Liquid Fire (44 page)

“For . . . what?” I said, surprised he said it with such . . . heart.

“For always giving you such a hard time,” Arcturus said. “When we first met, I was a younger man. Well, it wasn’t that long ago, but I was a new master; you were one of my first students. And your intellect is . . . well, intimidating. I’ve been defending my ego.”

“
My
intellect?” I laughed. “You
do
understand I’m the dim bulb of my circle—”

“You mean the blind witch and the vamp queen, don’t you?” Arcturus said.

“You think they’re
so
smart just because they’re scholars,” Zinaga said.

“Well, yes,” I said. “I’m not going for a PhD in vampirology, or graphomancy—”

“
You
were studying chemistry,” Arcturus said. “To become a college professor.”

“I dropped out,” I said.

“You switched majors. A budding
college professor
came to study with
me
—and then quit because you thought I had no more to teach you. Great way to make me feel like a master, but we must move past that. What makes you discount yourself, compared to your friends?”

“I went to work,” I said. “I work for a living, and they gave that up to study—”

“Did they?” Arcturus said. “I hear the witch’s a practicing graphomancer, and the vamp’s some kind of politician, and neither of them have graduated yet. Truth is, all three of you worked while you learned. Now tell me, Miss ‘Dim Bulb’ . . . which one of you got your Ph.D. first?”

I stared at him. I wanted to laugh, but didn’t. “I do
not
have a Ph.D.—”

“You attained mastery of a subject matter. You created a masterwork that made a unique contribution to the field—two of them, one of which rests on your skin and the other which is still flying around. And today, you defended their principles before a council of guildsmen.”

“You said I’m just an initiate,” I said. “I’m not a master yet—”

“A master is a position in a studio,” Zinaga said. “It’s not a measure of learning, but status and responsibility. Like a professor, you have to be accepted into a studio and in turn accept students to be a master. An initiate just means an accepted member of the Guild—”

“The same way a ‘doctorate’ means membership in an academic guild,” Arcturus said. “And don’t tell me I don’t know what that means, Dakota. I
do
know. I have a doctorate, in anthropology. That’s the game. You have to have a doctorate to give a doctorate, and . . .”

Arcturus sighed, then smiled, both proud and sad.

“You’re one of us, Dakota Frost,” he said. “You
are
a Skindancer.”

A chime sounded. The Grinder checked her wrist—which bore a normal-looking digital watch hidden beneath all the bangles and feathers—then stood. Arcturus and Zinaga did so as well, and after a brief baffled glance, so did I, facing the Grinder.

———

“Welcome to the Guild, Skindancer,” she said. “Time for your graduation ceremony.”

46. Droplets of Liquid Fire

“At midnight,” the Grinder said, stretching forth her hand toward a faery circle, “on the night of a new moon, when the Ni’ivan light of the Sun is hidden, and the Vai’ian light of the Moon is dark, then, and only then, can Dray’ya, Earth’s first life, truly blossom.”

The four of us stood at the edge of the faery circle, staring at the fantastic eruption of mushrooms around it. They were narrow and rounded and puffballs and oysters, red and blue and white and gold. They glowed like neon, lit from within—but they were not the true prize.

At the center of the ring, in a blackened patch of soot, grew a cluster of firecaps.

My head was spinning from the simple implications of the Grinder’s words. The Moon was
Vai’ian
, the spirit of life, its silvery form the biosphere of a whole world knocked into space by a giant impact. Werewolves drew their power and their curse from that surge of life force.

The Earth was
Ni’ivan
, a world of death, a deep web of fungal decay beneath mossy remnants of life, flowering into a new biosphere after that titanic impact. Vampires didn’t catch fire because sunlight was their enemy; it was because the sun was too much of a good thing.

And beneath them both, down where the Earth was still so hot that rock flowed like plastic, a third form of life flourished,
Dray’yan
, the last remnants of dragons, their magical cells infecting normal Earth life, producing drakes. But the infestation wasn’t limited to
animal
life.

“A Dray’yan fungus,” I said, watching the firecaps grow before my eyes. From tiny nubs, they quickly grew into miniature gnome’s caps, white tipped with red, rapidly swelling and variegating before my eyes into red cones rimmed with flames. “A
dragon
fungus.”

“A dragon fungus,” the Grinder said. “This is our secret. Where others see only a battle between two forces, we see the harmony of all three: Vai’ian, Ni’ivan . . .
and
Dray’yan. Magical power comes from these three spiritual sources. These three sparks of life—”

“These three kinds of organelles,” I said, stepping closer to the ring, shifting a branch. It crackled under my hand, and I was surprised to see the bark was burned. “The organelles only represent rules of magic. The compounds they’re made of will retain a touch of that magic—”

“And a touch of that spirit,” the Grinder said.

Around the ring, moss gleamed, glowing green and verdant right up to its edge. Within the ring was no life but the firecaps, guarded by an inner circle of singed white mushrooms as big as cantaloupes. Even the trees around it were twisted, their bark darkened with soot.

“So what’s the initiation?” I asked, staring at it warily.

“We are going to eat firecaps,” Zinaga said.

My eyes widened. “You can’t eat firecap ink,” I said. “Even if it’s nontoxic in the skin the stabilizers aren’t meant to be
ingested
—”

“Not firecap ink,” Arcturus said. “Raw fire caps.”

“Fire caps,” I said, “are a poisonous fungi. In their raw form, they’re a neurotoxin—”

“Still thinks she knows everything,” Arcturus chuckled. “Firecap ink is one of our most important pigments—but why? It’s because fire caps are also the source of our power. Consuming them cements our mystical connection to the Dray’yan life force—”

“Let me speak her language, Arcturus,” Zinaga said. “Fire caps are magical fungi, filled with Dray’yan organelles, drawing their power from them the same way that weres and vamps draw power from Vai’ian and Ni’ivan organelles in their bodies. But like vamps and weres—”

“They can infect you, filling your cells with alien magic,” I said. “Fire caps are filled with dragon organelles, and you’re suggesting that we eat them so they can infect us?”

“Yes,” the Grinder said . . . as the fire caps caught fire.

A bonfire leapt up in the middle of the faery circle, its magic rippling against my skin before I felt the heat. The mushrooms around the fire caps glowed to life in a thousand colors as the air was rent by a tearing, crackling cry that sounded disturbingly like a drake.

I stepped toward the singing fire. The fire caps burned without being consumed. Their pointed caps, now fully red, were darkening to black, tattoo-style flames etched into their sides. Tiny sparks fell from the base of the caps, then rode the flames up into the night.

“This is how they spread their spores, though they rarely take root in any place a human sets foot,” the Grinder said, leaning her staff over the flame, catching the sparks in a dark velvet sheet that made them look like tiny stars. “I will share the spores with my apprentices.”

“Shades of the burning bush,” I said, staring at the caps resisting the flame.

“They
will
burn, eventually, but only for a minute,” the Grinder said. “Then, we will quench them. Fire caps must be consumed or harvested before they caramelize.”

“Browning—
the Maillard reactions
—makes them edible,” I said, my chemistry flooding back to me. “But it breaks open the Dray’yan organelles, spills liquid fire out into the cells, reheats them from within—and caramelization makes them poisonous again.”

“Yes,” she said.

“They grow only in faery circles, magically insulated from the modern world,” I said, talking through the knowledge. I had to be sure my facts were right, teasing out the implications. “Already rare, they bloom only once a month, or less, at midnight—and must be harvested within the minute. By someone with knowledge—or you’ll get killed.”

“Yes,” she said.

“The magical world would tear this grove apart for this knowledge,” I said.

The Grinder laughed. “Perhaps,” she said. “But those truly in the know would not. We respect each other’s privacy, we Keepers of the Secret Flame—”

“Last person who called himself that tried to skin me alive.”

“Frost, relax. It just means ‘guardian of liquid fire,’ ” Arcturus said. “Many groups of people call themselves that.
All
Skindancers are Keepers of the Secret Flame.”

“And we keep each other’s secrets,” the Grinder said.

The fire abruptly went out.

The Grinder moved quickly to the edge of the circle, turning over a small hourglass. Khouri, who I had not seen hiding there, scampered forward with a bowl, holding it out as the Grinder carefully selected and picked red-hot fire caps with her bare fingers.

“This is how firecap ink is harvested,” she said to Khouri, wincing, tossing a cap into the basket, one eye always on that hourglass, so quickly running out. “Just after the flame, just after midnight. See this one, child? White streaks. No good.”

“I see that,” Khouri said. “And this one? Too burnt?”

“Yes, child,” the Grinder said. “Toss it there. I will show you how to mulch them.”

Quickly, they filled the bowl, then the Grinder pronounced them finished. Khouri gasped and scampered off, then ran back with a pitcher, just as the hourglass was running out. The moment the last grain fell, the Grinder poured the water in, releasing a cloud of steam.

Zinaga, Arcturus, and I crowded around the Grinder and Khouri, smelling the sweet steam rising from that bowl. As the fumes evaporated, we saw at the bottom of the bowl perhaps two dozen black mushrooms, their tips glowing with red flames.

Then Khouri grabbed one, popped it into her mouth and scampered off with a giggle. The Grinder hissed, shaking her head, but still smiling. Then she turned to us. “Pick four. One for Arcturus, one for Zinaga—and two for you, Dakota. You have some catching up to do.”

Eagerly we reached into the bowl, seizing the hot, wet, steaming mushrooms. We laughed as our fingers touched, Arcturus and me slapping each other’s hands away and Zinaga trying to referee. But we all came away with gleaming fire caps, warm to the touch.

I cupped two of them in my hand. “And what about you, Grinder?”

“I’ve had my share,” the Grinder said wearily, and she looked far older. “For now.”

“This is
already
in me,” I said, raising one mushroom in my fingers, watching the light of mana steam off the glowing red flame pattern on its tip. “In firecap ink. Droplets of liquid fire are in my tattoos, breaking down, flooding my bloodstream, collecting in my fat—”

“And you can feel it,” Arcturus said, and I did: the power flowed from the mushroom, tingled through my body—and made my dragon shiver. He said, “That’s the secret of your tattoo flying around, Dakota—
dragon ink.
It keeps our tattoos alive long after they leave living skin—”

“Firecap ink . . . is essence of dragon,” I said. “Devenger was right about my source of liquid fire. And here I thought . . .” and I grimaced as I said it, as ridiculous as it sounded to me now, “I thought my tattoos were powered by the magic of my beating heart.”

“They are . . .
on
your skin,” Zinaga said. “Off your skin, they’d disintegrate without a seed of high mystical complexity. This is the secret weapon of our clan—pigment choice. That’s why our designs are so long-lived. Dragon ink is best of all, a constant trickle of mana—”

“My tattoos,” I said, “are powered by
mystical nuclear reactions.
”

“Yes,” the Grinder said. “It is so. Are you afraid?”

“Afraid,” I said, “and delighted. Inkable liquid fire . . . and you let me have it.”

Arcturus smiled thinly. “We put more trust in you than you give us credit.”

“All those questions about my tattooing setup,” I said. “From both you and Finch. I thought you wanted to know whether I knew how to prevent magical infections, but you were
really
asking questions designed to show whether I was
sharing my inks
—”

“Which you do not,” Arcturus said. “What’s the phrase? Trust but verify?”

“Without knowledge, firecap ink
is
just ink,” the Grinder said. “With knowledge . . . it is essence of dragon, a secret of our power. A secret to longer life. But only one secret. First, we entrust you with this; once you have taken this step, you will be ready to take another.”

“You should have done this a long time ago,” Arcturus said. “She’s right. You do have catching up to do—and this is a matter of a sacred trust. When you eat this, you will be an initiate. On pain of death, you may speak to no one of what you have seen—”

I held up my hand. “Hell to the no,” I said. “I understand the need to keep some things secret. But this system is too fragile. We’re not going to leave secrets like this to us four Lords of the Sith, waiting for some
decappite
out of the
Da Vinci Code
to erase this knowledge forever.”

“We can’t trust anyone else with this knowledge,” Arcturus said.

“More than you know,” I said. “In the olden days, maybe ink without knowledge was just ink, but nowadays, we understand the physics of pigment. Devenger got a good guess about what was in my tattoos
just by looking at them.
Give him a bottle of ink and a gas chromatograph—”

“Goddess,” the Grinder said. “You must not tell him of this—”

“I won’t betray your trust, but you must help me build something you will trust. This is important. This is precisely what I’ve been fighting. Thank God this had nothing to do with the fires, or the keeping of this secret could have left everyone in the city of Atlanta dead.”

Arcturus frowned. He’d helped me crack that problem; even he saw that.

“She is the next generation,” Zinaga said. “Heck, I might even do the same thing.”

“What are you talking about, Dakota?” Arcturus asked. “Some kind of secret library—”

“Decide later,” the Grinder said. “Eat now. It is time.”

We looked at each other; then we raised the firecaps to our lips and ate.

To call it an explosion behind my eyes makes it sound trite. Warmth passed my lips, heat flooded my mouth, then fire ignited my spirit. The taste was of mushrooms and cinnamon toast and just-singed marshmallows, the best smores
ever
dissolving into my mouth and soul.