Tamora Pierce - The Circle Opens 3 - Cold Fire

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2024-12-03 0 0 653.96KB 243 页 5.9玖币
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THE CIRCLE OPENS
COLD FIRE
TAMORA PIERCE
BOOK THREE OF THE CIRCLE OPENS QUARTET
Chapter 1
In the city of Kugisko, in Namorn:
Niamara Bancanor, twelve and sometimes too helpful in Daja
Kisubo's opinion, gripped Daja's left hand and elbow. They stood on
one edge of a broad circle of ice where the Bancanors docked their
household boats in the summer. Now, in the month of Snow Moon,
eight weeks before the solstice holiday called Longnight, it was a
place to skate, with benches and heaped banks of snow at the sides to
protect those less able to stop than experts like Nia. For all her
fourteen years, Daja was as much a beginner at this as any three-year-
old. She wouldn't have agreed to these lessons, wanting to protect her
dignity, but after three weeks of watching the Namornese zip up and
down the city's frozen canals, she had realized it was time to learn
how to skate, dignity or no.
"Are you ready?" asked Nia. The cold air made dark roses bloom on
her creamy brown cheeks and lent extra sparkle to her brown eyes.
Daja took a deep breath. "Not really," she said with resignation.
"Let's go."
"One," counted Nia, "two, three."
On three Nia and Daja thrust with their left legs against ice
smoothed each night by convict crews who performed that service for
the entire city. Daja glided forward, knees wobbling, ankles wobbling,
belly wobbling.
"Right, push!" cried Nia, gripping Daja's arm. Two right skates
thrust against the ice. Left and right, left and right, they maneuvered
across the length of the boat basin. Daja fought to stay upright. She
knew her body was set wrong: while she didn't skate, years of training
in staff combat told her that she was not at all centered. It was like
trying to balance on a pair of knife blades. Who thought of this mad
form of travel in the first place? And why had no one locked them up
before they passed their dangerous ideas on to others?
She didn't want to think of the picture she made, though she'd bet it
was hilarious. Five feet, eight inches tall, she towered over Nia by
four inches. Where Nia was slender, Daja was big-shouldered and
blocky, muscled from years of work as a metalsmith. She was a much
darker brown than Nia and the other Bancanor children, whose mother
was light brown and whose father was white. Daja's face and mouth
were broad. Her large brown eyes – when she was not trying to learn
to skate – were steady. She wore her springy black hair in a multitude
of long, thin braids. Today she had pulled them into a horse-tail tied
with an orange scarf; she wore no fur-lined hat as Nia did, because she
had her own way to keep her head warm. Her clothes were in the style
worn by Namornese men: a long-skirted coat of heavy wool over a
slightly shorter indoor coat, a full-sleeved and high-collared shirt,
baggy trousers, and calf-high boots to which the skates were strapped.
"See, this isn't so bad," Nia said as they reached the entrance of the
boat basin. "Soon it will be as easy as breathing. Now turn…" She
swept Daja around until they faced the stair to the rear courtyard,
across the small basin. "Ready, left, push," Nia coaxed. Daja obeyed.
Left, right, left, right, they slowly made their way across the ice.
Servants coming and going from the house and outbuildings watched
and hid grins. Like Nia, they had spent their lives here on the
southeastern edge of the Syth. For those who could not afford horses
and sleighs in winter, ice skates were necessary. They were a quick
way around a city sprawled over various islands in waters that were
frozen solid from mid-Blood Moon to late Seed Moon.
By the time Nia turned Daja again, the older girl was starting to get
the idea. The trick was to rock as she stroked, using alternate legs to
push. If she brought her legs together, sooner or later she would stop
moving. Skates, when not in motion, had an ugly tendency to make
the wearer fall over.
Nia guided her back to the end of the boat basin, where it passed
under a street bridge to enter the canal beyond. Without stopping, she
moved Daja onto a course that circled the ice instead of halving it.
Three times they went around, Daja feeling stronger and more
confident with each turn. It was not so different from being aboard a
ship, in a cold way. She enjoyed it so much that she didn't realize that
Nia had let go of her. She skated two yards alone before she noticed.
Then she made the mistake of looking for her partner. Her knees and
ankles wobbled. She frantically tried to recapture the rhythm,
managing three strokes of the skates before her feet hit the basin's
edge. Daja went face-first into heaped snow.
She sank a foot before Nia pulled her out. Laughing, the girl
apologized. "I thought you were doing so well that you'd just keep – "
Daja straightened, bobbling. Nia had gone abruptly silent. A
moment later Daja realized the servants had also stopped moving.
Everyone stared at the place where she had fallen.
Daja sighed. Her Namornese hosts had told her that she had
adjusted wonderfully to their northern winter. She had not mentioned
that her mage talents included the ability to control her body warmth
by drawing heat from other sources. As a result, her very warm body
had melted her precise shape into the snow, down to each finger on
her gloves. The snow that had iced her face when she fell was melting
down the front of her coat.
"Can Frostpine do that?" asked Nia, putting her own gloved hand
into the hand-shape Daja had burned into the snow. Daja's teacher, a
great mage dedicated to the service of the Fire gods, was the reason
they were spending the winter in Bancanor House. Nia's parents were
old friends from the time before Frostpine took his vows.
"No," Daja replied. "Even if you have the same magic as someone
else, it shows in different ways." It would require too much
explanation, or she would have added that she wouldn't have this
ability if she had not spent months with her magic intertwined with
that of three other young mages. Though Daja and her foster-siblings
had finally straightened their powers out, they still carried traces of
what the others could do. Daja's ability to draw warmth and see magic
came to her courtesy of a weather-mage.
"Well," Nia said, determinedly cheerful. "Let's try again."
The lesson went forward. Daja caught the rhythm and managed two
circuits of the basin before they decided to stop. Back into the house
they went, shedding their winter gear and skates in the long, enclosed
area called the slush room. Afterward they followed the halls that
made the outbuildings part of the house to reach the kitchen.
Daja accepted a mug of hot cider from one of the maids. She sat
near one of the small hearths, where her jeweler's tools and a task that
she could handle awaited her. No servant would ask a great mage like
Frostpine to mend their bits of jewelry. Daja was fair game; they
thought she was a student, willing and skilled. The whispers that she
too might be a great mage had not come as far north as Namorn.
Daja enjoyed the work. She liked to sit here doing small repairs,
breathing the scents of spices and cooking meat, and listening to
servants and vendors chatter in Namornese. Before she had mastered
the strange tongue, her travels with Frostpine in the empire of Namorn
had been lonely. It was wonderful to know what people actually said.
She touched the necklace the cook, Anyussa, had given her. Daja's
left hand bore a kind of brass half-mitt that covered the palm and the
back; strips passed between her fingers to connect them. As flexible as
her body, the brass shone bright against her dark skin. The magic in
the living metal told Daja that the necklace was gilt on silver –
expensive for a servant, even one so well paid as Matazi Bancanor's
head cook, but Matazi herself would turn up her nose at it.
Daja laid the gilt metal rope straight on the table. She didn't touch
her pliers. Gilt was tricky stuff on which to apply any force: badly
worked, it would flake off to expose the metal underneath.
She needed to warm it a bit. Turning, Daja reached toward the
hearth and called a seed of fire to her. It swerved around the two
cooks who worked there: Anyussa was watching Nia's identical twin
Jorality, or Jory, stir a green sauce. Jory saw the fire seed go by and
grinned at Daja, then shifted nervously from foot to foot as Anyussa
inspected her work.
"Now look – you rushed. It's gone lumpy," the woman said, lifting a
few green clumps in a spoon. "That's the ruin of any sauce. If you
don't stir enough, or let your attention wander, or add flour too fast, it
lumps, and it's ruined." Anyussa turned to chide a footman who had
dropped a basket of kindling.
Daja was about to tell the glum Jory it was just a green sauce for
fish, not a disaster, when a silver tendril of magic leaped from Jory
into the sauce-pot. The girl stirred it in with a trembling hand. Daja
stared. She and Frostpine had lived here for two months. No one had
mentioned that any of the Bancanor children, the twins or their
younger brother and sister, had power.
Anyussa returned to Jory. Daja watched the cook. Had the woman
seen Jory's small magic?
Anyussa dipped her spoon again. "I tell young girls, you cannot
rush – " She fell silent as she raised her spoon and turned it to spill the
sauce back into the pot. A long, smooth, green ribbon flowed neatly
down, without a lump in sight. "But I was sure… "
As Daja repaired the necklace and mended cracks in the gilt,
Anyussa drew out smooth spoonful after smooth spoonful. She tasted
the sauce and poured it into a dish: no lumps. When a baker's
apprentice came to argue with Anyussa over a bill, Daja slid over the
bench to sit close to Jory. The girl regarded the bowl with a puzzled
frown.
"You know," Daja said quietly, "if you can find a way to fix that
spell to a powder or liquid, you could sell it. Cooks everywhere will
sing your praises."
Jory blinked at her. She had Nia's large brown eyes and slender
nose, set in a face the color of brown honey, a shade lighter than her
southern mother's. She was lively, smile-mouthed, and a handful – her
twin, Nia, was the quiet one. Her chief beauty (and Nia's) was the
masses of gold-brown crinkled hair that fell to her waist. "What
spell?" she asked Daja.
Daja smiled. "What spell? You unlumped your sauce. I can see
magic – it's no good telling me you didn't spell that pot." She
inspected Jory's face, and frowned. The twins weren't hard to read.
"You didn't know?"
"I don't have magic," Jory insisted. "Papa and Mama had magic-
sniffers at me and Nia when we were two, and again when we were
five. Not a whiff." She grinned at Daja. "Maybe it was a spark. Things
glitter in here all the time."
Daja got to her feet and draped her coat over her arm. Anyone who
saw magic would glimpse it all around this kitchen. There were runes
to keep out rats and mice, spells in the hearthstones to keep a few
embers alive until someone rebuilt the fires, and a spice cupboard
magically built to keep its expensive, imported contents fresh.
"You would know," Daja said. "If you do figure out what you did,
you should write it down."
"Oh, Anyussa just scraped from the bottom or something," Jory said
airily. "She wants everything perfect – "
"Fire!" someone yelled outside. "Fire in the alley! Fire brigade, turn
out!" Jory fled, Daja assumed to warn her mother and the
housekeeper. The kitchen help streamed outside.
Daja put her coat down and followed them, wondering what "fire
brigade" meant. She was surprised that Anyussa had allowed everyone
to run off to gawk – the woman was fair, but strict. When she reached
the courtyard Daja discovered her mistake in thinking the servants had
come to watch. A line of kitchen helpers stretched between the well
and the alley off the rear courtyard; they passed buckets of water out
the rear gate. Another line of people led from the large pile of sand
kept for use on icy paths. They passed buckets of sand the same way.
Daja followed the full buckets into the alley. The efficient assembly
stretched down its length to the nearby blaze, an abandoned stable
behind Moykep House. Daja viewed it with an intelligent eye, since
fire was mixed into her power. The stable was gone, that was certain.
The closest buildings might be in danger, but it seemed this strange
local efficiency covered that as well. Men stood on every roof that
might be at risk, soaking shingles with water, keeping an eye out for
jumping flames or wads of burning debris.
Daja was impressed twice over. Since her arrival in Namorn, she'd
found it hard to feel safe in cities that were almost entirely wood. Here
only the nobility and the empire built in stone. Apparently she did not
worry alone. Someone was teaching Kugiskans organized ways to
battle fires.
"How did this happen?" she asked Anyussa, who stood beside her.
"Most places, they have sloppy lines and hardly anyone ever thinks of
the neighbors' roofs but the neighbors."
"We got lucky," Anyussa replied. She was a fortyish white woman
with brown eyes, sharp cheekbones, and a full, passionate mouth.
Unlike many northern women, she left her hair brown rather than dye
it fashionably blonde, and wore it pinned in a coil. "Bennat Ladradun,
the man who trained us to fight fires, studied with the fire-mage,
Pawel Godsforge."
Daja whistled. Everyone who dealt with such things knew of the
great Godsforge, whose home was tucked among mountain springs
and geysers in the northwest corner of the Namornese empire.
"Ladradun is a mage?" She recognized his name: the Ladraduns lived
nearby.
"Not Ravvot Bennat," Anyussa replied, using the Namornese term
for "Master." "But he said there was plenty for even a non-mage to
learn, and he learned it. When he came home, he talked the city
council into allowing him to train districts in Godsforge's firefighting
methods. Then he talked some of the island councils into granting
funds and people to train. It paid off. It's been two years since a house
burned to the ground here on Kadasep. He – "
Suddenly people in the stableyard were shouting. Above the adult
voices rose the thin screams of children. Daja left Anyussa and raced
toward the stable, realizing someone must be caught inside. She
gathered her power in case she had to do something in a hurry.
In the stableyard, people stood as close as they dared to the entrance
of the burning building, full buckets in hand. Their eyes were wide in
soot-streaked faces, glued to that dark opening ringed in flame.
Someone went in, Daja thought. They're waiting for him to come
out. She was reaching with her magic, prepared to hold back the fire,
when a bulky, awkward, gray shape came out of the smoke-filled
entrance at a dead run. Behind the shape overtaxed roofbeams groaned
and collapsed. The stable roof caved in, sending gouts of flame
blasting out the doorway to clutch and release the gray shape. Daja
saw a clump of burning straw shoot up through the hole in the roof,
swirling in the column of hot air released by the fire. The brisk Snow
Moon winds seized it and dragged it higher, toward the main house.
Daja raised her right hand and snapped her fingers, calling with her
power. The clump of fire came to her, collapsing until it was a tidy
globe that rested on her palm. Holding it before her face, she asked,
"What am I going to do with you?"
She looked at the gray shape. Firefighters pulled the water-soaked
blanket away to reveal a large, sodden white man with two boys no
older than eight or ten. He carried one over a shoulder, one under an
arm.
Daja's throat went tight with emotion. There was no glimmer of
magic to this fellow who had nearly been buried in the stable. With
only a wet blanket for protection he had plunged into flames to save
those boys. He'd come close to dying: one breath more and that
burning roof would have dropped on his head.
This was a true hero, a non-mage who saved lives because he had
to, not because he could protect himself with magic. He was a tall man
in his early thirties, coatless; his wool shirt was covered in soot marks
and scorches. His russet wool trousers were also fire-marked. He
appeared to have forgotten his wriggling burdens as he stared at Daja
and her fire seed with deep blue eyes.
The firefighters tugged on the boys. Recalled to himself, the tall
man released them and grimaced. He shook his left hand: it was
crimson and blistered with a serious burn. The boys were coughing,
the result of their exposure to smoke. Their rescuer eyed them with a
frown as a firefighter wrapped linen around his burned hand. "Which
of you set it?" he demanded.
A woman in a maid's cap and white apron was offering the boys a
ladle of water to drink. She dropped the ladle at the blue-eyed man's
words. "Set?" she cried.
"His fault, Mama," one croaked, pointing to the other. "He spilt the
lamp."
"You said we could play up there!" cried his companion, before a
series of coughs left him wheezing.
The maid grabbed each lad by an ear and towed them into the main
house. Daja shook her head over the folly of the young and glanced at
the burning stable. The firefighters had given up. They simply kept
back and watched for more flying debris. They also edged away from
Daja, their eyes on the white-hot fire globe in her hand.
"If you don't want people to be nervous with you, don't do things
that make them nervous," Frostpine had advised after they'd been on
the road a week. "Or do things they won't notice. You've been spoiled,
living at Winding Circle. There everyone's used to magic. Outside,
making things act differently than normal turns people jumpy."
Daja didn't like to make people jumpy. She covered her fireball with
one hand.
"How did you manage that?" The boys' rescuer walked over to
Daja, cradling his wrapped left hand. "You called it. Viynain" –
Namornese for "a male mage" – "Godsforge had that trick, except in
ribbons, not balls." He thrust his right hand at Daja. "Bennat
Ladradun," he said. Even covered with soot and scorch-marks he was
a comfortable-looking man, with the soft, big body of a well-broken-
in armchair. His broad cheeks were each punctuated with a mole, one
high, one low. His nose was fleshy and pointed; his flyaway curls
were reddish brown and losing ground on top of his head. Someone
came up with a dry blanket to wrap around him: his clothes were
soaked by the blanket he'd worn into the stable.
Daja had to uncover her fireball to shake his hand. "Daja Kisubo,"
she replied. "You were brave to go in there."
"No, I just didn't think," Bennat replied absently. "If I had, I'd have
known better. The roof was about to go." He turned her offered hand
palm up and closed his fingers around it. "Not even hot," he remarked.
"A little warm, that's all." He let Daja go. "You're one of the smith-
mages, am I right? The pair staying with Kol and Matazi?"
Daja nodded. "The Bancanors' cook says you teach Kugisko to fight
fires."
Bennat smiled, his thin mouth tucked into ironic corners. "I teach
parts of Kugisko, bit by bit, kicking and screaming," he replied as he
inspected the fireball. He held his hand over it and snatched it back.
摘要：

THECIRCLEOPENSCOLDFIRETAMORAPIERCEBOOKTHREEOFTHECIRCLEOPENSQUARTETChapter1InthecityofKugisko,inNamorn:NiamaraBancanor,twelveandsometimestoohelpfulinDajaKisubo'sopinion,grippedDaja'slefthandandelbow.TheystoodononeedgeofabroadcircleoficewheretheBancanorsdockedtheirhouseholdboatsinthesummer.Now,inthemo...

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