The ring of five dragons, p.26
The Ring of Five Dragons, page 26
part #1 of The Pearl Series
“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” The regent Stogggul’s voice rose from a husky whisper to a desperate shout. He closed his eyes against a brief wave of vertigo. When he opened them, he found that his father had morphed into a Gyrgon peering down at him with ruby-red pupils.
“Stogggul Wennn, we will see you dead.”
The regent could see that he Was kneeling on the floor of a tiered, open-air amphitheater that completely encircled him. All the seats, save one, were filled with Gyrgon. There must be a thousand of them, he thought. All were staring fixedly at him. He could feel their animus grinding him into the ground. His hearts pounded painfully in his chest. Gyrgon did not make idle threats, nor did they bluff.
“The sight of you offends us,” said the Gyrgon with ruby-red pupils as he took his seat. “We do not know whether we feel more pity or contempt for you.”
Numb with shock, weakened by evil memories, all he could manage to mumble was, “Tell me how I have offended you that I may make atonement.”
The Gyrgon stood, his neural nets ablaze with his rage. “Your atonement, regent, will take this form: you will embrace our wrath and make it your own. You will galvanize the Khagggun. You and Star-Admiral Morcha Kinnnus will launch a campaign to root out and destroy all enemies, all traitorous elements. The gutters of Axis Tyr will overflow with blood, the valleys beyond will be filled with it. We wish to hear the wails of the mourners; we wish to see them turning in greater numbers to Kara, the religion that embraces V’ornn and Kundalan alike.”
“And when I have accomplished what you ask, what then?” the regent ventured. “Will you give me the salamuuun trade? The Ashera murdered my father for it It is only just that you—“
“You are not here to ask questions, regent, or to make demands!” the Gyrgon thundered. “You are here to listen and to obey!”
With a wave of his gloved hand, he caused the regent Stogggul to vanish, sending him back to his quarters across the city.
Rekkk Hacilar awoke in a filthy back alley, where someone had dragged him. His head lolled against a pile of trash bins. Rats startled away as he began to stiffly move. He ached all over; it was only what he deserved. For a moment his mind was blessedly blank. Then, like a poisonous blossom, he saw again the image of Giyan crumpled on the floor, heard her words traveling through space and time to cause him misery once more.
He did not know where he was, nor did he care. The alley was narrow, blank-walled, featureless. In the distance he could hear the myriad sounds of the city. Bones crunched and someone groaned; somewhere close by another fight was under way. He staggered to his knees, vomited freely. He held his head as if that would stop the dizziness. Gradually, he was able to drag himself to his feet. He leaned against a stained and rotting wall, gaining strength with every wheezing breath. He used garbage to wipe the vomit off his boots.
When he felt able, he took a quick inventory of all his bones. None appeared broken, which was something of a miracle, but he could not take even a shallow breath without intense waves of pain shooting through him.
It began to rain, the drops feeling like tears on his cheeks. He gritted his teeth and staggered down the alley. He had not gone more than a score of paces when he came upon a doorway he had not noticed before. Immediately to the right of the doorway was a small, discreet alloy plaque that read: NIMBUS and just below, the phrase REFERRALS ONLY. What was a luxe kashiggen doing in this working-class district of the city? Kashiggen were once peaceful inns devoted to entertaining the Ramahan. The V’ornn, knowing a good thing when they saw it, turned the Kundalan kashiggen into salamuuun palaces.
Ignoring the warning, he stumbled into an interior plush with velvets and satin, hazy with the unmistakable sweet, spicy scent of salamuuun. Rekkk licked his dry, cracked lips as he tried to focus. He saw an octagon-shaped room filled with Kundalan-style furniture. The walls were padded with richly brocaded fabrics; across the vaulted ceiling was a spray of enameled stars. In one corner, sat an old V’ornn seer, her features sunken into her skull. She watched him like an owl with greedy eyes. Two exquisite imari did their best to ignore him.
“A mistake, surely.” The dzuoko, a beautiful Tuskugggun in a pale lavender robe, confronted him. Clearly, the mistress of this kashiggen, her cloth-of-silver sifeyn was pushed back on her skull. She was eyeing him up and down with a distasteful expression. “None of my imari would come within an arm’s length of you.” By her side was a burly Mesagggun. His arms, thick as tree trunks, were crossed over his massive chest. Say this about him, he was clean and sober. He glowered at Rekkk from beneath formidable brows, pointedly ignoring his bloodied insignia. “Not that it matters. No one I know could possibly have referred you.” She snapped her fingers, and the oversize Mesagggun took a menacing step toward Rekkk.
“On the contrary, Mittelwin.”
Rekkk looked to his left. A young, striking Tuskugggun stood eyeing him. She wore a midnight-blue robe and sifeyn shot with glittering gold thread. She was very tall and slender, and she moved with an astonishing grace. Another of NIMBUS’ imari? Impossible. No imari would dare speak to her dzuoko in such a direct and crude fashion. From what he knew, the imari tradition was an ancient one, even for the Kundalan. Decades of training were required, and relatively few made it all the way through.
“This is the Khagggun I have been expecting,” this vision said sweetly. “A little worse for wear, I admit.”
“A little!” Mittelwin guffawed. “Look at the poor thing; I’d say some of our fine locals have had their way with him!”
The Mesagggun stifled a giggle.
“What are you laughing at?” Mittelwin said. “Clean him up, feed him some leeesta—from the warm pan, not the three-day-old stuff. Then take him to chamber seven for Mastress Kannna’s pleasure.”
For Rekkk, the shower was both pleasure and pain. The needles of water stung him in every bruised and swollen spot on his body, but the heat sank into him, easing the deeper pain. He had four soaps to choose from, all with distinctive masculine scents. He stayed under the spray a very long time. Khagggun did not often have the luxury of bathing in this manner.
Afterward, he was given a robe the color of cor blood. It filled him perfectly. When he asked the Mesagggun about his uniform the V’ornn told him that it was being cleaned and pressed. As he ate the delicious warm leeesta, he wondered whether the Mesagggun was his servant or his jailor. The Mesagggun gave him water when he said that he was thirsty. No numaaadis or spirits of any kind were offered. Nor were any of his questions answered. Who was this Mastress Kannna, and how could she possibly have been waiting for him when he himself had had no inkling he would stumble into the kashiggen until the moment he had spied the door? Patience, he told himself.
When he had eaten and drunk his fill, the Mesagggun led him down a corridor dimly lighted by old-fashioned Kundalan oil lamps. The flickering flames held behind crystal stacks had a soothing effect on the psyche. Even the mountainous Mesagggun was polite as he opened the door to chamber seven. Rekkk watched him retreat down the corridor before he went in.
Mastress Kannna was waiting for him in a small circular room with a conical ceiling. She sat in a deep chair. Beside her was a Kundalan-style sofa, looking as inviting as it was comfortable. In his current state, Rekkk was grateful for the comfort. V’ornn furniture was strictly utilitarian; the esthetics of comfort and style had been edited out.
“You look tired, Pack-Commander,” Mastress Kannna said. “Won’t you sit down?”
From somewhere in the room came the scents of clove oil and burnt musk. “I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage. You apparently know me, but I am sure that we have not met.”
“Not directly, no.” She lifted a hand. “Are you perhaps incapable of sitting?”
He grinned despite himself, sat gingerly on the edge of the sofa.
“Please. Relax, Pack-Commander, rest assured I will not attack you.”
He did not return her smile. “It is my training. If there is a certain lack of trust on my part, it is simply because—“
“Tell me, Pack-Commander, do you indulge?” She held before him a slim crystal canister containing a cinnamon-colored powder.
“I have been known to blow a few meters of salamuuun.”
“Excellent.” She popped the top of the canister. “This is prime-grade. The only kind Mittelwin purveys.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not this time.”
“Ah, I understand.” Mastress Kannna nodded. “It is a matter of trust again.” She stared deep into his eyes. “Tell me something, Pack-Commander.”
“Only if you answer a question first.” He took her silence as acceptance. “I heard Mittelwin address you as Mastress. Why? I have never heard that term used before.”
“That is because it is rarely used.” She crossed one leg over the other and, with a sibilant shiver, her robe parted slightly. “I am Great Caste. I am attached to a very special V’ornn. Hence my title.”
“What kind of V’ornn is your mate?”
“One question, Pack-Commander.” She smiled sweetly. “Now please tell me what you are doing in the Northern Quarter of Axis Tyr.”
“I came to get what I deserved.”
She eyed him curiously. “And did you?”
“I don’t know. I am still alive.”
Her smile widened as she downed half of the canister’s contents, offered him what remained. “Well, then, it is safe to say that you do not know if your journey is yet at an end.”
He hesitated for but a moment. It had crossed his mind that this might be a setup engineered by either Olnnn Rydddlin or Kinnnus Morcha to inject the last bolt in his coffin. Then the image of Giyan rose up like a daemon in the night, and he grabbed the salamuuun and inhaled it wholesale.
Mastress Kannna’s eyes glittered. “Lie back, Pack-Commander, Let the salamuuun take you where it may.”
He liked the sound of her voice. It was comforting, like his mother’s had been. He hadn’t thought of rfls mother in many years. He realized that he did not know where she was or even if she was alive. He closed his eyes and saw her standing before him. She smiled and spoke to him, and at once he felt how much he had missed her.
I wanted to find you, but I never had the time.
I know. Don’t blame yourself, Rekkk.
But I do.
You had your life to live. That was more important.
It shouldn’t have been.
It’s the way of life.
He cried as she enfolded him within her arms.
Do not grieve for yourself, Rekkk. Live your life as you always have.
I cannot. I love a Kundalan, but she will never return that love.
How can you be so sure?
I have injured her grievously, permanently.
Nothing is permanent, Rekkk. Not even death…
He floated for a long time on the sea of his own tears. This sea rocked him, cradled him, spoke to him in the soft susurrus peculiar to oceans. Deep below him, in those unfathomable depths, he felt life moving, creatures larger, more alien than he could imagine, though already in his lifetime he had seen his share of alien life. He did not fear them. Listening to their distant songs, understanding their meanings without knowing their words, he drifted on currents unknown …
When, at length, he opened his eyes, he saw that Mastress Kannna was gone. In her place sat someone wonderfully, heartbreakingly familiar.
“Giyan,” he breathed. “How did you find me?”
“On the contrary,” she said. “You found me.”
“I love you,” he told her.
She smiled. “I know.”
“And yet you are so sad, so very sad.”
“In my life I have lost things, Rekkk, precious beyond your imaginings. My heart is ash. I cannot fathom why it continues to beat.”
“You will never lose me. I swear this to you, Giyan.”
“And now,” Nith Sahor said, as he morphed once again out of one body and into another, “we come to the finale of our little drama.”
Rekkk felt the psychogenic effects of the salamuuun dissipating like fine strands of silk, draining from every synapse in his brain, leaving him to feel as if he was nothing but a long, lonely shadow.
“Where is Giyan?” he asked thickly.
“She has gone the way of Mastress Kannna.”
His eyes cleared. “You mean she never existed.”
“Not in the way you had imagined. But both of them exist just the same. For now I am Nith Sahor.”
The Gyrgon arranged his hands atop his crossed knees. Rekkk watched those hands, cloaked in alloy mesh, as if they were the jaws of a razor-raptor. To his horror, he found that he was trembling uncontrollably. He had been trained almost from birth to be fearless, but to be this close to a Gyrgon was something entirely out of his ken. With an enormous effort, he pulled himself together.
“Well, Rekkk,” the Gyrgon said, “are we feeling any better after our salamuuun flight?”
“I have heard of the Gyrgon affinity for cruel jests,” he said. “But I never thought I would be made the butt of one.”
Nith Sahor leaned forward. “You misunderstand me. Nothing here was done in jest. It was all in the service of discovering the—how shall I put it?—the inner nature of things.” Rekkk regarded the Gyrgon with alarm. “Ask yourself this, then: now that you have taken a peek at the map of your own universe do you know more about yourself than you did when you were getting the N’Luuura beaten out of you?”
Rekkk was wary. “Not that I could tell.”
“No?” Nith Sahor cocked his long, elegant head. “Perhaps, then, I should tell you about my flight. In it, I was on a ship, and that ship was sailing across a sea of turquoise blood. Like most V’ornn, I hate the ocean. In any event, Eleusis Ashera is on the ship with me. He is headless. His bloody body is fountaining the blood that has made the sea we are sailing on. And then I realize what I have done, the mistake I made with Eleusis. Gyrgon, you see, have limited experience in dealing with the outside world. It is why we delegate all the mundane jobs to others.
“I loved Eleusis Ashera—as I know you did, Rekkk. He had a special affinity for the unseen forces all around us. He-was drawn to the Kun-dalan as I am. Without knowing why. This feeling frightened me. I tried to get him to explain it to me. He could not, of course. Who can explain love, desire? They are inexplicable. But I did not yet understand, so I grew wrathful. I treated him shamefully. I did not protect him when, perhaps, I could have. Now he is dead, and that weight lies heavily upon me.”
Stunned by this unprecedented confession, Rekkk Hacilar said nothing.
“It’s true, I am afraid, the vaunfed Gyrgon are fallible.” Nith Sahor’s eyes sparked in the oil-fired lamplight as he briefly put a forefinger across his lips. “You see, Rekkk, your circumstances are not entirely unknown to me. In that light, I have a proposal to make you.”
A moment ago, Rekkk would have laughed at the absurdity of the comment. Now he could only make a small sound in his throat. His entire world had been turned upside down, and he was still trying to make some kind of sense of it.
“I have trusted you with many secrets, Rekkk. Do you think you can trust me now?”
Rekkk Hacilar stared at the Gyrgon, his hearts beating heavily in his chest. “If you are aware of my circumstances, you know I no longer have a reason to live.”
“Is that what your salamuuun flight revealed?”
Rekkk’s voice was so clotted with emotion for a moment he could not answer. “No,” he said at length.
“But you still feel suicidal? You wish to die?”
He stared down at the floor and thought of Giyan’s anguished face. “Yes.”
“What if I could change that?”
Rekkk put his forearms on his thighs, licked his lips. His mind seemed on fire. He wanted to scream out his rage and frustration at the circumstance that led him to love an alien female who despised him.
“What do you say, Rekkk?”
“How could you possibly bring back my desire for life?”
“On, I can’t do that, Rekkk. No one but you can do that.”
Just as his mother had told him in the salamuuun flight.
“But I can deliver what you want most.”
The air shimmered and, for a tantalizing moment, Giyan lay before him. Then, the Gyrgon returned.
“You will not coerce her in any way.”
“Absolutely not.”
“She will love me of her own free will.”
“Yes, but beware of what it is you desire most, Rekkk. This is my best advice to you.”
Rekkk took a deep breath. He was filled with thoughts of Giyan; his hearts were pounding fiercely in his chest. In for a blood-weight, in for a body-weight, he thought. “Apart from your promise, there must be another payment for services rendered.”
Nith Sahor nodded.
“Anything I want.”
“If I can provide it, it will be yours.”
“You must need me very much.”
“Better by far not to know the answer to that question, Rekkk.”
Rekkk remembered to let his breath out. This was Gyrgon he was dealing with, after all. He put his hands together. A distant memory surfaced. As a small child, he could remember his mother putting her hands together in prayer to the war god Enlil. In those days, religion was still embraced by some members of the Khagggun Caste. “Agreed,” he said.
Nith Sahor sat back, his eyes hooded, his expression a mask. “Are you aware that the Kundalan Ring of Five Dragons has been found?”
“No.” Rekkk Hacilar frowned. “Who has it?”
“Wennn Stogggul had it. He gave it as a gift to the Comradeship.”
“Surely not as a gift. What did he want in return?”
Nith Sahor smiled. “He wanted to be named regent; he wanted the salamuuun trade stripped from the Ashera Consortium and given to him.”
“Did the Comradeship agree?”
“He is regent, that much they have granted. But as for the salamuuun trade… Well, let us just say that I was able to table that decision for the moment.”
