The Pearl Saga - Mistress of the Pearl Part 63

With that, Fer drew a dagger and, lifting Nesta's chin with one hand, slit her throat with it. Her eyes went wide, a scream stillborn on her lips. Haamadi leapt back at the first fountain of blood. As she collapsed, he dug at her with his taloned fingers, making two incisions. He ripped her heart from her chest and, in seven huge b.l.o.o.d.y bites, swallowed it. Crouched over her, he dug into the second, lower incision, drew out the glistening strand of her intestine. Wrapping it around his left wrist he began a series of chants, rocking back and forth on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet.

Lujon watched this with a combination of fascination and repulsion. It was not the first time he had witnessed this necromantic rite, but the shock of it did not seem to wear off. There were many among the Sintire, he chief among them, who believed that it was essential for them to appropriate this powerful sorcery from the sauromicians. His efforts had been slowed, however, by opposition from a faction led by Orujo. Orujo was also an Aersthone, one of the original family that had broken away from the yoke of Onnda and he therefore commanded great respect. Lujon knew he had to be careful when dealing with Orujo, but the more he was exposed to the power of necromancy, the more impatient for it he became.

Haamadi's eyes were fluttering. He was infused with the power of the trapped spirit, and unconsciously Lujon moved nearer, as if he might absorb some of the unnatural strength. Strange sounds came from Haamadi's mouth, an echo of tongues unknown, a chittering of unnameable things. Presently, his head tilted back, his eyes opened, their pupils dilated."It is that d.a.m.nable priestess, Giyan," he whispered in a dry and reedy voice unlike his own. "She is using the Skreeling Engine at the Abbey of Five Pivots. Ah, I see her plan! She is feeding the Ramahan the truth about everything."

A slow smile crept across his face. Even for Lujon, it was eerie to see Haamadi's hands moving over the body as if of their own accord, extracting liver and spleen, scoring them with b.l.o.o.d.y fingernails as long as an animal's.

"We shall see now how it goes." Haamadi's altered voice echoed through the study. The carpet was soaked through with his victim's blood. "Osoru against necromancy. Now she will see the true power of the dead come to life!"

Activity aboard the Sarakkon vessel lapsed into somnolence as soon as Lujon and Haamadi had disappeared into the sh.e.l.l-like cave. Riane did not move, however. She was well aware of how many individuals must be on the island and was taking no chances of being spotted by a stray sauromician or Sarakkon sailor. She had crept around so that she had a better look at the sea-cave mouth, which was aboil with choppy water. As she did so, she saw a shadow lowering itself down a line of rigging into the water. Almost immediately, it disappeared underwater only to appear meters away from the s.h.i.+p, a face only, nose and mouth above the heavy chop of the swells, taking in a long, deep breath before disappearing again.

By the time the face surfaced again to inhale another breath, Riane had worked out the place where the stowaway would come ash.o.r.e. She moved perpendicular to the underwater swimmer, and when the face surfaced again her heart leapt in her breast, for the stowaway was close enough now for her to make an identification. Eleana!

How had she come to be on Lujon's s.h.i.+p? Riane wondered as she waded out into the heavy surf.

There was a series of upthrust rocks between them and the s.h.i.+p which, she was certain, was why Eleana had made for this spot. But the suck of the surf was very strong, just beyond the comber line was a dangerous rip current moving very fast from east to west.

She could see that Eleana, tired from her swim in, was struggling in the rip current. Stripping off her jacket, she plunged into the curl of a huge wave and stroked powerfully out. Already, Eleana was west of where Riane had last seen her, and Riane dived down deeper, swimming along the very bottom below the worst of the current. Above her, Eleana took a breath and, head over heels, went under. Riane scissor-kicked, jetting upward, grasped Eleana around her legs, pulled her down through the current.

At first, Eleana, terrified, fought her, but then, concentrating fully through the turbulence, she recognized Riane and, jackknifing her body, swam joyously into her arms. Together, they kicked along the rocky bottom until they were clear of the rip current, surfacing with gasps, riding the waves in a spray of foam and ozone-rich air the rest of the way into sh.o.r.e.

They leaned their backs against a pair of upright rocks, allowing the fitful sunlight to dry their clothes.

Riane had retrieved her jacket, which had been warmed by the sun.

They stared into each other's eyes and, for that moment, nothing else existed for them. They told each other what had transpired from the moment they had been parted on the ground floor of FIREFLY to the moment Riane had grasped Eleana around the legs. Revelation tumbled from their mouths, one after another.

"Your parents! Oh, Riane, that's so wonderful!"

They laughed and cried and embraced again. This time, it lasted a long time. They tasted the salt of the ocean on each other's lips.

Then, all at once, Eleana pushed Riane to arm's length. "Miina," she cried softly, "look at you!"

Riane was dressed in the style of her parents: three-quarter-length leather breeches, indigo raw-silk blouse, wide, triple-tongued amber-colored leather belt. Her waist-length jacket was of undyed woven wool with stand-up collar, wide, three-quarter sleeves and wide cuffs, a Venca rune in black embroidered across its back. On her feet were supple, thin-soled, ankle-length boots."This is the style of the Tchakira," she said.

"Is that who you are now?" Eleana frowned. She was still coming to terms with who the Tchakira were. She had many years of socially ingrained prejudice to overcome.

"I am many things, Eleana," she said softly. "As are you. One of them does not preclude the other."

"I know, love. I know."

Riane took a quick peek from behind the rock. "I saw Lujon and Haamadi go into that sea cave. It's obviously the way in, but it is likely to be heavily guarded. The best way to get inside the sauromicians'

lair is for us to Thripp."

"We can't." Eleana put her hand on Riane's sleeve. "Sagiira warned me that there are no power bourns beneath the island."

Riane shook her head. "Sagiira must be mistaken. I can sense them deep in the core of the bedrock."

"I know what you are feeling, love. Sagiira told me that the Ramahan had come here long ago to try to conquer death."

"As the Gyrgon are trying to do."

"The reason there are no power bourns here, the reason you feel something, is that somewhere deep below us lies the Underworld, where the spirits of the dead reside before the Great Wheel returns them in one form or another to life."

That jibed in its way with what Amitra told her she must do when she arrived at the Cage. She nodded. "If Thripping here is impossible, then we will have to enter the sea cave."

"Perhaps we should wait until dark."

"We cannot afford to wait. Lujon has the ninth banestone. He has already touched it with his bare hands; who knows what fell changes it has wrought on him. I must intercept him before he gives it to the sauromicians and they complete the Cage." Riane took a deep breath. "We go in now."

The pain began behind Giyan's eyes. Not a moment before, she had been sitting in the Skreeling Engine, feeling like a beam of honeyed sunlight the slow seep of acceptance from the Ramahan to whom she had beamed the truth. She was caught up in the Engine's power. The pain spread rapidly to clamp her brain in a kind of vise that squeezed tighter with each beat of her heart, each breath she took.

She had opened her seer's mind to the Skreeling Engine, and it had amplified her ability so that she merged with the Engine. Together, they had manufactured the dream that had set the Ramahan into a quiet uproar. Now her seer's mind grasped what even the Druuge Perrnodt could not. In her mind, she caught a whiff of the open grave, of blood running, terminal scream bubbling, and a stench rising. She saw with a flash the swift draw of blade across throat, white obscured by a gout of brilliant scarlet, and felt the precious life force s.n.a.t.c.hed like an infant from its crib, an act of such violation her instinct was to recoil in horror. Face-to-face with the hideous essence of necromancy, of the dreadful path the sauromicians had chosen, she gathered herself. Like Perrnodt before her, she chose to fight the pain with sorcerous spells and, as with Perrnodt, her strategy proved disastrous, for the more spells she conjured the deeper the pain went until it had inflamed every nerve in her body. Writhing in agony, she fell off the Skreeling Engine. She tried to think, but her mind was aflame. There was a bitter taste in her mouth. She had the good sense to turn her head, spit out the white crystals. More were forming inside her mouth.

Madila, the drug they had used to kill Perrnodt. She spat again, but it was more difficult that time, took an inordinate expenditure of energy. Her motor skills were being seriously impaired. She was about to try another spell-the most potent one in her a.r.s.enal-when a warning bell sounded deep inside her pain-racked brain. Think, she berated herself. Think!

Perrnodt must have tried this tack. It hadn't worked. Slowly, Giyan realized why. It was not that the spells were not working, they were actually making the pain worse-they were being used against her!

Was that how necromancy worked? She did not know, but she vowed to find out. If she lived through this-an outcome that was becoming more problematic with every moment that elapsed. She had to try something else. What?Krystren arrived back on the island of Suspended Skull with a keen sense of foreboding. When she looked at Orujo she saw her own death. It was not that she feared death, it was simply that she had never before understood how close she was to it. A hairbreadth, that is all there was separating life and death.

Orujo smiled at her, and she saw a death's-head, she saw the image of her own executioner. He took her hand.

"You are cold, Krystren. We will build you a fire in one of the abbey's hearths."

His solicitousness, the kindness and consideration he had shown her on their swift journey back south, set her teeth on edge. Everything with him was skin-deep. When on their unhappy journey had she realized that he wore a mask even with himself?

All during that journey she could not get Giyan's face out of her mind. Her shocked expression, the helpless corner into which she, Krystren, had pushed her. She prayed to Yahe that Giyan had found the message she had written in the dust.

She had no idea what Orujo planned for her, she only knew it was not what he had so craftily told her. But then neither was her acquiescing to his blandishments, which was motivated by her desire to infiltrate to the heart of the Sintire mission there on the northern continent. Her own mission had been made moot by Courion's death, but that did not mean she was simply going to roll over and defect as Orujo wanted her to do. The two of them were playing a deadly game of clandestine motive. The only question was who would discover the other's secret first.

She smiled her most brilliant smile when Lujon met them in the entrance to the Abbey of Loathsome Jaws. She had never met him or even seen him, but had heard many tales of his prowess and his cruelty.

The story was told among the Onnda that he hated everyone and everything, that his ancestors had been killed when the Sarakkon were driven by the Ramahan from the northern continent, that he lived only for revenge.

"Welcome back, Orujo," he said, his hard gaze on Krystren. "Though you must explain why under the circ.u.mstances you should be welcome here."

"Krystren is under our protection," Orujo said.

"Why is that?" Lujon spread his hands. "Did you strike your head? Are your brains addled? Have you lost your memory? Your mission was to find her, take her infinity-blade wand, and kill her. Kindly tell us what has changed?"

"We have a chance to get the infinity-blade wand and the knowledge inside her head."

Lujon looked skeptical.

"Think, Lujon, of all the Onnda secrets that will be ours! We will finally have enough to break them once and for all, scatter them to the four winds, oust Cerro, take our rightful place at the Orieniad. At last we will rule!"

Lujon took a step toward Krystren, put himself in her face. "And it she is playing you false? If her motive is to gain our secrets?"

"Then we will kill her ourself."

"Indeed." At last, Lujon s.h.i.+fted his gaze to Orujo. "Are you not besotted with her?"

"We are Sintire. Our ancestors founded Sintire. Nothing will prevent us from doing our duty."

Lujon nodded. "You have sworn this before us and before Abrasea. Let it be so." He lifted a finger.

"And if by chance you fail or falter, then know that without a moment's hesitation or regret we will kill you."

Necromancy depended for fuel upon the life force of the newly dead. Giyan used the last of her energy to concentrate through the pain that had now gripped her heart in a cold and clammy grip.Nesta. The murdered Ramahan's name was s.h.i.+ma Nesta.

Her seer's mind found the essence of Nesta. It was wrapped around the wrist of a sauromician archon, slaved to his will. It was weeping uncontrollably. With her seer's mind, she spoke to what remained of Nesta, gave it hope.

This act of compa.s.sion cost her, for the archon became aware of her extraordinary skill and, after a momentary shock, applied his necromantic power to stop the communication. He did it, quite naturally, through Nesta's essence, compelling it to turn itself full force on Giyan. It was that force the archon had used to introduce the Madila into her.

Giyan began to froth at the mouth, and she fought the urge to swallow, for she knew that if she did the Madila would spread throughout her system, and she would not be able to stop its pernicious effects.

She spat again, but her tongue felt thick and useless. She was able to push a very small amount of the crystals out of the corner of her mouth. Her mouth was filling up with bitter-tasting saliva faster than she could get it out. She had to swallow. It was an automatic response. In a moment, it would all be over.

It was her prowess as a seer that saved her, for half-paralyzed, she saw before her a vision of the Ramahan rising up from the torpor of delusion, saw them turning on the sauromicians, experienced their realization that they had been captives, that they had been duped by a false prophet, that they had been played for fools. And it was that vision-that future-to which she turned her mind, to which she directed all her energies. She no longer thought of her own plight. Her life was insignificant when faced with the continued incarceration and abuse of her Ramahan. Young and foolish they might be, so had she been at their age-foolish and headstrong and unmanageable. She rode the wave of love for them into their minds and hearts. The seeds of their delusion had already been planted through the Skreeling Engine. Now she whispered to them as if she were the Great G.o.ddess Miina Herself of what they needed to do to fight the sauromicians, to win back their freedom. And she felt them as they rose as one.

She felt the anger in their hearts, though she did not fuel it. She did not have to, for their rage at what had happened to their sisters while they themselves had stood by, complacent and unaware, was more than enough to energize them. Her mind was filled with their rebellion, as all over the Abbey of Loathsome Jaws they awoke from their somnambulists' trance to mount a simultaneous a.s.sault on their captors. The sauromicians were taken completely by surprise. So well trained to repel attacks from the outside, they were unprepared to deal with an internal uprising.

Giyan, having done her part, found the ma.s.sed rage of the Ramahan feeding back on her, fueling her own psychic battle. She found the strength to rise on all fours. Head hanging down between her shoulders, she vomited up all the Madila, then crawled into an adjacent room, turned the tap, and plunged her head in a basin of freezing water. The extreme temperature revived her. She opened her eyes underwater, felt the frenzy of movement, saw dead faces of sauromicians staring at her with the thousand-kilometer stare. Rinsed out her mouth, the last dregs of the deadly crystals swirling down the drain.

34

The Difference Between Death and Life

At the very last moment, as they were about to enter the sea-cave mouth, Riane held them back.

Eleana opened her mouth, but Riane shook her head sharply, and they retreated back to the cover of the large boulders, where they crouched down, huddled with their knees touching.

"I am aware of six sauromicians. We will never get through that way," Riane said.

"Even with your sorcery?"

"I have limited experience with sauromicians and none at all with necromancy," Riane pointed out.

"With so many in close quarters the odds are too great against us."

"Then we are lost."

"Not necessarily." Riane was eyeing the rocky scree. "See that cave about halfway up the cliffside? I can climb up to it."

"What good will that do?"

"Watch."

Eleana craned her neck, stared at the cave mouth. In a moment, she saw movement-sauromician or Sarakkon, she could not tell which- and she knew that that cave must also lead up to the abbey above.

She also knew what that meant.

"In that case, love, I will only slow you down," she said. "I should not come with you."

Riane took her hand. "Perhaps it is just as well." She gave a quick glance at the s.h.i.+p at anchor. "It is best there is someone here to keep an eye on the Sarakkon."

Eleana nodded. "If the sauromicians call for Sarakkon reinforcements, I will find a way to delay them."

"I know you will." Riane kissed her on both cheeks, then a long ecstatic kiss on the lips.

As she was about to go, Eleana pulled her back down. "There is something I want to give you." She dug in her tunic, produced a twist of cloth. "This is Madila-a very powerful drug the sauromicians used to try to kill Sagiira." She pressed the twist into Riane's hand. "Miina grant that it prove useful to you."

With that, she cuffed Riane on the shoulder. "Now go." Her eyes were melting. "And please, love, be careful."

"There is no one I would rather was here with me," Riane whispered. "I trust you with my life."

"As I trust you with mine."

Riane rose and, without a backward glance, made her way to the base of the cliff. It rose spiked and nearly sheer, but she had encountered cliffs like it before in the high Djenn Marre-cliffs more difficult for the cold, the wind, the treacherousness of ice underfoot and hand. She was not daunted.

With unerring instinct Riane chose hand- and foot-holds that were both secure and advantageous. She was able to seek out the best of her choices, as if the cliffside had been schematized in her mind, mapped and a.n.a.lyzed by the scanning she had done when she had first appeared on the island. The cliff face existed both whole and parceled in her mind. As she climbed steadily upward, her mind moved from section to section, remembering fissures, impa.s.sable overhangs, treacherous porches of friable rock, walls of smooth gla.s.sy surfaces, inviting indentations and blessed lips on which to lever herself up or to rest-places to avoid and those to which to gravitate.

As she neared the mouth of the cave, she looked for a ledge beneath the lip in which to gather her strength, both mentally and physically. There was no perch of suitable width, but she made do with a slight indentation in the cliff face against which she could press her body. She could hear the waves cras.h.i.+ng below, hear the raucous cries of the pelagic birds that swung through the air on their way to and from their eyries. One such nest was, in fact, not far from where she leaned against the cold rock wall. Itwas nesting season, the little ones ravenous, but not yet ready take wing.

She slowed her breathing, opened her Third Eye, and listened for sounds of movement in the cave mouth just above her. She heard nothing, felt nothing, but she was not emboldened. She did not know the extent of necromancy's powers either to stop her probing or become aware of it. Mindful of this unknown, she extended her consciousness very slowly until she had swept the lip and was certain no one lurked there. But what about farther inside the cave? She was just about to continue her ethereal probing when, with a startled cry, a mother bird, returning to her nest, decided she was too close and flew at her with talons extended.

Riane, forced to defend herself, lost one handhold. She did not want to harm the bird, but the thing had already bloodied her and would not back off, so she conjured a minor Venca spell, catching the bird as it plummeted down, insensate. She was reaching out to carefully place the bird back in her nest when she was wrested out of Riane's grip.

She looked up to see a sauromician wringing the bird's neck. "Filthy screamer." He grinned lasciviously down at Riane. "And what have we here?" Discarding the dead bird, he reached down, and hauled Riane up into the cave.

Something Riane had said stuck in Eleana's mind after she had left. Riane said she had to get to Lujon before he gave the ninth banestone to the sauromicians so they could complete the Cage. Eleana, as she always did in war, had put herself in the mind of the enemy. She did so unconsciously, and though she knew little about Sarakkon, still she knew they were first and foremost traders, and traders were always looking for an edge. What was troubling her was this: if she were Lujon, why in the world would she simply hand over something as valuable as the ninth banestone? Wouldn't he be more likely to keep it hidden somewhere while he negotiated with the sauromicians for its price? Might he not have already done so before he set out to find it? She did not think so because his hand was so much stronger with the banestone in his possession. No, the more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that Lujon had not had the banestone with him when he met Haamadi.

She turned, looking out past the breakers to where the Omaline rode at anchor. The ninth banestone was aboard that s.h.i.+p, she had no doubt of it. She had no desire to plunge herself back into that rip current, but she did not see that she had any choice. Besides, Riane had shown her how to dive deep beneath the worst of the current's pull.

Steeling herself, she slipped back into the blue-black ocean. As the freezing water closed over her and she dived beneath the first wave, her thoughts were only of Riane.

Limp in the sauromician's grasp, Riane felt the coldness of his necromancy creep over her like a fist of vipers. He had grabbed hold of her spell, used it like a handle to lever his mind into hers. Stunned by the invasion, she lay spread-eagled, the Riane part of her paralyzed, in the sauromician's control. But Riane's palace of memory, hidden in the deepest recesses of her mind, remained undisturbed by the necromantic spell, and it was there that Riane had retreated.

Within the protection of the palace she thought in overtime. She had been trapped by using a Venca spell. Sagiira had cautioned against trying to access the power bourns, which would have involved Osoru sorcery. Both of these sorceries were practiced by those who, like her, had the Gift-those whom the sauromicians had systematically tried to excise from the body of the Ramahan before being sent into exile. It would make sense that they would gear their necromancy toward those with the Gift. But what about Kyofu, the Black Dreaming sorcery the sauromicians started out using?

Riane, obliged to call upon the small catalog of Kyofu spells she knew, chose Fly's-Eye, because it caused a chaos of thoughts in its victim. She was prepared to cast it when she reconsidered. Even if Fly's-Eye worked, even if, crippled as she was, she was able to defeat this sauromician, then what? Shedid not know where Lujon was, did not know the layout of the caves or the abbey above. The sauromician did. Why not allow him to carry her into the heart of the enemy, where she needed to be.