“Can you?” asks Apollo.
But Emily is gone, and only the glitter at the end of the rainbow remains, fading moments after she has left. “One way or the other, you win, Apollo.”
“Not if Thor wins.”
“No. We both lose then. A pity about Martel. Could have been a real help, if he'd only thought more about it. Too tied up in the worldly things.”
“I wonder. I wonder.”
“A little late for that, now.”
The two depart, each in his own fashion, and, following them, so do the demigods.
The clouds above the sacred peak are empty, and without the gods to shield, they dissipate to allow the faithful below to worship.
From Pamyra, the conical peak glows green above the shadowed slopes, for the one thing that differentiates the sacred mountain, besides its sacredness, is that its upper slopes are cloaked in shadow, unlike any other peaks on Aurore. Thor is not hard to find, Emily discovers. Hammer resting on his knees, the thunder-god stares down at the waves crashing against the sheer quartz cliffs that stretch kilos east and west from his vantage point. His location, across the Midland Sea from the Sacred Mountain, is scarcely hidden, though neither Apollo nor the Smoke Bull has ever cared for the White Cliffs. The Goat can sometimes be found nearby. “It was a challenge, Thor.”
The hammer-god does not acknowledge her presence, nor even the concentration of energy that the golden goddess, mistress of the rainbow, gathers about her. “A challenge, Thor,” she snaps.
“No, bitch.” He lets the hammer fall as he stands, and it vanishes. “No challenge. You followed the behest of Apollo and the Minotaur to carry out the execution of another of their enemies. You, who could rule an Empire, cannot rule yourself.”
“Flame, Thor. Apollo and the Bull rule Aurore. No one stands against them. Not Martel, not me, not you.” Thor smiles, and the smile does not suit him. “None so blind as will not see, bitch goddess. None so deaf as will not hear.”
“Quoting Martel won't help either, old blusterer.” Thor shrugs, unfastens the great bronze clasps that hold his bearskin cloak, and lets the skin drop. A gust from the sea wind carries it high over the waves.
A gesture from the hammer-thrower, and the cloak bunches, becomes a dark bird that spreads its wings and glides toward the calmer water out beyond the ridge of black rock over which the solid gold-green waves are breaking.
Emily laughs. The harsh notes knife the harmony of the surf noises. As she draws the colors to her the brilliance of the rainbow glitters, iridescents, mounts to eye-sear, a small nova at the top of the White Cliffs.
Two hundred fifty kilometers across the Midland Sea, the priests at the temple in Pamyra note the strange light and genuflect.
The rock under the feet of the golden goddess puddles, and she stands in a pool of molten stone. “Very pretty, bitch, but is one supposed to be impressed?” You talk too much, Thor!
The thought lances at Martel with the power of an Imperial battle cruiser. You have forgotten nothing and learned nothing, Emily, and for that you shall pay. Pay with your memories, pay with service, and pay for the love that has left your soul. Strong thoughts… And her sending falters. Where is my hammer, Emily? Where is my lightning? And yet bind you will I in darkness, and in time, and away from all you hold dear.
A small sunburst crashes against Thor's shoulders. He does not even bend, but darkness rises from the White Cliffs beneath his feet and through his hand toward the miniature sun that is a goddess. As the blackness flows toward her the pool of molten rock traps her feet as it freezes, holds her like a fly in amber.
Thor takes one step toward the sun that has dwindled to a rainbow, then another. Who are you? Who… what…
The clifftop is empty. No sign remains of the two, except three black footprints in the white rock leading toward a perfectly white and perfectly circular depression melted into the stone.
A single raven, not native to Aurore, circles, then flaps over the waves inland toward the lowlands.
* * *
LVI
The woman wakes, shaking, from a nightmare. The details fade even as she tries to recall them.
Her hair is long and black, her waist narrow, breasts high but adequate, certainly not small, nor large enough to merit the term voluptuous.
All her physical characteristics, from golden eyes to lightly tanned skin, from black hair to oval face, are irrelevant to her at this particular moment.
She does not know who she is, where she is, or why. In the starlight, she looks at her hands. The nails are neatly trimmed, short, unadorned. The hands are uncallused, but not soft. She looks down at her body, discovers she is wearing a light blue one-piece coverall of a luxurious material, but without underwear, she can sense, and formfitting boots a shade or two darker than the singlesuit. She wonders how she knows the colors in the dim light. The gentle terwhit of a bird in the tree above her startles her, and she studies her location.
First, it is night. That she had realized earlier. Second, she is sitting on the ground. The grass is trimmed short, and there is no undergrowth. To her right, as she looks through the darkness, is a luminous glow, against which she can see the regular outlines of other trees and of a line of bushes, presumably bordering a walk or path that leads… where?
She wants to bury her face in her arms and cry, but she should not. She is too important for that, she knows. She knows not why, but she feels it nonetheless. One moment she is alone. The next she is not.
“It's time for me to take you to your home,” says the man. A figure in black, he is no taller than she is, but well muscled, despite the swirling black cloak.
How can she tell what she cannot see? She does not know, but accepts it all the same, as she accepts the kindness in the stranger's voice. Perhaps, perhaps he is not a stranger. She stands.
He offers his arm, and they head down the path, which turns out to have a dim light of its own and leads in a sinuous fashion toward the glow she had noticed earlier. “Terwhit.”
She jumps, knowing she should not. “The tercels are the only nightbirds the Regent permits in the Park of Summer.”
“Why?”
“One would have to ask the Regent, I suppose.” The path winds up a gentle incline. The glow in the sky ahead increases, and the girl can see that the path is a pale yellow and that the border shrubs have small yellow flowers with white centers and are evenly spaced.
She knows that the man in black will be gone before long, and even as she trusts him she fears him. Even as she fears him she knows only he can answer the questions she has and cannot ask.
“Who… ?” she stutters as they approach the top of the hill.
“Am I?” he asks. He chuckles, as if he finds it amusing, but she hears the bitterness behind the sound. “Who am I? I could tell you who I really am, but that wouldn't mean anything. If I gave you a name you'd recognize, then I would have to take that, too.” She shivers, starts to pull away.
His grip is like iron, and she finds her feet marching in step with his.
“Let us say, Lady-to-be, that I am your penance and hope to be your reward, and you mine. But that lies a long time from here and now… if either of us survives. And you will not remember this in any case.”
The path widens as they come down the hill. The two take a narrower offshoot that leads to a small gate. The main path continues toward a series of towers outlined in ghostly, pervading light. She cannot turn her head toward the towers of light, but understands they are there.
At the smaller gate stands a sentry in dark blue. His eyes are blank as the man in black leads his charge past.
“You are Lady Kryn Kirsten, the only daughter and child of the Duke of Kirsten, first loyalist behind the Prince Regent. You have suffered an accident in your return to Karnak.”
The dark man smiles at her, then wipes his expression blank.
“You will find it has all happened this way, though some has yet to happen that already has. Remember, Lady-to-
be, do not marry.”
She stands in the courtyard, sinking to her knees, head swimming as the alarms explode around her, clutching at the memories of the man in black that fade as her thoughts lose their hold on them, finding herself left with memories of a long black tunnel and with new memories, recollections of a tall man, a forbidding woman, and towers. The last words, words someone else has spoken, remain. “Do not marry.”
* * *
LVII
From within the tunnel he has wrapped around himself, Martel can sense a spark, a familiar flame separated from him by the thinnest of margins. He knows what the spark represents, and wills his course away from it. Too close to that spark, and the energy he controls will short-circuit across more than a millennium. Without the focus he embodies… he pushes away the thoughts, locks his mind on the place and the time where he is heading, and the tunnel of energy trails him.
Martel pushes himself away from the spark, thoughts lashing against time, most of his energy devoted merely to keeping his links with his starting point open.
“Can't go where you haven't been, is that it?” he mutters, though he neither speaks nor is heard in the nontime nexus where he finds himself suspended, but his thoughts form as though he had spoken.
He lets himself drift forward with the tide, though that motion is an illusion, because there is no tide to time, and casts his thoughts into the real time outside his energy tunnel for an anchor.
If Kryn had been born when the Duke thought she had, when she thought she had, now she would be away at Lady Persis' School on Albion. Chronologically, in real fact, the Duke does not yet have his daughter, though she has been placed already. Martel shakes his head.
If you can only keep track until all the pieces are in place…
As Martel sets foot on the golden tiles, the pathway to the back gate of the Duke's holding, the one on the park, is still shrouded in mist.
“Halt!” The stun rifle is centered on Martel's midsection. “Halted I am, my friend.”
“Your business?” “To bring a report to the Duke on his daughter Kryn.”
“Daughter Kryn? The Duke has no daughters—” Martel reaches out, holds the man's mind frozen as he supplies vague recollections of a slender, dark-haired girl… seen from a distance practicing with a light saber, rushing by the gate on the way out to the park, smiling with a new sunkite, sulking… and finally leaving by the main gate with four trunks and three guards.
Martel finds his vision blurring with the effort, realizes how much energy he is using merely to hold himself in this place and time. “Oh, her… gone away to school.”
“I know. I know. The Duke asked me to report. Here are my credentials.”
Martel might have been able to alter the man's memories from a distance, but no feedback would have been possible. With Kryn's life the question, he had to do as well as he could.
The guard looks at Martel's empty hands, and nods. “Lord Kirsten won't be receiving yet.”
“Realized that after I'd left the port. Anywhere I could wait?”
Lowering the blue-barreled weapon, the sentry wrinkles his forehead, chews at his lower lip with sharp upper canines. “Don't know. Let me ask the Captain.”
“You don't have to wake him. I'll wait out here.” Martel eases himself onto the bench across from the guard box and ignores the stunner.
Didn't realize it would be this much of a drain… “He's up. Already been round once.” Martel senses the Guard Captain before the man steps from the nearer wing. Senses him and inserts the memories of Kryn, subtly different, before the security chief sees him.
“Captain Herlieu, this gent needs a place to wait 'fore he makes his report to the Duke.” Martel stands and bows.
“Averil Seine, Captain. From Albion with a report for His Grace.” Herlieu frowns. “About?”
“His daughter.”
“Would have thought Her Grace would be the one to get that.”
Martel shrugs. Even with a bogus set of memories, Herlieu was rationalizing to fit the situation. Obviously, the Duchess had a great deal of power.
“Ah, yes… perhaps it should be. My commission was signed by the Duke, and… alas, not knowing the ways, I assumed…”
Herlieu laughs, his voice booming in the narrow space by the gate, the echoes bouncing back from the high and totally unnecessary bluestone battlements above.
“Of course you wouldn't know. The Duke, bless his soul, signs all the documents, sits on the Regent's Council, and fine advice he gives there. But her Ladyship runs Southwich here. Still… he's the Duke.”
Martel bows again. “I understand. Thank you for setting straight the record and for keeping me from a mispresumption.”
“Sure she'll see you. Early riser she is. Now, what was your name?”
“Averil Seine. From Albion.”
“Just sit here on the bench, and I'll tell her myself.” Martel sits, letting his mind follow the Guard Captain, touching the Imperial Marine's thoughts.
Funny-looking fellow… why would they want to know about Lady Kryn? Lots kept quiet on her… him not knowing about the Duke, either…
Martel searches for the Duchess, not that it is hard. Her thoughts are clear. Crystal-clear and strong. He recoils, but not before easing in a thought or two about the Duchess' daughter. He waits on the bench. “You're to follow me, Master Seine.” Martel bows again and follows Captain Herlieu up the slidechutes to the tower room that views both the park and the palace. “You may leave us, Captain.”
“Yes, Your Ladyship.” The slidedoor closes. “You're a fraud, and soon to be a dead one. Master Seine or whatever your real name is, unless you can tell me what your game is. Then you might have a shot at a permanent lower-level apartment.”
Martel probes at her mind. Strong enough, talented enough, that she would be a goddess if she sought Aurore—and he is limited indeed by the need to hold his links to the future from which he has come. Does he dare to tap power sources of a local nature? Will they break down the insulation between him and the present?
“It's simple,” he temporizes. “You have no heirs. I offer you a daughter who will become Regent and Viceroy, who will become second only to the Emperor in power.” NO!
“An interesting idea,” she says aloud. “But why should I believe it? Much less from an unknown from nowhere?”
A lurid thought surfaces in her mind, an image of Martel ripping off her clothes, followed by an image of her ordering him tortured.
“I think you misunderstand, Madame. The young woman already exists. She will honestly believe that she is Kryn Kirsten. She resembles you, and, to some degree, the Duke, and she will be accepted as your daughter.”
Martel surveys the room. The Duchess has set aside her breakfast, and, silver hair pulled back into a tidy knot, peers down from the meter-plus bed platform at him. The marble platform is a single slab, partly draped in blue, the fabric shot through with a gold thread glittering with a light of its own.
Martel senses she is ready to push the red button. He reroutes the energy, but does not absorb it.
“Go ahead. I'm standing in the fire zone. But it won't work. Neither will the guard call.” She jabs the button.
A weak red light pulses over Martel and dies. “What do you really want?”
“A good home for a girl who deserves it.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No. But you will.”
He throws his mind at her, as much of it as he dares, while still holding the links foretime. Unlike the Guard Captain, the sentry, there will be no insinuating memories, not quiet manipulation.
OUT! GET OUT! SCUM! Her mental screams pound at Martel.
Martel reels, knees bending with the effort of holding the circuits diverted, the energies from future and present separate, and pressing convictions and memories upon the Duchess Marthe at the same time, without destroying her in the process.
He forces an image of Kryn at her. Your daughter… your hope for
the future… Mental pictures of Kryn, smiling, romping in the courtyard of Southwich, pictures of Marthe holding her arms out to her daughter, pictures of a small face looking up wide-eyed. NO! I'M THE LITTLE GIRL. Martel feels the sweat heading on his forehead. Should have been sneaky… stupid… never figured on this kind of strength.
The energy link back to Karnak future dwindles. He doesn't want to have to live the same millennium twice. He staggers, still beaming images at the Duchess. She throws them back.
NO! CHILDREN ARE PIGS. EVERYONE WOULD KNOW. NOT FOR ME TO BE DEGRADED. WON'T BE A SOW. WON'T LET THEM THINK THAT!
The temperature in the bedchamber, expansive as it is, has to have risen twenty degrees.
Martel shifts his probes toward the Duchess' nerve centers. DIE! DIE!
His shifts and the lack of images give her the room to counterattack.
Martel feels his body crumpling, and in a desperate effort seizes the power directly from the palace sources, ignoring the emotional impact the sudden blackness creates for the staff in all the scattered and endless rooms.
With the surge of renewed energy he slams aside her defenses and feels her go unconscious.
That done, he switches his concentration to the fraying edge between his own links to the blackness of the future.
DANGER! TWO CANNOT BE ONE, NOT NOW, NOT EVER.
He wrenches the two energy lines apart, somehow welds them separate, before the blackness closes in on him. Thud! Thud!
Martel opens his eyes. His is sprawled on the pale yellow heatstones of the Duchess' receiving room/bedchamber. Thud! Thud!
He wobbles as he climbs to his feet. His forehead is wet, and he wipes it away with the back of his left hand. His sleeve comes away with a mixture of blood and sweat. Knees rubbery, he peers up at the bed block. Head aching, he probes.
The Duchess Marthe is unconscious, but breathing. His eyes water with the pain, but he keeps probing. Stroke—the mental strain of his last probes has apparently triggered it.
Should he leave well enough alone? He shakes his head, regretting the motion as it drives needles into his thoughts.
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