Braxi-Azea - In Conquest Born Part 48

And the Plague.

And impotence.

With a snarl he slapped the handplate of a steel-barred door, which lifted itself into the ceiling to admit him. He signaled it to close again behind him and it did so, sealing him in the tiny stone cell with the stink of mold, and death- and fear.

Zatar, I will destroy you!

He studied his surroundings, drinking in their dismal atmosphere with relish.

This cell was one of his smallest; he had designed it to mimic the dark confines of the Illean catacombs. Dank, odiferous, and above all else stiflingly close, it ws a claustrophobe's nightmare. The walls pressed tightly about their victim, and the low ceiling was cunningly paved with stones and boulders so that it appeared to be only loosely fixed in place. Might it fall, crus.h.i.+ng the room's helpless occupant? For one who did not know the details of its construction, the answer that came could only be yes. The walls, similarly misleading, leaned inward at the top, and beneath their irregular stonework one could easily feel the weight of the earth overhead, the thousands of tons of rock which pressed down upon the tiny and primitive chamber.

He had broken many men in this room, and had not had to do much work in the breaking; the room itself had power enough, applied to a people long accustomed to wide open s.p.a.ces and the infinite reaches of the Void. Now it held a single prisoner: a woman, feverish, chained to the uneven wall. He came to stand before her, touching a gloved finger to the side of her face. She was s.h.i.+vering with fear, and a fine sheen of sweat was her only garment. In the dim, unwholesome light her golden skin seemed gray and withered; her fine white hair, straggling down about her shoulders, was streaked with mud much as the hair of an Azean dip- lomat might be frosted with golden powders. Subcommander, fighter captain, lead scout . . . he could no longer remember her exact rank, and it did not matter.

They had brought her to Braxi and he had broken her, squeezing military information out of her pain-wracked body like one worked the juice from a sarafruit. Now the empty rind had been cast to him for his pleasure, and he explored its flaws with relish.

She looked at him-or past him, or through him-with eyes that had long since lost their l.u.s.ter, and her breath stank of fear. His mere proximity was salt to her wounds and he knew it; he moved even closer, pinning her against the wall with his bulk, and smiled as a tortured moan squeezed up from the heart of her. She was a latent claustrophobe; it had not taken him long to discover it. Now, knowing, he possessed the key to her soul-her Name, as it were, if Azeans might be said to have Names. Her fear had been mild to start with, a commonplace discomfort, and she had dealt with it simply, by avoiding situations that would inflame her phobia to life. But in doing so, she had not entered Sechaveh into her calculations.

Looking into her eyes, he saw the effects of his work: the finely drawn line between horror and madness upon which this woman balanced, longing for the latter but suffering, at his hands, the former. If kept carefully she might survive for decades; what peaks of intensity might her phobia reach if he had a lifetime to work on it? The thought excited him, set his blood to stirring as nothing else could. At one time the flesh of women might have pleased him, the contraction of their bodies as they screamed, or pleaded, or died . . . but now his pleasure was in pain and pain alone, his hunger a burning hostility that had its own special demands, and its own satisfaction.

He touched a finger to the woman's eyes, noting her reflexive response. Was it not amazing how the body sought to protect itself from harm, long after the soul had abandoned hope? He would tear her eyes out soon, and see how the darkness of the blind compared with the blackness of his dungeon in the heart of her phobia. Would there be a qualitative difference? Would the imagination of the newly blind make her unseen prison seem more confining, or would it lessen the effect of a blackness that no light would ever enter? The question made his blood stir, hotly.

She cried out suddenly, her eyes wide with terror.

As for Zatar . . . he cursed the name, the House, and most of all his own stupidity. But he would have his revenge. Law or no, his would be the ultimate triumph. Because of the man's own weaknesses Zatar would wither and perish; Sechaveh had not spent his life in a study of human suffering for the mere fleeting pleasure of it. He knew how to hurt Zatar, if not how to bring him from power; he could make the man's soul bleed until the throne of Braxi held only emptiness for him-until he tasted, himself, the very sort of impotent fury that Sechaveh was destined to endure.

He had planned it all out, and it soon would begin. Ni'en would be the first blow: struck down bloodily, painfully, perhaps even openly. She had no Braxana blood in her and the law, therefore, did not protect her from Whim Death. How like Zatar that he had taken her safety for granted all these years! What grief would the great Pri'tiera know, who had removed his gloves before a woman?

Only so much as he deserved, Sechaveh a.s.sured himself.

The woman cried again, sharply; her face was pale with fear and she writhed against the wall, pulling desperately at the chains that bound her. This was an interesting development! He grasped her chin in his leather-bound hand and forced her to stare at him. Blood dribbled from her screaming mouth, staining his glove. Internal damage, or cuts to the mouth's interior? What convulsions of fear had his presence inspired? Elated, curious, he stared at her, studied her, -and stepped back quickly as the cause of her suffering became apparent.

"No!" He hissed it, backing up as far as the tiny room would permit. Black froth sizzled over her lip and ate its way down her chin, following the trail that her blood had already blazed. The pit of her stomach was churning as well, and spots of blackness began to appear here and there on the taut, sweat-soaked skin.

The Black Death.

The initial shock pa.s.sed quickly and his reason returned to him. He was safe for the moment, for her torso was bound, but if her arms and legs flailed as they were eaten away, he might be in grave danger. He moved swiftly to the door and placed his hand upon the plate that controlled it.

Nothing happened.

Again.

The door did not move.

Sweat broke out across his brow; he found that his hands were trembling. Again and again he tried to coax the portal's controls to action. Finally he leaned down to the door's lower edge and sought to raise it by brute force-but there was no handhold, none at all, and friction alone would not suffice to raise the slick, heavy stone.

He was afraid.

The screams were deafening now, and in another place and time they would have pierced his soul with pleasure; now his blood ran cold, his hands and heart were like ice. He backed away from her, as far as he could get, and drew his cape before him. One more layer between him and man's ultimate torment; could it even help-would it be enough? To scream for aid would be pointless; who would pick his voice out from the woman's squalling? And would they help, if they heard? Someone had sealed the door behind him; such things did not happen by accident. Someone with access to House security, who might also have sabotaged the computer. . . .

"Call Sil'ne!" he commanded. A bit of living rot landed right by his face, and it barely missed his shoulder as it slid, seething, to the foot of the wall. It humiliated him to call for a woman's help, but the facts were simple: Sil'ne was the only one in the House who could not afford to let him die. Bereft of his support she would be Houseless, homeless; a woman who had failed her Master in this way would not find upper-cla.s.s patronage again. She dared not fail him . .

. and therefore he trusted her. "Sil'ne!" A line of blackness was eating its way through one of the woman's legs, and as she twitched in her death-throes it scattered the seeds of torment to all sides of him. A bit caught on his cloak and he discarded it quickly. "Inform her-bring her to me!" he cried, desperate. His cloak was being consumed; he watched in horror as it writhed, alive in its dying, and shuddered at the thought that the same might happen to him.

"Computer! Call-"

Airborne, a piece of the putrid substance was flung against him, and it quickly took root in the wool of his tunic sleeve. Were he dressed in a foreign manner he might have had one moment to brush the stuff away-with his Zhaor, even the scabbard, anything made of metal or synthetics-but the threads that had been spun for his clothing were of animal origin, rich in protein content, and were as much food for the dreaded Death as the flesh that lay beneath it. He moaned as the poison bit into his arm, attempting to voice a last cry for help, but he managed only a wordless scream as the poison ate his nerves, hungry for suffering as well as flesh.

Mindlessly he moved to brush at his arm, stopping only a hair's breath from the boiling surface before he remembered: to touch it was to spread it. How then could he save himself? He forced his body to be still, to endure the hot knives of pain which pierced through his arm and upward toward his shoulder, and which ate at his fingers until black sludge dripped from their stumps. There must be a way to survive this! he thought feverishly. The Azeans were poisoned often, and didn't always die of it; What technique did they employ?

As a nova of agony burst to life in his upper arm, he remembered.

He gritted his teeth and prepared himself for courage. Now there was hope . . .

and a morbid fascination, which he would never have admitted to, in watching himself master the death that had overwhelmed so many. Pain and I are old companions. . . . He reached his right hand to his Zhaor, carefully, and applied his thumb to the lock. It was programmed for any Sutrakarre hand and opened in response to his touch-and he sighed in relief as it did so, though tears of pain poured from his eyes even as he drew the blade free. Amputation: that was the secret. To sever the host-limb before the poison could spread. He maneuvered the Zhaor as well as he could right-handed, and brought it down on his better arm before he could start to question his actions. It had to be done quickly. Before the malignancy spread to his torso. And before agony overpowered sentience.

The sword-which could have severed real metal and should have sliced through his flesh like b.u.t.ter-bounced off his arm-bounced!-and fell to the stone floor, far out of reach. He stared at it aghast and then screamed-for the poison had invaded his torso. Mindless sound, sightless agony, pain beyond human endurance. . . . The Death touched his cheek and took root there, so that when he gasped for breath it choked him; then, with s.a.d.i.s.tic humor, it ate through his windpipe so he might still have air. He fell, but that was a minor injury; he was being eaten from the inside out, as though the poison had a living mind and intended to cause him maximum suffering. In that, it was succeeding.

And then-the ultimate mockery-the poison stopped short of his heart. Bits of it hardened and crumbled, consumed at first by that which followed, later joined by it. The seething subsided; the blackness grayed. Raw nerves sang of their torment while the heartbeat labored on, struggling to preserve a life that was already worse than death itself. But the battle had long since been lost. The blood, pumped outward, did not return. The brain, lacking its supply of oxygen, clung to the pain for as long as it could, then slipped slowly, unwillingly, into darkness.

Lord Elder and Kaim'era Sekav, son of Lurat and M'nisa, was dead.

Sil'ne waited in the library, using Sechaveh's Central Computer link to toy with the structure of his financial holding. Already the carrion-birds were gathering, Mistresses of the Braxana picking apart the remnants of Sechaveh's power, seeking a bit of carnage to add to their own estates. Through the network of the Central Computer she fenced with them, buying and selling shares of her ex- Master's interests with the expertise born of a century's practice. Let the House of Marax hunger after the Ayyaran mines, now masterless; she was there to foil it, and the Houses that followed it, tossing away sc.r.a.ps to feed the greedy as she saved, by her skill, the bulk of a now ownerless estate.

It was for amus.e.m.e.nt, nothing more. She hated waiting. Sechaveh's House would be a.s.signed to a stranger-some Lord of the Sutrakarren bloodline-and then she would be outcast. No Mistress who failed her Lord might ride the crests of the Braxana social system. Very well; she would go. But they would remember her. Remember that Sechaveh's economic holding was one she had built and maintained- remember that the power others had hungered to ally with was as much her doing as his, and that the ruthless efficiency which made him such a dangerous enemy was based upon decades of her labor, and depended upon her loyalty.

She called up the estate's T'sarakene contracts and remoded relevant clauses so that an immediate transfer of owners.h.i.+p would be next to impossible. T'sarak's Computer found the new phrases synonymous with the old and accepted them; no non-B'saloan system was programmed for use of all forty-two Braxana speech modes, and therefore one could sneak legal changes past their otherwise careful vigilance. Leaning back, she regarded her work on the flatscreen. Yes, that was good ... it would keep the vinefarms out of Kaim'era Lasir's grasping hands for a good while. Long enough for the estate to be divided. . . .

She started as the door before her split open.

"Lord Turak!" She stood, deftly touching the console to darkness as she did so.

Sechaveh's son entered and the door resealed behind him. The library, as they both knew, was soundproofed. "Have they finished?"

"We have finished." He paused, drinking in her discomfort. How like his father he was, in that! "It seems that an unfortunate accident has befallen the Master of this House."

"An accident," she breathed. "Then-"

"The residue's been a.n.a.lyzed, the remains studied, and all evidence points to the same conclusion: Sechaveh meant to witness the Black Death in a woman, and to that end poisoned her with a timed dose of the Waiting Poison. Protected by a personal forcefield, he entered her chamber to observe her unpleasant demise. Unfortunately-for him-the unit malfunctioned, offering no protection.

The poison reached him late in its vital phase and managed to eat its way through several organs and arteries before going inert. So say the investigators, and who am I to argue? He bled to death."

"Slowly," she murmured.

He grinned. "How like Sechaveh's woman to notice that point! Slowly, yes, compared to what would have happened if the poison had remained vital a bit longer. I imagine he suffered. Does that please you?"

Her voice was rich with derision. "I think you confuse me with my ex-Master, Lord Turak."

"How easily the t.i.tle comes to her lips! Ex-Master, indeed! How will you live, without him? Did you hate him, Sil'ne? Enough to kill him, perhaps? No worry on that score, now that the investigation's cleared you! Was it hard to govern your pride all these years, in order to get the power you wanted-or did you share his interests? No one seems to know."

"I don't imagine it need concern you."

He crossed the room and came to where she stood, behind her, his voice a whisper over her left shoulder as he searched the console screen for insight.

"They even checked the field belt for poison contact, and found the leather encas.e.m.e.nt eaten away, just as it should be. Imagine that! I would think such a man would test his forcefield, before committing himself to such dangerous circ.u.mstances.''

"Maybe he was preoccupied."

"Maybe." He placed hands on her shoulders; strong hands, eager hands. "His Zhaor sheath was of finely worked bra.s.s. I had always thought my father was more fond of leather and silken adornments-but then, I might be wrong. Surely such things would have been damaged by contact with the poison." He forced her to face him. "That wasn't the sword he was wearing, was it?"

She pulled away from him, stood, and walked far enough that he could no longer touch her. And turned to him, stone-faced. "Apparently Sechaveh's blood bred true," she a.s.sessed.

"His blood and his training-and yours." He closed the distance slowly, appraising her as he did so. "Gentle, innocent ex-Mistress." She flinched at the insult. "I want the sword you took from his body," he demanded.

"Why? So you can reveal me to the Kaim'eri? No thank you, Turak."

He came to her swiftly and grabbed her by the shoulders; she twisted in his grasp, but could not free herself. "The sword, Sil'ne. It's my right!"

She glared at him. "It's the only evidence of what really happened. Do you think I kept it intact?"

A faint smile mitigated his anger. "I know you. You did."

"There was never the Braxana that could resist a trophy, is that your reasoning?

Am I no better than the rest of them?"

He shook her, more violently this time. "I gave you the poison. Give me the sword!"

She broke free of him and glared-and then laughed, a sound rich with scorn.

"As you wish, Lord. If you'll follow me?"

He did so in silence, to a room which was much the same as many others- except for the narrow s.p.a.ce hidden behind one of the walls, which she opened with a touch. "It was part of our arrangement that Sechaveh would never come in here. Here." She withdrew a Zhaor, its rich, silk-covered sheath half eaten away, a crusty black ash falling from its damaged edges.

She handed it to him, and he unsheathed the blade.

"Fully blunt." He placed a finger against the deadly edge, withdrew it uninjured.

His eyes glowed. "The forcefield; did you-''

"I neglected nothing, Lord Turak. I'm no more anxious than you to die for this.

The malfunction will seem reasonable, the House's records will all bear witness to the supposed truth . . . I was very, very careful."

"You always have been."

"Thank you." Then she dared: "And the estate? Have they divided it yet?"

"Part of it. The main House is to be mine." Sliding the blade back into its sheath, he set the Zhaor aside. "And its staff."

"So I. . . ?"

"The choice is mine."

He watched her for a moment, enjoying her discomfort. "What shall I do with a woman who betrayed her Master?"

"I was loyal!" she snapped. "I was always loyal-until he threatened my people.

When I found out that he was plotting against the Pri'tiera-! What could I do?

What should I have done?"

"Exactly what you did. I have no argument with that. But a woman who let her Master die . . ." he let the words fade into meaningful silence as he stepped toward her, touched his hand to her skin. "You have fulfilled my most fervent dream. Could I do anything but reward you? Stay, if you want, and keep this estate going. You'll be under my own Mistress, but no other. The power will be little less than you enjoyed before-and the company, I think, will be more pleasurable." He kissed her, hungry for owners.h.i.+p. "Say yes."

She whispered it: "Yes."

He embraced her, and aroused her, and possessed her; how could he do otherwise? Each thrust of his killing pa.s.sion sent his father that much further into the grave, and by possessing her he made his triumph total. And she- inspired by the kill, hungry for normal sensation-she was a match for him, a proper companion for the night of his ascendancy. The power of women had always excited him, and violence was an aphrodisiac. How could his father have failed to respond to her? How could he have been so ... inhuman?

"The sword," he whispered, deep within the night.

"What of it?"

"The tip was also blunted; why?"

She smiled, and he saw the fire rise in her eyes. "I was afraid he might kill himself."

"Before it had ended. ..."

"Didn't you guess?"

"No." He laughed. "I should have."

"We were not so very different," she said softly.

"You and my father? Or me and-"

"All of us." She breathed it into his skin, and it stirred his blood anew. "All the Braxana. Do you deny it?"

He let his body answer.

Harkur: Nothing, not even pleasure, can bind two humans as close as a long- enduring vendetta, for it forces upon each a constant awareness of the strengths and vulnerabilities of the other, and commits them to a common purpose which colors all other activities.

Twenty-six.