Chainfire (Sword of Truth – 9)

Holding the lizard by its tail as she rose up on the balls of her feet, Jillian lifted her arm as high as she could toward the sky and wiggled the offering. She laughed when she saw the inky black bird look almost as if it stumbled in midair when it spotted the ringed lizard dangling from her fingers. The bird rolled into a steep dive with its wings pulled partly in to enable it to gather speed as it plummeted.

Jillian hopped up and sat on the dilapidated stone wall beside some of the exposed paving stones that had once been part of a road. Over eons, much of that road had been buried beneath layers of dirt. Atop those layers of wind — and rain-borne soil, wild grasses and scraggly trees now grew. Her grandfather had told her that this was part of a special place and very old.

Jillian had trouble imagining how old it could be. When she'd been younger and had asked Grandfather if it was older than him, he had laughed and said that while he admitted to being old, he was nowhere near that old and that the ground did not in a single lifetime so swiftly cover over the accomplishments of man. He said that such slow work required not only time, but neglect. There had been plenty of time, and with virtually no people left, neglect had worked its ways.

Grandfather had told her how this empty, ancient city had once been inhabited by their ancestors. Jillian loved to hear his stories about the mysterious people who had once lived in this place and had built the incredible city up on the headland beyond the stone spires.

Her grandfather was a teller, and, since she was always so eager to hear his tellings of the old lore, he said that if she was willing to put in the effort he would make her the teller who would one day take his place. Jillian was excited at the prospect of learning to be a teller and mastering all the things there was to learn, someone respected for their knowledge of the ancient times and their heritage, but at the same time she didn't like the implication that such an eventual advancement among her people would mark her grandfather's passing.

Lokey alighted next to her and folded in his glossy black wings, bringing her out of her consideration of weighty subjects, of ancient people and the cities they built, of wars and great deeds. The curious raven waddled closer.

Jillian set down the freshly dead lizard and, holding the tip of its tail, wiggled it temptingly.

Lokey cocked his head, watching. Instead of taking the offering, he blinked his black eyes. He waddled closer to her, leading with his right foot in the cautious sideways manner he always used when approaching carrion. Rather than flapping his wings and hopping back several times in the guarded practice he employed when coming upon what he hoped would be a meal but could potentially turn into a threat, he stepped boldly forward and snatched her buckskin sleeve in his heavy bill.

«Lokey, what are you doing?»

Lokey tugged insistently. The curious bird usually plucked at the beads down the sleeve or the leather thongs at the end, but now he pulled the sleeve itself.

«What?» she asked. «What do you want?»

He let go of her sleeve and cocked his head as he peered at her with one gleaming eye. Ravens were intelligent creatures, but she was never quite sure just how intelligent. Sometimes she thought that Lokey was smarter than some people she knew.

Lokey's throat feathers and ears lifted out aggressively.

He suddenly let out a piercing caw that sounded very much like angry frustration at not being able to talk so that he could tell her something. Kraaah. He fluffed out his feathers again and cawed again. Kraaah.

Jillian stroked his head and then his back, scratching gently but firmly under his raised black plumage-something he loved to have done-before smoothing down his ruffled feathers. Instead of clicking contentedly and blinking lazily, as he usually did when she gave him a such a scratch, he hopped back a step out of her reach and let out three piercing caws that made her ears hurt. Kraaah. Kraaah. Kraaah.

She covered her ears. «What's gotten into you today?»

Lokey hopped up and down, flapping his wings. Kraaah. He ran across the top of the old cobble road, flapping and croaking. At the other side he fluttered up into the air, alighted, and then lifted off the ground again. Kraaah.

Jillian stood. «You want me to come with you?»

Lokey cawed noisily as if to confirm that she had at long last guessed correctly. Jillian laughed. She was sure that the crazy bird could understand every word she said and sometimes read her thoughts besides. She loved having him around. Sometimes when she talked to him he would quietly stand nearby and listen.

Her grandfather had told her not to let Lokey sleep in her room or he would know her dreams. Jillian mostly had wonderful dreams, so she didn't mind if Lokey knew them. She suspected that maybe her friend did know her dreams and that was why she often awoke to find him perched on the nearby windowsill, sleeping contentedly.

But she was always very careful not to send him any nightmares.

«Did you find yourself a nice dead antelope? Or maybe a rabbit? Is that why you're not hungry?» She shook her finger at him. «Lokey,» she scolded, «did you steal another raven's cache?»

Lokey was always hungry. Her ravenous raven, she often called him. He would share her dinner with her if she would let him and steal it if she wouldn't. Even if he was too full to eat the lizard, she was surprised that he didn't at least take it away and hide it for later. Ravens hid whatever they couldn't manage to eat-and they could eat a lot. She couldn't understand how it was that the bird didn't get fat.

Jillian stood and brushed the dust from the seat of her dress and her knobby knees. Lokey was already airborne, circling, cawing, urging her to hurry.

«All right, all right,» she complained as she held her arms out for balance while scurrying along the top of the fat wall along an enclosure strewn with rubble.

At the crest of the small hill she stood with one hand on the sash of cloth wrapped around her hip while with her other hand she shielded her eyes as she peered up into the bright sky to watch her friend pitching and rolling in a bid to keep her attention. Lokey was a shameless show-off. If he couldn't do aerial stunts to impress other ravens, he would happily do them for her.

«Yes,» she yelled into the sky, «you're a clever bird, Lokey.»

Lokey cawed once and then swiftly beat his wings. Jillian's gaze followed him, her hand shielding her eyes from the sunlight, as he flew south out over the vast expanse before her. Random ribbons of green summer grasses, up closer to the foot of the headland and mountains behind her, cut through the barren landscape. To the sides, hazy violet fingers of distant mountains, each farther one a shade softer and lighter, extended down into the desolate plain that seemed to go south forever. She knew it didn't, though. Grandfather said that to the south was a great barrier and beyond a long forbidden place called the Old World.

In the distance, down among the green patches on the plain that lay close up against the foothills, she could see the place where her people lived in the summers. Wooden fences filled the broken gaps in ancient stone walls that held their goats, pigs, and chickens. Some of their cattle grazed out on the summer grasses. There was water in this place, and some trees, their leaves shimmering in the bright sunlight. Gardens stretched out beside the simple brick houses that had withstood the harsh winter winds and baking summer sun for untold centuries.

And then, when she glanced up again at Lokey, Jillian saw at the horizon toward the west a faint cloud of dust rising up.

It was so far away that it seemed tiny. The smudge of dust against the deep blue of the sky where it met the horizon seemed to hang in the air, motionless, but she knew that it was just a trick of the distance that made it look tiny and still. Even from this far, she was able to tell that it was spread across a broad swath. It was still so far away that it was hard to see much of its cause. Had it not been for Lokey, Jillian likely wouldn't have spotted it for some time.

Even though she couldn't yet see what was causing the dust, she knew that she had never before seen such a sight.

Her first thought was that it had to be a whirlwind or a dust storm. But as she watched it she realized that it was too broad to be a whirlwind and a dust storm didn't stream up into the sky the way this did. A dust storm, even if it did extend high up, still had at the base what looked like huge, billowing, brown clouds running along the ground that was actually where the gusty winds were churning up the dust.

This wasn't at all like that. This was dust rising up from something coming-from people coming on horses.

Strangers.

More strangers than she could fathom. Strangers in such numbers that it was like something in her grandfather's stories.

Jillian's knees began to tremble. Fear welled up through her, coming to lodge in her throat where screams were born.

This was them. The strangers her grandfather always said would come. They were coming now.

People never doubted her grandfather-to his face, anyway-but she didn't think they really worried about the things in his tellings. After all, their lives were peaceful; no one ever came to disturb them or their homeland.

Jillian, though, had always believed her grandfather and so she'd always known that the strangers would eventually come, but, like other people, she'd always thought it would be sometime in the dim future, maybe when she was old, or, maybe even, if they were lucky, generations in the future.

It was only in her infrequent nightmares that the strangers arrived in the present, rather than the far future.

Seeing those columns of dust rising, she knew without a doubt that this was them and they were coming now.

In her whole life she had never seen strangers. No one but Jillian's people ever wandered the inhospitable barrens of the vast and forbidding place known as the Deep Nothing.

She stood trembling in terror, staring at the smudge of dust at the horizon. She was about to see a great many outsiders — the ones from the stories.

But it was too soon. She hadn't had a life yet, hadn't had a chance to live and love and have children. Tears brimmed in her eyes, giving everything a watery appearance. She looked over her shoulder and up into the ruins. Was this what they had faced, like in Grandfather's tellings?

Tears began to run down through the dust on her cheeks. She knew, she knew without a hint of doubt, that her life was about to change, and that her dreams would no longer be happy.

Jillian scrambled down off the top of the rubble she had been standing on and ran down the hill, past the wall, the crumbled empty squares of brick buildings, the pits where once buildings had risen up. Her racing feet raised their own cloud of dust as she ran through the ruins of what once had been outposts of an ancient city. She ran down roads that no longer had life around them, no longer were lined with standing buildings.

She had often tried to imagine what it would have been like when people had lived in the houses, when people had walked the streets, cooked in the homes, hung the wash outside their brick houses, traded goods in the squares. No more. They were all long dead. The whole city was long dead, except for the few of Jillian's people who sometimes stayed in the most remote of the old buildings.

As she got closer to those ancient buildings of the outposts that they used when they lived in this area for the summer, Jillian saw people hurrying about, yelling to one another. She saw that they were gathering up their things and collecting the animals. It appeared they were going to move on, maybe back into the shelter of the mountains, or out onto the barrens. She had seen her people do such a thing only a few times before. The threat had always turned out to be imaginary. Jillian knew that this time it was real.

She wasn't sure, though, if they would have enough time to flee the approaching strangers and hide. But her people were strong and swift. They were used to moving around on the empty land. Grandfather said that no one else but her people could survive so well in this forsaken place. They knew the mountain passes and places of water, as well as the hidden passages through what seemed like impassable canyons. They could vanish into the inhospitable land in short order and survive.

Most of them could, anyway. Some, like her grandfather, were no longer swift.

With that renewed fear, her feet ran all the faster, padding with a steady beat over the dusty ground. As she got closer, Jillian saw men packing their travel goods on the mules. Women collected cooking utensils, filled water containers, and carried clothes and tents out from their summer homes and storage buildings. It looked to Jillian that they had been aware of the approaching strangers for some time as they were already well advanced in their preparations to depart.

«Ma!» Jillian called out when she saw her mother packing her pot atop a mule already piled high with their belongings. «Ma!»

Her mother flashed a quick smile and held out a sheltering arm. Even though she was getting past the age for such things, Jillian nuzzled under that arm like a chick burrowing under a mother hen's wing.

«Jillian, get your things.» Her mother shooed her with a hand. «Hurry.»

Jillian knew better than to question at a time like this. She wiped away her tears and ran to the small, square, ancient building they used as their home when they summered on the plains near the headland. The men sometimes had to replace the roofs when the worst of the weather tore them off, but, other than that, the rest of the stout, squat buildings were the very same buildings constructed by their ancestors who had once built and lived in the deserted city of Caska, up on the headland.

Grandfather, looking drawn and pale as she imagined a ghost might look, waited in the shadows just inside the door. He was not hurrying. Terror swelled in Jillian's chest. She realized that he couldn't come with them. He was old and frail. Like some of the other older people, he wouldn't be swift enough to keep up with the rest of them if they were to escape. She could see in his eyes that he had no intention of trying.

She sank into her grandfather's tender embrace and started wailing even as he comforted her.

«There, there, child,» he said, his hand stroking her short-cropped hair. «No time for this.»

Grandfather grasped her arms and eased her away as she tried her best to bring her sobbing under control. She knew that she was old enough that she shouldn't be crying in such a way, but she just couldn't help it. He squatted down, his leathery face wrinkling as he smiled at her and brushed away a tear.

Jillian swiped away the rest of her tears, trying to be strong and act her age. «Grandfather, Lokey showed me the strangers who are coming.»

He was nodding. «I know. I sent him.»

«Oh» was all she could think to say. Her world was turning upside down and it was hard to think, but somewhere in the back of her mind she realized that he had never before done such a thing. She'd never known he could, but, knowing her grandfather, it didn't really surprise her.

«Jillian, listen to me. These men who are coming are the ones I always told you would come. Those who can are going away for a while to hide.»

«For how long?»

«For as long as necessary. These men who ride this way are only a small number of those who will eventually come.»

Her eyes grew wide. «You mean there are more? But there are so many. They raise more dust than I have ever seen before. There can be more strangers than these?»

His smile was brief and bitter. «These are only a survey party, I expect-the first advance scouts of many more to come. This vast and desolate land is unknown to them. I expect they are looking for routes through it, testing to see if there will be any opposition. I'm afraid that according to the tellings, the men they scout for are more in number than even I can grasp. I believe that these other men, with their uncountable numbers, are yet some time in coming, but even this advance party will be dangerous, ruthless men. Those of our people who are able must flee and hide for now.

«Jillian, you cannot go with them.»

Her jaw dropped. «What — ?»

«Listen to me. The times I have told you about are upon us.»

«But, Ma and Pa won't allow.»

«They will allow what I tell them they must, just as our people must,» he said in a stern voice. «This is about far greater matters, matters that have never before involved our people-at least not since our ancestors filled the city. Now these things concern us as well.»

Jillian nodded solemnly. «Yes, Grandfather.» She was terror stricken, but at the same time she felt an awakening sense of duty to her grandfather's call. If he intended to trust her with such things, then she could not fail him.

«What is it am I to do, then?»

«You are to be the priestess of the bones, the carrier of dreams.»

Jillian's mouth again fell open. «Me?»

«Yes, you.»

«But I'm still too young. I've not been trained in such things.»

«There is no more time, child.» He leaned toward her in admonition. «You are the one to do this, Jillian. I have already taught you much of the tellings. You may think you are unprepared, or that you are not old enough, and all that may have some truth to it, but you know more than you may realize. What's more, there is no other. It is upon you to do this.»

Jillian couldn't seem to make herself blink. She felt completely inadequate, and at the same time faintly excited and guardedly inspired. Her people were depending on her. More importantly, her grandfather was depending on her and he believed she could do it.

«Yes, Grandfather.»

«I will prepare you to be among the dead, and then you must hide among them and wait.»

Fear began to wrap its arms around her again. She had never stayed all alone among the dead.

Jillian swallowed. «Grandfather, are you sure that I'm ready for such a thing? To be there, alone, among the dead? Waiting for one of them?»

The light coming in from the open door cast his face with a forbidding look. «You are as ready as I can make you. I had hoped there would be time left to teach you many more things, but at least I have taught you some of what you must know.»

Outside, people rushed around in the sunlight, tending to the preparations. They were careful not to look into the shadows, to Grandfather, after he had pulled her away from the rest of them, telling her what she must face.

«To tell you the truth,» he said, «this has taken me unprepared as well. The tellings have been carried down from our people for thousands of years, but they never said when it would happen. I never really believed that it would come during my life. I remember my own grandfather telling me the things I have told you and not really believing it would ever happen except maybe in some far future time that didn't really mean anything to my life. But the time is now upon us and we must do our best to honor our ancestors. We must be ready-you must-as we have been taught through the tellings.»

«How long will I have to wait?»

«There is no way I can tell you that. You must hide among the spirits. As the tellers have done down through the centuries, you and I have stashed food, as Lokey does, for just such an eventuality. You will have food to keep your belly full. You can fish and hunt for game when it is safe to be out.»

«Yes, Grandfather. But couldn't you hide with me?»

«I will take you up there, help prepare you, and tell you all I can. But I must then return here to help make these strangers think we are out in the open and welcoming to them while the others of our people escape-and so that you will be able to hide. I could not be as swift as you, nor as small to slip through the narrow places so that these men cannot follow you. I will have to return here and do my part.»

«What if the strangers hurt you?»

Grandfather took a breath and let it out with weary resolve. «It may be that they do so. These men who come will be capable of such brutality —that is why this is so important. Their cruel ways are why we must be strong and why we must not give in to them. Even if I die»-he shook a finger at her."and you can be sure that I will do my best not to, I will be buying the rest of you the time you need.»

Jillian chewed on her lip. «Aren't you afraid to die?»

He nodded as he smiled. «Very. But I have lived a long life and because I love you so, I would choose that you have a chance to do the same.»

«Grandfather,» she said through choking tears, «I want you to be with me for my life.»

He took her hand. «Me too, child. I wish to see you grow into a woman and have your own children. But I don't want you to worry too much for me; I am not so helpless nor a fool. I will sit in the shade with the others and present no threat to these men. We will confess to the strangers that the younger of our people ran away in terror, but we could not. The strangers will likely have more important things to do than waste their energy harming us. We will be fine. I want you to think about what you must do, and not worry about me.»

Jillian felt a little better about his safety. «Yes, Grandfather.»

«Besides,» he told her, «Lokey will be with you, and he will carry my spirit with him, so it will be almost like I am watching over you.» When she smiled at that, he said, «Come, now. We must go and make preparations.»

Jillian's mother and father were allowed a brief farewell after Grandfather told them in a stern voice that he was taking her to be with their spirit ancestors and see to the safety of their people.

Her mother and father either understood the importance of allowing their daughter to go, or were too afraid of Grandfather to refuse. In either case they hugged her and bid her strength until they could be together again.

Without speaking more of it, Grandfather led her away as eyes followed them. He took her up the ancient roads and through gorges, past the deserted outposts and mysterious buildings, and up the great rise of the land. As they climbed, the sun lowered in the western sky behind the golden tail of dust that slowly but steadily came ever closer. She knew that before the sun set, most of her people would be gone.

The lowering sun allowed the murky shadows to begin to haunt the defiles. The smooth stone, layered with twisting bands of rock, invited them ever onward to see what might be around each curving bend. Along the bottom the gravel was littered here and there with bones of small animals. Most, she knew, were the leavings of the coyotes and the wolves. She tried very hard to banish the mental image of her own bleached bones lying scattered in the gravel.

Overhead, Lokey lazily circled in the deepening blue of the sky as he watched her making her way with Grandfather up toward the headland. When they reached the stone spires, the bird silently glided among the columns' pinnacles, as if it were a game. He had followed them up to the ancient city enough times that he must have thought nothing of it. To Jillian, even though Grandfather had taken her up through the maze of ravines, gullies, and deep canyons a great many times, this time it all seemed new to her.

This time she was going as the priestess of the bones, the carrier of dreams.

At a place where a quiet stream followed a twisting route through the graveled bottom of a very deep canyon, Grandfather led her to a small boulder in the cool shade and sat her down. All around, the smooth, undulating sides of the canyon rose nearly straight up, leaving no way to climb out if a sudden rain brought a flood. It was a dangerous place-for more than the reason of the threat of flash floods. It was a tangle of side gullies and canyons that in places took complicated routes around huge standing columns so that it was possible to go around in circles and never find your way out. Jillian, though, knew her way through this labyrinth, as well as others.

As she sat quietly, waiting, Grandfather opened a pouch he always carried tied to his belt. He pulled out a folded piece of oilcloth from among the things he carried in the pouch, and opened it in one palm. He dipped his first finger in the oily black substance inside.

Grandfather lifted her chin. «Hold still, now, while I paint your face.»

Jillian had never been painted before. She knew of the formality from Grandfather's stories, but she just never thought about it being her who would be the priestess of the bones, the one to be painted. She sat as still as she could while he worked, feeling that everything was happening too fast-before she had even had time to really think about it. Earlier that day the most she had on her mind was catching a lizard for Lokey. Now it felt as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders.

«There,» Grandfather said. «Come see.»

Jillian knelt beside a still pool and bent forward. She gasped. What she saw was frightening. The face staring back had a painted black band across it, like a blindfold, but one she could see through. Her copper-colored eyes stared back at her from the dark midst of that smoky black mask.

«Now the evil spirits will not be able to see you,» he told her as he stood. «You can safely be among our ancestors.»

Jillian stood as well, feeling very strange indeed. She felt transformed. The face she'd seen had been the face of the priestess. She'd heard about it in Grandfather's tellings, but she'd never seen such a face in real life, much less expected it to ever be her own.

She leaned over and stole a cautious peek into the still pool. «This will truly hide me?»

«It will keep you safe,» he said as he nodded.

She wondered if Lokey would know her, if he would be afraid of her. The face staring back from the still water certainly scared her.

«Come,» Grandfather said, «we must get you up there and then I must get back so the men will find me there with those of our people who remain behind.»

When at long last they climbed out of the spires and stone canyons, they were finally up near the city, just outside the great main wall but within some of the outer rings of smaller walls.

They had emerged near the graveyard.

Grandfather gestured. «You lead the way, Jillian. This is your place now.»

Jillian nodded and started out toward the city glowing in the golden, late-day sunlight. It was a beautiful sight, as it always was, but this day it also seemed haunting to her. It seemed she was seeing it through new eyes. She felt a very real connection with her ancestors now.

The grand buildings looked as if people might still occupy them, as if she might spot some of them through the empty window openings as they went about their daily lives. Some of the structures were immense, with soaring pillars holding up projecting sections of slate roofs. Other buildings had rows of arched windows on each level. Grandfather had taken her into some of those buildings. It was amazing to see places that were stacked inside with layers of rooms so that one had to climb stairs-stairs actually built right inside the buildings-to get to rooms above. The ancient builders seemed almost magical in the things they had accomplished. From a distance, glowing in the golden light, it truly was a majestic sight.

Now, she would walk the streets alone, accompanied only by the spirits of those who had once lived here. She felt safe, though, knowing that Grandfather had painted upon her the mask of the priestess of the bones.

She would be the one who would cast the dreams at the strangers.

If she did her job well, the strangers would be so frightened that they would flee and her people would be safe.

She tried not to think about how the people who once had lived here had done the same thing and yet had failed.

«Do you think there will be too many?» she asked, suddenly frightened by the tellings of the ancient debacle.

«Too many?» he puzzled at her as they walked beside a wall that had long ago been encased by living nets of vines that now held the crumbling stones in place.

«Too many for the dreams. I'm only one person-and I'm not experienced, or older, or anything. It's just me.»

His big hand gave her an assuring pat between her shoulder blades. «Numbers do not matter. He will help give you the strength you need.» Grandfather lifted a cautionary finger. «And don't forget, Jillian, the tellings say that you must be devoted to this one. He is to be your master.»

Jillian nodded as they entered the vast graveyard. In the lower reaches there were simple stone markers. As they climbed higher, past row upon row of graves, they eventually came to larger and more ornate monuments to the dead. Some of them had grand statues of people in proud poses atop them. Some had carvings of the flame of life that represented the Creator's light. Some had ancient inscriptions of lasting love. A few had only an ancient symbol on them that her grandfather told her was called a Grace. Some of the great monuments had only a name.

Deep in the place of the dead, near the highest spot, where the weathered trees grew large and twisted, they came at last to a grand grave marked with a huge, ornately crafted stone monument. Atop it sat a speckled gray granite urn that held olives, pears, and other fruits, with grapes spilling out over one side, all carved from the same piece of stone. Grandfather, who had taken her to see this monument many times as he gave her tellings, said that the urn was meant to represent the bounty of life that man created through his creative efforts and hard work.