The Crystal Eye

by Deborah Chester

  The sergeant gestured, and the other patrollers hit her, hard and expertly, leaving her gasping and doubled over. They took her arms and forced her outside.

  Ampris had been beaten before. She had been thrown onto transports before. She had known despair and futility before. But this time was different. The other prisoners being herded outside across a paved courtyard to a waiting transport were moaning and yelping in distress. Most were Kelths, Ampris noticed. Several were missing hands, showing they had been punished for thievery. It was dark outside, as though the Viis were ashamed of this evil they did and wanted to hide it from the world. Ampris’s fear faded and she found herself strangely calm. She felt almost safe, which surprised her. But she did not fight this new emotion, thinking it was merciful to feel this way.

  She could barely walk because of her injuries. Her crippled leg would not support her, and she had to drag it. The patrollers shoved her into line and moved on. Ampris was not shackled or wearing restraints this time, but like the others she was too crippled and injured to be able to cause trouble.

  Yet she found herself glancing around, counting the number of patrollers present, studying their placement. A few were clustered next to the door of the utilitarian building. More were talking at the front of the transport.

  A clang and the grating of metal over pavement caught her attention. The gates were being rolled open manually by two sweating slaves. Amusement tickled the back of Ampris’s throat. So even the Bureau, with all the dread and fear it inspired, had breakdown problems. But the open gate drew her gaze again. She found herself calculating whether she could get to it.

  Someone prodded her in the back to make her move forward, and she nearly fell. Cold certainty flowed through her at that moment, and she knew she could not escape. All her strength, all her skills, all her courage were not enough this time. Her body was simply too broken.

  She wanted to weep and rage, but those emotions were futile. Ampris had never been one to give up, and her tough spirit did not want to surrender now. But she could not do this herself.

  Again she felt regret like a sharp stab and longed to see the faces of her sons once more.

  But, she knew, it was not to be.

  Sighing, she bowed her head and simply opened herself to acceptance.

  As though a flower had burst open, the Eye of Clarity began to glow with that same lambent light it had displayed earlier in her cell. The light spread across Ampris’s body, bathing her from head to foot. In wonder she raised her hand and stared at the aura of pure white light that encompassed each of her fingers. It looked so hot and fiery, and yet the feel of it was cool.

  She felt filled with renewed strength. When she looked across the courtyard, the buildings, the transport, the condemned prisoners, and the gates had all vanished. Even the darkness was gone.

  Instead, it was as though several moons shone in the sky, creating a clear, silvery light that was otherworldly and serene. Before her, she saw a vista of verdant hills and natural meadows, tall grasses waving in a breeze that smelled alien and yet sweetly inviting. She closed her eyes and inhaled, filling her senses with the new scents of greenery, blossoms, living creatures, and rushing water. There was no color in this moonlit landscape, but she did not care. It was as though she had reached a fabled place, a haven, after a long and difficult journey.

  She had only to step forward to enter it. She had only to believe.

  Ampris hesitated no longer. Although a corner of her mind was certain that if she walked toward this vision she would be shot by the patrollers, she stepped forward anyway.

  In her vision, her body was no longer hunched and twisted by injury. Her leg no longer dragged with every step. She felt young and strong again. She walked slowly and steadily toward the meadow stretching before her.

  Now she could hear sounds, faint at first, but growing steadily louder: the sigh of wind through the swaying treetops, the sleepy chirp of birds, the rustle of a small night predator stalking its rodent prey in the grass, the rushing gurgle of a stream of water.

  She wanted to bathe in that water and be clean again. She wanted to drink that water.

  Ampris closed her mind to all fear and thoughts of reality, and kept walking.

  If she bumped into anyone she did not feel it. The illusion grew more real with every passing second. She could feel the grass now beneath her feet, soft and pliant, not stiff and crackling from drought. The breeze ruffled her fur, and she raised her nostrils to it, inhaling with pleasure. She had forgotten how pure and clean air could be.

  She walked all the way across the long, long meadow. No one came after her. No one shouted at her. No one shot her.

  When she reached the stream and knelt at its edge, Ampris dipped her glowing hands into the freezing water. “This is real,” she said in wonder, then drank.

  The first swallow was pure and delicious, sliding icy cold down her throat.

  Then, without warning, the meadow and stream vanished. Jolted by the abrupt transition back to reality, Ampris found herself lying in a street gutter in some deserted quarter of Vir that she did not recognize. The white aura surrounding her was gone, and her Eye of Clarity hung around her neck as lifeless as usual. The gutter beneath her was dry. The air was thick with pollution, and the street smelled of uncollected garbage, dust, Skek droppings, and transport exhaust. It was still dark, but she sensed that it must be close to dawn. The sky had begun to show streaks of gray that told her the sun would soon be rising.

  For now, the street was silent and deserted, but when traffic commenced, she knew, she must not be found here.

  Ampris pushed herself to her knees. She was weak and flushed with fever that made her pant. Dizziness made her hold on to the curb to steady herself. The vision had all seemed so real, as though she had actually journeyed to another place. Yet she was here, in Vir, she told herself. She had to be hallucinating.

  But what kind of hallucination had gotten her out of the prison? She was far from the patrollers. What force had possessed her and protected her? Did she really just walk out of there, unseen and unnoticed? It seemed impossible to believe, and yet something had happened.

  Ampris clutched the Eye of Clarity with a shaking hand. She knew she was on the edge of a great discovery, but she found herself unwilling to believe that it could be so simple. After all these years of trying to unlock the mystery of the Eye of Clarity, perhaps she had been going at it all wrong.

  Perhaps all she had to do was listen, believe, and accept.

  She leaned forward to grasp the curb with both hands, but she could not pull herself to her feet. She tried once more, and found herself racked with pain. Dizziness assaulted her again, and she whimpered softly. She knew she had to find a hiding place or she would be picked up by a sniffer programmed to find vagrants. You were allowed to starve to death in Vir, but you weren’t allowed to lie in its gutters.

  But another effort to move brought collapse instead. She felt herself falling, but the jolt of impact with the pavement seemed far away and not very painful. Ampris sank deep into darkness.

  CHAPTER•SEVENTEEN

  Ampris dreamed that she was in a skimmer, flying high over Vir. The great city lay deserted and empty—except in the vast plaza at the end of the Avenue of Triumph. There, surrounded by bronze statues of great kaas, lay piles of Viis corpses, twisted in rigor, their skin frosted an eerie white.

  “The Dancing Death,” she whispered. “The Dancing Death.”

  “Ampris,” a voice said to her. “Ampris, wake up. You must come back to us now. You have slept long enough.”

  The voice continued, pulling her attention away from the sight before her. After a while, the city faded and she could no longer see anything. She floated in her skimmer, flying blind, and then she lost the skimmer too and was only floating, like a leaf in a pond, floating to the surface, to light and the blur of anxious faces hanging over her.

  She blinked slowly, hazily, and wondered who they were.

  “
Mother?” A strong hand gripped hers, crushing her fingers too hard. “Mother, do you know me?”

  The face that went with the voice would not come into focus. But Ampris inhaled his scent, and knew him. “Foloth,” she whispered.

  Her hand was released, and suddenly there was much noise and movement.

  “She knows me!” Foloth said in jubilation. “She knows me!”

  “Let me try,” said someone else. Again her hand was gripped, this time not so tightly. “Mother, do you know who I am?”

  It was a game, she realized. A guessing game, but she felt too tired to play it.

  “Mother, please!”

  She found herself being shaken and opened her eyes again. She knew Nashmarl’s voice and tried to smile at him. But another shadow came and took Nashmarl away.

  “Don’t bother her,” the new voice said to her son. “She’s very weak. She must rest.”

  “She didn’t know you,” Foloth said, boasting and mocking at the same time. “She knew me, but not you.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Hush, both of you,” said the third voice. “Give her time. She has to rest now.”

  Of course I know Nashmarl, Ampris thought drowsily, sinking back into the eddies of darkness.

  When she awakened next, it was very quiet except for the sound of low humming. Ampris opened her eyes and turned her head toward the sound.

  At once it stopped, and a shadow came to hover above her. “How you feeling?”

  She sniffed for scent and recognized this individual. A rush of affection swept through her, making her smile, while her mind groped for a name.

  “Come on, Goldie,” the voice said pleadingly. “Stay awake a little while this time. You need to come back to us, see?”

  “Elrabin,” she murmured.

  “That’s right.” He rubbed her gently between her ears. “How you feeling?”

  “Soft,” she answered.

  “Oh? Uh, sure. You feel soft. I guess that’s good. No pain?”

  “No.”

  He patted her hand. “That’s the way we want it. You going to heal up just fine, see? Jobul’s a medic, or at least an orderly, but he knows what to do. For a Myal, he’s not bad.”

  She blinked, and found that things were slowly coming into focus. It was as though she had been looking at white light for so long, seeing things no one should, and had somehow ruined her vision. But it was coming back now.

  Relieved, she gazed up at Elrabin’s face and saw his quirky, sly smile and the mischief that always lurked in his eyes. “Hello, old friend,” she said.

  He bent over her and gave her face a quick lick. “Hello, yourself. You want some broth?”

  “No.”

  “Sure you do. Got to get your strength back, Goldie. Can’t lie there forever.”

  She smiled and let her eyes fall shut. “You don’t eat in dreams.”

  “Maybe not.” He came back with a small chipped bowl and a spoon that he let clatter against the rim. “But this be real life, and you got to eat something, even if it’s just one swallow.”

  She smiled at him. “You’re a dream.”

  His tall ears swiveled back and he grunted a little as he lifted her gently and propped something behind her. “That hurt you any?”

  “No.”

  He sighed in relief and picked up the bowl. “Now open wide. Just one swallow, and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “I’m tired.”

  “Come on. Open the gnashers for me. Just once, okay?”

  She had to smile at him, and when she did he pressed the bowl of the spoon to her mouth. Some of the broth trickled across her tongue. It was tepid, but tasted surprisingly good. She swallowed and watched him scoop another spoonful. This time she took it willingly.

  “Hey, you be hungrier than you thought, see?” he said with satisfaction, feeding her as fast as she would take it.

  “It’s good,” she said.

  Her gaze wandered about the modest surroundings in curiosity. They seemed to be in a one-room structure constructed of mud bricks with a low ceiling assembled from an assortment of scavenged building materials. Besides her cot, there were two others lining the wall, plus a mismatched collection of crudely made stools, a sleek chair of Viis design, and a rickety table. A burner supported by bricks and a pail of water in another corner seemed to make up the kitchen.

  “What is this place?” she asked in wonder. “Where are the archivists, the brothers? And what are you doing here? If I am not dreaming you, then how did you get here? How did I get here? How did all this come about?”

  “Hey, slow down,” he said, putting away the emptied bowl. “Guess you be feeling better if you can fire off questions.”

  “I was in prison,” she said, trying to remember. “I was being loaded into a transport for execution.”

  Elrabin suddenly looked very grim. “Heading off for the death camps.”

  “Yes.”

  “When we got into the city,” he said, “it took us a while to get our bearings. My old contacts be mostly long gone, see? But I finally dug up some folk that knew what was what. That’s when we found out you’d been arrested by the Bureau.”

  She shivered, feeling a wave of weakness pass through her.

  “Hey,” he said softly, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Maybe I better let you lie back again.”

  “No,” she said. “Go on. My friends, the archivists. Did the Bureau get them too?”

  “No, they got shook up good by the patrollers. Some of ’em got sold somewhere for hard labor. Supposed to be executed, but you know how corrupt the patrollers are—they’ll sell anyone they can get their hands on and take a juicy kickback from the slavers to boot. A dry old stick named Quiesl’s still around though. And someone named, uh, Non?”

  She closed her eyes, grateful for Quiesl and Non’s survival, already grieving for the fate of the others.

  “I didn’t know what to do when I found out you’d been arrested,” Elrabin admitted, swiveling back his ears. “Been worried sick about you, knowing what you were going through at the hands of those—”

  He stopped, and stood silent, his eyes dark and murderous.

  “My sons,” she prompted him. “I dreamed I saw my sons.”

  “Yeah, they be here,” he said with a blink. “We all came.”

  “I was afraid you would.”

  “Couldn’t be helped, Goldie. Course now that they’re here, they ain’t so happy about it. Velia’s afraid of her own shadow. Tantha hates the place. Luax would howl if she knew how. She says the Rejects here live worse than the abiru workers.” He grinned. “Even sour old Frenshala’s done lost her zeal for seeing the big city. Some folk just got to learn the hard way.”

  “I wish they had not come. I wish Foloth and Nashmarl were safe.”

  “Goldie, you could tie those two cubs to a tree and they still wouldn’t be safe.”

  “Have they been much trouble?” she asked, knowing from his expression that they had. “I am sorry.”

  He squeezed her hand. “You ain’t sorry for nothing. In a few days you’ll be up and around, putting me in charge of them again. I know you.”

  She smiled, feeling very tired now. “But what is this place?”

  “This be Jobul’s home,” Elrabin said. “Nice, ain’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “He does all right for a Myal. Gets paid a better wage than usual, and he grows a garden on his roof, so he ain’t spending all his credits on Quixlix—not that it’s safe to eat that stuff these days. He found you, Goldie. You were unconscious in the street. He recognized you from some vidcast being spread around and brought you here. Then he notified the underground, and by then we’d linked up with them and we all ended up here.”

  Backing her ears, she thought over what he said, trying to remember.

  “You know how you got away?” he asked softly. “You must have put up one heroic fight.”

  “No,” she said and reached for her Eye of Clarity. Her han
ds were still unsteady, and he helped fit the stone into the curl of her palm. “The Eye saved me.”

  His ears pricked forward and skepticism filled his eyes. “Don’t go softheaded on me now. Ain’t no—”

  “It did. I had a vision. I saw Ruu-one-one-three,” she said. “Oh, Elrabin, it is so beautiful and unspoiled. That is where we must take the abiru people when we are free. It is perfect for us. We can start over. We can make a wonderful place for—”

  “Sure,” he said softly but without a gram of belief in his voice. “Sure we can. Someday. You better rest now.”

  “No, I have to tell you this. We have to get busy.”

  “No busy for you,” he said firmly, tucking the blanket tight around her. “You got to rest.”

  “Elrabin,” she said, and her tone made him stop fussing with the tattered blanket and look at her. “The Eye took me there. When I walked into its vision, I left the Bureau of Security. I don’t know how it worked, but it did. Maybe the patrollers couldn’t see me while I was in the light of the Eye, but I believe that what I saw was real. I smelled the air and grass. I drank the water. It’s not as though I imagined it. I was really there, as though somehow the Eye transported me through time and space. I was in the prison courtyard, and then I wasn’t. I can’t explain it.”

  His eyes were troubled. He patted her hand. “Okay, Goldie. You got out of there somehow, even if no one ever gets away from the Bureau. They weren’t much to talk about when I was a lit running around these streets, but things be different now. The folk say the Bureau has grown as powerful as the Kaa. I figured you were gone for good.”

  She curled her fingers around his. “I know how we can defeat the Viis.”

  “Hey, now. Wait right there,” he said in alarm. “Don’t you start working yourself into nothing like that. We can’t fight the Viis, Goldie. When you get to feeling better, you going to remember that. We got no weapons, and we ain’t likely to get any.”