Artemis Invaded (20 page)

“Yes. She resented,” the Old One continued, “that he was increasingly separating himself from her. I moved Griffin to Mender's Isle to protect him. Adara was too clever and ruthless for me. In the course of her ‘rescue' of Griffin, all I had worked so hard to discover was ruined. Many of those who lived and worked with me were killed. Julyan and I only narrowly escaped. Griffin went with Adara. By now I have no doubt she has convinced him that I was his enemy, rather than the best friend he had upon this world.”

Julyan was impressed. No one who knew the Old One would believe this story for a minute, but this “Maxwell”—so slim, almost fragile, so apparently young—easy to imagine him being overwhelmed by some terrible warrior woman.

Oh, Adara!
he thought gleefully.
Do you know what a terrible enemy you have made? Soon the time will come that you will be glad of my protection, no matter the price I exact for it—and my price will be high indeed. We'll start with every inch of your lovely body, but in the end, I think I'll claim your soul.

“You have given us much to think about, Maxwell,” Siegfried said after a moment. “Do you know where our brother is?”

“I do not,” the Old One said, “but I am certain he is alive and well. What good would he be to Adara the Huntress if he were not?”

“Then we owe it to ourselves to become more fully acquainted with the situation before we venture after him,” Siegfried concluded. “Not only do we need to know more about the culture that has grown up here, but we also must assure ourselves that our equipment will continue to function. May we enlist you in our researches?”

The Old One gave a very low bow—doubtless the first time he had bowed to anyone in more than a hundred years. “I would be honored to be of service, seegnur. Where do you wish to begin?”

“I'd like to see your facility on the mainland,” Falkner said. “Is that at all possible?”

“If we are careful,” the Old One answered. “After the disruptions caused by Adara and the lies she spread, the facility was sealed against intrusion. Still, we can penetrate via the underwater tunnel. Most of the more interesting equipment was underground, so our lights should not show.”

Siegfried nodded. “Then that is where we will start.”

“But,” added Alexander, a slow smile stretching his handsome face, “I am certain that is not where we will end.”

*   *   *

It feels so good to be out alone,
Adara thought as she left Maiden's Tear behind her.
In all fairness, I couldn't leave Terrell both to assist Griffin and to take care of all the camp duties, but I'd be a liar if I didn't admit I was beginning to feel more like a makeshift factotum than a huntress.

“Alone? Since when have you been alone?”

That was how Adara interpreted the flash of images that flooded into her mind. She hadn't intended to send her thoughts to Sand Shadow, but she guessed that in her relief at being out and away she had projected more strongly than she had intended. As was their custom when scouting a new area, the demiurges were ranging a short distance from each other, covering a larger area, while still being able to reach the other should trouble arise.

Is Sand Shadow closer than I assumed?
Adara thought.
Or is our bond becoming stronger? Certainly it has been tested over these last several months, not only by the challenges we've faced with Griffin, but when Artemis started drifting into our practice sessions. I doubt that many paired demiurges have faced such strange and peculiar challenges over such a short time.

Adara felt Sand Shadow's agreement, both as to the manner of their testing and the puma's belief that their bond had grown more complex. Along with this came a certain wistful hope that soon they would be able to understand each other as easily as did Bruin and Honeychild.

They are much older than we are.
Adara soothed the puma.
You are hardly grown out of spots.

She laughed at the puma's indignant reminder that, compared to Adara, Sand Shadow had made great progress over the seasons they had known each other. Adara could only agree. Humans did grow slowly compared to pumas. Humans aged more slowly as well, but one of the wonders of the human/animal bond was that—barring accidents—the animal demiurge did seem to live longer and with greater vitality than their non-bonded kin. Adara suspected that the seegnur had somehow linked traits for longer life to the adaptations that let human and animal communicate mind to mind. What use would the human/animal partnership be to the seegnur if the human was slowed by an aging demiurge or continually training new partners?

Despite Sand Shadow's reminder that she was not really “alone,” Adara felt amazingly light and free. Before Griffin's arrival, her responsibilities had been minimal. She had passed her final testing and been accepted as a hunter, but had not yet taken on a territory of her own—nor would she have been likely to do so. As he aged, Bruin had been ranging less, content with his garden, his students, and challenges in the immediate vicinity of Shepherd's Call. As he stayed closer to home, Adara spiraled outward, taking on his responsibilities, acting under the aegis of his reputation. It had been a comfortable time, an enjoyable time. Then, in the flash of a shooting star, Adara had become responsible for the life of a man—and not just any man, but a man who was probably a seegnur.

Adara pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, as if the pressure of responsibility was a physical thing she could push away. The patterns of dark and light within her eyelids seemed to take the form of mushrooms. With that, a startling thought crashed into her mind.

Is that why I am having so much trouble contacting Artemis? Am I resisting the responsibility? I didn't ask for it … I haven't asked for so much of what has dominated my life since early spring.

“But do you regret it all? Saving Griffin and this curious hunt we have followed since?”

Adara considered Sand Shadow's question, trying hard to eliminate from the equation her mixed feelings about Griffin as a man, trying only to weigh the life she was living now against the life she would have been living. Did she truly regret the change? Startled, Adara realized that the woman she had been—someone whose greatest worries had been honing her own abilities and developing a reputation—was a stranger to her. How petty that Adara seemed! How self-absorbed!

She smiled. She didn't regret the events of the last several months at all. She let herself probe the next element of what Sand Shadow thought of as a “curious hunt.” How did she feel about the addition of Artemis to what had been a closed relationship? That was a harder question. The world had been a much more comfortable place before Adara had realized that the spirit associated with it was more like a frightened child than the all-enfolding mother figure which had vaguely occupied that space in her imagination.

Adara would be the first to admit that she was not the most philosophically inclined of humans—although recent events were forcing her to reconsider that attitude. She had truly been content with the gradually more complex catechism taught to children. She had never been the type to ask why the sky was blue (because so often it wasn't) or why the sun moved (because it did). Maybe it was because she'd been taught that her world was a paradise designed by gods, for gods, so what use were questions?

Things were as they were because that was what suited the seegnur. Now, though, there were questions that the catechism had not addressed. Why was the fact never raised that Artemis the planet was also Artemis the person? What about Leto's complex? It didn't fit in at all with the ostensible reason the planet had been created. Which was the bigger lie?

Eminently practical, Sand Shadow pulled Adara back from a trail of increasingly fruitless speculation. To the puma's way of seeing things, the question was not how one felt about a hunt, but whether or not the hunt was worth pursuing. If it was, then the next question was what was the best and safest way to accomplish it. If best and safest also included easiest—well, that suited the great cat as well.

Adara found herself smiling. “
How would you hunt a neural network? We have tried opening ourselves to her when we are practicing. After all, that's how she touched us the first times. However, we've had no luck. Should we try again now that we're farther from Leto's zone?
”

A single image popped into Adara's mind, herself up in the high limbs of a long-needled pine, a lacework of fungus growing from the wood and talking to her. This was followed by a second image of a cluster of a similar mushroom, only this one was larger, falling like a curtain, rather than shaping a face. From the sense that came with the image, Adara could tell that Sand Shadow was looking right at them.

“You think we should use those? How?”

A mild sense of annoyance, one that Adara translated as,
“Why should I do all the thinking? I've half an idea. You come up with the other half.”

Adara understood the puma's annoyance. “Really,” she said out loud to herself. “You'd think I was a wolf pup, waiting for the head wolf to make my decisions for me, rather than a full-grown huntress.”

Sand Shadow was lolling next to the mushroom curtain, playing with her earrings, when Adara arrived. Reaching out with one hand to rub the great cat behind one ear, just where she liked it, Adara studied the cluster, admiring how the predominately white hue was shaded with palest pink and yellow. Bruin had tutored his students very carefully on the subject of mushrooms, for hunters also did a great deal of foraging. Sometimes plants could be as valuable as the plushest fur or finest joint of meat. Mushrooms and other fungi, with their widely varying properties, were among the most useful, whether for food, medicine, or sources of poison. After they had been properly prepared—usually by drying—they had the added advantage of being lightweight and easily portable.

Of course, some are only useful when fresh,
Adara thought as she examined Sand Shadow's find,
but that is hardly an issue in this case. Now that I have it, what do I do with it? Artemis may know how to speak through a fungus, but I do not.

“Eat it,”
Sand Shadow suggested, her image that of Bruin devouring an enormous skewer on which chunks of elk alternated with wedges of onion and large, white-capped mushrooms.

Adara considered this suggestion, but rejected it. Some mushrooms were safe to eat. Others were decidedly not. In between fell a vast number that might not kill the human who ate them, but could have side effects ranging from hallucinations to a very bad ache in the gut.

Sand Shadow seemed disappointed that Adara would not opt for the simplest solution.

“Glad you feel that way,”
Adara retorted.
“I notice you're not offering to eat them.”

The puma did not deign to reply.

Adara considered. Artemis's neural network was somehow associated with fungi, an idea that was only strange if one didn't realize that the visible fruiting bodies were the least portion of complex organisms that could stretch for miles. Adara had no idea if all mushrooms were part of Artemis's network, but she saw no harm in assuming so. Perhaps she and Sand Shadow would do better if they concentrated on Artemis using a specific focal point, rather than reaching out to nothingness.

Sand Shadow liked the idea. She assured Adara that nothing dangerous was anywhere near and that she would not let herself detach so far that she would not be on guard. Adara accepted this division of labor. The puma's senses were far better than her own. It did not make sense to insist that she keep watch while the puma prowled after the elusive neural network.

She settled down cross-legged, gently touching the mushroom curtain with her fingertips. Although their communication with Artemis had been as much wordless as shaped by words, still Adara—human as she was—had shaped it into words. She recalled them now.

“Velvet darkness, soft as sound,” she recited softly. “My shadow, my other self, can you hear me?”

That wasn't quite right … Artemis was not her “other self” as Sand Shadow was. How had Artemis defined herself in those earlier contacts? Not just as a neural network, that had been Adara's human mind, seeking to reduce the complex to a few simple terms. “Neural network, seeded spores activated by annihilating desire, interlacing mosaic, pieces yet unplaced.” That had been it. It made a lot more sense now than it had at the time.

Adara repeated these words in her mind, feeling Sand Shadow shaping the remembered images that went with them. Closer, but still not enough … Adara lowered herself to the level of the mushrooms, stared at them, repeating the words very softly. Neural network. (That spider's web of tangled threads.) Seeded spores. (Lovely, like the tiniest snowflakes on a very cold winter's day, but detailed, minute dandelion seeds drifting with purposeless purpose.) Interlacing mosaic. (Concentrate on the image of connection, not on the gaping holes they now suspected were there.)

Closer. They were closer, but still not quite enough. Adara saw how her breath stirred the delicate gills on the underside of the mushroom. Saw them vibrating, like the strings of the wind harps Bruin put in his garden when the weather was fine. That music, played without fingers, was both haunting and unpredictable, stirring the soul to flights of fancy.

Without realizing it, Adara realized her whispered words were becoming a chant, the chant rising and falling, making its own melody. Then, soft as a breeze, she began to sing, letting the rise and fall of her voice stir the delicate gills, while keeping her breath so soft that even the thinnest veil in the cluster did not stir. Her mental image changed, ceasing to be darkness, becoming instead the palest light, the softest breath, the gentle scent of moonflowers, all weaving into a music that called, coaxed, comforted, cajoled. Vaguely she was aware of Sand Shadow adding the whistling cries of a puma kitten—sweet notes often mistaken for birdsong by the uninitiated—to the mix.