Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits (41 page)

The meeting was held in the big hall at the back of the main building—the building that had been the whole human end of the Academy when it first opened eight hundred years ago. The hall was still big enough to hold everybody who went there—but I swear everyone who had anything at all to do with the Academy was there, not just the students and the tutors and the dragonmasters. There were people standing at the back and sitting in the aisles. Fire hazard, I thought. But no one made them leave.

You know how on winter solstice nights after it gets dark and you've done all the rites—or maybe it's the night after the solstice, depending on, you know, how well the rites get done, especially the ones with lots of libations—and you sit around the fire with your friends and tell stories about the really scary things that happened to your ancestors? Because telling those stories around the solstice is supposed to stop them from happening again, like to us. Our ancestors had a really rough time is all I can say. So maybe it works.

Sooner or later someone asks what everybody's worst nightmare is. Telling it out loud at the solstice is supposed to stop it from happening too.

I'm here to tell you that this doesn't work. Because my worst nightmare is being in front of a lot of other people who are staring at me. And here I was. And they really were staring at me. Nobody else. Me. It was much worse than the food halls. The halls are open all the time, and people sort of stream through, and there's never that many of them at the same time, and the tutors and dragonmasters mostly eat somewhere else, and it's all groups around tables, not rows and rows of chairs all pointed in the same direction with a stage at the front, organised for staring. Everyone would've known that Hereyta was in First Flight this year with Dag, and word would have got round that they'd actually made Flight. And I knew from yesterday that they'd decided to pin that on me. So everybody was staring at the one person up on that horrible great stage that wasn't wearing an Academy uniform. Who also, just in case they missed that bit, had a foogit with him. Maybe telling your worst nightmare hadn't worked for me because I could only bring myself to tell it out loud if it was only my own family listening.

So I took one look at that sea of faces and closed down and went off in my head somewhere. Well, not quite. Sippy wanted me there so I had to leave a little of me behind in the hall to keep him company—and get ready to grab if he got reassured enough to want to go cruising for new friends. I don't know what his worst nightmare was. Maybe taking a dive off a flying dragon, and he'd lived through that.

But I was enough not-there that it took me a minute to recognise the person coming down the centre aisle toward the stage platform where Dag and I and Sippy and half a dozen more blue and red and yellow coats from the Academy were sitting. Setyep was the only other red and yellow cadet besides Dag; the rest were all the blue and red higher-ups. The old guy from yesterday was the only other person I recognised, although how much you can say you recognise someone when you don't know his name I don't know, but what he'd said yesterday was kind of etched into me. (Even if I'd forgotten to ask Dag later what his name was and
who
he was. I was kind of concentrating on what he'd said.) I was actually staring at him (which meant I was facing away from the audience, which was the crucial part) and vaguely thinking about it that all the other blue and red coats seemed to be deferring to him, like he wasn't just another blue and red coat, he was
the
blue and red coat.

So I didn't notice her till she was walking up the steps to the platform. I'd seen her out of the corner of my eye but, so? There were a million people out there, what was one more? Even if she was walking down the aisle and coming up on the stage. But the walk was familiar. I wasn't looking at the person but the way she moved was familiar.

It was familiar. She was. It was Ralas.

She seemed perfectly calm. Well, she was always perfectly calm. It occurred to me she was like a dragon that way, or anyway like Hereyta. Someone falls at Ralas' feet with bright red blood coming
wham wham wham
out of somewhere so you know they're not going to last long, she's still calm. I saw this once. I'm the one stood on the wound—because I was too small and feeble just to press on it—to stop the rest of the blood coming out while she dribbled a little green herbal goo under his tongue and stuck a
xan
leaf on his forehead with a little
dir
paste and then got out her needle and thread and went to work. He lived too.

What was she doing here? She looked up as if she felt my eyes on her—she looked up so quickly it was like she'd been waiting to feel my eyes on her—and gave me a friendly, level look back like she was going to be interested in what I had to say for myself and she was keeping an open mind. She'd given me that look when I'd brought Sippy to her the first time, after I'd bungled setting his leg. I don't know why I always expected her to yell at me. She never did. She was always kind and she always had an open mind.

What was she doing here?
I couldn't think of any way it was going to be good news. Maybe she was going to tell them how I always meant well even if I usually messed it up. But that was hardly worth dragging her all this way for. They must have sent for her—they must have sent a
dragon
for her—before I woke up and told them I didn't have a
clue
how Hereyta got in and out of the Firespace and I couldn't tell them how to do it and no, I wasn't going to make a habit of waiting till she was a league in the air and then dropping Sippy over the edge and jumping after him. Not even for Hereyta. If I'd've done it for anyone, I'd've done it for Hereyta, but . . . no.

There was an empty chair on the other side of Dag and she sat down in it. She smiled at me. It was a ʺthere are more people out there staring at us than there are in the world and this bothers you why?ʺ sort of smile. I came a little more out of my daze for that smile. But I still kept my eyes away from the audience. Sippy had to say hello to Ralas of course but she even makes crazy foogits calmer so he said hello and then he came back to me and lay down, sort of wrapping himself around my ankles like he was making sure I didn't try to run away.

The old guy stood up and everybody fell silent like they'd all turned to stone. I would ask Dag again after this was over (if I lived that long) who he was. The problem was that both times I'd seen him before the experience was so extreme I forgot. And this time was going to be even more extreme so I'd probably forget again, and harder, if you can forget harder.

ʺWe've called this general session to tell everyone what happened three days ago during First Flight and so, we hope, put an end to the rumours. What did happen is quite remarkable enough and the absurd stories that are already being told and listened to and passed on are doing no one any favours, least of all the Academy.ʺ He said this in such a way that anyone who'd let one of those rumours go through them would now be feeling about ant-sized.

No one moved. Maybe the rumour-tellers really had turned to stone, and when everybody else got up to walk out, they'd just stay there forever.

Then he started explaining what had happened, starting with what he'd told us yesterday about choosing the First Flight list, but the moment I heard my name—ʺCadet Dag also took his younger brother Ern with him on Hereyta, and Ern's foogit, Sippyʺ—I went back into my daze again and stopped listening. So I don't know how long that part of the story lasted or how he told it, but I don't think it was very long and I don't think he'd have made it any more gruesome than he had to.

Then there was a staccato bit when different voices spoke, and I think that was people from the audience asking questions and the old guy answering them. After a few minutes it started getting sort of uproary like the old guy had said it would. I kept hearing my name. Early on the old guy turned and looked at me, and I probably had ʺno one homeʺ on my face, even though I was staring at him again. I was staring at him because staring at Ralas would only make it harder to stay in my daze because I kept wondering what she was doing here, and I still didn't want to look at the audience. He got that amused look again, and then turned away and answered the question. I think he had been thinking about asking me to answer the question. It's a good thing he changed his mind.

I heard Dag say something twice, I think, and Setyep once.

And then the next thing I knew was that everybody in the audience was getting up and filing out. I was so surprised I looked at them. There was a heavy sense of disappointment and frustrated curiosity in the air and a few audience members looked back over their shoulders as they left like they knew they were missing something and didn't want to—I was reminded of the way your parents send you to bed when you're dying to know what's going on and they think you're still too little—but that was as rebellious as anyone got. Most of the ones looking over their shoulders were looking at
me
so I didn't look back at them very long. But I doubted anyone was going to lurk around and then press their ears to the door either.

The old guy must have turned the rumour-spreaders back to human again because everyone left.

And then the eight of us on the stage were coming to our feet (I got up because everyone else did) and following the old guy out behind the stage, another way than the way we'd come in. And we were in this hallway, and there was a door with someone in
hsa
livery standing by it and we all went in and were waved toward a long oval table with chairs around it and pots and ewers and stuff to drink and plates of other stuff to eat in the middle of it. Like we were all going to sit down and relax and have a nice cozy chat. Because you always notice the stuff you don't want to notice when you're trying not to notice, I noticed that there were more chairs and plates than there had been people on the stage. So there were going to be more of us now.

I found myself sitting between Dag and Ralas, with most of Sippy wedged under my chair. I kept scraping my knuckles on the bottom of the chair when I leaned over to pet him. Ralas poured out some blastweed and put it in front of me. When I made no move to touch it Dag pushed it a little closer to me. Oh, well. I took a big gulp and it half scalded me going down. Which brought me out of my daze . . . just long enough for the old guy to nail me.

ʺErn,ʺ he said, ʺI realise this will not be popular with you, but the fact is that this meeting is mostly about you. We want to know—we badly want to know—how you got Hereyta into the Firespace and how you got her out.ʺ He was almost half laughing as he said it at the same time as he was absolutely deadly serious. The other old guys—they were all old—around him mostly weren't bothering with the half laughing part. Their stares really were like being stabbed. All but one of them, and he was just sitting there smiling like somebody'd given him the biggest present in the world and he hadn't got over it yet. Some of the wrinkles on his face were scars and there were two sticks leaning on the wall behind him and I wondered if, just maybe, he was Carn. I didn't think he'd been on the stage. But he was smiling and he was the only one, so without thinking I smiled back and his face just lit up. When he spoke I figured some of the wrinkles on his neck must be scars too. ʺErn. Anything you can tell us. Please.ʺ

ʺI don't know,ʺ I said, desperately, knowing that I had to say something, and knowing they weren't going to leave it at that. I looked back at the original old guy and I knew, suddenly, that the on-stage part had been a lot shorter than planned, because the old guy knew I couldn't stand it. I told myself that he only cared because of Hereyta and the Firespace—and I thought, well, why not?—but then I also knew it wasn't true. He wasn't just some old guy that everybody has to obey, trying to make me obey too. I remembered the affectionate look I'd seen on his face yesterday, looking at his cadets. Maybe he was used to the weight of the world on his shoulders, but that didn't mean he didn't feel it, that he didn't have to remember, sometimes, to stand like he had a broomstick up his coat. He understood what he was asking me to carry, and he'd help me if he could.

Except he couldn't. ʺI don't know,ʺ I said again, knowing that it wasn't just they weren't going to leave it at that, they couldn't. If I were in their place I couldn't leave it either. But there still wasn't anything I could tell them. I'd taken my header off Hereyta because I was following Sippy. That had just happened. I thought about when I'd taken Arac's place in Sippy's three-way game, and the way the other two had
looked
at me afterward. And then I thought about standing up, when we had to get back out of the Firespace again, and pointing, and how it had been that way, it had been how we could get out. But that wasn't anything anyone could use—it wasn't like ʺmash up some delor leaf and pour boiling water over it and drink it.ʺ

You just do it, Ralas had told me, long ago, and when I said, Do
what
? she'd laughed and said, It.
It.

The head old guy—I don't know how to explain this—he was staring at me just as intently as the rest of the old guys, but he was doing it
softer
somehow. Him and Carn, if it was Carn. I thought, I'd tell you if I could, and the old guy's expression changed briefly, as if he'd heard.

He said, ʺErn. Believe me. It doesn't just happen. The Academy has been here for eight hundred years and no dragon who has lost an eye has ever crossed into the Firespace again. Or if they have there's no record, and there would be a record. Or rather, the only hint of a record is from the tale of Erzaglia and Sorabulyar, which I told you about yesterday, and which you, interestingly, had heard of, although it's an old obscure tale that no one tells any more. We don't teach it at the Academy.ʺ He added gently, ʺErn. I can see how much you hate this. But think about how important this is to us, to our dragons—to all dragons, maybe—to Hereyta.ʺ