The Pearl Saga - Mistress of the Pearl Part 24

"But to do so ..."

"That's right," Sornnn said. "You will need your daughter."

Those Khagggun who had stared death in the face saw in the eyes of Line-Commander Hannn Mennus the same blank stare that hinted of nullity and infinity all at once. It was a curiosity to find it in the newly dead, a terror to observe it in one still living. He had been captured, so the story went, on Lethe, an ash-grey wilderness world once used by the Centophennni as a spygla.s.s to observe, G.o.dlike, that quadrant of the galaxy. Possibly they were looking for the V'ornn; in any case, that was the suspicion.

What was known and undisputed was that Hannn Mennus led a scouting pack ordered by the high command to confirm advance intelligence of Centophennni activity. Among the rank and file, speculation was rife that the high command never expected the pack to return. Hannn Mennus was not informed of this, of course. Instead, he led his pack into the inscrutable jaws of death. Every one of them had been obliterated, ashes scattered to the winds. Save him. He had no memory of what transpired on Lethe, and, of course, his Khagggun could no longer give up their secrets. Had the Centophennni ambushed them? But there was no evidence of goron particles. Had Hannn Mennus gone mad and killed them himself, pyred them to N'Luuura? No one could say. And so it remained a mystery.

Perhaps the Gyrgon discovered something during their three-day debriefing of him, prying into the recesses of his brain like fervid speleologists, but, if so, the findings never made their way into data crystals, a fact the speculators found particularly ominous. At length, the Gyrgon released him into the flow of everyday life. There remained about him, however, the stain of an unsolvable mystery, a whiff ofsuspicion; and if there was anything Khagggun disliked it was those things. He commanded well, employed excessive force and cruelty with abandon. They respected him for that. He was also a canny leader. He had killed many Kundalan, ripping the tongues from their mouths, displaying like so many bird feathers the dried, shriveled remains on the shaft of his fluttering standard.

It was Ka.s.stna's ill fortune to be discovered by a pair of Hannn Mennus' Khagggun. He heard them coming, but wounded as he was he was scarcely in any position to outrun them. Foolishly, he tried to kill them, but his hands were so palsied from his ion cannon wounds that he missed them completely. They came after him. Then he compounded his error by trying to hide from them. He was bleeding too badly and left a trail impossible to miss. Perhaps the loss of blood had addled his brain, for he neglected to remove his Khagggun helm and throw away his ion cannon before they dragged him from his inadequate hidey-hole. Seeing him wearing the contraband ignited their rage, but they were Hannn Mennus' own and he had trained them well. They beat him quietly, calmly, methodically and for a very long time which had the advantage of prolonging their pleasure as well as preventing them from making the fatal mistake of killing him.

Instead, one of them threw him over his shoulder like a side of freshly butchered meat, which by that time Ka.s.stna resembled. In due course, they delivered him to their Line-Commander in the tense and ritualistic manner of warriors who place an important sacrifice before their shaman-king.

Ka.s.stna was at that point in no condition to resist torture-especially the forms in which Hannn Mennus excelled. Besides, Ka.s.stna had no specific sense of loyalty to Gerwa, for whom both the Mennus brothers had been unsuccessfully searching for years. In fact, he had every reason to see Gerwa destroyed. It did not take long for him to spill his guts, both figuratively and literally. He gave the Khagggun chapter and verse on where to find Gerwa's encampment, the size of his complement, and the level of training of his Resistance fighters. But in one matter he perversely held his tongue-the cache of stolen Khagggun war materiel, for even then he harbored the insane hope that he would be left alive to one day soon enter Gerwa's burnt-out encampment and find the weapons that would ensure his entry into the council. He had perhaps five minutes to warm himself in the fire of that improbable dream before Line-Commander Mennus, having determined that he had bled this specimen dry of intelligence, slit open his abdomen.

An hour later, Mennus, at the head of a Wing that comprised fully five packs of heavily armed Khagggun, moved out through the dripping foliage on his way to annihilate the infestation on Receiving Tears Ridge.

13

The Garden of Law and Chaos

Riane had been dreaming of Eleana. It was so peaceful, so perfect she did not want to leave the world she had created, she did not want the dream to end. Then all was grey ash dispersed on the wind, and her eyes snapped open and a chill whipped through her just as if she had been plunged into ice water.

Her heart beat so fast it was almost painful.

Eleana!

Where was she? Left alone in the caverns patrolled by Haaar-kyut.

She sat up and found herself entirely alone in the center of a garden. It was, however, unlike any garden she had ever seen or heard spoken of. For one thing, it had the aspect of an oasis in the desert.

That is to say, instead of an infinity of sand, all around it loomed the ma.s.sive granite chambers of the Storehouse-dark, cyclopean, forbidding- grinding and moaning like ice floes to the subtle s.h.i.+fts of the tectonic plates out of which it had been hewn. For another thing, the entire scene was quite impossible.

Honeyed sunlight filtered through smooth, curving tri-palm trees, the undersides of their deep green fronds gravid with nut-brown fruit. Flower-lined lawns stretched in every direction, crisscrossed by a formal grid of white-marble paths. At each intersection of the grid, water tinkled in snowflake obsidian fountains, each one breathtakingly carved into the shape of a colossal Venca rune. Gim-nopedes swooped and flitted through the fronds, chasing each other in carefree fas.h.i.+on, following soft breaths of air sweet beyond comprehension.

Riane shook her head. First, the sudden loss of Eleana and now this impossible place all set her mind reeling. And then she remembered where she was. The Storehouse was the place she had been trying to get into ever since she had become the Dar Sala-at. The sacred repository where the Great G.o.ddess Miina had ordained The Pearl must be kept. It was written in Prophecy that she would find The Pearl and lead all of Kundala to freedom and their ultimate destiny. Now, at long last, she was at the starting point, the place where Miina had cast down The Pearl after the cabal of sauromicians had wrested control of it from Mother and, profaning the Holy of Holies, had gazed into its depths. She had a chance now to right those wrongs, to bring The Pearl back into Miina's White Light.

A sudden shadow, as of a hulking cloud pa.s.sing before the white sun glare, caused her to turn. She saw the Hagoshrin. Its hideous head with its thick trunk and questing tentacles was turned toward her. Its sau-cerlike eyes, with their eerie circle of pupils, were fixed on her. The vee slash of its mouth, half-obscured by the ciliated trunk with an obscene hole at the end, opened and closed in terrible silence.

Riane took an involuntary step back, and the Hagoshrin followed her, a movement made all the more menacing by its colossal bulk. She said, "Do you know who I am?"

"I know you." The Hagoshrin possessed a voice like a rasp abrading metal. It sent s.h.i.+vers down Riane's spine, it invaded her brain like a parasite, worming its way past all the psychic barriers she put up.

"Do you know who I am?"

"You are the Hagoshrin that guards The Pearl. You almost killed me and my companion Eleana."

"That is what I am meant to do."

"You would not listen when I told you who I was."

"Over the centuries, all who have tried to enter this holy place have lied. All who have tried have failed. That was before the Storehouse Door opened for you. You told the truth. You are the Dar Sala-at." Its head shot forward with alarming speed, and its nostrils dilated quickly. "Yes. You are not on the surface whom you appear to be." The eyes squinted. "I discern in you V'ornnish traits. I see fire in your blood. I smell the scent of vengeance on your sweat."

Riane was startled. "You do not seem to be the monster legend paints.""Legends are dangerous," the Hagoshrin said. "Like history they can be easily manipulated. After all, who is to gainsay those who remain to rewrite them to their own benefit. To the survivors the spoils."

Riane looked hard into the hideous face. It was a struggle not to let that terrible visage color her expectations of temperament and intellect. "This is not how I imagined you would be."

"It is best to have no expectation when facing the unknown." The Hagoshrin bared its enormous teeth, whether in laughter or in remorse, it was impossible to tell. "You are in the Garden of Law and Chaos.

Here everything is in perfect balance-Darkness and Light, Good and Evil, Love and Hate, Order and Chaos. Those things that rely on imbalance are rendered inert. The Veil of a Thousand Tears, for instance."

Riane unwound the Veil from her waist. The Hagoshrin was right. No matter how much she tried she could not hear the voices of the Dragons whose tears were enmeshed in the sorcerous fabric of the Veil.

"A good lesson to be learned, Dar Sala-at. Do not overly rely on any single implement, sorcerous or otherwise. Rely rather on your wits."

Riane shook her head. Imagine getting advice from a Hagoshrin! Nevertheless, she knew that it would be well to take its advice to heart. Giyan had told her that the Hagoshrin spoke only the truth. But she was in a daemonically difficult situation. Eleana was alone in the caverns, and who knew where Thigpen had gotten to? Yet she had a responsibility here to fulfill her destiny and locate The Pearl.

As Riane rewound the Veil, the Hagoshrin said, "In the Time that was No-Time, before the Imagining when the Kundalan were born, Mima constructed this place by weaving the bourn lines together. The Garden of Law and Chaos is pure energy."

"A perfect place to store The Pearl," Riane said. "I am come now. Deliver to me The Pearl or lead me to where Miina hid it."

"As you wish, Dar Sala-at!"

The Hagoshrin bellowed so loudly that Riane clapped hands to her ears in a vain attempt to protect herself, for it spoke a Venca word, and there was no protection. It caused the entire garden to tremble.

The sun winked out. What was left was a grey light, dim and occluded, filthy as sewage. A fearsome black sphere had formed that seemed all maw. The tri-palm fronds were bent low, their root b.a.l.l.s sucked from the ground as they, along with the frolicking gimnopedes vanished into it. The lovely fountains frothed, disa.s.sembling. Their plas.h.i.+ng water spewed in a thunderous cloudburst. The last vestiges of the magnificent garden was sucked whole cloth into the sphere of the Hagoshrin's powerful spellcasting.

The silence was oppressive, the darkness absolute. The stench of bitterroot took on a third dimension, a sharp-toothed rodent crawling through shadow. Livid bluish light bloomed in four corners, as if there existed within the sphere a cube of lambent energy.

Riane peered into the eerie semidarkness. "Where is it?"

"It will take a bit of time," the Hagoshrin said. "I am not as I once was. Your coming has freed me from this accursed prison but not in the way I imagined. I am coming apart from the inside out. After eons beyond number the sorcery is unraveling."

"This has been your prison?"

The Hagoshrin snorted. "Do you think I would willingly choose to be locked away in this G.o.ddess-forsaken fortress? No, no. I was promised all that I wished for-and then I was tricked, ensorceled, burdened with this agonizing existence. For the love of Kundala, look what has become of me!"

"I would think guarding The Pearl would be an honor beyond measure."

"Ah, Dar Sala-at, how much you have yet to learn."

The Hagoshrin rolled the middle part of its ungainly torso over to reveal a huge navel. "Yes, there, you see, it is coming." From its depths, it plucked a sphere that glowed every color imaginable.

"The Pearl!" Riane whispered.

"Yes! The Holy of Holies. The granter of all wishes, the bringer of dreams, the one instrument of all power." The Hagoshrim offered it. "Here, then, is The Pearl."

It felt insubstantial, lighter than air. Riane's hands began to tremble. Here she was on the brink of understanding, on the brink of fulfilling her destiny as the Dar Sala-at. With the Pearl she would lead arebellion such as the V'ornn have never witnessed-the Resistance would rise up and, joined by the entire Kundalan population, throw off the V'ornn yoke and drive the aliens completely off Kundala.

"The Prophecies are true," she whispered. She could not control her trembling. There with her in spirit were Mother and Giyan and all the devout Ramahan who had died at the hands of the V'ornn and the sauromician traitors. All the pain and suffering she had endured, all that had been taken away from her, all the sacrifices she had made- everything made sense now as she saw her purpose taking form in front of her eyes. She was filled with elation and the p.r.i.c.k of fear. Here was the moment of Transformation spoken of in both of Miina's sacred texts, Utmost Source and The Book of Recantation.

"What do the Prophecies say?" the Hagoshrin asked.

"That the Dar Sala-at will look into the depths of The Pearl and see the future of the Kundalan, that she will see the way to their salvation, the return to their former glory."

"Your moment is at hand," the Hagoshrin said. "Fulfill the Prophecy."

Riane stared into the sorcerous depths of The Pearl. At first she saw nothing, a swirl of colors, like pigments stirred in an artist's pot. Then, like a curtain of mist parting, she saw a scene. It was of an armada of s.h.i.+ps-V'ornn s.h.i.+ps-darkening the sky over the northern continent. As the s.h.i.+ps descended through the atmosphere, a group of male Ramahan were seen emerging from Middle Palace, walking through the thronged streets of Axis Tyr to the North Gate. A contingent of V'ornn were already waiting to greet them as they pa.s.sed through the gate. The V'ornn were unarmed. There were no hostilities, merely an exchange of greetings, then an exchange of cultural gifts.

Riane, stunned, looked up at the Hagoshrin, who was grinning from ear to ear.

"This isn't the future," she said in despair. "It isn't even the past. This isn't what happened."

"Indeed not. What you are seeing is precisely what the cabal saw, what caused them to open the gates of Axis Tyr-of all Kundala, in fact-to the V'ornn."

Riane was shaking her head. "This cannot be. It is some ruse-"

"You are seeing what caused the Kundalan to be ma.s.sacred and enslaved without even a modic.u.m of a fight. They believed-because the cabal believed-that the V'ornn were benign. Is it any wonder that the remains of this cabal-the sauromicians-have turned away from Miina, will now fight to the death to destroy Her teachings and Her followers?"

"I do not believe you."

"I pity you, then, for you will remain deluded for the rest of your days. I am incapable of lying."

"Maybe you cannot lie," Riane said, "but surely you are capable of hiding the true Pearl you are sworn to protect."

"I am sworn to protect it, yes. But I am also sworn to deliver it into the hands of the Dar Sala-at. This I have done."

Riane felt as if she were plummeting down an endless shaft. Rage, confusion and despair all swirled inside her like the colors oozing across the surface of The Pearl.

"It cannot be true!"

"I a.s.sure you it is."

She thought of all she had been subjected to, coming near to death, Annon's essence ripped out of his body, rudely thrust into a Kundalan sh.e.l.l, healed by some sorcery she could not even now fathom. She thought of all she had been taught, all she had endured within the corrupt confines of the Abbey of Floating White. She was overcome by nausea and a mounting sense of dread.

"But Mother used The Pearl. She told me so."

"Mother saw what Miina wished her to see, no more and no less. Like everyone else, she was convinced that The Pearl was real. The deception had to be absolute in order to fool the sauromicians."

Riane felt Annon's rage-the male V'ornn that was part of her, wanting revenge, needing to slash and burn everything in sight. She clenched her fists, threw her head back, and screamed until her throat was raw and aching.

"I feel your pain," the Hagoshrin said.

"Like N'Luuura you do!" Riane stalked off.

In utter darkness, she stared into an infinity of nothingness. She felt as if she had been asleep for a longtime, only to awake into a nightmare. She had trusted in Giyan, in Mother, the teachings of the Ra-mahan. In the Great G.o.ddess Miina. Was nothing on this world what it appeared to be? She recognized hers as a V'ornn thought and was grateful, for she would need Annon's indomitable strength now more than ever. How grateful she was to be part of this new fused ent.i.ty, now that the world was spinning around her at a speed and in an orbit entirely new to her. The question was how to proceed.

Part of her- the part that was in despair, that was paralyzed with dread-wanted to do nothing more than curl up there in the darkness, go to sleep, and never wake up. Even so, she recognized that as a fantasy, flight from what seemed an unknowable and unknown future bereft of all the supports she had counted on.

She felt alone-and yet she was not alone. Behind her the Hagoshrin was waiting, and right now the creature was her only hope of going on. Because she knew that no matter how deep her despair and desperation went, she would go on. She could do nought else.

Seeing her reappear, the Hagoshrin said, "Yes, Dar Sala-at. It is much to absorb."

"That is an understatement." She was fighting to catch her breath, but she appreciated the Hagoshrin's empathy. "Why would Miina do this?"

"I am not a G.o.d. And, in any event, I never had the G.o.ddess's ear."

"But I am written in Prophecy-"

"The Prophecies are the invention of the Five Sacred Dragons. They are spun from imagination, conjecture, wish fulfillment-the hubris of thinking one can control the skein of the future. The truth is that any sense of control is an illusion. One cannot control anything. The Cosmos is in entropy. It was born, it lives, and, like all of us who exist within its web, it will die. What any of us does or fails to do will not change it."

"This is insane. It is against everything I know or was taught."

"Think the process through, Dar Sala-at," the Hagoshrin said with infinite patience. "The Pearl was purported to be the source of the greatest power and, therefore, it became the lodestone for the greatest corruption. It was a means to cull from the ranks of the Ramahan all those who were corrupt. It was meant to draw them into a boil that in one stroke could be lanced, freeing the body of the faithful from the poison debilitating it. And Her ploy worked. The Pearl lured the sau-romicians into the open."

"But beyond that it failed," Riane said. "Corruption still infiltrates the Ramahan."

"Even after the boil is lanced, there remains a smaller seepage of toxin-from the deepest levels, therefore the most virulent and dangerous-that requires extirpation."

She wanted to spit in the Hagoshrin's face, she wanted to believe that it was demented, but she could not. Everything it said explained so many otherwise unfathomable questions. She had never truly believed that Miina would have created The Pearl only to let it so easily fall into the hands of those who would become sauromicians. Slowly, she let go of the breath she had been holding.

"If you speak the truth, then who am I? Why was I created?" "Ah, do not ask me for the meaning of life." There was an infinite sadness etched into the Hagoshrin's face. "I cannot even answer for my own poor soul."

"What you are saying is that everything I learned is a lie. I am not the savior of the Kundalan race, I will not be able to deliver them, and we are doomed to the living death to which the V'ornn have condemned us."

"Is that what I have said?"

"So much pain, so much suffering, deaths beyond count, misery beyond measure. Surely this cannot be the fate Miina would want for Her chosen."

"Her chosen betrayed Her and Her teaching." "But to take such a drastic step ..."

"Possibly drastic measures were called for. But if you wish an answer, perhaps that, too, will become part of your journey."

She was aware of a numbness setting in, akin to that which binds your flesh in cotton wool when first you are pierced by a weapon, a self-defense mechanism that allows you to fight on despite even a grievous wound. She sat for a long time saying nothing. Her mind seemed to have gone blank, and why not? Everything she believed in was called into question, everything she was so certain she wouldbecome was gone. She stared at The Pearl. A bauble, the Hagoshrin called it. It was nothing more than a holoscreen showing the same lies over and over. She opened her hands, and The Pearl dropped, bounced once, twice, then rolled along the ground until it vanished into the blackness of the sphere.

Riane looked up bleakly. "I don't know where to go, I don't know what to do."

"You are the one. Hold tight to your belief, Dar Sala-at, for that which remains after the boil has been lanced, the most virulent of the toxin, requires an agent-fearless, pure of heart-to destroy it utterly and for all time."

"But without The Pearl's power I am nothing."

"No. The Pearl is only an object. We do not better ourselves through objects. Without your belief in yourself you are nothing. This and this alone is what you must take away with you." A tentacle curled around her, almost tenderly. "And now you must marshal yourself, for there is a task at hand both vital and perilous. It involves the banestones."