The trail descended sharply, over stones that were loose underfoot. Lujan steadied his Lady’s elbow, and though his touch was sure, Mara still felt the precariousness of their position. Each step forward carried her farther into the unknown.
Brought up in the crowded sprawl of the Acoma estates, accustomed to the throngs of Tsurani cities, and to the presence of servants, slaves, and the numerous officers that made up the households of the noble-born, she could not recall a time in her life when she had been so alone. Her meditation cell in the Temple of Lashima had been isolated from others only by the thickness of a wall, and during the most solitary of her evening contemplations at home, a single word would bring servants or warriors instantly to attend upon her needs.
Here there was only the wild sweep of fog-shrouded stone slopes behind, and the jungle ahead, with its indigenous population of cho-ja, whose culture was other than the safe, treaty-bound commerce she knew with the insectoids upon her estates.
Never in her life had she felt herself so small and the world she trod so large. It took all of her will not to turn back, to call after Gittania, and ask to be guided back to Thuril territories, which now did not seem strange or threatening, but simply and understandably human. But back in the Thuril village awaited the rest of her honor guard, and Kamlio, dependent upon her efforts; and linked to them, her family and children and all of the lives upon three sprawling estates answerable to Shinzawai and Acoma. She must not let them down, must secure them haven against the wrath of the magicians to come. Mara faced resolutely forward, and resorted to conversation.
‘Lujan, tell me: when you were left the life of a grey warrior, and had no hope for a life of honor, how did you cope?’
Lujan’s helm tipped, as he looked askance at her. In his eyes she saw that he, too, sensed the immensity and emptiness of the landscape surrounding them, and that he was Tsurani enough to be uneasy as well with the solitude. How much we have grown to understand each other, Mara thought; how the difficulties of this life have woven our efforts together into a relationship that is special, and cherished. Then his reply stopped her introspection.
‘Lady, when a man has lost everything that his peers and fellows consider to be important, when he lives a life that is meaningless by the tenets of his upbringing, then all that is left is his dreams. I was very stubborn. I held to my dreams. And one day I awoke to find that my existence was not all misery. I realised that I could still laugh. I could still feel. Feasting on wild game could still ease my belly, and a tumble with a kind woman could still make my blood race and my spirits soar. An honorless man might suffer in the future when Turakamu took his spirit, and the Wheel of Life ground his fate into dust. But day to day? Honor does not add to joy.’ Here the man who had led the Acoma armies for close to two decades gave an uncomfortable shrug. ‘Lady, I was a leader of thieves, brigands, and unfortunates. We as a band might not have had the great honor that house colors may give a man. But we did not live without creed.’
Here Mara could see that her Force Commander was embarrassed to silence. Aware that his discomfort stemmed from an issue that was central to the man himself, and aware, too, that more than curiosity prompted her, she urged gently, ‘Tell me. Certainly you realise that I do not hold to traditions for their own sake.’
Lujan gave a small laugh. ‘We are alike in that more than you know, my Lady. All right. The men that I led swore a covenant with me. Outcasts though we were, and cast off by the gods, that did not make us less than men. We formed what might be called our own house, swore loyalty to ourselves, and added that what befell one would be shared by all. And so you see, Mara, when you came and were willing to embrace us all in honorable service, we could not have accepted save as a whole. When Pape devised his clever ruse to find distant kinship so that we might be called to Acoma service, had one man been refused, we all would have turned away.’
Mara looked at her Force Commander in surprise, and by the sheepish look in his weathered face, deduced further. ‘This covenant you speak of, it still exists.’ She did not ask, but stated.
Lujan cleared his throat. ‘It does. But when we swore you our loyalty by the Acoma natami, we added a coda, that our wishes, needs, and honor came second after yours. But within your loyal army there is still a band of us who feel a special kinship to one another, one we cannot share with your other soldiers, no matter how honorable they may be. It is a badge of honor unique to us, as was Papewaio’s black band of condemnation his own peculiar accolade.’
‘Remarkable.’ Mara fell silent, her eyes downcast as if she negotiated a particularly hazardous step, but the footing was less rocky now, the trail of beaten soil bordered by the first fronds and greenery that edged the jungle. The glass towers of Chakaha had disappeared with the loss of altitude, eclipsed by the dense, high crowns of tropical trees. Their danger was not lessened but increased, and yet Mara spared a moment from worry to ponder what her Force Commander had revealed: that he was a leader born, and that his loyalty was rare and deep; that even after advancement to a high post, he had kept his word with the ruffians turned soldiers that he had once commanded. It was noteworthy, Mara thought, that the man at her side had an inborn sense of himself and his personal responsibilities that ran deeper than in most Lords who ruled in the Nations. All this, Lujan had done, without fanfare, without recognition, without even the knowledge of his Lady, until now.
Mara glanced aside at him, and saw his face had resumed the mask of Tsurani inscrutability appropriate to a warrior in house service. She was glad the opportunity had arisen to learn what had passed between them. All that remained to be asked of the gods was the opportunity to ensure that such special qualities and talents that Lujan had revealed might be brought to full flower. If they survived, Mara decided, this was a man who deserved rewards above and beyond the ordinary recognition for exemplary service.
Then her thought was interrupted by a rustle in the undergrowth. The first of the high trees lay ahead, their trunks ancient and wide enough that five men with linked hands would have difficulty girdling their circumference. As their deep shade fell chillingly over Mara and Lujan, a ring of cho-ja sentinels arose seemingly out of nowhere, silent, shiny-black, and naked but for their natal armor of polished chitin. Bladed forearms were turned outward at an aggressive angle.
Lujan jerked Mara to a stop. His second, instinctive movement to thrust her behind him and away from the danger and then to draw his sword was checked, as he saw that they were surrounded. These cho-ja wore none of the humanlike accoutrements of rank that their counterparts in the Nations affected, and they moved in uncanny silence.
For a moment, the two human invaders and the insectoid sentinels stood motionless.
Mara was first to break the tableau, giving the full bow an envoy might use to greet a foreign delegation. ‘We come in peace.’
Her words were punctuated by a snap as in unison the sentinels raised forearms to guard position. One among them advanced a half-step, its face plates unreadable. These cho-ja of Chakaha made no effort to mimic human expressions, and the result left Mara uneasy. These foreign insectoids might attack and butcher them both where they stood, and not even Lujan’s fast eye might detect the signal that started the slaughter.
‘We come in peace,’ she repeated, this time unable to keep the tremble from her voice.
For a drawn-out moment, nothing moved. Over the drone of insects in the jungle, Mara thought she detected the high-pitched buzzing she had earlier experienced in the chamber of the Queen who inhabited her home estate. But the sound ended before she could be certain.
Then the one who had stepped ahead, and who might be classified as their Strike Leader, spoke out. ‘You are from the Empire, human. Peace to your kind is but a prelude to treachery. You are trespassers. Turn and go, and live.’
Mara sucked in a shaky breath. ‘Lujan,’ she said in a tone she hoped sounded convincing, ‘disarm yourself. Show that we mean no harm by surrendering your blade to these whom we wo
uld call friends.’
Her Force Commander raised his arm to follow her order, although she could see by his tension that he disliked the idea of giving up what small defense he might offer her.
But before he could set hand to sword grip, he heard the snap, snap as the cho-ja left guard position and angled their weight forward to charge. Their spokesman said, ‘Touch your sword, man, and you both die.’
To this, Lujan jerked up his chin in a flushed blaze of anger. ‘Kill us, then!’ he half shouted. ‘But I say that if you do so, when my intent is to surrender, you are cowards all. With my sword, or without it, at your first charge we are dead.’ Here he glanced at Mara, asking unspoken permission.
His mistress returned a stiff nod. ‘Disarm,’ she repeated. ‘Show that we are friends. If attack follows, then our mission is wasted effort anyway, for the Lady of the Acoma and the Servant of the Empire does not treat with a race of murderers.’
Slowly, deliberately, Lujan reached for his sword. Mara watched, running with sweat, as his hand touched, then closed over the weapon hilt.
The cho-ja did not move. Perhaps above the drone of the insects, their buzzing communication gave them discourse with their Queen, but Mara could not tell. Her ears were numbed by nerves and the fast, loud pound of her heart.
‘I will draw and set my sword upon the ground,’ Lujan said tightly. He kept his movements careful, and seemed outwardly confident, but Mara could see the drops of perspiration sliding down his jawline beneath his helm as, ever so slowly, he drew the sword from the scabbard, took hold of the blade with his bare left hand so that his intent not to fight could not possibly be mistaken, and placed the weapon point toward himself upon the earth.
Mara saw the cho-ja shift their weight forward as one, a movement she had seen before. In another second they would charge, despite her pleading for peace. As loud as she could make them, she mimicked the sounds of greetings she had learned from the hive Queen upon her estates, a poor human attempt at the clicks and snaps made by the cho-ja throat.
Instantly the cho-ja stood like statues, frozen a heartbeat away from murder. Yet when Lujan’s sword rested upon the ground, and he straightened, defenseless, their postures did not ease.
Neither did the leader of their party speak out. Instead, a great gust of air arose, lashing Mara’s hair into disarray, and causing Lujan to squint through watering eyes. Down through the canopy of jungle descended a cho-ja form, leanly streamlined and brilliantly striped. It possessed an unearthly beauty that was somehow almost dangerous, and above neatly folded limbs its seemingly delicate weight was suspended upon crystalline wings that beat up a storm of wind.
A cho-ja magician had come!
Mara drew breath to exclaim in involuntary delight, but her throat gave voice to no sound. The air around her seemed to shimmer suddenly, and the forms of the cho-ja advance guard shattered into patternless color. Her feet lost contact with the ground, and Lujan’s presence became lost to her. There were no trees, no jungle, no sky; nothing at all could her senses detect that was familiar, but a chaos of whirling light.
She found her voice, and her cry became one of terror. ‘What are you doing to us?’
A reply boomed back from nowhere, echoing in her mind. ‘Enemies who surrender become prisoners,’ the voice admonished.
And then all of Mara’s perception drowned in a great tide of darkness.
• Chapter Twenty-Two •
Challenge
Mara awoke.
Her last memory of open air, and lush jungle, and a patrol of cho-ja sentinels did not mesh with her present surroundings: a narrow, hexagonal chamber of windowless, featureless walls. The floor was of polished stone, the ceiling fashioned of a mirrorlike substance that threw back the light of the single cho-ja globe that drifted unsupported at the chamber’s center.
Mara raised herself on her elbows, then her knees, and discovered that Lujan stood behind her, awake, and visibly battling against a restless bout of nerves.
‘Where are we?’ asked the Lady of the Acoma. ‘Do you know?’
Her Force Commander spun to face her, pale with anger only barely held in check. ‘I don’t. The where hardly matters, though, because we are being held as enemies of the city-state of Chakaha.’
‘Enemies?’ Mara accepted Lujan’s hand to help her rise; she noticed his scabbard was empty, which partially explained his edginess. ‘We were brought here by means of magic, then?’
Lujan raked back sweat-damp hair, then from habit tightened the strap that secured his helm. ‘Magic must have conveyed us from the glen. And only magic can secure our release. If you look around, you will see there is no door.’
Mara quickly checked. The walls arose sheer and smooth, unbroken by any sort of portal. At a loss to account for the freshness of the air, the Lady deduced that the chamber must be entirely wrought of cho-ja spellcraft.
The conclusion made her tremble.
She was no longer dealing with humans, who might by their nature share some empathy. Cold with foreboding, Mara knew she and Lujan had become embroiled in the unknowns of the hive mind. More than ever, she was confronted by the incomprehensibility of an alien species whose ‘memory’ and ‘experience’ spanned millennia, and whose framework of reason would be judged only by collective prosperity and survival. Worse, unlike the hive she had conversed with inside the Empire’s borders, these free, foreign cho-ja had never been forced to coexist with humanity except on terms they chose. There would not be even the imperfect understanding she shared with the Queen with whom she had exchanged companionship over the years.
Lujan sensed his Lady’s despair. ‘We are not without hope, my Lady. These are civilised creatures who hold us captive. They must be disinclined to kill out of hand, or we would have died on the trail.’
Mara sighed, and did not voice her following thought: that if they were adjudged enemies, it was not for their individual deeds, but for the actions of all Tsurani over every age of history. The past records of sincere treaties broken by bloody betrayals were too numerous to count, and within Mara’s lifetime, the tenets of the Game of the Council had many times caused sons to kill fathers, and clansmen to rend clansmen. Her own hands were far from clean.
Her first husband’s ritual suicide had been manipulated by her; so even if the hive mind were to measure her by the acts she alone had authored, contradiction would be found in abundance – between the vows she had sworn in marriage, and the hatred she had held in her heart for Jiro’s brother; and in her betrayal of Kevin, the barbarian she loved, then sent away against his will, ignorant she carried his child. It occurred to her, as she bit her lip to keep back tears born of shame, that it was not the cho-ja way to learn by mistakes, for all of the errors made by ancestors were available to living memory. They were a race for whom the past did not fade. Forgiveness for them would not be the ever renewable resource it was for humankind – grudges might be kept for millennia.
‘Lujan?’ The echo of Mara’s voice in that confined chamber was hollow with fear. ‘Whatever should become of us in the end, we must find a way to be heard!’
Her Force Commander spun in a frustrated circle. ‘What is left to do for you, Lady, but to pound on these walls with my fists?’
Mara heard the desperation he tried to mask behind bravado. His distress sobered her; ever since leaving the Coalteca, nothing of Lujan’s training as a warrior had served him. He had held no army to command. The day the Thuril first arose in ambush upon the trail, she had forbidden him to defend her. At Loso, he had suffered insults that he would have spilled blood over rather than endure. He had been humiliated, driven in bonds like a slave, against every instinct of his upbringing. Out of his depth, separated from his warrior companions, he must find his circumstances incomprehensibly bleak.
Lujan had humor, and cleverness, and courage; but he owned none of Arakasi’s detached fascination with the unknown. Sobered to acknowledge the demands she had placed on her Force Commander’s loyal spirit, Ma
ra touched his wrist. ‘Bide patiently, Lujan. For either we are near to our end, or our goal is just within reach.’
Striking to the core of her thoughts, Lujan replied, ‘I feel most worthless, my Lady. You would have done better to bring Arakasi, or to have kept Saric at your side.’
Mara attempted humor. ‘What? Endure Saric’s questions, even when the gods themselves impose silence? And Arakasi? Lujan, do you suppose that he could have watched Kamlio led away without flying weaponless in the face of armed guards? Unless, of course, she had clawed him to ribbons on the Coalteca before we even saw landfall. No, I do not think I would wish either Saric or Arakasi with me at this time. The gods work as they will. I must trust that fate brought you here for a reason.’
The last line was false conviction. In truth, Mara knew only foreboding. Still, her effort had coaxed a quirk of a smile from her officer. His fingers had ceased drumming against his empty scabbard. ‘Lady,’ he allowed wryly, ‘let us pray you are right.’
Tedious hours passed, with no daylight in sight to reveal the passage of day to night, and no interruption or sound to break the monotony. Lujan paced the tiny chamber, while Mara sat and unsuccessfully tried to meditate. Tranquil thought evaded her, torn through again and again by longing for her children and husband. She fretted, afraid she would never again have the chance to make peace with Hokanu. Irrational worries gnawed at her: that if she failed to return home, he would marry and beget sons, and little Kasuma might never inherit the legacy that was her due. That Justin might be killed before manhood, and that the Acoma line would fail. That Jiro, with the backing of the Assembly, would topple Ichindar’s new order, and the golden throne of the Emperor become relegated to a seat for a slave to religious ceremony. The Warlord’s office would be restored, and the Game of the Council resume with all its internecine feuding and bloodshed. Lastly, the cho-ja of the Nations would forever remain bound to subservience through unjust treaty.
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