Banner of souls (19 page)

"Do you think it was deliberate?" she asked the Ani-mus in an undertone, as they worked on the door. "That someone locked us in with these things?"

"Two grown beings, against babies?" the Animus mused.

"There is a cruel kind of whimsy about it. I think someone is watching us. I think someone is
bored
."

The frame of the door gave way with a wrenching of wood, releasing a shower of beetles that scattered around Yskatarina's feet. Pale light flooded through into the growing-room.

The Animus glided past her and stopped. Something was standing in the passage.

It was another of the snake-children, but this one was older. It was the height of the Animus. It wore a long gray shift, hiding the tail on which it balanced. It regarded them gravely, from eyes like obsidian marbles, its small hands clasped before it. The protruding mouthparts worked in silent rhythm.

"I have come to take you to Prince Cataract," it said. Its voice was sibilant and hoarse, as if infrequently used.

"He knows we are here?" the Animus asked.

"Of course."

"We were locked in there," Yskatarina said, voice ris-ing. She pointed to the growing-chamber.

"Your siblings attacked us. Why?"

"They hatched. Yes, you were locked in."

"One of your siblings is dead," Yskatarina said.

"No matter," the snake-child said, serene. "It will pro-vide food for the others when they hatch. And more can be grown. Come with me."

Yskatarina and the Animus followed it down corri-dors, until it came to a door. She saw a thick, split tongue flicker out, leaving a film of saliva across a complex lock.

The door opened. They stepped through into a high, narrow room. Portholes, just beneath the ceiling, let in a stormy sliver of moonlight. Yskatarina's feet ticked against metal.

In the sudden light, something at the end of the room shifted and glittered. The snake-child bowed low and glided smoothly away.

"Prince Cataract?"

"Why, you are from Nightshade," the thing said. She could not see it clearly, only an angular hulk. An equine head reared up, swaying on a too-thin neck. There was the oyster-shell gleam of a single eye.

Teeth snapped in the long jaw. It was surrounded by a pile of—something. She stepped a little closer.

She could see the dull shine of scales. Snakeskin? But the pattern did not look quite right. Perhaps the creature
shed
… She sensed an ancient, bewil-dered evil.

"Come here," the thing said. "It is a long time since I tasted the blood of Nightshade."

Yskatarina took a skittering step back. "You'd know about Nightshade and blood, wouldn't you?

You were the Animus of the women known as the Grandmothers. My aunts."

"And so you are my niece, one might say. I hear that Yri and Yra are dead. Did you kill them?"Yskatarina hesitated.

"It does not matter," Prince Cataract said. "We quar-reled a long time ago now, irrevocably."

"Why?"

"I don't remember," the thing said, very bland.

"You are lying."

"Give me blood, and I will tell you. Or a small piece of flesh," the thing said, wheedling. "Only a drop… I live off fish and gulls and the snake-kin, these days. But they have ichor in their veins. It is not the same."

Yskatarina forced a laugh. "I have little enough spare flesh."

There was a whispering murmur in return, not quite mirth. "You may yet have more than I."

"What will you do for me, then, if I give you this—this taste?"

"I will tell you what you wish to know."

"About the vessel that brought you from Mars?" She tried not to sound too eager, but she thought she might have failed.

"What do you know about that vessel?"

"That my aunts, your bonded females, came to Earth via Mars, on a stolen haunt-ship. I am interested in that ship."

"You understand that I do not know all?"

"But do you know where the ship is hidden? With its records, with details of the
hito-bashira
?"

"Let me taste, and I will tell you."

"No. I need more than that."

"The
hito-bashira
is an ancient project. I know of it, of course. But I have told you enough, without blood."

The Animus made a small whickering noise, perhaps of protest or alarm. Yskatarina ignored him.

"You will have to take it from my side."

She pulled the bodice free of its straps and rolled it up, then stepped grudgingly forward. She motioned to the An-imus to keep close, for it occurred to her that the thing might try to exact vengeance for the deaths of its women. "Here."

Somehow, she expected Prince Cataract to be both hesitant and slow. He was not. The long head darted for-ward and struck. Lightning danced down her side, as though she had been stabbed with a thousand needles. She cried out. Her vision swam black. Then the head was weaving back again, preparing for another blow. The Ani-mus came forward in a rush and dragged her to the com-parative safety of the opposite wall. Yskatarina panted with shock and outrage. Her side burned. When she looked down, a spiral of scarlet drops marked the trans-parent surface of her legs, as though she stood on a thin column of blood. The thing in the chamber clicked and clattered its teeth.

"Now tell me what I came here to learn," Yskatarina said, above the racing of her heart.

The thing sank back into its pile of skin. "Very well."

Mars

The Kami that occupied the former Matriarch was be-coming accustomed to its new body. At first, the desic-cated corpse had proved difficult to animate effectively, as the woman from Nightshade had warned. Limbs flailed, striking out in random directions without control. Had it not been for the assistance of the excissieres, it would have taken the former Matriarch several hours to descend from the room at the top of the Tower. As soon as she had man-aged to activate the replacement phial, however, the ex-cissieres had taken immediate, steps, driven by the unquestioning loyalty engrams that had been pro-grammed into their kind for those who possessed the Ma-triarchal DNA..

Even now, understanding came and went, ebbing and flowing like some psychic tide. Mars, at least, was not so greatly changed. Accessing the former Matriarch's memo-ries, the Kami recognized the old clan names of Caud, Winterstrike, and other places, and the Tower was the same. But the influence of Mars was waning. The rule of Earth was starting to slip from Memnos, and Nightshades grip was stronger than it had ever been. The Kami re-joiced.

Using old codes, the former Matriarch summoned the records from their secret caches, undisturbed for a hun-dred years. Half-forgotten names flowed past her gaze: Yri and Yra, the sisters-in-skin who had journeyed to Earth, there to initiate a forbidden project. Embar Khair, the war-rior who had traveled with them on the first of the haunt-ships. Embar Khair had returned. The ship and the sisters had not.

There had been a horned woman, too: Essa? Im-possible to know what had become of her.

An excissiere, moving with brisk efficiency, operated the controls of the Chain-connection. Shortly after, the El-der Elakis face flowed across the antiscribe.

"You have not changed" was the first thing that Elaki said.

"Think again," the old Matriarch replied. Her voice was still rusty, the voice box partly withered. "I am Kami now."

Elaki grinned. "Does your revival make the Matriarch your predecessor, or your descendant? I have been won-dering."

"In either case, she is dead. She fell to a pulp on the rocks."

"At some point, it would be helpful to have her reani-mated, too. She must possess some useful information."

"The body may be too broken, but we will try. There are many ghosts rising now," the old Matriarch said. "Gaezelles, ram-horns, others."

"Frivolities, nothing more. You know my views on such sports."

"That once included this body."

Elaki gave a thin smile. "So it did. But you—your body, that is—was still Matriarch. The phial is keyed into your genetic line. It cannot be used by just anyone."

"You did not approve of genetic dead ends," the Matri-arch said. "I remember what you said at this body's trial: that Nightshade sought perfection of form. And yet here you are seeking the help of something that was one of the Changed. Now, what of those 'frivolities'? Shall I send them back to the Eldritch Realm?"

"No, leave them. They are harmless enough. It is the others that we require before we can proceed.

The armies. The Sown."

"Dragon's Teeth," the old Matriarch whispered from her decaying throat.

"Just so. You are to begin to raise them. Raise them now."

Behind Elaki's visage, the Kami that possessed the old Matriarch could see only darkness: the abyss that lay be-yond Nightshade. It seemed to her that it was here that the Eldritch Realm itself must lie: Hades, Dis, the dimension of the dead to which all spirits flew. To those who lived long ago, it had been only fancy, a fairy tale against the end of life. But these days, after the emergence of haunt-tech, spirits were known to be real. And spirits could fly back again.

Earth

Wearily, her side still bleeding, Yskatarina undertook the flight back to the ruin. She clung tightly to the Ani-mus, wishing never to let him go. All the same, she thought she must have fainted, for she woke to find herself on solid ground, with the Animus weaving over her. Wet wood was rough beneath her exposed skin.

"Where are we?" Yskatarina raised her head and saw that she was lying upon the veranda of the mansion.

"You must rest," the Animus said, anxious.

"No. Not yet." Yskatarina struggled to her feet, winc-ing with pain. She leaned a hand against a pillar of wood, breathing in the scent of salt and jasmine. The sea air should have been refreshing; instead, she felt stifled, weighed down by humidity and the lingering heat of the day. Her side burned and stung. "I'll need the medical kit. Band-stats, and a blood test. Those teeth must have been filthy."

The thought reminded her of something. Yskatarina smiled as she took a long sliver of ivory from an inner pocket of the robe. It was razor-sharp, bloody at the root. She thought she might have it polished, then mounted in silver, with perhaps a few sea-pearls for contrast, and wear it as an ornament. A souvenir. "At least he gave me what I needed."

Yskatarina gave a small, grim smile, remembering the pile of skin and the bones it sheltered. The Animus had been merciful enough in its first strike, in payment for the mouthful of Yskatarina's flesh. The snake-children had done the rest, creeping from the cracks and seams of the room to fall in silence upon the body of their creator.

She did not think anyone would greatly miss Prince Cataract, the creature that had once been an Animus of Nightshade. It had been too easy. But then, perhaps the prince had merely grown tired of being alive. As well as the tooth, she had taken a sample of the skin for analysis. She was looking forward, she found, to having the run of Elaki's laboratories when the time came. The first to go would be Isti… After Elaki herself, of course.

She thought back to Prince Cataract. How would she feel if the Animus decided that he wanted to go his own way? The thought was almost inconceivable, and swamped her with dismay.

"It was useful. We now know where the haunt-ship was hidden." Yskatarina hesitated. She moved to the rot-ting railing and leaned bone-and-plastic hands upon it. The missing fingers still irritated her. The hot damp night had drawn in now, and there was only an occasional flutter of lightning across the horizon to show that there was ocean there at all. She thought of the Dragon-King, sub-merging into the depths of the sea as she and the Animus spiraled upward, of the sad, vicious things it contained. She turned from the storm-dark, heading for the inner courtyard and the antiscribe.

"I have spoken to the boat, to Sek. Rule has changed in Memnos, so that is another task accomplished."

The Animus wove over her shoulder, neck snaking out in a series of popping vertebrae. "Do you trust Sek?"

"Sek is loyal to the Matriarchy, not to any particular Matriarch. If the Matriarch changes, then her loyalty changes with it. She is ours now, if she wants to keep her boat and its modifications. They have the girl on board," Yskatarina continued. "From now on, she, too, is mine."

The Animus's mandibles whispered across her neck.

"Perhaps you should not become too confident."

Yskatarina laughed. "Why not? Coming here, I realize how isolated Nightshade has become, how limited is Elaki's understanding. Put in a line to the contact. It is time we made the acquaintance of the
hito-bashira
."

Earth

Dreams-of-War woke. There was a chilly light in the east, and the wind blowing through the cracks of the porthole was cool. She was immediately aware of difference, of wrongness. It took her a moment, aided by the armor's feedback, to realize that this emerged from the salt-laden air, the wetness that created a faint sheen over the sur-face of the armor. She missed the desert air of Mars with a sudden pang, and as quickly suppressed it.

There was a sound from deep within the junk, a little cry. Across the cabin, Lunae lay curled and unmoving. The kappa's wide mouth was open, revealing a melon-pink in-terior and a thick sliver of tongue, but she made no noise other than an occasional rasping breath. Frowning, Dreams-of-War rose from the bed and padded to the door, cat-quiet as the armor's foot-servos went onto maximum. She opened the door and looked out. The passage was empty. The cry came again: thin, filled with a distant, des-olate anguish.

Dreams-of-War looked back at Lunae in momentary hesitation. The problem of having a charge who could bilocate at will was beginning to be brought forcibly home to her. Lunae was long past the stage where she would au-tomatically obey. Dreams-of-War could not help but re-spect this, yet it was disconcerting all the same. What if the girl took it into her head to undertake a major shift, and ended up in the middle of the ocean? She had not been properly trained in her talents. Hardly surprising, since no one knew quite what they were. And that, of course, included Lunae herself.
If she becomes a liability,
what then
? Dreams-of-War was seized by a claw of resent-ment against the Grandmothers, who had told her so little. Were they truly dead? Still, she had heard nothing.