Starfire Saga, page 83
The young man shook his head. “You can’t keep a secret like that—this,” he stuttered.
“Of course we can,” Jemeret said coolly. “We’ve kept it for decades—Venacrona, my Lord Ashkalin, your father, and I. Do you think you’re somehow less worthy to lead the Genda than your father was?”
Sheridar shook off the question. “People—the Samothen—have a right to know. We don’t have to give up our children just because they—the outsiders—demand it. We could fight.”
I said, “You have no notion of the power the outsiders wield, my Lord Sheridar.” I used the title deliberately. “They could destroy all life on this world without thinking about it any more than casually. I know, and I ask you to believe me. The Samothen are precious to me.”
Jemeret overrode my last word. “Right now we need your silence to preserve the Samothen, in addition to your strength.” I could feel that he stung Sheridar to reinforce his words.
Sheridar looked from one of us to the other, his conviction of astonished rightness fading into an admiration for his sire and the people who’d preserved the secret for so long. In another minute he understood what tribal leadership really meant for a chief of the Boru, the Genda, or the Marl, and though he was still young, he was trying his best to accept that responsibility. We never knew how long such persuasion would last, but for now we were all right.
Jemeret let out a breath he’d been holding, glanced at Ashkalin and gave a barely perceptible nod. The Chief of the Marl got to his feet. I was more than ready to move ahead.
“All right,” my lord said. “Let’s go to the Inner Council meeting. We have things to accomplish before morning.”
We trooped out. It didn’t occur to me until much later that I might have called the starfire. I was too driven to have thought of it.
So many hints—all disregarded because, once again, I was thinking with walls.
XVI. Evolution
The people already assembled in the room looked up as we came in. There were a few welcoming smiles, but everyone was tired and worried. They radiated it, a weary anxiety that filled the room and lapped at the walls.
The Inner Council was sadly depleted. Venacrona and Sandalari were there for the stars, and Jemeret and I for the Boru, but only a few of the other tribes presented two Councillors. Sheridar was standing alone for the Genda, having spent little time down with the people of his tribe since becoming chief. Ashkalin joined Moonelin, one of his guards, who was already in the room. I had one brief moment of regret that he hadn’t brought Danaller, his other son and Kray’s full brother, but then I realized he would want someone older, with previous battle experience.
Lyrafi of the Dibel smiled at me as my gaze passed over her. She had deep blue circles under her eyes, and I didn’t see her brother, Orion, in the room. There were, of course, no representatives of the Ilto, the Paj, or the Vylk. From the Elden, Tatatin was present, but not a co-Councillor, and both Henion of the Nedi and his companion, a tall, willowy woman wearing a pair of swords. There was no one present from the Resni. Instead of the twenty-two of us there should have been, we were only eleven. That hurt.
“The Resni?” I asked Jemeret under my breath.
“They didn’t get here,” Venacrona said shortly, and began the ritual introductions that traditionally opened any Inner Council meeting. The woman with Henion turned out to be his sister.
I read everyone in the room except for Venacrona, Sandalari, my Lord Jemeret, and Sheridar. Outside of Ashkalin, who appeared to be strangely relaxed and almost confident, they were all emotionally unsteady, but their anxiety was tempered by relief that we’d returned. They all looked to Jemeret and me, eyes of different shapes and colors carrying the same expression of hope.
The introductions were over. Jemeret touched me with his sting, and the High Lady of the Samothen got to her feet. I said, “All of you have a key task to perform tomorrow, and so do all of the Boru who have undergone at least boyhood or girlhood ceremonies. Just as—” I began, and halted suddenly. Andriel was calling me, reaching out to me, her powerful, undisciplined young mind insistent on finding me, unwilling to be separated now that she knew I existed and was part of her world. I touched and reassured her, following the trail of her probe until my sting rested directly against hers, urging her to be patient and withdraw her sensory scout, telling her again that I loved her and would not desert her. She hesitated a moment, bobbled, then acquiesced.
I felt Jemeret’s curious touch brush the slight echo of the child’s withdrawal, but he still said nothing. I cleared my throat, shook my head a little as if to change my thought. “Even the older Boru children will be given the responsibility of making certain that those in the lines have water.” I realized I was getting ahead of myself. “Those of you who were at Convalee remember how we made a long line of the Samothen so my Lord Jemeret and I could draw on the tribes’ strength to put the Honish to sleep. We need the lines again tomorrow.”
“Are you going to put the Vylk and Ilto to sleep again, Lady Ronica?” Henion asked.
I shook my head immediately. “Putting them to sleep tomorrow would be pointless. They’d still be on the plain and they would eventually have to wake up. We need to put the Paj to sleep instead. Then we’re going to give Krenigo a choice, and if he fails to choose what we want, we will influence the others. Once they have succumbed to the influence, your tribes and the Boru can walk across the plain, take their weapons, and send them home.” I was completely confident about that.
They stared at me.
We brought all the Boru women and older children across the mountain pass with us, leaving only the very oldest men and women and Keli to take care of the youngest children. Andriel wanted to come, but she was wielding too much uncontrolled power to be allowed in the thick of things. Bringing this set of normal noncombatants to what the troops perceived as battle lines was in itself an outrageous gesture of confidence. The people of the tribes at the foot of the mountains linked up at our command, and I stepped out onto the plain in front of the files, walking until I found a hillock that afforded me a view of the people on the far side of the plain, probably about two kilometers distant.
Jemeret gathered and touched me with his sting, giving me access to the reserve energy of everyone now behind me. I used it to amplify my voice, even though the only faces I could see when I adjusted my visual focus outward were those of the Paj, weary, in some cases terrified, despairing. As a pacifist tribe, they would not defend themselves, but then never before in the history of the Samothen had they had to do so against their own kind.
“I wish to speak with Krenigo the dishonorable,” I said. My amplified voice carried across the distance and rang over their heads even more loudly than I’d intended. I scaled back a little on the energy I was drawing.
As I’d guessed, he came out in front of his own files and stepped through the line of the Paj, grinning tauntingly, waving his longsword in my direction. I’d augmented my hearing, but I wasn’t going to give him any time to speak.
“You have treacherously attacked not only the tribes which can fight you in return, but the Paj, who are defenseless,” I said. “You deserve no consideration, but as your High Lady, I give you some. If you choose to surrender, you will be heeded, and while you yourself, and your confederate in betrayal, Ustivet, will be enslaved or exiled, according to the will of the Inner Council, your people will be allowed to go home. If you do not surrender, you and all the men who follow you will be humiliated utterly, and you will have earned that humiliation by your treacherous actions. You have one hour to make a decision. Should you choose the wiser course of surrender, lay all your weapons out on the plain in front of the Paj.” I wanted to add something about Ginestra, but I didn’t.
I could hear him shouting insults and challenges at me, punctuating particular threats with thrusts of the sword, but I cut back my hearing enough so that the words washed away on the gentle wind across the grasses. I turned and went into the files of our troops, to Jemeret, Coney, and Sandalari.
“I don’t see him surrendering,” Coney said. “I imagine killing Sabaran gave him quite a boost.”
I took Sandalari’s hand and the two of us walked back up the shoulder of the foothills to where we’d left the beam projector. It took about three-quarters of an hour to assemble it and set its beam height, angle of descent, and width. With a real sense of anger at Krenigo, I fiddled the physiological programming to make it more severe in the quarter hour that remained. Then I told Sandalari to stay well behind it and went out to a nearby overlook to see if, perchance, Krenigo had surrendered.
I was wildly impatient to get on with it and be out of there. It was a strange feeling. I thought it arose from my need to solve a problem more important to me than the others had been, because this was Caryldon. I was very wrong.
Once I was in position on the overlook, I reached out over the distance, looking for Jemeret. I felt a caution, knew he would begin using the tribes’ energy to identify the Paj and put them to sleep, because a beam projector only works on a conscious mind. When he was done, he signaled to me, and I walked behind the beam projector and switched it on.
The insurrection was over in less than half an hour.
Sandalari and I didn’t see it, but Jemeret described it to me, and I loved him for admitting we couldn’t have done it without the beam projector. If we hadn’t had it, he’d never have been able to expend so much power rendering the Paj insensible.
The beam projector did exactly what we’d programmed it to do. It rendered the opposing forces incapable of fighting. A man cannot raise a sword if his own body turns against him. The men of the Ilto and the Vylk, struck simultaneously by overwhelming nausea, draining sinuses, convulsive and repeated emptying of bladder and bowels, and then continual, irresistible compulsions to keep doing it, even when they were empty, lost all desire to fight.
I switched off the beam projector at twenty-six minutes, which we’d calculated was enough to reduce them to exhaustion without permanently injuring them, and the warriors of the Boru, the Genda, the Marl, and the Nedi did indeed jog over and collect weapons from the sweat-soaked, groaning, sometimes weeping opposition, too weak to even peel off their own soiled leggings.
The Paj were amazed when Jemeret woke them.
Trotting back down the track to join them again, I was conscious of the fresh, clean beauty of the springtime, happy it had gone well, curious about what would happen now, and anxious to see Ginestra, all at the same time.
When we reached the end of the foothills, we were greeted with laughter and cheering. The Ilto and Vylk troops, unarmed and manifesting every emotion from shame to rage, had stripped and been allowed to wash themselves, but no other clothes had been provided for them. Sheridar had told them loftily that they could wash their own or go naked. So far, some had opted for each of the alternatives.
Krenigo and Ustivet were under heavy guard, unable to move from the spot they’d been placed, near Krenigo’s tent, without encountering a forest of swords and the low-level slam of anger a group of lesser talents could put together.
We found their tivongs and confiscated them, took half the supplies they’d brought with them and distributed them to the Paj and the other tribes that would have a distance to go to get home, and then I went to them and told them they could leave now.
Several of the Ilto tried to rush me; I stung them, felt Jemeret do the same from behind me.
“Go home,” I said to them as coldly as I could. “Live in isolation or in squalor if you like, but know that you are and always will be welcome as part of the Samothen if you live by our rules. If you follow leaders who convince you to break those rules—you will be punished again.”
There were mutters, restless shifting. No one else challenged me.
I left Jemeret, Ashkalin, and the others to get the vanquished headed south, pulling their own wagons, and went to find Ginestra. She was sitting with Lyrafi and Sandalari, sipping some fresh water, working at healing a large, purple bruise that took up most of the left side of her head. Nevertheless, she smiled at me. I squatted down in front of her. “How are you, Ginestra?”
“I’m all right,” she said, and sighed. “Once, long ago, in my thoughtless youth, I slept with Krenigo at a Convalee. I think I was about seventeen, and it wasn’t richly rewarding, but I was something of an idiot then. This was just a little rougher.” I admired her aplomb. “Was the—” She hesitated. “—form of the punishment your idea?”
“We all agreed to it,” Sandalari said quickly. “We thought it would be better than killing.” Her voice caught on the last word, and I remembered that Sabaran had been her chief, and that she hadn’t had time to mourn for him, any more than Sheridar had.
Lyrafi seemed to remember it, too. “We’ll sing a waysong for Sabaran before we all part,” she said.
Ginestra gasped. “Sabaran’s dead? I thought all the deaths had been in the Resni.”
“What happened to the Resni?” I demanded, sending out a sensory scout to find Jemeret and bring him to us.
He appeared at once, resting a hand lightly on Ginestra’s shoulder, saying, “I think it’ll take those men a while to come to terms with their defeat, but we’ve started them blaming their leaders in addition to the rest of us.”
“Do you know what happened to the Resni?” I asked him.
He nodded. “I had a long talk with Krenigo before you and Sandalari got back. He wanted Zunigar to join him before they left the peninsula, and Zunigar flatly refused. The Vylk attacked the Resni.” I waited, was surprised when Jemeret smiled. “Zunigar’s no fool. He fought for a while, then pulled his tribe out of the Hive into the marshes. He probably lost about fifty men; the Vylk lost somewhat less, but they knew better than to try their luck against the swamp and left to get the Ilto.”
“They’ll have weapons when they get home,” Sandalari said. “Will they come against us again?”
“I doubt it,” Jemeret answered. “There will be some internal struggles for leadership which ought to consume enough time so they can begin to live with their defeat.”
“And they have to live with the fact that they attacked and captured a noncombatant tribe,” I said. “Now they know the penalty for that—ignominy. They have a lot of ignominy to work off, but they can do it if they choose to.”
There was a shout that someone had seen Zunigar and some of the Resni approaching. We all got up and went to meet him. Mounted on tivongs that looked lathered, as if they’d been ridden hard to get there, the Lord of the Resni was now sitting staring in astonishment at the parade of disarmed and in some cases disattired men starting their trek home.
He rode up to us, his boyish grin pulling at the corners of a mouth that I suspected had been quite grim recently. “Have I missed the war?” he asked, bowing his head to me.
“No war, just a lesson,” I said to him, and Jemeret told him in a few words what had occurred.
Zunigar roared with laughter, then sobered. “Where’s Krenigo?”
“He’s by that tent,” I said, pointing.
Zunigar looked at the ring of guards, then back at us. “I want him,” he said.
“I didn’t know the Resni kept slaves,” I said.
The man on the tivong grinned again. “I’ll make an exception for Krenigo.”
Jemeret caught my eye, shrugged barely perceptibly.
There was another shout. The parade of men halted. Zunigar’s tivong suddenly jumped and trumpeted, and the others took it up, then fell silent. Jemeret hissed, “Unbelievable.”
Every klawit in the world appeared to have gathered in the forests that ringed the stretch of plain on which we stood, and now that multitude of cats was moving from the trees beyond us, shoulder-to-shoulder, like a well-disciplined troop.
With a strength that staggered me, I remembered the Day of the Bell, when a small group of klawits had come out of the trees on the Plain of Convalee and given me the kitten we called Tynnanna. They’d acted that day with a uniformity of purpose so eerie that I’d thought it was a dream, and then events had drawn it from my mind, along with all its implications. Now, seeing this much greater coordinated action, it came rushing back to me. “They’re telepathic,” I said to Jemeret. “I should have seen it. They can read each other’s minds.”
“What are they doing?” Ashkalin asked wonderingly, coming to join us.
I’ve already said I learned that life keeps going while we analyze, that it washes away the fragile structure of unanswered questions. I used to want an answer for every question, back in the days when I thought every question had to have an answer, every problem a solution. Now I know that a question is asked, and sometimes life comes along and interposes itself between the upraised tone of inquiry and the competing responses.
Ashkalin’s question didn’t get answered. Maybe someday it will. We stood and stared as the great cats came to a stop, encircling us, and roared. I had to damp down my hearing; I saw a number of lesser talents covering their ears. The roaring subsided, and two klawits came forward from the group. I recognized one immediately as Tynnanna; even if I hadn’t known his every detail, the collar glistened in the sunlight as if it had been polished.
There was something familiar about the second cat, though it would be a while before I realized it was the one Tynnanna had brought to see Coney and me on a shelf of the mountain long before.
The two klawits walked in a measured and dignified manner past the group of us, past Ginestra, Lyrafi, and Sandalari, all standing now, past the people who had broken off their celebration of the victory, and into the circle of guards.
Ustivet and Krenigo, half dressed, weaponless, leaped to their feet. Krenigo tried to get a sword out of the hand of one of the guards, and Tynnanna, moving so fast I barely saw the motion, raised a massive paw and knocked his arm down. When no blood appeared on it, I knew he hadn’t unsheathed his claws.
