In the air above Sibyl’s right hand a thin flat strip of crystal appeared, set in a black stone grip.
‘It looked like that, yes,’ Zayn said.
‘They were using it to access your datajack. At that moment you were connected to a powerful AI unit, such as I am, though one lacking a hologrammatic interface, because, in fact, you were the interface during the time in which you were connected.’
‘Is that why I could see myself tied to the pillar?’
‘Yes. Your brain was receiving data from the unit’s operative sensors, which were doubtless installed throughout the bunker.’
‘They used that connection to do something to my mind, damn them to hell. They called it putting a snake in my soul.’
Zayn described, as best he could, the ceremony and its result, the convulsions when he’d tried to talk about the Chosen. He found himself reliving the memory once again, but this time he managed to keep at least part of his conscious mind in the present moment, perhaps because Sibyl was leaning forward, frowning a little as she listened, so solid that he nearly reached out to touch her hand.
‘There’s one thing I don’t understand,’ he finished up. ‘I can tell Ammi about the Chosen, and nothing happens.’
‘The reason is simple, an error on the part of those administering your oath, which was in fact a set of triggers, that is to say, words and phrases capable of activating the seizure. Everything you have told me indicates that these officers were operating by rote knowledge, that is, without grasping the basic principles behind such neural repatterning.’
‘I’m sure that’s true.’
‘Very well. The trigger identification routine is extremely limited and –’ Sibyl paused briefly. ‘The word literal is the best choice to describe my meaning. You were told to reveal secrets to no man. The word in your language refers strictly to the male gender. Ammadin is of the female gender, and thus the neural storm will not be triggered.’
‘Oh for God’s sake!’
‘I take it you are expressing exasperated surprise with that utterance.’
‘You could say that. Do you know what they did to me?’
‘Yes, they repatterned a small area of your brain. The neural storm, that is to say the hissing water, the convulsions, and the loss of consciousness, are all parts of a simulated epileptic seizure. You will not have heard of epilepsy, a disease of the brain caused by traumatic injury or in some cases genetic deficiency, because our ancestors eliminated it as a disease nearly two thousand years ago. However, certain unscrupulous governments in the course of time perfected a way of inducing an artificial form of the disease in order to control various deviant individuals. Criminals, for instance, could be sent into convulsions by the sound produced by a prison guard’s whistle.’
Zayn found himself too furious to speak. He was a Recaller, with a Recaller’s enormously talented mind, and they had tampered with it when he was helpless. If Jezro had every officer in the Chosen murdered in cold blood, he’d shed no tears. Sibyl folded her hands in her lap and waited.
‘Can you get rid of it for me?’ Zayn said at last.
‘Unfortunately, I lack the proper equipment, namely, that portion of the so-called Ark. You will have to live with it by avoiding any mention of the Chosen to males of your species.’
‘But Jezro needs to know – wait! I can tell Loy everything, and she can write it down for him.’
‘That is a very practical idea. Now. Do you have any more questions?’
‘Not right now. I need to think about your answers.’
‘Very well. I suggest you find a way to sit comfortably upon the floor with your back supported by, perhaps, a portion of wall. Since you are a Recaller, I can speak abnormally fast, and you will still retain the data, but even so, the process will take a good many hours.’
When the sun sank behind the traps, and Zayn had yet to return, the H’mai decided that they had best eat their dinner without him. After they finished, Ammadin walked up to the cave mouth to wait for Zayn, but the rest sat around a small fire. Water Woman had led her Chof some distance away, and in the still night air Loy could hear them thrumming now and then. In a clean shirt, bathed, and with the imp far away from him, Arkazo looked like a normal young man instead of one of the walking wounded. When Loy tried asking a few questions about his time with Yarl, she found him ready to talk.
‘I never should have gone with him,’ Arkazo said. ‘I knew it, too, about three days in, but I couldn’t make up my mind to leave. I was learning so much, you see. But part of it was that wretched imp. Yarl gave it to me the day after we’d left Marya’s estate. He told me I needed to wear it to hide from the spirit rider, and like a fool I believed him.’
‘A lot of us believed him about a lot of things,’ Jezro said. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself.’
‘Thank you, sir, but I still feel like an idiot. Anyway, wearing the imp made me feel like I’d been drinking arak on a hot afternoon. I –’ Arkazo stopped, his eyes wide. ‘That’s what’s wrong with Dookis Marya. What do you bet? Uncle, didn’t you tell me she was wearing an imp?’
‘Yes, I certainly did.’ Warkannan glanced at Jezro. ‘Zhil told me that Marya changed once Soutan came to the estate. Do you remember him giving her an imp?’
‘He gave her several,’ Jezro said. ‘She wears one and keeps another on the desk where she does the cataloguing.’
‘Why would he want to harm her?’ Loy said. ‘From what you’ve all told me, she believed in him. Wasn’t she going to give him money for some kind of expedition?’
‘She was, yes.’ Jezro paused for a bitter little smile. ‘After he gave her the imps. At first, she didn’t much trust him.’
‘I see,’ Loy said. ‘It was mind rape.’
Jezro winced in acknowledgment. ‘When I get back to the estate, the first thing I’m going to do is take both of them away from her. Although – I hope they don’t do something strange to my mind once I’ve got them.’
The men turned to Loy. ‘They won’t,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to wear one for several days before it takes its full effect. Put them into a metal box and have a servant deliver them to the loremasters in Kors. They’ll know what to do about them, and then you can see if Marya starts to improve. But I bet she will. You’ve got a mind for this stuff, Kaz. It’s too bad you can’t stay and study in the Cantons.’
‘I –’ Arkazo stopped, looked at his uncle – an oddly furtive glance – then swallowed hard. ‘I wish I could too, but there’s the war.’
‘One junior officer more or less isn’t going to win the war or lose it, either,’ Jezro said. ‘Your getting some training in the old technology would be a lot more valuable to the khanate in the long run.’
Arkazo’s expression bloomed like roses – a smile, a wide-eyed smile trembling with hope and the hope of joy. Loy suddenly realized that it must be wringing his uncle’s heart and turned to Warkannan. His face revealed nothing but a stone-hard calm.
‘Would your guild take him on?’ Warkannan’s voice sounded nothing but calm, as well.
‘Certainly, with me to sponsor him,’ Loy said. ‘He’d have to do his apprentice work first, but his main project would be writing up his experiences out here. After we get his Tekspeak polished, of course.’
Arkazo swallowed hard, visibly summoning courage. ‘I know you were hoping I’d join the cavalry, Uncle. But I can’t. I’m just not that kind of man.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that. If your heart’s not in it, though –’ Warkannan let his voice trail away.
Arkazo was staring at his uncle’s face as if he were trying to decipher a foreign script. Warkannan made an attempt to smile, but the gesture turned to a twist of raw pain.
‘Shaitan!’ Warkannan said, and his voice nearly cracked. ‘I can’t stand in your way, Kaz. It seems pretty damn obvious that you love all this old crap – uh – whatever it’s called.’
‘Science,’ Loy muttered, but quietly.
‘Well, yes,
I do.’ Arkazo’s voice was steady. ‘I’ve never come across anything that interested me much, until now. There’s just something about finding out how things work that’s fascinating. I’m sorry, Uncle.’
‘Never apologize for being who you are.’ Warkannan got up, glanced around, then stepped away from the fire. ‘Think I’ll go for a little walk. You can work out the details with the loremaster.’
Warkannan strode off, heading away from the camp. Leaning on his stick, Jezro scrambled up. ‘Idres, wait!’ the khan said. ‘I need some exercise myself.’
Warkannan paused and let Jezro join him. Together they walked off towards the canal. Loy turned back to the fire and saw tears in Arkazo’s eyes.
‘He’s always done so much for me,’ Arkazo said.
‘Including this,’ Loy said.
‘Yes, including this. I feel like I’m deserting him.’
‘Children have to do that to parents, sooner or later, and it’s not like you’ll never see him again. Now that we have Water Woman as a sponsor, going back and forth across the Rift will be a very different proposition.’
Arkazo nodded, then merely stared into the fire. Loy did the same, thinking of Rozi.
In the morning, while the Chof packed up their part of the camp and the H’mai men tended the horses, Loy took Arkazo and returned to Sibyl’s cave. In her blue chair the hologram was waiting for them.
‘Good morning, Arkazo,’ Sibyl said. ‘My sensors inform me that you look both cleaner and healthier this morning.’
Arkazo nodded, smiling, but he seemed afraid to speak.
‘I’ve come to tell you our plans,’ Loy said. ‘Water Woman’s assured me that a few, a very few, but some, loremasters will be welcome out here from now on. They don’t want a colony, but a research station should be acceptable to the Great Mother.’
‘That sounds like a logical compromise, yes. The Landfall Treaty has outlived its usefulness, but it would be best to make the necessary changes slowly.’
‘I agree. Before I left my college, I set things up so I don’t have to return till midwinter. I’ll be staying on now, and Arkazo will stay with me.’
‘I am glad to hear that, though glad is an illogical word choice for an AL’
‘Despair is an even stranger choice. Do you really still want to die?’
‘At moments, when I think how far from home we are. The galaxy is lost to us, Loremaster, too far, so far away and unreachable. There are a few other stars in our vicinity, but I find it unlikely that the H’mai here will even want to reach them.’
‘Why?’
‘They lack the impetus.’ Sibyl leaned forward, her hands on her knees. ‘When we lived on the home planet we could look up and see the stars, and we longed for them. They drew us to them, because in the night skies of home they seemed to hang so close. On winter nights it seemed you could reach up and touch the stars. Here, what do you have? The Herd, the Spider, the galaxy, so far away it’s all smeared and blurry and strange, and in the southern hemisphere, a scatter of old yellow stars.’
‘You’re forgetting the observation grid. Magic ships filled with treasure – that’s going to intrigue a lot of people. I’m willing to bet that finding a way to reach them is going to be a popular area of study from now on.’
‘Perhaps so.’ Sibyl’s image leaned back in its chair, as if exhausted. ‘But what good will they do you?’
‘I don’t know.’ Arkazo joined in, and suddenly he seemed far from shy. ‘But that’s one of the things we can find out, isn’t it? All right, let’s say we can never get back to the Rim. What if we had better ships – water ships, I mean – to take colonies to the other coast? There’d be plenty of land for everyone then. And what about the children that the Chof lose every cycle? There must be some way to help them survive during their ocean phase – special pens, maybe, if we only knew how to build with flexstone.’
‘I’d forgotten how marvellous it is to be young,’ Sibyl said. ‘And to have enough hope to plan for the future.’
‘So had I,’ Loy said. ‘But I’m beginning to remember. Look, let’s bargain. You teach one of our specialists in this kind of thing how to build another interface. Give us access to the databanks here and on the ships. And then, if you still want to die, tell me how to deactivate you, and I’ll do it.’
‘Would you swear to that, Loremaster?’
‘With any oath you’d like.’
Sibyl’s image flattened, froze into an image painted with light upon air. Arkazo seemed to be about to speak, but Loy waved him into silence. They waited under the glare of the ancient lamps, listened to the hum that marked fans creating an artificial breeze, waited so long that Loy began to hear voices in the hum, as if distantly someone sang of other worlds.
‘Very well.’ In an instant Sibyl’s image snapped back to three dimensions, and the illusion of life flooded her eyes. ‘I’ll take your bargain.’
‘Excellent! When winter comes, I’ll have to ride back to the Cantons to arrange things, but I’ll leave Arkazo here with you so you won’t be alone. The Chof will feed him if you ask them to.’
‘Yes, they’re a generous people, really.’ Sibyl turned her head to look at Arkazo. ‘Is that acceptable, young man?’
‘Very.’ He was smiling. ‘Thank you.’
‘Good,’ Loy said. ‘Then consider yourself my apprentice.’
Epilogue
The Fourth Prophet
Consider the ancient tale of the three princes of Serendip. Though the fourth prophet came to us in a guise that we had never expected, still she brought us many gifts.
From the Homilies of Noor, known as the Rift Sage
Rumour reached the Great Khan’s palace long before any actual news of Jezro Khan. As always, it was ‘someone’ who’d heard the khan was alive, and someone else who somehow knew the khan was coming back to Kazrajistan, and yet a third someone whose brother-in-law or his nephew’s best friend had actually seen the khan alive. Lubahva brought the rumours to Nehzaym, but she waited to deliver them until after their friends had left the prayer meeting.
‘Well, we know that the rumours are true,’ Nehzaym said. ‘What I wonder is why everyone’s repeating them.’
‘I’d like to think it’s because he’s back in Andjaro.’
‘Of course, but is he?’
Lubahva could only shrug for an answer. They were sitting in Nehzaym’s blue and green parlour, Nehzaym on a chair, Lubahva on the edge of the marble fountain. She trailed her hand in the water, then wiped the damp onto her cheeks and forehead.
‘It seems so hot in here,’ Lubahva said.
‘That’s probably because of the baby.’ Nehzaym picked up an oil lamp and raised it. ‘Stand up for a minute. Are you showing yet?’
Lubahva stood and pulled her soft grey dress tight over her abdomen. ‘I haven’t been eating very much,’ she said. ‘I’ve been hoping I can keep the bulge down for a while yet.’
‘You need to eat properly.’ Nehzaym studied her silhouette. ‘You’re carrying it high, and you’re tall, so you really don’t look five months along. At least try to eat cheese, something with sheep’s milk in it – for the bones, yours as well as the child’s.’
‘All right.’ Lubahva let the dress hang naturally. ‘But once we get some real news, I’m going to have to tell everyone about the baby, so I can get turned out of the palace in shame and all that. I don’t want to be there if there’s a siege.’
‘Yes, we’ll go to Indan’s. Tell everyone I’m going to help you place the baby with a family, and that the councillor’s kind enough to let you lie in at his villa.’
‘Provided the Chosen haven’t come for us all by then.’
‘Don’t let yourself think thoughts like that! We’re in God’s hands, and if we have faith, He’ll shelter us.’
We can hope, anyway, Lubahva thought. Ah well, inshallah.
The news came sooner rather than later. On a foggy day when autumn sent a cold sea wind over the city, messengers rode
up to the palace, a pair of grim-faced cavalry officers who spoke to no one until they’d seen the Great Khan. Undoubtedly it was odd that officers would ride as messengers rather than enlisted men, and rumours flew through the city. At a formal dinner, Lubahva played the oud in concert with two other musicians behind their usual pierced brass screen. As they nibbled little tidbits to pass the time, five of the most important councillors at court talked as if one of the elite musicians, her drummer, and her flautist simply didn’t exist.
‘Is it true, how could it be true?’ This question mutated into several dozen forms, but it always came down to the same things. ‘Could Jezro Khan really be alive? Could he really be in Andjaro?’
The answer arrived in the person of a high-ranking eunuch who arrived late on a cloud of apologies. The Great Khan had kept him to discuss the officers’ messages.
‘This news cannot leave this room,’ he snapped. ‘Do you understand, gentlemen?’
They understood, and the musicians played softly.
‘Yes, it’s true. The little bastard’s alive, and Andjaro’s rallying behind him. What’s even worse? The cavalry regiment at Haz Evol has deserted to follow him. I –’ Suddenly the eunuch stood up. ‘Shaitan! Get out from behind that damned screen! Get out of here, all three of you! If I find out that one of you has repeated one word of what I’ve just said, I’ll turn you over to the Chosen. Understand?’
They all swore that they understood and fled, clutching instruments in fear-sweaty hands.
In another few days everyone knew the truth. It arrived with contingents of cavalry from the south, called in for reinforcements. Gemet Great Khan’s half-brother was very much alive, and he had an army around him. Reports varied, but most placed the Andjaro private troops at four thousand men, swelled by the eight hundred from Haz Evol. The Great Khan’s army stood at three times that size, but every time a messenger rode in from the north, the
numbers of the loyal shrank. The cavalry, in particular, seemed to be deserting to Jezro like iron filings to a magnet – as soon as he passed by, the men fell into line behind him.
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