"I killed them, just now," he went on, looking south. "I gave each of them water laced with enough bane gold crystals dissolved in it to kill a camel. Your people were staked out in the sun with their fingernails and toenails torn out, and ants feeding on the wounds. I ended their agony."
Now he turned to Darien and saw the tears on her cheeks.
"You are crying," he said gently. "Do you think I'm a monster? But you cannot know what I am saying, so... why? Are you afraid of this man of rustling vines and leaves? A monster!" She sat very still. "Monster. Do you know monsters?"
He gestured to himself, then to her head, then reared over her with his arms up. HIM--I THINK--MONSTER, Darien guessed, then managed a smile and shook her head.
"You don't think I'm a monster?" he exclaimed.
She pointed to where his mouth was, then to her ears, then stroked one of her hands with the other. "Ah, you think I've got a kind voice. Well, thank you." He bowed with a great rustling of leaves and tendrils. "How deceptive voices can be. I confess to murder, yet I do it in a kind voice and a strange language, so you think me not a monster. If you knew that I'd poisoned your people you would feel differently. They did nothing but scream and plead in your language no matter what the torturer did to them.." so I killed them through kindness. How I wish that the truth went no further than that, but there were greater issues guiding my fingers to the poison jar.
"Had your unknown linguist broken, it would have endangered the expedition. Kharec would have learned where your towns are and would have turned aside to plunder them. I could not allow that, so I had to kill. The Abbess Theresla wants us to find out where the Call comes from, so we must continue south. I am the right hand of the Abbess, I can reach across the harshest deserts and over the edge of hell for her. To be the instrument of her will, ah, it makes me become alive. When she looks out over the edge of the world into the very lips of the Call, it will be through my eyes. How lucky for me that she was born female, and that I must see, hear, fight, thirst, starve, and kill for her."
He shook a mass of verdure that might have been a fist, and his mirrors turned to the south as if he were defying the source of the Call. Darien could see the strength and pride within him, but she could also see a woman of immense power and charisma behind him. He turned back to her.
"Do you want to know how I killed them? Ah, I was very clever. I told Kharec that your people would not live long enough to have their wills broken, what with the way they were being treated. I offered them water from my own waters king but Kharec had me seized, unlaced the vines masking my lips, and forced me to drink half of my own water. All morning he had me watched, yet I did not drink any phial of antidote, and I did not die. At noon he called me the turd of a diseased camel and left to bathe in the cool waters of one of your cisterns. The guards let your people drink from my waters king then gave it back to me. Here it is, here."
He raised the nearly empty waters king and drank what was left.
"Only a few drops, yet enough to kill you two or three times over, my pretty flatterer. Hah, but I have been adding a little bane gold to my water for years, so to me it has become just an exotic flavor. How long have we been here now? Three days? Soon Kharec will lose patience and decide to move on. You will be slain before we leave, he has already ordered that. Now there is irony for you: under the charter of the Abbess you can be killed, but not raped."
Darien's heart seemed to plunge through the flagstones as he spoke. She was going to be killed, yet his voice was level and calm. Decades of life, study, struggle, love, and achievement were going to become nothing with the slash of a blade, yet he did not care! He stood up and loomed over her. Seeing fear in her face, he chose to interpret her terror as fear of him.
"You fear me, pretty, nameless scullion," he said gently, then backed off a pace. "Very silly of you. Not only will I not hurt you, but I shall make sure that nobody else does. I am not a man, you see, I am the hands of the great Abbess and she would always protect you."
He was being casual about her death because he was going to save her! The swirling vortex of emotions within her suddenly broke Darien's self-control. Tears left shining tracks down her cheeks in the light of her little lamp. She hung her head and began to sob. The vine man stepped forward again and the leaves rustled loudly as he patted her shoulder. She looked up.
"You must help yourself, though. I shall make sure that Kharec is the first out of this strange fortress. When you get free you must run and hide. Under stand?"
He made a cutting motion over her tether, then did a lumbering run on the spot. She nodded that she understood. "It is good to be within stone walls again," he said, looking out over the desert. "At Glenellen we have a fine city, all cut out of red stone. Deep red sandstone walls, as red as the blood from an enemy's artery and reflected in the cobalt waters of the gorge. You could not imagine how pretty it is. The black Kooree nomads call it Jupla, they say that it is where the first humans emerged from the earth. The road to the governor's palace is lined with macro zamia cycads to signify long life to our rulers, and the courtyards and terraces of the convent are shaded by livistona palms and drooping ironwood trees. Covered stone irrigation canals water orchards of date palms, while grapevines grow in terraced gardens right up the side of the gorge. The suit that I wear is descended from a grapevine. It was fashioned by the Abbess Theresla.
"I am her hands, her legs, her ears and eyes. By our sacred laws she can go nowhere and I can go everywhere. I am devout, my pretty one, I read our sacred scriptures every day and I follow them to the very word. Yet... I also like being a protector, I do not do it just to obey the holy word. You are helpless, so I shall keep you safe. I am the right hand of the Abbess, reaching out to protect you." The deaths of the controllers bought Darien extra time. Kharec had the two lancers who had been guarding them seized and tortured. They quickly confessed to the killings, yet could not say where they obtained the bane gold poison. Their torture continued through the night and into the next day.
The vine man was also under suspicion, yet his value was too great for him to be harmed. Kharec ranted and fumed and threatened, and finally had him confined. A Call tether was threaded among the large stem vines at his back, and padlocked to an eyebolt in the courtyard where he passed the hours sunning himself. Darien watched them arguing from the window of her hostelry room, listening carefully to the distant voices.
"I don't like you being free during Calls," Kharec said as he impotently paced the gleaming white flagstones. "But during a Call only I can move freely. Who will now creep into enemy fortresses and lay them open for you? Who will rescue your men if their camels' sand anchors fail during a Call?"
"You place too much faith in your value, vine man These people are as timid as rabbits, and easily conquered. As for rescues during Calls, I think the men have come to depend too heavily on you. Having you confined will give them reason to maintain their sand anchors and timers better." His voice was raised: his words were meant as much for the unseen ears of his lancers as for the vine man
The vine man could now only move beyond the courtyard by tearing the vines of his suit, or by unlacing the front and getting out of it. If he did either during a Call he would be as vulnerable as any other mortal. Darien left the window and lay on her bed, but the voices still reached her clearly above the light bluster of the desert wind.
"If I have no more value, why bother to keep me?" the muffled voice of the vine man asked calmly. "Kill you when you may be innocent? I am deeply hurt, vine man You may be under suspicion, but no more than that. I am a fair and just leader."
"Besides, using me you can open up any fortress without losing a single man, or risking your own--" "Don't press my patience, vine man You will not be tortured, but your bag gage will be searched. If bane gold poison is found among your bundles of books, instruments, and fertilizer then--"
A Call swept over Maralinga Railside. Darien tumbled away from the horrors of her captivity into oblivion, then awo
ke with her waist chaffed from struggling against her locked tether. Outside the lancers stirred and cursed. This Call had been the first since the Ghan raid on the rail side
"Captain Kharec!" someone suddenly cried. There were other cries of "Gone!" and "His tether must have snapped." The vine man muffled voice shouted for their attention. "Listen to me, listen well! The Captain's tether was carelessly fastened. I saw it come apart, I saw him go south with the Call."
"But you should have stopped him!" someone bellowed.
"He had me fastened here by the very vines that make me immune to the Call. What could I do?" Now Calderen cried out. "Go down to the mercy wall at the south, he will have been stopped under the shelter at the junction." Three lancers hurried off to fetch Kharec. They returned in great distress.
"One of the camels broke free from the stable and was guided into the apex shelter by the mercy wall," one of them wailed. "Captain Kharec must have climbed onto its back, then reached the roof of the shelter. The tiles were broken where he got through and over the wall."
Calderan took command, yet the vine man was the real leader. He ordered his tether cut, then had the two tortured guards released. Calderan was a loyal and dedicated officer, and was adamant on one matter: Kharec had to be rescued. Oddly enough, the vine man seemed eager to help.
"The sweep of the Call is six miles deep, and once you enter it you will be trapped in the Call yourself. I am the only one who can save him."
"You must leave now, take a squad of ten and ride hard--" "No! This is totally unknown country, so we must remain at full strength when we leave. Tonight the Call will stop, and become a malaise zone. We will keep moving in the darkness, until we reach the edge of the malaise, then I will go on alone."
"But you might not find him in the dark, over all that area." "Precisely, that is why we must leave together. The search may take many days and nights, and could be dangerous. We may not even be able to return this way."
"What about that mute woman?"
"What about her?"
"She could write an account of what happened here for her own people. Send someone to kill her." His words stabbed through Darien like a knife through her breast, as sharp as the blade that would follow in a few minutes. She sat up, thinking only of staying alive. Soon someone would come and she had to escape, hide, or fight. She could jam the bed against the door, gain a few moments. She would die fighting! She turned to the bed--and there was a key and a double-barreled flint lock lying beside it!
Even as Darien snatched up the gun the outer latch rattled and the officer Yuragii entered. He was leering, already gathering up the front of his robes. She held the gun behind her, fumbling to draw the strikers back to be fully cocked.
"Now don't be afraid, you don't know how lucky you are," he crooned in a genuinely pleasant voice.
I'm only afraid of the recoil, she replied to herself. The gun had half-inch bore barrels, far larger than any she had been trained to use during her Overliber accreditation. Suddenly his gaze turned to the bed, where the key to her tether still lay. At that moment she brought the gun around, gripped it in both hands, and fired.
Only one barrel went off, but Yuragii slowly doubled over amid clouds of gunsmoke. The others were slow in coming, thinking that the shot had been his. As Yuragii hit the floor Darien snatched up the key and was soon safely hidden in the maze that was the rail side
She watched the Ghan lancers leave from a hidden vantage. Calderen was in the lead, terrified of actually being in charge after a lifetime of orders from others. Makkigi seemed lost, now that he did not have Kharec to spy upon. She counted the riders: thirty-seven, with three camels being led. A telescope revealed that two lancers rode unsteadily, obviously the guards who had been tortured.." and sure enough, one lancer was a straw mockup wearing robes. Somewhere in the rail side there was a lancer, hidden and aware that she was dangerous. He would be an experienced, ruthless warrior, and he would shoot to kill if he caught sight of her.
Darien began to write on a sheet of parchment, choosing her words carefully. The first lines were for whoever found the note: "On the authority of Deputy Overliber Darien vis Barbessa of Libris in Roch ester, this note is to be sent by beam flash to Rochester with the highest priority."
Some coded blocks of routing information followed, along with a valid beam flash authority number. After that was a thousand words of neatly written code which would be intelligible to anyone using the Calculor.
That night Darien crept out to the wind-engine shed. The shunting engine's brakes were screwed down tight and its rotors collapsed down into the primary drums and locked against the wind that blew through the double-ended shed. Working in total darkness she slowly cranked the tubular rotors up to their full height and unlocked them. The wind spun them up to a good operating speed. She tied a thin cord to a buffer to hold the engine steady on the rails and rigged the timer from her body anchor to the gear lever of one of the rotors. She set it for just after dawn, then unscrewed the brakes. Before she stepped off the engine Darien tied her parchment note to the master gear lever with bright red ribbon. The next person to enter the cabin could not miss it.
She settled down to wait in the kiosk on the rail side platform. Somewhere in the rail side a lancer was hiding, waiting for her to emerge. All the food had been cleared away, probably to the kitchens. She would have to eat eventually, and he would be hiding somewhere with a good view, waiting. The sky brightened She had the platform bell and two long sniper muskets on the floor beside her. Sunlight streamed over the horizon. It would shine in the eyes of anyone running after the shunting engine.
There was a dull clang as the timer released the gear lever, which engaged the forward rotor. The wind engine snapped its cord as the tubular rotor powered the wheels and it moved forward with a deep rumble. Darien began to ring the rail side bell, but stopped as the shunter rattled over the points and east along the main line. In the distance she saw the Ghan lancer scramble out of the rail side entrance and run across the staging yard, robes flapping and musket held high as he stumbled over the rails.
It was all so simple for the Ghan. The engine was moving, so she was obviously escaping on it. Luckily it was slow enough for a running man to catch. Women were such easy opponents, he panted to himself with satisfaction; they knew nothing of tactics or feints. He was thirty feet away when Darien squeezed the trigger. The wind scoured the smoke away to reveal his body sprawled in the pinkish sand. She aimed the second musket and took a bead on his head, shivering with revulsion at the idea of shooting a dead man, yet.." click-boom!
Darien emerged from the kiosk holding the vine man double-barrel red flint lock and approached the body. The right side of his head was a bloody mess; he was definitely dead. She turned the body over. There was no other wound, the first shot had missed! Great, gasping sobs burst through Darien's self-control, and she collapsed to her hands and knees. Her tears left dark craters in a drift of powdery, pink limestone sand.
The wind engine rumbled off into the distance and Darien made no attempt to stop it. With a particularly good wind and no coaches at all it rapidly gathered speed and rolled past Irmana within three hours. The duty switchman only realized that there was nobody on the engine when it was too late, and nothing could be done to stop it. The switchman at Jumel was caught by surprise as well, but this time there was a beam flash link to the next rail side At Warrion they were ready when the runaway arrived.
The switchman set an iron lever in a slot beside the track and nearly half a mile farther on a driver was waiting. The engine hurtled out of the west, and the track block brake's release arm clanged into the iron lever beside the track. Hard wood blocks swung down to jam under the rear wheels, yet the engine was traveling so fast that the blocks belched smoke and burst into flame with the friction. In half a mile the engine had slowed to a walking pace, its rotors straining to drive it forward while smoke streamed from its wheels. A driver ran beside the track and easily swung himself aboard. Wh
en he disengaged the gears to the wind rotors he noticed the note tied with red ribbon, and as he took the engine into the rail side siding he read Darien's instructions.
Because Warrion was within the newly expanded beam flash network it took only a few minutes for the first phrases of Darien's message to be routed to the clearing center at Woomera. Soon it was passing through the galleries of the towers that Darien had helped to establish; then its header crossed the border of tho Rcnthont Allinnt- nt lonrnnrl nnd flnh.d o.nt nero tho o'nlnnd and eucalypt forests to the tower at Rochester. Here one of Darien's codes routed the message straight down to the Calculor's receptor. It was decoded, and soon an astonished operator sent an alarm to the Highliber's study.
As Zarvora was reading the first decoded words, the eastbound express train was approaching Maralinga and Darien was waiting to flag it down. There were ten reserve musketeers among the passengers, and they stayed to guard the rail side with her while the express continued east for help.
Three days later help arrived in the form of a wind train from Woomera carrying twelve dozen more musketeers and twenty lancers. More important, there were also six demi-terriers that were too small to be affected by the Call. The dogs were trained to attack anything not mindlessly straining to wander along with a Call, such as rats that had learned when humans were helpless. The vine man would no longer have the world to himself during Calls, and if only one of the small dogs was able to tear a hole in his suit that would be the end. The demi-terriers were taken to sniff at the place where the vine man had sat sunning himself, and they learned his scent quickly.
Souls in the Great Machine Page 14
