More Than Fire

"You really know how to make me feel good," Ona said. "I'd kill myself before I'd submit to a leblabbiy."

"It wouldn't be hopeless. We could escape and find a gate and then find Red Orc and get revenge by killing him. After some suitable tortures, of course. I'm thinking about eating Red Orc's balls just as he ate his father's. Well-cooked, though, and with a suitable garnish, not eaten raw as Red Orc did."

"Speaking of ca

"Stop that!"

But both burst out laughing.

Kickaha knew the Lords well enough to doubt that Ona was jesting. If they did starve, one of them would kill and eat her companion.

He listened several minutes to their bickering but did not learn much. The only thing he knew for sure was that their predicament was caused by Red Orc and that they had escaped from him with the few possessions in the clearing.

The two women fell silent while they were looking into the pot. By now, they were getting ready to dip out deer stew with rough spoons made of bark.

Suddenly, Anana stepped out from the bushes into the clearing. She held her bow and an arrow at the ready.

"Hail, iron-hearted daughters of Urizen and Ahania!" she called. "Your cousin Anana greets you in peace! What brings you here?"

5

THE TWO WOMEN SHRIEKED AND JUMPED AS IF THEY HAD stepped on biting ants. The redhead, however, flashed out of her paralysis and darted toward the beamers near the edge of the clearing. After a few steps, she halted, then walked slowly back to Eleth. She had realized that she could not get to the weapons before Anana's arrow drove through her.

"Ona the Baker!" Anana called to the redhead. "You were always the quickest witted, the coolest, and the most dangerous in physical combat. But how could you be so stupid as to leave your arms out of reach?"

Ona scowled and said, "I am very tired."

Anana addressed the blonde. "Eleth the Grinder, also known as Eleth the Worrier! You were the pla

The blonde was not so pale now. She smiled, and she bowed. "Not as dangerous as you, Anana the Bright, Anana the Hunter!"

Anana said, "Ona, you and your sisters, Eleth the Grinder, and Uveth the Kneader, now dead, were known as the kind-hearted daughters of Ahania. Now you are called iron-hearted! But you have always been the kindliest and sweetest of the three!"

"That was long ago, Anana," Ona said.

"Your father, Urizen the Cold, changed you three from kittens to ravening tigers," Anana said. "Your hatred for him is well known."

She paused, then said, "Do you know that he is dead?"

Eleth said stonily, "We had heard that he was. But we were not sure that it was true."

Ona said, "Nor are we sure now. That you say our father is dead does not make it true. But if your news is true, we're glad."

"Except that we would be sad that we were not the ones who killed him," Eleth said.

During this talking, Kickaha had been moving stealthily around the clearing to make sure that no one else was watching the scene. Though he looked for the raven and the bearish creature, he did not see them. Nor was there any sign of anyone lying in ambush.

When the two women saw him step into the clearing, they started only slightly. Evidently, they had suspected that Anana was not alone. Eleth said, "Who is this, Anana?"

"Surely you have heard of Kickaha? Kickaha the Trickster, the killer of so many Lords, the man who slew the last of the Black Bellers? You have also heard of ancient Shambarimen's prophecy that a leblabbiy will destroy the Lords. Some say that Kickaha is the man of whom Shambarimen prophesied."

Eleth bit her lower lip. "Yes, we have heard of the leblabbiy who has been so lucky so far. We have also heard that he is your lover."

"He is a leblabbiy," Anana said cheerily, "and he is such a lover as you should wish you had."

"Thanks," Kickaha said, and he gri

"You killed our father?" Eleth said to Kickaha. Her tone indicated that she did not believe Anana.

"No," Kickaha said. "I wish I had. But it was Jadawin, the Lord also known as Wolff, who killed him."

"You saw Jadawin kill him?"

"No. But Jadawin told me that he did, and Jadawin does not lie. Not, at least, to me."

Anana herded the sisters to the end of the clearing most distant from the pile of weapons. Then she ordered them to sit down. She did not frisk them. Their filmy robes made it evident that they were not carrying concealed weapons.

"We're starving," Eleth said. "We were just about to eat the soup. Such as it is."

Kickaha looked inside the pot. "Nothing but meat. Very unhealthy. Why didn't you put some vegetables in?"

"We don't know what plants are good to eat and what're poisonous," Eleth said.

"But all Thoan, male or female, are given survival courses," he said. "You should know that ...

Ona said, "We don't know this planet.

"You can get up now and eat," Anana said. "By suppertime, we'll have much better food for you. If, that is, we stay with you. That depends upon how open and truthful you are with us. Now, I heard enough while you were talking to believe that Red Orc is responsible for your being here. Tell me-"

"Red Orc!" Eleth said viciously, and she spat on the ground. "There's a man who needs killing!"

"After suitable torture," Ona said. "He killed Uveth years ago and came close recently to killing us. It's because of him that we're stranded in this wretched wilderness."

Anana let them rave and rant for a while about what they would do to Orc when they captured him. Then she said, "Tell us just how you came to be here."

They stood by the pot, and Eleth was the first to speak. Ona ate while her sister talked, then Ona talked while Eleth ate. After fleeing Red Orc, not for the first time, they had managed to "take over" Nitharm, the universe in which they had taken refuge. "Take over" was a euphemism for slaying the Lord of Nitharm and his family. Since there were no male Thoan in that world, they had taken leblabbiys for lovers. This practice was acceptable by Thoan standards because their lovers were their slaves, not their equals, and were often replaced by others.

They had been happy there, they said. The only thing lacking to make their happiness complete was that they had not yet been able to find and kill their father. Then Red Orc had somehow evaded the traps they had set at the two gates into their world. He had taken them by surprise despite their security systems.

At this point in the story, Eleth had interrupted Ona.

"I told them many times that we should just close all gates and stay there forever. That would have kept any Lord from invading our world."

"Yes, you fearful, trembling, sniveling little bitch!" Ona had said. "And just how then would we be able to go to other worlds and make sure that our father was dead!"

"Don't call me names, assface!" Eleth fired back.

The rest of the story was longer than Kickaha wished to hear. But he and Anana let them ramble on since they might reveal something about themselves that could later be used against them.

Red Orc would have killed them if they had not happened to be very close to a gate to another world. They had been able to grab some weapons before they fled. After passing through a circuit of gates, they had come out on this level of the World of Tiers. Since then, they had been trying to survive while searching for another gate. This, they hoped, would not take them to another world but to the palace on top of the topmost monolith of the World of Tiers. There, they knew, was the structure that had been Jadawin's, then Va