"Rianor, no one should be able to enter who is not of the House unless the Qynnsent High Ruler or First Counselor opens the door, or unless I open it myself (or unless my replacement does, for I won't live forever). And a Ber cannot enter through that door at all. I knew you had not yet come back home tonight, but I would never have thought ... We were not going to hurt anyone before asking questions. Even Brendan, the brash young fool that he is, would have only made sure they could not hurt us. Thank the Master that I had time to get only him, and that no one but Lord Desmond heard the commotion; thank the Master we did not bring any more soldiers."

She swallowed, then her voice was the trembling one that did not suit her at all. "The Bers have gone wild on common people, and who knows when the Commanders will follow, and if they all will not turn to the Houses in the end. The world is not what it once was." Her voice faded. "We might all be losing our way ..."

For a moment Rianor was at a loss of what to say. Was this woman, suddenly all wrinkles and dark-circled eyes, this woman of sighs and trembles, Nan?

"Nan, go to sleep, take some rest, I will wake Master Keitaro instead," Rianor said just as Desmond snapped, "Stop rambling, woman, no one will ever harm Qynnsent!"

"Desmond!" Rianor himself snapped, too tired to wonder at Desmond's atypical outburst, while Linden suddenly found the strength to jerk her head up and glare at the man.

"Don't talk to Nan as if she were some sort of sc.u.m, my lord." She squeezed the woman's hand, and Rianor was amazed at how much contempt she could infuse into a form of address that sounded so sweet when directed at him. For a fraction of a second the lofty lord Desmond gaped like a surprised stable boy, and Rianor resisted a sigh. Most probably no woman had dared rebuke Desmond for years.

"It has been a long and tiring night," Rianor said calmly, "and I am going to a.s.sume that any excessive expressions are due solely to that. I am also going to a.s.sume that such will not be repeated, and that all members of this household will address others, n.o.ble or not, with respect and civility. Am I clear, Desmond and Linden?"

"Yes, my lord," both murmured, eying each other with suspicion and him with respect. In Desmond's case the respect was mixed with irritation, and in Linden's with amus.e.m.e.nt and something difficult to define.

Rianor closed his eyes for a moment, for yet another time in his life a.s.sured how much he preferred Science to people. The thought only became reinforced as Nan insisted to perform a full rite to "seal the door." Obviously, she had never seen a Qynnsent person enter through that door, let alone someone who was not yet of Qynnsent and was not a healer, and she was uncertain of the situation and did not feel safe.

The words Nan sang to the door were low and indistinguishable, aimed for the door and her own ears only. She had shared a secret tonight, but obviously she was not yet ready to share them all. That, together with the fact that the door had become invisible when closed physicallya"which was the cause of Rianor's feeling that something was not right earliera"made him feel a stranger in his own House. There were so many things he did not know.

It was all the Bers' fault. They were the ones who hid everything.

Tired of doors, Rianor looked at the ceiling, let his eyes wander. Nan seemed to be taking forever with her song, while beside him Linden seemed very interested in the Qynnsent banner over the stove. He would explain it to her, but not now. Now he needed a few moments of rest, of not talking, of simply watching how the firepipe and waterpipe criss-crossed the ceiling. The pipes went past the kitchen utensils that hung from the ceiling and walls, and down towards the large metal tub in the middle of the room. The waterpipe ended just above the tub, but the firepipe twisted and plunged into the floor beneath, where it was safe to discharge its substance and make the tub's bottom hot when needed. Pipes. Bers' work.

It was pipes and shapes on Rianor's mind when Nan was finally done, but he had to force himself to think of other things.

"Come, my lady, let us find you a room." He lifted Linden again, not letting her walk and unwilling to give her to anyone else, and sent Desmond for the accounts that listed all of Qynnsent's taxes and other dealings with the Bers. Then, he braced himself for a long and tiring night.

Chapter 5: Witch.

Esyld

Day 78 of the Fourth Quarter, Year of the Master 705 The witch slowly rose from the bed as the last visitor fled. Half-deaf she was, but still she could hear his stepsa"flap and then flop, as his mismatched shoes splashed in the mud below the staircase, and then again.

Run, she thought, but thou can't escape the pictures. He had cursed her, he had cried, and he had begged. He'd tried to make the sign of the wheel, even, and she'd laughed at his wide, spooked eyes when he'd known she stood unscathed. "Make the wheel for the witch t' kneel," the simple and wretched knew: but they knew not that the wheel was not to harm a witch, but to help her lull to sleep the Bessove, the Powers That Be.

The wind blew, and the door's rusty hinges creaked as it slammed. Esyld shivered. Slowly, she dragged her old feet to the window and nailed the cloth's undone, flapping corner to the frame with a pin and a stone. So many things undone, but not all could be mended. She'd had real gla.s.s, many years ago, but of the breakable kind, not the hard one. Shane the Shovel had stolen it for her when she'd been young and fair, so that she would choose him and not Bone Yorick.

He'd been comely, Shane, but his head'd been thick and his mind shallow. He'd next nicked a silk dress from some fancy dame, and the Militia caught him. Esyld didn't know if he rotted in a Factory, or in a prison. Shane's mama had cried and cursed and torn the dress to ribbons, and would've made ribbons out of Esyld's face as well, had Esyld's own curse not served its utterer better.

She'd called the wind then, long ago, when she was fair, young, and stupid. "Wind from my hand, make Shane's mama bend, wind from my eyes, make Shane's mama die!" Esyld had screamed while the woman's nails dug into her cheeks, and suddenly the wind had comea"a howling one that had risen before Esyld's tumbledown shanty and thrown the street's dirt and stink in the air and at Shane's mama. Shane's mama had run, but died soon enough from the coughing sickness. Esyld never called the wind again, but from that day on, she saw true pictures in the window.

The gla.s.s was broken now, but old and half-blind, Esyld still could see them. She saw the shadows, too, at eve's and daybreak's light, and some of them were living. It was her witch eyes that saw the strange woman's shadow now, even though her human, wretched eyes, struggled to shape her hooded figure at the door frame.

A young human woman at first glancea"tall, slim and quiet. At first glance, just one of them who sometimes came, lovesick fools or fretful mothers, weary wives and, once, a Factory runner.

A crossroad stone picked at double Fullfire-Moons to bind a lover; a red thread for a child's wrist to ward off tallasumi and halli; red clover for her who wishes for a baby, tansy for the one untimely pregnant.

She gave each what they wished, they gave her meager food and fire; she told them all their truths and whispered her one lie: that she would call the wind again if they betrayed her, that if one day the Bers came, she'd curse her slum wretches to a fate worse even than the one that would await her.

Now here the Ber stood, the first one who had ever found her, and Esyld's old, tired heart suddenly tossed wildly in her chest and her feet wavered. For a long moment she was falling, and then young, graceful fingers gripped her arm and held her.

"Careful, old Mother."

Old Mother. Old she was, but Mother she never would be, for mothers lay with dull, wretched men to bear snotty little ruffians. She'd killed a mother once, with a wind that had come to heed her, and the wind had shown her many truths. One of them was that a witch shouldn't let just any dull, wretched man into her life, for one can't make you happy who's beneath you.

"I apologize. I see that my words have upset you."

Esyld blinked her human eyes at that and tried to stare at the young woman's face, fear suddenly giving way to anger.

"You see, you say," she hissed, her feet regaining balance. "But can you see?"

The young woman laughed. It was a special, bitter laugh that should have been tears; a laugh that Esyld knew all too well but had never before heard from someone elsea"a laugh that scattered in the room just as Esyld reached out, grabbed the hand still on her arm, and saw.

Dark, red-tinted hair spilling over shoulders shapely but rigidly-held; a face with features finely-wrought but a mouth stiff with many words measured or unsaid. Black, long lashes above shiny brown eyesa"beautiful eyes to a human sight, but a witch saw the fire inside.

It burned behind the girl's eyes, inside her head, inside her veinsa"a fire both colorless and bursting with colors, hissing, crackling, reaching out with fingers both scorching and cold towards the old witch whose cursed, insolent eyes dared watch it. Wretches and others didn't know fire, for they only saw it imprisoned in metal and stone. They only saw wells, buckets, or pipes, never flames; most didn't know what flames were at all. But Esyld knew. Grandpap had told her about fire, long ago, and later she had seen it. Even wind could not help her against fire. The more the wind would blow, the more the fire would grow, leaping through the room, dancing in the air, until it had swallowed Esyld like once it had tried to swallow that girl, until all she could see was the bright blindness in her own eyes and all she could hear, taste, or feel was burning.

The girl had burned, once, Esyld knew now. Into the past she saw and saw the stake, the flames, and the hard-eyed, crooked-nosed man in a red robe who had lit them. A young man for Esyld for he could be her son, an old man for the girl for he could be her father. His eyes never left the girl's while she wriggled, wide-eyed but never emitting a sound; never moved when she stilled, stared at him, and sent the flames bursting away from the stake and towards him.

"Enough!"

Esyld shivered as the girl's shout suddenly thrust her back into a Mierberian slum and a shanty house devoid of all flames. Pictures of othersa"a crying young man, a stone-faced older couple, and another, dying, man, all elegantly-dressed, as well as a donkey and an old man in ragsa"flickered at her sight's edge. They faded as the girl whispered "Enough," one more time and hid her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

"Thou can't escape the pictures," as always Esyld said. She'd said the same to the father who'd left before the girl'd comea"the father whose wastrel, useless son was to be taken to a Factory.

The girl raised her head and the hood fell, her face so haggard now that Esyld noticed even with her human eyes.

"So you are not just a reprobate and a fake," the girl said in a soft voice. "You do see memories." She tossed her head, and a lock of hair wiped a tear from her cheek; then the girl straightened and her large, restless eyes bore into Esyld's. "I felt you in my mind, witch. You have no right to go there!"

"No right, you say?" Esyld felt the girl's eyes, even though hers were strained and blurred. Or, she felt what was behind the eyes, for she knew that eyes were breakable but sight endured. "If I ain't got no right, why did you come to me?"

"To take you away," the girl could have said. "To burn you." Instead, she clenched the fingers of her two hands together in front of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and her sight touched Esyld's again. Restless, doubting, ashamed, prideful the girl's sight was. Confused and fearful. Searching.

Slowly, Esyld's hand reached out and touched hers one more time. Slowly, she saw into the past again, but shrouded were now the well-dressed people and the old man, the donkey, and the burning.

With half-burned hair and charred clothes the girl lay on a simple cot, while the hard-eyed, crooked-nosed man stood at the door, his previously chin-length black hair shriveled and his clothes smoking. He nodded curtly once, and a woman approached the girl with a salve and a potion.

The girl, black-robed, sat at a small table in a room full of many other young women and men. A school, Esyld knew, for she had gone to school, too, before her father had told her that if she wanted food from now on, she would start earning it. A yellow-robed older man stood before the girl and the rest. "Master's chosen ones," he was saying, and the girl wrote it in a book, "not reprobates and witches, but Mierenthia's salt, intellectual elite, those with the hardest path and the worthiest." "The worthiest," the girl wrote in her book, and then again. And then "the best," her eyes glowing with an almost stake-like flame, and then "my place."

"My place," Esyld murmured, in the present, to herself.

The girl had just made a spell more skillful than those of the rest, but when she went to her room, she found her newest book of spells violently shredded. The girl cried, angry at some black-robed young woman and a black-robed young man, but when she drank a potion the anger faded. She now felt little towards the woman and naught towards the man, for the potion was to make the mind sleepy and slow, and to make men ignore women and women ignore men in thoughts both vile and pleasant.

Next time the girl deliberately made a spell less skilled, hoping that the other young Bers would like her better.

She said nothing the first time she went to the firewells and her partner broke a common man's arm at a whim. She drank her potion and wrote "Ber novices all togethera"the best" in her little notebook that night, but after a few more times at the wells, despite the potion, her hand would tremble and the ink would not obey her.

A yellow-robed woman teacher hit the girl's fingers with a metal rod when she tried a slight modification to a spell; her cla.s.smates laughed when a man teacher punished her with two days without light because she questioned a truth he was teaching. One evening she poured the nightly potion away and cried till daybreak, then realized what she had done and in fear managed to weave her own, new spell, to conceal the potion's remains, and to present herself to others as not-so-sad, not-interested-in-men, not-so-angry.

At a firewell, a yellow-haired girl, slightly older, openly defied a black-robed Ber boy, willing to fight or throw her life away rather than kneel to one she did not acknowledge as her better. The Ber girl watched the boy prepare for the killing blow, then suddenly what had been breaking inside her fully broke. She is like I was, the Ber girl thought. She is like I should be.

She would have stopped the boy then, had not water stopped him firsta"had not the yellow-haired witch stopped him with her own Magic. That night, the Ber girl sought out the Ber boy and secretly added her nightly potion to his. "Master willed it that you should stumble before you could kill," she said. "I do not know why he spared her, but the Master's ways are unfathomable," she lied to him. "We do not go back for those the Master has spared himself. You shall not seek revenge against that girl." I will save her.

The Ber girl was crying silently now, hunched on Esyld's three-legged stool, her head propped on her elbows over the crate that served Esyld as a table. Her pretty hair was wiping dirt that Esyld was nowadays too blind and tired to fight, her whole body trembling. Something flickered in Esyld's old, hardened heart, something made her feet cross the distance. Never had another witch crossed the threshold of the tumbledown shack, never had another girl brought such a sharp memory of the lonely, frightened, shunned girl who had once called the wind to her.

Awkwardly, Esyld stroked the girl's cheek.

"Why have you come?" she asked one more time, and silently, the girl reached into her robe and brought a stone out. It was a small stone, jagged and gray, plain to the eyes but warm in Esyld's palm, and heavy. In a moment it slashed the window-cloth open as she thrust it away, splashing in the mud outside while she made the wheel sign around the room three times, shivering.

Wheel from the Wind Moon to blow the Bessove far away from this place; wheel from the Rain Moon to caress and appease them; wheel from the Sun to burn mischief already laid. And a fourth wheel, she knew but never shapeda"wheel from Mierenthia's soil, life and stone to ask the Bessove for help with their fierce, heartrending wisdom.

"Cursed old witch, why did you do that!" The girl jumped from the stool, and Esyld found herself gripping her wrist with surprising new strength, shoving her back before she could make another movement. Then Esyld screamed with a voice that, whenever heard, made her slum wretches feel chilled in their chests. Then she sagged.

"There, they are gone now," she whispered in a voice so low that it was almost a thought. "They have gone far, for they know they are not welcome."

"Who has gone where?" the fierce young woman hissed. "This is why I came, witch, so that you can tell me about them! About whatever it is that made me see things after touching that stone you just discarded."

Esyld felt weary, and light in the head; she felt too weak to confront a heedless girl who thought she knew Magic.

"Bessove, the Powers That Be," she quietly said, "them who are of Mierenthia herself, never to be welcomed, never to be worshiped, never to be angered. They'd been sleeping for long, my grandpap told me, long ago. They'd faded after the Master'd come to rule, his grandmam'd told him, as her own grandparents'd told her the old story. In the tall mountains of the West they slept, and east in the Mountains of Balkaene Province beyond the Blessedber Pa.s.s, where they'd been strongest. He was reckless, Grandpap, and znahara"a witch healera"as well, so he tried to wake one. He then hid in Mierber, the strong main city of the Bers, from the mor he thought he might have stirred. But thena""

Esyld snickered as she waved towards the shack's peeling walls. "But then he had to hide here, for the Ber city was safe from Bessove, but znahari were unwelcome. So, did you bring your stone from the western mountains or Balkaene, little Ber girl? Why such a stone from you? They're waking, both the mountains and those who sleep inside, while day by day Ber fire in Mierber is dying. Where are you in this?"

"I wish that I knew." The girl walked to the window, a silent black shadow in the room's gloom. Esyld's room was always gloomy, even at midday. The girl stared outside, then suddenly turned and Esyld's cold stove erupted with tall, crackling flames, light and warmth chasing the gloom and shadows. Flames. Now Esyld had seen them with her human eyes. They were burning on the metal of the stove, and not inside.

"Esyld."

Esyld jumped at that, for suddenly the name seemed unnatural. In a way it was; she had not heard it for many years. She was not Esyld to the world. Witch. Seer. Aberrant. Benefactor. Evil.

"Esyld, I took the stone from a murder-accused boy this morning, just before I came to you. I think he came from Balkaene." The girl glanced at the stove, and the flames reached their shiny orange fingers out towards the ceiling. Esyld shivered. The boy. The boy panting over the heavy wheelbarrow he was pushing from the stone quarry and up the hill, this day like many days before that. The boy's frail, tired mother waiting at the threshold with her eyes dry and her face grim. The boy's mother was leaving him ...

"I let him go, Esyld. I let him go moments before the man who once tried to burn me would have arrived at the Militia station, seen the stone, and burned him, too. So where does that put me, Esyld? Recently, I seem to be sparing the stake flames to reprobates, but"a"she tossed her head and the stove flames leaped towards Esyld, swirling to avoid her just a split moment before they would have hita""but my fire is not dying."

The fire danced throughout the room, on dirt and metal, somehow sparing anything that burning could destroy.

"But it is not only fire that is in me, Esyld. I saw Bessove, once, before I burned. I liked them. And five days ago, at the firewell with Arion and that water witch, my eyes seemed to open for the first time in a long time, and I saw something else, too." She raised her hand, and the flames slowly flickered and faded. The stove, however, emitted warmth. There was fire inside it now.

"There are things flying in the sky high above Mierber, Esyld, things that do not belong in the sky. They resemble birds but are not. They are not Bessove, either. I want to know what they are, Esyld. And I want to know about Bessove, which, as you undoubtedly know, do not exist." She strode towards Esyld, grabbed her hands, and bore her eyes into hers. "Will you teach me, Esyld? I once ran away from being lady, I can run away from being a Ber as well. My fire is my own. Please. I can be a witch."

Esyld laughed. Softly at first, then louder, and louder, until her whole body shook with laughter and her chest ached, while the girl watched her in silence, her eyes wide and hurt.

"So you can be a witch, can't you? You like that shack so much? What is it that you like? The filth, the broken old bed? The previous owner's blood on the wall that cannot be fully washed? The muddy water that you need to cross half the slum to get, through streets full of c.r.a.p, disease, empty-eyed women, half-naked brats and half-mad men? The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who at fifth drink may decide that a young witch is best on her back with her legs spread?"

The girl's now narrowed eyes could have burned through Esyld and the wall behind her, without flame.

"I can deal with these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds well enough."

Esyld sighed. "You probably can, fire girl. I could, myself. None succeeded the first time with me, and none was left with what he needed for a second. But can you bear to be alone ..."

"I need no man!" the girl screamed.

"But do you need no one, no human at all, stupid wench!" Esyld screamed back. "Do you need the whole accursed world using you when they can, but never being there for you! How will you like screaming at night, wasting in fever, drenched in sweat, surviving the coughing sickness by yourselfa"for a witch's sickness is both well-deserved and will kill all who dare help? How will you like cringing in fear at every single rumor of Mentors and Bers? Have you ever feared Mentors, my lady? I have. Or have you ever spent the night listening to a stomach that growls and cries in pain, pretending that it is not yours, my lady? Have you!? And don't you dare cry!

"You want to learn about Bessove, you say. You want to learn about flying things. Well, my lady, leave the Bessove and flying things alone! The Powers That Be are not for the likes of you and me! I don't know about Bessove, my lady! I don't want to know! What I wanted to know, I knowa"how to protect myself, and the spells to ask the Sun and the moons for a little help. You Bers, with your book-Magic, pipes, and your Factories, you have angered the Bessove, and what I want to know now is how to live through it, not how to anger them more! Go back to your tower, little fire girl. Go back to where they will feed you and hide you behind cursed Ber walls. You may be misunderstood there. Here, you will be prosecuted and alone. Go back!"

Esyld coughed, her voice abruptly failing. She was weary, her voice spent. How long had it been since she had last lost control with someone? Long ago. Too long ...

"Go back to your tower," she barely whispered. "I have seen them cominga"Bessove, and them humans who fly. Go beyond the walls."

Esyld's eyes were as usual dry, but she still felt a tear fall on her hand, and suddenly the girl's arms encircled her and pressed her to the girl's chest. The girl was crying for her, Esyld suddenly knew. Had anyone but Grandpap ever done that? Esyld put her arms around the girl's waist, and for the first time in many years, she cried, too.

Merley, the girl, asked Esyld to see her future before she went away. But when raging fire, armies, sorrow, flying wagons and heavy wagons that trampled the streets and land flashed before her sight, Esyld jerked her head anda"for the first time in her lifea"refused to see.

But she could not refuse to tell what she had seen.

"Thou can't escape the pictures," she barely whispered to the girl, for she could not omit these words, either. It mattered not that this time Esyld did not want them to be the truth. Truth just was, and must be told. She always told it to those who came to her, even though it was rarely the truth that they wanteda"and then they blamed her when the truth came to be, as if it were she who had made it.

"You can't escape flames if they come for you, either, can you? That is what old people say. But I have." The girl laughed. "What are pictures, after all? Bers say that there are some paths you should walk and some that you should not. But if you did walk those paths, would the pictures perhaps not change? Do not worry for me, Esyld. And, I will not forget you. Some day you will need someone to care for you. I may come back for you then."

"Go," Esyld whispered, "Go!" before she would have broken down and asked the girl to stay.

Could you change the pictures? Could the girl? The pictures of the future were, after all, pictures, possible truth, not truth come to be. Could the truth Esyld saw be changed, or a new truth invented? Esyld had wondered about that long ago, but then she wondered less and less as the years piled their weight on her. "Paths," the girl had said. Would the truths that Esyld told her wretches come to be only if the wretches continued on the same old paths they trod?

Paths of broken shoes, tsarvuli, or ugly, bare feet. Master knew they were not easy paths to escapea"and a n.o.ble Ber girl could never understand! Who was she to come and poke into an old witch's wounds! Who was she to make her cry and wonder, when crying was dangerous and wondering even more so?

Was it you who chose the path, or did the path chose you?

Esyld sighed, her gnarled hands on a stove warm for the first time in a long time. She listened to Merley's steps outside, and wondered.

Chapter 6: Fireheart.