by Ann Maxwell
“What about?” asked Kirtn.
“The soldiers won’t let anyone in until the Stones are through with the rebels. The Redis illusionists want to move now.”
“How much time do we have?”
“None if the Redis win. Not much if the soldiers have their way. Only three rebel illusionists are still at large.”
“I’sNara and f’lTiri?” asked the Bre’n hopefully.
Fssa made a thin human sigh. “It doesn’t matter. They’re still caught within the Redis clan hall. No one leaves Tyrant k’Masei’s presence without his permission.” The snake’s sensors blazed as he turned toward Rheba. “Why in the name of the First Speaker didn’t Itch choose me to talk to? Surely one of my languages would work!” He brooded in somber metal shades, then whistled coaxingly. “What are you trying to say to Itch, dancer?”
“I’m trying to tell her that we don’t have anything of Yhelle to use against Yhelle illusionists,” grated Rheba, fighting not to rub her abused eyes. “Not our weapons or our clothes or our brains—nothing we have with us is Yhelle.”
Kirtn’s eyes widened, then narrowed to slanted yellow lines. His hand shot out, twisted in her clothes, then reappeared. On his palm caged crystals shone black between traceries of dancer light.
“The worry stones!” said Rheba. “But what good are they against Soldiers of Ecstasy?”
“Don’t ask me,” snapped Kirtn. “They’re Yhelle, though. Does Itch approve of using them?”
“Yes,” said Rheba, blinking rapidly and smiling. “It’s ecstatic.” Rheba frowned at the sullen stones. “I don’t know why, though. Depressing lumps of crystal.”
On an impulse, she allowed the golden cage surrounding one of the larger stones to dim. Despair flowed out from between the thinned lines of light like a dark miasma, a night that admitted no possibility of dawn.
Kirtn made an eerie sound of Bre’n sadness. Rheba glanced at him, startled. She could sense despair emanating from the stone, but it was despair at a distance, merely a possibility. But to the Bre’n, despair was a probability on the verge of becoming all too real.
Fssa mourned with a sound like wind blowing back from the end of time.
Hastily, Rheba fed energy into the dim cage around the worry stone. The stone fought the only way it could, silently, viciously, pouring out despair. But the cage brightened, turning the stone’s energies back on itself. Inside the cage, light energies pooled, building like water behind a dam, pressing silently for release.
Rheba was surprised to see that her hands and lower arms were as gold as the cage she had built around the stones. Her body was hot, each line radiant. She suspected that somehow her akhenet lines gave her a measure of immunity to whatever emanated from the worry stones. She also suspected that the longer the stones were restrained, the stronger they would radiate on their release. The thought was not a comforting one.
A whistle of relief came from Kirtn as despair was caged by light. He shook his head as though coming out of water. “Next time, warn me.” He looked thoughtful. “If it affects the Yhelles the way it affected me, it might help us after all.”
“Yesss,” hissed Fssa. “That’s it! Something about the worry stones’ emanations must upset the Yhelles. It affected me, too,” he added as an afterthought.
“Worry stones are an uncertain weapon,” said Kirtn. “We don’t know the range, power or duration of their effect. But they’re all we have.”
“I’m not sure I like them,” murmured Rheba, watching the stones’ dark glitter, “but they fascinate me. Their energies are tangential, bittersweet.”
She stared at the stones and waited for Itch to comment. Nothing happened. She sighed. “I guess the worry stones aren’t what Itch wanted after all.”
No more had she thought it than the back of her eyes felt like sand. “Correction,” she said through her teeth. “Itch wants the worry stones.”
“Itch can have them,” muttered Kirtn.
He did not like the dark, greasy shine of stone through dancer fire. He did not like the bleak winter memories they had called up out of the depths of his ancestral Bre’n mind.
“All right, Itch. What do I do with these black beauties?” asked Rheba.
Nothing happened. It was not a yes or no question.
“Dancer,” said the snake softly. “May I borrow your energy? I want to scan something. Maybe . . .” Fssa stopped talking and began changing shapes as he scanned the various walls.
Rheba looked at the snake, not understanding what he wanted. Then she realized that he had been out of her hair for some time. The heat of rotting compost was not much for a Fssireeme’s requirements, especially when he was changing shapes.
She scooped him into her hair. “You don’t have to ask, snake.”
He whistled thanks with one part of himself while the remainder flashed through a familiar yet still dazzling variety of metallic blue quills, scarlet metal vanes and silver mesh constructs. Using the energy that she naturally radiated, he could probe the surroundings more deeply than when he was dependent on his own energy alone.
Voices came through the thick wood walls, angry voices. She did not need Fssa to translate. The argument over when to disillusion the prisoners was reaching the point where it would either be settled or become a brawl. For once, she sided with the Soldiers of Ecstasy; more time might not save Bre’n, Senyas and Fssireeme, but less time would surely work against them.
Fssa’s head snaked out of her hair. His sensors looked like opals set in platinum filigree. “The fifth wall doesn’t have any guards,” he whistled, “and the ones on the fourth and sixth walls are drifting off to listen to the argument. I can’t be sure, but I think there’s nothing between us and a segment of the veil except a few buildings.”
Rheba’s eyes began to itch lightly.
“I could throw my voices—and a few insults—into the group by the first wall,” continued Fssa. “When the fight begins, we can burn through the fifth wall and run for the veil.”
She squinted and fought not to rub her eyes. “Itch doesn’t like the idea,” she said quietly.
Fssa said something in a language Rheba had never heard.
Kirtn did not know the language either, but he had an idea of what the Fssireeme was saying. “I agree,” he said grimly. “First the fight, then the wall. And if Itch doesn’t like it. Itch can suck ice.”
Fssa brightened into iridescence. He formed several mouths, paused to gather his best insults and then slid them through the wall in a nearly invisible, multivoiced assault.
The fight broke out within seconds.
“Burn it,” said Kirtn, pointing toward the fifth wall.
“Itch doesn’t want—”
“Burn it!” demanded the Bre’n roughly, all mentor now, unyielding.
Rheba swore and burned the wall to ash in a single outpouring of flame. Kirtn kicked through the glowing skeleton of boards, oblivious to the embers that seared fur and flesh. She followed in a rash, akhenet lines blazing, trailing a snake’s hissing laughter.
They ducked between two buildings and listened. No one had followed. Soldiers and Redis were too busy pounding on each other to notice that the focus of their argument had escaped.
Rheba closed her eyes, ignoring the itch. She sensed the direction of the veil as a brittle brush of discordance. The itch increased in intensity, telling her that her unwanted hitchhiker did not want to go toward the veil. Too bad. A lot of things had happened to Rheba that she had not wanted either.
“This way,” she whispered, tugging at Kirtn’s hand.
Together, they eased around a corner of the building—and straight into a mass of white-eyed soldiers.
XVII
For a wild moment Rheba hoped that the soldiers were only illusions. The hope passed in a flurry of shouts and raised clubs. Desperately she grabbed for stray energy. There was very little for her to use. It was night and only a tiny moon was in the sky. She could braid fire from the warmth the ground wa
s giving up to the sky, but it would take many minutes to transform such meager forces into a weapon. She had bare seconds. With an explosion of searing light, she loosed all her energy in a single wild instant. Fire streamed out from her, flames washing over the soldiers in hot tongues. Heat left black scorch marks on gray uniforms.
Soldiers screamed and clawed at clothing that had become too hot to wear. Weapons smoked in their hands, burning them. Incandescent light blinded them. Men in the front ranks fell to the ground, kicking and crying out to their gods.
Kirtn yanked Rheba aside and began running. He knew what she had done, knew that draining herself was the only thing she could do under the circumstances—and knew that it would not be enough. Only the closest soldiers had fallen. Some of the others were dazed, partially blinded. The rest were already in pursuit, weapons raised, white eyes seeking enemies. At least her akhenet lines were dull now, offering a less obvious target.
Fssa’s head lifted above Rheba’s flying hair. He swiveled methodically, sensing both where they had been and where they must go. What he found made black run in waves down his supple body.
“There are more soldiers ahead,” he whistled in tones that cut through the sounds of pursuit.
“Where?” demanded Kirtn. “Right? Left? Center?” His yellow eyes pierced shadows that could be enemies.
“Yes,” said Fssa simply.
Kirtn heard the shouts and pounding feet behind. There was no escape in that direction, either. Rheba twisted out of his grip and spun to face the closer soldiers.
“No!” he shouted. “Your zoolipt won’t let—”
His words died as he saw what she was doing. She held both hands in front of her, palms up, fingertips sorting over the worry stones. Pale dancer light crawled over her fingers. Inside the light, pools of darkness waited.
Rheba looked up, measuring the distance to the approaching soldiers. She poured all but one stone into her left hand. Her right arm came back, then snapped forward. The stone she threw was no bigger than the tip of her smallest finger. A golden lacework enclosed the stone’s darkness, but as the crystal tumbled among the soldiers, she sucked the cage energies back into her akhenet lines.
There was no fire this time, only freezing darkness, yet the Soldiers of Ecstasy fell as though burned to the bone. Their mouths gushed terrible rending cries, wordless agonies that marked their passage into darkness. The silence that followed was almost worse, an icy black blanket that seemed to mock even the possibility of light.
Above her head, Fssa mourned in the eerie sliding notes of Fssireeme threnody. Though he floated in dancer hair, his body was as black as the space between galaxies.
Rheba heard his keening as though at a distance, a wind twisting through hidden caves. She was not as affected as the Fssireeme was. The uncaged worry stone gave her a feeling of melancholy rather than tragedy. She responded only in a mild way, like someone hearing the travails of a stranger.
Beside her, Kirtn whistled a Bre’n dirge she had never before heard, minor-key notes singing of death, rhythms of entropy and extinction. The pure, grieving notes affected her as no worry stone could. But she ignored his song, ignored the tears it drew down her face, ignored everything except her own hand holding the quintessence of despair caged behind dancer light.
Around her, soldiers fell like rain.
More? she asked silently, her fingers hovering over the smallest remaining worry stone as Bre’n grief turned like a razor in her heart.
A coolness soothed her hot eyes.
Which direction? she asked, taking the small stone and turning slowly, seeking a target.
Pleasure came, tiny and distinct.
She saw nothing in the direction indicated by whatever lurked in her mind, but she did not hesitate. Her arm came back once more. Once more she hurled caged darkness through the night. Once more she took back dancer light and loosed despair.
Illusionists screamed and shattered out of invisibility. Their screams thinned and died as quickly as they had come. It took longer for their feet to stop beating futilely against the ground.
Silence came again, silence more profound than death, for dead men do not grieve.
More? she asked, shuddering and hoping that she had done enough. She would rather burn flesh than minds. Flesh healed, eventually.
The itch came back. It almost felt good, for it told her that she did not have to loose more worry stones. Tentatively, she walked toward the first group of fallen soldiers. She wanted to retrieve—and cage—the stone she had hurled at them. Even so, she held her breath, expecting Itch to object behind her eyes. Nothing came, neither pain nor pleasure.
She moved among the soldiers like swamp fire, burning fitfully, more sensed than seen. The worry stone nagged at her awareness, a black hole sucking away at her mind. She dragged a soldier aside. His body was wholly slack, yet he was alive—if meat that breathed could be called living.
The stone lay beneath him. A chip, a bare fragment of a once larger stone, yet it had brought down more Soldiers of Ecstasy than she could count in the darkness. She wondered if it was always that way, if grief always far outweighed ecstasy. After Deva, she could believe that was true.
Quickly she caged the stone, and her dark thoughts with it.
The soldiers did not move. If bridling the worry stone made any difference to them, they did not show it. She stared at the huddled bodies near her and wondered if it would not have been better to burn them to ash and gone. Certainly it would have been cleaner.
Her eyes itched lightly, telling her that she was wrong.
Or was Itch simply trying to make her feel better?
The question was unanswerable, even in a binary system. She sighed and turned toward the place where the illusionists lay. Fssa’s soft keening fell from her hair like twilight over a mauve desert. Though he understood the artificial nature of his grief, he could not wholly control his response to the stones.
Kirtn was less affected. He no longer sang the poetry of despair, though it lived behind his yellow eyes. He walked next to her without speaking, knowing that she was being drawn to the only remaining source of the bleak emanations. When she stopped, he stopped, waiting.
With an apologetic glance at her sad Bre’n, she bent over and retrieved the second stone from beneath an illusionist’s ragged robe. The stone was four times the size of the first she had thrown. She began to draw dancer fire over its black faces. Gold sputtered and died. It was then she realized that the stone’s power increased geometrically with their size.
And this stone did not want to be caged again.
Silently, she gathered the slow warm exhalations of the earth and braided them into fire. The energy was thin, dissipated, nebulous. It was almost more trouble to gather than it was worth. It certainly was not enough for her purposes.
The stone drank the budding cage almost casually, black consuming threads of gold.
Her right hand stretched high over her head as she tried to slide between clouds to touch the pale moon. After a long time, moonlight twisted, thickened, ran over her fingers like ghostly water. Yet she was far from full, far from having what she needed for the demands of the cage. Her fingers began to shake. She was using almost as much energy to feed her small dance as she was retaining to build a cage for the stubborn worry stone.
Her body ached, protesting. Akhenet lines surged raggedly. Yet she had no intention of leaving the stone unmuzzled. She did not need the itch behind her eyes to know that she must cage the stone’s energies once more.
Bre’n hands touched her shoulders, Bre’n breath stirred warmly in her hair, Bre’n strength ignited her akhenet lines. She drank Kirtn’s presence until it filled her and wan moonlight burned sunbright in her hands.
She gave her body over to his control while she danced across the many faces of darkness. Sadness called to her. She ignored it, drawing laughter in thin lines of fire. Whorls and arcs and graceful curves danced over black planes, fire pulsed in traceries as strong as th
ey were fine. The cage uncurled, gold on gold, incandescent against the stone’s night, burning until each face of darkness was confined.
With a sigh, Rheba blinked and looked at the caged stone in her palm.
“Thank the Inmost Fire you didn’t use one of the big stones,” said Kirtn, pulling her against his body, trying to forget the unholy grief he had known before she danced.
“Thank Itch,” said Rheba. “I was going to unwrap the big ones, but she made my eyes burn so badly I couldn’t see to choose.”
Fssa’s head dangled low, caressing her cheekbone where lines of power still smoldered. “Is it safe? Are the soldiers dead?” he whistled, sensors gleaming as he searched the nearby ground.
“We’re safe from these men, though Itch says they aren’t dead,” answered Rheba. “But then. Itch’s idea of life might not be ours.”
An uneasy silence followed her words.
“We’re going back to the ship,” said Kirtn, his voice flat. “We can’t help i’sNara and f’lTiri until we have weapons we can trust. Which way is the veil?”
“That way,” said Fssa and Rheba together, finger and slim head pointing to the right. “But,” she added, “Itch is telling me not to go that way. Or maybe she doesn’t want us to go back to the ship.”
Kirtn did not bother to answer. He started walking to the right. “Pick out a small stone or two,” he said, peering into darkness as clouds closed over the pale moon. “Just in case we find more trouble than you can burn.”
Reluctantly, Rheba sorted through the stones sealed in her pocket. Her fingertips found the third-smallest stone; it was bigger than her thumb. She hesitated, then pulled the stone out of her pocket. She did not want to unleash such a large stone, but suspected that the stones she had just used would not be back to their full strength yet.
“What about i’sNara and f’lTiri?” she asked, not objecting, merely wanting to know his plans.
“We could call in the Yhelle Equality Rangers,” offered Fssa.
Kirtn made an untranslatable sound. So far as he was concerned, the only thing the Rangers were good for was making state-of-the-art navtrices. “We’ll use the J/taals. The clepts could probably track i’sNara and f’lTiri through any illusion this side of reality.”