Land of Night (29 page)

Melev pulled him closer, and it felt like Melev's hand was gripping his bones, ripping him apart. Scarlet mourned the loss of his voice. A scream might have lessened the pain. Melev was ruthless, pushing Scarlet further into an agony so intense it seemed impossible he was still alive. As Scarlet writhed to be away from him, Melev burrowed closer, so for a moment it seemed as if they were grappling, joined as if in sex, fused as one body and writhing in completion.

The world spun around. Light bloomed in the darkness, faces like pale flowers, and Scarlet saw the Hilurin spirits he had once glimpsed in a bare stand of junipers back on the Nerit, that night when Cadan had nearly killed him. That night when Liall saved him. Cadan's hands had been around his throat, then, cutting off his life. Now Melev was digging his heart out with his fingers.

"Tell me,” Melev intoned. “The instrument of making. The magic. Where has it been hidden?"

Scarlet struggled wildly to answer, to scream that he knew of no such thing, but the pain grayed out his vision and suddenly he was simply not there any longer. He believed he had passed out. He seemed to float in a warm void, those shifting, colored lights all around him. He blinked, or thought he did, looking up at the myriad shapes all in motion.

A young Hilurin man, no older than he, surely, took more solid form in the shifting lights and came forward. “Deva, he means,” the boy said in a gentle voice. “She was the great ship of iron that brought the Shining Ones here, and then failed them. They were marooned on this continent of ice, stranded far from their homes."

The boy was First Tribe, but unlike anyone Scarlet had ever seen: features sculptured like white marble, jet black eyes, fringed so thickly with ebony lashes that they looked like bruises high on his cheeks. His brows were black ribbons of silk across his unlined forehead, and the beauty of youth was upon him like a crown. His smile was infinitely gentle. Scarlet had never seen such a smile, except perhaps from Scaja in his earliest memories.

Yeva Bilan,
Scarlet called, thinking he must be the Flower Prince. Surely this man was the beloved of a goddess.

Visions flashed by his sight: his old friend Kozi, who disappeared one year; Cestimir, who smiled at him unafraid and held his hand over his heart with blood seeping through his fingers; Scaja and Linhona holding hands under a rain of ash. He suddenly saw Jochi's face and recalled the history lesson Jochi had given him, only now it seemed as if he were reliving it himself, and he could see the ocean rise and the land drowned, and the earth shaking down the great towers of lost Rshan.

Melev pressed him then, and Scarlet opened his mouth in a soundless scream. Melev's will pushed and battered his mind to ask something of the beautiful Hilurin prince, but no sound would come out. Pain dragged him under, threatening to drown all sanity, and he sent a helpless plea to the prince instead.

Help me.

The prince stretched out his hand, and Scarlet heard him send the command to Melev:
These are mine. My people. Let him go.

Melev recoiled, and for once, Scarlet saw emotion on his face: fear.

Scaja smiled at Scarlet across a universe of stars, and the sky broke in half before the sun caught fire and burned him alive in it, drowning him in cold, blue seas.

He dreamed.

Scarlet saw a flutter of colors, and a swarm of small people, no higher than his own chin, appeared. He could see they were Hilurin, all black-haired and ebony-eyed, so that for a moment, he felt a rush of homesickness.

Channels,
said a disembodied voice. The face of the gentle prince swam into view.
Symbiosis
, the prince said, smiling.
A true joining of races. None dreamed it could ever be broken, until the ship failed and the miles of ice defeated us.

Scarlet saw the Anlyribeth and the Shining Ones working together to repair the great beast of iron that rode the black sky between the stars; saw the misery on their faces when they failed time and time again. Decades passed like blown leaves, and a great many of the Shining Ones died.

Denied their weightless life inside the belly of Deva, the sentient ship, the tall Shining Ones could not adjust to land living. Many walked like old men, hunched over from the weight of their spines and great shoulders, their bare feet dragging in the snow. The prince smiled sadly at Scarlet.

Over time, they began to notice that we Anlyribeth did not suffer like them. Our bodies were smaller, better able to adapt, better able to exist on scarce food, whereas the Shining Ones needed great amounts of food to sustain their internal heat. Just breathing the thin air was an effort. They had no energy left over to find sustenance. We were industrious and clever. We thrived and took care of our own, but paid little heed to the starved Shining Ones, who had never needed our help in such base matters before.

At last, the unthinkable happened. Anlyribeth were once trusted helpers and allies, gentle companions and kindred spirits of the mind. Now, they were potential food. The reaction was utter shock and horror. The offending Shining One was quickly slain by his own fellows, but the damage was done.

We tried to flee. We were not vengeful. We did not wish the Shining Ones ill. All we wanted was our freedom. When we left, we took nothing from the iron vessels. We did not touch the Instruments of Making, knowing the Rshani would need them to survive.

They had not reckoned, however, that several thousand millennia of mental co-existence would give the Shining Ones an even greater weapon against them. Even if they had been told, they would not have believed it. Scarlet watched as the Shining Ones herded the Anlyribeth back to them with the force of their minds alone, and watched as they sorrowfully put collars on their small necks and silver bracelets on their arms, forcing their new slaves to serve and sustain the race of the Shining Ones.

It might have ended there. Might have, but did not. We could have served the Shining Ones forever, and eventually forgotten who we were, but the habit of exploration would not leave the minds of the Shining Ones. They must always have something new to conquer, some new path that has not been traveled. They decided to rebuild their homeworld, to make of it a replica of Danaee, but they could not do it alone.

The Instruments of Making were taken from the ship and the old ones sought out their Channels—the Anlyribeth who their minds were bonded to—once more. Some Anlyribeth had to be compelled to reunite their links with their old companions, now their masters. Many others had died, but there were enough Channels to forge a link, enough to create power and build castles, walls, battlements; a city. A great fortress rose in the shallow bowl of the mountains now called Fanorl, and eventually a civilization where the elder race ruled and the younger Anlyribeth toiled and were made mental thralls to serve the power of the Shining Ones.

Long centuries we lived like that, locked inside our own minds, our power bound to theirs, mind-blinded, useful only as physical slaves to service their wants and as tools to focus their power. They used us in other ways, too, our women mostly, but even our handsome youths were not safe. This world had made their lusts grow strong. Now they each sought for themselves power, beauty, and sex to fill their appetites. Some of us, however, were loved.

The prince smiled again but pain edged every word
. I was Txaxa, t'aishka to Sadyn, who was high in their esteem, a leader of many. Sadyn treated me well, better than any Rshani. Rshani is the name they took for themselves after they used the Instruments of Making and the genetic material of the snow bears to forge a child race able to sustain themselves on this frozen continent. But Sadyn could not see what it did to me to live with what my kin endured under his people. I tried to tell him, but he, like all Rshani, was blind to it. By this time there were few true Shining Ones from that first landing left. They all vanished into the heart of the mountains called Fanorl, and were never heard from again, save in the Ancients who wandered out many, many years later, and who were themselves also changed from their original form.

It was I, the trusted one, who finally crept into the stone temple they had erected around the ruins of the metal ship and stole the Creatrix, the Instrument of Making with which the Rshani had forged their city, using only the power of their minds linked through their mortal Channels, the little Anlyribeth. I took it and set free Deva, the powerful sentient force housed inside the ship that drove it through the vast, black abyss of stars. I also freed my kin, and we together created a great Channel to open the boundaries of the world and hurl our physical bodies into the void beyond. We did not know what, or if anything, awaited us there, only that it was our last chance.

What they found was Byzantur, with its mountain of magnetic iron meteorite that repelled the sensitive aliens of Danaee, but which left the Anlyribeth unaffected.

"But,” Scarlet fumbled for words, his voice suddenly unlocked. “This ... Creatrix. What happened to it? We Hilurin have no legends of it."

The prince's fingers pressed Scarlet's four-fingered hand, and when he withdrew, a red flower was etched into the skin of Scarlet's wrist like a tattoo, which faded as quickly as it had appeared.

"I think you know, do you not? Listen, my descendant..."

Liall heard a shout echoing down the dark corridors of the deserted ruins. It was not a Rshani voice, but higher and lighter. He grabbed a smoking torch and ran with Alexyin, shoving the burning brand into every doorway down the long maze of corridors, but they were lost.

Alexyin grabbed Liall's arm and made him stop. “Listen!” he hissed.

The torch sputtered in the dark. Wind howled thinly from a hundred cracks in the walls, and below that, faintly, he heard the sound of chanting.

The maze confused them. Sounds seemed to come first from one direction and then another, tricking the ear. At last, he heard another sound, a shimmering metal noise like chains sliding over rock, and it gave them a direction to follow.

Liall prayed as he went, or tried to. He had no tongue for it, but Scarlet believed. Surely his goddess would save him, even if she wouldn't listen to Liall. They stumbled over a broken step in the corridor and saw that it led to a higher level, and from there, through a bricked archway, they saw a faint glimmer of yellow light.

"Scarlet!"

The light grew much brighter, and when Alexyin and he burst through the last doorway into the round chamber, they found it filled with torches.

Incredibly, Melev was there, toppled over like a fallen tree in the center of the sunken floor, his bare legs sprawled out. Liall had little thought to marvel at his presence, because he saw Scarlet across from Melev, crouching with his small wrists chained to the floor. Scarlet's body was bent double with his forehead resting on his knees, and he was silent and deathly still.

Like Cestimir, Scarlet did not move as Liall approached him. Liall knelt. “Please,” Liall whispered, reaching out to touch his hair. He slipped his hand under Scarlet's chin and lifted Scarlet's face to see if he still lived.

Scarlet gave a gulping sigh and coughed on the thick smoke. His eyes opened a crack. “Liall?"

Liall groaned and embraced him, chains and all, too grateful to form any thoughts except
thank you, thank you, oh thank you for this!

Alexyin knelt beside Melev and rolled him over, and Liall heard Alexyin gasp. He looked over to see Alexyin backing away from Melev's body in horror, and he saw the twin black holes scorched into Melev's face. The great lamps of Melev's luminous eyes had burned out.

11.

Mourning Call

Liall was there when Scarlet woke, sitting on the edge of the great bed and holding his hand. Scarlet looked around, seeing the now-familiar outlines of their bedroom, blinking. He tried to sit upright and found that he could. Someone had dressed him in a plain sleeping tunic and the pain was gone. “Melev...” he began.

"Is dead,” Liall said gently. The prince was wearing something odd. It looked like a virca, but was very plain with no buttons or ornament. The fabric was all in muted shades of gray and violet mingled together, so that when Liall moved, it resembled a brooding cloud in a thunderstorm.

Mourning clothes, Scarlet thought. He closed his eyes. “And Cestimir?"

Liall took a shaking breath. “Him, as well."

"Oh, Deva ... Liall, I'm sorry. So sorry. If we hadn't gone—"

Liall cut him off. “Do not. This was no one's fault except Vladei's.” He stroked Scarlet's dark hair away from his face. “What happened in the ruins, when you were alone with Melev?"

Scarlet lay back down and closed his eyes. “I saw dead ones in the stone circle, Liall. My parents, people I'd known, my old friend Kozi. Many spirits."

"It was a dream, t'aishka."

"No,” Scarlet said, knowing better. “It was real. And.... Liall? I think I was the one who killed Melev. My Gift isn't the same as it was in Byzantur. It's changed. It's so much stronger now.” He looked at Liall with dawning comprehension.
Channels
, he thought. “It's changed because of you, because of us."

"Hush, you must rest,” Liall soothed. Clearly, he thought Scarlet to be babbling.

"It was real,” Scarlet insisted, but how to explain? He barely understood it himself.

"Real or not,” Liall choked out, seeming grieved beyond words, “the man who put you there is dead, and Vladei is dead, too."

"Vladei,” Scarlet echoed, hating him and not sorry at all. “But.... are there any are more like Melev?"

"Not here."

"Oh,” Scarlet said, disappointed. Scarlet sensed that it was hugely important for him to find one like Melev, but the why of it was beyond him.

Liall frowned. “What is it?"

"The spirits were Anlyribeth, those who were Hilurin before we took a new name. We used to live here, Liall. Thousands of us,” he rushed on, aware that his voice was unsteady and he sounded like a madman. “I saw so many things ... the crash, the Rshani enslaving the Anlyribeth, then the earth shook and cracked and the Anlyribeth left. Melev said we took something from the Shining Ones when we left here, a great instrument called the Creatrix. He wanted it back and I tried to tell him we didn't have it, but he didn't believe me. We
don't
have it, Liall, but I know where it is!"