IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume VI: The Rift
Chapter 20 Reports
Sunday, December 27, 2708,
continued Cyran
calls Kiril and me aside, marching to one side of the rest as the road passes
through a broad, open area, over an expanse of rock where only moss and lichen
grow. I let Kiril make her report first,
while my mind drifts across the arid landscape.
I’ve already planned my own; it lies in a closed folder in my mind, and
right now I want to think of anything else, anything at all. (Pauline has to make her report as though she still worked in a
hospital, as though she expected us to transcribe it for her. Regardless, I get the gist: We have at least
abated the violence in Kimba. She can
travel now, and without a chain.) (“I have sent in my report, along with my resignation,” Wallace
says, “But the Alumni Board will want my head.”) It feels good to let others
take care of the details of ordering the march, to just grip my pack-straps and
gaze out at the graceful circles of the flying dardies in a bright blue sky, as
they search to see if we missed anybody in the burial detail. (I listen as I watch the others pack up to leave, Dalmar giving
all the food one last check, Toni rolling up the blankets—fresh and fluffy
replacements for the now-ruined bedding that we began with. To my surprise and delight Dalmar’s lab
results have approved a canister of cocoa powder!) (We watch the sleighs pull
up, taking on load after load of dazed-looking students. The air steams with cocoa from hot and
distant lands, and the cups warm all our hands, passed about by a bundled-up
little kitchen-maid with a turned-up nose reddened in the chill. Maybe we sip on cocoa from the same
plantation where Deirdre and Jonathan hang out.
Who knows?) Of course we can no longer
stay at what forever after will be called “Trap Canyon”. But where can we light? Not my worry, with Cyran here, thank the
ghosts! (I look at the people remaining to us. A Tai Chi instructor. A political liason. An accountant. A lawyer who used to do construction. A secretary.
Two academics. A baker. A surgeon, but granted she also knows martial
arts. A street-smart but aging newspaper
hawker. A housewife junkie in early
recovery. Two teenage skateboard
messengers and a high school shotputter.
Three more kids besides them, but the thief can handle himself in a
fight All of them hardened by our
trials to get to this point. I take one
last, deep breath of the musty, cinnamon-laced air of Montoya Manor. “Right,” I say. “Let’s go, m’loves.” Time, now, to spread our antidote across what’s left of the
country. I wonder if we can do it? No, Zanne, never think like that.
I’m an agent of the Tilián, and a member of Fireheart Friendclan, and a
shaman’s daughter, and a neurologically enhanced prodigy, not to mention a
trained telepath, and most important of all, I’m me. I make dreams come true.) My mind wanders, trying not
to listen in on Kiril. I think I dreamed
last night that Tanjin kissed me.
Deliciously on the mouth, and then his delicate, exploring tongue sent
shivers deep throughout my body, warming me in places that I had frozen years
ago. And the thawing ached so
exquisitely that wanted more and I wanted it to stop, and I didn’t know what I
wanted anymore, and “knowing” seemed irrelevant. (“I cannot stay here, Randall” Wallace tells me, very
quietly. “Not as the first Headmaster in
Toulin history to close down the school.
And especially not when people find out why.”) But it must have only been
a dream. By the time I could pry my
eyelids open he had gone on guard duty, only his warmth and musk upon the
blankets beside me. Besides, it had only
been a kiss. Had it been more, he surely
would have stayed behind. (I take point, with Apollo for back-up. Pauline and Jameel take rearguard. “Tshura
says we can’t stay here any longer,” I explain as we walk down the empty hall,
which our Romany friends assure us will stay empty for a little while longer.
“It’s been lovely, but our vacation in Montoya Manor has come to an end.”) (“Agreed, Wallace,” I tell him,” you can’t stay here.” I pat
him on the arm, while nearby teenagers laugh nervously about their coming “vacation.” “But don’t be so hard on yourself—a whole lot
more shaped that ‘why’ than any man could handle.” “Toulinians will not understand that.” He makes a halfhearted stab at
chuckling. “We are not known for our
imaginations.”) Cyran interrupts Kiril to
turn keen eyes on me and ask, “And why did you ‘have to’ use so much leaf,
Deirdre?” “Draggin’ fever,” I mutter,
my eyes dropping to watch my feet on the grit, left, right, left, keeping on no
matter what I feel. “And has the fever stunted your imagination, or was that the
leaf?” e asks. “Because not so long ago
you could have figured out how to delegate your work to others. Several others.” I have no reply. E knows it, and presses me no further. Yet hir eyes just won’t get off of me. Hesitantly, Kiril resumes her report. (Apollo asks, “Why does...uh...Tshura want us out, Zanne?” even as
he peers carefully down a perpendicular corridor, not entirely trusting her
information—as well he shouldn’t.) Kiril finishes and I take
my turn. Will Cyran even believe a word
I say, now? And wouldn’t that be a relief,
if e didn’t? With nothing left to lose,
I take a deep breath and begin my own account.
I know by now that nothing but the most honest account possible will
satisfy Cyran. I have memorized what to
say. I speak it as though a casual
listener, myself, off in the distance, hearing the travails of someone else. (We reach the end of the guest quarters. I scan outside the entry to a greater hall
with eyes, ears, and psi, before leading them out. “Because Tshura and Guaril are losing
coherence. They can’t protect us much
longer.” The others stare at me,
wide-eyed. “They’re ghosts,” I say
curtly. Magentine impressions lingering
in a primitive computer system not designed to hold onto such things. “What did you expect?”) As I speak I feel my ghosts
march beside me, or see them hinted at by a heat-shimmer, a stone outcropping,
a ripple of windblown weeds in a miserly cup of soil in the stone. To one side a distant cliff stretches alongside
us, deeply eroded, and the ridges halfway look like all the soldiers I have
ever killed, lined up in a proper military row.
I can almost see still more soldiers behind them, deep into the rock,
going all the way to Hell and back. Only
the most rigorous honesty can keep their souls at bay. (I push Jake’s wheelchair down the hall, over worn but
well-polished linoleum. He stares off in
the distance the whole time, as though he could see through walls. Maybe, for a
little while still, he can. “Here, Don, this way.” The
nurse leads me back a dark corridor and around a bend to where I’ve never
been. I feel my neck prickle when I see
cobwebs in the normally tidy school. The
passage leads to a gate in front of a double door. With some effort and a rusty, skreeling
noise, the nurse pushes the gate aside and then opens the doors of
the....elevator! He grins lopsidedly.
“Students are not supposed to know that this exists. But we make exceptions precisely for
emergencies.” Then he frowns. “And
you’re not really students, are you? I
keep forgetting. All of this will take
some getting used to.” “Not for long, sir,” I assure him.
“We’ll soon be gone.” Inside, as we descend, the elevator makes an unsettling clacking
sound as it lets us down, our stomachs sort of floating in our bodies. I rode an elevator only a few months ago, in
Istislan, yet it feels like I never have till now, as if I descend in something
ancient and unholy. I suppose I’m picking
up on attitudes soaked into the wood and metal for generations. I take my hand with the rings off the wall. Jake looks up at me, wide-eyed.
“It hasn’t closed, you know. The
Rift. Opening it took too much. It won’t just snap shut overnight.” And my short hair stands on end.) I feel my skin crawl with Cyran’s regard as I finish my report. I feel Kief breathing down my neck. I feel the ghosts of everyone I’ve ever let
down staring at me right along with Cyran.
The deaths...oh, all the deaths! (Then Wallace turns to me with his wide, sad eyes. “Randall, will the Tilián even take us in, do
you think?” I smile up from my cocoa at him. “The Tilián are the least judgmental people
in the world, Wallace.” Or the most, I
suppose, depending on how you look at it. “But...the deaths.
So many deaths.” He glances back,
to the upstairs windows of the infirmary.
“George is a serial killer.” A deep voice behind us says, “Til has retrained worse
than him.” “Jake!” I say, turning.
“You’re up!” Sort of. Don has pushed him out in an antique
wheelchair, bundled to the chin; he’s not yet steady on his feet.) Thoughtfully
Cyran murmurs, “Kiril saw fit not to mention that you attacked her. You heard her omit it, just now, and there
were no other witnesses. You could have
slid right past that and I’d have never known.” Cyran
looks on me with more compassion this time.
“And that is why I can still have some hope left for you as my officer.” Dammit! (Jake nods to me, his eyes still a bit strange. “Good morning, Randy.” To Wallace he says, “Til Institute has the
best rehabilitative facilities in the world.
I can’t say that either of you won’t sometimes wish you’d gone to prison
instead, but in the end you will find your place in society, and you will
become a blessing to others, and you will, I think, be happy.” Wallace has gone pale.
“Either of us?” Gently I say, “There was the matter of the serving-girl.” Faintly he agrees.
“Yes. There was that.” “You will need retraining,” I tell him. “You’ve never learned healthy ways to
interact with women. You can’t just
avoid them forever, and we can’t risk any more...tragedies.” I put an arm around him, because he looks like
he could use it. “But don’t worry,
sir....” “Don’t call me sir.
I have no title, now.” “Wallace, then.
You’ve got something better ahead of you. For the first time in your life, Wallace, you
will live!” ) (Down the stairs we go, now, by a back passage seldom used in
Montoya Manor. I don’t tell the others
that my own boosted telepathy has begun to wane as well—thank the Gates of
Knowledge for this truth! Much more of
that and I do believe that I would have gone mad.) They might have a point,
Cyran and Kiril, and the ghosts. Maybe I
did go very slightly overboard with the leaf, and maybe not absolutely
unavoidably. Much more of that and I
could well have gone mad. (Did I really telepathize to Lisa in words?) I glance over at Lufti
where he marches with the others, arguing ferociously yet soundlessly, with
either himself or something we can’t see.
Suddenly he shouts at thin air, “You can’t have her, you gutter-bred
bastard! Even without the drugs, all you
ever were about was you, you, you!” He leaves the ranks to
hurry over and hug me, sobbing, gripping me so hard that he won’t let me move
at first. Then a dardie sings, sweet
notes upon the putrid air, and he laughs and lets go, singing, “Corn, corn, the
dardies love the growing corn and so do happy crows!” He dances a little, and then walks beside me,
hanging onto my arm, exhausted. I sling
my pack to the front and hoist him up onto my back; his feet could use some
more time to heal. (We come out again on the ground floor into an unused
ballroom. Kimba hangs on her brother’s
arm till Toni picks her up. The
treatments have left the girl depleted, but Toni has grown stronger these past
few months. “Here, honey,” Toni says and
presses a water-bottle to the girl’s lips; I’ve briefed everybody on the
dangers of dehydration and kidney damage in chelation therapy.) “Water, please,” Lufti
rasps in my ear. Kiril holds up her
waterskin to him and he drinks thirstily, as we rejoin the ranks and Cyran
makes hir way back up to the front. |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
||
![]() |