IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
IV: Braided Paths Chapter 31
Rip
Thursday, October 1, 2708 (“Where’s the child?” Headmaster Weatherbent tears through the
dorms, the closets, the storerooms.
“WHERE’S THE CHILD?” He throws
open chests where a small one might crawl in and get trapped. He overturns tables and large trash
cans. He crashes and slams and swears
through the stillness and reserve of the ancient establishment, his white hair
falling in his eyes, his hands bleeding from unheeded scrapes as he pries open
long-shut cupboards, rips time-weakened curtains from their rods, heedless of
the stares. And suddenly he stops, and a horrible expression drags at
his face, the mouth open, the old eyes fixed on nothing. And I think, “He remembers a game, something
involving searching, and the memory’s unbearable.” I shiver, because I’m no telepath, I’m
nothing at all like a telepath, and I shouldn’t know such things. “Borders blur” I think next. I feel that maybe that comes from Jake, and I
shudder harder at a sudden blast of cold, rainy air from the opened door. For the Headmaster has burst outside, in garb unsuitable
for rain, his robe sodden around his ankles where his slippers splash through
puddles. Then he sees it, and he stops,
and he sags where he stands, murmuring, “Noooooo. Not another one.” We look to where he stares, at the gate,
still ajar.) (The sacrifice lingers on me. I still taste the herbs and the kusmet, still
smell the sweat of my disciples all around me, and the blood. The herbs play yet in my veins, though faded
enough that I can pass for normal. But
even now the world still tingles slightly. I should go back to bed.
Instead I keep on scribbling in Txt: the secret code, the arcane
language of the ancients, that mystic combinations of letters and numbers by
which those wise and wicked folk compressed space and time, sending messages
everywhere instantly—the magical shorthand passed on in secret year after year,
generation after generation, by schoolboys in the know. I record my visions before they slip away
from me. Nobody’s going to get any more
sleep anyway, not after the Headmaster’s spectacle.) (Ow! Something snapped, something stung, something
changed one notch closer to terrible, and I feel fear, soooo much fear! I reach for Kiril’s hand in the dark, but
she’s not there, she hasn’t been there for days and days now. Deirdre’s standing guard; I can’t disturb her
at her duty. I huddle in our blankets
all alone.) (Sarge looks old as he takes the report on the
dead and wounded: old and shivering cold and smeared with soot and what might
be blood, I can’t tell in the dark. None
of us get any more sleep. Everything starts to look
all in shades of blue instead of black and gray, so I go back to my tent to fix
breakfast for the day. I see some
soldiers looking weirdly at me, then I realize that I stepped over a dead man’s
arm to go my way. They keep thinking I’m
a child. I rinse the night-soaked
beans, and soon they simmer along nicely, a bit of tarragon thrown in—my secret
for bringing out their full flavor, along with the savory government-issue
ham. I look up from my work and see the
men loading bodies into long, zippered bags, then piling them into an ox cart
with snow on top. They want the luxury of
bringing home their dead. I don’t think
anybody will ever find all the rebel graves scattered throughout this land;
farmers and builders come up on bones all the time. These people treat me well, but they take so
much for granted! And what about me? Am I one of the privileged, now? I do better than anybody in my own troop
these days, and I’ve undone the knot that I used to need to keep my waistband
snug. Do any of them envy me? Should I resent myself? I grind up some stapleseed
that I found in the other supply-tent, to use later for lunch. They feed oxen on this stuff! They don’t know that the special, nutty
flavor, that richness in the cornbread that I fix them, comes from a liberal
helping of stapleseed meal in the batter.
To have so much, and to never know what they’re missing! I mustn’t sing over my
work. The sorrow of the camp weighs down
my heart as though it belongs to me. I
watch one man stop right before he pulls the zipper over the face of a friend,
and I see that soldier break down and cry, kneeling on the ground right there
in the snowmelt, unable to continue.
Somebody else finishes the job for him. I hear Sarge order a pigeon
sent to report on their misfortunes (so far they’ve lost half the force they had
in someplace-or-other; I catch that much.) and he relays their need for
replacements of supplies and men (never mind that he’s supposed to only be a sergeant,
in charge of no more than twelve.)
Good. It’s not enough to scare
one company—everybody’s got to share the fear.) (The borders blur.
I can see her. Herrrrrrrrr. Long blonde curls. Sassy.
Like me. And Jake loves
hurrrrrrrrrr, but not that way. Old
friends. Jake’s friend is a
hurrrrrrr. And they share an old bond,
once tangled mind to mind. And her eyes widen.
She rises from a restaurant chair, then stumbles back, knocking over
several other chairs, and I feel a toad drop from my mouth, and I say something
in Vanikketan, but I’m so screwed I don’t know what I just said. And others around me close in on the
hurrrrrrr, too, but oh, the lightning reactions! A hurrrrrrr who can fight! And she (sheeeeee!) shouts something also in
Vanikketan, trying to break through to us.
I catch the word, “Gregor” from her shouts. We are all under the spell of a...gregor? I am the President of Vanikke! And I...I...I am nobody. “Winsall? George
Winsall, are you all right?” I come to myself with my head in my scrambled eggs, back
at school. I must still have the potion
in my veins, the strong, strong herbs. I
sit up and mutter an apology to the table-monitor. “Long night studying,” I say, and some of my
boys chuckle under their breath. Magentine. I’d
said something about magentine. How it
transmitted something, a new mode of communication. I’d held a crystal in my hand, and so did all
the other men, stretching out their glowing fists. I told hrrrr that it sang to me.) (I serve them breakfast,
and they thank me gratefully, but they don’t finish all I’ve cooked. If morale stays down this low, I’m going to
have to adjust my recipes for lighter meals.
I can freeze what they leave untouched in the pot, but they won’t have
later what another soldier’s left on his plate; any that I can’t eat will go to
waste. Time to pack up for the next
march. Like a good camp-follower, I get
all my pots and pans neatly organized, little ones inside the big, and tuck
them into the mess-cart with the bags and boxes and jars and bottles of my
trade. But then I see Sarge take my
bedding out of the cart, and the comb and mirror that he gave me, and the wash
basin and pitcher. “It’s not safe for you to
sleep with the supplies, anymore,” he says to me, his face grim. “You’re going into my tent from now on.” Ohhhh no!
Suddenly this mission doesn’t look so privileged anymore.) (Borders blur. I
myself change them. This rebel enclave
has become the property of the Charadocian Government once more. Even if all of its citizens have died. I walk through the dawn-gray streets of Chicamoq, through
the smoke, the rubble, the bodies. Even
this early my hair feels too hot and heavy on my shoulders; I miss working in
the cool of the high country. But I
refuse to braid it up like a peasant woman, not when I can help it. Already my men dig graves, temperatures being too high to
transport corpses, and no ice available.
They mutter superstitious prayers over the enemy as well as our
own. Stupid, backward country—do they
think'that I cant hear? And my boots go
click, click, click on the crude stone pavement. Not all stone.
Here and there the peasants seem to have patched in gaps with some dark
gray concoction that smells unbelievably horrible when it burns. Whatever it is, it probably uses dung or some
other foul substance as a binder.
Barbarians. It would take too hard a march for this troop to make it
to the Midlands in time. I shall have to
catch a jeep and change companies. Just
as well; the men need rest after the resistance that the village put
up—protesting the while that they had nothing to do with any rebels. Did they take me for a fool? Rebel gear turns up with Chicamoq markings on
them all the time! Nice little
commercial hub for the lower classes, including nice, illegal weaponry. I pause to renew my lipstick. But no, the perfume of it disagrees with me;
it mingles nauseously with the odor of the dead and the smoldering street. I don't want it on my lips right now. I put it back in my pocket.) (Bruised.
I feel so bruised. And ripped
up. I got out of the restaurant alive;
those paunchy bureaucrats couldn’t kill a well-trained lady like myself that
easily. But I could never have foreseen President
Vosca and his entire cabinet physically attacking
me. People ran at the sound of
smashing crockery. Of course. But I didn’t expect to hear the sound of
applause when I ran down the street, stumbling and bleeding, clutching at my
side and trailing rags. Unsmiling faces
on the early shopkeepers and the late-hour janitors, but applause. For the President? For me?
For the spectacle? And not one
hand to help. Bruised. Ripped up.
Inside and out. Why do I feel so
much damage in my head? Or heart. Or Truth help me, my speculative soul. And why do I feel so acutely my connection to
Jake? Shouldn’t he bond with....someone
else? Worse than that. We connect with a whole web of others. Almost like that time, three years ago, when
together we fought against Alroy. Why
does it feel that three years haven’t passed at all?) (Time. He ripped time. And space.
And…something else, something for which no word in Toulinian or
Tilianach exists. Things bleed through,
mingling where and when and how they shouldn’t, a little bit more every day—and
now he’s upped the pace. Or maybe I did
it, somehow, I don’t know how. And I we I feel a blurring, a merging, I don’t
even know whether I’m Jake or Randy right now, or somebody else, I just know
that I’m afraid.) Kiril feels fear and I feel
Kiril. “Remember me,” I say to
someone. “Remember us all. Tell our story. Don’t let us die again.” Fear shudders in my loins and makes my
breakfast taste like ash, even with the syrup and the nuts. I am Kiril.
I am a soldier—a soldier of the Charadocian government? The wound aches in the cold but burns like
fire when I move. “Remember me. Remember us.”
I am Jake, Zanne, Merrill, I am...I stalk an evil private school, where
fear presses down from the hallowed, time-stained walls. I clutch a broken rib. I ride a jolting jeep from town to war-torn
town. I become abruptly sick as I
realize that this tasty bit of bacon didn’t come from any pig. “Remember!” But the minute I wake up I realize that I’ve
forgotten almost everything in the dream—except that I told someone to remember
me. When did I even lay down? Wasn’t I supposed to...oh yeah. Lufti relieved me at guard duty. He said he couldn’t sleep. I see him out there, now, his eyes wide,
almost mad, clutching his rifle close, turning his head slowly this way and
that, now snapping to one side at a sudden noise, now shuddering and resuming
his scan. I go over to him. “You’re off duty, soldier. You’ve got time to catch a nap; I’ve got
wounded to tend before we move.” He
nods, his eyes suddenly sleepy with the words.
He goes back to the blankets that I’ve left warm for him. * * * With the light of day I get
a better look at Tanjin’s wound—surface shoulder, open to the air the whole
way, no major blood vessels hit, but he’s still pretty ripped up; he’s bound to
have some repercussions, certainly weakening of the muscles in what little
flesh he has. Oh, how I wish I had never
learned his name! “Did Rashid leave us
anything for pain?” I ask. Betony
rummages through supplies for me. “I don’t think so. He had a hard time keeping enough morphine
for surgeries.” I cuss softly over Tanjin’s
taut and sweating face. We could numb
him with snow, but the flesh needs circulation to heal, and I have not yet
found the herbs for that special tea—they aren’t so common, and you need both;
one enables the stomach to absorb the other.
I wash the wound out with the resinous antiseptic that I’d brewed all
night from sap. Well, Deirdre, what did you
expect? You can’t take on an operation
on the scale of last night’s raid without casualties. Four wounded, five dead, and suddenly our
numbers don’t seem quite so cumbersome.
But we got more of them than they got of us; I need to keep that in
mind. I think we did. Can we still find Nayal’s
band? We could absorb them now. But no, they’ve faded off into the
countryside, as good guerillas will. Tanjin manages a smile my
way. “The pain’s less, now,” he
says. “It’s dropping off fast.” Yeah, right. For a little while I had
lulled myself into believing that we’d come all this way just to play pranks
upon our enemies. I didn’t even know
that I’d let myself slip into that fantasy.
So alluring is anything that can deliver our thoughts from this
horrible, horrible war. |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||
![]() |