Ruler of Naught (65 page)

Abruptly the veil cleared, revealing a tall building
intricate beyond any he had ever seen. It tugged at him, rhythms in stone and
glass drawing him on. He responded with a dance of celebration and recognition.
One of the others had shown him, had played this—no, there was no room on the
Telvarna
.
The confusion dropped the veil across his vision once more; he tasted comments
from the others but did not understand, wandering in a blue-shot haze,
following the flames as they resumed their progress.

o0o

“I hate this blungesuck of a cesspit,” Marim snarled,
kicking at some kind of greenery growing alongside the pathway.

Fronds scattered across the dirt before her, leaving a sharp
scent in the air that made her sneeze. Her toes were covered with sticky
greenish goo.

“Sgatchi!” she squawked, grubbing her toes into the dirt to
clean them. Then she noticed small wiggly things scrabbling wildly in the dirt
she'd dug up, and she gave a bellow of disgust. “I
hate
dirtside!” she
wailed.

Everything about planets offended her. The smells in the
unfiltered air, the disgusting way things degraded, and worst of all were the
bugs.

Something touched her shoulder. Ivard! His nasty freckled
face blank, his arms waving around and his head bobbing as he honked at her.

Marim grimaced and sprinted away from him.
Ugh! I bunnied
with that?

Marim spotted Vi'ya on the pathway ahead, moving with that
stalk that meant her mood was rasty, the Eya’a right behind her.

Lokri was with them again, but his mood was even more vile
than Vi'ya's, and he refused to talk to anyone at all. Marim veered, catching a
glimpse of him at the end of the straggling line, his arms folded and face
grim.

Jaim looked around with interest. That was weird. He’d grown
up on Rifthaven, and dirtballs spinning around suns were just as alien for him
as for her. But he didn’t seem to mind uncontrolled weather or the unplanned
clutter of geography, or the tiny creatures doing their best to eat people, she
thought irritably, slapping at a tickle on her cheek.

As for that cursed Schoolboy! Damn him anyway, for cheating
her out of that coin. He stalked, his father puffed, Montrose wore an evil
smile. As for the Arkad, who knew, or cared, what he thought?
He's a
prisoner, same as us.
She liked him as a person, but ever since Nukiel's
nicks had grabbed the
Telvarna
, Brandon was no longer Vi'ya's tame nick,
he was one of
them
. You could see they all thought so. Only he was the
worst kind of nick, one with a flashy title but no actual power. He couldn't
get them freed, so she hoped he suffered, too. Fair's fair.

o0o

Osri’s father inhaled sharply, as if in pain and wonder.
“New Glastonbury,” he said, staring at the vaulting lacework of gray-white
stone of the cathedral emerging from behind the sheltering garden.

Osri swayed, dizzy: against the moving clouds the twin
spires of the edifice looming above seemed to topple toward them.

Sebastian’s face was gray. “The god who died,” he whispered.
“Is that why we’re here? To be put to death?”

Osri put out a hand to steady his father, who grasped his
arm. Then, looking down at Osri’s sleeve, he touched the embroidered emblem of
the Phoenix there, ringed in flame. On his other side, Brandon appeared,
concern in his demeanor.

Omilov’s face cleared. “Ah, I lost more to Eusabian’s
henchman than I knew, if I’ve so thoroughly forgotten my mythology.”

“What do you mean?”

Sebastian shook his head. “No matter.” He moved off,
apparently lost in private thoughts.

“Let’s get this over with,” Brandon suggested.

Osri fell in step beside him, the Marines trailing after
them.

Marim kicked savagely at the low shrubs defining the gravel
path they were following; Ivard honked and moved toward her, his arms writhing.
She ignored him and he dropped back.

As they approached, the cathedral gradually swallowed the sky,
shouldering it aside until it defined the world. Osri reflected on how little
he knew of this faith—it had been, he remembered, a long time since a High
Phanist had resided here. His only recollection was a dim wonder, in a history
class long ago, that humanity should have remembered so long a brutal death by
torture almost four thousand years past. Torture? Was that why Father reacted
so?

He studied the cathedral as they walked into its shadow,
puzzled at the exuberant architecture, the sense of turbulent joy embodied in
the frenzied explosion of figures and carvings of trees and beasts and other,
more abstract forms, trying to reconcile it all with that image of violent
death.

He touched the crumpled ribbon and the coin through the
fabric of his pocket, remembering the warmth they had held, and the slippery
feel of blood when he had picked them up from where they’d fallen out of
Ivard’s grasp.

Vi’ya strode up to the massive doors, towering high above
them, and grasped one handle. The muscles in her back bunched; the door swung
out silently. She walked through the widening opening, followed by the Eya’a,
and then the others.

o0o

As the door swung open behind the Dol’jharian captain,
Artorus Vahn placed his palm against it, gauging its heft, and was astonished
as it pushed his hand away even as he leaned into it. He looked thoughtfully at
the Dol’jharian woman, conscious of the weight of the neurojac holstered on his
belt. He sent a glance at Roget; the other Marine whistled soundlessly, rolling
her eyes.

They followed the Aerenarch inside and stopped, amazed by
the majesty of the cathedral’s interior. All except the little blond Rifter.
Marim.
Raised on an unchartered habitat. Gennated for plantar free-fall
adhesion.

Vahn shook his head as the information came unprompted. His
brain still buzzed with the effects of the mild Augment session he’d undergone to
study the interrogation chips on the Rifters and the others. Fortunately, it
had been low-level enough to avoid visual migraines.

Marim trotted forward a few steps, then turned back and
looked at them exasperated, hands on her hips. Clearly vast spaces meant little
to her. Jaim’s posture also reflected this habitat-bred attitude—
Rifthaven
—but
his shadowed expression indicated some emotional impact that Vahn couldn’t
clearly read.

The rest of them were Downsiders or Highdwellers, and the
Cathedral of New Glastonbury held them in thrall. The towering windows,
explosions of color and complex form, transmuted the uneasy sky into restless
beams of light sweeping through the interior. To either side tall columns
marched toward the distant front of the cathedral, drawing the eye toward the
elevated dais with the white-clad altar on it, and above and beyond it, the
glorious mandala of colored glass that dominated the east wall.

From the distance chanted voices in a melody of eerie
beauty, too faint for words to be distinguished. A sweet, resiny smell lingered
in the air; close by chimes tinkled as Jaim looked around.

They approached a small figure in black, which resolved into
a short, stout woman with gray hair and a grandmotherly face. She was buttoned
into a long garment with a high white collar.

She seemed comfortable in the majestic cathedral, assuming
an aura of power quite at variance with the smiling openness of her face.

Vi’ya’s stance projected obduracy. In contrast Brandon
vlith-Arkad stood with elegant grace, his Douloi mask unreadable.

“I am Eloatri,” the woman said, her gesture taking in them
all. “Welcome to Desrien.”

Her gaze passed quickly over Vahn, but he felt her full
attention in that moment, without any sense of judgment or appraisal.

Her gaze came to rest not on the Aerenarch, but on Ivard,
whose limbs and head moved in a ceaseless rhythm with a subtle triple beat. She
stretched out a hand to him in welcome, kindness transforming her worn
features.

“Ivard il-Kavic,” she said, in a voice so soft that Vahn
triggered his augmentors to hear her more clearly, “be at peace here, and find
your heart’s desire, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit.” She traced a cross on the boy’s forehead, lips, and over his heart.

For much the same reason that underlies their
appreciation of the waltz and the Abbasiddhu triskel, the Kelly appear to find
only Christianity, with its triune image of holiness, intelligible among human
religions.

Vahn shook his head again as memory served up another dollop
of data—he had no idea what a “triune image of holiness” referred to. But
whatever it was, it seemed to reach the ugly, pale-skinned Rifter. Ivard’s eyes
focused on Eloatri and he smiled hesitantly; the movements of his arms and head
quieted during her gesture, but when she lifted her hand the spasmodic
movements resumed and the boy’s bruised face settled back into vagueness. The
High Phanist appeared untroubled: she caressed his cheek and then stepped aside
as he loped off in his bizarre fashion toward the distant altar.

Eloatri’ took a step closer to Vi’ya and Eya’a. Vi’ya stared
down at her, expressionless; the two Eya’a looked up, their diamond-bright eyes
gathering the soft light of the cathedral into lambent prisms.

Then a shrill, ear-stabbing trill erupted from the Eya’a.
They threw their twiggy hands over their eyes and cocked their heads back at a
jagged angle that made Vahn uncomfortable, exposing their throats to the High
Phanist. She reached forward and touched each beneath the chin with a single
finger. As their heads came down, she bowed deeply to them.

“In the name of Telos, and the Fulfillment of Humankind to
Come, and of the Magisterium, I welcome you, Second Mind of... ” She trilled on
a high note, “to the Thousand Suns. May you find what you seek.”

The Eya’a ran their attenuated fingers over the woman’s
wrists and forearms as they uttered high chirping sounds.

A flicker of—disbelief? anger? surprise?—widened Vi’ya’s
eyes.

Eloatri turned her attention to the Dol’jharian. “It is
there, deny it as you will,” Eloatri said.

Vi’ya looked down at her, expressionless as stone.

“As the
one-who-hears
you will not be able to avoid it.”

Vi’ya walked out of the cathedral. The Eya’a took off in
another direction, vanishing behind a pillar.

Eloatri turned to the Aerenarch and executed a formal
deference: a bow exquisitely judged, conveying recognition of his formal status
with the reservation of judgment concerning its permanence.

Brandon’s lips curved into a wintry smile. He returned the
deference: the unique Royalty-to-Numen mode paid only to the High Phanist, but
with the conditioned-on-proof modulation.

Vahn suppressed a desire to laugh. That, too, was
exquisitely judged—there’d been much speculation on the
Mbwa Kali
on how
the Digrammaton could have gotten from Arthelion to Desrien.

Eloatri smiled and held up her right hand, displaying a
white raised weal—now fully healed—burned into her palm that echoed in reverse the
shape of the Digrammaton on her chest. “It had not yet cooled from red heat when
I received it from Tomiko—and even now it is not entirely safe to wear.”

The Aerenarch’s face blanched. Montrose turned a startled
look at the High Phanist.

Vahn’s stomach griped with an empathetic response to the
ugly weal seared into Eloatri’s hand. But his mind was even more disturbed:
only if she had received it at the moment of her predecessor’s death on
Arthelion, hundreds of light-years away, would the wound have had time to heal.

“Pay your respects and then go to the north transept,”
Eloatri said to Brandon. “Await me there.” She turned to the remaining Rifters.

The Aerenarch pursed his lips, and after a pause, obeyed.
Vahn followed.

The High Phanist said to the rest, “You have the freedom of
Desrien. Make what use of it you will.”

The great organ came to life, weaving complex patterns of
brilliant sound around them.

Montrose followed the sound to the base of a steep stairway.
Music thundered around him, spilling from mighty constructs of gleaming metal
pipes and wooden-shuttered boxes in the sides of the cathedral. He climbed the
staircase.

At its top a man sat on a polished bench before an immensely
complex console: ranks of keyboards over an array of pedals, and row upon row
of large knobs at the ends of protruding rods, some pulled out, some flush with
the console.

The man lifted his hands from the keyboards. He had a snub
nose and pudgy cheeks; his eyes were vivid under a high forehead and fringe of
sandy hair.

“I've seen pictures of this,” said Montrose. “It's an organ,
right? A mechanical synthesizer?”

The musician chuckled, a cheerful wheeze. “You could say
that, although it is perhaps the one instrument that's never been successfully
synthesized.” He held up his hand. “Oh, I know. Theoretically you can duplicate
any sound. But look. First, each tone comes from a different pipe.”

He ran his hands across first one keyboard, then another;
then, quickly pulling and pushing some of the knobs, did it again. The sound
rolled across the spacious interior, coming from a multitude of sources,
filling the space with a variety of chordal sounds.

“There are thousands of pipes. You can't get that sound from
a single sound source. And come here.” He motioned Montrose closer, grabbed
his hand and pressed his index finger against one key. “Feel that. There's a
direct physical link between the key and the valve that controls each pipe.” The
man slid off the bench and Montrose took his place.

Montrose pressed first one key, then another. The keys felt
like nothing he'd ever experienced from a musical instrument: alive under his
touch, and there was a slight delay he found disorienting at first.