“Is that true?” the kitten asked. “Do you really know how she fared?”
Spacebread glared. “I know I had to go into space while still a kitten because she couldn’t feed me. She would have sent for me if things had gotten better. Her faith brought her nothing.”
“But the Flame burns from within.” The small guardian shook its head. “Don’t you remember what she told you? Why did you come here without believing?”
She shrugged. “A hope. My last hope to see Klimmit live. I tried everything else within my power.
Everything. I’ve never failed so miserably before, not since I had to leave home, not since I grew up. I—I never thought I would need to ask for help for anything.”
“But do you ask for your sake—or your friend’s sake?”
“For both,” she said, her eyes pleading. “Please. Help us.”
The kitten sighed, and it seemed to be a deeper and wiser sigh than should come from one so young. “The Flame can open to you. It can happen, as it happened often in the days before Osghan fell. But there must be a sacrifice. You must give up the possession that you treasure most, as fuel for the Flame. Only then can you see it and help your friend.”
Spacebread’s hope suddenly flickered again. She paused a moment, then drew her sword.
“This is a Thorian sword. It’s value is great, but it means more to me than that. I won it once, long ago, in a battle. It was presented to me as prize. I suppose it represents my honor to me. But I will give it in exchange for Klimmit’s life.”
She bowed her head and held out the gleaming blade. Her arms were stiff with sacrifice.
But the kitten laughed, kindly. “No, I mean your most valued possession. To see the Flame and help your friend, you must give up what you cling most firmly to.”
Spacebread stared hollowly, uncomprehending.
“Your life, Spacebread. To see the Flame, you must lose it.”
For a moment, she couldn’t move. First anger rose within her at the Guardian’s words, then a sinking feeling of frustration. She gazed at Klimmit. Resignation crept over her. She had not known she loved him so. To win this last struggle, then, she would have to pay the final price. Her life for Klimmit’s. Suddenly, there seemed no sadness in it, no loss, but an exchange.
She sheathed her sword again. “What do I do?”
The white kitten smiled. “You alone can bring the Flame for this purpose. It burns within you. You already know how to call it and with what eyes to see it, though you have hidden it from yourself as all people do. Remember your mother’s words, what she taught you in those long nursery hours. Remember what the song means.”
Spacebread steeled herself and turned within. She opened the locked chamber where she kept her childhood and heard her mother’s song again, as if from a great distance. Love was in the words, and a perfect faith. Slowly she remembered the teaching, remembered how she, too, had once believed that there was a Flame within her that was greater than all things. It had been a simple child’s belief. And it had been crushed by the need to leave home and the discovery that the Flame could only help her face what must come in growing up, not conquer it for her. That was the pain, the shattering of belief, the bitterness of having to grow up too fast.
“Before that,” the kitten urged. “Before the words. See as you saw. Understand. Remember the river.”
Without asking how her memories were known, she closed her eyes. The river. A memory older than any other. It was a canal, where her mother took her walking, a wonderful place. The swirls and patterns of the water were direct shapes of light, living things that did not make the slurping and sloshing noises, but were a part of them. The river was a thing that poured into her eyes. It was a light. It burned without burning.
“That’s it!” the kitten’s voice said. But now the words seemed not to echo in the room, but inside Spacebread. “As a child, you saw with pure eyes. The Flame wears our universe like a garment, but you can see beyond the veil if you look with the eyes of your heart. Look beyond the physical by believing you can, beyond the skin of things to the heart of the matter, where the power that spins atoms burns.”
Spacebread tried, wrinkling her brow. The veil held, the universe would not show its face.
“The poison inside Klimmit is only atoms,” the Guardian continued. “The Flame can rearrange them into other patterns, if you will only believe. See as you saw once, ‘Bread. See with your heart!”
She stopped trying and believed in the Flame.
Her eyes opened. For the briefest second she saw only the wall where the Guardian had been. Then she dropped her belief in walls, her belief that she knew what was what. Reality split. Behind the wall was another reality, behind the wall and behind the coffer and behind her and Klimmit too. A Flame burned inside everything, giving life.
The vision took her, dissolving her, destroying everything she had ever believed in in a tiny moment of intensity. In that moment her power to believe in Spacebread’s separate tiny life vanished as the kitten had done. All that she had known before perished.
There was no Spacebread, only her vision.
The Flame was everywhere, bright. A white angel, her arm, reached out and fluttered across Klimmit’s burning face. She saw the Flame dance down her arm. She saw it spin. It went deep within the frozen figlet’s form and spun there, then turned outward, lacing a pure fire through his system that consumed the poison, reconstructing his life.
Spacebread returned to herself, reborn. The room returned to itself; the wall became a wall again, as if the Flame had once more donned its normal cloak. All was as it had been before, except that Klimmit. now lay in a pool of ashes where the coffer had been.
It had happened.
She leaned against the rough altar. “Now I know,” she whispered to herself. “The Guardian was me, the kitten within me who had to learn so long ago not to see the Flame in order to survive in the world. It was my pure self that I had forgotten. This room must focus the image of the child within to create a Guardian for each person. And it told the truth. I had to give up all the old beliefs about myself. I have died. That other Spacebread is no more. I have become a Spacebread new in the world. The kitten within me has been reborn.”
She knew then, too, that it was her love that had truly healed Klimmit, in the way of all miracles. Her love had loosed the Flame.
Varnish crinkled as Klimmit sat up. He blinked. “Where did everybody go? What happened?”
She could not hold back her tears. She grabbed him in a tight, fond embrace, but he wriggled away, embarrassed and confused.
“Is Niral all right?” he asked. “They were shooting at him, weren’t they? Where are we, anyway? Where are the drones?”
She did not think she could speak. Wiping the moistness from her face, she tried to come to her newborn senses. She fumbled in her Foldover bag and found a cryo-pistol, then handed it to the puzzled figlet.
“I’ll explain all that has happened later,” she said. “Now we have to help Niral and Dundee. They’re back there holding off Quan and his drones while … while I gave you the antidote. Your Uncle Gorsook is dead, Klimmit. He died buying us time, too.”
Klimmit looked up from checking over his pistol. His small Warrior’s features hardened, the pain of his ordeal now showing. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s avenge him.”
[15]
The Last Accounting
NO GUIDE-LIGHT led them from the chamber, as though the forces at work there were telling them they were on their own. The torch in Klimmit’s helmet rim was switched on to light the way. His body was so purified he did not notice the absence of a filter helmet. Nor did he notice the way Spacebread moved, with a reborn sureness and poise she had not worn in many years, not even at the Festival. They sped on through the darkness like a force of nature.
The noise of battle, which had been lost in the time-maze, grew louder. Shrieks sounded amid occasional gunshots, but they were drone’s shrieks. And a now familiar voi
ce boomed out commandingly, stridently: Quan’s.
As they neared the fight, a dark figure spun in the doorway to face them. They ducked. But something made Spacebread hold her fire.
“Dundee!”
“Welcome back!” the calico cat called as though nothing had happened to him. “Why, you’ve done it. Hurrah! The figlet is well. Come help then, there’s plenty for shooting!”
She looked down as she flattened herself on the other side of the doorway. Where his lower leg had once been, Dundee now wore the tusk of an adult Margh drone strapped to his stump with a belt. He noticed her stare and grinned.
“No pain at all, once the shock was over. Clean disintegration. Caught one of the buggers and borrowed a new leg.”
A shot zinged off the lintel above Dundee’s head, he leaned around and repaid it. Spacebread could not get a clear shot. She knelt behind the fallen column to take stock of the situation, pulling Klimmit with her protectively.
Niral hovered as before in the entrance of the chamber beyond, blocking most of the fire with his body. Groups of drones huddled behind fallen pillars in the long hall, trading shots with Dundee when they could. Each time a drone lunged from the darkness, Niral turned to face him and he was lifted and thrown, shrieking, by Ability. And, in the center of the hall, Korliss Quan hung suspended like a dark storm cloud. He called in a loud but calm voice for Niral to quit opposing them. Occasionally he hurled chunks of stone, which tumbled from the embattled walls, toward Niral, to wear down his energy. But the younger Korliss held firm.
Spacebread drew a tight bead on Quan’s forehead and fired. The shot exploded in a shower of sparks before reaching him.
“It’s no use, I’ve tried,” Dundee warned. “It’s his force, it protects him. Looks like a standoff.”
Just then Spacebread saw something that turned her cold blood hot. For there, projecting from a collapsed column’s edge, was a bit of blue fabric. It was too familiar. Of course. She had been too distracted to realize it before. It was a Yesturian cloak. The same one that, bundled against the cool of non-desert planets, she had seen in an alley on Kiloo and fleeing Klimmit’s assassination on Kesterole. The same blue robe that could be worn on Yesturian without attracting attention, so that its wearer could give Spacebread what she needed to find Osghan. The merchant with the glittering eyes had been in Quan’s pay all along, his servant since Kiloo.
A pure, reborn anger took her. She threw herself over the column firing, and heard Klimmit’s hum right beside her. Her sword drawn to deflect shots, she paused at the first barrier. Her pistol blazed, dissolving the top of the cover that protected most of the remaining drones, while Klimmit whipped to the rear and caught them in a hail of cryo-fire. Before she could be cut down by a second group of drones, hiding in the place where the Yesturian lay, Dundee hobbled into the fray.
“Take that, y’bugs, for my leg!” He fired past Quan in a blinding, furious spray.
“Leave the blue one for me!” Spacebread yelled, as they all three charged.
Two went down in freezing figlet style. Dundee got another as he charged, but was tackled by a fourth and grappled desperately with the creature’s tusks. The Yesturian stood up to finish Dundee off, aiming carefully. But a Thorian sword knocked his gun into a cloud of fragments. He spun, his glittering eyes wide with fear.
“I have a map for sale now,” Spacebread hissed. “A map to hell!” She bolstered her pistol and pointed her sword at his bundled chest.
Suddenly Quan hissed in anger; a sound like tree branches being stripped by the wind. His Ability exploded outwards, throwing all but Niral against the wall, and he moved forward deliberately into the chamber where his young foe awaited him. Ability clashed with Ability.
Spacebread recovered her senses in time to see the Yesturian pull a long glinting wire from his cloak.
A native Yesturian weapon, it ended in a bladed weight, wickedly mobile. The Yesturian lunged for her. Thorian steel slapped the thing aside: Spacebread spun and struck out underneath the wire. But her sword encountered only a tangle of robe.
Overhead the creature swung the whispering weapon, but Spacebread’s sword met it halfway to her skull, and it snarled around the blade instead. The Yesturian yanked, the wire bit into the blade, and the two were locked into a tugging, gasping contest of balance. Each stood rock firm, the wire taut between, wrestling with the other’s weight.
The Yesturian pulled down, then up when Spacebread reacted; but she was playing with him, and snatched his hands high. Her boot caught him beneath one arm. That hand tore away from the cord’s handle, but drew a dagger and now struck at her from another direction.
With all her strength Spacebread slung the blade around in a circle, with her its hub. Around too went the Yesturian, faster and faster until a stone twisted under his foot. He crashed into a bit of wall and lost all balance. His robe flapping as he tumbled, he slid in a wide arc into the farther wall. There the wire went slack.
The Yesturian moaned. He looked up. His hand no longer held the dagger. A dark pool was forming under him. His eyes held Spacebread incredulously for a moment, then fluttered shut.
Dundee was finished with his foe also. He limped up from the wreckage, trying to pull his tusk-leg from the thorax of the drone.
A surge of triumph raced through Spacebread, through her new heart and new soul. Not because of the Yesturian’s death, but because she had fought bravely and well.
A scream interrupted her thought. It was the scream of a creature that had lost more than a fight, the scream of a lifetime’s scheming lost in a moment. It was Quan’s voice.
Spacebread and Dundee turned, panting, into the lighted chamber where the two Korli had fought. Niral knelt before Quan’s fallen form. His eyes were closed, and he chanted slowly. The elder Korliss lay like a bundle of rags among the debris. One robed hand stretched across his face to hide whatever look of defeat was there.
Spacebread noticed Klimmit hovering beside Niral. She asked “Is he … ?”
“Not dead.” The figlet shook his head. “They fought terribly. I got here in time to see Quan’s last attack. He seemed to be tiring. He yelled that Niral had ruined all his plans, had ruined Marghool and the Korlann. He acted crazy. You should have seen his eyes. He said he would direct his Ability inside Niral and kill him, since he would not return and help Quan.” Klimmit shook his head in amazement, losing track of the words.
“Well?” Dundee urged. “What happened then?”
Klimmit shrugged. “I guess the only part of Quan that was still part of the Korlann was his Ability. And then that refused to obey him. At least that’s what it appeared to do. It seemed to turn on him when he tried to use it that way. He was thrown against the wall by the force.”
“He defeated himself,” Spacebread said grimly, remembering what Niral had said about the danger of using the Ability inside another’s body.
The chanting ended. Niral slowly opened his eyes and looked up, catching sight of the figlet alive and hearty.
“You found the Flame,” he said in wonder. The weariness in his voice could not disguise the tone of victory.
Spacebread looked from the restored figlet to the Korliss, who had found the strength at last to face his enemy, and felt the glow of something within her that also had been restored. She smiled.
“Yes,” she said. “We found the Flame.”
[16]
To Share the Stars
DUNDEE DULOWE loosened his scarlet cravat and leaned back to watch Spacebread climb onto the pedestal he occupied. He growled low in mingled annoyance and exhaustion and relief.
“I would not have gone through that, my love, if I had known aforehand how longwinded the bloody Korlann is.” He sighed. “I thought the ceremonies and rigmarole would never end.”
Spacebread settled into her side of the pedestal. She was gorgeous in a purple cape and lavender blouse. A dark blue beret, tilted slightly, gave her comment a rakish air. “Come now, surely you don’t receive a m
edal from an entire planet every day. That’s worth listening to a little preaching for, isn’t it?”
Klimmit gazed down proudly at his own golden medal, which hung from an extravagant yellow ribbon around his neck. “Well, I think it’s worth it. It would have been worth it just to see Niral receive the gratitude of the Korlann. I’m so happy they believed us.”
“Quan’s behavior helped,” Spacebread commented. “I’ve never seen such ravings. And from the look of them, neither had the Korlann. It’s a good thing we kept him drugged on the way back. He might have been dangerous in his insanity, crippled though he was.” She shuddered to recall the mad look in the Korliss’s eyes as he struggled against the crystal bars of the Korlann’s Ability-proof cage.
“It’s too bad they decided he was too crazy to punish, though,” piped Klimmit. “I would have enjoyed seeing him cast into the Great Vent. For Uncle Gorsook’s sake. But it’s just as well. Niral deserved to have all the attention today.”
A waiter appeared from the kitchen door and hurriedly scuttled to their pedestal. Spacebread still was not used to the sight of a friendly drone, and she watched him approach across the pavilion.
The drone bowed deeply. “You honor us greatly, felines. Please forgive us; the pavilion does not usually open this early. But all Marghool is talking of your exploits …” The drone’s voice tapered into an astonished silence as he caught sight of Dundee’s replacement foot, which had now been fitted surgically on his leg.
“We’ll have two ales and two orders of spiced rorqual steaks,” Spacebread said.
“And a bowl of C-18 nutrient, with a dash of nitrogen, please,” Klimmit added.
The three relaxed as the waiter wandered back to the kitchen, throwing a stunned glance or two over his shoulder.
Kiloo seemed very empty without the celebrating throngs of cats. Its sun was setting, and the chasm dividing Kindarh lurked in purple shadows. Marghool hung like a huge jeweled crescent above the horizon.
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