The soldiers tossed her as rudely as ever onto the floor where Realgar hid behind his desk. “You hear me,” Realgar said in distinct Valan, louder than usual. “I know that, and it’s good enough. I want the Lady Berenice of Hyalite, whom you call Nisi the Traitor. I give Nisi twenty-four hours to surrender herself here. In the event that Nisi fails to appear, every Sharer in Per-elion will die.”
Merwen’s first response was incomprehension. Every Sharer would pass the Last Door some day, no matter what Nisi chose to do. But of course by now Merwen knew what the death-hastener meant, or what he thought he meant.
Merwen had known all along that hiding was useless, especially from one’s lovesharer. Merwen herself had avoided this truth, while Nisi passed test after test yet shunned the only true test of a Sharer. Would Nisi survive it now? Nisi, who had shared love with this hastener of death?
Long ago, Virien had asked Merwen, Will you share my love? This Valan wordweaver now was something much harder than Virien, an ocean of malevolence beyond understanding. Somehow, though, Merwen would have to reach that understanding. To what lengths must she go, and must Nisi go? What a deadly thing it was to share love among Valans.
Nisi was weaving at her loom and squinted as the sun reached to her eyes, low as it was on the horizon. A boat wandered in and Merwen stepped out. With a wave, Nisi jumped from her seat and embraced her. “Merwen! It’s been so long. I can’t believe all our sisters are back. How are the girls doing?”
“Stronger by the day, devouring their weight in squid.” Merwen’s smile flashed only briefly. “Nisi, I have a bad choice to share: I have to bend Unspeech, rather than hide a truth from you.”
Nisi’s hands dropped to her sides. “Yes?”
“Your lovesharer asks for you.”
Nisi blacked out, then caught herself again, as red streaks receded from her vision. “He asks…for me?” No place to hide, not anymore, now that Realgar had found her. “What else, Merwen? What else does he want?”
Merwen was silent.
“What else, do you hear? You’re hiding from me.”
“In his distraction, he speaks of hastening death for all other Sharers of Per-elion.”
So that was the ultimatum. Nisi could actually breathe easier now, knowing the worst. In a sense she could breathe easy for the first time since “Lady Berenice” had ceased to be.
“A shameful thing to threaten,” Merwen added. “Yet children talk biggest when they share the most fear.”
“What? Merwen, he will do it, I know him well. And if I give myself up, do you know what they’ll share with me? A fate ten times worse than Lystra’s.”
“Then stay here.”
“Nonsense. We’ll all die then.” Even as she said this, Nisi rejected both choices. She would never give herself up, never give them the satisfaction of putting her on trial. As for Realgar, he would kill as many Sharers as he had to, whether she surrendered or not. Vengeance would be just another excuse.
There was only one way left for Sharers to survive, all of them. “Merwen, when Usha taught me whitetrance, I learned that it is right to hasten one’s own death for freedom, for a free mind.”
“Yes.”
“If that is true, then I believe it is right to hasten a few others, that Sharers may live in peace once more.”
“A contradiction many times over. To hasten death, one must share death, and the death of another can’t be shared until one dies.”
“Yes, but what if every Sharer had to die all at once? When the hastening of Valans could prevent it? Just once, Merwen, to save Shora.”
“To save what? Which is worse, to die having lived or to live having died?”
“Merwen! We can’t afford such sophistry now. We’re facing thousands of Viriens all at once.”
“And you would hasten them all? And you tell me Shora will survive? Nisi, all Valans are not Virien, even among death-hasteners. We can share with them, share ourselves with their selves, until they see themselves for what they are.”
“You only postpone the inevitable. I know soldiers, and I say this: in the end, either they die or we die. You can’t just give in.”
“It is you who give in. Why Nisi? What words did I share that brought the poison?”
“I learnshared your whitetrance, and I’ll do what I have to, but I will not die just to save them the trouble of hastening me!” Nisi turned and rushed into the silkhouse, pulling at the doorhole so it whooshed shut behind her.
All she could think was that she had to act before Realgar did. Sharers would do nothing, but Nisi still had her explosive pack. If she had to pass death’s door, at least she would take a few soldiers with her. Perhaps her act would even shock some sense into other sisters. Merwen had said one could not share death unless one died, first. If Nisi blew herself up, along with Planetary Headquarters…
A sense of unreality descended on her. It was absurd to think that she herself would commit a singlehanded suicide assault on the Valan fortress. Nisi shook her head to clear the haze, to focus on what must be done. She dug out the explosive from her hiding place in the tunnel below. Vaguely she wondered how strong it was, since the figures on the package meant nothing to her. It made little difference, since she had no choice left, only one path ahead. Realgar had foreclosed all others.
Nisi rubbed herself all over with fleshborer repellent. Then she went out to the water’s edge. The sight of the horizon caught her unawares. Clouds stretched into velvet mountains, lined with molten cinnabar that streamed downward into the ocean, mountains of a heavenly country that could be seen and yearned for but never touched. It was as if the Patriarch had allowed her one last glimpse of how the world could be if only His pure wisdom were obeyed. But I will never find it, thought Nisi bitterly, not in this world where men are deceivers ever.
She plunged and swam out beyond the branches, not daring to take a boat, which guards might detect. Fortunately the sea was calm this evening, and she could reach Headquarters without exhaustion. The package strapped to her waist scratched softly as she kicked. In the sky, red and green headlights twinkled, and ahead at last loomed the hulk of a space freighter with a deck built out around it, where Realgar would have—
Nisi choked and sputtered, and she clung to a dead branch of raft seedling to catch her breath. Don’t look back, she warned herself; you’ve made your choice for dead and free.
On the deck there were many points of light, and they cast long arcs of feathery red onto the ripples. Nisi wondered how close she could get undetected. The best thing, she figured, was to dip under and trust to her breathmicrobes the rest of the way.
Blackness closed over her, except for the faint streaks of searchlights above on the surface. She swam on, whether for five minutes or fifty she could not tell. The surface light grew brighter, and she feared she would be seen; but then it suddenly trailed off again. She swam upward slowly, until her head bumped something hard. This must be it, the underside of the deck. Nisi took the explosive and pressed it up. Its seal broke, and the plastic molded and stuck.
It sat there, inert. What in Torr’s name was wrong with it? Was there another catch, or had it simply gone bad over these months?
Once doubt cracked her senses, instinct flooded through. I am a survivor, her mind screamed, I’m still alive, and I will live. She swam blindly, gasping for air, heedless of anything except to get away, away from darkness and death. How far she swam, she had no idea, until the blast ripped the night sky in two and showered the sea with flame. The Headquarters towered behind, a jagged silhouette against the flame.
From everywhere helicopters swarmed and dove at the sea, and loudspeakers called. Lights were all over. Something caught Nisi and choked her as she thrashed about to kick herself free. Half conscious, she felt someone drag her across the slimy deck of a ship, whose oily odor gagged her stomach. She was shaken until her ears rang, and stark leering faces whirled above her.
“Bastard catfish,” she heard from one, his lips stret
ched taut against his teeth. “If that’s your doing, by the Nine Legions you’ll pay for it.”
“Say, you’re an odd catfish.” Someone squeezed Nisi’s hand and pried apart the fingers and jabbed under her nails. She cried out sharply.
“It squeaks, too.”
“A halfbreed, that’s what; a filthy halfbreed.”
Abruptly the soldiers fell back, their attention diverted. Nisi raised herself on an elbow and looked past the booted legs. What caught their attention was something else hauled from the sea: a corpse, gouged to the white bones by fleshborers.
Someone whistled and said, “The wounded don’t last long in this swamp, do they? I’d burn your head off, halfbreed, only it’s too good for you.”
They took her into Headquarters, where the flames had been quenched by now. Her head was stunned and she could barely keep her feet, dragged before one officer, then another. And then at last a familiar face came into focus.
It was Realgar, oddly out of place in his Iridian uniform. Incredibly, she felt relief, gladness that he was here and alive after all. She had loved him too hard and too long.
Realgar stood rigid, every muscle tensed to keep himself in hand. After all those months of mourning, to find her like this, shameless before all his troops and thoroughly in league with his enemy. How had those natives twisted her mind?
“Go,” he told the guards. He was alone with her now. “You did it, didn’t you?” he asked, cursing himself for the hope that it was all a mistake somehow.
Berenice straightened, pulled her arms in, and lifted her chin in her old defensive way. “You would have killed us all, Ral.”
“Did you really think I’d waste two thousand civilians just for a damned fool like you?”
“You told her so. Aren’t you a man of your word?”
His hand cracked across her face, and she slammed to the wall. She raised her arms slowly, leaning against her palms as she faced him. “Berenice. Do I have to knock sense into your head?”
“Yes…perhaps you do,” she said thickly, her lip swelling. “Oh, yes. I understand you, much better now.”
Realgar frowned, uncertain how to take her words. “When I heard you were here, all I wanted was to get you back quietly, so it wouldn’t get out, and I could send you safe to—”
“To a sanatorium.”
“Yes, by Torr. The best in Iridis.”
“How thoughtful of you.”
“Instead, you sabotage my base, and my troops drag you in here shameless as a field whore. Berenice—I’m the Guard Commander, and you’re a traitor in wartime. What can you expect of me?”
She shook her head slowly. “Nothing. I want nothing from you, ever again.”
“What do you mean by that?” Realgar’s voice became low and harsh. “You’re one of them, is that it? Did you take a woman lover, too?”
Her lip curled down on the unbruised side. “I wondered when it would come down to that. The one thing you always liked about me being here was that I was cloistered among women.” She tilted her head in a ghastly flirtation. “Suppose I had loved a woman. I can have a child, Ral; they fixed me up long ago. I don’t need you; I never did.”
The blood pounded in his temples, until he thought his head would burst. But the moment passed, his breath slowed to normal, and with it the world changed, shifted gears. Berenice was nothing to him anymore, Realgar told himself. She was worth less than nothing. “So that’s how it is. Well, then, I’ll send you back to stand trial. But first, you shall witness the execution of your co-conspirators.”
Her eyes widened. “I had none.”
“Sharers never act alone. All decide for one, and one for all.”
“I acted alone, I tell you. You said you would not kill civilians over me.”
“What civilians? They, and you, are responsible for the deaths of twenty-three of my troops, at latest count. Oh, I see: too good for killing, the natives are, but they’ll look the other way when you do it.”
“Merwen begged me not to do it, I swear!”
“Merwen will die last.”
She threw herself at him and clasped his arms. “Ral, all I ever wanted was for them to be free. Didn’t you betray me by leading this senseless invasion? Don’t punish someone else for what I’ve done. I’ll go to the sanatorium, I’ll—”
He knocked her to the floor, then pulled her up by the arm and whipped his hand across her face, back and forth, knuckles cracking as they connected bone. At last she fell, limp and still. Realgar breathed heavily and rubbed his numb fingers. His tongue tasted nausea as a buried memory rose: his father with his mother, and himself a child whimpering in the corner…
Then he stared, and his toes curled. Berenice lay crumpled, with her head swollen unrecognizably, yet an unmistakable otherworldly whiteness was seeping into every pore of her skin.
24
IN THE MORNING helicopters buzzed over Raia-el again, five all at once. Soldiers swarmed out to tramp through the houses, pulling people out for what mad reason none could guess, and dragging them, not to the helicopters, but of all places to the central cup of the raft. Before, soldiers had forbidden Gatherings; now, they tried clumsily to make one.
Merwen lifted her head wearily, with Weia’s last screams still ringing in her ears. Around her, sisters wandered uncertainly, while soldiers pointed their coldstone wands and ran about in a curious crouching position as if they expected the sky to collapse on them. Radio chatter barked from all directions.
Trurl leaned over to help her up. “Thanks, sister,” Merwen said. “Shora, what is this new madness?”
“Just another fit of the old.” Trurl sniffed disgustedly. “There was an accident, I hear. Part of the soldier-place caught fire. It seems to have inflamed their minds as well.”
With a shudder, Merwen turned away. “Let’s go home.” Others were already walking away from the desecrated gathering place.
A streak of flame cut across their path. The raft hissed and smoldered where it touched. When the smoke cleared, two Sharers were splayed out, a mangled gash cut through them. Someone cried out, and everyone collected at the spot. Merwen gagged at the scorched odor. Usha huddled over them, but one was charred through to the ribs, and Merwen knew already it was useless.
The horror of it overloaded her senses to the point of detachment. Yet again the death-hasteners had cursed themselves, this time here, in the gathering place of Raia-el. Death paid a wage, for a hastener; but was it more than a trader’s wage, in disks of coldstone? If only she could answer that question.
A death-hastener grabbed her again and dragged her to a site where a row of poles had been erected. There were Sharers tied to the poles: Trurl, and Shaalrim, and Lalor, and last Yinevra, all the staunchest of witnessers. Merwen noticed, as if outside herself, that she herself was being bound to one of the poles. Several death-hasteners faced her, including Realgar and Jade, and also Nisi in whitetrance with someone propping her up. At the sight of Nisi, Merwen breathed a sigh, for she could guess what had happened now. It was true; Nisi’s fate would be ten times worse than Lystra’s.
An amplified voice blared Valan speech past her. “This is the Commander of the Valan Guard. As you are all aware, last night your traitorous sister launched an unprovoked attack on Headquarters in which twenty-four troops died and eighteen are missing. From now on, the slightest infraction of Valan orders will be met with execution on the spot. To demonstrate our intent, the Protector and four of her Councilors shall be put to death.”
Merwen barely heard the last part. Nisi had set the spark; Merwen knew that, and it would have sickened her if she had any room for feeling left. What had become of Nisi, after sharing Merwen’s home for so many years? If only she could understand that, she would have the key to everything: Realgar and his insane demands, even Malachite the Living Dead.
Fear was the cause, and the wage for one who hastened death. Fear was the same wage for traders, who feared to starve if they ran out of stone. Valans might imagine
other wages and desires, but in the end, they killed because they feared being killed; they hastened death because they feared it, yet they feared it more, the more they hastened. That was the final paradox left to her.
A flame sprouted, a column of yellow and black, crackling, shooting to the sky. There was an odor of cooked flesh again. It took Merwen a minute to realize that Trurl had been tied there.
Fire and fear. The ancestors had perished in flames; or was it fear of the flames that had consumed them? Fear bred fire, and few were the Doors that remained…
Another flame sprouted, this time where Shaalrim had been. Trurl and Shaalrim; they were not, anymore, and half Merwen’s life seemed to slip away.
Then sisters were crowding all around her, and around Lalor and Yinevra, sheltering them with their own bodies. The death-hasteners pulled them away, burning some, but others came; it was a feast of fleshborers, and it was not long before the flames licked Lalor. And all the while Realgar stood there, unmoved, the wordweaver who did not care to share words anymore.
Yinevra was still alive. Her torso rose above those who surrounded her, though her arms were lashed tight behind the stake, her stare fixed ahead, set in the deepest lines of contempt that Merwen had ever seen. But something stopped Merwen there: she had to stay Yinevra’s death, Yinevra who had saved her from Virien, although Merwen had never forgiven how it happened. Now Merwen would act to save Yinevra, even though Yinevra would never forgive her if she succeeded.
“I have something to say.” Merwen looked directly at Realgar as she broke Unspeech, in Valan, a double shame. “I have something to ask of you.”
Amid the smoke and shouting, and the natives underfoot everywhere despite the troops pulling them back, Realgar caught the movement of Merwen’s lips. She had said something, and she was staring at him. She had broken Unspeech. Realgar knew the significance of that. The Sharer Protector herself had cracked.
Up to that point, Realgar had been irritated by the turn this spectacle had taken. He had expected the natives to sit by passively, as usual, while the five were executed, a scene he could send back to show the Palace how decisively he had dealt with native terrorists. Instead, they had interfered, interposing their own bodies and necessitating extra killings, too disorderly for the recorders.
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