From Ruins

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  They came on foot, the Chatcaava. A handful of them were streaked in blood and mud and bits of grass, but most of them were pristine. All male, winged, and wary. Sediryl counted twenty before they stopped issuing into the clearing. She wondered if there were more, back with the... the beasts. The beasts that had looked too much like them.

  "I don't suppose any of you speak Universal," Sediryl said, before any more diplomatic declaration occurred to her.

  Naturally, they didn't answer. She said to Vasiht'h, "Bring the Queen, and my data tablet."

  "On it," Vasiht'h said, backing into the corridor without taking his eyes from their visitors.

  Sediryl slipped out of the hatch, walking in front of her Faulfenza. She studied the apparent leader of the party, a muted silver male with eyes the green of cut limes. He returned her regard, and she couldn't read anything in it but alertness. She'd expected avarice? Cruelty? Eagerness? Not this impassivity.

  She read the arrival of the Queen in the shocked rustle of the males behind him, though. Twisting to look, she found Qora carrying her, and Vasiht'h beside him. The Glaseah handed her a tablet, and Sediryl flicked through it to the sentence she'd painstakingly assembled from the lexicon. Her voice was breathy from pain, but she got it all out on the first try.

  "The Queen of the Chatcaava needs her people's aid."

  The male in charge looked at her sharply. Sediryl met his eyes and said, in Chatcaavan, "Yes?"

  A long pause, one long enough to make her question her choices, wonder if she was about to die.

  "Yes," the male said, and said something else. When none of them moved, he pointed.

  "That way, I guess. Let's go."

  "All of us?" one of the Faulfenza asked.

  "All of us," Sediryl said. "If everything's good, we'll come back for the ship. If it's not, having a handful of us trying to survive in the forest and avoid capture isn't going to accomplish anything."

  "She's right," Paudii said. "Move out. And bring the wounded."

  Many uncomfortable experiences Sediryl could count in her life-and now many harrowing ones as well-but few equaled the flight in the Chatcaavan vessel. She was so weak she kept listing to one side. She didn't know where they were being taken, and she couldn't speak the language to ask, or to eavesdrop. All she knew of the Chatcaava had prepared her to consider them dangerous opponents, and they moved with a serpent's disturbing fluidity and speed, even in their most casual gestures. They had arranged the wounded in the back of their shuttle, along with their kills, a juxtaposition Sediryl found sinister. The remainder of Sediryl's party was sitting on benches lining the bulkheads, strapped in with their... rescuers? Captors? Who watched them with eyes that reminded her distinctly of the creatures they'd been hunting.

  If it hadn't been for their obvious respect for the Queen, Sediryl would have given up on any hope of freedom, or success. But they had set the Queen on a pallet and hovered around her body, and it was obvious they accounted her of more moment than their prisoners.

  "Where do you think they're taking us?" Vasiht'h asked her, sotto voce.

  "Presumably somewhere they can help the Queen," Sediryl answered. "Other than that... your guess is as good as mine, arii."

  "Not all Chatcaava can possibly be evil."

  Sediryl glanced at him, but he was staring at the males crouching around the Queen. "Probably not," she said at last. "But what matters is whether the one in control of us is of the evil kind or the good kind."

  Vasiht'h shook his head.

  "On the positive side," Sediryl said, "you did talk a criminally psychotic D-per into helping us. This can't be worse."

  "All the talk in the world doesn't matter if they can't understand you. On more than one level."

  "If you go hunting trouble," Qora said from Vasiht'h's other side. "You have a better chance of finding it."

  "Better you find it first, than it surprises you," Sediryl said.

  Qora guffawed. "Very good, Princess. Excellent attitude."

  "But stay positive anyway," Vasiht'h added, with a wry smile for the Faulfenzair.

  The shuttle banked and began descending. Sediryl strained for any words she might recognize in the speech of the Chatcaava as they began talking more, but she hadn't spent much energy on the parts of the dictionary that had included words like ‘landing' or ‘estimated time of arrival' or even ‘the engine's failed, we're going down.' But the engine didn't fail, and they did set down. The Chatcaava gathered the Queen and headed for the hatch, and Sediryl followed them. No one stopped her, either, which she hoped was a good sign, particularly since the pilot, standing at the door into the cockpit, was watching her.

  They had landed on a plateau midway up a mountain, a glorious brown and silver mountain that shone in the high, bright light of the sun. Their ledge abutted a wall four times the length of their shuttle; it had been flattened out of the rock and carved with sensuous shapes, animals of every kind, reliefs polished until their curves looked like marble. For all Sediryl knew, it was marble-she'd never studied geology.

  A single opening was set into this wall, twice as tall as Sediryl was high, and two carved Chatcaava, both winged, framed it, their joined hands delineating the topmost arch. Standing before that ingress was a greeting party. Ten males in leathers that reminded Sediryl of Eldritch armor, five on either side of six people: two more males, one in robes and the other in trousers and a short coat, and a four-armed female in a diaphanous gown sifted by the breeze. The remaining two astonished Sediryl: Chatcaavan children in short white robes, holding golden stems from which depended six round bells that shivered when they shifted in place. She'd never seen Chatcaavan children. Their blunted faces, enormous eyes, and little tails made her want to hug them.

  The Chatcaava from the shuttle presented the Queen to this female. Sediryl followed them, came to a halt in front of this new female. She heard Vasiht'h's footfalls as the Glaseah padded to her left side, and Qora and Paudii joined her on the right. Like the female they faced, Sediryl thought, and from the way that female was considering her, the symmetry wasn't lost on them.

  Talk then, in Chatcaavan: the hunters to the female, a short but respectful dialogue. After its conclusion, the female looked again at Sediryl. She spoke, and a few beats later the male in trousers began translating: a good translator, then, who didn't need to pause to search for words, or rephrase them into simpler sentiments.

  "How came you here, strangers, to the Vault of the Twelveworld?"

  "We were fleeing pirates," Sediryl replied. "And were shot down." All of which was true, if lacking in critical detail. She wished her head hurt less, and her ribs.

  "In the company of a Chatcaavan female."

  "She is no mere female," Sediryl replied. "She is your Queen, captured by pirates."

  "We rescued her," Vasiht'h added, and Sediryl winced.

  The sharp-eyed female spotted it. "You do not agree?"

  "We could have done a better job of saving her," Sediryl said. "When she fell sick, we had no idea what to do."

  "You brought her here," the female replied. "You could not have done better. Indeed, if she lives, you will have saved her."

  Sediryl's hands tried to fist at her sides. She forced them to remain loose, palms flattened on her trousers. "You know what's wrong then?"

  "We do. She is lost in the shape-knowing. She will either find her way free of it, or she will die."

  "The what?" Vasiht'h asked, ears sagging.

  "Is that what happens when you try to learn too many shapes at once?" Sediryl asked.

  The Chatcaavan female dipped her head. "You understand."

  "I saw it happen," Sediryl said. "She strove to learn every shape known in space. Only when she'd learned them all did she fall into... this... fever."

  The Chatcaava listening broke into murmurs after the translator rendered her words. They halted when the female lifted a hand. "A brave ambition."

  Had it been? Or had the Queen, like Sediryl, only wanted somethin
g for herself? Something to prove she was capable of being someone, someone who made her own choices, someone other people respected for her own accomplishments instead of all she'd been prevented from doing? "She wanted to understand," Sediryl said at last. "I think there's courage in that, when knowledge is so often a source of pain."

  "I look forward to meeting her, if she survives." The female looked at the guards, and two of them advanced on the Chatcaavan Queen.

  "Will you take her to a clinic?" Sediryl asked.

  "She goes now to the Heart of the Vault, where a place has been waiting since the Chatcaava left the Source," the female said. "There she will fail, and die. Or succeed, and emerge crowned in the Living Air."

  That sounded serious. Also, appalling. "You're going to put her in a cave? Alone?"

  "Others may keep the vigil, if they so choose," the female said. "There is nothing they can do to help her. She must fight this fight alone." She cocked her head, birdlike. "It may take days."

  "It's already been days!" Vasiht'h exclaimed. "You can't just leave her in there without someone to hydrate her! Cover her if it gets too cold! Watch her for worsening symptoms!"

  Sediryl set a hand on the Glaseah's shoulder. "If it doesn't constitute interference with this rite, we would stand the vigil."

  "Then follow," the female said, and headed into the opening. The children shook their stems, and the bells sang, sweet and shivering high.

  The entrance led into a tunnel. Its walls were chased with flowing creatures, sea and sky and land, the contours pulled from the shadows by warm pinlights near the ceiling. Sediryl had been fearing a long and tortuous descent, but the tunnel opened quickly into an intimate cave, no larger than Sediryl's sitting room in Nuera. A single couch had been hewn from a wall barren of ornament save a trickle of water that issued from somewhere Sediryl couldn't see in the faint gold veil cast by yet more of the pinlights. An occasional tinkle sounded near the floor, where it pooled in a divot the size of Sediryl's palm.

  The floor was just as bare as the walls. No place to sit. No place to build a fire. No windows or skylights. No chimney for smoke. It felt like a womb, like a beginning-of-all-things place, and a quiver shot up Sediryl's spine as she watched the Chatcaava laying the Queen on the stone table. Vasiht'h hovered nearby as they arranged her on her side, her bare wing-arms folded behind her and her hands before.

  The female spoke again, and her translator murmured, "Here she must remain until she emerges."

  "And then what?" Sediryl asked, looking at the female.

  "Then," the Chatcaavan answered, "we will have found at last what was lost for so long."

  "And us?" When her answer was a blank, curious look, she prompted, "We are aliens. What will you do with us?"

  "Cherish you, as the tenets demand. You are the sacred Other, are you not?"

  Startled, Sediryl said, "I have never heard us referred to that way."

  The female watched Vasiht'h settle himself alongside the Queen. "If I am correct, you have brought us priceless treasure. The heart of our race will beat again. When we are done, all Chatcaava will revere you."

  She would settle for all Chatcaava not warring on the Alliance, or enslaving the Pelted. Sediryl looked away. "It may not be so easy."

  "Nothing worth waiting for is. But when the waiting is over, the sweetness of it is imperishable and without ending."

  There was no arguing with that much faith. Sediryl certainly didn't feel capable of it, given how little she had herself. She wished she could emanate the same serene assurance the Chatcaavan priestess did. But all she had was herself, and all the mistakes she'd made, and all the work she would do to address them. It would have to be enough. Perhaps that resolution made free with her face-could Chatcaava read alien faces?-because the Chatcaavan said, "We will speak again."

  The bell-ringers preceded her out, and the guards fell in step behind her. After the last scraping sounds of their footfalls had faded, Vasiht'h said in a small voice, "I guess we're on our own?"

  "At least we're not in someone's harem." Sediryl slid down the wall with a sigh, knees up and arms tight under her breasts. It helped a little, with the pain and the lightheadedness. "That's got to count for something."

  "I hope they're planning to feed us, if this is really going to take another... what. Week? Month?"

  "It had better not be a month," Sediryl said. "Or there won't be an Alliance left to go home to when she's done."

  Vasiht'h shuddered, a motion that traveled the length of his centauroid spine. "It won't be as bad as that. Right?" When she didn't answer, he looked up. "Sediryl?"

  "I don't know," she said. "I'm not my aunt. I can't see all the futures." She grimaced. "I hope that's not a prerequisite for being queen or I'm going to be a very bad one."

  "You can ask Jahir for advice," Vasiht'h said. "He can do it."

  She looked up, surprised. "What?"

  "That talent Liolesa has for seeing the pattern of things? That's how she does it, isn't it? He told me that once." Vasiht'h had the Queen's hand in his and was stroking it gently. "He can do it too, though he says it's not as well-developed in any other Eldritch as it is in her. I guess she practices a lot."

  "I'm sure she does," Sediryl answered, and hugged her knees.

  "Are you going to marry him?"

  Her head jerked up, spun. "What?"

  "Jahir." He glanced over his shoulder at her. "You know how he feels about you. He wanted to go find you to propose before all this happened."

  "Should you be telling me this?" she stammered, aghast.

  "Probably not." Vasiht'h sighed. "But it seems useless not to when we might die. Jahir said we wouldn't die apart, but what if he's wrong? What if some future diverged and that future has vanished? How would I be able to tell? I'm not dva'htiht." He smiled, sad. "I told Crispin that if I was going to die, I wanted to spend my last days doing all the things I normally would. And while ‘keeping watch on a dying queen' isn't routine, talking about things I hope for, that qualifies."

  "You like talking," she muttered.

  He grinned, tired but genuine. "It's a vocation."

  "You do it well." She brushed her thumb against the top of her knee, letting herself imagine Jahir. Doing so felt indulgent, because thoughts of him were burnished in sunlight and the easy contentment of her life before it had become an endless round of parties and feuds with her mother, and then the bitterness of her exile. It also felt complicated, because those memories were now overlaid with more recent ones of seeing him on the homeworld for the wedding and realizing he'd become mysterious to her. All the things she'd liked about him as a youth, his nobility of spirit, his kindness, the grace of him, had been drawn in relief by the fact that she no longer recognized him. Living offworld had changed him, as surely as it had her... except it had made him better. She had no idea what it had done to her, but she wasn't sure ‘better' described it. Different, certainly.

  "I'm sorry, I should have known that was a problematic question."

  "No, it's fine." She smiled a little. "I guess the answer is... I don't know. Because I don't know him anymore. We were so young when we stopped seeing one another, and then he left and we both changed. But I'd like to get to know him now." She thought of his face, struggled not to blush. "Very much."

  "That's an excellent answer." Vasiht'h cast a mournful gaze at the Queen's face, reached to tuck some of her mane back from her cheek. "I wish there was something we could do."

  "So do I," she said.

  "Do you suppose if we sung to her?"

  That made Sediryl laugh, just a little. "Can you sing?"

  "Not as well as Jahir, but... on key, yes. Do you sing?"

  "We all sing," Sediryl said, thinking of the endless lessons. "All of us dance. All of us play instruments, ride, know how to make witty conversation. All of us are educated in a lot of useless things."

  "Music isn't useless. Neither is conversation, or art." He turned to face her, twisting to rest his back against the
couch. "Beauty is never superfluous."

  "It is when it's all you know," Sediryl said, eyes closing.

  "Is that why you tried so hard to learn everything else?" Vasiht'h asked. "Because you didn't want to be like... who? Your parents? Your peers?"

  She didn't open her eyes. "I didn't pay your fee. Remind me to do that."

  A pause. Then the Glaseah chuckled. "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be," she said. "You want to make sure your partner doesn't marry a terminally broken or unsuitable woman. I don't blame you."

  "Sediryl," Vasiht'h said softly, "you're not broken."

  "Oh?" she asked. "What am I, then?"

  "A work in progress. Just like the rest of us."

  She lifted her head and looked at him, but his attention was on the Queen, still stroking her hand.

  "Please wake up, alet," Vasiht'h whispered. "We need you."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Very few things could pierce Jahir's increasing disorientation. He knew his periods of lucidity were narrowing, and the fear that inspired seemed distant compared to the dreams: of glistering nets of patterns, spreading outward, and increasingly of fire and the howls of monsters, and those dreams in particular felt urgent in their significance. The Usurper still dragged him from his pallet (and that too felt like a pattern, like a shared pattern), and hung him on the wall, and deprived him of sight and hearing and gagged him and he drifted there in the webs of the universe. He did not reach anymore, because he had made a vow, and having made it he felt its rightness, that he should husband his strength for his cousin's arrival, for surely Lisinthir would come.

  The Usurper had become inconsequential, save as a source of diffuse information. Jahir no longer needed to sit in his mind to hear his thoughts bleeding, spilling, coloring the fog near him. To focus on him was unnecessary.

  Until the yell.

  "WHAT!"

  Jahir roused himself to attend to the conversation. Two minds in the room with him: the Usurper and his foremost ally, who'd come to reinforce the throneworld. It was that male who answered, "I'm afraid it's true. Kauvauc is still alive."