Lyrec (13 page)

*****

On the day he had condemned his race to death, Miradomon had hung in space, fashioning the doorway that would lead him out of his universe. He knew full well what the result would be and did not care. It was sheer chance that the two members of his race—the one who had been sucked through the opening first, whose name he had not known, and Elystroya—had come upon him. Their minds were so closely linked to his that he could not hide his intentions from them. Their horror washed over him in the moment that he split the fabric of his homeworld. Two universes of utterly different properties were forced to meet. The creature who had accompanied Elystroya had been torn away into oblivion, and the homeworld, simultaneously drawn in and pulled out, had begun instantly to disintegrate. This would have spelled death for Elystroya, too, had she not acted in the initial moment. Somehow she guessed that he intended to survive the holocaust, that he had in some way allied himself with the unleashed destructive forces, and she had responded to this by melding with him before the tumult pulled her away.

He and she became a unity, the most intimate of acts among his kind. He was disgusted by it, but unprepared for her move and unable to stop it. For that brief time he swam within her soul, touching her thoughts against his will, powerless to resist, while she did the same.
 
He hid what he could from her, which wasn’t much.
 

 
As one they witnessed the death of every being they had ever known. Shards of her agony cut into him; his cold detachment drove her to shut off her mind, blocking the horror and him.
 
When she opened up again, violent nausea roared through him as she realized that her true unity, her lover, had been slain. She cried out to the crystal stars to take her life, too. But the stars were busy shattering under the forces he’d unleashed. They couldn’t hear. She willed herself to die, but she could not so long as she was attached to him. She tried to withdraw, to leap back out of the doorway of safety.

Just why he had stopped her, he still did not know. She meant nothing to him. Less than nothing. Her overwhelming love for her lost one repulsed him. Yet he could not let her go. As she tried to escape him, Miradomon doubled in strength and size from the obliteration of his race. It was nothing then for him to paralyze her, to seal her up within him. He was already so much more powerful than she.
 

Later, when he had time, he would find a place for her in his new world.

*****

Since that unnatural day he had often pondered what instinct had urged him to let her live. He denied the obvious answer that he envied her dead lover.
 
For himself, he wanted worship, not love. He convinced himself that it was her suicidal nature that appealed—she wished to embrace death, and he was becoming death. In conclusion, he decided that he let her live so that one day, when all other life had been cleared away, there would remain one entity who knew what he had done. When he had absorbed everything, then she would have to beg him for release. Only he would have the power to grant it. She would have to do whatever he asked. She would have to worship him.

Now, with the light of death washing over him, Miradomon was tranquil. He wanted to speak with Elystroya. Her form had been discarded as an unnecessary burden many worlds ago. He would not let her use it again in any case. He realized as he stood dreamily beside the pit that he had a suitable temporary replacement in his possession.

Turning from the source, drifting past his nightmarish army, he went to Elystroya.

The place where she was kept lay all in darkness. As Miradomon entered, the walls began to glow with a smoky light. Before him, in a field of tiny silent sparks, floated a small polished black globe. Out of the end of his liquid sleeve, a skeletal and greenish hand appeared. He reached for the globe and lines of gold as thin as hairs reflected from the back of his hand. His hand passed through the field of sparks and they vanished. He was holding the globe. He carried it away.

Across the room, encased in a similar but larger field of sparks, the naked body of a young girl hovered. The figure was slender, prepuberal. Straight blonde hair hung to her waist. Her face was blank—the essence of her that had been a personality called Lewyn was absent, extracted and encased like that of Elystroya. He would have discarded her altogether, but there remained a slight possibility he might need her personality again at some other time. There were always unforeseen elements in any plan—her brother might suffer an accident, perhaps. For the moment, her body could be of another use to him.

He positioned the globe over her head, then let it touch her. His hand drew away, and the globe sank beneath her hair. Miradomon’s other hand emerged. As the sparks disappeared, he clutched her, then lowered her to her feet. He did not release her until her pale eyelids fluttered open and two large blue eyes focused on him.

“Elystroya,” he said. His fingers cupped her chin. A blue corona surrounded her for a moment, and her eyes nictated. He let loose her head and the corona faded.

The young face filled with conflicting emotions. The mouth opened. At first she made broken, inarticulate sounds and her thoughts alone communicated to him.
This is not my body.

“It might be,” was his answer. “It’s young and healthy. Or you could choose any of a thousand others you preferred, which I would pluck for you in an instant.”

“You!” Her eyes widened with dawning horror. “I’m not with…you’ve kept me alive and—and
this.
” She looked down at herself. “What monstrous thing have you made me? Where is my body? Miradomon, where? Let me have it so that I can die.”

“Not possible. Your
crex
is dust in a dead universe far removed. You’ve slept through a dozen of them. All gone now. This monstrosity as you call it is how they look here. No stars of crystal for you to appeal to—the stars here don’t listen. Can’t hear.”

Kill me.

No.
His own emotion surprised him. “No,” he said aloud, more gently. “I’ve kept you alive for…we shared.” He saw repulsion crawl across her features as she remembered the events. “You did so to stay alive, you chose then not to die. I’ve decided that I want you alive, too.”

She appeared to resign herself to this. Her blue eyes studied him, then glanced beyond him to where the globe containing Lewyn’s mind floated in its field of sparks. “And your body,” she said, “you’ve thrown that away, as well.”

“Oh, no. This room and beyond, that globe you stare at, is all part of my body now. I surround us. I’m a world.”

“Surround us?”

“That’s one of many things you don’t know. Would you like to hear about it? I’d tell you.”

“What you did to our people.” She sobbed. A name formed in her mind, a loud, desperate shout:
Ly-rec!
“Why have you done this cruelty to me?” Her body trembled. She backed to the wall and slid down it, curling up on the floor.

“Elystroya,” he whispered. She did not respond.
Elystroya.
Nothing. He floated to her. His bony hand emerged and gripped her chin. He raised her to her feet. He looked into her eyes, but found no sign of her there. Something had happened to her—the shock of awakening, he decided, had been too much. Bodies such as this were given to highly charged emotions, their chemistries were volatile. He could clearly recall the first time he had encountered the beings in this string of universes: Their very volatility made it easy to manipulate them. It was his fault he hadn’t better prepared her. He should have eased her into this new experience. He wanted urgently to explain himself to her, to make her understand why he had sacrificed everyone. What he could offer her. It was imperative she recognize the source as something she could share with him. She must understand his plans for her.
 

He touched her shoulder with his cold fingertips. His will penetrated her defenses. He said:
Come and I’ll explain.
 
You need to acquaint yourself.

He made her answer, “Yes, Miradomon.” He liked the sound of her voice, and had her repeat it. “Yes, Miradomon.” Within, her mind was empty, the phrase went un-echoed. He pretended not to notice; with time, that would come. She had no choice.

He took her hand and together they drifted through his world.

Chapter 9.

The hooves of the captain’s horse thudded on the hard scrubby ground, then abruptly cracked against a stone. A small gray chip flicked up. It glanced off Lyrec’s brow, stinging him. Blood, black in the shadows of dusk, flowed to his cheek where it split into an inverted “Y” running to his chin.

He shook the blood away from his eyelid, raised his head angrily. He was about to shout a curse at the captain when he heard a faint call. It came only once, and might all too easily have been his imagination. Nevertheless, what he thought he heard was his name, called once from far away. He searched the barren landscape of the tor for the caller but saw no one.

On the hillside just one tree stood, spindly and stooped, its leafless branches low as if ashamed of its nakedness. No one could have hidden there.

He listened for another call, but none followed. Wind raked across the tor, rumbled in his ears. The same wind had buffeted them for hours without stop. How could he have heard anyone call through that? Unless the call had been mental. Who? It hadn’t been Borregad, whose contact he knew well. He did not dare believe what he wanted to believe. He couldn’t afford such hope. Better to assume it was fatigue, hallucination.

If it had been Elystroya, she would call again.

Throughout the day rain poured in brief torrential periods between which a mist sheeted the brown fens. Lyrec began to itch from the dampness. The soldiers seemed to take little notice of the weather beyond covering themselves with blankets when the rain came. They did not complain or curse the sky as he would have expected and he came to understand that this was the common weather of Ladoman.

It was through the fen mists that Lyrec first glimpsed the tors. They rose, black against the sky, a collection of mottled lumps like the decaying skullcaps of a submerged army of giants. The soldiers wove a deft path through the marshes and, finally, out and up the first rocky hillside.

The sun had begun to set as they started up this last tor. The shadows of the one before it stretched over the lowlands below. Lyrec sensed their eagerness to reach the top of this one; something awaited them there, and he soon saw what it was.

A circle of stones stood like fingers thrust out of the ground. Lyrec thought again of the image of giants; this was a haunted land. In the center of the circle he saw the remains of a fire. Beyond it, the ground became dark with a disturbingly defined edge—a small jagged crater where part of the tor had collapsed. The soldiers reined in at the stones and dismounted stiffly. They strode about to work their legs. One of them gestured at the crater with his head and muttered to the man beside him about “the buttertub,” then gave Lyrec a sinister look.

They built up the fire and then moved in around it to warm themselves, leaving him tied to the captain’s horse. He walked past it and sat down against one of the outermost stones, ignored as if forgotten. His knee joints popped as he settled in; his whole body was one collected ache. For the moment he forgot his quest, became just a man, tired and beaten, for whom the ideals of heroism and justice must wait another day. Utter weariness had bettered them.

His hands were as white as the underbelly of a fish; he wriggled his numb fingertips and shook his arms as much as the rope would allow, ignoring the pain of it.

The rain began again, softly heralding an evening chill. The soldiers huddled beneath their blankets and drew nearer to the fire. Lyrec brought up his knees and bowed his weary head. A moment later he seemed to have dozed off. One of the soldiers glanced at him, then looked away, satisfied by their victim’s defeat.

Steam began to rise from Lyrec. His skin flushed with color. The rain falling around him ceased to touch him, as if a clear shell had come into being over him.

On his wrists the skin grew purple and hard where the wounds were. The pale skin around them began to move. It closed over them.

His breathing became quick and shallow. He shuddered as with chills and broke out in a sweat. Soon his excited breathing slowed, and he fell asleep. The shell remained protecting him. His body and clothing dried. The skin on his wrists had sealed over the wounds.

He did not know how long he slept. When he opened his eyes, the sky was dark and the rain had stopped. Tendrils of mist were rising from the sodden ground. At the fire—now as tall as the soldiers around it—the Ladomantines huddled together under blankets. He smelled something cooking that awoke a different pain in his stomach. He wondered idly where they had found something to burn and something to cook. What could possibly live on these bleak tors?

“They might have cooked me,” said a voice beside him. Lyrec glanced over his shoulder. All he could see of Borregad was two large disc-like eyes hung in the black night. “Are you feeling any better now?”

“I didn’t hear you arrive.”

“You were busy healing,” replied the cat.

“Yes. Did you hear a call earlier? I don’t know where you were then, but we were coming up this hillside. Very faint it was, so that I couldn’t be certain … but the more I think about it, the more I’m sure it was real. I didn’t expect it, so I couldn’t have hallucinated it, could I? I wasn’t even thinking of her then.”

“Elystroya? She called you?”

“I think so. Yes, I’m almost certain.”

The cat looked away from his friend’s hope. For some time he had supported Lyrec’s desire to find Elystroya, all the while hiding his own certainty that she had perished. The fiend, Miradomon, had no reason to let her survive. More likely she had been sucked out of their universe as he had; as they hadn’t come upon her, she was unquestionably dead by now. This afternoon he had overheard Lyrec’s mad ravings, brought on by exhaustion. He could add support to virtually any notion his friend had—but not this one. “I heard nothing,” he said. “No call.”