Idol of Glass

by Jane Kindred

  “Fuck,” Ume gasped as Cree breached the opening. Not exactly her usual genteel sonorous moan.

  Cree paused. “This okay, love?”

  “Gods, yes.” Ume’s voice was muffled by the pillow as she buried her face in it. “That was instruction, not protest.” She giggled at her own words, but Cree made sure the giggle was swiftly cut short, transforming it with a steady stroke of her finger into a groan of pleasure.

  Cree wriggled down farther under the covers, keeping her hand steady, and then used her grip inside Ume to guide the stiff cock to her mouth. Ume’s moans were loud enough now that they were probably giving their neighbors something to gossip about, but Cree didn’t care. She sucked at her greedily, pumping the finger, and then joining it with another, and in a moment, with a loud cry, the proof of Ume’s satisfaction burst into Cree’s mouth.

  “Sorry,” Ume gasped when Cree came up for air. “That took me by surprise. I meant to give you pleasure first.”

  Cree gathered Ume into her arms and silenced her with a kiss, sharing Ume’s musky taste with her. “You always give me pleasure,” she said when they separated. “I wanted to give it to you for a change.”

  Ume was already drifting off in her arms, and Cree smiled to herself. Apparently, she’d exceeded her goal. Without Ume to distract her, however, her thoughts wandered back to Pearl. It would do no good to dwell on what his life had been. She had to stay focused on what it was now. Ume had to be right about the Hidden Folk at least treating him with respect, if not exactly kindness—she doubted they understood the concept of kindness—even if their motives were selfish ones. If nothing else, he would be well fed and surrounded by comforts.

  Was it nighttime where he was? Was there night and day under the hill? She couldn’t remember. Ume said Pearl loved to draw, that he communicated with his pictures. Cree wondered what he was drawing right now. She wondered if he had any way of knowing that she and Ume loved him.

  Six: Focus

  The Permanence, Pearl suspected, were interested in his magic, though it seemed to him they had more powerful magic of their own. They never had to speak to create what they desired; things simply seemed to be there when they wished them to be. But they lacked the ability to affect the outside world. Like Pearl, they heard the Meeric beat. This was clear to him whenever the flow tugged at him most strongly. His keepers convened meetings behind closed doors as though examining the tendrils of knowledge slipping through their blood.

  After such meetings, the one who called himself the Recordkeeper—which in Pearl’s head translated more accurately as Keeper of Secrets—often paid Pearl a visit to see how he was getting along. Without pressuring, he encouraged Pearl to take advantage of the drawing implements the Permanence had provided. It wasn’t much of a leap to assume they’d brought him under the hill to draw for them. At least they hadn’t confined him in a cage. Each time, Pearl politely declined, still unwilling to endure the full force of the Meeric flow, afraid of being overtaken by external forces. Afraid of madness.

  After the Permanence divined where Pearl’s hesitation lay, the Caretaker offered to teach him how to channel the images that came to him without drowning in them. “The secret,” she said, “is to let it flow around you, a stone in its path, not through you.” Eager to learn this, Pearl agreed to her tutelage.

  His lessons began at dawn. Though there was no rising sun to mark it, the glow of illumination in the halls under the hill waxed and waned with light from somewhere beyond. Pearl had never experienced the changes in hours or seasons until being freed from his glass box, so direct evidence of the sun that governed them wasn’t something he missed. But he did enjoy the soft changes in the light that marked its path in the sky, and dawn at Ludtaht Ra and at the governor’s palace in Soth Szofl had been his favorite time of day.

  The first time the Caretaker roused him from his bed, however, and led him through the endless corridors to the hall where his lessons were to take place, Pearl was seized with alarm. The hall was walled in mirrors.

  The Caretaker sensed his hesitation. “These will not confine you. They will merely focus your perception.” She held out her hand beneath the long drape of her sleeve, and Pearl took it with trepidation. He found touch uncomfortable. But she led him to a cushion on the stone floor and Pearl sat as she directed. The dawn-like glow had just begun to scatter through the room of mirrors from curtains at the corners of it in flickering points of light, like a coven of candles reflected into infinity.

  His tutor sat opposite him in the same meditative pose. “What do you see in the glass?”

  “Us,” Pearl answered promptly.

  “And what else?”

  Pearl hesitated a moment. He hadn’t expected to have to engage in conversation. “Light.”

  “The light you see in the glass is real, yet it is not the source of light. The light comes from without. Just as the images that come to you when you concentrate on them come to you from without. They are not your own. Do you see?”

  Pearl nodded, shuddering slightly as images from the Meeric flow began to swirl in the glass. He pinched his eyes shut.

  “You are in control of what you choose to see. This was not something you were taught, and thus you were at the mercy of any and every image that flowed to you.” The Caretaker laid her hand gently on Pearl’s knee, and he started, opening his eyes. “When an image comes to you that you do not wish to dwell on, dismiss it as though snuffing its light.”

  This seemed easier said than done, but when Pearl looked into the mirrors once more, he concentrated on a single point of light and found he could shrink it by narrowing his vision.

  “Very good.” The Permanence never truly smiled, but the Caretaker made an attempt at a warm look of approval. “Now, without closing your eyes, eliminate the light you’ve focused on.”

  Pearl concentrated, but nothing happened.

  “It is the same as conjuring with words.” The Caretaker’s voice seemed rather tightly controlled, as if Pearl were aggravating her but she didn’t want to show it. “With a word, you could dismiss the light, could you not?”

  Pearl’s brow furrowed. If he spoke to dismiss a point of light coming presumably from the sun, what would he be conjuring? A darkness on the sun? That didn’t seem wise. But it was intent that mattered. If he focused his intent not on the greater source of light but on this single point, dousing it might be a simple matter of moving something solid between the source of light and its reflection. Pearl envisioned the fluttering curtains at the corner of the room becoming solid, no gaps or pinholes to allow light inside among the glass. In an instant, the room went dark.

  The Caretaker sighed. “Your power is unfocused.” He sensed motion across from him, the Caretaker’s hands lifting, and the points of light returned. “Perhaps my presence is a distraction.” She rose gracefully and gave him a perfunctory bow. “I shall leave you to it. Remember that the reflection is not the reality. It is not your goal to affect what you see, only that you see it at all. Simply allow your perception to be open to the images without absorbing them. You, after all, are but another mirrored glass.”

  When she’d gone, Pearl tried to imagine himself as a glass in which the light and shadow of the Meeric flow were reflected. Watching the flickering dance of the rays of light that struck the glass all around him made him itch to draw. Perhaps he could just draw the light. Perhaps he could choose to see only that.

  Though he hadn’t noticed it before, a table sat in one corner of the room stocked with several kinds of paper and any number of implements for drawing and painting. More of the hidden realm’s incidental conjuring: providing what was needed or desired as soon as it was thought of.

  Pearl sat at the table and took up a piece of charcoal, looking into the mirror as he began to draw. As soon as his charcoal touched the paper, he was struck full force with the images of Ra’s madness. Scenes he’d witnessed bef
ore spooled out like a story in images depicted on a scroll, assaulting him with Ra’s violent acts, and always ending with Ahr lying at Ra’s feet with a hole in his gut and blood flowing from it until the mirrors before Pearl were nothing but red.

  Seven: Momentum

  Stamina was one of the benefits of the Meeric constitution. Regeneration was another. Shredded flesh and depleted blood mended and replenished. Each time Shiva let her fall bleeding and insensate to the ground, Ra recovered just enough to utter her petition to the great Meer: “Vetma, ai MeerShiva. Again.” She submitted to the punishing sting of Shiva’s switch far beyond the endurance of an ordinary person, mindful that this was all the more reason the punishment remained insufficient. Ra lost count of how many times they’d been through her crimes against Jak, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. Perhaps it might, if she could die of it.

  It seemed, however, that it was at last enough for Shiva.

  At Ra’s latest plea for punishment, her chastiser sighed with impatience. “Your atonement, MeerRa, has become self-indulgent.”

  “Self in’ulgent?” The word slurred from Ra’s tongue without meaning and dripped with her blood to the floor. She tried to focus on Shiva’s face but saw only a haze of ruby—Shiva’s hair, perhaps, or more blood.

  With a gloved hand, Shiva gripped Ra by the hair and pulled her close while crouching before her, so that the green eyes burned into her own. “You seem to think I’m at your disposal, as if I came to your Soth AhlZel on Munt Zelfaal to wait upon your whim.”

  Blood dripped into Ra’s eye, but she ignored it, too tired to lift her hand to wipe it away. “Why did you come?” She hadn’t meant for it to sound so impertinent.

  After a dangerous silence, Shiva answered, her placid voice showing no sign of offense. “There was disquiet in my blood. I came because you were in agony.”

  “I thought”—Ra paused to breathe against the burning in her lungs—“You said—I was a fool.”

  “A fool in agony,” Shiva agreed. She ran a finger through the blood on Ra’s face. “And quite pointlessly.”

  “You think—I shouldn’t have taken from them what I—” Ra’s breath caught in her throat as dissipating endorphins gave way to the rising throb of each stripe Shiva had laid into her flesh. “What I took. You think I should have let them suffer.”

  “What I think, little fêt, is that you show a penchant for masochism. As if suffering itself were a virtue.” Shiva loosened her grip on Ra’s hair and lifted Ra’s chin with the tip of her switch. “Easing the suffering of the ordinary is admirable. But I have always preferred taking vengeance upon those who cause suffering. Which is why I’ve been indulging you in your vetma.” The Meer withdrew the switch and let Ra’s chin drop as she stood. “You’ve caused great suffering, and so you merit great punishment. But the punishment is not for your enjoyment.”

  “Enjoyment, MeerShiva?” Shocked at the accusation, Ra struggled to lift her gaze to Shiva’s but could only manage to fix on the long, slender fingers stroking the switch. “I do not enjoy punishment.”

  A low, almost sensuous laugh came from above. “Lying, my dear, does not become the Meer. I’m surprised you can manage it without bursting that swollen tongue.” The switch turned slowly in Shiva’s hands, the impossible razor sharpness of it slipping through her fingers like butter yet leaving them unscathed. The motions were mesmerizing. “But neither is it for my enjoyment. And I freely admit to having taken pleasure in it. Which is why we shall now set aside your atonement for your crimes against Jak na Fyn and move on to the next.”

  Shiva slipped the switch into the sheath at her hip and clasped her hands behind her back, legs planted firmly apart on the grassy floor of her conjured tower. “It’s time for you to face your crimes against the mortal who was once your concubine. The one who came to me—after your mistreatment of her brought down all our race—so full of hatred for her own form she sought a vetma from the very sort she loathed. I granted her vetma, and she left me no longer the woman she’d been, but a man who supposed he might make his way more easily in this world in his new countenance.”

  “Ahr.” Ra choked out the name, the sound almost unintelligible, a mere syllable imbued with inexpressible sorrow.

  “Ahr.” On Shiva’s tongue, the name was like another blow. “After attempting to force Ahr to assault the one he loved, what further crime did you commit against this mortal?”

  Gripped by uncontrollable shaking, Ra couldn’t speak the words. To speak was to create, and she would not create this again. But it was already done.

  The stiletto heel of Shiva’s boot rested on Ra’s hand where it lay against the heather. “What crime?” When Ra still didn’t answer, the heel dug in, grinding against bones and cartilage until Ra howled. “What—crime?”

  Weeping and defeated, Ra surrendered. “Vetma, ai MeerShiva. I took his life.”

  Shiva lifted her foot and let Ra drip to the ground, and Ra heard the Meer walk to the door and go out. She waited in the darkness, dazed, wondering with what worse punishment Shiva might return. But Shiva did not.

  “I took his life.” The words came to Pearl through the flow, though he’d tried to shut it out, with a terrible permanence. But they also brought an unexpected respite from the bloody images that had sought to drown him. In these words, Ra’s madness, at last, was silent.

  Seated at the table in his library, Pearl could finally draw without depicting decapitations and disembowelings. The first image he was able to conjure on paper that didn’t come from that dark, oppressive place was a sky full of stars. Like the underside of the dome at Ludtaht Ra, the image had a depth to it that belied the medium. At the temple, the “stars” in the deep blue-black mosaic were pieces of diamond.

  Pearl rendered his diamonds with pricks of his stylus on the thin, onionskin parchment, laying the drawing over another sheet he’d painted with a pearly pastel, so that the sparkling white base came through when held up to the light.

  “Most impressive.”

  Pearl turned at the nondescript voice behind him. A member of the Permanence he hadn’t encountered before had entered the library as silently as light. Except for the voices, he found them somewhat difficult to tell apart. With the loose flowing garments they wore and the long, elaborate hairstyles on both the men and the women, even differentiations of sex weren’t always obvious, but Pearl supposed his own sex was difficult enough for others to ascertain, so that didn’t bother him. He’d focused instead on the timbre of their speech, and this one’s gave nothing away.

  “You may call me Mnemosyne.” This was a feminine name—and this was the first time Pearl had met anyone here who had a name and not a function. An almost-smile lit the icy-pale eyes as if in acknowledgement of Pearl’s thought. Mnemosyne approached him, the colorless hair, he now saw, sparkling with something like pale gemstones woven into the spiraling fall at her crown. Mnemosyne examined his drawing. “Where did you see this?”

  Pearl thought for a moment. He hadn’t considered where the image came from, though he knew his drawings were manifestations of the Meeric flow. He couldn’t invent something that had never been—or if he did, he would conjure what he drew to life; something he’d never attempted.

  “The sea,” he said after a moment. He could smell the sea air in his mind, and hear the susurrus of waves. He’d drawn the sky over a great ship on the ocean at night. The thought of trying to explain this in words made his throat ache. Instead, he titled his image, writing in the bottom right corner, “Night Sky Over the Deltan Dream.” He wasn’t sure where the ship’s name had come to him from.

  “Lovely,” said Mnemosyne. “I hope you’ll draw more. We want you to feel comfortable here with us. This is your home.” Pearl flinched as she lifted his arm from the parchment without warning, running her fingers over the ribbon at his wrist. “Your sutures have healed nicely. Yet you seem to have woven the cloth
into them.”

  Pearl looked down at his upturned wrist, and then lifted the other to examine it. It was true. The satiny fabric was part of him now, braided intricately with the healed flesh. He supposed he’d done it unconsciously with his will. He liked the ribbons, and he’d been afraid of what he’d see underneath when the Permanence took them away.

  Mnemosyne released him with another almost-smile. “You are very imaginative, young Pearl. I see you creating great things.”

  Eight: Communion

  The golden dome of Temple Ra reflected an ochre cast on the water of the Anamnesis as Jak pulled into Rhyman in the late afternoon. Dried russet and ruby petals fluttered down over the tree-lined route to the temple like folded paper moths. Under other circumstances, Jak would have been overwhelmed at the beauty of the Delta in autumn. It was no wonder Ahr had always pined for it, even as he’d professed to despise it.

  The In’Lan motorized bi-wheeled cycle elicited mild curiosity. Such contraptions were still uncommon even here, just miles upriver of the industrial Soth In’La. But Jak encountered no impediments to approaching Temple Ra. It had been difficult to face the machine for the first time since returning from Mount Winter with Ahr’s body draped in its side-carriage, but Jak took comfort in the fact that Ahr was once again the companion on this journey.

  At Temple Ra, Jak was announced and sent into Merit’s study, where Merit received Jak with a look of pleasure and surprise—and misgiving, when neither Ahr nor Ra followed.

  “Jak.” He smiled warmly, hazel eyes crinkling as he took Jak’s hands and pressed them. “Isch birrahtta Ahr? Eht ischem birraht Ra?” Though Jak hadn’t picked up sufficient Deltan from Ra to understand Merit’s words, it was clear enough that he was wondering at their absence.