Issola (Vlad Taltos)

by Steven Brust

  “Oh, right,” said Morrolan.

  Sethra looked at us. “Amorphia? How could there be amorphia there? It only occurs on our world. They cannot duplicate the conditions that gave rise to it without, in all probability, destroying their entire world.”

  I said, “I don’t suppose there is a quick explanation for that remark, is there Sethra?”

  Morrolan and Aliera looked impatient, but Sethra said, “The Catastrophe that created the Great Sea in the first place resulted from several fluke occurrences, as well as some nasty scheming and plotting on the part of Verra and others with her. But the fact that it failed to entirely consume the world is the biggest fluke of all. Amorphia is not something that is containable, by its very nature. To create it is to end everything.”

  “But Adron’s Disaster—”

  “Very nearly destroyed the world again,” said Sethra, “but the one advantage the gods had in containing it was the existence of the Great Sea. Had the Great Sea not been there, the Lesser Sea might well have destroyed all life in the world.” She shook her head. “I simply cannot conceive of the Jenoine finding a way to produce amorphia.”

  “Well, they did,” I said. “Or else found another way to get it, because they’ve got it.”

  Morrolan and Aliera told her about the river of amorphia we had found, Teldra and I making the occasional murmur of agreement. When they had finished, Sethra said, “I didn’t think they could do that. I still don’t understand how they can do that,” which was followed by an unpleasant silence, during which we all, I suspect, contemplated the powers of the Jenoine.

  “Are they gods?” said Morrolan suddenly.

  Sethra shook her head. “I do not believe so. Teldra?” “Not in any meaningful way, at least as far as how they see themselves.”

  “Well, that’s something,” said Morrolan, which was much like what I was thinking. “So, then, how do we approach them? How do we defend ourselves against them, beyond that we’ve been doing for thousands of years?”

  “Don’t forget the weapons,” I pointed out.

  “Weapons?” said Sethra.

  “They had whole racks of weapons. Mundane weapons, the sort of thing I think of as weapons. Things that cut, and stab, and make nasty gouges. If those bastards are so bloody magical, what do they need with weapons?”

  “Good question,” said Morrolan. “He’s right, they had quite a collection of them. What are they for?”

  “That,” said Sethra, “I think I can answer. I believe that, after establishing themselves here, they intend to subvert a portion of our citizens and use them as a mundane army.”

  “How can they subvert them?” said Aliera.

  “If they can, indeed, attack the Orb, then they can, at least potentially, gain access to the minds of those who are linked to it.”

  That thought made me shudder. For one thing, I was linked to the Orb myself.

  “Well, let’s see,” said Aliera. “Consider what we know about them. They are after my mother, and perhaps others of the gods as well. It is the gods who are protecting our world—I think I now understand a little how they are doing it. But what the Jenoine want is full access to our world. What prevents them from having it are the Lords of Judgment, the Orb, the power of Dzur Mountain. They attacked Dzur Mountain once before, and failed to take it.”

  “Barely,” said Sethra under her breath.

  “Therefore, our defense of these things—”

  “Defense,” said Morrolan like it was something foul. “Why not attack them instead? I’ve always preferred attacking to defending.”

  “I know,” said Sethra. “But you are still young, and may yet learn.”

  He glared at her. She ignored it and said, “Go on, Aliera.”

  Aliera continued, “Our defense of these things has to happen on several levels at once. We require the assistance of the Lords of Judgment, in the first place, and I should think we really ought to consult the Necromancer after all.”

  “Yes,” said Sethra. “But whatever we’re going to do, we ought to do it quickly. We don’t know how much time they’re going to give us. And worse, we don’t know where they’re going to attack.”

  “Yes, we do,” said Morrolan suddenly, sitting upright, and staring off into space.

  We all looked at him.

  “Trellanstone,” he said. “It all revolves around the trellanstone, or kyrancteur, in the language of the Serioli. They managed to find some, and they are using it. They wanted Aliera and me out of the way to—”

  Sethra figured it out first. “Oh,” she said. “Yes. I should have seen it at once.”

  Then Aliera got it, and nodded slowly. “Foolish of me. One of them was able to stop a simultaneous attack from two Great Weapons. It should never have been capable of stopping even one of them. I was so annoyed, I didn’t stop to wonder how it managed it. Yes. There is only one way it could have done that. How annoying.”

  Of course, I could have sat there for the rest of my life and never figured it out, but Sethra realized I was confused and took pity on me.

  “Trellanstone,” she said. “It is useful for manipulating amorphia—raw chaos. So far as I know, there are two places in the universe where one can find amorphia, and both of them are on this world. The Great Sea of Amorphia is protected by the Orb, which is protected by the Empress, who is protected by the Lords of Judgment, by Dzur Mountain, and by the Orb.”

  “Ah,” I said. “And so now we know, I’m sure, where they got the amorphia from in the first place.”

  “Yes,” said Sethra. “We used the power of the Greater Sea to protect the Orb, and used the Orb to protect the Greater Sea. It never occurred to me that they might tap into the Lesser Sea, because it isn’t connected to the Orb. But they have somehow tapped into it. They have been draining it, and learning to control it with the trellanstone, and that could give them what they need to attack the Orb.”

  “The Lesser Sea,” I said. “Well. Can’t we just cut it off from them?”

  Sethra nodded. “Yes. And we will. I can do so myself. But then what?”

  “Then,” said Morrolan, “they will use their trellanstone to attempt a permanent link with it, much as the Orb is linked to the Great Sea. If they achieve that, they will, in effect, have the seeds of their own Empire on our world.”

  I nodded. “Yes. And after that things could get all kinds of difficult, couldn’t they?”

  “They could indeed,” said Sethra. “We must act at once. Every moment that passes, they draw more energy, and become stronger, and it will make it harder to resist them. We must cut off their flow, and then be prepared to make certain they cannot re-establish it. That means facing them down right there, at the Lesser Sea of Chaos.”

  “Adron’s Disaster,” said Morrolan.

  Aliera nodded. “I was afraid Daddy would cause trouble sooner or later.”

  14

  CONVERSATIONS WITH THE UNDEAD

  I was glad Teldra and Loiosh were there, because I didn’t want to be alone.

  Morrolan, Sethra, and Aliera had left us, continuing their discussions as to who should speak with whom about what—Morrolan to speak with the Empress, Aliera to talk to the Necromancer, and so on, and what they should tell them. Dzur Mountain is a big and lonely place, and some of that feeling rests in each chamber, no matter how small and warm; with little effort I could imagine the nightmares from my childhood creeping out of the corners—especially since this was a place where some of the nightmares were real. And it didn’t help that it required very little imagination to see Jenoine appearing out of nowhere; from all evidence, that was a very real possibility.

  Teldra and I spoke for a while about the meal, and the furnishings of Dzur Mountain, and other things. I wanted to ask her about Cawti, but I refrained. Instead I said, “Do you think I was out of line, Teldra?”

  “My lord?”

  “My, uh, blowup at Morrolan and Aliera. Was I out of line?”

  “I don’t believe it is my place
to say, my lord.”

  “Heh. In other words, yes.”

  She shook her head. “No, I simply mean it is not my place to say.”

  “All right.”

  She hesitated, then said, “I think you, being wounded, had the right to request respect for your injury.”

  “Mmmmm. But you wish I hadn’t said it?”

  “I’m not certain, Vlad. Certainly, everything you said is true. Not exhaustive, but true.”

  “Not exhaustive?”

  “I mean your insight was well taken. But, there is still much you don’t understand about my Lord Morrolan. For all of his skills and strengths of character, Morrolan is still a young Dragon. He knows this. It is why he wanted me as his seneschal. To know and take steps to counter one’s weaknesses is praiseworthy, in my opinion. Also, rare.”

  “I see. Other than having the desire from time to time to slaughter a few hundred helpless peasants, what does it mean to be a young Dragon?”

  “It means seeing the world with one’s self as the center.”

  “Really? I’ve never considered Morrolan to be self-centered.”

  “He isn’t,” said Teldra. “Not as the term is usually meant. There is a subtle but important difference, Vlad, between thinking only of yourself, and seeing the world as it affects you.” She smiled suddenly. “And the difference, by the way, is exactly what courtesy is all about.”

  “You’ll have to explain that to me.”

  “Do I, Vlad? I somehow doubt that.”

  “Oh?”

  “Oh. But, very well. Morrolan is generous, and self-sacrificing, and always glad to be of help to a friend, but sometimes he sees things first from how they affect him. It means he will sometimes go into a situation wondering what he should do, rather than wondering what needs to be done.”

  “That’s pretty subtle, Teldra.”

  “Not as subtle as you might think. Or, rather, it is a case where subtleties can become very large. Sometimes, for example, you step into a situation where the thing that needs to be done is nothing at all; someone looking at it from his own perspective is unlikely to realize this.”

  I made a noncommittal sound, trying to work it all out.

  “I know of one case late in the Interregnum—because my Lord Morrolan told of it himself—where he was a division commander under Sethra. He was, he says, an effective commander, but he had the bad habit, when given an order, of sending back suggestions to Sethra about what she should do with the rest of the army to support him, not quite able to realize that she might have thought of these things, and that it was she who had the best view of the entire picture, and was placed to make those decisions. The result was a small increase in friction among the staff, and a series of delays in carrying out her orders. His intentions were good, but he was seeing everything from his own perspective.”

  “Hmmm,” I said. “Okay, I see your point. And, yeah, Morrolan is like that, sometimes. So is Aliera, for that matter.”

  “Yes, she is also a young Dragon.”

  “Which, of course, is part of why they keep knocking heads, notwithstanding my juvenile outburst earlier.”

  “Of course.”

  I shrugged. “Well, okay, I’m glad we settled that. What are young Issola like?”

  Teldra flashed me a smile. “Obsequious to the point of irritating, or else timid to the point of invisibility. What about young Easterners?”

  “Brash, cocky, and convinced we can beat anything that walks, flies, or swims, and that we know all the answers to everything.”

  “Rather like Dzur, then.”

  “I guess. I’m generalizing from one example, here, but everyone generalizes from one example. At least, I do.”

  That earned an actual chuckle; I felt very proud.

  I added, “Of course, by Dragaeran standards, all Easterners are young Easterners.”

  “Yes. Which is only one of the reasons Easterners are treated the way they are by humans.”

  “Morrolan is an exception; he deserves credit for that. As are you, by the way.”

  “Thank you,” said Teldra. “In my case, I can’t help it, it’s how I was raised.” She smiled.

  There were footsteps in the hall, and I knew it was Sethra before she appeared, either because I recognized her footsteps, or because of some subtle psychic awareness of her that I was developing. She nodded to us and said, “Have you two solved all of our questions of grand strategy for us?”

  “No,” I said, “but we’ve solved a great deal of the mystery of the mysterious Morrolan.”

  “I’m impressed,” said Sethra, sitting down in an oversized chair to my left. “That’s much more difficult.” It seemed to me, watching her sit, that she was tired. I guess she’d been busy enough while we were away.

  I said, “You reached the Necromancer?”

  Sethra nodded. “She’ll be along directly.”

  I tried to say, “Good,” but couldn’t force the word past my lips, so I settled for the old brusque nod. Sethra glanced at my arm and said, “Any change?”

  “About five or six minutes ago it twitched a little. Hardly anything; I was talking to Teldra and barely noticed it.”

  “Very well,” she said. “That’s probably a good sign. The muscles are coming back to life, which means, among other things, that they aren’t entirely dead.”

  “You thought they might be?”

  “It was a possibility.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “What good would it have done you?”

  “It would have given me a good excuse to have a hissy-cow, right when I badly wanted to have one.”

  “A hissy-cow?”

  “Uh …”

  “No, no, Vlad. Don’t explain.” She chuckled. “A hissy-cow. I think I like that.”

  I had gotten a chuckle out of Teldra and Sethra within the same hour, and that after making Teldra and Aliera blush, and before that I’d managed to shock the Demon Goddess. My life was now complete. I decided this was a good time to quit, so I leaned back and closed my eyes, only to be interrupted by the sound of more footsteps. I didn’t want to open my eyes, for fear that the Necromancer would be there, so I did and she was.

  You must understand, it isn’t that I’m afraid of her. I’ve spoken with her, and, if you can get past the fact that she’s undead, and that her mind is perfectly comfortable living in places that would drive me mad, and that for her the distinction between the living and the dead is just a matter of which way she’s facing, she’s a perfectly decent sort, as Dragaerans go. It’s just that her showing up just then meant that things were liable to start moving, and I was very happy sitting on a couch in Dzur Mountain, feeling relatively at peace with the world, and luxuriating in the notion that no one, just at that moment, would be able to kill me.

  “The technical term is ‘self-pity,’ Boss.”

  “Did I ask for the technical term?”

  “Hello, Vlad,” said the Necromancer, in that strange, almost hollow-sounding voice of hers, with her eyes looking more through me than at me.

  “Hello,” I said, resisting the urge to growl.

  Aliera was standing next to her, and nodded me a cool hello. “How’s the arm?” she said.

  “It twitched.”

  “Good,” said Aliera. “I was hoping it would do that.”

  Bloody great.

  Sethra said, “Have you explained what we require of the Necromancer?”

  “No,” said Aliera. “I thought I’d leave that to you.”

  “Very well. While I do so, I think you know what your next task is.”

  “Yes,” said Aliera. “I shall attend to it at once.”

  Sethra nodded, and Aliera took two steps forward, one step to the side, and vanished as if she had stepped through an invisible doorway.

  Sethra Lavode turned to the Necromancer, and I suddenly had the feeling that I was present at one of those great historical moments that you read about, wishing you were there. Here was the Enchan
tress of Dzur Mountain explaining to the Necromancer the plan of campaign against the ancient enemies of the Dragaeran race. This might be one of the great turning points in the history of the Empire. It seemed incumbent on me to say something to undercut to the whole significance of it, but nothing came to mind.

  The two pale, black-clad undead women regarded each other—thin faces, ancient eyes; sort of a strange mirror image. Sethra was perhaps a little taller, and her hair was a bit darker and longer; the Necromancer gave the appearance of a little more age, though this was illusory. In addition, though I knew Sethra was a vampire, the Necromancer looked like one—so pale, wasted, drawn; like someone in the last stages of some horrible disease.

  “We are expecting an attack from the Jenoine,” said Sethra.

  “Where?”

  “The site of Adron’s Disaster.”

  The Necromancer’s eyebrows went up. “Is it unprotected?”

  “Yes. The other has been protected all along, almost by accident, as it were. And it never occurred to me to look for an attack that way.”

  The Necromancer nodded, closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Nothing yet,” she said.

  “Are you certain?”

  The Necromancer frowned and said, “What do you mean?”

  “Look again. Look for anything that doesn’t belong.”

  “Very well,” she said. Then, “Oh.”

  “They are tapping it?”

  “Someone is. It will take a while to find out where it is going, but it certainly seems like their workmanship.”

  Sethra nodded. “I suspected it, from what Vlad told me. They are evidently collecting it in quantity.”

  “Collecting it? Raw?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “How are they keeping it unstable?”

  “They have found a large piece of trellanstone, and use it to keep the amorphia flowing, rather like a stream, from what Vlad and Teldra said.”

  “I see. Yes, that might work, if you had someone monitoring it at all times, and if it was physically near the trellanstone.”

  “The stream ran within a few hundred feet of it.”

  The Necromancer nodded. “This could be a real problem,” she said, almost as if she cared. “Have they stirred?”