The Pearl Saga - Mistress of the Pearl Part 65

All such questions were driven from her mind, however, when pa.s.sing through the carnage in the central part of the abbey, she entered Haamadi's study to discover Riane in pitched battle with Lujon.

The instant the anima entered her, Riane quailed at its cold clutch. Her nostrils were clogged with the stench of offal. She wanted to drop the infinity-blade, to tear her clothing off, to rip her skin, rend her flesh from her bones, anything to rid herself of the abomination Lujon had loosed upon her. She knew instantly why the Ramahan had shunned necromancy, made it anathema, unholy. She felt as if every cell in her body was being turned inside out, as if light was dark, as if day had turned to night. Could there be anything more dreadful than experiencing death while still alive? She found herself thinking of null-s.p.a.ce, the terrible feeling of reversal, of it being inimical to life, and her mind made the leap, the connection it needed.

Even as the anima sought to suffocate her in a pit of death, she slid her hand up the wand and into the pulse of the goron-energy stream. The initial jolt almost finished her, but she quickly adjusted to the pulse of the stream, found that it began to seep into her wrist, travel up her arm, into her shoulder. When it reached her chest, it collided with the anima, which emitted a scream that echoed painfully through Riane's body and mind. The anima twisted this way and that, trying to get away, to no avail. Riane kept the goron stream trained on it even as it shriveled and blackened into a twist of nothingness before vanishing completely.

Riane's instincts had been correct. Null-s.p.a.ce, filled with goron energy, was a place of living death.

While the anima in its insubstantial form had been unaffected by the gorons, once inside Riane's body it had become vulnerable.

She could feel Lujon's mind gathering itself for its most powerful necromantic a.s.sault yet, and she knew she had to stop it before it began. Enfolding a goron pulse in her fist, she flung it at him. It struck him full in the face, burning through his eyes, nose, and mouth. He danced a silent, spastic jig, the skin burned off his face, the flesh flayed from the bone so quickly that the blood was boiled away before evena drop was spilled. What remained was a bare skull on a body in the process of shutting down. Its legs tangled, and it tripped over its own feet, stumbling over Nesta's corpse, before crashing into the desk and crumpling into a heap.

35

The Ninth Banestone

What have you done?" "I have brought you the ninth banestone." Eleana unwrapped the Sarakkonian scarf, held out the dark, egg-shaped object to Riane. "I thought you would be pleased."

"Of course I am pleased." Riane's eyes were wide and staring. "Where did you get it?"

"On the ship. I figured Lujon would not take his most valuable bargaining chip with him when he confronted Haamadi."

"Miina be praised, that was brilliant!" Riane hugged her. "But how on Kundala did you manage to sneak in here without being noticed? The enormous risk-"

"The sauromicians are dead," Eleana said. "All dead."

"Giyan," Krystren said. "We left a message for her on the ground of the Abbey of Five Pivots. She must have found it. We are willing to bet she used the Skreeling Engine to somehow destroy the sauromicians."

"In that case, we had better find the Cage of Nine Banestones," Eleana said.

Riane nodded. "I have got to save Seelin. There is no time to lose."

The moment Riane had dispatched Lujon, Orujo's reanimated corpse had collapsed into a stinking heap. Of Haamadi they could find no sign, and they were all afraid that he had made his way to the Cage.

"We have seen the Dragon," Krystren said. "We know where it is imprisoned."

She led them out of the abbey and into the rock corridors of the sea caves.

The way was etched in Krystren's memory. They kept descending, the crash of the sea booming through the ear of the cave, giving it the quality of a G.o.ddesslike voice speaking to them in a language beyond their understanding. Presently they entered the cave with the unnaturally smooth walls and the peculiar ruddy glow. Krystren placed the flat of her hand on a spot on the rear wall. A door opened, and she led them into the thick-walled keep, windowless and ominous. The sickly red glow enveloped them all. She pointed to the square column in the center. "The Cage is down there. You put your feet on those stirrups-"

"Pull the lever and down you go." Riane nodded. "I know. I have ridden one of these machines twice before."

"Twice?" Eleana said.

"That is for later." Riane turned to both of them and said rather formally, "Eleana, Krystren, I cannot thank you enough for the help you have given, for the dangers you have braved. But now I must go on alone."

"What are you talking about?" Eleana cried. "I have come this far. Do you think I would not accompany you all the way?"

Krystren said gravely, "After what we have been through it is our right."

"I do not doubt the truth of your words," Riane said. "However, where I must go now you cannot follow. I am the Dar Sala-at. It is only for me to do. And I need you both to find out what has happened in the abbey. If all the sauromicians are indeed dead, then someone must take control of the Ramahan, prepare them for the long journey home." Her eyes were pleading. "Please. I cannot explain further. Do as I ask."

"All right." Eleana bit her lip to keep herself from adding "love" to the end of her sentence. She was acutely sensitive to the Sarakkon female's presence and how it constrained her from uttering words of love. She could not even give her a proper farewell.

Krystren, after a long moment to show her displeasure, gave a reluctant nod."Good," Riane said. "Then do as I have bade you. I will rejoin you shortly."

Giyan was tiring. Even for her, this was a monumental struggle. By concentrating all of her energies, she had managed one painstaking layer at a time to free the spirits trapped within the rings of the dead that circled Haamadi's head like a necromantic aurora. But her success did not come without a severe price.

The effort of fighting Haamadi's necromancy every step of the way depleted her. But the sauromician archon without his rings was himself stripped of much of his power. At some point she became aware that he was trying to pull away from her sorcerous grip. Giyan was instantly alert to his change of tactics.

Why would he be giving up fighting her? Had he conceded defeat? But immediately her seer's finely honed instincts sensed that this was not his way. He had caught a whiff of something .beyond her ken.

What could it be?

And then, as he fought to pull away even harder, she had a vision: Haamadi down in the crypt deep beneath the Abbey of Loathsome Jaws, locked in mortal combat with Riane. Between them the ninth banestone. They fought, and Haamadi won. She saw him take the ninth banestone, complete the Cage within which Seelin, Miina's Sacred Dragon of Transformation lay dying. She saw the spark and cold flame, felt the enormous power of the nine banestones flowing into Haamadi, saw him grow to outlandish proportions as he fused with the aura of power bestowed upon him by the banestones. Nothing could stop him now. Nothing.

At the bottom of the shaft, Riane let go of the handgrips and stepped away from the Tchakira machine.

She found it fascinating that at some unspecified time in the past they had been there on Suspended Skull.

The sight of the Cage of Nine Banestones blotted out all other thought. It towered over her, the eight banestones pulsing their goron-based energy in crisscrossed lines that imprisoned Seelin, the Sacred Dragon of Transformation.

"Seelin!" Riane ran toward the Dragon, who lay with her eyes closed, great forepaws placed one over the other. The Dragon was identical to the one in Annon's memory. Her body was huge, sinuous sea-green. Her powerful forelegs were attached along their upper surfaces to a thin-veined membrane, triangular as a sail, moving like spindrift, gleaming prismatically. A long tail whipped back and forth like surf against a rocky sh.o.r.e. She had one set of forelegs and two sets of back legs, all tipped with long coral talons (one of them missing), a long, tapering, reptilian skull and enormous golden eyes. Gleaming teeth of pearl protruded out beyond the silhouette of her head. A pair of horns, corkscrewed like waterspouts, grew out of the thick scaly ridge of bone above her eyes.

She crept as close as she could. "I've come to free you! Seelin, wake up! It's me, the Dar Sala-at."

"There you are wrong."

A young boy, no more than Riane's age, had appeared, coming off the Tchakira machine. She could see from his dark skin and sharp features that he was a member of one of the Five Tribes of the Korrush.

Oddly, he was dressed in the persimmon-silk robes of a Ramahan konara.

He smiled at her, and said silkily, "As every Ramahan here knows, I am the Dar Sala-at."

Riane now knew the means by which the sauromicians had persuaded the Ramahan gullible enough to believe them to leave the Abbey of Floating White. They were told that they were following the true savior.

All at once, the youth's eyelids fluttered, and almost instantly he went rigid. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he began to shake as if in the grip of a violent seizure.

Riane took a step toward him, away from the Cage. "What is the matter with you?"

The false Dar Sala-at collapsed, his skin dull as if in death. But a moment later he shook himself like a wyr-hound throwing rain off his pelt. His eyes opened, and Riane gasped. They had taken on a golden, feral hue. As he rose, he bared his teeth."I am the archon Haamadi. This boy, Per, is mine, body and soul," the youth with the feral eyes said.

"You do not believe me? Watch!"

As if released from an invisible leash, Per leapt at Riane. Riane could feel, like a current from a V'ornn ion engine, the animal energy with which Haamadi had infused the boy. He came at Riane like a rabid wyr-hound.

Riane allowed her spirit to sink into herself, to walk the corridors of her memory palace until she came to the room where she had mentally stored the texts of Miina's sacred books. Fire. She went to the section on the Five Elements, read the Venca text.

Her mind made the extrapolation. She spoke the Venca syllables, creating the spell as she went along. "Nazha." Water. "Nazhima." Ocean. "Imken." Current.

Riane kept chanting, weaving the spell tighter and tighter, could feel the fire retreating, lying low, as if caught in a sudden downpour. He swung down to strike her, and she grabbed the front of his robe, used his own momentum to bring him close. She could smell the animal stench on him. Teeth bared, mouth half-open. Breath like a charnel house. Riane grabbed the twist of cloth Eleana had given her and jammed the Madila crystals into his mouth, striking him in the larynx with the edge of her hand, making him swallow convulsively.

His feral eyes glared at her. He opened his mouth, tried to stick two fingers down his throat. He shrieked then, hands to his head. Sweat flew off him, and he arched back, his head cracking against the stone. Foam was bubbling between his lips as Riane rose, gasping with pain. His heels and fists drummed a tattoo on the floor. His eyes rolled in his head.

Where was Haamadi? She could not think about that now. She was here with Seelin, with the ninth banestone. Difficult as it would be she knew what she had to do. There was no time for second thoughts or hesitation.

Blood was beginning to leak from Fer's ears as Riane staggered to the Cage and unwrapped the ninth banestone. All at once, she recalled her vision of the future. She had seen herself in this cavern, completing the Cage. Seelin's eyes opened. She looked nearly dead. She could no longer move. Amitra had been right. There was only one way to save her.

Riane stepped inside, placed the ninth banestone, completing the Cage. There came a lambent flash as the goron energy completed its circuit. The light went out in Seelin's eyes. Riane went over and touched the Dragon's snout. There could be no doubt about it, and she wept. She could not help herself.

Seelin was dead.

The moment Riane completed the Cage an opening had appeared in its bottom facet. Her grief had momentarily blinded her to it, but now it revealed itself to her. Without a second thought, she levered herself into it. Down she went.

If you are successful, Amitra had said, you will find yourself in the Underworld our ancestors tried-and failed-to reach. It is a dangerous place for one still alive. We cannot tell you what you will encounter. But it is where Seelin's spirit will go after she has died. There you must find her and bring her back to our world, the world of the living.

There was no sense of falling, no sensation of gravity, period. But there was illumination, as if the way was lit by reed torches. She saw, buried in niches she pa.s.sed, curled bodies, some young, others old.

They lay in a kind of repose so that it was possible to believe that they were only sleeping, until you saw their eyes, which were all the same, grey and filmed, staring at nothing or at everything.

Her nose wrinkled at the profound stench of decay, and she shivered, certain that she was traveling through the land of the newly dead. With each level she descended more and more bodies lay curled.

Waiting, but for what? They were roused, their heads turning in her direction, their lips pulled back in animal snarls. If they were dead, how could they be aware of her?

A V'ornn female sat cross-legged. As Riane came abreast of her niche, she reached out. Had she been waiting? Though dead, she had the strength to pull Riane to a stop. She looked at Riane with hergrey, filmed eyes, and, with a start, Riane realized that it was Kalla, Annon's mother.

She blinked several times, as if this would clear her mind. The part of her that still recalled Annon's V'ornnish ways was certain that she was hallucinating. What was a V'ornn doing in the Kundalan Underworld? Or was there only one Underworld for all the races that spanned the galaxies? Why not, she thought. Isn't death the great leveler?

"You look so different from the boy I dandled on my knee." Kalla gazed at her with her sightless eyes.

"Here, daub this on."

Riane saw that she held out a small black pot. She took it from her, but the foul odor forced her to turn her head away.

"Rancid oil," Kalla said, laughing. She had a beautiful smile. "Put it on, and no one will be able to tell you are not dead like the rest of us."

"Mother, I do not understand."

"Why do you call me mother?"

"You are Kalla. Annon's mother."

"I am Kalla, that much is true. I was Eleusis Ashera's wife, but Annon was no child of mine."

"What? What is that you say?" Riane felt sick. A dizziness enveloped her. "How can you not be Annon's mother?"

"I bore my husband three females, but alas for us, no boy-child."

"I do not understand. Annon was Eleusis' son and heir."

"That he was. But the female who bore him was a Kundalan sorceress, his mistress Giyan."

Annon was a half-breed? Giyan was his mother? The annealing flash of revelation illuminated even the remotest corners of Riane's mind. So many thoughts flashed by, so many of Annon's memories, so many odd things-his love of Kundalan culture and language, his secret antipathy to V'ornn arrogance and superiority; tiny occurrences, words, glances, between him and Giyan, between Giyan and Eleusis.

Unexplained until now. Like a telescope that is suddenly brought into focus, Riane saw the true nature of Annon's origin, but seeing it was not enough. The enormity of it was too much to absorb so quickly.

Understanding would take time.

"I have waited a long time to tell you this, Annon. You should know your own mother, shouldn't you?

You should know that I, loyal wife of Eleusis, was cast aside because I could not provide him with that which he desired most: a son, an heir." Kalla's lips turned up in a bitter sneer. "He turned to her to love, to penetrate, to seed her womb. And she, in her sorcerous ways, contrived to conceive the boy-child that would bind him to her forever. You, Annon. You are that boy-child."

She put her head down, cradling it in her hands. "You hate me now, don't you? The messenger of ill news is always sent to the slaughter, isn't that so? Well, what can I expect? Never loved in life, despised even in death, for even here Tuskugggun are not honored. That is my lot. Foolish creature, then, to complain! I am Tuskugggun. I never should have expected more."

Riane put her hand out.

"No, do not touch me!" Kalla cried. "It is not allowed for the living to touch the dead."

Riane, ignoring her, pulled her close, cradled her as once Giyan had cradled Annon. Kalla was cold as an icicle. "How could I hate you?" she whispered. "You were my father's wife. You were loyal to him.

You never gave away his secret, even on the point of death. I am certain he loved you for that, as do I."

Kalla began to weep, or tried to at least. "You see how it is," she said miserably, "the dead cannot shed tears." Shaking Riane off her, she returned to the subject at hand. "Have you anointed yourself?"

Riane began to smear on the rancid oil. She was trying not to think of why Giyan had failed to tell her that she was Annon's mother. Did she not want Riane to know? Was she ashamed of birthing a half-breed? "You know where I am going?"

"I hope you will find what you are looking for." She wagged her crooked forefinger, caught in a power loom. She had not wanted the Genomatekks to replace the fractured bone. "But beware the Daemon."

"Daemon? But, Kalla, all the Kundalan daemons are imprisoned and V'ornn do not believe in daemons."

"Listen to me." The crooked finger wagging. "She guards the dead, she decides their disposition,where they go. She will know where to find the one you seek." "But Kalla-"

"You will have to throw yourself on her mercy, ask her for the favor. Beware."

Riane staggered back, but Kalla came after her, holding out a gnarled hand. "Take this," she whispered, and dropped what appeared to be a smooth oval stone into Riane's palm. "This will guide you back here, it will help you ascend with your burden back to the land of the living." And all at once Riane was falling again, this time tumbling in a welter of sparks and flames. She closed her eyes against the vertigo, and presently she arrived. Finding herself on solid ground, she tapped it with her knuckles. At least it seemed solid enough.

Reed torches flickered in the distance, casting long-shadowed light, like a watery winter's sun sliding into the shallows of dusk. She was on a road that wound through dark countryside. She followed it, almost immediately losing track of time. The light never changed, not a breath of air stirred. Though she saw the silhouettes of trees and shrubs, she could smell nothing at all. No birds twittered, no insects buzzed. All was still as the grave.

She pa.s.sed others, all walking with a somnambulist's tread, their eyes, fixed and staring, registering her as one of their own-because of her smell, she surmised. She did not attempt to talk to them, but hurried on, disquieted to be in their eerily silent company.

Presently she came upon a dark-flowing river, which she pa.s.sed over using the arch of a narrow bridge. The bridge was most curious, being composed entirely of bones. Four piers that supported it were, in fact, warriors with terrible wounds and cold, staring eyes, who held the arch upon the bulging muscles of their shoulders.

On the other side, she found herself on the extreme edge of a battlefield. For as far as she could see in every direction, dark figures had at each other, swinging weapons, hacking off limbs. But again, there was no sound. Everything appeared to be happening in a vacuum.