The Thrones of Kronos (2 page)

“They taught us you were demons.” Vi’ya started, then shut
her mouth. Why ruin the dreams of the condemned?

Math’s quick intake of breath made her jerk around to look
at him: had he lost his faith so quickly, then?

But his eyes widened, his face suffused with joy. “You are
from the time that is to come?” He read his answer in her mind before she could
form it, and she saw the gleam of tears on his lashes. “The gift! The gift!”

And from above, carried on the wind, came an eerie sound,
voices singing a sustained note, from high to low, a chord so beautiful its
effect was searing.

Math’s eyes flickered to the south, where the horizon seemed
subtly different. “Above us, deep in the other side of the mountain, await
those who will try to win through,” he said swiftly. “At least one for each
Talent.”

Vi’ya winced, thinking of what was to happen to the
survivors. She was resolute in not wanting to speak, but Math was reading her
closely, and he said, “We know the nature of the Servants of Dol. The ones
above are volunteers. My wife is among them—”

Wife.
The word
gave her a third shock.

“It appears that the talents will not die,” he murmured,
concentrating on her. “For you do hear us, unlike the Children of Dol in our
own time. And there are others?”

She understood their “gift” now, and assented with a quick
nod. The wave was coming: she could hear the sea hissing out beyond the point
any tide had ever gone. “Yes. There are others.” She spoke as quickly as he.
“The mainlanders will come and enslave those Chorei they find, but the talents
endure in their descendants. Tell me! If you truly don’t believe in war, how
did you make their ships of conquerors disappear?”

“They never disappeared.” Math raised his hands. “They are
among us. We convinced them to lay down arms and join us.” His gaze lifted.
“You have our gift, You-Who-Hear. Carry the rest of our gift: remember us.”

The chorus of voices swelled, both heard and in the mental
realm, all voices joining together in a psalm of joy and unity, spirit linked
to spirit, as the Chorei gazed out at the kelp-veined wall of steaming water,
its top frayed by the shock wave just behind, and awaited annihilation.

Vi’ya closed her eyes as the roar intensified, drowning the
sound of the voices on the air, but not in mind, and at the last she
surrendered the guard on heart and spirit and reached to join . . .

. . . and the wave passed, silent and cold, and faded into
nothingness.

Moira ran down the broad corridor in the Mandala, the
busts of long-dead Panarchs and Kyriarchs to either side raking her with the
blind gaze of patient stone. She stopped and stared up hopelessly at the
colossal doors that barred her path. The eyes of the bird of flame inlaid upon
them seemed to glow forbiddingly down at her; from behind came the hard,
frightening voices of the invaders from Dol’jhar. The girl paused to glance
down the long corridor behind her, then desperately reached up and yanked at
the huge handle on one door.

There was no give to it, and she had begun to turn away,
fighting back tears, when a deep-toned hum commenced, and the huge doors began
to swing open. She stuck a foot through the skinny crack, then her basket as
the crack widened slowly, then squeezed the rest of herself through as soon as
the opening was big enough.

Moira ran a few steps, then faltered, relief at her escape
turning to fear at the immensity of the gloomy room. She stepped back, and
back, but when she whirled around to run, the gigantic doors were already
swinging shut. The soft boom of their closing seemed to come from everywhere.

She had seen the Throne Room before, but only on a holo,
which didn’t give a hint of this vast space ready to swallow her. She didn’t
see a ceiling, just an infinity of stars. Still air chilled her, and voices
seemed to whisper among the shadows in the distant corners—as if the room was
full of lots and lots of ghosts.

She scrutinized the walls. Nothing there. So she braced her
shoulders and looked at last across the polished floor to the emerald gleam of
the Throne. It, too, was shadowed—it looked to Moira like a towering tree
twining its branches among the stars.

A tree. She felt safe with trees.

She ran toward it, clutching her basket against her chest.

There had to be doors at the other end of the huge room. Meanwhile,
if the Dol’jharians figured out which way she’d gone and came after her, she
could hide behind the Throne.

She ran faster, her feet making whispery echoes. She tried
to ignore those creepy shadows, and kept her gaze firmly on the safety of the
tree.

Then she saw the man who was seated on the Emerald Throne.

She stopped, breathing hard.

“If they catch you,
pretend you’re lost. Cry.”
The Masque’s voice rasped vividly in memory, bringing
the image of the red cloth that covered his lower face. Above that his dark
eyes, that stared right into you. But this man wore no mask.

“Come forward.”

The voice was soft, barely louder than her sandals on the
cold, polished floor.

Moira managed to draw in a shaky breath and walked toward
the Throne. It wouldn’t be hard to cry. She’d seen what Dol’jharians were like,
there on the beach when their ruler had destroyed the Havroy and his soldiers
had shot people down for no reason.

But as she neared the huge Throne, she perceived something
strange about the man sitting on it. The Throne gleamed with dull light, but
she couldn’t see a source. The man gleamed with the same kind of light; his
clothes weren’t like anything people wore now, but he didn’t look at all like
the Dol’jharians.

Was he the ghost that all her friends whispered about? Nionu
actually claimed to have seen it once, but Moira thought that was just her
friend’s jealousy making her fib, because she never got to visit the Havroy.
Moira had been the last girl to take flowers to her; since the Evil Dol’jharian’s
cruiser-weapons had melted the ancient statue, no girl and her family would
ever make that happy journey again.

One, two steps closer. The man on the Throne looked very
old, but he sat up straight and tall, as though he belonged there, his body
made out of cloudy light.
It’s just a
holo,
she told herself fiercely. That’s what her father had told her. But
this man looked like the vids of Jaspar, the first Panarch so long ago, and his
eyes reminded her of the Masque’s.

Holos didn’t look at you like that—only people did.

Moira’s pace slowed until she stopped short of the dais
before the Emerald Throne. The old man smiled at her and beckoned her closer.
She didn’t move; her throat constricted like an invisible hand was squeezing
it.

“Who are you? Are you a ghost?” she asked finally. Her squeaky
voice was lost in the huge room.

“More than a ghost, less than a man, I think, Moira.” His
voice was clear, but soft, so it didn’t echo.

It didn’t surprise her that the ghost knew her name.

“Can you help me?” she asked, carefully setting her basket
down at her feet. “The guks saw me.”

“Guks?” the man repeated, smiling just a little.

“What we Rats call the Dol’jharians,” Moira explained,
intrigued that he knew her name, but didn’t know what her age-mates in the
Mandala called the occupying soldiers. She sneaked a quick look behind her; the
big doors were still closed. “They like to kill people, but they’re not
supposed to kill any more of us if we don’t break their rules. I broke their
rule about anyone coming to this part of the Palace. But it belongs to
us!
Not to them! I
hate
them!”

“Aren’t you already breaking a rule?” the man asked.

Moira bent to grab her basket again. Could the man see
inside it?

“I’m helping my papa,” she said firmly. After all,
that
wasn’t a lie. She really was
helping her father. Even the Dol’jharians knew that her father was the head
gardener and that Moira carried rare cuttings back and forth to his workers,
few of whom had full walkabouts—the boundary passes issued by the invaders.

But they didn’t know that underneath the plant slips, buried
in the moist soil, Moira sometimes carried message chips.

The man said, “Do you know the difference between breaking a
rule that only hurts yourself and breaking one that might hurt many others?”

Moira was silent. Did the ghost know about the chip, then?
She’d promised her papa—and the Masque—never to tell anyone about what was in
her basket besides plants.

But she knew what he was talking about. The Masque had been
careful to explain how no one could use the DataNet anymore, except for
business, and the guks read everything. Real messages—like the ones she and her
papa tried to send to her mother, maybe hidden with Moira’s dog somewhere on the
other side of the world with the other Navy people who’d escaped the first days
of killing—went on chips carried from hand to hand. And they were viewed on
no-port viewers like the ones the small children used in school: In fact, some
of them had come from school, a fact Moira and her friends had found funny.

She said carefully, “You mean that if I don’t carry these
plants, somebody might get in trouble?”

He nodded in approval. “That’s just what I mean, Moira.”

Then he thinks I was
selfish to come up this way, and not through the service tubes like the Masque
told me to do.
“I snuck up here because I wanted to see you,” she blurted.
“To see if you were real.”

“Why?” the man asked. He was no longer smiling.

Moira struggled with feelings that wouldn’t come out into
the right words.
Because I hope my mama
is still alive. Because my papa drinks every night, until his eyes are red.
Because I don’t know if Mama took my dog, when the Navy doesn’t let you have
pets, so he could be lost and alone somewhere, and so many of us don’t have our
whole families and never will again.

Because the guks are
stronger and meaner than any of us. Because there’s gotta be somebody on our
side who is stronger than the Dol’jharians.

Somehow she couldn’t say those things out loud. “The other
Rats said the Masque saw you,” she said. “They all say that the guks are scared
of you, but the Masque isn’t—that he spent a whole night here, and you were
with him. I just had to know if any of it was true.”

“It’s all true,” he said.

Moira drew in a shaky breath.

The man smiled again and said, “Who are the Rats?”

“My friends,” she said proudly. “We call ourselves
Ratrunners, just like people our age on Rifthaven. We even have a hand code—”
She was getting close to breaking promises. And stopped.

“Well done, Moira,” the ghost said approvingly. “You may
tell the other Rats that I am here and that I am helping the Masque. However,
you must promise not to come this way again—” He turned his head, and Moira’s
heart squeezed when she could see right through his skull.

But he smiled, and his eyes bored straight into hers again.
“Courage, child,” he said.

And at the end of the room, where she’d entered, the big
doors swung open.

Pentasz Sinaran motioned one of his Tarkans inside as the
doors began to open. Her shoulders tensed and her face blanched as she looked
back from the opening doors at him.

“The little girl is before the Throne. But the . . .
it
is with her.” Her voice was strained.

The squad commander cursed under his breath, using a term
that would have earned him a hundred lashes from Altasz Jesserian.
It is not one of the karra,
Jesserian
had told them.
It is a hologram, a
computer device.

But the altasz, commander of Dol’jhar’s forces on the
Mandala, had never seen the Panarchist karra. And even if it was from the
computer, it was still the malevolent will of a dead enemy. What else could you
call it?

Now, as the portal widened, he could see it, too. He ordered
his squad through the opening doors; despite their fear, they fanned out
efficiently, running to take up positions flanking the Throne. A swift crackle
of speech from his communicator confirmed Jhustuan’s squad entering via the
Aleph-Null Gate behind the Throne.

Fighting down a prickle of numinous horror, Pentasz Sinaran,
a twenty-five-year Tarkan, forced himself to advance toward the Throne, his jac
held low across his body in the ready position. A ghastly light seeped and
whirled through the enormous hall, sharpening to the vivid greenish yellow of a
gangrenous bruise. The air had thickened, becoming difficult to breathe. He
clenched his teeth as roiling clouds swirled with deadly slowness in a vortex
centered above the Throne.

But the fear would not conquer twenty-five years of brutal
training and experience. The squad commander did not pause or slow his
approach.

Moira was so scared she almost couldn’t feel it anymore, and
as the sky filled with clouds like the worst thunderstorm she’d ever seen, she
stood rooted by the Throne as the Dol’jharian approached.

Sinaran watched her, too. He could see fear limned in every
line of the girl’s body as she retreated across the dais and stood near the
Throne, poised for flight. She was almost of an age for her first Karusch-na
Rahali, now approaching. Sinaran felt a brief stirring at the thought; like all
Dol’jharians, his body never lost the lunar rhythms of his far-off home.

He sternly suppressed the surge. The Panarchists were off
limits, and this one was too young and weak, even if she had bled, which he
doubted. In any case, his orders were plain, and the girl would never reach the
Struggle, if the Panarchists even had such a thing.

He reached the edge of the dais, and tensed his right leg to
step up.

“As you value your will and soul, approach no closer,” the
karra said in perfect Dol’jharian.