The Pearl Saga - Mistress of the Pearl Part 7

"You lie, criminal. My path is laid out for me." Jura tossed her head. "I will run you through myself and collect the vengeance reward the regent is bound to give me."Riane did not turn to face her, nor in any way move to defend herself. "You are Tuskugggun. Worse, you are Looorm. The only thing the regent is likely to do is throw you on the garbage heap."

"Impudent Kundalan, how do you know-" Jura's jaw jutted in defiance. "How can you say that?"

"We are females. Just like you." She gathered Eleana in her arms, rocking her slightly. "Now do what you will. I have my friend's life to save."

The banestone, black as pitch, heavy as a hindemuth's head, seemed to wink at Kurgan from its hiding place in his residence. As he stared at it, he wondered what it was. Even Minnum was unable to say what, precisely, it could do. The two key pieces of information he had managed to glean were that it was known as a banestone (whatever that was!) and that it was very, very valuable. That was why he had stolen it just before he had made his way out of Za Hara-at. He had thought about ordering Sornnn SaTrryn to come with him, but had changed his mind. The SaTrryn had the Korrush in their blood, and none more than Sornnn, that was clear enough. If he wanted to spend his time mucking around in the dead city, let him. All the better to advise Kurgan when the Mesagggun rebuilt it.

Hearing a knock on his door, he put away the banestone, but, oddly, he still felt its presence, like a heart that had been pulled from a living victim.

"Come," he said, turning, and saw First-Captain Kwenn standing in his doorway. A rather smallish Khagggun, possessed of a mild manner uncharacteristic of the species. But Kurgan had discovered that he harbored under his placid surface a fierce and determined nature. He could lull you to sleep with his dull manner, but he had a mind like a tritan-ium trap. He never forgot anything.

"Deck-Admiral Iin Mennus has arrived," the head of the regent's Haaar-kyut said. "Shall I have him escorted to the great hall?"

"No pomp. This is a social call," Kurgan dissembled. "Have him brought directly here."

"It shall be done, regent," he said, turning on his heel and marching out.

First-Captain Kwenn knew how to take orders; he did not overthink situations. Best of all, he heard things, kept his snout to the ground. He could find the bones, no matter how deeply buried.

Kurgan glanced down at his crystal reader. Though he had already committed them to memory, he skimmed again the information that had been compiled for him on the glowing green data-decagon in the reader's slot. Then he switched it off and looked up at the wall studded with weapons from all the star-flung races the V'ornn had conquered. Well-oiled blades gleamed darkly, curved, twisted, straight, hanging side by side with weapons that trans.m.u.ted and discharged all manner of energy. Not a goron particle among the lot, however. The V'ornn had not conquered the Centophennni. Their battles, when they occurred, were so fierce that all was obliterated in the frenzy. Not one goron-particle weapon had ever been salvaged, and so the origin of their terrifying power remained an enigma. What he would not give to possess a goron-based weapon!

A discreet cough announced Deck-Admiral Iin Mennus being shown through the doorway. After the Haaar-kyut guard closed the door, the Deck-Admiral proceeded across the room as warily as if he were crossing enemy territory.

"Good evening." To which Kurgan received only the most perfunctory of nods. The Deck-Admiral was not known for his courteous manner or his respect for authority, especially what he considered civilian authority. He was a short, squat Khagggun with a misshapen skull and a hideous scar that pulled down the left corner of his mouth. Any competent Genomatekk could have fixed it. That he had chosen otherwise said something about his fierceness and his pride. "I am who I am!" Kurgan could hear him booming.

In fact, though, his voice was as silken as a shock-sword being withdrawn from its scabbard and seemed quite out of place emanating from that brutish physiognomy.

"Quite a collection you have here." The Deck-Admiral stood, spread-legged, in front of the weapons display. He then turned to stare at Kurgan with his small, close-set eyes. "But rather crude, I'd say, as a means of intimidation.""I thought you would appreciate these trophies."

"Why? Because I am Khagggun? But you know nothing about me, regent."

Kurgan's smile was without a blood drop of warmth. "You are the primary male in a litter of eight children. Your mother is an armorer in hingatta liiina do butha, where she reared her female offspring.

Your father distinguished himself in service before dying on the line at Hel-lespennn. Your first younger brother, Hannn Mennus, is a Pack-Commander with a commendable record of kills and cruelty." Kurgan c.o.c.ked his head. "How am I doing so far?"

"I had heard rumors concerning your elaborate network of spies," Deck-Admiral Mennus said sourly.

"As well as your vault of dossiers."

" 'Information and vigilance breeds victory.' "

Deck-Admiral Mennus took a Nieobian push-dagger off the wall. "Excellent balance." He ran the tip of his thick, scarred forefinger down the composite S-curve blade. "You speak like a Khagggun, yet I do not think you mock me."

"I have only the highest regard for you, Deck-Admiral."

Iin Mennus returned the push-dagger to its place on the wall. "Regent, I have many duties. My time is limited."

"Are you so eager, then, to spill more Resistance blood?"

The Deck-Admiral shrugged chronosteel-cable shoulders. "What other pleasures do I have?"

Kurgan laughed. "You are too long away from Axis Tyr."

"I do well keeping my distance from a place whose many fleshpots would blunt my most faithful companion, the sword edge of death."

Kurgan held up a hexagonal crystal decanter. "Fire-grade numaaadis? A laaga stick to share."

Mennus glowered, "No, I suppose not." He gestured. "Won't you at least sit and make yourself comfortable?"

"Comfort is for Bashkir."

Kurgan, looking at the wall of weapons, caressed a fantasy to life, imagining them one by one struck to the hilts in Mennus' flesh.

"Despite my admiration for you, Deck-Admiral, I a.s.sure you there will come a moment when you will have crossed a line from which you cannot retreat."

"Shall I treat with respect one who seeks to weaken me by implanting an ok.u.mmmon in my flesh?"

"Is that why you think I have brought you here?"

"I am the only Khagggun of my rank without one. What else am I to think?"

"And yet nothing could be further from the truth."

"The news is most welcome." Mennus' scar had gone dead white. "I meant no offense, regent.

Khagggun are not diplomats. We are blunt, sometimes to a fault, perhaps. In the shedding of blood, this bluntness serves us well. We have a job to do, we do it, end of story."

Kurgan c.o.c.ked his head again. "Is there no other way for you?"

Mennus shook his head. "You know there is not."

Having received confirmation of what the data had suggested, namely that this particular Khagggun had no interest in palace intrigue, Kurgan crossed the room, pulled aside a set of thick dark blue drapes, and opened the window-doors onto the terrace. As he stepped out, he heard the Deck-Admiral moving behind him. There was a small low table on which rose a coruscating spiral. At its peak was a shallow veradium bowl filled with five small pentagons carved out of bone. Kurgan and Mennus stood at the sculpted stone bal.u.s.trade. Beyond had once been Eleusis Ashera's star-rose garden. When Kurgan's father had briefly been regent, he had turned it over to his sorceress-mistress. Kurgan had lately planted rows of orangesweet because Nith Batox.x.x had despised the scent. Breathing in the perfume served to bring him a kind of contentment, if only briefly.

At length, Iin Mennus gestured at the coruscating spiral. "I take it you play warrnixx, regent."

"I have a fondness for the game, yes."

"It takes a certain kind of mind to master warrnixx. I would judge your level of expertise."

"And I yours." When Kurgan turned to Mennus he was smiling a little. "I wish to make you my newStar-Admiral."

Mennus' eyes opened wide. "Regent?"

"There has of late been much unrest among the high command. The last two Star-Admirals turned treasonous, plotting against their regent." Kurgan took a step toward his guest. "I mean to stop it right here, right now."

"I am a warrior, regent. I would be useless as an administrator."

Kurgan came even closer. "Between you and me, Deck-Admiral, I no longer trust the members of the high command. They have, as you so accurately put it, spent too much time in fleshpots, in idleness that breeds envy and rancor. The recent theft by the Resistance of an entire convoy of the Khagggun's newest weaponry is just the latest example of their laxity. They have become rotten. They must be swept into oblivion. Order, stability, and obedience will be restored to the Khagggun. Otherwise, we become vulnerable-to the Resistance and to others."

"The regent must know that I am the last Khagggun to bend his knee to civilian authority."

"Which is why, once you destroy those who have diseased the corps, the others will fall in line without a whimper of protest."

Mennus gripped the stone bal.u.s.trade with his large, square hands and looked down at the rows of tortured vines newly bursting into flower. "If I were ever to have a garden, which is unlikely, I would sow it with the bleached skulls of our enemies. What do you think I would reap, in time?" "I do not know."

"Nothing, regent. Absolutely nothing." He turned to Kurgan. "I want nothing more than the continued strength of our Swarm. If I were to accept. . . the entire Khagggun structure would have to be strategically rethought and overhauled." Kurgan said nothing. "And there is another thing."

From beyond the palace's thick walls came the ten thousand songs sung by Axis Tyr as darkness crept close, the hush of evening ended, another raucous night stepping out of the wings, eager to begin its dance. Kurgan said nothing. He was content to wait for what he knew would be the Deck-Admiral's final request.

"It is this nonsense about giving Khagggun Great Caste status that is at the root of our rot. The high command is far too busy scrambling to make coin on deals best left to the Bashkir than in honing the edge of death. I know you must agree. During your short reign, you have done everything in your power to wipe away every last vestige of your father's legacy."

"You surprise me, Deck-Admiral. Being cast away in the west countries has done you no harm."

" 'Intelligence and vigilance,' regent," Iin Mennus said.

Kurgan nodded. This interview had gone better than he had imagined. "Give me your arm." They gripped each other's forearms in the seigggon, the solemn blood oath. "It is done. From this day forward, the order for Great Caste status for Khagggun is rescinded. You will make certain that high command report to Receiving Spirit to have their ok.u.mmmon removed."

"And if they obfuscate or refuse?"

"I commend the members of the high command into your care, Star-Admiral Iin Mennus. Do with them as you see fit."

Jura struck the dead Haaar-kyut in the chest with his own shock-sword. "I have dreamed of doing that."

She drove it down again, grunting with the effort, and this time split the alloy armor. "He paid well, but I lost count of the times he hurt me." She looked at Riane. "To be honest, they all hurt me, the males, in one way or another. Oh, they excel in that."

Riane was sitting next to Eleana, her arm around her. Eleana had regained consciousness moments after Jura stopped waving the weapon around. Her breath was a little raspy, and her voice sounded semistran-gled. Otherwise, the spell had done its work. Thigpen was crouched beside them, silent, her brushlike tail switching back and forth, content for the moment to play the part of the dumb domestic pet.

"If you transform yourself," Riane said, "it will alter what happens to you."

Jura laughed thinly. "You must be joking." She had a flat, guileful face with a decidedly feral cast, ananimal's natural magnetism. Beneath her cloak she wore a tunic through which her enviable charms could now and again be glimpsed in tantalizing fas.h.i.+on. "It was my misfortune to be born into the caste of the lowest form of Tuskugggun. I have lived all my life on Isingla.s.s Street. There is no hope of altering anything."

"And yet," Riane said, "in here you have been transformed. Do you not see it?"

"All I see is that I am out my rich fee," Jura said tartly. She dropped the shock-sword to rifle through the Haaar-kyut's armor. In a moment, she rose with a stack of coins in her hand. "It is more than I could have imagined." She took a step toward the doorway. "You will not stop me, or turn me in?"

"Go in safety," Riane said.

"Use the coins wisely," Eleana added.

For a moment, Jura stood dumbfounded, then a sly grin broke out across her face. "Transformation, isn't that the word you used?" She hefted the bag of coins. "I will remember what happened here. I will not forget you." Then she vanished with only a whisper of sound.

It had been Sornnn SaTrryn's intention to make all haste back to Axis Tyr, there to return to his duties both as Prime Factor and as a de facto member of the Kundalan Resistance. In this way, he hoped to retain the ear of the regent and to gain knowledge of Marethyn's whereabouts and her well-being.

But the Korrush, as is often its wont, had different ideas. He was not a hundred meters from Za Hara-at when he was met by two Rasan Sul. Like him, they wore thick-striped robes. Like his, their heads were covered with the traditional sinschal. Though one was old and one was young, they both had long, curling beards. Their rugged, wind-roughened features, shadowed and deeply seamed, peered out at him with a gravity, a sense of purpose that could only have been forged in the hostile environment of the Great Northern Plains. The sky was clear save for a single streamer of cloud, long and low and immobile with the weight of memory.

"Greetings, wa tarabibi," the old one said. He had sunken cheeks, skin the color of Korrush dust, a soft but forceful way of speaking. His name was Nasaqa. He had known Sornnn since Sornnn was a child. The other one, Baqesh, was his bodyguard. He was large, tongueless at the hands of the Jeni Cerii, very good at what he did.

"Greetings, wise one," Sornnn said. "What brings you to Za Hara-at?"

Nasaqa smiled, showing white but irregular teeth. "I am come to say a prayer for your father here at the Holy of Holies." He stroked his long, tangled grey beard. "He brought you to the Korrush, wa tarabibi, but it was already in you to love us."

"You honor me with both action and words." Sornnn knew very well, and Nasaqa knew he knew, that this journey to Za Hara-at was not simply about meditation and prayer.

Nasaqa raised a hand. "Walk with me."

They proceeded around the perimeter of the Za Hara-at dig, at first seeming to make little progress, for the ruined city was huge. Presently they arrived at a low plateau completely removed from the s.h.i.+mmering energy field protecting the V'ornn encampment. In the immediate distance, the squat shanties of the poor village of Im-Thera could be seen, the Beyy Das villagers moving about their ch.o.r.es.

All at once, Nasaqa turned to Sornnn. His eyes were piercing in their intense scrutiny. "Recently, we were visited by the Ghor and learned from them that the Gyrgon have been using their insidious influence with the kapudaan of the Five Tribes. They would have us kill each other off in the frenzy of a religious war."

"Now that you know the truth can't you call a council of leaders to defuse the situation?"

"Some, doubtless, will be dissuaded, but most will not. The ancient embers of smoldering hatreds and distrusts have been fanned into flames. The majority are convinced that this is the beginning of the She'ajj, the holy war promised us by Jiharre. What we will have instead is self-immolation for all the Korrush."

A bird called from the blue roof of heaven, its cry echoing through the barren stillness. They walkedon, seeming far away from everyone and everything.

"We cannot allow this, Nasaqa. You and I must find a way to stop this insane talk of war."

"But, you see, the Jeni Cerii are already arming, and the Ghor tell us that the Gazzi Qhan gird themselves for war. Skirmishes have broken out on either side of the two tribes' borders." "Have the Rasan Sul been affected?"

"Not yet. But it is only a matter of time." Nasaqa raised his hand. "I know what is in your mind. We are already storehousing spices."

Sornnn spread his hands. "My concern is for more than our spice trade, Nasaqa. There is a long-standing friends.h.i.+p between the SaTrryn and the Rasan Sul. Whatever service I may perform, if it is in my power to do so, I will."

"We need your knowledge and your expertise to help us combat the insidious seeds of destruction the Gyrgon have sown. Will you stand by my side when the war commences?"

Sornnn was stunned. "Nasaqa, I am sick with worry for you, for the Korrush, for the business, but I am Prime Factor of all the Bashkir caste. I cannot simply abandon my position. The regent would not allow it. Not to mention the Gyrgon."

Nasaqa nodded. "Your reply was preordained. Indeed, considering the outcome, some of my council cautioned me not to have this meeting."

"Then why did you?"

"Because I believe with all my heart that you will help us," Nasaqa said.

"I regret there is nothing I can do."

"Regret nothing, wa tarabibi, and yours will be a happy life," the old one said. "A falah katra." Until we meet again.

While it seemed on first glance that the altar had been shoved against the rear wall of the cubicle, that was not the case. There was, in fact, a little more than a meter of s.p.a.ce into which Eleana now crawled.

Reaching the center point, she tapped on the rock face in a peculiar rhythm, and a section swung silently inward. She slithered through feetfirst. Thigpen scampered after her, then, Riane, with a last look at the doorway through which Jura had disappeared.

The cleverly concealed entrance swung shut behind them, and Riane looked around. They were in a shaft made of huge square shanstone blocks into which were set, at regular intervals, small niches where oil lamps burned, giving off warms pools of light. They stood on a small landing from which depended an elegantly carved but vertiginously steep shanstone spiral stairway, down which they descended, Eleana leading the way.

Riane did not care for this roundabout route to gain entrance to the regent's palace, but, as Giyan pointed out, they had no choice. Kurgan had had the run of the palace for months. He had been prowling the caverns when she had placed the Ring of Five Dragons in the Storehouse Door. He knew she had found her way in somehow. The underground entrance into the palace cavern via Blank Lane was untrustworthy. Someone must have seen Giyan and Annon exit the palace on the night of the coup because the Khagggun arrived so quickly after them in Stone Border.

Brus.h.i.+ng aside these dark thoughts, she touched Eleana on the shoulder.

"Do not worry," Eleana whispered. "Your spell has done wonders." She took Riane's hand, briefly squeezed it, and for that moment their gazes locked.