by Ann Maxwell
“He’s alone,” whistled the snake hesitantly. Then, in a single ascending trill of exultation, “He’s alive!”
Relief went through Rheba in a wave that left her dizzy. She swallowed hard and tried to control her shaking body. After a moment, she succeeded.
“Protect him, snake,” she demanded in Senyas. “I’m burning through.”
She sent a double-handed stream of fire across the compost pile. Fire fountained, bringing wood to its flashpoint so quickly that there was little smoke. She held the fire, drawing heat out of the rotting garbage to feed her dance. When she was through, the deeply piled refuse was cold and the wall was only a memory outlined in cherry embers.
Fssa, who had spread himself like a fireproof tarpaulin over the Bre’n, sucked up the last of the fire as he shrank back to his normal, heat-conserving shape.
She slid and staggered across the compost pile until she was next to Kirtn. She wiped slime from her hands and then ran them over his body, searching for any wounds. She found no burns or injuries, nothing but copper fur coming away in patches and sticking to her hands. Yhelle’s humid heat was making Kirtn shed like a cherf. Other than that, he did not seem harmed. But he was too still, and his breathing was too shallow.
Carefully, she made a ball of light and used it to examine him. With gentle fingertips she probed beneath the hand-length copper hair on his head. Behind his ear she found a horrible softness where hard Bre’n skull should be. Blood was oozing beneath his hair, blood thick between her fingers.
She made an odd sound and withdrew her hand. Very gently she eased his head onto her lap and prayed to childhood gods that the zoolipt inside him would be able to heal his wound. She tried not to tremble, afraid of disturbing him even though she knew that it would take more than her shaking flesh to drag him up from the darkness a soldier’s club had sent him into.
From beyond the burned wall came voices, people talking, a ragged murmur that had no meaning to her. At the edge of her awareness she sensed Fssa shifting, changing, dragging sounds out of the air and transforming them with Fssireeme skill into other words, words she could understand if she wanted to.
She did not listen. Nothing mattered to her but Kirtn’s slack body—not the guards, not the cold slime creeping over her legs, not even her own imprisonment. Considering her precarious situation, her attitude was irrational; but where Kirtn was concerned, she was no more rational than a Bre’n teetering on the edge of rez.
After a time the snake ceased his soft translations. He kept on listening, however, dividing his attention between her small, stifled sounds and the voices beyond the wall.
Kirtn groaned. Immediately the ball of light near his face brightened. Rheba bent over him. With an inward flinching, she eased her fingers into his hair. No viscous blood met her touch, no crushed skull, and only a trace of swelling that vanished even as she discovered it. His zoolipt was nearly finished.
She held her breath and waited, still afraid of wounds she could neither see nor feel.
His eyes opened clear and yellow. They focused on her instantly. She felt his consciousness like a special fire spreading through her. His face blurred and ran as the tears she had been fighting finally won. She reached up to wipe her eyes. His hands closed around her wrists.
“Don’t. You’ll get whatever you have on your hands in your eyes.” He hesitated. “Just what do you have on your hands?”
“A little garbage. Some of your blood.” Her voice broke. “And a lot of your fur, you great shedding cherf!” She tried to shake tears free of her eyes but could not.
“Here,” he said. “Let me.”
“Your hands are no cleaner than mine.”
He sat up and pulled her close. She laughed raggedly and cried and held him with arms that were more gold than brown. His lips moved over her eyelids, drinking her tears with a delicacy that made her shiver.
“Are you really all right?” she whispered. “It’s not a dream?”
“No . . . but I’ve dreamed like this more than once.”
She shifted so that she could look up at his face, trying to sort out the emotions rippling through his voice. He smiled as his mouth slid down her cheek.
“And you, dancer,” he breathed against her lips, “are you all right? Have you ever dreamed like this?”
A golden network of lines ignited over her body as she tasted the salt of her own tears on his tongue. She fitted herself against him and savored his mouth like a rare spring wine.
Fssa’s apologetic but urgent whistle separated them. “I know you two have to share enzymes once in a while,” he said delicately, “but you’ll have to find a better time. Some Redis are on their way here.”
Kirtn spoke without looking up from the half-closed, half-gold dancer eyes so close to him. “Carrying garbage, no doubt,” he said, acknowledging the truth that his sensitive nose had been shouting at him ever since he woke up.
“Nothing that healthful,” said Fssa in curt Senyas.
The snake’s tone got their attention. Bre’n and Senyas focused on Fssa in the same swift movement. Fssa’s sensors noted the change. When he spoke again, his tone was less cutting but no less urgent.
“I tried to tell Rheba earlier,” said Fssa, “but she wasn’t listening. The Redis are only keeping you here until there are more of them to work on you. As soon as the last of the false Yaocoon raiders come back, there will be enough.”
“Enough for what?” said Kirtn. “They could have killed us before now if that’s what they wanted.”
“They don’t want to kill you. The Redis—or k’Masei’s Soldiers—are really frightened of your ship. They haven’t been able to trick Ilfn into opening the door, and the ship itself is interfering with their attempts to project illusions inside the control room.”
Kirtn’s hand went to the slime-covered stud on his weapon harness. There was no tingle of response, no signal that any messages had been sent. In fact, there was nothing at all, not even the slight warmth that indicated the stud was alive.
“Are you sure?” Rheba asked Kirtn, though he had said nothing aloud. She brushed aside Kirtn’s hand and probed the stud with subtle dancer energies. “Nothing,” she said to him in Senyas. “It’s dead. Probably the fire warped it.” Then, to Fssa, “How do you know that the ship is under attack?”
“The soldiers outside are talking about it,” he said patiently. “They’re scared invisible of you, but they’re hanging on until the Stones are through with the rebels.”
Then what happens?”
“The Stones will be able to concentrate on you. They won’t kill you, but you won’t be dangerous anymore. You’ll open the Devalon for them and everything will be safe again. A whole shipload of Redis converts will be there for the making.”
“That’s absurd,” snapped Rheba. “It will take more than looking at a few crystals to make us into Redis.”
“The soldiers are sure you’ll convert. You won’t be as satisfactory to the Stones as converted illusionists. Apparently aliens are . . . resistant . . . to love. Even so, it’s better than killing you and then having to deal with a ship that can baffle illusions.”
Kirtn stared at Fssa’s opalescent sensors. “You keep talking about the Stones. What about k’Masei the Tyrant? Doesn’t he have a say in all this?”
Colors rippled over Fssa in the Fssireeme equivalent of a shrug. “The soldiers only talk about the Ecstasy Stones.”
“Do they say what conversion is like?” asked Kirtn uneasily.
“Oh yes, they’re quite specific.” But the snake said nothing more.
“Go on,” said the Bre’n, his voice as grim as his eyes. The Daemenites had believed in scuffing up their living-god offerings before throwing them in the turquoise soup—fresh blood helped to pique the zoolipt’s interest. He wondered if something similar was part of Yhelle’s conversion rituals. “Just what does conversion involve?”
For a moment it seemed that Fssa was not going to answer. He darkened percepti
bly. When he spoke, his voice was thin and sad. “Conversion is just like being disillusioned.”
“But we’re not illusionists,” protested Rheba. “Nothing will happen to us.”
“The energies Yhelles use to control illusions are quite similar to the energies you use to control fire,” whispered Fssa, so dark now he was almost invisible. “When the Stones are through, you’ll still be alive. But you’ll never dance again.”
XVI
Rheba did not need to ask what Kirtn thought of Fssa’s words. The Bre’n’s bleak fear and rage swept through her akhenet lines like a new kind of energy. If she could not dance, he and she would soon die—or wish they had. Was that what disillusionment meant to the Yhelles, too?
For the first time she had a visceral appreciation of what i’sNara and f’lTiri had risked in order to trace their children. No wonder f’lTiri had not wanted Rheba and Kirtn to join the rebels.
“I could probably handle whatever machine does the probing,” Rheba said in a hesitant voice.
“You have to see it first,” Kirtn said in a cold mentor’s voice. “And what if it isn’t a machine? What if it’s a psi master like Satin?”
“She couldn’t control me, or you either.”
“She could have killed me.” Kirtn’s tone was uncompromising. He used Senyas to emphasize the blunt realities of the situation they faced. “We can’t count on burning our way free, either. Your zoolipt . . .”
Though he said no more, they both heard his words in the silence of their minds: If you burn too hard, your zoolipt will stop you and never know that it killed you.
“The rebels might win,” she whispered.
He did not bother to answer. Neither of them thought much of the rebels’ chances, particularly since it seemed that the rebel leader was a traitor called Tske.
“I’m not going to sit here like a lump of muck,” snapped Rheba, pushing away from her Bre’n.
He laughed humorlessly. “Neither am I, dancer.”
“Right,” said Fssa, his voice an exact duplicate of Master Scavenger Scuvee.
“Wish I had some of the zoolipt’s gold dust,” Kirtn said, remembering the yellow drifts of aphrodisiac that one of Daemen’s zoolipts had created to reward its worshipers for especially tasty sacrifices. “That would separate illusions and people in a hurry.”
“You might as well wish that the communication stud worked and we could call the ship to our rescue,” pointed out Rheba.
“Or that the J/taals could help us, or even the rebels,” sighed Fssa.
“Yes, yes,” said Rheba impatiently, closing her itching eyes and rubbing them with a relatively clean knuckle, “but I’ve noticed that off-planet things don’t work very reliably on Yhelle. Illusions confuse us hopelessly. We need something of Yhelle to defeat the Tyrant and his white-eyed Redis.”
A soothing feel of coolness washed behind her eyes, followed by an exultant sense of affirmation deep within her mind. Startled, she looked at Kirtn. He was looking at her with equal surprise.
“You didn’t think/say/feel that?” they asked each other simultaneously. Then Kirtn said slowly, “It was in your mind, dancer.”
An eerie feeling crept along the back of her neck. Her hair rippled and whispered hotly. Someone or something was in her mind, trying to—what was it trying to do?
The itch behind her eyes was suddenly increased tenfold. She cried out and would have clawed at her eyes if Kirtn had not grabbed her hands.
“Maybe it’s just an accident,” he said, but his voice held a mentor’s skepticism of coincidence.
She writhed, trying to break free of his grip long enough to scratch her maddening eyes.
“It can’t control you, dancer,” he said harshly. “Even Satin couldn’t do that. Maybe it’s just trying to talk to you.”
Instantly cool relief washed behind her eyes, followed by another sense of affirmation. She shuddered and sighed. “Maybe. But it picked hell’s own way of doing it.”
“I don’t sense anything new,” said the snake, sensors blazing as he washed both of his friends in soundless radiation, seeking anything unusual. He found only muck and flesh surrounded by a dancer’s unique energies . . . and an odd twisting echo that he dismissed. He had first sensed the echo on Reality Street as Rheba bent over a fascinating Ghost fern. When the echo persisted whenever they went, he had decided that the echo was the cumulative signature of Serriolia’s illusionists. “Could it be the zoolipt?” asked Fssa, reshaping himself into his usual form.
“It’s not the zoolipt,” said Rheba bitterly, remembering the dance that had ended too soon. “The zoolipt doesn’t ask, it acts.”
Relief was still cool behind her eyes. She basked in it. Then she opened her eyes, startled by a thought that was definitely her own. “That’s it! Itch is trying to communicate!”
A delicious feeling came into her mind, relief and laughter and pleasure combined into shimmering exultation.
“Itch?” whistled Fssa. “Is that a What or a Who?”
Kirtn just stared. “Itch?” he asked, his tone that of a mentor, demanding.
“I don’t know what else to call it,” said Rheba, “but if that itching keeps up, I’ll have a few suggestions that would make a cherf cringe.”
The itching stopped instantly.
Rheba smiled like a predator. “Message received. Now get your little histamine fingers out of my brain so I can think!”
Kirtn watched Rheba with eyes that reflected the uneasy surges of her akhenet lines. Plainly, he suspected that she was in the grip of a subtle illusion. His only concern was whether or not the illusion was destructive. Considering what had happened to them since they had left the ship, he was not particularly hopeful. With few exceptions, Serriolia’s illusions were not benevolent to outsiders. He was afraid that Itch was just one more manifestation of the Tyrant’s pervasive powers.
His dancer smiled and put her gold-bright hand on his cheek. “I don’t think it is malevolent. Just itchy.”
“The zoolipt isn’t malevolent, either,” he pointed out, “but its goals aren’t necessarily ours.”
“If I could make Itch go away, I would. I can’t. So we’ll just have to figure out how to live with it until it gets whatever it wants or gives up and goes back to wherever it came from.”
“And what might an itch want?” said Kirtn in a tone that attempted to be reasonable.
Rheba shrugged irritably. “I don’t know, and right now I don’t care. It will have to wait its turn.” She held her breath, expecting an onslaught of itching. Nothing happened. She let her breath out in a relieved rush. Apparently Itch was capable of cooperation.
“Maybe,” suggested Fssa tentatively, “maybe what Itch wants is to help us against the Tyrant k’Masei and his soldiers.”
“How?” Kirtn demanded.
Simultaneously, a feeling of pleasant coolness bathed Rheba’s eyes. “Itch likes the idea of helping us,” she said.
Kirtn threw up his hands. Arguing with a dancer, a Fssireeme and an Itch was beyond even a mentor’s capabilities. “No wonder Bre’ns go crazy,” he muttered. He turned to Fssa. “If we burn our way out of here, are there too many guards to fight before Rheba’s zoolipt gets nervous and shuts down the dance?”
Before the snake could answer, Rheba winced and fought not to rub her eyes. “Itch says no.”
“No what?” demanded Kirtn coldly. “No there are too many guards, or no Itch doesn’t want us to leave?”
She considered carefully. “No there are too many guards.”
Kirtn swore with a poet’s vicious skill. Then, “I suppose we’re just supposed to sit here and scratch and stink.”
She winced and itched. “No, that’s not it.”
“Then what in the name of Fire does that damned Itch want us to do?”
There was no response, though she waited for several moments. Then she realized what the problem was, “The question’s too complex for Itch. We’re stuck with a binary method of communica
tion. Yes or no, pleasure or itch.”
“Sweet burning gods,” whistled the Bre’n sourly. “With everything else, we had to pick up an idiot hitchhiker!” He rubbed his hands through his copper hair and sighed. “Yes or no. Not even a maybe. We could be a long time establishing even the most rudimentary understanding. I hope the Soldiers of Ecstasy aren’t in a hurry to begin disillusioning us.”
“I could ask Rainbow if it knows anything about life forms like Itch,” offered Fssa hesitantly, knowing that every time he communicated with the ancient crystals it caused Rheba inordinate pain. “If Rheba thinks it would be worth it, that is,” he amended.
She looked with open distaste at the double strand of large crystals hanging to the middle of Kirtn’s wide chest. Neither sweat nor muck nor shedding Bre’n hair stuck to Rainbow’s polished faces. Endless colors winked back at her in a silent beauty that belied the savage headaches that came to her each time the snake spoke to the Zaarain library.
“No,” said Kirtn, his voice rough and final. “If the soldiers came while you were communicating, Rheba would be in too much pain to dance. We’d be as good as dead.”
Rheba hesitated. “Itch agrees,” she said finally. She frowned, trying to remember what she had said before she realized that the itching behind her eyes was more than a random allergic phenomenon. Something about using Yhelle to defeat Yhelle’s illusions.
The backs of her eyes radiated soothing coolness. So far, Itch was with her. The only question was, where were they going?
Nothing, neither itch nor pleasure.
Rheba sighed. “The only thing we have of Yhelle that might be useful is an illusionist or two,” she said aloud, thinking of f’lTiri and i’sNara.
She groaned and knuckled her eyes. Itch did not agree with that thought.
Fssa rippled with dark metallic lights. “More voices,” he whistled softly. “More Redis coming. Soldiers, too. They’re arguing.”