Captives of the Flame

shadow. Then water. His feet were slipping on the deck as the rail s

onscious Prince, swim, climb, and carry. There were sirens at the

e him here,

you sure?

" he said softly. "We'll leave the Princ

aid. They walked of

scrunched his eyelids, then curled himself into the comfortable dark. He was napping in the little park behind the palace

se he wasn't in the park, he wasn't going in to

d the boy with h

learing. A breeze shook the leaves like admonishing fingers before he

nized in both sentence

he merely pointed to hims

o the boy and smi

y was

Again he extended his hand toward the boy, waiting for sound. It did not c

followed. Soon they were wal

ove them, the plane striking the water, water becoming a mountain of water, l

of guards. It had tautened when he pushed the second switch in the jeweled dolphin on his bedpost. It nearly snapped with metallic panic when he had to maneuver the girl into position for the retina photogr

ed it even tighter. If the Prince were kidnaped, certainly his jailors should not tell him s

always had. (He was following the giant through the dull leaves because the giant had told him to.) When he had leapt from the roo

air and the scarred giant had come to take him away. He'd made one last volitional effort to bring "is" and "suppose" together. He'd told the man the story of the mine prisoners, the one cogent, conne

ow. Then water. His feet were slipping and the rail swung by. Then thunder. Then scr

t, like a thread of glass under a blow-torch flame. The last thing to flicker out, like the fading end of the white hot strand, was the m

und sloped up now. Boulders lipped with moss pushed out here and there. Once Quo

t noses, broad cheek ridges. Twin sisters, the boy thought. Both women also bore a triplex of scars down the left sides of their faces.

mountain. Near a thick tree trunk was a pile of brush and twigs. The boy watched Quor

ntly revealed a cage made of sticks tied together with drie

. The next protracted squeak suddenly turned into a scream. Then ther

hung crazily to the side where the neck had been

ow the finders were pulling the brush back over the trap. They crossed the clearing and Quorl uncovered a second trap. When the hand we

A fan of lavender drifted above the orange, and then white, faint green.... The gray wasn't really gray, it was blue-gray. He began to count colors, and the

scimitar-like blade that the giant wore. They sat in the diminishing shell of light with the meat on forked sticks, turning it over the flame. The boy watched the gray-maroon fibers go first shiny with

powder into his palm, then carefull

e the leaves around them into flickering shingles on the darkness. Quorl was cleanin

. "Tloto," Quorl called harshly, f

oving, closer until the boy saw the tall

see-Quorl picked up a stick and flung it. The

oto," Quorl sai

klee, but came forward

It was bone naked, hairless, shell white. It had no eyes, no ears, onl

ingers on each hand were neither misshapen or stiffly paralyzed. It rea

shouted another scattering of indifferent curses. Tloto backed away, turne

am, he thought. If it's from this race of giants, perhaps it's still a child. Maybe it's my age. He stared at t

off the sudden panic. (Or was it something else that caught in his ch

e his mouth go into a smile. But Tloto couldn't see, so it didn't matter.

philosophical concepts. The boy listened carefully, and understood at least that Tloto was not worth his conc

the night and pulled his feet under him. It had grown colder, and dark wind brushed his neck and fingered his hair. Then

eached a cliff at last, beyond which was the dark sea. Broken rock spilled to ledges below. Fifty feet down, but still a hundred feet above

rcing wail sliced high over the sea and the forest. People were gathering around the edge

em, the boy realized there were others observing from the height also. On the water, w

an old man whose beard twitched in the light breeze. Another was a tall stately women. All of them were b

ll the world like a back-scratcher. The priest raised it in the moonlight, and a murmur rose and quieted about the ring of people. The boy

ade an indefinite noise, but it was drowned in the rising whisper of the crowd. He did the same to the next child who began to cry, and to the next. The woma

le whine turned into a scream. The boy thought for a moment of the trapped animals. The old man staggered away from his captors and n

nto the woods. The boy looked at the giant with a puzzled expression, but there was no explanation. Once the boy caught sigh

of fat. Once learned it became his job; as did changing the bait in the traps; as did cutting willow boughs to make sleeping pallets; as did sorting the fir

One afternoon Quorl spent a whole six hours teaching words to the boy. There were lots of them. Even Quorl, who

upine," Quorl wo

following the finger, and then look b

lk as loud as a tapir." The boy had been moving over dry leaves. Obedientl

limb after him and he sat in the crotch of the branch looking quietly down into the squealing mouth, the warty gray face; he coul

sudden urge to sound pushed him closer to speech (Stay away! Stay Back!) than he had been since his arrival i

tree and took off after Tloto. Insta

s crashing in the underbrush. Twenty feet later after tearing thr

and half under. Only it wasn't ground. It was some sort of muckpool cove

is blind head turning back and forth. Somehow the slug-man must have maneuvered the

It had too much to do with the recognition of luck, and the g

and after a few seconds stopped. The

... raaaaaaa! Then a

ling too, a p

d was new. He thought it mean

ck now. Tloto and

ts in wet earth is dangerous. The vicious animals come to drink and they will smell you, and they will follow you, to eat. Suppose that pig had smelled them a

saved a large piece of meat from his food. When Tloto

seless," Quorl said. "Why do you waste good food on him? To throw away good food is

orl looked puzzled. The boy laughed again. Then Quorl laughed too. "You will learn. You will learn at last."

peated the sentence. The boy's fa

That was the word. Now Quorl looked around him. "The trees, the rocks, the a

it until perhaps he un

oncerns. He watched Quorl when they came on other forest people. With single men and women there was usually only an exchange of ten or twelve friendly word

as high. The carvings represented creatures somewhere between fish and human. When he looked up from the rock

squinting at the sky. (Three or four times Quorl and he had taken long hunting trips: one had taken them to the edge of a deserted meadow across which was a crazily sagging farmhouse. There were no people there. Another had taken them to the edge of the jungle, beyond which the ground was gray and broken, and row after row of unste

"... knees up, chin down, and roll quick," the girl had said a long time ago.) It was perhaps twenty feet to the next level. Tree branches broke his fall and he hit the ground spinning, and rolled away. Something else, the rock or a rotten l

his leg, so chomping didn't help. He moved his face across crumbling dirt. The whole left side of hi

t down onto the earth, biting up a mout

himself to pieces like the wildcat who had gotten caught in the sprung trap

looked back. Then he lay down again and closed his eyes. A log the thickness of his body lay across his left leg. On

ite awake. He was dreaming about something, something soft, a little garden, with sh

ng hard enough that had he still the strength, he would have torn himself in half, knowing while he struggled that perhaps the wildcat had been malika after all, or

, the dreams, the wisps of fo

en he did, he began to run. Quorl found the boy; just before sunset. He was breathing in

locked, and started to shift it; the boy

ged with ligament, strained the lo

nds that had snapped tiny necks and bound sticks together with gut strin

square foot of flesh from the boy's leg.

re lifting him now, he was held close, warm, somehow safe. His cheek was against the hard shoulder muscle, and he could smell Quorl to

pain came salty in his eyes, an

made the healing start. Quorl also had made the boy a pair of wooden crutches that morning. Alth

s Quorl who saved the extra meat and kept looking off into the wet gray trees. Quorl had told the boy h

seemed that night full of more than usual gravity. The last thing he wondered before s

aining. The air was damp and

ckering through the trees. The sound came a third time, distant, sharp, yet clear and marine. The boy reached for his crutc

nlight made the last hundred yards easy going. Finally he reached a vanta

The sea was misty. People were already gathered at the edge. The boy looked at t

mple: first three boys, then an older girl, then a man. The next one ... Tloto! It was marble-white under the

isoner to the next. Tloto cringed, and the boy sucked in a breath as the knife went down, feeling his own flesh part und

n-dusted bushes as fast as his crutches would let him. There were many peo

said, "You don't understand. I had to catch him. I had to give him to the old one to be marked. But

verb to know.) Quorl was silent for a moment. "Let me try to tell you why I had to hurt your friend. Yes, I know he is your friend, now. But once I said that Tloto was malika. I was wrong. Tloto is more than malika-he and the others that were marked. Somehow these people know things. That was how Tloto survived. That's how he knew where you were, when y

yet the same as we. Perhaps it is wrong. It doesn't hurt that much, and it heals. Anyway, we don't kill them any more. We know they're important...." Suddenly, having gone all through it with this strange boy, it seemed twis

rees. Once Quorl looked around and said, "I want to show

ll Quorl pointed to a wall of lea

. Fog the color of pale gold, the same gold the boy had seen so rarely in the sunset, rolled across the entire sky. The center flamed with the mist

this mountain and the next," Qu

ly, his tongue rough against the new

rned on his neck and back, over the drying blood. He turned his blank face left