Stormqueen! (37 page)

“No. Father thought it too far for me to ride; also, he said you were too busy here during the fire season for guests.”

“Well, he was right,” Kyril said, “but I will be glad to show you what I can as I have leisure. Come inside, my dear.”

Inside the station were relief maps of the entire valley, a replica in miniature of the tremendous full-circle panorama seen from the windows of the building on every side. He pointed out to her the cloud-cover over parts of the valley, the areas marked on his map which had been burned over in recent seasons, the sensitive areas of resin-trees which had to be watched closely for any stray spark.

“What is that light flashing, Master Kyril?”

“Ah, you have sharp eyes, little one. It is a signal to me, which I must answer.” He took a mirrored-glass device with a small mechanical cover which could be opened and closed swiftly, and stepping to the opened window, began to flash a patterned signal into the valley. After a moment the flashing in the valley resumed. Dorilys started to ask a question, but he motioned her to be quiet, then bent over his map, marked it with chalk, and turned back to her.

“Now I can explain to you. That man signaled to me that he was building a cookfire there, while the herdmen take their count of his cattle. It is a precaution so that I will not think a forest fire has begun and call men together to fight it. Also, if the smoke remains more than a reasonable time for a herdman’s cookfire, I will know it is out of control and can dispatch someone to help with it before it spreads too far. You see” - he gestured in a circle all around the fire-tower - “I must know at every moment where every wisp of smoke is, in all this country, and what causes it.”

“You have the chemicals from Tramontana?” Donal asked.

“The first lot reached me just in time to stop a serious outbreak in the creek-bed there,” he said, indicating it on the map. “Yesterday a consignment was brought here, and others stored at the foot of the peak. It is a dry year, and there is some danger, but we have had only one bad burn, over by Dead Man’s Peak.”

“Why is it called Deak Man’s Peak?” Dorilys asked.

“Why, I do not know, little lady; it was so called in my father’s time and my grandfather’s. Perhaps at some time, someone found a dead man there.”

“But why would anyone go there to die?” Dorilys asked, looking up at the far crags. “To me it looks more like a hawk’s nest.”

“There were hawks there once,” Kyril said, “for I climbed to take some when I was a young man. But that was long, long ago.” He looked at the distant sea of smoke and flame; to the others it was blurred by distance. “There have been no hawks there for years…”

Renata interrupted the conversation, saying, “Dorilys, can you tell where the fire on that slope will move next?”

Dorilys blinked, her face going blank, staring into the distance. After a moment she gestured, and for a moment Allart, astonished, realized she was speaking so rapidly it was gibberish.

“What, child?” Renata asked, and Dorilys came back to herself.

She said, “It is so hard to say it in words, when I can
see
the fire where it was and where it is and where it is moving, from its start to its finish.”

Merciful Avarra
, Allart thought.
She sees it in three dimensions of time
-
past and present and future. Is it any wonder we find it hard to communicate with her
! The second thought that hit him, hard, was that this might somehow have some bearing on his own curious gift… or curse!

Dorilys was trying to focus down, to search, struggling, for words to communicate what she saw.

“I can see where it started, there, but the winds drove it down the watercourse, and it turned - look - into the… I can’t say it! Into those net things at the edge of the wind-stream. Donal,” she appealed, “
you
see it, don’t you?”

He came and joined her at the window. “Not quite what you see, sister. I think perhaps no one sees it quite as you do; but can you see where it will move next?”

“It has moved - I mean, it will move
there
, where they will have the men all ganged together to fight it,” she said. “But it will come there only because
they
come. It can feel - No, that isn’t right! There aren’t any words.” Her face twisted and she looked as if she were almost crying. “My head hurts,” she said plaintively. “Can I have a drink of water?”

“There is a pump behind the door,” the man Kyril said. “The water is good; it comes from a spring behind the station. Be sure to hang up the cup when you have drunk, little lady.” As she went in quest of her drink, Renata and Donal exchanged long looks of amazement

Renata thought,
I have learned more about her
laran
now in a few minutes than I have learned in half a season. I should have thought to come here before
.

Kyril said in a low voice, “You know, of course, that there are not any men fighting the fire now; they controlled it and left it to burn out along the lower crags. Yet she saw them. I have seen nothing like this since the sorceress Alarie came here once with a fire-talisman to gain command of a great fire, when I was a young man. Is the child a sorceress, then?”

Renata, disliking the ancient word smacking so much of superstition, said, “No; but she has
laran
, which we are trying to train properly, to see these things. She took to the gliders like a young bird to the air.”

“Yes,” Donal said. “It took me far longer to master them. Perhaps she sees the currents more clearly than I can. For all we know, they are solid to her, something she can almost touch. I think Dorilys could learn to use a fire-talisman; the forge-folk have them, to bring metals from the ground to their forges.”

Renata had heard of this. The forge-folk had certain especially adapted matrixes, which they used for mining and for that purpose only; a technique both more crude and more developed than the highly technical mining methods of the Towers. She had the Tower technician’s distrust of matrix methods developed in this catch-as-catch-can, pragmatic way, without theory.

Kyril looked into the valley, saying, “The cookfire is out,” and erased the chalk mark on his map. “One less trouble, then. That valley is all as dry as tinder. May I offer you some refreshment, sir? My lady?”

“We have brought food with us,” Allart said. “Rather, we would be honored if you would share our meal.” He began to unwrap the packages of dried fruit, hard-baked bread, and dried meat that they had brought.

“I thank you,” Kyril said. “I have wine here, if I may offer you a cupful, and some fresh fruit for the little lady.”

They sat near the window so that Kyril could continue his watch. Dorilys asked, “Are you alone here all the time?”

“Why, no, lady. I have an apprentice who helps me, but he has gone down the valley today to see his mother, so for the day I am alone. I had not thought I would be entertaining guests.” He drew out his clasp-knife from his heavy boot and began to peel her an apple, spiraling the peel into delicately cut designs. She watched with fascination, while Renata and Allart watched the clouds moving slowly across the valley far below them, casting strange shadows. Donal came and stood behind them.

Renata asked him, in a low voice, “Can you, too, sense where the storms will move?”

“A little, now, when I can see them spread out this way before me. I think perhaps that when I am watching a storm I move a little outside of time, so that I see the
whole
storm, from start to finish, as Dorilys saw the whole fire a little while ago.” He glanced back at Dorilys, who was eating her apple, chattering with the ranger. “But somehow at the same time I see the lightnings in sequence, one after another, so that I know where each one will strike and which first, because I can see the pattern of where they move
through
time. That is why, sometimes, I can control them - but only a little. I cannot
make
them strike anywhere, as my sister does,” he added, lowering his voice so that it would not carry to the little girl. “I can only, now and again, divert them so that they will
not
strike where they have already begun to move.”

Allart listened, frowning, thinking of the sensitive divisions of time which this gift took. Donal, picking up his thoughts, said, “I think this must be a little like your gift, Allart. You move outside time, too; do you not?”

Allart said, troubled, “Yes, but not always into
real
time. Sometimes, I think, a kind of probability time, which will never happen, depending on the decisions of many, many other people, all crisscrossing. So that I see only a little part of the pattern of what will be or what
may
be. I don’t think a human mind could ever learn to sort it all out.”

Donal wanted to ask some questions about whether Allart had ever tested his gift under
kirian
, one of the telepathic drugs in use in the Towers, for it was well known that
kirian
somehow blurred the borders between mind and mind so that telepathy was easier, time not quite so rigid. But Renata was following her own line of question, her mind again on her charge.

“You all saw how the fire troubled her,” she said. “I wonder if that has something to do with the way she uses her gift - or strikes. Because in anger or confusion, she no longer sees a pattern of time clearly; for her there is nothing but that one moment, of rage, or anger, or fear… She cannot see it as only one of a progression of moments. You spoke of a fever she had as a child, when storms raged around the castle for days, and you wondered what dreams or delirium prompted them. Possibly there was some damage to the brain. Fevers often impair
laran
.” She considered for a long moment, watching the slow inexorable drifting of the storm clouds below them, which now masked a sizable part of the valley floor.

Dorilys came up behind them, winding her arms around Renata like an affectionate kitten trying to climb into a lap.

“Is it me you are talking about? Look down there, Renata. See the lightning inside the cloud?”

Renata nodded, knowing the storm was just beginning to build up enough electrical potential to show lightnings; she herself had not seen lightning yet.

“But there are lightnings in the air even when there are no clouds and no rain,” Dorilys said. “Can’t you see them, Renata? When I use them, I don’t really
bring
them, I just
use
them.” She looked sheepish, guilty, as she added, “When I gave Margali a headache, and tried to do it with you, I was using those lightnings I couldn’t
see
.”

Merciful gods
, Renata thought,
this child is trying to tell me, without knowing the words, that what she does is to tap the electrical potential field of the planet itself
! Donal and Allart, picking up the thought, turned startled eyes on her, but Renata did not see them, suddenly shuddering.

“Are you cold, cousin?” the child asked solicitously. “It is so warm…”

All the gods at once be thanked that at least she cannot read minds as well…

Kyril had come over to the window, looking with concentrated attention at the curdled mass of gray that was the storm center and the lightnings just beginning to be visible within it. “You asked about my work, little lady. This is a part of it, to watch where the storm center moves, and see if it strikes anywhere. Many fires are set by lightning, though sometimes no smoke can be seen for a long time after.” He added, with an apologetic glance at the noblemen and Renata, “I think perhaps that some unknown forefather endowed me with a little foresight, because sometimes when I see a great strike I know that it will later blaze up. And so I watch it with a little more care, for some hours.”

Renata said, “I would like to inquire into your ancestors, and find how even this diluted trace of
laran
came into your blood.”

“Oh, I know
that
,” Kyril said, again almost apologetic. “My mother was a
nedestro
of the old lord of Rockraven’s brother - not he who rules there now, but the one before him.”