Starfire Saga, page 1
CONTACT WITH STARFIRE
I was watching the couple, smiling at their open joy, when I felt the touch of the starfire on my wrist. I looked quickly at the white tendril that had come to draw me out onto the floor. It burned like a real flame, but it was cool against my skin. In a flash I stole a glance at Jemeret, who was looking at me and the starfire expressionlessly. Then I rose, and since I had already gathered to narrow my irises against the glare, I pulled in a little more strength and tried to pathfind the flame on my wrist.
By the time I tried it, I was already out on the arena floor. For a split second the tendril seemed to freeze, and then it stood away and flowed around me at a distance of about half a meter. I didn’t move, afraid I’d broken some sort of major taboo. The white tendril rose in front of me, swaying back and forth, and leaned forward to touch my forehead.
From behind me in the rows of spectators, I heard a few gasps and a low murmur, which stilled instantly as single tendrils rose from the gold, the blue, and the red bowls of starfire and came to join the white one. They all twined together like a snakelike creature and then spiraled upward around my body until I, too, was encased in fire. I became aware, at the very core of my being that the starfire was a living thing, and living things have no paths...
COMMENCEMENT
by
ROBY JAMES
Published by ReAnimus Press
Other books by Roby James:
Commitment
The Soldier's Daughter
Maelstrom
Beyond the Hedge
A Song of Awakening
© 2013, 1996 by Roby James. All rights reserved.
http://ReAnimus.com/authors/robyjames
Cover Art by Abigail Southworth
Licence Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
~~~
To Keith
Despite his denials, he really is my own Lord Jemeret
To Barbara, for speaking like the starfire
And to control freaks everywhere
~~~
Acknowledgments
I express my heartfelt love and deepest appreciation:
For comments on the evolving copies of the manuscript: to Bonnie Fink, Gigi Gilmartin, David Vorspan, Rod and Judy Ditzler, Jim Peterson, David Epstein, Pat Thompson, Linda McKelvey, Georgia Zweber, Lindy Mendelsohn, and Candy Weigand. And, for catching more typos than anyone else, to the dear friend in Phoenix who specifically told me not to mention her name.
For reading the finished manuscript with enthusiasm and encouragement: to Jan Kirshbaum, Bob Woolley, Eli Schochet, Lou Loomis, Neil Hattem, Connie Greaser, Sandy Lewis, Nell Bruegel, Gladys Sturman, Mal Cohen, Virginia Parkum, Frances Nye-Peterson, James Nolte, Les Cole, and Bob Miller.
For an assessment of the accuracy of the psychology (the “science” in my science fiction), to Dr. Stephan D. Schuster. And to Sima, Sarah, and Maita Schuster, his family, who couldn’t be kept from fighting over who got to read it next.
To my precious Cousin Ron, who, reading it, told me to my everlasting joy that I had grown up to be the writer my late mother always wanted him to be.
To M. Miriam, and to my “family,” the Community at Our Lady of the Rock.
For ongoing encouragement without having to read the manuscript, and thus, for blind faith in me: to Valerie Saenz, Ed Shaheen, Linda Hancock, Cathy Swarts, Dwight Morgan, Bob Melville, Barbara Straus Reed, and Michael Kesler; Mickey and Susie Rappaport, Dick Kirshbaum, Barbara Hattem, Paula Loomis, and Bonnie Vorspan; Doris Isolini Nelson, Janet Sternfeld Davis, Kathy Rousseau, and the other women of the Steering Committee for the Los Angeles Catholic-Jewish Women’s Dialogue; Father William Treacy; Lura Dymond; Lillian and Don Smith; Gail and George MacDonald; and Mary Ann Mobley and Paula Butturini, who kept telling me to keep at it when I was getting discouraged.
My gratitude goes without reservation to Shawna McCarthy, my agent. And I am also grateful to Gabriel Cohen, who introduced me to Michele Slung, who introduced me to David Hartwell, who introduced me to Shawna.
And, of course, to my editor at Del Rey Books, Ellen Key Harris.
Any errors or shortcomings are completely my own, but my strength comes from all of the people above, and I wanted them to know that I couldn’t have done it without them.
—R.J.
The technical form of almost everything can be studied from books, but the essence of things can only be known through contact, or from life itself.
—Morris Lichtenstein
I. A Place Like the Past
I want to write it as it happened—the processes and the progresses that brought me to where I am, the ways I changed and the ways I stayed the same. I want to tell it as if it were a story, even though of all the things I thought my life would be, “story” is not a word I would have chosen. And yet, Jasin Lebec once told me we all write stories with our lives. It’s just that we’re not aware that’s what we’re doing, so we never read them as a whole creation. I promise to read this when I’ve done writing it. It will help build the foundation I can go on from.
I didn’t even begin the journal until after we arrived at Stronghome, and life keeps moving forward, even as I write about the things that have happened—are happening—happened before I got to this world. So I may never catch up with where I am. Somehow that’s almost fitting.
The first thing I remember is hearing the fire. The crackle seemed to penetrate the darkness in my mind, and then on my closed eyelids I saw the pattern of moving light. I felt the pain simultaneously. It had been years since I’d felt anything more than a minor cramp, and for a moment or two the shock of the pain’s intensity made it impossible for me to think clearly.
I fought to master the gather and take a deep breath, and as I felt I could, the reflexes snapped into place and the pain began to lessen. The capacity for logical thought returned slowly. When I had gathered enough to hold the pain back into a dull, aching throb, I concentrated my awareness behind my breastbone and spread it outward, gathering more as I did so. My assessment showed that I had one cracked and two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a broken arm, assorted abrasions, contusions, and scrapes, and a badly gashed ankle. I was bleeding from numerous cuts in addition to the ankle, but those didn’t worry me. Without trying to open my eyes yet, I began instantly to seal off the bleeders in the ankle. The protective edge of my gathering had now shut down all the pain receptors from the injured areas, allowing me the luxury of comfort as I slowly knit the cells on both sides of the ankle cut—first deep inside, then closer and closer to the surface.
As soon as that was nearly healed, I went to work on the ribs, carefully joining cell to cell, almost unconsciously blessing my luck that there were no bone spurs at any of the breaks. I got the shoulder and the arm repaired next, and was tiring fast when I heard the voices approaching.
“There’s the fireball!”
“Over here, look over here!”
Footsteps came closer, and then, “It’s a woman, and she’s alive!” It was very near and filled with amazement, but for the moment I didn’t want to pay attention to it. I was marshaling my strength to prepare to open my eyes. I couldn’t remember having been in anything that could have crashed, not floater, nor groundcar, nor lander. The last thing I could remember was running up the long flight of steps to the entrance of Government House on my way to Mortel John, Kray, and Coney, who stood at the top of the steps, waiting for me. And now the surface under my heels, hips, and shoulders was rough, uneven, softly padded with what felt like vegetation. Clearly, I was no longer in the paved environs of Government House.
“Don’t try to move her. Get Dogul, and hurry!”
The crackling sounds of the fire almost drowned out the words. I risked opening my eyes. It was dark out, and the light I had seen through my eyelids came from a huge fireball, several meters away to my left. Whatever I had crashed in would soon be only cinders, ash, and twisted, blackened metal. Several people ran through my line of sight, between me and the flames, dark shadows on the face of the inferno. I hadn’t yet tried to move my head, because it would take more energy, and I was stretched too thin between repairing the injuries and holding back the pain.
The fireball flared up suddenly, and then seemed to subside, leaving a softer, darker night. I realized that, incomprehensibly, some of the people were carrying torches, and then, gathering a little more and turning my head slightly, I saw that there were trees in my field of vision, too—huge, old, thick-boled trees that towered up into the darkness.
This wasn’t a world I knew. This had to be a natural area, but one that was unbelievably ancient, and the cities had to be some distance away. I ran quickly through a catalog of the worlds on which I had been, and I didn’t know any with natural areas as old as this one.
“Here, Dogul, she’s over here.”
I pulled in my senses to face this person called Dogul—and again I was surprised as the torchlight revealed a woman of great age, but not age as it came in the Com, with dignity, ease, and grace. This was an aging of wrinkles on leatherlike skin, eyes meshed in a net of deep lines between a headbanded cowl and veil and a chin band.
“Are you aware?” she asked. Her voice wa
Bright light suddenly intruded on me, and I had to close my eyes. So much of my energy was gone now that I did not even want to try irising my pupils down faster than normal.
I heard Dogul say, “Get a litter. Bring it here as soon as you can. You, Vulin, get up to the stonehouse and tell the Meltress—not the Melster, mind you—the Meltress, that I beg an audience. Go!”
She bent over me again, and I felt her hands gently exploring my body and my limbs. The torchlight dimmed a little, and I opened my eyes again, blinking a few times. Dogul’s exploration had reached my ankle. I heard a sudden intake of breath, and she straightened for a moment, then leaned close to my face.
“Listen to me,” she said in a low voice. “It is dangerous to practice Samish arts here. You may not know, but this is Honish land. If you value your life, do no more, and be thankful one such as I found you.”
She straightened and turned away before I could react, but that was probably just as well, because I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. I understood most of the words she’d spoken, but the sense of her warning eluded me. Because I was exhausted in addition to valuing my life, I stopped any further attempt to gather, ceased repairing my cuts and bruises, and used my remaining strength to keep the pain receptors closed. In my mind I cataloged the planets I’d been to in my slightly more than twenty standard years. I needed a logical train of thought to believe I was still in control, and I fastened onto needing to know where I was. There was Steressor, where I had been born and certified as a talent; Werd, where I had been trained, tested, and graded as the first Class A of my generation; Koldor, where the higher-level Com training was undertaken and completed; and Orokell, seat of the Com. Those were civilized worlds, not one of which had a natural area with trees in it that looked to be hundreds of years old, and not one of which supported wrinkled women in archaic headgear. Then there was the nameless test-world where I had done my Tenday, but I knew it to be all desert, not forested, and not peopled with anachronisms.
Where was I? How had I gotten here? How could the Com have misplaced a just-graduated Class A talent? I was too valuable for this.
Trying to think logically—and the growing stress of not reaching a conclusion—drained me even further. Some of the control over my pain slipped, and I began to ache. A soft groan escaped me involuntarily, and Dogul leaned back over me. “Better to be silent,” she said.
If I had not been in pain and exhausted, I would probably have laughed. There was something so ludicrous about the strangeness of all this, something bizarre, out of mesh with all objective reality. I even irrationally supposed that I could be dreaming some kind of Arthurian legend.
“Here comes the litter, Dogul.”
“Slide it down here beside her. I want to move her as little as possible.”
I felt a genuine stab of fear at the idea of being moved. Somehow in my bewilderment, reality had crystallized around the firmness and solidity of the ground beneath me, as once in classes it had centered on my prowess in training. I was too tired to fight both pain and fear.
Several pairs of hands moved me quickly, a little roughly, onto the litter. All my control, exerted hard, didn’t keep enough of the pain at bay, and I cried out against my will for the first time since childhood. I felt abruptly shamed by it. A Class A talent should never have been taken unaware by a simple thing like physical pain.
As the litter lifted and Dogul threw a rough cloth over me, exhaustion took over, all the rest of my control slipped, and the world grayed out. I was not really unconscious, just withdrawn and subdued, protected, away from the confusion. Nothing from the outside disturbed me for an indeterminate time, and then the light brightened and a soft, low-pitched woman’s voice intruded. “What is all this about, Dogul?”
I brought myself back to some measure of awareness. The litter had halted, but had not been set down. A torch was closer. As I heard Dogul say, “Meltress, please come and see,” I opened my eyes. Dogul was bowing to a thin woman of unknown age, wearing a fine but shapeless robe and a much more delicate version of the cowl and veil. She looked at me for a long moment, then looked at Dogul, and seemed to be calculating something.
At last she asked, “She came with the great fireburn we saw from the walls?”
“She was with it when we found her, Lady Meltress,” Dogul answered. “I thought you would want to see. The stars have truly blessed you.”
The thin woman looked back at me again, and the corners of her lips lifted in what I was hard put to call a smile. “You have done well, Dogul,” she said. “You will be rewarded. See that her hurts are attended.” Then she was gone from my field of vision.
When Dogul bent over me again, she was smiling. “Now we’ll take you to rest, pretty one,” she said with satisfaction. I let myself drift back into the grayness. Until I rested, I would be good for nothing. My reserves were low, and I had to deep. I fell asleep and had deeped before the litter stopped moving.
I awoke suddenly, as always emerging from deeping into sleeping first, then becoming fully aware in an instant. The remembered pain kept me from moving quickly, but as I turned my head, I saw a young woman in a clean but worn robe rise from a stool and go to the door. The door was made of wood, banded with some sort of hammered metal. The walls around the low bed on which I lay were of mortared stone.
The young woman slipped out the door, leaving behind some sort of rough cloth she’d been sewing. I knew what hand sewing was, in a historical sense, but I’d never before seen anyone do it. Suddenly, there was a logic to the trees, the wrinkles, the clothes, the room, and the sewing. “This is a wilderworld!” I said aloud. What in the name of sentience was I doing on a wilderworld? They were proscribed. And if I had crashed here, would anyone know I was here? Could anyone come and get me from a wilderworld even if they knew it?
The latter thought I quelled quickly as I sat up, damping away the remaining aches and pains. I was the Class A. The Com would move whole worlds to get me back.
I wanted to get up, but first I had to test out my injuries. I had been able to heal nothing fully before I ran out of time and energy. Under the coarse, loose shift I’d been dressed in, my ribs had been tightly bandaged—the cracked one I had not been able to repair at all had obviously been diagnosed. So my breathing was a little restricted. My bad arm was discolored from elbow to shoulder, but I had gotten the break knitted and the shoulder back in place well enough so that most of the surrounding muscles were not badly damaged. The various cuts, scrapes, and abrasions had some sort of salve on them. Nothing was serious—I had taken care of the worst ones myself.
The door opened and Dogul came in, followed by the young woman, who was carrying a tray with a bowl and a mug on it.
“How do you feel?” Dogul asked.
“All right,” I said cautiously. “Where am I?”
The young woman put the tray down on my knees. The bowl contained what looked like a thick vegetable broth; the mug, a thick, yellowish, milky liquid. Dogul answered, “You are in the stonehouse of the Melster Lewannee and his Meltress. They have kindly agreed to see to your healing.”
“I can see to my own healing,” I said. “Where is this stonehouse?”
Dogul gestured sharply to the young woman to leave the room, and she did so, closing the heavy door behind her. When it had closed, the old woman demanded, her face twisted with anger, “Are you mad to speak that way in front of a serving-maid? If it becomes known that you are Samish, you will be put to the ax, and then where will our plans be? We need only two more days, the Meltress and me!”
Common sense told me that I would learn more if I didn’t alienate her, and logic said that I needed to learn. What she had said had little meaning for me. “Samish” was a word I had heard her say before, but still didn’t understand. “Our plans” meant nothing. “The ax” also meant little, but it sounded ominous in context. One of the things Mortel John had labored long and hard to teach me was diplomacy. I decided to see if I could practice it.
