The Final Key: Part Two of Triad (Saga of the Skolian Empire)

by Catherine Asaro

  Eldrin screamed again, his body rigid. Then he convulsed on the deck. When the seizure eased, he heard someone sobbing, pleading for them to stop the agony, and he barely recognized it as his own voice.

  “Gods, what do I do?” the man said. “I’ve never treated psions.” He had an air syringe in his hand and he was frantically rotating its cuff. “Could phorine have another name?”

  Eldrin rolled onto his side and curled into a fetal ball. “I don’t … it’s bliss … node-bliss.”

  “Ah, hell,” the doctor whispered. “Bloody hell.”

  Eldrin clawed at him. “Help me.”

  The man took Eldrin’s arm. “How strong of a psion are you?”

  Eldrin tried to answer, but he couldn’t form words. Anonymity was his only protection, but gods knew, if the truth would bring more bliss, and if he could speak, he would tell them.

  Another man said, “Do you know what he meant?”

  “I’ve heard the slang,” the doctor said. “The effect of the drug depends on the strength of the empath. The greater his Kyle rating, the stronger the addiction.”

  Eldrin rolled onto his back, chilled, though moments ago a fever had blazed through him. He kept rolling, onto his other side, clutching at the deck. He couldn’t stop shaking. How long had he been on this ship? A day? Longer? He didn’t know. It was only an endless, fractured misery.

  “Can’t you give him something?” someone asked.

  “I don’t know the chemical composition of the drug or its other effects.” The doctor sounded agonized. “If I give him the wrong medicine, it could kill him.”

  Eldrin doubted it mattered. He couldn’t survive this agony.

  Blue Dales. Blue mists. Blue snow. Blue Archers. In a blurry atmosphere saturated with glitter, the universe turned blue. Shannon’s mind blended with mist and snow.

  Blue.

  Kyle Blue.

  The Eloria touched the blue with their trance and lent him their strength while he searched for his family. The Kyle meshes were vanishing. Disintegrating. His family would disintegrate with them—followed by the Imperialate. ISC didn’t know how to deal with it, not like this. They would fail his family because they couldn’t walk the blue.

  He searched for the answer, deep in trance.

  Blue chaos encompassed Soz: threads, strings, cables, meshes, nodes—all crumbling. Tattered remains of the web billowed as if they were buffeted by the gales of an oncoming storm. She clenched the lines and braced herself against the destruction.

  Memory fragments whipped around her: years ago, just after her sixth birthday, she had spent hours building a tower of bagger bubbles outside. Then the wind had knocked it over. She had wept terribly, hunched over her destroyed masterpiece. Her sister had known. Nine-year-old Chaniece had come out and held Soz in her arms, rocking her back and forth until her tears slowed and her loss didn’t hurt so much.

  Another memory: her brother Del, twin to Chaniece, had been sixteen when Soz was thirteen. He taunted her constantly about what he called “her silly business,” training with a sword—until she trounced him in a practice bout. He had clenched his fists and stalked away. That night she had been wandering outside the castle when she had heard him composing one of his wild ballads. It was about his regret that he couldn’t understand her. She had never told him that she overheard, but after that she hadn’t resented his challenges as much.

  Another memory: Kelric, her youngest sibling, when he had been seven and she sixteen. Strapping Kelric, with his gold skin, hair, and eyes, and his sweet-natured laugh. He would be as big as Kurj, and probably as dangerous if he chose the military as everyone expected. A metallic warlord. But to her he would always be her little brother with his hair sticking up in unruly curls, hooting as she tickled him with a bubble-reed until they collapsed in the reeds, out of breath from laughing.

  And Aniece: her little sister, always wanting to follow Soz around. It had exasperated Soz no end during the throes of her adolescence, but right now she would have given anything to be home with Aniece tagging after her.

  Memories swirled in Kyle space, this universe of thought. They brushed the mesh she held so desperately, and as the strands slipped, so did her memories, her thoughts, her essence. She was losing the web bit by excruciating bit, and with it herself. She had too little strength. But if she loosened her grip, these lines that crisscrossed Kyle space would snap away and cease to exist.

  The web would cease. So Soz hung on.

  The web, and her life, continued to dissolve.

  The hand on his shoulder startled the Bard, and he jumped to his feet before he was fully awake. His hip hit the table and he stumbled, his bad leg giving out under him. Both legs were biomech, but the right one responded less to his brain than the left Flailing for the table, he started to fall.

  A strong hand caught his arm, and held him firm. Flustered, he looked up, and up, at a dark Abaj towering over him. Eldrinson only came to his shoulder and had about half the Abaj’s mass. An insignia on the man’s chest indicated he was a captain. His black hair, sleek and straight, was pulled into a warrior’s knot at his neck and fell halfway down his back in a thick queue.

  Eldrinson swallowed and looked around. More dark blurs stood in the room. When the captain released his arm, Eldrinson felt nervously behind himself on the table until he found his glasses. He fumbled them on and the scene came into focus. Abaj filled his living room, all just as large as this captain, with black hair, black eyes, black uniforms, black boots, and the glittering black bulk of Jumblers on their hips.

  Gods. Eldrinson instinctively stepped back, then stumbled and grabbed the table to steady himself. He didn’t know what to think about this plethora of giants. He felt like a wild animal caught by hunters, except they didn’t regard him like predators. Instead, he sensed—concern. They were solicitous.

  The Jagernauts all bowed to Eldrinson from the waist. Then the captain spoke in accented but otherwise flawless Iotic. “Our honor at your presence, Your Majesty.”

  “What may I do for you?” Eldrinson asked in the careful Iotic he had learned years ago from Roca.

  “Imperator Majda requests your presence in the War Room,” the captain said. “And Prince Taquinil.”

  Eldrinson knew ISC well enough to interpret “request.” It was an order. In the past he might have bridled at such a summons, but now he could think only that Jazida Majda might have news of his family.

  He inclined his head. “I will get the boy.”

  As Eldrinson limped past the Abaj, they bowed again. It unsettled him to receive such deference from these techno-warriors who epitomized the power of his wife’s people. He thought of getting his cane, but he didn’t want to appear any more frail than he already looked. Self-conscious, he went down to Taquinil’s room. Its door rippled open, a molecular airlock in the middle of a house. It seemed strange to have airlocks here, but he understood it was another method ISC used to guard his family. If the habitat suffered a major breach or anyone succeeded in releasing poisons or other dangers into the house, the airlocks could protect them. Then he remembered Vitarex Raziquon. For all its astonishments, the technology of his wife’s people had limitations.

  Taquinil’s bedroom was dim. The boy had nestled under a blue comforter and blue sheets, with stuffed animals tumbled all around him. He was sleeping with his arms around a fluffy white one with large eyes and a long tail.

  Eldrinson touched his cheek. “Taqui?”

  His grandson burrowed deeper under the comforter.

  Eldrinson nudged his shoulder. “You must wake up.”

  Taquinil opened his eyes, groggy, his gold irises shimmering even in the dim light. “Grandhoshpa?”

  Eldrinson’s heart melted. “My greetings, Sleepy-ears.”

  Taquinil’s drowsy contentment washed over him. Apparently his mental shield was having an effect; the boy seemed free of the anguish that had tormented him these last few days. Hope stirred in Eldrinson. Perhaps his grandson felt bet
ter because the people they loved were better.

  Taquinil sat up, yawning, and tugged at his shirt, which was patterned with smiling animals. “It doesn’t feel like morning,” he said, his voice softened by sleep.

  “It isn’t.” They were in the middle of the fifteen-hour night on the Orbiter. “We have to go see General Majda.”

  Taquinil rubbed his eyes. “Why?”

  “I’m not sure,” Eldrinson said. “Many Jagernauts came for us.”

  “Oh.” The boy seemed confused. Eldrinson sympathized. He felt the same way.

  After Taquinil climbed out of bed, Eldrinson pulled out some clothes for him and helped his sleepy grandson dress. Then the boy padded toward the door, pushing his bangs out of his eyes. They went to the living room together. The Jagernauts were still there, eight of them filling the place with looming black.

  Taquinil stopped and stared at the formidable company. Then he backed up against his grandfather. Eldrinson put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “They’re friends.” He took Taquinil’s small hand in his large one.

  The Abaj bowed to Taquinil, eight giants making obeisance to a slender and not very tall seven-year-old boy. Taquinil tried to nod the way his parents would have done, but he looked more afraid than royal.

  “Well.” Eldrinson strove to project confidence. “Shall we go?”

  The captain moved aside for them. Taquinil’s grip tightened on Eldrinson’s hand and he stayed close to his grandfather. As they walked forward, the Jagernauts closed around them, taking up formation, two in front, two in back, and two on either side.

  Their bodyguards took them away from the house.

  The web was losing stability. The lines had become ragged and frayed, but still they came to Soz and still she held them, her arms stretched. The meshes wound and tangled around her, all blue and gold and white—and shrinking as the darkness expanded.

  I never flew a Jag starfighter. The thought was soft, just for herself here in the blue, not for the Chair. I never visited Earth, the birthplace of my ancestors. I never loved a man. Her life had only started. She had so much to do. She couldn’t bear to die this way.

  The darkness continued to expand. Black spaces were filling Kyle space. Holding the lines, she stood in an isolated bubble of light that slowly and inexorably contracted around her.

  The War Room was located in the spherical hull that enclosed the Orbiter biosphere. Consoles and equipment filled its amphitheater, one of several ISC nerve centers scattered across the Imperialate. In the twenty-six years of his marriage to Roca, the Bard had come here only a few times. As he and Taquinil. entered with their guards, he looked up and around. Far overhead, a command chair was suspended under a holodome like a great throne silhouetted against a star field. He knew the stars were only holos, but the panoramic view took his breath away. He felt insignificant here, in this nerve center of a military that went so far beyond the army he had commanded that he couldn’t even encompass the idea of it with his mind.

  People filled the amphitheater, officers working at consoles and pages hurrying on errands. Robot arms swung above the scene with console cups at their terminuses and telops working within the cups. At the far end of the amphitheater, a dais supported an oval table large enough to seat twenty people. Officers from the Pharaoh’s Army, the Imperial Fleet, and the Advance Services Corps sat there, deep in conference.

  Beyond the dais, the Lock Corridor reached to infinity.

  The corridor began on the far edge of the dais, flush with the raised disk. Pillars rather than walls delineated it, each column constructed from a transparent but virtually indestructible composite, as was the archway that framed the entrance. Ancient mechanisms gleamed within the pillars, moving gears and levers that flashed with lights, yet were eerily silent. The corridor stretched away from the dais until it dwindled to a point, as if it went on forever. It was part of the original station that modem Skolians had found derelict in space, a relic of the ancient Ruby Empire that had survived for five thousand years while humanity struggled out of its Dark Age.

  At the table on the dais, Jazida Majda, the acting Imperator, was standing up now with her top officers, all of them facing the archway where Eldrinson was entering with Taquinil. The Bard recognized none of them, but the insignia on their uniforms marked them as generals and admirals. He and Taquinil climbed the steps to the dais. As they reached the table, everyone bowed—twenty of the most powerful war leaders in an empire honoring an illiterate farmer and a frightened seven-year-old boy.

  Eldrinson kept Taquinil’s hand in his, as much for his own reassurance as for his grandson, and inclined his head to the intimidating array of brass. The boy watched him, then inclined his head to the officers in the exact same manner.

  Majda spoke. “You honor us with your esteemed presence, Your Majesty and Your Highness.”

  A ripple of amusement came from Taquinil’s mind. He found the titles funny. His grip on his grandfather’s hand eased. Eldrinson shielded his mind and hoped his grandson wouldn’t sense how much this terrified him. He had no idea why these war leaders had summoned them, but he doubted it was anything good.

  One of the admirals stepped back, a tall man with black hair and a blue uniform. He pulled out the two chairs closest to General Majda. Eldrinson nodded formally to him, then paused for Taquinil. In the convoluted hierarchies of Skolian nobility, Eldrinson was “Majesty” because they considered him a king in his own right, try though he might to tell them otherwise. Taquinil was a “Highness” because he was a prince rather than sovereign. However, the boy was heir to the Ruby Throne, the highest title in Skolia, so he outranked Eldrinson—and everyone else alive except the pharaoh. The First Councilor of the Assembly ruled Skolia, but even she bowed to Taquinil.

  As soon as the boy sat in his chair, Eldrinson settled into the one next to him, with the boy between himself and Imperator Majda. The Imperator sat next, followed by the other officers. The Abaj took up positions around them like dark statues. Eldrinson’s unease was building. What did these people want? He concentrated on Majda, but she had shielded her mind and face, and he could read neither her dark eyes nor her emotions.

  “What has happened?” Eldrinson asked.

  Majda answered with an eerie calm. “We have a problem.”

  Nausea surged within Eldrinson. “What kind of problem?”

  “With the Kyle meshes.” She glanced from him to Taquinil. “Can either of you sense it?”

  “It is collapsing,” Eldrinson said.

  Taquinil spoke in a low voice. “Coming apart.”

  “I’m sorry.” Majda sounded heavy. More lines creased her face than Eldrinson remembered, and her eyes had a parched look, as if she hadn’t slept in days. “We have no functioning Kyle links here. We’ve sent racers to rendezvous with our forces, but communicating by starship is a slower process. We’ve only a diffuse sense of what is happening out there.”

  “Do you mean with the war?” Eldrinson asked.

  A Fleet general with bronzed hair was sitting on Majda’s other side. “How can you know?” he asked. “No one else does except the people on the world affected.”

  The world? Eldrinson rose out of his chair, his bad leg stiff under him. “ESComm attacked Lyshriol?”

  “Not Lyshriol.” Majda paused.

  Eldrinson was suddenly aware of everyone watching him. He took a breath to calm himself. Then he sat down. “Where?”

  She spoke grimly. “Parthonia.”

  “My Hoshpa!” Taquinil cried. “Hoshma!”

  Eldrinson laid his hand on his grandson’s arm, and Taquinil looked up at him, his eyes wide.

  Majda spoke to the boy as if she were treading a field of plasma mines. “We’ve had no reports of any harm come to either Pharaoh Dyhianna or Prince Eldrin.”

  Her carefully chosen words didn’t fool Taquinil. “Because you have no reports at all,” he said.

  She answered as gently as was possible for
the iron-willed general. “We’ve an idea what is happening, but nothing specific. We isolated your mother before the Kyle space meshes started to disintegrate, and we hope the failure didn’t affect her. We know her ship took off in time.”

  “And my father?” Taquinil’s gold eyes seemed huge.

  “We think he is all right.” Majda said.

  His voice quavered. “But you don’t know. For either of them.”

  She spoke softly. “I’m sorry. Terribly sorry.”

  Eldrinson gripped the arms of his chair. “What about the Assembly? They were in session.”

  “We had enough warning to evacuate the amphitheater,” Majda said. “Our forces have destroyed the ESComm ships and secured Selei City.”

  Taquinil spoke in a monotone. “But not before thousands died.”

  Majda said, “Your Highness—”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” His voice broke. “They died. The beams came from the sky and annihilated them.”

  Eldrinson wondered if the boy’s phenomenal intelligence was as much a curse as a gift. Taquinil understood only too well the meaning of his nightmares and the fragments of thought his painfully sensitive mind picked up from the people around him.

  He laid his palm on the boy’s arm. “It will be all right.”

  “No, it won’t,” Taquinil whispered.

  Eldrinson took his hand. “I’m here.”

  Taquinil looked up at him, his face drawn, his eyes haunted. He managed a nod.

  “I’m sorry,” Majda said. “I wish I had better news.”

  Eldrinson regarded her. “Is the attack over?”

  “At Parthonia, yes.” She set her palms on the table as if to brace herself. “Their force was small, which helped them infiltrate our defenses, but it also meant they were too few to survive. It was a suicide mission. They intended to cripple the Kyle web no matter what the cost.” She leaned forward. “We believe they intend to launch a larger invasion. Without the web, we may not prevail. ESComm is stronger and harsher, and now they’re faster, too.”