Pyrebound - 10.5

Chapter 10.5 – Pyrebound
They were five more days on the trail. Ram remembered only a little of them after, and cursed what scant memories he kept. He couldn’t keep himself from thinking back, incredulous, to his breakfast in Dul Pilupura, where he’d blithely told Imbri that indwelt men had no need to fear the white sun. He had learned better.

At the end of their first white day, the others returned to Ki refreshed and ready to ride on, only to find Ram half-dead from exposure. He spent the next three days lashed to one of the pack-brutes like extra baggage, raving and drooling, gradually recovering his mind and his strength under yellow sunlight just in time to understand that he would have to go through it all over again when they reached the next gate.

He screamed, he begged, he threatened, he refused to be left behind again. In the end, he drew Beshi, and demanded against all reason to be returned to the pyre at once. But he could barely stand, and Bal simply slapped the sword out of his hand and kicked it away before tying him up. That second white day was easier; he had less of a mind to lose. The last leg of their trip was a blur. He thought another day of white sun might have killed him, spirit or no spirit.

It was late morning, nearly noon, when a chorus of cheers woke him from his daze at last; he lifted his head from a brute’s hairy flank, and got his first glimpse of the God’s fire since he’d left the shroud. There wasn’t much of it, only a tantalizing shimmer in the distance, but it roused Ram like cold water, and brought him back to himself after days of plain sunlight had failed. They had come to Dul Jatu at last.

Here, at its uttermost periphery, the light barely sufficed to sustain a thin film of weeds over plain sand. It remained a paradise, after the desert, and they gratefully stopped for an hour to let the brutes browse—and to retrieve Ram from his undignified position. He sat in silence on the grass while the six surviving animals gorged. When they resumed, Darun had to hold him extra-tight around the chest to keep him from falling off, but he didn’t care. His body grew stronger, and his mind calmer, with every second he looked at the holy light.

Or rather, three lights, twinkling just above the horizon. At first he thought they were hearths, but the spirits in them didn’t feel quite right. As the brutes tromped forward, still snatching mouthfuls of grass, those faint sparkles grew into great pillars of light, and fresh glimmers rose behind them in turn, shining with the mingled powers of the golden sun above and its votive fires below. It was hard to see past the splendor of it and tell what the things themselves were. “Glass?” he guessed aloud, at length. It was the first coherent thing he’d said since he woke, and it hurt his throat to say it. How much had he been yelling lately?

“Yup,” Darun muttered into his shoulder blades, where her face was buried. Either the last few days had been hard for her too, or she wanted him to think so. “They’ve got a thousand of the things.”

It made sense. One spire of glass, shot through with bits of polished metal, could catch any light and scatter it, and these were very tall. There was almost a mile between them, and they might not provide much light, but on white day, even a little bit would help. And, if he wasn’t mistaken … yes. Every one of them had a haranu near its crown—an embedded dulsphere, maybe. Enough to let the grass grow in peace, if nothing else.

Of course, good land needed more than one kind of protection. They caught the clatter of hooves on the wind before they reached the first line of pillars, and the Damadzus promptly called a halt to await their welcome with dignity. To Ram’s surprise, that welcome consisted entirely of moonchildren—six mounted archers who came galloping in from the north. One of them pounded on a large drum while his allies formed a cordon around their visitors.

Imbri and Shazru prodded their emaciated brute forward as soon as the drumming stopped, and Ram expected a repeat of the tense negotiation outside the first gate—but was again surprised. Imbri spoke briefly, without bothering with a mask, and the drummer replied as though nothing were out of the ordinary. Their conference was ended almost before it began, with the drummer pointing them in the right direction, then leading the whole troupe off with the same racket as before.

“I thought this was Dul Jatu,” Ram croaked.

“And so it is,” Shazru said. “Those gentlemen were part of its traditional border patrol. It is a profitable arrangement for all concerned; the pyres do not need to post men along their vast frontier, while the tribes get grazing rights, the odd honorarium, and permission to capture or despoil any interlopers. Those captured, of course, are generally sold on the local market. Dul Jatu has a thirst for labor.”

“Don’t call those stray dogs a tribe,” Imbri groused. “They’re trash the other moonchildren cast out. Criminals and incompetents come here for scraps.”

“Yeah, and what are you?” Darun said, poking her head out from behind Ram’s shoulder. It was hard to tell whether or not Imbri heard her.

They rode on for a long time. At every moment Ram expected to see the light of a hearth appear, if not the fire of a temple—were they headed straight for the pyre itself?—but all they saw were slightly brighter towers, with slightly greener and thicker plant life beneath. After they’d been tramping along for fifteen minutes Ram spotted a herd of cattle in the distance, then another of sheep, and finally a pair of men racing along on (if Ram wasn’t mistaken) horses. At least, they were bigger and livelier than any mule he’d ever seen.

The hearth-fire, when it finally appeared, shone from atop an enormous glass spire, twice the proportions of the others, which itself rose from the top of a hill. A few brick buildings of various sizes cluttered the slopes below; the largest was bigger than Urapu’s common hall, but all of them together wouldn’t house half a small hearth’s population decently.

A short, well-dressed, slightly stout man awaited them fifty feet from the base of the hill; Piridur nearly unseated Imbri and Shazru in his rush to the front of the line. But he dismounted slowly, and gave the stranger a dignified bow before saying, “A pleasant course to you! I be Piridur zen-Mitu ni-Karagi. Be you hearthmaster here, good sir?”

“Pleasant course to trail’s end, sir. This be Genrushu hearth, and I Lundesh zen-Pepli ni-Jazaral, master indeed. Karagenes, say you? Be you here on the pyre’s own business?”

“Then you be double welcome, sir. We’ve a trouble here, and no mistake. Come in, if you please. There be room for all.”

And so there was—the largest building on the hill had much of its interior space given over to one long room, with a double-high ceiling. A series of doors all along one side led to bedrooms, with a railing and more doorways above. The opposite wall had only one long, high window letting in light from the hearth-fire; the hall was dug into the side of the hill. The far end of the main room was dedicated to kitchen space, with a pair of handmaidens and three bondswomen to staff it. They had what looked like half a cow on a spit, giving off a very agreeable smell. The end nearer the door had couches and chairs.

It seemed less a common hall than an inn; four bondsmen bustled out to take their packs as they entered, and Lundesh was nearly a parody of hospitality, offering them drinks and snacks in his bizarre brogue, and telling them over and over to make themselves comfortable. For the master of a hearth (were there no councils here?) he acted remarkably servile.

At last, when everyone was comfortably seated and provided for on couches, he sat down himself. “Times as they be,” he said, “I’ll dare speak plainly, Master Piridur, and trust to your courtesies. All the talk of your Karagi be that you’ve a rogue bull.”

“Be that the talk, then?” Piridur answered, holding his glass up to the light as if the remark didn’t concern him.

“It surely be, sir, and you’ll not have come so far for the beef alone. Though there be those as have, mayhap. My cousin, he be master at Tembi to the north, and he do tell me Tembi have lost three head this month new-started, and eight of his bonded, and them as took the lot rode no beasts.”

“Went they on foot, master?” Piridur said with a smile. He aped the accent surprisingly well, and Ram wondered how Lundesh wasn’t offended.

“Indeed no, sir, they rode the skies, and took as pleased them with the God’s own fire. I like this not, sir, and I’ll thank you to speak plain. Your bull be rogue, sir, and if you’ll not spike him we’ll do for ourselves.”

“You are heard, sir,” Piridur said, holding up his hands in apology. “Plain speech be not the style in Dul Karagi. Rightly we come not for the beef, though we’ll thank you dearly for it. What wrong be done, we’ll recompense—but tell me true, sir: who makes this talk, of bulls gone rogue?”

Lundesh shrugged. “Whence comes the wind, sir? It be common talk, of a month and more, but nor a man knows the provenance.”

“My money’s on Zasha,” Darun murmured. She’d laid her head on Ram’s shoulder, and said it so softly that only he could hear it. Ram squeezed her shoulder in acknowledgment. He wasn’t certain he followed the conversation completely, but not many people outside Dul Karagi knew about the Shimrun situation. If Zasha wanted to make trouble, he’d be spreading the story far and wide.

“If you be come amending,” Lundesh went on, “we’ve no just quarrel. Eat and drink as you like, and full welcome, sirs and ladies; you’ll see no bill or warrant when you go, and you take the trouble with you. It be but a pity you come in autumn, not spring.”

“We chose not the season, sir,” Piridur told him, and that was the end of the meaningful conversation. Ram was glad; he was still weak, and untangling their speech felt like work. Sitting back and enjoying the beer was much easier. It was followed by a magnificent plate of herbed roast, and Darun hauled him off to bed, unprotesting, as soon as the opportunity arose.

“I really didn’t miss the way these wacky bastards blabber,” she said, as she shut the bedroom door behind them. “I think Bal doesn’t talk because he caught it while he was here, and he’d be embarrassed to have us hear him.”

Ram slumped onto the bed. “What can you tell me about this place?”

“You mean Jatu? Lots of stuff,” she yawned. “What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. Why would Shimrun pick here to run to?”

“They’ve got a lot of cows to snitch, I guess. That, and it’s a pain in the ass to get to.”

“There’s more than that,” Ram insisted. “Like this hearth. It’s tiny. Doesn’t anybody live here?”

“Not really. They’ll have a few handmaidens, bondservants, and flamekeepers at every hearth. Jatu’s big, dull, and empty. Every caravan crossing the desert loses a bunch of animals, just like we did, so they buy new ones here, and pay with merch. Blackbands are usually just passing through, if they come here at all. It’s a good place for weird news and livestock, and not a lot else. That help you any?”

“Oh, and it’s actually two pyres. Dul Jazaral on the east end, Dul Tugima on the west. Ja-Tu. It covers so much land that they need a pair of fires to cross the gap.”

“Hmm.” What really troubled him was the talk of rogue bulls, and ‘spiking’ most of all, after what he’d found in the packs. But he was still too unsteady to think it over. He was asleep before he could think of another question.

He slept through the night, and woke shortly before dawn feeling nearly well again. For a time, he lay in bed thinking. It was waning day, he was fairly certain; he could put off leading Piridur to Shimrun for two more days, until the start of the next tetrad. His sense of distance had improved somewhat on the trail, and he thought it would take another pair of tetrads to reach the Ensi’s location—one to get to the closest hearth, another for the ride out to wherever Shimrun had gone to ground.

Assuming, of course, that Shimrun and his companions felt like sitting and waiting for the arrival of their embassy. And assuming that Ram felt like taking Piridur there at all. Ram didn’t think Shimrun was sitting idle—three cows in five days, plus eight bondservants taken? It sounded like he was raising an army. Ram had never really believed in Piridur’s supposed diplomatic approach; the ensi would have still less cause to trust any Karagene promises. Shimrun wouldn’t return on Jushur’s terms.

Ram would have had to abandon Piridur eventually, for his family’s sake. Knowing what he knew now only made it doubly urgent. If Piridur and his two men were ever in the same place with Ram and Shimrun, he felt confident that they would break the seal on that heavy bundle, and at least try kill both of them with its contents. The handmaidens would likely retaliate by burning the assassins, but Ram thought Piridur, at least, was ready to die for Dul Karagi.

Fortunately, none of that had to happen. Ensi? Can you hear me? He felt another mind awake in the distance, drowsy but attentive. I’ll be coming to you soon. Alone, if I can manage. Our enemies are with me, and I’ll need to shake them. Will you help me escape? The answer wasn’t quite clear enough for Ram to make out words, but he knew it was affirmative.

Which left only one more difficult thing to do. He sat up slowly in bed, and stole a last glance at Darun. He shouldn’t have, and knew it, but he looked, and looked again. The sight of her made him nearly frantic; she’d been all the good in his life for such a terribly short time, and the thought of leaving her for a world with no comforts—just the long and bloody-handed pursuit of whatever the Ensi decided had to be—was too much to bear. He couldn’t turn away, only watched as the day’s first light crept in through the window and turned the wispy edges of her hair a golden brown.

At length, her eyes popped open. “I wouldn’t go out the door, if I were you,” she said quietly. “They’ll be watching it.”

Ram instantly forgot his bittersweet yearnings. “Say what?”

“They’ll have a guard on the door—I would. So try the window. That’s the way to run.”

“Who says I’m running?”

Darun shut her eyes again, frowning. “Ram, you wouldn’t pick a knife-fight with Bal, would you?”

“Of course not, but—“

“Of course not. He’s got you outclassed; you’d be cut to shreds. So why do you think you can win, trying to lie to someone like me? You’ve been awake for ages now, too still, too tense, breathing too fast. No bullshit. You’re running.”

“Say I am,” Ram told her, despising the tremble in his voice. He didn’t think he could hurt her, even if the spirit would let him. Even if he had to. “What are you going to do about it?”

That earned him a snide look. “That sounds like the same old question again: what do I want?”

“I can’t offer you any money, the way I’m going.”

“Money? Who said anything about money? I told you, that’s just metal.”

“What about nice clothes? Or perfume, or good food?”

“I like them all just fine. But I’ve told you before: I want. To do. What I want. You can’t buy that.”

“Tchah! You know who liked money, Ram? Ushna. He just loved him some tanbirs. Wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t do for them. How often did you see him doing what he liked?”

“I don’t know. What did he like to do?”

“Beats me. I don’t think he knew either, because all he did was chase money, and he only wanted money because money was the thing to want. And if he had to lick a rich man’s balls to get some more, he’d have done it, and thought he was real clever. I’m not Ushna, Ram. I’m not a whore.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“No, but that’s what you mean. What kind of pathetic little bitch goes for gold? I haven’t done a thing for money since I left the mines, Ram.”

“You’re did sales, didn’t you?”

“That’s not about the cash, Ram. It’s about the deal. It’s about the relationship. It’s about getting an idiot to pay us ten times what we did for some hunk of bazu woo, and brag to his friends about it, when he doesn’t even know what it does and he’s just going to leave it on his sitting-room table. I lean in, he adds ten percent, and I go off dancing at the Red Flute. You know what I call that, Ram? Good healthy fun.”

“I can’t give you that, Darun.”

“Neither can Piridur.”

Ram looked out the window; the sun was definitely up now. The others would have gone to bed later, but they’d be up eventually, if they weren’t already. “I don’t have time for this.”

Darun sighed dramatically. “You’re like two different men, you know that, Ram? Part of you’s just like Piridur: afraid of fun, determined to be miserable so people will say nice things about him after he’s worked himself to death. If I want that kind of man, I can turn you in, and Piridur will take me back to Dul Karagi, and I’ll be the big hero who saved the pyre. But heroes don’t do blackband work. I’ll have to settle for marrying some drab little Zasha, who has exactly two beers with every meal and talks business even when he’s eating alone. You think I want that?”

“That’s half of you, Ram. But then there’s the other guy, the one who looks around and says, ‘What the hell is this?’ The one who’s always pissed off. The one who knows he’s a whore, and doesn’t like it.” She smiled. “That’s the kind of man I want. Because I don’t know what all he’s going to do, but it’s going to be fun to watch. He’s not going to take the shit they feed him, and say thank you like a good boy.” She flounced over to the window and pushed it open. The morning breeze was chill. “Do you get it now?”

“You mean you want to make trouble just to prove that you can.”

It wasn’t really anything he hadn’t known or guessed already, but for whatever reason, her talk had made him feel slightly better about trusting her. He stood up beside her, and took a long moment to stare deep into her smiling eyes, trying to catch another glimpse of the world without a future. She stared right back, her face inscrutable.

“Let’s die young together, just you and me,” she intoned in a whisper.

“It’ll be fun,” he agreed, and kissed her, hard.

Minutes later, they were out the window with their bags, a blanket thrown over Darun’s dressing-gown, holding back laughter as they ran. The hearth’s stable was already open for the day, the bonded grooms busy feeding and watering the beasts within. There were only two of them, and they caught on quickly; when Ram drew Beshi, and held a finger to his lips, they were perfectly compliant. One of them helped Darun tie and gag his friend with bits of harness, before submitting to the same treatment. The knots weren’t very good, but they wouldn’t need much lead time. Ram could already sense three bright sparks hurrying in their direction. Ensi? We’re on our way.

He had no notion how to handle a horse, so he picked the two of their old brutes who looked least knackered. They wouldn’t go past a sluggish canter, and not in a very straight line. It would do. They rode over green fields on a pleasant autumn morning, Ram leading the way and waving cheerily at every startled herdsman they passed. The lights of the pillars made up for the cold morning.

By and by he struck up the ballad of Ektush im-Garza, and Darun joined in at the second chorus. There were twenty verses in all, but he’d never learned more than ten; a lot of them were redundant, and a few were so filthy he’d never brought himself to sing them. He got up to the fifth or six before Darun interrupted with a triumphant whoop, pointing at the sky ahead.

The skybarque flew more poorly than their brutes ran, like a drunk sow trying to pick her way down a muddy hillside. It yawed, veered, and tilted in every direction. Ram and Darun dismounted in a hurry, stripping their gear off the brutes just before they lost all composure and bolted. They, at least, had some sense of self-preservation. Ram didn’t need such things anymore, and as for Darun, she laughed and clapped to see the barque abruptly dip in mid-flight, nearly driving its nose into the ground.

It wasn’t nearly so pristine as the shining craft they’d flown from Pilupura and Tenzen. Several of its glass panes were cracked or smashed out, and what remained was filthy. Ram had no notion what color the sails used to be, under all the dust.

It landed, somewhat harder than normal, some distance away. If it had come any closer, it might have crushed them by accident. They ran for it, hand in hand. When Darun fell behind and stumbled, Ram scooped her up and went on just the same. The heads of two girls and a woman were visible over the upper railing; the smaller of the girls was waving as well. Darun waved back.

“Rammash,” a familiar voice called down. “It’s good to see—“

“Hi, brother!” the waving child interrupted. She had an enormous mane of messy black hair. Her mantle was brown with accumulated grime, and Ram wondered if any of Mother’s silver trim still remained on it.

“Hello, Mana. Thanks for coming, Shennai.”

“I could hardly do otherwise.” A rope ladder rolled down the side of the barque. “Come along, now. The Ensi is waiting.”