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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: A Working of Stars
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Whose mind, Arekhon wondered, had worked on the Void to give it such a grisly substance? Was the image something from his own dark nightmares, or from Ty’s—or was it Maraganha’s, a reminder that the Void-walker was, for all her helpful good humor, essentially alien? He pushed the thought away from him; such speculation would only distract him now.
“Look for your friend here,” Maraganha said. “If you let fear stop you, she’s lost for good.”
Arekhon opened his mouth to speak, but Ty was ahead of him, looking straight on at the dreadful tree and asking, “Where is Narin Iyal?”
The head nearest to them opened its grey eyes. Its mouth moved. “Better to ask, where are you?”
A second head spoke as soon as the first was silent. “Better yet to ask what it is that you truly need.”
“Do not ask for that which you do not desire,” said a third. “For surely then your wish will be granted.”
“We don’t have the time to play games with oracles,” Maraganha said to the head that had first spoken. “Talk straight. Do you know where Narin is?”
“Yes.”
“Is she still in the Void, or is she in some other place?”
The head’s pale lips turned upward in a smile. It was mocking them, Arekhon thought.
“She is here, and she is not, and she was, and she shall be, and she is not.”
“Fine,” said Maraganha. She wrapped her fist in the head’s long dark hair and pulled it free of the branch on which it was impaled. “Since you know so much, you can come along and show us the way.”
The tree dissolved back into the mist from which it had emerged, but the head still dangled from Maraganha’s hand. The Void-walker looked back at Ty and Arekhon.
“Follow me,” she said, and they began to walk.
It seemed to Arekhon that they traveled through the cold grey mist for hours without discernible progress. His legs grew tired, and his feet ached, but the mist around them never changed—nothing changed, except that every now and again the woman’s head, its neck still dripping misty grey blood, would turn to right or left as it hung from Maraganha’s upraised hand. When that happened, the Void-walker would change her direction so that the head once more gazed straight forward, and continue on. Ty and Arekhon followed her without speaking.
After an interminable while, there was a noise, coming from what—if this place had distance—would have been somewhere far away. Arekhon thought that it sounded like the noise of the sea, or of breakers crashing against distant cliffs. Then, suddenly, the mist was roiling about them like storm clouds filled with wind, and rushing and curling about their feet like water foaming over stones.
“Here,” Ty said, and reached down, his hand going through the layer of nonsubstance on which they stood. Arekhon flung himself down full-length on the illusory ground and thrust his arm through it, and felt a body there, cold, wet, and he grabbed at soggy cloth and pulled, and up into the Void came Narin, dripping wet, blue about the face, and gasping.
She looked from one of them to the other. “Not without my crew,” she gasped, “no one dies, not this time,” and rolled sideways and down into the breaking mist.
“Catch her! Quickly!” Maraganha shouted, and Ty and Arekhon plunged their arms down again into the foam.
Arekhon touched hair this time, like the woman’s hair that Maraganha held twisted in her fist. He pulled, and Ty pulled with him, until Narin rose out of the deep and let herself be gathered into their embrace.
“As the universe wills,” said Maraganha, and the phantom head she had carried turned to scraps of grey cloud and blew away on the wind. She laid her hand on Arekhon’s shoulder, and he felt them turning the corner again—for an instant he could see the Void-marks shining ahead of them like beacons in the dark—and then they were through, all of them, standing on the dark verandah in the yellow light of a single candle.
Narin said, “My shipmates—where are they?”
“Saved,” Arekhon said. “All of them pulled from the water off of Skeppery Reef except for you.”
“Why did you bring me back?” she asked. “I wanted to join my crew, be one of them—I was almost there.”
“You’re part of the great working,” Arekhon said. “And it isn’t finished yet.”
 
ENTIBOR: ROSSELIN COTTAGE ERAASI: HANILAT
 
T
he next morning, Arekhon begged hospitality for Ty and the others from the Master of the Cazdel Guildhouse, and took them all there together. Ty was glad to be back, however briefly, in the place that had become his home on Entibor, and Narin—having decided that not drowning was, on balance, a good thing—was resigned to staying there with him. Maraganha, for her part, appeared to find the prospect amusing for reasons Arekhon didn’t feel qualified to guess.
Having seen to the comfort and accommodation of his Circle, Arekhon returned alone to the Rosselin town house in An-Jemayne. When he got there, the servants told him that Elaeli was gone. The Provost of Elicond, they said, had taken his leave only the day before, and the Mestra had departed also. Arekhon thanked them politely and took one of the household’s private aircars to Rosselin Cottage, a familiar journey and one that he feared he was making for the last time.
Elaeli was waiting there for him, sitting in her favorite spot on the screened verandah, overlooking the wooded downslope. She appeared somewhat paler than usual, and tired. Arekhon wasn’t surprised; he knew from prior engagements that a visit like the Provost’s involved very little in the way of personal pleasure. That knowledge had provided him with a certain amount of consolation from time to time, which he worked hard to keep Elaeli from noticing. She hadn’t asked for the life that Demaizen’s great working had given her, and she was entitled to make the best of it however she could.
She rose from her chair and came forward to embrace him. He buried his face in the soft brown curls of her hair. “’Rekhe,” she said. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“I can’t stay,” he said. It wasn’t the greeting that he’d intended, but he couldn’t unsay it once he’d spoken. He tried to explain it instead. “The working is too strong. I’ve found Narin and Ty, and they both agree—”
after some persuasion,
said the voice of honesty in his head “—that we need to go back across the Gap to Eraasi.”
She released him from her embrace and stepped away to look at him. “What for?”
He turned his empty hands palm-up, sketching a shrug. “I don’t know. But I had a dream that said it was time.”
“You never used to dream like that before.”
“I had a proper Circle before.” For a moment he closed his eyes, feeling again the pang of loss. “Things were … more orderly, back then.”
She bit her lip. “I shouldn’t let you go. If you cross the Gap, you won’t come back. You told me yourself that Natelth wanted you dead.”
“If I live, I’ll come back,” he said. “I promised it once before, remember, and I keep my promises.”
“That’s the problem, ’Rekhe. I don’t think anybody can be that lucky twice.”
“Nevertheless,” he said. “I think it has to be done.”
“Nevertheless,” she agreed, on a sigh. She went back to her chair and gestured him into its partner a few feet away. After he had settled himself on the gaudy fabric cushions, she gave him a rueful smile and said, “It’s true what all the people say, you know.”
“What is?”
“That if you take a Mage for a lover, you’ll only have to give them back in the end.”
He knew better than to deny the charge. “I’m sorry. It’s the real reason we leave our family altars, I suppose. The pull of the Circle is too much for us.”
She looked at him sharply. “And what if the Circle is gone? What do you do then?”
“Go mad, some of us. Find another, if we’re lucky.”
“Ah.” On the slope below the porch, a long-tailed bird—impelled by some unknown stimulus—burst out from among the leaves and darted across the green background in a vivd, crimson streak. Elaeli followed its motion and subsequent disappearance with her eyes before asking, “So what does that mean for you? Is Garrod’s Circle broken, or not?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Kiefen Diasul was still alive on Eraasi when I left, and still bound into the working, and so was Iulan Vai. But it’s been more than ten years. Anything could have happened.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any way you can talk yourself out of going back there to find out,” she said.
“If I could—”
“Never mind,” she told him. “I shouldn’t be giving you a hard time, after everything you’ve had to put up with to spend a few years here with me.”
“It’s had its moments,” he said. In spite of himself, he smiled. “I certainly never expected to find myself working as a politician’s personal bodyguard.”
“It was the only way I could think of to keep you close to the politician’s personal body,” she said. “And let’s face it, you’ve got a streak of natural deviousness in you that makes you damned good at the job.”
“You’re kinder to me than I deserve.”
She snorted. “Hardly. I’ve used you abominably, ‘Rekhe.”
“No more than I used you in the service of the great working.”
“You did. We each deserve more than we’ve granted. Nevertheless, I’m going to ask for one thing more. Come back to me, ’Rekhe. Choose me over the working. Be with me and don’t leave.”
He sat quietly.
At last she said, “So, you see. We each of us have things that compel us. So I’ll make another request. Return when it’s over.”
“I swear it,” Rehke said. “Living or dead, I will return to you when my part in the working is done, and I will ply the luck for you in the meantime.”
“I don’t want an
ekkannikh;
no revenant can warm my bed the way you do.”
“Nor will I be,” ’Rekhe said. But I have given my word, and I will protect you and all that you have built and will build here, with all my power, in any place or time soever.”
“Be careful with words of power,” Elaeli whispered.
“I am,” ’Rekhe said.
 
 
Zeri sus-Dariv had never given serious thought to marriage. She had reached the age of legal independence several years past, and had come at that time into the possession of an income sufficient to let her live as she pleased provided she did not live extravagantly. She had her friends and her occasional lovers; she had her small but elegant apartment; and she did not see how the acquisition of a husband would improve her comfortable state.
Some people thought it a flaw in all of her generation, that they did not make haste to marry and raise up children to tend the family altars. Zeri had looked at the number of her cousins and given it as her opinion that there were, if anything, too many descendants crowding those altars already.
That was before the hecatomb at the Court of Two Colors. If there had been one, just one, minor child of sus-Dariv’s inner line closer to its head than she was, she might have secured the same degree of alliance by giving that one over for adoption into the sus-Peledaen. Then she could have gone on by herself to manage whatever remained of the family’s affairs, and all without the need to marry.
Instead, she found herself sequestered with Fas Treosi and Natelth sus-Peledaen in the office chambers of the sus-Khalgath town house, under the watchful eye of one of Lord Natelth’s own Mages. The three of them—and the Mage—had spent most of the afternoon going over the articles by which, upon the consummation of Zeri’s union with Natelth, the sus-Dariv would be subsumed into the sus-Peledaen.
For subsumption it was. Even Fas Treosi’s best efforts, as embodied in pages upon pages of legal documents, could not stand against the fact that not enough ships remained in the fleet, and not enough names remained on the family tablets, for the sus-Dariv to continue alone. All that remained was to provide as best she could for those survivors who had depended on the family for their livelihood, and to save what she could of their pride.
“The ships that remain,” she said. “Syr Treosi has sent you the list.”
The Mage, who up to this point had stood to one side and remained silent, finally roused himself to speak. “A brief list.”
“Granted,” she said.
“Specifically, two space-only heavy-cargo vessels, one light-cargo landing-ship, three loading shuttles, and a fast courier currently in the yards for repair. Not enough to sustain trade.”
She decided that she didn’t like the Mage. “No. But let’s be honest—if it were sufficient, I wouldn’t be here.”
Natelth was a square and solidly muscled man, but not particularly frightening except for the fact that he was, quite possibly, the most powerful individual in the homeworlds. Now he only looked amused. “True enough,” he said. “Is there something remaining about the ships, then, that we should discuss?”
“It is a matter not so much of the ships themselves as of the ships’ crews,” Fas Treosi said, in response to Zeri’s nod in his direction. “They have had a severe shock—the loss of family and friends, with other changes following close behind—and their morale is correspondingly low. Lady Zeri feels that it would be counterproductive for us to ask them to change their ship-names and fleet colors at this time.”
Natelth nodded—not without sympathy, Zeri thought—and glanced over his shoulder at the Mage. “What do you say,
etaze
? Does the luck favor changing the names, or keeping them?”
The Mage gave Zeri a long, measuring look. His eyes were cold, she thought, and there was something in them that she couldn’t name. “Change them,” he said. “The name should reflect the thing; and the sus-Dariv fleet is gone.”
“You hear the man,” Natelth said. “Their names and colors to become sus-Peledaen. But this family has always acknowledged good service—nobody will lose rank or seniority by the change, and those who are syn-Dariv will be accepted without question as syn-Peledaen.”
Zeri suppressed a sigh. It was, she supposed, the best that could be expected. “So be it,” she said, and reached for the stylus.
 
 
Isayana had no desire to meet with the sus-Dariv woman before her brother’s wedding day. In her opinion, the mere fact that they would be living together under the same roof in no way obliged them to become friends. She waited downstairs in the smaller reception room, out of Natelth’s sight and mind, with the household
aiketen
instructed to ignore her presence. Eventually she heard the sus-Dariv’s light footsteps coming down the stairs, accompanied by the heavier tread of the legalist Treosi. She continued to wait in silence, and was rewarded a few minutes later with the sound of a third set of footsteps.
She stepped out into the hallway and came, as she had expected, face-to-face with perhaps the most powerful of her brother’s Mages. “Syr Diasul,” she said. “Well met. I’ve been wanting to talk with you.”
He stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked at her with his strange, half-mad eyes. “I’m flattered. Why?”
“You were a member of the Demaizen Circle. My brother Arekhon’s Circle.”
Something disturbing surfaced for a moment from the depths of his gaze. “That’s not a good name to mention around here. Every
aiketh
and mind-node in this house reports back to Lord Natelth.”
“What I speak of in private conversation is my own business,” Isa said. “Na’e understands that. But if you feel safer in a null room, I can arrange it—house-mind!”
“Yes, my lady?” said the house-mind over the hallway annunciator.
“Shut off all nodes and receptors in the downstairs front reception room for the next half-hour.”
“Working, my lady. Done.”
“You see,” Isa said to Kief. “Now you can speak your mind in safety.”
She turned her back to him and reentered the reception room. A few seconds later, she heard him follow.
“Yes,” he said, as the door snicked shut and she turned once again to face him. “I was a Mage in Lord Garrod’s Circle. It’s not a secret.”
“But you left Demaizen to be the First of a sus-Peledaen Circle.”
“I left Demaizen because everybody else was dead,” he said.
“Arekhon wasn’t dead then. Or any of the other Mages who went with him across the interstellar gap.”
“I didn’t know that at the time,” Kief said. “I thought that one of your Circles might take me in for ’Rekhe’s sake.”
“A good guess, as it turned out,” she said. “By the time ’Rekhe came back and got his name wiped off the family tablets, you weren’t just one of the common Mages in your new Circle. You were the First.”
For a long moment, there was silence. Then he said, “I don’t think you appreciate the level on which Demaizen was working. Any one of Lord Garrod’s Mages could have done the same thing.”
“In fact, I do appreciate it. That’s why I’m talking with you now.”
For the first time, he looked puzzled rather than suspicious. “What do you mean?”
“You know that I do much of the design and instruction work for the sus-Peledaen quasi-organics.”
“’Rekhe mentioned it once or twice.” Kief smiled a little. “Usually when he was tinkering with something himself and explaining how he wasn’t actually very good at the work and how his sister could do it better.”

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