The Pearl Saga - Mistress of the Pearl Part 10

Sagiira c.o.c.ked his head, listening to the very air that eddied around them. "Unwanted visitors."

"Khagggun?" Eleana asked.

"Yes and no." Sagiira's eyes closed for a moment, and they could see very rapid movement beneath thin, blue lids. "The regent Stogggul and his Haaar-kyut satrap. They are coming this way." He stood.

"Quickly now, come. I will tell you what you need to know."

This is not the safest place for you to be," the regent's Haaar-kyut satrap said.

"I have spent the better part of the last year trying to hunt these fugitives down," Kurgan Stogggul growled. "They have outwitted my best Khagggun. Nothing you say will give me pause. I am going to take care of them myself, First-Captain Kwenn."

"Still." Kwenn held at the end of a straining chain a large, wire-haired wyr-hound. He let it poke its ugly black snout into one miserable hovel after another, snuffling at scents. He had his portable ion cannon at the ready. "One can never be too careful."

Kurgan appreciated Kwenn's strict attention to detail, though he could not admire it. To his way of thinking, tiny imaginations bred tiny thoughts.

"I had no idea there were so many Kundalan living like rat-moles in the bowels of the city."

"As far as I can see," Kurgan said as they pressed forward, "they are welcome to the bowels of this backward city." The wyr-hound left a thin trail of saliva wherever it went. "Who trains these things, anyway?"

"A retired Khagggun named Tong, regent. He only breeds the best. They are exceptionally loyal, you know."

"As long as they do their job."

"Oh, Unu will find our quarry."

"You name these things?" Kurgan wrinkled his nose. "That is a bit much, Kwenn."

"Don't you like animals, regent?"

"Not in the least," Kurgan said. "I never can fathom what they are going to do next."

"It is simple, really." Kwenn went into a stinking cubicle on their right, while the wyr-hound terrified the inhabitants. "They are not so different from us Khagggun," he continued upon reemerging. "They respond negatively to fear and aggression, positively to being rewarded, and they require strong leadership." He c.o.c.ked his head as they made their way down the dank underground corridor. "On the subject of strong leadership, regent, your choice of Star-Admiral will anger many."

"Those Khagggun, whoever they may be, are of no consequence, First-Captain Kwenn, for they shall soon succ.u.mb to Iin Mennus' iron fist." Kurgan kept a wary eye on the wyr-hound, whose snufflings he found disgusting. "This change is long overdue. The Khagggun have become soft; they bicker among themselves. Their Bashkir desire for coins will gain them only fat bellies."

"You are right, regent. Great Caste status for us was nothing more than a n.o.ble experiment."

"It was not even that. It was an ill-considered deal brokered by my father to gain political control over all Khagggun.""Then you are wise to rescind the status."

All at once, they stopped. The fur on the wyr-hound's collar stood up. Its ears had flattened, and its long greenish teeth gnashed together. Kwenn pointed his ion cannon down the corridor.

"Listen to me." There was a fierce and determined look in Kurgan's eyes. "Under no circ.u.mstances do I want the fugitives killed. Do you understand me, First-Captain Kwenn?"

"Absolutely, regent." First-Captain Kwenn depressed the limiter icon on the ion cannon. "I will hit them with stun bursts."

At that moment, Kwenn was almost taken off his feet by the leap of the wyr-hound. "Here we go!" he said as he dropped the chain. At once, the wyr-hound bounded down the corridor on his powerful legs, the two V'ornn right behind him. Kurgan drew a weapon, a small but lethal-looking push-dagger with a dartlike blade that had been dipped in a Nieobian paralysis gel. The corridor had sometime ago emptied of its shambling residents, who were doubtless cowering at the backs of their mean little chambers.

Up ahead, Kurgan could see a creature, something long and sinuous, moving low to the ground. The wyr-hound leapt upon the creature, its jaws clashing, seeking to snap the creature's neck. The creature-he was astonished to see that it was a claiwen-whipped its spiked tail around. The wyr-hound screamed as the spikes buried themselves in its muzzle and the side of its skull. It dug its claws fiercely into the claiwen's side, but the tail whipped up and back again, and the wyr-hound was thrown against the wall. Even as it bounced off, the claiwen opened its huge jaws and tore out the wyr-hound's throat.

"Unu!" Kwenn cried, and, as the claiwen turned its b.l.o.o.d.y face toward them, fired off a blast from the ion cannon that dropped the thing in its tracks.

"Look!" Kurgan hissed.

Down the corridor raced three figures-two Kundalan and another kind of beast that Kurgan had caught a glimpse of at Za Hara-at. They tore around a corner and disappeared as Kwenn, leaping over his fallen wyr-hound, fired off another blast that made the air sizzle.

"Concentrate on the female with the yellow hair," Kurgan said as he ran easily at Kwenn's side.

"Leave the dark-haired one to me."

We should make all haste for the under level Sagiira told us about while we still have a lead on them,"

Eleana said as she ran side by side with Riane.

"That is just what we won't do," Riane said. "You heard that sound. The First-Captain is armed with an ion cannon. He doesn't need to get close to bring us down." They whipped around another corner, almost tripping over a half-supine Kundalan just starting out of a doze.

"Then what do you suggest?"

They had reached a section of the underground warren that Sagiira had described to them. Here the corridor opened up into a kind of plaza with a succession of nooks and crannies created by ma.s.sive structural columns supporting the buildings above. The plaza was entirely deserted. All was silence, save for the occasional creak of the ma.s.sive stone underflooring above their heads.

"We stay right here," Riane said.

"What?" Eleana looked around. "And wait for them to come upon us?"

"Yes," Riane said. "Exactly so."

She directed Eleana and Thigpen into niches a bit farther back in the plaza. Then she chose one herself, closer to where their pursuers would arrive.

"Say nothing," she whispered. "No matter what happens, keep absolutely quiet."

Eleana, setting her back against the cold stone column, watched Riane close her eyes. Her lips moved slightly, and a moment later Eleana felt overcome by a slight dizziness. She blinked. It seemed to her as if they were underwater. She thought she could detect ripples emanating from Riane, as of a stone thrown into a lake, spiraling out to encompa.s.s the entire plaza. She had been witness to Flowering Wand once before. It was a powerful spell, rendering those within it invisible. Its drawback was that it had a shortduration.

Now her thoughts turned elsewhere as her ear detected the pounding of V'ornn boot soles, and into the plaza burst the regent and his Haaar-kyut First-Captain. She possessed a healthy fear of Khagggun.

She knew better than most their ferocity and relentless cruelty. But it was the sight of Kurgan Stogggul that make her heart turn over in terror. It was he who had raped her, he who had buried his seed deep in her womb, he who was the father of Sahor, the child she had borne, a child who would have died without the intervention of the Gyrgon Nith Sahor. Now Nith Sahor dwelt within her child, using Gyrgon technomagic to age him from infant to sixteen-year-old in a matter of days.

Her mind was filled with Sahor as she watched Kurgan's clever pirate eyes scan the plaza. She wished that Sahor had not gone to the Museum of False Memory to become its new curator while Minnum stayed on to explore Za Hara-at. She wished that the war was over. She wished to be with her child and with Riane, whom she loved more than life itself. But here she was, deep underground, with nowhere to run, confronting the one V'ornn she never wished to see again.

As Kurgan walked slowly and carefully through the plaza, she felt a loathing that was close to revulsion. The sight of him brought up that beautiful sun-dappled day when she had stupidly stopped at her favorite creek to bathe after completing her act of sabotage against the Khagggun in Axis Tyr. That was when he had spied her and, coming upon her by surprise, had taken her by force. Abruptly, her nostrils were filled with his rutting scent. She felt his rough hands digging into her flesh, his crushing weight on top of her. In her ears his breath panted out his l.u.s.t.

Tears filled her eyes, and his image swam before her.

"Unu is dead. I will kill them all now."

Kurgan whirled to confront his Haaar-kyut. "You will do as I have told you, Kwenn, and help me capture them."

Their voices came to her as a drifted cloud, slightly m.u.f.fled, partially distorted by the spell.

"Unu was my favorite." First-Captain Kwenn swung the muzzle of his ion cannon this way and that.

"How many nights I slept with him as I trained him."

"If you harm them in any way-"

"They are Kundalan. They deserve to die."

"That is not for you to say, First-Captain." Kurgan took a step toward him. "If you harm Riane or Eleana, I will kill you myself. Is that clear enough?"

"Yes, regent." Kwenn nodded. "Of course. My apologies."

"When we return to the palace I will procure for you another wyr-hound. Right now, though, we have fugitives to find." Kurgan pointed. "You take the right side, I will take the left."

He knew her name! Eleana, shaken, saw the Haaar-kyut move off toward where Riane stood. She held her breath as Kurgan Stogggul advanced in her direction. He worked methodically and thoroughly, peering into each nook and cranny, looking for a door or escape hatch. All too soon, he was less than an arm's length from where she stood. Though she knew he could not see her, still she had pressed herself against the stone as if she could sink into it, vanish for real.

How did he know her name?

He was so close she could smell him now, and she gave a tiny involuntary gasp. At once, his head came around, and he stared right at her. His black eyes searched the shadows within which she was secreted. His nostrils flared, and his eyes flicked back and forth. His hand came up, his fingertips touching the stone beside her cheek.

He could only know her name one way-he had been spying on them in Za Hara-at! What else had he learned? She feared for Riane.

Locked in proximity with him, Eleana felt as if she were suffocating. She could sense the malevolence emanating from him. Felt his overweening ambition, his l.u.s.t for conquest. And something else that threatened to turn her bones to water-the extraordinary force of his desire. She commenced to tremble, for she knew with every cell of her being that this desire was aimed at her.Riane had heard Eleana's gasp and how it had instantly drawn Kurgan's attention. Looking at the intense expression on his face, she wondered whether he somehow suspected that Eleana was there. She had been stunned to discover that he knew Eleana's name, and she, too, had come to the inevitable conclusion that he had not disappeared from Za Hara-at as quickly as it had at first seemed. Then she realized what must actually be happening-Flowering Wand was beginning to dissipate. They had only moments before the spell was gone, leaving them visible and vulnerable to the V'ornn. She had to use her advantage before it vanished altogether.

Kwenn had just pa.s.sed her when she stepped out of her niche and slammed her forearm into the back of his neck. He pitched forward, his forehead striking the stone wall. Riane jammed her boot into the back of his right knee and, as he buckled, s.n.a.t.c.hed the ion cannon out of his grasp.

The small sounds of the scuffle had caused Kurgan to cease his scrutiny of the place where Eleana was hiding. He turned, the point of his push-dagger coming up, when Riane fired an ion burst into his chest. He flew backward, crashing to the floor, insensate.

"Come on!" Riane cried as she led the way out of the far side of the plaza.

Sornnn SaTrryn returned to Axis Tyr to find it dull as dishwater. He knew he should have been pumped up by the prestige and power that went with being Prime Factor, but all he could muster was indifference.

Within twenty-four hours of listening to Bashkir business disputes, he felt as if he had been incarcerated in the Forum of Adjudication for twenty-four years. He found the invidious accusations of his fellow Bashkir almost as risible as their prevarications. Owing to his absence, the backlog of adjudications was formidable, the Forum's session interminable, the recesses, though brief, his only solace.

His mind was filled with the kaleidoscopic Korrush, with brooding Za Hara-at, with the portent of war, and with his disquieting conversation with Nasaqa. And he could not help but wonder how Minnum was getting along without him. He missed the little sauromician, but not as much as he missed Marethyn.

He longed for her as one longs for food, for breath. She had, in short, become an essential part of his life, and he could not now live it happily without her.

He was briefly pulled out of his misery by Raan Tallus. He was the solicitor-general, a clever and powerful Bashkir, who was now administering the Ashera family business. Cool-eyed, dark-skinned, clearheaded. Loved a good verbal sparring match. In short, since he was at the center of a dispute involving not only an emperor's ransom of coinage but also of intellectual property he insisted belonged solely to the Ashera, he brought a single spark of interest to Sornnn's life. Sornnn watched in concealed amus.e.m.e.nt the ease with which he demolished the opposing Bashkir's arguments while at the same time scoring his own points. It was impossible not to be impressed. On the other hand, the matter was far from the open-and-shut case he would have Sornnn believe, and eventually Sornnn fell back into the prison that his life had become.

Mercifully, the session could not go on forever, and when at last time won him his temporary respite, he roamed the packed streets, restlessly moving from place to place. He walked the entire length of Divination Street just so he could pa.s.s Marethyn's atelier. Shuttered now, it had a sad air of abandonment that sent him straight to Gamut, the cafe where they used to meet in secret, but inside the sense of her was so palpable he was forced to leave before he could finish his drink. Divination Street brought him in close proximity with the subterranean club, Cthonne. He went there after midnight, but amid the gyrating throng he could find none of his Resistance contacts.

He went next to the umbilical of the vast all-night spice market, to Spice Jaxx's, where he most often met Majja and Ba.s.se, the Resistance members to whom he had introduced Marethyn. They were not there, and the Resistance he did find were from different cells, and so knew nothing of them, or of her.

That was frustrating but perfectly normal, the way the Resistance was required to work. Still, he could not help feeling that fate was mocking him. How could Marethyn simply fall off the map?

The next day, during an hour's break-a welcome respite from Raan Tallus' endless oration filled withgalaxies of witnesses, affidavit-crystals, case-law precedents-he went to see Tong.

Tong was his father's oldest friend, an ancient and war-torn Kha-gggun, who had chosen retirement rather than having his many-times-broken bones rehabilitated once more by the Genomatekks. Now he raised wyr-hounds and led a quiet, unremarkable life.

Tong had his kennels in the Northern Quarter, a rough area for Kha-gggun, seeing how it was populated mostly by the perpetually angry Mesagggun. But there were Looorm, too, which, Sornnn supposed, was why Tong was there in the first place. He had never mated; as far as Sornnn knew, he had no children.

It was Tong who had helped Sornnn's father set up the traffic routes to and from the Korrush. Routes unknown or little guarded by the Khagggun so Hadinnn SaTrryn could move more than spice when he needed to.

Tong was Sornnn's last resort in finding out news of Marethyn, but he was soon to rue his decision to come there.

"My friend, I'm afraid I have some bad news."

Sornnn felt a buzzing in his head, and he sat down in a chair Tong provided for him. Wyr-hound pups nipped at his legs, begging for attention.

Tong picked one up and set him down in Sornnn's lap, where Sornnn immediately began to stroke his still-soft fur. The pup licked his fingers.

"What's happened?" Sornnn said in a faint voice. "Tell me straight out."

Tong sighed. He had been a ma.s.sive Khagggun once, but age and the disabilities he chose to live with had whittled him down. His skin, grey-tinged as the day, lay over atrophied muscles in thick folds. All the deep copper color seemed to have been lost on the many battlefields he had left behind. He still had a keen eye, though, and a taste for the Looorm he'd bedded in brief bouts between battles.

"Ah, Sornnn, there is no good way to say this." He poured Sornnn a shot of fire-grade numaaadis.

"The cell Marethyn joined was ambushed while they lay in wait for a convoy of Khagggun war materiel."

The cup slipped from Sornnn's nerveless fingers. He felt his stomach clench, his gorge rising. A great black wall seemed to be rising, obliterating everything in its path. Dimly, he was aware of Tong pouring him another drink, urging him to swallow it. But when he did he choked, spewed the numaaadis onto the ground, where the dogs greedily lapped it up. Dimly, he heard someone saying, "Your source must be mistaken. I don't believe it." Eventually, he recognized his own voice. His vision blurred with tears.

Marethyn gone. It could not be. He thought of their love, their time together, so precious, so short. He heard her laugh, the rustle of her clothes, the l.u.s.ter of her bare flesh. The scent of her! How deeply he breathed in her presence. His best friend, his lover, his life. How would he survive without her? He uttered a low moan.

Tong was patient. When he judged Sornnn ready, he went on. "From what I have learned the cell was set up." He took the empty tumbler from Sornnn, but when he went to refill it Sornnn shook his head sharply. "They walked right into the trap."

Sornnn felt his hearts constrict, and he cried out her name. "Surely some of them had to survive," he said in a strangled voice.

"None have been reported anywhere. And that convoy disappeared as well. If it's any consolation, it was a disaster for both sides." Tong's eyes were very sad. "My friend, is there anything I can do?"

Sornnn shook his head. The sweet balm of shock had for the moment removed him from everyone and everything. In his mind he danced with Marethyn, and she spoke to him of all the intimate things he longed to hear. Never her touch, never her voice. Never again. The thought was too final to make sense.

In a flood, the bitter tears came, overwhelming him.

Tong took the pup as Sornnn stood up.

"I should go now." He felt dizzy and strangely light-headed, certain that at any moment he would awake to find this all just a terrible nightmare. "My work is waiting."

"Klagh." It was the worst of the Kraelian curses, a harsh and guttural sound befitting its ugly sentiment. "Stay here until you feel yourself again."

Sornnn did not think that he would ever feel himself again. Besides, his nerves felt rubbed raw. Tolook at even one sympathetic face that knew what he knew, that felt his pain, seemed intolerable.

He threw himself into his role as Prime Factor, but all the while it seemed false, two-dimensional, as if he were watching a crystal-vid of someone else's life. Nothing was real, nothing mattered without her. A veil had descended over the world, isolating him; he moved through his life like an automaton, functioning without feeling. He looked into the mirror and no longer recognized the face. By night he wandered the streets, slipped through crowds, pinched his face to make certain he was still there. He was not rea.s.sured. By day he was a.s.saulted by slick-talking representatives of Bashkir families jabbering on about the growing Kundalan labor shortage, the need for slave labor would explode as soon as ground was broken in Za Hara-at and work in the lortan mines quickly brought on a pernicious lung disease; how to get in on the coming building bonanza at Za Hara-at; the usual simmering resentment toward Ashera ent.i.tlement, their monopoly of the sala-muuun trade, their major investment-along with the Stogggul-in Za Hara-at. An overall theme apparent to even sunken Sornnn: a ground-swell of curiosity and interest in the rebuilding of the ancient city. Every family, it seemed, wanted to partic.i.p.ate. They could smell the coinage accruing. Sornnn could not recall this degree of antic.i.p.ation among the Bashkir.

Their fluttery excitement, like Tuskugggun on their way to a party, only served to depress him further.

The thought of a concerted Bashkir commercial push into the Korrush made him want to scream.

That was all on the inside. On the outside, he smiled politely, listening to their arguments, reb.u.t.ting when need be. He got caught up in a whirlpool of linguistics, semantics, staid and static logic, precedents, the emotional pushing and shoving for favorable rulings. Cross-talk voices, raised in anger, lowered in seduction. He interfaced with so many they became a blur, the blur became a pain in his head, closing one eye, a vein throbbing excessively in his skull. Bludgeoning him to a Genomatekk. Perhaps I am dying, he thought as he sat, waiting. That would be fitting.

Marethyn was dead, and it was his fault. He had brought her into his secret world, had wanted to share everything with her. Lacked the strength to keep her at arm's length, to be friends. It was too heavy a price to pay to keep that wall between them as he did with everyone else. With her, he had wanted it all, had believed that he was in control of everything, and now she had paid the ultimate price.