Wild Magic

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Faan stepped over a charred, contorted body and walked with unhurried small steps into the center of the Circle. She pushed back the hood of her cloak and turned slowly, her eyes sweeping along the burn-branded walls and across the dead lying in the kariams leading away from the Sok. “What happened here?” She winced as her voice broke harshly into the silence.

Abeyhamal spoke.

“Prophet? A Seer?”

Abeyhamal spoke.

“Oh. Scourge of Chumavayal. Why didn’t you just say that?”

Abeyhamal spoke with intense irritation.

“You know, if you told me a little about what was happening, I’d be a lot more effective. Vema, vema, no more questions. Well, this: what am I supposed to do here?”

Abeyhamal spoke.

“Vema, vema, I’m all yours.”

Faan danced.

Stamp. Sway. Shimmy.

Turn in double loops, the lazy figure eight, Abeyhamal’s sign.

Dance to the music of the earth, the deep heart-throbbing that was insignificant at first, then began to boom louder and louder as waves of light and dark pulsed from her, rings of honey light, rings of hot dark fed by the fire that was with her always.

Out and out.

Lapping at the blackened walls, driving before it the resident anger and anathema spread across the Low City by Chumavayal through his Prophet Faharmoy.

Faan danced.

Abeyhamal hummed in her-yet was there only in part, was lying concealed within her, erasing through her Chumavayal’s attempt to preempt HER space.

The Low City throbbed with the dance.

Stones glowed in the pulsing golden light.

The squatters came into the street and danced toward her.

Like water wheeling in a grand maehtruin they flowed round and round the Circle, humming at first, then singing syllables of sound without meaning, an antic sound that played a happy counterpoint to the earth-heart’s throb…

The sun dropped lower and lower, stained the sky with layers of vermillion and shell pink…

Faan stopped turning.

The song of the earth slowed, the chant slowed with it.

The rings of light pulsed out from her, nudging the crowd away. Like water through a bursting dam, the squatters flowed along the kariams and into the wynds and ways of the city.

In moments Faan was the only person visible.

She rubbed at the nape of her neck, pulled the hood back up. “Anything else you want?”

Abeyhamal spoke.

“It’s getting dark. I don’t know if there’s time for that.”

Abeyhamal spoke.

“Vema, vema, I swore and I will do, if it takes the rest of the day and all night, too.”

Faan walked across the Circle to the kariam that she’d come by, trotted along it until she came to the approach to the Wood Bridge.

Abeyhamal spoke.

“Vema, vema.” Faan kicked off her boots and dropped them by the Approach Pillars. She wiggled her toes, sighed. “That does feel good. Don’t get in a snit. Vema vema, I’ll hurry.” She dropped the heavy cloak over the boots. “If some potz steals these, you going to replace them for me?”

Abeyhamal spoke.

“I’m doing the job you want. What I think and what I say, that’s my business.”

She trotted along the Low City Gatt Road until she reached the approach to the Iron Bridge. She circled carefully around this, guided by prods from her divine rider, worked her way to the River through a double line of massive empty warehouses until she reached the last tumbledown building. She turned her back to the River, started loping along the wynd. In this heat, she thought, it’s idiotic. But she kept on, circling the outer limits of the Low City in a claiming run that would seal the place to Abeyhamal.

Chapter 12. Juvalgrim And The Scourge Of Chumavayal

Faharmoy glanced upRiver, frowned as he thought he saw a fire on the Wood Bridge; he set his hand on the iron rail and leaned out, eyes narrowed, struggling to see more clearly through the veils of heat haze. Nothing. Imagination and heatwaves, no doubt. He shrugged and went on.

The High City was hot red, the windows and the polished metal accents catching and reflecting the sunset; shadows shimmered with red edges. The towers of the Biasharim and the Cheoshim made funnels of the kariams, drawing furnace winds along them; the leaves on the trees and shrubs whipped about, more brown than green, their suppleness gone. The kichidawa hedges had died down to the deep roots, their foliage was gone, their crooked branches were as still and tangled as his uncombed beard, their fingerlong thorns gleamed like curved steel needles. The fountains in the women’s gardens were dry, silencing the hidden whisper of tiling water he’d found so enticing on his first visit here.

The Cheoshim towers were harder and blacker than he remembered, red-eyed from the sun, sullenly silent, though as the night crept down, a night hardly cooler than the day but without the hammering of the sun, the parade grounds were beginning to fill with listless, unenthusiastic cadets.

Faharmoy walked more slowly for a moment, watching the Armsmasters try to get some snap into the marching. He shook his head. Corruption in little, corruption in all. This place was a sinkhole.

The iron tiles of the Jiko Sagrada seared through the soles of his sandals. He accepted the burn as the cost of his sins and, murmuring the Laws of Chumavayal, he walked up the mountain with an unhurried step, his staff sounding a steady tonk tonk tonk on the tiles, punctuating his whispered chant.

He stopped at the ancient olive that marked the path to the Sibyl. “Diyo,” he said. He touched his staff to the twisted trunk. “CHUMAVAYAL BLESS!”

He left the tree burning like a torch and walked on, stepping on coolness now, the sinuous black tiles frosting where his feet touched them.