by Ann Maxwell
He put his lips against her throat, seeking a pulse. He found it easily, a strong, steady beat of life. Relief came in a rush of weakness. He knelt and held her, turning her face away from the flames that still twisted up into Serriolia’s uncertain night.
Eyes narrowed into yellow lines, he searched the spaces between the fire for Soldiers of Ecstasy. He saw only uneven light, ashes, darkness. Yet he knew there had been neither time nor fire enough to burn all their enemies. Or had the massed uniforms been merely illusions? Had she danced herself to unconsciousness for no more than a Redis trick?
A glittering, white-hot-head poked out of her tangled hair. Fssa’s low whistle called to him in Bre’n notes rich with concern. “Is she all right?”
He answered without looking away from the night and fire that surrounded them. “Yes.”
“What happened? One moment wonderful, hot energies and the next—nothing.”
“I don’t know.” Kirtn’s whistle was very soft, his eyes restless, probing shadows for illusions living between real flames. “We danced more viciously on Loo. She danced more violently on Daemen, alone, and did not faint.” As he whistled his fingers moved over her, searching for burned-out akhenet lines. Fear lived in his whistle, but his hands were steady. “Her lines are whole. She’s burned and so am I, but the zoolipt is taking care of that.”
Dizziness spiraled through him, followed by a thought of how wonderful it would be to stretch out on the resilent forest floor and sleep. Impatiently he threw off both the dizziness and the desire for rest. The dance had drained him and its sudden end had been like being dropped out of a building, but he was far from the end of his strength.
He felt a sense of persistence, of turquoise seduction weakening his resolve. He had not sensed/tasted that color so clearly since he had floated in a pool on Daemen, buoyed by a fluid that was not quite water, tone on tone of blue, but most beautiful of all was the vivid living turquoise that was a Zaarain construct gone wild.
He blinked and had trouble opening his eyes again. It would really be so much better if he slept. . . .
“The zoolipt!” whistled Kirtn, consternation and anger and the beginning of fear in each clear note. “It stopped her and now it’s trying to put me to sleep!”
He looked at his palms, knowing they had been deeply burned during the dance. They were healing, just as his dancer’s hands and arms were healing. They owed that to the zoolipt inside them. It liked their “taste.” After hundreds of thousands of years of Daemenites for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight snacks, Senyas and Bre’n were exotic fare for the zoolipt. It would keep them alive far longer than their normal spans, healing them until its skill failed or it finally became tired of their taste. Then they would die and the zoolipt would look for a new treat.
Until then, the zoolipt would do everything within its unknown powers to keep its palate happy, including cut them off from a dance it saw as too dangerous. The zoolipt, rather than dancer or Bre’n, would make the choice as to what was or was not worth risking death to achieve. It was the Daemen’s own Luck that they had been fighting more illusions than soldiers. Otherwise dancer and Bre’n would be dead now, killed by a meddling zoolipt’s kindness.
He did not realize that he was thinking aloud until he heard the snake’s soft commiseration. Fssa’s Bre’n whistle not only harmonized and sympathized, it pointed out that nothing was free. He and Rheba had live-in doctors. A great convenience . . . until they disagreed on what was best for the “patient.”
Fssa’s whistle changed into a shrill warning. “Something is approaching behind the flames!”
With a speed that few but Bre’ns could achieve, Kirtn put Rheba behind him and drew his weapon. His burned hand sent searing pain messages to him as the gun’s hot metal butt slapped against his palm. Dizziness swept over him like black water, a zoolipt protest. He swore in savage Bre’n and ignored the unwanted advice. The dizziness came again, narrowing reality to a tunnel leading into night. He felt consciousness sliding away as he spun toward the tunnel’s mouth. He would sleep as she slept, defenseless, brought down by a blob of protoplasm that was too stupid to accept injury now in order to avoid death later.
The thought of being forced to abandon his sleeping dancer to whatever waited beyond the flames hurled Kirtn to the breakpoint of rez. Black energy sleeted through him, energy drawn from his own body without heed to the cost. Black flames leaped. Unchecked, they would consume him cell by cell. Rez was the antithesis of survival; it was the pure, self-devouring rage of a mind trapped in a maze with no exit.
Abruptly, the zoolipt retreated. It was ignorant of Bre’n psychology, but it was not stupid. If it persisted, it would drive its host straight into the injury or death it was trying to avoid.
Control returned to Kirtn, but it was too late. Through the barrier of dying dancer fire he saw a circle of uniforms. “Real?” he whistled curtly to the Fssireeme.
Fssa sent out sonic probes, sifted returning signals with an array of cones and quills, and sighed. “Yes and no. Not all of the guns are real and most of the people are illusions, but they keep shifting.”
“Thanks,” said Kirtn sourly. He did not know how much ammunition remained in his stolen weapon. He did know it was not infinite. He could not afford to waste ammunition on illusions. There was also the uncomfortable fact that while he was shooting at an illusion, real bullets would be coming his way.
“I’m sorry,” whistled the snake, each note vibrating with shame.
“Not your fault,” Kirtn whistled, stroking the still-hot Fssireeme and watching the growing gaps between the flames. The attack would come soon.
“Alien!” The call came from beyond the flames. The voice was harsh, husky, speaking in Universal.
Instantly, Kirtn’s weapon covered the spot where the voice came from. There was nothing but smoke and shrunken fires.
“Alien!”
The voice came from behind him. He spun and saw nothing at all.
“Alien!”
The voice was at his elbow, but when he turned he was alone.
“You can’t—find me—alien!”
The voice came from three directions in rapid succession, but when Kirtn whirled to locate the speaker, there was nothing in sight but the unmoving soldiers.
“I could have killed you, alien.”
The words were soft, so close that Kirtn felt the speaker’s breath. “Tske,” said Kirtn, recognizing the voice.
The man laughed and appeared just beyond Kirtn’s reach. Kirtn shot three times and the man laughed again, unhurt.
“I’m behind you.”
Kirtn did not turn.
“You’re learning.”
Tske condensed out of the night, three of him, then five, then eight surrounding Kirtn, flickering in and out of life like fire. Kirtn waited. He knew that projecting illusions cost energy. If Tske kept bragging in multiple images he would eventually wear himself out. Then he would find that Bre’n strength was more real than apparent.
“Throw the gun down.”
Kirtn hesitated, then hurled the weapon at the nearest soldier. It was a long throw for anyone but a Bre’n. The gun smacked into flesh. The soldier cried out and Kirtn smiled. That one, at least, was not an illusion.
A knife gleamed out of darkness. Rheba jerked suddenly.
A red line slid down her arm, blood flowing^ Kirtn leaped forward, swinging his arms wide to catch something he could not see. It was too late. Whoever had wielded the knife was gone. He looked at the gash on her arm and wanted to kill. Blood slowed, then stopped as the zoolipt went to work on the wound. Kirtn’s lips lifted in a snarl. He still wanted to kill.
“It would be a lot more pleasant if the soldiers didn’t have to kill you,” said Tske reasonably. “You have a formidable ship, and I’m sure your friends on board would be unhappy to lose you. But the Soldiers of Ecstasy are also formidable, and rather stupid. Don’t push them any more, alien. They don’t like your illusion or your furry reality
.”
“What do you want?” snarled Kirtn.
“A day or two. Then, if i’sNara and f’lTiri succeed, I’ll give you to them and welcome!”
“And if they don’t?”
“I’ll take you to your ship.”
Kirtn did not believe anything except that Tske was afraid of the alien ship looming in the port. The illusionist was hoping that i’sNara and f’lTiri would fail. The Yaocoon would not like to have witnesses to his treachery against his own clan. If the two ex-Liberationists did come back, Kirtn doubted that he or Rheba would be alive to meet them.
Yet it was also true that Tske did not particularly want them dead or he would have killed them during the confusion of the first ambush instead of merely leading them away from the rest of the group.
With a feeling of frustration and unease, Kirtn heard people closing in. The soldiers muttered among themselves, illusion and reality alike. He could not understand their words, for Fssa was not translating. The snake was listening, though. Cups and quills gleamed on Rheba’s head like an eerie crown.
“I’m telling the truth,” said Tske persuasively. “You think I’m afraid of what you’ll tell your friends if they survive.” The illusionist laughed. “But you can’t prove I’m Tske. I could be k’Masei the Tyrant. What better face for the enemy to wear than that of the opposing general?”
Kirtn stared at the circle of Tske illusions, trying to see the truth. Tske—or whoever owned that sly, teasing voice—was right. There was no way for a nonillusionist to see the truth. Alive, he and Rheba were inconvenient but not especially threatening. Dead, they could open the door to a host of alien problems.
It was a comforting thought. He wished he could believe it. He was still wishing when a blow from behind hurled him face down into the ashes of dancer fire.
XV
Rheba awoke to the stench of rotting mush. It was not the smell that had brought her out of unconsciousness, however; it was the relentless itch behind her eyes. She reached up to rub her face, only to find herself spreading a liberal portion of muck across her cheeks. The foul textures of garbage brought her upright. Her last memories were of clean flames, not sludge.
“Kirtn?” she asked, her voice hoarse. She coughed and tried again. “Kirtn?”
She looked around, ignoring the fierce itch behind her eyes. She saw darkness relieved only by the faintest phosphorescence from the rotting garbage. She combed her fingers through her hair. “Fssa?”
There was no answer. She shook out her hair. “Where are you, snake?”
From the darkness came a soft slithering sound. Fssa’s sensor’s glowed as his head poked out of a garbage pile.
“What are you doing over there?” demanded Rheba. “Where’s Kirtn?”
“Your zoolipt shut down your energies so completely I couldn’t stay in your hair,” said Fssa, answering her first question. “The warmest place for me to be was in this compost pile.” The snake’s tone shifted downward. “I don’t know where Kirtn is. They hit him from behind after you fainted. Then they carried both of you away. When they dumped you here I fell out of your hair. I didn’t see what they did with Kirtn.”
“They?”
“The Soldiers of Ecstasy. And Tske. At least,” sighed the snake, “I think it was Tske. These illusionists make my sensors reel.”
Rheba sent lines of light radiating out from her body until she could see the dimensions of her prison. She leaned forward, coughing as her movements released foul gases from the decomposing garbage beneath her. Her eyes burned and itched. She ignored them.
The room—if it was what it appeared to be—was a hexagon about as large as the Devalon’s control room. Dancer light illuminated every corner and stinking garbage mound. No matter how hard she stared, she could not see Kirtn’s familiar form.
“What happened before they hit Kirtn, snake?”
The question was in flat Senyas. Fssa answered in the same tone and language. “You stopped dancing. Do you remember that?”
She hesitated. “Yes. But I don’t remember why.” She ran her hands over her body. Akhenet lines shimmered like golden opals just beneath her skin. “I’m not burned out. No cold or empty lines. I’ve danced harder than that before and not fainted.”
“Kirtn thinks your zoolipt stopped you. You were burning yourself up.”
“But not dangerously! Not yet! If I’d lost control or Kirtn had flinched it would have been different, but we were winning!”
“The zoolipt only knew you were burning.”
She made a searing comment about the zoolipt’s intelligence.
Fssa wisely said nothing.
“Is Kirtn hidden here beneath garbage or illusions?” asked Rheba finally.
“I probed. If Kirtn’s here, I can’t find him.”
“Can you tell what’s beyond the wall?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady. She had lost everyone she loved but Kirtn when Deva burned. To lose him, too, was unthinkable. She fought the panic streaking along her akhenet lines in sullen orange pulses as she listened to the Fssireeme.
“The wall is real. It interferes with my sensors. I can get some sonics through, but the returning energy isn’t clear enough to tell the difference between what’s out there and what the illusionists want us to think is out there.”
“Is the wall made of wood, plastic, stone or metal?”
“Wood.”
She made a sound of satisfaction. She took back the light she had created. The compost room became very dark. Then a flush of yellow akhenet light suffused her body. She took heat from rotting garbage and braided it into a thin line of fire. Heat streamed from her fingertip as she pointed toward the farthest wall. Smoke curled invisibly, stinking worse than anything that had come before.
Just when she thought she could not bear the stench any longer, a section of wood as big as her hand leaped into flame. The wall burned through quickly, leaving behind a dazzling shower of white-hot sparks.
Fssa did not need to be told what she wanted. He poked his head out of the still-burning hole and probed what was beyond. In the twin illumination given off by embers and dancer lines, he changed shapes like a fluid fantasy wrought in every metallic color known to man. Finally he returned to his snake shape.
“More garbage,” he said succinctly.
Rheba’s answer was another line of fire eating whitely at another wall. The snake slid over to the fire and used his head to punch through the weakening wood. The heat was nothing to the Fssireeme. He could swim in magma with the ease of a fish gliding through a pond
“Machinery. A recycler, from the shape. Disconnected, though. I don’t think there’s any energy loose for you to use.”
She did not squeeze past the lump in her throat to ask if Fssa had seen Kirtn, knowing that if he had, it would be the first thing the Fssireeme said. The fire that leaped from her hand was bright and vicious. It attacked a third wall, burning through it before Fssa could help.
Even as the snake reached the third hole she turned to a fourth stretch of wall. She would have incinerated the whole hexagon, including the garbage, but she did not know where Kirtn was. An unconscious Bre’n had no more protection against dancer fire than any other race of Fourth People. Until she knew where Kirtn was being kept, she would have to be careful.
She refused utterly to consider the possibility that her Bre’n was dead.
“Guards,” whistled Fssa.
Instantly Rheba let go of the fire she was creating and darkened her akhenet lines. Fssa flared out, using himself to patch the hole so that no one beyond could see the dancer burning within. He resumed probing, hampered but not incapacitated by his role as living plug. He formed a whistling orifice in the lower third of his body and resumed describing what his sensors revealed to him. “Soldiers of Ecstasy.”
“How can you tell if you can’t see the uniforms?” asked Rheba, sending another line of light at the fourth section of wall. It did not burn well. It was either wetter, thicker, or of a more
resistant wood than the other three.
“Their eyes are different. Odd energy patterns. Unique.”
Rheba remembered the few times she had been close enough to the soldiers to tell the color of their eyes. White. All of them. She had assumed that it was merely an illusion, a badge of their allegiance that separated them from other Yhelles. Now she wondered. Was there some mechanism that bound them to their tyrant k’Masei, a bond reflected in their white eyes?
Her own eyes itched wildly, then she felt a wonderful cool sensation. She shivered in relief. Maybe the zoolipt had finally figured out how to take care of whatever was causing the intolerable itching.
Even as she had the thought, her eyes itched again. The itch was mild, but definite. She swore and turned her attention back to the still-smoldering wall. It was nearly opposite the third hole she had burned, the one that Fssa was covering with part of his body. If she went to work on the fourth wall again, and Fssa moved, the guards outside would be sure to see the light and investigate.
She did not want that, at least not until she knew if Kirtn was nearby, perhaps even within reach. She would much rather be with her Bre’n when she faced the guards than have either of them face the white-eyed Soldiers of Ecstasy alone.
She crawled across the slippery garbage toward Fssa. “Finished?” she asked.
“Yes. If he’s out there, he’s not in any of my frequencies.”
“Take the heat out of the embers.”
With a Fssireeme’s total efficiency, Fssa sucked all the unwanted warmth from the wood around the hole in the wall.
“I’ll cover the hole,” said Rheba. “You go to work on the fourth wall.”
With her back over the charred part of the wall, she sent a streak of fire across the stinking garbage. The fourth wall smoldered and flamed. Fssa measured the heat, centered on the greatest area of weakness in the wooden boards and rammed his dense-fleshed body through the wall. Minute embers fell over him like incandescent snow.
“He’s here!”
Fssa’s excited whistle brought her halfway to her feet before she remembered the guards outside. As Fssa surged through the small opening in the fourth wall, she turned and plastered garbage over the hole she had been covering with her body. Some of the garbage fell out, but more of it stuck. Very quickly, the hole vanished beneath oozing refuse.