The Final Key: Part Two of Triad (Saga of the Skolian Empire)

by Catherine Asaro

  “What medications?” he asked warily.

  “I don’t know. However, judging from your behavior before and after you inject this drug, it has a strong effect.”

  Eldrin poured himself a glass of whiskey, which he now kept in the carafe instead of wine. “Yes, well, that’s why I have to take it.”

  “Your symptoms indicate either a neurological disease or an addiction. I have no record of any disease”

  Eldrin’s hand jerked and gold liquid sloshed over his fingers. “Are you calling me an alcoholic?”

  “No. Are you?”

  “No. I can stop drinking any time I want.”

  “This may be. However, your situation has triggered alarms in my systems. I should contact the medical authorities, but I have been unable to do so. I’m blocked by a security protocol called Epsilon.”

  “I know.” Eldrin didn’t actually understand Epsilon. Taquinil had found it on Dehya’s console and said it gave people privacy. Eldrin had the impression the files were games Dehya had left for the boy. He had asked Epsilon to prevent Etude from sending out warnings about his use of the medicine. He didn’t know why it worked, but apparently Taquinil was right, this Epsilon game did protect his privacy.

  He returned the dragon flask to the cabinet. “I have reason to want a drink.”

  “Perhaps you would tell me this reason?” it said.

  Eldrin didn’t want to tell it anything. He had developed a taste for alcohol after his marriage. He had been sixteen, well below the legal drinking age among Skolians. But Dehya was gone so much, and she never locked her wine cabinet. Confused, angry, and lonely, he had found that alcohol helped.

  They married him to Deyha, literally at gunpoint, and then left him on his own to deal with the impossible.

  So he drank.

  When he had first come to the Orbiter, Eldrin had seen a specialist, a military doctor who helped him deal with his “post-traumatic stress” from combat. Those sessions had been an oasis in the midst of his confusion. On Lyshriol, people treated him as a hero, but he knew the truth. He had committed murder. He killed two men with his sword and another in hand-to-hand combat. His people called him a man of courage and honor, but he felt like slime. Going to a counselor had helped. But after the Assembly forced him to marry Dehya, he stopped seeing the specialist. He hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone. He had just plain hated himself.

  Somehow, incredibly, he and Dehya had found their way to each other. They formed the bonds only Rhon psions could know. They were alike far more than he could have imagined. She understood his painful sensitivity to emotions because she was the same way. She and Taquinil became gems in a life that otherwise bewildered him.

  Eldrin hadn’t drunk as much then, but since coming here, he often sought the solace of alcohol. He felt ripped in two by this separation from his family. He took a swallow of whiskey, and it spread warmth through his body. He didn’t need phorine yet; although the euphoria had faded, he felt no symptoms of his illness. Whenever he stopped taking it, his head ached, worse and worse, until he went into convulsions. He knew he should go to a doctor, but he hated to admit his weakness, and the doctors would reprimand him for using medicine without supervision. They might even take it away. No. He was strong enough to deal with this on his own. He would manage. Somehow.

  To Etude, he said only, “I’m lonely.” It was easier to admit that to an EI than to a living person.

  “I may be able to help,” it said.

  “Really?” Eldrin doubted it, but he thought it charming the EI offered assistance. “How?”

  “Imperator Skolia is en route to the palace. He should be landing here soon.”

  “Kurj is coming home?”

  “It appears so. Will that help your loneliness?”

  “Yes, actually, it will.” Kurj had been staying down in the city, in the skyscraper where he had his office, in daily strategy sessions with his top officers. Eldrin hadn’t expected to see him at the palace at all.

  “When will he arrive?” Eldrin asked.

  “Within the hour,” Etude said.

  “I’m glad.” He finished his whiskey, savoring the haze of warmth it created. But he poured no more. Perhaps Etude was right, he depended on it too much. He made a resolution: he would stop the alcohol and phorine both.

  He would manage.

  Somehow.

  5

  The Ruby Palace

  “They’re claiming the attack came from pirates,” Kurj said. “Rogue marauders.” Even in the spacious living room where he and Eldrin had retired, he looked huge. He sat on a brocaded couch, his booted legs stretched across the gold carpet, creasing the pile. His hands were folded around a steaming mug of kava laced with rum.

  Eldrin sat across from him in an armchair, one with those annoying cushions that kept trying to make him relax. He was glad to see Kurj, but his brother’s news disquieted him. “The emperor claims the ships that attacked Onyx acted without authorization?”

  “It seems so.” Sarcasm saturated Kurj’s voice.

  The steam from Eldrin’s drink wafted over his face. He didn’t take a swallow. The kava had rum in it and he meant to keep his pledge. No more alcohol. It would be mortifying to tell Kurj why he had made such a resolution, though, so he kept holding the mug.

  “It’s absurd,” Eldrin said. “First they expect us to believe a hard-line emperor with years of experience didn’t know one of his top people had infiltrated a major ISC system and attacked my family? Now we’re supposed to accept that eleven ESComm ships went rogue and committed an act of war? How stupid does he think we are?”

  Kurj took a swallow of kava. “Qox is playing a game—a vicious, calculated game. If we attack in response to the Onyx affair, he will claim we started the war.”

  “It’s obviously a false claim.”

  “False, yes. Obvious? To us, yes. To the Allied Worlds of Earth? Maybe not.” Kurj rubbed his eyes with no attempt to hide his fatigue. He rarely relaxed his defenses and let anyone sense his emotions. Eldrin was one of the few people who saw the human side of his daunting half-brother. It had taken Eldrin years to realize how the rest of humanity viewed Kurj, because the Imperator tended to ease up with him.

  “It wouldn’t take much to put off the Allieds,” Kurj said. “They already don’t trust us.”

  “It’s disheartening.”

  “Yes.” Kurj’s inner lids slid up, revealing his gold eyes. “Tell me something more cheerful, heh? That’s why I came home.” He let his body sink into the sofa and made a visible effort to relax his tensed muscles. “How are Dehya and Taquinil?”

  “Beautiful,” Eldrin said. “Dehya’s tired, though. The Kyle web takes a lot out of her. Both of you.”

  “That it does. It’s like a quicksand, an endless pit.” Kurj shook his head. “It takes everything we have and wants more. I don’t know how much longer Dehya and I can maintain it.”

  Eldrin hadn’t expected that. “But the two of you can find a solution, can’t you?”

  “Just between you and me,” Kurj said, “no. I don’t see how.”

  Eldrin stared at him. What Kurj had just revealed went against every public portrayal he had seen of the Dyad. Although Dehya shielded her mind, he had picked up hints from her. He knew she was exhausted. But he hadn’t realized it was that bad. “What will happen to the Kyle web?”

  “As long as Dehya and I can keep going, we’ll be all right.” Kurj downed the rest of his kava and set his mug on the table. “Just pray nothing happens to either of us.”

  Eldrin felt cold. “And if it does?”

  “Your son is too young to join the Dyad.” Kurj spoke quietly. “Mother is the next in line. Or you.”

  “You know I’m not ready,” Eldrin said. Putting him in the Dyad was a surefire way to ensure the fall of the Imperialate.

  Kurj smiled. “Don’t look so alarmed. I’m not planning on dying any time soon, and I’m sure Dehya feels the same way.”

  “Gods, I hope so.”
Eldrin couldn’t bear to think of losing his wife. So much responsibility for the survival of the Imperialate rested on her fragile shoulders. Alaj had prescribed a phorine dose for her ten times what Eldrin took and it barely affected her. That told him volumes about how much her work tied her mind into knots, yet even with that, she had shielded him and Taquinil from the worst.

  “She is going to Parthonia,” Kurj added.

  “Parthonia?” Eldrin tried to reorient his thoughts. “She didn’t mention it to me.” He shouldn’t be surprised; Parthonia was the Imperialate capital, after all. Dehya attended Assembly sessions there, either in person or as a simulation through the meshes. He could see why she would go in person for the upcoming session; after the lapses in ISC web security that had allowed the ESComm attack, no one trusted the web. But it bothered him that Kurj had known her plans first.

  Kurj was watching him. “I talked to her before I came here.”

  “Oh,” Eldrin said. Nothing required his wife tell him first. He should stop being so insecure. “Is she taking Taquinil?”

  “She wants to,” Kurj said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. No other Rhon psions are on Parthonia to protect him, which means he will have to go to the Assembly sessions with her.”

  Eldrin took a swallow of kava, then remembered his resolution and set the mug on the table. “I can take care of him.”

  “Have your nightmares stopped?” Kurj asked.

  Eldrin wished he could say yes. But he dreamed of Althor’s death often. “No.”

  Kurj had the kindness to say nothing more. If Eldrin had thought he could protect his son from himself, he would have gone home in a moment. But he couldn’t.

  “At least Althor isn’t in pain,” Kurj said.

  No, he wasn’t in pain. He was dead. “I don’t understand why I have nightmares about him,” Eldrin said. “Is it possible I’m picking up his dreams?”

  “You couldn’t. He has no higher brain functions.” Kurj spoke quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  Eldrin struggled with his grief. “Maybe my mind can’t accept that.” He truly could use a strong drink. He glanced at the steaming kava, but left it on the table.

  A chime came from across the room, originating with an artfully rounded console that matched the gold and red wall mosaics, like part of the décor.

  “Jason, what is it?” Kurj said.

  Eldrin blinked. “Who is Jason?”

  “Earth mythology,” Kurj said absently. “He had Argonauts.”

  A deep voice came from the console. “A flyer is arriving at the palace.”

  “Jason is your EI?” Eldrin asked. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask the palace if Kurj had a personal EI here. Perhaps he should have, as a courtesy. Could you be rude to an EI? After so many years, he should know what etiquette applied to created intelligences, but none of it felt natural.

  “Yes,” the EI said. “I am Jason.”

  “My greetings.” Eldrin answered, feeling awkward.

  “Who is on the flyer?” Kurj asked.

  “Councilor Roca and her consort,” Jason said.

  Eldrin sat forward with a jerk. “My father?”

  “Both of your parents are in the flyer,” Jason told him.

  Kurj wasn’t smiling. “My stepfather never comes here.”

  “He is tonight,” Jason said.

  Eldrin couldn’t believe it. His father, who had refused to see any of his family for over a year, was here? He had come, even blind and unable to walk? Eldrin flushed, uncertain whether to rejoice or worry about the unexpected visit from this man he always thought of as the Bard, in honor of his glorious voice and the love of singing he had imparted to Eldrin.

  Kurj, however, didn’t look surprised. Eldrin’s anger sparked. Had Kurj known Eldrin’s parents were on Diesha and never told him? Gods, Eldrin hadn’t seen his father in two years. Kurj had no right to keep this from him.

  Enough, Eldrin thought. He took a slow, calming breath. Kurj could have forgotten. He had other matters to consider, after all—like an interstellar war.

  The Imperator was watching him, his mind shielded. Eldrin suspected his own emotions were far more obvious to Kurj than the reverse. He had never been good at hiding them.

  “I’ve been in conference with Dehya and my commanders,” Kurj said. “I haven’t had time for personal matters.”

  “Of course.” Eldrin had to accept that explanation. But his parents didn’t know he was here. If they had stayed somewhere else instead of the palace, he might never have known they had come to Diesha.

  At night, the temperature in the Red Mountains dropped sharply. Eldrin pulled his climate-controlled jacket tighter around his body. He was standing outside the circle of light shed by lamps around a landing pad on the palace roof. The flyer had just finished setting down. Its engines died, and an oval-shaped airlock snicked open in its side.

  Eldrin’s mother jumped down onto the tarmac. Her skin and hair glimmered in the lamp light. Eldrin started toward her, his mood lifting, but when she turned back to the hatchway, he froze. He had forgotten the medtechs would need to carry out his father. He stepped back and waited with Kurj, in the darkness beyond the light. A lump seemed to have lodged in his throat. After more than a year of worrying, he would see his father. Roca waited on the tarmac, looking up at the flyer.

  A figure appeared in the hatchway.

  Eldrin’s breath caught. His father was standing, gripping the edges of the hatch, silhouetted against the light inside. Standing—and seeing. He wore a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. He smiled at Roca, then looked out beyond the circle of light. It didn’t surprise Eldrin that his father had chosen to wear glasses; the Bard had always avoided more advanced technology if he could manage on his own.

  He knew the moment his father saw Kurj. The Bard’s posture went rigid and his expression shuttered. His mind became closed. At Eldrin’s side, Kurj seemed to turn into stone. He had raised so many mental barriers against his stepfather, his mood became opaque, even to an empath of Eldrin’s strength. But he needed no empathy to know that Kurj was no happier to see his stepfather than the Bard was to see him.

  Suddenly the Bard’s mood lightened. With a start, Eldrin realized his father was looking at him. Serenity flowed to Eldrin from his father, real this time, nothing induced by phorine or alcohol.

  Eldrin walked forward. Roca turned to him, and welcome filled her mind. Eldrin reached her first, and he hugged her tightly, his eyes closed, his head bent next to hers. When they separated, he looked up at the flyer and offered his hand. As soon as he saw his father stiffen, Eldrin regretted the gesture. He should have remembered his father’s pride, which among Roca’s people was sometimes all he had to buttress himself against their disdain.

  Then the Bard reached out and grasped Eldrin’s wrist in a hold they had often used when climbing in the Backbone Mountains, two fingers on each side of his wrist. Eldrin closed his four-fingered hand around his father’s wrist and braced his feet so the Bard could use him for support.

  His father let himself down from the hatchway. Straightening up, he dropped Eldrin’s arm and stood on his own. He regarded Eldrin steadily, and the lenses of his glasses caught a glint from the light in the flyer. Eldrin experienced the same odd disorientation that he had felt since he was fourteen. It came to him every time he stood next to the Bard and realized he had grown taller than his sire. He grinned and his father’s face warmed with affection. Then his father clapped him on the shoulder.

  Kurj stood back, watching them, his mind shadowed.

  Roca selected rum from the well-stocked cabinet in the living room where Kurj and Eldrin had relaxed earlier. Kurj dropped onto the brocaded couch. A robot trundled in with a tray of steaming kava in mugs shaped like the bells of sunsetdragotus blossoms.

  “We arrived on Diesha this morning,” Roca said. “We came straight from Lyshriol.” She leaned against the cabinet. “It took three days, ship’s time.”

  “It seemed longer.” Eldrin’s
father lowered himself into an armchair and exhaled as the cushions eased his body. It told Eldrin a great deal about his father’s exhaustion that he so obviously appreciated the chair’s ability to deduce his needs and provide comfort. Normally the Bard abhorred technology.

  “Space travel feels long to me, too,” Eldrin said as he settled into his own armchair. They had pulled the seats into a semicircle facing the couch. Even with everyone guarding their minds, Eldrin sensed how much his father’s legs ached. Sometimes he and his father seemed like two parts of one mind. But Eldrin had come to the Orbiter as a teenager, apparently during a surge of neural development in his brain. Whether or not that had made it possible for him to learn to read and write, he couldn’t have said, but he did know he had become less like his father then.

  Right now, something felt odd in their connection. Wrong. He sensed … static. The Bard was staring blankly ahead.

  “Father?” Eldrin asked. “Are you all right?”

  The Bard continued to stare, looking at no one.

  Roca turned from the cabinet where she was putting away the rum. “Eldri?” As soon as she saw her husband’s face, she went over and knelt on a footstool by his chair, bringing her eyes level with his. She touched his cheek. Then she lowered her hand and simply waited.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Kurj demanded.

  “It’s a seizure,” Roca said.

  The Bard suddenly blinked. He rubbed his eyes, then let out a long breath and lowered his arm. For a moment he just looked at Roca. Then he said, “I think I need to lie down.”

  Lines of worry creased her forehead. “Are you all right?”

  “Just tired. It was a long day, eh, with Althor and Soz?”

  “Quite a day.” Roca stood and offered her arm. He even let her help him to his feet. He seemed confused, his motions slowed. Eldrin also stood, intending to offer support, but his mother shook her head slightly at him. He understood. His father disliked revealing his vulnerability, especially in front of Kurj.