Requiem for Anthi: Anthi - Book Two (22 page)

“Great Merdar, what is this babbling? Have you lost your wits as well as your courage?”

Unar grasped his jen-knife. “My courage is not—”

“Asan shut down Anthi out of spite and a desire to persecute the Tlar’n. He wanted to cause trouble and civil war, and he has succeeded. It was his only chance to seize power. If I reactivate Anthi, we shall have warmth and the power to grow food again. That will calm the Soot’dla and the other houses, and we’ll have no more trouble. Unar, why can’t you—”

A sharp pain speared her, cutting her off in mid-sentence. She doubled, locked in agony, and was unable to draw breath.

“Aural? What is it? Aural!”

Unar’s hand gripped her shoulders, but she was barely aware of him as her body straightened and arched and spun. Pain tore through her chest as though a stake had been hammered into her. She cried out, her hands clutching the fur-trimmed bodice of her gown as though to close the wound that was not there.

A terrible fear passed through her as she realized it was Asan who had been injured, Asan who felt this agony, Asan who was dying. Her rings broke around her, and she cried out again.

This could not happen, must not happen. Months ago, when Asan had fought Leiil Hihuan and been wounded, she had felt nothing. That made her certain their ring-bond was safely broken. Confident of her safety, she had placed Asan into human hands, uncaring of what might befall him.

Now she realized her folly. She had been drinking
yde
with the priest Picyt when Asan suffered that first injury.
Yde
had strengthened her. But now there was no
yde
, none to be had anywhere for any price. She would have taken food from Cirthe’s mouth—had there been any food—to buy
yde
. Without the drug, she was not safe from the bond.

It held her now, and it was pulling her down with Asan into death.

“No!” she cried, twisting in Unar’s hold as the pain intensified. Blinded without her rings, she felt herself falling. “Asan, by the mercy of Anthi, release me!”

But there was no mercy, none at all. Screaming, she plunged into cold darkness.

In a spacious guest suite on the ground floor of Martok’s villa, Zaula amused herself at first by exploring every inch of her rooms. She ran her fingers over the polished wood, awed by the wealth around her. She picked up the small pillows covered in white cloth of a weave strange yet soft. She laughed at the size of the
n’ka
bed and thumped its hard surface so far above the floor. Even after all those many weeks upon the ship, she still missed a good soft nest of cushions to sleep upon.

A wall of windows overlooking the sea made her self-conscious until she realized the glass was fashioned so that she could see out but none of the people wandering the grounds could see in.

The box-shaped machines which Asan called protection drones floated unobtrusively over the heads of the people. A crowd had gathered upon a stone terrace overgrown with vivid blue flowers cascading down over the railings. Zaula could hear their laughter and chatter faintly. She watched for a long time, fascinated by their clothes and mannerisms. Not all of them were small, striped-eyed humans. She longed to have Asan here with her, to tell her the names of the other species and to explain the customs of this gathering to her.

No one wore masks, of course. And although she could hear faint strains of music with a queer, unfamiliar beat, no one sat down to listen to it. They went on talking as though they heard nothing.

Udge Enster, still wearing his clothes of ty-scarlet, wandered about, scowling and speaking to no one. He allowed the slave machines to replenish his drink many times, but it must have been a bitter draught, for he looked grim and edgy.

She felt a prickle of unease as she watched Udge. She wondered what was taking Asan so long in his discussion with the one who ruled this place. Asan had been tense all day. Were it not beyond thinking, she would have said he was frightened. But why should he fear the men who knew him in his other life as a
n’ka?
Despite what he said about the
n’ka
in him, it was not true. Asan was
c’tal it my’lan
, the shining of the mystery. Asan was Beyond and all its ways. Asan was knowledge and gentleness. Asan was fire.

Smiling to herself, Zaula wandered away from the windows into a tiled room where a small pool of water glistened invitingly. As she investigated crystal vials of perfumes and scented oils and touched the soft thickness of towels, she thought of the pleasures of lying in Asan’s arms with his rings entwined about hers.

He had led her from level to level of pleasure, neither as brutal as Hihuan nor as reverent as Fflir, but instead a mix of mastery and gentleness that left her breathless and aglow from the fire of their sharing. Even after the first awkward time when she had shamed herself by seeking Fflir with her rings, Asan had not been angry or disappointed.

He could have crushed her. Instead, he calmed her weeping and told her of how Fflir had served him with honor and become his friend. He missed Fflir’s impudent jokes and companionship. He even grieved with her for Fflir’s death, and through Asan’s mind she saw so many other deaths and his regret for them.

It was then that she began to truly love him.

Yet in so many ways he was too complex for her. The levels of his mind and heart were many. She did not understand them all. There were times when he seemed far away, as though upon a pinnacle looking down. She was Tlar; her breeding was pure from the first days of Ruantl. But Asan was more than she. He was more than Tlar, greater. His powers and his abilities were stronger. Indeed, he was from the mists of Tlar legend, and although he joked and lost his temper and snored, it was as though he were a giant among little men.

She was Tlar, but he was Tlartantlan. And sometimes the gap frightened her.

What was taking him so long? He had only to use persuasive tone and perhaps his rings, and these
n’kai
would agree to his terms. He had told her his plans for Ruantl, but she could not understand or remember all of them.

She felt guilty now for not having listened more closely.

Enemy…friend…lover.

Sighing, she undressed and slid cautiously into the water. Its warmth surprised her. Never, not even in the days as Tsla leiis to Hihuan had she bathed in a pool so large, so warm, and so pleasantly scented. She closed her eyes and floated, letting her rings flicker in and out around her.

Asan was not able to mend her rings entirely, but he took the pain of using them away. After such a long time of distress and half-blind groping, she could see again with her higher senses. She could sort the air and blank her thoughts from others for welcome privacy. She could not seizert. She would never be able to do that again, but she could expand her rings a short distance to see what was happening elsewhere.

She tried it now, wondering if she could find Asan’s mind here in the villa.

No…she could extend her senses to the next room where a human guard stood at her door. She even managed to reach outside almost to the beach where young humans of both sexes played a silly game with a ball and hoops.

But she could not touch Asan. A chill passed through her. She stood up in the water and frowned. The temperature was cooling.

Climbing out, she dried herself and put on a sarong she found in a cupboard. It was soft and luxurious against her skin but too short so that it ended at her knees instead of her ankles. The color was the same bright blue the machine had worn. Zaula frowned at her reflection and reached up to untie the sarong. She had not liked that machine, the one that looked so much like a
n’dl
. She would not wear its clothes.

Dizziness engulfed her without warning. Nauseated and chilled, she found herself kneeling upon the floor when the spasm passed. Clutching her stomach, she drew an unsteady breath and shoved her hair back from her face. Her forehead felt clammy and slick with sweat.

Puzzled, she let her rings fall through her body and found nothing wrong. She pushed herself back onto her feet. With a frown, she searched for a different fresh garment to put on. They were all blue.

Resentful, she abandoned the idea of changing and returned to her view of the beach. The sky, so oddly green and unfamiliar, was full of the sun that blazed across the horizon in an enormous bronze orb. Shades of gold, umber, and orange tinged the clouds. The sea gleamed golden.

She stared entranced, and thought with sudden certainty,
I never want to go back to Ruantl. It is dark, and cold, and ugly. I want to be free of it, to turn my face to the sunshine without fear
.

As though she had offended the gods, pain hit her in the chest with such force she cried out and staggered against the window. Somehow she managed to catch herself from falling. Then the pain receded, fading so quickly from her she realized it was not her own. Yet the pain remained a force in the reality around her.

And she heard a dim, low cry in her mind.

She stiffened in dismay. Asan was hurt. She must help him.

There was no time to think or wonder what she should do. She knew only that she must act quickly before it was too late.

She ran to the door and opened it. The guard blocked her path.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

She could understand Standard because of the implant, but she could not speak it. Carefully projecting her mind so as not to hurt him in case he wasn’t telepathic, she said,
Martok has sent for me
.

“Oh, that’s right,” said the guard aloud, relaxing his hold on his weapon. “I’ll have to escort you below. This way.”

They went to a spiraling ramp and descended it. Zaula found it difficult to control the guard lightly enough so that he still believed he was acting on Martok’s orders, yet not so lightly that he began to question what was happening.

Impatience throbbed through her. But there were doors that blocked their way, doors that required security checks. She wanted to shove the guard to make him move faster. Perspiration soaked her skin, making the sarong stick to her. She longed to abandon the guard and run the rest of the way herself, but she did not know where to go.

Then double steel doors swung open and she found herself in a dank cavern that smelled strongly of the sea. A protective drone hovered at eye level directly in her path. She hesitated, glancing at the guard. As he stepped forward, speaking a password, she heard a shout in the distance ahead of her. Zaula tried to see, but the light was too dim. She darted past the drone and ran forward, her bare feet slipping on the damp stone floor.

The light grew stronger. She squinted and lifted her hand against it, but all she could see was a pair of figures silhouetted before her. They were bending over something. She heard one of them laugh.

There was the stench of burned circuits and blood. Zaula went cold inside. She stumbled and nearly fell, but she forced herself to keep going on feet that she could no longer feel. Everything blurred except the form crumpled upon the ground. She stumbled again, feeling the distort shifts about him as his rings of life faded.

“What in Demos’ name?” said the human kneeling beside Asan. He stared at her. “Where did you come from?”

She shoved past him without a word and knelt beside Asan. Her own rings encircled him as her hands grasped the hard bone and muscle of his shoulders and tried to stanch the blood flowing from him.

Don’t die. You mustn’t die
, she pleaded.

His blood was hot upon her fingers. She could not lift him enough to see his face. A small pebble ground painfully into her knee as she shifted her weight to reach across him. She pulled up the hem of his tunic and folded it into a pad across the wound, but that wasn’t enough. A pool of blood beneath him began to seep into her sarong.

“Help him!” she cried aloud.

One of the men grasped her shoulder and pulled her back.

“Pared, get him to the lab. I want Saverson to do complete biopsies before he dies. Put him on life support if necessary until the examination is finished.”

“If you wanted living dissection work,” said Pared dryly, “you should have adjusted your aim. What is this female doing here?”

Without waiting for an answer, he spoke into a communicator and summoned a squad of his men.

“He must not be moved,” said Zaula. Despair filled her as she realized she could not be understood. She gestured. “Not like this. He must be—”

Pared’s single eye stared at her, and he lifted his hand to the hollow between his ear and jaw in a gesture she recognized. Did his medallion of tongues understand her?

“The wound must be closed,” she said. “Please.”

Pared shook his head from side to side. “No. Get out of the way.”

Running footsteps echoed off the stone walls. A handful of men came into sight. Two of them propelled a floating stretcher. Zaula stared at it in amazement. But this was no time for curiosity. Pared pulled her out of the way.

The other human, the scarred one with the voice of a machine, wound his fingers in her hair and tipped back her head. He was more hideous than any Bban she’d ever seen. His touch made her shiver in revulsion. Asan’s pain hung upon him.

“Quite lovely,” he said in that thin, artificial voice.

She glared at him through tears and started to reply with an insult to the blood. But before she could do so, the men lifted Asan. He groaned, and the sound tore her heart.

“Leave him!” she shouted.

She jerked free of the scarred one and threw her rings between the guards and Asan’s stretcher, forcing them back. If Asan was to live, she must find the strength and the ability to close his wounds. She had seen him do it; she had watched healers at work within the citadel. Now she prayed to Lea and Lli to help her.

She extended her hands, and blue light began to glow, feebly at first, then more strongly.

“What is she doing?”

“Shut up!”

Zaula pulled her whole consciousness inward, fighting her own instinct for survival to push her rings around Asan. His own were in tatters, nearly gone. She could not thread with them sufficiently to gain their help. Yet she struggled to lift them, struggled to reach through
sonthi
to his nerve centers and find his lungs and the fibrillations of his heartbeat.