Such was the giant’s power that he could control the fires he set. Though the buildings nearest them might char, they did not catch, nor the flames spread, so individual column after column of smoke rose above the moonlit roofs to mark his progress. By the time twenty-seven such columns were in being, he was taller than the tallest tower of the Great East Gate.
Those fires were still raging when dawn whitened beyond it, but by then the giant was gone. Sentries on the wall had watched him dwindle to a distant spark, and by daylight they could see his track spearing northwestwards, a ruler-straight line of burnt crops, grassland and scrub that vanished as it crossed the ridge of hills that rimmed the northern desert.
They turned and looked back over the city. The smoke of twenty-seven fires still floated up and drifted away on the wind, but that was not what struck them most strongly. Seeing it even from here, they could tell at once that Haballun had become changed overnight. Both for good and ill, it had overnight been stripped of all its high magic.
Meanwhile the giant who had been Tib was striding down into the desert. His huge paces carried him through the roasting heat of its day and the bitter chill of its night. Soon after the next daybreak, a mile-wide canyon barred his path. He climbed down the nearer cliff and walked along the canyon’s floor until he came to a place where the canyon narrowed to a deep slit that he could span with his arms, resting one hand on either cliff.
He gathered his giant strength and pushed. The whole wide desert groaned, and distant cities trembled as he ruptured the rind of the world and gazed down into its roiling central fires.
He settled down, dangling his legs over the edge of the crack, and waited. One by one, twenty-seven golden lizards rose through the skin of his thighs, cast their purple gaze on him for a moment, crawled as far as his knee-cap and cast themselves over the edge. As each one left him, some of his heat went from him and his stature dwindled. By the time the last emerged, he was Tib again, a naked young man with ordinary human flesh, sitting on bare rock, and forced now to draw back from the furnace heat that rose from the crack.
He felt a tingling in his upper right arm. The final lizard rose through his skin, formed no longer of metallic mesh but of living gold. Instead of leaving him, as the others had done, it crawled up his arm and over his shoulder, coming to rest out of sight on his shoulder-blade. He felt a patch of intense, pure heat that did not hurt or burn him. It lasted only a few seconds and then the lizard crept back up, stopping this time on the point of his shoulder. Squinting sidelong down, he saw it reach up with a long, dark tongue, forked at the tip. The lizard crept closer, out of sight now, and clung to his neck. Something smooth and warm slid into his ear, further and further. A whispering began inside his head.
ʺWe are the salamanders. Our normal mode of being is outside time, where we have no material form. To exist in time we take this form. Our gateway between our two modes of being is the central fire of the earth, where the material elements are made and unmade. Long ago in time we watched fragments of the material world shape themselves into stars and planets and then, on this planet, into living things and, finally, people. Until these came into existence, we were unable to act in the material world, but now, through them, we could. At first we did so very seldom, but continued to watch from a distance.
ʺThen the people began to develop the powers that you call cottage magic, through which, we saw, humankind might evolve into its next stage. Some of us were eager to study the process, so took material form and came to live secretly in the households of those who possessed these powers, in order to watch more closely. I was one.
ʺI lived secretly in the house of a man called Vered, in the city of Haballun. He possessed unusual abilities and great intelligence—too great, for he discovered my existence without my being aware of it. What is more, he devised a means to trap me into this mode of existence and keep me caged. Worse yet, he prevented me from warning my fellow salamanders what had happened to me, and told certain of his friends what he had done, so that they could do the same. Before we could move to prevent it, twenty-seven of us had been likewise trapped. Whether we liked it or not, these men—they were all men—could use our mere presence enormously to increase their power. They discovered high magic.
ʺDespite all this, Vered was a good man, just in his dealings. His aim had not been power or wealth but to understand the deepest causes of things, and he believed I would be a doorway to such knowledge. But as soon as he learnt more of my nature he realised the wrongfulness of what he had done and set me free, and furthermore tried to persuade the rest to do the same, but the corruption of power had already done its work on them and they refused. Vered, with my help, then set about mastering them one by one, but they combined against us and destroyed him.
ʺI fled into my other mode of being, and conferred with the rest of the salamanders. I was determined to rescue my friends. The others were willing to help me, but seeing what had happened to me and my friends, they were not prepared to risk entering the material world while there were magicians there of such power. We ourselves have considerable powers in our other mode of being. I can move easily enough across material time and enter where I will, but once within it, I am bound by it until I choose to leave it, and it would take all my strength to move even a small material object with me into another time and to keep it there for a little while before it was snatched back.
ʺI needed to act through someone of great natural powers but uncorrupted by them. I knew of only one, Vered himself. But even with my help, working in his own time, he had been impotent against the combined powers of the other twenty-seven magicians of Haballun. So I persuaded the salamanders to transfer him out of his time to the present age, when the magicians had become so corrupted by their powers that they could no longer trust each other enough to cooperate. They agreed to do it, and said it was possible if we all worked together, but even then we would be unable to hold him here for more than a morning.
ʺI re-entered Vered’s time on the day before he would be destroyed, when he could already foresee his failure, and told him what I planned. Though it would all happen long after he was dead, he was eager to undo the harm that he had done.
ʺI then searched a little back from this time and found a newborn child who had no ties to any other person. This was you. Your mother was a girl of the hill people. She became pregnant without her brothers’ permission. They killed her lover, but not her, since she was their sister and their customs forbade it. But they would not send for help when she gave birth, and she died. You lived, so they carried you into the desert and left you for the wild animals. Instead I caused a hunter to find you and carry you to Haballun to be raised as a slave.
ʺWhen the time came, I took the form of an artificial salamander and caused a woman who dealt in magical objects to buy me from a street vendor, and then to choose you. This was to keep you safely hidden, and ready for our purpose. The rest you have seen for yourself. Now you are Tib again, with your human life to live. The blessing of the salamanders is on you.ʺ
The salamander withdrew its tongue and crawled swiftly down Tib’s body and across the rocks. It paused on the rim of the crevasse and turned its head. For the last time he looked into the depths of those purple eyes, and then it crawled on down out of sight. With another desert-shuddering groan the crevasse closed.