M A R Barker - [Tekumel- The Empire of the Petal Throne 01]

by Flamesong (v0. 9) (epub)

  Hearing her name, the woman in gray bowed. She had a pallid, pasty complexion: probably a native of one of the towns on the western shore of Lake Parunal. Her ancient, aristocratic Engsvanyali name did not match her features at all.

  Aluja considered. “Well, quickly then. Where are your companions?”

  The Lady Deq Dimani lifted her chin toward the man in black. “He is Shakkan, the seniormost of the Gaichun's agents in the spy-labyrinth they call the Ochuna. His people reported two incursions there a Kiren or so ago: one from the High General’s Palace of Ever-Glorious War, and the other from this direction—the Gaichun’s stronghold. He says that the first is the Tsolyani party: either they seek me or else they try to conceal Thu’n and the Lady Jai. The second group is led by Prince Tenggutla Dayyar, the Gaichun's son. What he does in the Ochuna at this hour is unknown.”

  The woman in gray said, “Shakkan humbly adds that the two parties met in an abandoned section of the Ochuna. Some now come this way, while others have gone elsewhere. As yet he knows not whither. ”

  “Tell him to take us to the girl—the young, pretty one— not the soldier women. Say also that we would remain unseen.” The Gaichun’s agent set a fast pace. They descended the staircase Ridek had almost entered before, then passed through more corridors, passages up, others down, rooms and halls and winding tunnels, until at last they reached the level of the black fungus. Aluja felt a pang of something close to sorrow; his ancestors had grown this curious parasite as decoration for the walls of their homes. It had never been intended to serve as a cloak for secrecy and treachery!

  Shakkan came to a halt and spoke. The interpreter said, “No lights. They are forbidden in the Ochuna.”

  “Tell him that the rules are changed,” the Lady Deq Dimani replied sweetly. “We proceed.” The man adopted a hurt expression, but he obeyed.

  They halted, Shakkan nearly invisible in front of them, black upon black, then the two women, Aluja, and Ridek. Their six-man escort brought up the rear. The spy whispered something in Tka Mihalli.

  The translator woman said, “He urges you to let the guards go first; he perceives strangers ahead, and we cannot allow you to come to harm.”

  The precaution was too late; their lights had been seen. A voice from the darkness called in Tsolyani, “Who is there?” Aluja pushed Ridek behind him and raised his blue globe, the “Ball of Immediate Eventuation.” The soldiers took up positions for a cautious advance, and for a heartbeat there was confusion as -they rearranged themselves. The Lady Deq Dimani remained in front, ignoring the translator woman’s pleas to let the escort go ahead of her.

  “Tse’e?” she shouted back. “Prince Nalukkan? Or ‘sand-worm,’ or however you name yourself! We are many. Come out and surrender, all of you!”

  Ten paces ahead of them the old man appeared as if by sorcery from some near-invisible side-passage in the left-hand wall. He had retrieved his steel sword from Trinesh, and it gleamed like a crescent of yellow flame in the reflection of their lamps.

  “Where are the others?” the Lady Deq Dimani demanded. He made a negative gesture and halted, facing them.

  “Are you so heroic then, old sand-worm? Have you crawled out to die, to give your blood in exchange for that of the Vriddi of Fasiltum?” She hefted her own weapon. “Let me oblige you.”

  “I tire of running,” Tse’e replied. He spread his feet apart in a dueling stance that was as rusty as his sword. “The Hereksa could not bring himself to kill you. I can. You endanger us all with your Gaichun and your plotting.”

  She gave an unladylike snort. “How little you know!” Aluja moved up behind the two women and Shakkan, Ridek close beside him. “Let me!” the Mihalli hissed to the Lady Deq Dimani. “No need for you to risk your life!” Ridek understood less than one word in ten of the others’ rapid Tsolyani. He scrabbled for Aluja’s “Eye” within the fine leather pouch the Gaichun's tailors had given him. If his friends needed help, he would give it! The device felt slippery and damp as he fumbled it out, the dark red iris between two fingers and his thumb over the raised stud on its back. The slickness was probably the sweat of his own battle-fear. Why had the Ancients made their weapons so small and so awkward? He grasped it tighter, concentrated, and pointed it.

  The Ochuna exploded into garish, scarlet dazzle.

  “What have you done?” Aluja yelled. The Lady Deq Dimani screamed something too, and their escort echoed her with a shrill cacophony of shouts and questions in Tka Mihalli. Ridek heard footsteps blundering off into the tunnel behind him.

  He stumbled against the wall, then yelped when something tiny and sharp, like a red-hot needle, stabbed his shoulder. When he could see again, he found Aluja crouching before him, his wide-dilated pupils as red as the blaze from the “Eye.” The translator lay sprawled upon the black-carpeted floor, her bird-mask askew to reveal a tangle of gray-white locks beneath. The Lady Deq Dimani had thrown herself against the opposite wall; she nursed a darkening, bloody abrasion upon her temple. Only two of their guardsmen remained, both on their knees behind Ridek. Two more were visible farther down the passageway, but of the other pair there was no sign. Torches and lamps guttered on the floor all the way back to the last turning.

  Aluja clutched his blue orb and peered at the elderly Tsolyani swordsman. The man had not moved. He still stood in combat stance: feet apart, blade up, and one bony hand held back for balance.

  The Lady Deq Dimani rubbed at her bruise, decided that it was minor, and lifted her sword once more. “Well, sand-warm?’' she challenged.

  Aluja crept forward to touch the man’s blade.

  It did not waver: it was as solid as though carved of stone.

  “The boy—the ‘Eye’—caught him full,” the Mihalli said.

  “Is he dead?” Ridek asked shakily.

  “No. It is as 1 told you. He lives, but he is out of phase with this Plane. You have only to click the ‘Eye’ at him a second time to free him from its hold.”

  “There is an ‘Excellent Ruby Eye’ in the treasury on my island of Vridu,” the Lady Deq Dimani said. “Yet I have never seen it used.” She felt of one fold of the old man’s desert-cloak, then jerked her hand away in astonishment. “It is hard—frozen—but not cold!”

  “Ai, none can touch him. No one can harm him, take away his belongings, or affect him in any way. Unless he is freed, he remains thus until the gods bring this cycle of time around again to start the world anew.”

  She did not understand. “Good! He is welcome to stand paralyzed thus—and may he suffer during each long moment of eternity! His slaughter of the Vriddi is well avenged.” She looked into the stony, unblinking eyes. “Pain, old sand-worm, pain! That is my wish for your future!”

  Aluja did not disillusion her. The Tsolyani would know nothing, fe^l nothing: perhaps a biink of bloody light, then, should some adventurer free him later on, life again without gap or discontinuity. The Mihalli had no reason to hate this man; let her think that her revenge was truly complete.

  “My Lady.” Dayetha Fashkolun pointed. “May we aid Shakkan?”

  Ridek saw the spy for the first time, still black on black, but pressed against the wall of the Ochuna, open-mouthed and frozen, like some spidery insect preserved under glass. The “Eye” had caught him, too!

  Aluja held out his hand, and for the first time Ridek realized that he no longer held the “Eye.” It had slipped from his grasp when he fired. The Mihalli himself discovered it, innocent as a stream-pebble, in a clump of sable-furred Shon Tinur on the floor. He clicked the stud, and Shakkan slipped down to lie wheezing and trembling upon the black carpet.

  It took time to calm the Gaichun’s terrified agent, to reassure the remaining soldiers, and to gather up their torches

  and lamps. No one looked directly at Tse’e, though the guardsmen cast sidelong glances and made furtive religious gestures as they passed his statue-still form. Ridek had to admit that the Governor’s men were braver than he had credited: it was no shame to be frightened
by all of this magic, these foreigners, and the strange wizard they had rescued from the metal dungeon. He whispered to Aluja, and the Mihalli quietly repaired his disguise: the planes of his face had begun to shift to an elongated snout. That would be all these poor troopers needed to send them screeching away in panic!

  “My Lady,” the translator suggested, “let us remain here while Shakkan seeks the rest of the old one’s party—and perhaps gains news of Prince Tenggutla Dayyar’s people as well. There are others of our agents in the Ochuna, and he can accomplish this alone quicker than we.”

  “As long as my comrades are found.”

  Shakkan prowled away. In less than a Kiren he was back with another behind him: Thu’n.

  “My Lady! Oh, my Lady!” The little Nininyal scrambled past the black-swathed agent to fall upon the Lady Deq Dimani with squeals of joy. He looked behind her. “Who? Is it the boy?—Ai, it is Ridek, the son of the Baron Aid!” He stopped in dismay. “Alas! We shall all be impaled for this!” Ridek was suddenly reminded of his brother, Sihan.

  “Calm yourself,” the Lady Deq Dimani ordered. “Tell us where the others are—particularly the Lady Jai!”

  Thu’n blinked beady black eyes at Aluja. “Ohe! A Mihalli! Is this the Aluja the Tsolyani mentioned?”

  The creature could see through his disguise! Aluja’s people had long suspected that a few members of certain other nonhuman species could do this, but there had been no proof until now. This was important, but it must be left for later.

  The Lady Deq Dimani held Thu’n at arm’s length and almost shook him. “Where are the others?”

  The Nininyal clacked his beak, wriggled, gesticulated, and

  gibbered with what sounded like two tongues at once, thereby losing much of his narration in the telling. There had been a Prince, a fight, golden plates, and much running. The Tsolyani officer was unconscious—already dead?—and had been left somewhere to die. One of the soldier women remained with him. The others hoped to leave Mihallu with his, Thu’n’s, assistance, but how this was to be managed was unclear. Later the Nininyal had gone with Tse’e while the soldiers went another way. None of this was overly intelligible.

  The Lady Deq Dirnani ended by seizing both of the Nininyal's paws. “Where,” she shouted into his big, furry ear, “is the Lady Jai?”

  “Why ... ?” Thu’n collected himself. “Why, she is upstairs—the Prince, the Gaichun's son, the bejeweled one, took her to mate.”

  “To mate? As a concubine? A slave? —Or to rape?” “Fa!” Thu’n squawked. “How should I know what you humans feel qbout such things? Too many silly distinctions! Rape—copulation—pleasure—fornication—sex—obscenity— you have more words for this one simple act than you have hairs on your heads! We Pygmy Folk see mating in a more balanced light. Ow!” He writhed as her nails bit into his wrists. “Ow! Fa!”

  The Lady glared at him. That look, he knew, presaged a storm of monumental proportions. He would have essayed a sheepish grin, but his rigid beak would not allow it. He hissed weakly and cackled instead.

  She swore angrily and rounded upon the startled interpreter. “So now we must invade the Prince’s boudoir to get her back! Which way, woman—to the quarters of your Gaichun's whoremongering son?”

  Aluja intervened. “In the name of your Lord of Sacrifice, Madam, leave the Lady Jai for now! Likely she has already suffered indignities—and we cannot save her from what is done! Let me but return you to Milumanaya and Ridek to Yan Kor; then I shall come back for her, and the Gaichun's heir will pay for his effrontery!” He saw that she would not listen and tried another tack. “The Baron needs you, Lady, to lead the attack upon the Tsolyani armies in Milumanaya. A victory there is worth a dozen maids, however noble!”

  Her lips opened, then shut again in a hard, white line. “The Lady Jai is important to me,” she replied darkly. “More than you realize.”

  “I can guess. Flamesong.”

  She glowered at him. “A matter of mine, Mihalli, not yours! Keep your guesses to yourself! Come. I demand that we go to her. Now.”

  The translator interrupted, saying, “Shakkan is returned from the chamber at the end of this hallway, my Lady. He reports a foreign officer dead or unconscious upon the floor. A woman in armor sits beside him.”

  The Lady Deq Dimani hesitated. “An officer? The Hereksal Trinesh hiKetkolel?” She rubbed her bruised forehead in indecision. “We will look there before seeking Jai.”

  “But you just . . . ?” Aluja began.

  “If he lives, he may know more. Dead, he deserves at least a word of memorial, friend or foe, since he worships the Flame Lord and belongs to a good warrior clan. If indeed he be slain, we can still question the soldier woman.” She looked from face to face. “The Lady Jai can endure her Skein for a moment or two longer. Is that not what you just urged, Aluja?”

  Without waiting for a reply she slipped past Shakkan and along the passage. At its end bronze hinges fixed to the side of a low archway showed where a door had once been. No panel hung .there now.

  “Tse’e—Lord? Thu’n?” The voice from beyond the opening was a woman’s, faint and soft.

  “Saina?” the Lady Deq Dimani called. “Saina? I have soldiers—and others—here with me. Make no resistance, and no one harms you.”

  She listened, but no sound came. Aluja grasped Ridek’s shoulder and pressed him against the side wall. The translator woman crouched beside them, and Shakkan motioned the guardsmen forward.

  The Lady Deq Dimani uttered a scornful curse. She snatched a torch from one of their escort and marched straight on, into the room. They heard a jumble of conversation; then she reappeared and beckoned to them.

  “The soldier woman—Saina—is injured,” she said to Aluja. “The Hereksa is unconscious. Your so-noble Prince—” she almost spat at Dayetha—“stabbed him with a poisoned stiletto as he fought with Horusel—one of the Tsolyani subalterns.”

  The translator was bewildered. “Shakkan can summon aid. ...”

  The Lady Deq Dimani turned her back and re-entered the room, the others trailing after. The place had been a storeroom of some sort; empty chests and splintered slats of wood lay all about, a muddle of refuse and decay. Fortunately for the two Tsolyani against the far wall, the Shon Tinur fungus had not made serious inroads here.

  Saina did not rise. She sat with her back against the grimy stones and menaced them with Tse’e’s steel thigh-dagger. Trinesh lay curled next to her, his head upon a folded cloak, to all intents asleep.

  Aluja glided over, hands open to show that he meant no harm. Saina's dagger-point swiveled to follow him.

  The Lady Deq Dimani said, “Oh, put it down, girl. See to the Hereksa, Aluja.” She added, “Please.”

  Aluja ignored the fiercely watchful gaze of the soldier-woman, left Ridek where he stood, and knelt beside the injured officer. He had no idea what to do. Some Mihalli were physicians as well as sorcerers, but Aluja had mastered only a smattering of the healing arts.

  The Tsolyani was a rangy, powerfully built, young man, stem-looking and proud even in his present condition. Command, responsibility, and war: all shaped a person thus. Trinesh hiKetkolel had probably never been allowed to be a child but had been pressed into the warrior mold as soon as he could walk.

  The Mihalli called for a torch and rolled the youth over upon his back. Broad, high cheekbones, reddish-copper skin, and a sharp, triangular chin betokened the warlike clans of western Tsolyanu, the Chakas probably, with just a hint of the more ancient aristocracies of the Dragon Warriors. The Tsolyani seemed to be asleep, his lashes black half-moons upon pallid cheeks. Only the slow beat of blood at his temples indicated that he lived.

  “1 think it is Sha’u Nte.” Aluja unbuckled the youth’s breastplate to massage his chest. “That is a drug made by boiling the bark of a tree that grows hereabouts. My people used it to bring about visions and a sort of mental tranquility, but it puts humans into a trance for a time.”

  “Your people?” Dayetha Fashk
olun puzzled.

  Aluja had forgotten her—and Shakkan, and the soldiers, it would not do to have them flee from a dreaded Mihalli in terror now. He checked his human disguise. “A manner of speaking,” he temporized.

  “Cure him,” the Lady Deq Dimani said shortly. “We—” she broke off, then continued in a different tone—“Aluja. . . . Best see to the woman first.”

  He looked. The Tsolyani girl sat in a widening pool of dark blood.

  “Take Ridek out.” He did not wait to see if anyone obeyed. “What happened, woman? Where are you injured?” Saina said, “No. Attend to Trinesh-—the Hereksa. In the fight—Horusel cut me—the inner thigh—I don’t think he really intended it.”

  Thu’n peered over Aluja’s shoulder. “Tse’e—the old Tsolyani—bound her leg tightly with a cloth. But she has lost much strength.”

  Saina’s lips trembled, and she licked them with a tongue as gray as ashes. “No matter, I said. See to Trinesh.”

  “He comes to his senses even now.” Aluja pulled her sopping kilt aside. The gash was terrible: from just above the knee up almost to the groin. Did not humans go into shock from wounds like this? That must be why she seemed to feel no pain. He knew so little about their physiognomy! He turned his head to address the Lady Deq Dimani. “It is serious. We must summon aid.”

  Saina smiled. “No need, whoever you are. I am a soldier, and I have seen wounds like this before. A few minutes, a Kiren or two, then death as the blood flows away.” The dagger slipped from her fingers, and she laid her hand upon Trinesh’s arm instead. “Tell me: should I sing my death song now? I am not a very good singer, you know.” She tried to smile again.

  Trinesh stirred, groaned, and woke. He yawned. “Where—?” The Lady Deq Dimani put out a hand to help him, an unusual thing for a matriarch of Vridu to do. “Look to Saina,” she said.

  “Trinesh? Hereksa? Oh, I am sorry. . .

  He sat up. One glance and he knew. “Saina!”