Fire in the Mist Read online

  She waved an arm and shouted, "Send forth the storms and the fires! Send forth the wind and the water! Focus it, send it—send all of it! Now!"

  Sahedre's vassals reached up their hands and willed forth doom on Saje-Ariss. And lightning cracked from newborn stormclouds that billowed out of the Greathall in an ugly stream of night-dark poison, and winds screamed and twisted in the skies above Daane, before they raced in funnels toward their destination.

  Yes! the Wisewoman thought, and laughed with joy. Yes! I have waited lifetimes for this—and it is all I had hoped for, and more. She beckoned to Frelle Jann. "We need more magic, dear girl," she said, and drew the frelle to her. She caressed the young woman's cheek with her knife.

  "More magic... and you are going to give it to me."

  Medwind, still too weak to stand, gave Nokar Feldosonne a mind-picture of his destination. He passed the picture on to the rest of the transport-specialists. Everyone gripped weapons, made last-minute checks of ammunition, and one by one, signaled their readiness.

  Medwind nodded at Nokar; Nokar knelt beside her cot and rested one hand on her shoulder. He began the backward count.

  "Three—two—one—NOW!"

  Medwind once again felt everything twist and wrench and spin inside her and around her. This time, the wrongness didn't stop. She became aware of the others in the rescue party, trapped in the same non-place. She could feel their frustration and their growing fear. A smooth, gleaming, impassable wall arrested their progress.

  :Go back!: Nokar commanded. :Retreat! Retreat!:

  Medwind felt no panic in the old man's mind—only calm intelligence and quick recognition of the obstacle that blocked him.

  Hell of a commander—for a librarian, she thought with admiration, as the world buckled further in on itself and shifted again.

  Then space untwisted, and Medwind groaned and sprawled on the Basin floor. Around her, other members of the stymied rescue party did the same. Sajes throughout the towering seats gave startled cries.

  Through the swirling cloud of multicolored smoke, Nokar's voice could be heard, explaining to the sajes in the auditorium, "They've shielded the University. We can't get through."

  Without warning, the Basin rocked from side to side, and tiny bits of masonry from the top of the dome crumbled down to dust the sajes below. The low rumble of an earthquake mixed with the howl of tornadoes and the green glow of mage-light that arced and spit through the cracks in the ceiling.

  "We're under attack! Disperse!" Burchardsonne shouted. "The south field—quickly!"

  With a "whoosh" the Basin cleared.

  Medwind found herself slumped neck-deep in the swamp to the south of Ariss, Nokar's hand locked on her braid, surrounded by the thousands who'd simultaneously fled the Basin. A sluggish breeze dissipated the saje-smoke.

  One man behind her cried out once in anguish, then cursed dully and without emotion. She turned to see why and looked away quickly. A young man, one of Mage-Ariss' would-be rescuers, had materialized partly in the swollen base of a primordial swamp-cypress that grew nearby. He was dying even as she glimpsed him, and she was utterly helpless to save him. The sight of his face—of his agony and his resignation—would stay with her, she thought, for the rest of her life. She noted that other sajes averted their eyes from him, and from the few others who suffered the same fate.

  Nokar pulled her to a sitting position and leaned her against a tree. He said bitterly, "We always knew that we would lose a dozen or so sajes with the emergency evacuation of the Basin. No one could ever come up with another big, nearly clear space that would take everyone at once and wouldn't endanger innocents. So we knew we would be taking our chances.

  "It doesn't seem right that Chak was one of the ones we lost, though. He was a scholar," the old man added. "Loved books, loved learning—I'll miss him."

  "The senseless deaths were what I hated most about war," Medwind admitted. "My inability to love killing was the embarrassment of the Huong Hoos, to be honest. So I left. There was no room in my tribe for a life-loving warrior."

  "You'll never fit into somebody else's world, Song. You have your own ideas—you won't let someone else think for you. The only place you will be accepted be the place you make for yourself." Nokar studied her intently. "You'll get to your own place someday."

  "If I live that long."

  The old man's mouth twisted in a humorless smile. "Yah. There is that."

  The evacuations' survivors were finally assembled around Burchardsonne, Nokar, Medwind, and the remains of the hand-picked rescue team. To the north, the refugee sajes could see the green blaze of Faulea University—burning—and hear the raging winds that battered the helpless city.

  "We can't get into Daane to stop this," one young sage said. "So what do we do now?"

  Burchardsonne looked grim. "We have few alternatives. First, we can blast back randomly. Anything we aim at that mage-shield will likely bounce off and scatter away from the target. We'll probably hit nothing but innocents."

  "We should try it anyway."

  Burchardsonne looked from face to tired face. "Should we? We know who the enemy is. Should we destroy people who aren't the enemy, simply because they are unlucky enough to live near her?" He shook his head. "I don't think so. Second, we can do nothing. That will give over the city to Sahedre Onosdotte—and I don't want to see what she will do with it.

  "We have a third option only if one of you can make it work. I want some idea of how we can break through that barrier."

  There was a long silence.

  "Thoughtspeech," Medwind offered. "Break through to those on the campus near her, tell them the true story about Rakell's—" Her voice broke, and she had to catch her breath before continuing. "—About Rakell's death—and let them raise rebellion against Sahedre from inside the shield."

  "Surely she's thought of that, and blocked against it."

  "It won't kill any innocents if we look and find out."

  Burchardsonne sighed. "True enough. But who's going to try it?"

  Medwind looked up at him from her place at the base of the tree. "None of you would know who to talk to—none of you would know what to say to keep from getting your minds blasted by someone who thought you were trying to attack. It will have to be me."

  Nokar Feldosonne shook his head vehemently. "You are as near death as you need to get, Medwind." He crossed his arms and furrowed his brows. "Something this taxing, right after your ride through the Timeriver, is likely to kill you."

  "Maybe—but that doesn't mean I'm wrong."

  The old librarian bit his lip. "No, it doesn't."

  "This is war, Nokar, Burchardsonne. Don't be afraid to lose a few players if it will win you the battle. I always figured I was meant to die in combat anyway. Not as some old woman sleeping on my mats." She managed a weak smile.

  The old librarian didn't return it. "You are right, and I can't change that. So go." He looked into her eyes, and she read pain there—and concern—and maybe something else. "But come back."

  The barbarian nodded. "I'll try." She closed her eyes and forced the natural swamp-images of seeping water and swimming snakes and biting insects out of her thoughts. She breathed slowly, narrowed her focus to a tightly controlled whisper, and sent her mental murmur questing toward Daane.

  :Listen,: she said. :Help is on the way. Can you hear me?:

  Her question, to her astonishment, slipped through Sahedre's shield like a dagger through silk. Sahedre had blocked physical and magical approaches... but not mental. Medwind probed across the campus, immediately found the familiar mind of her fellow instructor, Litthea, and slid inside.

  Instantly, wrongness enveloped her. Where she should have been met by the identifiable forethoughts of her friend and colleague, she was instead overwhelmed by a foreign, hypnotic urge to "kill the sajes." She felt compressed fragments of her friend Litthea's self as if from a great distance—but Litthea was trapped, seduced by the evil that commanded her in her own body. The min
d and wishes of Sahedre overrode everything, and Litthea had no choice but to obey. Medwind fought free from the gluey trap of Sahedre's magic, and rushed out of Litthea's mind. Sahedre's virulent personality vanished. Medwind's lean frame, miles distant, shook with relief.

  Close, she thought, repressing panic. If Sahedre had felt me, she could have had me. Who is left that I can talk to? she wondered. Whose mind is still safe?

  Her delicate psychic probe skimmed from colleague to student, from student to friend, all across the campus. She darted down, a hummingbird seeking nectar, and flitted back in revulsion each time. Every mind—every single mind in the university—was poisoned by Sahedre's control.

  How can she force them all— Medwind started to wonder.

  And the telltale horror of the start of another sacrifice for mehevar invaded her skull.

  That's how. Gods! Will it never end? In answer to her own question, she thought, No, it won't. She'll kill forever, because that's where she gets her strength. As long as Sahedre lives, people will die to feed her.

  Medwind's mind rang with the pain and the fear of the victim—Frelle Jann, she realized, noting familiarities of shading and character in the tattered and dying soul that screamed for mercy. The barbarian fled back to her distant body, too weak to witness the torture and annihilation of another colleague without embracing madness.

  As she fled, she felt a lone mind, frightened and surrounded by darkness, weakly and futilely protesting the killing.

  One survives in Daane who has free will? Who is it? And where is she hiding?

  But she was already headed back to her body, and too weak to reverse long enough to identify the protester. She found herself, still leaning against the tree, propped up by a saje on either side, weak and sweat-slicked and shaking. It was more effort than she could imagine, just to speak. "Sahedre had—all of th-th-them in mind-thrall," she whispered. "I b-b-briefly touched one mind that had managed to hide from her—but I didn't have—time to r-r-reach into it." The chill of the breeze on her wet skin, the coldness of the swamp water on the parts of her that were submerged, and the hard shiver of fever-wrack gripped her. Her limbs shook and her teeth rattled.

  The librarian knelt beside her and gripped her hand. He rested his wrist lightly on her forehead, then laid his fingertips on her neck to measure the pulsing beat of her blood. His eyes darkened with worry. "We need to get her out of this swamp," he told Burchardsonne. "Fast—or she's going to die."

  Medwind smiled up at Nokar. In Hoos, she told him, "Just leave me. Old man, I'd m-m-make you one of my—husbands if I h-h-had the chance. I like you. But I'm n-n-not g-going—to survive this. You get rid of Sahedre. Then make sure—I get a—good Hoos f-f-funeral—with l-l-lots of horses and all. And honor f-for my head."

  "Sheepshit," Nokar snapped back in Hoos. "Don't give me your noble-warrior-dying-bravely act. You're going to survive—we need your help to get rid of Sahedre." He did a sudden double-take. "You'd really take me as one of your husbands?"

  Medwind managed a faint grin. "Yah, old man. Even make you—a H-H-Hoos warrior if you—survived the w-w-wedding night."

  "You'll live now just for that, by the gods. I claim Hoos honor on your word. Your husband, huh? There's a hell of a way for an old man to go down in glory."

  In Arissonese, he told Burchardsonne, "I'm taking Song to Demphrey's healer's station out on Tenth Round in the Ka district. Find Demphrey and send him along. If you come up with anything that will win us this war, contact me there. Otherwise, I'll find you when I can."

  Medwind heard this with fading interest. She felt the old man's fingers once again on her shoulder, but noticed only the first part of the wrenching of the universe before darkness overtook her.

  For an instant, Faia had felt someone else, someone not tainted by the bloodlust in Sahedre's soul, who went questing through the darkness she occupied. She reached out, cried out briefly for release—

  And then the light of that other soul vanished, and she was left again in empty blackness.

  There is something on my face. Crawling. It itched and tickled, but she didn't have the strength to brush it off. She opened her eyes, and found herself eyeball to eyeball with an enormous roach.

  Medwind Song, rising to consciousness out of what seemed an eternity of fire and pain and darkness, did not find this a good omen.

  "A-a-agh!" she groaned. The roach scuttled off.

  It was replaced in the narrow circle of her vision by the flowing beard and locks and wrinkled visage of Nokar Feldosonne. This seemed an equally bad omen, for it indicated that the horrors she began to recall were not phantasms brought on by too much booze, but real events.

  "I liked the cockroach better," she croaked.

  "Nice to know I'm appreciated. Healer Demphrey says you might live. He says you need rest."

  "How is the war going?" She didn't really need to ask. She could hear the howling of the wind, the lash of torrential rains, the steady thunder of explosion as fireball after fireball battered the saje city.

  "We're losing badly."

  "Then Healer Demphrey can—well, no, he probably can't. It usually isn't anatomically possible. But he can keep his advice to himself." Medwind managed to pull herself up on one elbow. The world spun wildly, but she ignored it. "Look, Nokar, I have to go back. There is someone in Daane that I might reach. I think I know where to look."

  Nokar brushed stray hairs off Medwind's forehead. "It's no good, Song. You've been under Demphrey's drugs and spellings for almost four hours. In that time, Burchardsonne has sent dozens of Mindspeakers into Daane. Most fell into Sahedre's clutches and died. The few who made it back report that there is no one under her shield who is not in her thrall. And in that time, she's done half a dozen mehevarin, and expanded the shield to encompass about a third of Mage-Ariss."

  "What happens when the shield is attacked directly?"

  "The damage bounces back directly onto the senders. Burchardsonne lost two units that way. He won't try a third."

  Medwind lay back on the slab she occupied and stared up at the reed thatch poking between the wide-spaced ceiling beams. "I see."

  "We've lost this one, Medwind." Nokar sighed. "And this one is for the whole of Arhel, I'm afraid. Sahedre is unstoppable."

  "I see." Medwind closed her eyes. "I'm going to sleep a while, old man. Don't wake me up if the world ends. I'd rather not know."

  She felt dry lips brush her cheek. "I'm glad you're going to rest."

  When goats have kittens, Medwind thought. She gave a very good imitation of a woman drifting off to sleep. When she heard Nokar sigh again and walk away, she summoned what little energy she could and sent her mind searching back along the path she'd traveled earlier.

  The spark of light was returning. There had been others, casting back and forth at a distance, but this one was coming straight to Faia. She could feel it as if it were the full blaze of the sun breaking through a pinhole in her prison.

  She stretched out and greeted it.

  :Who are you?: she whispered.

  :Medwind Song. And you—are Faia! Of course. She must have forgotten about you.:

  :She did not need to forget about me. She has me trapped and helpless—I cannot harm her, and she cannot put me to work, so why should she waste any of her precious energy to control me? But you—what are you doing here?:

  Medwind sent the tiniest flutter of a laugh into Faia's mind. :I came to see if you would try to rescue us.:

  :Hah! I would be astounded if I could rescue me. Not much hope of that, I am afraid.:

  Medwind's next comment was long in coming, and thoughtful in tone. :It would be the same thing. Let me tell you what I've found out about her, and you see if there's anything you can use.:

  Faia listened patiently, only interrupting once to remark—:This fiend had a daughter? Easier to imagine a blood-spider suckling its young than her a mother.:

  :Nevertheless, the death of her daughter Beliseth was the start of this whole disaster.:
Medwind's thoughtvoice wearied. :I must go. I am too weak to stay any longer. Faia, there is nothing else that we can do from the outside. And you are the only one left on the inside. If our world is to survive, it will only be because of you.:

  Then she was gone, taking the light and hope of her presence with her.

  Faia, in her blind cage, was vaguely aware of Sahedre surrounding her. If she concentrated, she could hear the other woman's now-unguarded thoughts. Maybe Medwind Song was right. Maybe Sahedre has forgotten about me, she thought. An idea occurred to her. She wondered if she could steal through Sahedre's memories for a look at the child, Beliseth, without alerting her mother.

  Stealthily, she extended a thin fiber of thought into the other woman's mind. She kept away from Sahedre's noisy, angry awareness, and concentrated on the darkened backways of her past. Beliseth was not hard to find. All Sahedre's past thoughts were wrapped around her. Every waking moment was overlaid by pictures of a sweet-faced green-eyed child with soft blue-black curls that tumbled half-way down her back. In the clearest memories, she was about eight, growing early into beauty. Faia could sense her mother's enchantment and adoration of the child. Younger images of Beliseth were fuzzed slightly by time, but even as a young child, and before, as a toddler, there was never anything but love in the memories Sahedre held of her daughter. Faia rummaged carefully, and found Beliseth again as an infant, round and pink and dimpled, and even deeper, located Sahedre as she concentrated on the movement in her belly, the first delightful quickenings of life.

  Faia backed out, and held her breath. An idea occurred to her, breathtaking in its simplicity—and in its cruelty. Could I do that, even to Sahedre? she wondered.

  She stretched a little, peeked out through the eyes Sahedre controlled, saw what was left of the bodies of instructors and other women's small children in piles around the Greathall—all victims of Sahedre's mehevar and her pursuit of the destruction of Ariss.

  I could be that cruel, she decided grimly. This time, to this woman, I could be that cruel.

  She drew in passing surges of the power Sahedre had forgotten to guard, stored it, hid it, squirreled it away. She waited until Sahedre's energy began to lag, until the madwoman began to cast about for another sacrifice to increase her strength. Then, with feigned amazement, Faia screamed a sudden mindshout that tore across the Wisewoman's consciousness—:I am pregnant?! I am PREGNANT! And she is a girl!: