Did You Never Dream of Flying? Page 2

that stunning shade of deep blue found nowhere else in nature, the tiny points of the first stars glittering overhead. The eastern horizon was dark.

  The fire, though, marked no campsite. The clearing was empty, much wider than expected, and on a fairly sharp slope. Above, the dark shape of the first true peak of the Tuani loomed, a jagged triangle chopped out of the sunset. He had to narrow his eyes so that the rest of the view faded almost to black before he could comfortably look at the fire.

  It blazed what had to be ten feet high, despite being no wider than an ordinary campfire at its base. The form of it was impossible, a bulge in the middle where the flames seemed to circle and spiral inwards before heading for the sky. At the top, the fire splayed out, tongues of white-orange spraying in every direction.

  A memory rose, called up by the bizarre shape. The Sherim Bersh had taken him through in training had been a squat pine, stretched in the middle of its trunk to accommodate a round doorway that he'd been firmly instructed never to open. It looked as if that tree was completely ablaze, its foliage gone already, its ugly trunk and heart about to be consumed.

  Had they really come so far? He paused and closed his eyes, reaching down to the well of his Gift. It lay waiting somewhere at the bottom of his mind and, yes, he could feel the surface rippling. He kicked himself for not noticing earlier. Of all the times to let himself down...

  Chag whispered, "You alright?"

  Atla turned to find the little man frowning at him. The firelight didn't flatter the hollows of his face, but he didn't look annoyed. Raising his voice so Pevan, who was halfway up the slope to the Sherim already, could hear, he said, "The fire is the Sherim. It wasn't like this last time I was here, though."

  Pevan stopped, turned back to face them, a dark shape against the firelight. Distance thinned her voice out as she called, "What do you mean, not like this?" Atla flinched as three sword-straight lines of violet light stabbed out from the Gatemaker and vanished into the night somewhere above them.

  Wild Power. He'd seen it before, of course, but never so starkly. A chill ran through him that had nothing to do with the night. Pevan must have felt something similar, because she was hurrying back down the slope. Chag extricated himself from Atla's grip and started up to join her, but she waved him back.

  When she finally got close enough that her face wasn't silhouetted against the fire, her eyes were fixed wide with worry. She looked to Atla first. "How's your sign language?"

  He made the gesture for I can keep up.

  She frowned. "Speak, until I tell you otherwise. How's the Sherim different?"

  "It used to be a tree. Same shape, but, well, uh, not made of fire."

  "Was the Sherim ever very active when you were here before?" Her question came without any of her usual levity, hard and fast.

  "I, uh, I don't know. There were a couple of times when it was leaking a lot of Wild Power. Uh, I don't know how they would measure up." Atla pulled his cloak tighter around himself.

  "And there was no sign of any fire then? No heat from the tree?"

  Atla shook his head, looking away at the darkness and trying to remember. Certainly, the last time Bersh had brought him here, when they'd spent most of the time signing to each other rather than talking, it had been freezing cold the whole time. There'd been one morning that they'd had to crack ice off the tent flap before they could get out.

  "Some effect of the Realmquake, you think?" Chag's jaw was set, and the firelight made him look sickly.

  "Obviously." Pevan glanced over her shoulder at the fire. "The question is whether it will go back to normal, or if this is the new normal. And whether we can afford to wait before trying to cross it."

  A gust of wind blew Chag's hair into his face as he turned to Atla. "I don't suppose you can cross the Sherim like this?"

  "The route I know means climbing the tree." He bit his lip. "Doesn't seem like a good idea."

  "I wouldn't let you try it anyway." Pevan glared at him. "What's the next nearest Sherim any of us know? I doubt it's going to be Federas'."

  "Tendullor's tied to the Gorhilt Sherim," Chag offered with a shrug. "A couple of hundred miles South of here."

  "Lefal, too." Atla hadn't even thought about that. The thief really was a neighbour, after a fashion.

  He shot Atla a frown that said he might be feeling more or less the same thing. "It's been a while since I was home, but I trained at Yolan, so I learned the Gorhilt Sherim pretty well. Between us we can probably manage it safely." Something in his voice sent a shiver of unease through Atla. How well did he remember the Sherim at Gorhilt? His Gift would keep him pretty safe, but could he really lead the other two?

  "That's our best bet, then." Pevan's tone gave no grace for his uncertainty. Again, she glanced uphill. "We'll eat and sleep here. Might as well make use of the fire."

  Atla swallowed, ice dripping into his gut. "Is that safe?"

  "Fair question." She gave him a grim smile. "Call it a calculated risk. A Wilder coming through is either going to have a problem with the fire or take a long time to adjust itself to our logic, in which case you should feel it. You're not a sleepwalker, are you?"

  Mutely, he shook his head.

  "We'll keep our distance, don't worry. But it'll be good to feel a little warmth again, right?" She smiled. "Do you want to eat here in the dark, where we can talk, or up in the warm?"

  He looked from Pevan to Chag and back again. Both were huddling under their cloaks, and he realised he had his shoulders curled tight too, in a futile attempt to keep a little more warmth in. "Uh... I vote up there."

  Chag nodded and started to move, but Pevan grabbed his arm. She turned a diamond-hard glare on them both. "Absolutely no talking past this point. None. Clear? If you need attention, snap your fingers. If you need to cough, don't cover your mouth, and make sure you look away. Until we know just how sensitive the Sherim is, take no risks at all."

  Atla glanced at Chag, but his eyes were fixed on Pevan.

  Again, she asked, "Am I clear?"

  They nodded in unison.

  Pevan returned the nod, slowly. "Okay. Atla, break up the bread. Everyone gets part of the stale end. I'll take first watch. Chag second. Let's get warm."

  She turned and began to walk up towards the fire. Something in the way she leaned forward made her look very tired indeed. When Atla stepped after her, he found aches in his knees that probably mirrored her condition. It was hard to resist the urge to groan.

  He busied himself tearing a hunk off the end of the loaf. The softness really had gone out of it, and it probably hadn't responded well to being under his arm all afternoon either. When he offered it, Chag took the chunk without protest and bit in straight away. He gave no sign of enthusiasm, but he didn't spit it out either.

  Pevan took her piece with better grace, managing to find a smile when Atla tapped her on the shoulder to hand it over. He bit into his own share and was pleasantly surprised. It was dry, sure, and dull, but only the very end had that prickly, wooden feel of staleness.

  Up close, the fire was brighter than could possibly be natural, and his eyes stung just to look at it. Even twenty feet away, he could feel the heat. A ring of charred ground suggested that it might well have been even hotter the day before.

  They ate standing up, Pevan passing the canteen round a couple of times, but watching like a hawk for any greed. When they were done, she pointed to two patches of grass just inside the fire's bubble of warmth. Unable to think of any appropriate sign to respond with, Atla lay down where she pointed, his back to the fire.

  The grass was thick - probably nothing in the forest wanted to graze, particularly this close to a Sherim. For a moment, he craned over his shoulder for a worried look at the fire, but it wasn't like he could do anything about it. He turned back to see Pevan standing at attention, staring downhill, then closed his eyes.

  His dream shook apart and he woke with a heart-slamming shock, visions of thrashing tower blocks and fire smothering reason for a moment.
He tried to roll to his feet and struck something. It fought back, kicking him in the shins as it toppled. The grunt as it fell was a human sound, though, and that brought Atla back to himself.

  He managed to sit up, despite Chag's legs being tangled with his own. The little man pulled himself clear and glared at Atla. He pointed a finger at Atla's chest, then raised his hand to frame his eye. Your watch.

  Atla nodded, returned the sign for sorry. Chag waved a hand in dismissal, then lay back down, rolled over, and seemed to go straight to sleep. Atla pushed to his feet, glad beyond belief that the fire was still burning. His bladder protested, but the treeline seemed a long way off in the dark.

  The slope gave him his bearings. The sun had gone down behind the mountain, and there was only darkness now in that direction, but looking the other way, toward Vessit, the horizon was a hazy grey blur. Above it, midnight was draining from the sky, leaving watery silver and the faint promise of some yellow.

  As the rush of adrenaline from his waking faded, Atla's bladder demanded attention more firmly. He walked up to the trees behind the Sherim - they were closer than anywhere else, even though it meant giving up line of site to Pevan and Chag for a moment - and relieved himself. Some whisper of wind in the forest set a tingle in the middle of his back as he turned to go back to the fire.

  Instead of looking round, he plumbed his Gift. The Sherim loomed large, of course, making waves so big that