The Carnelian Throne (31 page)

The second time had been at the stairs’ head as we peered about us into a silent, petrified forest under an arching dome. From their perches in those leafless giants whose wood had ages ago been replaced with scintillant silicates they attacked: strange creatures, angular and gnarled as the limbs from which they descended, on us. The sandy ground was littered with them, as if with dead branches after an electrical storm.

Sereth leaned against one of the great tree bolls. His chest was heaving and sweat gleamed on him. Through the trees at his back I could see the curve of the amber dome riverward, toward the place where the narrow island met the water.

“Chayin, I would speak with you alone,” he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. I, too, was perspiring freely. The air within the dome was close and moist and stale.

Chayin left Mahrlys’ side and approached him.

For prudence’s sake, I sidled close to her. She was staring, back turned to the men, through the trees of stone toward the little isle’s center, where something gleamed as warmly as the dome above, as if a second hemisphere of amber rested there.

I said, “What is that?”

And she answered: “The heart of this garden’s rarest flower: the recollections of Othdaliee.”

And then she shuddered as if struck from behind, raked her fingers through her black hair, uttered a little scream, and fainted dead away.

I heard: “How dare you vent your wrath on her?” And whirled in time to see Sereth push Chayin from him with the flat of his hand. The cahndor staggered back a pace, then another, then slipped in some white slime puddled near a tree-thing’s corpse.

Sereth, a smile on him, waited patiently while the cahndor recovered.

The two circled each, other.

Numbly I sank down beside Mahrlys, and closed my eyes: owkahen sprang clear and bright into my sensing, all wraiths of the wehr-mist ripped away.

And I screamed: “Chayin, Sereth did not do this. Look. Look at owkahen,” and by then I found myself between them, my fists pounding the cahndor’s chest.

Chayin imprisoned my wrists in one hand, snarled, and by that grip pulled me from between them. Then he hesitated, asking Sereth: “Is this true?” And his membranes snapped as he sought conformation from the time.

“It is. You did not ask me. I think you and I need wait upon excuses no longer. One reason is as good as another.”

“No, Sereth, no,” I blurted. “Please, seek owkahen. Something has happened. Wehrdom stands clear and revealed.” And then Chayin shoved me toward Mahrlys and I crouched there, shaking, staring sightlessly at her chest rising and falling under the thin white robe.

I did not watch: I read death in that silence broken only by a foot sliding in the sand and a rustle as they circled each other. No, I did not look, only shuffled through the enlightenment the time held out. And then moaned, struck my forehead with the flat of my hand, and shouldered my way into Mahrlys’ unconscious mind.

Ah, I could not have done it sooner, no more than I could refrain from it then. Therein I found the nature of her designs, the awful fate she had orchestrated for Chayin. I saw what reality was called Imca-Sorr-Aat. And I saw what had dropped her senseless and chased her mind into the corner where it cowered: linca-Sorr-Aat no longer dreamed. Thereupon I did not need her further, for owkahen showed me why. It showed me what responsibility was Chayin’s, in what way he had betrayed us. But I cared not, for all else was shown me, and in that larger context all things are fit.

So I turned from her, opening my eyes, and watched carefully as they closed, grappled, fell together in a heap. For a moment I thought I could do no good, that they would never break apart, but Chayin’s grip on Sereth’s neck slipped. They separated. I found an opening, in that tangle of limbs and I flesh-locked them both so neatly that my father, were he watching, would have been proud of me.

I knew what I did, how great the risk of applying physical force to Sereth, but I did not really consider it.

Unsteadily, my steps slow and careful, I went and knelt down between them, my eyes on my own knees that I not see Sereth’s face and lose hold on them. Then I said: “Give me long enough to explain, and do what you will,” and dropped the hold, far becoming untenable as Sereth’s fury sought to breach my defenses.

I had a few moments, while the tremors attendant on flesh-lock rolled over them, and I used them well:

I told Chayin what life Mahrlys had planned for him, that of a semisentient vegetable who would dream Wehrdom’s dreams a thousand years and never wake; and I remanded him to owkahen for instructions as to what punishment might fit such crimes as hers.

And I told Sereth to look there also for Chayin’s crimes, if crimes Sereth judged them after seeking counsel in the time, were no more than hesting Se’keroth’s legend into fact without heed to consequence. And then I brought both their attention to the designs of Wehrdom newly etched on owkahen’s face, and said:

“It is not any of us whose minds will be turned to jelly by Wehrdom. Though it seems to me late, it might be fit of us to attend him who took Chayin’s place on Wehrdom’s altar. Perhaps we can offer him an easy death.”

I broke it off, eyes still lowered, waiting for Sereth’s revenge. I had raised Shaper skills against him. But it did not come. When I looked up I saw that they sat regarding each other, as if they had not heard.

“Chayin, you promised Deilcrit your aid. Mahrlys lies unconscious in but the reflection of his need. Can you sit and pick an old bone with Sereth, knowing that Deilcrit suffers the very agonies she meant for you?”

“If Sereth agrees,” said Chayin stiffly, “we will continue this at a later date.”

“Gladly. But on one condition: I will do what I please to that saiisa of yours, and we will worry about reparations later.”

Chayin’s mouth tightened. He looked at me pleadingly. I only shook my head. Even if I wanted to use it, I had not enough influence on Sereth to lift the murder from his demeanor. And I did not want to. I almost asked Chayin whether he would have slain Deilcrit for Mahrlys, but bit my tongue, and rose stiffly and brushed the sand from my knees instead.

Chayin gathered up the unconscious Mahrlys in his arms and brought her to where Sereth quietly explained to me how we were going to obviate four people into a place we had never been, on the strength of the image of that room owkahen held out to us. I did not disbelieve him, only followed his terse instructions and added my strength to his own, while a part of me ruffled all the pages of owkahen seeking some probability in which Deilcrit was not a mindless hulk, sacrificed to the time. And I thought I might have found one, in the very presence of Wehrdom’s web about owkahen, when Sereth said, “Ready?” and I nodded and took his hand and Chayin’s and the three of us put our combined strengths into the obviation of space for the first time.

There was the golden glow of nonspace, and the cold that nibbled at my substance; but there was no pain, only a gathering as if to spring, and a sucking in of the flow we rode. And when I let go Sereth’s hand and blinked away the vertigo as my substance repaired to its accustomed form, I saw the carnelian throne I had viewed in the Eye of Mnemaat, and upon owkahen’s face.

It centered a featureless octagonal chamber of black glass, bathed in a pool of amber light of the same sort as poured in through the wide-open door at our backs.

In it slumped a battered figure, one rag wrapped about its loins and another about its left arm. His belly and shoulders were scored with clawmarks, his chin rested on his chest. And above, perched on the throne’s unornamented back, poised a huge whelt. Across the throne’s arms rested a gray-bladed sword with a jeweled hilt.

The battered chest rose and fell very slowly. He did not stir. The whelt humped its wings and gave a forlorn cry.

I looked at the figure, and tears blurred my vision. I whispered Deilcrit’s name, and Sereth gave me shelter under his arm. Without a look at Chayin or Mahrlys, we approached the throne and what rested therein.

“There—must be something we can do,” I quavered to Sereth as the whelt took screeching flight and from behind us came a bellow:

“Stop right there.”

As one we turned, looking past Chayin, who crouched over Mahrlys’ just-stirring form, and saw a huge, blackhaired, ragged man striding toward us brandishing a steel sword. As he came upon us I recognized it as the sword I had lost in the forest, and whispered that to Sereth.

“Who are you?” demanded the man. Giving us a wide berth, he circled until he stood between us and the motionless figure on the carnelian throne.

The whelt, squawling loudly, dived toward us, veered at the last instant, to take perch again on the throne’s back.

The man waggled my sword, repeating his query. His eyes were red and his cheeks bore clean white tracks among the dirt and stubble.

“Perhaps we should ask the questions,” Sereth said, letting go his grip on me and stepping a, pace closer to the man. “That weapon you hold—”

“Quendros, stand aside,” came a voice, deep and distant, from behind the hulking giant. That one, with a grunt of surprise, stumbled backward down the steps.

“Deilcrit!” I cried, and ran toward him. Sereth caught my arm roughly and pulled me up short.

The face looking down on me was sheened with strain. Under sheltering brows, long brown eyes flickered back and forth across us; touched Chayin, and Mahrlys, and Quendros, and then returned to me. The chiseled, ascetic features remained unmarred by emotion. The luminous eyes held no hint of recognition.

“Imca-Sorr-Aat,” he corrected, and then leaned back and seemed to fall asleep. The whelt bent its head to his, and cooed softly.

He dreamed a dream of life behind locked lids whose key he had misplaced. In the dream the presence called Imca-Sorr-Aat spoke through his mouth, and the growling sound echoed back in his emptiness and disturbed him. So he went to the pool of recollection and stared long therein, listening to the lullaby Imca-Sorr-Aat sang in his inner ear, that he might dream of man-wehrs undisturbed while that which dwelt within him held audience with what dwelt without.

But they were his eyes which Imca-Sorr-Aat opened, and what they saw belonged to him also. Three creatures like shadows before flame, the eyes had seen, and the vision triggered another vision that had been Deilcrit’s when he alone commanded the flesh in which he rode. In the vision there had been himself, and the three combusting silhouettes, and a black-haired woman and a man. Such was the ladder of recollection Deilcrit climbed while Imca-Sorr-Aat hung to his legs and whispered sweet songs. And when he had pulled himself up that great distance he had no strength left to say whatever it was he had wanted to say.

So Imca-Sorr-Aat, who had held a hundred thousand audiences and partaken of the strength of those who had come to him, spoke through his mouth as it had through a quarter-hundred mouths before. The ritual of audience was one of the oldest of Imca-Sorr-Aat’s memories. It prepared to lure the creatures it saw into the chamber of its desires, where it might, as it had countless times, claim the memories of those before it and add them to its own, strengthening Wehrdom thereby.

But Deilcrit had heard and seen and stood helplessly by in his own temple while a foreign priest oblated therein. When his eyes opened by Imca-Sorr-Aat’s will and that name came from lips which were once his own, he screamed and thrashed in the tiny prison left to him and battered his identity like a great pointed stake against the walls Imca-Sorr-Aat had constructed to hold him.

Wehrdom dreams the dreams of all its children. Through the child whose flesh becomes both terminal and interface to that biologic correlative function fashioned by the sum of knowledge within it, Imca-Sorr-Aat rules Wehrdom. Had it been otherwise once? The Imca-Sorr-Aat presence recollected, reluctantly, that it had.

And Deilcrit, dangling from his life’s visions over the dreamscape which sang so softly songs of enchantment, drove his identity like a wedge into that hesitation and reclaimed the volition of the body in which they both dwelt.

And for the fourth time since he had stumbled over the slain ossasim and sunk into the carnelian throne, his eyes opened.

The first time had been in the shock of inundation, when every light in Othdaliee had blinked on and every way but the way out had opened wide, and he had sent the disfrancished ossasim with their decapitated lord on their last journey: by now servants and the past-master trod the sands of Othdaliee’s heart; soon they would exist in the kiss of memory only, their substance gone to make broader the recollections of Imca-Sorr-Aat.

The second time had been at the moment the flame-figures disturbed Imca-Sorr-Aat’s cogitations and called traces of Deilcrit up from where he languished imbound.

The third time he had watched in horror as Imca-Sorr-Aat made use of him, and felt Cirelli’s mourning mind’s touch, and even supplied the presence with Quendros’ name. And therein lay the key to his success—there and in the fate Imca-Sorr-Aat held out to those who sought wisdom in Othdaliee. For Imca-Sorr-Aat sought wisdom also, and any receptacle thereof was to its ever-ravenous belly the most delectable of morsels.

Deilcrit, through waves of nausea, forced the numbness from his limbs and pushed away the bricks Imca-Sorr-Aat had placed upon his lids and upon his shoulders and mortared like a sarcophagus around his limbs, and thrust his body upward with all his might as sight came to him. Not because of him would Quendros end in Wehrdom’s belly! Nor Mahrlys!

That which was Imca-Sorr-Aat sighed, commenced a dirge within his inner ear.

But he stood upright, on trembling knees, braced on the arms of the carnelian throne. His ears heard the sound as Se’keroth clattered to the steps at his feet.

Having heard it, he sought the sight. When the sword swam on the step before his eyes and he was sure that he did not yet dream, he raised his head to those who awaited him.

The cords stood out in his neck and perspiration rolled like rain down him, but he managed to retrieve the blade. Legs braced wide apart, swaying, he turned his head slowly from figure to figure, waiting until each one bore a name in his mind.