Ruler of Naught (29 page)

He struggled to rise, but his hands had turned to stone,
unfeeling except the blue pulse around one wrist.

He tried once more to open his eyes but the pressure on his
lids permitted only the barest slit, awash in fluid, through which he perceived
the flicker of candles on either side of a hooded figure.

Arms raised, something golden glinted:
clash
!

“Hear me, you whom my soul loves,”
said a familiar
voice.

Jaim.

Identifying the figure steadied Ivard, and he relaxed back
in his bunk.

It’s Jaim, and he’s doing something religious.

Jaim did religious things most every day, though seldom with
the candles and never before with a hood over his head. Or was something really
over his head?

Ivard tried to look more closely, but something was wrong
with his eyes. They itched when he tried to open them, so he subsided. He
didn’t care anyway.

For the third time the cymbals clashed, a sweet sound that
Ivard found comforting. He listened with pleasure until the faint ringing had
completely disappeared.

“See me, you whom my soul loves.”
And a brightness
flickered against Ivard’s eyelids, followed by the sharp tang of incense.

The green scent filled Ivard’s lungs, sending runnels of
tiny blue fire inside him.

It was good to be here like this, better than the
dispensary. In there he was closed in, and it got boring, but here he felt a
kind of current, and he floated somewhere.

“Where do you wander now, you whom my soul loves, in the
light of paradise?” Jaim’s voice seemed to come from everywhere.

Paradise... what was that? Lots of places seemed to have
that name.
Rifthaven,
Ivard thought hazily as he drifted upward.
We’re
rich now. We can buy anything. That’s Paradise.

Then a whisper somewhere just behind his head drew his
attention. Was that Jaim?

No, he could hear Jaim: “The cleansing flame did I give
you, yet still I hear your voice and feel your gaze... ”

The whisper behind Ivard carried a feeling of urgency. Was
something wrong with the ship?

Because he could see the whole ship now, including the
white heat of the engines driving them silently through the void. He could see
inside the ship, too, only it wasn’t like watching a vid, it was like feeling
flames. Pale ones, bright ones.

The whisperers were watching the brightest two flames.

When Ivard turned his attention that way, he became aware of
the triple watchers from his dreams. All of them were drawn ineluctably toward
the glow.

Chaos.

That was the double whisper. Ivard glimpsed a flickering image,
repeated many times over. He fought to bring it into focus and for a moment he
saw the captain’s cabin, things strewn or smashed, bright red smears on walls
and deck.

The vision disappeared and Ivard heard mingled harsh breathing,
heard hearts pumping blood through two bodies locked in bone-wrenching
struggle.

Rage-without-fi...

It was a question, but he couldn’t answer, not with the
sound of blood filling his ears, and the heat that radiated past him like the
singe from the Tarkans’ jacs.

Ivard saw the flickering image again as the bodies sprang
apart, one of them stumbling against the shadowy shape of a bulkhead.

Lokri—that’s Lokri.

The comtech straightened up slowly, sweat-dripping hair
hanging in his wide silver eyes, and in his hand was a dagger.

He’s afraid for his life
, Ivard thought. His own
heartbeat hammered counterpoint.

Lokri pulled back his arm, struck. In a blur of movement the
captain feinted bare-handed, blocked the forward stroke of the knife with a
crack that Ivard felt like lightning through his brain.

Lokri gasped, dropping the knife and clutching his forearm.
Vi’ya grabbed up the knife from the deck, then slashed it down Lokri’s body in
one swift movement. Ivard watched with helpless terror—but Lokri did not die.
With the other hand the captain pulled Lokri’s shirt away from his bruised and
blood-smeared flesh.

Lokri’s head jerked up and he tried to free himself, just to
meet a powerful openhanded slap from Vi’ya’s palm that sent him reeling back
against a bulkhead.

“We are taught that love is stronger than death, and more
enduring than flame,”
Jaim’s voice intoned somewhere behind Ivard, and
again the cymbals rang.

The captain backhanded Lokri across the other side of his
face, and he landed flat on the deck, his arms outflung. She jammed the knife
into a the frame of a picture, and then she was on him.

Ivard tried to move away, to go back to Jaim and his
candles, but the watchers forced him to stay: the two whisperers giving him
flickering multiple images, the silent three sending sounds, and beyond sounds,
a sense of touch so vast and terrible that Ivard’s mind was paralyzed.

Ivard felt the susurrus of flesh over flesh, the salty sting
of a hot tongue as the captain licked slowly, slowly, the hollow of Lokri’s
throat, tasted blood and sweat.

She was brown skin over cat muscles, her long back scarred
under the drift of silky black hair. Her fingers dug into Lokri’s outflung arms.
His hands went rigid, clutching at air, when the seeking mouth moved down over
his chest, showed teeth. Blood rushed and sang, sweeping away Ivard’s own
terror in a cataract of rage-driven passion.

“We are taught that love is stronger than death, and more
enduring than flame. The waters of Ending cannot drown it, nor the Void claim
it,”
Jaim chanted far away in the background.

The scents of fear and desire mingled with the hot copper
taste of blood. Vi’ya sank her teeth into his belly, just to the threshold
point of pain. Lokri’s eyes closed: his pain, and desire, lanced through the
watchers like jac-fire.

No sound beyond the heartbeats and the harsh crescendo of
mingled breathing as the bodies suddenly locked, bound all around by her long
black hair.

The whisperers said:
Cessation in joining?

Once again Ivard missed the meaning of the question. Blood
pounded through his brain, then suddenly diminished into darkness. The
watchers abruptly left, and Ivard cried out frantically after them.

He was alone, and something suffocated him. But who could
help? Was Lokri dying? He struggled to find his body again, and almost had it,
guided by a banner of fire round his wrist. But then the darkness shimmered
even around that.

The last thing he was aware of was the sound of cymbals, and
Jaim’s voice, soft and steady:

“We are taught that love is stronger than death, and more
enduring than flame. Turn your eyes from me, beloved, and go hence in peace. If
exists a Paradise, then await me there.”

Ivard heard Lokri cry out in anguish, and spiraled down into
the darkness.

As they rounded a corner in the second sublevel of the
Palace Major, something shimmered out of the wall near the feet of Anaris’s
Tarkan escort. The guard’s grip tightened on his weapon, his gaze flicking
toward Anaris, who did not hide his amusement. The Tarkan marched on, fingers
white on his jac. It undoubtedly didn’t help that the lights were set low for
the nightwatch, leaving the corridors indistinct and corners obscure with
unquiet shadows.

Anaris glanced at the Bori stumping alongside him. The
lighting had been Morrighon’s suggestion. After he arranged to deflect
Barrodagh’s wrath from the computer tech, Ferrasin had been only too willing to
report that the lighting cycles were a part of the palace computer’s
programming not safe to tamper with.
My Bori scuttler was a terrible mistake
on Barrodagh’s part.

The report of Anaris’s first encounter with the haunting had
spread rapidly. Now the Tarkans were beginning to treat him as more than the
conditional heir, although never in the presence of the Avatar. This encounter
would merely strengthen the rumors.

The Tarkan paused before a scuffed wood-paneled door.
Morrighon reached past him and tabbed the annunciator, and the door swung open.

“Wait here,” Anaris said to the Tarkan. He entered
Morrighon’s quarters, followed by the Bori.

Inside, Anaris looked around. The small suite was almost
painfully neat: a long, plain desk against one wall was piled with
geometrically precise stacks of paper and carefully arranged datachips, the
chair drawn up in the leg well at an exact angle. The other furniture in the
room—a few chairs and a low table—were also placed with geometric accuracy.

Anaris looked through the opening into Morrighon’s sleeping
room. Arranged on a low shelf within easy reach of the bed was a row of at
least ten communicators, each with a color-coded band of dyplast around it. They
were all live, and the whisper of voices from them made the room seem crowded.

Interesting
. Although Morrighon’s promotion had given
him a compad, he had kept the communicators issued to lower-ranking Catennach.
Why?

Something else caught his eye. The pillow on the bed was on
the end jutting into the room, not against the wall, where two slightly shiny
patches, faint greasy stains, confirmed that Morrighon slept with his feet
against the wall, and his head facing the door.

Confidence, or mere eccentricity?
Anaris knew he
could never sleep in so exposed a position. He eyed Morrighon as he returned to
the sitting room and seated himself in the best chair, near the low table. His
assumptions about his secretary were undergoing yet another adjustment. The
past weeks had already shown depths that the Bori had concealed very well. Here
was another layer revealed.
Is that why I’m here?
The thought of a
Catennach summoning a Lord amused him with its strangeness.

Morrighon stood respectfully opposite Anaris until the
Dol’jharian motioned him to sit.

“We can speak freely here, lord,” said the Bori. “The words
the listeners hear will not be those we speak. Indeed, what they hear will
implicate Nyzherian, one of Barrodagh’s close allies.”

Anaris raised an eyebrow. “Ferrasin.” It was not quite a
question.

Morrighon smiled in acknowledgment. “Your protection of him
has advanced us a great deal.”

Anaris stared at Morrighon. The claim implicit in the word
“us” was an astonishingly bold statement to make, even as true as it was.
You
have made your decision, it seems, and I must make mine.

“Indeed,” said Anaris neutrally, after he judged enough time
had passed. Morrighon relaxed a trifle, and some of the fear leaked out of his
posture.

There was a long pause. Anaris could see that the Bori was
gathering himself to ask a question he feared might offend. Anaris uncrossed
his arms and placed his hands on his thighs.

“My lord,” began Morrighon formally, “it is needful that I
inquire on a matter touching the ancestors. Have I your leave, free of pain and
iron?”

Anaris snorted, and the Bori flinched. “You are well
trained, Bori, but out of the hearing of others, you may dispense with
formality.”

Morrighon inclined his head. “It is about the apparitions. I
do not understand why they seem to follow you. If... ” He swallowed, still
nervous. “If they were truly the shades of dead Panarchists, as the Tarkans
think, then that would be reasonable, but as they are a computer artifact, why
is that?”

Anaris merely looked at him for a time, impelling the Bori
to continue. “I ask not from mere curiosity, lord, but so that I may better
know how to exploit them to your benefit.”

Anaris relented. He couldn’t do everything himself, and
since the Tarkan would report this meeting—the listeners would know they were
being gulled, but would not be able to prove it—Morrighon had committed himself
to Anaris’s service. If Anaris failed, Morrighon would die—painfully.
And
you know that I know that, don’t you, my scuttler?
The Bori’s subtlety
pleased him—he might indeed be a match for Barrodagh.

“That is correct,” Anaris acknowledged, and told Morrighon
the story of the Krysarch’s practical joke and its consequences.

When he was finished, to Anaris’s amazement, the Bori
snickered, a strange, falsetto gurgle, as though he had a tree frog concealed
in his throat. “It is indeed the Aerenarch’s shade, then, even though he is
still alive. How wonderful that your enemy should be helping you to the throne of
the Avatar.”

Anaris smiled, savoring irony.

o0o

Morrighon wiped his eyes and took a deep breath, energized
and relieved by the heir’s acceptance of his jest. He found Anaris an
unsettling master. Most of his actions were those expected of his father’s son,
but at other times his behavior was unpredictable.

For one thing, Anaris seemed to accept him as a person,
despite his ugliness—certainly no other Dol’jharian noble the Bori could think
of would have so easily agreed to come to his quarters. That was demeaning in
Dol’jharian terms; and it had taken all of Morrighon’s courage to make the
suggestion. But the spate of information flowing from Ferrasin had forced the
decision: the Avatar’s son had to understand sooner rather than later that
Morrighon was fully committed.

Anaris was looking at him now, expressionless, his dark eyes
intelligent in the strong-boned face.

“According to Ferrasin, there may be even more to it than
that,” Morrighon continued. “He insists that since our meeting with the Avatar,
when he directed that the computer be spared so long as it continued to yield
information, it has been easier to extract data from it.”

Anaris’s brows lifted in disbelief.

“He believes that the computer can distinguish between
people, and deal with them according to their degree of threat to its
well-being. He points out that the Avatar is not visited by apparitions, even
though the Tarkans, when he is not with them, frequently report their
appearance in the Palace Minor.”