The Pearl Saga - Mistress of the Pearl Part 51

A sudden fright went through Sornnn. "If you have hurt Tong, if you have harmed him in any way ..."

"Prime Factor, I swear to you-"

Sornnn held up his hand. He thumbed the Khagggun Tracker Tong had given to him long ago, and when he saw his friend's face a wave of relief swept over him. The two of them spoke for a few moments until Sornnn was satisfied. Then he signed off.

For time, he stood looking thoughtfully at Kwenn. At last he said, "So everything you have told me is the truth." "Yes, Prime Factor."

Sornnn nodded. "It seems we both want something, First Captain." Something akin to hope was stirring in his hearts, and it did not only concern Fleet-Admiral Pnin. "There is a way now that we can accomplish those ends."

He took Kwenn to Leyytey's atelier, but she was not there. She was not, in fact, anywhere, and by then Sornnn knew all her habits and preferences.

"It looks as though the Fleet-Admiral's daughter has disappeared," Kwenn said.

Kwenn's words made no sense to Sornnn. It was not in Leyytey's nature to retreat from adversity.

Then his heart sank, because he knew where she must have gone.Riane climbed the stairs at FIREFLY, heavy with so many misgivings she preferred not to consider them. With Eleana and Kurgan so close it seemed to her that she was thrust back into Annon's old life, when Annon and Kurgan, best friends, had come upon Eleana bathing. Hot sun drifting through the sysal trees, spangling the water, lending it a dreamlike appearance. Eleana reaching up with bare arms, soft down golden, elbows bent. Letting her hair down in long, luxuriant folds, a bedsheet inviting. Both of them running, wading into the streambed. But it was Kurgan who had taken her by force, Annon trying and failing to stop the rape. Was it then their friendship took a dark turn? Was anything ever the same afterward? It seemed to Riane not. After that, one long unending nightmare, starting with Eleusis Ashera's slaughter and ending there. Then. The princ.i.p.als reunited.

Riane on the second floor, stepping carefully, silently, along the threadbare runner. Stains everywhere.

Chambers empty as the eyes of the dead. The odor of desperation seeping like sweat out of every wall.

In this miasma, she returned to Dragonfly, honing the spell to its narrowest possible beam. Her only thought was of Kurgan and the banestone. Approaching the last doorway in the corridor, she vowed that the opportunity to secure it would not be wasted, not again. So preoccupied with Kurgan and the banestone was she, that Riane again missed the shadows coiling like smoke. Afterward, she would have rueful cause to remember the Hagoshrin's admonishment: Do not rely overly on any implement, sorcerous or otherwise. Rely always on your wits and you will never be disappointed. Without knowing it, she was relying on emotion, relying on sorcery to protect her. She saw Kurgan, saw the banestone, a dark egg that seemed to pulse before her eyes. Clearly, Kurgan was not yet aware of her.

He appeared to be talking to himself, talking, perhaps, to the banestone which, she saw with a thrill of horror, he was holding in his bare hand. You must not touch the banestone with your bare hands. The Hagoshrin's words were clearly etched in her memory: It will change you in ways no one can predict, and not for the better. What would it do to Kurgan? For despite the blood feud between Ashera and Stogggul, despite the fact that Kurgan's father had been responsible for the deaths of all the Ashera on Kundala save Annon, the spirit that survived inside Riane could not forget that once Annon and Kurgan had been best friends. Hunting together, confiding secrets, confessing sins, sharing everything. Such a bond was not easy to forget, nor to forgo. It remained, like a blood oath. It abided in spite of time and terrible events.

And so Riane stood transfixed by the past and, thusly, the present and the future were formed.

There was another, however, who was not so fixated, one who ran, claws retracted for silence and for speed who, at the last moment, shot past her, through the doorway and into the hands of Lujon.

Thigpen's jaws snapped, her claws came out, drawing blood. Then the Ardinal flung her headlong across the chamber at the mirror. The mirror in which, without realizing it, Riane had been staring at Kurgan's reflection.

Thigpen vanished into the mirror.

Riane sprang into the room. Lujon emerged fully from the shadows where Thigpen had spied him, a sharp-toothed rock in a befogged bay, waiting for grief to form around him like a shipwreck.

"Eleana!" Kurgan roared. "Where is she?" Launching himself at Riane, he was stopped in midstride by Lujon and lifted off his feet. Whirling, he pressed the slender muzzle of the ion pistol into Lujon's rib cage, pulling the trigger.

Nothing happened.

"Surprised? We told you to be careful." Lujon, reached for the dagger, completely ignoring the inert ion weapon.

Employing Ka Form, Kurgan went hand to hand. He had been well trained by the Old V'ornn, had contested with combatants older and larger than he in the brutal Kalllistotos. For his age, he was an accomplished fighter; but he was saddled with the disadvantage of having both to protect the banestone and to keep an eye on Riane. Lujon, on the other hand, was Sintire trained from birth to be an expert a.s.sa.s.sin. Now the sauromicians had taught him in the black arts of necromancy which, unlike the white sorcerous arts, was not difficult to master. A firm hand, a few pointers on how to slice into the newly deceased, a strong stomach, and here and there a few words to learn. Any surgeon would do nicely.As the Old V'ornn had taught him, Kurgan used the edge of his hand like a wedge, breaking the two lower ribs on Lujon's left side. At almost the same moment, Lujon, heel of his hand forward, struck him a tremendous blow on the bridge of the nose. A sharp crack] resounded off the walls. Kurgan's head snapped back. Lujon used the ma.s.sed points of his fingertips on Kurgan's exposed throat, drew back his other hand to gouge out his eyes and use them, no doubt, to augment his power.

Riane conjured Try in Mind, a hammer of energy beating Lujon back.

Kurgan dropped to his knees, retching, one hand to his throat, the other fiercely gripping the banestone. Lujon raised the arm with the necromantic talisman, tapping into the energy of the newly dead.

A darkness spilled into the room, running like tar, stinking like the pits of the d.a.m.ned. The air turned gelid; Riane had trouble moving, it was like trying to run in a dream. Lujon drew out a slim rod familiar to Riane. An infinity-blade wand! Milk-white, smooth as silk, just like the one Minnum gave her from the Museum of False Memory. The Sarakkon touched the tip of it to the nearest banestone and it glowed a fiery crimson. It was clear that somehow the wand had absorbed goron energy from the banestone. The goron-particle beam, opalescent, glistering, expanded outward like a great fan, a gigantic scythe sweeping through the s.p.a.ce between them, about to slice Riane's head off.

She conjured Mounting Irons, felt the gelid atmosphere thaw, took her opening, and leapt, rolling beneath the great energy blade, fetching up against Kurgan. Out came her own wand and, mimicking the Sarakkon, she tapped it against the banestone. She thumbed the gold disc, causing the opalescent beam to shoot out. She lifted it slightly so that it intersected the great scythe.

Shock registered on Lujon's face as resistance tremored the scythe blade, as energy fought energy, but, recovering quickly, he shut down the beam, swept the wand down, reignited it as a sleek wasp-shaped blade. Riane had limited experience with the goron-particle beam, had only used it against Gyrgon ion-based weaponry. She was clumsy and slow, and did not immediately understand the need to turn it off and on again in order to change its shape. Lujon's energy blade almost disarmed her, slicing inside her defense. She quickly shut down her own beam, rolled, reignited it in the shape of a double-edged ax, and swung it at Lujon's left side with all her might. He grimaced, his broken ribs grinding into fascia and muscle, which was just what she intended, for it caused his arm to lag his eye.

Bringing her ax down in a two-handed blow, she engaged his beam with hers. Sparks flew, and there was a scorched stench as of flame against flesh, a juddering down her arms into her chest. Teeth chattering, heart pounding, she felt hooked up to a gigantic engine, which, in a way, she was.

Riane was at last making some headway, Lujon's knees were buckling, as he struggled against the perfect angle she had chosen. And that is where it should have ended, Lujon's position crumbling, Riane's goron-particle ax splitting him in two. But Kurgan had recovered sufficiently, wiping blood out of his eyes. He had not seen Lujon powering the infinity-blade with the banestone, was not even aware of the infinity-blade's existence. Remembering in his befogged state how the banestone had killed the powerful Kundalan monster, he reached out.

"No!" Riane yelled, divining his intent.

He was determined, he would not be stopped, and pressed the bane-stone against Lujon's bare flesh.

Riane felt the charge against her increasing exponentially. Her energy ax sundered in two, loosed gorons through the chamber. Lujon, eyes blazing, swept his arm in her direction, and she flew backward, arms and legs in a tangle, infinity-blade sputtering and keening. He formed his beam into a poleax, drove it at her, meaning to skewer her against the wall. She twisted away, shook her wand, re-formed her infinity-blade into a kind of webbing that hooked the leading edge of the poleax, sweeping it away. With a grunt, Lujon pushed through the webbing, hooked it up and away.

Riane went scrabbling after the wand, almost had her arm severed for her effort. Lujon laughed, toying with her, his power growing still, his energy beam far stronger than hers. Still, she could not give up and pounced on the wand, reactivated it, brought it to bear. He moved her around the chamber with it, and every step she took brought the leading edge of gorons closer to her flesh. She could feel their searing energy, the skin on her forearms burning. Lujon drove her, at length, into the corner by the narrow door to the attic, where the mirror gleamed, reflecting the goron particles in a kind of fireworkssplendor. The beam swept toward her again, glennan going down before the scythe, and she knew she could not counter it, could not even deflect it sufficiently.

No time to think or react, a deathlike hollowness rising in her chest as she leapt at the mirror, pa.s.sed through it.

Into the Other Side.

27

Pnin's End

Because of his status as one of Star-Admiral Iin Mennus' inner circle, Teww Dacce had been a.s.signed a villa. It wasn't a large villa, at least by Bashkir standards. It was certainly more humble than that to which he aspired. Still, it was far more than the barracks in which he had lived in the old days.

Dacce being Dacce, he had filled it with antiques, rare and collectible artifacts, the better to proclaim his true status to acquaintances and compatriots. Slave to his aspirations, he had made a rather desperate attempt to mimic a Bashkir's domicile.

It was late when Iin Mennus had finally dismissed him. During the short walk home his head was so filled with the Star-Admiral's orders that he arrived at his front door not remembering how he got there.

Inside, the villa was dark. He fumbled for the nearest fusion lamp, but it would not come on. Neither would the second one. He was on his way to the third when he stumbled over something that should not have been on the floor. He swung around, startled, but before he could completely regain his balance he felt a shadow movement. His reaction was cut short by dual knife edges at his throat.

"If you move. If you give me any reason at all, I will slice you open like a ripe clemett."

"Leyytey." Teww Dacce had frozen in place. Now a smile spread across his face. "You never had a penchant for rough s.e.x play before." He yelped as the shock-sword bit into his skin and drew blood.

"You have mistaken what I say for the last time." The slightest twist to her hand caused the blades to bite deeper. A slow drip of blood commenced. "Do I make myself clear?"

He nodded, all at once confused. When it came to Leyytey he was totally at sea.

Leyytey had taken Teww Dacce hostage, though perhaps that was not precisely correct. With a shock-sword at his throat he was surely her prisoner. But, really, Leyytey was not thinking clearly, because she had run out of patience. All she could think of was the dire circ.u.mstance Iin Mennus had put her father in. She was tired of listening to males drone on about ways that might or might not work. She was going to free him. She had not considered the consequences, though to be fair to her current state of agitation, had she done so she surely would have dismissed them.

She told herself that she had chosen to take Teww Dacce hostage because it was the only method at her disposal to free her father. Her former lover was in the Star-Admiral's employ. He had access to Fleet-Admiral Pnin. All of this was irrefutable, of course. Nevertheless, she was also motivated by an element of revenge.

Nothing felt so sweet as to hold the keen edges of a shock-sword to his throat, to see the look in his eyes when she lit one of the fusion lamps she had doctored. There was an equal measure of satisfaction and sadness at being witness to his utter confusion. She steeled herself, knowing what his confusion would morph into.

Rage caused Teww Dacce to clench his fists, caused the cords on the sides of his neck to stand out, turned his voice guttural.

"Have you lost your mind?" he said thickly. "What do you think you're doing?"

She tightened her grip on him. "Shut up."

"I am on the Star-Admiral's personal staff. Do you know what they will do to you?"

"I said shut up]"

"They will kill you, Leyytey. And past due, I say."

She punched him in the side as hard as she could with her balled fist. Wind whistled out of him, and he jackknifed over.

"Here are the rules, Dacce. One: speak only when I address you. Two: obey all orders. Three: makeno sudden moves. Think you can remember those?"

Silence.

She poked him, hard. "I am speaking to you."

More silence, obdurate and sullen.

Leyytey grasped his right hand around the wrist and, before he knew what was happening, sliced off his smallest finger.

He screamed and fell to his knees, holding his maimed hand. There was blood everywhere. A string of foul curses fell from his lips. His eyes looked dull and red-rimmed. He was squeezing hard on the stump of his finger.

"It's not too late. Call a Genomatekk. They'll reattach my finger. They do that, and I'll forget all about this."

She hit him then with the heavy b.u.t.t of the shock-sword. Not in the face, of course. He would need that unmarked for her plan to succeed. Anyway, it hurt him more to do it in the place where she had punched him. He gagged a little at the pain, and she raised his head up with a hand under his chin.

"Do I have your attention now, Dacce? How gratifying. Because I never had it before."

He stilled his panting breaths before he managed to say, "What do you want? To beat me to a pulp?"

He began to laugh. "I will kill you for this. I will put your severed head on a pike outside the Star-Admiral's pavilion for all to see."

She saw then that brute force wasn't going to get her what she wanted, and she stepped away and raised the intensity on the fusion lamp. Then she swung her shock-sword, first to the left, then to the right.

She slashed into the antiques and the artifacts, stomping on them as they hit the floor. Whirling around the room, shock-sword whistling, her breath coming fast. Dacce watched her in stupefaction. "What have you done?"

"I thought it was time to redecorate." She kicked at the shards of porcelain and fired clay and crystal, the shreds of textiles and twisted metal alloy. "I have broken everything, Dacce. Everything you love and covet is gone." She knelt down in front of him. "What's the matter? Don't care for the new look? Too late. It's too late for everything Dacce."

She saw understanding come slowly to his face, and it was not a pretty sight. Longed for, it now only deepened her disgust. "What do you want?"

"I want you to take me to my father. I want you to free him. I want you to get us both out of there alive and safe."

He realized that she was perfectly serious. The horror of it was that he could do all that. Iin Mennus had given him the power. Not that he would survive it. He seriously doubted if any of them would, but he also knew that would not stop her. Nothing could. She was on a collision course, and unless he was prepared to die right then, nothing would derail her. He closed his eyes for a moment. He had never known her. Why should he have? She was Tuskugggun. She was nothing. The essential problem now was that she knew him. She knew that he would not opt for death, would not call her possible bluff if there was even an iota of a chance that she would kill him. Still, there was one last card to play.

"If you kill me, you will never see your father again."

"That may be," she said without hesitation. "But at least I will have had the satisfaction of watching you die."

Dacce's last chance went up in smoke. She had not hesitated to slice off his finger and, he knew one thing about her because he had observed it firsthand in her atelier: she was as good with her weapons as any Khagggun.

"I will do what you ask of me." His head sank to his chest, but he was already calculating the scenarios where, on the way to Fleet-Admiral Pnin's villa or, failing that, inside it, he would take her by surprise, plunge her own shock-sword through her hearts.

Even if you do not speak, in the end I will win." An entire array of scalpels, pincers, bone forceps, andcurettes appeared from the palm of Nith Na.s.sam's ion glove, a bouquet of dreadful blossoms he began to pick through with obvious relish. "Because I will dissect your mute body and find all the answers I need."

Gul Aluf's eyes had never left Sahor's face. He became aware of a tiny shiver in the air, a wavering like heat rising. Her fierce concentration was stirring ions to life, but slowly, ever so slowly.

There came for Sahor a moment of disconnection, a moment when neither Gul Aluf nor the lab-orb existed. His universe spiraled down to the size and shape of Nith Na.s.sam. In a way, even he himself ceased to exist inasmuch as he lost any sense of himself inside his body. It was as if he had become incorporeal, an amorphous globule of spinning atoms, mere electrons, neutrons, and protons, invisible even to a Gyr-gon's eye.

Sahor saw Gul Aluf's narrowed eyes spark, and she had done all she could, sending a narrow-cast ion beam straight at the photon collar tightening around his neck. When it burst asunder, Sahor commenced his attack.

He was no longer Nith, however, and the first strike of hyperexcited ions from Nith Na.s.sam struck him full in the chest, drove him to his knees. Nith Na.s.sam turned. "And for your part in this ..." He leveled a photonic stream at Gul Aluf, rendering her unconscious.

He frowned deeply as he stalked after Sahor. "That should have paralyzed you. What is this sh.e.l.l of yours made of?"

He reached down and grabbed Sahor by the bleeding throat. His other hand drew back, ion sparks fizzling off it in all directions. He hooked the first two fingers, and twin beams shot out. Sahor tried to look away, but the photonic beams caught his eyes and held them.

Apart from a flare of lambent blue light, he was blind. He felt the beams crawling along his optic nerves, tracing pathways to the deepest centers of his brain there to take possession of his autonomic nervous system. Once that occurred, he knew, Nith Na.s.sam would control his body completely.

He fought back, using his mind, but he lacked sufficient knowledge of his own new self to choose the right pathway. Millimeter by millimeter, the photons were crawling toward their target. All his senses now were flickering, fading out of his control. He had only moments to decide what to do.

But which way to go? He was filled with turmoil: fear, rage, loss made his mind turbid, unable to reach a clear conclusion.

Clear.

Sahor let go of everything. His fear, his rage, his sense of impending loss. Even as the photons crept along his optic nerves, a limpid pool of calm began to spread inside him. He did not think, he did not hope, he did not expect. . . anything.

And into the perfectly clear pool of nothingness came an image. In his mind's eye he saw Nith Na.s.sam. How? But of course. He had somehow followed the twin beams of photons back to their source, and they revealed everything he needed.

He tapped into the beams and amplified them beyond their capacity. Like water seeking its own level, the overcrowded photons reversed themselves.

Sahor heard Nith Na.s.sam scream, and then the blinding blue light vanished, leaving him dazzled and panting, but free. His rage returned, redoubled in strength, and he rushed at Nith Na.s.sam. This was a mistake. Nith Na.s.sam, in his pain, lashed out with his ion glove fully activated. It struck Sahor full on the cheek. Agony raced through him, and he doubled over, retching and shivering.

Nith Na.s.sam took hold of him and threw him across the lab-orb, and he struck the goron-wave chamber. Only its convex surface saved him from cracking his ribs. As it was, he fought for breath, hanging on with rubbery knees.

Nith Na.s.sam advanced toward him. He was not about to give Sahor another chance to counter.

Blood dripped from one eye, but he ignored that. He was healing himself even as his ion flash caught Sahor in the solar plexus.

Sahor, clinging to the side of the goron-wave chamber, felt his fingers encounter the activation panel.

From the moment he had entered this new body, from the moment he had worked his Gyrgon DNA through the spiral of Kundalan DNA, merging them, creating something entirely new, he had seensomething there that had fired his interest. He had been planning a scientifically correct series of experiments leading to a trial with himself as the subject. But now, here he was on the point of being dissected, and his only hope lay in taking that idea to its final trial without knowing whether it would kill him. But better that, he thought as he activated the goron-wave chamber, than to let Nith Na.s.sam learn the secret of what I have become.

"What are you doing?" As the chamber whined into life, Nith Na.s.sam took an involuntary step back.