out of his sight at all without some serious negotiations first.” And considering Garth was a student at the time, that must have been very frustrating. “But eventually, he grew out of it, and Garth could pursue separate tasks without Night pitching a fit.”

“But Kaya’s never been that bad—” Mari cut herself off when I started laughing. “She was?” she demanded incredulously.

“Oh, you should have seen her the first few weeks I had her.” Just remembering those early days made me shake my head. “By the time we reached Mellor, she had mellowed out quite a bit. But those early days, she wouldn’t even let me sleep in a tent.
Anything
that blocked her view was not allowed.”