The Pearl Saga - Mistress of the Pearl Part 18

They played quickly and efficiently, as befitted Khagggun. In the end, Dacce won with a daring and unexpected maneuver with his last remaining decagon.

"Well done, Pack-Commander." Kwenn pushed over a pile of coins.

"And you, First-Captain." Dacce deftly swept the coins into his pocket. "I find your defensive strategy most unorthodox."

"Do you have five thousand to go with those hundred?" Kwenn said. "Because being at the regent's side, I am privy to numerous lucrative deals that make Bashkir fortunes."

"Five thousand! I hardly have five hundred!" Dacce exclaimed bitterly. "It is my ill fate to be poor."

"Pity. Twenty-five hundred and we could have been partners, a small dip in a big deal that could have tripled our coinage."

"Triple! But it is now illegal for us to involve ourselves in Bashkir deals."

"It all depends on whom you know and who looks the other way." Kwenn was staring at the spiral, possibly reliving the game moves. "Are those flecks of blood on your uniform?"

"Admiral's blood," Dacce said. Then, as Kwenn set the spiral for another game, he laughed. "Little Admirals."

Kwenn glanced up.

"That is what Iin Mennus calls them, the members of the high command. Little Admirals." The lights glittered on the warrnixx playing field. "How he hates them. It is palpable, his hatred."

"That is only natural after how they treated him."

"No, no. This is different." Dacce shook his head. "Iin Mennus and his brother have a love affair with torture. It is not enough for them to kill their enemies; no, for them death is the least interesting part of it."

At the bar, Sornnn SaTrryn, whom Dacce should have remembered but did not, pushed away his half-finished drink. He'd finally had enough.

Marethyn knew she was running out of options. The rain had finally stopped. It was growing cold and clear, the worst kind of weather in which to try to hide from Ka.s.stna. Not to mention the fact that she was hungry, tired, and frightened. As she ran through the forest, she could feel her nerves overfiring.

There was a bitter taste in her mouth, almost like silicon. Her body had been pumping out so much cortasyne as a means of self-preservation that all her senses felt as if they were on permanent hyperalert, but her thinking was muddled.

As a consequence, she barely reacted as the way ahead pitched upward at a steeper angle. Grasping handfuls of branches, she hauled herself upward, until she became aware that she was leaving a carpet of stripped buds in her wake. She veered to the west, grasping the boles of trees, but these were often either too big around or too slippery to be of much use. Twice, she lost her grip and fell backward, squandering precious time and energy.

Her lungs began to labor as the trajectory she was on became even more difficult. The last one hundred meters was almost a sheer vertical, but at last she made it up to the crest of the intermediate ridgeline. Above her, the Djenn Marre continued their torturous ascent, thrusting, so it seemed, into the very heart of the heavens. She took the time to do a quick reconnoiter, and discovered the ridge petered out perhaps three hundred meters to the east. With no strength left to climb farther, she headed west.

On the semidenuded ridge, the wind was like a knife against her. She knew she had to find some cover soon, for if Ka.s.stna didn't kill her, exposure to the deepening night surely would. She loped on, feeling her hearts beating wildly in her breast. Presently she entered a line of Marre pines. Theirunfortunate location had stunted them, however; the tops barely reached eye level.

At least the ridge was fairly flat, and she could rest her aching thigh muscles. A half kilometer farther on she saw the mountainside to the north falling back. At first it was so gradual that she barely noticed.

Then, abruptly, it drew back sharply, as if afraid of the precipice its own towering height had built. Just beyond, she discovered a hollow. It was filled with brush, dense and dusty as a broom. There was a peculiar odor in this area, bittersweet as burnt spun sugar.

With a little grunt of thanks, she made for this best of all possible hiding places. But she had only gone several meters into it when her footing gave out and, with a brief rumble of loose stones, she skidded down into utter blackness and utter silence.

The Hagoshrin was staring up at them with an expression that defied decoding. Riane felt as if she and Eleana were a pair of prehistoric insects trapped in amber. As she had said to Eleana, they could not go forward or back. She looked around her, desperate to see if she could find anything useful that she had overlooked. As she did so, she found once again her elation at finally being with Eleana without the wall of secrecy. She knew Giyan had only her best interests at heart when she had warned Riane of telling anyone-even Eleana, especially Eleana- her secret. But Riane's heart knew what was right, what she needed to do, and she had done it. Now there was no going back.

"Riane, look!"

Eleana's urgent whisper broke into her thoughts. She was pointing at the Hagoshrin, which had managed to move forward. Its tentacles reached out, quested along the ruined span, slithering across the gaps in the arch, moving inexorably toward them.

Riane, however, was on her back. Staring up at the ceiling of the creva.s.se.

"Love, what are you doing? The Hagoshrin is still coming toward us. It's almost at the stairs. What are we going to do?"

"Move deeper into the creva.s.se."

Eleana followed the direction of Riane's gaze. "And then? We'll just be trapping ourselves."

"Perhaps not. I have noticed that the creva.s.se is far deeper than I had thought or expected." She slid deeper inside, Eleana following. Riane unwound the Veil, its glow illuminating the rock walls. "Look. Do you see?"

"The rock is smooth."

"That is what caught my attention." They kept moving farther in, which was just as well, for they could clearly hear the dry rasping sound of the Hagoshrin's body against the rock stairs. "My guess is this creva.s.se is not natural at all."

"It was made by the Kundalan? But why?"

"I am hopeful that if we explore far enough, we will find out."

A sc.r.a.ping sound caused them to turn their heads. By the Veil's glow, they could see that the Hagoshrin's serpent form had reached the entrance to the creva.s.se.

"Show yourselves, infidels!" it screamed. "You are trespa.s.sing on holy ground!"

"Keep going," Riane whispered. As they crawled backward, she kept an eye on the Hagoshrin. Its coils were filling the mouth of the creva.s.se. It was still coming after them.

The way was becoming more and more narrow. They were forced now onto their bellies, squirming like reptiles, the rock face just above their heads, brus.h.i.+ng their shoulders and b.u.t.tocks.

"It's getting smaller still," Eleana said.

Riane, raising the Veil, saw the s.p.a.ce whittled down to a thin opening.

"Your flight is hopeless." The Hagoshrin's cry echoed through the creva.s.se. "You are trapped."

"I think it's right," Eleana said. "I don't know whether we can squeeze through."

Behind them, rocks skittered. A slithering drew near.

"We have to," Riane said. She smiled, turned Eleana's hand over, kissed the palm. "You first."

"I don't want to lose you," Eleana whispered. "Not now.""Not ever," Riane said, kissing her tenderly.

Eleana went feet first, wriggling and struggling in a shower of pebbles and loose rock. For a moment, she seemed stuck. Then, in the blink of an eye, she was through.

"Come on." Her voice floated back to Riane. "Hurry!" Riane slid through on her stomach. Wriggling and squirming as Eleana had. She saw the first coils appearing at the far edge of the glow the Veil threw off. The coils roiled and rose to fill the whole s.p.a.ce. Using her elbows, she levered herself backward through the narrow aperture, could feel the rock digging into her back.

She was halfway through when the coil abruptly, explosively expanded. Like a beaten drum the creva.s.se reverberated with the shock waves. There came a loud crack, and Riane felt the top of the aperture fracture, a terrible weight pressing down on her. Felt Eleana pulling at her legs to no avail. She was trapped.

For Kurgan, carrying the banestone in the crook of his arm like a newborn, it was decidedly odd to hear the sound of laughter in the caverns. He stopped in his tracks, looking around for the source. He had explored far enough to be aware of the peculiarities of the acoustics. You never knew where sounds were coming from. He had often speculated that this was deliberate on the part of the Ramahan who had excavated the s.p.a.ce, for he had seen myriad signs that the original cavern had been expanded and redesigned to fit unknown purposes.

The banestone had brought him to an area with which he was unfamiliar. He was far away from where Star-Admiral Iin Mennus had, until recently, toiled diligently and bloodily over his three Little Admirals.

He had, of course, violated the protocol of his office by venturing into the caverns without his Haaar-kyut guards. However, he had no intention of allowing anyone, First-Captain Kwenn included, access to the banestone. It was too precious and potentially powerful an artifact. No one must know of its existence; otherwise, doubtless, word would reach the Gyrgon, and they would order him to relinquish it.

Eventually, he might decide to do that, but not unless it was under his conditions and not until he had exacted a terrific price.

The ghostly laughter had ceased, and he began to wonder whether he had heard it at all. The banestone was urging him on, pulsing cold and hot. The thought of finding Eleana, of having her for his own, goaded him onward. He felt hot and clammy. He had an abrupt urge to spit.

He shone his lumane ahead of him. He had long ago left the area lit by V'ornn fusion lamps. The rather organic-looking cavern curled around to his left. Upon reaching the elbow, he smelled something dank and foul, the acrid accretion of rot and decay. He played the powerful lumane beam over the velvet blackness, half-expecting to have come upon some secret Ramahan burial site. Not that it would have mattered to him; his mind was filled with Eleana. The banestone was like some strange, sorcerous compa.s.s that had locked on to the object of his desire, and was bringing him unerringly closer to it.

The banestone's throbbing became more rapid, and Kurgan kept moving forward, the certainty growing in his mind that he was nearing her position. The lumane's beam revealed to him stone walls unbroken by crypts or any sign that he had entered a Ramahan tomb.

Somewhat farther on, he came upon an enormous sigil deeply incised into the cavern wall. There was something about it that struck him. It seemed that the center of it took the form of a great eye, surrounded by a circle of what could only be tiny pupils.

As he watched, astonished, the pupils began to pulse. But surely that was impossible. They were a part of a stone carving. And yet, now, it was unmistakable. Not only were they pulsing, but they were doing so in sync with the banestone. Abruptly, the banestone chilled in his hand, and the section of the wall into which the pictogram was incised split silently down the middle, opening inward.

The banestone was pulsing more rapidly than ever. Kurgan gripped the tritanium hilt of his push-dagger as he stepped through. His lumane threw out a rea.s.suring beacon of cool blue-white light, revealing what appeared to be a tunnel through the rock, round and hollow as an intestine.

As he began to move through it, the thick stone doors swung closed behind him.Riane let go of all the breath she had been holding in when the aperture collapsed. Behind her, she could feel Eleana frantically digging at the loose rubble. A s.p.a.ce opened just as the coils were about to reach her, and she levered herself backward with all her strength. A shower of rock, a minicascade, tumbling. As she popped through, the aperture, no longer held up by her shoulders, collapsed completely, cutting them off from the Hagoshrin.

They held each other in the semidarkness, breathing hard and shaking with relief.

Eleana stirred, and whispered, "Since we may die in here-"

"We are not going to die here."

She took Riane's face in her hands and whispered fiercely, "Our love is what we have now, in this black and desolate place. It may be all that we have. You must tell me everything."

Riane knew that she was right. She told Eleana how the spirit of the dying Annon had by sorcerous means migrated into the sh.e.l.l of this Kundalan girl. "Riane was dying, too, of duur fever, until I brought my V'ornn strength to her. She had suffered a fall from a great height. Her memory was wiped clean. It is only now beginning to surface in small flashes. I still do not know my own origin."

"But her personality-"

"Is still intact. The process of integration is ongoing. It has been slow and difficult." Riane stirred, abruptly afraid. "And you are not... repulsed?"

Eleana laughed. "That is the male V'ornn in you talking. I fell in love with you, not who you were or what you looked like. You have come back to me from the land of the dead." Eleana brushed away her tears. "I feel as if I have been given the most wonderful gift."

The inescapable magnetism of love long held in abeyance overcame them again, and, for a time, exquisitely, almost painfully, attuned to each other's touch and breath, they were insensate to everything else around them.

"Listen to me," Riane said, when at last she forced herself to pull away. "No one must ever know what I have told you."

"Who knows besides Giyan?"

"Possibly Sahor. No one else, not even Thigpen. As far as the world is concerned Annon is dead. He must remain dead, for the Stogggul would come after him with all the power at their disposal if they had even a hint he was still alive."

"Not to worry, love." She touched Riane's cheek. "No V'ornn would believe such an outlandish tale."

"This is no joking matter," Riane warned. "And you must never, ever call me by that name."

Eleana's pink tongue came out, its tip questing at the corner of Riane's lips. "Not even when we are alone?"

"Never. Otherwise, sometime when you least mean to, it will surely slip out."

Eleana kissed her. "I understand."

"I mean it. Giyan did not want me to tell even you."

Eleana took Riane's head in her hands. Her gaze locked with Riane's. "I swear, Dar Sala-at, on my life and the life of my son, that I will tell no one. Your secret is like our love; it binds us closer together."

She kissed Riane once, twice, three times. "No one will ever come between us now."

They continued to kiss, long and pa.s.sionately.

After a time, Riane held up the Veil. They were in a chamber hewn out of the living rock. It was square, a vast cube. At its center was a column, square as well, gleaming as if lit from within. Metal.

Approaching it, they saw that it ran down through a hole bored into the rock.

"What is this place?" Eleana whispered.

Riane shook her head. She did not know. She inspected the column, saw a pair of narrow vertical channels set into opposing sides. Feeling something surfacing from the depths of Riane's shattered memory, she began to search around on the front of the column and found a lever set flush. Depressing it set in motion an ingenious system of counterweights. Up along the channels rose a pair of leather-boundstirrups and a carved porphyry handgrip.

Eleana staring, openmouthed. "What on Kundala-?"

"It's the way down," Riane said.

"How do you know?"

"I just do." She settled her feet in the stirrups, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Ready to give this a try?"

"Do I have a choice?" Eleana put her arms around Riane, clung to her back.

"Hold on." Riane raised the lever.

The system of counterweights once again began to whir, down went the stirrups and the handgrip, Riane and Eleana with them. Fetid wind rushed up their backs, fluttered their hair. Astonis.h.i.+ngly, there was virtually no vibration, which made the ride unexpectedly easy.

"I do not understand this," Eleana said. "Here is a machine, admittedly with a single, simple purpose, that is of a level of sophistication beyond anything I thought us capable of. Could it be V'ornn?"

"The V'ornn never explored this part of the palace, I can a.s.sure you."

They were almost at the bottom of the column. The pearlescent glow had returned, giving an almost surreal aspect to this part of their journey. Certainly, they felt the pull of gravity, but their other senses steadfastly refused to confirm their descent.

Arriving with a soft metallic clank at the bottom of the column, they found themselves at the edge of a stinking moat of a viscous, opaque liquid in which could be seen floating huge water lilies, pale and erose to the point of shapelessness. There was a narrow bridge of white granite that spanned a cesspit reeking of rot and bitterroot. In the center was the basalt column that was crowned with the altar.

"The Hagoshrin's lair," Riane whispered.

Walking around the cesspit, Eleana peered down at the water lilies, and a s.h.i.+ver raced up her spine.

"Dear Miina, look!"

Riane studied the flowers more closely, and discovered stirring not some form of sun-averse plant life but the rotting remains of what once must have been corpses. The water lilies were actually patches of skin and connective tissue that had come free of the decomposed flesh. What was particularly disturbing about the grisly sight was that there were no bones or skulls at all to be seen.

"What do you think happened to the skeletons?" Eleana asked, echoing Riane's thoughts. "Dissolved in the moat?"