The Firefarer

Part Nine/ Chapter Three: The Firefarer

She stood on the battle field, aware of a sudden communing of the winds. They teased and whipped her hair, plucked at her dress, danced in a violent gyre about her body. She inhaled the air, scenting the entire world: the bitter tang of the sea, the dry hot dust of deserts, the mist of the lowlands and the foul stench of distant cities.

She observed the battlefield with heightened sight ˗ with a vision which penetrated the bodies and minds of men and women, which saw through the clouds to the stars, which took in lands far beyond the valley, stretching back across the Pagi, the Harar mountains and the Angust straits to the Ahi and the source of her power ˗ the fire mountain.

And words carried to her in a jumbled rush. Words in Ahi, in Pagese, Ruach, and in languages which she could not even recognise. She caught the corrupted speech of the mad, children's first faltering words, the harsh curses of murderers, the flattering praises of Pagi and the desperate pleas of the dying. Assaulted with the weight of words, Muna covered her ears.

Vito stood before her, reaching out as the battle raged on. "Hide!" she heard herself say. But that voice was not her own. It was a voice forged of all other voices. It shook her body to speak. His eyes rounded in fear, and he ran.

Alone now, passing through the maelstrom of battle, she looked down to the earth. A chasm dropped away beneath her feet, and below her was a gaping, glowing void. When she looked up, it were as if she hung suspended amongst the dizzying spin of distant stars. She stared back down at the earth and watched the battle play out beneath her ˗ tiny Pagese knights astride ant-like steeds streaming down the valley towards miniature Ahi. That made her throw back her head and laugh.

Her laughter rippled out over the field of war. She was amongst them again, she realised, and they were watching her. Some had lain their weapons down and were already running. Others stared, fear-struck, spears and bows dangling uselessly from their hands. Muna took a step forward. Warriors fled from her path. She was at the very heart of the battle now: unharmed, calm, cleansed of her grief. "I know what this is," she told herself. "And I can control it."

When she closed her eyes, she saw Artemisia's remains smoking on the floor of her studio. She recalled the destruction of Pere and the Ahi camp in the forest. And those words came back to her ˗ the words that Ol Lauro had charmed from her as she lay in his arms on a night lit with fireflies. My parents once told me that I have a gift. A terrible one. They told me that I have more power than my brother. More power than any Firefarer before me. But I did not believe them. It cannot be true. I have never hurt anyone.

That child on the beach. That had been her, not Hori. She knew that now. She had destroyed their village, had burnt the dunes and the huts, set fire to the sand itself. That was why they had moved from one settlement to the next, avoiding discovery, her parents teaching her to bury her gift so deeply within her own heart that she could not retrieve it.

But that time was over. To know was to control. Without knowledge her power loosed itself, seeping out of her as she slept or slipped unconscious. Now she was awake, alive to it. She was one with the fire mountain. Its molten rivers ran through her veins, her breath was its smoke, her body its scorched rocks and boulders. She was its fire. Muna opened her eyes and released it.