Braxi-Azea - In Conquest Born Part 30

Zatar shook his head. "I don't know, Yiril."

"She took the poison."

"I watched her do so."

"Perhaps the formula was incorrect."

"Perhaps." His speech mode said: No.

Yiril sighed. "Well, that's what it was as far as the others are concerned. And perhaps Sechaveh, too-but I leave that in your hands. Getting a formula across two nations, and in secret-there's room enough for error there that I think we can save our project. For later, of course-much later."

And thus you also save me, Zatar thought. But it wouldn't do to thank him.

"Someday," Yiril said softly, "when it doesn't matter-if it ever doesn't matter-1 would like to know what happened in there."

Zatar smiled faintly; he was relieved to see that amus.e.m.e.nt was still possible.

"Someday," he promised in the Basic Mode.

"Are you coming back to the ship?"

He had hit a nerve. You know me better than I know myself. He looked back at the door. "Not yet."

"Half a tenth-no more. We'll need the rest to get out of range."

He nodded. "I know."

Then Yiril put a hand on his shoulder. "Shem'Ar," he warned, adorning the phrase with prefixes, suffixes, and variations in emphasis until it warned, admired, dominated, coerced and fretted-all at once. Zatar smiled. "Shem'Ar,"

he said in the Basic Mode: I know. The older Kaim'era left him.

Alone.

Why am I such a fool? Zatar wondered. He shook his head again, as if to clear it. Thought was thick within him, unfamiliar emotions clogging what was usually a structured cognitive process. He had made an enemy, a skilled one; the thought of leaving her free among the stars was bitter. He wanted at least to understand her, to comprehend her motivations for sparing him what would have been certain political death, when he lay within her power.

And he knew she was still there.

He turned back to the door. His weapons were still in the rack and he left them there; otherwise the doors wouldn't open.

He stepped forward.

The doors whisked to the side.

She was waiting.

He stepped into the room and heard the portal shut behind him. On her face was a mixture of triumph and pleasure, such as he would have expected to see on a Braxin countenance. In that moment, when all thought of the future faded before the power of her presence, he was glad that she would die any other kind of death than the one he had originally intended.

"Why?" he demanded. It had been clear from her behavior in the conference room that she detested pointless preamble.

She didn't have to ask what he meant; she had awaited his return to hear that question. "Because you're mine, Braxin. I'll let no other have you-not after what you've done. No politics are going to bind you to Braxi, out of my reach forever.

Which is what would have happened if you'd been revealed as a failure. I spared you only in order to keep you accessible to my vengeance."

"Motivation worthy of a Braxana."

"Spare me your insults."

"And what if I go home? What if I choose to make myself inaccessible?"

"I'd follow you, Braxin. With all my ships behind me. But you won't do that. You don't dare. I'm too much for your Border fleet to handle and you know it. They need your insight-they need you. Isn't that the case?"

He pictured the map again and the red fog within it, a glowing spear poised at the edge of the Holding, waiting for her hand to cast it at the Mistress Planet. All for hate of me? he wondered.

"Absolutely."

"Why?"

She laughed. "They fed me hate. It became my substance."

"Am I supposed to believe that? You're not a child, lyu Mitethe. In youth that kind of answer might suffice. Not now."

She seemed pleased by his understanding. "The man who murdered my father set in motion a fate that's entailed only suffering for me. I swore vengeance; I mean to have it. And you, Kaim'era, are Darmel lyu Tukone's murderer."

"Are you asking? Yes."

"There was no question in my mind. I thought there might be. I thought I might fail to recognize you in your native form. You were so different then . . . but the eyes are the same. And the arrogance. As soon as I saw you, I knew."

A picture was forming in his mind-had she put it there?-a memory from his first Azean journey. The enemy beguiled, his wife wholly charmed, and the child .

. . for a moment there was terror in her eyes. Recognition? He should have killed her then, but there was no opportunity to do so. Her face had haunted him for years afterward, long after the rest of the a.s.sa.s.sination had faded from his memory.

". . . not two men in the Holding could have managed it," she was saying. "It had to be the same man, working twice. Congratulations, Kaim'era. Against impossible odds, you succeeded."

"I failed."

"No. You underestimated me, most certainly. But your a.s.sa.s.sination attempt was consummately managed. Slipping poison past a telepath isn't an easy thing to do."

She was going out of her way to express admiration for him, even as her manner dripped venom. Why? Was it pleasing for her to discover, after all these years, that her chosen nemesis was worthy of her? That was a sentiment he could well understand; he was experiencing it himself. Raised among the Braxana, what a woman she would have been! What a warrior!

Startled, he examined his feelings toward her. Hatred, yes, but his admiration was just as intense. She was a worthy opponent in the traditional Braxana sense.

She would defeat the enemy by probing him for weaknesses and then turning them to her advantage. Her opponent would fall-or he would grow stronger. And she, likewise, must strip herself of all human weakness, lest she facilitate her own downfall. By doing battle, each opponent would force the other to improve, thus making war not only an act of destruction, but of creation as well. It was the ultimate Braxana archetype, and one which no other people shared. The K'airth- v'sa-literally, "mate of the private war"-was as attractive to the Braxana warrior as he or she was deadly. And it could be a woman. Yes, though years of male dominance had buried that fact. And if any woman deserved the t.i.tle, this one certainly did.

He would have to fight her; there was no other way. She had said it herself: she was too much for the Border fleet to handle. Only one who understood her could hope to defeat her, and the common Braxin would never be able to do that. Zatar could manage it, because he was not afraid of her. If he truly understood her. If he made no mistakes.

The ancient Braxana would have valued such an enmity. They had created elaborate rituals to formalize the confrontation of equals, in order to increase its destructive/constructive power. Such rituals hadn't been used in centuries, perhaps millennia. No k'airth had existed since the Braxana warriors left their native steppes and were absorbed by civilization; in the complexity of modern society, paired enmity had ceased to be valued.

Until now.

"I will kill you," he said softly, "by my own hands, in my own time." The words welled up from his subconscious, from that part of his soul which hungered for the sword and chafed at civilization's imposed restrictions. He hadn't even realized that he knew them. "In my own way." How would she take this? Would she even understand? He hardly did himself.

But she seemed to. Her eyes gleamed, and her body tensed. This is what she wants, he realized.

"I will kill you," she answered, "by my own hands. In my own time. In my own way. No other will have you," she added, smiling her pleasure at the antic.i.p.ated triumph.

He tried to stop himself with the logic of his circ.u.mstances- this was madness, after all!-but reality intervened. Best right now to leave Braxi for a while, to find some other focus of activity while the Kaim'eri calmed down over what happened today. Best to simply be gone when they cried for explanations. This vendetta would serve his political ambition as well as his pleasure.

And it would certainly provide the latter. He looked into her eyes-gleaming, triumphant-and sensed the rare ecstacy there would be in orchestrating her death. I could lose myself for a while in the killing of you, he thought.

But one final barrier remained. And fear of that was so deeply ingrained in his Braxana soul that it took all his courage to raise his sword-hand and offer it to her.

She was startled. "Do you know what you're asking for?"

"I would know my enemy."

"You won't survive it. Your people aren't made for such things!"

"You a.s.sume weakness in me where there's none."

"None at all? I doubt that." But she leaned against the table so that she might reach his hand, and then grasped it with her own. "You're a fool, Kaim'era. This battlefield is mine."

For a moment there was nothing: falseness, a moment of ease before the storm.

An instant later the fabric of the universe burst apart within his mind.

In the first few seconds it took all his strength not to go insane.

Easy to give in, her voice came soundlessly, abandon all the senses, embrace the fluid darkness."

He fought the suggestions which seemed to plant themselves in his psyche. He struggled for a sense of self, and at last found it. He demanded understanding.

The sharp, intangible life which surrounded him yielded before the strength of his summons. He called forth all the power of primitive tradition and challenged her in the name of the k'airth: it is my right to know the nature of my enemy.

Sky, and earth, and air sweet by his face. He fell, startled. The gra.s.s moved under his glove and he pulled his hand away, quickly, only to notice that it didn't move at all. Fascinated, he stroked it. The life that was within the fragile blades sang to him with simple, primitive existence, a song of being without thought to complicate it. Something was overhead; he turned to face the sky and saw a formation of birds winging toward him. He touched them, knew their hunger, felt the drive which forced them onward with senses unknown to man and in their endless migration, tasted the call of their mating and the joy of melody as it rang through their souls.

And she was before him.

He stood. "What is this?" he whispered.

"What you demanded," she said, aloof. "An insight into my a.r.s.enal. Welcome to my world-or at least, to an image of it that our minds can share. Long enough for you to see the potential of what you face."

"You didn't expect this," he said, and he knew he had voiced her thought.

"Your will is very strong-your adaptability, atypical. Enjoy it for the moment you have it, Braxana."

He reached into the earth and knew the hunger of the worms that burrowed there, saw the tunnels and caves and emptinesses of the planet's crust through the eyes and minds of the creatures that inhabited such places. He reached up- ward, outward, and felt the stars like a caress upon his mind. But not the stars themselves, no; the millions of living creatures who orbited those points of light, who formed with their cultural foci stars of emotion in the Void of thought.

"Marvelous!" he breathed.

She was amazed and he felt it. "You see nothing to fear?"

"I see nothing but wonder."

"Your people don't feel that way," she challenged.

"Then my people are fools." He looked at her with new understanding, underscored by jealousy. "To live like this-"

"To taste it is wonderful," she interrupted. "To live with it involves more pain than you can imagine, in ways the non-psychic mind can't begin to grasp."

He ignored that. "What are you?"

"My person? This body?" She indicated herself with a graceful motion that would have seemed out of place if done by her physical self. "This whole world is a thing out of our imagining, which the power I have sustains for your discovery."

"It isn't real."

"It isn't material. It's very real."

"But our bodies-"

"Are clasping hands across a conference table. How much time does a dream take? Thought takes less. This is real only to us, and only in the moment we live it."

He closed his eyes and drank in the sheer psychic richness of his surroundings.

It was easier with his eyes closed, with that much less to distract him. The land, and the sky . . . and her. He could taste her hatred, flavored with just a touch of fear. She had expected him to break; well, he was not so simple a creature as to cringe from her power just because tradition would have it so. The potential of it was filling his mind with longing, and not just for the ability. For her, and everything she represented. For her hatred, which was an aphrodisiac to his kind.

For the paradox of race that she was, and because she had bettered him. Most of all because she was a shem'Ar, and throughout history such females had driven the men of his tribe to their greatest hungers, and to their blindest pa.s.sions.

"Take care," she warned him. A command; she was being careless. Did his digression make her uneasy? If so, it was his first-and so far his only-triumph.

Not willing to let the opportunity slip by, he approached her. Let her read his intent in his mind. She might be master of the psychic arts, but in the realm of human s.e.xuality the Braxana had no rivals. Physical indulgence was as natural to them as breathing, and more necessary. Whereas she, raised in Azean surroundings- "You're making a mistake." She seemed shaken, unsure of her own objections.

Did he sense a response in her, a calling of hunger to hunger that defied her rational purpose? Enmity and pa.s.sion were a combination much valued by the Braxana; the thought of tasting not only the pleasure of her body but the sharp bittersweet hatred of her mind stirred longing to new heights within him.

It was a dream, was it not? And a dream had no consequences.

He grasped her by the shoulders, and was stunned as a flood of sensory data overwhelmed him. He touched her- himself-their senses intertwined until he could barely tell one from the other. Yet their ident.i.ties were distinct. He stroked her, feeling her flesh tremble beneath his touch as though it was his own. She was not unwilling, no, though clearly alarmed by his initiative. "You don't know what you're doing ..." she whispered. Ah, but he did. He was tasting the pleasure of a woman while sharing his own, and that was an ecstacy undreamed of by his kind.

"Fool!" she told him, but she did not pull away. "You'll regret it. . . ." But there was hunger in her, and it rose to the surface, enveloping him in the rich conflict of her desire . . .

. . . and then there was a feeling of being disconnected, somehow, as if his senses were shutting down . . .

. . . and in fear he drew himself back from her . . .

. . . and in darkness, absolute, he foundered.

Where am I?

Restatement: What am I?