Banner of souls (25 page)

Dreams-of-War flicked through the rest of the charts. Planetary maps, trade routes, nothing out of the ordinary. She put them back in the box and closed the lid, then sat back on her heels. If Yskatarina was from Nightshade, then what did this mean?

"Someone comes," the armor said into her ear. Dreams-of-War thrust the box back into its place and slid out into the passage, locking the door behind her. She could hear footsteps approaching along the deck, an arachnid rustle. Quickly, Dreams-of-War dodged along the passage and around the comer.

Yskatarina seemed to be humming to herself, or perhaps it was the creature speaking in some speech of its own.

Dreams-of-War hastened back to her own ruined cabin and sat down with the sea wind whistling around her. Lunae's absence was palpable. With difficulty, she turned her thoughts back to the matter in hand.

Nightshade
. She had heard all the rumors. The planet had been founded long ago by a religious sect, commonly supposed to be mad, who believed in sustaining the cre-ation of male forms and who sought the creation of a per-fect being. Dreams-of-War thought of Yskatarina's creature with distaste. The world was closed to ordinary traffic. The lab clans insisted upon it, and it was a condition of keep-ing the end of the Chain secure. But secure from what? Dreams-of-War asked herself, as so many had asked before her. Nothing had been known to cross the great chasm of space between the systems, unless one counted the Kami.

Dreams-of-War scowled. If Yskatarina was a member of a Nightshade clan, then what was she doing all the way here on Earth, on the same boat as Lunae? And Yskatarina felt
wrong
, as if she did not belong here on this world. This was not simply her own instinct, Dreams-of-War realized now, but that of the armor: a sensitivity of semisentient haunt-tech, relying on cues that were unavailable to human senses.

Dreams-of-War's first inclination was to return to Yskatarina's cabin and beat the truth out of her, but after a moment of temptation, she dismissed this as a useful course of action. She was not afraid of Yskatarina's creature, she told herself, but she did not know of what it might be capable. She sat glowering out to sea, until the sun dropped over the horizon and the sea sank into a twilight haze.

Later, she went to stand at the prow of the junk as it limped through the waves. At last, she thought, they were approaching land. Memories of the desert nagged at her, combined with the guilty, frustrated ache of Lunae's loss. The emotion had become so all-encompassing that she had almost ceased to notice it.

The islands rose up from the horizon like the humps of a sea-serpent, sharply arched.

Dreams-of-War thought of the Dragon-King and grew colder yet.

"This place we're going to," she said to Yskatarina, who had come to join her on the deck. "What is it called? We are not heading for Ischa—that is farther north."

"According to Sek, these are the southernmost points of the Fire Islands," Yskatarina replied. "We're putting in to repair the damage to the ship. This harbor is known as Toke'ui. You will see many of the kappa there. I do not know what they call it."

"I see no smoke," Dreams-of-War said. Remembering the discrepancies in the navigation charts, she was starting to wonder whether this had not been Sek's destination all along. But if so, why?

"This part of the archipelago is not volcanic. That is more the nature of the northern islands, which border on the Great Rift. We are too far south to see many volcanoes yet."

"I will not be traveling north," Dreams-of-War said. "I shall seek the help of the kappa from Toke'ui."

Yskatarina glanced at her, askance. "I did not like to say so before, but you realize that in all likelihood your ward and her nurse are dead?"

"I will not believe it."

"Will not—or are too afraid? What becomes of you, if your mistresses learn that you have let the girl slip from your care?"

Dreams-of-War glared at her, but Yskatarina had spo-ken neutrally, with no hint of a threat.

"Nothing will 'become' of me. 1 shall hunt down that which attacked us and return to Mars, that is all."

"Memnos will not punish you?"

"Why should they?" Dreams-of-War braced armored hands on the rail and leaned out into the sea wind. But pri-vately she was by no means certain. She remembered the honeycomb of cells beneath the Memnos Tower and what they contained. She pictured the Matriarch squatting at the center of those cells like a wasp queen, exuding poi-son. The thought reminded her uncomfortably of the Grandmothers.

Warriors had disappeared before, never to be seen again, mourned with the full rites and mealy-mouthed sanctimony, when everyone had suspected the truth. But these were the secrets of Memnos and not for the ears of Yskatarina.

"You are fortunate," Yskatarina murmured. Dreams-of-War looked at her. Yskatarina was gazing blandly out to sea, yet there were undertones, swift currents beneath the placid surface. Dreams-of-War wondered how the clans of Night-shade might deal with those who failed. It crossed her mind that now might be a good moment to challenge Yskatarina, but an unfamiliar caution held her back. The creature stalked behind its mistress, upright now, arms folded in a tight knot.

"Look," Yskatarina said. 'You can see Toke'ui."

"Where?"

"The black smudge at the edges of the shore. See it?"

"You have good eyesight," Dreams-of-War remarked.

Yskatarina merely smiled.

They reached the small port as twilight was falling, the gloss of lamps casting out across the still water.

Dreams-of-War watched as ripples and wakes made their way out from the long harbor wall, heading for the junk. It was a moment before she recognized the round heads of kappa, perhaps twenty or so, as swift in the water as seals.

"They will bring us in," Yskatarina informed her.

"You seem to know a lot about the manner in which things are done," Dreams-of-War remarked.

"Have you traveled this way before?"

"Perhaps," Yskatarina said, but did not amplify.

'You have family in the region, maybe?" Dreams-of-War probed.

"Something like that." Yskatarina turned away from the rail. "We will dock shortly. I must prepare."

When she had returned to her cabin, Dreams-of-War went in search of Sek. She found the captain on the bridge, inscribing coordinates into the sail monitor.

"Captain, I need information. How is it best to contact the kappa? Shall I speak to them when they board?"

"There's an office at the end of the dock. The harbormistress works there. But it is late; she may have gone. In that case, you will have to wait until morning."

"Do you believe that they could have saved Lunae?"

"The kappa are easily underestimated," Sek said. "They are a strange, secret people. It's said that they have access to ruined palaces beneath the waves, tall columns of buildings many storys high, that are home to shark-monkeys and porpoise; long-drowned temples to lost gods. The kappa have been persecuted relentlessly throughout their history. They have ways of keeping safe."

Seething with anticipatory frustration, Dreams-of-War went back down to the deck and stood in the prow. The port was clearly visible: a muddle of tumbled houses heading up the hill, lit erratically by lamps. Along the shore, several lights were flickering, as if about to go out. A smell of mingled soap and fat drifted out across the water.

A
poor place
, thought Dreams-of-War, but this came as little surprise. Most of Earth was in a similar condition. She was sure that they preferred it that way. The Memnos Matriarch's words echoed from some half-forgotten con-versation: "
The people of Earth are lazy, slack-willed. They do not
understand discipline
."

Dreams-of-War longed suddenly for Mars: for stone and metal, for sleek hard lines against sand. She began to doubt that the kappa would be able to proffer anything re-sembling aid. An image came to her, of Lunae tossing within the embrace of the waves, eyes open and hair streaming through the water like bloodstained weed. She gripped the rail more tightly and willed the junk into port.

Elsewhere

Essa took the wet-ship low over the red range, skim-ming between serrated peaks and through bands of light and shadow. Yet there was no sign of a sun in the pallid sky, only the vast, shattered construct of what remained of the Chain's maw.

"Where is the sun?" Lunae asked. "And where are we going?"

"The Illuminant gives this world its light now. All the land worlds of the solar system have undergone such—re-modeling, transformation, shattering. As for your destina-tion, we are going to visit someone."

The ram-horned woman stroked the wall into a shower of droplets that sailed through the air and fell against Lunae's face. "The crevasse is beneath us now. That's where we are headed."

Lunae looked down and saw a rent in the red land.

"I can't see the bottom," she said. "How deep is it?"

"No one knows. No one has ever measured it."

"Have they not tried to fly to the bottom?"

"This is the only craft we have. I do not want to risk it."

Lunae pictured the vehicle disintegrating into gentle rain, and shivered. Essa once more stroked the wall. The craft swerved and dived, heading for the chasm.

"Let us not test it, in that case!" the kappa said in alarm. Essa smiled.

"We are not about to do so. The person we are going to see lives in the chasm, not far from the lip."

The craft took them down, gliding over spongy rock. But as it drew closer to the ground, Lunae could see that it was not stone at all, but banks of lichen and fungus, shad-ing into bloodier colors in the shadows of the crevasse. The walls looked as rich and soft as velvet.

"This is what gives the red range its name," Essa said. "Mars has become covered with lichen like this.

There are entire forests of huge fungi…"

Lunae thought of Dreams-of-War with a twinge of an-guish. Her guardian would never, she felt, take her to see the plains and forests of their own day, now.

The kappa frowned. "This was not the case in my time."

"Perhaps it seeded when Mars underwent the Blight."

"The Blight?" Lunae could cope with the height, the ravine, the racing craft, but the distances of history left her feeling fragile and dizzied.

"The splintering of the Chain," Essa replied. "See where the temple lies?"

Lunae peered through the shimmering wall of the craft to see a narrow ledge jutting out from the side of the ravine. They were descending swiftly now, the shadows of the surrounding peaks casting darkness over the land.

"Who is the temple dedicated to?" the kappa asked, leaning forward.

"It is no longer known. Perhaps the one who lives there may know, but if so, she has not told me."

Essa touched the wall of the craft, sending it gliding toward the platform. As they drew near, Lunae could see that the plat-form was carved out of the fungus: a great jutting ridge of it, the underside of the bracket grooved with runnels, through which the little craft could easily have slipped.

The kappa said, surprising Lunae, "Does it ever spore?"

"Every so often. We have to keep inside, then. The chasm is filled with the dust when the brackets emit their charge of spores, and it saturates the lungs beneath even the finest masking."

The craft swooped toward the platform, landing in a puff of dust. Lunae and the kappa climbed forth, to stand on the spongy surface. The columns of the temple rose up before them: worn, weathered stone stained by ancient rain, mottled as if spattered with acid. The stone was the color of roses, of the dust of other worlds. The air smelled like the inside of a cupboard: hot and dry, with a mush-room mustiness.

There was no wind.

Lunae watched as Essa placed both hands on the side of the craft. It melted down into a smooth lake, shining in the last of the light and creating an oily film over the velvet of the fungus.

"Won't it dry up?" the kappa asked nervously.

Essa smiled, made a gesture of negation. "It is not quite like water. You have no need to worry. Now, let us go within."

Earth

The kappa of Toke'ui crowded around the dock, secur-ing the junk with ropes. Sek stood with both hands on the prow, eyes closed.

"What is she doing?" Dreams-of-War said to Yskatarina.

"She listens to the ship," Yskatarina replied.

"It speaks to her?" She remembered Lunae's talk of voices when they had first arrived.

"So she says."

"But this is surely a filament vessel, not haunt-tech. How can it possess sentience?"

"I don't know," Yskatarina murmured. "Perhaps when she told me of it, she spoke in metaphor."

But Lunae had meant it literally, Dreams-of-War was certain. What would be comprised of haunt-tech, in a ves-sel such as this? The most likely possibility was the naviga-tion system. But what if Sek had some other agenda that she was pursuing? Did that connect with the goals of Yskatarina, or not? If Yskatarina had summoned the swarm-assassin… And she also wondered whether this was the original destination, as ordered by the Grand-mothers, or somewhere else. And if somewhere else, then why? Dreams-of-War was sure that they had started to change course before Lunae had gone missing.

The situa-tion was as murky as the waters of the harbor below.

"By the way, I meant to ask if you have traveled much in space?" Dreams-of-War said, as casually as she could manage. "You said that you have visited Mars."

"I have been off-world once or twice. I have visited some of the worlds; I have been to the Crater Plain, where I believe you yourself come from." Yskatarina spoke smoothly, and did not look at the Martian.

"How do you know that?"

"The Martian clans are not so extensive or so great in their complexity that I cannot recognize an accent," Yskatarina said. "I know a little of the origins of the War-rior Clans of Memnos."

"I thought perhaps a woman of your means might have traveled farther," Dreams-of-War remarked.

"To Io-Beneath, perhaps, or Europa? Or do you just mean farther up the Chain?"