In Conquest Born, page 47
He wondered at the very nature of his search. If one had to find an object in a large house, he reasoned, one wouldn’t necessarily begin by a thorough study of each detail of architecture. One would look over the entire property quickly to see if the object was in open view, or was in such a position that it readily caught the eye.
Why not the stars?
Tense, afraid, he readied himself. Fighting off all self-imposed barriers, he mustered the full extent of his power and stripped it of every binding thought and image, until his entire being was a mass of pure telepathic sensitivity. Then he opened himself to the cosmos.
Thought and emotion without label, familiar and unfamiliar, stable and unstable, lasting and fleeting . . . a sea of the stuff of thought without thought to guide it . . . concentrations here, there (don’t think “planets,” he begged himself) and there again . . . this one of such a tenor . . . that one filed with disruption . . .
It seemed an eternity that he swam the thoughtwinds; he had forgotten what pleasure there was in the act. In order that he might focus his attention upon the mindsea between the stars he left control of his body to a few parts of the brain that could manage it automatically, and floated free of all material concerns in the pure joy of sensitivity. Worlds turned about him and with them the thoughts of millions revolved in their private cycles, sleep-silent to waking-alert, reflections of light and dark and season in a slow progression about his mindfocus, pinpoints of mental radiance to dance the emptiness before him . . .
Anzha.
He touched her carefully, oh-so-carefully, ridding his mind of any personal identity, allowing only the briefest whisper of other to touch her sensitivity with warning. She was too preoccupied to notice, or perhaps (it occurred to him only now) she couldn’t recognize a truly abstract sending. He withdrew, and gently stroked her environment. Five minds, four of them psychic, focused on the future . . . it was safer to read their minds than hers, so he did so. Darkness, lightyears and light-years of it, and time passing without action . . . a mass of obscurity, defying detection . . . an investment in purpose, intentions of triumph . . . patience, above all else. Always the image of darkness; it would mean something to Zatar, he was certain. He touched the nearest planets and drank in their cultural essence: luxury growths/seasonal sexual festivities at harvest /mild, unthreatening environment; colonial tensions/excess male population/mining in the colder regions . . . he tasted what he could of the planets she was passing, memorizing the culture-fixes that might give some clue as to her location, straining to continue despite the growing exhaustion—
—burning pain in the centers of thought, it is too much, too much, the mind strained, the body falling, desert of my enemy I am drowning! Return, return (Reintegration Discipline) return . . .
He opened his eyes.
For a moment, nothing.
Eyes. He touched them. Sensation. Cloudy vision, clarifying . . . the sun, burning, baking . . . with a low moan he turned away from it.
“Lord Feran,” a voice said softly.
He looked up, surprised to find the Pri’tiera capable of such gentle inflection.
Zatar crouched by his side and two women also knelt there, flanking him. One of them handed him a cup of water, the sight of which brought waves of thirst and physical need to his awareness. He spilled half of it, his bodily control still far from perfect, but his parched membranes greedily drank in the rest.
“I reached her,” he croaked, his voice dry but exultant.
Zatar waited.
He burst forth with the details of his vision, and with the culture-fixes he had picked up. Zatar fed it all into the computer; hopefully the massive brain that guarded the House would be able to make some sense of his rambling, and relate it to a location and a purpose.
“I found her . . .” Feran whispered. His eyes fell shut, the sunlight burning his vision even through the layers of skin. I touched her . . . who ever thought one man could know such power?
A woman bathed his forehead with cool, fresh water. The touch of her hand pained him more than it should, even with his heightened sensitivity. He reached out to her mind for the proper label: sunburn. Then his senses recoiled violently, rejecting the effort, and his psychic/physical reaction was so strong that he vomited helplessly on the tiled floor.
A woman’s hand stroked him gently along the neck, soothing his discomfort. He lacked the strength to move, but lay there where he had emptied himself. After a moment other hands cleaned him, and then the floor, of his misery.
“You did well.” It was the Pri’tiera’s voice, somehow disassociated from the body looming over him. “She’s headed away from the Holding, toward the Barren Zone off our yerren border. We won’t be able to track her inside the nebula itself, and it’s a year’s travel or more to cross it but at least we have something to work with. It looks a lot like she’s fleeing the War,” he commented.
“I don’t believe that.”
“Neither do I. We’ll get a better directional focus from the computer, then I’ll send out scouts. We’ll find her.”
“Pri’tiera—” He coughed, then tried again. “If you tell the scouts what they’re looking for . . . they’ll focus their attention on her. She’ll pick it up. Physical distance means little to us; mental focus is everything. Be careful. . . .” He gasped for air; his throat was raw and breathing was painful. “I’m sorry it—took so long. . . .” What a ludicrous thing to say! “Missed the morning. . . .”
Zatar was amused. “Missed it by three days, Feran. But that’s all right.” A strong hand clasped his shoulder. “It was worth the waiting.”
He slept.
Viton: It is when a man’s House seems the most secure that he is most vulnerable to attack.
TWENTY-FIVE
Darkly, like a shadow, Sechaveh strode the length of the poorly lit corridor. The walls about him were of stone, as was the staircase that led to this place, as were the chambers whose doors lined its walls. Cold stone, rough and gray and damp with the moisture of underground humidity. Fungus gathered here and there on the irregular slabs, and ate at the mortar between them; the odor of decay drifted thickly between narrow doorways, hinting at tortures which had been, and—dramatically—of torments yet to come.
He was tense; he had always been tense. But now his tension wound like a cord around his heart, strangling his very soul. Anger poured from him in torrents and reverberated between the mock-ancient walls, drowning him in a cacophony of rage.
He had lost! No, he had not lost. That was important: He could not lose. The others, with their pitifully compassionate natures, trusting women and underestimating their enemies, their own colleagues . . . they might lose, and see their plans die the eternal death. Not him. Only for the moment was life’s aspect bleak, only for the single, temporary moment . . . he squelched his anger as well as he could, forcing himself to promise himself. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will have my vengeance.
But there were no more tomorrows, and he knew it. He had hungered to control Braxi since the day he had first set foot on it, a cynical youth still bearing the scars of his alien humiliation. Every moment since had been spent either working to achieve that goal or dreaming of the moment when it would at last become reality. He had allied with Yiril because that man commanded respect among the Kaim’eri, had offered the ruthlessness of his youth in exchange for the older man’s guiding hand. It was Yiril who calmed him, Yiril who taught him the ways of Central intrigue, Yiril who later used him for his savagery and was used in return. They had allied with Vinir because it was a sound political move at the time they did it; three men acting in unity could wield much power in a government where it was assumed that no man would support another. Then Zatar . . . he cursed as the name came to his lips, spat it out as though he were regurgitating some vile poison. Zatar. He had made a throne possible and then claimed it himself, while Sechaveh, struck impotent by a single careless incident, was forced to sit back and watch, and do nothing. Zatar! Sechaveh had meant to unseat him at the last possible moment, to drive the Holding into chaos and then restore it himself. He had used Zatar in his youth and was fully prepared to counter his growing strength; he had spent the years planning for that moment, had dreamed of it, and considered himself ready.
And then there was Venari.
And the Plague.
And impotence.
With a snarl he slapped the handplate of a steel-barred door, which lifted itself into the ceiling to admit him. He signaled it to close again behind him and it did so, sealing him in the tiny stone cell with the stink of mold, and death—and fear.
Zatar, I will destroy you!
He studied his surroundings, drinking in their dismal atmosphere with relish. This cell was one of his smallest; he had designed it to mimic the dark confines of the Illean catacombs. Dank, odiferous, and above all else stiflingly close, it was a claustrophobe’s nightmare. The walls pressed tightly about their victim, and the low ceiling was cunningly paved with stones and boulders so that it appeared to be only loosely fixed in place. Might it fall, crushing the room’s helpless occupant? For one who did not know the details of its construction, the answer that came could only be yes. The walls, similarly misleading, leaned inward at the top, and beneath their irregular stonework one could easily feel the weight of the earth overhead, the thousands of tons of rock which pressed down upon the tiny and primitive chamber.
He had broken many men in this room, and had not had to do much work in the breaking; the room itself had power enough, applied to a people long accustomed to wide open spaces and the infinite reaches of the Void. Now it held a single prisoner: a woman, feverish, chained to the uneven wall. He came to stand before her, touching a gloved finger to the side of her face. She was shivering with fear, and a fine sheen of sweat was her only garment. In the dim, unwholesome light her golden skin seemed gray and withered; her fine white hair, straggling down about her shoulders, was streaked with mud much as the hair of an Azean diplomat might be frosted with golden powders. Subcommander, fighter captain, lead scout . . . he could no longer remember her exact rank, and it did not matter. They had brought her to Braxi and he had broken her, squeezing military information out of her pain-wracked body like one worked the juice from a sarafruit. Now the empty rind had been cast to him for his pleasure, and he explored its flaws with relish.
She looked at him—or past him, or through him—with eyes that had long since lost their luster, and her breath stank of fear. His mere proximity was salt to her wounds and he knew it; he moved even closer, pinning her against the wall with his bulk, and smiled as a tortured moan squeezed up from the heart of her. She was a latent claustrophobe; it had not taken him long to discover it. Now, knowing, he possessed the key to her soul—her Name, as it were, if Azeans might be said to have Names. Her fear had been mild to start with, a commonplace discomfort, and she had dealt with it simply, by avoiding situations that would inflame her phobia to life. But in doing so, she had not entered Sechaveh into her calculations.
Looking into her eyes, he saw the effects of his work: the finely drawn line between horror and madness upon which this woman balanced, longing for the latter but suffering, at his hands, the former. If kept carefully she might survive for decades; what peaks of intensity might her phobia reach if he had a lifetime to work on it? The thought excited him, set his blood to stirring as nothing else could. At one time the flesh of women might have pleased him, the contraction of their bodies as they screamed, or pleaded, or died . . . but now his pleasure was in pain and pain alone, his hunger a burning hostility that had its own special demands, and its own satisfaction.
He touched a finger to the woman’s eyes, noting her reflexive response. Was it not amazing how the body sought to protect itself from harm, long after the soul had abandoned hope? He would tear her eyes out soon, and see how the darkness of the blind compared with the blackness of his dungeon in the heart of her phobia. Would there be a qualitative difference? Would the imagination of the newly blind make her unseen prison seem more confining, or would it lessen the effect of a blackness that no light would ever enter? The question made his blood stir, hotly.
She cried out suddenly, her eyes wide with terror.
As for Zatar . . . he cursed the name, the House, and most of all his own stupidity. But he would have his revenge. Law or no, his would be the ultimate triumph. Because of the man’s own weaknesses Zatar would wither and perish; Sechaveh had not spent his life in a study of human suffering for the mere fleeting pleasure of it. He knew how to hurt Zatar, if not how to bring him from power; he could make the man’s soul bleed until the throne of Braxi held only emptiness for him—until he tasted, himself, the very sort of impotent fury that Sechaveh was destined to endure.
He had planned it all out, and it soon would begin. Ni’en would be the first blow: struck down bloodily, painfully, perhaps even openly. She had no Braxaná blood in her and the law, therefore, did not protect her from Whim Death. How like Zatar that he had taken her safety for granted all these years! What grief would the great Pri’tiera know, who had removed his gloves before a woman? Only so much as he deserved, Sechaveh assured himself.
The woman cried again, sharply; her face was pale with fear and she writhed against the wall, pulling desperately at the chains that bound her. This was an interesting development! He grasped her chin in his leather-bound hand and forced her to stare at him. Blood dribbled from her screaming mouth, staining his glove. Internal damage, or cuts to the mouth’s interior? What convulsions of fear had his presence inspired? Elated, curious, he stared at her, studied her, and stepped back quickly as the cause of her suffering became apparent.
“No!” He hissed it, backing up as far as the tiny room would permit. Black froth sizzled over her lip and ate its way down her chin, following the trail that her blood had already blazed. The pit of her stomach was churning as well, and spots of blackness began to appear here and there on the taut, sweat-soaked skin.
The Black Death.
The initial shock passed quickly and his reason returned to him. He was safe for the moment, for her torso was bound, but if her arms and legs flailed as they were eaten away, he might be in grave danger. He moved swiftly to the door and placed his hand upon the plate that controlled it.
Nothing happened.
Again.
The door did not move.
Sweat broke out across his brow; he found that his hands were trembling. Again and again he tried to coax the portal’s controls to action. Finally he leaned down to the door’s lower edge and sought to raise it by brute force—but there was no handhold, none at all, and friction alone would not suffice to raise the slick, heavy stone.
He was afraid.
The screams were deafening now, and in another place and time they would have pierced his soul with pleasure; now his blood ran cold, his hands and heart were like ice. He backed away from her, as far as he could get, and drew his cape before him. One more layer between him and man’s ultimate torment; could it even help—would it be enough? To scream for aid would be pointless; who would pick his voice out from the woman’s squalling? And would they help, if they heard? Someone had sealed the door behind him; such things did not happen by accident. Someone with access to House security, who might also have sabotaged the computer. . . .
“Call Sil’ne!” he commanded. A bit of living rot landed right by his face, and it barely missed his shoulder as it slid, seething, to the foot of the wall. It humiliated him to call for a woman’s help, but the facts were simple: Sil’ne was the only one in the House who could not afford to let him die. Bereft of his support she would be Houseless, homeless; a woman who had failed her Master in this way would not find upper-class patronage again. She dared not fail him . . . and therefore he trusted her. “Sil’ne!” A line of blackness was eating its way through one of the woman’s legs, and as she twitched in her death-throes it scattered the seeds of torment to all sides of him. A bit caught on his cloak and he discarded it quickly. “Inform her—bring her to me!” he cried, desperate. His cloak was being consumed; he watched in horror as it writhed, alive in its dying, and shuddered at the thought that the same might happen to him.
“Computer! Call—”
Airborne, a piece of the putrid substance was flung against him, and it quickly took root in the wool of his tunic sleeve. Were he dressed in a foreign manner he might have had one moment to brush the stuff away—with his Zhaor, even the scabbard, anything made of metal or synthetics—but the threads that had been spun for his clothing were of animal origin, rich in protein content, and were as much food for the dreaded Death as the flesh that lay beneath it. He moaned as the poison bit into his arm, attempting to voice a last cry for help, but he managed only a wordless scream as the poison ate his nerves, hungry for suffering as well as flesh.
Mindlessly he moved to brush at his arm, stopping only a hair’s breath from the boiling surface before he remembered: to touch it was to spread it. How then could he save himself.? He forced his body to be still, to endure the hot knives of pain which pierced through his arm and upward toward his shoulder, and which ate at his fingers until black sludge dripped from their stumps. There must be a way to survive this! he thought feverishly. The Azeans were poisoned often, and didn’t always die of it; what technique did they employ?
As a nova of agony burst to life in his upper arm, he remembered.
He gritted his teeth and prepared himself for courage. Now there was hope . . . and a morbid fascination, which he would never have admitted to, in watching himself master the death that had overwhelmed so many. Pain and I are old companions. . . . He reached his right hand to his Zhaor, carefully, and applied his thumb to the lock. It was programmed for any Sutrakarre hand and opened in response to his touch—and he sighed in relief as it did so, though tears of pain poured from his eyes even as he drew the blade free. Amputation: that was the secret. To sever the host-limb before the poison could spread. He maneuvered the Zhaor as well as he could right-handed, and brought it down on his better arm before he could start to question his actions. It had to be done quickly. Before the malignancy spread to his torso. And before agony overpowered sentience.
