No Flame But Mine by Tanith Lee Page A

days and a night. How can I have arrived there days after you yourself, yet been there two days before you, and still you met me, I you, on the first day of your return?
    Unlike this discrepancy of a mysterious and awful glitch in time, before them years and spotted only now, neither was aware of the world or the sky outside.
    The daylight had flattened and smoked over. For a long while only the brazier had given either light or dimension to the room.
    It was as if some perfect scene-stealing effect took place, and no one paid any attention. Of course, whatever had expended such effort out there, up there, might be affronted that the audience ignored it.
    Without prelude the bang sounded high above. It shook the house, the built streets beyond. From walls and roofs solid slabs of snow dislodged and crashed in the alleys of Kandexa.
    Jemhara and Thryfe, along with some thousands of others, were on their feet.
    The noise had been as if the sky itself had blown up, split right across, and might now give way like a damaged ceiling.
    There came an immediate gushing rattle.
    Past the window flared a sparkling, straight-dropping hail of what seemed tiny embittered glittering stars. As they hit the walls and ground in turn, a million sharp and metallic impacts resounded. Below, out in the alley, a man screamed unpleasantly. Next moment the pane of glass in Jemhara’s window, closed still for the night, was smashed. A cascade of diamonds shot through into the attic.
    Thryfe spoke. Another pane, this one of energy, dashed up to fill the window-frame.
    Like maddened wasps hatched from some defrosting orchard, colourless gems flew and smacked against the barrier. Splintering appeared in air—
    Jemhara flung the wooden shutter closed and fastened it.
    In near total darkness – the brazier fire had sunk down like a frightened dog – they stood listening to the arrows of ice striking on every outer surface over and over. There was distant shouting too and wailing cries.
    Another roaring bang bisected the sky overhead. It had seemed impossible the concussion could be repeated. The house shook again. In one wall a hair-fine crack undid itself and powder sprayed across the room.
    Jemhara smote the brazier. The fire regained its courage, jumped up. Across the floor white wasps of ice sizzled malignly, not melting.
    In the alley outside a man, arms and back broken, was calling, his howl weakening, lost too in the rattle of the hail. He had attempted to crawl to shelter. His track had been like that of a snake, but was already obliterated, and his body half covered by prisms of ice. Jemhara had seen this in the instant she slammed the shutter. She had not been able to help the man. She said nothing.
    Above, a low grunting complaint stirred from the roof.
    A beam twisted a little, over their heads.
    The shutter too had been dislodged. They watched as it slid sideways like a turning page and thudded in on the floor.
    â€˜We must go down,’ he said.
    She snatched her cloak, a handful of things from the table and Ranjal’s twig off the peg. They went towards the door.
    A new note sounded – a whistling tearing screech—
    Everything flamed white.
    Jemhara saw something like a gigantic blazing spear cast from the sky, parting the jewelry hail – it fell to earth perhaps half a mile away. Where it hit home white fire and blue detonated outward from whatever it had struck. A barking explosion followed, unlike the vast noises of the sky.
    Despite the danger, Jemhara had looked back at the window, transfixed, staring. Now a second blazing shaft lit the gloom – now another – and another—Scores of these things tore through the hail, rushing from the sky each with its shrilling note and blank white flash of light. Wherever any struck anything below there was the yap of explosion and blast of harsh iced fire.
    â€˜Jema—’ He pulled her from the room and out on to the stair beyond. The stairwell was