The Fall Page 27

He shrugged a shoulder. “You crawled in my hair. But our Paran wanted you, and it was not for me to decide who could capture his heart.”

  “Despite his bad judgment?”

  That earned her an honest laugh. He wiped the corner of an eye with a finger. “I came to tell you,” he said, sobering, “that you must prepare for a journey. We travel to the Circle today.”

  * * *

  They had covered half the distance between the stronghold and the city when Laura’s senses caught fire. Grabbing her head, she screamed and tumbled off the lounge onto the floor of the transport pod. The creature halted and emitted an empathic shriek the moment her skin came into contact with it, then moaned along with Laura.

  Meilyn dropped onto the floor next to her. “Artist!” He placed a hand on each side of her head. Soothing energy poured from them.

  “Too bright,” she gasped. “Too hot!” She threw a silent plea at the pod. Get me out of here!

  An instant later, the city’s scorching radiance hurtled away from her. She sucked in a breath. Meilyn withdrew his hands from the sides of her head and slipped one underneath it, fumbling in a pocket with the other. He pulled out a vial, popped off the seal with his thumb, and put the opening to her lips.

  “Drink,” he said, lifting her head.

  She swallowed the liquid he poured into her mouth, bitter as it was. Her senses blurred, but her surroundings focused. She quivered on the floor of the transport pod, which careered backward along the tunnel at high speed.

  “Good. Can you sit up?”

  “I think so,” she answered, throat scratchy and sore from her scream.

  Meilyn put a hand under her shoulder to help her upright. All around her, her fellow passengers clung to their seats, wild-eyed. The servant at the front radiated grim terror as he fought the pod.

  “I cannot control it!” he exclaimed.

  Urgency shot through Meilyn. “We need you to stop the pod, artist,” he said. “Tell the pod to stop.”

  She closed her eyes. Fuzz surrounded everything, including the pod. “I cannot focus.”

  He took her hand and placed it against the pod’s crystalline wall. Her sense of the creature sharpened. “And now?”

  “Better.”

  “Tell the pod to stop!”

  She reached with burned and aching senses toward the pod and stroked the terrified creature. “You can stop now,” she murmured.

  It slowed.

  “We are safe. You can stop.”

  With a silent, empathic whimper, it halted.

  “Good girl. Let the nice people comfort you now.”

  A scanner hummed. She opened her eyes to see Meilyn’s wrist before her face. To one side, an aide spoke in soft tones into a tablet.

  “You sustained no damage,” Meilyn said, deactivating and pocketing the scanner, “but your empathic nerves may ache for a time. Do you remember how to make a barrier between yourself and others?”

  “I can do that?”

  The healer’s mouth flattened into a line. “We should have realized you would not remember. Start by thinking yourself in a room with thick stone walls.”

  * * *

  Chichen Itza. Al Khazneh. The Great Pyramid at Giza. Fu’u’swan. Laura pictured herself in the center of them all at once. A furnace raged just outside.

  Two aides hurried her the short distance between the pod sent to collect her from the stronghold and— She halted to stare, despite the hurry and her own terror of imminent incineration. A pod the size of an old London bus hovered in the city hub, so large it couldn’t have fit in the stronghold’s transit room. No wonder they’d had to gather at the city hub in order to board it.

  The Paran’s entourage already occupied the vehicle, visible through its transparent skin, mainly dressed in dark browns and indigo blues, with a goodly number of individuals in yellow. A bare handful of black robes moved about among them.

  “Why so few servants?” she blurted.

  “Most left yesterday, to prepare the Paranian quarters at the Circle,” an aide said.

  The other aide gave a gentle tug on the belt around her waist. “Artist,” he murmured.

  “Oh, forgive me.” Laura offered a sheepish smile. “I have delayed you all long enough.” She let them hustle her up the ramp and into the rear of the pod, where furniture had been brought in to form a kind of sitting room. Once the aides settled her on a lounge, the vehicle began to float toward a heavily-guarded tunnel entrance.

  The Paran stayed on the other end of the pod, his barriers closed, surrounded by a small crowd of people with solemn faces, Meilyn among them. Marianne had come along as well, sitting near Azana, and they too stayed away. Rose, however, had other ideas. When her mother put her down, she scrambled on all fours straight for Laura.

  “Ba!” she exclaimed, pulling herself up to stand against the lounge on which Laura reclined. She grinned and beat the side of the lounge with open palms. “Ba!”

  Laura caught one of her little hands, smiling back. Rose leaned over as far as she could and tried to pull Laura’s fingers into her mouth.

  She felt the memory coming, this time. Walls of dark stone, heavy with time and tragedy. Marianne sat beside her, eating as if she had never tasted food before, and past her, at the head of the table, sat a man in embroidered pale blue, his senses extended toward Laura. No, not toward Laura—toward the baby in her arms. A precious little newborn just a few hours old, connected to Marianne, and somewhat less so to himself. He wanted to hold her.

  “Ba!”

  Laura blinked back into the pod. The barriers Meilyn taught her had crumbled, but the city’s inferno had lessened to a glow in the distance, and the only presences nearby occupied the pod with her. Bright little Rose explored Laura’s fingers with mouth and tongue. Marianne had a grip on her daughter through the connection between them—the poor tot’s gums itched and ached, and she wanted to chew—but, unaccountably, she didn’t come over to grab Rose away.

  She saw herself from within herself, and knew the Paran’s eyes were on her. When she swiveled her head toward him, he turned his attention elsewhere. She sighed and reformed the empathic walls. Rose gurgled and blew bubbles into her hand.

  “I think I remember you from before,” Laura murmured.

  With a grin, Rose dropped to all fours and chugged away.

  Laura rolled onto her side. The people around her formed and reformed into groups, friends and acquaintances and, in some cases, couples. She fanned out her senses, farther, and farther. More and more souls shone before her, hundreds, then thousands, then millions, until she held the entire world in her awareness. She let it go, and a thought thrust its way into her awareness.

  I couldn’t do this yesterday. Then, So many souls on this planet. I can see and understand each of them… and not one is for me. I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere.

  An aide touched her arm, soothing. Laura closed her eyes and let herself drift off to sleep.

  * * *

  The pod emerged from the tunnel into a huge round transit hub which had to be two hundred meters across, filled with dozens more of the crystalline behemoths. Laura stepped through the pod’s exit and down a ramp with an aide keeping a tight grip on her belt. Most of the staff had already left the vehicle, and the Paran stood to one side, greeting with much noise and back-slapping a handsome fellow ruler in pale olive.

  She caught her breath. The man had extended the feathery edges of his senses around the Paran, as if he were going to—

  “No!” she exclaimed, surprised at her own temerity.

  Both men turned toward her.

  The Paran’s brows knitted. “Beloved?”

  “He is reading you.”

  The Paran punched the other ruler’s upper arm. “Your subtlety has increased since last we met, my friend.”

  The man broke into a wicked grin. “You let your barriers slip.” He rubbed his shoulder.

  The Paran snorted.

  His olive-robed friend turned to L
aura. “I am, as my negligent friend has failed to inform you, the Brial.” He performed a bow, his dark eyes sparkling. “You can only be the beloved of Parania. I am happy to see you recovered enough from your injuries to attend this gathering.” He nodded at the Paran. “This one will keep you out of trouble, Parania.”

  Laura glanced at the Paran and back to the Brial. “How long have you known each other?”

  “Since we were boys, and the Brial my grandfather ruled.” He aimed a back-handed swat at the Paran’s mid-section. “I wondered when you would take power, you laziest of all our caste.”

  The Paran punched him again. “I am not lazy in the arena like some, bark eater.”

  “Sand crawler.”

  “Digger squid!”

  The Brial put a hand over his heart. “I confess it. I prefer coupling with a beautiful woman to sparring with my guards.”

  Laura flushed from head to toe. The Brial fixed his attention on her, his eyes dancing.

  “Unfortunately, unlike the digger squid, you survive the experience,” the Paran said in a dry voice.

  “To the happiness of women everywhere.”

  Laura coughed. “Except me.”

  The Paran roared with laughter. “She knows you already, Brialar.”

  “I have not had the pleasure—I pledge my honor on it.”

  Her face flamed again, but a giggle escaped her. She shifted more of her weight toward the aide at her side and took her hand.

  “Parania, you flutterwit, you stand here jesting while your bond-partner grows fatigued.” He performed another bow. “I will leave you to your preparations. I must go see if my son and his heir have yet arrived.”

  He spun and headed away at a brisk pace, black hair swinging across his back as he walked.

  “He does not look or behave like a grandfather,” Laura murmured, staring after him as he disappeared up one of the staircases placed at regular intervals around the wall.

  A flash of grief came from the Paran. He cleared his throat. “Nor did I.”

  The blood drained from her face. “Forgive me,” she said quietly.

  “Artist, you must rest,” the aide said. “You have little strength left.”

  “Our quarters are this way.” The Paran gestured toward the nearest set of stairs. “We are among the last to arrive, but you have a little time to rest before the Circle opens.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Deportment tutors. Finishing school. The daughter of the richest man in human space could smile when she didn’t want to, be gracious toward people she didn’t like—and be civil with her husband in public when they weren’t getting on in private. Laura could get through this. Oh yes, she knew how to get through what amounted to a conclave made up of every anointed ruler on the planet, along with their heirs and bond-partners, while wishing with all her heart she could be anywhere else but here.

  Smile. Nod. Murmur.

  She pasted on a social face, shut her newfound barriers, and allowed the Paran and Azana to lead her into a round room they said stood at the exact center of this extensive complex of underground buildings they’d come to, listening with half an ear while the Paran nattered on about its history. Apparently, the Suralians had found it thousands of years ago, empty and abandoned, while digging transport tunnels north across the polar axis, and the architectural style matched some of the ruins left behind by the Benefactors. Unable to do more than wonder at the buildings’ original purpose, the ruling caste of the time had collectively decided to use them for their most sacred ceremonies, and they considered nothing more sacred than gathering to meet with the Jorann.

  Laura glanced up at the domed ceiling and around the room. Against the wall, opposite the ugly metal entrance doors, stood a gleaming chair, carved from something resembling crystal, glimmering with frost and surrounded by a faintly sparkling field. A line of low platforms curved outward from each side of it, just over a hundred of them, not quite meeting in front of the doorway. A quiet murmur of conversation filled the air, as the high ones chatted among themselves.

  Parania’s dais, covered with thick blankets like the rest, lay closer to the doors than to the crystal throne. The Paran settled her to his left and sat in the middle, with Azana on his right, cradling Laryth in a sling. Around the Circle, older rulers included their heirs and their heir’s children on the dais. On a few of the platforms, younger rulers sat alone. Marianne occupied the bond-partner’s place on the first dais to the throne’s right hand, with little Rose in her arms and a young girl in the heir’s place, but no ruler in the middle. The first dais on the left of the throne lay empty and bare.

  The Paran followed her gaze. “Detralar’s place,” he murmured. “We are placed in the order our provinces were founded.”

  A hush fell. The doors opened, pulled by camouflaged servants. And in walked—Laura drew a sharp breath. The woman from her dream glided through the middle of the Circle, tall and willowy, accompanied by a much taller man in pale blue, who moved like a panther and looked like Adonis. An image of him with Marianne flitted through her mind. The Sural.

  All those able to stand did so and gave a profound bow, while Laura and a few old and white-haired individuals bent forward where they sat. The Sural escorted the woman—the Jorann—forward and bowed low as she entered the field around the throne and turned to face the Circle. When she took her seat, he backed away and stepped onto the middle of the dais with Marianne.

  The Jorann said something unintelligible.

  “My rulers,” the Paran murmured. “Come.”

  A middle-aged woman in pale orange and a man in light blue-green stepped off the two platforms nearest the door and took positions in the center of the room. Then another pair, from the next dais on each side, did the same, and so on up the curve; pairs left the low platforms and joined the growing crowd, a few very old rulers sending younger high ones in their place. By the time the Paran left in his turn, several men and women blocked Laura’s view of who on the other side went with him.

  At first, the way in which they positioned themselves looked random, but as more rulers left their daises and the area in the middle of the room filled, she began to see patterns, circles within circles intersecting with circles. Finally, the Sural left his dais to join them, and the Jorann spoke again.

  “She says, ‘The Circle may open,’” Azana whispered.

  The ruling caste began to move, first with slow, deliberate steps, then faster, until they danced in complicated patterns, touching fingers with some and not others as they passed. In their pastel robes, no two the same color, they resembled a flower garden gone wild—or perhaps a debutante’s ball. But violence was there, too: movements that hinted at thrusts and feints, death-blows and blocks, swept up into the ritual’s intensity.

  They circled and turned and spun, and a collective euphoria arose, not just in the rulers taking part but in their heirs and bond-partners as well. The Jorann, eyes sparkling, extended her senses around them all, seeming to foster the harmony. Laura’s empathic nerves tingled, and a calm descended over her.

  Eventually, a few individuals began to tire, and the pace slowed to a stop. As one, the rulers turned, bowed to the Jorann, and then they went back to their daises, beginning with the Sural and ending with the pair near the door. When all had returned to their places, the Sural spoke.

  The Paran, his face still aglow, bent to help Laura stand. “Those not of the ruling caste—the bond-partners and the children who have not passed the trials—must leave now,” he said.

  * * *

  The Sural was a skilled opponent, the Monral admitted to himself. One by one, beginning with the youngest provinces, the allies of Monralar and many of the previously undecided rulers had risen to call for abandoning Tolar’s splendid isolation and pretense of backwardness, and declare their planet amenable to trade with other worlds. Not one had mentioned the question of conventional rule, or the necessities of the Game; the Monral had coached his intimates carefully, and the other
s had followed where they led. The Sural had sat, impassive, till they finished. A single look passed between the two most dangerous men on Tolar as the Monral ceded the floor to his enemy.

  The Sural stood then and began to question the ruling caste in one human language, then another, then a third. Not a single ruler could answer. Finally, he summoned his heir, the young girl Kyza, forward and asked her in Suralian to acquaint the other members of her caste with the difficulties they would face. With a respectful bow to the Jorann, she went to the center of the Circle and began to describe, in English, the races of the Trade Alliance—their homeworlds, their principal culture traits, and the political stance of each. Only a few of the rulers could understand her, and as for the rest, they were looking at the Sural with a renewed appreciation…

  When Kyza took a breath, the Monral coughed to draw attention to himself, then diffidently suggested that his son and heir, Farric, might assist the youngster in her presentation. The Sural’s eyes had narrowed, but precedent left him no cause for complaint as Farric kept pace with Kyza, line for line, translating for the benefit of the assembled rulers and adding details of his own, speaking primarily in fluent Suralian and handling himself admirably.

  It really did not matter, thought the Monral to himself, whether outworld trade went first through Earth’s station in the Drift, or directly to Tolar. He would use the odalli, Kekrax, Den, or human, to get what he needed. And the other races had no reason to fear the Tolari, quite yet.

  Kyza fell silent, and the Sural signaled her to return to his side without a further word. Then the Monral rose last, in the position of honor, and began to patiently explain to all those present what he had accomplished in sending his son and heir to the stars.

  * * *

  Farric sweated. Father had outdone himself, first in countering the Sural’s clever use of his daughter to embarrass the ruling caste, then in showing those same rulers how much they stood to gain at his hands, materially, culturally, politically. But there was more; the Monral had hinted, time and again, that the Sural’s only counter was one of force and coercion: that he was so intent on having his own descendants lead Tolar that he would use any means to prevent another’s rise to leadership in the caste. That point had certainly struck home, and any challenge from Suralia now might appear as a spoiling attack rather than a legitimate contribution to the debate.