Fire in the Sky

1

Yawning and still half-asleep after two nights of disturbing dreams, Shadith carried her harp and gear from the room assigned to her and stood in the arcade outside, shadows from the vine leaves flickering across her face. It was a hot day, damp and sticky; sweat stayed on the skin and breathing brought a load of insects, plant spores, and a whole stewpot of smells, ranging from the oversweet perfume of the fruits on the trees in the next field over to the acrid bite of pony urine.

Peaceful. She looked up. Through the vines she could see a flikit circling overhead. Protection or spy? She clicked her tongue. Probably both. Koraka may be a slickery slider, but he’s not stupid. I wonder if I am. Stupid. Staying here. At least I’m walking in with my eyes open this time, not falling through a hole.

Followed by a line of ‘bots like ducklings waddling after their mother and a hoard of curious children, Aslan, Duncan Shears, and Marrin Ola went down another shady walk toward the tech rooms at the back of the blai, going to log in before mapping and collecting began. Better them than me. She sighed. Well, chatting to a lot of odd-shaped politicians isn’t that much more interesting. At least there’ll be music. I can live with that.

She rubbed at the hawk etching, distressed because the passion she’d felt only two days ago was draining from her, leaving her cold and dim again. Restless. Even thinking about the murdered Eolt only wakened an echo of feeling in her. She sighed. And this business of the cross-country trek on ponies wasn’t helping. Stupid, the Eolt not letting the Goлs send them in a

A Fior woman and two Ketengs with growths budding from their hips hurried past her, dragging a cleaning cart; they stopped a moment to stare at the troop of ‘bots, then bustled into her room and set to work with much banging about, sloshing of water and unflattering comments about the mesuchs moving in on them.

Aslan leaned out the door of the workroom. “Shadow, if you’ll come here a moment?”

“What’s up?”

“Grab a seat.” Aslan kicked a backless chair across to Shadith, settled herself in her own, leaning back, elbows braced on one of the work tables. “Bad news, folks. You may want to change your plans, Shadow.”

“More bad news?” Shadith looked round for the privacy cone, raised her brows.

“No need. Anyone who’s watching knows what I’m going to say.” Aslan held up the flake, tossed it onto the table. “I took this over to the enclave this morning, saw Koraka. He got the point real fast and took me to the com room himself. And we got to watch the software melt to sludge. And the backup program follow it. Com’s dead until the Goлs’ techs figure out what happened and make sure it won’t happen again. A tech took the shuttle to the parking station. Same thing. He had to pull all personnel out of the station. Life support was going. No ship due for three months, so we’re stuck here. We can do it two ways. We can move back to the enclave and stay there hunkered down till the ship comes, or we can go on with what we planned and take our chances with getting killed.”

Shadith got to her feet. “Doesn’t look to me like all that much has changed since the last time we talked.” She pushed her arms through the straps of the gear sack and settled the harpcase beside it. “Count me irritated and on the job. I’ll be flaking the trip, dictating observations. One way or another, word of what’s happening here is going to get out.”

Without waiting to see what the others decided, she left the room, strode along the walkway toward the staging area where Maorgan and the Metau Chachil were getting the pony train organized.

A Keteng with a lichen web so overgrown and complex that xe seemed to be peering out of a thicket stood by a string of twelve ponies, arguing with the Metau over the fee for their use, xe’s voice getting louder and shriller with every word; xe’d been paid, but xe wanted an additional surety against return because xe said xe’d had reports that choreks were thick as black biters on a dry day. “… killing ponies or going off with them and everything else they can haul away. My eldest is in xe’s third budding and the youngest is in slough, xe needs oluid to help with the Change. How you expect me to get xe through it if my stock ends up in some chorek stewpot?” Xe wind-milled xe’s arms. “What if the mesuch don’t bring ‘em back? Ard? What do Ard care about Denchok and their worries? Nothing. Living off the land’s fat. HUNH!”

Ignoring xe, two Fior and three much younger Ketengs were cinching packsaddles on six of the ponies, roping supplies in place. Of the remaining six, three were saddled, three had lead ropes clipped to their halters.

Shadith raised her brows. Choreks? Three ponies? I wonder who the other one’s for. She yawned, moved her shoulders and left the shadows of the arcade.

“G’ morning, Maorgan. When we leaving?”

Maorgan glanced at the sun, looking up through the golden shimmers of the drifting Eolt at the sun. “Won’t be long now. Custom, Shadowsong, we start important journeys at the tick of noon, when Greiдsil shines on our heads.”

“Why? Wouldn’t it be better to get started early when the sun isn’t so hot?”

“Ah, Shadowsong, that’s the mesuch speaking.” He drew the back of his forefinger along the neck of the nearest pony. “The caцpas browse on sunlight like the Eolt. They can go longer if we set out later. Besides, a journey’s start ought to have a set point so you know where you are.”

Shadith blinked. “You’re right. My mind’s in the wrong pattern. Which caцpa’s mine?”

He pointed, what looked like mischief twinkling in his pale blue eyes. “Him.”

The moss pony’s eyes had long curling lashes and were a brown so dark it was almost black. Mixed in with his hair were a tracery of lichens that gave it a curious crinkly texture and a greenish sheen. Horses of any sort were generally associated with the multiform descendants of the Cousin Races, not with species native to the worlds where they settled, so the distant ancestor of this little beast would have come here with the first Fior as a fertilized ovum. Hm. Both it and the plant that grew on it must have mutated since-or were tampered with by the old Fior. She made a mental note to ask Maorgan when the first moss ponies showed up. Ca/Vas, he called them, but she found that hard to remember when she was looking them.

She scratched her caцpa’s poll, cooing to him as he leaned into her, his eyes closing, his head resting heavy on her shoulder.

A boy’s voice sounded behind her. “His name’s Brйou.”

She looked round. “Bea, Glois. Why Brйou? He doesn’t stink.”

“He makes stinks. You wait. You’ll see.”

Utelel giggled, stiffened xe’s lips, and blew a loud BRRRUPPP!

“Ah. Now I understand why Ard Maorgan looked like that.”

Glois scowled suddenly, moved closer to Utelel, took xe’s hand. “We sh’d be going with you. We old enough.” His scowl deepened. “Almost. What diffrence a year gonna make?”

“You might grow a little sense in a year, dilt.” Maorgan stopped beside Shadith. “You and your accomplice in iniquity scoot over where you belong and stop bothering the Harper with your nonsense.”

Glois wrinkled his face into a clown grimace, then he and Utelel went sauntering off.

“Shadowsong.”

Shadith turned, leaned against the caцpa’s side, her fingers idly scratching through the wiry hairs of its mane. He’d taken to calling her that when she explained why Aslan called her Shadow instead of Shadith. Apparently he liked the image of a singer in shadow and the way the syllables slipped off his tongue when translated into Bйlucharis. Chuulcheleet. She rather liked it herself. “Hm?” she said.

“We’ll be three riders, not two. Ard Danor from Melitoлh comes with us. That’s him over there a little behind Metau Chachil.”

Danor was an ancient Fior standing apart from the noise and revel, his body pulled so tightly in on itself she could almost see the gap left in the air around him. Inside that wrinkled hide was a horrifying mixture of hate, fury, and grief. It rasped along her nerves as if she were being stroked by nettles. The thought of spending days in his neighborhood was not a happy one.

“Your friend is a skin around rage.”

“He’s a dead man walking.” His eyes went somber. He shuddered as he looked up at Eolt Melech drifting delicately golden over his head. “You heard Eolt Lebesair’s song. The mesuch on Melitah hunt Eolt to watch them burn. His sioll is ash on the wind.” He looked past Melech at the Yaraka flikit circling overhead and moved his shoulders with distaste. “I almost think we were blessed that it was them who came to us.”

She nodded. “If you have to entertain thieves, a subtle one is a better guest.”

A Denchok with a mid-size lichen web sat on a stool, playing a large harp, a small herd of Meloach and Fior boys squatting beside him, joined with pipes and drums. Glois was there, playing a set of panpipes almost as long as his arm in his left hand. Utelel crouched beside him, stroking and tapping a doubled drum he held between his knees.

Off to one side Metau Chachil and Teseach Ruaim stood fingering the medals that marked their office. The rest of the Alsekumers were milling about, chattering in groups, laughing, asking questions, stopping to stare at the pony train, at Shadith and the others. Meloach and Fior children were running about, making noise, some in a chaotic tag game that involved tossing around a leather ball about the size of a boy’s head.

When the sun was directly overhead, a chord of surpassing beauty came dropping down from the two Eolt. The folk of Alsekum hushed, the Dumel musicians let their hands go still.

Rising and falling as if they rode the waves of an invisible ocean, the Eolt made a symphony of image and sound and on the ground Ard Maorgan and Ard

Maorgan’s harp sang with them, harmonies that dipped in and out of the organ symphony completing and complementing the Eolts in ways impossible to describe or even understand.

Shadith heard the song and knew there were words in it, celebrating the sun, the day, and the journey, though there was no way the brain she had now could fully translate it. Or appreciate the grief that screamed from Danor as he stood, head down, listening to what he could no longer share. She began to understand just what the sioll-bond meant, what an Ard was, and why they were so important to the joined peoples of Bйluchad.