The Fifth Season Read online

  “It’s really loud,” she agrees, trying to sound knowledgeable.

  “Hmm, yes, that, too. But the bigger problem is that it’s not a good place to bring children.” She waits, but he doesn’t elaborate. “We’re going to a place I’ve stayed at several times before. The food is decent, the beds are clean, and our belongings aren’t likely to walk off before morning.”

  Thus do they pass Damaya’s first night in an inn. She’s shocked by all of it: eating in a room full of strangers, eating food that tastes different from what her parents or Chaga made, soaking in a big ceramic basin with a fire under it instead of an oiled half-barrel of cold water in the kitchen, sleeping in a bed bigger than hers and Chaga’s put together. Schaffa’s bed is bigger still, which is fitting because he’s huge, but she gawps at it nevertheless as he drags it across the inn room’s door. (This, at least, is familiar; Father did it sometimes when there were rumors of commless on the roads around town.) He apparently paid extra for the bigger bed. “I sleep like an earthshake,” he says, smiling as if this is some sort of joke. “If the bed’s too narrow, I’ll roll right off.”

  She has no idea what he means until the middle of that night, when she wakes to hear Schaffa groaning and thrashing in his sleep. If it’s a nightmare, it’s a terrible one, and for a while she wonders if she should get up and try to wake him. She hates nightmares. But Schaffa is a grown-up, and grown-ups need their sleep; that’s what her father always said whenever she or Chaga did something that woke him up. Father was always angry about it, too, and she does not want Schaffa angry with her. He’s the only person who cares about her in all the world. So she lies there, anxious and undecided, until he actually cries out something unintelligible, and it sounds like he’s dying.

  “Are you awake?” She says it really softly, because obviously he isn’t—but the instant she speaks, he is.

  “What is it?” He sounds hoarse.

  “You were…” She isn’t sure what to say. Having a nightmare sounds like something her mother would say to her. Does one say such things to big, strong grown-ups like Schaffa? “Making a noise,” she finishes.

  “Snoring?” He breathes a long weary sigh into the dark. “Sorry.” Then he shifts, and is silent for the rest of the night.

  In the morning Damaya forgets this happened, at least for a long while. They rise and eat some of the food that has been left at their door in a basket, and take the rest with them as they resume the trip toward Yumenes. In the just-after-dawn light Brevard is less frightening and strange, perhaps because now she can see piles of horse dung in the gutters and little boys carrying fishing poles and stablehands yawning as they heft crates or bales. There are young women carting buckets of water into the local bathhouse to be heated, and young men stripping to the waist to churn butter or pound rice in sheds behind the big buildings. All these things are familiar, and they help her see that Brevard is just a bigger version of a small town. Its people are no different from Muh Dear or Chaga—and to the people who live here, Brevard is probably as familiar and tedious as she found Palela.

  They ride for half a day and stop for a rest, then ride for the rest of the day, until Brevard is far behind and there’s nothing but rocky, ugly shatterland surrounding them for miles around. There’s an active fault nearby, Schaffa explains, churning out new land over years and decades, which is why in places the ground seems sort of pushed up and bare. “These rocks didn’t exist ten years ago,” he says, gesturing toward a huge pile of crumbling gray-green stone that looks sharp-edged and somehow damp. “But then there was a bad shake—a niner. Or so I hear; I was on circuit in another quartent. Looking at this, though, I can believe it.”

  Damaya nods. Old Father Earth does feel closer, here, than in Palela—or, not closer, that’s not really the word for it, but she doesn’t know what words would work better. Easier to touch, maybe, if she were to do so. And, and… it feels… fragile, somehow, the land all around them. Like an eggshell laced with fine lines that can barely be seen, but which still spell imminent death for the chick inside.

  Schaffa nudges her with his leg. “Don’t.”

  Startled, Damaya does not think to lie. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

  “You were listening to the earth. That’s something.”

  How does Schaffa know? She hunches a little in the saddle, not sure whether she should apologize. Fidgeting, she settles her hands on the pommel of the saddle, which feels awkward because the saddle is huge like everything that belongs to Schaffa. (Except her.) But she needs to do something to distract herself from listening again. After a moment of this, Schaffa sighs.

  “I suppose I can expect no better,” he says, and the disappointment in his tone bothers her immediately. “It isn’t your fault. Without training you’re like… dry tinder, and right now we’re traveling past a roaring fire that’s kicking up sparks.” He seems to think. “Would a story help?”

  A story would be wonderful. She nods, trying not to seem too eager. “All right,” Schaffa says. “Have you heard of Shemshena?”

  “Who?”

  He shakes his head. “Earthfires, these little midlatter comms. Didn’t they teach you anything in that creche of yours? Nothing but lore and figuring, I imagine, and the latter only so you could time crop plantings and such.”

  “There’s no time for more than that,” Damaya says, feeling oddly compelled to defend Palela. “Kids in Equatorial comms probably don’t need to help with the harvest—”

  “I know, I know. But it’s still a shame.” He shifts, getting more comfortable in his saddle. “Very well; I’m no lorist, but I’ll tell you of Shemshena. Long ago, during the Season of Teeth—that’s, hmm, the third Season after Sanze’s founding, maybe twelve hundred years ago?—an orogene named Misalem decided to try to kill the emperor. This was back when the emperor actually did things, mind, and long before the Fulcrum was established. Most orogenes had no proper training in those days; like you, they acted purely on emotion and instinct, on the rare occasions that they managed to survive childhood. Misalem had somehow managed to not only survive, but to train himself. He had superb control, perhaps to the fourth or fifth ring-level—”

  “What?”

  He nudges her leg again. “Rankings used by the Fulcrum. Stop interrupting.” Damaya blushes and obeys.

  “Superb control,” Schaffa continues, “which Misalem promptly used to kill every living soul in several towns and cities, and even a few commless warrens. Thousands of people, in all.”

  Damaya inhales, horrified. It has never occurred to her that roggas—she stops herself. She. She is a rogga. All at once she does not like this word, which she has heard most of her life. It’s a bad word she’s not supposed to say, even though the grown-ups toss it around freely, and suddenly it seems uglier than it already did.

  Orogenes, then. It is terrible to know that orogenes can kill so many, so easily. But then, she supposes that is why people hate them.

  Her. That is why people hate her.

  “Why did he do that?” she asks, forgetting that she should not interrupt.

  “Why, indeed? Perhaps he was a bit mad.” Schaffa leans down so that she can see his face, crossing his eyes and waggling his eyebrows. This is so hilarious and unexpected that Damaya giggles, and Schaffa gives her a conspiratorial smile. “Or perhaps Misalem was simply evil. Regardless, as he approached Yumenes he sent word ahead, threatening to shatter the entire city if its people did not send the Emperor out to meet him, and die. The people were saddened when the Emperor announced that he would meet Misalem’s terms—but they were relieved, too, because what else could they do? They had no idea how to fight an orogene with such power.” He sighs. “But when the Emperor arrived, he was not alone: with him was a single woman. His bodyguard, Shemshena.”

  Damaya squirms a little, in excitement. “She must have been really good, if she was the Emperor’s bodyguard.”

  “Oh, she was—a renowned fighter of the finest Sanzed lineages. Moreover, she
was an Innovator in use-caste, and thus she had studied orogenes and understood something of how their power worked. So before Misalem’s arrival, she had every citizen of Yumenes leave town. With them they took all the livestock, all the crops. They even cut down the trees and shrubs and burned them, burned their houses, then doused the fires to leave only cold wet ash. That is the nature of your power, you see: kinetic transferrence, sesunal catalysis. One does not move a mountain by will alone.”

  “What is—”

  “No, no.” Schaffa cuts her off gently. “There are many things I must teach you, little one, but that part you will learn at the Fulcrum. Let me finish.” Reluctantly, Damaya subsides.

  “I will say this much. Some of the strength you need, when you finally learn how to use your power properly, will come from within you.” Schaffa touches the back of her head as he did that time in the barn, two fingers just above the line of her hair, and she jumps a little because there is a sort of spark when he does this, like static. “Most of it, however, must come from elsewhere. If the earth is already moving, or if the fire under the earth is at or near the surface, you may use that strength. You are meant to use that strength. When Father Earth stirs, he unleashes so much raw power that taking some of it does no harm to you or anyone else.”

  “The air doesn’t turn cold?” Damaya tries, really tries, to restrain her curiosity, but the story is too good. And the idea of using orogeny in a safe way, a way that will cause no harm, is too intriguing. “No one dies?”

  She feels him nod. “Not when you use earth-power, no. But of course, Father Earth never moves when one wishes. When there is no earth-power nearby, an orogene can still make the earth move, but only by taking the necessary heat and force and motion from the things around her. Anything that moves or has warmth—campfires, water, the air, even rocks. And, of course, living things. Shemshena could not take away the ground or the air, but she most certainly could, and did, take away everything else. When she and the Emperor met Misalem at the obsidian gates of Yumenes, they were the only living things in the city, and there was nothing left of the city but its walls.”

  Damaya inhales in awe, trying to imagine Palela empty and denuded of every shrub and backyard goat, and failing. “And everybody just… went? Because she said?”

  “Well, because the emperor said, but yes. Yumenes was much smaller in those days, but it was still a vast undertaking. Yet it was either that or allow a monster to make hostages of them.” Schaffa shrugs. “Misalem claimed he had no desire to rule in the Emperor’s stead, but who could believe that? A man willing to threaten a city to get what he wants will stop at nothing.”

  That makes sense. “And he didn’t know what Shemshena had done until he got to Yumenes?”

  “No, he didn’t know. The burning was done by the time he arrived; the people had traveled away in a different direction. So as Misalem faced the Emperor and Shemshena, he reached for the power to destroy the city—and found almost nothing. No power, no city to destroy. In that moment, while Misalem floundered and tried to use what little warmth he could drag from the soil and air, Shemshena flung a glassknife over and into the torus of his power. It didn’t kill him, but it distracted him enough to break his orogeny, and Shemshena took care of the rest with her other knife. Thus was ended the Old Sanze Empire’s—pardon; the Sanzed Equatorial Affiliation’s—greatest threat.”

  Damaya shivers in delight. She has not heard such a good story in a long time. And it’s true? Even better. Shyly she grins up at Schaffa. “I liked that story.” He’s good at telling them, too. His voice is so deep and velvety. She could see all of it in her head as he talked.

  “I thought you might. That was the origin of the Guardians, you know. As the Fulcrum is an order of orogenes, we are the order that watches the Fulcrum. For we know, as Shemshena did, that despite all your terrible power, you are not invincible. You can be beaten.”

  He pats Damaya’s hands on the saddle-pommel, and she doesn’t squirm anymore, no longer liking the story quite as much. While he told it, she imagined herself as Shemshena, bravely facing a terrible foe and defeating him with cleverness and skill. With every you and your that Schaffa speaks, however, she begins to understand: He does not see her as a potential Shemshena.

  “And so we Guardians train,” he continues, perhaps not noticing that she has gone still. They are deep into the shatterland now; sheer, jagged rock faces, as high as the buildings in Brevard, frame the road on both sides for as far as the eye can see. Whoever built the road must have carved it, somehow, out of the earth itself. “We train,” he says again, “as Shemshena did. We learn how orogenic power works, and we find ways to use this knowledge against you. We watch for those among your kind who might become the next Misalems, and we eliminate them. The rest we take care of.” He leans over to smile at her again, but Damaya does not smile back this time. “I am your Guardian now, and it is my duty to make certain you remain helpful, never harmful.”

  When he straightens and falls silent, Damaya does not prompt him to tell another story, as she might have done. She doesn’t like the one he just told, not anymore. And she is somehow, suddenly certain: He did not intend for her to like it.

  The silence lingers as the shatterlands finally begin to subside, then become rolling green hillside. There’s nothing out here: no farms, no pastures, no forests, no towns. There are hints that people once lived here: She sees a crumbling, moss-overgrown hump of something in the distance that might have been a fallen-over silo, if silos were the size of mountains. And other structures, too regular and jagged to be natural, too decayed and strange for her to recognize. Ruins, she realizes, of some city that must have died many, many Seasons ago, for there to be so little of it left now. And beyond the ruins, hazy against the cloud-drifted horizon, an obelisk the color of a thundercloud flickers as it slowly turns.

  Sanze is the only nation that has ever survived a Fifth Season intact—not just once, but seven times. She learned this in creche. Seven ages in which the earth has broken somewhere and spewed ash or deadly gas into the sky, resulting in a lightless winter that lasted years or decades instead of months. Individual comms have often survived Seasons, if they were prepared. If they were lucky. Damaya knows the stonelore, which is taught to every child even in a little backwater like Palela. First guard the gates. Keep storecaches clean and dry. Obey the lore, make the hard choices, and maybe when the Season ends there will be people who remember how civilization should work.

  But only once in known history has a whole nation, many comms all working together, survived. Thrived, even, over and over again, growing stronger and larger with each cataclysm. Because the people of Sanze are stronger and smarter than everyone else.

  Gazing at that distant, winking obelisk, Damaya thinks, Smarter even than the people who built that?

  They must be. Sanze is still here, and the obelisk is just another deadciv leftover.

  “You’re quiet now,” says Schaffa after a while, patting her hands on the pommel to bring her out of her reverie. His hand is more than twice the size of hers, warm and comforting in its hugeness. “Still thinking about the story?”

  She has been trying not to, but of course, she has. “A little.”

  “You don’t like that Misalem is the villain of the tale. That you are like Misalem: a potential threat, without a Shemshena to control you.” He says this matter-of-factly, not as a question.

  Damaya squirms. How does he always seem to know what she’s thinking? “I don’t want to be a threat,” she says in a small voice. Then, greatly daring, she adds, “But I don’t want to be… controlled… either. I want to be—” She gropes for the words, then remembers something her brother once told her about what it meant to grow up. “Responsible. For myself.”

  “An admirable wish,” Schaffa says. “But the plain fact of the matter, Damaya, is that you cannot control yourself. It isn’t your nature. You are lightning, dangerous unless captured in wires. You’re fire—a warm light on a col
d dark night to be sure, but also a conflagration that can destroy everything in its path—”

  “I won’t destroy anybody! I’m not bad like that!” Suddenly it’s too much. Damaya tries to turn to look at him, though this overbalances her and makes her slip on the saddle. Schaffa immediately pushes her back to face forward, with a firm gesture that says without words, sit properly. Damaya does so, gripping the pommel harder in her frustration. And then, because she is tired and angry and her butt hurts from three days on horseback, and because her whole life has gone wrong and it hits her all at once that she will never again be normal, she says more than she means to. “And anyway, I don’t need you to control me. I can control myself!”

  Schaffa reins the horse to a snorting halt.

  Damaya tenses in dread. She’s smarted off to him. Her mother always whopped her in the head when she did that back home. Will Schaffa whop her now? But Schaffa sounds as pleasant as usual as he says, “Can you really?”

  “What?”

  “Control yourself. It’s an important question. The most important, really. Can you?”

  In a small voice, Damaya says, “I… I don’t…”

  Schaffa puts a hand on hers, where they rest atop the saddle-pommel. Thinking that he means to swing down from the saddle, she starts to let go so he can get a grip. He squeezes her right hand to hold it in place, though he lets the left one go. “How did they discover you?”

  She knows, without having to ask, what he means. “In creche,” she says in a small voice. “At lunch. I was… A boy pushed me.”

  “Did it hurt? Were you afraid, or angry?”

  She tries to remember. It feels so long ago, that day in the yard. “Angry.” But that had not been all, had it? Zab was bigger than her. He was always after her. And it had hurt, just a little, when he’d pushed her. “Afraid.”