Robin McKinley - Fire - Tales of Elemental Spirits

ʺDespite all this, Vered was a good man, just in his dealings. His aim had not been power or wealth but to understand the deepest causes of things, and he believed I would be a doorway to such knowledge. But as soon as he learnt more of my nature he realised the wrongfulness of what he had done and set me free, and furthermore tried to persuade the rest to do the same, but the corruption of power had already done its work on them and they refused. Vered, with my help, then set about mastering them one by one, but they combined against us and destroyed him.

ʺI fled into my other mode of being, and conferred with the rest of the salamanders. I was determined to rescue my friends. The others were willing to help me, but seeing what had happened to me and my friends, they were not prepared to risk entering the material world while there were magicians there of such power. We ourselves have considerable powers in our other mode of being. I can move easily enough across material time and enter where I will, but once within it, I am bound by it until I choose to leave it, and it would take all my strength to move even a small material object with me into another time and to keep it there for a little while before it was snatched back.

ʺI needed to act through someone of great natural powers but uncorrupted by them. I knew of only one, Vered himself. But even with my help, working in his own time, he had been impotent against the combined powers of the other twenty-seven magicians of Haballun. So I persuaded the salamanders to transfer him out of his time to the present age, when the magicians had become so corrupted by their powers that they could no longer trust each other enough to cooperate. They agreed to do it, and said it was possible if we all worked together, but even then we would be unable to hold him here for more than a morning.

ʺI re-entered Vered’s time on the day before he would be destroyed, when he could already foresee his failure, and told him what I planned. Though it would all happen long after he was dead, he was eager to undo the harm that he had done.

ʺI then searched a little back from this time and found a newborn child who had no ties to any other person. This was you. Your mother was a girl of the hill people. She became pregnant without her brothers’ permission. They killed her lover, but not her, since she was their sister and their customs forbade it. But they would not send for help when she gave birth, and she died. You lived, so they carried you into the desert and left you for the wild animals. Instead I caused a hunter to find you and carry you to Haballun to be raised as a slave.

ʺWhen the time came, I took the form of an artificial salamander and caused a woman who dealt in magical objects to buy me from a street vendor, and then to choose you. This was to keep you safely hidden, and ready for our purpose. The rest you have seen for yourself. Now you are Tib again, with your human life to live. The blessing of the salamanders is on you.ʺ

The salamander withdrew its tongue and crawled swiftly down Tib’s body and across the rocks. It paused on the rim of the crevasse and turned its head. For the last time he looked into the depths of those purple eyes, and then it crawled on down out of sight. With another desert-shuddering groan the crevasse closed.

Now that he had his natural body back, Tib could feel the heat of the rising sun. As he looked around for shade, a glint caught his eye. He went to look and found a golden nugget, still too hot to touch after having been squeezed up, molten, from the central fires between the lips of the crevasse as it closed. As he waited for it to cool, he saw another a little further on, and another beyond it. He walked along the line of the closed crack, picking the nuggets up as he went, until the trail ran out. Near that point stood a huge leaning rock, forming a kind of open-sided cave and casting the shade he needed. There were strange painted patterns on its under-surface, and a rough stone hearth to one side.

Tib settled down and waited. His position was apparently desperate, a naked man with nothing to his name but a double handful of useless gold, and nothing to give him hope but an abandoned hearth and some old painted patterns. But he was filled with the same confident calm that he had felt after the magician had left him in the dark of the cellar, waiting for whatever had been going to happen next. There was something still to come. The gold was a sign to him, a reward from the salamanders for allowing himself to be used as he had, and that meant he would live to spend it; while the hearth and the paintings meant that people came to this place, and would come again.

Sure enough, they arrived well before the sun was overhead, a dozen adults, very dark skinned, wearing nothing but little leather aprons patterned with blue and red beads, and a few naked children. The men carried flint-headed spears and short bows, and the women yellow gourds slung in nets. Silent as ghosts, they stole along the floor of the canyon in single file. The line halted in front of the rock. They turned towards him, stared for a moment and then with a low, sighing moan, knelt and touched their foreheads to the ground.

One grey-haired man came crawling forward while the others remained kneeling. Tib rose and went to meet him. The man looked up, imploring, from his crouch, but Tib took him by the wrists and pulled him upright. The man raised a shaking hand palm forward. Smiling, Tib placed his own palm against it. The man gave a great shout, stepped back, flung up his arms in a gesture of exultation and shouted again, and the rest came crowding round, whooping and laughing.

Tib stood smiling in the middle of the melee until they had shouted themselves hoarse and drew apart. A woman offered him a gourd of water, pleasantly flavoured with some kind of aromatic bark. He thanked her and stood aside, watching them prepare a meal, gathering fuel, kindling a spark from a fire-bow, opening gourds and satchels, cutting the meat of two small animals into strips with a flint knife, chattering and laughing, even the smallest children knowing their tasks.

He understood what was happening. He had heard of these desert people, older, far older, than Haballun itself. The hunter who had first found him must have been of their kind. This was one of their sacred places—the paintings showed that. They had heard the double groan of the crevasse as it opened and closed, so had come to ask the desert spirits what it meant, and had found him waiting for them. That was enough. He was sacred. They had seen his little pile of gold and left it alone—it was sacred too. They would feed him and clothe him and guide him to the edge of the desert.

And then what? Slaves do not own anything, let alone nuggets of gold. A thought struck him. He reached behind his shoulder to the place where the salamander had rested just before it had talked to him. His fingers touched not the ridged scars of the slave symbol that he had felt so often before, but smooth skin. The slave-brand had gone. He was free. He was also rich. He could go anywhere and do anything he chose. He realised that he had already chosen.

He would go back to Haballun and find Aunt Ellila and help her run her stall. Objects connected to high magic might have lost their powers, but they had been only a minor part of Aunt Ellila’s trade, and there’d still be a good living to be had from the rest for the two of them. Or rather, for the three.

He was wondering what Zorya would turn out to be like when the grey-haired old hunter came and bowed before him and took him by the hand and led him to be the guest of honour at their feast.

FIRST FLIGHT

ROBIN McKINLEY

My parents had it planned that I’d be a wizard. Eldest son dragonrider, second son spiritspeaker, third son wizard, you know? My dad was a carpenter, but he was a fourth son. I think that was part of the problem, he felt he had something to prove, even though his next-older brother wasn’t a wizard but a merchant. A wealthy merchant, so everyone thought, oh, how clever of him, since most wizards are poor. And my mum made candles, but then she was a daughter, and daughters get to choose what they want to do. (There aren’t very many women dragonriders, spiritspeakers, or wizards. There are some, but not many.)