Starfire Saga, page 51
Coney was watching me closely. “You have to be careful. They remember how you were. They were afraid all along that Jemeret might change you, but it would probably be better if you didn’t let on how much.”
“You’ve changed, too,” I said on impulse. “I felt it from the very first.”
His expression was serious. “Yes, well, with you in the radiant tank and Kray in postmortem preservation, I lost my innocence pretty damned quickly.”
“Not entirely.” I whispered it. “You’re still an Epicyclist, after all.”
Coney’s face altered swiftly. “Ronnie, my faith is not a result of innocence. It grows out of hope. There is a considerable difference.”
I didn’t want to respond to that; I still couldn’t see faith the way he saw it. “Jemeret said you went out walking. Why?”
He grinned at me sheepishly. “I love this place,” he said softly.
I realized that I wasn’t the only one who wanted to stay. It somehow embarrassed me. “We’d better get over to the temple now,” I said. “Jemeret said he’d meet us there, and it’s almost false dawn.”
Coney took the nomidars while I pulled my cloak on, and with only one glance backward at the warm little house, barely visible against the beginning of the light on the snow, I followed him down the path toward the temple.
Sejineth waited outside with five tivongs and Tynnanna, and at the door of the temple itself were Sandalari and Venacrona, cloaked for travel. Jemeret was coming up from the village, moving quickly and quietly. Coney went to stand by Sandalari, who smiled up at him, then looked at me.
“How long do you think it will take you to find the Isle?” Sejineth asked me.
“We don’t know where the Isle is,” I said, avoiding the question. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
Jemeret had joined us by that time. “Wait here,” he said to the others. “There’s one last thing to do inside.”
Venacrona led the way up to the starfire chambers on the second floor, and Jemeret took my arm and steered me along with him. Without hesitation, the two men turned and walked into the chamber where thin sheets of blue mica surrounded the overhead lamp. I stood uncertainly in the doorway for a moment, for my own instinct had been to go into the central chamber, the one for all the star colors.
“Here,” Jemeret said, holding out his hand to me.
Venacrona was setting out a small wooden bowl with a sweet-smelling spice powder in it. “I’ll leave you,” he said, “and I’ll be outside.”
“Thank you,” my lord said softly.
It was, I realized, the first time he and I had been alone in the calm quiet of the temple. “Why the blue chamber?” I asked him. The walls and the altar played with the sound in strange ways, just as the cave of the starfire metal had.
“Blue is the color of life,” Jemeret said, “in our color lore, at any rate. But if you think about it, the blue worlds are the best to settle on. The blue stars have the longest lives ahead of them.” He took off his cloak and dropped it against one of the walls. “It’s in the face of life that I need to atone for taking life.”
Before he’d quite finished the last word, the whoosh of the starfire’s arrival permeated the room, and a faint blue glow colored everything. It surprised me, because it was warm, and I’d never associated heat with the starfire before.
Jemeret took a handful of the powder and tossed it into the blue flame, his eyes fastened on the pale brightness. “I’ve come to acknowledge that I took a life which was not mine to take,” he said. “I’ve misused the power of which I am caretaker, and the one I harmed is beyond my reach. As he cannot give me forgiveness, I place my fault in the hands of the force which created that power.”
He rested his palms flat on the altar top and bowed his dark head until the column of starfire nearly touched his hair. A tendril of the flame emerged beneath his lowered face and caressed his forehead. The heat seemed to ebb out of the flame, sinking downward in cavalier defiance of physics.
Jemeret straightened as the tendril retreated, his soft gray eyes looking blue in the reflection from the starfire. Even without making any effort to read him, I knew that the pain he’d been feeling had gone out of him, and he’d come to an acceptance of what he’d done.
“Do I do that?” I asked him.
“If you want to.”
I nodded once, tossed my cloak on top of his, and crossed the chamber to stand beside him in front of the glowing altar. The spice powder felt gritty against my palm. As I scattered it into the blue column, the warmth seemed to return to the fire.
“I’ve come to acknowledge that I took a life which was not mine to take,” I said, but before I could say anything else, the entire chamber seemed to reverberate as the starfire column shook.
Jemeret said quietly, “Lives.”
“What?” I looked at him, surprised. I had only Kray on my conscience.
“You cannot just atone for one when you carry two,” he said. “When I was healing you, I studied a great deal about your past. I wanted to rebuild the correct brain. When you were barely nine, you used your sting to kill a man who attacked the three of you with a nerve blaster.”
The hitch. I’d killed him with the sting, and they’d never told me. They’d shielded me from the knowledge, and my ignorance had probably made it easier for me to use against Kray a weapon I’d already used once with impunity. And I’d only been a child.
Jemeret watched me adjust to the new knowledge. “Even as a child, you were stronger than they thought you’d be.”
“But not smarter.”
“The potential was there,” my lord said, his voice as gentle as his eyes.
I swallowed, told myself to accept it, and repeated the phrases Jemeret had spoken to the starfire, but in the plural. The words resonated within me, shaking me at a cellular level, and I drew in a shuddering breath as I leaned on the altar. The resonance inside me was painful, making me ache in response to it.
The starfire’s blue tendril rose and touched my forehead. The ache and the resonance drained away in a cool, soothing glow that sank into me. I still recognized that a misuse of power was a shameful thing, but I could understand that flaws did not of themselves invalidate a person’s worth. I could resolve to try to keep from repeating my error. I could depend on Jemeret to help me. And I could recognize intellectually that I might fail in that attempt without needing to destroy myself. I almost added “again” to that, but I had been saved from self-destruction by the man who stood beside me. It wasn’t visceral knowledge yet, but it was a beginning. The tendril withdrew, and the blue light vanished as the starfire slid back into its bowl.
I blinked away unexpected tears, and reached out to put my arms around Jemeret. “Are you all right?” he asked. I nodded against his chest, which moved under my cheek as he spoke. “We may not be able to perform this ritual in the Com.”
“Do you think we’ll be killing anyone?”
“I hope not, but all things are possible.”
We picked up our cloaks and left the temple.
Sejineth had turned over the reins of the tivongs to Venacrona, and now he nodded briefly to Jemeret, a bit longer to me, and then looked back at the Lord of the Boru again. “I wish you well,” he said a little stiffly. Jemeret nodded in return.
I couldn’t help feeling he deserved a little more, as Shantiah had deserved it. “Tuvellen will depend on you for help,” I said.
“We won’t forget, and when we return from the Isle of the Wise, you will be suitably rewarded.”
The lean, rough-faced tivong keeper I had known since my first days on this planet nodded once again at his chief, then looked back at me. “You’ll be sailing in strange waters, Lady Ronica,” he said. “Have a care.”
I almost told him he was more right than he might ever know. “Thank you,” was all I said.
He turned and disappeared into the slowly lightening dawn.
“Power?” Coney asked Jemeret.
“More than he uses,” Jemeret said. “He’s one of those Boru who could do more than they choose to or learned how to. When his father lost the chieftainship, and Sejineth knew he wasn’t strong enough to challenge me, he stopped trying to use a lot of his power, except with the tivongs.” He looked momentarily thoughtful. “I might have encouraged him more than I did.” He took Vrand’s reins from Venacrona. “Let’s get away.”
I mounted Rocky, calming my abruptly racing heart. In a way, it was ludicrous. I was returning to a world I’d been raised to influence and rule, and I was nervous and uncertain, because I was no longer who I’d been. I fiercely put it down. As Coney had said, I could do this.
In point of fact, I had to do it. Somebody was trying to destroy talent, if the murders of two small children were any indication, and the MIs—which had not stopped me from killing Kray—were unlikely to be applying much in the way of resources to the problem. Jemeret might well be right that the rest of us were not in danger, but the third child, Tial Borland, clearly would be. And Jemeret had shown me that one of the purposes of talent was the protection of talent. I wanted to do that.
Then, too, I wanted the government, especially the members of the Tribunal, to see that I was not the mindless, helpless wreck they remembered. I had enough pride remaining to want their good opinion; I think I felt I still deserved it, had worked hard to earn it. I knew Jemeret didn’t care what they thought of him, but I hadn’t reached that point yet.
There was another reason, too, in its own way even more compelling, though I hadn’t fully faced it yet. If there was any way to keep Jemeret from committing suicide by trying to eliminate the MIs, I had to be there to save him. He had saved me.
I used to think you could judge people best by what they had: their power, their decorations, the possessions they valued, the company they kept. And I still think you can know something about them by those criteria. But I think when you truly want to know someone, look first at their debts. People are to a great extent what they recognize they owe. When someone tells you he owes nothing to anyone, you know instantly who he is.
III. Markover Station
With Venacrona in the lead and Coney bringing up the rear, the five of us took the now-familiar road around the village, keeping ourselves slightly hidden in the trees. We made it onto the mountain track that led up Harrilith before the first rays of light gilded more than the uppermost peaks.
No one was moving in the houses yet, and if someone looked out the window and saw movement in the trees, they would think it was some forest creature seeking food before the onset of the next storm. If we returned—I made myself change that to when we returned—the entire population would turn out to greet us, but this was very different. As far as our tribe knew, we were not here at all.
We didn’t talk much. Tynnanna had raced out ahead of us and vanished, as usual, but he was waiting for us at the crest of the track. We stopped there, and Jemeret and Coney dismounted immediately. Sandalari and I quickly followed. Venacrona uncoiled a length of rope from his saddle and we tied our tivongs to it, so he could lead them. He would take them on to the Genda, then return to Stronghome with a guard from Sabaran, as if he were only now, belatedly, returning from the peninsula. He would expound at length about our departure.
Only he was mounted now. “I’ll see you safely to the second ledge before I continue down,” he said.
“Be careful on the road south,” Jemeret cautioned. “Tuvellen should do well enough, and I’ll try to call you if I can. Follow me.” The last was to the rest of us, and it sounded uncharacteristically brusque. I read him as we started to walk along the track, and he was tense and apprehensive. His normal confidence was there, but it had acquired a patina that contained it.
Suddenly he stepped to the left, onto a hidden trail entrance upslope of one of the huge boulders that lined that side of the track and which had concealed the trail quite effectively. We four could slip onto the trail and then into the narrow mouth of what turned out to be an equally narrow tunnel, but there was no way Tynnanna, with his wide shoulders, could follow.
The klawit was not deterred. He gave one growl as I lingered at the entrance watching him, and then he crouched, sprang upward over the boulders, and dashed straight up the slope, heading for a destination he already seemed to know.
The tunnel was long, but never completely dark, for it climbed gently upward, away from the descending track, close enough to the ground above it so that tiny shafts rose to the surface of the upper wall of Harrilith and provided, at intervals, light and fresh air. In addition to climbing, the tunnel curved toward the north, following the outer slope of the massive mountain.
In less than an hour we’d reached a thin ledge which also curved around one of the mountain’s high faces. We couldn’t see the track below until the point at which it reached the floor of the valley. Sandalari gave a small, nervous giggle, utterly unlike her. “The ledge will hold,” Jemeret said almost absently. “It’s just built to look as if it won’t.”
I glanced around, looking for Tynnanna, but he was nowhere in sight. We turned sideways and, balancing our nomidars, edged along the ledge to the narrow slit of another tunnel mouth. This one curved upward even more steeply. It was clear to me that the spaceport was at a much higher altitude than anything else on this world, perhaps because there would be significantly less chance of anyone seeing the flash of a lander.
By the time the second tunnel ended, more than an hour later, I was expanding my lung capacity to take advantage of every bit of oxygen in the rarefied air. I was certain the others had done the same.
The ledge the second tunnel gave onto was much wider and a little icier, though not considerably, and when we came out onto it, Jemeret turned and stared back and down the way we’d come. I looked where he was looking, altering my focus to see the barely discernible speck of dark against the white and gray background. That spot was, I knew, Venacrona with the tivongs, patiently waiting for us to arrive here, at this place. I felt Jemeret’s signal to the priest, who probably would not have been able to see us, and the dark spot moved off, toward the crest of the pass leading to the rest of the world beyond Stronghome.
Coney put his arm across Sandalari’s shoulders and hugged her briefly against his side. Jemeret touched me with the sting, and I felt his inquiry even before I saw it in his eyes.
“I’m all right,” I said.
A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth, and he turned to lead the way across this ledge and around a peak of Harrilith into a flat area hidden on all sides by a bowl of other peaks. There was no snow on it, so I knew the material was not natural. In its center sat a Com lander, as shiny in the afternoon sun as any government vehicle I ever remembered; beside it, incongruous and imperturbable, sat Tynnanna, nearly tall enough so that his ears were level with the vehicle’s roof. Now that the footing was secure, we accelerated into a run, all four of us keeping pace easily.
In less than fifteen minutes we were at the lander. It must have been programmed to admit anyone, for its door slid open at once, and Jemeret ducked inside to expand the opening to the “cargo” setting. By the time we climbed in, he had retracted two of the seats to make a cargo space that Tynnanna could fit into. The klawit didn’t hesitate, just stepped inside and curled up as if he were in front of the hearth at home. By that time the other three of us had activated the seat fields while Jemeret sealed the craft for liftoff.
“It feels strange,” Sandalari said. “I have a vague memory of things like this, but the recollections have become almost dreamlike. And now—here I am.”
“Here we all are,” Coney said. He looked at Jemeret. “Do you want to take it up, or should I?”
“Change first,” my lord said. “Then you take it. I have to shave.”
“I won’t hear of it,” I nearly shouted.
All three of them stared at me, and Jemeret laughed. “You know as well as I do that no one wears a beard in the Com.”
“Set a new fashion.” For some reason, I was very upset by the idea of the beard vanishing. He’d had it since the first day I’d seen him on Caryldon. The only time I remembered him without it, I had been in the tank, and I didn’t want to be reminded of that. Inspiration struck, and I spun on Coney. “Grow a beard. Now. Sandal—Sandi, you don’t mind, do you?”
Coney started to speak, then seemed to think better of it.
“Why should I mind?” Sandalari asked. “He’s the same man with or without a beard.”
“But it’s not the same statement,” I said, suddenly certain. “Jasin Lebec always did whatever the Com wanted. He was the perfect Class A. I will not be an unquestioning instrument of theirs anymore, and they already know that Jemeret won’t be. We want them slightly off balance, and they need us. Coney...”
He studied me for a few moments, then looked at Jemeret. Incongruous as it was, because I considered the Com my ground, not Jemeret’s, I waited to see if my lord would approve my choice.
“I am the husband,” he said softly, “but I’m not a Brochidian husband. Coney, grow the beard. I’ll change first, and I guess I’ll take the lander up.” He slid open the flight locker and looked at the jumpsuits hanging there. The Com had specified gold and bronze, indicative of our respective ranks. Jemeret made a small noise of disgust and pulled the nearest off its hanger, thumbing the label on. “Dark blue,” he said. The color flowed downward from the collar. Jemeret carried the suit into the minuscule eliminatory, emerging a minute later fully dressed, his close black beard still intact.
Coney followed, first turning his jumpsuit to the same dark blue. When he emerged, his new beard was just past the stubble stage. I wondered what they’d done with the tunics, leggings, and cloaks. The eliminatory would be too small to start piling them up.
“What’s a Brochidian husband?” Sandalari asked while Coney was out of sight and Jemeret was taking the control readings prior to launch.
“Brochid is one of the many Com worlds where the local customs were very different when the Com took over,” I answered, pulling out a jumpsuit and handing it to her, then taking another for myself. “Only men could be husbands, and they could only marry women. The women had to be completely subservient to the commands of their husbands, fathers, and brothers.”
