The Ring of Five Dragons, page 22
part #1 of The Pearl Series
One day, six weeks after she had been installed at the abbey, Bartta came to her during Third Chime and bade her follow. Silently, they wended their way through the labyrinthine corridors, atria, and gardens until they came to a square chamber filled with three acolytes kneeling in a precise row. Garbed in the same blue raw muslin robes she wore, they all faced one way, watching expectantly as a konara in persimmon-colored robes of raw silk stood with her hands clasped in front of her. Riane recognized two of them as girls who were regularly tormented in the shower.
Sunlight streamed in through the intricate patterns of incised wooden shutters, throwing arabesques of brilliant light and deep shadow across the tiled floor. Upon the whitewashed walls were hung rectangles of cor parchment covered with the same strange form of Kundalan writing she had seen in her leather-bound book.
“Konara Laudenum, this is Riane,” Bartta said in her cleur, strong voice. “She is an acolyte of only six weeks in need of your . . . special instruction.”
The priestess smiled and spread her hands, but Riane did not like her face. It was shut tight as a prison door. “It will be my pleasure to instruct her, Konara Bartta.”
Doubtless sensing the girl’s reluctance, Bartta put her hands on Ri-ane’s shoulders. In response, Riane dug in her heels.
Bartta bent down. “Do what you are told,” she hissed in Riane ear. “If you embarrass me, it will go ill with you this evening.”
Riane balled her hands into fists, the rage burning in her. She tried to think of what Leyna Astar would counsel in this situation. She tried to think like a Kundalan, like a female, like a Ramahan. Instantly, she knew she could; the trouble was, she did not want to.
“I do not care,” she said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “There is something evil here.”
“Evil?” Konara Laudenum laughed. “Nothing evil can enter the abbey. Müna would not allow it.”
“There, you see,” Bartta said. “Nothing to worry about.” She whispered again so only Riane could hear. “All part of the training I promised Giyan you would have.”
Riane noticed that the other three acolytes stared straight ahead as if they had not heard a thing. In fact, they seemed to be in some kind of trance. She could feel the power bourns; they had been distorted somehow, interrupted. The intermittent pulse gave her the willies.
“Riane, I know how intimidating new situations can seem at first. But I assure you that feeling will pass.” Shima Laudenum was smiling. “Why don’t you come and sit beside me?”
And then Riane felt Bartta’s powerful fingers digging painfully into the muscles of her shoulders.
“Do as she says, Riane.” With a vigorous shove, Bartta propelled her forward.
Riane walked on stiff legs to the spot the priestess indicated, and sat cross-legged on the floor rather than kneel as the other acolytes were doing. When she looked back, Bartta had vanished.
“Now, then,” Konara Laudenum said with that awful fake smile plastered on her face, “we can get right down to business.” She spoke di- rectly to Riane, as if the other students did not exist. Riane felt an eerie shiver run through her.
The chamber fell into darkness, and Riane looked around to see who had pulled the shutters. She discovered that she was alone in the darkened chamber with Konara Laudenum.
“Where are the others?” she asked.
“What others, Riane?” Konara Laudenum’s hands wove a complex pattern in front of her. There appeared between them a translucent cube. As the priestess set it down on the floor, black flames flickered up from inside it. Riane held her hand out, but felt no heat emanating from the fire.
“That’s right, Riane.” Konara Laudenum’s eyes were gleaming oddly as she observed with an avid gaze. “Put your hand into the fire.”
Because she could feel no heat, Riane moved her hand forward. The moment her fingers touched the flames, their blackness disappeared. A fire like any other she had seen flickered and sparked. She snatched her hand away from the sudden, blistering heat.
“How did you do that, Riane?” Konara Laudenum asked.
“I. … I don’t know.”
The priestess pointed. “This is the Cube of Tutelage. It exists, but only in a way.”
“The way the other acolytes existed?”
Konara Laudenum’s smile was back in place, impregnable as the abbey’s walls. “Yes, Riane. Just that way.” She lifted her left hand, and the fire disappeared from the cube.
“This is sorcery/’ Riane said. “Bartta says that Osoru has been banned from the abbey.”
“It has, and quite rightly so.” Konara Laudenum did something to make the Cube of Tutelage spin. “But this is sorcery of another kind altogether.”
As Riane watched, the cube, which had been spinning slowly in a counterclockwise direction, began to pick up speed. As it did, it grew in size. From something that was no more than two handspans in each direction, it blossomed out so rapidly that Riane had to scramble back. When it had reached three meters on a side it slowed, and came to a stop.
“Get in,” Konara Laudenum commanded.
“What?” Riane jumped up. “You can’t be serious.”
“Get in,” the priestess repeated. Her smile had become a rictus. “Do it now.”
“And if I refuse?”
Konara Laudenum raised her arm, her forefinger beckoning, and Ri-ane felt all the warmth drain out of her. A dread chill flooded her, making her shiver, her teeth chatter uncontrollably. She wrapped her arms around herself without effect.
“Stop it,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Only you can stop it, Riane.”
Throwing Konara Laudenum a murderous look, Riane stepped into the cube.
“You see, Riane,” Konara Laudenum said from just outside the cube, “the Ramahan cannot exist without sorcery. But with Osoru only those with the Gift were able to practice. This created an artificial caste system that we discovered was intolerable. It led to the most flagrant misuse of power; it led to the loss of The Pearl, to Mother’s death. Nowadays, Kyofu has replaced Osoru. Everyone can learn Kyofu, given the right frame of mind.” She raised a finger. “But the right frame of mind is essential.” That repugnant smile was back. “The Cube of Tutelage is conjured for just this purpose.”
Riane put her palms against the slick sorcerous surface. “Can’t you just teach me Kyofu?”
“I’m afraid not.” Konara Laudenum did not look the least bit apologetic. She watched with a kind of maddeningly detached interest as Riane tried to find a way out of the cube. “I could tell you that resistance is quite useless, I suppose,” she said. “But from what I have been told, you need to find this out for yourself.”
The harder Riane beat against the translucent walls of the cube, the weaker she became. She broke off suddenly, stood panting, staring at Konara Laudenum’s malevolent smile. What am I to do? she thought.
“By the look of things,” Konara Laudenum said, “I do believe we are ready to begin.”
The atmosphere inside the cube began to grow thin. Blood pounded in Riane’s temples, a headache commenced behind her eyes, and she stumbled, growing dizzy.
“Excellent.” Konara Laudenum had taken a step closer to the cube. “Now we are getting somewhere.”
A curious image popped into Riane’s whirling mind. She saw herself hiking along an icy ridge. Plumes of permafrost whirled up into the deep blue bowl of the sky. She reached the base of an enormous icefall, and began to climb. The thin air tumbled out of her nose and mouth and, instinctively, it seemed, she breathed in, all the way to the bottom of her lungs, and held the air there. She continued upward, breathing in this odd fashion, and, even as the air grew thinner, she was never out of breath.
Without even thinking about it, Riane inhaled to the bottom of her lungs. She did not exhale. Watching Konara Laudenum, she made herself stumble again, this time falling onto her backside. She lolled her head, she closed her eyes to slits as if she were on the verge of uncon- sciousness.
She saw Konara Laudenum extend her hand through the barrier of the cube, pull it apart. The cube disappeared, and Riane made herself flop over on her side. Her heart beat fast as she saw the priestess draw three concentric black circles in the air. The circles moved until they were stacked directly above her head. Then they began to descend.
Riane exhaled slowly and, with great care, inhaled again, and held the air in her lungs. She felt the dread cold of the black circles as they approached her, then settled around her like a web. Her last thought was of Giyan before she was hurled into unconsciousness.
What had been done to her? Riane had no way of knowing. She sat on her narrow bed in her cell, her knees drawn up to her chest. She knew that Bartta was a sorceress just like Konara Laudenum, and she was terrified that Bartta would conjure up some way to crawl inside her head. Her stomach threatened to regurgitate its contents at the thought of Bartta being privy to all her most intimate thoughts, that she might find out about the knife and the book and take away her last physical links to Annon’s life.
She felt a sudden compulsion, running through her like wildfire, to open the book. It was crazy, she couldn’t read a word of it. She shivered, drew her legs up, jammed her back against the whitewashed wall, unadorned save for the image of Müna’s sacred butterfly. “It’s finally happened,” she whispered to herself. “I’ve gone mad.”
Silence. The beating of her heart, the rush of blood through her veins. But the quietude of the abbey failed to alleviate her terror. On the contrary, it multiplied her isolation, the panicky feeling that madness had at last claimed her.
Something was crawling around in her skull, she could feel it, like blood slowly seeping between her fingers. Again, alien thoughts rose, unbidden—images of mountain peaks, ice storms, cold clear nights bundled against the bitter wind, memories of running through thigh-deep snow, dropping by rope down sheer cliff faces, of burying two adults—Mother? Father?—while tears froze in her lashes, on her cheeks. In her mind, she screamed, searching for one—just one—memory from Axis Tyr, but they seemed remote, alien, as if she had read about them in a book, as if they had been lived by someone else.
This must somehow be part of the Kyofu conditioning, part of what the three black circles had done to her. She would not allow it.
She gasped and slammed her head against the wall until blood was seeping from it, matting down her hair, dripping into her eyes, pooling in her ear. Still she kept banging herself against the wall until Bartta, made suspicious by the noise, ran in and stopped her. She cried out, not really knowing who was restraining her or why. With a frantic twist, she broke free, flinging herself across the tiny cell, stumbling over a three-legged stool, passing out as she hit the blood-spattered stone-tile floor.
That’s all right, Shima Argolas, Twill take over now.” The tall, thin Ramahan priestess clasped her hands in front of her and bowed deeply to Bartta. “Yes, Konara. Please do not tire her; she has been through a difficult time.”
“How are you feeling, dear? Better, I trust,” Bartta said, smiling benignly down at Riane. But as soon as Shima Argolas left the infirmary, she sat down at Riane’s bedside. Her smile died. Her cold eyes stared hard at Riane. “What on Kundala do you think you are doing, damaging yourself like that?” she said, crossly. “Do you want to be put in restraints at night, because I can accomplish that with a snap of my fingers.”
Riane said nothing. She was wondering if the violence she had done to herself had managed to get those three black rings out of her head.
Bartta sighed. “And how are we getting on with Konara Laudenum? She is a bit much, don’t you think? She has the most unpleasant socialistic air about her, longs for all konara to be created equal, don’t you know. Well, that is only because she hasn’t been elected to the Dea Cretan. Doubtless this eats at her, just as it eats at her that I have gained control of the Dea Cretan. ‘Why does Konara Bartta have all the power?’”she whined in a passable imitation of Konara Laudenum’s voice. “Foolish Ramahan!” She snickered behind her hand. “Knowledge is Power and Power is All!” she sang softly to herself. It was a melody that had become familiar to Riane in the last several days as she had drifted in and out of consciousness. But, until that moment, she had never heard the words.
Bartta leaned over her, sucked in her lower lip, her teeth shining yellowly. “What am I to do with you?” she whispered. “How am I to train you properly when you continue to act so rebelliously?”
She gently stroked the girl’s bruised forehead. “Any more of this violence, and you will disfigure yourself permanently. We can’t have that.” She smiled that same benign smile she had offered up to Shima Argolas. “A modicum of trust, Riane. That’s what I thought we had. Well, you surely made a muodd out of me.” She rearranged the girl’s hair. “You won’t get a second chance, this certainly is true.”
Bartta dug in a cor-hide bag which hung at her waist and withdrew a tiny copper sphere. This she placed in the center of Riane’s forehead. “The Third Eye sees, and with that, Sight comes Knowledge.” Her forefinger circled the sphere seven times, touched it once, and it sprang open, making a star-shaped indentation in Riane’s forehead. “But if your Third Eye is blinded.” With the pad of her forefinger, she pressed down until Riane’s eyes crossed, and she groaned in pain.
“The Sphere of Binding.”
The infirmary seemed to have lost the sharpness of its dimensions. The walls began to bleed, the ceiling melting away, until the square space had become a sphere that pulsed and glimmered with a dark energy. It held them in its slowly beating heart. A murmuring arose, no more than the rustle of a breeze through tall grass. Nevertheless, it caused the hair at the nape of Riane’s neck to stir. If only she had Annon’s bow and arrow—or a Khagggun’s shock-sword. But she was weaponless. Worse, she was gripped by an odd and disquieting lassitude. The sphere around them flashed colors and patterns that were making her dizzy. She tried to look away but they were everywhere. The lassitude stole through her, robbing her of energy, mental stamina, determination.
“The Sphere of Binding, yes,” Bartta said. “A most potent spell, one not often used. That idiot Konara Laudenum tells me your mind has shown remarkable resistance to the Rings of Concordance, so now I am forced to take drastic safety measures.” Humming happily to herself, Bartta took up the open sphere. Touching it again caused it to retract, and she put it away. In the center of Riane’s forehead, a red star-shaped mark was slowly fading, but the spell had reopened Riane’s wound. “The Sphere binds you to another until the death of one. And death will come, make no mistake. It always does with this particular spell As the mark fades, so will your memory of this,” she said to Riane. “I was never here. You never woke up.” She recited a short incantation in the Old Tongue. “The spell I used cannot be seen, smelled, heard, tasted, or felt, even by another sorceress.” She was busy wiping off the fresh blood when Shima Argolas reappeared.
“Dear Müna, what happened?” she cried as she ran to Riane’s side.
“Alas, she became violent again.” Bartta shook her head as if she were pained to her very soul. “I could do nothing to calm her save give her a sleeping draught.” She sighed. “Whatever shall I do with her?”
“Müna knows.” Shima Argolas nodded in sympathy.
Bartta rose. “My time is not my own, unfortunately. I must attend to the sacred affairs of the Great Goddess. I will leave the girl in your capable hands for the time being.”
Sometime later, when Shima Argolas sat dozing on cushions she had set up beside Riane’s bed, Leyna Astar entered. She stood in the doorway some time, listening for something only she could hear. Perhaps she was making certain that Shima Argolas was indeed asleep before venturing inside. She made not a sound as she glided across the cool stone floor. She knelt on the other side of Riane. Her slightly cupped palm moved in the air just above Riane’s form. Wherever the hand went a kind of glow appeared for fust an instant. Depending on where the hand was over Riane’s head or body the color of the glow changed, now blue, now green, now purple, now orange or red. Leyna Astar’s hand paused over several places, most notably the spots where Riane had been injured. When she removed her hand, all traces of blood had vanished; only a few small and insignificant scars remained. She spent a moment, head bowed as if in prayer, her body so still that had an observer been present she would not have seen Leyna Astar breathe. Then she rose and quickly retraced her steps, vanishing into the labyrinth of the abbey.
Rings
Dalma, look what I bought you.” The Tuskugggun in the gimnopede’s-blood robes and woven-gold sifeyn smiled. “A ring.”
“Not just a ring,” Wennn Stogggul said, grinning. “It is the Ring you have coveted for—
“It is the Ring” Dalma cried. “The one I have wanted for months!” She plucked the ring from his fingers, and he swung her around. “But how did you get it, Wennn? It was already sold—to a very wealthy Bashkir. The maker told me herself that she would not make another, and that even if she did, I could not afford it. But now it’s mine!” She was laughing. “How, how, how?”
“I am that I am!” Stogggul’s voice roared through the regent’s palace, making guards come to attention, assistants cock their ears, attendants cringe. He ran his hands down to her wasp waist, over the flare of her hips. His tender parts began to swell at the look in her eyes. “Power breeds more power. I am regent now; I get what I want, when I want it. I can do anything. I have rewarded Kinnnus Morcha by promoting him to Star-Admiral. I have brought what they wanted most, the Ring of Five Dragons, to the Gyrgon. I have given them the head of Annon Ashera. What more do they want of me?”
Dalma licked the back of his neck, in just the spot he loved. “Patience, my love. The Gyrgon are tricksters. They will not be prone to give you what you want when you want it.”
