Starfire Saga, page 89
There was no real Com presence on Ananda yet and no eftel, just a few of the earliest arrivals of the Scuttlers, and they would have gone on to Ananda City. The MF personnel who had built the spaceport were off-world by this time. I thought it fairly apparent that Dolen T’Kelle would have had the place to himself.
I couldn’t sweep for people; a sweep would involve using my sting, and this could be another of Dolen T’Kelle’s tricks to get me to lower my shields.
I’d been able to mute some physical pain, but there were too many other things to repair, and I hadn’t wanted to use my reserves. I limped across the expanse of floor in the direction of the wide sliding doors. There would be a smaller access somewhere at the edge of the cargo entrance, and I figured I might as well try it.
It glided open easily enough; an empty warehouse wouldn’t need to be secured. I regained a time sense as the door slid aside to reveal a crisp, clear morning over the landing field. But there was barely enough time to notice the day. The landing field was busy.
There was only one ship, an MF shuttle that stood partly off its skids, as if the landing had been interfered with. There were four bodies down on the surface, and I had no time to wonder about them because the power flying around the field was so intense, it was readable even without my trying. I recognized three distinct major forces, and several minor ones. The major ones were all utterly familiar to me and would have been even if I hadn’t been able to see the people wielding them. I think now that it was attack by more than one talent that kept Dolen T’Kelle from surrounding and neutralizing any single sting, but I didn’t think about that at the time.
Dolen T’Kelle stood with his back toward me, a lone point of resistance, the flavors of his power terribly familiar and sickening to me. Jemeret was braced against the side of the shuttle, just at its gaping door, his face pale but resolute, other heads at his shoulder inside the doorway. I felt their power supporting his, the strongest note the clear, vibrant thrust of Andriel, letting her unfettered talent flow purely into the fight without any hesitation or husbanding of reserves. Jemeret wielded the accumulation of power with his sting, and Andriel’s sting danced along beside his.
The moment I realized what was going on, I struck, the relief at being able to use my sting at last making the process almost explosive. We could, together, I hoped, batter him down without killing him, even though in my heart I wanted him dead.
Dolen T’Kelle felt the added assault, glanced over his shoulder and, despite the effort he was making to defend against and destroy the others, smiled tightly at me and slammed back against my attack. He battered at my sting even as he flung his talent against the combined forces of the others.
Reserves don’t last forever. It was our major weakness; his, too. I felt people beginning to fade—Jasin Lebec and Coney dwindled first, then Sinet; Sandalari dropped away next, and then abruptly, with the suddenness of youth, Andriel’s contribution slackened. Sensing it, Dolen T’Kelle lashed once, with his full power, at me, knocking me backward as I absorbed and tried to minimize the blast, then swung everything he could against the only real remaining threat. I think the monster understood that Jemeret had always been stronger than I was. I think his plan was to eliminate my lord and then turn upon me, to whatever end he’d intended all along.
I quickly assessed my reserves and saw, now that I’d finally, finally, let myself act, I’d been typically myself and thrown everything in. My reserves were two-thirds gone. I think I might have begun praying for Jemeret, but that could be a construction added to the truth by more detached recollection. At the time, there was so much chaos, so much dizziness brought on by raw power, that I was probably hardly thinking at all.
I gathered to take the last of my reserves and plunge back into the battle, but at that moment Dolen T’Kelle threw another massive surge of power at my lord, and just as I’d been thrown back, Jemeret took the blow and was driven to the ground by it. Andriel cried out from the ship; Dolen T’Kelle gave a crow that seemed to strike at any hope I had that we could win. And while the monster might have wanted me alive, he clearly had no such compunctions about the others.
So when I saw Jemeret drop, I was riven by a terror unlike anything I’d ever known, deeper and more agonizing than my long-ago self-condemnation had been, more powerful in its immediacy than the love I’d become a part of and would now have to do without. I couldn’t lose him, not if there were any hope of saving him. Failing to save him, I couldn’t let him go without me.
All my doubts fell away. Perhaps they’d been exorcised by the flail of Dolen T’Kelle’s unremitting brutality toward me, I don’t know. What I do know is that, in the smallest sliver of a microsecond, I’d committed to the decision, as easily and inevitably as if I should have known all along that it would come to this. The fight was too hard; Dolen T’Kelle’s hatred of us was too intense. By myself I could do nothing except drain my reserves and die. If by any chance he could stop me from dying, that would be even worse.
Almost before I was aware of it, my hand had dived into the jumpsuit’s thigh pouch, fastening on my brow-crown with enough force to bend it slightly in my grip. Without a heartbeat’s hesitation I did the thing that to Jemeret had always been unthinkable, the thing against which he’d repeatedly warned me. If I was committing suicide by it, we were lost anyway, and I was being driven by a desperation so basic that I no longer cared what happened to me. I stung the starfire.
I believe now that if I’d had a single instant’s thought of wanting to kill Dolen T’Kelle, I would have died at the very moment I opened the pathway to that infinite power. But I was thinking only of saving Jemeret, of wrenching him out of the pit into which the monster was driving him, by throwing all my remaining strength and any other I could muster between him and the peril. I was barely aware, until much later, of seeing the monster fall back, roaring, furious as he discovered too late that I was not the lesser threat any longer, but the instrument of a far greater dynamic than his own.
Venacrona, who previously knew the starfire better than any of the rest of us, called me “an instrument of salvation,” but I think that I was only a determined woman learning to live by a new set of rules. What I did was no more than any other woman in my place would have done—any other woman who, being a lover, had danced with Fire.
I stung the starfire, and glory poured through me and out onto the face of Ananda. There was no way I could control the contact, no way I could command the flow of power that filled me with an ecstasy I could never have imagined and which I am now completely incapable of describing. All I can say is that I know the starfire agreed to work my will, gave me the strength to carry it out like a kindly master who finds her servant’s wishes worthy and therefore agrees to fulfill them.
Jemeret lived.
So did I.
So did Dolen T’Kelle, but with all the hatred and all the power burnt out of him.
XIX. Among the MIs
Revelations can be fraught with irony. At first I found it hard to accept that my long sought alternative to killing or being killed was as simple—and as difficult—a thing as healing and changing your opponent. We’d set out to do it all along, we just hadn’t recognized it. We’d returned to the Com to change it, and never noticed that we needed to change far more than merely the greatest empire humanity had ever created—we had to change ourselves.
I recognized that, and other things, as we sat in the conference room of the rollship Termalume on our way back to Orokell. Jemeret held my hand in his lap under the table, watching me with his soft gray eyes. Andriel sat on the floor at my side, her arms wrapped around my leg, radiating happiness. She was wearing Tynnanna’s collar like a necklace. I realized that she had drawn power from it in all innocence, just as she did so many things we thought impossible. She thought the power came from the klawits, not from the starfire, and once again she had done it without debate, without letting Jemeret know she was doing it.
She’d told us that she used it to reach me when they were on Zellume, but hadn’t thought to bring it into the shuttle when they came down onto the planet to get me. “It was only lent to me for one thing,” she said earnestly, “and I’d borrowed a lot of power from it. I didn’t know how much it had left.” We were still unsure how she had accessed that power. She might have stung it—even before I did—but she seemed oblivious to the uses of power in the ways we’d always been taught to think about it. She was completely untaught—not by the Com, not by the Samothen, not by anyone except those who hated what was most basic about her. What problems we might ultimately encounter because of that, we had no way of knowing.
Coney sat at the table with us, but Sandalari was in their cabin, lying down. In the end, I thought, she’d lost more than I had. In Dolen T’Kelle’s attack on them at the shuttle, she’d pushed her newfound skills past their elementary limit trying to help, and had miscarried as she exerted herself too much. She hadn’t given up the struggle, even though she was deeply saddened, but now she was mourning her loss in her own way. The unborn girl had been Dolen T’Kelle’s last victim.
Jasin Lebec was there, seeming even more frail, but at the same time, paradoxically, there was an increased strength about him, as if he knew that some unfathomable chasm had been crossed, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Sinet Coleby was with Mortel John. She’d been hurt during the battle, though not badly, because Dolen T’Kelle struck at everyone, and her defensive shields were still very weak. She didn’t know she had them until very recently, and as a result she’d only just begun learning to use them.
Lendo Dell was dead. He was one of the four who died during the battle. The other three men had been MF, members of Termalume’s crew. The five bodies—the four men and Keli—were in PMP in the ship’s infirmary for return to Orokell. I’d refused to allow them to be disposed of on Ananda. It seemed too much like throwing them away.
I’d been telling everyone present—the Orokell members of the Tribunal through eftel vid, and probably the MI surveillance as well—what had happened on Ananda in the not-quite-a-month I was in Dolen T’Kelle’s hands, though not in minute detail. As nearly as could be reconstructed, it had taken two full tendays for him to get us to Ananda, and then we were in the rock chamber for seven days. I told the story in a slightly less organized fashion than the rambling account here, because it was too raw. But I told it steadily, even Keli’s death, as Jemeret kept stinging me with a low level of love and support, punctuated every so often by another mental hug from Andriel. She was very young to be part of such a debriefing, but needed to remain with me, so we agreed to let her stay. I thought she’d earned that much, at least. I did not give them details, just euphemisms. Only Jemeret had seen what my body still looked like under the smooth cloth of the new jumpsuit I was wearing, and I was slowly continuing the process of healing it, even as I told the story. There was no permanent physiological damage, and therefore no hurry to finish the repairs other than to rid myself of the marks. Psychologically, I did want all traces of my ordeal erased, but not enough to drain myself getting rid of them. I wondered if they would slip back in and give me nightmares.
Just before the debriefing began, in the privacy of our cabin, Jemeret had kissed and stroked every bruise, bite, cut, and abrasion, every external centimeter of my body that had been harmed, saying, “It should have been me. I wish it had been.”
I’d caressed his hair, grateful, and disagreed. “I’m High Lady, and it was something only I could do.” Silently: You might have tried to kill him. We might never have won then.
When I was finally finished telling the Tribunal what I knew, Jasin Lebec, who was nominally chairing the debriefing, said, “In the normal course of things, we should now begin calling witnesses. Do you agree to that, Jemeret?”
I didn’t understand the conditional verb until my lord looked up at his grandfather and said, “Bring him in. If the starfire didn’t kill him when Ronica called it, I won’t attack him now.”
I cleared my throat and squeezed his hand. “Perhaps I didn’t make it clear enough when I told you,” I said quietly. “I didn’t call the starfire, Jemeret. I think I wouldn’t have been able to wield its power if I’d called it. I stung it.”
He shook his head. “I can’t entirely accept that yet. When I think about what happened to my sire—”
“He stung the starfire with the intent of killing,” I told him. “We know that’s not an appropriate use of talent. It’s what talentless people have always done to win. The old humanity always used a new kind of power to kill with, and the starfire won’t conspire in talent behaving in the same way. We have to grow beyond it, and we’re not there yet. The starfire didn’t kill your father, Jemeret; he killed himself by trying to use it.”
“I don’t understand, then,” Coney said. “Dolen T’Kelle killed a great many people. He’s still alive.”
“He never tried to get the starfire to help him.” I smiled at Coney. “It would have been much simpler if he had.”
“But when the starfire attacked him, it didn’t destroy him,” Coney protested, frowning.
I shook my head. “The starfire didn’t attack. It doesn’t. It’s not a violent power. I was wielding it, and killing wasn’t my intention. So he didn’t die.” I couldn’t say his name. That seemed to give him too much solidity.
Jasin Lebec had signaled to the crew to bring Dolen T’Kelle to the conference room. The eftel began chiming just as the guards brought the big man to the door.
“They’re calling again,” Jemeret said to me, his jaw tighter than his even tone of voice implied.
“No,” I said.
Jasin Lebec cut off the chime. The Tribunal—probably Pel Nostro—had been trying to call us since Termalume left Ananda orbit. We’d refused to let any of my team take the calls. They could listen in, but we had too much to resolve internally first, and it was a matter involving talent. Until we were done, the Com had no place in the discussion.
Jemeret smiled, letting me feel his approval, then stiffened as Dolen T’Kelle took a seat across the table from us. Andriel let go of my leg and got to her feet behind my chair, her hands on my shoulders, her feelings suddenly masked. I regretted the cessation of her obvious joy, which had been healing all by itself, and I hoped she was not afraid.
Dolen T’Kelle had changed, though physically he looked just the same. As he sat, he inclined his head in my direction. I couldn’t return the gesture. I was not big enough to rise above the anger and hatred I still felt for him. I would in no way have regretted his death; I simply could not be responsible for it. For my sake, the others had tried to find ways to do the debriefing without him, but that had been impossible, because there was still too much we didn’t know.
I trembled, gathered, controlled it. Something in me—perhaps unworthy—wanted to believe that he could suffer as much as I had. At the same time, my instincts told me he would not.
The shaggy-haired man seemed far less vibrant than he’d been, some sparks of energy gone from him, but all the old intelligence still in his eyes. It was a more impersonal intelligence, as if detachment had replaced ambition, and diffidence replaced rage. I’d hoped for regret; now I saw that was asking too much.
Jasin Lebec folded his hands on the table in front of him, a deliberate gesture, drawing our attention to him. “Dolen T’Kelle, you have been brought here to answer questions relating to the deaths of a number of Class B and C personnel and the abduction of Class A Ronica McBride. Have you any objection or reluctance to testify on these matters?”
“Absolutely not,” Dolen T’Kelle said. “You’ve won, and the winners always set the terms. If information is what you want, you have every right to it.”
We had agreed that Jasin Lebec and Coney would conduct the questioning. I wasn’t at all certain I could have done it rationally, and Jemeret was too angry at what had been done to me. So Jasin Lebec began. “How long have you known you were a Class A talent?”
Dolen T’Kelle smiled crookedly, an expression that distorted his features. “Your tense is wrong. I’m not a talent any longer.”
Jasin Lebec acknowledged that with a nod. “When did you first realize you were a Class A talent?” he corrected himself, unperturbed.
“I think I only came to understand it completely after Ronica McBride went into the tank,” he said, and I bit down hard on my reactions to keep from shuddering. “Before that, I’d been more of an idealist, a dreamer, if you will. My parents were Macerates, and I was raised to be part of the hierarchy of the faith. I always thought things I wanted happened because I prayed to the Preserver for them.” He laughed shortly.
I looked down at my hands, holding tightly to Jemeret’s.
“Why did you begin killing other talents?” Jasin Lebec asked.
There was no attempt at dissimulation or denial. Dolen T’Kelle seemed to think the answer should have been obvious. “They were the only ones who might have identified me or stopped me,” he said, “as, indeed, you did. I was tired of being marginal to society when I was clearly the one best suited to run it. I was determined to correct that imbalance. It became somewhat more urgent when you seemed likely to be bringing Ronica McBride back into the Com again.”
“Why kill the children?” Coney asked. “They surely couldn’t harm you.”
Dolen T’Kelle looked at him as if he were too simple to see the truth. “They were easier to take care of while they were young. They would just have grown up if I hadn’t gotten rid of them.”
Coney bit his lip to keep back a remark, then asked, “You didn’t really think you were the Preserver, did you?”
Dolen T’Kelle looked a little surprised. “Is that what you were thinking? Of course I never even considered it. Once I knew I was fulfilling my own prayers, I knew the Preserver was an impotent symbol of human desires. I stopped praying to it and started acting for myself.”
