So long as natives were dying steadily for their incalcitrance, plain arithmetic showed they would have to give in soon. But with deaths tapering off, how could he hope to persuade any of them, let alone Protector Merwen, that the game was up?
He was left to the last resort: satellite targeting of the rafts. Now he wished he had started off with that, right after the “terrorist attack,” when the political risk would have been lowest.
Then Jade brought stunning news. “General, I’ve uncovered a mutiny in the works, a plot among the staff.”
“A mutiny? What the hell do you mean?”
“With native collusion,” Jade went on crisply. “The deal was for the natives to back off long enough for the troops to make a decent exit, and let Talion do as he liked thereafter. To be frank, sir, they think Talion has overstepped his mandate, and that you—”
“Yes, I know what the trollheads think.” Realgar himself knew better, he knew what a lethal threat those natives were; but how long could the troops believe in a threat they could not see or feel? Until this was settled, a satellite strike was out of the question.
Shock swept through him as the news sunk in. Mutiny was unheard of, except perhaps in a battalion cowed by a ninety-percent casualty rate. Everything was turned upside down in this campaign.
“I’ve got the situation in hand, General,” Jade assured him. “With the leaders captured, the insurrection died as swiftly as it arose.”
“Execute the leaders. Torr’s name, who were the damned leaders?”
A printout spat from his monitor, a list of officers, mostly colonels and lieutenant colonels from the first, third, and fourth divisions. At one name, he slammed the paper down. “Jade, that Adrian had to have been brainwashed. Why the devil did you keep her on?”
“General, I probed her inside out and she read clean. Her stay in that lab warren gave us invaluable intelligence about—” Jade stopped short and bit her lip. Lines worked in her cheeks, an unusual lapse of control. She must have thought what Realgar was thinking: If even Jade could no longer depend on such a trusted assistant, then who could the Commander himself count on?
In his office Realgar paced back and forth between his desk and the throw rug with its tigers and antelope stitched in fine russet wool. His thoughts were far from Sardis now.
Time had run out on his crumbling campaign. To be sure, the revolt had been quashed without Talion’s hearing of it, but it was a matter of days, a week at the most, before Palace spies would get word somehow. He could still order a satellite strike, but was it worth losing control of his own corps? Not while another option remained.
The natives might yet yield—or strike back with a blow that would galvanize his troops once more. This was it, the last chance for Protector Merwen.
Behind him, the door hissed open. Realgar turned and stood at attention as Merwen entered. “So, Impatient One,” he began without letting her sit down. “What do you have to say for yourself? Your sisters have thrown themselves defenselessly before the onslaught of my troops, a psychological device that may soften the heads of a few men but only hastens the final day of reckoning.”
Merwen looked more awkward standing than she did seated. Her cheeks sagged beneath her eyes, and her skin had a grayish cast, for she was never let outside now. “Your words puzzle me.”
Realgar laughed. “You are more coldblooded than I gave you credit for. You’ve used defenseless citizens, even grandmothers, as weapons. There is more ice in you than in Jade.”
Merwen hesitated, and her fingers twined at her sides. “It is true that one who watches one’s sisters die without lifting a finger is in danger of losing her humanity. One’s soul may drift away, almost imperceptibly, like a raft without starworms. Still, there is hope for you.”
“Don’t hope too hard. Your subversion of my soldiers has only convinced me to let the satellites finish you off. And Raia-el will go first—today.” Realgar paused to let this sink in. “So now is your last chance to quit.”
She was silent.
“You disbelieve me?”
“I learned a year ago on Valedon how dangerous your kind can be. Nothing you have shared surprises me.”
“You did not answer my question,” Realgar said with forced quietness. “Do you believe I will erase your people from this planet?”
“You will not,” she said, too quickly. “You fear the final end to us even more than you fear us alive.”
He did fear, and he could have strangled her for it—fear of Malachite’s judgment, fear of what hidden plagues might already have doomed him. “So you depend on fear, even as we do.”
“No, no; we don’t share fear by choice. Fear is your ultimate weapon, not mine. Mine is sharing: to share my own soul with yours, until the mask falls from your eyes. When you come to see that your survival is inseparable and indistinguishable from mine, then we both will win.”
“Nonsense. Death is the ultimate weapon. Once you all die, that will be the end of it.”
“Will it? How can you be sure? If even one lives to know your shame, you will fear, and your fear will consume you.”
Realgar’s fists tensed. “Your raving will make no difference. You will be dead, and so will your children.”
Merwen stepped closer. “How can you stand there and tell me you’re not human? Don’t you hear your own voice and see your own eyes? What do you see in the mirror?”
He saw the shaving mirror again, that first morning when the purple tinge appeared, and the mornings afterward as it deepened, dark as the face below him now. His fury heightened. “What in hell tells you I’m human at all? What makes you so damned sure of that?”
Lines tautened under her chin, and the silence lengthened into minutes.
“So you doubt us.” Realgar sensed a ghost of a chance. “You doubt that I am human.”
“Not at all.”
“You’re afraid to say why, though, which amounts to the same thing. What is it? What makes you sure?”
No answer.
His voice filled with contempt. “Where is your honesty now, Sharer, the frankness you are so proud of? You fear me far more than I fear you.”
“I fear for you. Some kinds of truth are too dangerous for children. Answer this first: Whose eyes do you see in mine, and whose in the mirror?”
With a will of its own his arm lashed out, connecting with one cheekbone, then the other. Merwen reeled back against the wall, but kept her head up without covering her bleeding face, still gazing from eye sockets beginning to swell.
Realgar turned and barked at the monitor for a guard. Intensely discomfited, he could almost feel her stare pressing at his back before she was led away. Already he regretted his mistake. In one instant of anger, he had lost sight of what he most needed to know, just when it came within his grasp. He had to regain the advantage now, before time ran out.
10
MERWEN PURSUED HER deadly game with the Valan wordweaver, as doggedly and perhaps as blindly as she had with Virien so many years before. In between, down through those years, how many countless Gatherings and Unspeakings and troubled souls had shared at least some healing from Merwen’s wordweaving, yet today it was Virien all over again, with thousands of lives and rafts at stake beside her own.
They did share a common goal, she and Realgar. Each intended to reach an agreement, an understanding, with the other. But where Merwen tried to elicit healing, Realgar offered only sickness, which he wished her to share in order to lessen the shame of his own living death. Against that current Merwen had made slow progress.
Merwen did not blame him for striking her. She knew she had asked for it the moment she slipped and let herself share his fear, instead of reaching for his soul. After that, his own fear rose to such a pitch that it had to come out somehow. And then, his act was a sign to her: when a wordweaver acts, it is usually because one has run out of words.
Merwen thought over these things as she sat crosslegged upon her elevated sleeping-place, her swo
llen face uplifted to Nathan, who examined her bruises with his blunt Valan fingers. Nathan asked, “Are you sure you won’t take an injection? The swelling will go down much faster.”
“No, thank you.” Perhaps unfairly, Merwen had resisted Valan medical treatments as far as possible since the deaths of those poor men withdrawn from the care of Sharer lifeshapers.
“The general wants to see you again,” Nathan added. “I told him you are in critical condition, but he is very insistent.”
Merwen eyed Nathan sternly. “Why did you share an untruth?”
At that the would-be lifeshaper left in a hurry, and Merwen was suddenly alone. She thought of her daughters, and of the untold suffering that went on outside, until anguish possessed her and screamed from her mind: The sea…give me back the sea. How long must I dwell on land?
A dark shape entered the room. Merwen struggled to focus her eyes, which stung beneath her hot eyelids. The shape wavered, then fixed.
It was Realgar. Merwen had never seen him come to this place before. Realgar watched her calmly, his arms at his sides with the fingers closed, his mouth small, his eyes clear and wide. Then he sat down and crossed his legs on the floor.
Immediately Merwen slid off the sleeping-place and fell hard on the cold floor. She seated herself to face him, and her pulse raced as though a wild fanwing had come to roost at her feet. The Valan looked so odd, though, with his flat-bottomed boots poking awkwardly from his legs and the creases stretched in his plumage. Nervous laughter welled up in her throat, but she clenched her teeth against it.
“I regret that I shared injury with you. It will not happen again.” His words flowed in Sharer, for the first time since Merwen had come here.
“I saw your anger,” Merwen said, trying to relax, to slow the blood that swelled her veins. “A Sharer so angry would have Unspoken me for a year. That would be much harder to bear.”
Realgar took time to choose his words. “Do you know why I was so angry? It is because I saw my face in the mirror at the time when it most resembled yours.”
Merwen sighed and her eyes half closed. If only the Valan could grasp the full truth of his own words. “And why? A hundred times why, why should that make you angry?”
“Because the choice was not mine. You insisted then that I was ‘human’ enough to share your breathmicrobes; yet you will not share with me why you know that I am human.”
She remembered suddenly when Nisi had first brought her Valan lovesharer to Shora: a male, as strong and proud as Yinevra, one who rarely spoke but showed a dry wit when he did, his eyes hard as coral except when they reached to Nisi. “I knew, when I saw the love you shared with Nisi.”
“Nisi.” The name came reluctantly from him. “I share nothing with Nisi. In fact, I will have to hasten her death.”
Then Nisi was still alive. Merwen glowed with the pleasure of it. She had been so sure that Realgar would not let Nisi live, despite his love. Merwen thought, How little faith I have.
“Does it please you to hear that the one who betrayed you will die?”
“I rejoice that she may not die, that you still have a chance to share life with her. To not-kill her.” Not-killing—in Valan terms, that was the lesson Merwen had to share.
“Merwen, have you ever known a Valan who did not share betrayal in the end?”
Merwen thought. “There was Siderite.”
“Siderite betrayed you with every word he shared. All his learnsharing was intended to control, to share defeat with you.”
“If that was his intent, then we indeed betrayed him. Do you suppose that Usha would share the most crucial of her skills with a frightened child?”
Realgar said nothing, and the silence expanded, a wave rippling outward. The silence called to her, shamed her more than any words could to share the last truth. Feeling lightheaded, she did so, knowing that she committed herself to fate.
“Spinel,” she whispered. “Spinel may be Impulsive, but he will never share betrayal.”
“The young Spirit Caller?”
“Spinel was like you, as a child. On the day we first met in Chrysoport, he urged me blindly to share the will of those who carry death-sticks, as you do. Yet now he is healed. That is why I still share hope with you.”
“Perhaps it’s time we had a reunion with…Spinel.”
The next day Merwen was led again to Realgar’s office. He was sitting carelessly on his desk, in relaxed conversation with another soldier—
Spinel, in full red plumage down to the black boots, toying curiously with a death-stick in his hand.
Spinel turned his face, and he gasped, and the death-stick clunked on the floor. He stepped forward, reaching out. “Merwen, it’s you at last!”
But she shrank back to the wall, every inch of her skin rebelling at the shape he had taken, her tongue arching with nausea.
Spinel stopped, puzzled. “It’s okay, Merwen. They wouldn’t let me in without getting dressed. Anyway, I’ve come to share taking you home.” He glanced uncertainly at Realgar, then back to Merwen.
Realgar said, “He learned to use the firewhip.”
“What? Not really, only just now.” Spinel kicked the death-stick away from him.
“Didn’t you? You’ve become one of us now.”
“I did not.” Blinking furiously, Spinel began to see the trap he was in. “I did not, I tell you! You tell her I didn’t!” He grabbed insistently at Realgar’s arm.
Realgar shook him off. “Come, now, is that any way for a Sharer to behave? It’s no use; you’re one of us now.”
“I…am…not…” Spinel slumped down against the desk, his head at an angle. Gradually his face and hands turned olive-green as on the first day she saw him, devoid of violet.
“Damn.” Immensely irritated, Realgar shouted at a plate on the wall, and a guard came to drag Spinel away. Then Merwen regretted that she had not shared a word at least, that she had let the shock repress her. But this time, she thought, he knows whitetrance; he must be safe.
Realgar was cordial again. “Of course, Spinel was too shy to perform for you, but we have a recording of his service with us.”
The room darkened, except for a luminous cube above the viewing stage. A simulation appeared, a three-dimensional mirror of life as miraculous as the ones shown by the first traders. There was blue sky, above the deck of the soldier-place, where Spinel stood in his soldier’s plumage, strangely impassive. The sound of ocean rushed in, and a stray note from a clickfly: today was a daughter conceived by Aia of Umesh-el…Beyond Spinel sat two sisters of Sayra-el, come in their turn to witness unto death.
The cloth creased and stretched behind Spinel’s shoulder as his arm rose, and at his hand the stick glinted, and then the witnessers gave up their life-blood.
Spinel. Spinel had died in life. Yinevra was right; the Valans were no better than servos. Let the flames consume them, and let Shora’s ocean bury them forever.
But the Sharers of Shora would never know.
Already her surroundings were telescoping into one dark hole, but her last words escaped. “Hear this, however long you live in death: Though Spinel has shared my betrayal, you, Realgar, shall not.”
Then her soul flew out, and the galaxies swirled away to sunspecks on water. Farther and farther her senses expanded, more distant than she had ever flung herself before, until all the universe was just a faint haze in the dark behind her, a shockwraith slinking away. She reached out to the Last Door and stepped through.
Dreams came, too vivid for whitetrance. All those she saw in her dreams were dead by now: Mother Ama, Trurl, Yinevra glowed whitely before her. Their bodies were youthful, all barely out of girlhood, as Merwen had not seen them for decades. Yinevra’s forehead was as unlined as on the day they first had kissed and murmured of a future together, a future unknowingly foreclosed in bitterness and pain. Only there was no pain here. “Yinevra. Forgiven.”
Yinevra smiled, the small knowing smile that Merwen had leaned upon before she had
learned her own strength. “Almost too long you waited, Patient One. Come in, now, and close the door behind you.”
So the Last Door remained open; she still had to close it. For some reason Merwen hesitated. Today was a daughter conceived…“Yinevra, what are you doing here? Why hasn’t your soul found a new home?”
Yinevra’s shape flickered and fled. Ama loomed above her, erect and tall, large as if Merwen were still a child. “My daughter, we can’t go back yet, because there are too few infants to take us in. Too many deaths hastened, too soon.”
Then Merwen understood that Mother Ama wished her to go back, to somehow find a way. “It’s too late, Mother. I would only fall sick.” The sickness unto death—Merwen would not share that betrayal.
The dreams evaporated, and all was still. Out of the stillness, through the Door, came a regular tapping sound, and she strained to catch it. It was the sound of her own heart beating.
Someone or something outside in that distant blot of a universe must have kept her heart going when she had willed it to stop. Could it be Nathan, the primitive lifeshaper? Perhaps his Valan skills were good for something, after all.
Curious now, Merwen stilled her own breath. Within seconds it started up again, despite her absent will. It must be Nathan, she thought, and the thought of a Valan actually shaping life for a change gave her a peculiar joy. What else could Nathan shape? The pressure of her blood, its pH, its sugar level; all these she willed out of balance, in turn, and each was soon restored. When she altered her endorphin secretion, that failed to return, so she restored it herself and continued to probe Nathan’s skill. Merwen was in no hurry to close the Door, nor to return and face the impossible existence she had left behind.
A Door Into Ocean Page 43