The Fall of Neskaya (67 page)

“And when I was finished, when I had said everything there was in my heart to say, he died.”
Yet there had been no self-accusation in Caitlin’s words, only a sense of completion and acceptance.

But I have not said everything there is in my heart to say to you, Coryn,
Taniquel thought.
I have not even begun to. Where have you gone? Where must I follow, to reach you?

She took his hand between hers. Though his body had been bathed, dust still clung to his hair and grit beneath his fingernails. There were a few half-healed abrasions on palm and knuckles. The patch on his shoulder flickered lightly.

On impulse, she bent to press her lips against his. She thought, quite irrationally she knew, that if she could only put enough passion, enough tenderness into that kiss, he would somehow respond. Wherever he was, he wanted to come back to her, or he would if he knew she was here. Of that she was absolutely certain.

There was not the faintest answer as she straightened up, no movement of his own lips under hers, no deepening of those too-shallow breaths, no flutter of eyelids. She sat there for what seemed hours, wondering what to do next. It
must
be possible to reach him. She dared not believe otherwise.

As if in a dream, her hand moved to the neckline of her dress and slipped between her breasts, where she carried the handkerchief he had given her. She shivered, remembering the warnings she had been given, the stories of people wandering lost until their fleshly bodies perished. Did she have any right to risk herself, when the future of Acosta depended on her?

But for this moment, she had set aside her crown. She was no longer Taniquel Hastur-Acosta, Queen and Regent of Acosta, niece to Rafael Hastur, second of that name. She was simply Tani, who had been lost and then found in more ways than one.

“Vai domna?”
came a soft voice.

Taniquel straightened up to see a woman barely out of girlhood, thin face haloed in frizzy yellow hair, slip between the curtains. She wore the white robe of a monitor. With a dancer’s floating grace, she came over and knelt beside Coryn. Level gray eyes met Taniquel’s. On closer inspection, she was not so much young as almost sexless, with only the narrowness of her chin and her mane of straw-pale hair suggesting femininity.

“So you are Coryn’s lady,” she said. “Demiana said you had come, but not that you were so beautiful.”

“I’m sorry,” Taniquel said. “I don’t know you.”

“Oh! It is I who should apologize. I’m Amalie, matrix mechanic at Neskaya, or I should say I
was.
I’m doing monitor’s work again, for there are so many wounded.” She glanced down at Coryn’s body in such a way that Taniquel knew she had been the one to bathe him and lay him out like this.

“If I were to touch that,” Taniquel pointed to the patch of smoldering blue, “would it spread to me? Are they changing, getting bigger?”

Amalie pushed back her hair with one hand and shook her head. “No. What you see is an outward projection of an event which is essentially energetic, not material. The—fires, if you will—are most concentrated over the energon nodes, which function as capacitance sites—” she broke off. “Again, I am sorry. That is not what you need to hear.”

How can you know that?
Taniquel wondered as she searched the other woman’s eyes. She felt a feathery brush of fingertips on the back of her wrist.

“He is gone where none of us can follow.” Amalie’s words were slow, like a funeral chant.

“Into the Overworld? But you know—you are trained—” Taniquel stammered.

Amalie shook her head. “We have searched as far as we dare go.”

“Then you must dare beyond that. Or if you cannot—” Taniquel swallowed. “Once I went into the Overworld because I was desperate, and I knew that only Coryn could help me. Now, he needs me just as much. I have to try. I cannot do any less for him. Will you help me?”

Gray eyes widened minutely. “You will not succeed.”

“Why, because I am a woman and therefore weak? Because I have no training, no talent?” Taniquel fumed.

“No,” Amalie said, raising her hands in a calming gesture. “Because no one can.”

“But I am not no one!”
Taniquel’s words hung in the air like a challenge. She gathered herself, smoothing her voice. “I ask you to help me into the Overworld. I have been there once before. I know how frightening and disorienting it is. You may be right, I may not succeed. I may not even survive.” Tears brimmed, quickly blinked away. “Please. Let me try.”

After a long moment, Amalie said with a tiny shake of her head, “I must be as mad as Durraman’s donkey to even consider such a thing. But I owe Coryn my life, and if there is any small thing I have not yet done to help him, I will.”

She returned after a few minutes with an armful of bedding, which she laid out in a pallet alongside Coryn’s. Taniquel was secretly relieved that she would not have to be parted physically from him. She lay down as Amalie folded and tucked blankets under her knees and the small of her back.

“I will go with you into the known part of the Overworld,” Amalie said. “You know that distance has no meaning there, nor time. We think that Coryn may have strayed—or gone deliberately—into the shadow of the dead.”

Taniquel nodded, gulping. Amalie adjusted the pillow beneath her head.

“You may meet people or catch a glimpse of them from afar.”

The monitor’s lips pressed together, almost bloodless. “Some of them may be dead, wandering shades who have not yet accepted their passing. This is especially true when their deaths were sudden or violent. They may seem frightening, but they have no power over you. They can harm you only if you believe they can. One thing you must not do, no matter who you see, is to run after them. That is the one thing which will truly doom you.”

“You mean—anyone but Coryn.”

Amalie shook her head. “
Especially
Coryn.”

“I don’t understand.” Taniquel pushed herself up on to her elbows. “If I don’t go to him, how will I ever—” Amalie pushed her back down.

“I told you that distance is not important in the Overworld, but love is. Truth is. We could not contact him with our minds, no matter how well trained and powerful. You—” with a fingertip laid gentle as butterfly wings on Taniquel’s lips “—you may be the only one who can reach him.”

B
efore she closed her eyes, Taniquel reached into the folds of her bodice and closed her fingers around the much-folded handkerchief which Coryn had given her. She had held it like this, close to her heart, many times since Coryn gave it to her in the garden. The fabric had once been very fine, the embroidery done with skill and delicacy. Its age and wear suggested it had come from mother or grandmother. Sometimes she almost caught a hint of a scent, sweet and spicy like strawflowers. But more than that, she sensed—no, she
knew
, with all the wordless certainty of her empathic
laran
—that with this scrap of cloth, Coryn had entrusted her with a piece of his soul. There was nowhere he could go that she could not follow him, if only she had the courage.

Taniquel drifted on Amalie’s rhythmic murmurs and silky touch between her brows. Her body felt heavy, sinking into the cradle of blankets and pillows. At the same time, some other part of her felt light, like a bird eager for flight.

Amalie’s words became a muffled echo, as if heard through a long tunnel. Taniquel could no longer feel the bedding beneath her, the folds of her gown, the pressure of her boots against toe and arch.

In a heartbeat, she was back in the Overworld. She sensed the place, as clear as the metallic taint in the air before a thunderstorm. She opened her eyes to grayness. Flat, featureless sky and unending horizon greeted her. A day or a century could have passed with no perceptible difference. Only she had changed, although her body and gown looked exactly as they had before.

“Taniquel.” Amalie stood a few feet away, her hair blown into a solar aureole. She wore a filmy green dress which seemed in constant motion. As Taniquel got to her feet, Amalie pointed behind her.

Taniquel turned to see a Tower made of glass, barely discernible against the ashen sky. Only a faint rippling, like air rising from the earth on Midsummer Day, indicated anything at all was there.

“Neskaya Tower,” Amalie said, “or all that’s left of what we created here.” She sounded weary with sadness. “Now it’s more memory than anything else.”

“Where do I go from here? What do I do?”

Amalie shook her head. “Go where you are led, or stay here, it makes no difference. I—” her voice caught for an instant, “I wish you success. You are not the only one who loves Coryn, but you are our only hope.” Then she vanished.

Taniquel shivered, remembering her last foray here and the shadowy figures she had seen before Coryn rescued her. She’d been so frightened then. Now she had some idea what to expect, some warning that distance meant nothing, only intention did. And if she did not find Coryn, if he could not return with her, she was not sure what she would do.

She held the handkerchief, which had somehow retained its original form. Pressing it between her hands, she called his name and waited.

At first, nothing seemed to happen. Sky and ground gave no hint of passing time. After a while, she noticed that the Tower had disappeared, or at least gone so invisible, she could no longer make out any hint of its contours. The air turned a shade cooler.

On the horizon to her right, an ill-defined shape appeared, quickly growing in size as if it rushed toward her. It was, she saw, a group of people. As they drew closer, their number varied, sometimes half a dozen individuals, sometimes four, sometimes twice ten. They wore flowing gray robes and hoods which hid their faces, or perhaps it was her own urgency which muted her sight. Forgetting Amalie’s warning, she called out Coryn’s name again and rushed toward them.

The faster she ran and the faster the people seemed to come toward her, the farther away they seemed. If she only ran more swiftly, she would surely catch them.

She could almost feel the wind of their passing. Every muscle strained for more speed. Her hair whipped behind her and her feet skimmed the ground, smooth and cool like a single, unbroken slab of polished slate.

Suddenly, one of the figures sped past her as if she were standing still. She barely glimpsed it, only enough to make out a woman’s face, eyes white and staring, mouth distended in a soundless howl. The rest—body swathed in shapeless gauze, limbs, hair like rent clouds—blurred.

The expression of utter despair on the woman’s face shocked Taniquel. She stumbled to a halt, barely keeping her balance. She could not think what the figure was—a dead person, eternally lost in confusion, or a living person like herself? Until that moment, she had not realized the terrible risk of coming here, how ignorant she was of this place and its perils.

“Oh, Coryn, Coryn . . .”

His name came like a sob. Taniquel wanted to throw herself down and give herself over to grief. Once he had found her in this eternal gray wilderness. He had come to her rescue. Now it was she who must find him.

But how?
She lifted her head, tightened her grip on the handkerchief, and waited.

Two more figures approached, one in robes which might have been crimson but were so thin and diaphanous as to be the faintest rose. The face of the man who wore them was all but transparent, yet he seemed to see her. He slowed his pace, eyes searching hers. She did not know him, though he seemed to be pleading for some recognition. Shaking his head, he went on. A few paces behind a woman followed. Her face shone with tears and she lifted her arms toward him. Her lips moved in soundless pleading.

Now the mass of figures drew visibly closer and more numerous. More of them parted from the group and passed by Taniquel. Many of these gave no sign they even noticed her. One man, though, paused. The colors of his hair and face were stronger than any of the others, as if he burned with an inner fire. He wore a Keeper’s crimson robe, the fabric dusted with soot. When he saw her, his face darkened, brows drawing together over flashing eyes.

She
knew
that face—

Rumail! Damian Deslucido’s
nedestro
brother, the renegade
laranzu!
For an awful instant, Taniquel wanted to run, to hide. His was the voice which had threatened her outside the Overworld Tramontana, and his had been the mind which probed her when she was a captive in her own home.

She lifted her chin a fraction higher as she remembered Amalie’s words. The dead had no power to harm her unless she permitted it. Still, she flinched when he spat at her and called her a word so obscene she had never heard it spoken before, not even in the Acosta armory when no one knew she was listening.

“You!” He made a broad, sweeping gesture to indicate the surroundings and for an instant, Taniquel saw the hazy outlines of rubble. “This is your doing! Upstart chit from an insignificant little dirt-hole! We should have slaughtered you along with your worthless husband, or else tracked you down like an animal. You thought you could stand up to us, to strike back—a rabbit-horn who thinks she’s a dragon! Luck and the Hastur lord have been on your side for the day. But in the end, he too will fall. He cannot stand against us. My brother’s vision will prevail. King Damian—”

“—King Damian is dead!” she snapped. “Have you not seen his shade wandering here in the Overworld?”

“You lie, hell-bitch!”

“I saw him hanged, and his lecher son at his side.”

Rumail burst out in another round of profanity, then broke off and threw back his head in peals of insane laughter. “I leave you with this curse—the Deslucido curse—that you and yours will never know a moment’s peace. I will take my revenge—”

“Then you will have to do it from hell!” she cried. “Get you gone, shade of a dead man, to whichever of Zandru’s frozen levels will have you!”