by Ann Maxwell
“I thought you wanted me to steal them.”
“Oh, I do. It’s just . . . you’re quite beautiful, you know. Can’t they send someone ugly?”
Rheba choked off an impulse to laugh and cry at the same time. “I’m alone. There’s no ‘they’ sending me after the Stones.”
“Then you’re not Lib?”
“I told you. All the Libs are dead.”
He looked away for a long moment. When he looked back, his eyes were more dark than green. “In that case,” he said, “you’d better listen very carefully. The more you know about the Stones, the better your chance of surviving. Although,” he sighed, “I must tell you that you’ve little chance at all. Certainly none that I’d wager my worst illusion on.”
“I don’t have any time to waste listening to tales,” said Rheba, ignoring the sudden itch behind her eyes. “Kirtn—my Bre’n—” Her voice squeezed into silence.
“The Stones won’t hurt your Bre’n,” said k’Masei. “At least, not right away. I’m not even sure that the Stones mean to hurt anyone at all. They’re just”—his pale hands described random curves—“ignorant. Or maybe they don’t care.”
“How much time does Kirtn have?”
“Once, I would have said months. Then it was weeks. Days. Now . . . surely an hour or two?” He looked sadly at her. “Is your Bre’n strong?”
“Yes. Stronger even than he looks, and he would make four of you.”
“Then,” sighing, “if he doesn’t go crazy he’ll be all right for a few hours.”
“I won’t wait that long.”
“Listen to me,” he said, turning suddenly and bending very close, so close that she saw her akhenet lines glowing in his eyes. “Getting yourself enchanted or killed won’t help your Bre’n. They nearly got me, and I’m immune too.”
“Immune. What does that mean?” she said impatiently.
“You don’t feel the Stones calling to you? Not at all?”
She frowned. “Since Kirtn has gone . . . sometimes, far away, I hear beautiful singing. I’d like to go and find it. Is that what you mean?”
“Is it hard to resist going out and looking?”
“No. Just an urge that comes and goes.”
He smiled. “You’re lucky. It’s worse for me, but I’m used to it. That’s what immunity is. They can’t control your mind. That’s what made me a master snatcher. As you can see”—a wave toward the room’s slender illusions—“I’m not Serriolia’s best illusionist. But I’m not bemused by Ecstasy Stones, either. My friends would dress me up in their best illusions, I’d sneak into other clans, and I’d come back with Ecstasy Stones.
“I decided,” he said, settling onto the floor next to her, “that in order to break into the Redis clan hall, I’d have to come under cover of the Stones that the Redis didn’t own.”
“What went wrong?”
“Oh, nothing.” He smiled wryly. “It went all too well. I brought a double handful of Ecstasy into the Redis hall. When I got there and saw the Redis Stones, I realized that there were more than I could carry in a single trip. The only logical thing to do was to leave my Stones there.”
“Logical?” said Rheba, her voice rising.
“I told you I was a fool.” K’Masei sighed. “I didn’t know then that the Stones could get into your mind. I thought it was my own idea to leave my Stones there. Then I thought that if only every Ecstasy Stone in Serriolia was brought to the hall, the love would overflow to the point that it wouldn’t matter who possessed the Stones—Redis or Libs or Yaocoons. Everyone would hold them in common and we’d be just one big happy clan. And maybe, just maybe, I’d be able to feel the love that everyone else was raving about.”
He closed his eyes. “Only a fool believes in his own illusions. By definition, I was a fool.” His eyes opened. He stared at her. “Are you sure you’re real?” he asked softly. “I don’t want to believe in any more of my own illusions.”
“I’m real,” she said impatiently. “What happened after you finished stealing Ecstasy Stones? When did you realize you were being used?”
“When people stayed and starved rather than leave the Stones. Ecstasy seems to be . . . addictive.” He shivered, though he was dry and the room was warm again. “I tried to separate the Stones, to make it the way it used to be. But it was too late. The Stones had learned about illusions, or maybe they had always known. Anyway,” he said softly, “they’re very good. When I went to separate the Stones, they were never where they seemed to be. They wrapped illusions around me until I nearly strangled.
“When I woke up, they told me that if I tried to separate them again, they’d kill me. They liked being together, you see.”
“They told you that? They really speak?”
“Oh, not in so many words. I just had a very clear feeling that they would kill me if I came into their physical presence again. I could be wrong. I could be a coward as well as a fool. But if I’m not wrong and I go back to the Stone room, I’m dead. That might solve my problem but it won’t free Serriolia.” He looked at her, sad and smiling at the same time. “You see, unless someone does something about the Stones, all of Serriolia will be sucked into them. All of Yhelle’s best illusionists. Then we’ll be as helpless as fish in a desert.”
“Are Ecstasy Stones a race of First People?” asked Rheba. Before k’Masei could answer. Itch went to work on her eyes. So far as Itch was concerned, the answer was no.
“I don’t think so,” said k’Masei. “But I’m no expert on the Five Peoples.”
“What do the Stones want with the people they attract?”
“If I knew that, I might know how to stop them. All I know is that the Stones use people, somehow. I’ve seen things . . . illusions are rampant in Serriolia, more and better illusions than we created before the Ecstasy Stones were united. But such illusions should be impossible, because nearly all the illusionists in Serriolia are here, held by Ecstasy Stones. If illusionists aren’t creating what I’ve seen, the Stones must be.”
Rheba stared at his pale, earnest face. He seemed to expect some comment from her, but she did not know what to say.
“Don’t you understand?” he said, leaning very close to her again. “Except for the Yaocoons and a few resistant members of other clans, there is no one left in Serriolia. Only illusions roam free. When the Yaocoons are absorbed and the city is enslaved, what next? The rest of Yhelle’s city-islands? The whole planet? Maybe the whole Equality?”
“How do you know that only illusions inhabit Serriolia?” said Rheba, concentrating on the part of his words that she thought might help her free Kirtn. She did not understand the rest of what k’Masei was saying. Nor did she care to. She wanted her Bre’n; she would have him no matter what she had to burn. “How do you know who’s free and who isn’t? Aren’t you a prisoner here?”
“The veil window still works,” said k’Masei, indicating the far wall with a nod of his head. “At least it used to. Lately all I’ve gotten is the Stone room.”
“That’s all anybody gets out of the veil,” she said bitterly.
“What do you mean?”
“The veil only goes to Redis territory unless you’re strong and smart enough to wrestle another portal out of it. We weren’t.” She surged to her feet with startling speed. Her lines of power flickered raggedly. “Show me the Stone room,” she demanded.
“Wait. I haven’t told you everything.”
“Then talk while you show me,” she snapped. “We’re wasting time.”
Itch disagreed. Rheba snarled soundlessly. K’Masei, assuming he was the focus of her anger, hastened to activate the veil window.
“Is it two-way?” she asked, standing next to him as colors blurred and ran over the oval face of the window. “Can the other side see through to us?”
“No. But—” His voice died abruptly.
Frowning, he concentrated on the veil window. His hands moved over buttons that could have been controls. Colors twisted, slid down diagonals o
f white, blurred, shuddered and did everything except make a coherent picture.
K’Masei muttered something in Yhelle. Rheba suspected that even if Fssa had been present, he would not have translated the words. She leaned closer, eyes straining to make something out of the jigging, incoherent colors.
“They won’t let me see anything except them,” said k’Masei hoarsely, but he tried another combination anyway. Then, with a final hissed phrase, he abandoned his attempt to control the veil window.
Immediately, shapes condensed out of chaos. A room came into focus, a room huge beyond reason and crowded beyond bearing, a room where no one moved, no one spoke, a room where all eyes were focused on a mound of glittering crystals resting on a mirrored pillar.
No. Not quite a mound. The piled crystals hinted at symmetries foreign to Fourth People, manipulations of space that existed just beyond Rheba’s ability to see or perhaps even imagine. There were arches . . . or were they arcs of light? There were stairs that went up forever, yet terminated below the level of the first step. There was a tunnel that expanded into infinity and at the same time doubled back, chasing and catching itself through dimensions that had no names.
The piled Stones had built, and were still building, a crystal universe in miniature. Or was it merely a miniature? Could it be something much greater that she simply lacked the eyes to see?
Rheba forced herself to look away from the endless crystal fascinations of the Ecstasy Stones. Only then did she notice the sea of faces adrift in the huge room, a sea whose only shore was the glittering island that she would not look upon again.
Nebulous eddies of light connected the Stones with the faces of their worshipers. Many of the faces close to the Stones were emaciated, mouths slack, eyes dead white. Farther away, pressing inward, the faces gradually became more human, colors of flesh and eyes that were alive.
Two of the faces at the edge of the crowded room were familiar: i’sNara and f’lTiri. She looked at them for only an instant, though. Towering above them was her Bre’n, a bemused Fssireeme dangling from his neck and a Zaarain construct scintillating brilliantly across his chest.
But Kirtn was motionless, a man bound hand and soul in unspeakable ecstasy, beyond even the reach of his dancer; she would touch him but she could not.
Kirtn, where are you?
Gradually Rheba became aware of k’Masei’s voice speaking softly to her, trying to call her back from whatever terrible place she had gone.
“It wasn’t always like that. People used to come and go, eat and sleep, do something other than . . .”
. . . hang suspended on the Ecstasy Stones’ shimmering promises. Her thought was like bile, like the bitter fear congealing into ice along her akhenet lines, darkness where light should be.
“Then something happened. Too many people, maybe. Or just enough. The crystals . . . changed. The biggest ones went dark. Dead, I guess.”
Rheba’s eyes itched in denial, but she said nothing. She could not. Like her Bre’n, she was suspended in the endless moment of discovery. Unlike her Bre’n, it was not ecstasy she savored but the agony of losing him.
“After that,” continued k’Masei, “the Stones were calmer, less powerful, I guess. Then one of the Soldiers of Ecstasy came into the Stone room. When he left, he was carrying the dark stones. I don’t know where he . . .”
. . . took them to the Liberation hall, despair rather than ecstasy for enemies of the Stones. Her eyes itched, denying her conclusions. She hardly noticed. Kirtn was filling her mind, her enthralled Bre’n like ice flowing where fire should be.
“. . . doesn’t really matter. Without the dark stones, Ecstasy was rampant. People would come drifting into the room, dazed with love, and they would stay until they died. I think the Stones didn’t understand Fourth Person physiology. After a while they learned, though. They let people come and go, eat and drink and sleep, but not often and not enough.”
Cold crept over her body, sliding through veins and lines, the antithesis of fire claiming her as she stared at skeletal faces, dulled eyes, slack mouths drooling . . . and one of them would be her Bre’n unless she . . . but what could she do, a dancer alone? What could anyone do against alien ecstasy?
Her eyes burned, tears and cold and itching alike.
“The more people who came, the greater the Stones’ power. And the greater their power, the more people came,” said k’Masei, letting out his breath in a long sigh. “Cycle without end, but not aimless. The Stones have a purpose. I’m sure of it. I just don’t know what it is.”
She hardly heard through the fear beating in her veins. And the itching . . . the itching would drive her crazy before the Stones drove Kirtn out of his mind. Or were Itch and Ecstasy Stones one and the same?
“When the Stones talk to you,” she said hoarsely, grabbing his arm, “what does it feel like?”
“What do you mean?”
“If they don’t communicate with words, how do you know what they want?”
“You just . . . know.”
He frowned at the grim picture revealed by the veil window and moved as though to shut it off. Her fingers tightened with a strength that drew a sound of protest from him. She did not hear, or if she heard, she did not care. He moved away from the cutoff switch and stared at the alien woman whose eyes had become wholly gold.
“How do you know what the Stones want?” she demanded. She did not want to ask outright about Itch, but she did not have time or temperament to be coy, either. “Do you feel hot or cold when the Stones speak? Does it sound like rainbows or silence? Do your teeth or knuckles hurt? Does your scalp itch? How about the back of your eyes?”
K’Masei, who had been looking more and more puzzled, brightened at her last words. “I don’t know about the rest, but when Ghosts talk to you, I’m told that it makes the back of your eyes itch.”
“Ghosts?” she said hoarsely. “Ghosts? Ice and ashes! The last thing I need now is some freezing fairy tale riding my mind!” She groaned and said beneath her breath, “Itch, is it true?”
Coolness spread behind her eyes, telling her that it was true. Itch was a member of that near-mythical division of life called Fifth People; or, irreverently, Ghosts.
Shuddering, Rheba put her face in her hands and wondered what else could go wrong.
XXII
“What else do you know about Ghosts?” asked Rheba, lifting her head to confront the man who called himself k’Masei the Fool.
“Why? The Stones aren’t Ghosts,” he added quickly, as though to reassure her.
“The back of my eyes itch,” she said succinctly.
“Oh,” he said, looking at her as though she were an interesting specimen and he a collector. “Do you have a Ghost?”
“Yes,” snarling, “and the damn thing itches enough to drive me crazy!”
K’Masei blinked and backed away a bit, startled by her vehemence. “It’s just trying to get you to listen. After a while it will give up and go away. Ghosts can’t talk to us, but they keep trying. They’re harmless, though,” he said soothingly. “We’ve had them as long as we’ve had Ecstasy Stones and they haven’t hurt us yet. The Ghosts, I mean.”
Rheba winced, hardly reassured. The Ecstasy Stones had not hurt the illusionists for eight Cycles, either. But that had changed, drastically. “What else do you know about Ghosts?” she said, not sure that she wanted to hear.
K’Masei half closed his eyes as he concentrated. His lips moved while he sorted through his memories of history and legends in a low voice. “Twelfth Cycle? Tenth? No. Ninth. We’ve had Stones and Ghosts since the Ninth Cycle. In fact, legend has it that they came to Yhelle together, riding in the ship of our greatest explorer. I can’t remember her name. She also brought those odd ferns. Did you see the elegant ferns on Reality Street?”
Rheba remembered her delight in the plants and cursed herself as a fool. Apparently she had inhaled a Ghost as well as the fern’s fey fragrance.
K’Masei smiled vaguely and made
a dismissing gesture. “But that was a long, long time ago. Nobody knows anything for sure about Ghosts except that they exist and the best time to see them is during a thunderstorm.” His smile thinned. “We don’t know much more than that about the Stones. At least, we didn’t up until now. We thought they loved us.”
“You were wrong,” said Rheba dryly.
“Yes. We believed in our own illusions,” said k’Masei, lips twisting in a bittersweet smile. “Epithet for a race of fools.”
She stared at the veil window, listening to k’Masei with only half her mind. Kirtn was there, unmoving, trapped. And she was here, restless, a Ghost riding the back of her eyes. Friend or enemy, both or neither—what stake did Itch have in this game being played with deadly crystal markers? What do you want from me. Itch?
There was no answer, of course. It was not a yes or no question.
Why me?
But that was the wrong kind of question, too.
Rheba gathered her mind as she had been taught to gather energy. When she no longer felt like laughing or crying or screaming, she asked the only question that mattered to her: Will you help me free my Bre’n?
Coolness came, sweet delight and . . . anticipation? Apparently Itch would be pleased to ally herself with a Fourth Person.
Rheba wanted to ask how Itch could help against the compelling perfection of the Ecstasy Stones, but it was the wrong kind of question again. No simple answer. And, perhaps, no answer at all. Itch was as alien as the zoolipt, and even more ignorant of her needs. The best she could hope for was that Itch would stay out of her way when she began to dance. That was more than the zoolipt had managed to do.
Suddenly, blue flashed across the faces of the Ecstasy Stones, riveting her attention on the veil window. Around the edges of the room, faces blurred and moved like statues sunk beneath disturbed water. Something had happened, something that stretched the hold of the Ecstasy Stones over their worshipers.
In that fluid instant Kirtn quivered, a wild animal straining at a leash. His mind was an ache in her bones, his anger and fear and rage, Bre’n rage sliding toward suicidal rez. Then the blue blush faded from the Stones and her Bre’n was motionless once more. She was alone with echoes of agony quivering in her marrow.