“We should all be afraid,” said the chief of Intel Five darkly. “We should find a way to stop them.”
Eondal fixed him with an old red eye. “How?” he asked and turned away.
18
Moba Glacier had ground its way closer to the sea during the years Brock had been gone. It towered over Clinic One, a city nestling along the narrow curve of beach. The glacier was a sleeping giant growling and thundering inside itself, grey-green with age but not diminished. Brock stepped off the landing pod, squinting with an immediate flinch against the bitter lash of wind off the glacier. All these years he had missed the cold in the over-heated chambers of the Chaimu, and now he found himself wishing it was not quite so chilly. Muscles tensed, he gathered his fur-lined cloak more tightly around the charge armor he wore, much to the startled disapproval of the port official, and turned to raise his fist at the shuttle. With a whine of its engines it lifted off into the sky, disappearing quickly inside low, grey clouds.
It was mid-afternoon, the hour of meditation. As soon as the roar of the shuttle died away, an oppressive quiet engulfed Brock as he stood there, sniffing the cold damp air and gazing seaward. The water was mostly slush in the protected curve of the bay, with ice floes dotting its surface. A school of gremin were sporting out near the first breaker, surfacing with quick blows of spray and darting about with shrill cries. Overhead, a cannox wheeled through the air, plump-white against the metal-grey sky, its webbed feet a brilliant orange.
“Weapons are not permitted beyond this point,” said the port official sternly when Brock turned to leave the gated area of the landing pod. He spoke with the soft, rounded vowels of the east, but his voice was implacable; his eyes were flat with discipline.
Brock met that gaze as though it were not staring right through him. “I carry my weapons anywhere,” he said with equal flatness.
He did not have to identify himself. There was not a Sedkethran alive who did not know the shame that one of their race was a dire-lord. And it was as a member of the Held that Brock stood here now. The port official was bound by negotiated agreement to defer to any ranking Heldman.
Brock waited a second longer, then his head lifted. ‘‘Let me pass.”
The port official lowered his head and pressed a button, releasing the gate. As Brock strode through, however, the man whispered, “Promadi!”
Brock’s step faltered only fractionally at the insult, then he continued as though he had not heard.
He rented an airsled sealed with a clear glastel bubble, the kind commonly used for public transportation by the infirm or by those who were too old to flick with accuracy. It chuff-chuffed softly along the deserted streets lined with smoothly stuccoed dwellings or high walls delineating private gardens. No windows faced out onto the streets. Architectural lines were curved, never sharp angles. Colors were soft; the earth tones of beige and gold and pale mauve interspersed here and there with the official grey stone of government buildings rising in short, conical towers. The air was spitting tiny ice pellets now. They rattled off the glastel bubble, and he saw them bouncing upon the pavement. Occasionally the air shimmered in brief waves, and he knew that someone was flicking somewhere, meeting a friend, taking care of an errand, performing a duty. Brock frowned, longing to see someone out walking about, although such a thing was rare, especially at this time of the day. He had tried to prepare himself for his return, but just the same he was struck by the bleakness of it all. Even if he saw someone, they would turn aside from the promadi. It is not a homecoming, he told himself firmly, but still felt drawn with loneliness. He wished he had brought Ellisne, but it was too dangerous for her and the life she carried. My child, he thought proudly, lifted by new emotions. Our child. Our sharing.
The sled passed a sprawling compound on the outskirts of the town. The rooftops of row after row of utilitarian barracks showed above the wall. The muscles in Brock’s stomach tightened, and he increased speed, refusing to stare, yet finding his eyes drawn to it all the same as he wondered if there were any young boys or girls trapped inside those walls who felt hatred, confinement, stiflement. How many talented young minds were the magstrusi crushing today beneath the Disciplines?
The pressure against his mind was constant now, like a persistent headache. He was alone. He carried nothing beyond standard weapons. It would be a simple matter to stop him. But Sedkethrans were a nonviolent race. Such a solution would never occur to them.
The street ended abruptly, and there were no more buildings. Ahead of him were only stubby cliffs riddled with caves, and inhabited by thousands of waterfowl screeching, fighting over nests, and stealing eggs. The face of the cliffs was strewn with nest materials fluttering messily in the lash of the wind. Sleet was collecting on the ground in white pockets. The wind buffeted the sled as he turned it toward the glacier. He was ashamed of purposely delaying a confrontation with the magstrusi. There was so little time. What if the controls of this goda were also dead? Who would he find to reactivate them? He should be turning back to the training compound, not sightseeing. The natural life on this planet, scant as it was, was doomed. He was afraid of the urge to stretch out the few remaining hours; he was afraid of his own compassion. Hatred was safer.
But just the same he kept going straight for the glacier. Minutes later he was upon it, the sled hovering with slow puffs of air that created swirls and eddies in the dry layer of snow dusting the surface of the ice. He craned back his neck, looking straight up at the sky through the bubble as he had looked straight up during those clandestine nights spent out here as a boy. Then, tangled and confused inside by longings and hot feelings of rebellion, he had stared in fascination at the jewelled spray of stars against a velvet sky. And somehow he had sensed that the stars were his destiny. Then, he had not known how they could be. He was only a boy, his back smarting from the sting of his latest whipping, his mind numbed from the endless litanies of memorization, his future already determined; he was destined to be an orderly in one of the numerous clinics. He had been determined too erratic to be a healer. He showed no aptitude for engineering services.
Abruptly his hand slammed down on the controls, and the sled landed. Cutting the engine, he flung himself outside on the ice, bracing against the wind that nearly whipped him double and sent his cloak billowing out around him. The sleet cut his face and made him gasp. Squinting against it, he held up a hand to shield his eyes.
I am back from the stars! he shouted, communing with the glacier as it growled and snapped beneath his feet. The wind shrieked in his ears, numbing his body with cold. He held onto the sled to balance himself. You were right, ice. My destiny was waiting for me. And now it is time for yours.
There was nothing more to delay for. With a sigh, he pulled himself back under the shelter of the bubble and started the sled up again. He wanted to go to the Cave of Harmony, but that was impossible. It was accessible only by flicking. Frowning, he turned the sled back toward town. For the first time in years he wondered about his parents, but he could not look for them. He did not know what they looked like. He did not know if they were still alive. For that ignorance, Magstrus Olbin, I hate you. He suddenly wanted to see the dwelling in which he had been born, but he did not know where that was either. Perhaps he had been born in another town. The memories were too dim, too uncertain, repressed at the time of Change, and not resilient enough now to be brought back. He thought of sprawling, noisy Chaimu households filled with extended families, exotic treasures, loud music, laughing children, and the complex scents of cooking food. Each time a new child arrived from Mabruk, very small, very wide-eyed, very shy, there was a celebration with days of feasting, and telling wild stories, and giving toasts, all the friends of the family invited, sometimes from other worlds, and extravagant gifts showered upon everyone by the proud parents in honor of the child’s official naming. How different from stark, perfectly ordered Sedkethran households, where children were still born from their mother’s womb but never loved or feasted or sho
wered with gifts.
How do the Imish raise their children? he wondered, then brushed the thought aside. He was coming to the gate of the training compound.
For a moment as he halted the sled and leaned out to speak to the porter, staring at him with a stony face inside the glastel booth, Brock felt a release from the mental pressure. The headache faded. His breath hissed out in relief, only to choke as the pain slammed back with doubled strength. Brock flinched, reeling back slightly, and caught himself with both hands against the pilot’s brace. For an instant he knew nothing but that inexorable pressure, crushing him so that he could not see or hear or breathe. He could not withstand it; surely it was too great even for his powers to resist.
Just as suddenly it was gone, that immense strength draining away like an ice puddle evaporating under the weak sun, and Brock sagged against the pilot’s brace. Dazedly he managed to lift his head and focus his vision. They must have brought everything they had against him, he thought, and it had not been enough. They couldn’t crush him!
His confidence rushed back. A bit unsteadily he straightened himself and looked out at the porter once again.
“I have come to see the elder magstrus,” he said.
The porter’s flat eyes stared right through him without any variant in expression, and he replied, not to a promadi, but to the Held dire-lord, “You are expected.”
Brock glanced across the compound, where children were exercising naked in the brutal lash of wind-driven sleet, and saw a long, pillared loggia running along the flank of the building but no doors. Shame at his deficiency caught him in the throat. His hands clenched hard at his sides, and he had to fight himself before he could ask: “How do I enter?”
This time there might have been a flicker of surprise in the flat eyes, but it was no more than a fleeting shadow. Of course, thought Brock with a bitterness he could not control, a dire-lord would know nothing about flicking.
The porter replied, pointing, and Brock climbed out of the sled, leaving it at the gate. The instructors ignored him as he strode the length of the compound, his charge armor making him seem bigger than he actually was and his cloak billowing to increase his size yet more. But the children faltered, their eyes growing round with wonder as they stared.
I am their first warrior, he thought, masking his limp beneath an extra swagger. Better than that, I am their first Sedkethran warrior. Look, little ones, and see what you should be.
“Auel!” bawled the instructor, the gutteral notes of that command sending resurgent memories through Brock. The children jumped obediently to resume their exercises, and his boots crunched on across the ice-coated gravel.
He found the door unlocked and ducked into the shelter of the building. Glad to be out of the icy bite of the wind at last, he sighed and brushed the granules from his face. He was standing in a small vestibule with plain plaster walls and a tiled floor. A hallway curved ahead of him, and he followed it, his senses alert for whatever might lie in wait.
At least the intolerable pressure on his mind had ceased after that last attack. In its place remained only the light, polite tapping of a request for a mind link. He bared his teeth grimly as he moved quick-footed and silently along the corridor. He had no intention of giving them the slightest access into his mind.
And then he was there, standing in the round chamber of the elder council. It was dimly lit by a skylight in the ceiling. The walls stood shrouded in shadow. As Brock entered, he felt a chill that had nothing to do with temperature levels. We are enemies, he thought. There can be no compromise.
He walked to the center of the room and stood motionless for a long time. There was no need to announce himself. The magstrusi knew he was here. They would respond when they were ready. But as the waiting lengthened, he turned his head to one side and then to the other with a frown. There was not time for their games. How close was Falmah-Al to success? Had her technicians already unlocked the goda’s secrets? Was it already on the move down a relentless path of terror?
As an acolyte, he had entered this place cautiously, drawn by insatiable curiosity to peek at the Writings forbidden to his sight. Now his head came up angrily. In two strides he reached the stone altar in which the Writings lay sealed. His forefinger jabbed the button. With a faint whir, the altar opened to reveal the scrolls in their protective cases. Drawing off his gauntlets, Brock seized a scroll and tipped it out of its case. He read swiftly, his mind automatically unlocking the coded phrases that had once taken so long to decipher. How easy, how simple they were now!
He scanned enough of the first scroll’s contents to be sure it did not contain what he sought. Tipping it back into its case, he seized the next and opened it. Still nothing about the entrance to the goda control room. He reached for the third…
“Stop!”
A lightning bolt of pure white energy crackled through the air, jolting his wrist so that he dropped the scroll and jerked back his hand. His entire arm tingled fiercely, but he scarcely felt the discomfort through the rage which blazed up through him. By Meir above, he had vowed they would never whip him again!
As he turned, he activated his charge armor, and its protective hum was a familiar sound in his ears as the forcefield encased him in a golden aura of safety.
“Olbin!” he shouted.
But the magstrus did not reply.
Frowning, Brock bent to pick up the scroll he had dropped. Again the whip of energy crackled, this time across his shoulders. His charge armor spat furiously, neutralizing the blow. Baring his teeth, Brock opened the scroll. Another whip lashed out, trying to knock the scroll from his hand. Lifting his arm, Brock deflected the blow and went on reading with rising excitement.
This was it! He stared at the symbols, mentally rearranging them into a map. The entrance was here! Right in this room!
A forked tongue of energy split the delicate parchment, which blackened and curled at the edges. Brock hastily blew out the sparks.
“Fools!” he shouted. “Would you destroy your own precious Writings?”
“Better to destroy them than to let your eyes defile them, promadi!”
It was Olbin’s voice, disembodied, booming at him from the darkness concealing the vaulted ceiling.
Brock had wondered, during the flight from the cluster ship, what he would say to his old teacher during this confrontation. Now that the moment was at long last here, the words seemed to dry up in his throat. The arguments were unimportant. Revenge, boasting, flaunting his powers…what would any of them serve? He had more important things to do here. Laying the scorched scroll aside, he picked up the last one and opened it.
“No!”
This time the whip was accurate and focused. The ancient scroll case shattered in Brock’s hand.
“Go!” ordered Olbin. “Leave this chamber, defiler! Leave this world!”
Dusting the shards from his hands, Brock shrugged and put his shoulder to the altar, heaving to move it aside. It was very heavy, and budged only a few inches with a grating of stone upon the tiled floor. But he saw the edge of a door set into the floor and quickly summoned his strength for a second try.
The mental attack came without warning, hammering his mind savagely so that he fell to his knees with a grunt of pain. Beneath the agony of that intense pressure, which seemed to make his entire skull explode, anger turned cold and bitter in his stomach. He would not let their prejudiced stupidity give Falmah-Al the victory!
“Cuh!” With a grunt, he hurled their attack back at them, focusing his own mind on Olbin’s in an effort to crush it. His atrox hummed in his chest; he felt a surge of power. They could not beat him. He was stronger. He could feel them crumbling beneath the onslaught of his mind. Shouting aloud, he raised his fists in the Chaimu sign of victory, aware of nothing except his own strength, his hatred of them like a fire that would not be quenched, and his nearness to success. Just a little more, and the magstrusi would be finished forever…
A healer’s pin—long, thin, and pre
cise—plunged into his neck, piercing nerves that stiffened him in agonized, rigid paralysis. Equally abruptly, his mind was pierced by the astonished thought: My charge armor should have protected me!
“Fallacy,” said Olbin, breaking off his attack as Brock’s faded. “You have forgotten your own people’s abilities. It is a simple matter to flick a solid object through an energy field.”
By rolling his eyes, Brock could barely glimpse a robed figure holding him spitted and helpless. Anger at his own false pride choked him. He had been so stupid!
“You have me, Olbin. Get on with it.”
“Is death the only pattern your mind has learned? A pathetic lesson, surely. We cannot crush you. That, you have already discovered.”
“I shall go down through that trap door,” said Brock, “unless you stop me.”
“We have stopped you.”
“And will you go on holding me here forever like an insect on a pin?” Brock’s body beneath his neck was numb. Permanent paralysis? It would be so easy. A slight twist of thumb and forefinger…
“Agreed. We are temporarily at a stalemate,” said Olbin. “But not for long. Healer Megsin, take our prisoner to the waiting area. There must be a debate called by the elder council to determine the best manner of trial.”
“No!” said Brock, well aware that such a trial could run for weeks. There wasn’t time. “Olbin, you must listen to me! The Imish have a goda. The only way we can—”
“Silence! You will not speak further blasphemies!”
“Hear me! Olbin, you—”
The healer jabbed the pin deeper into Brock’s neck. There was a sudden flare of white-hot pain, and then he knew nothing at all.
19
He awakened later sore but clear-headed and was surprised to find himself in a simple cubicle of the type assigned to novice healers during their training. The bare plaster walls were pale mauve and devoid of decoration. There was exactly enough room for the suspensor plates of the bed and a woven-cloth chair between the walls. Brock’s armor was gone. He wore only his padded undertunic and trousers. Frowning, for he had expected to be placed in one of the seldom-used detention cells of ungstan carbonix, Brock sat up, curling his legs beneath him as he bobbed gently up and down on the suspensor field. He reached out to switch it off, but before he could do so, the door slid silently open as though the person outside had been waiting for him to stir.
The Goda War Page 22
