Empyrion II: The Siege of Dome

by Stephen Lawhead

  They walked again, feeling the warmth of the day and the pure rays of the sun on their faces. After a time Yarden nodded, saying, “I think I understand what you are saying: the artist practices her art for herself alone, but she performs as an expression of praise to the Infinite Father for the gift of her art—a gift she shares with her audience.”

  “Or with no audience at all.”

  “Yes, I see. The audience does not matter.”

  “Not to the performance, no. But if the audience is moved to praise the Infinite too, so much the better. Let praise increase! Of course, an artist is pleased when the audience is pleased. That is only natural. But, since she performs her art for herself and for the pleasure of the Infinite, the audience’s response or lack of it is of no concern.”

  “The only concern is how well she has performed.”

  “Yes, whether she has used her gift to her best abilities. If she has, what does it matter whether she had an audience or not, or what the audience thought about the performance?”

  Yarden understood, though she still thought anyone who could create such beauty as she had just witnessed ought to have more for their trouble than mute enjoyment, no matter how appreciative the crowd.

  They continued on in silence until they reached the nearest of the outflung wings of the Arts Center. “Do you wish to return to the paintings?” asked Ianni. They had been viewing Fieri commemorative artwork in the gallery before their stroll of the grounds and their encounter with the dancers. Yarden looked up at the imposing entrance to the gallery and hesitated. “Or we could come back another time.”

  “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “Not at all.” Ianni smiled. “One can only absorb so much.”

  “And I’ve absorbed all I can. Now I need time to think about what I’ve seen.” She took Ianni’s hand and squeezed it. “Wasn’t it beautiful though? I never imagined anything could be so perfect, so right, so expressive.”

  Ianni eyed her thoughtfully. “Perhaps you have an artist’s heart, Yarden. Would you like to learn?”

  Yarden shook her head sadly. “I could never dance like that.”

  “How do you know? Have you ever tried?”

  “No, but—” Yarden’s eyes grew wide with the possibility. “Do you think I should try?”

  “Only if it appeals to you.”

  “Oh, it does. You have no idea how much!”

  The place where they brought Treet was an underground complex carved into Empyrion’s bedrock, a cave with square-cut walls and passageways—the Cavern-level bastion of the Nilokerus. It was here that Hladik maintained the infamous reorientation cells: row upon row of stone cubicles, barely big enough for a person to stand upright or stretch out full-length. Each cell had independent heat and light controls so that one cell could be floodlit and heated to a swelter, while the one next to it was plunged into total darkness and bone-chilling cold, depending on the whim of the reorientation engineer.

  Treet was dragged roughly from the Archives vestibule, through an endless succession of corridors and galleries until he was handed over to the keepers of Cavern level. He had kept his mouth shut and answered none of his captors’ questions, since it was clear from the beginning that they had already decided what to do with him and anything he said would make no difference.

  From the conversation of the guards, he gathered they thought him a runaway—someone who had left his Hage to lose himself in Dome’s underground mazeworks, hoping perhaps to make contact with the Dhogs. They presumed he had sneaked into the Archives when they themselves had entered. It did not occur to them that he had been in the Archives all along. Neither did it occur to them that he might be a Fieri spy.

  For that he was grateful. At least they considered him no more important than the typical runaway, which meant that he might be released sooner or later if he kept up his part of the charade.

  “Your name?” asked the bored Nilokerus officer; glancing up from a green screen. He sat behind a large console and gazed at his prisoner with weary, watery eyes. The air in the caves was warm enough, but humid, and the stone was chill, making the atmosphere clammy and hard on the sinuses. “What is your name?”

  Treet thought fast and said the first thing that popped into his head, “Stone.” He tried to make his tone properly contrite, still hoping he could yet convince them it was some sort of mistake.

  “What were you doing in the Archives?” the officer asked, punching keys into the terminal before him.

  “I—ah …” Treet tried to come up with a plausible explanation. “I saw the doors open and I went in. I didn’t know it was—what did you call it?—the Archives.”

  The intake officer looked up. “Were there no guards to stop you?”

  “I suppose they didn’t see me.”

  The guard gave a snort of contempt—whether for Treet’s answer, or for the slackness of the guards on duty, Treet couldn’t tell. “Hage?”

  Treet said nothing. He was desperately thinking.

  “Your Hage? Answer quickly.”

  “Bolbe.” Treet blurted the name, and then gritted his teeth, hoping that he’d chosen a good cover.

  The officer punched a few more keys. “No Stohn in Bolbe,” he announced. “What is your Hagename?”

  Mind whirling frantically, Treet searched his memory for a name that might serve him now—a name he had heard in passing that could be documented. “Bela,” he said finally, with what he hoped was the right amount of resignation. Wasn’t Bela the name Yarden had told him was the name of her Chryse keeper?

  The officer shifted in his seat, tugging on his red-and-white yos as he punched in the name. “Yes,” he murmured at length. “Here it is. Bela. You are a second-order ipumn grader.”

  Treet nodded and lowered his eyes.

  “You will be returned to your Hage, Bolbe—”

  Treet started to breathe a sigh of relief. His dodge had worked. Evidently, Bela was a common enough name.

  The Nilokerus officer continued, “—after reorientation.”

  “No!” shouted Treet. The Nilokerus loafing in another corner of the room looked up sharply. “Please, I’ve never done anything like this before. I’ll go back gladly. I’m sorry.”

  The officer gazed at Treet, hesitated. Would he let Treet go? With a shrug he said, “Standard directive punishment. No exceptions.” He motioned to a nearby guard. “Take him to J-5V. Begin reorientation at once.”

  “No!” Treet screamed again. “Please! No!”

  Two guards grabbed his arms and pulled him away; he was marched down one of the branching corridors and shoved into a cell. He heard the fizzling crackle of the barrier field as it snapped on, and he was left alone in the darkness of his cell.

  EIGHT

  Crocker came instantly awake, fully alert. His sleep had been deep and long, but a part of his awareness remained sharp, even in sleep, so that he awoke when he heard the faint rustling in the dry vegetation on the side of the pool opposite where he slept. He did not move, but merely opened his eyes to see a fat, furry creature the size of a small but well-fed pig ambling out of the brush.

  The sounds of the forest were hushed now as the denizens of the day settled to their nests; the forest’s nocturnal population had not yet begun to stir. Night came quickly to the world beneath the leaf-roof of the forest, and Crocker gazed out across the evening-dimmed circle of his bower at the intruder, his pilot’s eyes keen in the failing light. He watched the animal pause in its slow shamble to the water, raise up on short hind legs to sniff the air, and peer into the murk with tiny round eyes. The thing had stubby legs that curved under its bulk and a long, fleshy tail that it carried straight up in the air. Its face was long and pointed, like a rat’s elongated snout, but its eyes faced forward and its ears were the velvet exclamation points of a rabbit.

  The animal appeared happy with its survey of the glade and continued down to the water’s edge. Crocker eased himself up on palms and toes and made his way around the pool, maintaining
careful silence on the cushiony moss. He came up behind the creature as it poked its long muzzle into the water and slurped noisily. Crocker eyed his prey for a moment—the creature was totally oblivious to any danger—and then, gathering himself for the spring, pounced on the animal, his hands quickly finding its short neck.

  A terrified squawk bubbled from the creature’s throat as it wriggled furiously. Crocker picked the animal up and shook it, squeezing the soft neck until the feeble fight went out of its body. The animal gave a convulsive quiver and died with a gasp.

  He was standing by the water’s edge, examining his catch, when out of the brush behind him came a ball of bundled fury, charging right for him. He spun around, flinging the dead animal aside, just as his feet were swept from under him. He went down on his hip and squirmed to his knees as the burly ball of lightning attacked, long ears flattened to its back, sharp incisors bared.

  Crocker saw enough in that second before the animal sprang to know that he was being challenged by the mother of the creature he had just killed—it was an exact replica of the first animal, but easily twice its size. He put his hands up and rolled backward as the animal leaped for him, catching it under the chin and pulling it over the top of him, his legs lifting its body up and over with the aid of its own momentum. The animal raked at him with its short, clawed feet and snapped at him with its long jaws as it went over, and then it was sailing through the air to land with a heavy thump on its back a few meters away.

  The animal grunted and came up snapping, gathering itself for a second charge. Crocker did not wait, but leaped headlong at the animal. It twisted away, but Crocker landed on its back and his fingers found its neck and dug in. The creature yelped—a confused, mewing sound—and tried to roll over. But Crocker, adrenaline pounding through him, clamped his knees against its fat sides and kept his place on its back. The fleshy tail lashed his back ineffectually and the animal stumbled, grunting and squirming, digging its short claws into the moss and flinging patches skyward.

  Sitting atop the thrashing beast, Crocker was overcome by a sudden rush of pure ecstasy and, with his hands buried in the creature’s neck, choking the life from its body, he threw back his head and laughed. The sound rang in the glade, shivering the leafy hedge round about—a strange, strangled sound of tormented delight.

  He laughed until his sides ached and then, as the unearthly echo died away, looked down to see that the animal beneath him struggled no more. Gradually he released his hold and got up. The creature lay still, unmoving. He looked at it for a long time and then knelt down beside it and put his hands on its body.

  The fur was luxurious, thick and fine; the flesh beneath well-muscled, but soft. He stood abruptly and walked around the pool to the place where he’d entered, then stepped back through the hedgewall. There, patiently waiting for him on the other side, stood the robo-carrier. Since it could not force its way through the thick hedge, it had simply stopped on the trail to wait for its human controller to return.

  Crocker retrieved the camp pack from its rack and then went back into the glade, opened the pack, and dumped out its contents. There was a utility knife among the articles in the pack, small and of no use as a real weapon, but Crocker took it up and went to the larger of the two animals he had killed.

  Within a few minutes he had the rear haunch of the animal skinned and had cut away a large section of its liver; his hands were steeped in gore to the elbows. He sat back on his heels to look at his handiwork, the smell of blood heavy in the air. He raised the piece of liver to his mouth and licked it, tasting the thick sweetness, then hungrily devoured the still-warm portion. When he had finished this delicacy, he wiped his mouth with a blood-streaked arm and, taking up the knife again, began hacking at the meaty loin of the hapless creature.

  When he had freed a good-sized piece of the haunch from the rest of the carcass, he sat back and, nostrils flaring with delight, began tearing off still-warm strands of meat and devouring them, smacking his lips and grunting his pleasure at this fine feast.

  The concert had been over for hours, but Pizzle still sat with Starla in the soft night, gazing at the sky and talking in the empty amphidrome. The Naravell, a moving retelling of the long years of the Wandering and a monumental piece of music by any standard, went by Pizzle as if it had been a jingle for foot powder. He could concentrate on nothing but the entrancing creature beside him.

  Starla had shown herself to be charming, fascinating, captivating, engaging, bewitching—all this, and she had not spoken more than a half-dozen complete sentences throughout the course of the evening. Mostly, she had listened raptly as Pizzle discoursed on whatever subject happened to pop into his head—everything from Arabian Nights to Zen. Her presence, like a heady wine imbibed too quickly, had not only loosened his tongue, but made everything he said seem to him wise and wonderful and sparkling with wit.

  He spoke like one drunk on the sound of his own voice, but it wasn’t his words that fascinated him—it was that she was there listening to him. He would talk just to have her listen, just so he could watch her listen—for he’d never experienced anything so marvelous in all his drab life. For indeed, his whole life did seem lackluster and inconsequential up to the moment of meeting Starla.

  Pizzle paused for breath—his voice was going hoarse—and Starla laid a hand on his forearm and said, “Let’s walk for a while.”

  They’d been sitting for hours, but Pizzle hadn’t noticed. To him, the evening had been but a moment as it sped by. “Sure, sounds good,” he said, getting to his feet. He looked around and saw that the amphidrome was dark and empty. “Cleared out fast, huh?”

  Starla led him up the aisle and out of the amphidrome and along the broad boulevard planted with feathertrees—slender trees whose long, supple branches grew delicate blossoms like goose down. They walked along for a while in silence. Pizzle, having interrupted his monologue, could not now think of a single word to say. He was absolutely tongue-tied.

  “Smell the air,” sighed Starla. The feathertree blossoms sweetened the warm night air with their light fragrance.

  “Mmm, nice,” said Pizzle. He looked at his ravishing companion. If Starla by daylight was a vision, Starla by starlight was a dream. Her platinum hair shone like silver, and her eyes were liquid pools of darkness fringed by long, sweeping lashes. “You’re nice, too,” he said, and blanched. Without premeditation he’d just given her his first compliment. What a night!

  “I must go soon,” she said. They walked on a little further in silence. “We could go to another concert sometime … if you like—”

  “Oh, I would,” agreed Pizzle heartily. “Tomorrow night. Okay?”

  Starla laughed. “I don’t know if there is a concert tomorrow night.”

  “Then we’ll go sailing. Anything. Please? Say yes. I’ll come pick you up. Where do you live?”

  “Very well,” Starla agreed. “We will meet again tomorrow evening.”

  “What about tomorrow morning? As a matter of fact, I’m free all day tomorrow.”

  “But I work tomorrow.”

  “Where? What do you do? Tell me about it. I want to know about everything you do. I want to know all about you.”

  “Most often I serve the Clerk at the College of Mentors. There are twenty-four of us, and we help Mathiax administrate the Mentors’ resolutions.” She stopped and smiled at Pizzle. “But the day after tomorrow I am free.”

  “You are? Good! Let’s spend the whole day together. Okay? Say yes.”

  “Yes.” Starla laughed, a warm, throaty sound, full of good humor. “I’d like that very much.” She paused, glanced down at her feet and then up into Pizzle’s eyes. Growing serious, she said, “I know you are a Traveler, and that you come from another world. Jaire has told me much about you. I must seem very plain to you after all you’ve seen.” Pizzle opened his mouth to tell her just how wrong she was, but she silenced him with a gesture and went on. “Forgive my presumption, but it’s hard for me to think of you as someone s
o different. I think we are more alike than different. And though I don’t know you very well, I like you very much, Asquith Pizzle. I would like to be your friend while you are here.”

  He looked at her, standing against the heaven-scented background of the feathertrees, and swallowed a lump in his throat the size of a melon. “No one has ever said anything like that to me,” he said. “I’m going to stay here forever.”

  NINE

  Cejka, Director of Rumon Hage, took up his ceremonial bhuj, turned the flat blade so that its polished surface faced the correct quadrant, thrust out his chin, and squared his shoulders. Though his days as a member of the Threl elite might well be numbered, he would appear among his own people as their worthy leader: imperious, unafraid, powerful. Opposites, to be sure, of how he really felt. Covol, his Subdirector, arranged the hood of his black-and-red striped yos, nodded once, and stepped away. Cejka began walking slowly, a phalanx of Hage officers and functionaries behind him, leading his delegation through Rumon to the docks where they would board one of the official funeral boats that would take them to Saecaraz, where Sirin Rohee’s funeral was to be held.

  As they moved through Hage, he thought again about his message from Tvrdy. Though the Cabal had suffered crushing defeats of late, it was no small tribute to his own skill and cunning that his network of rumor messengers was still virtually intact. For this he was thankful.

  The meeting with the Dhog, Giloon Bogney, had been, in Tvrdy’s estimation, a success. They had gained the nonbeing’s promises of support—though at a very high price, it seemed to Cejka. Hage stent for the Old Section? Such a thing was inconceivable even bare weeks ago. No doubt Tvrdy had only done what he’d been forced to do.

  Ah, Tvrdy, my friend, thought Cejka gloomily. What is to become of us? Jamrog will not let us live, I think. Already I feel his hands on my throat. I hope you know what you are doing. An alliance with Dhogs! Unthinkable!