Empire - 03 - Mistress Of The Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  'I will draw and set my sword upon the ground,' Lujan said tightly. He kept his movements careful, and seemed outwardly confident, but Mara could see the drops of perspiration sliding down his jawline beneath his helm as, ever so slowly, he drew the sword from the scabbard, took hold of the blade with his bare left hand so that his intent not to fight could not possibly be mistaken, and placed the weapon point toward himself upon the earth.

  Mara saw the cho-ja shift their weight forward as one, a movement she had seen before. In another second they would charge, despite her pleading for peace. As loud as she could make them, she mimicked the sounds of greetings she had learned from the hive Queen upon her estates, a poor human attempt at the clicks and snaps made by the cho-ja throat.

  Instantly the cho-ja stood like statues, frozen a heartbeat away from murder. Yet when Lujan's sword rested upon the ground, and he straightened, defenseless, their postures did not ease.

  Neither did the leader of their party speak out. Instead, a great gust of air arose, lashing Mara's hair into disarray, and causing Lujan to squint through watering eyes. Down through the canopy of jungle descended a cho-ja form, leanly streamlined and brilliantly striped. It possessed an unearthly beauty that was somehow almost dangerous, and above neatly folded limbs its seemingly delicate weight was suspended upon crystalline wings that beat up a storm of wind.

  A cho-ja magician had come!

  Mara drew breath to exclaim in involuntary delight, but her throat gave voice to no sound. The air around her seemed to shimmer suddenly, and the forms of the cho-ja advance guard shattered into patternless color. Her feet lost contact with the ground, and Lujan's presence became lost to her. There were no trees, no jungle, no sky; nothing at all could her senses detect that was familiar, but a chaos of whirling light.

  She found her voice, and her cry became one of terror. 'What are you doing to us?'

  A reply boomed back from nowhere, echoing in her mind. 'Enemies who surrender become prisoners,' the voice admonished.

  And then all of Mara's perception drowned in a great tide of darkness.

  22 — Challenge

  Mara awoke.

  Her last memory of open air, and lush jungle, and a patrol of cho-ja sentinels did not mesh with her present surroundings: a narrow, hexagonal chamber of windowless, featureless walls. The floor was of polished stone, the ceiling fashioned of a mirrorlike substance that threw back the light of the single cho-ja globe that drifted unsupported at the chamber's center.

  Mara raised herself on her elbows, then her knees, and discovered that Lujan stood behind her, awake, and visibly battling against a restless bout of nerves.

  'Where are we?' asked the Lady of the Acoma. 'Do you know?'

  Her Force Commander spun to face her, pale with anger only barely held in check. 'I don't. The where hardly matters, though, because we are being held as enemies of the city-state of Chakaha.'

  'Enemies?' Mara accepted Lujan's hand to help her rise; she noticed his scabbard was empty, which partially explained his edginess. 'We were brought here by means of magic, then?'

  Lujan raked back sweat-damp hair, then from habit tightened the strap that secured his helm. 'Magic must have conveyed us from the glen. And only magic can secure our release. If you look around, you will see there is no door.'

  Mara quickly checked. The walls arose sheer and smooth, unbroken by any sort of portal. At a loss to account for the freshness of the air, the Lady deduced that the chamber must be entirely wrought of cho-ja spellcraft.

  The conclusion made her tremble.

  She was no longer dealing with humans, who might by their nature share some empathy. Cold with foreboding, Mara knew she and Lujan had become embroiled in the unknowns of the hive mind. More than ever, she was confronted by the incomprehensibility of an alien species whose 'memory' and 'experience' spanned millennia, and whose framework of reason would be judged only by collective prosperity and survival. Worse, unlike the hive she had conversed with inside the Empire's borders, these free, foreign cho-ja had never been forced to coexist with humanity except on terms they chose. There would not be even the imperfect understanding she shared with the Queen with whom she had exchanged companionship over the years.

  Lujan sensed his Lady's despair. 'We are not without hope, my Lady. These are civilised creatures who hold us captive. They must be disinclined to kill out of hand, or we would have died on the trail.'

  Mara sighed, and did not voice her following thought: that if they were adjudged enemies, it was not for their individual deeds, but for the actions of all Tsurani over every age of history. The past records of sincere treaties broken by bloody betrayals were too numerous to count, and within Mara's lifetime, the tenets of the Game of the Council had many times caused sons to kill fathers, and clansmen to rend clansmen. Her own hands were far from clean.

  Her first husband's ritual suicide had been manipulated by her; so even if the hive mind were to measure her by the acts she alone had authored, contradiction would be found in abundance — between the vows she had sworn in marriage, and the hatred she had held in her heart for Jiro's brother; and in her betrayal of Kevin, the barbarian she loved, then sent away against his will, ignorant she carried his child. It occurred to her, as she bit her lip to keep back tears born of shame, that it was not the cho-ja way to learn by mistakes, for all of the errors made by ancestors were available to living memory. They were a race for whom the past did not fade. Forgiveness for them would not be the ever renewable resource it was for humankind — grudges might be kept for millennia.

  'Lujan?' The echo of Mara's voice in that confined chamber was hollow with fear. 'Whatever should become of us in the end, we must find a way to be heard!'

  Her Force Commander spun in a frustrated circle. 'What is left to do for you, Lady, but to pound on these walls with my fists?'

  Mara heard the desperation he tried to mask behind bravado. His distress sobered her; ever since leaving the Coalteca, nothing of Lujan's training as a warrior had served him. He had held no army to command. The day the Thuril first arose in ambush upon the trail, she had forbidden him to defend her. At Loso, he had suffered insults that he would have spilled blood over rather than endure. He had been humiliated, driven in bonds like a slave, against every instinct of his upbringing. Out of his depth, separated from his warrior companions, he must find his circumstances incomprehensibly bleak.

  Lujan had humor, and cleverness, and courage; but he owned none of Arakasi's detached fascination with the unknown. Sobered to acknowledge the demands she had placed on her Force Commander's loyal spirit, Mara touched his wrist. 'Bide patiently, Lujan. For either we are near to our end, or our goal is just within reach.'

  Striking to the core of her thoughts, Lujan replied, 'I feel most worthless, my Lady. You would have done better to bring Arakasi, or to have kept Saric at your side.'

  Mara attempted humor. 'What? Endure Saric's questions, even when the gods themselves impose silence? And Arakasi? Lujan, do you suppose that he could have watched Kamlio led away without flying weaponless in the face of armed guards? Unless, of course, she had clawed him to ribbons on the Coalteca before we even saw landfall. No, I do not think I would wish either Saric or Arakasi with me at this time. The gods work as they will. I must trust that fate brought you here for a reason.'

  The last line was false conviction. In truth, Mara knew only foreboding. Still, her effort had coaxed a quirk of a smile from her officer. His fingers had ceased drumming against his empty scabbard. 'Lady,' he allowed wryly, 'let us pray you are right.'

  Tedious hours passed, with no daylight in sight to reveal the passage of day to night, and no interruption or sound to break the monotony. Lujan paced the tiny chamber, while Mara sat and unsuccessfully tried to meditate. Tranquil thought evaded her, torn through again and again by longing for her children and husband. She fretted, afraid she would never again have the chance to make peace with Hokanu. Irrational worries gnawed at her: that if she failed to return home
, he would marry and beget sons, and little Kasuma might never inherit the legacy that was her due. That Justin might be killed before manhood, and that the Acoma line would fail. That Jiro, with the backing of the Assembly, would topple Ichindar's new order, and the golden throne of the Emperor become relegated to a seat for a slave to religious ceremony. The Warlord's office would be restored, and the Game of the Council resume with all its internecine feuding and bloodshed. Lastly, the cho-ja of the Nations would forever remain bound to subservience through unjust treaty.

  Mara's eyes snapped open. A thought occurred, and her heartbeat accelerated. These cho-ja might not be moved by a Tsurani, a sworn enemy — but would they turn their backs upon their fellows in captivity within the Empire? She must make them understand that she, as the only opponent of the Assembly with the rank and influence to threaten them, offered the cho-ja within Tsuranuanni their first hope of change.

  'We must find a way to be heard!' Mara muttered, and she joined in step with Lujan's pacing.

  More hours passed. Hunger began to trouble them, along with the urgency of bodily needs too long denied.

  To this last, Lujan remarked wryly, 'Our captors might at least have equipped our cell with a latrine. If they leave me no better choice, I shall have to shame my upbringing and empty my bladder upon their floor.'

  Yet before that point of crisis could arise, a flash of intense white light smote the eyes of the Lady and her officer. Blinking against temporary blindness, Mara realised that the walls that held them appeared to have dissolved. She had discerned no moment of disorientation, nor heard any whisper of sound; and yet whatever spell of release had been keyed, she found herself no longer confined. Had their prison been an elaborate illusion, she wondered. Daylight fell through a high, transparent dome tinted soft purple. She and Lujan stood at the center of a patterned floor, the tiles fashioned of glass, or precious stones, and laid with a breathtaking artistry. The mosaics Mara had seen in the hall of Tsuranuanni's Emperor seemed clumsy as a child's scrawls by comparison. The beauty might have held her staring in wordless admiration, but a double-file escort of cho-ja warriors prodded her forward.

  Frantically, she glanced around for Lujan. He was not with her! She had been mesmerised by the floor, and if he had been led away, she had not seen where. Another prod from her escort sent her stumbling ahead. Leading the column of warriors, she saw a cho-ja with yellow markings on its thorax. By the tools hung in the satchel at its belt, it appeared to be a scribe; and it followed on the heels of another figure of towering height that trailed what Mara had at first presumed to be some sort of gossamer mantle. More careful inspection revealed wings, overlaid in elaborate folds as a lady's train might be. They slid with the faintest of rustles over the polished floor, emitting sparkles of light that danced and died in the air. By the palpable sense of power that chased prickles over her skin, Mara understood she beheld a cho-ja magician up close.

  Awe held her tongue-tied. The creature was tall! Built with slender, stilt-like limbs, it moved with a grace that recalled to her Kevin's long-ago description of the elves that inhabited his world of Midkemia. But this alien being owned more than beauty. Its sleek, wide head was crowned with antennae that at times gave off glow. Its foreclaws were ringed with precious metal, silver and copper and iron. What from a distance had looked like striped markings were actually more intricate, a maze of thread-fine lines that almost seemed to have meaning, like temple runes, or text beyond the ken of human perception. Curiosity warred with Mara's fear, until only uncertainty for her fate held her silent. Upon her rested the future of the Empire and, as had those predecessors named Servant by past Emperors, she felt that responsibility weigh upon her.

  She was ushered down a passageway, and through an outer door that let onto a catwalk of dizzying height. It crossed in an arch between two spires, affording a dramatic view of the glass city, its surrounding jungle, and the teeth of the mountain ranges that hemmed the valley around. Mara saw more of the cho-ja magicians in flight over the city's towers, before her escort of warriors hastened her ahead. She was urged across the catwalk, which had no railings but was surfaced with a strange, almost tacky substance for secure footing. The pillared entry at the far end opened into another wide, domed chamber.

  Here more cho-ja squatted in a semicircle, these marked similarly to the one she had guessed to be a scribe.

  Their colors were baffling, accustomed as she was to the unadorned black of the creatures in her own land. She was led into the center of their congress, and there the tall magician swept around and fixed ruby eyes upon her. 'Tsurani-human, who are you?'

  Mara took a deep breath. 'I am Mara, Lady of the Acoma and Servant of the Empire. I come to you to plead for — '

  'Tsurani-human,' the magician interrupted in a sonorous boom. 'These before you are the judges that have already convicted you. You are not brought here to plead, as your fate has already been determined.'

  Mara went rigid as if struck a blow. 'Convicted! Of what crime?'

  'The crime of your nature. Of being what you are. The actions of your ancestors were your testimony.'

  'I am to die for what my ancestors did ages past?'

  The cho-ja magician ignored the question. 'Before your sentence is read, and for the sake of Tsuranuanni, the human-hive-home that birthed you, our custom holds that you shall be granted the right of testament, that your kind not be deprived of such wisdom you choose to impart. You are granted the hours until nightfall to speak. Our scribes will record what you say, and their writings will be sent back to your hive-home in the hands of the Thuril traders.'

  Mara regarded the patterned features of the cho-ja magician, and rage took her. Like Lujan, she desperately needed to attend to the functions of her body. She could not think with a full bladder, and she could not accept what the magician's short speech had implied, that she was just one member of a hive, and that her permanent absence held no more consequence than knowledge gained or lost.

  The ruby depths of the magician's gaze showed no quarter. Argument would be futile, she knew. The bluster that had won her through to audience with the Thuril council would here gain her nothing. Humbled by feeling that this civilisation made her Empire's achievements seem less than the efforts of a human babe to make order in a sandbox, she repressed her desire to shout in frustration at her fate. In the eyes of this race of beings, she was an infant: a dangerous, murderous infant, but a child nonetheless. Well then, she would indulge the curiosity that plagued her! Perhaps there would be inspiration to be gained. Pressed by a white heat of impulse, Mara put aside her concern for her family and country. She gave in to the instincts of a child.

  'I have no great legacy of wisdom,' she announced in a bold voice. 'Instead of giving knowledge, I would ask: in my birth-lands, there is a treaty that holds the cho-ja nation captive. In my land, to speak of it or to impart knowledge of the war that gave rise to its making is forbidden. If the memory of this great battle and the terms of its peacemaking are recalled in Chakaha, I wish to be told of these events. I would ask to know the truth of the past that has condemned me.'

  A buzzing murmur arose among the tribunal, a sibilance that grew into a cacophony that set Mara's teeth on edge. The cho-ja guard squatted behind her, motionless as though they might hold their position until the end of time. The scribe that stood by the magician twitched once, then shifted its stance as though with uncertainty. The magician itself did not stir, until, suddenly, it raised its wings. Gossamer folds unfurled with a gusty hiss of air, and snapped taut with a crack that silenced the chamber immediately. Mara stared like a peasant shown wonders, noting that the wings connected somehow to the forelimbs and hind limbs of the creature, almost like webbing, but vast as sails. The forelimbs were many-jointed, and extended high overhead until they nearly touched the roof of the dome.

  The magician turned on its stilt-like legs. Its now heated gaze swept the stilled tribunal, and as it turned full around, it glared again down at Mara. 'You are a
curious being,' it said.

  Mara bowed, though her knees threatened to give out on her. 'Yes, Great One.'

  The cho-ja magician hissed a high-pitched breath of air. 'Assign me not the title your kind awards to those perpetrators of treachery, your Assembly.'

  'Lord, then,' Mara rang back. 'I offer my humble respect, for the oppression of the Assembly has been mine to suffer also.'

  A twitter from those assembled arose at this, then stilled. The magician's glare seemed to sear through Mara's skin and touch the core of her thoughts. Swept by a sense of violation, and a moment that rang like fever, or the pain of contact with flame, she cringed and choked back a scream. Then the sensation passed, leaving dizziness. She fought to keep her balance and stay upright.

  When her senses cleared, the cho-ja magician was speaking rapidly to the tribunal. 'She speaks truth.' Its tone had turned musical, perhaps resulting from surprise. 'This Tsurani has no knowledge of the doings of her ancestors! How can this be?'

  Mara mustered the tatters of her dignity and answered for herself. 'Because my kind have no hive mind, no collective memory. We know only that which we experience, or are taught by others, within the span of the days of our lives. Libraries preserve our past history, and these are mere records, subject to the ravages of time, and the limitations set upon them by those factions who set down their contents. Our memories are imperfect. We have no . . .' Then she intoned the click-chuck that the Queen on her land had used to indicate the hive consciousness.

  'Silence, Tsurani!' The magician furled its great wings, with a sigh of air currents and a sparkle of light that arose from no visible source. 'We are not children. Humans have no hive mind, this we know. The concept is awkward, a thing that ill fits our thought processes. We understand you use libraries and teachers to convey your hive-nations' wisdom through the generations.'

  Mara seized upon what appeared to be a moment of neutrality. 'One of your kind once told me that the hive mind of the cho-ja resides with the Queens. What one Queen knows, all experience. But I ask, what happens if a Queen is to die with no successor? What becomes of her workers and her males, and all the individuals that make up hive society?'