Lady-Protector

by Jr. L. E. Modesitt

  For a long instant, Mykella stood stock-still, trying to see and sense through pain-fogged eyes and thoughts. As both cleared, she saw the last Ifrit, ignoring the weapons but scrambling toward the device on the stone floor, picking it up and doing something to the metal boxlike oblong.

  Mykella sensed a swelling purpleness rising from around the device and struggled to create another a Talent probe to send toward the remaining Ifrit.

  The Ifrit lifted the device, as if using it as a shield, but Mykella snaked her probe round the metal box and ripped at the life-thread node. The box dropped, and Mykella looked into the eyes of the dying Ifrit—a woman, she realized, whose eyes held total despair in that instant before they went blank.

  Mykella’s eyes dropped to the metal device and to the unseen thread or cable that wound back down to the Table below. The cable was swelling in a way she didn’t comprehend, only that the purpleness flooding down it toward the device threatened …

  She tried to strengthen her shields before a wave of blackish purple slammed into them … and blackness hammered her into darkness as the entire ancient building shuddered and shook.

  Mykella woke to find herself sprawled against the far wall in the chamber on the other side of the corridor from the room where the Ifrits had been. She slowly moved to a sitting position, then stood. She could sense no other living things around her, as if the Ifrits had never been.

  Had they even seen her, or just a green mist—or something like it?

  She moved out to the corridor and looked to her right, where the corridor seemed to end in a gloomy recess less than fifteen yards ahead. There was an exit—or there had been one—but it had been walled up, with square sections of golden stone mortared in place. Mykella moved to the last set of archways. She studied them closely, noting grooves in the stone. Had they once held doors?

  After a long moment, she turned and retraced her steps back to the chamber where the Ifrits had been. There she stopped in the archway, feeling slightly light-headed, and as if cold liquid oozed through her short hair.

  The entire structure was empty of all furnishings, and every outside window had been mortared closed. She had seen nothing except the bare structure, not even any light-torches or their brackets. Just walls and columns and floors and ceilings, all of cold stone. There wasn’t even a scrap of parchment or a fragment of metal. She didn’t pretend to understand how the structure had come to be as it was. All the tales of the Cataclysm had indicated it had happened suddenly. Why and how had the Table building been sealed so carefully? Who had done it? How long ago? It certainly hadn’t been accomplished recently. And why? To protect the Table? Had the Ifrits come back at some time and done so to protect it?

  She took a step into the chamber.

  The only sign of the Ifrits was four sets of silvery garments and four pair of boots. How long were you unaware? The bodies of the other Ifrits had stayed for a time.

  As she finished the thought, a greenish glow appeared beside her, followed by the diminutive figure of the soarer. They were not from the same Ifrit world. These were the last survivors of the world that brought the Cataclysm to Corus. They had a … device … that hoarded every bit of lifeforce left on that poor world … When they died … only the lifeforce locked within their garments remained.

  “The device … that was what exploded?”

  That was what called me. You have done well …

  The soarer’s words explained why the Ifrits had looked so different, even to their weapons and garb. Lifeforce locked within their clothing? There was something … Yet … Mykella couldn’t help remembering the look of total despair in the face of the female Ifrit just before she died. But Mykella had done well?

  “There were two worlds of Ifrits?” she finally asked. “Two?”

  There have been many, each one sucked dry of life …

  “How do they do that? Why?”

  From where do you think the great eternal highways and buildings come? Their strength is from bleeding lifeforce from a world.

  “I stopped these and the ones who came before them.”

  That will only make those from the other world more cautious and more angry. It may take them more time to prepare, but they will come with greater numbers and greater weapons. The world will be bled dry of lifeforce, like all the others, unless you stop them.

  “Me? What about you?” Mykella couldn’t help it. Why was the soarer putting everything on her?

  I cannot do what you can. Once there were many of us … and we did stop them … at a cost you would never know … now … An impression of a sad shrug followed.

  “Your advice hasn’t been all that helpful. You told me I needed to use the dark, deep green. How? I’ve surrounded myself with it. I’ve tried everything. Nothing works.”

  You cannot capture it. It must capture you.

  “You said I couldn’t let it touch me…”

  That is when you use its power. Before that, you must become one with it. That is the only way in which you can separate yourself from it when the time comes.

  “How do I let it capture me?” Mykella tried not to snap. She was worn out, both from fighting the Ifrits and from trying to understand too many things she’d never had to think about before.

  By being like it … I must go … this … was … almost too far.

  The green glow—and the soarer—vanished, leaving Mykella alone amid chill and lifeless stone.

  She looked for the weapons used by the Ifrits but saw nothing. Because they were powered by the lifeforce of a dying world?

  Why are the Ifrits coming back to Corus now? Why not earlier? Father couldn’t have stopped them. Neither could Grandsire.

  No one and nothing answered her questions.

  Would she ever know the answers?

  Mykella shivered. Lines of ice covered her skull. That was the way she felt, and the light coming through the translucent glass or stone had dimmed, whether from oncoming twilight or clouds, there was no way for her to tell. She began to walk toward the ramp down to the Table when she felt a chill wind gust around her. Where had that come from if the building had been sealed so tightly?

  The gusts strengthened as she neared the ramp, and the ramp looked lighter. She saw why even before she reached the archway at the top of the ramp. A massive tree trunk had smashed through a section of the roof, falling so far that, halfway down the ramp, she would be able to touch the trunk.

  Had the Ifrit device reached beyond the building? It must have. What that might have been, Mykella had no idea, only that coincidence couldn’t explain the fall of such a huge tree.

  She shivered again, more of a shudder, and she realized that she needed to get back to Tempre, that despite the heavy coat and gloves and felt-lined boots, she was far too cold.

  As she eased down the ramp, she paused as more fragments of stone shifted and slithered down through the openings on each side of the massive tree trunk. On the upper side, there was a gap between trunk and golden stone—a gap perhaps half a yard in width and a yard long through which frigid air gusted. Should she investigate?

  Mykella shook her head. What good would that do? Besides, she was more than a little exhausted and getting colder by the moment

  She frowned as she looked at the trunk, a good three yards in breadth. It had just fallen, crashing through the side or edge of the building, with gouges in the bark. Yet the bark shimmered. She reached up and touched it. Even through the nightsilk gloves, the trunk felt warm but somehow lifeless. She eased out one of the unused flame pistols, and tapped the trunk. The crystal of the barrel clanked … as if the trunk had turned to stone. She replaced the pistol and eased out her small belt knife from under her coat. The blade did not even scratch the barklike stone. Slowly, she replaced the knife.

  How did that happen? From that device? Had it sucked the life out of the tree, trying to defeat me? Or had it tried to suck lifeforce all the way back to the dying Ifrit world?

  Again, she had no answers,
and she put one boot in front of the other and made her way down to the Table chamber, if only because it was closer to the dark pathways that would take her back to Tempre.

  It took all her strength to travel those green-black paths, and she staggered when she emerged in her palace bedchamber. All she wanted to do was collapse on her bed, wrapped in warm quilts.

  “Mykella! Mykella!”

  The shouting seemed so far away … so far …

  Mykella slowly walked, or staggered, toward the door of her apartment and slid the bolt, letting the door open. She couldn’t even open her mouth, let alone speak.

  Salyna stood there in the palace corridor. Her mouth dropped open. “Oh … what … happened to you…”

  Mykella could feel the world wobbling around her.

  Then she didn’t feel anything at all.

  25

  When Mykella woke up, she was sweating. That wasn’t surprising given the comforters piled around her. From the hazy light filtering through the gauzy window hangings and from the dark velvet night drapes being drawn back, she could tell it was still day. Her head ached, and her eyes burned, but she could make out Salyna sitting beside the bed in a chair brought in from Mykella’s private study. So was Rachylana, except on the other side.

  “What glass is it?” Mykella asked, struggling with the comforters to sit up and escape the excessive warmth.

  “Fourth glass of the afternoon. Tridi afternoon. You’ve slept for two glasses,” said Rachylana.

  “What were you doing?” Salyna demanded. “There were narrow slashes across your head, but none of them cut any hair, and there was blood frozen in lines across your scalp. There are bruises on your arms and back, and a lump on the back of your head. There are more welts on your face.” She rose, leaned forward, and lifted two pillows.

  “You’re still greenish, too,” added Rachylana as she stood. “Not so much, though.”

  Salyna frowned as she slipped the two pillows behind Mykella’s back.

  Mykella tried not to wince when Salyna touched her left shoulder. “Fighting … Ifrits…”

  “Ifrits?” asked Rachylana.

  “They attacked the palace again?” Salyna’s words were but a fraction of a moment after her older sister’s.

  “What are Ifrits?” demanded Rachylana.

  “Like the old-time Alectors,” said Salyna impatiently. “They use the Tables to come here from another world. They caused the Cataclysm.”

  Rachylana looked from Salyna to Mykella.

  “No,” replied Mykella. “These Ifrits came through the Table at Blackstear. What’s worse is that they weren’t even the ones from Efra. They were the last survivors of the old Ifrit world … and when I killed them, I finished killing that world … I think, or it died because they’d taken the last of the lifeforce to get here. I didn’t mean to, but they attacked me…”

  “Mykella, you scare me,” replied Salyna. “At times, it’s like I don’t know you. You were my little older sister. I was trying to look out for you. Now … you’re … you’re someone I barely glimpsed before. It’s like … the world’s not the same. You know I never had rosy ideas about things, but … they’re darker…”

  Rachylana glared at Salyna. “You didn’t tell me any of this.” Then she turned to Mykella. “You didn’t, either.” She paused. “I knew you were doing something. You’ve been doing it for weeks. You aren’t in your study. No one knows where you are, and you’ve never been one to hide in your rooms. I don’t care what anyone else says—you look, maybe feel, greenish to me. Why didn’t you tell me?” With her last words, the edge on her voice turned into sadness.

  “Because … you’ve been so angry with me,” Mykella admitted. “You wouldn’t talk to me for days.”

  “I was angry,” Rachylana said. “But you’re my sister.”

  Salyna opened her mouth, then closed it.

  Mykella waited.

  “I’m … sorry,” Rachylana said slowly. “I hurt so much … about Berenyt. It seemed liked you wanted to lash out at everyone and take everything away. But … I … well, I’m not stupid. I can see now; that bitch Cheleyza was manipulating Uncle Joramyl and Berenyt. Berenyt only thought he loved me. None of them even saw it. Father didn’t, either. She tried to poison me, didn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Mykella admitted.

  “You saved me.” There was another silence. “Why couldn’t you save Father?”

  “I tried. I didn’t get there in time,” Mykella said. “Joramyl didn’t let anyone know Father was ailing until it was too late.”

  “Treghyt suspected, didn’t he? He knows you know. That’s why he fled. Why didn’t you do something?”

  “I could follow his movements through the Table,” Mykella said, “but that didn’t tell me where he was. The last time I looked, on Londi, he was dying. I think he might have taken poison himself. I don’t know, but I think so.”

  “Why can you do all this?” Rachylana asked. “Why you?”

  “I don’t know. Two seasons ago, I saw the soarer in the garden. I asked you if you saw anything…”

  Rachylana’s brows knit. “I remember. I thought there was a green mist around the broken statue, but then it was gone. Is that why you look green?”

  “She doesn’t look green,” interjected Salyna.

  “To me she does. It’s like a mist around her. In a way … anyway, why does that allow you to do all this?”

  “I don’t know,” Mykella said. “The soarer just came to me and told me that I needed to save my world and my land. Every time I think I’ve managed to figure something out, something else happens.”

  “Why did these other Ifrits go to Blackstear? It has to be cold there. Is it because there’s a Table there? The only one they could find?” asked Salyna.

  “I don’t think they knew which Table was what, and they were too tired to do anything else. I went there because I was afraid they were the Ifrits from Efra that the soarer warned me about, the ones who want to take over Corus.”

  “The ones you killed … they didn’t want to conquer us? Then why—?” pressed Salyna.

  “Their world was dead—almost so. They were trying to escape. The moment they saw me, they attacked. They had weapons I’d never seen before, but they all went to pieces, I think, when the box that kept them alive, it must have been something like that, exploded.” Mykella swallowed. “It was awful. The first one attacked me, and then the others … they called me the green vileness … something like that. But … afterwards…” She gave the smallest of headshakes. “You don’t know what it was like. I can still see the desperation … the agony in her eyes just before she died … like all hope everywhere had vanished.”

  “Her?”

  “Some of them are women.”

  “How could they?” asked Salyna.

  “Do what? Kill a world … kill our world?”

  Salyna nodded.

  “They use the lifeforce of everything that lives to make their grand buildings and highways, like the Great Piers and the green towers and the highways … even power their weapons, I think.”

  “That’s … awful…” Salyna shuddered.

  “How did you know they were there … how did you even get there? The Table chamber is locked and ironbound,” pointed out Rachylana.

  “I don’t need to be in the chamber,” Mykella said. “Not anymore. I can do it if I’m touching the stone walls of the palace.” That was true enough if not the entire truth. She shivered and pulled one of the coverlets up around her. She’d felt so hot before, and now she was chill again.

  “I’m going to have Muergya bring up some hot broth and bread for you,” said Salyna. “You need something warm, and you need to eat more. Your face is thinner than I’ve ever seen it.” She turned to Rachylana. “Make sure she stays in that bed.”

  Rachylana lifted her eyebrows.

  Mykella could sense the unspoken question, and she almost laughed, except she was too tired. “I’ll stay. I’m not going anywhere.
”

  “Not until you feel better, a whole lot better.” With that, Salyna turned and left the bedchamber.

  Not until the outer door to the main corridor closed did Rachylana speak. “She can’t see the green, can she?”

  “No.”

  “Could I use the Table?”

  “You might be able to use it to see things,” Mykella said, “but you shouldn’t. Not now. The Ifrits can use it to take over the mind and body of anyone who cannot shield herself. One almost did that to me at first.”

  “When you can … when it’s safe … will you show me?”

  Mykella nodded, tiredly. “Please … please don’t try now. I don’t want to lose anyone else.”

  “I won’t. I promise.” The redhead looked at Mykella. “You’re green, and pale, and so tired you’re almost yellow. You need to rest.” She sat down in the straight-backed chair. “I’ll be here.”

  As she lay there, sore in more places than she wanted to count, Mykella couldn’t help but wonder. Those four were fleeing with what little they could bring, and you barely managed to defeat them? And the soarer said that the other Ifrits had even greater weapons?

  Except she hadn’t “defeated” them. She’d killed them, and the raw despair in the eyes of the last Ifrit woman gnawed at her heart. Yet … what else could she have done? If she’d turned her back on the situation, she’d have been fighting two groups of Ifrits before long, and the ones in Blackstear wouldn’t have stayed there, and they would have recovered and gotten stronger. And they hated her … just for what she was. They hadn’t tried to talk or do anything but attack her with every weapon they had.

  At the same time, she had only herself to blame for her injuries. She hadn’t even drawn on the green darkness to help her. Was that because she’d been surprised at the speed and anger of the first Ifrit? She’d been fortunate to discover them … just because one Table marker was a little brighter than the others. That scared her, too. What else might she miss?

  Not for the first time, she felt she didn’t know enough. But where and how could she learn more … before it was too late?