by Holly Lisle
CHAPTER 4
Copper House
CLACK-CLACK.
"Foom!"
Clack-skitter-clack-thump.
"Sssssssmeeeeeeeee…POW!"
Lauren opened one eye. Strange bedroom. Light a bit too peach-colored. Jake sitting on the floor in the next room, with Bearish on one side of him and Mr. Puddleduck on the other, crashing cars into each other.
She got a lot more awake very fast. Jesus—she didn't think Jake could open doors in this place on his own. They used latches that took a bit of coordination, and all the doors weighed a ton. But she figured she'd make damned sure he couldn't open the doors again before she dared let herself sleep so soundly. In this huge old place, and with strangers and danger all around, she didn't dare take chances.
She sat up and stretched, and he turned to her, smiling.
"Hey, monkey-boy," she said.
"Hey, Mama. Bearish crashded his car."
"He did, huh? He needs to be more careful."
"Yes," Jake agreed. "He got hurted. He gots a bump on his head."
"I'm sorry. Shall I kiss it and make it better?"
He nodded and carried Bearish to her, and she asked, "Where does he hurt?" She'd learned to ask—medicinal kisses applied to the wrong spot always drew an indignant, "NO! Not there!" from Jake.
"Right there," Jake said, pointing. Lauren kissed the back of the bear's head.
"Did that fix it?"
"Yes," he said, climbing onto the bed with her. "Thank you."
He sat beside her, a hand on her knee. He looked worried. "What's wrong, puppy?"
Jake thought for a moment, finding the words. "I dreamded about Daddy."
Oh, no. Lauren scooped him into her arms and cuddled him. "What did you dream?"
"Cars crashded on Daddy."
That wasn't something she had ever told him. It had to be coming from the memories Jake had gotten from Brian when Brian saved Jake's life by giving him a part of Brian's soul. Brian's gift had kept Jake alive as he and Molly moved between the worlds. And it had changed Jake in a number of little ways. He knew more words, spoke more clearly, used phrases his father had used…and apparently remembered things that had happened to Brian. "Yes. A bus crashed on Daddy, actually."
"Could you kiss Daddy and make him all better?"
Lauren hugged Jake tight. "Oh, sweetheart. I wish I could have. More than you will ever know. But Daddy was hurt too badly for kisses. Nothing could make him better."
"Oh." Jake laid his head against her. "He was a good daddy."
She felt tears fill her eyes, and she blinked them back. "The best," she said, her voice suddenly hoarse. She swallowed hard.
"Bring him back," Jake said.
Lauren closed her eyes. "Don't think I haven't thought about it." She kissed Jake's forehead and ruffled his hair. "But I can't," she said. "He's gone someplace where I can't bring him back. He's…far away. He's gone."
"I want to bring him back."
She hugged him tighter. "Me too, kiddo. Me too."
Copper House
Molly woke with the weight of the rrôn in her head, and spent the first bit of her morning with Seolar avoiding mentioning their presence, either outside the window or in her thoughts. When Seo went to take care of his business for the day, however, Molly decided that before she made any plans with Lauren, she was going to find out why she could hear the rrôn.
Copper House had an excellent library. She couldn't read a word in it, because she couldn't read any of the hundreds of Orian languages yet—when she heard any Orian speak, her brain and some low-level magic translated what was said into English. The translations, however, did not extend to deciphering text.
So she found Birra guarding the door. "Come with me," she said. "We have work to do."
Birra smiled at her. "You look magnificent today, Vodi. I am so very, very glad you…found your way home."
"Me, too—and that's a very polite way to put it." She swept down the hallway toward the library, Birra at her side.
"So what sort of work are we doing?" Birra asked.
"We're researching the rrôn. And past Vodian." Molly, in her time in Oria, had discovered that telling saved a lot of time—that when she politely asked, people who had been trained to serve, as Birra had, became confused and couldn't figure out what she expected of them, and didn't know how to react. She was not comfortable in a command position—she'd been enlisted, not an officer, in the Air Force—but she'd seen command done long enough that she thought she was doing a pretty good job of faking it.
"Vodi?" Birra sounded distressed.
Molly didn't slow at all. "Yes, Birra?"
Between them hung a pause that grew, and grew, and with every step they took down the hall that pause became more uncomfortable. From the corner of her eye, Molly could see Birra's mouth opening and closing as if he were a fish tossed on the bank. He looked both appalled and fearful, and in her time knowing Birra, she had never seen him look either way before.
"Spit it out, Birra," Molly said.
His head swiveled and he stared at her. "I have nothing in my mouth, Vodi."
Molly sighed. Colloquialisms almost always died badly when undergoing translation, yet she could not give them up. She said, "Tell me what it is that you want to say that you don't think I'll want to hear."
"Oh." The pause again, but this time at the point where it got really uncomfortable, Birra sighed and said, "There are so many other things you could do with your day, Vodi. Your sister and her son are here, and certainly you wish to plan with the Hunter…"
Molly raised a hand. "Whoa. In the time I've known you, Birra, you've taken the trouble to be honest with me. You aren't being honest now. You're hiding something. What?"
Birra didn't look at her. They arrived at the library doors, and in a stiff, formal voice he said, "I only believe, Vodi, that you will not bring yourself any joy pursuing information on the rrôn, or on previous Vodian. I would dissuade you only because I do not wish to see you unhappy."
"The pursuit of information is only rarely done in pursuit of happiness," Molly said. "You'll give me the information I need, won't you?"
"Yes."
"Fine. Please find me any information we have about the rrôn. Where they came from, what they believe, where they've been, what they've done—anything. I'll also need biographies of previous Vodian, and especially any records of Vodian contacts with the rrôn."
"Especially that?"
Molly nodded. "Especially that. I have something funny going on in my head, Birra, and I want to know what it is and how to stop it."
"Very well. Which books should we go through first?"
Molly considered. "All the newest information."
"How new is new?"
"Anything written within the last year."
Birra shook his head.
"Last ten years?"
Birra shook his head again.
"Jesus. Last fifty?"
"We might have something in the last fifty years, but I wouldn't depend on its reliability."
Molly glanced at him sidelong to see if he was pulling her leg, but he looked dead serious. "Okay. Do you know specifically of any references to contact between Vodian and rrôn, at any time in your history?"
"No."
"No. Of course not. Then how about helping me just find everything you have on the rrôn. And all the Vodian biographies—and anything else on my predecessors."
Birra consulted a file, and took a log that lay atop the file, and logged in the titles and reference numbers of the books he needed. Molly, looking over his shoulder, could recognize the difference between the numbers and the letters of the local writing system, but that was it. She needed to learn how to read. The fact that she couldn't frustrated her endlessly. She followed Birra through the rows, up and down the stairs to other levels, and finally helped him carry the two stacks of books and manuscripts he'd managed to locate.
They hauled everything down to a long table in fr
ont of the fireplace, and Molly took a chair. She indicated that Birra should take one beside her, and said, "Now, tell me what we have here."
"This first manuscript is Imallin Merional's Conversations with the Dark Gods, written probably five hundred years ago. I cannot swear that it will have a great deal about the rrôn, but it may, and will certainly be worth perusing. Merional has maintained his reputation for clear writing and honesty through the ages."
Molly nodded. "That sounds promising. What else?"
"Those Whose Names Are Unspoken. To the best of my knowledge, this is a compilation of knowledge about the rrôn and the keth, gathered by veyâr only a hundred years or so ago. As recent information, it hasn't yet had the chance to prove its lasting value, but you might find some worth in it, if you're willing to accept possible errors."
A hundred years old, and in Birra's eyes it was recent information. Molly sighed. The veyâr were not people who would have much interest in the constantly shifting, ever-updated news-driven world Molly came from. They preferred their information well aged—preferably with a bit of moss on it. She suspected that preferring old information and suspecting new information let them maintain the twin illusions that everything stayed pretty much the same, and that the world was a comprehensible place.
She, however, would have loved a hot-off-the-press, possibly controversial, untested, untried report from a team of anthropologists, biologists, and social scientists who had been dissecting the rrôn and their society for the past five or ten years and who had gathered all the latest dirt into one thick, boring, multisyllabic assessment that would, somewhere in the heart of it, tell her why she could hear the bastards thinking, why she felt a secret, unspeakable, uncanny urge to go running out into the open spaces to scream, "Hey, I'm one of you guys," at them…and what the hell she was supposed to do about it.
Birra listed the other books and manuscripts for her—Life of the Vodi Elspeth, Life of the Vodi Melantha, Life of the Vodi Aki, Life of the Vodi Kelda. Travels of the Veyâr from the Lost Homeland. The Recounting of Imallin Galorayne. A couple of untitled journals.
It looked like it was going to be a long day, but Molly was fine with that. She said, "All right. Let's start with Merional's Dark Gods. Conversations at least sound promising."
She settled back in her chair, and found Birra looking at her, confused.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't understand, Vodi. I found you the books. What do you want me to do with them?"
"Read them to me."
For just an instant, the confusion held its ground. Then the tiniest look of relief appeared in Birra's eyes, and he said, "You want me to read them to you?"
"I can't read—at least, not these. I read in my own language just fine."
"But when you look at these books I got for you, you do not see words? You cannot understand them…at all?"
"Not so much as a word," Molly said. "That's something I'm going to have to remedy, but for now, I need a reader. And that reader is going to be you…because I know I can trust you to be honest with me. Right?"
"Of course, Vodi," Birra said. But the tiny edge of relief didn't go away.
She wondered what was in the books that he didn't want her to find out. Whatever it was, she was certain that she hadn't managed to convince him to give her the truth. He still seemed to her just the smallest bit satisfied with the situation, as if he had things under control. As long as she couldn't do her own reading, he was right.
She would just have to hope that he wouldn't be able to figure out which information she most needed and would let something slip.
Birra skimmed pages, offering the titles of each, and Molly said, "Pass…pass…pass…" until he got to, "My Discussion with Baanraak," and Molly recognized the name. Baanraak was the killer the rrôn leader had gone off to find.
"Read that one," she said.
Birra frowned and sighed, but he began to read.
In the forests far from the village, Baanraak the rrôn agreed to meet with me, with an exchange of fine yellow gold for his time and the guarantee of my safety; we met as we'd set out to do, and I gave him the first half of the gold to prove my intent, and he did not immediately devour me, and so proved his.
Like many of the dark gods I have so far met, he is in the flesh amiable enough, and tells a good tale. He recounted to me some of his exploits in worlds above this one, and though I do not credit them fully, still he told them with enthusiasm and an eye for detail that made them fascinating to me. He agrees with others of the dark gods that there are no other men like us in the worldchain, that we are the only veyâr—and that is a thought I cannot countenance. Surely the gods, seeing that they had done a thing right once, would do it in the same manner each time.
Molly giggled in spite of herself at that.
Birra glanced up at her. "You do not agree that the gods made the veyâr well?"
"Wasn't what I was thinking at all. The writer simply sounds like a lot of humans I know, who either think that the only living, thinking beings in the universe can be human and that they exist nowhere but on Earth, or that life exists elsewhere, but it has to all be human."
Birra said, "Have you no other people in your world, as we have the Tradona people or the goroths or two handfuls of others?"
"We don't have any," Molly said. "We might have at one time, but no more."
"Then what about the old gods? Surely your people cannot see the old gods and think themselves sole owners of the universe."
"The old gods have gotten thin on Earth," Molly said. "They've either moved on or are in hiding."
Birra frowned. "I wish I knew how you had managed that. This would be a better place without them."
Molly gave him a sad little smile and said, "I think it's because our world is getting ready to die. Most of the old gods are moving on because they don't want to get trapped there when it happens."
"Ah." Birra shook his head. "Never mind, then. Perhaps we can find a way to tolerate them." He started reading again.
Baanraak seemed more honest than most of the dark gods who spoke to me. He does not claim any pain or grief over the harm he does, nor does he say he regrets the path he chose long before I or any of mine were born. He says that dying—
Birra flipped the page and started reading again.
This Baanraak claims to have no great love for his own people, the rrôn, but by his word, if I am to believe it, the rrôn have ever been solitary creatures.
"Wait a minute," Molly said. "You were reading something on the other page about Baanraak dying."
"Not at all," Birra said. "He started into a long and gruesome description of killing the veyâr, which I found offensive. I did not wish to read any more of it."
Molly stared at Birra. He was lying to her. Just flat-out lying. And whatever he'd skipped over was in some way related to her—or at least, to things that Birra didn't want her to know. Since Birra did nothing on his own, she had to assume that the actual restrictions came from Seolar.
But why?
She wouldn't find out from Birra, that was certain. She might be able to get information from Seolar, but she couldn't even count on that. What she could count on was that she needed to make sure these books Birra had dug out for her didn't conveniently disappear as soon as she left them. If these books and manuscripts held information Seolar was determined not to let her have, she would be willing to bet they would vanish before she could come back to them the next day.
She manufactured a yawn and said, "Birra, let's leave all of this for later, shall we? I'm being a poor hostess to Lauren and her son, and she and I do have things much more important to discuss than any old trips through ancient history."
She stood, and the air of sheer relief that poured off of Birra would have been funny had it not so clearly demonstrated his reluctance to be where he was, doing what he was doing.
He rose, too, and smiled at her. "Of course, Vodi. We can certainly do this another time, when you have nothing mo
re important."
"Right." Molly picked up one of the stacks of books and manuscripts and said, "Get those others, will you. We'll carry these to my suite. Seolar can read from them for me this evening, or perhaps another time."
Birra nodded and picked up the books. "Of course."
They carried the two big stacks to the huge suite Molly shared with Seolar, but she had no more intention of leaving the books there than she had of leaving them in the library. She said, "Birra, I'm going to change into other clothes. While I do, would you please go to get Lauren for me. She and I must talk."
