Peter Dickinson - Tears of the Salamander

“It’s more than I can manage,” he said, and scrambled off the block, but before he could start back across the yard for the spare bucket and the ladle Toni grunted and stopped him, laying his hand on Alfredo’s arm and tapping himself on the chest. He seemed utterly confident.

“All right,” said Alfredo, taking the bridle. “But watch out. The bucket’s going to be hot. You’ll need a bit of sacking or something.”

Gingerly Toni tested the bucket, frowned slightly and climbed the block. He tested the handle again, this time more firmly, positioned himself, grasped the handle and with a single flowing movement swung it across into the cradle ring. He rose, blowing on his palms, and grinned at Alfredo. Yes, the bucket was hot, but nothing like as hot as Alfredo, or Toni himself, apparently, had expected.

Nothing like as hot as the other one either, it turned out. That was now beaming out heat like the open door of an oven. They used the carrying pole to take it across to the block.

“We can’t pour it in,” said Alfredo. “It would be far too dangerous. I’ll go and get the ladle. You see if you can find a way of getting the lid off. Don’t burn yourself. It must be something the salamander’s doing, keeping the other one cool. It did it in the furnace too.”

He raced off, checking on his way through the kitchen how much time had gone. More than he’d thought. In twenty minutes Mass would be over. As soon as Uncle Giorgio stepped out of the church he’d know that something was happening up on the mountain, and the closer he came to home the more he would feel it and the faster he’d hurry.

It was warm now in the furnace room. More than warm. The furnace was beaming out heat, much like the bucket in the yard. Alfredo snatched up the ladle and raced back. He found Toni crouched over the bucket, his face streaming with sweat while he levered at the clasp with a hoof pick and a screwdriver. Alfredo took the lead mule’s bridle again and watched Toni anxiously, getting his breath back. If Toni didn’t succeed in the next few minutes they’d have to give up, and the salamander must take its chance with what was already in the bucket. …

There was a sudden click. Toni rose and backed away, gasping. He unfastened the clasps on the bucket in the cradle with his bare hands and then used a leather apron he’d found to lift the lid of the other bucket clear. The salamander was again making its peeping complaint, but stopped as Toni ladled the hot liquid in for it, then tipped in what was left in the other bucket and closed and clasped the lid of the one in the cradle. He then calmly began to fold the apron, as if they had all the time in the world.

“We’re in a hurry now,” said Alfredo. “He’ll be coming out of the church in ten minutes. We’ve got to get as far up the mountain as we can before he reaches the top of the wood.”

Alfredo nodded, but finished folding the apron and tucked it into the harness. With the same assurance he gestured to Alfredo to switch to the rear mule. The change in him was astonishing. He now seemed to understand everything that was said to him, and all that was happening, and why, and to be fully aware of the urgency, but at the same time to be completely untroubled, without any of Alfredo’s twanging tensions and anxieties. Nor was there any doubt who was in command. Now, for a while, the mountain had two real Masters, Toni and Uncle Giorgio, and the coming contest would be between them, with Alfredo merely helping Toni as best he could. He accepted the change with relief.

They untied the halters and started up the hill. Uncle Giorgio’s mules were well mannered, as mules go, and used to the mountain, but the cradle was an awkward burden on the steep and twisting track, so they toiled slowly up through the wood, Alfredo with all his inner senses tense for the moment when he would first feel the outburst of Uncle Giorgio’s fury on discovering how he had been betrayed. That would be no merely human rage, he was certain. It would be the rage of the Master, an eruption like that of the mountain. Even here, far up the slope, he was sure to sense it.

By the time they reached the top of the wood he was almost exhausted. Last evening’s loss of food was taking its toll. What he had eaten since wasn’t enough to replace it. His calves and thighs seemed emptied of muscle, barely able to heave him another step upward. His lungs gasped uselessly at the dry, hot air. In the trees’ last shade they halted briefly to drink from the water bottles and cram food into their pockets.

“He must be almost at the house by now,” said Alfredo.

Toni nodded and turned to gaze at the slope above them. He shook his head and beckoned Alfredo forward, then pointed up the slope and offered him the bridle of the lead mule, spreading his hands in a gesture of bafflement. His meaning was obvious. Not enough people climbed the mountain to leave a clear continuous track on the stony surface, and he had never done so.

Alfredo had, though only once. He studied the slope and spotted a jut of rock a few hundred paces farther up. That was the crag he had noticed when he and Uncle Giorgio had been making their way down from the crater, because it felt like one of the places where some of the powers of the mountain seemed to run close to the surface and might be summoned forth and used. He pulled his hat from behind his back and fitted it onto his head, then led the way on into the full weight of the sun.

Hardly had they started to climb again when the explosion came. It swept up through the still, hot noon with the onset of a sudden squall. The air seemed to crackle with it. The mountain quivered at its touch. Alfredo staggered. Toni, behind him, cried aloud. Both of them had felt it, and knew what it meant. Uncle Giorgio had reached the furnace chamber and seen the lock melted and the salamander gone. Now it was a question of how fast he could follow. Alfredo attempted to quicken his pace but his legs refused to respond. He huddled into himself, contracted his whole being into the effort to drive himself on, his eyes intent on the next step ahead, only glancing up now and then to check how far it still was to the landmark crag.

They weren’t going to make it, nothing like. His muscles had nothing left to give. His whole body seemed to be on fire with the effort. The world was on fire, a roaring, red haze. There were voices in the roaring, one voice deeper, almost, than sound itself. The voice of the mountain, calling him. He surrendered himself to the voice, to the fire, to the mountain, letting it flood his body with its power, drive his limbs on and up in paces that were suddenly light and easy, like the dance of flames.

He looked up. The whole mountainside was pulsing with flame, flame from the spirit world, the world of the Angels of Fire, invisible except to eyes that could see through the sense of fire. Beside him the mule plodded on unnoticing, seeing only the everyday mountainside. Alfredo saw it rippling with the colors of sunset, like a monstrous ember, and the crag he was aiming for not as a darker jut of rock, but as a white-hot focus of the mountain’s power, bright as the sun-stuff in the salamander’s furnace.

The crag came closer and closer, but all the time, from behind him, he could sense the onrush of the Master’s rage, rapidly gaining on them, sweeping up the hill, faster than any human, any mule or horse, could climb. Just as they reached the crag Toni gave a shout of warning. Alfredo switched hands on the bridle, turned and looked back. The fire vision cleared from his eyes. For a moment there was nothing to be seen, and then the Master burst out from among the trees.

He came in the form of a compact rolling cloud, denser and darker than the thickest smoke and full of orange lightnings. Alfredo’s stomach shrank inside him. How could he ever have imagined he could face this thing ? And he was nowhere near where he had wanted to be, high up the slope, close to the heart of the mountain and its inmost fires, before the struggle began. But his only hope was still to stick to his plan. The crag was at least a place from which some of the powers of the mountain could be drawn. Uncle Giorgio had no such advantage. He let go of the bridle, turned aside, and put his back to the rock. The mountain spoke to him through it.