Lesson of the Fire by Eric Zawadzki

to do any
more work for him when he pressed past her purposefully. She saw
the smoke, then, over a rise near the horizon. She heard the
humming of raucous conversation long before they found the source
of the smoke.
    It sounds like a city. But
there should be nothing here. And that hum
sounds like conversation, but those are not words, I
think.
    They topped the rise, and Brack stopped so
she could see the town. A hundred paces away, rotting boards and
thatch created some kind of road on top of the muddy ground. It
looked like some kind of market community, with hundreds of
thatched-roof stalls selling all sorts of things, and a dozen great
buildings near the center. Giant, stinking bonfires kept bugs away
from the marketplace. But the most astonishing thing was what
populated the place.
    Stocky, tusked gobbels.
Scrawny, long-limbed ravits. She saw an ochre, a sickening pile of
muck that somehow had life. A giant winged insero, towering over
the stalls, eyes the size of her entire body dominating its
triangle face. And dozens of species of guer, the reptilian species
that came in a scary variety of sizes and strengths. Drakes! A whole army of Drakes! She nearly dropped her marsord as she prepared to
defend herself, but her companion gripped her arm tightly, his
fingers like ropey tendons.
    “Civilization comes from all directions,” he
said. “The Mar never understood that.”
    “These are the creatures of Domin,” she
hissed at him, afraid they would hear her. She quelled it, pulling
her arm away from his.
    This is why I followed Brack here — the path
of my patroness, Dinah.
    “Why is Domin any worse than Seruvus?
Seruvus makes slaves. What does Domin do that is any worse than
that? The gods do not show up unless you call on them, Weard
Duxpite.”
    “Why did you bring me here?”
    His hand encompassed the whole bazaar. “This
is Tue Yee — the most important spiny-tailed guer city in the Tue
territory. It is a major hub for trade between the other
territories.” He stroked the deep lines on his face. “What do you
know of the Mass?”
    “Nothing,” she lied,
knowing that Brack was said to believe in such nonsense. He had to, though. His
brown eyes bored into her green ones, and she wavered.
    “Nothing, she says.” His cough sounded like
a laugh. “Not even the lies taught you as a child?”
    “They are lies,” she said, steeling herself
for what he would say. “They must be, if they never told of this
True Tee.” Her hand swept the bazaar.
    “Tue Yee.” He snorted and turned away,
leading her into the market. “The Mar have the Mass to thank for
their freedom. In the dark days when the Gien Empire ruled
Marrishland, even the mightiest Mar wizards were ground beneath
imperial heels.”
    A couple of short, scaly guer looked up at
them as they passed and bared their teeth at the two wizards,
hissing. Katla flinched, but Brack hissed back. An apparent
stand-off continued for several seconds before Katla recognized it
as a conversation in a language she had never heard.
    “Through it all,” Brack continued once the
lizard-like guer had returned to their own business, “the Drakes
retained their independence by fiercely defending their swamps.
Rural Mar had their freedoms, too, but the Gien Empire never laid
claim to these lands, nor to the dead swamps of the lost Duxy of
Despar. It is a pity, really, that the damnens still refuse to send
emissaries here even after all these centuries.”
    “The Giens regarded the Drakes as monsters,”
Katla said. “They were unworthy of conquest and only fit to die.
Sending armies into uninhabitable swamps was a waste of their time.
This history is written. The Drakes damn themselves whenever they
attack a town.”
    Brack’s eyes burned, but he kept quiet,
feigning disinterest. Katla wanted to scream at his fake
complacency, but she kept her patience.
    They passed a spiny-tailed — a short guer
with two well-muscled lower legs and two long arms, its most
prominent