The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

“Hey!” Hreem spun around, but her action had released the terrified paralysis of the people in the room. The only weapons at hand were the bowls, cups, and spoons, so a sudden storm of dishes and their brown, half-congealed contents pelted Hreem and the wall behind him, transforming him into a sort of animated slop sculpture.

  The sight reminded Lar horribly of the vid from the capital on Torigan, the soldiers melting into slime when a missile liberated the mycospores collected by the mad dowager Archonei.

  Marim shrieked with laughter.

  Hreem bellowed in rage, clutched for a jac he didn’t have, then cursed as he lunged at the shestek. His feet flew out from under him in the slippery mess and he fell with a meaty, liquid-sounding splat, as, with a disgusting belch, the hole violently ejected the shestek. It landed on the floor and began flopping around like a hooked fish, splattering glop everywhere.

  A new figure appeared in the doorway—Lar stared when he recognized Lucifur, Vi’ya’s big Faustian cliff cat, that had been missing for two days.

  o0o

  Answering his father’s summons, Anaris found Eusabian standing before the huge holovid in his quarters, staring at the flaring eye of the black hole as it devoured its companion sun. A hissing, roaring crackle of an EM feed filled the room: the sound of matter torn asunder by a gravitational field so powerful it permitted no existence but its own.

  A slight movement of the Avatar’s head served as acknowledgment of his arrival, but Eusabian said nothing. Anaris ranged himself at arm’s length from his father, gazing at the stellar fire that echoed the fires of their distant homeland. Anaris remembered a similar encounter, long ago, in a library on faraway Arthelion. Then, the silence had been that of two minds moving in similar orbits, despite their disparate origins.

  Here, despite their common heritage, it was that of two minds sundered by a distance akin to that traversed by the matter swallowed by the black hole, which never again would this universe see.

  Anaris clenched his teeth, dismissing the poetic cast of his thoughts. He wondered if Vi’ya was affecting him more deeply than he had calculated, then the Avatar broke the silence.

  “I contemplate irony, and find its taste strange.”

  The comment was so unexpected, so bizarre, that Anaris held himself motionless only with great effort. Had his father’s mind snapped during the long wait?

  So he merely echoed the word, his voice flat. “Irony.”

  The Avatar turned, his profile a harlequin of blue-white ice and rusted iron in the flaring light from the death throes of a star. “Irony. Tell me you have not savored it. Perhaps you are alone too rarely?”

  Vi’ya. Anaris stilled the spinning of his mind; perhaps, in truth, he was alone too seldom, or too much with her. Anger sparked. He let the emotion buoy him, knowing he walked at the edge of a chasm.

  “My duties leave me scant time for contemplation,” he replied. An oblique strike at his father’s boredom.

  But the response was unexpected: a gleam of teeth in a semblance of smile. “Indeed. And not all of them onerous. Thence the irony.” Eusabian faced the holovid. “My ancestors expunged the Chorei with a stone ripped from heaven.”

  “My” ancestors, not “ours,” he thought as his father continued after an almost imperceptible pause.

  “Or so they thought. But regardless of the outcome of this struggle, it is the Chorei who will be the victors.”

  The statement resonated on so many levels that there was nothing Anaris could say. But the implied threat among its manifold implications made his back tingle. He had not noticed the Ogres when he entered. They might be poised in the shadows, awaiting the word that would end his life.

  The comm whistled for attention. Eusabian was annoyed as the holovid flickered to a close-up of Barrodagh’s face. Great viscid tears of sweat oozed from his forehead, his face twisted by a rictus of such pain Anaris was amazed he could even speak.

  “Lord, your pardon, but Juvaszt reports detecting three lances inbound. They will impact in less than an hour.”

  o0o

  Morrighon’s compad chimed. “A riot in the rec area,” said Farniol. In the background he could hear screaming, breaking crockery, and—laughter? “Hreem’s sex toy came out of the wall.”

  “Who else is there?”

  Farniol knew what he meant. “Lar. And Marim.”

  “Observe only. I will bring a squad of Tarkans.” Morrighon slammed his fist down on his compad, terminating the connection. “Regeneration!” he yelled.

  But even this most lurid of Catennach curses failed to relieve his feelings. How convenient it would be to have the Tarkans slaughter everyone in the rec room, ridding him of Hreem and his threat to the tempath, as well as Marim, whom Morrighon suspected more strongly with every passing hour of being a nark for Barrodagh! But Tat would never forgive him if her cousin were killed, and he needed her too much.

  Well, he still might be able to put this new disaster to good use. Perhaps he could goad Hreem into a careless move. The Tarkans would need little excuse to flame him down.

  He tabbed the compad and ordered a squad to meet him outside the rec room. They must permit no one to leave, but not enter until he arrived. Then the door slurped open and he left.

  o0o

  As the cat looked around, his whiskers twitching, a knot of screaming, panicked Bori and grays crowded toward the door, prevented from leaving by the big cat still standing there, his tail lashing violently back and forth, deep moaning growls issuing from his throat. Others grabbed food from the vacated tables and continued pelting the shestek and Hreem with it.

  Two Bori ran to the dispenser and returned, laboring under the weight of an enormous pot full of stew as they ran toward the shestek; they slipped in the mess on the floor and instead dumped the steaming slop on Hreem, who had just managed to get to his knees.

  Screaming with laughter, Marim reached for someone’s bowl and started pelting the frightened grays and Bori struggling near the door. Some of the former turned to strike at the nearest Bori but slipped in the muck, which caused Marim to go into doubled-over paroxysms of mirth.

  Lar watched, torn by a weird mélange of emotions—sympathy for the hapless Bori, disgust at the worming thing on the floor and the huge food-slimed man floundering after it, anger at Marim’s cruelty, and unwilling laughter at chaos resulting from her actions as she began tossing food and dishes right and left, shrieking anew at every hit, howl, and curse.

  Lar and Romarnan scrambled away from the mess. The big cat stalked, moaning in anger, his tail lashing, his slitted gaze fixed on the shestek. The mob rushed toward the door, then recoiled, falling back in confusion, their faces white, and the door sucked closed.

  Hreem scrambled forward on his hands and knees, slop dripping from him, and grabbed two-handed at the shestek. As soon as his hands touched it, an expression of stuporous bliss relaxed his features, and he slumped forward, face down in the steaming slime of caf-veined stew and bits of bread. The shestek, half-erect like a snake preparing to strike, swayed hypnotically from his clutching hands.

  Then Lucifur crouched and sprang. He swept past Marim, who made a halfhearted grab at his tail, bounded high over a table, and batted at the shestek with one paw, yowling with predatory delight.

  When it writhed away, he crouched into hunter mode, his ears flattened, and then pounced again. The cliffcat toyed happily with the shestek, measuring its responses until he apparently got a good feel for its movements. Then, in a blurring flow of muscle, he lunged and bit it.

  Hreem howled, his body convulsing as though electrified. His hands fell away from the shestek, and Luce bounded high into the air in surprise, paws and claws extended. He sprang again, wrestling with the violently worming construct, letting it go and chasing it around in a demented circle through the lake of lumpy stew.

  Finally he pounced once more in the killing strike of a cat: teeth in what would have been the shestek’s neck, had it a real head, and back claws raking along its length.r />
  The jacker scrambled to his hands and knees as the shestek snapped loudly and stopped moving. Lucifur dropped it and stood growling, tail lashing.

  “You logos-chatzing—” Hreem screamed, and lunged at the cat.

  Lucifur yowled and slashed his face, then scrambled away, slipping and sliding in the muck. Blood poured down from Hreem’s forehead, blinding him. Lucifur trotted to where Lar stood. Lar looked down at the stew-smeared cat and gave up to laughter as Lucifur butted Lar’s leg with his head, nearly buckling his knee, and his moans changed to a purr.

  Hreem got to his feet and approached Lar and the cat, eyes narrowed to glints of crazed red rage, which effectively ended Lar’s panic-inspired giggles as fast as they’d started.

  But those still fighting near the doorway froze into a stew-splattered tableau, the eyes of Dol’jharian grays and Bori techs alike white-rimmed with terror as the door squelched open and a squad of jac-armed Tarkans stormed in.

  Biting his lip against intermittent fear-driven snickers, Lar wondered if, despite the shortage of personnel on the Suneater, they were all about to die right then in the lake of half-eaten stew. Waves of relief washed through him when he recognized the short, dumpy figure of Morrighon behind the squad.

  The Tarkans fanned out efficiently, covering the entire room as Morrighon looked around, his face twisted in an unreadable expression.

  Then Morrighon’s compad chimed urgently at the same moment that the Tarkan squad leader cocked his head, apparently getting a signal through the minicomm protruding from one ear. The Tarkan’s expression turned grim as Morrighon’s smoothed out—as though a problem had suddenly been resolved. An alarm started hooting loudly in the corridor outside.

  “Panarchist lances are on the way,” he said quietly. He looked at Romarnan and his friends, standing near Lar. “Hull squads to suit up for immediate egress. Catennach, to your stations. The rest of you, stay here.”

  “Whaddya mean, stay here?” Hreem snarled, then stopped as the Ogre that had been on guard suddenly glided into the room.

  “The Ogres are now activated and will kill anyone found in the corridors without a pass tag or Tarkan escort.” Morrighon smiled crookedly as he fingered the little jewel at his neck.

  Romarnan and his friends slid out with the others in the hull squads, accompanied by two Tarkans. They were followed by the Catennach, who all had pass tags. Hreem and Marim stood together, glaring at Morrighon in a mixture of fear and defiance. Someone near the wall began moaning brokenly. Lar’s heart pounded, painful in his chest as Morrighon turned to him.

  “Larghior, go with the Tarkans and return the animal to its owners. Stay there.”

  Lar kept his hand on Luce’s head. He started out, and the cliff cat obediently trotted by his side. It seemed as if Morrighon, who had begun as an enemy aboard the Samedi, had gradually metamorphosed into a kind of ally. But now that the Panarchists were coming, he was an enemy again. The same core of truth and loyalty in him that had briefly made him an ally would keep him cleaving to the masters who had twisted him, body and spirit, away from anything his ancestors would recognize as a Bori.

  Lar felt the familiar grip of danger-laced fear that was his customary state of mind. The war, so long distant and unreal, was coming to the Suneater, and he was right in the middle of it.

  EIGHT

  Vi‘ya squirmed in the uncomfortable chair, trying to find a position where the tall, ornately carved back didn’t press into her skull. Her head ached.

  Silence deep and vast slept in the cathedral around her, full of possibilities she refused to consider. Why could she not escape this place? She rose, scanning the dim vistas of stone and wood obscured by slanting beams of warm, dust-glinting light, and saw an exit opposite the high altar all white and gold.

  And red. There was something red on it. She ignored it, stalked toward the distant door, and found herself again approaching the altar. Again and again, no matter how she turned, it loomed before her, symbol of an alien reality that had no place in her mind or her emotions.

  The organ pealed out in loud ascension; she recognized the melody, one from Brandon’s recital, oh, so long ago, in a place she would never see again. She remembered the words, translated then, now only sounds. Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme . . .

  With profound reluctance Vi’ya stepped up on the dais and approached the tall table with its gilt-edged covering. And shock stabbed through her heart. Lying on a golden plate was the hideous lump of her locator, still red with blood where she’d cut it from her own shoulder amidst the fire and ice of Dol’jhar’s enslaved colony.

  The organ died in discord. She heard a moan of pain, looked up. A man, enwrapped in webs the color of ashes and lost hope, hung suspended from the groined and carven ceiling far above: Gelasaar hai-Arkad, and black agony climbed down the cable to him, spinning, spinning its curses against the light that drained from the sky above the Isle as the Chorei cried out despairing, and the stars fell from the sky, gouging out volcanoes all around her that spilled bright warmth too distant for her succor.

  She called out to others on the work gang: “Two-Fang! Rock-Gut! Claw-Head!”

  “Come on, Death-Eyes! Lead us!” they called back as they sprinted past her, running joyously toward the spouting magma, but the freezing webs of the hateful artist held her fast, insects boring into her body as the locator screamed derision at her, warning of one who would escape her million-years sentence, so deserved, so undeserved . . .

  Vi’ya awoke to the hooting of an alarm, the worry in Jaim’s eyes a visual echo of the sound. “What is it?” The inside of her head felt sticky and dry. Everything seemed out of focus.

  “I don’t know. You started thrashing around in your sleep and then the alarm started. The door won’t open. Sedry’s afraid to force it until we know what’s going on.”

  “Right.” She nodded, regretted the motion instantly. She forced herself to stand up. After a brief pulse of nausea, she blinked the room into focus.

  Beyond Jaim stood Ivard and Lokri, both worried. Sedry and Montrose were blurry figures on the opposite side of the chamber. Vi’ya closed her eyes, fighting against vertigo. “Where’s Marim?”

  “Rec room, we think,” Jaim said. “This might be a general lockdown so she can’t get back.”

  The door to the Eya’a’s chamber squelched open and the little aliens rushed out. Their near-ultrasonic voices hurt Vi’ya’s ears, but worse was the flood of impressions roaring through her mind. The shock hit so hard that for a heartbeat she dropped into synesthesia: great towers of ice melting, slipping, grinding all around her in the ruin of a long-delayed spring. A blue flicker from the Kelly, their enfolding presence, two hands on her shoulders and a glimpse of red hair, these restored reality.

  Winter sleep is ending, the Eya’a, now calmer, sent.

  At that moment the outer door slurped open and Barrodagh stalked in, his emotional discordance—fear and rage its main component—roiling Vi’ya’s guts all over again. The others faded back against the perimeter of the room. “Come with me,” he snarled, flinching away from the Eya’a.

  “Not until I know where we’re going, and why.” She gestured. “And what that alarm is.” Not that she had any doubt, but she would give the Bori nothing for nothing.

  “That alarm is Panarchist lances, inbound, less than an hour away. We are going to the Chamber of Kronos, where you will activate the Suneater.” His eyes were wild with anger.

  The unspoken threat in his mind struck as hard as his gloating anticipation, mixed with fear, and nausea curled up into her throat in spite of the quick pulse of exultation. It worked! Her mind flickered between two questions, the first being the present situation and the second considering their line of retreat.

  But the thought of the Telvarna brought back memory of the Kelly’s recent news: for some reason—there had been no time to contemplate why, or to pursue it by the more risky means of the Unity’s psionic connection—Anaris had ordered a hyperwave ins
talled on her ship.

  Jaim stood up. He made no threatening move, but there was quiet menace in his posture. “Our crew is not complete, and you promised us their safety. Where is Marim?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Barrodagh snapped. “Wherever she is, there she stays. The Ogres have been activated and only those with pass tags are allowed in the corridors.” He stalked to the door, then turned to face Vi’ya. “You will come with me now, or I will leave and the Ogres will enter. Everyone save you and the beasts are expendable. After they are dealt with the Ogres will carry you to the chamber.”

  There was no use asking him what assurance she had that the Ogres wouldn’t do so, anyway. There was none, and she could not reveal the Unity to him.

  “Very well,” she said, following him. “But I hold you responsible for the safety of my crew. Do not forget the transfiguration room under the Palace,” she added, and had the satisfaction of seeing him blanch with sudden understanding.

  That would have to be enough for now.

  o0o

  As Vi’ya left, the alarm gargled and died. Ivard waited until the door scroinched shut, then dropped onto the bed, hands over his eyes. Mentally he reached for Vi’ya. What are your orders?

  Stay there. Follow Sedry’s orders. Have her contact Tat and the other if she can. I will need you all soon, and you are safer there than elsewhere. If you must leave, head for the Telvarna. Do not look for me.

  Her focus vanished. Ivard motioned to Sedry, who deactivated the nark, and then he relayed Vi’ya’s orders.

  Montrose looked at Sedry. “Other?”

  She had an odd expression on her face that Ivard couldn’t interpret, but he could smell that she was upset. Finally she shook her head and sat down at the console. “Jaspar Arkad.”

  “What?” That came from all the others.

  “That’s what it calls itself. It’s from the Mandala, and it is a gross transgression against the Ban. But it is an enemy of the Dol’jharians and has some control of the arrays here, especially those regulating the stasis clamps. It summoned the lances for us.” She tapped at the console. “Now shut up, my love, and let me work. Tat’s our only hope of evading the Ogres.”