Hammer of Darkness

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “I hope this doesn't seal my death, dear one,” she continues conversationally, “but you're still acting human and refusing to face what you are. Still appearing on the nightly faxcast, as if it were common for a god to broadbeam the evening trivia. Still trying to persuade a very human woman that you are, too.”

  “Your death?” His words sound lame. “My death. Possibly. Possibly yours as well, although I doubt that for reasons I couldn't possibly explain.” She sighs. Loudly. “Don't you understand? They want you as a god. If you won't because of me, then They'll do away with me… or take all my memories. Do you want to take back everything you've given me? Do you want to become just like Them?”

  By now the tears are streaming down her face. “Let me have my memories, at least. Something. Go on and be what you are! You have all I can give. I can't be some god's plaything. And I won't! If I come back to you, then that's all I'll be. Don't you understand? Don't you?” He waits, again.

  “You could come and twist my thoughts, change me into a willing tool. But you don't. Does that make you good? Or just stubborn? Or waiting until later?

  “For my sake, if not for both of us, leave me alone. If you love me, if you ever loved me, please, please, let me be. If you care at all, let me alone. Let me have a memory. Before it's too late… already there's so little. I was stupid to fall in love with you, and you were stupid to give me back myself… and that's enough stupidity…”

  “All right…” His words sound unsteady to himself. He cannot speak more. Nods, reaches toward the contact plate, looks once again, only to see her looking down, and not at the screen. He presses the plate, and the screen blanks.

  His room is dark, though not so dark as previously. The storm clouds are dispersing.

  He walks out onto the covered porch, then down onto the hillside, where he stares into the distance toward a peak others cannot see. A peak called Jsalm. The sacred mountain. He shakes his head. Once. Violently. He turns, slowly, until he faces the small cottage. With deliberate and heavy steps he mounts the three risers to the porch, crosses it, and reenters the dwelling.

  A black glittermote circles the space where he had faced the distant peak before vanishing.

  The dories, tentatively, hop to the outer branches of the quince. The largest half-spreads her wings, then chitters a long note that echoes, that hangs on the hillside.

  * * *

  XXIII

  The two figures could be meeting on a mountaintop, or on a sea bottom, or in a cloud of glittermotes that would drive a man mad, or in the pitch darkness of the caves deep beneath Pamyra.

  Instead, they stand on a ledge over the White Cliffs. You've bet too much on this one. Not yet. Oaks take longer to grow.

  So do the bristlepines, but they don't challenge. Just endure. He's young. So you doubt already? Sometimes, but not about the potential. A vision of black thunderbolts passes from the lighter to the darker.

  Strong enough to take us on? Never. Two words to avoid—“always” and “never.” If you fear, why encourage?

  I don't. Just watch. The lighter one laughs, a laugh that breaks like glass against the hard rock at his back. Before the shards can reach the breakers below, he shimmers like the sun Aurore never sees and launches himself like a sunbeam into an afternoon that is not and has never seen one. The darker one picks up a laugh crystal, studies it, ponders. In time, he, too, departs after his own way. Neither has noticed the white bird perched in the nearby tree, a white bird with golden eyes and dark pupils that reach back farther than any bird's should, windows into more than soul.

  In turn, the bird flutters off the bristlepine branch, lands lightly next to the laugh crystal that has begun to evaporate, cocks her head as if to catch something within the frozen sound as it vaporizes.

  Beneath the White Cliffs, a thousand meters below, the golden-green breakers crash, foam against sheer quartz, crash and foam, crash and foam, in even rhythm.

  The white bird, larger than a dove, for there are no doves on Aurore, and smaller than a raven, takes wing, and with effortless strokes clears the cliff edge, merges with a vagrant mist that has no business so high above the waves, and disappears.

  * * *

  XXIV

  Martel leaves his own screen blank, but taps out the code for hers.

  He sighs, knowing there will be no answer. There never is, hasn't been for months.

  Instead, this time, a message flashes across the screen. FAXEE UNKNOWN. NO FORWARDING CODE. Martel disconnects, taps out the numbers again. He must have used the wrong code.

  How likely is that, Martel?

  He does not answer his own question, but looks across the room at the open window, and through it sees the light breeze fluff the hillside grass. Rathe moved? Impossible!

  Besides, changing location wouldn't change the code. Permanent residents kept their codes, unless they decided to delist. If she had delisted, the screen would have told him that and indicated that her personal code was unavailable.

  faxee unknown. no forwarding code. the same message scripted out.

  “Two options,” he mutters under his breath, not liking either. Rathe has either emigrated off-planet, which is unlikely but possible, or she is dead. How long has it been?

  Martel breaks the connection and stares at the closer stretch chair, the crème one. The farther one, the black one, is where he usually sits.

  Black, that's your color, not that there's much black on Aurore.

  Martel picks up the faint hum of an electrobike on the coast highway, with the underlying whine that indicates it is climbing the gentle hill toward Mrs. Alderson's on its way into Sybernal.

  So what do you do now? You waited too long, Martel. He has two choices, either to see if he can track Rathe down or to finish cutting the strings right now.

  Three, you can also track her down and then cut the strings. Martel half smiles to himself. That makes the choice.

  He walks into the bedroom and sits on the end of the bed closest to the wardrobe. Off come the sandals and on go the black formboots.

  He stands up and checks his tunic and trousers. Clean enough. Four stans before he is scheduled on duty at the CastCenter, certainly enough time to get to where Rathe lives—used to live—and find out what he can.

  Is it really? he asks himself. If you walk, it will take nearly a stan to get there. More. She lives/lived north of Sybernal.

  “So what are you telling yourself? That you don't have time?”

  If you walk, he answers mentally. “So don't, is that it?”

  Instead of leaving through the front portal, he walks out the back way and marches over to the quince. The resident dorle chirps once and quiets as he approaches. You're crazy, Martel.

  “Absolutely, absolutely. But you knew that before I got here, didn't you? Doesn't everyone?”

  He is not certain whether he is answering himself or an intruder, but it does not matter.

  Concentrating on the blackness that is somehow related to the field and yet not a part of it, he thinks of flying, of wings, and of ravens, symbols of night, symbols of that darkness.

  The darkness enfolds him, washes over him, and where he stood hops a raven.

  His takeoff is awkward, but with each wingbeat his flight is steadier, and he remembers to climb into the wind as he circles upward.

  The southern rim of Sybernal stretches under his wings. He glides toward it, straight for an imaginary point directly over the CastCenter.

  Sybernal, roughly clam-shaped, arcs around the natural harbor, which is used mainly by pleasure craft and the few fishing vessels that challenge the gold-green seas. The ring closest to the sea is the constant-width beach, from which protrudes several points, including the North and South Piers. Behind the beach is the Petrified Boardwalk, and then the town houses of the permanent tourists, interspersed with a sprinkling of restaurants and shops.

  Behind the narrow district of red and gold awnings and roofs that sparkle even without the direct lighting of a sun
runs the Greenbelt, and through the middle of the Greenbelt the coastal highway marches.

  The trade district and the residences of most natives and norms are inland of the Greenbelt, and the most affluent of those who call Aurore home have their houses on the higher grounds west and north of the town.

  The poorest live closest to the trade district, where the light breezes seldom penetrate.

  Martel lifts his right wing, turns more toward the west in order to cross the CastCenter directly. From above the CastCenter, the five-unit complex where Rathe lives is northwest. He had located it after she left the last time, although he'd never been invited inside.

  How can you be someone's lover and never see where she lives?

  The question is just another he cannot answer. His perceptions fan outward, to sense the thermals, to soak up the feeling of being airborne, and sense a turbulence. Darkness that is not darkness looms before him, building as he flies toward the five-sided communal dwelling.

  Martel simultaneously leaves his perceptions extended and builds his shields, walls of darkness, his own darkness, behind them.

  While he can sense dories, sparrows, grimmets, and other birds flying well below him, the air at his altitude is clear. Reserved for the gods?

  Martel starts to shake his head, but stops as he realizes he has lifted his left wing and lost ten meters nearly instantly. BEAR OFF, SMALL BIRD!

  Martel blinks at the power of the command, surveys the sky, and extends his perceptions further.

  Directly ahead, and several hundred meters higher, circles an enormous eagle, a golden eagle, whose feathers glitter with the light of a sun.

  Martel draws upon his own depths, and the raven he is enlarges, with wingtips that would cover a small flitter. He climbs, wings beating, upon a thermal he has created, until he is level with the golden bird.

  So intent is he upon his efforts that he does not see the departure of the golden eagle. But when he reaches the point where the eagle had circled, the heavens are vacant, the skies absent any trace of the giant bird. Probing the air around him, Martel finds nothing. He circles, slowly losing altitude, extending his mental search until his probes touch the buildings below… such an enormous black bird…

  … the black vulture of the gods… “Did you see that?” “The big black one drove off the sun eagle.”

  … has to be an omen… god of darkness… Among the jumble of thoughts he can find no trace of the warm and friendly thoughts he seeks, no sign of the woman he has known.

  His shape retreats to the classical raven as he drops to the buildings below, where he alights in a fir next to the complex where Rathe lived.

  Her rooms are empty. That he can tell from a quick probe. Martel the raven launches himself from the branch toward the windowsill. He skids on the sill's smooth stone, flaps wildly for a moment to catch himself, and falls against the plastipane.

  “You see that clumsy bird, Armal?” What do you expect? Martel questions mentally, blocking the thought from any transmission. Perfection from an instant raven?

  He peers through the clear pane. Bare is the main room. Nothing remains, not even the floor covering. The ceramic floor tiles shimmer with the cleanliness of recent scrubbing.

  He casts his thoughts into the rooms, but the sterility blocks any attempt at linking anything in the four rooms to Rathe Firien. Martel casts farther. The man called Armal is the landowner and the landlord.

  Martel touches his mind, feels the strangeness, and enters his thoughts. Part of Armal's memories are gone. Martel can feel the void. There are no memories of the tenant in number four. None whatsoever.

  The raven who is a man withdraws his probe and tries the woman who lives with Armal. A blowsy, wire-haired brunette originally from Tinhorn, she has no memories of Rathe either.

  Neither do the tenants in the other units, nor is there even a trace of such a memory in the scattered mental impressions of the guardhound.

  Martel turns his bird frame on the narrow ledge, forgetting he now possesses a tail. The long feathers brush the pane, and the thrust overbalances him into the thin air of the courtyard. “Skwawk!” Flame!

  He instinctively spreads his wings and beats his way out of the confined space.

  “Clumsiest bird I ever saw, Armal. Biggest, too. Except for that golden eagle the other day.”

  Martel knows the golden eagle, but short of tackling Apollo head on or sifting the minds of all Aurore one by one, what can he do? You waited too long, Martel… too long if you really cared.

  He does not answer himself, but flaps toward the trees in the Greenbelt. From there he can emerge as a man and walk to the CastCenter.

  * * *

  XXV

  To whom do the beaches belong? They are the sea's, the sands', and the land's. They belong to the summer, the spring, and the fall, To winter, to joy, to heartbreak, and no one at all.

  The flitter, golden, with a rainbow sprayed across the lower fuselage, hovers over the beach grass at the edge of the sand, but the air from the ducts still swirls sand around the five who tumble out.

  First comes a tall man in khaki shorts and blouse, wearing a leather belt hung with all the implements of the overt and professional bodyguard. Next comes a woman, wrapped in a robe that billows around her, who keeps her balance despite the interference of the robe and the softness of the sand into which she jumps.

  An older woman, sharp-featured, with golden hair, and another man, younger, golden-skinned and blond, who also wears a beach robe, follow. Last is a heavyset man who floats to the sand rather than drops. Once the last has stepped away from the flitter, the aircraft rises and circles to set down on the plateau above the secluded beach and wait for the return trip to Sybernal.

  Secluded the beach may be, but not deserted, not as empty as the golden sands seem.

  Near the base of the cliff, south of where the beach party disembarked, crouches a bristlepine. On the clear limb that offers a view of the sands where the five set up their keeper, chairs, and umbrellas waits Martel.

  Today he is a raven. Tomorrow, or yesterday, a man. But today, he has decided to watch the private party of Cordin D'Alamay, well-known wealthy businessman from Percoln, and rumored esper. Only rumored, for the gods of Aurore do not permit known espers to visit without preventive quarantine.

  Martel is not the only watcher. That he can tell from the number of glittermotes that flicker in and out over the surf and around a certain ledge even closer to the bathers than the bristlepine.

  D'Alamay gestures at one of the folded chairs, all of which are golden. The one on which his attention is riveted is the sole chair with the rainbow across the back. The sought-after chair rises from the pile, unfolds, and deposits itself on the sand facing the low surf.

  The heavy man wipes his sweating forehead with the back of his black-haired and tanned arm before dropping his bulk into the chair.

  “Very impressive.” The older woman, who shares the same eagle nose, narrow face, and approximate age, places her chair next to her brother's. “I didn't know you could handle objects that heavy.”

  “It's easier here.” He beckons to the other woman, who has stripped off the concealing beach robe to display a figure, barely covered, that would bring top prices at the Pleasure Mart of Solipsis. Not surprisingly, since that is where Cordin D'Alamay purchased her three-year contract. “Honey! You and Cort set up here.”

  Honey nods, and favors D'Alamay with professional smile number two—slight promise. Cort, the male counterpart of Honey, sets up his beach chair next to the older woman and Honey's next to D'Alamay.

  The bodyguard, impassive, surveys the surf, the cliffs, the sands, the skies, one right after the other.

  Atop the cliff, the flitter pilot also surveys the flat seas and the line of beach that stretches near level in both directions.

  D'Alamay takes another deep breath from deep within his chair. He looks at the sand in front of him. A small hill begins to grow. Soon the rough outlines of a classica
l-period castle appear, along with the return of perspiration to D'Alamay's forehead.

  Cort, sitting on the edge of his beach lounger, feet dug into the sand, purses his lips.

  “Whew!” he whistles. “Just like Castle D'Alamay.” The slumping of the sand into rougher outlines signals D'Alamay's shift of concentration.

  The heavy man's eyes settle on Honey, who views the sea from beside her lounger. His appraisal travels the length of her tanned body. Honey wears a minimal two-piece bathing suit, unlike the more conservative suit of Arabel, D'Alamay's sister. While most women of any age would be pleased with Arabel's figure and skin tone, Arabel chooses not to flaunt hers.

  Cort finds his job somewhat easier because Arabel is physically attractive. No matter that the figure and the skin tone represent the best from New Augusta's medical profession.

  A tenseness drops onto the beach, like an unseen dark cloud.

  The raven jerks his head from side to side, but can detect no new physical arrivals.

  More glittermotes flicker around the boulder behind the D'Alamay party and above the point where the waves begin to crest before they break. Honey. Come here!

  The mental command from D'Alamay is faint but clear. Honey's cold gray eyes glaze over momentarily, but she shakes her head, and the compulsion. Come here!

  “Whatever you're doing, Cordin, stop it!” Her cold eyes again glaze over.

  “Remember who owns your contract.” D'Alamay smiles, showing too much tooth. Come here. Take off your suit.

  “No,” Honey says to the unspoken command. Her voice shakes. “I won't.”

  Perspiration beads on D'Alamay's forehead. Come here… take off your suit.

  Honey turns, takes one step toward D'Alamay, almost within his arm's reach. “No!” Yes! Now! “No…”

  Yes. Now, take it off… that's it… like that… Slowly, slowly. Honey's right hand reaches to the knot at the back of her neck. Jerkily her hand tugs at it. The cords loosen, and she lets the halter fall away into the breeze. Both arms drop to her sides. Now the bottom…