Sword and Sorceress XXVII Read online

  “There was a beginning of everything, neighbor,” said Selah, “and yeast has been in the world since its beginning. The Great God spat into the churning mist of chaos and infected it with the spirit of growth. And the seas grew foamy like beer, and the hills of the land rose like loaves, and the herbs and the woods rose out of them. The Great God spat again on the new lands, and there the yeast of Her mouth caused new life to spring up: beasts in the fields and birds in the trees. And then from Her mouth came a word rich with the spirit of life, and it brought forth speaking creatures, women and men that have in their own mouths the fragments of that first great word.

  “And while the spirit of growth was still rich and active in the dough of the world, the first baker made a barm of broken grain and water to hold that yeast and feed it. And bakers have fed the rising ever afterward. Generations of us have lived and died, yet the invisible life of the yeast remains. But now it will die unless I have something to feed it.”

  Nima said, “Lord Gessig has grain. Why isn’t there any in the City?”

  The baker thought. “You say he has fine wheat in plenty, but less of the common barley than last year?”

  “Yes.”

  “The wheat he can sell to sea-traders who ship it to the islands, far dearer than he can sell it close to home,” Selah mused. “Or maybe he simply thinks to drive the price higher by withholding it.”

  “If all the grain we grow is being sent to the islands, maybe I could stow away on a ship,” Nima said. “But even if I could, it’s still all wrong. Why should a few men hoard what many sowed and harrowed and harvested? What will happen to everyone here, if they keep on?”

  “We’ll have to shake lose some of their hoard,” Selah said.

  “How?” Nima demanded. “What can we do?”

  “Maybe nothing. And yet. . .” The baker hesitated. She looked into Nima’s face as if appraising her. “When my mother taught me baking, she also taught me certain secrets. No one thinks of bakers as powerful, but every day we hold in our hands the force that grew the world.” She laid a hand on Nima’s abdomen. “You hold the spirit of growth, too. Maybe between the two of us, we can raise more than bread.”

  #

  At moonrise they stood in the back garden between the bakery and the ovens. It was too hot and arid to grow much there, but Selah had nursed along a few herbs, mint and basil and rosemary.

  “Place your hand on the rosemary, but gently,” Selah commanded. “Don’t pluck it. Feel the living stem between your fingers.”

  Nima did as she bade. For a sower of seeds and reaper of grain, it was familiar, yet unfamiliar: she was used to handling growing things, but unused to standing still, doing nothing to them, neither gathering nor pruning nor weeding nor mulching. The stem between her fingers was like a cord binding her to earth.

  Reverently, Selah placed one hand on the dough and let it sink slowly in, the springy mixture pillowing between her fingers. Then she dipped the tip of one finger of the other hand into the yeasty mix, carrying away a little of it. She touched it to Nima’s head and lips, and then to her own. Finally, she rested her hand, still bearing a trace of the rising, on Nima’s belly. She breathed in slowly, and Nima felt her own breath fall into rhythm with Selah’s.

  “Source of life, source of growth,

  Source of the yeast that raises us,

  Breathe into us the lightness to rise,

  Culture us with the yeast of your mouth,

  Revive our dry earth with the rains of growth,

  Sprout us like barley. Raise us like wheat.

  Grind us like grain for our neighbors’ need.

  Try our hearts in the heat of your ovens.

  Our people hunger for bread. Here we are:

  Leaven us. Let us arise for them.”

  As Selah chanted, Nima felt the stirring inside her, the child fluttering in her womb, more active than ever before. She felt the blood rushing in her veins, the milk flooding her newly swollen breasts. She ceased to be hungry, as if she drew sustenance directly from the earth.

  Something seemed to bubble up within her from the ground, through her bare feet, through her legs and hips, through her womb, through her heart, through her throat, till she had to speak, though the words were nothing she had ever thought of, though the voice that issued from her lips was not her own: “Daughter of yeast, kneader of dough, baker of bread, I know you. From your first beginning in your mother’s womb I know you. From the soles of your feet to the crown of your head, from the inmost marrow of your bones to your outmost lock of hair, from your soul to your flesh, I know you. I hear you. I have come for you.”

  “Thank you,” Selah breathed huskily. “Oh, thank you.”

  “Do you know what you undertake?”

  “To be yeast,” the baker said.

  “You shall be yeast, if you can bear it,” the voice spoke through Nima.

  “I will bear it.”

  “Then rise, Daughters of Yeast. Rise, Kneader of Bread. Rise, Sower of Seeds. Rise, Reaper of Grain. Rise, my children, and leaven the world.

  Nima felt thin threads of living matter flow through her from the lips that spoke these words up into her brain, down into her womb. They flowed through her feet, down into the earth like roots, like runners connecting her to Selah. She felt, as if it were her own, the strength of the baker’s hands, her fingers that worked the dough, her arms that shifted the heavy baking-stones, her broad shoulders. The tiny threads of life grew and multiplied, and she felt herself grow and rise bigger and bigger until it did not shock her to find she could step over the little mud-and-timber bakeshop—as, indeed, she must, for the garden was too small for herself and the baker to stand together.

  “I’ll raise the people in the streets,” Selah told her. The baker, too, had risen up tall as the proudest house in the City.

  “I’ll go back to Lord Gessig’s fields. My people are there,” Nima said.

  The road from the fields to the City that she had trudged painfully all night long, she now retraced in a swift series of leaps. Wherever her feet struck the ground, she could feel the spirit of increase working its way through the soil, spreading and multiplying.

  She came to a granary where Lord Gessig stored his harvest. With a touch of her hands, the grain within it swelled and burst its wooden sides open. Wheat fountained up out of the earth like a spring, more than the greatest barn could hold.

  With glad shouts, the field hands left their evening chores and ran to catch the sudden bounty.

  An overseer and a guard came running to restore order. “You dogs! That’s Lord Gessig’s wheat. Don’t think of taking a grain of it for yourselves! Help us contain it.” They seemed not to see her: as large as she had grown, Nima found, she was as invisible as yeast in a loaf.

  She bent down and took the overseer and guard each in one of her gigantic hands. She spoke to the grain in their bellies, and it swelled and rose inside them till they doubled over with cramps. The overseer dropped his whip, the guard his spear; Nima picked up their weapons and broke them before moving to aid the field hands.

  She did not know all of them, but she recognized Elishua, an old friend of her parents. Here was someone she could trust. “Rise, Sower of Seed, Daughter of Yeast,” she murmured, touching Elishua’s hand.

  The old woman grew to match Nima’s stature. “What must I do, young prophet?”

  Nima’s heart quaked at the title Elishua gave her, but there was no time to argue about something so unimportant as a name. “You and I must raise the people in the fields. I’ll go north.”

  “Then I’ll go south,” said Elishua. They moved through the lands of Lord Gessig, swelling the grain in the silos, bursting the locks of strongholds, raising up more and more companions to join the Rising.

  She reached the wheat field she had once worked. There was Haxal the Overseer, holding the bag of wages and ordering the workers each in turn to strip for inspection before he doled out their daily pay. She bent to him, unseen, wonderin
g if she might make the marrow in his skull swell up until his head burst, like poor Nash’s. But the thought put a bitter taste in her mouth: that was not how the spirit within her wished to work. Instead, she touched the sack of wages; the coins swelled until the sack burst, spilling coppers everywhere. While Haxal scrambled to gather them up again, she took the hands of two of her old companions, Rush and Mara, and raised them up. “Children of Yeast, Sowers of Seed, arise and help me. Raise the land.”

  When they came to the barley field, Nima found she could sense in her feet the seeds that had not sprouted. The spirit of growth in her stirred them, and they rose: a late crop to save her people. But it would not save them if Lord Gessig were free to hoard it to make it dearer, or ship it far off for profit, leaving none for them.

  A knot of field hands stared at the miraculously growing barley in wonder. This time, when Nima took the hand of a bent-backed laborer, the yeast found its way into his heart. Instead of raising him up a giant, it swelled his soul, banishing fear. He began to speak to the others in urgent tones. Nima did not stay to hear him, but hastened to other knots of workers, raising the spirit within them. Soon, throughout the estates, slaves were striking off each others’ iron rings, and a growing army of field hands advanced on the lord’s hall.

  Nima walked by their side, gigantic but unseen, her feet leaving no prints in the earth. When they reached the hall, a guard stood in the doorway, refusing to let the workers pass. Nima’s invisible hands thrust the guardsman aside, so the crowd poured into the stronghold.

  “Who are you? What are you doing in my hall?” Lord Gessig demanded of the advancing crowd.

  One whose heart the yeast had raised, a woman called Lem, faced the lord boldly. “Don’t you know us? We feed you every day. We built this hall of yours. We are the workers in your fields, and we are tired of starving. We want our fair share of what we harvest.”

  “Guards!” Lord Gessig shouted. “Seize these unruly peasants.”

  The guards plied whips and fists, but the field hands were so used to blows and beatings that they could not be daunted. One of them raised a spear against the field hands; Nima found a spot of mold on its shaft and let the spirit of growth spread the decay until the weapon shattered.

  “See?” Lem said. “The Great God shatters the weapons of your henchmen so you will hear us.”

  Another guardsman looked beseechingly at his commander, as if he longed to break off the fight, and only sought permission. Nima reached out with the touch of the rising, and the spirit within him grew. He lowered his sword. “I will not stand against the Great God.”

  The lord glowered at him, but behind the mask of anger, he was trembling. Nima saw her former master as she had never seen him before: a coward who even at the height of power feared the people he commanded, and even at the height of wealth desperately feared becoming poor. Nima reached a hand toward the lord. If the yeast grew within him, might he not grow big-souled enough to give of his abundance? Or would he only grow bolder in greed, and send his people away hungry?

  Whatever the risk, she had to give the yeast what it needed: a chance to breed and grow within another human soul. She loosed the spirit of growth to find its subtle path into Lord Gessig’s heart. But, as if an iron ring closed around it, his soul would not stretch and grow. She watched in dread and awe as the lord’s face turned red, then gray, then blue, as a heart that could not grow choked and died.

  Yeast breeds, yeast grows, yeast dies.

  #

  In the morning, Nima found herself shrinking back down like dough well kneaded, returning to human form again. But with the power of the rising still in her veins, she sprang along the road with strength, all the way to the City, to the baker’s shop.

  “Selah!” she cried. “Selah, the famine is over, the lord is dead, everything is new!”

  “Everything is new,” said a weak and weary voice.

  The baker lay in her back garden, too spent to care that her head was on stone. Nima ran to her, cradled her head: it was hot as a loaf just taken from the oven.

  “You’re fevered,” she said. “Let me find you a healer.”

  Selah shook her head. “No use. Yeast grows, but yeast dies to make bread for others. I knew that when I asked to become yeast.”

  Nima’s heart lurched. “I touched people and made them rise. And now, will they die of what I have done?”

  “Never fear,” Selah said. “Some die, but some remain and breed, like the rising left for the next baking. So it must always be: but without the rising, many would have died of hunger before long. This time, I will pay the price of the rising; you and the others will live and breed and grow. And you, Nima, will keep this shop, and tend the rising, in my place.”

  “Me! I’m not a baker.”

  “You will be,” Selah said. “Did not the spirit of yeast whisper its secrets to you in the night?”

  Nima opened her mouth to deny it, but realized that Selah was right: though she remembered no teaching, she knew what to do with the dough just as she knew how to breathe and the child within her womb knew how to grow. “Yes,” she said. “I will keep the rising alive.”

  Ghost Pyres

  by Jonathan Moeller

  Here is another of Jonathan Moeller’s stories about Caina, one of the Emperor’s Ghosts. In this case, the ghosts are still alive; they’re the spies and Intelligence corps. Caina has been a Ghost for nearly two decades, yet she still encounters new and different magical threats to deal with. At least her life is never borning.

  Jonathan Moeller is pleased (and astonished) to return to SWORD & SORCERESS for a sixth time with “Ghost Pyres.” He is also the author of the sword-and-sorcery novel DEMONSOULED, which was published by Gale/Five Star in 2005, and is now available as a free eBook in all major eBook formats.

  Visit him on the web at www.jonathanmoeller.com, where you can find, among other things, five years of interviews with SWORD & SORCERESS contributors, and CHILD OF THE GHOSTS, a free full-length novel set in the world of “Ghost Pyres.”

  ****

  Caina doubled over and threw up.

  A cramp shot through her limbs, and her skin prickled as if she had been stabbed with needles. Caina grabbed at the wall for support, and felt Lucan Maraeus’s strong hands close around her shoulders. Which was just as well—she didn’t want to fall on her face in the street. They had come here hunting spies from Anub-Kha, and collapsing in public was hardly a good way to remain inconspicuous.

  After a long moment the nausea and the pain faded.

  But the tingling sensation remained.

  “Are you ill?” said Lucan. He was a lean man in his middle thirties, and with his fine clothes and ready smile affected the manner of a wealthy, idle lord of the Empire. Yet now the smile had vanished, and his right hand twitched toward his sword hilt.

  “No,” said Caina, wiping her mouth. “No. Not sickness. Worse.”

  His grim expression darkened. “Sorcery?”

  Caina nodded.

  When she was eleven, a sorcerer’s spell had slain her father and left her scarred. Ever since, she had possessed the ability to sense to presence of sorcery. With seventeen years of practice, she could now sense the distance and intensity of arcane spells. It had come in handy, more than once.

  “Someone just cast a spell nearby,” said Caina, looking around. She and Lucan stood in one of the main dockside streets of Caer Belaen, a small town southwest of the Imperial capital. A few passing sailors cast odd looks at the nobleman and his indisposed companion, but no one stopped to offer help.

  Sailors had a good eye for trouble.

  “You’re sure?” said Lucan.

  “Aye,” said Caina. “A powerful one, too.” Another wave of sharp prickles crawled over her skin. “And it’s still active.”

  “No magi live in Caer Belaen,” said Lucan.

  Caina nodded. “Then we investigate.”

  She would have investigated anyway, even if an entire chapter of the magi li
ved in the town. She was a Ghost circlemaster, one of the leaders of the Emperor’s spies, and she had sworn to defend the people of the Empire from those who preyed upon them. And very often, magi and sorcerers were the predators.

  Gods, how she hated them.

  “This way,” said Caina. Caer Belaen was half-abandoned, most of the merchant ships preferring the larger harbors at Caer Marist and Malarae. So abandoned warehouses lined the streets of the dockside districts, crumbling and dilapidated. The tingles grew sharper as Caina approached one of the abandoned warehouses.

  She stopped, frowning.

  “Do you smell that?” she said.

  Lucan blinked. “Is that...burned meat?”

  Caina saw red light leaking through the boards of the abandoned warehouse’s doors.

  “I don’t think that’s pork,” she said.

  She took a deep breath, drew a dagger from her belt, and pushed open the door.

  A gruesome scene met her eyes.

  The abandoned warehouse was empty, but strange, swirling symbols and odd glyphs had been painted across the walls. A heap of coals stood in the center of the room, glowing with eerie light. The flames burned too bright to be natural, and Caina felt waves of sorcerous force rolling off the fire.

  A burned corpse lay atop the coals. To judge from the half-melted jewelry clinging to the blackened fingers and neck, Caina suspected the corpse had once been a woman. Fury burned through her, almost as hot as the sorcerous flames. Yet another life torn apart by sorcery, another victim murdered by a spell.

  The world would be a better place if every last sorcerer perished.

  And whoever had done this would pay.

  “Gods,” said Lucan, taking a step forward.

  “No!” Caina grabbed his arm. “Don’t touch it. I don’t think it’s safe. Let me have a look.”

  She took a cautious step, examining the strange designs painted on the walls. A ring of the sigils had been painted on the floor, encircling the pyre. Caina knew far more about sorcery than she wished, and she recognized many of the symbols.