Reign of Fire Read online

  Reign of Fire

  Volume II of Lear’s Daughters

  M. Bradley Kellogg

  with

  William B. Rossow

  In memory of Challenger and her crew

  January 28, 1986.

  Commander Francis Scobee

  Pilot Michael Smith

  Gregory Jarvis

  Christa McAuliffe

  Ronald McNair

  Ellison Onizuka

  Judith Resnick

  With thanks to

  Antonia D. Bryan, Jane Ira Bloom,

  Karen Haas. Sheila Gilbert, Eric Golanty,

  and Lynne Kemen

  BOOK ONE

  “ ‘Who’s there, besides foul weather?’

  ‘One minded like the weather, most unquietly.’ ”

  King Lear

  Act II, sc, iv

  PROLOGUE

  The old people tell of a time when the sun was gentle for many cycles and the crops in the fields swayed low with fruit. But soon, they say, Lagri Fire-Sister stalked the halls of Her desert fortress, restless for new diversion.

  She summoned Lightning, Her messenger, and sped him to Valla Ired, Her Sister of Water and Ice. Then She marshalled Her armies: Heat and Thunder, Tornado and Drought.

  The Lightning spoke to Valla in Her palace beneath the ocean. “Fire-Sister proposes a wager.”

  Valla urged a red snail across Her coral gaming table. “I am well occupied here.”

  Lightning spun bright cartwheels around the shadowed hall. “Lagri mocks Your seclusion, Water-Sister. She calls You coward, and boasts that She will make You prisoner in Your own dwelling. The length of a DarkTime, She will hold You fast.”

  Valla looked the messenger up and down. “What are the stakes?”

  “She offers the Plain of Dop Arek, which She took from You during the most recent engagement.”

  “A mere skirmish.” Valla curled a pale lip. “The Dop Arek is not worth calling Snow and Rain from their rest. Let my Sister play alone.”

  Lightning sizzled enticingly. “She might be convinced to include the Talche Hills…”

  Valla crooked a finger. She flicked the red snail into a pocket at the corner of her game board.

  “And the wide river Dym beyond…”

  Valla smiled coldly, easing back her chair. “My Sister will regret this reckless wager.”

  Lightning laughed, a shower of sparks. “Then let the Game begin!”

  1

  “EMBRIHA LAGRI!” the young man cried, and thrust the shining banner high into the hot, still air.

  Amber light played among its folds. Fine embroidery glimmered. The bright white cliff rose steeply behind. For a moment, the silken triangle of orange outshone even the sun hanging swollen against a wide green sky as opaque as polished malachite.

  The exultant throng cheered, but as quickly quietened. Silence held for the length of a sigh while echoes rang along the towering wall of rock.

  Among the white-clad ranks of the PriestGuild, the elders eyed the lofted wave-and-flame seal of their guild uneasily, flicking questioning glances in the direction of their guildmaster’s frown. The Terran expeditionaries regarded their young colleague’s gesture with equally mixed feelings.

  “Look at poor old Ashimmel,” Megan murmured drily. “There’s Stav hailing the Goddess’s victory, and the Master Priest can’t decide whether to approve of him or not.”

  “What is he up to?” Susannah whispered. She sensed faint challenge as well as celebration in the raising of the PriestGuild banner.

  Megan chuckled. “Always a flair for the dramatic, our Stavros.” She gestured at the line of laden wagons. “Getting the caravan off to a rousing start.”

  But watching him, Susannah was unconvinced. The gleam in his eyes and the fervent thrust of his arm spoke of a deeper conviction. Without formality or prior announcement, the ancient Sawl Ritual Master Kav Daven had drawn Stavros into his strange ceremony of Leave-taking, as if it were the most natural occurrence to include off-worlders. But only Stavros… Susannah struggled to deny a creeping sensation of exclusion, but it expressed itself anyway, through prim censure. “I suspect you may be right about him getting too personally involved here.”

  Megan cocked a mildly satiric eyebrow. “Which the rest of us would never think of doing, is that it?”

  Stavros lowered the banner suddenly, as if made self-conscious by the spontaneous drama of the moment. Released, the crowd exploded into hubbub and bustle and a surging toward the wagons. At Kav Ashimmel’s impatient signal, two white-robed apprentice priests lifted the Ritual Master’s canopied palanquin as easily as if it were empty, and trotted it across the dusty terrace to the cliff stairs. Kav Daven’s milky blind eyes glimmered within the shadow of the ribboned hangings. The elderly and infirm of all the guilds followed in their own covered chairs and litters, ascending the steep, wide steps in a long and colorful line.

  The other celebrants shed their finery where they stood. The winch ropes were loosed from their ballast. Standards and banners and neatly folded ceremonial robes were busily loaded onto the wooden pallets to be hoisted up the sheer cliff for safe storage in the guildhalls. The lean, leathery Master of the Ranger Guild strode among the hundred assembled wagons and countless carts, barking orders, receiving hurried reports from her guildsmen about final preparations for the caravan’s departure. Every so often, her attention drifted skyward and she offered a fierce glare at the hot malachite sky as if daring it to show a single threat of cloud.

  Susannah nudged Megan as some of Aguidran’s urgency caught hold. “Hey, we’ve got last-minute stuff to do ourselves.”

  They pressed through the milling mass of people, vehicles and animals to the big yellow hard-canopied, Infirmary wagon, stationed in the exact middle of the line. At its head, the Master Healer’s dour assistant Ampiar consulted with a bright-faced ranger over the harnessing of the double teams of hjalk. The great golden beasts bore the sun’s heavy amber heat without complaint. At the rear, the packing still progressed. Susannah reassured herself that her own medical kit had not been buried too deeply, then stood aside while the physician’s apprentices scurried about under the calm direction of the Head Midwife, tying lash lines and stuffing each remaining nook and cranny with last-minute items.

  The expedition’s blond-haired Lander pilot wandered up to watch restlessly. “Gonna be real quiet around here,” she said matter-of-factly. “Never thought I’d wish I was on a science mission.”

  Susannah smiled. “Want to come along?”

  McPherson smoothed an envious hand across the wagon’s freshly painted wooden sides. “Hah. Can you see the Commander letting me, after the hell Emil raised about Stavros going? I bet she ain’t had a tongue-lashing like that since she was a cadet, with me and Tay right there, you know? And she just stood there and took it.”

  Because she’s a tough old bird, thought Susannah, not for the first time. “Good for her. I’m sure she’s heard lots worse in her time.” She exchanged a glance with Megan. “Not like Emil to throw his weight around in public, though.”

  Megan snorted. “Must have run out of his day’s ration of oily charm.”

  “Besides,” McPherson consoled herself, easily scaling the high side of the wagon to wriggle into the padded driver’s seat with the testing curiosity of a professional. “She needs me to help get the com and power up again. It’s no good you guys going out into nowhere without a connection to Base. We need CRI back on line.”

  “And then there’s Taylor,” Susannah added with a sly glint. “Someones got to stick around to nurse him along.”

  The little pilot guffawed, then pushed off her perch with a sprightly bound that turned into a suggestive cavort
as she touched ground. “Hell, yeah!” she grinned. “Well, see you guys.” She turned to go, then lingered to point out the line of litters climbing the cliff. “Who’ll take care of those oldies left up in the Caves?”

  Megan draped her arms over the chest-high rim of the sturdy front wheel and leaned against it heavily. “Liphar says there’s a maintenance crew of sorts that stays behind during trading trips—some priests and rangers for the weather watch and a bunch of FoodGuilder agriculturalists to keep an eye on the crop. It only looks like the whole world’s on the move.”

  Susannah felt a moment of doctor’s concern for the plump older woman. Megan looked heat-worn already, eager for some shade, reconsidering perhaps the wisdom of embarking on a month-long trek without the standard expedition amenities. The Sawls, though on the small side and chronically thin from a lack of abundant food, were a hardy people, more resilient than their Terran visitors and more resigned to hardship. Being a full decade younger than Megan, Susannah was less concerned about herself, and presented an adventuresome face to the idea of being out of contact with both Lander and Ship’s Computer. But secretly, she prayed for the speedy repair of the storm-damaged communications and power link with the Orbiter. Gazing across the wide rugged plain that stretched from the foot of the cliffs to lavender mountains in the north and east, she worried about the kind of medicine she might have to practice out in the bush, with little more available to her than her own hands, a few drugs and the intriguing skills of Sawl Master Healer Ghirra.

  Ghirra himself arrived then, leading his own small caravan. Commander Weng paced him on one side, dressed in habitual spotless white with her rank insignia glinting on her collar. On the other, the little apprentice Dwingen struggled to keep up with his guildmaster’s long stride. Behind them marched four apprentices, carrying the expedition’s injured planetologist on a leather stretcher. The bearers had been scavenged from various guilds at a moment when all other hands were needed for the packing. Stavros walked alongside the stretcher, a little apart, his body taut with barely contained energy, smiling at some private thought.

  The bearers set the heavy stretcher down on its folding wooden legs, then stood back, shaking the cramps out of their arms. Susannah moved to Danforth’s side to check his pulse and temperature. The big man lay like a black Gulliver fallen among the Lilliputians. The odd ceremony and the odder bout of weather that followed had exhausted his meagre strength. He grasped Susannah’s hand weakly.

  “Did you see all that?” he demanded. “What did you see?”

  “Just some weird-looking clouds, Tay.” She lied gently to soothe him. “A storm that didn’t happen.”

  McPherson hovered solicitously. “He’s okay, hunh?”

  “This sun is not the best thing for him.” Susannah adjusted her stance so that her shadow fell across his sweat-beaded face. Danforth breathed his thanks and let his eyes droop shut.

  “So much damn work to do…” he murmured.

  “… and so, GuildMaster,” Weng was explaining to Ghirra with gracious precision while one thin, hand tucked wisps of silver hair back into her neat bun. “According to our ship’s clock, it is the end of a very long day for my personnel. Though I understand that it is near the beginning of a cycle for you, I’m sure you can appreciate how hard it would be on the three who will accompany the caravan if your sister begins with a full twelve hours of travel.”

  The Master Healer nodded, his long, handsome head inclined in patient, respectful sympathy. He looked taller and leaner without his linen physician’s smock, his brown curls gathered at the nape of his neck, more like the Master Ranger, his sister, Susannah thought. Like the rangers, he now wore his blousy cloth trousers tucked into the tops of loose-fitting calf-high leather boots, softened at the ankles with long, hard wear.

  “The second and third work shifts haven’t had their sleep round, either, Commander,” Stavros pointed out from his slight remove. “Doing their best to make up the delay. Everyone’s going to be tired.”

  “I think my sister asks only one half throw this time,” Ghirra offered consolingly. “But already we are late. We must travel many throws by Darkfall.”

  Megan’s attention was caught. “But so long as we’re into night travel anyway in a week or so, why not rest now and then start refreshed?”

  Ghirra smiled politely. “Rest after a Leave-taking, Meghan?”

  “Oh, right. No. Of course not.” The anthropologist was plainly embarrassed, but Susannah sympathized. Many Sawls had learned some English after two months of the Terran presence on Fiix. But Ghirra was exceptionally fluent, and an astute observer of Terran manners besides. Talking to Ghirra, it was often easy to forget you were talking to a Sawl, until you indulged in some particularly Terran reasoning and received his oh-so-courteous but astonished response.

  Stavros laughed softly. He had stopped with the others but remained a bit apart, smiling at them with uncharacteristic benevolence.

  Like he has nothing to do with the rest of us, Susannah mused. She had seen that distanced look many times on Sawl faces. The Terran linguist stood calmly, but his angular features were still flushed with the excitement of the Leave-taking ceremony and his unexpected participation in it. His usual glowering intensity was transformed into a kind of glow. When McPherson joined him to discuss a strategy of repair for the comlink, his expression hardly changed. He answered her questions with benign attention and kept smiling his odd, half-wondering smile.

  Kav Daven’s special attentions really affected him, Susannah decided, and wondered how long this seeming change would last.

  A pair of rangers came by on a last-minute inspection tour, dressed in soft road leathers and boots. Their dark faces were shaded by wide-brimmed hats of waxed cane woven on a bent reed frame, resembling the traditional headgear of Commander Weng’s farming countrymen, but noticeably more rigid and heavier. With them was the Head Herdsman, a short, energetic woman with bared muscular arms and thick braids of auburn hair shot with silver. She bustled over to take the Master Healer aside. He excused himself and disappeared with her around the front of the wagon while her lively hands sketched out an explanation of the slight limp on one of the hjalk she had assigned to his teams.

  Weng made a small shrugging gesture that was confined mostly to her chin. She turned to Susannah. “I trust, Dr. James, that you three will fare well enough out there. We will assume that this more settled weather will favor our repairs here so that you will not have to remain incommunicado for too long.”

  Susannah dug for the insulated desert hat that had languished for two months at the very bottom of her field pack. She held it up and shook out the wrinkles. “Guess we’re going to need our hot-weather gear after all.” She patted Danforth’s shoulder. “See, Tay, you weren’t so off base as you thought.”

  The leather stretcher creaked as the planetologist stirred from the fringes of a doze. “Even more than I thought,” he mumbled, but did not elaborate.

  A phalanx of ranger runners trotted along the line of wagons, their long curls bouncing around their eager brown faces as they called out the final ready signal. The stretcher bearers exchanged covert looks and shifted restlessly.

  “Go on, take him down,” Susannah told them, pointing toward the tilted silver cone of the Lander hulking among the terraced fields a half-mile away. “We won’t leave without you.”

  Stavros’ quick translation brought relief to the young Sawls’ worried faces. They hefted Danforth’s bulk willingly and started off at the fastest pace they could muster. McPherson waved her shipmates a cheerful farewell and sprinted after them. Weng nodded soberly and followed at the more disciplined pace of the able but elderly.

  “You notice Emil hasn’t condescended to come around and say good-bye,” observed Megan, not without satisfaction.

  Susannah shouldered her pack. “He’ll work out his irritation on the repairs. One day we’ll be trudging along out there on foot and he’ll come whizzing by in the fixed-up Sled, hot on th
e trail of a billion-dollar lithium lode.”

  “Exactly what I’m afraid of,” Megan replied seriously.

  A sharp cry rang out from the distant head of the caravan. The lead wagons jolted into motion, a dark brown wagon with the carved guild seal of the RangerGuild gleaming on its side, the first of twenty giant red-and-blue FoodGuild wagons that were interspersed throughout the train, the Master Potter’s wagon, a smaller graceful wagon from Woodworkers’. The rattle and creak of wheel and harness rose in a rumble with a spreading cloud of yellow dust. Ghirra reappeared at the side of the Infirmary wagon with the Head Midwife, Xifa. The two youngest apprentices danced around them like excited puppies. Smiling gravely, the Master Healer explained to Susannah that little Dwingen was facing his first trade journey away from his family wagon.

  Megan did not object to Ghirra’s suggestion that she might prefer to ride. She hauled herself up into the driver’s seat beside Ampiar, groaning comically with the effort. Ampiar took up the reins. The double hjalk teams bent into their harness. When the wagons just ahead began to move, Stavros broke his silence as if suddenly recalling where he was.

  “I’ll be further up with Liphar’s family,” he announced. He gave Susannah his same odd smile and loped toward the head of the train.

  Walking alongside the wagon, Susannah asked Megan, “What’s with him, do you think?”

  “Stav? Oh, he’s okay.”

  Susannah frowned faintly. “But that’s just it, Meg. You don’t think it’s a little odd? I mean, he actually looks happy.”

  2

  The wide cart track headed eastward along the stony ledge at the base of the cliffs. The long train of wagons and guildsmen walking with their families moved at a snail’s pace at first, carefully skirting the acres of planted fields where the new amber shoots reached skyward with astonishing speed. The still-flooded terraces mirrored hard, green sky between neat rows of slim yellow stalks unfolding their first true leaves.