Salvation's Fire Read online

  Though the idea was slow the giant dragon-fish was not. It skimmed away across a bed full of stones and silt, heading upstream to put distance between itself and the dangerous, predatory things-from-above. In its wake it left her the memory of the winged one. It was downriver a way and had built a nest there. The dragonfish knew to keep away from it.

  She was about to turn and look for her mother to discuss it when she was seized. Everything she’d been thinking and her quietness was lost in a sudden, violent surge of rage and struggle. Then she realised it was Bukham holding her and that she was being set down. She whirled and glared at him, rubbing her arms where she’d been grabbed. Beside her the otters chittered crossly and one bit him on the ankle.

  He yelped in pain and was making apologetic gestures and pointing at the water. She scowled and told him he didn’t know what he was talking about, but then, seeing how baffled he was and that he didn’t understand her signs anyway, she sighed and shook her fist at him. He’d intended to save her, but that didn’t make her feel better.

  He pulled a sad face, very sad. She smiled and then he smiled back. She helped him to dress the otter bite with some salve from Celestaine’s pack and then she took her otter friends to visit Horse, who was all by herself at the back of the boat swishing midges off Lysandra as she dozed on Horse’s broad back.

  Kula loved Horse. Vast and strange, wild and ancient, she was. She was before Kula and the people. She was almost before everything, just like the dragon that Kula wanted to talk to her about. There were traces of memory so old in her that touching them made Kula feel that she could see almost to the beginning of things. She was the opposite of Kula herself, in whom nothing stuck. Horse was an old, old book and Kula was a blank page. Kula knew that this is why she could see as she did, as far as she did, as completely. Because nothing stuck. She remembered that she had been part of a people, in a place, her family, her life and that between them there was not a single thing from the origins of the world that had not been remembered, but for her it had already faded to the point that it was like a distant dream. Now there was only the one the others called Lysandra, her mother. She knew they had a journey to go on, for a reason. Horse was coming because of the reason so it must be important and if it was important to Horse then she ought to make sure there was no trouble. The dragon was a big trouble.

  She sneaked up on the centaur who was pointedly looking the other way and pulled her hair.

  “What little bat is that?” asked Horse, looking the other way as Kula hopped over her broad back, waking Lysandra. Kula heard her as clearly as if she had spoken, though not in words, and flapped her arms and fingers like bat wings as she went for another tug.

  “What little bug is that?”

  They played on, Kula talking about the dragon, as at the boat’s foredeck the others ate the evening meal and talked so serious, full of memories. They carried the past like stone in their faces and hearts because they couldn’t let it go. She felt sad for them. They were difficult to be around. Even when it was peaceful they couldn’t stop. She undid them a little, loosened a few things here and there, explained to the Shelliac and the otters that the dragon was ahead of them still, not far away.

  BUKHAM SPENT THE evening swatting biting flies and fighting an urge to slip away and go home. The Shelliac lit smoky torches and handed out cool pachi fruit, stowed carefully enough to keep it cool and sweet as they made a show of talking emphatically it in hugely exaggerated gestures like a travelling theatre group—what a shame such good fruit would all go to waste because of a dragon. The land hereabouts was already wasted and the people driven off by the thing. Plus with the Kinslayer’s armies now devolved to roving bands of witless thugs it was too much to suffer a monster when the boat was full of legendary monster-slaying figures. Surely, for the sake of the good fruit and the safety of law-abiding, peaceful folk, the mighty warriors could get up off their arses and take a punt at dislodging the thing before it spawned.

  Finally, just as he thought he was about to leap up and go it was Nedlam beside him who moved first. Only understanding a bit of what they said but all of what they meant, she threw down the last rind into the slop bucket and snapped, “Fine. Fine. I will do it. I will get the beast!” just to shut them up and because Heno’s fish had been put back and now there was only fruit to eat and she was grumpy. Bukham slumped with relief. He wouldn’t have known what to do after the standing up bit.

  “You’re the salt of the earth,” Celestaine said, approvingly and as a preamble to some plan or other but a plan she never got to. A second later she looked as shocked as Bukham felt to find herself hauled up by the front of her jerkin, an inch from Nedlam’s blunt nose. He felt a sudden palpable menace, the barge far too small and confined.

  “Ned,” he said quietly. “She didn’t mean it literally. Let go. She was saying thank you.” He put his hand out and touched Nedlam’s arm, the muscle there as solid as rock.

  He felt her quiver and then she said decisively, “I only salted it because I had to, not because I wanted to!”

  The declaration was loud and after it the silence was intense, broken only by the relentless lap of water against the boat. Nedlam herself looked surprised. She let go slowly and dusted off Celestaine, holding out her hands to show she was sorry. Bukham patted Nedlam on the back.

  “It’s a saying. It means good,” Celestaine said, relaxing back cautiously, a what-the-hell expression on her face. “What’s the matter, Ned? You’re never upset.”

  “How can it mean good?” Nedlam said quietly. She glared at Heno as if it were his fault, her voice full of hurt. “Tell your woman to keep a straight mouth. Who says things like that and it’s good?” She pushed her way around the group and out of the door onto the deck. Bukham heard her boots on the gangplank and then the splash of her walking onto the islet’s swampy sanctuary. A second later a bestial roar of rage and misery split the evening’s froggy murk and the otters came rushing in, hurtling around in wet, muddy streaks until they found their cots.

  The air was so tense even Kula didn’t move a muscle. The Shelliac looked thunderous, and frightened, their gaze flitting between Heno and Celestaine as they tried to decide which of them was the more dangerous, waiting for some kind of retribution to fall, a doom they had expected, betrayal already trying to leak into their expressions, fingers slowly moving towards weapons.

  “You people are such weak materials.” From the darkness behind Horse’s massive bulk a smallish figure in a multi-coloured dress stood up and turned to face them. In the dimness of the night and the oil lamps they could see her only by the reflection on her eyes and the whiteness of her teeth. “No wonder he came to kill you all. And still, it didn’t do a bit of good to you.”

  “What would you know?” Deffo said, from his position in the most inaccessible corner, but he was suddenly cramped out of style by the addition of everyone else as they gave a lot of space to Horse and the woman standing beside her: Lysandra.

  Bukham couldn’t believe what he was hearing. That Lysandra spoke wasn’t entirely new. That she had an opinion of her own was unexpected. That it was this condemnation was devastating. He felt crushed. As Kula’s mother, Lysandra had been so caring, so joyful, dutiful he would have said. As she stood now, her words had seemed to destroy all of that. She was siding with the Kinslayer. How could it be that anyone would have a good thing to say about him and, above all, that it should be this? How could she dare say it, knowing what they thought and how they felt and what had happened? He felt scared of her and scared for her at the same time, his limbs urging him to run away before things turned bad, as they surely must any second now.

  Celestaine’s hand was on the hilt of her sword. Heno was frozen, staring as if he could discover the truth by concentration.

  “So much killing and still we kill it kill it kill it and salt the earth,” she said to the Shelliac trade-patriarch. She was contemptuous, and angry, Bukham thought; a contained anger that was coming out in a consid
ered way. She was disappointed.

  “Monsters kill people,” Celestaine said firmly. “What other way is there? They don’t talk.”

  “Yes, the talking,” Lysandra said. “Very successful. But even your greatest friend can’t survive the beast ahead, nor any of you. It is time-lost, like Horse here. An army won’t dispatch it. But don’t worry. You—” she turned to the Shelliac leader and swept him up and down with a scathing gaze. “I will get the terrible, terrifying dragon out of the way.” She turned to look at those of her own company and bowed her head once, then walked out, down the plank and onto the islet.

  “Oh dear,” said Murti with that glee of his that Bukham was starting to dislike even more as it presaged trouble.

  “What the ever-living fuck?” Celestaine said, looking at the space Lysandra had stood in.

  Bukham rubbed his palms against his tunic but there was no getting the damp and discomfort off them. He looked at Murti. “Now how good a priest am I?”

  “Not everything’s about you,” Murti said impatiently as Heno got up and passed him on his way down the gangplank. Celestaine followed him. Bukham looked back and saw Horse holding a sleeping Kula in her arms. Well, at least that was all right, he thought as he found himself alone by the firepit. Beside him one of the Shelliac, internal lights pulsating rapidly, signalled to him—what? What was that? Who was this strange person they had brought to endanger the boat?

  He tried to explain but a commotion of voices from the islet cut him short. Without hesitation he hurried with the crew to go see for himself what was going on.

  He found everyone, even Deffo, lining up on the islet’s shallow beachline. Nedlam, resolute with her hammer over her shoulder, was apart, a few feet into the water. Lysandra was much further out on the sandbar where it reached into midstream. The water, lit by the moon, broke around her ankles and tugged at the trailing hems of her gown. She had one arm upraised and was looking directly up into the moon’s large face. Clouds scudded across the stars in rags, brief blots on the broad V of the sky that was visible to them between the sharp rise of the land on either side.

  A breeze rippled their hair and clothing. Against the rush of the water in its uneven bed, the sound of leaves sighing, filled their ears to the brim, heightening the fear in Bukham because he hated the wind and the way it masked all other, much more important sound. Their sense of expectation rose, rose, then began to subside, but Lysandra remained still and so they waited.

  Down in the sharp point of the V something flitted across the visible stars moving from left to right. Bukham felt the air cold all over his back, aware of its exposure, his height, the space at the back of his head where the shirt hung off his neck. He found Murti nudging him with a grunt, the old man’s thinner form looking even more like a bag of bones than usual.

  “I feel we are about to get our arses kicked,” he muttered.

  “You’re enjoying this,” Bukham realised.

  “Who doesn’t love a good turnabout?”

  Celestaine turned and looked back at them. “Where’s Deffo?” She spotted him then, standing close to the boat and almost invisible in its moonshadow. She turned back scowling to face whatever was coming towards them.

  A giant bird with a long, whip-like tail flew over the river’s course. Its silhouette seemed feathered, elongated, the tail trailing a vertical diamond which Bukham recognised suddenly as the downward fin that had cut through the clouds earlier on in the day. Compared to the size of the creature itself, the fin was large.

  Then with a speed and suddenness that surprised them all there it was, landing in the river’s shallows with a small splash of white water, just ahead of Lysandra’s station. The long wings folded down and it used the knuckles as forelimbs. The brilliance of the moon made all shadows as black as the abyss. The thing was a collection of mismatched, ugly angles to Bukham, a nightmare with two vividly glowing red eyes. He wanted to run but nobody else was leaving. Streamers of blackness seemed to ripple off the creature, and Bukham could feel a vibration in the tissues just beneath his skin as if it were emitting a constant, inaudible tone.

  It wasn’t a dragon. He realised that now. He knew them by story: huge, bejewelled, ancient, venomous—the list of their features was as long as it was unlikely.

  A commotion broke out among the Shelliac, a clank and clattering and subdued but urgent whistles. The thock of a bow being shot startled Bukham even as the hiss of the arrow and its splash into riverwater was already there with him. He stepped back and found himself treading on Heno’s foot. He moved aside and stood shoulder to shoulder with the Yorughan.

  The creature made a complaining, stuttering sort of sound ending on a hiss and Lysandra turned around with a violent gesture. “You will not shoot it!”

  The beast sprang back into the air and the downdraft washed over them in a strange, dry stink of things they couldn’t name or place, animal but at the same time alien in a way that Bukham felt give even his bones pause for concern. They all must have felt it because there was a moment of near panic as the thing went sailing overhead and then on, down the river towards the shallow bend and beyond in the direction of the Port.

  Lysandra spun around, her hands in fists, arms straight at her side as she came towards them. Bukham took a few steps back.

  “What did you do that for?” She pointed at the archer, a Shelliac with shortbow drawn, a harpoon arrow in place. “Why? Why?” She was angry and as she came at them there was a sense of presence about her that went far beyond the ordinary, as though her every step pulled something unseen and terrible behind her so that you could feel the ripples of it spreading out from her in a gigantic train.

  “What the hell?” Nedlam was there, moving forwards, putting herself firmly in all their way.

  Lysandra stopped as she reached Ned and threw up her hands in the air in a gesture of exasperation. “Now it has gone back to its nest.”

  The Shelliac captain broke in to say they would not be going anywhere until the beast was dispatched and all danger to the countryside removed.

  “I hardly think you’re going to turn around with a full load and take it back where it came from,” Celestaine replied. “And now we’ve all seen it’s some kind of big wyvixen. It’s not a dragon, not any of the Kinslayer’s creatures, it’s just a monster from the wilds upset by the war. There were plenty of them in the wars to the south. It’s just an outlier. We’ll sort it out in the morning.” She sounded like she was making a pitch rather than stating a fact. Bukham didn’t buy it. He believed Lysandra, who stood alone, having left a sleeping Kula with Horse.

  Neither Celest nor the captain seemed to notice that where Lysandra stood at the shore her feet were surrounded by white water, bubbling and popping as if it were on the boil although it didn’t look right for that. Still, it was bad in Bukham’s eyes, like the bottom of a non-existent waterfall. Then he thought that perhaps Celestaine did know because she went to intercept the Shelliac and make a foray across the islet with them in the throes of planning a hunt in quite a loud voice. Silently Nedlam and Heno fell in to back up her reassertion of leadership. He was left with Murti and Deffo in the van and that suddenly felt bad.

  He watched Deffo cast a long, thoughtful look at Lysandra and then decide that it wasn’t his problem. They shared a glance and Bukham gave a sheepish shrug. Deffo tried to sidle up to Murti who was already walking back to the boat but Murti ignored him; although it looked like he was just too quick, his old man shuffle one step ahead of the other old man shuffle. Bukham, alone, looked at Lysandra reluctantly.

  The water was calming down. She had folded her skinny arms across her chest and her chin was down. She looked thoughtful but not angry and came forwards the last few steps out of the river to dig her toes into the sandy mud. After a moment or two this distracted her completely and he watched her loosen her arms and look down, then pause and start to play, dabbing marks with her feet that filled quickly with water and became tiny, five-toe mirrors in the steady moonl
ight.

  “Is that what you really think he was doing?” He had no idea he was going to ask it until he did. “The Kinslayer came to kill us all because we were too weak? That we failed the gods’ plan? Was that part of the plan all along, to make us stand up to him?” He didn’t expect an answer but he was surprised.

  “I wanted to make you all stop.” Lysandra caught Bukham’s eye and smiled. Then she passed them and went back aboard the ferry. “I wanted to make you think differently about what has happened. Stop attacking everything. Doesn’t the dragon have the right to the land, as much as you?”

  Bukham swallowed. “I don’t know. It’s very dangerous. I think that when something is dangerous you plan to be rid of it.”

  She seemed to think about this as she stirred the mud and sand with her toe. “Yes. I am confused about this because I have no fear of it. Thank you. Even so, I will not let you kill it. I will find another way. Kula would not see it die. She would like it to eat everyone who did not help, who is not kind, who cannot escape their—what is this thing that stops you all? Their…?”

  Bukham thought of his uncle, their careful progress, their lack of action. But they had kept trade going, they had supplied the people as best they could, and fighters twice as much. They didn’t fight but they had done their part. Someone had to supply. But Uncle had said Kula must go. What did he do that for? “I don’t know,” he said, because he wasn’t sure that Uncle’s actions could be put down to anything other than simple impatience in the end.

  He found Lysandra studying him, a smile on her face, slight but definite. “It’s all right. She doesn’t want it to eat you.” Then she passed him by and went up into the boat and on her way past she whispered, “But something will be eaten.”

  In the morning his worst fears were realised. After the briefest of breakfasts in the dawn the Shelliac set themselves up with gear—harpoons, nets, torches—and poled off from the islet while the mist was still clinging to the banks. Celestaine, Heno and Nedlam, always ready, remained on watch. Lysandra and Kula came up on deck. The boat moved with steady progress around a long curve and then back the other way, the river broadening. Either side the woodland proved too thick to show any signs of habitation but on the third bend they came to the pathetic remains of a wooden jetty, and the Shelliac insisted that it had been a fishing spot and trading point until the dragon had taken over this whole stretch of the waters. Bukham recognised the tone. It was grievances aired to fuel the fire of a fight.