Catch the Lightning

by Catherine Asaro

  Their riders were lean and angular, well over seven feet tall. Scarves covered their faces, except for their eyes, protection against the storm of sand they raised. Black cloaks billowed behind them, revealing glimpses of vivid gold, red, green, and purple clothes. They came on, line after line in the deepening crimson light, as if they meant to run straight over us.

  Every animal halted at the same instant, the closest less than fifty yards away. In the sudden silence, wind ruffled our hair and whispered across our skin. A mount shifted its weight, another snorted, but no other sound broke the silence. Had someone on the horizon called, we would have heard.

  A rider jumped to the ground. He released the scarf from his face and it blew back, its long ends rippling in the air. His legs devoured the ground as he strode forward. I recognized him: the cast of his features, his hooked nose, the angles of his face, his dark eyes. He was much taller than a man of the Maya, but that was his only real difference. If anything, with my small nose, I looked less Maya than he. Separated for millennia, across different universes and times, yet still I felt the kinship. Like knew like.

  He stopped in front of Althor, towering over him. Then he knelt on one knee, his head bowed. Althor touched his shoulder and spoke in Iotic, the language I almost understood, words with the sound of ancient ceremonies.

  Standing, the man answered, his voice deep and resonant, ringing with notes. His words had a sense of ritual, like a chant. At the time I thought he spoke a different dialect of Iotic, one harder for me to decipher, but in fact I understood Althor better only because he and I were more attuned to each other. All I picked up from this man was that he was called Uzan. I’ve since learned Uzan is his title, as leader of the Abaj. If he has a personal name, he has never told us.

  The Uzan unsheathed the sword that hung at his side, a long blade with a curving tip. In form it was identical, to the one Althor wore with his dress uniform. But this blade was a metal-diamond crystal grown in one piece from nano-bots, built atom by atom, with a razor-sharp edge. The Uzan raised it above his head, and its blade glinted in the dying sunset.

  He brought it down at Althor.

  Before I could shout a protest, the sword hit the ground and sent up a fountain of sand, one inch to the right of Althor’s foot. Althor didn’t even flinch. The Uzan raised it again, and this time a rush of air brushed my cheek as he brought it down. I made myself stand utterly still, my heart thudding in my chest. Its tip hit between Althor’s foot and mine, spraying sand as high as my face.

  The Uzan turned to his warriors and lifted his sword. In response, they raised theirs in perfect unison, hundreds of blades pointing at the stars. The Uzan lowered his and the Abaj followed suit, again in unison. I wondered how they timed it with such precision.

  Althor slid his hand under my elbow and we walked forward with the Uzan. It was hard to see now, as the shadows deepened. A man appeared out of the enveloping darkness leading a riderless animal. It loomed over us, forearms reaching out with claws as long as my lower arm, daggers that could easily tear a human to shreds.

  Althor ran his hand along the animal’s side with a practiced touch. It responded by lowering its bulk to the ground, folding front and back limbs under its body like a camel. It smelled of sand and musk, with breath as sharp and bitter as lemons. The head came so close that I saw the scales on its face, blue prisms edged in green, with an echo of the sunset trapped inside. It watched me out of large gold eyes.

  A bony ridge extended down the animal’s neck, and another crossed its lower back from haunch to haunch, like a natural saddle. Althor grabbed the animal’s neck ridge and swung gracefully up onto it. As soon as he was astride its back, the creature rose to its feet, higher and higher, until it towered above us. Althor spoke to the Uzan, and the Abaj bowed. Then he turned to me and knelt on one knee, his head bowed.

  Flustered, I glanced at Althor. He just sat on his dinosaur, no help at all. So I did what he had done, touching the Uzan on the shoulder. The warrior rose to his feet and leaned slightly forward. I looked at Althor again, but he just continued to watch, his face shadowed, emotions hidden.

  Then I realized the Uzan was actually listing toward the riders. I stepped in their direction and he bowed as if I had answered a question. I had in fact, though I didn’t know it at the time. I had accepted his offer of a ride. As he led me to his mount, the animal settled to the ground, folding its legs under its body. Condensation rose from its snout into the cooling air.

  The Uzan put his hands around my waist and lifted me onto its back. Startled, I grabbed its neck ridge. The Uzan swung up behind me—and the ground dropped away, lost in pooling shadows as the animal rose to its full height. When I started to slide, at first I thought I would plow into the Uzan and knock us both off the animal. But instead I settled into a smaller ridge across the middle of its back.

  The Uzan spoke and the horde turned as one. Althor rode several riders down the line. I tried to decipher his mood: curiosity to see my reactions; approval of my calm; darker, more buried emotions about our capture and escape. I understood why he and the Abaj preferred I rode with someone, rather than alone, given how little I knew about the animals. But it puzzled me that he wanted me to go with someone else.

  Then we took off. The animals ran in a loping gait, far faster than any horse. Althor leaned forward, his lips parted, his exhilaration flashing like the discharge from an iron arc. I pulled up my hood against the dust storm our passage created, but without a scarf I still should have been breathing sand. Yet I tasted none. When I touched my face, my fingers pushed through a molecular membrane within the hood; the jacket’s web system had determined the need for protection and provided it.

  Night soon overpowered the last of the sunset, leaving the land dark. It reminded me of Nabenchauk. No city lights glared on the horizon, no city hum broke the silence. As we rode through the starlight, I wondered how the animals kept from stumbling. I later learned their vision extends into the infrared; to them, the desert is anything but dark so soon after sunset, when the ground is still warm.

  I didn’t realize we had reached a city until we were actually within it, among buildings that slept in shadow and silence. Our mounts slowed, picking their way through a forest of spires. Broken spires. These were ruins.

  The riders dispersed, taking up posts in groups of five: at a tower, by a pyramid, alongside the path. We stopped at a tapering spire about forty feet tall, with a base fifteen feet in diameter. The Uzan dismounted, stirring up clouds of sand as he jumped to the ground. Clinging to the animal’s neck ridge, I brought my leg over its back and slid off. For a moment I hung with my feet dangling. Then I let go and fell.

  As I hit the ground, the Uzan seized me from behind in a bear hug utterly unlike his previous gentle, almost reverent, touch. I jerked away and stumbled on unseen rocks. As I staggered, he grabbed me a second time. Angered, I folded my arm and clenched my fist, ready to ram my elbow into his side— Then I realized it wasn’t the Uzan. It was Althor, trying to keep me from falling. I turned in his arms, looking up at him, and he grinned, the first good spirits he had shown since our wedding night.

  The Uzan led us into the spire through a rectangular doorway. It was hollow inside, with a sloping roof that narrowed to a point about thirty feet above us. A crack stretched up the opposite wall, widening into a gaping hole that let starlight silver the interior. The Uzan spoke, ceremonial phrases, and Althor responded in the same singsong style, their rumbling voices accented by musical notes. At the time I thought they were chanting, but that beautiful exchange was actually how Iotic sounds when spoken properly by Raylicans. , Although all Skolians can trace their ancestry to Raylicon, four thousand years of genetic drift, often self-imposed, has changed them into new races. Althor is three-eighths pure Raylican: his mother is half, his father one quarter. His family are the only ones, after the Abaj, who carry so much of the original race in their genetic makeup.

  After Althor and the Uzan finished speaking,
the warrior bowed to us. Then he departed, his cloak swirling after him. When we were alone, Althor stood watching me, his arms crossed, his body silvered by the starlight. “You handled yourself well”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded, feeling awkward with the emotional distance that had opened up between us.

  He went to the wall and knelt by a ledge. As he pulled two silvery blankets from under it, he tilted his head toward the remains of a partition that had once divided the spire into two rooms. “If we sleep behind that, it should help shield us from sand sifting in the break.”

  I looked around the spire. It seemed an odd place for the Abaj to put up their prince and his new bride, especially given the high level of technology Althor said they possessed. “Is this the only place they have for us?”

  Althor glanced at me. “Why should we need more than they need?”

  “You mean they all live like this, in these ruins?”

  “At this time of year, yes.”

  “Can’t they rebuild the city?”

  He went over and set a blanket behind the partition. “Why should they?”

  “It’s falling apart.”

  “The Abaj have lived here for six thousand years. They won’t change now, on the eve of their death.” He sat on the blanket, looking more relaxed than before. When he held out his hand, I went over and sat next to him, cross-legged. He didn’t stiffen this time when my arm brushed his knee.

  “I’ve always had a fantasy to do what we did tonight,” he said. “You mean that ride through the desert?”

  “That was not just any ride.” He paused. “Five thousand years ago the Abaj were all women, as tall as the men you saw tonight, strong and fierce. When a Ruby queen brought a husband home from one of the colonies, the Abaj greeted her as they greeted me tonight. They guarded the husband while she went to ensure her holdings had remained secure in her absence.”

  “What if the man wanted to go with her?”

  “He had no choice. Men had no rights then.” He snorted. “My ancestors were barbarians.”

  “It sounds—different.”

  Althor laughed. “Don’t look so intrigued.”

  I smiled. “What happened to her husband?”

  “The Abaj took him to Izu Yaxlan. This city. He rode with the Uzan.”

  “You mean like I did tonight?”

  “Actually, you were supposed to ride behind him. But I thought you might fall off the ruzik, so I asked him to put you in front.”

  “What’s a ruzik?”

  “The animal.”

  “And your fantasy was to switch the roles, to be the Ruby king bringing home his bride?”

  I thought he would smile and say yes. Instead he stared into the darkness. It was a while before he spoke. “Those queens controlled an interstellar empire. To bring home a husband was a sign of their control over their lives and realms.” He paused. “Of all nights, this was perhaps a good one for me to live out such a fantasy.”

  I understood. Iquar had taken everything from him, more than his freedom, even his control of his own mind.

  “I was afraid you didn’t want to ride with me because you were ashamed,” I said.

  “Ashamed? Why would I feel such a thing?”

  “Because of—him.” I couldn’t say Iquar’s name. “Because he touched me.”

  Althor put his arm around my shoulder. “Among my people, the shame at being Iquar’s slave is mine, not yours.”

  I laid my head against his chest. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  He sighed and murmured soft words with no meaning beyond the comfort of making them. After a while he said, “I think I recognized one of the mercenaries.”

  I looked up at him. “How?”

  “The one who knew my military record sounded familiar, even through the filtering of his armor. My bioweb is processing the data.” He paused. “Tina—when the Jag woke me, I scanned its weapons systems. All of its tau missiles are gone.”

  “It fired them at the Cylinder.”

  “Do you know what a tau missile is?” When I shook my head, he said, “They’re equipped with an inversion drive. A starship engine. They move at relativistic speeds, with a huge kinetic energy. Four taus could obliterate the Cylinder.”

  I swallowed. “Maybe Iquar’s people destroyed them.”

  “Some, probably. But all four? Not coming in at near light speed from so close.” He pushed his hands through his hair. “Gods, Tina, I hadn’t realized just how seriously the Jag’s El brain had degraded. It’s lost all rationality.”

  “It knew exactly what it was doing.”

  “It couldn’t have.”

  “Iquar hurt you, so it hurt Iquar.” I could still feel the ice of its rage. “It wasn’t just Iquar, either. No one helped us. I’ve never felt anger like the Jag’s before. It wasn’t human.”

  His incredulity flared. “My ship avenges me?”

  “It loves you.”

  He stared at me. “What?”

  “It loves you.”

  “A ship can’t love.”

  “Yours does.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Why? You’re more than a man; why can’t the Jag be more than a machine?”

  It was a while before he answered. Then he said, “I need to think about it.”

  After that, we sat listening to the night. Musical clicks came from somewhere, like finger cymbals tapping together. Every now and then I heard feet shift, or the voice of an Abaj on guard around the spire. Their watch over us was symbolic: on a planet protected by the technology of a starfaring people, we hardly needed guards with swords. But I was glad they were there. I doubted I would ever feel safe again…

  The scratch of cloth on my arm woke me. I was lying on one of the blankets with the other pulled over my body. Althor lay next to me, sleeping on his back. He jerked and his knit pullover scratched my arm again.

  Suddenly he sat upright, his inner eyelids gleaming in the starlight. His mouth opened, as if he were trying to scream. But no sound came out. I sat up but didn’t touch him, fearing his enhanced reflexes if I woke him too fast out of a nightmare. Instead I kept murmuring, “It’s all over. You’re here, with me.” Finally he made a strangled sound. His inner lids rolled up and he looked at me.

  “It’s all right.” I put my arms around him and stroked his hair. “It’s all right.”

  He pulled me close. “Gods, Tina—I can’t—can’t—”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just kept murmuring nonsense words. When his shaking eased, he lay on his back again, pulling me with him. He spoke softly. “I hope an afterlife truly does exist. And I hope its spirits do to Kryx Iquar for all eternity what he did to his providers during his life.”

  I laid my head on his chest. “It’s over now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

  Althor turned on his side, propped on an elbow, facing me.

  “You are like rain in the desert, so sweet and gentle. Thank gods he believed you were my concubine.”

  Although I was almost certain Althor had lied about the concubine business, it still made me uncomfortable. “It isn’t really a supplement contract, is it?”

  He grinned. “What if I said yes?”

  “Althor!”

  He touched my cheek. “It’s a Rhon contract. It makes you a full member of my family, an heir to the Ruby Dynasty. For whatever that’s worth.” Dryly he said, “Statistically, it was supposed to be impossible that any of us would find a Rhon woman. I had to go to another universe to find you, but I did it.” Lying down again, he wrapped me in his arms and spoke against my ear. “I didn’t tell you the rest of the ceremony, when a Ruby queen brings her mate home from the stars.”

  My body warmed with the tickle of his breath. “There’s more?”

  “After she secures her holdings, she rides through the night to this city and goes to her husband. That’s when they consummate the marriage.” He bit my earlobe. “In my fantasy, my wife awaits my return, wa
rm and sleepy in our bed, ready to take me into her arms when I come to Izu Yaxlan.”

  I traced my fingers along his lips. “She’s waiting.”

  That night, in ancient ruins, on a dying planet with a dying sun, we finally consummated the union that would give new life to a dying people.

  19

  House of Flight

  Dawn came with that hint of magic that hangs over the land before sunrise, when the sky has begun to lighten but the desert remains in shadow. I lay spooned with Althor, my back to his front, his arm around my waist as he slept. Morning sounds came from outside: quiet voices, the shuffle of feet, a clank of swords. Fragrant smells of cooking and incense drifted into the spire, and insects clicked at the dawn. The Abaj had hung a cloak in the doorway and weighted its hem with jeweled clasps. When wind tugged the cloth, the clasps bumped each other, making the musical clicks I had heard the night before.

  A voice spoke outside, louder than the guards’, but still quiet. I wasn’t sure if its owner was talking to us or our guards.

  Althor nuzzled in my hair. “Hmmm?” As I turned over to face him, his eyes opened. “What did you say?” he asked.

  “I didn’t. It was someone outside.”

  Althor spoke in a louder voice, in Iotic, and someone answered.

  “Ah.” Althor smiled. “They want to know if we want cacao.”

  “Chocolate? You’re kidding.”

  “Chocolate?” He pushed up on his elbow. “What is that?”

  “The drink I gave you in LA.”

  “That was good. But it wasn’t cacao.”

  “They must have brought the word with them. Chocolate made from cacao beans was a favorite drink of ancient Maya royalty. They even had special pots for it, like Lord Smoke Squirrel’s cacao cup.”