The Children of Anthi: Anthi - Book One

by Deborah Chester

  Blaise followed more cautiously, one hand on his weapon. Lea’dl! Try as he might he could not curb his mounting sense of unease. Pausing for a moment near a bend in the passageway, he spread out his rings warily, well aware that to do so could lead to discovery.

  “Come!” Aural whispered, looking back at him. “Hurry!”

  His senses told him nothing. No one was near save the guards outside Picyt’s quarters. Blaise frowned, not yet certain how to get past them.

  When they reached the end of the passageway, she stopped. “Let me go first and distract them,” she said, her voice scarcely audible. “They know my task.”

  For a moment he wondered why she did not use mind-touch, since the need for silence was very great this near the guards, and then he cursed his own stupid suspicion. Of course, if they communicated mentally, Picyt would pick it up at once. Silently Blaise nodded to show he understood, then, seeing her strained expression and the intensity in her eyes, gave her a brief encouraging smile. She looked at him but did not smile back. With a deep breath she straightened and put on her mask before walking out into view of the guards with the serene grace of Aural.

  Not daring to watch, Blaise held his breath and listened to her murmur something to the guards. She even laughed. He raised his brows in reluctant admiration. Saunders had come a long way in the art of deception and duplicity. And, to his surprise, she succeeded in leading the guards down another passageway branching off from the widened intersection of tunnels. As soon as the sound of their footsteps faded, Blaise drew his jen-knife, wishing for a fire-rod instead, and eased out with silent catlike steps across the open space lit by flaring torches to where the door of Picyt’s quarters stood slightly ajar. If Saunders kept the guards away long enough, it would take only seconds to kill the defenseless priest. Blaise swallowed, frowning as he prepared to kill in cold blood. It had to be done.

  He listened for a moment at the door, and heard nothing but the harsh, regular rasp of breathing. He extended his senses imperceptibly, seeking a trap, but detected none. Tensely he pushed the door wider and eased his way inside the darkened room. There he paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, before creeping forward to the figure lying among silken cushions beneath a canopy. The thin draperies rippled softly in the drafts. Blaise readied the knife and reached out to draw the draperies back.

  He stiffened, staring through the dim illumination from the incense burner at Uble’s smooth, unconscious face. He could smell the faint bitter scent of yde. He turned to flee, only to stop at the sight of two figures standing in the darkness between him and the door.

  “Does my Leiil now believe?” asked Picyt’s hoarse, ruined voice.

  Defiantly Blaise started to answer, but the second figure swaggered forward, activating the light cube in his hand.

  “We do indeed believe,” he said, his youthful voice deep with arrogance as he raked his black, purple-flecked eyes over Blaise. He curled his sensual lips in a contemptuous smile. “The true Asan would have swept down upon us with fifty cohorts of jen warriors rather than creep through the shadows to strike down his enemies in the coward’s way.”

  Blaise felt sickened at his own stupidity. Why had he trusted Aural? Why? “I am no coward, Hihuan,” he said, masking his despair with a level voice. Without warning he flicked his jen-knife across the room at Hihuan, remembering that day of trickery and pain, but by casually lifting his hand Hihuan deflected the blade with a flash of blue fire. The knife clattered harmlessly on the stone floor.

  “That was foolish,” said Hihuan, his black eyes narrowing. “Take his sword, noble.”

  Picyt, even more decrepit and ravaged than before, stood bent and shrunken in his vast white robes, glaring resentfully at Hihuan. “I am not thy lackey, Noble Leiil. Let the guards return and deal with him.”

  Hihuan frowned, but he summoned the guards, who reappeared almost at once with an unmasked Aural. She looked sullen but unharmed.

  Raising his personal force field, Blaise glanced at her, but she did not respond.

  “I have done thy bidding, Leiil Hihuan,” she said, stepping away from the masked guards who flanked her. Tlar’jen, Blaise saw at once, reading the marks of caste and family rank upon their masks. There were four of them. Jen-knives with jeweled hilts that glittered in the light hung at their belts, but unlike the Bban’n, they carried their fire-rods in the cuff of their gauntlets and wore plated breast shielding beneath their cloaks instead of mail. Aural gestured, her blue eyes the color of smoke. “Permit me to retire.”

  “Oh, not yet, Dame Aural,” said the Tlar leiil, leering at her. “You are a sight that pleases us.”

  She compressed her lips in anger, and she started to speak.

  “Well, Saunders,” said Blaise before she could do so. “I hope you are to be generously rewarded for this night’s work. Do you still expect the Institute to come orbiting some day and rescue you?”

  “Oh, silence your imbecilic tongue!” she snapped, tossing a strand of hair back from her face. “I am not Saunders, you fool, and had you not been so besotted with that accursed Henan girl, your senses would have told you so.” She swung away from Blaise as the blood rushed furiously to his face. “Revered noble,” she said proudly to Picyt, “you desired that he be brought. He is here.” She extended her hand impatiently.

  “Ah, yes, my promise.” Picyt twisted the pallid, dead flesh of his face into something resembling a smile and drew a vial of yde from his wide sleeve. He placed it into her hand.

  Her fingers closed tightly around it, and Blaise saw hunger quiver through her face. Sickened, he swung his eyes away from her as Hihuan stepped forward to put his hand upon hers. She flinched back, and with a low laugh he let her go.

  “Is it possible to find an eighth level?” he murmured, his black eyes glittering at her with undisguised appetite.

  A bitter, malicious smile curved her lips. “Take care, mortal Leiil, lest I put you there and leave you untouched.” She raised her brows at his frown. “That is your favored game, is it not?”

  Scowling, Hihuan moved away from her and flicked his hand at his guards. “Seize Asan! This affair wearies us.”

  Swallowing his boiling rage, Blaise refrained from his desire to issue challenge as he glared fiercely at Hihuan. “I think you will find it grows even more tiresome. Good-bye.” He gathered his senses together, but although fire seared his veins he did not seizert. He blinked, stunned by this failure, and tried again with no success.

  “No, Asan,” said Hihuan with a deep laugh. “How much the years have permitted you to forget. We are Tlar here, not simple-minded Bban.” He nodded toward the guards with their drawn fire-rods, and only now did Blaise realize they were not firing on him. Instead, they had reversed polarization in their weapons to draw the energy from his force field. That was why he could not seizert, not as long as they continued to drain his power.

  Swiftly Blaise drew his rings tightly in, dropping the force field abruptly. One fire-rod began to glow and its owner dropped it with a curse. Blaise seized that split second of distraction to draw his sword. Moving onto the balls of his feet, he hefted the curved blade of green corybdium with its thin inset of gold, swinging it lightly to make it sing in a soft taunt.

  “Fool!” shouted Hihuan, and gestured at his guards. “Fire! Cut him down!”

  “No!” cried Picyt with horror. “The key to Anthi must not be destroyed—”

  A bolt of energy crackled from a fire-rod, moving straight at Blaise. But the full force of his mental concentration was locked on that attack. He compressed his rings into a spearhead and shot them the full length of the blade, which hummed in answer, the metal glowing with heat that seared his hands. Yet he felt nothing as he swung up the blade and deflected the bolt back at his attackers. A guard fell, screaming, and two more fired. He deflected these also, the power shining through his blade as energy shot recklessly about the room, one bolt slamming into the wall beside Aural, who ducked with a cry.

&
nbsp; “Madness!” shouted Picyt, cringing behind a chair. “Fools!”

  But the battle went on, and even Hihuan drew a fire-rod, dropping to one knee to fire it low. Blaise knew it was coming, and the memory of his former wound drove him to dodge too soon. Thrown off-balance, he cursed himself as he ducked again and barely deflected a second bolt from Hihuan with the tip of his blade. The shock of absorbing and deflecting so much energy was tiring him. A shudder ran through the sword, and he gripped it more tightly, seeking desperately now for his chance to seizert.

  One more deflection…now. Scarcely had he knocked the bolt aside when he withdrew his rings from the sword and reformed them. But just as he achieved seizert a wall seemed to appear from nowhere, slamming him back into the physical plane with such force that he sagged, stunned, to his knees, the sword slipping from his loosened grasp.

  “Hold fire!” shouted Hihuan, rising to his feet. He smiled at Aural in surprise. “Well done, Dame Aural! Well done! But we would have had him in another moment. These ancient methods of doing battle exhibit great flamboyance but are not very effective.”

  “You would have had his death,” she snapped. “And Anthi would be lost to us all. Would you have the revered noble die through your bloodthirst?”

  Hihuan’s fleshy, handsome face darkened. “Perhaps that would not be such a dreadful thing.”

  Picyt responded bitterly to that. “Arguments serve no purpose save that of our enemies. Let the task be done.”

  “Agreed.” Hihuan smiled. There was a grim ugliness in his eyes that boded no good for anyone. He nodded at the three remaining guards, who seized the still groggy Blaise as soon as Aural withdrew her force field. Their rough hands dragged him to his feet, stripping him of cloak and baldric. Something dim within Blaise urged him to fight his way free, but he could not get past his sense of disorientation. The ringing in his ears made him grimace, and he muttered a sharp oath as his arms were twisted painfully behind him and shackled.

  “Why is Anthi’s return so important?” he asked woodenly, snatching at anything to gain time for his wits to return. He focused his eyes upon Hihuan’s unsmiling face. “Surely your army does not need a life-maintenance computer in order to defeat the Bban’jen.”

  Hihuan sneered, but it was plain the question had struck a nerve. “You know the many functions of Anthi. She supports the protection shields over Altian and blocks Bban mental vibrations, among other things. You know this, Asan. Seek not to make us think you more a fool than you are.”

  Blaise smiled without amusement. “In other words, Anthi is the primary unit that supports secondaries in your capital. Small wonder you fear the Bban, if it is to be a fair fight.”

  “Silence!” Hihuan’s black eyes blazed. “You—no,” he said with abrupt softness, as he regarded Blaise’s sword, which one of the guards held. “Bring that to me.”

  The guard obeyed with visible puzzlement, and Hihuan snatched the sword from his hand, turning it over so that light flashed along the blade. “This is no common Bban weapon. It…” He tapped the large jewel set in the hilt and with an oath pried loose the stone with the point of his jen-knife. The jewel bounced off the stone floor, and with a savage stamp Hihuan crushed it beneath his heel. “So much for Bban trickery,” he said, snarling, kicking at the powder beneath his foot. He flung the sword across the room, where it landed with a loud clatter.

  Blaise winced, his blood flaming at the insult even as another part of him cringed. No, he would not believe Giaa had given him the weapon as a deliberate trick. “And what makes you think Anthi can be restored?”

  Hihuan scowled, holding his left arm as though it had begun to pain him. “Bring him,” he snapped at the guards, and strode from the room with a sweep of his bronze cloak.

  The great armored cave with its green walls of corybdium plates stood shrouded in cold darkness. Flames shot up from the torches in the drafts, lighting the blackened crystal mass of Anthi with a ruddy glow. The tall metal doors leading beyond into the cavern where the empty capsules stretched in long silent rows still stood open. As Blaise was dragged in and forced to his knees before Anthi, his determination hardened to a final bedrock core. He would not give in, not to anyone.

  “Unchain his hands,” said Picyt, scuttling off into the shadows to light more torches until the room blazed with illumination. One of the crystal capsules lay several feet from Blaise. It was occupied. His blood froze as he stared at it.

  “No!” he said.

  “Yes!” rasped the priest, clenching his clawlike hands. “I shall take Rim’s form. Mine will not last much longer. Now hurry. Hurry!”

  “Patience, revered noble,” murmured Hihuan, smiling sleekly at the priest’s trembling hands. “Make yourself serene and await Anthi’s return.”

  “The computer is off-line,” said Blaise curtly, trying to ignore the cold knot in his stomach. He knew of no way out, and yet something within him still refused to consider the only option remaining. Sensible as it might be in terms of his own survival, he would not reactivate the computer. “It shut itself off. Why do you keep insisting that I can somehow restore power?” He shrugged. “Let me go, Hihuan. Surely this world is large enough for both you and the Bban tribes. Go and leave me to my own method of survival.”

  For answer Hihuan lifted his finger, and one of the masked guards pressed the tip of his jen-knife to the base of Blaise’s skull, pricking the flesh slightly, chilling him. He tensed, and Hihuan laughed softly.

  “Consider this, mewling coward,” said the Tlar leiil with a sneer. “One thrust of the hand and Merdar shall welcome you into the shadow land with swift arms.”

  “You—”

  “We are not fools, Asan! Nor are we superstitious Bban’n whom you may deceive. We know Anthi’s functions. The key to her reactivation lies within you. Release it, or die now.”

  Blaise grinned without mirth. “Why don’t you place Aural’s hand upon Anthi? She is my equal.”

  Somewhere behind him Aural breathed a vicious curse, and Hihuan said savagely, “You know Anthi is coded to follow only the bidding of Asan.”

  Blaise twisted his head to look straight up into Hihuan’s angry gaze. “Then kill me,” he said calmly, though he was shivering inside. “I will not give her to you.”

  One of the guards swore, and Hihuan scowled at Blaise as if he were tempted to give the order. But he hesitated, and Blaise’s self-confidence rose.

  “Now see what thy arrogance has brought us, Noble Leiil!” shouted Picyt, his voice breaking with anger. “Nothing but delay. Nothing but impasse. Must thy way be always to crush rather than to bargain? What choice has thou given him but proud refusal?”

  “Enough!” Hihuan’s face darkened with fury as he flung out his hand. “Beware lest your wretched blood go to the sands, priest.”

  They glared hotly at each other while Blaise shifted slightly, trying to draw away from the point of the knife. The guard’s hand clamped down hard upon his shoulder in warning, and Blaise dared not move again. He grimaced as his knees grated on the stone floor.

  “Perhaps, now that you’ve come around to my way of thinking—” he began, but stopped as Hihuan lifted his hand at Aural.

  “Dame Aural,” he said with a casualness that alerted Blaise. “Prepare a goblet for our guest.”

  She frowned, hesitating as Picyt gasped and said, “It is a great risk, noble.”

  “Do it!” snapped Hihuan, and with a bow of her head she left the cave.

  “No!” cried Picyt, his withered mouth stretching in protest. “Not yde! His mind will be destroyed. And there shall be nothing left. Nothing! Not Anthi, nor my future—”

  “Silence.” Hihuan shoved the priest away so roughly that Picyt stumbled and fell. “Now let us hear no more from you,” he said, kicking him aside. Picyt dragged his trembling, furious body across the floor to the case of Rim, where he huddled, mouthing curses beneath his breath.

  Blaise attempted to seizert. But in his desperation he had forgotten the
guard’s hand on his shoulder, had forgotten that the guard was Tlar and could sense his intentions from that touch. His spirit flung itself wide, but even as blue fire flashed through the air, reflecting off the darkened sides of Anthi, the guard struck his skull hard with the knife hilt. Blaise snapped back into his sagging body with a jolt severe enough to make him retch with nausea. The room seemed to dance around him, and when he finally regained a hold on reality, he was lying on the ground, a dull ache hammering steadily through his head. Dimly he heard footsteps around him.

  “You took long enough,” said Hihuan petulantly.

  The silken hem of Aural’s robes swayed to a halt inches from Blaise’s blurred eyes. “Creating a mixture of full potency takes time, my Leiil,” she said, her words low and slightly slurred. Blaise wondered if she had sampled the stuff while she was gone.

  Hihuan snorted. “Lift him.”

  “No,” muttered Blaise, but the world still spun and his voice sounded very far away.

  Rough hands jerked him off the ground, scraping his cheek across the stone and flipping him onto his back. He was half lifted, and strong fingers entwined themselves in his long black hair, yanking back his head hard enough to make him gasp in pain. That, and the sting of his bleeding cheek, roused him from his grogginess. He heaved himself up, managing to get his feet under him, but his struggles were in vain against the three guards holding him.

  What would the real Asan do? he wondered in frantic despair, clamping his jaw shut with such force that the muscles bulged.

  Hihuan bent over him and placed the goblet against his closed lips. Blaise was desperate. His heart pounded, and his blood seemed to thicken in his veins. There was no return from yde!

  Hihuan glanced at the guard holding Blaise’s head, and that ruthless grip on his hair tightened until it seemed half of his scalp was being torn off by the roots. He resisted as long as he could, until with an oath Hihuan punched a fist hard into his unprotected stomach. Blaise jerked, trying to choke off a cry, but Hihuan’s thumb dug into the corner of his mouth, forcing his jaw open. Blaise tried to bite him, but Hihuan tilted the entire contents of the goblet down his throat so rapidly that Blaise had no chance to spit it out. He coughed and wheezed, feeling as though he were drowning, and the guards released him, letting him fall to the ground.