The ashes are light and drift from his fingertips into the still air of the room and slowly toward the floor.
Martel locks the rear portal onto the porch, as well as the front as he leaves, for the first time since he originally entered the cottage with Rathe Firien. He will not be back soon.
The three holos gaze adoringly at the wooden beams of the ceiling above the table, and the black thunderbolt on the envelope protects them.
A man who is no longer just a man, clad in two black cloaks, one fabric, one shadow, strides along the coast path toward Sybernal, and those who see him do not. But they shiver as he passes, not knowing why.
xliii
In the strictest sense of the word, the old Empire of Man “fell” with the death of the Regent and the succession of the Grand Duke of Kirsten. Practically speaking, however, the impact was the permanent division of the Empire. Both the “eastern” Empire, ruled from New Augusta by the Emperor, and the “western” Empire, ruled from Karnak by the Viceroy, claimed to be only parts of the new Empire of Light.
In a strange way, the claims were true. In the millennium that the Empire of Light existed, never did either ruler contest a prior claim of the other, nor was there a recorded instance of the fleets of one firing upon the fleets of the other.
To the Viceroy, of course, most credit should be given. Never before or since in human history has a ruler endured, not only relatively sane, but apparently young and healthy, for a millennium. During the same period, there were twenty-four Emperors, five palace revolts, and three lineal changes associated with the Emperors of New Augusta.…
—Basic Hist-Tape
Hsein-Fer
Karnak 4413
xliv
The golden goddess glitters.
Glitters as she walks, glitters as she never glittered before, and the words she has not spoken dance across the dull air to shimmer from the darker corners created by her very presence in Sybernal. Seldom has she donned her aspect so blatantly in the city of gold sand beaches and eternal sunlight that comes from no sun and turns the seas golden-green at all hours. Seldom has she been seen in recent centuries, not since she was rumored to have consorted with the god who is and never was.
Yet she is, and she glitters as she walks from the Petrified Boardwalk down a narrow lane toward a narrower staircase. The women turn away without looking, and the men look and turn away, wishing they dared to look longer, but knowing that she has chosen the dark god, the one no one dares mention, and been rejected.
Inside the No-Name, a man dressed in black sits alone at a table. The row of tables nearest his is vacant, and the bar is slowly emptying. No one wears black in Sybernal, no one of Aurore, not without tempting the gods or the dark one, and the man in black does both.
A rumormonger who has seen better times mutters, “The Emperor kills the truth,” before collapsing on the hardwood counter, and, yes, it is real hardwood, genuine steelbark from Sylvanium, that counter of the nameless bar where the media downers congregate, where they ignore the one called Martel who sits among them, where they tempt fate and gods by remaining in his presence.
Martel knows the collapsed one could not have been a good newsie, not after spouting such garbage. The news itself kills truth, for the news media can never encompass all that happens and, by omission, present only a scattering of accurate facts sufficient to kill the truth. Rulers, among them Emperors and Viceroys, merely use the media’s reported facts to ensure that the truth remains dead and buried.
In waiting, Martel has drunk too much Springfire, more than anyone should drink, he knows, and particularly more than he should drink. Still, he hesitates to change his metabolism to burn it off … yet.
“Martel…” The voice has a golden sound, but its fullness cannot quite hide the trace of silver bells beneath.
He turns and looks through the glitter. Even without the coruscating auras, the veil of glittermotes, and the projected sensuality, she is still impossibly impressive. Her natural, but genetically back-altered, golden hair streams over her shoulders like a cloak. The golden ruby of her lips and the clean lines of her still- and forever-young face combine with her tan and slenderness to strike a silence deeper than that at the bottom of the well of souls.
Martel, wishing again he could have remained merely a newsie, but knowing she had indeed sent him the three holos, ignores the temptation to see her as she wishes and concentrates on her as she is. Physically, of course, there is no difference, but, without all the attributes, she stands before him as a collection of clashing traits—the face of a girl with eyes that have seen Hell, the figure of a virgin with the body posture of experience, a complexion that demands dark hair with golden.
“Emily, Queen of Harlots and Whore of Gods, nice of you to pay your respects.”
“Martel, your words have been nicer. Not to mention your actions.”
The two newsies closest to the arched doorway scuttle through it and up the stairway into the light. Another crouches in the corner of his solitary booth.
Martel readjusts his metabolism, holds back the churning in his stomach, and wipes the instant sweat boils off his forehead as his system burns off the poisons he has so recently drunk from the jasolite beaker.
“That was then. When I was young and did not know you weren’t, and when I had not learned the price. Not that I have yet paid it, but I will. Oh, I will.”
“Not that one, I hope.” She turns.
Martel watches, not quite ready to follow, not quite rid of the Springfire toxins.
The golden girl turns up her glitter, spraying the room with the hope that kills. The single woman, a caster from Path Five, sees that false hope and hates. Hates instantly, and dies nearly as instantly.
Martel reaches out with a twist of thought and readjusts her thoughts before her death is final, before she knows she has died. But he leaves the hatred. That is a personal matter.
Wiping off the last of the sweat-poison boils with a towel flown from across the bar, he stands away from his table and strides through the sparkling motes left by the golden girl, letting them cloak his black tunic and trousers for the instants before they understand what he is and expire.
Like a knife of night he cuts through the residues of the worthless hope left by Emily as he tracks her from the No-Name.
On the long beach called Beginning he finds her. On Aurore any beach can be a beginning, for it is on the beach that most who would be gods find their calling.
There are no shadows on the beach.
He ignores his thought and lets his steps take him to Emily, who watches the waves break, who holds her cloak of glittermotes to call attention and repel it.
His own shield of darkness wraps around him tighter than his cloak. The breeze swirls his black hair into patterns no geometrician would dare probe, but he ignores it.
“Still the same stolid Martel,” observes Emily, releasing her cloak of lightmotes back into the field.
Martel looks through her shallow/deep gold eyes. Why did all those who merely accepted godhood have eyes, eyes that miss nothing but understand nothing?
Maybe that is the answer, he thinks.
“A thousand years, and you still think about eyes and philosophy?”
“How many thousand and you still don’t?” he counters. Shielded or unshielded makes no difference. Her powers have not grown.
Martel stands fractionally above the soft sand that would climb into his boots, given half a chance. The nouveaux riches of the Empire flock to Aurore to lie on the beaches, to tan, and to let the sand drift over and about them, hoping the god field would select them. And Martel stands above the sand, well above the salt.
“Philosophy is a substitute for power, or a rationale for not using it.”
“Did you intrigue me out here just to insult me?” Martel knows he should have waited until Emily made her offer, whatever it is. But the time has passed, long passed, for him to take matters on her terms.
You think so?
Martel does not answer.
Emily gathers back her light cloak and draws upon the field. She expands until she is half again Martel’s height, until she has a fistful of small lightnings within her right hand, until dark clouds swirl over the beach called Beginning.
Martel ignores the temptation and watches the always regular breakers coasting in to foam up on the square-lined beach that stretches kilos north and south.
The lightnings flash, and Martel accepts them, one by one, without flinching, without injury, and without expression.
From the depths of the field building around Emily comes the roaring whistle of tormented air emerging onto the sands into a sandspout that bears down on Martel. The winds die as they strike Martel, and the sands slough away.
Emily makes no other moves and says nothing. Martel is determined not to speak again.
Locking his time sense into a trance, he waits, personal defense screens alerted, only half conscious of his immediate surroundings as he feels the planet turn, if Aurore indeed is a planet, a fact contested by approximately 49.49567 percent of the physical scientists in the Empire to have studied Aurore.
Alone in his time-slowed thoughts, Martel again senses the wrongness of the beach, that wrongness he has glimpsed so many times before in passing, whether gathering background cubes for the CastCenter, or cloud-diving, or just in walking the Petrified Boardwalk.
Waiting for Emily, he ponders.
Pondering, he waits.
Multiple drains on the field around him prick his alert screens, and Martel flashes directly into double-speed awareness, without shifting a single muscle.
Item: Five full foci surround him.
Item: Emily hovers outside the pentagonal force lines.
Item: Sixteen standard hours have elapsed.
Item: All five of the foci circling him are asexual.
Never has Martel experienced an asexual focus. Theoretically, the user is either ancient or alien, but while alien gods are possible in theory, Martel has never run across one. Therefore, either the foci are ancient human-derived gods or artificial.
As a practical matter, neither is likely to be a danger, and Martel returns to normal awareness, increasing his circulation level to lessen the possibility of physical stiffness.
He blinks.
While he can sense the five foci, he can see none, only Emily hovering at an angle, her eyes shielded by her customary veil of glitter, emotions cloaked in a jangle of discordant projections.
Lust rolls in so strongly the beach air reeks of rancid trilia blossoms, so pungent that Emily would have cast a double shadow on any other planet.
Martel does not move.
“You still believe in all that ethical restraint,” Emily notes as she touches down several body lengths in front of him.
“No. Or not exactly. I don’t like being pushed into making decisions.”
“Apollo wagered that you would break the elementals.”
“And you bet I wouldn’t?”
Emily makes a curious gesture in the air, and the five foci are reabsorbed into the field.
“You know, you do believe in ethical restraint. One woman, one god, one set of beliefs, and that’s what They’re fearing.”
Martel looks away, back at the thin edge of foam that coasts into the beach ahead of the waves.
Finally he speaks.
“Why now?”
“You’ve given Them a millennium. Isn’t that enough?”
Since Emily never quite tells the whole truth, Martel makes the necessary translation. Apollo has finally decided that Martel is no danger and is moving against him. Either that, or Emily has decided that Apollo is no danger to Martel and is pressing Martel.
“Not necessarily.”
Emily takes a step sideways, toward the water.
Martel casts around, but, outside of a few norms farther up the beach, they are alone. No gods or demigods are standing by.
“Why don’t you go to Karnak, Martel?” suggests Emily.
“Why Karnak?”
Why indeed Karnak? Is she playing to your curiosity, Martel? Or trying to get you off Aurore, and away from the field?
Before he has finished the thought, the girl who glitters has bent the field and is half Aurore away, or playing with the dolphins in midocean, or reporting to Apollo.
He can go to Karnak or he can stay on Aurore.
That is not the question, but then, it never has been.
xlv
“Shuttle from the Grand Duke Kirsten now arriving at port ten. Passengers from Tinhorn, Accord, and Sahara. Grand Duke Kirsten at port ten.”
One would have thought that the Viceroy would have retired the Grand Duke before having the former pride of the transport liners relegated to backwater runs. One might have thought, unless one knew the Viceroy. Even so, before long the Grand Duke would be scrap or an outsystem tramp with a new name.
Eventually, another Grand Duke Kirsten of the Imperial Western Flag Fleet would be built and christened—the fifth of the same name—and the cycle would repeat.
In the meantime, the fourth Grand Duke carries passengers on the Karnak-Tinhorn-Sahara-Accord quadrangle, and often carries far less than a full complement, for the schedule is more important than the profit, the regularity a quietly impressive reinforcement of Viceregal power cheaper than corresponding calls by appropriate fleets. Not that the fleets do not call … just that they call less frequently, but just as impressively as ever.
The first shuttle’s passengers file down the sloping corridor toward the clearance officers and their fully instrumented cubicles.
One customs inspector fingers his power spray syringe, reviewing the small holo of a black-haired man with a young face and deep eyes, a face that seems to cast a shadow even through the holo cube. His partner should steer the man toward his station. Then it will be his job to complete the operation.
The killer, for that is an accurate description of his profession, paid as he is by the Assassins’ Guild of Karnak, relaxes as he sees the man approach, mentally measures the distance between the unsuspecting traveler and his inspection console, and flexes his arm to ensure the proper function of the syringe hidden within his sleeve.
The victim wears black except for a silver triangle mounted on the plain black metal buckle of his black belt. He carries no luggage, not even a small carrying case or the effects pouch of a postulant.
The false inspector feels a twinge of unease, but stifles it with a cheerful call.
“This way, honored sir.”
The traveler in black turns his gaze on the assassin, and the look alone sends a chill down the professional killer’s spine, for the look is simply an acknowledgement of what is.
Nearly convulsively the assassin triggers the syringe.
For the first time in years, if ever, an assassin’s weapon fails, but the Guild insists on backup plans, and the man’s hands flick to the clearance lights: green for clear, red for danger—smuggling, weapons, or attack.
Even while his hands are triggering the switch that will bring a red light while alerting the guards in the overhead blisters, he reaches for his own stunner, a special model designed to burn out enough nerves to render the question of survival academic.
The clearance light turns green, and the traveler turns to move through the opening portal to the open shuttle terminal, to Karnak itself.
Frantically the assassin jerks the stunner from inside the hidden pouch, levels it, and squeezes the firing stud. No energy flows from the circular tubes pointed at the back of the departing man in black, but the jolt to the killer’s arm is enough to slam his fingers apart and let the fused hand weapon clatter on the hard flooring.
Though his arm looks intact, he cannot feel anything below the elbow.
The sound of the dropped stunner echoes through the rest of the receiving tunnel.
Three red lights blink on in the consoles above, one in each guard blister. The energy-concentration detectors focus on th
e heat of the discarded stunner, but the guards zero in on the figure standing above the weapon.
The assassin bites hard on a back tooth, one designed in a special way, but before the nerve poison can take full effect he collapses under three separate stun beams, one from each overhead blister.
The remaining travelers gingerly step around the twitching body, avoid looking down, and make their declarations to the other two customs officials.
The man in black does not look back.
After a time, the assassin’s body is still, and, shortly, is removed. Three disposal units roll from a recess in the tunnel wall. The body is lifted into the first. The second sterilizes the floor and surrounding area. The third does nothing.
The last of the passengers from the Grand Duke steps around the three metallic units and presents her declaration to the sole customs officer left. By the time the clearance light has flashed green, the tunnel is empty, and the guards in their blisters have punched the standby studs, to wait for the next arrivals.
xlvi
May the wind rise in dusty rooms, rooms for sex and sensuality, and let us not call either a sin, for sinning is a term implying an absolute morality, and the gods of the Empire, the gods of Aurore, accept no morality and know no absolutes.
While they know no absolutes, they know well the power of belief in absolutes, and revel in that power.
While the winds of sex and not-sinning spin in quiet circles, rise and die, rise and die in polished sheets and damp skin, in eternal light and in eternal darkness, and in the grubby universe in between, the gods of Aurore gather upon the holy peak Jsalm.
Some glitter, like Emily, and some, like the Smoke Bull, wrap misty darkness around themselves like a cloak. Each has an individual aspect and an energy presence, but what these gods that are, beings that were, do with their appearance with the light and power they draw from the field matters little.
That they have all met on the sacred peak in person is what matters, for it was in the time of the immortal Viceroy’s grandfather before the Empire of Man became the Empire of Light that they last gathered. Two have often met, perhaps three, even five, but never have all met since that time.
Haze and the Hammer of Darkness Page 49
