Chasing Fire

Book 3: Five Countries

by Michelle M. Welch

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Epic Fantasy; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

Returning to the land of Confidence Game and The Bright and the Dark, Michelle M. Welch revisits the Five Countries, where magic is suspect, loyalty drives a hard bargain, and war is just a misstep away. Now, as a devastating plague takes its deadly course, a quest as fragile as a dream begins. . . . 

Rindell Jorren, the twenty-year-old son of a governor of Dabion, is unsuited to follow in his powerful father’s footsteps. Aimless and timid, Rindell wants only to delve into the poetry and song of the romantic cavaliers of yesteryear. But his father has other plans. To shore up his alliances, he has arranged a marriage for Rindell to a heathen Azassian. Unknown to Rindell, his future bride, Adina, is mad. Descended from the Azassian warrior who ripped the country apart centuries before, she is racked by nightmares, bound to the past–and sought by wanderers on the fringe of reality. But while Adina is blurred by insanity, Elzith the Sage sees clearly: a city burning, a search for faith, and a way to finally free humanity from its greatest scourge. . . .

Release date: September 27, 2005

Publisher: Spectra

Print pages: 416

Sample

1


Rindell Jorren

Autumn 791 c.c.


Rindell wasn't at all sure about his job. Another day, another tent, another dead body to sketch. As always, he stood as far back as possible and held his tablet up over his face whenever he could, as if it would keep him from breathing whatever had killed the person. He was starting to think he should get another job, as if he had a choice. At home was the freak his father--planning who knew what punishment for Rindell if he left his apprenticeship--and here was the freak Aron Jannes.

"This is a good one," Jannes was saying, half under his breath. "Head is still intact, eyes are clear. We'll be able to get a lot from this one." He hung over the body and began poking at it with a small silver rod that was balanced between the deformed fingers of his right hand. Rindell swallowed hard and chewed on the end of his pencil, waiting unexpectantly for Jannes to call him forward to draw something.

For three years he'd worked for this disturbing man, the Circuit Justice for Mortality. Rindell had expected to travel around Dabion filling notebooks with drawings, though he hadn't really been able to imagine the subject matter. He'd expected to visit Healers' tents and burial grounds, a distasteful enough job, but better than facing his father again. He had not expected what the company of Aron Jannes would be like. No match for his father, of course, but Justice Jannes was impressively frightening in his own right. The cold face, the permanent frown, the angry eyes--he never actually lost his temper, but if Rindell had been drawing him, he would have drawn a powder keg with a broken hand. For once, though, Rindell had learned his lesson, and the caricature never made it to the page.

"The Healer you asked for is here," a voice said from behind them.

A tall, thin man in a white robe stood in the tent's doorway, calmly waiting to be acknowledged. He used no introduction, no "your honor." Healers didn't care about such formalities. Rindell stepped backward with a sigh of relief although Jannes looked over his shoulder with his eyebrows furrowed deeply, angry at the interruption. "The Healer," he mimicked coldly. "Don't you have names?"

Rindell had wondered that himself, but kept his mouth closed. He backed away through the tent flap, drinking in the fresh air gratefully, but before he got very far Jannes followed him out and pushed him along to their next destination, muttering an order about taking notes for "this infernal interview."

The Healer in question, whose name was still not given, was sitting in a nearby tent, perched on a stool beside the bed of an old man. All the Healers looked alike, the shapeless white robes, hair cut blunt above their shoulders in a color that ranged from brown to as light as wheat, the men and the women all looking the same. Rindell didn't even know until the Healer looked up, turning away from the sick man to face the visitors and showing a narrow, soft chin, that this one was a woman. Rindell's eyes drifted over the front of her robe and he ducked his hotly reddening face toward his tablet, scribbling notes furiously, although the interview hadn't started yet.

"You handled the first case of the plague, did you?" Jannes demanded of the Healer. "Where was that?"

The Healer's voice was smooth and calm, although it didn't make Jannes any calmer. "In Karrim."

"Which parcel?"

The Healer smiled and shook her head, more as if it wasn't important than as if she didn't know.

Jannes frowned and muttered, loudly enough that he was sure she could hear, "Like talking to a damned wanderer." Healers, like the wandering madmen, didn't care about the numbers Justices were always giving to things. They were also impervious to embarrassment; Rindell did the woman the favor of being thoroughly embarrassed for her and looked sheepishly out the door flap. And there, as if on cue, was a wanderer, walking past as easy as day, motley clothes and wild-colored hair and all. Rindell blinked and rubbed his eyes--clumsily, with the hand that was holding the pencil. When he opened his eyes again the wanderer was gone.

"The year, then," Jannes was demanding in a voice that made Rindell flinch back to attention. "Do you know that?"

The female Healer knitted her brow a little and sighed, unaffected by Jannes's tone. "It was years ago, ten? Fifteen? Before your war in the south."

War in the south, Rindell copied in his tablet, then stopped and chewed his pencil. What war in the south? In all those history lessons he'd ignored, he thought he would have remembered a war in the south. He glanced up and saw Jannes scowling at him. "The siege of Mount Alaz," he prompted. "So it would have been 776." Rindell scribbled obediently.

"What were the symptoms?" Jannes went on in an irritated voice.

"Oh, the same as they are now. Fever, delusions, scratching of the skin and tearing of the hair, and the infection of the wounds. That is only the outside, though. Inside they are tormented by their sins."

Sins? That didn't sound medical, and Rindell wondered whether he should write it down. He glanced at Jannes, hoping the Justice might give him some indication, but Jannes was watching the Healer with an even deeper frown.

"And you," the Healer asked, her voice softened with almost painful charity, "how well are you?"

The powder-keg caricature in Rindell's imagination promptly exploded. "I," Jannes spat, turning an angry red, "am fine."

The Healer did not let him go from her gaze. She studied him, serenely and sorrowfully, for another moment, then said, "You are restless, and you're not sleeping. I can give you a draught to help you. And you," she added, turning unexpectedly toward Rindell, "will make sure he takes it."

Rindell didn't have the courage to argue with her. Aron Jannes wasn't sleeping, it was true; he almost never slept. Rindell knew because he'd been traveling with the Justice for the past three years, but there was no way for the Healer to know. Rindell tried hard not to look at the woman again, more disturbed by her than ever. Healers were suspect, according to the physicians at the School of Bioran Science. The medical college at the Origh School had been instituted to address the problem of the plague, which the Healers with their reputed but unseen powers had failed to cure. Rindell had no idea what those powers were supposed to be. Obviously they did nothing for all the dead people. But this woman knew Jannes wasn't sleeping, and she was very insistent about it. She stood and eased out of the tent to fetch the sleeping potion, and even after she was gone Rindell felt a little nervous. He decided it would be best to change the subject. "So the siege of Mount Alice," he said, "was in 776?"

"No, 777," Jannes snapped. "Mount Alaz, in District Three. The Alacans tried to secede from Dabion. Lord Justice Zein fled the High Council, went to Mount Alaz and closed the gates. One of his retainers had the plague. Before the end of the spring half the city was dead."

Rindell blinked. He really hadn't heard any of this in school. "How do you know?"

"I was there," Jannes said between his teeth, and he turned on his heel and left.

This didn't make Rindell any less nervous. He also didn't like being alone in the tent with the sick old man, and cautiously he turned to peer at him and check for scratches, torn hair, and infected wounds. It was startling, then, to see the man's eyes, a remarkable amber color, wide-open and looking straight at Rindell.

"Well," the old man said gruffly, "he's a bastard, isn't he?"

Rindell burst out laughing and sank down on the stool where the Healer had been sitting.

The old man didn't laugh, but his face wrinkled up around the eyes, looking like it was going to crack, like he hadn't laughed in a long time and his face wasn't used to it. "You probably weren't even born yet in 777."

"I was," Rindell answered indignantly, sitting up straight. "I was six years old."

This time the old man did laugh, a short and gravelly sound, and the wrinkles reformed around his mouth. Rindell noticed for the first time that the stranger wore a beard and mustache, absolutely colorless but carefully shaped. Everyone in Dabion was clean-shaven. The old man's hair was long, still thick, hanging over his shoulders. "You're a cavalier," Rindell breathed.

A deep V formed in the man's forehead then, and he looked at Rindell suspiciously. "And what does a twenty-year-old clerk know about cavaliers?"

"Everything!" Rindell said rapturously. "The sword fights, the poetry, the romance--everything the minstrels wrote. I've read it all!"

The old man's face went truly severe. "Well, forget it all," he said. "It's all lies." And he turned his back to Rindell and lay very still, as if asleep. Reluctantly Rindell gave up on his saying anything else and ducked out of the tent. Then he nearly jumped out of his skin. Just outside the door stood the wanderer.

"He knows the song. You should ask him."

The words were so nonsensical--the speaker was, after all, a madman--that Rindell had no idea how to respond. He could only stare at the wanderer, tilting his head up until his neck started to hurt. Never having seen one up close, he hadn't quite realized that wanderers were so tall, or so pale, or that their eyes were so fragmented with different colors, shifting and changing and never standing still. For a moment Rindell wondered how he would draw that, how he would paint the effect. Then he suddenly felt rude for staring, and blurted out, "Be careful. It's not safe, there are rebels out there, men with guns."

The wanderer's wide face brightened. That was a completely inappropriate reaction, Rindell thought. The wanderer must not have realized what guns were. "You'll tell me if you see her," he said eagerly. Then, without explaining whom Rindell was supposed to be seeing and without taking his leave, he turned and walked around the corner of the tent. Rindell darted after him but by the time he rounded the corner, the man had disappeared.


2

Cal Serinason

Autumn 791 c.c.

The old cavalier forgot his visitor as soon as the young man left the tent. He slid back into the dream he had left as if there were no boundary between sleep and wakefulness.

His mother was singing to him. She had died when Cal was twelve, bearing his only sister, but in the dream he was dressed as he had been on his sixteenth birthday, claret velvet so brilliant it shone like gemstones, a sword on his hip and a feathered hat cocked on his head. He walked out into the streets of Kysa and his mother's voice followed him, singing, and the minstrels and the street musicians picked up the melody until it flowed and curled around him like perfume or smoke, and it ran in the fountains like water. Everywhere was the song.


We have crossed the river wide
rolling to the sea
we have left our lives there


So sad, this song. On the night of the midsummer festival, when all the city was on the streets in their finery, wine flowing, dancers and jugglers and singers spreading entertainment and joy, all the voices of Kysa were raised in the words of a song that spoke of the most perfect sadness, the most beautiful homesickness.


Carried off into the sea
we have lost our lives there
we have crossed the current


The melody was haunting; it flowed into the skin and lingered there, whispering its minor tones into the ears even when the words were forgotten, when the last voice he had heard sing it had left him years before. And then Cal turned a corner, stepped into a lane, slipped into an eye in the crowd, and saw her. She was singing the most beautiful song, plucking the chords from her lute, holding them all in her spell. Serah. The night of Cal's first midsummer festival, the year he turned sixteen--he wouldn't even meet her for two years. But she was there in his dream, and then he was not sixteen, he was twenty-six, and Kysa was burning.


We have crossed the wide land
far out to the sea
our lives are lost in memory


On an Ikindan vessel bound for the south, his claret velvet and bare feet on the decks. The Ikindans on the ship, two men who hadn't even been on that vessel, the tall wiry thief and the small one called Mister Runes, watching him out of their pitch-black faces. The song still, in the words of Ikinda, of which Cal knew only a handful--still he heard it, the foreign voices raising the melody of homesickness. The dream within a dream, Mister Runes, the mute, speaking to him in his sleep. If you hear the voice of the white wizard, heed it.

Years lost. An old man in a brocade vest, threadbare and faded, claret velvet cloak worn and patchy. In the monastery at Seven Oaks, surrounded by the silent monks, the trees whispered the song in their leaves. And then the wanderer, Amipal, singing to Cal the words of his mother's song. Amipal plucked a lute from the air and traced the paths of Serah's hand on it. Cal reached for the lute as if he could grasp Serah's hand through time.

And he awoke. He was in no city, on no ship; the canvas walls of a Healer's tent hung around him, white and empty. His clothes were in a pile on the floor, so old and worn that he could hardly see or remember what color they once were. His sword and the lute that Amipal had given him were miles away, back in Cassile. He no longer remembered why he left. If you hear the voice of the white wizard, heed it. The dream-voice of a mute. It was in a dream that Amipal had told Cal to come east and meet him. But Cal had walked across two countries and found no one, had done nothing but fall ill in a storm. There was no wizard, no music, no one singing to him, no noise but the rustling of tent walls and the quiet, strange voices of Healers.

But no--there was another sound, a sound Cal knew too well. Conflict, the shouts of fighting men, and the rumble of gunpowder.

Rebels were taking over District Four. That was what Cal could gather from what little talk surrounded him in the Healers' camp. How this had happened, Cal didn't know; he knew almost nothing about Dabion's government and cared even less. The Healers around him wasted no words on political matters, and most of the sick couldn't provide words if they'd had them. But a force was gathering against the government of the District where Cal had found himself, and they were spreading. It had been rumors at first, muttered between sickroom mates whose voices carried through the canvas walls. Then the stories heard from cousins in the city of Kerr became firsthand accounts. Cal had been at the camp for some time; he had left Cassile almost a year before, driven by dreams. In the last weeks, though, the camp's population had swollen. The new patients were not routine fevers or injuries, or even the terrifying specter of plague that had recently invaded the camp on the body of a traveling merchant. These were the wounds of unrest, the cruel signature of violence: cuts, battery, bullet wounds. The rebels were approaching. Cal could hear them, they were so close. They had reached the camp.