The Admiral-East-Prime landed on his side, wing at an odd angle, and it had taken the Emperor a single move to throw him: a single move through which he'd been dragon, Seersa, human. He hadn't even needed the Eldritch shape. Standing loosely behind the downed male, he waited, stretching dark wings. That first gasp that had rippled through the watchers had died quickly; he'd never heard such stillness in such a crowd.
His opponent pushed himself from the ground and stared at him, breathing too hard for the severity of his fall. The whites were showing around the bottom of his eyes.
"Again?" the Emperor said politely.
"You didn't end it."
"I will," the Emperor promised. "But not yet."
The male jerked his head upright. "I will not be toyed with."
"This is not a game," the Emperor agreed. "And we are not done. Or are you?"
"I do not yield!"
"Then," the Emperor said, "We continue."
The male snarled and rushed him, and the Emperor dove for him with a laugh. He faced a male wielding only one weapon, and an old and familiar one, while he... he was armed with so many. Not just with the shapes, but with the styles of fighting they suggested, and the ways of thinking they required. Nothing this male could do to him required the effort staying in play against the Ambassador and his terrifying mind powers had.
He faced the Chatcaavan mind, containing multitudes.
Once again, the Admiral-East-Prime hit the ground with a grunt, the dirt puffing around his body. This time the Emperor followed him down, dissolving out of the Chatcaavan shape into the Seersan one, for the lower center of gravity and the weight it concentrated. Sitting on his opponent this way felt far more final. "Done?"
"What are you!" the Admiral-East-Prime exclaimed, panting.
"You tell me."
"Freak!"
The Emperor pressed a hand against the male's back and sprang the Seersan claws. He leaned into them. "Guess again."
"No, no!" the male cried. "Not an insult! Descriptive! You are one of the freaks! I have seen them!"
"Still wrong," the Emperor said.
"I don't know what you want me to say!"
"Then we continue." The Emperor rolled off him and onto his digitigrade feet, flexing them so that the claws showed at his toe-tips. "Up."
Wild-eyed, the Admiral-East-Prime rose, and again, they engaged. The male made the mistake of trying a grapple; the Emperor went Eldritch, too thin for the hold, and fell out of it, and once again, the Admiral-East-Prime wound up on the ground.
"Is there no one who can fight me and win?" the Emperor asked. "No volunteers?" No one stepped forth, not even from the knot of challengers who'd been waiting their turn. "Perhaps I'll even the odds. All of you who doubt me... against me... at once."
"It's beautiful," Andrea said softly.
"It's madness!" the Knife said.
Lisinthir chuckled. "Nothing of the sort."
"Are they even going to accept this as a fair fight?" Laniis asked. "He's... he's cheating, isn't he?"
"It's not cheating if they're handicapping themselves," Na'er said, grudgingly. "Every one of those bastards could do what he's doing. They've just never tried."
"But isn't it... some kind of religious thing? Doing something unclean?" Shanelle glanced at the Knife. "Becoming one of us is disgusting to you, isn't it?"
"Not to all of us," the Knife answered, eyes shining. He grinned. "And there's no debating its effectiveness. Besides..." He turned his gaze back to the broadcast. "Andrea is correct. It's beautiful."
"I think it's unnatural," Na'er muttered. "He's using us to secure his victory."
"We're going to use him to secure our safety," Meryl said. "Seems like a fair trade to me."
"If it works."
"Granted," Meryl said. "But somehow I doubt he's going to fail. But here, we're talking over him. What did he just say?"
"He's going to take them all on at once." The Knife's wings sagged. "He'll die!"
"At last," Lisinthir said. "Something that might inspire effort on his part." When they all glanced at him with varying expressions of incredulity, he said, blandly, "'Might.'"
"Such a thing isn't done," the base administrator said from the edge of the field. "It impugns the honor of the challenger. It suggests he needs help."
The Emperor answered, "He has fought honorably. He may retire, if he yields."
"I do not!" the Admiral-East-Prime protested. He rose, wincing, one leg unsteady. But there was pride in his gritted teeth. "But you... you are..."
"Yes?" the Emperor asked.
"You are Changing!"
"Yes," the Emperor answered. He was wearing the Chatcaavan shape again, as it seemed the most likely to induce his opponents to take up his new challenge. "It is our birthright."
"No one Changes," the Admiral-East-Prime said.
"Incorrect," the Emperor said. "I do."
A fraught silence.
"I will fight with you, Admiral-East-Prime," came a voice. Another male stepped onto the field, younger, body lean and scarred. Someone of sufficient rank to have earned those scars, but still new enough, apparently, to flex with the wind.
"It is not done!" the base administrator said, wings tightening against his back.
"The Change was not done either, and yet it is being done," this new male said. "The Change is said to be pollution. Something that weakens us. But I do not see weakness... yet."
"Yet," the Emperor said, hiding his pleasure.
"It must be tested," this new male said. "And you have offered."
"I have," the Emperor agreed. "Who among your peers will join you in that test?"
The male turned to the others by the risers. "Let us put paid to this irregularity. Then we can use the dueling to choose our own successor, as we have always done."
A rustle of unease. Then another male walked onto the field, and another. They kept coming until only two remained behind, unwilling to join their fellows. Only thirteen males, though. The Emperor thought of the simulated crowds he'd fought and inhaled, welcoming the surging of his blood. To finally test himself against flesh and blood...!
"Too many?" the new male asked, wary.
"Not enough," the Emperor said. Grinned.
"Ridiculous," the Admiral-East-Prime said. "Hubris."
"Try me and see."
The Admiral-East-Prime glanced at the base administrator and snarled, "Do it."
Grimacing, the base administrator retreated from the field, leaving the Emperor and his opponents. They spread out, englobed him. Several of them were already opening their wings, suggesting they intended to attack from above. He flexed his talons, rolled forward onto the balls of his feet. Every nerve sang, and in every muscle was another set of muscles, eager for release. He was Chatcaavan, and he was Change.
The siren rang out.
"He's going to die!" Laniis squeaked, and covered her mouth.
Lisinthir rested a hand on her shoulder, surprising her into silence, and into that silence, the Emperor lunged, and thirteen foes dove for him, and none of them could trammel him.
The Knife stood before the center of the display, wings slack and eyes wide. Lisinthir had seen less awe in cathedrals.
This fight... this fight was joy. He used every shape he knew, including the Eldritch-the Eldritch most of all, in fleeting moments between Seersa and human, for the flashes of insight he derived from the constant touch of his opponents. What use their attacks when he read their intentions moments before execution? He could have stayed out of their range, but didn't for the pleasure of wrestling them, sliding out of their grips, fouling them with the unexpected weight, reach, or defense of each body. And the more he Changed, the more he felt the lodestone truth of it: that he was not his flesh. He was some Perfect thing that animated it, and existed independently of its shape.
From that truth, it was a short distance to the truth that this Perfect thing existed in all bodies, no matter their shapes... and that truth would tran
sform his Empire.
He tried to make it last, but it ended too quickly. He was standing in the center, and all around him they had fallen, and the entire auditorium was on its feet.
Wearing the Chatcaavan form again, the Emperor said, calmly, "What am I?"
The male who'd joined the Admiral-East-Prime gurgled around the throat the Emperor had wrung. He cleared it several times, croaked something, let his head fall back down. It was the Admiral-East-Prime, nursing a broken arm, who said, "You are the victor."
"What else?"
"Our Apex-Navy."
"And?"
The Admiral-East-Prime lifted his head. "You are our Emperor."
"Now," the Emperor said, "we are done."
Silence still, though all the males in the auditorium remained on their feet. Stunned, from the faces he could see. Confused. Uncertain. Some angry. Change came hard: he knew that best of all. He did not begrudge them their tumult. Instead, he spoke.
"The last Navy male I killed was Second-who-was," the Emperor told them, slowly turning his head to meet as many eyes as he could. "My most staunch supporter, who challenged me out of the belief that I had become too weak to rule. I said then, ‘defy me and die,' and a good male spilled his life on the dueling field on the throneworld as proof."
He walked to the first of his opponents and offered that male a hand up. He received a stare, and after a heartbeat, that hand. After he'd helped him up, he moved to the next, continuing to speak. "I regret that choice. Second-who-was... his death was a waste. I miss his counsel and the surety of his presence at my flank, warding me."
This silence was stunned. To admit to a mistake? To proclaim that the honor killings were sometimes wrong? If his Changing had not seized their attention, this surely would have. Did. Was this how the Ambassador felt, mesmerizing with words until his audience fell under his sway? Had his Perfection ever addressed so large a throng, held it spellbound? Truly there were powers beyond the ones he had been raised to worship. He drew in their enraptured attention like tea-wine, and his confidence informed every word-yes, and his experiences as well, piercing sharp.
"But that was the world that was, and living in it we could have done nothing else. Nothing better. We were trapped, as surely as the wingless, as bound to our ways of being and thinking as they are to the ground-but less free, because we were unaware of our chains."
He spread his wings to their fullest and cried, "No more! The Change has come to us at last!" Stepping outward, he became Eldritch. The next step, human. Seersa. Chatcaavan again. A full circle, every shape he knew, pacing through them until he stood again the dragon. "We have been struck at the heart and now we are riven by our rivalries, ancient and senseless. The war with the aliens is nothing to the war we now face against ourselves. And if we are to survive it, we must embrace the innermost truth of our race, and adapt to the universe in which we now live.
"The Change is calling, and no male will embrace it without hardship or misgivings. But without it, we will fail. Our empire will fail. And all that we hold sacred will fail with it."
His voice rose. "Change does not bring weakness. Only the strong will survive it. You-you are the strong. And I am your Emperor. Follow me, and we will thrive. Defy me, and you will not need my talons: you will be your own executioner, and you will die alone, left behind by the peers who have chosen the sky."
He swept the auditorium with his eyes. "Choose wisely. I depart in a week."
"What is he?" Deputy-East whispered, staring at the lone figure standing in the center of the dueling circle: standing there and commanding the entire auditorium with his voice and presence alone.
"Your ears are going, are they?" the Worldlord said, voice absent. "You heard the fallen. He is our Emperor."
Deputy-East glanced at him. "Even after all he's been through with us...."
"Especially," the Worldlord said, "after all he's been through with us. Come, Deputy-East. Let us meet our master."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Another harpist. Another interminable party, during which her mother foisted her on this squirming youth or that, predating on the available male population like one of the basilisks out of Eldritch legend. Sediryl winced as the newest unfortunate found himself shoved in front of her (why did it hurt, moving? Was her corset too tight?). She would have to choose soon, if only to put the eligible pool of males out of their misery (but she'd already chosen... hadn't she?). But this one was stuck with her now, and they would have to dance, if only the harpist would stop repeating that one... high... note....
Sediryl jerked awake to the sound of overheated metal pinging, and hissed as the movement aggravated some injury in her side. She tried a cautious breath, and was relieved when she could expand her chest fully. It hurt, though, worse than anything she'd known; she lost time, just... experiencing it, the vastness of it. Even her bones ached in their joints.
Something spurred her from that fugue, a need to be moving, to prepare, to know. Blinking the crust from her eyes, she scanned the battered bridge of Liolesa's ship and groaned. The entire vessel was listing to one side, and she smelled blood and worse things. But she was awake, and no one else seemed to be, so she unbelted her restraints and forced herself to an unsteady crouch. She was lightheaded with pain but she didn't seem mortally injured, and the blood on her face was dry. Exploring her scalp, she found a new and larger cut above the dent she'd given herself earlier, but it had crusted over.
The Visionary's bridge remained lit, but the air was rank. Climbing over her chair, she found Vasiht'h's crumpled body and hastened to check for a pulse: thank the Goddess, beating strong. She explored the length of his body and grimaced at the crumpled wing, but other than that he seemed hale enough.
The same could not be said for Lodii, Just Lodii, who had guided them to this safe haven only to die in her chair. Sediryl stared at the Faulfenzair's limp tail and empty gaze and started shaking. How many of these Faulfenza had she seen to their deaths?
Twitching her head in negation, she forced herself upright. Too many, which meant she had to save the rest.
Exploring the remainder of the ship, Sediryl found the other Faulfenza in varying states of injury. Most of them had weathered the crash better than she'd hoped. Only two had suffered severe wounds, which is how she discovered the ship was functional, if crippled: it woke at her request and guided her through first aid procedures before reporting its own damage. The Visionary would need repairs, but the ship would fly again, granted them. If she could find anyone to fix it.
One problem at a time.
The Chatcaavan Queen, mercifully, had suffered no further insult. Sediryl left her shifting restlessly on the couch to which she'd been strapped, still fevered.
That left only the very large matter of where they were. Sediryl went to the hatch and tried unlocking it, an act that left her panting around her injured ribs. The door unlatched, which the ship should have prevented had the atmosphere outside been inimical. Still, she waited for an alarm, sweating, leaning against the cold metal. Only when it failed to sound did she shove the door open onto the Vault of the Twelveworld... and found her face turned into a freshening breeze, rife with the perfume of trees and dewed with the weight of fresh water. Licking her lips, she stepped outside, steadying herself with a hand on the bulkhead. The soil gave beneath her slippered feet, and the wind returned to tug at the hem of her robe, sift her sweat-clumped hair. They'd landed in a forest: deciduous, she thought, and temperate with frequent precipitation if she read the signs correctly. There was little underbrush, which had contributed to the roughness of their landing, but they'd come down near a clearing where the shift in the silhouettes suggested different trees. Probably a watercourse, which was fortunate.
What wasn't fortunate was the density of the surrounding trees. She turned in place and winced at the trail of damage they'd left in the wake of their landing.
"Might as well have left a map pointing at us," came a hoarse voice behind her.
&n
bsp; Sediryl glanced over her shoulder as Qora slid out of the hatch, favoring one leg as he hobbled over to her.
"It won't be long before someone finds us," she agreed. "But maybe that's for the best. Unless someone on board can repair the ship?"
Qora's lips pulled back from his teeth. "Don't think it would matter without the spare parts, or the energy to manufacture them from prints."
"Then we're going to have to get help," Sediryl said.
"From Chatcaava," Qora said, sardonic.
"Better them than pirates," Sediryl said. "We have the Queen with us. We'll have to hope their loyalties lie with her rather than the usurper who sold her."
Qora looked at her. "You are taking this calmly."
Sediryl considered that. Was she? She was exhausted and in pain, but she was alive, and no longer pretending to a role she'd abhorred. "This situation, I can handle."
The Faulfenzair surprised her by chuckling, and gently. "Have news for you, Eldritch princess. You also handled the last situation."
She sighed. "Don't remind me."
"We are alive, aren't we?"
"Some of us."
Qora nodded, surprising her with the Pelted gesture. "Better than none of us. And you brought the pirates to the Chatcaava, and the Chatcaava have come to kill them, just as required. You have done what you promised. Yes?"
"And killed a lot of people on the way-"
The Faulfenzair growled. "People die in war, Eldritch princess. People also die from stupid accidents, and horrible diseases, and old age. Do we prefer to die young? Of course not. But Faulza willing, our deaths have meaning. This... death while escaping tyranny, and preventing more loss?" He lifted his head. "Better that, than many, many alternatives."
"I don't want anyone to die," Sediryl whispered.
"Many disappointments you'll have in life, then," Qora said dryly.
The comment, so similar to the one she'd hurled at Crispin, jarred her from her reverie. She glanced at him and couldn't help a smile. "All right. I get the message. No more whining."
From Ruins Page 17