Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits

SALAMANDER MAN

PETER DICKINSON

Long before the man reached Aunt Ellila’s stall, Tib recognised him as a magician. Though many people practised cottage magic, the high magic practised by professional magicians was illegal throughout the country. But the town of Haballun chose to be different, in this and many other ways.

Slavery, for instance. This was also illegal, yet Tib himself was a slave, bought by Aunt Ellila direct from the school, with an enforceable guarantee from the Guild that if he escaped and was free for more than a month, the purchaser would be compensated by a payment twenty times his purchase price. To make the guarantee effective, the Guild had hired a magician to design a system whereby each slave was branded on his left shoulder-blade and the brand then tattooed with an individual mark, linked to a scrying stone in the Guild head office. If Tib went missing, a clerk would dig out his sale-parchment and lay the stone on the copy of his mark, and an image would appear in the crystal showing exactly where he was hiding. Once recaptured, he would be punished for as long as he had been free in a manner that caused intense pain but did no physical damage, and then returned to his owner. As part of his schooling Tib had been made to watch would-be escapers undergoing this torment. Since he had been brought to the school almost newborn, he had sometimes wondered what freedom might be like, but if he’d ever felt tempted to try it he had only to reach over his left shoulder and feel the ridges and hollows of the brand to abandon the idea.

Aunt Ellila wasn’t in fact a bad owner compared to some that Tib had heard of. ʺAuntʺ was a purely formal title, dating back to the early days of the system, when owners needed to pretend to be blood relatives of their slaves in order to have an apparent right to keep them as servants. If Tib had had an actual aunt or uncle he would have called them ʺGada Thisʺ or ʺGado That.ʺ

Tib was Aunt Ellila’s only slave. He cleaned the house and ran errands, but his main job was to help stack the heavy hand-cart and then haul it down to the market in the morning, with Aunt Ellila walking beside it and carrying the basket of her more fragile stock on her head. He then unstacked the cart, set it up as a stall, rigged the awnings and the screened area behind it, assembled the shelves and showcases, and finally unpacked the crates and brought the goods to Aunt Ellila to arrange as she wanted them. During the long, hot day he ran errands, parcelled up items sold, and so on, and minded the stall in the slack period at midday while Aunt Ellila went off to Defri’s bar to dice and drink bhang soda with her cronies.

At other times he sat in the shade of the awning, apparently asleep but in fact on the look-out for sneak-thieves, the market police, and other trouble-makers. He was extremely good at this. It was what Aunt Ellila had bought him for and trained him to do from the first day she’d had him. A few months back a couple of other stall-holders had come round getting up a petition for more police patrols. What was the point? Aunt Ellila had asked them. It would only mean more police for the thieves to bribe, and so more theft to finance the bribes. Much better buy a kid like Tib, who could spot a gang at work a dozen stalls off, so that she could pass the word to her neighbours and they’d be ready for the bastards.

Magicians were a different kind of trouble. They were a lot harder to spot, for a start. It wouldn’t be anything to do with the man himself, of course. This one, as usual, looked as ordinary as magic could make him—middle-aged, a bit tubby, brownish stubble, green head-cloth, standard linen long coat, baggy pants, sandals and the vague air of a citizen with three or four everyday errands to do.

It was the way the crowd moved round him that was the tell-tale. The space between the stalls was thronged. No magician likes to be touched, unless he has chosen to be. There is always some slight leakage of power, so he sees that it doesn’t happen. The throng between the stalls was a glutinous current, with slow eddies and churnings, stoppages and swifter impulses. But this man moved through it at his own pace, pausing briefly in front of each stall. When he did so, no one jostled into him. When he wanted to move on, a gap appeared in front of him, though whoever had been blocking his path only an instant before might be looking the other way. Tib spotted him for a magician as clearly as if he’d had a sphinxlet perched on his shoulder.

Tib yawned and stretched. His right arm, as if by accident, touched a wind-charm into tinkles. Rapidly he stilled the chime by closing his palms together over the cylinders. By the time he let go Aunt Ellila was re-arranging her stock, moving some items aside and bringing others into view, which she hadn’t wanted any casual stall-browsers deciding to buy on a whim.

Her trade was in good-quality knick-knacks, jewellery and ornaments, bought either at house-sales or from other stalls. It was surprising how many people possessed, without knowing it, useless-looking objects of the kind that in fact had magical purposes, some startlingly powerful in the right hands. Aunt Ellila did not herself practise magic—not one of the twenty-seven magicians in Haballun was a woman—but was the fifth in her family to trade from this pitch, each generation teaching the next how to recognise such things. She had no children, but a twelve-year-old niece would be coming shortly to train as her apprentice, and eventually perhaps to inherit the business. Most of the twenty-seven magicians would look by from time to time to see if she’d picked up anything new, but Tib had no way of knowing if this was one of the regulars, as they all had spells on their doorways that changed their appearance whenever they went out.

The man paused, as expected, in front of Aunt Ellila’s stall, but this time stepped closer. With a glance at Aunt Ellila for permission to touch, he picked up one by one the objects she had brought into view. Most he put straight back. Some he inspected longer. A few he weighed in his palm, closing his eyes, and put aside. Tib paid little attention. All this was standard magician stuff, and the market gangs weren’t beyond having one of their number play the part to distract attention while they went about their work. But he was instantly aware when the dynamics of the sale shifted.

He glanced across. Aunt Ellila had a charming smile, and was using it to the full, but her eyes were narrowed. That meant, Tib had learnt, that she suspected a customer knew something about an object that gave it a greater value than she’d been going to ask. So he was surprised to see that the magician had picked out the broken camel toy. This was, or had been, a mechanical novelty with, as far as Tib knew, no magical properties at all. It consisted of a statuette of a camel standing under a banana-palm, gazing up at the unreachable fruit. A silk cord ran into the base, which, when pulled, was supposed to cause the camel to rear up and try to reach the bananas. It might have been worth a quick smile if it had worked. Tib had spent several evenings trying to get it to do so, without luck, and now Aunt Ellila only kept it on display as something to catch the eye, and in the faint hope that some fool of a customer might think he’d have more success.

The magician put it on the counter and pulled the cord. Nothing happened, but he picked it up all the same and held it between his hands. Watching him from behind, Tib could see no change in his appearance, but for a blink of time he ceased to be ordinary and became a presence, his true self. The next instant he had veiled that self in ordinariness. He put the camel back on the stall and pulled the cord again. The camel reared up and stretched with absurd, hopeless longing for the bananas.

Aunt Ellila clapped her hands. The magician replaced the camel on the shelf where he’d found it and assembled the objects he’d chosen. Aunt Ellila fetched two stools, and they settled down to bargain. Tib watched the passing crowd.

After a little while Aunt Ellila called to him.

ʺJust go and fetch us a couple of mugs of bhang, Tib. Mint for me, and . . . ? Mint for the gentleman too. And a pot of honey-jellies, but go to Selig’s for those—they’re better than Defri’s. Take the money out of the till. Good boy.ʺ

Tib showed her the coins he’d taken and set off, going to Selig’s first, at the other end of the market, rather than carry the bhang there and back through the throng. Selig’s honey-jellies came from the same cook as Defri’s, which meant Aunt Ellila wanted him out of the way, so he took his time. But Aunt Ellila enjoyed a good haggle, so he was surprised to find on his return that the bargaining was over. She and the magician were sitting where he’d left them but rose as he approached. Aunt Ellila was holding herself stiffly and not smiling at all. The magician sipped briefly at his bhang and put the mug down.

ʺExcellent,ʺ he said. ʺI will fetch the registrar’s clerk.ʺ

He slipped into the crowd. Tib put the honey-jellies on the stall and handed Aunt Ellila the change. She threw it into the till uncounted, snapped the drawer shut and held out both hands in the imploring gesture of a street beggar.

ʺOh, Tib,ʺ she croaked. ʺI’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. I . . . I’ve just sold you.ʺ

Tib’s jaw fell open. He stared.

ʺI hope you got a good price,ʺ he managed to say.

ʺBeyond belief,ʺ she said, shaking her head. ʺImpossible. But . . . Tib, I told him I still didn’t want it. Nothing would be enough. I . . . I’ve been hoping, when Zorya comes . . . you and she. . . . If she married you, then we could free you, and then you could run the stall together, and look after me when I’m too . . . too—ʺ

She hid her head in her shawled sleeve and wept. Utterly stunned and bewildered, Tib put his arm round her shoulders and held her to him. Zorya was the niece who was coming to be her apprentice, but Aunt Ellila had never given him the slightest hint of the rest of her plans. He felt much as he had during the delirium of fever three years back, too dazed to think, too numb to feel.

The sobs eased. Aunt Ellila straightened, shook her hair out and used her shawl to dry her tears.

ʺHe said it had to be you and no one else,ʺ she said angrily. ʺSomething about a sign—that stupid camel—gods, I wish I’d chucked it out! So when he saw I wasn’t just talking your price up, that I wasn’t going to take any price, he . . . he . . . look!ʺ

She reached into her neckline and hauled out the chain that hung there. Like everyone in the city who could afford it, she wore a collection of amulets against enchantments. They wouldn’t have been much use against a professional magician, but it was still worth paying for protection against cottage-cursers, and the surprising number of people who lived wholly unaware of their abilities and used them by accident. Tib had never seen Aunt Ellila’s amulets, but thanks to the nature of her business, they would have been more effective than most. Now all that was left of the nine little symbols, tokens and figures that had dangled from the chain was a few splinters of bone, melted blobs and shreds of fabric.

ʺThat was to show me what he could do if I refused,ʺ she said. ʺHe was perfectly fair and open about it. He’s even given me a replacement which he says will be a lot more use—I’m not going to wear it till I’ve had Dr. Cacada take a look at it, of course. And he’s sticking to the ridiculous price he offered, but . . . oh, Tib, I didn’t see what else I could do!ʺ

ʺNo . . .ʺ said Tib slowly. ʺYou’ve done your best. You’ve done your best for me all along, really. I’ve been extremely lucky. I owe you a lot, and I’m not going to forget it.ʺ

She looked at him, shaking her head, again on the verge of tears.

ʺYou’re a good boy,ʺ she said. ʺI’d like to give you something to remember me by. I was keeping it for when . . . when you. . . . Come.ʺ

She led the way into the curtained lair behind the stall where she dozed off her lunchtime bhang. It seemed to contain nothing besides the roll of mattress and the head-pillow that Tib had ferried to and fro every day since he’d been strong enough to push the cart, but she knelt, unhooked a few fastenings at the side of the roll and pulled out several small linen and leather bags. She put one aside, hid the rest back in the mattress and rose with the chosen bag in her hand.

ʺI suppose I’ve really known all along it was meant for you,ʺ she said. ʺLong before. . . . Anyway, the day I came to look for a slave, there was a beggar outside the school selling trashy little trinkets. Of course I looked his stuff over, the way I do. There was nothing on his tray worth even a glance, except this. I knew at once it had powers, though I’d no idea what they were. Still haven’t. I bought it for a song and put it in my purse, but then . . . I hadn’t actually been meaning to buy a slave that day—just wanted to see what was on offer, then go home and think about it, but the moment I saw you. . . . Anyway, oh, months later, when I was sitting over my bhang one evening, and you’d cleared supper and curled up in your cot and gone to sleep, I was thinking about what a lucky choice I’d made when I found you and fiddling around inside my bag for one of my little combs I’d put in it, but it had slipped down behind the lining, and so had this. I’d completely forgotten about it. I suppose that was why I’d never put it on sale, because it would be a bit like selling a piece of you, and now . . . and now . . . I’m going to lose you anyway, so you may as well take it. . . . Aren’t you even going to look at it?ʺ

Still in his daze of shock and grief, Tib found she’d already put the bag in his hands. He fumbled the cord loose and groped inside. His fingers touched something soft and flexible—a ribbon, he thought, but when he drew it out he found a golden band, not gold thread, but too soft and flexible to be wire. Running it through his fingers, he came to a stiffer part and found himself being stared at by two small purple eyes—jewels of some kind—and now he could see the shape of the head woven into the mesh. The thing was a small golden lizard. A pair of stubby clawed legs dangled beside the body, with another pair beyond. By then the body had begun to narrow towards the tail, but before he came to the tip there was the head again, lying, he now saw, on the hinder end of the body, with the tail itself coiling neatly round the neck.

ʺI think it’s an arm-band,ʺ said Aunt Ellila, and then, as he slipped the band onto his wrist, ʺCareful! Take it off at once if . . .ʺ

The band dangled loose and harmless from Tib’s wrist, so he slipped it up to the thicker muscle above the elbow, where it seemed to fit snugly. The dangling legs spread themselves, and the feet, without actually gripping, seemed to adhere lightly to the skin, like those of a wall-climbing gecko. A faint shimmer ran through the mesh and, without any movement he could sense, it seemed to lose substance and fade until for a moment he could see his skin through it. Then it was gone, melted into the flesh of his upper arm.

Aunt Ellila put out a trembling hand and lightly touched the place, but instantly snatched it back with a cry of pain and sucked at the first three fingers. When she withdrew them from her mouth Tib saw that the fingertips were scorched white, as if she had laid them on a hot roasting pan. But when, gingerly, he held his palm over the place and then himself touched it, he could feel nothing but his own natural warmth.

At that point the magician returned with a clerk wearing the badge of the Slavemaster’s Guild on the shoulder of his long coat and carrying a writing-case and a small parchment roll. Aunt Ellila cleared a space on the counter and the clerk unrolled the parchment, weighting the corners with knick-knacks from the stall. He told Tib to take off his smock and compared the tattoo on his shoulder with the copy on the parchment. By now Aunt Ellila was weeping openly.

ʺIt’s not that uncommon for owners to become over-involved with a slave,ʺ the clerk said chattily, as if neither Aunt Ellila nor Tib was present. ʺWomen with younger men, especially. It’s less offensive the other way round, of course—we’d have broken this relationship if we’d known of it. Come now, madam. . . .ʺ

The magician turned and gazed coldly at him. The clerk doubled in pain, clutching his side. The magician nodded. The clerk straightened, pale and sweating.

ʺYou should see a leech for that problem, my friend,ʺ said the magician, still unsmiling. His glance flicked for a moment to Tib, as if to check that he had seen the episode and understood.

From then on the clerk went efficiently about his business, clearly anxious to get it over. He wrote three lines on a fresh sheet of parchment, which Aunt Ellila and the magician signed. He took Tib’s left hand, pressed the thumb onto an ink-pad and then onto the parchment below the signatures and compared the imprint to the much smaller one on the original deed of sale. As he did so, Tib was able to look briefly at this. His eye was caught by the one almost blank line on the crowded sheet—ʺParentage:ʺ and then, simply, a dash.

Lastly the clerk watched as the magician counted out the payment to Aunt Ellila, made a note of it on the new document and sealed that with the Guild seal and attached it to the original. He accepted his fee and left. Tib hadn’t been surprised to see that his own price was nothing out of the ordinary—the Guild had strict rules—but as soon as the clerk had gone the magician gestured towards the items he’d originally chosen from the stall and counted out more coins from his purse—six of them, gold, and larger than Tib’s thumbnail. Tib knew all Aunt Ellila’s asking prices, as well as what she’d happily settle for. If the coins had been only silver, they’d have bought half her wares. She picked them up as if in a dream, shaking her head and still barely mastering her tears. The magician seemed not to notice.

ʺYou’ll need a man to help you home with your goods,ʺ he said.

ʺI . . . I’ll find somebody,ʺ muttered Aunt Ellila.

The magician crooked a finger as if beckoning somebody from among the passers-by. A wizened little man squirmed his way through. His smile was so wide it seemed to split his face in half. His ears were upside down.

ʺHelp the lady home,ʺ said the magician. ʺStay with her as long as she needs you, and then go back to the place from which you came. No earth-wandering. Now, boy, say your farewell and come with me.ʺ

As Tib was stammering his thanks and good-byes, Aunt Ellila glanced sidelong at the magician.

ʺTib,ʺ she whispered, ʺthat thing you’re wearing—it’s more than a protection, much more. And the man who sold it to me—it’s not the same man, but there was something about him. . . . And this man—those things he bought, he doesn’t need them. And they’re dangerous—in the wrong hands, I mean. But he’s a good man, all the same. I’m sure of it. You’d better go now. . . . You’ve been a good boy. . . . Think of me sometimes.ʺ

Choking, Tib forced himself to turn away. The magician had been waiting for him without apparent impatience, but as soon as he saw Tib moving he turned and strode rapidly off. Anxiously Tib hurried to catch up with him before they were separated by the scrum, but found that he need not have worried because the magical influence now seemed to extend to him, so that no matter how quickly he moved or what path he chose, there was always a pace or two of clear ground immediately ahead of him, though nobody seemed deliberately to move aside to make way for him. All did so for their own reasons.

As they passed the roast-crab stall the magician tossed the little parcel of what he’d bought from Aunt Ellila onto the brazier, which immediately erupted into an amazing flare of coloured lights. Again, nobody seemed to notice. All heads other than Tib’s happened to be turned away.

Yes, Tib thought. Aunt Ellila had been right. The magician had had no need of his purchases, except to be able to make up the slave-price, so he’d deliberately bought stuff that would be dangerous in the wrong hands and then destroyed it. A good magician was said to be rarer than the Phoenix, and there was never more than one of those at a time. But this was a good man.

They reached wider and less crowded streets, through which the magician strode on, not once looking round. Tib was starting to pant with the effort of keeping up by the time they turned from a main thoroughfare into a narrow, windowless alley. The magician strode, unpausing, at a closed door that opened to let him pass and closed as soon as Tib had followed. They crossed a bare courtyard, unswept for a year. Dead leaves and scraps cluttered the paving. They descended a musty-smelling stairway into darkness, but the magician moved in a mist of pale light that Tib could follow down, and then along a stone corridor. A heavy door swung open, and again shut as soon as Tib too was through.

The magician faced him, smiling for the first time.

ʺHard quarters, I’m afraid,ʺ he said. ʺThere is a reason, you will find. I cannot explain. My time is up. Good—ʺ

With an explosive snap as the air rushed to fill the space where he had been, he was gone, and Tib was left in darkness.

It took him a little while to realise that he was naked. He knelt and felt around for his clothes, but found nothing but close-fitted paving stones. It was the same when he explored the walls. They were bare masonry, apart from the door through which he had come and a window-opening in the adjacent wall, with a hefty iron grill, its bars as thick as his two thumbs laid together back to back.

A minor strangeness struck him. Why didn’t he feel chilly without his clothes, down in this sunless cell, after hustling through the hot and crowded streets? He didn’t, in fact, feel any sensation of temperature at all, apart, perhaps, from a faint inner glow emanating from his upper right arm and now beginning to spread quietly along his veins and nerves. This, he guessed, must come from the arm-band, and was the now-germinating seed of whatever was coming next.

He felt perfectly calm about it, as if he were merely a spectator, fully aware of what was happening to the young man in the cellar, but at the same time completely inside it. He, Tib, the young slave who had said farewell to his owner with such heartfelt grief less than an hour ago, was now two separate entities: a new, emotionless Tib occupying the body in the cellar, and the old Tib, the real Tib, a disembodied watcher.

He settled down with his back against the wall to wait. Something, obviously, had to happen. Everything so far today, since the arrival of the magician at Aunt Ellila’s stall—no, since long before that, if she was right about the man who had sold her the arm-band the day she went to the slave school to look for him—perhaps further back still—had been part of some purpose. It couldn’t end here.

Perhaps he slept. If so he didn’t dream, but after a while became aware of a smell of burning. He opened his eyes, not having realised that they were shut, and found that he could see. An orange light filled the cellar, coming, he first thought, from nowhere. But when he raised a hand to test his vision, he saw that the whole arm, and the hand too, were glowing like hot coals. The light came from him. Stretched out on the floor in front of him, his legs and feet glowed with fiery currents. The smell of burning came from scorching dust particles on the pavement where he sat and in the crevices of the wall against which he was leaning. The surface of the masonry was turning powdery from the heat. His clothes, if he’d been wearing them, would have been ashes long ago.

But Tib himself felt only his own comfortable warmth. The cell, he realised, was now a furnace. No living thing could have survived more than an instant in it, but he breathed the roasting air as though in the cool of a pleasant evening.

This, no doubt, was why the magician had brought him here. It was a place where he could undergo this transformation without burning the building down, perhaps setting fire to a whole quarter of the city. But still there had to be some purpose beyond this change, and even the magician had been no more than part of that purpose. Despite his obvious powers, he could not have stayed a moment longer than he’d done, but had been whisked away as soon as his task ended.

Without impatience, Tib waited as the heat grew slowly more intense. When the light from his body steadied to a pure, even gold, so pale that it was almost white, he knew that the time had come. His purpose slid into his mind.

He rose to his feet and found that the cell had shrunk. He could now reach up and touch the vault. He strode to the window opening and laid a hand on each end of one of the bars of the grill. The metal melted at his touch, running in rivulets down his forearms but bubbling away in vapour before they reached his elbow. He melted out the remaining bars, lifted the grill clear and climbed through the opening. By his own light he made his way along the passage and up the stairs that he and the magician had descended. He needed to bow his head to pass through the doorway into the courtyard. The leaf-litter around him rippled into flame. The oak of the outer door charred at his approach and burst alight. He crashed through its roaring timbers and strode into the streets of Haballun, a burning giant.

It was past midnight, but the city never slept and the streets were still bright and busy. Screams rose as the giant flared like sunrise into their centre. A section of the night watch was stationed there to deal with riotous drunks. They formed a line, raised their crossbows and loosed a volley of bolts whose shafts and fins were already aflame in mid-flight, and the heavy iron heads melted before they reached their target, spattering the giant with molten drops that he felt no more than flesh feels a sprinkle of warm rain.

Tib, filled with purposes not his, but for which he had been brought to the slave school and bought and raised by Aunt Ellila, equally unknowing, moved through the maze of the city, his giant stride carrying him faster than any news of his coming. He stopped in front of a building. With his remaining human awareness he recognised it as the house of Dr. Cacada, the minor but still powerful magician with whom Aunt Ellila had maintained an uneasy relationship, giving him first choice of her latest purchases, and in exchange asking his advice on items that she felt might be tricky to handle. Sometimes she had sent Tib here on errands, and then he had seen it as a shabby little house squeezed in between two much grander ones. Now the blaze of his eyesight melted the illusion and he saw it as it was, fully as handsome as its neighbours but shielded with symbols of power that created between them a network of magical protection, glittering and pulsing.

The giant strode forward and grasped the network with both hands. Instantly it reacted, reaching out and flowing round his body like a many-tentacled sea-thing engulfing its prey. He ignored the pressure and ripped the whole net from the building. It shrivelled into squirming tatters round his feet. He kicked in the main door, grasped the door-posts, tore out the whole front wall and walked through. At once the building burst into flame, and in a few moments more was a furnace.

He stood at its heart and rested, drinking in the heat, much as an old woman, sitting in her porch on a summer morning, drinks in the sunlight, remembering under its caress what it was to have been young and strong. Invisible in the glare, a small lizard, white-golden like the giant with its own inward heat, came scuttling through the embers, up over the giant’s foot to his calf. It hung there for a moment, moulding itself to the shape of his fiery flesh, then sank through the skin and disappeared. The giant emerged from the ruins of Dr. Cacada’s house, taller by the height of a man than when he had come.

By now the remaining twenty-six magicians of the city knew of the giant’s existence, and if they had been capable of cooperation, they might have combined to stop him. But all the magicians were, effectively, enemies of each other. Hatred, fear and distrust were the only relationships they knew. At first each simply assumed that one of the more powerful of them must have conjured the giant into existence in order to destroy a lesser one and used time he could not spare trying to elucidate how the thing was done and how the event might be turned to his advantage. By the time they realised that the giant was something new, a manifestation of a previously unknown force, he had destroyed the houses of three more magicians. He had grown in stature each time one of the little lizards crept into his body and added its powers to those already there, and was now as tall as the houses between which he strode and filled with the energies that fuel the stars.

The magicians were masters of their art, but its prisoners too, because it was the only art they knew. It made little difference what defences they built around themselves, what weapons they deployed against the giant, walls of brass, ramparts of ice, downpours that turned the streets to raging torrents, thunderbolts and shafts of lightning, monstrous beasts and demons, spells of utter destruction, spells of stillness and of binding, mailed legions of dead men—nothing delayed his march. A canyon opened at his feet. He spanned it with a bridge of fire and strode across. As he reached each magical household, the spells of its owner lost their power and the unhappy creatures that for centuries had been bound there to serve his will were freed and fled away.

Such was the giant’s power that he could control the fires he set. Though the buildings nearest them might char, they did not catch, nor the flames spread, so individual column after column of smoke rose above the moonlit roofs to mark his progress. By the time twenty-seven such columns were in being, he was taller than the tallest tower of the Great East Gate.

Those fires were still raging when dawn whitened beyond it, but by then the giant was gone. Sentries on the wall had watched him dwindle to a distant spark, and by daylight they could see his track spearing northwestwards, a ruler-straight line of burnt crops, grassland and scrub that vanished as it crossed the ridge of hills that rimmed the northern desert.

They turned and looked back over the city. The smoke of twenty-seven fires still floated up and drifted away on the wind, but that was not what struck them most strongly. Seeing it even from here, they could tell at once that Haballun had become changed overnight. Both for good and ill, it had overnight been stripped of all its high magic.

Meanwhile the giant who had been Tib was striding down into the desert. His huge paces carried him through the roasting heat of its day and the bitter chill of its night. Soon after the next daybreak, a mile-wide canyon barred his path. He climbed down the nearer cliff and walked along the canyon’s floor until he came to a place where the canyon narrowed to a deep slit that he could span with his arms, resting one hand on either cliff.

He gathered his giant strength and pushed. The whole wide desert groaned, and distant cities trembled as he ruptured the rind of the world and gazed down into its roiling central fires.

He settled down, dangling his legs over the edge of the crack, and waited. One by one, twenty-seven golden lizards rose through the skin of his thighs, cast their purple gaze on him for a moment, crawled as far as his knee-cap and cast themselves over the edge. As each one left him, some of his heat went from him and his stature dwindled. By the time the last emerged, he was Tib again, a naked young man with ordinary human flesh, sitting on bare rock, and forced now to draw back from the furnace heat that rose from the crack.

He felt a tingling in his upper right arm. The final lizard rose through his skin, formed no longer of metallic mesh but of living gold. Instead of leaving him, as the others had done, it crawled up his arm and over his shoulder, coming to rest out of sight on his shoulder-blade. He felt a patch of intense, pure heat that did not hurt or burn him. It lasted only a few seconds and then the lizard crept back up, stopping this time on the point of his shoulder. Squinting sidelong down, he saw it reach up with a long, dark tongue, forked at the tip. The lizard crept closer, out of sight now, and clung to his neck. Something smooth and warm slid into his ear, further and further. A whispering began inside his head.

ʺWe are the salamanders. Our normal mode of being is outside time, where we have no material form. To exist in time we take this form. Our gateway between our two modes of being is the central fire of the earth, where the material elements are made and unmade. Long ago in time we watched fragments of the material world shape themselves into stars and planets and then, on this planet, into living things and, finally, people. Until these came into existence, we were unable to act in the material world, but now, through them, we could. At first we did so very seldom, but continued to watch from a distance.

ʺThen the people began to develop the powers that you call cottage magic, through which, we saw, humankind might evolve into its next stage. Some of us were eager to study the process, so took material form and came to live secretly in the households of those who possessed these powers, in order to watch more closely. I was one.

ʺI lived secretly in the house of a man called Vered, in the city of Haballun. He possessed unusual abilities and great intelligence—too great, for he discovered my existence without my being aware of it. What is more, he devised a means to trap me into this mode of existence and keep me caged. Worse yet, he prevented me from warning my fellow salamanders what had happened to me, and told certain of his friends what he had done, so that they could do the same. Before we could move to prevent it, twenty-seven of us had been likewise trapped. Whether we liked it or not, these men—they were all men—could use our mere presence enormously to increase their power. They discovered high magic.

ʺDespite all this, Vered was a good man, just in his dealings. His aim had not been power or wealth but to understand the deepest causes of things, and he believed I would be a doorway to such knowledge. But as soon as he learnt more of my nature he realised the wrongfulness of what he had done and set me free, and furthermore tried to persuade the rest to do the same, but the corruption of power had already done its work on them and they refused. Vered, with my help, then set about mastering them one by one, but they combined against us and destroyed him.

ʺI fled into my other mode of being, and conferred with the rest of the salamanders. I was determined to rescue my friends. The others were willing to help me, but seeing what had happened to me and my friends, they were not prepared to risk entering the material world while there were magicians there of such power. We ourselves have considerable powers in our other mode of being. I can move easily enough across material time and enter where I will, but once within it, I am bound by it until I choose to leave it, and it would take all my strength to move even a small material object with me into another time and to keep it there for a little while before it was snatched back.

ʺI needed to act through someone of great natural powers but uncorrupted by them. I knew of only one, Vered himself. But even with my help, working in his own time, he had been impotent against the combined powers of the other twenty-seven magicians of Haballun. So I persuaded the salamanders to transfer him out of his time to the present age, when the magicians had become so corrupted by their powers that they could no longer trust each other enough to cooperate. They agreed to do it, and said it was possible if we all worked together, but even then we would be unable to hold him here for more than a morning.

ʺI re-entered Vered’s time on the day before he would be destroyed, when he could already foresee his failure, and told him what I planned. Though it would all happen long after he was dead, he was eager to undo the harm that he had done.

ʺI then searched a little back from this time and found a newborn child who had no ties to any other person. This was you. Your mother was a girl of the hill people. She became pregnant without her brothers’ permission. They killed her lover, but not her, since she was their sister and their customs forbade it. But they would not send for help when she gave birth, and she died. You lived, so they carried you into the desert and left you for the wild animals. Instead I caused a hunter to find you and carry you to Haballun to be raised as a slave.

ʺWhen the time came, I took the form of an artificial salamander and caused a woman who dealt in magical objects to buy me from a street vendor, and then to choose you. This was to keep you safely hidden, and ready for our purpose. The rest you have seen for yourself. Now you are Tib again, with your human life to live. The blessing of the salamanders is on you.ʺ

The salamander withdrew its tongue and crawled swiftly down Tib’s body and across the rocks. It paused on the rim of the crevasse and turned its head. For the last time he looked into the depths of those purple eyes, and then it crawled on down out of sight. With another desert-shuddering groan the crevasse closed.

Now that he had his natural body back, Tib could feel the heat of the rising sun. As he looked around for shade, a glint caught his eye. He went to look and found a golden nugget, still too hot to touch after having been squeezed up, molten, from the central fires between the lips of the crevasse as it closed. As he waited for it to cool, he saw another a little further on, and another beyond it. He walked along the line of the closed crack, picking the nuggets up as he went, until the trail ran out. Near that point stood a huge leaning rock, forming a kind of open-sided cave and casting the shade he needed. There were strange painted patterns on its under-surface, and a rough stone hearth to one side.

Tib settled down and waited. His position was apparently desperate, a naked man with nothing to his name but a double handful of useless gold, and nothing to give him hope but an abandoned hearth and some old painted patterns. But he was filled with the same confident calm that he had felt after the magician had left him in the dark of the cellar, waiting for whatever had been going to happen next. There was something still to come. The gold was a sign to him, a reward from the salamanders for allowing himself to be used as he had, and that meant he would live to spend it; while the hearth and the paintings meant that people came to this place, and would come again.

Sure enough, they arrived well before the sun was overhead, a dozen adults, very dark skinned, wearing nothing but little leather aprons patterned with blue and red beads, and a few naked children. The men carried flint-headed spears and short bows, and the women yellow gourds slung in nets. Silent as ghosts, they stole along the floor of the canyon in single file. The line halted in front of the rock. They turned towards him, stared for a moment and then with a low, sighing moan, knelt and touched their foreheads to the ground.

One grey-haired man came crawling forward while the others remained kneeling. Tib rose and went to meet him. The man looked up, imploring, from his crouch, but Tib took him by the wrists and pulled him upright. The man raised a shaking hand palm forward. Smiling, Tib placed his own palm against it. The man gave a great shout, stepped back, flung up his arms in a gesture of exultation and shouted again, and the rest came crowding round, whooping and laughing.

Tib stood smiling in the middle of the melee until they had shouted themselves hoarse and drew apart. A woman offered him a gourd of water, pleasantly flavoured with some kind of aromatic bark. He thanked her and stood aside, watching them prepare a meal, gathering fuel, kindling a spark from a fire-bow, opening gourds and satchels, cutting the meat of two small animals into strips with a flint knife, chattering and laughing, even the smallest children knowing their tasks.

He understood what was happening. He had heard of these desert people, older, far older, than Haballun itself. The hunter who had first found him must have been of their kind. This was one of their sacred places—the paintings showed that. They had heard the double groan of the crevasse as it opened and closed, so had come to ask the desert spirits what it meant, and had found him waiting for them. That was enough. He was sacred. They had seen his little pile of gold and left it alone—it was sacred too. They would feed him and clothe him and guide him to the edge of the desert.

And then what? Slaves do not own anything, let alone nuggets of gold. A thought struck him. He reached behind his shoulder to the place where the salamander had rested just before it had talked to him. His fingers touched not the ridged scars of the slave symbol that he had felt so often before, but smooth skin. The slave-brand had gone. He was free. He was also rich. He could go anywhere and do anything he chose. He realised that he had already chosen.

He would go back to Haballun and find Aunt Ellila and help her run her stall. Objects connected to high magic might have lost their powers, but they had been only a minor part of Aunt Ellila’s trade, and there’d still be a good living to be had from the rest for the two of them. Or rather, for the three.

He was wondering what Zorya would turn out to be like when the grey-haired old hunter came and bowed before him and took him by the hand and led him to be the guest of honour at their feast.