Pyrebound - 10.3

Chapter 10.3 – Pyrebound
They passed through the last of the shroud sometime before dawn, in the cold hours when the stars faded into an empty grey sky. By then, every articulate fear and thought had worn itself into exhaustion pacing circles in Ram’s head, and he drowsed fitfully atop his brute as it loped along, startling at the odd rustle in the leaves. From time to time, the brute would stop to tear a mouthful from the shroud, and he would wake enough to kick it in the flanks.

He didn’t actually notice when they left the horrible weeds behind them; he jolted awake for the thousandth time to find it was early morning and their brutes’ hooves were tramping softly through plain sand. Looking back, he saw the others trailing behind them at no great distance. He felt like he ought to have cheered, or sung yet another hymn of thanks to Haranduluz for seeing them through the night unharmed. Instead he fell back asleep. When they finally made camp, he ignored the tents, and lay flat on his back under the open sky to take in the sun. He never so much as thought of asking Imbri questions.

Shazru woke them all up again after a miserably short rest, only a few hours past noon. It was waning day, and they were far from pyrelight. They rode at a steady canter, with short trots when the brutes started panting. Even inductor breaks were brief and rare. The white sun would rise in a few hours, and they had lost time in the shroud.

“Nobody’s traveled this way in a long time, have they?” he griped to Shazru at their second stop. “There wouldn’t be shroud in the way if they had. So why are you so sure there’s a gate in three days’ range? You don’t have a map.”

“I know how to navigate, ass,” Imbri snarled. She was at least twenty feet away fiddling with her inductor, and Ram had spoken quietly, but her hearing was excellent, and her mood foul. “I’ve been doing this for blooms. If your daddy the mason didn’t tell you how parallax effects work, that’s too bad. I don’t have time to stop and teach you right now.”

“I wasn’t saying we’re lost. I just don’t get how you knew there’d be a gate in range at all.”

This time Shazru answered. “The desert makes no promises, Rammash, and the world is cruel. But that is the very reason for our confidence. Most of the gates—including, in all likelihood, our destination—were made to reach pyres which no longer exist. Rivers shift, crops fail, priestly lines die off, but the gates endure. There are trails to every place where men have died.”

“Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

“I find it so.” Shazru stuffed a fig in his mouth, and said around it, “This is my fourth kindling in black—perhaps my hundredth desert expedition—and I have never failed to reach a gate in time.”

Riding the roads to countless dead pyres—as the En of Dul Karagi, he could never find it comforting. It was better to clasp Darun’s hands to his chest as they rode, and reflect that she didn’t seem worried, either. Not that she ever worried. It was impossible to tell how Imbri or Bal felt, but he could hear one of Piridur’s men muttering prayers as the brutes broke into a fresh sprint. Nobody else spoke.

The sun set, and the moon rose, and Imbri called another halt. She poured out the water as usual, but lingered over the bowl, long enough that Shazru and even Piridur came over to check what was happening. She drove them all away with a sibilant moonchild curse, then sat back on her haunches and sighed.

“Ram?” she called. “You want to learn about magic? Here’s a little lesson for you.”

He came over to look. The inductor was wobbling erratically on the water’s surface, pointing first one way, then another, then a third, back and forth at odd intervals with no set pattern. “Weird. Did it break?” He thought of his confusion at the Garden, when he felt Shimrun leave the pyre. “Or did something … come out of the gate?”

“What? No. It doesn’t work like that. The simplest explanation is that there are other inductors out there. Somebody else is making for the same gate. Or multiple somebodies.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” Piridur fretted from behind them.

“It poses certain diplomatic difficulties,” Shazru said.

“There’s no hard capacity limit, if that’s what you mean.” Imbri shook her head, but returned the water to the skin as ever. “You could shove the whole Dominion in a single gate if you had enough moonchildren to ferry them through. I’m just going to be earning my pay tonight, is all, since somebody decided to jinx us with talk about deserted trails.”

Imbri rearranged everything before allowing them to move on. The flamekeepers Dezri and Nishal would take the lead, brandishing their crossbows, on either side of Piridur. They would pose a laughable threat to any significant group of moonchildren, of course; the point was to convey Piridur’s status as a man worthy of a bodyguard. Next came Imbri with her ancient silver mask on, then Darun dressed as a handmaiden, flanked by Ram and Bal. Shazru, being utterly unimpressive, was stuck in the back.

“You brought this stuff along just for this situation?” he asked Darun, feeling the gold mantle. He couldn’t see the colors by moonlight, but the fabric felt expensive. His haranu declared that she looked very good in it, and suggested that he get her indwelt at the first opportunity.

“Done it before, once or twice,” she yawned back. “Moonchildren aren’t super-fond of blackbands—we’re the competition.”

“Imbri said they don’t like indwelt people, either.”

“That’s the point,” Imbri cut in. “Without that mantle, they’d look at Darun and think they could sell her for a gold.”

“Five gold,” Darun insisted.

“For a lot of money,” Imbri amended. “This way, she’s worthless to them, and dangerous. They won’t even touch her themselves; she’s polluted. Really, that’s the goal for all of us: to be dangerous and useless, so they’ll decide it’s most convenient to ignore us. Keep your sword ready, and try to look tough instead of tired. Just don’t do anything that might let on you’re indwelt.”

“How would I do that? Did you think I was going to try and set myself on fire to show off?”

“I never know what crazy thing you’re going to do! An indwelt man would be a novelty. Novelties sell. Be mean but mundane. Now, let’s move.”

They hadn’t ridden for five minutes before one of the flamekeepers—Nishal, Ram thought—spotted movement on the horizon. Imbri wasn’t the only one who’d been checking her inductor recently, it seemed. The beasts caught the scent of other brutes shortly after and, though every one of them was gelded, it took forceful, almost cruel handling to keep them from a gallop. There was no guessing how much face they would have lost if they looked like they couldn’t control their own animals.

Thirteen riders approached, with half again as many brutes. All but the silver-faced and headdressed chief were masked and coated alike from head to toe, with bows and swords near at hand. A pair flanking the chief had spears as well. Otherwise, they were totally indistinguishable, from each other and from every other moonchild Ram had seen. He wondered how they told each other apart.

Even as the band pulled up to a halt in front of them, the spear-bearer on the chief’s right belted out a challenge, an earful of insolent-sounding fricatives. Piridur nudged his brute forward, and started to say something, but Imbri shouted over him, giving the spear-bearer as good as she got.

Ram couldn’t even begin to follow the conversation that followed; without understanding the language, with no facial expressions to go by, it was just a flood of noise. The moonchildren spoke one after the other—or sometimes simultaneously—argued amongst themselves, interrupted and held side conversations. The only one who didn’t seem to be speaking was the chief, who sat impassively back in his saddle and watched. Piridur made a few more pitiful efforts to join the conversation, but gave up when Imbri paid him no mind, and tried to copy his counterpart’s dignified silence. It would have worked better if he’d had a better-trained brute; his kept straining at the reins. As for Imbri, she spoke rarely, answering only when directly addressed.

By and by, the storm of words wound down. The moonchildren on the edge of the group fell silent, and started casting glances behind them. Two of them simply rode away without a word, and took the spare brutes with them. Only four, sitting in a clump around the chieftain, kept up the argument, and mostly among themselves. At last, one of the taller men pushed his brute ahead of the chief and his guards, and pointed at Imbri as he shouted something.

Imbri hesitated, until the pointing man repeated his command. Then she tossed back her hood, and pulled off her silver mask. Every one of the strangers gasped at the sight of her, but she didn’t flinch, even when they started muttering together. They sounded, if anything, more upset than they had before, for all that they were quieter, but Imbri continued to wait it out, as still as the chieftain.

When all was quiet once more, the chief leaned forward, and broke his silence with a half-dozen quiet words. Imbri replied in the same tone. He spoke again, at greater length, extending his hand towards Piridur, then sweeping it side to side to indicate the rest of their group. He ended with what sounded like a question for Imbri. She answered with three words. He nodded, and spread his arms in a gesture Ram couldn’t fathom.

It seemed to be a cue; the rest of the moonchildren abruptly turned their brutes around, and ambled off the way they came without a backward glance. Only the chief remained behind, studying Imbri’s face. When he spoke again, he sounded almost friendly. Imbri laughed, crossed her arms across her chest, and bowed to him. He said what might have been “farewell,” and wheeled his brute around. In an instant he was gone, racing back across the sands to rejoin his tribe.

“I take it that went well?” Piridur said, as soon as the chief was out of earshot.

“About as well as it could have,” Imbri said, stowing her mask in her coat and tugging her hood down in its accustomed position over her face. “I was hoping they wouldn’t make me unmask, but it wasn’t much of a hope. My accent sucks. Once they saw me, it was about fifty-fifty whether they’d turn even more hostile, or get so spooked they’d leave us alone just to avoid dealing with me. We got something in between.”

“It certainly could have gone more smoothly,” Piridur said. “I’d appreciate it if, in the future, you don’t make me look ridiculous. I’m representing Dul Karagi.”

“They don’t care where you’re from, and you would have looked ridiculous whatever you did,” Imbri replied. “You’re not even a person to them. I told them you were paying me well, and that made you about as respectable as you could be. Anyway, the path to the gate is clear now. Just give them a few minutes to pass through, so they don’t have to see us again.”

As soon as they were moving again, Ram rode his beast up alongside Imbri’s, and leaned over to ask her, “What was all that about? Why did they react that badly to your face?”

“There are many kinds of people the moonchildren don’t like, Ram. Basically everyone who doesn’t ride around in a mask is scum. But half-breeds are the worst of all. I don’t even make the list of undesirables, because nobody would dream of degrading himself to produce something so low. Looking at me was like looking at … I don’t even know what. Imagine your mother had a resh baby. Maybe worse.” She didn’t sound any more bitter than usual.

He thought of Mana. “I think I know what you mean.”

“No, I don’t believe you do,” she said. “But it’s not your business, either way.”

“But if we’re staking our lives on this, don’t we deserve to know what’s going on? Like, if you disgust them so much, why did the boss seem so nice at the end there?”

“He understood that I’m a special case. I deal with the bazuu a lot; he’d heard a little about me. I might be an abomination, but I’ve got the right kind of friends.”

“Huh.” He rode on in silence, trying to think of a not-too-impolite way to pry further. He settled for, “It must be rough, growing up with people like that.” He felt something jab him under the ribs, and turned to see Darun glaring at him. She clapped a hand across her mouth: shut up!

“I wouldn’t know,” Imbri said. “Is there a hill up ahead? They always put gates on the highest point in the area.”

He looked to Darun for guidance; she still looked disgruntled, but nodded. Why had she suddenly decided to care about Imbri’s feelings, anyhow? He squinted at the horizon. “I think so. It’s pretty far away, though, if that’s the hill we’re looking for.”

“That’s fine. We’ll get there long before daybreak, and that’s what matters. Give the tribe time to get clear.”

“How do the gates work? Something like a rookery, where we’ll all be in different rooms? Or … is it a gate to Kur?”

“You can’t have a gate to Kur, Ram. Kur’s not … real.”

“That’s ridiculous. Where did all the bazuu come from?”

“From Kur. More or less. It’s complicated. Don’t get me wrong, Kur exists. It’s just not real.”

“You’re the one who wanted to learn about magic. Did you think it was going to be easy?”

“No, but you’re not even making sense!”

“Not my fault. Flametongue doesn’t even have words for these concepts. I’m doing the best I can with a limited vocabulary.”

“Try a little harder.”

“Tch!” She bit her lip. “Okay. You can’t go to Kur for the same reason you can’t, say, turn yourself flat and walk around on the surface of a sheet of paper. The way it is just isn’t compatible with the way people are. It’s where the bazuu came from, all right, and in some ways it’s more ‘real,’ more permanent, than Ki. But humans would have to stop being human to go there. Can you understand that?”

“Let’s pretend I can. Where’s the gate go?”

Imbri groaned, then muttered something unpleasant-sounding in Moonchild. “It’ll be easier to explain once we’re there.”

He decided to let it go. They rode the last few miles in silence, stopping briefly to confirm via inductor that they were headed for the right hill. Their leisurely pace paid off; there were no moonchildren in sight.

But neither was there anything else. They rode up to the crown of the hill, dismounted, and found themselves standing on a perfectly ordinary (albeit elevated) patch of ground. It might have had a bit more greenery as well, Ram supposed; bits of grass clung to the top, and a few bushes. The brutes got to work devouring the lot as soon as Bal got them unharnessed. Their saddles and gear went in a heap on one side of the hilltop.

“We’ll be leaving the animals behind,” Imbri announced. “It’s dicey enough with eight, and even the outside of the gate will provide some shelter. They won’t be happy, but they’ll be fit to ride when we come back. You won’t find anything nourishing inside, so take a snack.”

“I don’t see the others’ brutes,” Piridur observed.

“What, the moonchildren’s? They’ll have taken theirs. They had at least three inductors, as I read it, and lots of people to use them. You’ve got one, and me. I’m not taking the damn animals, Piridur. We can replace them at Jatu if we have to.”

Piridur looked skeptical. “What if they wander off?”

Darun rolled her eyes. Even Shazru sounded a touch incredulous when he said, “They would certainly perish if they tried, Lord Piridur. They are not very intelligent, it is true, but they are capable of self-preservation. Nor will anyone come by to steal or attack them. I assure you, we will find them when we return.”

Piridur sat down in the dirt. “Do what you have to.”

“That’s all we ever do,” Imbri told him. She pulled out her inductor once more and pointed it at the ground, whispering something to it in Moonchild. “The actual locus of the gate’s buried, of course. It couldn’t survive yellow sunlight.” The inductor jerked in her hand, and she followed it confidently to a spot where no grass clung to the sand. “Everyone ready? Things are about to get really weird.”

“I think it’s the fun part, personally,” Darun whispered in Ram’s ear.

Imbri thrust the inductor into the sand, a key in a secret lock, and with another whispered phrase the world vanished.