BeneathCeaselessSkies Issue006 Read online

  Deathfire backed away from the door. “I think I’ll wait out here.” If he went in, he might not be able to stay his hand.

  “It’s awfully cold out,” the woman said, “and I have supper already on the table. There’s plenty for two more.”

  “Maybe later. I’ll just stay in the barn, if that’s all right?” Deathfire crossed the road before she could answer.

  “He’s young,” he heard Laratis say before the door thudded shut.

  A freezing rain began to pour down on Deathfire. He let himself into the barn and stood there watching the rain turn to ice as it hit the log cabin. So this was Dunasby. There was no shortage of ice, but what about fire? Shifting gray clouds covered the sun. The air smelled like death.

  Deathfire’s heart pounded. A feeling came over him, like he was only breaths away from touching the beyond and leaving this world forever. But he had to act. Fire would not start by itself.

  Pulling the hood of Laratis’s cloak over his head, he left the barn and circled the cabin. Those inside would join him in death and walk free of this world.

  It was a small cabin with a lean-to shed in the back stacked with fire wood. That would do. Deathfire carried a load of straw from the barn to the shed, keeping it covered under his cloak. The fine dust from it made him sneeze when he tossed it on the wood pile. He found an unlit lantern in the shed and added its oil to the wood and straw. Then he set to work with flint and steel.

  His numb fingers fumbled to get a spark. Little puffs of gray were followed by a flash of white, then another. At last a red ember burned in the straw at the base of the wood. Deathfire huddled around it, shielding it from the wind and icy rain with his cloak.

  He blew on the ember until a finger of yellow fire licked the straw and caught hold. The flame spread, leaping tall, eating into the wood.

  Deathfire hurried to the barn and pulled out a cart meant for hauling rocks and dirt. He rumbled it up to the front of the cabin and wedged it against the door.

  Then he stood back and waited. The fire would consume the cabin and its occupants. But what of him? What guarantee did he have if he burned with them that he would be freed from this prison world?

  Black smoke billowed from the cabin’s rear wall. Deathfire waited, ready to throw himself into the blaze, but unsure now. Dunasby, fire and ice. The human door. The place and events were right, but how could the humans be a door?

  A cry of surprise came from inside the cabin, followed by screams from the children. Someone tried to force the door open, but couldn’t budge it.

  Deathfire stood in the cold rain that turned to ice as it struck his face and shoulders. Fire and ice. The flames spread to the cabin’s roof.

  The crash of glass came from the side of the house, and a few moments later the children ran past, headed for the barn. Deathfire had forgotten that there might be a window. He growled in frustration.

  The children were followed by the man and his wife. She was hunched over clutching her stomach, her face pale with pain. Her husband hurried her into the barn, barely noticing Deathfire standing like an ice statue in front of the house.

  Laratis came last from the burning cabin.

  His face was black from ash and smoke. He slapped at a patch of flame on his shirt as he ran for the barn, but he stopped when he saw Deathfire.

  “You? You did this.” Laratis’s hand went to his sword.

  “Just doing them a favor. Humans escape from this world so easily.” Deathfire reached for his own sword.

  “They don’t want to die!” Laratis pointed back toward the barn. “They want to live.”

  Deathfire shook his head. “You don’t understand.” From the fury on Laratis’s face, Deathfire knew it was true. Laratis had come looking for transcendence, but had no clue how things really were.

  The fire had not worked, but Deathfire still had his sword and bow and knives. He’d kill them all anyway, starting with that wretched woman before she could bring another soul into this hell. Deathfire strode toward the barn door.

  Laratis jumped in front of him and shoved him in the chest, pushing him back. “I won’t let you harm them.”

  “Stay out of my way,” Deathfire said. “It won’t do you a bit of good to die.”

  Laratis swung his sword. Deathfire blocked his blow. The impact stung his cold hands. Deathfire kept his grip on his weapon and fought back. The two circled on the icy ground, trading blows.

  Deathfire’s arms burned, and his lungs ached for breath. He’d not wasted time with sword practice in this lifetime. It didn’t take Laratis long to slam the sword out of his hands and pin him to the ground.

  Laratis’s blade pricked Deathfire’s neck. “I should kill you,” he said.

  “Go ahead. It won’t make any difference. Believe me, I’ve tried.” Deathfire fingered the knife up his sleeve.

  Laratis removed his sword from Deathfire’s neck. “Get out of here and don’t come back.”

  Deathfire got to his feet and plunged the poisoned knife into Laratis’s stomach.

  Laratis grunted in surprise and clutched at the blade. He caught hold of the handle and pulled it out, but the poison had already done its damage.

  Laratis gasped and stared at Deathfire in shocked wonder. He fell to his knees, turning the ice and snow beneath him red. “I knew I was coming to die while saving someone else’s life, but I didn’t think it would be like this,” he whispered.

  “What does saving someone have to do with it?” Deathfire leaned over Laratis. Anger burned inside him.

  “Everything. Life is precious, a gift from the gods,” Laratis gurgled, then slumped to the ground, dead.

  Deathfire backed away and headed for the barn. It was all a mistake. He’d find no escape here at Dunasby, but he’d do the humans a favor and send them on before he left.

  Inside the barn, the three children huddled next to the woman who lay in the straw with the man kneeling at her feet. Her face was beaded with sweat, and she cried out as birth pains tore through her.

  “It’s all right, Beth,” the man said. “The baby’s almost here. Keep pushing.”

  Deathfire shot an arrow through the man’s back. Then he drew his sword. The woman and children would be easy enough to kill, but he wanted to take care of the baby first.

  He walked through the straw and stood over the woman. She screamed at him. “Get away! Leave us alone!”

  “Don’t worry,” Deathfire said, rubbing a gentle hand across her sweat-soaked brow. “I’ll make it painless for all of you.”

  “NO!” The woman’s desperate scream pushed the infant’s head out into the open. The rest of the body followed.

  The baby lay in the blood-soaked straw while the mother fought to grab Deathfire’s sword arm. He’d have to kill her first and then the children.

  His sword arced toward her neck, then stopped.

  Deathfire leaned over and wiped the birthing blood from the baby’s face. A mark like a golden sheaf of grain graced the infant’s cheek.

  “Laratis.” Deathfire backed away. Laratis had been born again, sent back as a human instead of an elf. The human door.

  Deathfire bolted from the barn and ran, tripping and sliding through the ice and snow, away from Dunasby. Away from the humans. Away from Laratis who had found a way out of this world. Transcendence, he’d called it.

  “Everything,” Deathfire muttered to himself as he forged his way through the cold back down the canyon. “Saving someone else’s life has everything to do with it.”

  He slid into a snow bank and clawed his way back out. Night was coming on, and it was getting colder. Too cold.

  I can’t die now, he thought. Now he knew what he had to do to join Dana beyond. He just needed to stay alive long enough to accomplish it.

  Copyright © 2008 by Rebecca Lyn Shelley

  The Dragon's Child

  J Kathleen Cheney

  The ground trembled and the mountains shook, bringing all motion in the great courtyard of the wizard’s
complex to a halt—guards and servants alike stilled in fright. Jia-li clung to Kseniya’s arm until the tremor passed, her dark eyes wide.

  Breath steaming in the frigid air, Kseniya glanced down at the girl and squeezed her hand. “It’s over now.”

  Jia-li’s brows drew together. “I can feel the dragons under the mountain, and they are angry,” she whispered.

  The dragons’ fury had become more evident the last few months, the quakes growing more frequent, making Kseniya wonder if the wizard’s control over them had grown lax.

  Jia-li shivered. “They don’t want to be there. I told my father so. I told him he should let them go, but he just says I don’t understand.”

  A thing he often told her. The wizard kept Jia-li at lessons most of the day, a hard thing for any child to endure. That the child was also his daughter made no difference to him. He showed no love for the girl, nor any interest in her beyond her general health and what talents she demonstrated. And with her mother dead, only Kseniya remained to care for her.

  Kseniya knelt in the snow and straightened the collar of the girl’s quilted jacket. Even after eight years, she still found it disconcerting that Jia-li had her father’s eyes, dark brown with a distinctive almond shape. Only the lighter hue of the girl’s hair gave hint of her foreign mother’s blood. “Come, you don’t want to be late. He would be angry.”

  Jia-li nodded dutifully. Two guards stood at the outer gate, so Kseniya stopped there while Jia-li walked up the wide red-painted stairs of the wizard’s grand house without looking back.

  It would have to be soon, Kseniya decided as she watched Jia-li disappear within those walls. Now that the girl was old enough to make the trek through the mountains, Kseniya had to find a way to steal her away before the wizard broke the girl’s spirit and corrupted her soul.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  In the pale afternoon light that slipped through the high windows of the storeroom, the fine silk of a red veil slid through Kseniya’s fingers, and she wondered when a bride had ever come to this bleak mountaintop. Underneath folded lengths of more mundane fabrics, she’d found an old wooden chest, and secreted inside lay a fortune in embroidered silks—tunics and jackets and trousers—the answer to her prayers.

  She had always known that if she were to steal away with her niece, it must be in winter when the dragons preferred to sleep. These long-forgotten silks would provide warmth during their passage, and when they escaped the mountains she could sell them for food.

  She shut the lid and quickly rearranged the fabrics over the chest, only regretful she’d not found any weapon within. She took a deep breath and forced down her excitement. She could not risk giving away her intentions.

  Calmed, she gathered up the length of plain ramie Bao-yu had sent her to fetch and hurried back to the inner hall of the women’s house. The old woman took the cloth in her wrinkled fingers, then smiled and patted Kseniya’s hand in thanks.

  Unable to speak, Bao-yu was still the closest thing Kseniya had to an ally atop this mountain, the only one of the servant women willing to associate with the outlander held among them. Bao-yu didn’t seem to mind her foreign style of dress or strange accent. Nor did she look away from Kseniya’s scar-lined face, as most of the women did.

  The mountain froze in the winter and no rain fell in the summer, making it inhospitable, so servants never stayed long, neither the men who guarded the wizard’s complex nor the women who did the cooking and washing. Only Bao-yu had lived there longer than Kseniya, and she supposed the old woman simply had no place else to go.

  Bao-yu resumed her work, embroidering a hidden luck-token on the inside of the collar of one of Jia-li’s tunics. It was one of the dragons native to this country, Kseniya realized, not the fiery creatures the wizard held captive. The servants told tales of the dragon the wizard had driven away with his horde ages before—one who brought the spring and rain—but Kseniya thought that creature a myth. Even so, Bao-yu’s furtive rebellion against their master warmed her.

  When a knock sounded on the outer door, Kseniya went to open it, expecting her niece returned from the wizard’s house. Indeed she found Jia-li there, the wizard’s bodyguard with one hand on the girl’s shoulder.

  Her eyes properly downcast, Kseniya didn’t catch his movement in time to retreat. He laid a hand upon her arm.

  Startled, she slammed his hand into the doorframe and trapped it there, her fingers clamped about his wrist. A knife lay concealed under his jacket’s sleeve, stiff against her palm. His fingers stayed relaxed, though, not resisting her hold.

  Aghast, Kseniya grasped Jia-li’s jacket with her free hand and dragged the girl into the warmth of the hall. Then she stepped back and let go of the man’s wrist. She kept her eyes on the ground, desperately wishing she could look at his face to gauge his reaction.

  To her surprise, he didn’t strike her in return. “I need to speak with you,” was all he said, the words delivered in a whisper. Then his dark-booted feet moved out of her range of vision.

  Kseniya raised her face and stared after him, her heart pounding, but he was long gone. What had she done?

  In all her time on the mountain, none of the guards had ever come near her, repulsed by the scars that mapped her skin. There would be trouble later due to her rashness, threatening all her planning. Letting loose a shaky sigh, Kseniya closed the door.

  Jia-li stood in the foyer, her pale face worried. “What happened?”

  “He startled me, dearest. That’s all.” Kseniya didn’t think she’d heard the man’s voice once since his arrival on the wizard’s mountain late in the fall. She didn’t know what it meant that he’d spoken to her. She bit her lip. “Does he ever talk to you?”

  Jia-li shook her head. “He just watches.”

  Easy to believe, for the man had alarmingly sharp eyes. Kseniya had tried to avoid him, reckoning him more of a threat than the old bodyguard he’d replaced. It would have to be tonight, she decided then, even though the moon was not full. She would have preferred more light.

  Sighing, she leaned down and turned Jia-li’s hands upward so that she could see the girl’s palms. The skin showed red and blistered. “Let’s go back to your room so I can take care of these.”

  In the winter the house felt chilly, but Jia-li’s ornate bedroom in the rear of the building retained its warmth. The girl settled cross-legged on her silk-draped bed, her light-brown hair streaming over one shoulder. With her back to the lamp, the flame outlined her small form with a flickering glow.

  “It is worse every day,” Jia-li said, her eyes glistening. “He keeps asking me things I can’t do.”

  Kseniya knelt and took the girl’s hands in her own. The blisters lay under Jia-li’s skin, not atop it, as if the skin burned from the inside, the fire inherent in the girl burning its way out of her body.

  Kseniya concentrated her will into her hands, and where they touched Jia-li’s, she set the damaged flesh to rights, thieving away the pain. She felt grateful for the winter’s cold —it eased the fire that prickled along her skin. She let it flow throughout her body, spreading the dull ache thinly so that it did little harm beyond discomfort. She breathed slowly, her eyes shut, not wanting to worry the girl.

  Jia-li’s small hand touched her cheek, tracing along one of the old scars. “I wish you would teach me to heal.”

  “When you are older, dearest. You’re not ready yet.” Kseniya opened her eyes and smiled at her.

  “I wish he weren’t my father,” Jia-li said.

  “I know,” Kseniya whispered. The women’s house had ears, and ill-spoken words might find their way back to the wizard. Whether by magic or some mundane method, it mattered not. Better to give the man nothing to use against them.

  For a second, she suspected Jia-li would cry, but the girl squared her small shoulders, determination on her face. “Will you tell me about my mother again?”

  Kseniya refused to let her sister’s memory die. As one of their father’s bastards, Kseniya had been
raised by Anushka’s side—to guard her more royal sibling. But Anushka’s will to live had faded away after giving birth to Jia-li, lacking the will to endure.

  Kseniya tucked an errant strand of Jia-li’s hair behind her ear and resettled herself on the floor. “Your mother was a princess of the Cholodio Mountains, and her people were known far and wide for their healers. When the Emperor heard of them, he decided he must have them. He took all his soldiers there but couldn’t conquer the mountains. So he set his wizard at the task, and he unleashed his dragons upon their lands, destroying their villages and farms.”

  It sounded only like a child’s story now, even to her own ears—and she had lived through it. “The princess escaped and hid among her people, but the wizard sent men to hunt her. Long before, a seer had prophesied that the wizard would only be defeated by a child of his own blood. So, to save her people, Anushka gave herself up. When you were born, she hoped you would be the one to free them.”

  “And then we can leave?” Jia-li asked in a wistful voice.

  She had chosen not to burden the girl with hopes of escape, and even now thought it best to hold them secret.

  “Yes, dearest. Then we will go home.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  It was no small matter, waking the girl in the dead of the night, but the moon would rise soon, and Kseniya wanted them off the mountaintop before the light gave away their escape. She stole into the storeroom and retrieved the satchel hidden there, filled now with hoarded food and the finest of the bridal silks.

  Jia-li dressed without argument, drawing on layer after layer for warmth. Once satisfied, Kseniya carried the girl through the women’s house and out to the courtyard. They slipped through the side door onto the platform where the washer women rinsed their laundry in a spring that emerged from under the foundations of the house.