Chapter 6: Man on Fire
The next morning, Tull woke to the smell of breakfast cooking—corn cakes and beef jerky. Scandal, Ayuvah, and Tirilee sat glumly around the wagon, eating. Nearly all the Hukm were asleep, thrown on the ground like giant dolls, sleeping with clubs at their sides. They did not like the human camp, with its ever-present fire and smelly humans, so they slept far away, and most of them would not rise until late afternoon.
Half a mile away, Phylomon sat beneath a tree with Ironwood Woman, their fingers working as they talked.
Tull walked over to the fire, stretched, and dished up a plate. “What’s going on over there?” he asked, nodding toward Phylomon and Ironwood Woman.
“War plans, I gather,” Scandal said. “Ironwood Woman wants to attack Bashevgo, and Phylomon plans to lead her battle.”
“Hunh,” Tull grunted. The less such things were spoken of, the better. If the wrong person were to hear the battle plans, they would become common knowledge in the halls of the Slave Lords on Bashevgo.
Scandal said, “Ayuvah here was just telling us about the man of fire that he saw. He says there’s a cave filled with artifacts from Falhalloran.”
Tull felt stung. He did not like that word artifacts. The laser cannons at Bashevgo were artifacts. The hoversleds that the Lords of Craal rode down the streets were artifacts. Benbow glass and Phylomon himself were artifacts. Always that word was used when speaking of things of power. It was not a word that inspired peace of mind.
“I was just thinking,” Scandal said, “That the man of fire might be more help to us right now than a barrel of sea serpents would. I mean, Ayuvah here says that the man of fire gave him and Phylomon some kind of token that let them create those monsters last night, and if the man of fire can create monsters to kill dragons, surely he could make something to kill anything that swims over from Hotland.”
“Possibly,” Tull said, though he suspected that Phylomon would have suggested the possibility first, if it could really be done. “We should ask Phylomon.”
Scandal cleared his throat, “Aah, not so fast there, Friend. Perhaps we should ask Phylomon, and then again perhaps we should keep our thoughts to ourselves. Ayuvah, when you were in the cave, did you see anything worth money?”
“I—uh—don’t know,” Ayuvah said. “I saw the man of fire, and we traveled down a long tube on a couch that floats. And then a beam of light filled me and taught me how to arrange the symbols of power.”
Scandal frowned. “Did you see any Benbow glass, or any of those lights Phylomon has chained around his neck? Maybe a refrigeration cube or a power cube? Anything like that?”
Tull understood the problem. No one had ever heard of flying couches or light beams that teach. Scandal wouldn’t know how to work them. What he wanted was something useful—glass for weapons, refrigeration cubes for his inn.
“There were many lights in the cave, but not like the one Phylomon uses. These glowed all the time.”
“I can buy light bulbs out of Denate,” Scandal growled. “You don’t suppose the man of fire would mind if we looked around in his cave, do you?”
“I don’t know,” Ayuvah answered with a note of fear in his voice.
Scandal pushed, “What do you think would happen if I threw a bucket of water on this man of fire?”
Ayuvah frowned. “I think that he would kill you. He is not made of fire like our campfire. He shines like the sun, but he does not give off heat or smoke. He does not burn like wood. I do not think you can kill him. Phylomon called him the ‘Aspect of Falhalloran,’ but the man of fire referred to himself as the city of Falhalloran.”
Scandal scratched his beard. “How can a man be a city? Or have the kind of power this man has? Certainly, if the man of fire marched against Bashevgo or Craal with an army of giants, the Slave Lords would pee their britches in terror. There is something you aren’t telling us. Maybe it’s something you don’t even know. Why don’t you take us to the cave?”
Ayuvah shook his head. “Phylomon made me promise not to show it.”
“I promise never to reveal where it is,” Scandal said, “if that makes you feel any better. To show you my good faith: I’ll give you thirty silver eagles if you take me to this cave.”
“You only want to loot the cave,” Ayuvah said.
“I only want to speak to the man of fire. I promise I won’t take anything that he’s not willing to give to me freely. Fair?”
Ayuvah thought. “Will you give me the money now?”
“Ayuvah!” Tull shouted, stunned at the betrayal.
“This money would feed my family for a year,” Ayuvah countered.
Scandal cut the coin purse from his belt. “If the man of fire gives me a refrigeration cube, this will be worth it. I promise, you won’t regret this.”
“Then I am coming with you,” Tull said, “to make sure you don’t steal anything.”
Scandal glared at Tull; his face burned red with rage. “I am not a thief!” he shouted, “I am an honest businessman, making a business contact!”
Tull felt embarrassed at making such an accusation, yet he could not fathom Scandal’s designs. “I know,” Tull said, “but I’ll come just in case you are tempted to become a thief.”
Wisteria woke then, and sat wrapped in her furs. Her face was white and pasty, and when Tull offered her breakfast, she refused to eat.
Tull told her of their plan to visit the cave, but she complained, “I feel ill. You go on ahead without me.” An hour later, Phylomon returned from his visit with Ironwood Woman, ate a few bites of corn cake, and went to sleep. Ayuvah, Tull, and Scandal crept from camp, followed by Tirilee.
The journey to the cave was only two miles, yet in that space they passed three dead dragons, their legs and wings stiffened with rigor mortis, their flesh blasted by fire from the red drones, their mouths burned by the plasma of giants that had battled them in the sky.
There were not enough buzzards in the valley to eat so much flesh, and on one carcass a black-and-white magpie feasted. It jumped into the sky at their approach, then dipped and soared, dipped and soared in unhurried retreat, its tail feathers floating out behind it.
The four of them climbed a long low hill, and at last came to a rocky white bluff between two arms of the hill. Twisted scrub oaks grew along the cliff face. Ayuvah pointed to the oaks, brushed a strand of red hair from his eyes, and said, “The cave is there.”
“Where?” Scandal asked, searching the base of the cliff.
Ayuvah walked forward, looked at the stone, and announced loudly, “Falhalloran, it is I, Ayuvah, I have returned.”
With a sound of rushing wind, the white stone crumbled into dust and dropped like a curtain.
Scandal fell backward in surprise. “What in the name of hell!” he shouted, running back from the cave.
Ayuvah said, “We are going to get ourselves killed,” and backed away.
Tull had been too startled to run. He walked forward, looked into what seemed like a natural cave. The walls oozed with mud and limestone. Cave coral had formed on the floor, and travertine ran in ridges down the sides. The whole place was wet and dripping, and in the middle of the floor lay a porcupine skeleton.
From these signs, it was hard to believe that Falhalloran would be anything but a gutted ruin. Tull imagined a city of wood and stone, with rotting floors and bent walls. In such a musty place as this, he suspected, that was all that could be left. Yet he spotted tracks on the floor where Phylomon and Ayuvah had entered the day before.
“I will not go in,” Ayuvah said. His legs trembled. “I should not have brought you here. I broke a promise.”
Tull walked forward, inspected the walls. Tirilee followed close behind; she crept up and actually took his hand. Tull looked at her in surprise, and the young Dryad shook, then sniffled in terror. “I want to see it, too!”
Scandal hurried forward, following a close third. Tull took a few steps, and, as if by mutual consent, the others each took exactly one step to match his own. The tunnel stood before them, leading far back into the blackness. He felt a warm wind brush his face—like the liquid exhalations of a woman’s breath, blowing out from the tunnel.
“I hear breathing,” Tirilee said softly. “Something is alive in there!”
Tull felt it too, the hot breath of something infinitely large. The hair on Tull’s back stood on end, and Tirilee clutched his arm.
“I am alive,” a voice whispered from the cave, ringing from stone to stone—a powerful commanding voice, neither male nor female. “Come into me.”
Tull looked at Tirilee, and her lips were drawn back in terror. He asked, “Who are you?”
“Falhalloran, the City of New Birth.” the voice whispered.
“Listen,” Scandal whispered to Tull. “This is wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe we should leave.”
Tull watched the fat man tremble. So he had wanted to loot the place, he realized. Scandal had come only because he had hoped to sneak past the man of fire.
“We’ve come to see you, Falhalloran,” Tull shouted. “Can you show yourself?”
Scandal’s eyes grew round and he moaned in fear. In the distance, far back in the cave, there was a scream like the sound of metal twisting.
Suddenly the mud and limestone walls of the cave began to glow. Not the comforting glow of a fire, but a fierce glow that frightened Tull. With a rush of wind, a great stone pillar in front of them burst into a flame of light that gave no more warmth than the sun striking one’s face, and the pillar shrank into the form of a man whose features were molten glass, whose body was somehow fiercely bright.
The man was tall, like Phylomon, with a stretched look and angular cheekbones. Yet, unlike Phylomon, he had hair—white filaments of flowing glass. He wore a simple tunic, open at the chest, that left his arms bare.
Tull felt a wave of heat rush over him, a burning within his own breast, and looked down. His own body, and the bodies of those who were with him, also glowed. Yet they did not look like glass. Somehow, he suspected that he had been changed into something not quite flesh and bone.
“I am the Aspect of Falhalloran,” the man said. As his mouth moved, Tull detected tiny structures, like intricate crossbeams and braces that made up the fine musculature of his mouth. He was obviously neither glass nor flesh—a structure of some other material. His voice penetrated Tull, seemed to inscribe itself in his mind. “What do you desire?”
Scandal took one look at Falhalloran and promptly fainted.
Tull pointed at Scandal lying in a heap on the floor. “We came to ask your help. To the north, in Bashevgo, and to the west, in Craal, the Slave Lords rule, and they keep forty million of the Pwi in captivity. For eight hundred years we have been at war with them, and they have won. In our own land, the sea serpents that have formed an eco-barrier for a thousand years have died. We want you to send your giants to save us from the carnosaurs that will swim across the ocean, and we want you to help free our people from captivity.”
“I am Falhalloran, the City of New Birth,” the man of fire said. “I am not a weapon of war. Neither I nor the giants I created last night can move from Sanctum.”
“Yet you are the most powerful creature on this planet!” Tull countered. “Surely you could give us weapons!”
“I could teach you to make weapons to destroy your enemies, destroy this world,” the man of fire said, “but in time your enemies would wrest them from you. Your end would be more miserable than your life is now.”
“Is there nothing you can do to help us?” Tull begged.
The man of fire said, “I do not bestow weapons,” and his light began to fade until suddenly he became nothing more than a stone pillar once again.
***