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

by Catherine Asaro

  Eldrinson didn’t want to believe it. “Dehya can repair the meshes. She can use the Dyad Chair at Safelanding.”

  Majda started to speak, then glanced at Taquinil and stopped.

  “What is it?” Taquinil asked.

  The general answered with difficulty. “As far as we know, Pharaoh Dyhianna never arrived at Safelanding.” She quickly added, “She might still make it. Or perhaps she is there but for some reason can’t use the Dyad Chair.”

  “We must help her!” Taquinil said.

  “Yes.” Majda exhaled. “For some reason, the web is holding together. We don’t know why, but we don’t think it can last. We need to send a Dyad Key to fix the system, and we have to act now, while we still can. Otherwise, we will lose what remains.” Grimly she added, “If that happens, we’re dead.”

  Eldrinson understood immediately. “You need a new Key.”

  “Yes,” Majda said. “I’m sorry.”

  He wasn’t the one they needed to apologize to. They weren’t asking him to kill his own son. “How does Roca feel about it?”

  Silence. All the officers just looked at him and Taquinil.

  “What?” Eldrinson asked.

  Majda took a deep breath, as if steeling herself. “We can’t put Councilor Roca into the Dyad.”

  The apprehension that had plagued Eldrinson for days surged. He felt clammy, then chilled inside. “Why not? She is the logical choice.” The only choice.

  “We believe it would kill Imperator Skolia.”

  That wasn’t the reason. He saw it in the way they all averted their eyes, heard it in her drained voice, suspected it from the heavy shields guarding her mind. Yes, they feared Kurj would die. But in a choice between saving Kurj or the Imperialate, they would choose the Imperialate.

  Somehow he kept his voice calm. “Tell me the truth.”

  Majda met his gaze with tired eyes. “We’ve lost touch with your wife’s escort. They disappeared.”

  No. No. His nightmares couldn’t be real. He had to deny the words. Refuse them. Banish them. “It can’t be true.”

  “I’m sorry,” Majda said.

  Sorry. Sorry? He wanted to shout at her. Sorry didn’t tell him what had happened. If the Traders had Roca, he would know. He would feel the tortures they inflicted on this woman who was the other half of his soul. If she had died, he would know. A ragged cavity would have opened in his heart.

  But he felt … nothing. Nothing.

  He couldn’t voice his fears. They went too deep, too far. It would tear apart his precarious calm. Eldrin, Dehya, and Roca had vanished, Althor and Kurj existed in a living death, and his other children were on Lyshriol, vulnerable and alone.

  He struggled for composure. “Who will you put in the Dyad?”

  “Who?” Taquinil echoed.

  Majda regarded the boy with a look of apology. “We have a—a less prepared candidate.”

  The Bard couldn’t believe they meant Taquinil. Less prepared was an understatement. No seven-year-old, no matter how intelligent, could operate as an effective member of the Dyad.

  Then he suddenly understood. They were training another candidate. “No! Soz is too young. Too much like Dehya.” Putting her in the link would kill one of them. Dehya had decades more experience, but he suspected Soz had the stronger mind. He stopped, aware of Taquinil at his side, but he saw the knowledge reflected in the boy’s face. He knew what it would mean if Soz entered the powerlink. No wonder Majda wanted to apologize to him.

  “We cannot put Cadet Valdoria into the Dyad.” Majda had an odd expression, as if she were on a runaway maglev train hurtling off its rail. “The cruiser where she is assigned has no access to a Lock.”

  “Lock?” Eldrinson had never sorted out the differences among Locks, Keys, and Dyad Chairs. Dyad members were human beings known as Keys. They used one of the three Locks to join the Dyad, and they used the seven Dyad Chairs to work with the Kyle web. But he had no real sense of what that all meant.

  The man with tawny hair spoke. “What we call a ‘Lock’ is an anomaly where a singularity in Kyle space pierces spacetime.”

  “My wife has told me,” Eldrinson said. “One used to orbit Parthonia.”

  “It still does,” Majda said. “It was the first installation ESComm went after when they attacked. They didn’t destroy the Lock, but they severely damaged its space station. We can’t use that Lock until we repair the supporting structure.”

  Eldrinson saw their dilemma. “And the Lock on Raylicon is too far.” It would take days to reach, far too long in this crisis. Given Roca’s disappearance, it could also be dangerous right now to send Rhon psions anywhere.

  He tilted his head toward the Lock corridor. “You must use this one.”

  “So you see.” Majda glanced at Taquinil, then turned back to Eldrinson. “We don’t have time to bring anyone else in your family here.”

  Yes, he saw. Eldrinson didn’t want to, but it was clear. He put his arm around Taquinil’s shoulders. “The boy is too young.” Surely they realized that with Taquinil’s mental sensitivity, he might not survive. And if Soz’s mind was too much like Dehya’s, what about Taquinil? Both he and his mother were geniuses with similar minds. Either Dehya would be responsible for her son’s death or he would kill his own mother. No matter what happened, it would leave the survivor too shattered even to save themselves, let alone Skolia. Eldrinson shook his head. “You cannot put a child in a Dyad powerlink with his parent.”

  Majda’s gaze never wavered. “We weren’t thinking of the boy.”

  Her answer slid over him like water running off the table. His voice cracked. “You have no one else.”

  They all continued to watch him.

  “No,” Eldrinson rasped. “I cannot.”

  “We see no other choice.” The general sounded exhausted. “I am sorry, truly sorry. We don’t know if you will survive. But you have a better chance than Prince Taquinil.”

  His pulse was racing. “If I do this and live, it will kill Dehya or Kurj.” He couldn’t look at Taquinil. “That would destroy our family just as thoroughly as if the Lock killed me.”

  Majda spoke heavily. “Would that we had another choice. But either we do this or Skolia falls.”

  Eldrinson thought of the tension he and Kurj dealt with every time they faced each other, and of his difficulties with Dehya. He wanted peace with them, for Roca’s sake as much as his own, but he had never found it. Would he cause the death of Roca’s firstborn, the child she had loved first and longest? Or would he kill the sister who was a part of her? Roca would never forgive him. Eldrinson would give his life to protect his family. If Kurj or Dehya died, the backlash in their newlyformed Triad could leave him incapable of anything.

  “What will adding me to the Dyad achieve?” he asked. “I have no idea what to do and no time to learn.” He looked around at the other officers. “Can any of you tell me how to use a Dyad Chair?”

  Silence answered him.

  “None of us have worked in a Chair,” Majda acknowledged. “We don’t even know if the one here will accept you.”

  Eldrinson felt as if he were drowning. “This is insanity.”

  “Your Majesty, I implore you.” For the first time in all the years Eldrinson had known her, Jazida Majda looked desperate. “If you can’t help, Skolia will fall.”

  What could he say to that?

  Taquinil laid his palm on Eldrinson’s arm. It will work out.

  Eldrinson thought of Dehya. Our wanting to believe something won′t make it so.

  You would never hurt my mother.

  Not intentionally, no.

  You have to try, Grandfather. if you don’t, my parents could be hurt much worse. The Traders might get them.

  Eldrinson knew he was right. They all were. The only reason the powers of Skolia accepted his marriage to Roca was because he was Rhon. Now they needed a Rhon psion. He had sworn to support them the day he married her, and implicit in that vow was an oath to the Dyad. But he ha
d always assumed it would be his children who inherited the titles. Not him.

  He took a shaky breath. “Tell me what to do.”

  Screams ripped his mind, his body, the ship, the universe, screaming, screaming …

  Colors pummeled Eldrin. Jagged red. Green, sharp and acid. Blue so cold it froze. Black. Dark, empty black. He cried soundlessly, lost in this place of horror. Slices of violet hacked his body, but the bloody parts reformed, reattaching themselves so the colors of his terror could cut him apart again.

  Smells assaulted him. Rotting meat. Death. He would have vomited, except he had nothing left. He heaved anyway, silent and dry. Another smell, the sickly stink of baggerbubbles moldering on the stalk. He and Althor had harvested them in their youth. He had loved the job, but now he heaved with disgust.

  A face wove into view above him, yellow, so bright it hurt his eyes. He tried to push it away. A claw folded around his hand and held his four fingers in a powerful grip, a hand with a thumb, a nightmare hand. The mouth opened and words echoed …

  “I’m here,” the face said. “I won’t leave you.”

  The words rang around Eldrin, distorted, ricocheting back and forth. He wanted to shout his denial, make this madness stop; gods, he wanted it to stop, stop, stop. The words of comfort gave him an anchor, his only anchor, in this terror. He clutched the claw until his fingers ached.

  I’m here. I won’t leave you.

  But the insanity grew worse.

  Soz felt her brother’s agony across the blue, across Kyle space, across universes.

  Eldrin, she thought.

  His anguish pierced her.

  I’m here! she thought. Fraying mesh threads whipped through the darkening fog and wrapped around her arms—including threads from her brother with a ragged, heartbreaking beauty unmatched in the functional web around her. She held the threads of his consciousness and refused to let them unravel. Even from the depths of the agony that wracked his body and his mind, his incredible mental strength came through to her. He was dying, but he refused to die.

  Memory fragments of Eldrin flowed around her. Of all her brothers, he was the only one she had never teased. It wasn’t just that he was the eldest, the firstborn. He had a quality about him that set him apart from the rest of them, not through any intention of his own, but simply because he was different. Then he had gone to war with their father and come home a warrior. It had leeched his soul and darkened his life, and Soz had been too young to know how to offer comfort. That had hurt as much as his pain.

  And he had sung.

  Soz had no artistic talent. She could plan strategy, solve equations, and fire any number of deadly weapons, but she could never create beauty. Many of her siblings sang; their father was a Bard, after all, and had taught them. Shannon had an exquisite tenor, Del a compelling bass, Aniece a lilting soprano. But none came close to Eldrin. He had inherited their father’s enhanced vocal cords. All Lyshrioli had them to some extent, but in certain genetic combinations, they created an unparalleled tool. Eldrin outstripped even their father’s glorious voice. He thought nothing of sliding through his five octave range. His voice chimed like crystal on impossibly high notes and rumbled in his deepest range. He had an artistry unmatched by anyone else Soz had ever heard. When he sang, she cried.

  Now he was screaming in agony.

  Live! She thought. Live and be well, my brother. She didn’t know what had happened, why he suffered such torment. She gave him as much strength and succor as she could manage, and she kept the threads of his mind on the outer layers of hers, so that when the web dragged her under, she could release her tenuous link with him.

  She would die, but she wouldn’t pull him down, too.

  The Bard stood at the entrance of the Lock corridor. The floor beneath him glittered, steel and diamond. Columns delineated the walkway, and machinery within them caught his attention, gears and levers in three-dimensional tessellations. Lights spiraled within the pillars along the rotating gears. Like those gears, apprehension spun within him, intricate and complex—and also fascination. The corridor mesmerized him.

  He turned to the table on the dais behind him. They were all on their feet, every officer, all the generals and admirals and Jagernauts, and Jazida Majda, acting Imperator, General of the Pharaoh’s Army. Taquinil was standing by his chair a few steps away.

  I do this for you, Eldrinson thought to him. That you may live free. He couldn’t make the universe perfect for his grandchildren, but he could try to make it bearable.

  Majda and her officers waited, motionless, as if they feared any movement on their part would send him fleeing. He wanted to leave. But he had given his word. He would do this. What, exactly, he would do, he didn’t know. Walk the corridor. And then? They seemed to assume he and the Lock would understand each other. He hoped they were right.

  Eldrinson settled his glasses more firmly on his nose. Then he lifted his hand and hinged his palm, folding it in half, a gesture of farewell among his people.

  Majda lifted her hand, palm outward, a gesture that among Roca’s people meant, “Until we speak again.”

  Taquinil was watching them. Yes, Grandhoshpa. Until then.

  Eldrinson knew this might be his last chance to touch a member of his family. Once he did this, he couldn’t turn back. His family would forever be wrenched onto a new path. He stretched his arm toward Taquinil, and the boy reached out to him. They were too far away to touch; after a moment, they each lowered their arms.

  Then he turned and limped down the corridor.

  It went on forever.

  Surely this Lock corridor wasn’t possible. It had to end. The Bard knew he was inside a space station only four kilometers in diameter. But the corridor stretched out, straight and true, to a white dot, an impossible point of infinite perspective.

  They called it the Corridor of Ages. He walked, his boots muffled on the diamond-bright floor. No sound existed. No smells. No color except the gears in the columns: bronze, copper, silver, gold, platinum, turning, turning, turning …

  Echoes. Voices.

  Eldrin.

  His son was screaming. Terrified by the raw despair in those cries, the Bard strained to find him with his mind. He sent out strength, support, comfort. He lost his focus and the cries faded.

  “Eldrin, my son,” he whispered. “Where are you?”

  Tears wet his face. He knew he might kill Dehya when he entered the Triad, if he didn’t die himself. His eldest son—Dehya’s husband and Taquinil’s father—was in mortal trouble. What would happen to-Taquinil if he lost both parents? Eldrinson would care for him, bring him home to Lyshriol. But how could Taquinil ever endure the man who killed his mother? What if Eldrinson lost Roca? Soz? If he died in the Lock, who would protect and care for the children of the Ruby Dynasty? So much grief. It was too much. He couldn’t bear this.

  Stop, he told himself. He refused to dwell on uncertainties. For every one that brought pain, another held hope. A fog of probabilities surrounded him, what Dehya called uncollapsed quantum states. The mists of what-could-be enveloped him.

  Suddenly the luminous point before him was no longer at infinity. It expanded into an arch shaped like a tall octagon, not Luminex, more like alabaster with an inner light. He stopped before it and white light bathed him. His mind whirled as if he were sweeping around the edges of a whirlpool.

  WHO?

  The question filled his mind. As ancient as the birth of stars and as deep as interstellar space, it came as a sense rather than a sound. He set his hand on the glowing edge of the octagonal arch. A small chamber lay beyond, filled with so much light, he could see nothing but its sparkle.

  I am Eldrinson, he thought.

  STRANGER.

  Yes. He adjusted his spectacles and entered the chamber, a room with eight walls, an octagonal prism saturated with light.

  Time slowed.

  In the center of the chamber, a column of light rose up, radiant. It came out of an octagonal depression and vani
shed overhead in a haze of blurred reality.

  The Lock. A Kyle singularity.

  Eldrinson understood nothing of this column. He knew only that a Lock offered a portal into another reality. Only here did it exist in his universe. It rose out of a universe where space and time had no meaning. Overhead, it pierced the fabric of spacetime and vanished back into another reality. Yes, he had heard the words. They made no sense to him.

  None of that mattered.

  He had expected to feel pressure from the power coursing through this chamber. He had been certain it would overcome his weakened body and limited mind. He had lived with his flaws and lacks for so long, all these years, knowing how little he had to offer Roca. His inherent weakness would crush him.

  Instead his mind soared.

  Finally he knew the reason for the anomalies on Lyshriol, the differences in the people, world, and stars—the binary and octal forms of their existence, their Memories, their need to identify symbols by exact location and details. Their designers hadn’t intended them to be illiterate; it was an unplanned side effect caused by millennia of undirected genetic drift. Here he felt the truth: their ancestors had designed them for Kyle space. And he was, in many ways, the ultimate result of that ancient experiment by a long dead people. He had been created for this.

  The Bard limped to the column, his motions slowed in the turgid time of the chamber. He stared into its depths, enthralled by its terrible beauty.

  Then he stepped into the singularity.

  15

  Key to the Web

  the planters jumped high,

  jumped high.

  so high.

  they sang their news,

  sang their news.

  sang so high.

  they sang high.

  they sang low.

  they sang forever.

  they sang of endless seas.

  the endless seas of trance.

  forever beautiful.

  forever blue.

  forever.