She stepped back, turning blindly for the door. Two steps, and she would be free of fire forever.

A scream reached her, high and frightened, piercing the laughing roar of the fire like a thin-bladed knife. She jumped, and all around her fire fled back from the movement. Jetta spun all the way around, instinct greater than fear rooting her in place. The fire retreated.

Shame drove through the fear. She took a step--forward, not back. Fire fled on the right. On the left it feinted, a licking coil as long as her arm reaching for her face. She lifted a hand imperiously. It retreated. Confidence flooded back. Jetta laughed and began to Dance.

Step, step, turn. Third movement: face the enemy. Step, turn, step again, forward this time, into the teeth of avid death. Fifth movement: no retreat. Fire leaped and roared around her, licking eagerly into the air that was its goal, its life, its escape from its prison in the earth. Flame squeezed up through the joins of stone floor and walls and raced eagerly toward exposed lintels, furniture, draperies sweeping into peril from window rods. Jetta raised one bare arm, shoving her palm flatwise toward the threatened ceiling. Smoke parted in front of it, and the fire that had been crawling into the irreplaceable Fornay carvings recoiled. Step, turn, step--

Another scream, fainter this time. Jetta faltered. Malicious fire. . . Memories of death, and pain, and screams, and a fire that laughed, a deep coughing roar as it consumed. . .

I am master!

Training and a lifetime’s conditioning shoved down the memories, forced phantom pain from her arm, her leg. She looked closer at the flames running over the pallid stone, and saw that as yet it was surface fire only, pale, but not yet the white heartfire no water could quench. She heard no hissing pop of collapsing rock as fire consumed the air in the porous foundation stone. This fire was malicious, aye, she could feel it, but as yet it was only the forerunner of the ancient fire that lived in the deepest core of the earth; it was not the foe itself that the Fire Clans had hunted since time began. The yellow of these flames was younger, brighter, well diluted with the base red that spoke of uncertainty. This fire had not learned--yet--how to use its malice.

She moved, a quick step and turn into the heart of it. Time now was precious, before the fire learned to call its terrible parent. Now, while a Third Rank master could still hold it alone, now while the Dance ran in her like a flood, the only flood that could tame stone fire.

Flames crowded back in front of her. She spun faster, because she knew now where the screams had come from. She knew this place as she knew the hearthhold of her birth, had run its halls since she was a child chasing stray sparks with Lyth and Kori and Settak. She leaped a small flame chewing determinedly at the floor, spurning the blackening spot with a bare foot. The fire retreated sharply in her wake, fleeing toward the walls as she forged relentlessly into the heat and smoke. Ruddy light reflected dully off the leather hip guard and breastpiece that was her only garment, played coyly along skin turned a deeper gold by the light, caught red gleams from the silver promise bracelet around her right wrist. Heat blasted up around her, but did not touch her any more than the light burned her. Smoke curled around her in lazy wreaths, chains that did not quite know--yet--how to trap and bind a Firedancer. It breathed jets of fire toward her, but she spun into the heart of it, fearless now, caught into the most ancient rhythm of her people. The Dance pounded in her blood, driving out fear, memory, awareness of malice, binding the infant hostility of this fire to her will.

Another step and leap, and she was across the great room and into the corridor beyond, reaching for the door of the nursery where old Minna had cuffed and applauded the stray brats roaming here as impartially as she had the antics of her own son Kori. Jetta shoved the hot wood of the door back with the heel of her hand. Smoke and flame curled out of her way, exposing a small boy standing rigid in the center of a tiny clear space, short legs spread, guarding a smaller figure yet, who cowered and sobbed in abject fear.

Her screams, not his, Jetta knew with perfect certainty. That one would never make a Dancer, but Tekkorin--there was a different matter. He had the gift, right enough, and the fire had not yet taken his nerve.

Minna would approve this child.

The boy’s gaze found her through the smoke, childish blue and wide with fear in a small, grimy face. Relief flooded his expression, but he did not lower his arms from their half-instinctive, half-trained barrier stance.

"Good, Tekko!" she called. "Stay as you are. I have this now."

With deliberate speed she Danced, turn and turn again in a widening circle around the children. The girl had stopped screaming and was watching her now, her eyes streaming tears from the smoke and the heat, her face red and running with sweat. Tekkorin was as dry as Jetta herself, though he was gasping from heat as much as effort. Jetta felt neither heat nor the acrid bite of smoke in her lungs. The Dance sustained her, a weapon forged over eons to balance the hunger of the Ancient: Dancer against flame, builder against destroyer, order against chaos. With each step the fire retreated, and everywhere her foot fell, the fire died for an arm’s length around. She began to sway, reaching outward to the farthest extent of her arms, shoving the fire farther and farther from the children. In one round of the room the fire was half the height of the walls; in another it was clear, dark where it had been full of burning light.

"Tekko, come!" she called, her mind beyond the wall on the fire in the hall, which was trying to launch a new assault.

Without a word Tekkorin snatched the girl up by one arm. She came, stumbling but determined now that the way to the door was clear. Jetta spun into the doorway. Fire had reclaimed the path she had forged to this spot, which surprised her. Flame was rarely so bold, to claim a Dancer’s footsteps. But then she heard the roar, a deep vibration more felt than a sound in the ears, underlying the sharp crackle of the flames running up the walls. Laughter.

"Jetta!"

It was a frightened wail, terror from Tekkorin at last. Indeed, the gift ran deep in him, if he could sense the presence of the Ancient at his age. Flames ran together in the center of the room, rearing up higher than her head. Jetta hesitated, seeing a hysth forming. In a moment it would be living flame, able to understand its own malice--and do something with it. She brought her hands up, but the hysth was faster. It turned from hot red to pale gold in a breath, shading to white at its heart, working itself into a doorway for the Ancient. Everywhere, stone groaned under the heat and began to hiss and crumble as it gave up its air. A section of ceiling fell from the far corner near the door, priceless carvings shattering apart into a chaos of blackened wood. Anger exploded through Jetta, seeing something she loved taken forever by a thing without soul.

She sprang recklessly into the center of the great room, spinning as she went, so that her hands made the warding gesture in a full circle before she landed lightly astride a small flame racing for the safety of the hysth. But the hysth refused the smaller red flame and fled before her, leaving its younger brother to die in a curl of smoke. The deep roar around her changed to a thinner crackle, malice turning abruptly to fear. The hysth wavered, faded from white to red, and lost its nerve. It retreated into the stone walls, dying to sparks and then nothingness as Jetta’s Dance drove it back to its spawning ground. Abruptly the room was filled with smoke and nothing more, heavy amid a stink of burning and blackened wood.

"Tekko, the door!"

Tekkorin grabbed the girl again and ran, straight for the front door, where hands snatched them through into clean air and sunlight and safety. Slowly Jetta let her Dance wind down, stepping lightly between hole and hole in the floor, driving the fire deep into the ground where it always slept, waiting, watching for carelessness, for a lapse in the watchfulness of the folk who lived in the air it craved.

Finally, deep in her bones, she sensed victory. This upstart youngster was beaten, licking its wounds in some deep crevice far below her, hiding from the Ancient, which doubtless would not welcome this setback. Another skirmish in a long, long war was over.

Abruptly the weariness hit her, the inevitable aftermath of the Dance. She stopped in the middle of the great room, drooping like a wilted flower. Dimly she heard someone shout, and pounding footsteps. Hands caught her, bore her up, and then sunlight touched her face along with a breeze clean of fire stink.

Kori, she thought, but that wasn’t right, Kori was dead, and suddenly her arm hurt, and her leg, raw red pain licking like the very fire deep into her body. She screamed and fought the hands trying to soothe her, setting off a sudden alarmed babble over her head.

Strong fingers seized her chin, fighting the frantic sideways thrashing of her head. "Jetta! Stop it! You are out, and safe! Jetta ak'Kal! Stop it!"

The voice penetrated, ringing along familiar pathways. She froze, staring up into a pair of intense dark eyes as hard as containment stone. "Farahk," she gasped.

He released her, still staring unblinking into her eyes. "Is your mind your own, ak'Kal?"

Shakily she nodded, and sat up, drawing her knees up into an instinctive barrier. Farahk's eyes narrowed; she caught herself huddling, and surged to her feet, shaking off the memory of pain and loss still tender after a year.

Faces framed in dark hair, bodies in the deep reds and yellows of the Fire Clans, surrounded her. She looked up at her neighbors, villagers she had known all her life, and bit her lip, groping after the professional calm a Third Rank master should never lose. They crowded back, breaking the circle of concern drawn tight around her. Farahk came up more slowly, hard muscles rippling in the late afternoon sunlight. It jolted Jetta to see him dressed in the brief leather hip guard of a Dancer, legs and upper body bare of anything the fire might snatch, his dark hair, like hers, bound up tight with a thong at the nape of his neck. Wide dark eyes met hers. Jetta stared, first in realization, and then embarrassment. Hot color flooded her face.

He waved impatiently at the gawking villagers. "It’s done here. The fire’s out, thanks to Jetta ak'Kal. Go and see what can be salvaged. Take yon girl child to her parents, and see to Tekkorin."

People scattered without objection. Quite apart from being a Fifth Rank master, Farahk seldom brooked being questioned. Hands brushed Jetta’s shoulder in passing: silent thanks, appreciation, and then they were gone, and she stood alone with Farahk in an awkward silence.

"So," he said.

Stubbornly she looked away. Firin’s house bore scorch marks around the windows facing the square and a gaping hole in the roof of the great room, but the majority of the sprawling hall was untouched, white walls gleaming in the golden light. The rest of the village still dreamed in the sun, a scatter of arrogant white stone and wooden roofs crowning a hill shaped like flame itself. The vulnerable trees of the forest stood in a great circle a hundred paces back from the nearest walls, far enough the Ancient could not use them against the village. The sun hovered over the far end of the valley, turning the river and the high falls pouring over the Guardian Ridge there to silver. The high ridges hemming the wide sweep of green dreamed in quiet peace, lush and verdant like no other place in ten leagues, for here fire walked with caution, and rarely. This was Firehome Vale, Clanhome to the Fire Clans. Every third person here was a Dancer.

Farahk’s hand touched her shoulder. "Jetta."

The hard edge had left his voice. She turned, caught in spite of herself. Their eyes met, alike in the liquid blackness of mastery, as their faces bore traces of common ancestry in the wide set of the eyes, the winged dark eyebrows, the flat, hard lines of cheek and jaw. She saw compassion in his face, and flushed, caught all sideways.

"So you are not as well healed as you thought," he said quietly.

She looked up, her pride caught. "I did what was needed! The fire is driven deep, and Firin’s hall is still standing, and the children live."

"Aye. You did well."

"But still you were set to come in after." Bitterness edged her voice.

"Were it needed, yes. Should the children have died for your pride?"

"How long have you had someone standing my watch behind my back?"

"You have not been cleared by the Circle again to work alone. Surely you knew that."

"I--" But she had known, she had just refused to think about it, as so much else of this past year was forbidden territory. Of course her credentials were gone; no one trusted a Firedancer who had failed her task. One dead village to her credit was enough.

She stared sullenly at the ground, absently rubbing her left arm. He caught her hand, held it up to her when she snatched her head up, startled. He only looked at her, still holding her wrist quietly. She flushed again and wrenched away.

He ran a light finger down the unmarked skin of her arm. "It healed well."

"No scars. The Seafolk healers are adept."

"No scars outside."

She met his eyes. "I am ak'Kal of the Third Rank! I am not afraid!"

"Yes, you are." His voice was so matter-of-fact it quenched her anger as though he had Danced it away. "You conquered it today. What of next time? What when you meet with the Ancient itself? You came out screaming, girl. The fire has touched your flesh. Did it also eat your nerve?"

Her chin came up. "The Ancient has no hold on me. This fire was malicious. I stood to it."

His eyebrow went up like a bird rising. "So? Then you did better than well, daughter of my sister."

She drew a deep breath, steadying as he let formality go at last. "It was a young fire. I felt that, too. It was not the Ancient--but it tried to call the Old Man. It tried."

"Why does that surprise you? Any fire will try if you let it."

"Here in the heart of Firehome Vale?" She stared. "Since when would it dare?"

"Since when would it dare rise here to begin with?"

That silenced her. Since when, indeed? Suddenly uncertain, she stood silent as a First Ranker while those eyes that had seen more fire than half the other Dancers in all the clans studied her face. "You have great talent, Jetta," he said finally, startling her, for it was not what she had expected. "Since you were a child it has been expected that you would rise to Fifth Rank, perhaps even to the Circle. I have never seen a Dancer so aware of how a fire will run, of where it sleeps, of its mood when it bursts from the deep. Because of you, Setham Village was fire-clear for full five years. That is a thing unheard of."

"And now Setham Village lies in ashes because of me."

"No. You know why Setham died."

She looked away, her vision blurring with the easy tears of the past year. "Kori," she whispered.

"Kori didn’t cause the fire any more than he caused his own death." Farahk’s voice was gentle, but inexorable. She flinched, because she did not want to hear this, could not bear to think of that time. But Farahk’s hand was on her chin again, his hard fingers forcing her head up. Finally she met his eyes, furiously blinking her vision clear.

He dropped his hand, a reluctant smile catching up one side of his mouth. "Your courage is intact, girl. Find whatever path will lead you past Kori, and you will yet stand in the Circle."

Anger flamed again, bright and hot. "Lead past Kori?" she echoed incredulously. "And should I forget him, my lifemate, my second self, who died because I failed?"

"Did I say forget? But he’s dead, child, of his own mistake, and if you dwell on that mistake it will take you, too. Or you will never Dance fire again, and then how many will die who might have lived had Jetta ak'Kal had the will and the courage to Dance for them?"

She spun away, staring into the sun sinking red over the falls. "I will not fail my duty," she said through her teeth. "Is that all?"

Silence behind her. She waited, hating his trick of outwaiting opposition, but it worked nonetheless. She turned to find him still watching her, with neither anger nor compassion in his face. He was master now, and she apprentice.

"Annam Vale has requested a Dancer," he said evenly. "You will go tomorrow."

"No!" It was wrenched from her before she thought. "No, ak'Kal! Not yet!"

"You object to backing on your watch, and yet refuse an assignment elsewhere? Make up your mind, girl."

Jetta jerked upright. "Fire has attacked Firehome itself! How can I leave--"

"And are there no other masters in Firehome, with more years of facing the Old Man than Jetta ak'Kal has been alive?"

That silenced her. Even now she could hear First Rank apprentices chanting the histories in the sprawling teaching house where she had learned the Dance. Clanhome had no need of her to keep the Ancient at bay. Maybe it was only because she was on watch that the Old Man’s spawn had dared to raise its head.

She felt Farahk’s eyes on her, and looked away. Setham Village lay like an accusing ghost behind her eyelids, a specter of ashes and blackened walls and screams. Maybe if she stayed, it would be Firehome itself someday. And maybe if she left, it would be Annam.

"If you are not fit to Dance anymore, now is the time to find it out, Jetta ak'Kal."

She forced herself to meet Farahk’s eyes again. "I can Dance," she said through stiff lips.

"Then you go."

Go with Circle sanction, or just go. That was in his voice, the thing that happened to Dancers who lost their nerve. They either taught, for which she had no patience, or they left. When fire rooted in a human heart, it was too dangerous for them to stay. She looked down that road of bleak wandering, a magnet for the Ancient, welcome nowhere, and swallowed hard.

"Yes, ak'Kal," she said thickly. "Is that all?"

"No. Settak goes with you."

"Settak! But he’s only a journeyman, and Second Rank! He isn’t qualified--"

"To take your place if you fail?"

"Old Man Fire! That’s not what I--"

"But it’s what you were thinking, deep inside. There is no danger of you failing here, with a village full of Dancers to catch what you do not. In your heart you know that."

"I didn’t know! I didn’t know you were there, so why should I have feared failing?"

"Then why does Firin’s hall have a great hole in its roof? How is that flame got such a hold there, if Jetta ak'Kal did not hesitate?"

"It was already well alight when I came, ak'Kal."

He frowned and looked down his nose at her. "So?"

"Yes!"

A little silence stretched. Her anger trickled into uneasiness as still Farahk said nothing. Abruptly he raised his eyes as if some inner debate had ended. "All the more reason for you to go, then," he said cryptically. "Settak is competent enough in the Dance. Annam lies in the heart of the containment quarries. The risk is small."

Which brought the bright blood rushing to her face again, in humiliation this time. "Then why send us at all?"

He deliberated a long moment, watching her unblinkingly. Something behind his eyes cooled her anger, set a small worm of doubt in her guts. Something was not right about Annam Vale, and the danger was greater than he pretended. "Uncle?"

He drew a quick breath and let it out in a sigh. "Annam is full of Windriders, sister-daughter. Think on that, if Old Man Fire indeed comes calling."

Farahk dropped a hand on her shoulder, a quick, hard squeeze of assurance, and walked away with the light, arrogant step of the very top Dancers. She watched him go, hardly seeing him for the swirl of fear and excitement and doubt squeezing her guts into knots. She felt like a First Ranker again, facing the fire for the first time.