Fire Wizard

Chapter 1 A MAN’S VOICE shouted at the bow of the ship. The sound echoed over the water in the still afternoon air. Johanna sat up, dazed. She’d been lazing on the sloping covers of the ship’s hold, warmed by whatever little winter sunshine made its way over the hill on the western side of the river, and she must have fallen asleep. She’d been exhausted. With her overnight trip to the farm of the Guentherite order, she had barely slept the previous night, and after their frantic escape from Florisheim, both the Lady Sara and the Prosperity had settled into a steady drift down the swollen river. There had been little for the refugees to do except rest. Until now, that was. Ko, at the bow, had pulled in the team of sea cows and was directing them to the riverbank. Johanna let herself slide down the sloping cover and went up the front to join him. They were in a bend in the river, and forest on the high bank had been cleared to make room for . . . yes, what exactly? Or rather, what had it been? Because clearly some disaster had happened recently, maybe as recently as last night, judging by the churned earth and the splintered stumps of wood that were still smouldering. The jumble of broken and shattered buildings stretched over most of the lower part of the sloping riverbank on the left hand side. A stately house surrounded by vineyards at the top of the hill remained untouched, but every other structure closer to the river was reduced to a pile of smoking rubble. A blue haze hung low over the ground. In between the wreckage lay mounds of dirt. There were a couple of carts, torn to shreds, and the body of a horse. Overnight wild animals had ripped part of its belly open, spilling blood and entrails on the blackened ground. “What is this place?” Johanna asked. “This is the Guentherite abbot’s summer residence,” Ko said, his face white. He stared at the scene, his mouth open. “The place where you were captured?” “The very place. When you sent us to check on Saardam, we came down the river and saw all this activity here. There were people with boats, and there was a jetty over there.” All that remained were shattered pylons. “We didn’t know what to do so we pulled the boat to the bank, but it was a poor hiding place.” Both riverbanks were too steep for reed beds and there wouldn’t have been anywhere for the men to hide. “I’m guessing it didn’t used to look like this.” “There used to be a couple of open sheds with carts.” He pointed. “That over there was the caretaker’s house, and over there was a large furnace.” Johanna remembered the furnace on the Guentherite brotherhood’s farm. “For what?” “Making iron.” “What do they want all this iron for?” He shrugged. “They were making it into big blocks and sheets that they stored in a shed over there.” But that shed no longer stood upright and Johanna could make out no iron in the rubble. “Did many people live here?” He nodded. “At least a hundred. Maybe more. I don’t know. We never spent that much time here.” Johanna saw no one, not even dead people. The two boats drifted towards the remains of the jetty. A couple of boys came with sticks and ropes to hold the boat off and tie it to the jetty. “Hello!” someone yelled at the deck of the Prosperity. “Hello! Is anyone there? Hello! Do you need help?” Something moved behind the dead horse. A man rose, leaning on a shovel. He probably climbed out of the grave that he had been digging. He stared wide-eyed at the two ships coming towards the shore. His hair was grey and dirty, his hands were black and he had smeared a black smudge over his face. “Is he a monk?” Johanna asked. The man wore a drab grey garment that didn’t look like a habit. “Prisoner,” Ko said, his voice dark. “By himself? Why doesn’t he run away?” Ko met her eyes. “Because there is nowhere to run to? The forests around here are not kind. There are bears and wolves. Looking at the horse, the wolves have already been here. There are ghosts, too.” Maybe, but Johanna thought that the worst thing one had to fear in the forest was other people. Sylvan and his bandits roamed these places. She still didn’t know for certain who had killed all those people and put them in the ice cellar. The stories of the two scouts Ko and Willem had been told and retold many times: they had been captured when they went downriver to check on Saardam. They’d been taken to the Guentherite brotherhood’s farm where they had been forced to dig black rock out of a deep hole in the mountainside. The hole was close to the river and constantly at risk of flooding, because water seeped through the rock. The monks used the water wheel to scoop it out, but still, the diggers stood in water all day. There had been many different people, mostly young men, mostly from downriver. Some were hapless farmers who had stumbled across one of the brotherhood’s projects while going to market or moving their animals. Some were peddlers or merchants travelling on horseback from town to town. They’d found their horses and stock confiscated, their travel clothes removed and replaced with a grey sack-like garment. Others were people whose families owed the brotherhood debts from as far away as Burovia. They all worked in the hole together, and learned to communicate across languages. It was always dangerous. When the water seeped through the black rock, it absorbed ghosts that had been disturbed by the digging activities. The ghosts would float between the workers, sometimes making them fall asleep on the spot, sometimes making them fight each other. Once the black rock had been brought to the surface, some of it would be used to light the furnace at the back of the chapel. In the furnace the monks would melt ore that came from upriver by boat, and turn it into iron. Both the bars of iron and the rest of the black rock would be shipped to the Abbot’s summer residence along the river, and no one knew what happened to those materials there. The lonely surviving man walked to the shore with a painful-looking gait and a distinct limp. He called something in a local dialect, waving his hands. Johanna asked, “Does he want help or does he want us to go away?” No one could answer that. Karl, aboard the Prosperity, yelled something back at him and the man replied. “He says we should move on as soon as possible,” Karl yelled across the water to Johanna. “He says this is a dangerous place.” “Is there anyone else here?” she yelled back. He asked the man and the man gave a longer reply, waving his hands and pointing. Karl looked up into the sky, frowning. He asked more questions and the man answered. Roald said next to her, “He says that a great fire serpent came and burnt the place down.” Yes, that was true, he had spent time at the order. He would be able to understand their dialect. “He says that the other people all ran into the forest and didn’t come back. He says that he can’t run because of his leg, so they left him behind.” “Did he say what sort of place this is, what they’re making here?” “No, but he keeps saying that we should leave because the fire serpent will be back.” The man kept looking at the sky. “What is this fire serpent?” “The fire serpent was mentioned in the books we read.” Roald sounded indignant. “I showed you the pictures.” “But they are mythological creatures.” He gave her a yes, and? look. Johanna remembered the dragons described in the book called On The Magickal Creatures of the High Lands, the Sea and the Orient that Roald had borrowed from the Jeromist monastery in Florisheim. There was no time to argue about what was real and what were folk tales. He was unlikely to understand the difference. Then again, he had also told her that there was a dragon at the Guentherite farm, and that it used to sit on a brother’s shoulder warning of bad air. She hadn’t seen it when she went there, not that she’d looked for it. People seemed confused about what type of creature was called a dragon. The conversation between Karl and the old man went on for a bit, and ended when the old man retreated up the riverbank. Short of rowing the dinghy to shore, the passengers couldn’t have a closer look, and no one on board showed any inclination of wanting to do that. The women stood holding scarves over their noses. The air smelled of charred meat. They might not see any dead, but evidently the fire dragon had burned a lot of people. Johanna beckoned for the old man to join the boats, but he seemed scared and not interested in coming on the boats, so they could do nothing except push off again. The boats slowly drifted downstream while the man stood on the riverbank, watching and leaning on his shovel. When there was a bend in the river and he vanished from view, Johanna went downstairs and leafed through the book of magical creatures, but it gave her no more information than she already remembered. The book contained a drawing of a dragon, a scaled, snake-like creature with wings that were far too small for it to get off the ground. While it was said that dragons breathed fire, this particular one looked like a lizard to her with some wings drawn on. She had seen lizards in Lurezia where people kept them as pets. A peddler at the markets had baskets full of them. Some were thin and lithe, others short and fat. He had picked one up and given it to her to hold. She remembered the heavy and smooth feel of the creature as it warmed itself on the palms of her hands. Lizards were harmless, and she was sure that the “dragon” Roald had referred to that was supposed to be at the Guentherite farm was really a lizard. A fire serpent, whatever that was, didn’t sound harmless. Johanna couldn’t help thinking that the Guentherite order’s digging activities in the ground had upset a lot of bad things. Necromancy, ghosts released from the ground in such numbers that the water became murky, fire creatures. Evil wizards taking over peaceful lands. And the boats were drifting on this sick and ghost-infested water, closer and closer to Saardam, where people had no magic, where a Guentherite wizard had taken up residence, and the only useful magic they had was Johanna’s ability to see things in wood. The fact that wood burned in fire seemed a cruel coincidence.