“Anyhow, because I grew up surrounded by military relics—and plenty of active military as well—I am good at assessing what we saw today. Leto’s facility was intended for the research and construction of weapons, weapons I suspect would have enabled those who commanded them to dominate the empire, to weld a fragmenting state into a whole cemented by fear of complete annihilation.”
Adara touched Griffin’s arm. “Shall we seal that complex again? Look for your communications array elsewhere?”
Griffin shook his head. “This goes beyond my need. You spoke of nightmares. I fear I won’t be able to rest until I understand how much of that facility remains intact. My dream has always been to return home, bragging of my discovery, but once I do so, others will come here. I must know how dangerous this planet may be.”
His voice dropped. “And, if it is as dangerous as I fear, well, I may be forced to forsake my dream. I’m not sure I could ever return. What if I let something slip?”
He forced a smile and slipped his hand around Adara’s. “I might stay here on Artemis and see if I can learn to sweet-talk you as well as does my roguish friend.”
Adara squeezed his fingers before taking back her hand. “You may be forced into exile in any case. That place looked thoroughly damaged to me.”
“I know,” Griffin said. “That may not be all bad. I keep remembering how the tales of Artemis always ended with her not being destroyed. Historians usually agreed that this was because she offered no threat and would be the prize of those who came to dominate the region. What if that is only partly true? What if those planet splitters were held back because Artemis offered a greater prize than history remembers? What if she was lost to the future because any record of her coordinates was deliberately destroyed? What if I’ve found what should have been left lost?”
Terrell sighed. “You’re not the only one who has been remembering, Griffin. Back in the early days of my training, we were given stories to memorize because entertaining often falls to a junior factotum. One of these was a fanciful tale, based on what my teacher told us was a reconstruction of stories of the goddess Artemis—the virgin huntress for whom our planet is named. The tale of her birth was included. Do you know what was the name of Artemis’s mother?”
Adara whispered. “Leto?”
“Yes,” Terrell said somberly. “Leto. I think that naming means that Artemis was created after Leto—to protect the war facility as the goddess did her mother. We have been told that our planet was created as a place of pleasure and relaxation but, even as the highest of technology lay beneath the pastoral pleasures, so yet another falsehood underlies the bedrock of our beliefs. The war machine factory was not added later. All along, it was the hidden purpose for Artemis.”
Interlude: In Spirit Bay
What fire that burns even water?
What storm on a day without clouds?
Shall I tell?
Who?
They have left me.
Enigma will be my new heart.
6
Leto’s Heart
Although they traveled with all the speed the Old One might command—and between hoarded coin and favors, he commanded far more than Julyan would have imagined—days passed before the waters of Spirit Bay glistened on the horizon.
“Go ahead,” the Old One commanded. “Take Seamus with you. Travel as rapidly as possible. At the loremasters’ college ask for Flamen. When you have him in private, show him this.” The Old One held out a square of embroidered fabric. “Ask him what has happened since he and his friends sent that message. Based upon what he tells you, I will decide how best to present myself.”
Julyan nodded. He had been about to say that he could travel much more quickly if he left Seamus behind. Then he understood. The Old One would witness the meeting with Flamen through Seamus. No time would be wasted carrying messages back and forth. Nor did Julyan doubt that the Old One would be close by. Julyan’s going ahead was a safety measure, nothing more.
They had discarded the costumes they had used in Crystalaire but, when he arrived at the loremasters’ college, Julyan thought it best to give his name as Ryan Trader and present Seamus as his son. He didn’t know how much their enemies had revealed about the Old One and his associates, but nothing was ever lost by taking precautions.
The youth who was porter that day seemed unsuspicious. He directed them to wait in a small parlor and refresh themselves while he sent for Flamen. The wait lasted long enough that Julyan was fighting an urge to bolt when Flamen finally arrived.
The loremaster was a thin, wiry greybeard with worry carved into the lines of his long face. He paused in the doorway and spoke in a querulous tone of voice. “Yes? I was told you wished to see me.”
Julyan extended a hand as if in greeting, showing the folded cloth in his palm. “We have friends in common. One of them sent me to consult you on various matters.”
The lines on Flamen’s face sketched both shock and eagerness. Then he became all the suave scholar. “No doubt you are interested in consulting me about further education for this young man. The day is pleasant. Walk with me and I will show you something of our college.”
Only when they were well away from possible eavesdroppers did Flamen ask anxiously, “You come from the Old One? He received our message?”
“He did. He sent me to learn what has developed.”
“Little, but that little is having great effect. He told you how something fell from the heavens into the bay?”
“Yes.”
“It came down by night, unseen except for fire burning along its flanks. It splashed into the bay, causing considerable upheaval. No ships were lost, although sailors tell of being rocked as if in a terrible storm. Many smaller craft were swamped. Later, lights were seen on Mender’s Isle.”
“You wrote this.”
Flamen looked exasperated, but finally came to the point. “There have been few developments since. Craft have been sent out to watch the islands, but nothing significant has been reported. Even sightings of lights have become more rare. A loremasters’ conclave has been held to discuss the matter. All this has managed to confirm is that there is much dissent among our numbers. Some are saying that nothing crashed into the bay at all, that the disruption was caused by waters settling into subterranean areas and ebbing out in an erratic fashion.”
“How do they explain this thing that fell from the heavens?”
“Reflected moonlight. Hallucination. Bits of the sky trash that have fallen from times immemorial, unconnected to aquatic disturbances.” Flamen rubbed his temples. “As for the lights seen on Mender’s Isle, those are being dismissed as relics of the disturbances there.”
Hypocrites! Julyan sneered. Five hundred years of piously proclaiming that all will be right when the seegnur return … Now they do all they can to deny the possibility. But much would change if the seegnur did return. The loremasters would go from dictating right living to being dictated to by the returning masters.
Seamus stirred, blinked, stretched, then spoke, his voice full of strange flats and sharps. “Ryan, meet me at Chankley’s Harbor. Flamen, say nothing about my arrival to any, even our closest allies. Glory will be yours. The Old One has spoken.”
Flamen’s pale scholar’s complexion turned distinctly green. Julyan hid his own discomfort—he never liked when the Old One used Seamus as an extra mouth—beneath a knowing chuckle.
“Got it,” he replied. “I can be there in a couple hours.”
“I hear,” Flamen said, swallowing hard, “and will comply.”
Seamus shook his head as if to dislodge a bug from his ear, then started chewing the nail on his right index finger. Apparently, the audience was over.
“Well, we’ll be off, then,” Julyan said. “If some emergency arises, you’d do well to send a note via Captain Bore Chankley at Chankley’s Harbor. I’m sure you and the Old One already have some sort of code worked out. Use it. Captain Chankley is not wholly in the Old One’s confidence.”
Flamen nodded.
As Julyan chivvied Seamus along, he thought, Captain Chankley is not wholly in the Old One’s confidence, but then who is? I suspect that one keeps secrets even from himself.
It was not a comfortable thought.
* * *
After they’d been exploring Leto’s complex for several days, Terrell suggested to Adara that they go check on the horses and Sam the Mule.
“Leto may have assured us that Maiden’s Tear was designed to keep large predators out,” he said, “and certainly we’ve seen no evidence of them, but Sand Shadow had no trouble entering the area.”
“She is in a demiurge relationship,” Adara reminded him. “That makes her different.”
“Still…”
Adara was always glad to get outside. Leto’s complex was an unsettling place. They’d cleared away the dead bodies. Since Griffin had insisted on preserving all of the equipment, this had consisted more of removing fragments of bone from within clothing and armor than a more usual burial detail. Leto made the task extremely unsettling. Whenever she recognized someone by some detail of clothing or insignia, she lamented with passionate intensity.
After the bodies were dealt with, they had made a rapid check through the remainder of the facility. Over half was given to tasks Adara hardly comprehended. However, there were areas that reminded her of the Sanctum: sleeping rooms, rooms for socializing, what Griffin identified as a hospital. These had been thoroughly wrecked, but at least they contained few bodies.
To facilitate cleanup, Leto had opened a door into the valley, so her human visitors no longer needed to pick their way through the cavern. This secondary door was hidden from view by a chance-seeming tunnel of rocks and foliage. After Leto supplied them each with crystalline keys to the valley door, she reflooded the underground lake and sealed the door.
Once more out in the open, Adara stretched, glorying in the freshness of the mountain air. “I’m glad to be outside again.”
“It is stuffy in there,” Terrell agreed. “Leto admits that a great deal of the facilities’ functions are nonfunctional. I was relieved when she found how to activate the lights. Walking through those closed corridors, never certain when you might stumble over a body or a wall splashed with blood, was wearing on my nerves.”
Adara nodded. Those lights remained a source of astonishment to her and Terrell. It was one thing to hear tales about lights that worked without smoke or flame, another to actually experience them. Leto was now working on activating what she called the heating/cooling system—as if one thing could do both jobs. To Adara, that made about as much sense as thinking you could kindle a fire with an icicle, but Griffin took the terminology for granted, so she supposed there must be some sense behind it.
Once they were well out of the valley, Terrell spoke. “Griffin is behaving very oddly. He’s acting like when we first came to the Old One’s Sanctum Sanctorum—before Sand Shadow shook him out of his introspection.”
Adara nodded. “I suppose it is only reasonable. If Griffin is to find a way off planet, he needs to find an undamaged communications array.”
“He’s obsessed,” Terrell disagreed. “Can an hour away now and then matter? Griffin has been on Artemis for months, yet, last night, he wouldn’t stop his burrowing through the guts of some machine even to join us to eat. It wasn’t as if he was looking at anything that might lead him to a communications array. He was down on one of the manufacturing levels, assessing if the machines there had only been turned off or if they’d been damaged beyond use.”
“I remember. I was surprised. Sand Shadow had hunted wild turkey and saved the better part for us. And there were early raspberries. Instead of coming to enjoy dinner, Griffin just jammed a slice of the roast between two stale flat breads and went on with checking the machines. I thought he’d be more interested in the living quarters and the facilities associated with them. After all, wouldn’t we be more likely to find working communications equipment there? But when I suggested we shift over there, he looked at me as if I had two heads.”
Terrell looked side to side uneasily. “I wish we could be certain we can’t be overheard. I know Leto told us she cannot hear anything in the valley, but still … To her, Griffin is the seegnur. She might not lie to him, but she would to us.”
“True,” Adara agreed. She shifted away from the most direct path to where the riding animals were pastured. “We can see Sam the Mule and the horses from over here,” she explained, “and the view is much more enjoyable than blood-splattered walls and cluttered corridors.”
Terrell followed without question. When Adara stopped and leaned against a slim aspen ornamented, coincidentally or not, with some elegant shelf fungus, he asked, “All clear?”
“This is within the area Artemis could see. She might hear us, but Leto should not be able to.”
Terrell nodded. “I’m wondering. Could Leto have anything to do with how Griffin is behaving?”
“Controlling him, you mean?” Adara considered. “I suppose that’s possible. But would the seegnur have created a creature with the power to control them?”
Terrell shrugged. “I don’t know. We don’t know enough about the seegnur—and we keep learning that much of what we do know about them is lies.”
“Griffin,” Adara said, “has always insisted that he does not think he is a proper seegnur.”
“Proper or not,” Terrell replied stiffly, “he is enough of one to touch my dreams. I assure you, my golden-eyed beauty, that I would not invite a man into my dreams. You, now…”
“Terrell.” Adara squeezed his shoulder, noticing that in her emotion the claws were tipping forth. “I care too much for you to use you lightly. Before…” She swallowed hard. “Before, back in Shepherd’s Call last midsummer, I could sleep with you because I didn’t care, not about you and not very much about myself. Now … You’re my friend, my trusted companion, and, worst of all, I think you honestly care for me. Please, don’t tease…”
“Is it Griffin? Tell me and I’ll work on resigning myself.”
“No. It is not Griffin. I feel for him much as I do for you, but without the added complication of a pleasant memory. ‘It’s not anyone or if it is anyone it is…”
“Not that bastard Julyan!”
“Not Julyan. Definitely not Julyan. But how I feel is all tangled up with what happened with Julyan. I adored him with a depth of passion that embarrasses me when I recall it. I would recite his name in my head rather than think. I wrote him poems, set them to music … I would have carved his name on my heart. Not only did he reject me—I think I could accept that—now I have learned that what I worshipped was a lie.”
“I’m not lying…”
Adara held a finger to her lips in a bid for silence. “Terrell, I don’t think you lie. I don’t know myself, don’t trust myself … Please! I need you as a friend. Don’t make that impossible.”
Terrell slumped against the tree. “There are times…” He left the thought unfinished, visibly wrenched himself back to other subjects. “Do you think Leto is somehow controlling Griffin or is it only that their desires run in harness?”
“I don’t know, nor do I think I would be the one to find out.” For the first time, Adara noticed that Terrell’s eyes were bloodshot, that there were smudges beneath them. “You aren’t sleeping well. Why not?”
Terrell shifted uneasily. “I don’t like sleeping in that place. The stench of death is long gone but it feels like a charnel house to me. But Griffin will sleep nowhere else. He has taken over one of the sleeping rooms, even though the air is still and stale. He resents any time spent away, so I have stayed nearby.”
Adara tilted her head and studied him. “And…”
“I don’t like my dreams when I do sleep. By day Griffin tells me what this device may have been for, what that press was intended to shape. All are horrors. The armor is the least offensive—Leto calls it ‘spaveks.’ At least the spaveks were meant to protect the wearer, bu
t the weapons … By night I dream of old wars…” His voice dropped low and husky, as if admitting to some shame. “Or Griffin does. I’m not sure whose dreams are whose anymore.”
Adara wanted to hold Terrell, to stroke the rough velvet of his cheek in comfort, but she knew those gestures would be misinterpreted.
“I don’t think I would be the one to find out what is driving Griffin,” Adara said, “but you might, my friend. Stop running from those dreams. Take control of them. Find out why Griffin dreams so, and if his dreams are of his own choosing.”
Terrell rubbed his eyes with his fists. “I was afraid you would say something like that. But you’re right. I am factotum-trained, factotum-bred to my core. My soul tells me to protect this seegnur … But how can I protect him from himself?”
“First find out if the protecting is needed,” Adara said. “Then we decide.”
“And you?”
“Leto is a mystery, but legends call her Artemis’s mother. Perhaps in learning more about the daughter, I can learn whether or not the mother is one we can trust.” She gave a lopsided smile. “I have been saying I cannot call Artemis to me, but I’ll admit, I haven’t tried very hard. If you will take on Griffin, then I will work harder to understand Artemis.”
Terrell thrust out his hand. “Deal!”
Adara accepted the clasp with a hard squeeze, noting that her claws had retreated. “Now, let’s go down and see the horses and Sam the Mule. They look fine from here, but a closer look is never a bad idea.”
* * *
Unlike Spirit Bay or Crystalaire—both of which had been designed by the seegnur not only to provide habitation for some of the residents of Artemis, but also to cater to the whims of the visiting seegnur—Chankley’s Harbor had evolved organically. The difference showed. The seegnur’s building materials had been incredibly tough. Even after five hundred years, many buildings looked fresher and newer than those of more modern construction. The trim on those structures never needed repainting and it took a ferocious storm to damage the roofs.
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