Perrnodt whimpered a little, but pressed on, the trail moving west, ever west, past the town of Exchange Pledges, bustling with the business brought to it by the V'ornn strip mines to the north. In the dense smoky depths of the Borobodur forest, the pain brought her low. Her chest constricted, she labored to take a breath. Through lips that could barely move, she invoked Crossed-Wrists, a Venca defensive spell. The cessation of the pain made her weep with relief, but within moments it was back, more agonizing than ever. She was obliged to cast ever more powerful spells, but even with that the periods of relief became shorter and shorter.

That confused and frightened her, for she felt certain that it was the Dark League that had turned their collective face in her direction in order to keep her from finding the abbey's Ramahan. The lens of the opal had turned opaque. No matter what she tried, it would not clear. From what infernal source were the sauromicians drawing their energy? She had heard stories-whispered, clandestine even among the Druuge-of the alleged power of necromancy, but, of course, that was impossible. Even the sauromicians would not dare to keep the dead from their cosmic fate.

She invoked Dragonfly in an attempt to use the opal to reveal to her the source of the sauromicians'

newfound power. The opal began to shudder and shake as if it were trying to shatter itself against the sorcerous barrier it had come up against. And, then, all at once, the lens revealed to her a flash so horrific her mind could barely contain it. She saw the corpses of young Ramahan priestesses. Saw the look of fury frozen on their faces. In a frenzy, they had turned on each other.

Pain exploded, a searing fireball in her head, bursting nerves and blood vessels alike. She fell onto herback, her mouth working silently. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest. Her eyes were full of blood, and a blackness engulfed her that, gradually, she realized would not dissipate.

4

Return to Axis Tyr

Kurgan had been shadowing Nith Immmon for ten minutes along stone-clad corridors, through waiting areas flagged with agate tiles, down green-onyx and cor-blood-red-porphyry staircases, across abandoned skylit plazas, studded with obsidian plinths that had once held the trembling bodies of animals sacrificed to the Kun-dalan G.o.ddess Miina.

Kurgan, making a decision purely from intuition, had not walked out of Receiving Spirit after concluding his interview. Instead, as Nith Immmon had glided down the corridor away from him, moving deeper into the labyrinth the V'ornn had made of Receiving Spirit, he had hurried on silent feet after the Gyrgon.

Nith Immmon's gait now shortened, and Kurgan saw that he was approaching a heartwood door bound in bands of thick bronze incised with Kundalan runes. It was fitted with a complicated lock of Gyrgon manufacture. Nith Immmon put his palm against the lock, which opened with a sigh to reveal a s.p.a.ce of utter blackness. Nith Immmon vanished through the open door, and a moment later it began to swing shut. Kurgan sprinted to it just in time to throw himself sideways through the opening. The door clicked shut behind him.

Pressing himself against the closed door, he scarcely dared breathe. Where was Nith Immmon? The question was soon answered as a pool of lambent blue light illuminated a corridor composed of rough stone blocks, white as the facade of the building. Up ahead, he saw the origin of the light, a glowing ball that hung suspended in midair just above Nith Immmon's cupped hand. The Gyrgon was moving away from him.

Kurgan, following Nith Immmon, made his cautious way down the corridor, which, unlike those on the other side of the door, was cramped and low-ceilinged, the sides sloping inward as they went up. The utter silence pressed in on him, as if even the sound of his breathing was being m.u.f.fled.

Presently, the corridor made a ninety-degree turn to the left, and Kurgan came to a halt. Thrown upon the far wall was a ruddy glow, dim and flickering. It reminded him of something, but he could not immediately think of what. Nevertheless, he felt a crawling in his belly, as of insects stirring to life. It was then that a shadow flitted across the ruddy glow, and he knew where he had encountered this before: the sphere Nith Na.s.sam had led him past on his way to Nith Batox.x.x's laboratory.

He craned his neck, peering around the corner. The corridor ended a short way farther on, debouching onto a spherical chamber, lit by a series of fusion lamps exuding the reddish light. It had a metallic floor that was smaller than the chamber itself by perhaps three meters. It was connected to the corridor by a narrow walkway that spanned the waterless moat. The floor contained a number of horizontal chambers shaped like laaga sticks connected by photon lines to what he thought must be Gyrgon fusion engines, though they did not conform to any design he had ever seen.

Nith Immmon, his helm held in the crook of one arm, was standing before one of them. He had a long, mournful face and small ears that rather comically stuck out from his skull. The lobes glowed with implanted biocircuits, and there was a small germanium stud above each eye winking to the rhythm of his pumping blood. He was looking upward and, when Kurgan followed the tilt of his skull, he saw a great shadow descending from near the top of the sphere where another set of chambers hung in an ion stasis field.

As the shadow dropped into the ruddy light, Kurgan saw to his astonishment that it had wings, which folded as it alighted in front of Nith Immmon. Kurgan could see that the figure was carrying something in its arms, but he was for the moment too fascinated by the creature itself to take heed.His astonishment doubled, for it was as tall as Nith Immmon, the hairless conical head clearly V'ornnish, the amber hue paler but, again, distinctly V'ornnish. But the eyes, large and expressive, had in the center of their black irises pure white pupils. Then, his breath was taken away by another detail. A string of Gyrgon biocircuits spiraled up the skull. What is this thing? he asked himself.

He shifted slightly in order to better his field of view. From there he could see that the creature was naked. Its b.r.e.a.s.t.s marked it as a female, but then, as he lowered his gaze, he saw the distinct outlines of V'ornn male tender parts.

"Are we ready?" Nith Immmon asked.

"As I said." The creature had a voice both silky and throaty. The sound of it set the insects in the pit of Kurgan's lowest belly to scrambling again, as if an unconscious part of him recognized it.

The creature set down its burden, which, Kurgan saw, was a male child. He looked somewhat like a V'ornn, but there were differences, subtle and otherwise. For one thing, he had hair on the top of his head.

"Show me what he can do," Nith Immmon said.

The creature took the child by the hand and walked him to one of the chambers. Kurgan could see that the creature had very long, dextrous fingers. A wave of the creature's hand and one of the chambers opened. It helped the male child in, and the lid came down, sealing the child within.

"Will an exposure of three minutes be sufficient?" the creature asked.

"At what concentration?"

"The goron wave simulates that encountered at h.e.l.lespennn."

"h.e.l.lespennn, when the stars fell." Nith Immmon was racked by a shudder. "Commence."

Sound like a knife caused Kurgan to slam his hands to his ears. His eyes began to tear.

When the sound ceased, the door to the chamber opened, and the creature helped the child climb out.

Unlike Courion, he appeared unharmed by the terrible radiation.

Nith Immmon held out his hand, and the child walked toward him. He was almost there when his pupils and irises vanished, and he collapsed.

"Another failure," Nith Immmon said sorrowfully.

"This is the longest one has survived," the creature said. "I see progress, not failure."

"That is because we have different priorities," Nith Immmon said. "I seek to prepare us for what is to come and you ..."

"I create," the creature said.

"Of course. You are Breeder." Nith Immmon put on his helm. "Still, it is a mystery to me, Gul Aluf, that you are comfortable being outside the Temple of Mnemonics without your ion exomatrix."

She smiled. "No. The real mystery is why you lie to me, Nith Immmon, about these experiments."

"Do you doubt my loyalty to the Comradeship, to this very Swarm?"

"Not at all." Her wings flashed up and down once. "But I also know that once these experiments work you will wield almost unlimited power among the Comradeship. Nith Sahor. Nith Batox.x.x. Our stewards are gone. There is disunity among the Comradeship-and worse, the beginnings of internecine warfare."

"Worse still, we suddenly are directionless. And why is that? Nith Sahor was betrayed and murdered by Nith Batox.x.x and his cabal. Nith Batox.x.x was possessed by a Kundalan archdaemon of great power-a power we neither foresaw nor can understand no matter how much we try. Here on Kundala are forces we neither control nor comprehend. Do you not consider the possibility that Nith Sahor was right about how special Kundala is?"

"No. We are V'ornn. The Kundalan are nothing more than animals." "You see?" Nith Immmon said.

"This is why the Comradeship is at an impa.s.se. And for us-at this juncture in our history-any impa.s.se is dangerous."

Riane, Eleana, and Thigpen arrived in Axis Tyr in the evening of what had been a bright brittle early-spring day. The chill was returning to the air, a reflection of winter's grip, but the sysal trees were so bursting with incipient buds that the gimnopedes felt safe flitting through the k.n.o.bby branches.

The trio had slipped secretly into the city via the network of tunnels the Resistance had spent years digging. Riane could see right away why they needed Eleana. For security reasons the Resistanceperiodically filled in tunnel entrances, dug others in different locations. It was difficult work, time-consuming, backbreaking, but it saved countless lives. They emerged more or less in the heart of the spice market, which at this time of day was thronged with buyers, sellers, idle onlookers, and others bent on illicit deals.

They had flown on the back of the fulkaan, the enormous avian with which Riane had been connected in her former life. The fulkaan had let them down in a dense copse of ammonwood within five kilometers of the city walls. From there, Eleana had led them on foot to the hidden entrance to one of the Resistance tunnels that honeycombed the surrounding area.

They pa.s.sed the glowing windows of Spice Jaxx's, where Looorm and Deirus congregated in their off-hours or, in the Looorms' case, off-moments between acrobatic s.e.xual liaisons with wealthy Bashkir clients. It was also where members of Resistance cadres sometimes met to exchange information and to eat heartily before the dangerous trip home to the hillsides north of the city. The Deirus presence guaranteed that Khagggun and inquisitive members of other castes would give it a wide berth. It was comfortable, a hushed and low-lit establishment, the better to accommodate the clandestine nature of its clientele.

Thigpen curled across Riane's shoulders, hidden beneath her voluminous travel cloak as they wended their way through the milling crowd, immersed in the babble of voices, the singsong trills of the spice merchants hawking their wares. Laughter was pa.s.sed around small groups of V'ornn as if it were ludd-wine, and a heady mix of spice dust sparkled in the dusk. Long shadows sprang up as lanterns were lighted. A Kundalan male haggled with a dealer on behalf of his V'ornn master, a Tuskugggun put a fingertip to her mouth, deciding between two grades of cinnamon. A patrol hoverpod, weapons bristling, droned by overhead, making contact with a pair of Khagggun, who had all at once materialized like spectres from a fogbank. The travelers continued in their dogged way to the edge of the market, whose demarcation was a scraggly line of Kundalan with lost or maimed limbs, scarred faces, and hopeless eyes.

Riane stopped to speak to each one, crouching down, touching their outstretched hands, murmuring Venca prayers that would initiate auras of healing around them. As she signaled Eleana to fetch some water, she felt Thigpen's tail curling around her neck.

"This is not perhaps the wisest course of action." Thigpen's whiskers twitched beneath Riane's cloak.

"Consider the heightened Khagggun presence."

"These are my folk," Riane whispered back. "It is prophesied that I will bring them out of their enslavement. I will not ignore their torment until that time comes."

With tearful eyes and murmurings of grat.i.tude, they accepted the water that Eleana brought. However, one there was with red-rimmed eyes who rose and slipped into the crowd, shadowing them as they pa.s.sed on.

Cinnabar Street was part of a rather quiet district lined with expensive artists' villas, the beautifully ornate Kundalan architecture and designs perfectly preserved. High stone walls, expertly carved and patterned, inset with graven bas-relief medallions, preserved the privacy of the owners.

"Look at how they live here amid beauty and tranquillity." Thigpen bristled with anger. "Look, look!

Not only V'ornn live here. Kundalan who collaborate with them. For them, the war scarcely exists."

At length, they crossed Constance Street and turned into Divination Street, a wider thoroughfare more appropriate for the beginning of a commercial district, containing armories and large ateliers, bristling unashamedly with wealth and power. There, two sides of V'ornn culture existed elbow to elbow despite being polar opposites. They saw on display the latest suits of armor, loaded with new biocircuits the distribution of which had been sanctioned by the Gyrgon comradeship, new shock-swords, lighter-looking, more lethal even than those Rekkk and Eleana possessed, mean-looking ion maces. And then, in the next shop, photonic sculptures, brilliant, ethereal, lighter than the air itself, which seemed to breathe on their own. In the next, a true oddity, reading matter caught not in the facets of decagons but on supple wry-gra.s.s paper, lovingly handmade, bound with cor-tail thread, surrounded by covers fashioned from the speckled hides of razor-raptors, dyed hin-demuth, pebbled searay, even, astonishingly, perwillon.A brief hush heralded dusk, a lull drifting across the streets. Shops closing, the Tuskugggun armorers and artists needing to return to their hingatta to see to their children. Divination Street saw its crowds melt away.

Eleana went up the wide steps of a large shanstone building that had once been a temple. The V'ornn had turned it into the Bashkir Forum of Adjudication. It was there that Sornnn SaTrryn weighed disputes between Bashkir families.

As luck would have it, the forum was between sessions, and the guards were nowhere about. Their boot soles rang on the green polished shanstone flooring as they wended their way between fluted columns. The harsh bluish light thrown off by the V'ornn fusion lamps seemed to wash out the natural colors of the stones. In the rear, Eleana opened a narrow door so plain it was scarcely visible, and they found themselves in a utility area-a small succession of cubicles with rough-hewn rock walls and ceilings, piled with the rags, brushes, buckets, brooms, and cleansers of the Kundalan work crew.

Thigpen, who had leapt down the moment they had come inside, wrinkled her nose at the harsh chemical smells.

"Civilization," she said huffily. "Who needs it?"

"Shhh!" Eleana warned them both.

They stood very still, listening to the soft echo of footfalls outside. Following Eleana's lead, they crept from cubicle to cubicle until they were in the last one. It was smaller than the others, with makeshift shelving. A magnificent red-jasper Ramahan altar incised with images of Miina's sacred b.u.t.terfly had been shoved against the back wall as if it were a piece of junk.

They could hear a deep voice, uttering the harsh, clipped vernacular of Khagggun-speak. "In here, come on."

"Why?" came the higher-pitched voice of a Tuskugggun. "This place gives me the chills."

"The only thing giving you chills tonight is me." The Khagggun laughed. "I told you. There's an old Kundalan altar in there."

The voices were rapidly drawing closer, and Riane and Eleana looked at each other. Eleana made to draw her shock-sword, but Riane grasped her hand to stay her.

"Their priestesses sacrificed animals on this thing." Shadows skittered. The Khagggun and his Looorm were in the next chamber. "Climbing on, naked, joining our tender parts where so much blood had been spilled. Trust me, there's nothing like it."

"The last time I trusted a Khagggun," the Looorm said, "I broke my collarbone."

The Khagggun was laughing, in high spirits when he found Eleana in the chamber where the V'ornn had consigned the altar. She stood with her hands behind her back, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s provocatively thrust out.

"What can this be?" He was a big, hulking specimen of the warrior caste. The purple color of his body armor marked him as a foot soldier in the regent's Haaar-kyut guard.

"Listen, skcettta," the Looorm said with a sneer, "work your own territory and get out of mine."

"No, no, this is too good to pa.s.s up!" the Khagggun boomed. "Two females for the price of one!" He approached Eleana, who was leaning back slightly, her legs spread. "The altar will receive a good workout tonight, eh?"

He reached for Eleana, but before his meat hook hand could wrap itself around her arm, Thigpen leapt from her hiding place behind the altar. Extruding her long, needle-sharp claws, she bared her teeth at him. Rappa were carnivores, and had the rending teeth of creatures many times their size.

The Looorm screamed, lurched into the Khagggun. Off-balance, he took a swipe at Thigpen, for his effort feeling her teeth sink into the back of his hand. He whipped her into the wall, then swung his shock-sword free. Riane dropped from the ceiling, where with her body's mountain-climbing expertise, she had found adequate handholds in the pockmarked rock. As she hit the floor, a dagger in her fist, the Khagggun turned to face her, and Eleana drew her shock-sword from behind her back. He heard the telltale sound of the ion flow as Eleana thumbed her weapon to life. With a battle cry, he swung a blind blow behind him that, had she not nimbly danced away, would have severed her abdominal muscles.

He was slowed by his shock that she was a female, and a Kundalan, to boot. She wasted no time, engaging his sword tips with her own, sliding her twin blades down the length of his to the hilt. The ion arcflowing back and forth between her blades caused a powerful feedback loop that sent a nerve-numbing shock all the way up into his shoulder. He yelped, dropping his weapon as much in surprise as in pain.

Riane jammed her dagger into the interstice between the plates of his alloy armor, and he swatted at her, as if she were some form of biting insect. She staggered a little, but held on to the hilt, twisting the blade inside him, bringing a grimace to his face but no sound to his lips. Khagggun were stoics, trained to take physical punishment as well as to give it.

Ignoring the growing pain in his side, he unhooked his ion mace and, in one fluid motion, swung it in a short vicious arc. Eleana leapt back, but a cl.u.s.ter of spikes dragged across the front of her left shoulder, sending an agonizing shock through her. The regent's guardsman took a stride toward her and, grabbing the front of her tunic, lifted her off her feet.

He wrapped the ion mace's chain around her neck and pulled. Riane withdrew the dagger, stabbed again in another spot. The Haaar-kyut ignored her as he continued to squeeze the life out of Eleana. And he ignored Thigpen when she landed on his back. Deftly, she flicked off his helm, sank her teeth into his ear, and sc.r.a.ped both sets of foreclaws down his skull. He screamed as his blood flew, Eleana collapsed onto the altar, her eyes rolling up in her head. Riane scrambled across the floor, grasped the Haaar-kyut's shock-sword and, without a second's thought, drove it point first just above the spot where the hilt of her dagger protruded.

The Haaar-kyut staggered a pace before falling to his knees. His hands were spasming; he had no control over them. His lips were moving. He was trying to contact his Pack-Commander, though his photonic link had been severed when Thigpen had wrenched off his helm.

The Rappa left him to Riane, skittered across the floor on extended claws, jumping onto the altar where Eleana lay. The Haaar-kyut, relentless to the end, grabbed Riane's cloak, pulling her toward him.

His teeth gnashed and his jaws came down on her. She twisted, jammed her elbow hard into his throat, and his grip on her loosened.

She ran to where Thigpen was crouched over Eleana.

"How is she?" Riane panted, staring down at Eleana's pale face. "How badly is she hurt?"

Thigpen shook her head. She had unwound the ion mace's chain, which had left deep red welts around Eleana's neck.

Riane conjured Earth Granary, surrounding Eleana with its potent healing and was about to gather her into her arms, when Thigpen tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to see the Looorm incongruously wielding the Haaar-kyut's shock-sword.

"Careful," Riane said softly. "That thing can kill you as easily as it can me."

"Who are you?" The Looorm's eyes were wide and staring. She was clearly panicked.

"I am Riane, this is Thigpen, and Eleana."

"Do you know what you have done? You've murdered a member of the regent's elite guard."

"Not murdered," Riane said reasonably. "It was self-defense."

"Do you think that matters?" The Looorm was wildly swinging the shock-sword in their direction. She was small and slender, no more than a child, really, and her face seemed all eyes and pouty lips. She looked born to the profession of s.e.x. She was without the traditional Tusku-gggun sifeyn, of course, and her skull, perfumed and oiled, gleamed provocatively in the light. "You are Kundalan. You will die for this affront."

"What is your name?" Riane asked, all the while spreading Earth Granary like a balm over Eleana's body.

"What?"

"You know our names. What is yours."

"No one asks a Looorm's name."

"You do have one."

"Why, yes, I ..." The Looorm's shock had turned to something akin to confusion. "My name is Jura."

"Listen to me, Jura. You have many choices."