Forever the Road (A Rucksack Universe Fantasy Novel) (43 page)

“No,” Rucksack replied. “They’re dead because o’ the Smiling Fire.”

“We should have prevented it!”

“I don’t think we could have. We still don’t even know how he became strong enough to escape.”

“We were helpless then,” Jade said. “We’re helpless now. For nearly a month we’ve been running around this city, trying to help people, but all we do now is find charred bones and burned buildings. Agamuskara is dead, Rucksack. So is everyone in it. The mirror eclipse is three days away, and the Smiling Fire has the dia ubh. We might as well be walking corpses.”

Despair hung between them like a body in a noose. “I can’t do this anymore,” Jade said, looking at the photo again. “Whatever keeps you going, I don’t have it. It’s not in me.”
The eyes in the photo see only the long future in front of them, the possibilities and choices,
she thought
. But all that had waited for them was a fiery death.

Rucksack’s smile was soft as he took her hand. “Now you look at me, Jade Aga—”

“Don’t.” She looked away from him. “That’s not who I am anymore.”

“You are who you are,” Rucksack said. “But suit yourself. Look at me, Jade.”

“We should have run away,” she said, “like Jay did.”

“But we didn’t,” Rucksack replied. “Because we stayed, we have saved hundreds, if not thousands. The people we saved have saved others. The Smiling Fire has decimated the city. He has destroyed the buildings and carts as much as he has killled the people and animals. Everything is gone. Oh, to be sure. We mourn every death. We mourn every destruction. And we add it to a big feckin bill. He will pay for all he’s done. Those he murdered will be avenged. I don’t know the how or the path anymore than you do, but I tell you true, Jade o’ herself, the Smiling Fire will fall. While we still breathe we will take that bastard down and help all we can along the way.”

Jade met his gaze. “That’s more like it,” Rucksack said. “No matter how much he’s burned—and by now it’s safe to say he’s burned damn near the entire city—as long as we live, we are not helpless. Overpowered and outmatched, completely. Likely to fail, without a doubt. But against all odds, we are also alive. Life is opportunity. As long as we’re alive, we have a chance.”

Rucksack squeezed her hand. Courage and hope spread through Jade with gentle warmth. “Just because you give me a dose of your courage doesn’t mean it will last long,” she said.

“Do you feel braver?”

Jade nodded.

“I gave you nothing you didn’t already have,” Rucksack said. “I just got the other stuff out o’ the way.” He nodded at the photo and the card. “Keep these. Remember those people. Remember what was, because it can be brought back. Cities can be rebuilt. People can be reborn, in this life, in another. As long as life lives, he’s going to fall.”

Jade put the photo and card in her pocket. “We should keep going,” she said, continuing down the street toward where the alley used to be.

As they walked, Jade thought back over the last few weeks. She had woken up in Rucksack’s flat, bruised and scraped up but alive and healing quickly, to Rucksack’s surprise.

At least my Jade healing hadn’t left me yet,
she thought.

The day she woke she had ignored his protests, gotten out of bed, and gone out into the city with him. What tears she had, she had left sputtering on hot rubble. She’d been unconscious for three days. While she was asleep, the city, her city, had been little but panic, fire, death—and Rucksack.

He didn’t say a word about it. But as they found survivors, tended the wounded, and helped people leave the city, every person stared at Rucksack with awe and gratitude.

The stories came to Jade from person after person. The smiling fires were coming, they would say. There was nowhere to run. Then he was there. Suddenly, somehow, we were safe before the flames caught.

Or, our son and daughter were trapped inside. The building started to collapse. Then he appeared, rushed inside, and came out with them, alive.

Or, as he walked through the city, all the animals—down to the last dog and cow—followed him through the rubbled streets until they ran free across the fields and plains to the north.

Or, he stands on the hill and watches the city. His tears make the grass grow. When the cries rise up with the flames from Agamuskara, he comes as if flying. The air roars like a tiger. The flames flee as if the ocean had come for them.

Rucksack. Bumbling, stout-swilling Rucksack.
There’s more to you than I’ll probably ever know,
Jade thought.
Turns out that when there’s a crisis, though, you turn into steel. You’re loud, evasive, and annoying, but you’re a bloody hero.

And Ruckack and Jade forgave one another. The arguments and anger from when Jay had left, they let them go. There were more important problems to deal with.

They stopped for a moment. As Rucksack looked around, he seemed to be listening, seeing, and feeling much farther out than what he could perceive with his physical senses.

“It’s as I thought,” he said. “The Smiling Fire is on the far outskirts of the city. He’s probably got another old whiff of Jay from when he carried the dia ubh. That’ll buy us the time we’ve been wanting.” He smiled at her, as if they were out for a pleasant morning walk, then started off again.

He’s always like that now,
she thought.
Not once have I seen him despair. How does he do it? These last few weeks, he’s pulled me along with him, never the other way around. He’s always found a reason to smile. He’s always found a way to make me laugh. He’s kept me strong. I just leech off him.

Rucksack looked at her and asked, “Did I ever tell you why I don’t drink anything but stout?”

The question surprised her.

“Other than to keep people like me from influencing you?” Jade replied. “I always figured you just really liked it. And no beer tastes better than free beer, after all.”

“Aye, that helps. Some have joked that if you cut me, I’d bleed black. But the main reason is despair.”

“Other drinks make you despair?”

“Hard liquor affects me differently from other people. I lose my will. I lose my hope. A shot will make me seem like I’ve drunk half a bottle. A bottle would…” Rucksack shook his head. “Let’s just say there are things in this world that would be all the better off had I never touched a bottle. It was a hard lesson learned.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“After the Smiling Fire destroyed the Everest Base Camp, I woke on the other side o’ the street from the pub, groggy and unscathed but for a scratch on my arm. I couldn’t find you. I searched for hours, Jade. I shifted hot rubble that would’ve burned the flesh off a regular man, trying to find you. But the only thing I could find was a damn bottle o’ single-malt scotch that had somehow survived the explosion.”

“Why haven’t you ever mentioned this?” Jade said. “What happened when you drank it?”

“I stood awhile, holding that bottle, smelling the sharp whisky inside.” A hunger shone in Rucksack’s eyes. “I wanted to down it, world be damned. That damn Smiling Fire was going to have his way after all. He had the dia ubh, the only person who could stop him was gone, and you were likely dead. There was no hope in me. When there’s no hope inside, you might as well fill the void with any alcohol that comes to hand—the stronger the better. I tilted my head back and lifted that bottle to my lips, ready to upend it down my throat. Maybe this time I’d be able to drown myself.”

She could picture him standing there, the fires crackling around him, smoke rising from the rubble of the pub and hostel, bottle raised. A battle raging in his soul.

“Maybe I’d finally learned my lesson, Jade,” Rucksack said. “I took that bottle and poured some o’ the scotch on my scratch. When I looked up, I saw a hand. There you were, behind and under some rubble, not moving, but when I got to you I could tell you were breathing. If I’d taken a drink, I wouldn’t have seen you, and who knows what would’ve happened.”

“I can say you definitely have my gratitude.”

“No, Jade,” Rucksack replied. “You have mine. Seeing you alive filled me with new hope. Filled me with strength and power. It was the closest I’d felt to my own self in a long, long time. I don’t despair, I won’t despair anymore, because o’ you. If you think I’m giving you strength or hope, I’m not. I’m just paying you back.”

“Thank you,” Jade said. Inside, hope welled up. A new strength bloomed. “If you can do that, maybe I can too.”

They smiled, passing by a pile of rubble that was almost a small hill. Their smiles quickly faded.

Rucksack said, “Isn’t that—”

“Yes,” Jade replied. “I’d know that paint anywhere.”

The red door’s color was tinged black with soot. Out of all the walls and doors of the alley, only this remained intact and standing. Even the building that had surrounded it, and Asha and Jigme’s room behind it, was gone.

“Jade,” Rucksack said softly, “can you still do that listening thing your lot do?”

“Technically speaking, all my Jade abilities should be gone by now.”

“I’m willing to test the actual beyond the technical,” Rucksack replied. “Maybe this can tell us some o’ what we don’t know.”

“I’ll try, but no promises.” As if she were about to knock, Jade stepped close to the door and laid her hand on the wood. “It’s cold,” she said. “All these fires. How can the door be cold?”

Rucksack stood next to her and touched the door as well. “Maybe that’s what you can figure out.”

Jade nodded and closed her eyes. She began to listen for the story that the door needed to tell.

When she stepped away, her eyes were wet. The red of the door’s paint then faded to gray.
Every time I think I’ve run out of tears,
she thought,
some new horror shows me more.

The door fell over, cracking into fragments when it hit the rubble where Asha’s bed had once been.

“What was it?” Rucksack asked.

“It was them,” Jade answered. “Jigme and Asha. They worked together. We thought they’d been acting strangely, but I never could have imagined…”

“Worked together how?”

“They brought children to him, Rucksack. And they brought the old man from The Mystery Chickpea. Jigme and Asha took them all to the Smiling Fire. That’s how he got stronger. And then, that night, Jigme led Asha to him too.”

Rucksack’s eyes flickered.
Please don’t lose your hope and strength,
Jade thought.
If you lose yours, there’s no hope for mine.

“Then they’re dead too,” Rucksack said. “We couldn’t save them after all.”

“There is nothing to save,” said the shadow rising from the rubble. “Their fires have been returned where they belong.”

Rucksack stared hard at the Smiling Fire. “Good sneaking,” he said. “I didn’t see the slightest glimmer of you returning.”

The Smiling Fire stood in front of them. “You have stolen many fires from me,” he said.

“I have an aversion to people being burned to death.”

“A temporary reprieve.”

Rucksack shrugged.

“You smell of him,” the Smiling Fire said, looking at Jade. “It is fortunate you did not die yet. You will bring him back.”

Her fledgling hope flickered, and her newfound courage faltered. “Run. Burn. Die,” said the fear and despair deep inside her.

But something deeper turned into steel.

Jade stared into the red grin, and she understood what had to happen. She smiled back.

Then she punched it.

The Smiling Fire staggered backward.

“Jade!” Rucksack shouted.

“Run!” she replied, aiming a solid kick between the shadows of the Smiling Fire’s legs. “The last thing he needs is you, Mr. Fire of Life. Get out of here. Stay alive. Help others. Find Jay.”

“I can’t let you—”

“It’s my turn to save you, Faddah Rucksack. Move your arse. Don’t you dare let me go unavenged.”

Rucksack ran.

The Smiling Fire rose.

“Damn,” she said. “I figured balls would’ve been too much to ask for.”

Jade stared into his red eyes. Something flickered.

Everything depends on whether or not he’s going to do what I think he’s going to do.

“So,” she said, “am I right?”

He grinned. The last thing Jade saw was a hot, red shadow.

T
HE SMILING FIRE
tried to open the thing again. When first he had stolen the thing and tried to open it, the rush of power had been almost like the first days, the hot days, the old days. That power had set so much of the city ablaze, even though the thing had not opened. He had been so angry and that had fueled more fires. The city smoked and smoldered now. Gone were the colors and the sounds, the crowds and songs, the foods and life. All was black. All was ash. All was empty and dead.

But no more fires burned in Agamuskara. At first he had not noticed. Now he understood. All that strength, all that fire, was still only temporary. It was all only temporary.

Except for all the death,
he thought.
That was permanent.

Now the Smiling Fire understood that the eclipse was like a key for the thing, the dia ubh. The mirror eclipse was one key, but the dia ubh needed two. Jay was the other. The light of one. The blood of the other.