The Wraeththu Chronicles (131 page)

I was still drifting in a stupor when the Lyris came toward me from the dark. He stood at my feet and, with that immense vocal power only Nahir-Nuri possess, by words alone made me female. My body could not disregard the potency of what he said. He did not have to touch me to do it. He said, to my female form, "We deceive ourselves in so many ways. We are not perfect, not new, nor absolved from the laws of this planet. What we are about to do is as old as civilization itself. Think of the past. Honor it, for we are closer to Mankind now than at any time since the Destruction, when we were born. Man burned himself out from within. He had no balance; without it he perished. We have our own balance; it is flexible. Calanthe, for this time you are woman, an incarnation of the Goddess and I am man, incarnation of the God. Our communion is sacred and must be honored in love." When he spoke again, it was to pray and I closed my eyes. He kneeled to kiss me and said, "There is a danger in the world. You must go to the source, the source!"

I tried to lift my head. "What? How? But. . ."

"But nothing! Have you learned only how to carry a burden of guilt?" He stood at my feet once more, his attendants on either side, looking up at him. "Submission shall be praised as welcome. As you trust me not to burn, so I trust you not to engulf. Maiden and boy, guardians of the threshhold; open the gates unto me."

And at these words, his attendents each took hold of one of my ankles. Lowering their gaze to the floor, they gently parted my legs; sea-gates. I felt completely submissive, yet with the strength of a lioness. The Lyris lay upon me and his attendants did not raise their eyes again. In Elhmen, the experience of water had been wild and untramelled, elemental female. Here in Sahen, the experience of fire was governed, controlled, the elemental male, the emperor. When the heat came, it burned me inside from what felt like stomach to throat, but it was not a terrible pain. I had an intimation of what we were really doing, and how aruna is probably wasted a million times a day by two million hara. Most of the time we cannot see. Sometimes we can; this was one of those moments.

The Oracle of Shere Zaghara

"Though art slave to fate, chance, Kings and desperate men."

—John Donne, Death Be Not Proud

Panthera was shown into the Lyris's apartments early the following morning. I suppose it's strange that, away from the light of the sun and the moon, the Sahale should regulate their days as normal, but they do. Panth-era studied me carefully, aware of a certain change about me, but not quite sure what it was. I was dressed and ready to begin the next stage of our journey; not a long one, thankfully. The Lyris had gone some hours before. I had slept alone.

"And what happened last night?" Panthera asked me tentatively, as if speaking to an invalid sensitive about the accident that had maimed him. He felt obliged to say something.

"Thea; I am now Algomalid!" This seemed the safest answer.

His eyes widened, then narrowed. "You've had no training!" he accused.

"Haven't I?" For a moment, I felt bitter. "Oh, I've had my training, don't you worry. Years and years and years of it! A lesson learned; or dozens of them!"

"So, you know the answer then, do you?" Why that note of sadness?

"No, not yet," I answered defensively. "Not the answer."

He wanted me to say more. "How many are there then?"

"Who knows? I have to go to Shere Zaghara, deep carverns, north of j Sahen. Of course, you don't have to come with me . . ."

Panthera stood up. "I never have," he said. "When do we leave?"

The Lyris had granted us passage through his private conduit to the deepest grottoes of Sahale. "It is not a difficult or treacherous route," he told me, "so you may go there alone, or just with your companion, as you prefer. Go to the burrow of the fire-saucer. It is the chamber of greatest light and unmistakable. Your answers may come to you there."

May. We went down through the palace and at first the stairs had plastered, painted walls on either side. Eventually this changed to gnarled rock. Feverish cavern-lights cast eerie shadows in corners and across our faces. At first we traveled downwards in silence. I was thinking deeply and eventually had to tell someone.

"Panthera."

"What?" He sounded disinterested, but I carried on.

"I can see the end now, I think."

"Of these steps?"

"No! Of everything. Of trouble. I can see it all through."

"Have you only just decided that?" he asked wearily, perhaps doubting my sincerity. I didn't blame him.

"Perhaps it's been decided for me, but I don't want to be wishy-washy about it any more. The best form of defense is attack."

"Or a mirror." That could have meant many things, some of them not quite flattering. "So you've admitted to taking up the quest then, have you?"

"I'm not as weak as you think."

He glanced at me quickly then and I could see that he thought I was deceiving myself, wondering how on earth I could be third level Acantha when I was such a fool.

"Listen, Thea, you didn't know me before Piristil, did you, when I was in Megalithica, before Pell . . ."

"And during, and after!" He did not hide the bitter sarcasm. "It's all him, isn't it? The God figure!"

I ignored this. "Let's just say that after Pell died, I let go of the reins, lost control. That has got to end."

"Oh? And how do you plan to regain control of reins that curb the bits of other people's horses?"

"They were my horses once."

"Who rides them now, though?"

"This conversation is getting out of hand!" I laughed.

Panthera wouldn't even smile. "Maybe. Perhaps everything is getting out of hand."

"What do you mean?"

He would not say.

The steps beneath our feet were becoming warmer, the rocks glassier and the air held a hint of sulfur. We could hear strange booming sounds coming from a long way below us. "Are we on our way to hell?"

Panthera asked, too wistfully for it to be a joke. Now the passage was levelling out, widening and heightening. Landings swept away from us to either side, offering glimpses of swooping galleries and dark or flaming caverns. Ahead of us, a smooth sweep of glossy, black stone led to a narrow slit in the rock wall. From here a sliver of intense brightness shone like a ray of sunlight into the passage. It was stronger than sunlight. "This is it," I said. Bulbs of spectral, red light clung to the arching, throated walls like clusters of bubbles, but they were hardly needed. My heart had begun to pound about twenty steps up from here, half with fear, half with excitement. As we approached the entrance, I could see that the gap was just wide enough for me to squeeze through. We paused at the threshold. Panthera put his hand upon the wall, running his fingers over the undulating grooves.

"Should you go in there alone, Cal?" he asked. For a moment, I thought he was afraid. There was a fine lacing of sweat along his upper lip, but then I looked at his eyes; they were dark and tranquil.

"Perhaps I should."

"I'll wait for you here then." He turned away and then, impulsively, wheeled around to embrace me. "Take care."

"Don't worry."

"And don't change too much." He smiled and put his cheek, briefly, against mine.

As soon as I wriggled through the gap in the wall, it was as if a heavy, impenetrable curtain of time and distance had fallen between us. I was alone. Beyond me, I could see the glistering walls of a huge and camerated natural vault. There were veins of micra, taut tendons of mineral splatter-ings, and a thousand, thousand eyes of warm, living gems, glowing from the walls, sullen in the light of a slowly licking fire. The saucer itself was maybe only six feet across and of simple rough stone, broken in places as if it had lain there unseen for millenia. I could not decide whether the flames rose from a cavity in the saucer's center, coming up from the earth itself, or if it simply existed upon the stone; a fire without fuel. I approached the light. A pottery cup and a flagon of liquid sat in the sand, attached to the stone bowl by a thin, metal chain. I had been instructed by the Lyris to take up the flagon, pour some of the liquid into the cup and drink it. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I did so. It tasted like stale, warm water; a strong, mineral flavor. For a moment, I calmed myself, controlling my breathing as I'd been taught so long ago. Then, making the genuflections of entreaty, I addressed the genius loci of the cavern, and opened up my mind for the reception of thought. The entity that lived within the flame, as if used to such encounters with harish kind, introduced itself without preamble and asked my business. As instructed, I opened up the part of my mind that was like an illustrated book of my life. The entity read it slowly, thoroughly, and took pleasure in it. My small life, entertaining at the best of times, apparently captured its interest; it read with relish.

"You seek answers to questions you cannot form," it decided. "If you knew the questions you would know the answers."

"May I ask one of you?"

"You may."

"Why am I important?"

"You are important only as all natural things are important," it answered obliquely, and then added, "If time is a tapestry, then you are one thread, whose color improves the whole, and without which some threads may become unraveled or cease to have been at all."

"This much was known to me," I said. "You must agree that it is a circumstance that could be applied equally to every living being on this planet."

"Precisely."

"I'm not asking the right question am I?"

It did not answer this, but instead honored me with a physical manifestation of itself, which appeared as a slim, rangy hound with glowing eyes, whose fur was brindled and short, and who had a crest of copper-colored fronds growing from its neck. It lay down some feet in front of me and licked its paws fastidiously with a blue tongue. The fronds all pointed toward me like eye-stalks.

"Must I go to Immanion?"

"Yes. Is that an answer you did not already know?"

I rubbed my eyes. The words were bitter in my mouth, but I had to say it. "Is my destiny to be the Tigron's concubine?"

The hound looked up at that and pricked its ears at my indiscretion. "If that were the case," it said indignantly, "then you would not be here now asking questions of me! Don't waste my time!"

"Sorry. No insult meant by that. Tell me then, what must I know?"

"One thing. What you are. Another thing; what must be done. The tying of loose threads. Finish what has been started, and in the right way. Make it smoooth."

"I still don't understand."

"What is most important to you?"

I pretended to think. It took some time to force the words out. "Pellaz and myself. . . . Are we destined to be ... together again?"

"You will meet in Immanion."

"As lovers?"

I could hear the flames cracking, spitting in the fire-saucer. The fire hound looked at the flames. "You cannot do this alone. Help is needed. Go to the Dream People and join with them in the saltation of vision. They are to be found in the east, and are known in this land as the Roselane. All nears completion. A great cycle draws to a close and heralds the morning of a new age. Among the Roselane, you shall see yourself, and the mirror shall be clear. That is all."

I could feel the creature drawing away from me.

"That is not all!" I cried desperately as its image wavered upon the sand. "You did not answer my question!"

"I have answered as I can, and as I must. Do not believe everything you are led to believe. That, too, is part of it."

"But the visions . . . what are they? Is it real? The dreams? Are they?"

"You do not need me to answer that!"

"And Zack, what has he to . . ."

"No!" I was interrupted firmly. "That is not part of what I have to tell you. I've delivered my part. Remember it well. That is all. Now, leave quietly!"

The flames in the saucer suddenly jetted skywards and then abated to a dull, crimson glow. The pottery cup fell over at my feet. I did not bother to right it again. I walked straight out.

Panthera was sitting where I'd left him, his back to the wall. When he saw me scrambling through the rock, he got to his feet. "Well?" he demanded, searching my eyes for the answers I'd not received.

"Riddles! Just riddles!" I snapped and strode right past him, heading blindly for the stairs.

Panthera hurried after me. "What do you mean?" He grabbed my arm.

"There are no answers!" I turned on him viciously. "Can't you understand? There are no answers. Just another place to go, another move in the game!"

"Didn't you expect that?"

I couldn't answer.

"What happened, Cal. What did it say?"

"You really want to know? OK, I'll tell you. I had a cozy little talk with a supernatural beast. What it told me was nonsense. I'm no wiser. Go to Roselane, it said. Can you believe it? We came all this way, Kachina was killed, for that! If it's somebody's idea of a joke, then I'm not playing anymore. It's ridiculous!" I started running, not bothered whether Panthera was following or not. Near the top of the stairs, my chest began to ache. I could not continue. I had to stop; leaning down, shoving my head between my knees, I gasped for breath.