It’s why you’ve called me, answered an alien voice inside her mind. The Speaker entered the circle of light and Jaja immediately hopped to her shoulder to rub cheeks.
“Me? Call you?”
The Speaker nodded, the scarlet and deep blue feathers of her headdress fluttering with the movement. You… angry with us. Feel like… we play with you?
“Aya, a pawn that you spy on, to move at your whim.”
The Speaker shook with almost human indignation. No, no! We help… guide.
Mahri began to pace that circle of light and noticed that just like the last time it already started to shrink. “You said that before. Maybe what you consider guiding, we consider manipulation.”
Do not know word. No understand.
Mahri sighed in exasperation. If they couldn’t communicate with each other, how did these aliens expect to guide them, anyway? They made decisions based on their concepts, not a human’s.
“Why don’t you just explain everything, as you see it. Then I can decide whether you’re right or not.” By-the-moons, she sounded as arrogant as Korl. But she didn’t care. They seemed to want her cooperation—why else try to communicate with her—and she wasn’t going to just go along with their plans. Regardless of what had passed between her and Korl already.
Then she grimaced. Not that she’d had any luck fighting their control anyway.
The Speaker stroked Jaja’s ears, and her pet extended them into the huge fins they were, brown eyes wide in appeal as he wagged them at Mahri. She fought back a grin at the sight of that tiny face surrounded by those huge, waving fins, her anger fading a little.
I already… yes, I try harder to make understand. You come from above, yes?
“You told me that before, however hard it is to believe. I’ll accept that my ancestors came from another place than this.”
Good. Now, Sea Forest wild… death easy for your kind. We help, give root, but problem. Only some can chew zabba, others die. But good too, your… differences. We all same, us natives, peaceful… but go nowhere.
Mahri nodded, wishing the native would hurry up, for the smaller the circle of light got, the quicker it seemed to shrink. It might’ve helped if she’d talk back with mind-speech, but she wasn’t willing to break down that barrier, to allow them access to her in anything other than this dream-talk.
Your species also… mad-angry-war. Always one with more power than other, seek to have all. But we choose to let you become part of our world anyway. See long… future. No war, our people become your servants, to guide, protect, choose path to peace.
Mahri nodded, remembering what the Speaker had told her before. That these natives had given up a part of their world, worse, made themselves virtually slaves to her people, to avoid war and the annihilation of her kind. They truly were aliens to her people. She couldn’t imagine humans going to such lengths to preserve another species, even if it were for their own good. Still, she couldn’t see what her and Korl had to do with any of this.
The alien fluttered impossibly long lashes in excitement. But we must all become one with Sea Forest! Your minds all… closed. Must have equal root… knowledge for to happen.
“And if we don’t?” asked Mahri, unable to imagine her own mind left open to mingle with the thoughts of thousands. Would it be even possible to retain one’s identity? The aliens seemed to have done so, but her own people?
The Speaker bowed her head. Your kind will not… survive-live-continue. But your people may come again, and then be war, for will not understand Sea Forest and number of you too great to… reach all.
Mahri’s heart pounded. Of course, if her ancestors came from somewhere else, it made sense that more people were out there, among the stars. And they wouldn’t understand the Power or the dependence this world had on everything in it. “But how can a Bond between Korl and I help all our people become one with Sea Forest? He can only touch minds with me. If I let my barrier down I can reach your native life, but he can only touch mine.”
Many connections can be made. Sometimes… twisted.
Mahri nodded, remembering the forced entry into Korl’s mind by his sister. She knew she should ask if the native knew how they’d done it but…
No evil. Must go slowly. The Speaker continued on, shaking her head again. Not so much at one time. Little things add to greater good. You make Prince of Changes choose path that lead to greater good.
Mahri still didn’t understand. Maybe she never would, their minds were so unalike. Fear fluttered in her stomach, at the thought that if they didn’t someday understand each other, her kind might not survive.
Jaja folded his ears and chattered. The circle of light had shrunk so that Mahri and the Speaker had to stand almost nose-to-nose to stay in it. There wasn’t much time and Mahri didn’t relish the thought of another overdose just to answer her one burning question. When she woke, if she woke, who knows what damage she might’ve caused herself this time. The memory of that mind-trip through the essence of all things made her clutch at the Speaker’s narrow shoulders and squeeze.
“Did you make him love me?” she blurted.
Then cringed at her own selfishness. The fate of all mankind seemed to rest with her and Korl, yet all she could think to ask was if he truly loved her.
But without that, nothing else seemed to matter.
The Speaker grunted a wheeze that could only be laughter. This is true reason angry? Fight us?
“Aya.” Shame in that admission, but defiance also. The circle of light had shrunk until she could barely see the alien’s face surrounded by those brilliant feathers.
And then only blackness and the sound of the Speaker’s mind-voice. We only chose the door. The rest… up to you.
The door? wondered Mahri. Aya. At the Healer’s Tree, when she’d chosen a door seemingly at random, and later cursed herself for the ill fate of choosing a Healer that turned out to be a prince.
Not so random a choice, after all.
Mahri walked through the elegant corridors, trying to remember the directions she’d overheard to Master R’in’s rooms. Between her recovery from another overdose, and then Korl’s persistence in making sure she was healthy again (in mind and especially body) she hadn’t left their apartments for almost three turnings of the moons. And she had no idea of the palace layout.
She’d been walking for some while before she noticed that laughter had erupted several times after she’d passed an open door. Mahri wondered if it had anything to do with her and back-tracked to the last doorway she’d just footed by.
A circle of busily sewing women dropped their skeins and hastily rose to their feet and bowed.
“Your Highness,” greeted a raven-haired woman. “How may we assist you?”
They didn’t ask her to join them, and although Mahri hadn’t expected them to, she still felt a bitter twinge of disappointment. “I’m looking for Master R’in’s chambers.”
A young girl giggled behind a gloved hand at the hoarseness of the princess’s voice. Mahri felt her face turn red and swallowed hard on the gravelly feel in her throat. It seemed her screams had been heard beyond her and Korl’s apartments and she blushed again at the memory of the delicious cause of them.
The raven-haired woman shushed the girl before replying. “He’s two levels below us, Your Highness. Third turning on the right. Do you not have a guard to escort you?”
Mahri shrugged. She needn’t tell them she’d given the guard Korl had assigned to her the slip. Besides, they hadn’t been for her protection, or status either. They’d been ordered to keep her a prisoner. “I didn’t want one.”
“Of course not,” whispered a small thin woman amidst sudden muffled snickers.
“Do you sew, my lady?” asked someone else in the group. Mahri felt them advance on her like a pack of vulture-rays.
“No.”
“Of course not,” said the same woman, this time much more snidely.
“I mean, yes,” snapped Mahri. They made her so ne
rvous she could barely answer a simple question. “I mean, I sew seams and such, but nothing like what you’re working on.” She gestured at the skillfully embroidered tapestry that lay stretched on its frame in the middle of the room.
“No matter, Highness. I’m sure your talents lie in other areas.”
Another round of giggles followed. Did they think her stupid, wondered Mahri, that she didn’t understand their game of words? For all their friendly smiles and manner, she detected the underlying hostility within their jesting.
“Aya, I’m also quite skillful with this.” And she pulled her bone staff from her belt and flicked her wrist in the subtle yet complicated pattern that extended it. With much persuasion on her part, Korl had returned her weapon and had her snar-scale leggings and top copied in silk for her to wear when she refused the dresses that had been sewn for her. She regretted the decision to wear the boating outfit now, despite the comfortable familiarity of it, for it made her more of an alien to these women.
She swung the bone and managed to at least back the women away from their predatory advance on her. So they wouldn’t accept her—no surprise that—but at least she’d make them show a little respect. Mahri made three successive moves and snapped the top of a swan-shaped table in half.
“I’m quite skillful at killing,” she growled, and managed to bare her teeth without bursting into laughter.
As one, the women sucked air through their teeth and backed away from her in horror. Except for the young girl, who eyed the Wilding with awed fascination. “Have you really killed? Do you truly have Master tolerance of zabba? What’s it like to pole a boat? Are the swamps really full of monsters?” Her questions poured forth so quickly Mahri had no chance of answering them, even if she’d had a mind to. The small woman pinched the girl’s arm and brought her to heel.
Mahri sighed. Perhaps, if she had a mind to try very hard, it might be possible to make a few of these women her friends. But it wouldn’t be worth the effort, for she didn’t belong here, and wouldn’t be staying once Korl came to his senses and realized he could never make her into a princess.
Mahri spun and left the room, snapping her wrist to shorten her staff and slamming it back into her belt with feeling. And a ridiculous belt it is, she thought as she caught sight of the gleam of crystal imbedded into it. Worth a small fortune, the gilded thing, just to carry her worn old staff. But it seemed that if she refused to wear the crown, Korl had to identify her as Royalty somehow, and the belt was his attempt at a compromise.
She ignored the peals of laughter and half-frightened imprecations of “savage” and “barbarian” that echoed down the corridor—and no longer had to wonder about the laughter that greeted the sight of her. The courtiers were having a grand time at the expense of the prince’s new bride.
It didn’t make her feel any better that she’d expected their scorn and derision.
How she hated this place! So he loved her—so what? He still chose to keep her a prisoner and no matter the elegant trappings, the palace was still her prison. His definition of love—again—was greatly different from her own.
After her dream with the Speaker, she’d decided to help Korl rule if it came to that. But she’d admitted to herself that she didn’t know how to help him. She knew how to be herself, and every ounce of her being rebelled at staying in the palace. As long as she lay in Korl’s arms she could be happy, but they couldn’t stay abed all the time, no matter how much she longed to do so, and Mahri wondered how long it would be before her hatred for this place extended to him as well. She didn’t want it to come to that.
Mahri took the circular, carved stairwell down the two levels, aware that the Royal Family had their own Powered elevator, but refusing to take advantage of it. Only in these small denials could she exert some semblance of her vanishing independence.
She wished Jaja were with her. He’d done an admirable job of distracting the guards for her though, and she’d bet that afterwards he’d gone back to gorging himself again. If he kept it up she’d have to roll her pet out of the Palace Tree.
After Korl had allowed her to leave their bed, her first thought had been to seek out Master R’in, and she wasn’t quite sure why. But she felt for some reason that he might be her friend.
“Your Highness?”
She stopped, stunned to see the lined face of the Master Seer, as if she’d conjured him up from thin air.
“May I be of assistance?”
“Aya. I came to see you.”
It was his turn to look stunned. “Me?”
“Aya. Korl said you’d answer my questions, help me to learn about the palace… and other things.” Mahri just hoped her lifemate hadn’t had a chance to talk with R’in yet. Although he had suggested she see the Seer, she didn’t know how much Korl would allow the old man to tell a water-rat. This might be her only chance to learn as much as she could.
He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Makes sense. A bit dangerous to have a Wilding, er, an untrained Seer, running around the palace.”
Mahri smiled and nodded. She needn’t tell him Korl didn’t allow her near any zabba and had hidden that stash in the bathing room in another place. He didn’t want her using it to escape, for without it he knew she’d barely make it to the base of the Palace Tree, much less through the guarded channels. She’d been counting on his pride to keep the knowledge that his bride was a prisoner only to his own personal guard.
Master R’in’s eyes sparkled with more than just the Power of root. “Perhaps you’ll even teach me a few things.”
Mahri shrugged. All she knew were the swamps. Could he really be interested in her home?
The old man waved her toward an open door and when Mahri crossed the threshold she stopped in stunned amazement. Shiny boxes of silver lay everywhere, piles of round discs—of some pearly substance that rivaled the inside of Caria’s most beautiful seashells—littered the spaces in between. Walls of wooden shells held stacks of Leviathan bones, and Mahri threaded her way through the chaos to finger the flat pieces.
As she’d thought, words were inscribed on each surface, the same way Caria had scratched her notes about Mahri’s adventures. But whereas, by necessity, her sister-in-life had worked with soft bone, Leviathan had been used for these tablets, and only Power could shape that substance. They’d last forever.
Mahri eagerly picked up several and began to read, mentally thanking Caria for teaching her that skill.
The old man had his own private library… and some of the tablets had the yellowish-brown tinge that spoke of great age! This was surely the greatest treasure to be found in the Palace Tree.
“You’re welcome,” said R’in, “to come here anytime and read the records, although not much might be of interest to you.” He sighed. “Only an old man seems to have interest in the First Records. Like most, you’ll probably find the main library more appealing.”
Mahri looked up from what appeared to be a personal account of someone called the First Commander. “You mean there’s more?”
Master R’in nodded, fought a rather condescending smile unsuccessfully. “My collection contains only those records no one else had any use for.”
Mahri laid a hand over her heart. More bone books! To imagine such a thing, why, Caria would have fits.
Some water-rats were literate, those that kept track of goods for trade, but they usually had no need of records of any permanence, and to be in possession of anything other than private accounts would be cause for arrest by the Royals. Even Caria’s scratches, if discovered, could get her family into more trouble than they were worth.
“You’d get arrested for allowing a water-rat to read books of knowledge.”
He threw back his head and laughed, a throaty chuckle that Mahri immediately liked. “You still think of yourself as that, do you? My dear child, you’re a Royal now, and may read whatever you wish. Besides, I would not deny anything from the woman that had saved my prince.”
Mahri frowned. She’d ask
ed Korl and he’d refused to answer… perhaps the old man would tell her what had happened to his sister. “How is S’raya anyway? And that blackrobe.”
R’in’s beard wiggled. “You don’t know? You should have been warned!”
“Warned about what?”
The Seer frowned. “I can’t imagine why my prince… well, perhaps he thought to protect you. No matter, you should be told. S’raya went quite mad and killed herself. But the blackrobe has disappeared, and taken with him several of the palace monk-fish.”
“For what purpose?”
The old man shrugged. “We only recently discovered that he’d been performing experiments on them. We assume that’s how he learned to See into the mind of our prince—something I’m still having difficulty believing. And since you thwarted his plans I think you should be wary of him, at least until he’s been found.”
Mahri nodded. Knowing Korl’s arrogance, he probably felt that they’d catch the blackrobe, and in the meantime he’d keep her safely imprisoned in the palace. Why bother telling her anything when he’d take care of her anyway?
She sighed. Would he ever consider her his equal?
Mahri turned back to the shelves and feather-touched the stacks of bone. “But Caria can’t learn,” she whispered.
“Eh? What’s that?”
“Why can I learn, but none of my family or friends can? I’m still the same person I was before I took Korl as lifemate.”
Master R’in shook his head. “Customs, dear. Traditions that started with the first taste of zabba. And they die hard.”
“So, no matter how hard I study, I’ll never be Korl’s equal. Water-rats are considered inferior beings by law and nothing I do can change that.”
“I’d hoped that you’d wish to study for its own sake.” He hobbled over to one of those shiny boxes and rapped the top of it. A boom-rattle noise followed. “Curiosity, perhaps. If you wish to know the beginnings of the law, you’ve come to the right place.”
Mahri sighed. So he wouldn’t discuss the stupidity of Royal Law. She’d have to approach him within the boundaries he expected. “All right, I give. What is that thing?”
Beneath the Thirteen Moons Page 23
