Dancer's Illusion

by Ann Maxwell

  “Could be?” asked Rheba, her voice barely audible.

  “Dancer,” Fssa murmured patiently, “on Yhelle, they could be anything.”

  “Including Soldiers of Ecstasy?” she snapped.

  “Including—” Fssa convulsed, reshaping himself into an array of scanning devices.

  Balanced on the breakpoint of dance, Rheba sensed the Fssireeme’s changes and even, very slightly, the energies radiating from and returning to him. She grabbed Kirtn’s arm. He looked at her and saw the odd shapes of Fssa beneath her glowing hair. He froze, trying to make no sound that would obstruct the snake’s search.

  Fssa’s whistle was a mere thread of sound. “I don’t like it. Not the trees—they’re real enough—but beyond. Sounds.”

  “What kind of sounds?” asked Kirtn, his voice so soft that only a Fssireeme could have caught the words.

  “Fourth People sounds. But no rhythms.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, snake.”

  “Fourth People walk in patterns and talk in patterns, and patterns have rhythms. These sounds don’t.”

  “Maybe the trees break up the patterns of sound,” whispered Rheba.

  A hiss was the snake’s only answer. Then, sharply, “I know about echos the way you know about energies. These are wrong.”

  “Maybe it’s an illusion,” suggested the Bre’n.

  Fssa made a sizzling sound, Fssireeme anger.

  Kirtn looked at Rheba. His eyes were hot with reflected dancer fire. Hers were growing more gold with each heartbeat.

  “Ambush?” he whispered.

  “Surely Fssa would have heard something.”

  A scream, stifled in the first second, yet unmistakable.

  They crossed the stream in a single leap and ran up the opposite bank. As they gained the top, she sent a white sheet of energy ahead to light the way, knowing that it was possible to hide in blinding brightness as well as in darkness. Not only would the wall of light illuminate what was ahead, it might catch attackers with their illusions down.

  Frozen in the unexpected light, illusionists and Soldiers of Ecstasy slipped in and out of illusion in dizzying blurs, adjusting their appearances to the demands of light instead of darkness. Motionless huddles of clothes lay strewn across the clearing between trees both real and illusory. Some of the shapes on the ground wore gray uniforms, but only a few. Most wore the rags of people whose appearance depended on illusions woven over a threadbare reality.

  Black against dancer light, shadows formed and reformed around Redis and Soldiers, trying to bring them down. But there were so many more Redis than shadows, and the Soldiers’ white eyes saw through illusions with frightening ease. Shadows slid to the ground and puddled into ragged, motionless bundles.

  With the ambush discovered, there was no further need for stealth. Guns appeared in Redis hands. Muzzles flashed and vented death. More shadows screamed and became illusionists slack upon the ground.

  Flames seethed out from Rheba, licking among the gray uniforms of the Soldiers of Ecstasy. Hands holding weapons were burned to the bone. Five Soldiers, then, twelve, screamed and cradled their hands. The clearing shivered and changed as more uniforms poured out from between the trees.

  Rheba answered with another wash of flame. To her horror, she saw that some of the uniforms were facades forced upon Yaocoons by superior Redis illusionists.

  She had burned three of her own people.

  Kirtn whistled shrilly, demanding that i’sNara and f’lTiri show themselves. There was no answering flash among the roiling shadows, no snake shape calling wordlessly to them.

  Rheba lifted her hands and sent lightning to dance among the fighters. Uniforms retreated, harried by shadows. The ground sizzled and stank and finally grew sullen flames. Smoke rose, concealing the shadows that remained. It was all she dared to do until she had some way of telling Yaocoon illusionists from Redis.

  Kirtn leaped into the smoke, looking for friends. He quickly discovered that conscious or not, the Soldiers of Ecstasy wore real uniforms, as befitted their lack of illusion talents. He suspected that some of the badly dressed illusionists fallen throughout the clearing were also Redis, but had no way of being sure. He searched through the casualties with ruthless speed. He did not find anyone he recognized.

  Fire sizzled past him. Something yelped and retreated, dropping a gun. He scooped it up, learning its mechanism by feel and firelight. Muzzle, barrel, stock, trigger. Guns varied little from culture to culture. Their design was implicit in their function.

  He put his back to a real tree. Rheba set barriers of flame burning in an arc behind him. Fssa whistled a shrill imperative that ended with two names. If i’sNara and f’lTiri were conscious, they would come to the Bre’n.

  For a moment, the only sound in the clearing was the hot crackle of fire. They had broken the back of the ambush, but were still far from safe. Warily, Rheba moved to join her Bre’n. They formed a triangle with the tree as their apex. Fssa scanned ceaselessly.

  Shadows began to gather around them, black moths drawn to an alien flame. Rheba could not be sure that the winged shadows were friends; neither could she burn them down as enemies. Seething with barely controlled energy, she searched approaching illusions for Yaocoon clan signs.

  A leaf flickered at the edge of one shadow. A lush curve of flower bloomed briefly in another. A fern quivered and vanished in a third pool of darkness. A fourth shadow approached. It displayed neither flower nor fruit, stem nor branch, nothing but tone on tone of darkness shifting.

  Dancer fire rained over the shadow. It vanished, leaving behind nothing, not even a cry of surprise.

  “Fssa?” she asked.

  “A projection. The illusionist was somewhere else,” answered the snake.

  “At least the illusion couldn’t carry a gun.”

  Kirtn stared at the shadows between trees and said nothing. There were plenty of Soldiers of Ecstasy still around. He doubted that they would carry nothing more deadly than an illusion in their hands.

  Shadows continued to flow toward them, revealing tiny flashes of plant life as they came. No snake shape appeared, though many shadows gathered.

  “Why aren’t they shooting at us?” asked Rheba in a voice that was a harsh whisper. “Are they blind?”

  “In the past, killing aliens caused more trouble than it cured,” hissed a nearby shadow. “You never knew how powerful their planet might be. Besides, we’re shielding you as much as we can. He’s a tree and you’re moonlight.”

  A bullet whined by, burning itself in a tree no more than an arm’s length away.

  “It would help if you threw less light,” the shadow muttered.

  Fssa hissed a stream of Senyas directions in Rheba’s ear. Blue-white fire leaped from her fingers, scorched across the clearing and danced among trees on the far side. Men screamed and threw down guns too hot to hold.

  “On the other hand,” said the shadow, “throwing light isn’t always a bad idea.”

  Kirtn’s smile was a predatory flash of teeth. He, too, was comforted by dancer fire.

  “That’s it,” the shadow whispered. “Everyone who could get here has. Let’s break for the veil.”

  “What about i’sNara and f’lTiri?” asked Rheba.

  “I don’t see them. But then, they’re nearly twelve and I’m only a nine.”

  “Is Ara here?”

  “No.”

  “What about Tske?”

  “I’m Tske,” hissed the shadow. “They’re holding the veil for us, but they can’t hold it forever. Hurry. If we waste any more time here they’ll go on without us.”

  “What about them?” whispered Rheba, gesturing toward the people lumped up in the dark clearing.

  “The ones who are unconscious will wake up with a headache. That always happens when you’re forcefully unillusioned. The ones who were hit are dead. The Tyrant’s bullets are a thin metal shell wrapped around the Equality’s most potent poison.”

  Rheba grimaced. T
he more she heard of k’Masei, the Redis and the Soldiers of Ecstasy, the less she wanted to be near any of them. As self-appointed keepers of a planet’s love, they were as unlovely a group as she had seen anywhere but Loo. “Lead the way,” she snapped to the shadow that was Tske.

  Her akhenet lines flared as she walked, telling of energy held in reserve. She called in more with each step, weaving it out of moonlight’s pale solar reflections. The Soldiers of Ecstasy might have abandoned this battle, but somewhere ahead the war still went on.

  At least she hoped it did. Otherwise i’sNara, f’lTiri and their children were lost.

  “How did we get separated from i’sNara and f’lTiri?” she whistled in Bre’n, no more than a tiny thread of sound. “I thought we were together when we went out the gate.”

  “We stopped at the stream.”

  “But not for long.”

  “Long enough, apparently,” whistled Kirtn.

  Uneasiness shivered in each Bre’n note, telling more clearly than words how he felt about being escorted toward an unknown enemy by a contingent of nameless shadows. In Serriolia, deluding a nonillusionist was so easy that even children were embarrassed to stoop to it. He hoped that the same held true for the Tyrant, but doubted it. Tyrants stooped to anything within reach.

  Fssa whistled mournful agreement. His sensors were better equipped than eyes for seeing through illusions, but not much better.

  Rheba trotted after the barely visible shadow illusion that was Tske. He flickered in and out of the trees ahead of her. The way was rough, more a trail than the broad street she remembered following to the Yaocoon clan wall. Her memories were not to be wholly trusted, however; things changed without warning or apology in the streets of Serriolia. Even so, she had a persistent sense of wrongness, of things out of place.

  Her eyes itched fiercely, adding to her malaise. Everytime her eyes had itched recently, it meant trouble on the way. Her hand closed around Kirtn’s wrist. Her uneasiness went through him in a soundless mental cry. Her sense of imminent peril joined them in shallow mind dance, more emotion than words.

  Wrongness.

  ?

  Veil too far. Her emotions were a silent cry of warning, of danger unseen, of sounds unheard, of blind worlds where only the sighted survived. But she was blind and so was he.

  Find the veil. A mentor’s command, cold and binding.

  Rheba stopped. Gold licked up and down her arms, dancer power flowing as she sought the uniquely discordant energies known as the veil. She felt her mentor’s presence behind her, his hands on her shoulders refining her dance.

  There.

  Veil energies danced dissonantly on his nerves. It seemed neither near or far, but he was not a dancer to weigh forces, only a Bre’n.

  Wrong. Too far. With her silent words came emotions, a feeling of futility in a world full of shadows.

  He let go of her. “Fssa.” Kirtn’s whistle was almost a keening. “Do you sense anyone ahead besides Tske?”

  The snake changed, glittering violet quills, a silver ruff, black cups that shone oddly, metallic ripples coursing through his length. “Nothing.”

  “The veil?”

  “Oh, it’s there. It’s always there. It winds in and out of everything in Serriolia. But we’re going away from the part we were headed toward before.”

  “Is there anyone or anything behind us?” For all its softness, Kirtn’s whistle was urgent.

  “Just the illusions we gathered in the clearing. At least, I think they’re the same ones. It’s very hard to be sure.”

  Rheba’s hand closed hotly around his wrist. Words and emotion seared him, but when she spoke, her voice was controlled. “Tske,” she whispered, calling ahead to the shadow leading them.

  “Hurry,” was their only reply.

  “We’re going the wrong way!”

  The shadow blurred, then raced back toward them. “Don’t be ridiculous,” hissed the shadow. “I know my way around Yaocoon territory better than any illusionless alien. Now hurry!” He turned back the way he had come.

  “That’s the wrong way,” insisted Rheba, raising her voice, knowing that Fssa would automatically increase the volume of his translation. “The veil we want is over that way”—a bright-gold finger pointed to Tske’s left—“and that’s the way I’m going!”

  The shadow snarled. Suddenly the night seemed to darken. Soldiers of Ecstasy leaped out from behind trees, wave after wave of gray uniforms and glittering white eyes. The ground shook and roared, giving birth to yet more soldiers. As Kirtn and Rheba turned to flee, shadows twisted, condensed, white eyes gleaming. No Yaocoon clan symbols gleamed this time, only metal gun barrels.

  The shadows following them had been Redis illusionists, not Yaocoon raiders. She and Kirtn had been neatly trapped.

  XIV

  Before any shadow could move, Rheba exploded into flames. With part of her mind, she called down fire on everything within reach. The rest of her mind reached for the nearest energy source that could sustain the demands of her dance. While fire raged within the trees and not-trees, she tried to drag power out of the veil.

  The energies were unlike anything she had ever tapped before. Discordant, dissonant, grating terribly on every natural rhythm in her dancer body, the veil’s power came to her more as an attacker than as an ally. She struggled against the clashing energies, forcing them to bend to her needs in an act of will that left her blazing.

  New akhenet lines ripped through her flesh, but she felt nothing except the hot demands of her dance. Her Bre’n flowed through her, steadying her erratic fire. Even with his presence, the veil energies arced dangerously at the edge of her dance.

  Grimly, Rheba fought to control the forces she must use to fight free of the ambush.

  Shadows flowed closer, stitched through with the gray threads of uniforms. Bullets whipped by the dancer’s burning body, warning of soldiers growing bolder. Kirtn poured more of himself into her dance, giving her both strength and balance to use in her fight to reshape the veil’s bizarre energies.

  He smelled the stink of his own fur and flesh scorched by unbridled energy. The pain was like a vicious light searing his brain. He ignored it as Bre’ns throughout time had always ignored pain.

  He risked a quick glance over his shoulder. Where Tske should have been, there was a skirmish line of soldiers. Behind them were more soldiers, and more, line upon line of gray pouring out of the night. Illusion? Reality? Something in between?

  Dancer.

  With the single word spoken in Rheba’s mind came a picture of themselves, the burning center of a growing circle of gray.

  Kirtn sensed her reply flowing up through his palms where they rested on her shoulders. A backwash of discordant power tore through him, but he did not lift his hands. He bent himself to the needs of her dance, controlling her body so that her mind was free to grapple with fire.

  A feeling of relief raced through Rheba as Kirtn took more of the burden of the dance on himself. It was dangerous for a Bre’n to carry too much of the dance, but Kirtn was unusually strong. And she needed every bit of his power now.

  She matched her rhythms to those of the veil, sucking energy to her in a single dangerous rush. She could not fully control the veil, but she could hammer its energies into a deadly weapon. She had to work with reckless speed. She could not hold onto the veil long without burning herself to the bone. Nor could Kirtn bear so much of the dance for more than a short time.

  Her hands lifted. Incandescent light leaped out, light that swept through trees and flesh and night with equal ease. She pivoted in a circle with Kirtn at its center, sweeping her surroundings with deadly energy, trying to burn through illusions to whatever reality might lie beneath.

  She watched the resulting blaze with eyes that were almost wholly gold. And she saw shadows between the burning trees, shadows sliding over burning ground, shadows lifting guns.

  But the bullets were not shadows at all.

  As one, she and Kirtn
threw themselves aside. At the same instant she released a brilliant burst of light, hoping to blind the soldiers who were even then sighting down gun barrels. Bullets stitched harmlessly through the night. The Soldiers of Ecstasy were dazed by dancer fire, but that would pass very soon. Then she and Kirtn would be targets once more.

  She reached for the veil again, determined to draw enough energy to make the area a fiery hell where only Bre’n and Senyas could survive. She sensed Kirtn’s soundless protest at the danger she was calling into herself. But he did not try to stop her. Whatever the veil’s danger, it was not as great as the Soldiers of Ecstasy.

  Raw energy poured into her. Her akhenet lines burned hotter and hotter, trying to channel the dissonant power of the veil. She screamed but no sound came, only a gout of searing fire. Desperately she threw away the terrible energies, raining death around her. Grass and small bushes exploded into flame. Trees, rocks and the very air itself smoked. Still her dance raged, demanding more fire and then more, a Senyas hell created for Yhelle illusionists.

  Kirtn’s lips writhed back from his teeth in an agonized grimace, but he did not stop her dance. Nor did he release his grip on her, though his fingers blistered and fur smoked. She was dancing at the farthest edge of their control, yet she was controlled and that was all that mattered. If he flinched in the face of her fire they would both be consumed.

  Hell leaped around them in every shade of fire. Trees exploded into flame, dirt smoked, rocks shattered. Illusions screamed, but their sounds were lost in the consuming roar of unleashed fire. Triumph flickered through Kirtn’s pain. They were winning. If they could sustain the dance for a few more moments the Soldiers of Ecstasy would scatter like ashes in a hot whirlwind.

  Then he felt his dancer change beneath his hands, akhenet lines guttering light and dark, hot and cold, warm and cold. Cold. She was falling. He staggered and barely managed to keep both of them upright. Wrenched out of dance, he was dazed, disoriented, stunned by the slack weight of dancer in his arms.

  Rheba?

  There was no answering flicker, no stir of recognition, no warmth of companionship in his mind.