Jo Clayton: Fire in the Sky

Maybe a cutter might…

The tree shuddered as a deep, powerful HUM shook the air around her. The vibration was bearable at first, then the intensity increased as the sound grew louder. The Eolt were singing. Thousands and thousands of Eolt were singing a single note, the sound focused somehow on the Kushayt, battering at the stone walls, vibrating cracks into them.

The HUM shaking her so badly she could barely control her hands, her eyes blurring, her body shivering with it, she managed to scramble from the tree and stumble blindly.

She broke from the wooded strip into an open, cultivated area, nearly impaling herself on a torn-up wire fence and falling on her face into some kind of tuber plant.

When she got to her feet, she found herself standing in the middle of a group of silent Keteng and Fior, drowning in a pool of hostility. A stocky gray-haired Fior woman stepped forward, a middle-aged Denchok just behind her.

“Who are you?” The Fior had to shout to break through the increasing volume of the HUM.

“I am Shadith, a Harper,” she shouted back. “I came with the Eolt from Chuta Meredel.”

“Ah!”

As the chill around her began to bleed off, the young Fior she’d seen before pushed past the woman. “Did Danor reach the Vale?”

“Oh yes. He rode with me and Ard Maorgan to a Klobach of the Meruu. It was his grief that convinced them.” She waved at the throng of Eolt.

“Ahhhhhh.”

The SOUND built and built, then broke off suddenly. Wave on wave the Eolt dived at the Kushayt.

And died. Fire in the sky.

Despite the fire, some Eolt reached the walls. Pairs of them seized Chave guards and carried them high. And let them fall to crack open on the earth. Those Chave that survived this were taken up again, carried out over the Bakhul Sea and dropped to drown there.

Wave on wave, the Eolt dived and died.

One by one the Chave guards died.

Until the walls and watchtowers were free of them, the few left retreating into the buildings where the Eolt couldn’t reach them.

And the fire died from the sky.

The small army of Fior and Keteng waiting in the tuber field shouted their triumph, swarmed through the woods and over the walls. They died also as they pried the last of the Chave from their holes, one, two, six or seven at a time, but by sundown there were no more Chave alive on Bйluchad.

“… so the attack is over now, the Kushayt cleaned out.”

Marrin was sitting in the wrack of branches and leaves at the base of the tree where the flikit was still balanced precariously overhead, talking into the com. He looked up when he saw Shadith coming through the trees, nodded somberly and continued with his report. “How many dead? Maybe in the thousands for the Eolt, as to the others…”

Shadith said, “Fifty-nine.”

“Shadow says fifty-nine Keteng and Fior dead from the cleanup.”

Shadith dug into the branches and lifted the harp-case she’d hidden there, slung the strap over her shoulder. Then stopped, appalled at what she heard coming over the com.

“… too bad. All those deaths really weren’t necessary.”

Marrin’s face paled. “What! What do you mean, Goлs Koraka?”

Shadith came to kneel beside him, her hand on his shoulder.

The small voice spoke again, calm and musing in a way that brought the hairs up on her spine. She closed her fingers tighter, felt Marrin wince, took her hand away.

“I tried to get hold of you, but I couldn’t get an answer. We got a call here about an hour and a half ago. From the Chave docking station. It was the Highborn Genree ni Jilet in a panic. The docking station’s kephalos was going insane, the argrav was turning lethal, they didn’t know when or where it would dip to nothing or max out on them, crushing whoever happened to be standing in the wrong place. And the life support systems were shutting down. He wanted us to come get him and the others.” The Goлs’s voice vibrated with malicious glee. “He didn’t want to tell me why all this was happening, but I wasn’t about to put my people in harm’s way so he had to convince me it wasn’t a trap.” He started talking faster, the words pouring out of him as he relished the telling of his enemy’s humiliation.

“The Ykkuval made a pet out of one of the locals, one of those harp players like the one we dealt with. Thought he was tame and harmless. Well, the harmless pet picked the moment when the Ykkuval was linked to the kephalos to shove a poison dart in his neck and toss some sort of spores to contaminate the circuits. Even the fuel cells were corrupted. Everything went blam. The techs cleaned the kephalos up and got it running again, Genree took over and had the Security chief shot for negligence. Then things started breaking down again, so he and the other highborn took off to the Docking Station where they could be comfortable, forgetting, I suppose, if they ever knew it, that it was Chave policy to keep the station slaved to the downside kephalos.

“They’re down here now, not liking it much, but alive. All the locals had to do was starve the Chave out, they wouldn’t last long with no power and not much food. It’s too bad we missed connections. You’re hard on flikits, Aide.” He was almost giggling now, he was enjoying this so much. “I’ll send another for you and the Harper. I hope you don’t mind if I insist my pilot do the flying.”

In the blaze from Bйluchad’s starfield the ceremony for the dead began.

Marrin sat on the crumbling Kushayt wall with a Ridaar remote flaking the scene, while Shadith moved into the middle of the white ceramic landing pad, stood with head back, her harp at her feet, the case transformed, her sleeves ripped off, and her arms held out from her body.

Singing in muted mode the Eolt swarmed overhead, dipping to brush her with their speaking tentacles, sending shudders of pain/joy through her body at the touch, sharing with her infinitesimal bits of Eolt energy.

She settled herself on the transformed case, took up the harp and touched the strings, searching for the song that would gather the grief and say it for all of them. There were no Ards here, bonded in sioll; she was all they had.

This great death by fire became for her the death of her homeworld which was also a death by fire when Shayalin’s sun went nova. It was real for her for the first time in the twenty millennia since she’d got word her home was gone. Her eyes filled with tears and she wept, grief for Shayalin mingled with grief for the death of the Eolt. For them and for herself, she played the Death Song the Weavers of Shayalin made for their own.

The Eolt sang, blending their great voices around her small one.

The Fior and Keteng knelt beside the bundles of their dead and listened to the Requiem.

And Marrin recorded it, his face grim with anger, grief and regret.

Shadith stood on the beach watching the starlit shapes of the Eolt drifting away, north south east west riding the winds to the places they’d come from. She started at a touch on her shoulder, looked around. Marrin.

“It’s time to go,” he said. “The flikit’s here.”

Harpcase on the platform beside her, Shadith stood looking out over the mirrored city, watching wearily the glory that was sunset on Helvetia. Light in crimson and gold ran like water along the slippery surfaces, flickered erratically off shattered diamante walls, was thrown in fire spears mirror to mirror, mirror on mirror on the walls of the costliest city in known space, mirror mirror everywhere, spears of gold, spears of blood, going here, going there as the mirrors changed their inclination. Gradually muting as the sky turned purple then darkened further to indigo.