Darkness Risen (The Ava'Lonan Herstories Book 4) (30 page)

At the last set of cages in the labyrinthine zoo,
they met up with the Queen. Behind her were four other Queens, all masked, all
smirking.

“And what have we here?” the smooth, hated voice
said behind the motley Herd. Most of them froze in terror, but Gavaron whirled
to face her and her milling packs of shadow-creatures that made even the lor’ugawu
cower.

“What are you doing out of your cages? And you, my ‘prize,’
do you know how long it took me to acquire all of these fine specimens? You
have undone ten-cycles of hard work. And you shall pay the price.” Shrouding
nets of av’rita-restraints looped around him, trying to cut off his sense of
the living world.

He laughed, shearing through the nets, and throwing
off the last straggling bonds that clung to his thoughts. He reached out to the
minds of his Herd, holding them, shielding them from her twisted thoughts and
mind traps. He filled them with his rage, his hatred, and they became a solid
mass at his back, a unified group with one goal: kill the one who had ruined
their lives. The other four stood back, not lending any aid to her.

“I have learned a few tricks from you, bitch-Queen.
I am free of your tethers. You no longer control me or those who are with me.
Is that what you fear? Why do you cower behind your made-up creatures? Could it
be that you hide behind these nih’macha because you haven’t the courage to face
me yourself?”

She yawned behind her mask, waving his words away.
“What a quaint,
male
notion. What an
animalistic
idealism. You
see, this is why your kind will never dominate, and why wuman Queens will rule
the world. How you
hate
me! How you wish to feel your hands around my
throat, throttling off my last breath! And oh, how you will spend the lives of
your fellow ex-captives to reach that goal! No, it is not
I
, but
you
who hide behind others. These creatures of mine were
made
- they have no
soul, no memories, no loved ones grieving for them. Whereas your army was each
and every one of them birthed painfully to some weeping mother, nursed and
nurtured to adulthood. I see you have the blood of my best Stable’Marm on your
hands. Will you add theirs, too?”

Through his rage-haze, he saw the twisted sense of
her words, and the trap that lay in them. As Stallyn, he led the Herd, and they
would follow him, right off a cliff. Had he freed them just to get them killed
because of
his
own lust for revenge? Was he that much worse than she?

No, she has to be stopped, so that she will never be
able to do this type of thing again,
he thought, coldly. And he would have
to do it alone. He began moving his Herd back with his mind alone.

“You dare enslave us?” he rumbled, his voice deep
silver with hatred, yes, the same hatred she baited him with, and with
righteous fury. A weapon. To such as him, the earth itself was more than just a
medium. It was a
weapon
.

He reached for the stone, the stone beneath their
feet, and a surprised shriek to his right ended in a thin gurgle. A thin spire
of stone, crystal sharp and razor clear, had skewered one of the Queen’s
blurring creatures where it crouched.

“You dare to treat me and mine as mindless chattel?!
You dare to spit in the face of the High Queen and the Goddesses Themselves?!”
His fists clenched so hard that the joints crackled like splitting stone, and
two more of the creatures died in mid-leap. The ground began to heave and roll
like a table lifted and shaken.

“You and all your foul works shall crumble and rot,
and leave not even dust to show your passing!” he thundered, and with a great
heaving sigh the villa and grounds began to disintegrate, eroding away as if
eons had passed in grans.

The Queen gazed about her at the destruction,
unconcerned, then turned back to him with that malicious, gloating smile. The
other four retreated, however, and with four av’tun flashes, were gone.

“My dear, beautiful mount, if you think that I am
the only one to make such a collection - why, then, you must not be as
intelligent as I gave you credit for. Not only am I not the only one, but I
learned from the
best
.” She seemed unfazed by her abandonment by her
compatriots.

He shut out her words. She was trying to get him to
charge in blind rage. And she was stalling so that her creatures could get in
around behind them. It did not matter if there were other zoos, other
menageries. He was here in
this
one. He intended to get out. He reached
to the Queen and began to rip the pearl stuff from her. She began to shriek, in
pain and, almost it seemed, surprise. The eve-mare creatures, held by her will,
were unleashed.

*:RUN!:* he sent, and led them away, back the way
they had come. The ground his Herd trod upon was stable, while all around them
the world became fluid. He made the faster members take the front, and the
slower and stronger ones bring up the rear, and he stayed at the very back. The
shadow creatures converged from all sides, so that they had to fight for every
step to freedom. It was a fight of pure survival, pure instinct, no weapons
besides those the Supreme One had bestowed upon them naturally, no tactics
except those that they were born knowing and those that the hardness of life
had taught them. Gavaron laid about with his hoofs and fists, breaking necks
when he could, stabbing with his elongated horn when in close quarters. He
could not use the earth now, not without risking hurting his Herd. Others
lashed out with huge paws and blood-red claws, stabbed with hooked beaks,
crushed with muscular bodies. There were no collars here to sever - these
creatures were pure evil in and of themselves, and only death stopped them.

When they finally broke through to the wilderness,
he had lost half his Herd to the blurring beasts. He sent the others to find
their lives, and turned back alone, to face the one who had come between him
and his promises. Bleeding, she faced him with a terrible wrath showing plainly
on her face. The blurring creatures ignored the escaping others and centered on
him. That was fine. That was just the way he wanted it. The earth rose in waves
to his command.

Blood will flow in rivers and pool into seas,
he remembered.
Here and now, he meant to keep that promise.

the darkness
turned...

CHAPTER
XVI

the light turned...

“
This
is grave news, my Daughter and Heir. Your illness saddens my heart. I have
received a correspondence from K’lad’mi confirming the Priest Ejai’li’s
assessment of your condition. However, I will need a third verification from a
more familiar source before any sure measures can be taken. I am relieving you
of your stewardship for the duration of your illness; you are to turn over all
duties to the Second Voice immediately and confine yourself to bed-rest and
minimal activity. My First Voice will be returning to rule in my stead. When I
receive a full report of your circumstance, then we may discuss the most
advantageous course of action...”

Silonyi pulled her eyes away from the neat script of
her mother’s transcriber.
Mother is confining me? She isn’t summoning me to
the Ritious City? How can this be?

She sank to the pallet surface, the papi’ras
slipping from numb fingers.
This has to be a mistake...
but somehow she
knew it was not.
Because of what I did and what happened, Mother is going to
- to let me die...

She snatched up the letter and scanned ahead.

“...If the Priest is correct, then we will pursue
the best course of action once I have returned...”

Her mother said nothing of ever going to the Ritious
City. The coldness that dawned in her stomach spread like crystallizing water. What
was her mother thinking?
Doesn’t she care at all?

It was almost beyond comprehension. Silonyi sat
shaking, not knowing what the cold sensation would turn into: fear, despair, or
anger. What was she supposed to think, to do?

What have I been taught all these cycles?
She had been
taught that she was a tool in her mother’s designs, and a broken tool was
discarded rather than fixed. She was a broken tool.

I never thought she would really throw me away,
she thought,
bitterly,
but she has. I am worthless to her. My life means nothing to her.
For
a gran she wallowed in despair. Then a spark of diamond determination flared in
her.
If I am a broken tool, then I must think like the broken tool that I
am. I will have to go - go to the Ritious City despite Mother’s orders.

But beneath the defiant thoughts was puzzlement, a
sore perplexity. Why had she not been discarded before? On that eve when her
mother had laid her memories bare and seen what had happened with the prisoner,
why had she not disposed of her then?

Maybe they were waiting to see if I’d been affected.
Maybe it has been the decisions I’ve made since then that have put me into this
position.

Would waiting, then, redeem her? Or would it cost
her her life? Or were the two one and the same?

Perhaps I have betrayed her in some way. Perhaps if
I waited, she would see that I am still loyal to her and she will be able to
get me there in time.
But somehow that did not seem quite right. That was not in keeping with her
mother’s mode of operation - in as much as she could read her mother’s
intentions. Then another thought dawned on her.

Haven’t I been taught never to trust even allies? That
if my life could either be in my hands or another’s, to always take it into my
own?
Maybe staying would be to fail in that lesson. Perhaps this was all a test of
her mettle, especially after her most recent failures. For her behavior at the
lorn had most definitely been a failure on her part. And she had been tested in
similar ways before -

She clung desperately to the thought, preferring it
to the thought that her life meant nothing to her mother.
Yes, I am being
tested. Never as drastically as this, but to make up for the lorn, maybe she
feels that a drastic test is needed. Maybe the whole thing is a test. Maybe
even the Priest was in on it. Maybe there was a rite upon the chi’av’an to
injure me in such a way that I would be forced into this position.

Well, then, I shall prevail. I will prove that I am
up to the task.
She immediately began to plot, standing up to pace, looking at her predicament
as a prisoner planning to escape would. And in truth, she was.

If my authority has not been taken away yet then I
can slip away before the warru get orders to stop me. But that would be too
easy. She will put obstacles in my way to assay my worth. So they already have
their orders and I am no longer autonomous. And my objective is the Ritious
City. What do I need to get there?
She went to a wide window to gaze out
over the hillside that T’chi’la had been built into thousands of cycles ago.

A guide. Food. Trading currency. Silonyi thought
about the first requirement, and the obvious answer almost made her laugh.
Him.
The prisoner. Isn’t it convenient that he just happens to be there right when I
would need a guide?
More proof that this was a test.
Yes, it is too
convenient to have been anything other than planned. Now getting him out and
making our escape will be the real feat.
Silonyi sat down on a padded bench
and considered. The De’en’nu was six turns away. If he agreed -
when he
agreed
- that gave her six turns to help him build his strength back up
enough to travel.

Now, how to get to him, and how do I get him what he
needs?
Getting to him - that was easy. The billa’ja’ways. Getting him what he required
- better food and Av’s light - past the guards was the problem. He was being
fed, to be sure, but merely to keep him alive, not to give him strength and
energy. And there was also the problem of his inactivity for so long. Would he
be able to travel even if she did get him out?

And the guards. They were bound under heavy rites of
obedience to her mother alone. She knew because she had tried to go and see him
again and the guards had stopped her.

Someone cleared a polite throat behind her. She
turned to see Imraja standing there.

“Is there anything you require, Highness?” the
second Voice asked. Was there something in her voice? An offer of help,
perhaps? Silonyi speculated for an instant about asking for Imraja’s help, then
decided against it.

“No, Imraja, there is nothing I require,” she said,
giving a tiny smile and a nod of polite dismissal. Imraja’s eyes narrowed
fractionally before she took her leave.

No, even if the Voice
did
want to help her,
and after the comment that Imraja had let slip, the temptation had been very
great to ask, it was too risky.

Silonyi turned back to her musings, though she felt
very enervated. Not having the sustenance of the Rite of Solu, whichever one,
was taking its toll.
And I was worrying about
him
being able to
travel.
I
might not make it.

She wracked her brain till her thoughts began to go
in circles. Then, it suddenly hit her.
He
had probably been planning
escape for as long as he had been in the den’lains. And he was a warru, or so
she surmised. He could tell her what would be required for a journey of the
magnitude she was contemplating. She made up her mind then and there. After the
eve meal, she would go down and see him. The sooner they started, the sooner
she could be cured.

...Dim-lit halls
turned to darkling haze, streaked with silver and summoned by a hissing
whisper...

The solitary guard slumped slightly as the air
around him turned fey and the beginnings of a tiny smile touched his lips; his
rite-glazed eyes receded further away into a muddled mist of obedience.

You are doing a good job,
a voice like
the Queen’s whispered to him.
For this I favor you above all others. Now,
stand still, very still; I am sending a - messenger to the prisoner to
interrogate him. You need not take notice of this messenger - in fact, it will
be better for you if my messenger did not take notice of you. You are the only
one I can trust to let this messenger pass. Do you understand?

The man nodded and drew himself up straight, held
himself stiff.

Excellent. Now you will see without seeing, observe
without acting. You will see what appears to be the Heir moving past you, but
that is just a guise to protect you from the messenger’s true form. You will
let the messenger pass and note nothing unusual in this. You will stand by as
the messenger interrogates the prisoner, and no matter what you think you hear,
you will not interfere. And when the messenger has left, you will report
nothing out of the ordinary has occurred. Do you understand?

Again the stiff nod.
Excellent. You shall be
rewarded.

And in truth, a form
did
pass before him that
looked like the Heir; he found nothing out of the ordinary in this, as per his
orders. She passed by without a glance, and he was grateful - the messenger’s
aspect was probably truly terrible. Resolutely, and under the pressure of the
rites holding him, he ignored the form and all that it said and did.

Silonyi moved to the bars of the cell and sat back
on her heels, setting her basket down on the floor beside her. She touched her
forehead and fought back a wave of tiredness. This was the fifth rite she had
had to perform this eve to get here, and it had drained her. Her mother’s
servants were very well protected against tampering. She had had to use every
bit of trickery and cunning just to make it this far. And she had left a trail
of tampering a yori’turn wide. But, hopefully, in seven turns it would not
matter.

She looked in on the prisoner. He was much the same
as she had last seen him, curled up on the floor of the cell, shivering in the
musty cool of the den’lains. Now he was not shivering, though. Now he lay as
one dead.

Silonyi gathered the tatters of her energy. The
guards changed every two san’chrons. She had less than one and a half to do
what she had come to do.

“Psst!” she hissed to the still figure, hoping that
he was just asleep. “Hey! You, prisoner!”

The man did not move.
Is he seriously sick?
Silonyi
gritted her teeth.
All this effort, and for what? Probably nothing!

“Hey!” she raised her voice as much as she dared. “Wake
up, man!” Nothing. And she had brought nothing with which she could prod him,
nothing to throw at him. Frustrated, and fearing time that slipped away like
mist, she reached through the bars to poke him. An instant before her fingers
touched his flesh his hand whipped out, a coiled snake striking, to seize her
wrist in a grip like death. He yanked her forward, so that she jammed painfully
against the bars; and before she could cry out, his other hand was around her
throat, crushing her windpipe.

“Well, well, wha’ we gah hyere?” his voice, thick
and hoarse, rumbled. She clawed at the hand throttling her, her lungs beginning
to burn for air. The hand gave her a stupefying shake that made her teeth
rattle. “A li’l spy, eint? Sneakin’ roung where she ain’t ‘posed to be, eint?” A
low chuckle moved around her.

Rage blossomed in Silonyi as she fought for even the
thinnest threat of air. She felt her inner reserves gather for a death-strike
at the prisoner, an instinctive act of self-preservation. Then a second thought
stopped her, even as she began to asphyxiate. He was probably counting on that,
wanting a quick death as opposed to slowly wasting away. But he could not get
what he wanted if he killed her or if she blacked out without striking. He had
to know that, and was trying to goad her into action. She marshaled herself,
forcibly holding back the strike on the man who dared to handle her so. Her
eyes misted over and her temples throbbed with the force of will as she tried
to stop struggling, tried to slow her heart-beat down, and held the retaliative
strike, held it, held it. Jets of freezing rage and chill-hot pangs of
retaliation swirled the air about her in a gathering storm. She held it.

You are here for a reason,
a part of her
reminded sternly.
Control even the most violent of killing rages, and you
have an awesome weapon waiting in the shadows.

His grip tightened, so that it felt as if the inner
sides of her throat were grating against each other. “Wah’s dis? Nuttin’ from
de li’l spy?” He shook her again, snapping her head back and forth on her neck.
The world took on a hint of rose...