The Pearl Saga - Mistress of the Pearl Part 13

Marethyn, dressed now in her dark brown leggings and tunic, came up to him. "I have no such thought, nor have I earned the right to have it," she said softly. "But I am perhaps more objective than any of you, and what I see is disorganization, suspicion, petty jealousies, and perpetual infighting among the cell leaders. It is hardly a wonder that you are losing the war for independence."

Medda's brows knitted together. "Say that to Gerwa and see how fast he has you executed."

"That is why I have told you, and not him."

"She speaks the truth," Majja said."No one asked you," Medda snapped.

"You know she is right," Majja persevered. "I have seen her bravery more than once. Without her, Medda, we never would have gotten the cache of weapons."

"Bah!" Medda threw up his hands in disgust. "Trust females to stick together!"

"This prejudice was not the way of it in the old days," Majja said heatedly. "Our society was founded on females and males sharing responsibility and power."

"Times have changed," Medda said. "We must look to the future, not the past."

"Stop blindly repeating what Kara preaches." Majja's eyes sparked with anger. "Think for yourself and discover the truth."

"You are not a Follower. You still believe in the G.o.ddess, in the old ways, the ways that made us weak enough to fall to the V'ornn. Kara gives us the strength to break with the old and embrace the new."

"You are wrong, Medda," Marethyn said. "Kara is a religion created by Gyrgon. It is a ruse to keep you Kundalan disaffected, factionalized, cut off from your past."

"Enough, Tuskugggun!" Medda's eyes narrowed. "Again I would warn you to keep your mouth shut."

He jerked his head. "Now let us be off to see what Gerwa has in mind for us."

As it happened, what Gerwa had in mind for them was far from pleasant. Standing by his side when they entered his tent was Ka.s.stna, the head of the Resistance cell into which Marethyn had been recruited by Majja and Ba.s.se. Gerwa was sitting behind his folding camp table, a crude, hand-drawn map of the immediate vicinity spread before him. Ka.s.stna stood just to the left of him, his legs slightly spread, his arms folded across his ma.s.sive chest. His brutish, closed face with its rage-fueled, diamond-shaped eyes, was further disfigured by a pair of wounds, lividly fresh, slashed diagonally across the flat planes of his cheeks.

"You are dismissed, Medda," Gerwa said, without looking up from his study of the map.

"I would prefer to stay," Medda said, unexpectedly.

Gerwa looked up. "That was not a request."

"Let him stay if that is his wish," Ka.s.stna said curtly. "He will soon come to regret his folly."

Marethyn could see by Gerwa's quick glance that he was peeved at Ka.s.stna's usurpation of his authority.

Gerwa said, "Marethyn Stogggul, your cell leader wishes you to answer questions he feels compelled to put to you."

Ka.s.stna's irked expression told Marethyn several things, not the least of which was that Gerwa's verbal retaliation had had its desired effect. There is no love lost between those two, she thought.

"Question number one," Ka.s.stna said, as he returned his attention to her. "How did the Khagggun know when and where we were lying in wait to ambush the weapons convoy?"

"I do not know," Marethyn said.

"Don't you?" Ka.s.stna unwound his arms and began to stalk around her. "Almost all my cell were killed when we were blindsided."

"We all would have been if I hadn't-"

"Keep still!" he shouted so loudly the cords of his neck stood out. "You will speak only when you are spoken to. Is that clear?"

Marethyn stared straight ahead.

"Question two." Ka.s.stna stood behind her. "Am I to believe that you, a V'ornn, the sister of the regent, did not deliberately set out to infiltrate our cell and set us up for the slaughter?"

"Believe what you will. I did not."

He came around and faced her. "You are V'ornn. Why should I believe anything you say?"

"My actions speak more clearly than any words. Majja, Ba.s.se, and I escaped with the weapons cache and delivered them here."

"To further ingratiate yourself with us. To worm your way in." He stuck his face in hers. "To gain our trust so you can undermine us from the inside out."

"It seems to me that you are doing an acceptable job of it on your own."Ka.s.stna struck her so hard she staggered. Before she could regain her balance, the point of his dagger p.r.i.c.ked her side. "I should kill you on the spot, but Gerwa thinks you are too valuable to be thrown in the offal heap with the other V'ornn."

"I hope you are not foolish enough to try to use me as a hostage." She ignored the line of blood that had begun to ooze from the laceration just beneath her right ear. "Like as not, my brother would dance a jig at news of my death."

"Liar!" Ka.s.stna struck her again.

"In fact, it's the truth," Medda said. "According to Majja and Ba.s.se, the Stogggul family has more or less washed its hands of her. They are intensely embarra.s.sed by her ongoing efforts to gain Great Caste status for the Tuskugggun. None more so than the regent. Their latest row occurred at the barbaric Rescendance ceremony for their father."

Ka.s.stna shook his head. "Majja and Ba.s.se have somehow fallen under the Tuskugggun's spell."

"You accuse your own cell members?" Medda said. "They have spent more time among the V'ornn in Axis Tyr than the three of us combined."

"My point exactly," Ka.s.stna shouted. "They have been corrupted."

"They are part of my subcell," Medda said. "They are brave and fearless warriors."

Ka.s.stna's dagger came up threateningly. "Is this how you maintain discipline, Gerwa?"

"Actually, Medda has a point." Gerwa stood up. "I have kept a close eye on your warriors since their arrival. They hold nothing but hate in their hearts for the enemy. To suggest otherwise is-"

But Ka.s.stna was already holding the edge of his dagger to Marethyn's throat. "You see these wounds?" His voice was throttled with emotion. "Coward! Traitor! You left me for dead!"

"As far as I knew you were dead. When we left, we were under heavy fire, and you were surrounded by Khagggun. If we had hesitated, we all would have been killed."

He shook her as he pointed to his cheeks. "I got these at the hands of your kind."

"My kind treat me just as you do," Marethyn said. "There is no difference between you and my brother."

Gerwa caught Medda's eye just as Ka.s.stna uttered a guttural cry. It took both of them to drag him off Marethyn. With a deft motion, Medda disarmed Ka.s.stna while Gerwa pushed him back against the wall of the tent.

"That is enough now," Gerwa said in an even tone. "In trying to disgrace me, you have dishonored yourself."

"Get off me!" Ka.s.stna cried. "Do you even know what you are doing?"

"Show some restraint, Ka.s.stna."

"Restraint? Don't make me laugh." Ka.s.stna shook himself free. "You will hand her over. I will take her to the tribunal, where she will be appropriately punished for her crimes."

"I will no longer entertain your accusations," Gerwa said. "And you do not seem in any condition to take anyone anywhere. I would suggest-"

"Are you questioning my order?"

"This is my cell, my territory."

"But she is still under my command, as are Majja and Ba.s.se. If you go against me in this, you yourself will be brought up before the tribunal."

In the ensuing silence, Ka.s.stna's evil grin seemed to fill the tent. "You have gained nothing this day, Gerwa. But you have made a powerful enemy." He held out his hand without looking at Medda. "My weapon."

Medda glanced at Gerwa, who gave him a curt nod, and Medda handed over the dagger, hilt first.

"I will take possession of my prisoner now," Ka.s.stna said. "As for Majja and Ba.s.se, you can keep them. The three of you deserve one another."

I remember how you once were." Gul Aluf, standing in Terrettt's room in Receiving Spirit, put a handout and stroked his cheek. "I remember the promise you held." Her hand was damp with his sweat. He always perspired mightily when he slept now. "What happened?"

The late-afternoon sun cast a burnished hand upon the wall as it sank into the west. It was the hour when activity on the Promenade slowed from a roar to a whisper, when the fis.h.i.+ng boats lay empty, rocking at their berths while their crews took an early supper, when the great, ornately prowed Sarakkon s.h.i.+ps were finished off- or on-loading, when the Sarakkon themselves came out on deck, smoking laaga or drinking their foul brew from tiny, unbreakable cups, when the frenzy of the day slipped away with an inaudible sigh, before the furor of the night began.

"How did Nith Batox.x.x go wrong?" Gul Aluf stared down at Terrettt's sleeping face, spasmed in some nightmare. "I checked his calculations myself. Nothing was amiss. He was right. You were a choice candidate. We both agreed on that, and your birth caul confirmed our a.s.sessment. What happened?

How did you turn out like this?"

She shook her head while she inserted probes from her own palms into his, took measurements, gathered readings, saved them to her personal databank, and withdrew the probes. Her eyes flickered as she compared the new data with the previous set.

"No change." She sighed. "Locked in limbo, in a twilight world of knowing and not knowing, the pendulum swinging first toward genius, then toward lunacy." She sighed again, more deeply this time. "No wonder you are mad. Any V'ornn would be, given the circ.u.mstance."

She looked around the room, at his latest paintings-stars and swirls and globules. Her gaze pa.s.sed over the topographical map of the northern continent Terrettt's sister had put up. On it, he had drawn seven circles, very much like those in his paintings. Senseless, useless. A total waste of a life. But that was the risk you ran when you experimented. It was for the greater good that Terrettt had been sacrificed, she had no doubt about that. But in this case, because Terrettt was a Stogggul, the outcome was awkward. She had argued with Nith Batox.x.x, but he was adamant that the Stogggul usurp the Ashera power. The father had been a fool; not so the son, the present regent. Nith Batox.x.x knew that, and now she wondered whether he had seen it all, that he had known that Stogggul Kurgan would turn on his weak father and engineer his death. It was no secret to her that Nith Batox.x.x had a special- one might say obsessive-interest in Stogggul Kurgan. On one point Nith Batox.x.x and Nith Sahor had agreed: the Ashera and the Stogggul had crucial roles to play in the future of the V'ornn on Kundala.

"Poor thing." She said it out of reflex, thinking of the experiment gone awry, mourning the loss. "Poor, poor thing."

Riane hurtled down the stairwell. The instant Eleana vanished, Riane leapt into it after her. A hundred meters of painful, teeth-jarring small-scale collisions, then, like the center stairway, the treads abruptly ended, and she was pitched, feetfirst, down a spiral chute.

This one, however, was far different from the one that had taken Annon to the cavern just outside the Storehouse Door. This chute was roughly hacked from the bedrock. Sharp outcroppings and jagged edges sc.r.a.ped and struck her like a rageful enemy, bouncing her from side to side.

"Eleana!" she managed. "Eleana, where are you?"

Light rose along with a draft of warmish air, an exhalation from a corpse, and she saw what appeared to be a giant mouth, glowing pasty white, open and waiting for her to plunge into it. Her heart almost froze in her breast. Had Eleana fallen into it?

A jagged outcropping struck her a glancing blow, and she reached up, grabbed hold of it. She cried out; the sudden halt to her fall had almost wrenched her arm out of its socket. Riane swung dizzily, sick-eningly, suspended from her precarious handhold, but not for long. She was slipping. She flung out her other hand, but encountered nothing to hold on to. There was a narrow ledge below her. Can I reach it? she asked herself. Is it strong enough to hold me?

She had no time to contemplate such questions. Extending her left leg, she dropped her handhold, and landed. The ledge held. She threw out her right leg, wedging her boot against the other side of the chute.Now she was spread-eagled just above the place where the chute opened out into the monstrous maw.

The illumination, which appeared to rise from the very depths of the pit, was pearlescent. It was impossible to make out its source.

Cut, sc.r.a.ped, and bleeding, trying to catch her breath, she stared down into the pit, and there she saw Eleana, lying on what appeared to be a black-basalt plinth that rose up in the center of the maw.

"Eleana!" Riane called. "Eleana!"

There was no response. Eleana lay on her side like a crumpled doll. Is she dead? Riane wondered in despair. Or simply unconscious?

In the shadowless light, she could now make out details of the shaft's jaggedly rippled contours. Eight or nine meters above her a narrow fissure presented itself, doubtless cracked open by one of the seismic quakes that periodically ground the bedrock plates of the northern continent. Looking elsewhere, she quickly determined that she could make use of the shaft's erose contours. By employing them as foot- and handholds, she began to make her laborious way downward. The effort was extreme, even for someone used to rock climbing. Drops of her sweat mingled with her blood, vanis.h.i.+ng into the depths as she crept ever closer to Eleana.

Finally, she arrived at the very edge of the rock maw. Then she was close enough to make out that Eleana was, indeed, breathing, and she thanked Miina for that. Only a s.p.a.ce of several meters separated them, though it might as well have been kilometers wide. How am I going to reach her without falling myself? she asked herself.

Blood and sweat dripped dolefully off her into the heart of the maw.

"Eleana!" she called. "Eleana!"

Still, Eleana did not stir. Desperate, Riane swept off a few small bits of rubble from the upper side of a nearby ridge and tossed them onto Eleana. They struck her body without effect. She tried again, aiming this time. The one that hit Eleana's forehead caused her eyelids to flutter open.

Riane called her name, and Eleana turned slowly, looking up at where Riane painfully clung to the rocks above her, calling again, keeping her pitch and tone even, an aural lifeline.

Eleana blinked heavily, her breast rose and fell slowly, as if she were pinned to a dream. Her pupils were unnaturally dilated and unfocused.

Drip-drip of blood mingled with sweat.

Eleana stirred, her eyes moving in the direction of Riane's echoey voice.

"Riane . . ."

"Yes, yes! I am right above you!"

At that moment, the pearlescent glow flickered, and Riane almost gagged, for on a particularly strong updraft of air came the sickening stench of bitterroot. It was mingled with the cloying odors of moist earth and rotting flesh.

The air stirred from below, the flickering increased, a shadow formed. Riane felt her heart racing, and she was suffused with the same overpowering sense of danger Annon had once felt on the stairway above. The difference was that then Annon had had a way out. She did not. She reached for the ion pistol, but it was gone. She must have lost it when she pitched down the stairs after Eleana.

"Riane?" Eleana's eyes were open wide and staring. "I feel a shuddering, a vibration. What. . . what. .

"Eleana, listen to me." The shadow was coalescing, growing in size and dimension as it rose from the depths of the abyss. "Just stay where you are, all right?" The shadow was obliterating the light as it came.

"Don't move!"

Eleana nodded.

The shadow resolved itself further. Some kind of creature, humped, misshapen, huge beyond imagining, was climbing the pillar on the top of which Eleana lay. Riane concentrated all the more.

Drip-drip, her blood and sweat plunged into the pit. A long, slender tentacle whipped up, sucking the drops right out of the air. Riane's blood ran cold. To her horror, she realized that it was her own blood that had roused the thing, bringing it up from its subterranean lair.

8

Rain