The Carnelian Throne (30 page)

When they walked between them and Deilcrit extended his arm for Kirelli, a humming sound cut through the faraway whine of the wind over the ridge, and sent Deilcrit hastily retreating, until he was stopped by Quendros’ arm.

“What’s the matter, boy? Don’t like your palace?”

Deilcrit was struck speechless by what he saw between the two statues, and did not answer.

The apparition stood in a bath of light converging from the eyes of the whelt-headed statues.

Then Quendros’ arm was on his shoulders, and the older man’s reassuring voice whispered in his ear that the thing that approached them, through which the black paves could be dimly seen, whose head was like a whelt and whose body was like a woman’s, was a projection of light, a thing of man’s elder science, and told him not to be afraid. His mind heard, but his body did not. It shook like a leaf, until Kirelli straddled his shoulders and pressed cheek to his and gave him wehr-comfort.

So fortified by the confidence of both his allies, he neither fainted nor dropped to his knees before the glowing, flesh-toned apparition with its silver beak and cobalt crest.

This vision, which in Benegua’s mythology was that of Imca-Sorr-Aat’s female attribute, beckoned them, whelt-head cocked. Then it turned and floated down the middle of the black way along which sixteen identical statues stood guard.

Deilcrit’s teeth chattered loudly, and he clamped his jaws together until they ached. Quendros, beside him, gawked right and left, but when Deilcrit asked him how the light-thing could move away from the statues that Quendros said created it, the older man opened his mouth, closed it, and said: “Never mind.”

Before a gaping portal thrice his height and wide enough to hold the men standing abreast, the image flickered, faded, and from within another, seemingly identical, beckoned out of the dim.

Quendros strode across the threshold. Deilcrit’s legs were rooted to the back steps. Kirelli nudged him, cooed softly, then tugged at his hair.

Quendros, within, shouted: “Look, Deilcrit,” and thrust his hand through the substance of the wheltheaded deity and waved the hand around.

Deilcrit squinted above, at the sky, at the last pair of black whelt-headed statues with their beaks turned toward him, staring down reproachfully; at the huge obsidian tower within which Quendros already stood.

There was a soft kissing sound. Kirelli squawked, took leave of his shoulder, and darted through the mighty portal. Deilcrit hesitated another moment, realized that the portal was indeed closing, and bounded through in three leaps. To find himself pulled up short by the slamming together of the glassy slabs upon the tail of his ragged shirt.

He lunged against the thing that restrained him, unthinking, and the ill-used tunic ripped from his shoulders and he stumbled into Quendros’ arms.

“Easy there, Deilcrit, it’s only a door. You made it. We made it. We’re
in
Othdaliee.”

Embarrassed, Deilcrit pulled away and stared at the glassy black portal from whose mouth dangled his garment, and at the patiently waiting apparition. Then he craned his neck and followed the black walls up into the dark. At about eye level on one of the walls was a large oval in which bricks of colored light were stacked. As he watched, the bricks flickered, changed color, ceased to exist. Quendros was peering intently at the oval. So, apparently, was the apparition, which stood by Quendros with raised arm.

As he joined them and Kirelli alighted on his shoulder, he realized that the apparition would point to a brick and then Quendros would touch it and then the color would change and they would repeat the process.

When Quendros did not answer his query as to what he was doing, Deilcrit turned around and stared at the black doors, closed up for a thousand years.

Then Kirelli nudged him and he turned back to where a rainbow display now filled the oval and the wall was drawing back into itself to expose a corridor lit with a dancing red glow. The whelt shivered and made an agitated little noise.

So he thought calm thoughts to it, reminding the whelt that soon they would both have their freedom, one way or the other, while he hissed at Quendros: “What did you do?” once again.

“Pressed what buttons were indicated. You want to go home, this is a little late.” And he bowed low and sweepingly to Deilcrit, and indicated the corridor wherein danced the red light.

Then Kirelli humped up his wings and shook off his fear and flew first into the corridor of reddish mist. He could do no other than to follow. He was just turning to reassure Quendros when the wall through which he had entered closed upon itself.

He pounded on the wall and yelled Quendros’ name until he realized the futility of what he did, then sat at its foot and closed his eyes and took stock of himself, searching out that purpose which he had thought he had here.

Even through his closed eyelids he was dizzied by the lights pulsing. He fingered the hilt of the sword he bore, and spoke harshly to himself and dredged up Mahrlys’ face. But it was a long while before his legs would hold him and he rose up in the narrow, low corridor to take Kirelli onto his shoulder and walk the length of it, looking betimes at his feet, which seemed to sink into webs of flame that splashed and clung to his ankles. The farther he proceeded down the corridor, the deeper the sticky webs became, until he slogged through them rather than raising his feet so that he could see them between steps. By the time the strangely liquid filaments had reached his thighs, both he and the whelt knew that this was what they had come so far to find, and their cheeks were pressed together and their minds embraced more tightly than ever. He had allowed himself to be enfolded by Wehrdom’s caress. So tightly that Kirelli heard his every fear and he himself was inundated with wheltly trepidation, and all of Kirelli’s conjecture as to what strength they might throw into that consuming red glitter that threatened to wipe from them all cognizance of individuality came clear to him.

Tightly held the whelt to his mind. Brightly burned its claws in his shoulder, and he was glad of the pain as the red stuff through which he walked congealed thicker and lapped about his chest. He felt little stingings, like insect bites, from the filaments the stuff threw up, but once his skin was immersed in it he felt nothing. It was not a physical danger, in truth, he faced there, but one of mind. When Kirelli’s claws and his chin were beneath the surface and the salty taste of it lapped against his lips, he felt terror that even their combined strengths would not be enough; that the inundation of knowledge to which their linked minds were being subjected would prove too great; that their conjectures were unfounded and they would lose remembrance of their purpose before the moment at which they must act to save themselves came. And then the sparkling red mist was in his mouth and his eyes and he felt Kirelli shiver against him and closed his lips and lids and tried to breathe the stuff in and his lungs exploded and he did indeed forget who he was.

But Kirelli did not, and he was conscious of raising his arm slowly through the viscous stuff around him to steady the whelt on his shoulder. He wanted to stop, to cease the senseless pushing, but the whelt urged him on. He plodded sightless through the blood-warm sea for eternity. Eternity consisted of Kirelli’s wehr-voice cooing his name and the whelt’s claws in his shoulder and at its end lay the dreaming mind of Imca-Sorr-Aat.

“Deilcrit.”

“
—Kire ...
I cannot think .... What is it l must not forget?”

“Imca-Sorr-Aat lives in dreams. He kills for dreams. We must not let him .... Deilcrit, do not sleep .... If
you cannot hold, open your mind to Wehrdom ...”

And then he heard the whelt no more, but only faced that which rose out of the mist at him: a muscular ossasim thrice the size of any he had seen, talons extended. He tensed to throw himself aside, upon the boulder-strewn ground, then recalled there were no boulders in the corridor of red mist. There was red mist: it seemed that the whole ossasim was comprised of red mist, and when he grappled with it his arms would not obey him and his hands closed upon empty air. Yet he felt its teeth in his neck and then its great weight pinning him down as it poured into his defenseless mind all of the burden of knowledge that had been Imca-Sorr-Aat’s for twenty-five thousand years. And he screamed, and gurgled, and drowned in what no man should hear. Insanity beckoned, mindlessness a cool dark refuge with a lovely woman at its gate, yet he could not even surrender, for he lay helpless in the clutches of Imca-Sorr-Aat. The mad red eyes burned into him every knowledge forgotten and damned, and the lives of the billions it held chronicled within were his lives, and he lived them each and all. And at the end of them trailed his own, and he recognized all that he had been, and recollected his purpose, and tasted of his own strength. Then did he open his mind to Wehrdom and let the crushing weight of the years flood through him and out into the mind of every wehr who lived. And there came a great sighing, and a wailing shook the ground under him, and it cracked asunder, and the red mist that was Imca-Sorr-Aat began to discorporate before his eyes.

A terrible urgency filled him, that Imca-Sorr-Aat might escape and leave him trapped in the shuddering dreamscape. With all his determination he called on those wails as his own, willing the most palpable. Slowly, the thing that was Imca-Sorr-Aat took shape once more, and as it did, he grabbed its neck in both his hands and dug in his thumbs. For a score of heartbeats there existed only his straining fingers and the jaws seeking his throat.

Then he was coughing paroxysmatically, on his hands and knees, before an open doorway. Kirelli the whelt lay motionless by his right hand. By his left glittered oasasim feet through which the floor could be seen. Still choking, his eyes streaming tears, he gathered up the whelt and held it to his ear. A heart beat, weak but clear, within the feathered breast. He pressed the whelt against him and rocked slowly back and forth on his knees, not knowing what else to do for it, though within him rustled something which knew more than he ever dreamed possible. He did not prod that nightmare, quiescent. What lapped around the edges of his conscious mind told him more than enough. He knew for what the whelt-headed attendant waited, knew what yet lay between him and the carnelian throne.

But he sang wordlessly to the whelt, limp in his arms, content to wait.

This was their journey, together. He thought, inundated by grief, that though it was but a few steps more, he could not make it alone.

“You promised me, whelt, that you would follow me one day. That day has not come. Live!” And he pressed his head to the whelt’s, and sent himself within its mind.

A soft, frightened thing curled there, whimpering. He reached with comfort, with success, with love, into the whelt mind. But the crying thing would not come forth.

Wordlessly he entered his despair, his own fear, his need, into that empty space, and Kirelli came to fill it.

The limp whelt body stirred, fluttered, grew animated in his arms. He sat back on his haunches and laid Kirelli on his thighs and stroked the cobalt crest. There was an explosion of wings, and an irritable “Breet,” and the whelt stood uncertainly on the floor by his knee, shifting from foot to foot.

Deilcrit rubbed his eyes and snorted and growled menacingly to the whelt that their host awaited them. Then, trying hard not to grin, he extended his arm.

As the age-old guardian of light preceded them down innumerable corridors that lit when they entered and darkened when they left, he allowed himself the first small thrill of triumph. He had not been consumed by the trial of Imca-Sorr-Aat.

The corridor had not judged him fit only to end as fodder for Othdaliee’s fire. And his mind had not turned to curd ....

But then the light figure winked out abruptly, and all about him the illumination dimmed, and the walls drew back to admit him into the presence of Imca-Sorr-Aat.

Here were corporeal attendants, ossasim in resplendent cinnabar robes who stood rigid about the octagonal chamber’s walls, staring straight ahead of them. These were the servants of Imca-Sorr-Aat’s flesh, deployed around their master, who slumped as if sleeping in his carnelian throne.

With a whisper to Kirelli to take wing, Deilcrit approached the throne alone.

None among the ossasim lining the walls moved. Their eyes did not follow him. It was possible those eyes did not see, that they saw only Imca-Sorr-Aat, that they had seen nothing else for a thousand years. He did not fear them. They would not move to stop him. They were disfrancished with their sleeping regent.

He climbed the three steps slowly, heavily. He had won this right, and none would stop him, but as he faced his last grisly task, he faltered.

He looked down into the peaceful, sleeping face of the snow-white ossasim whose dreams had ruled Wehrdom for the last millenium. His hands clenched convulsively on the sword he bore at his hip. For a thousand years the interface that coordinated Wehrdom had been this ossasim, kept alive by Othdaliee’s elder knowledge. Yet and still did the burden of that correlative function lay upon the brain whose projection had battled him in a dreamland of its construction. What would be left of Deilcrit as he knew himself when he alone bore Wehrdom’s weight? Not for ten thousand years had he who bore the title Imca-Sorr-Aat been more than an idiot-savant. This the thing which lay in the back of his mind told him smugly.

Upon an instant, before the thing that dwelt in him could weaken him further, he drew the sword and mounted the final step and lopped off the head of the ossasim who had been Imca-Sorr-Aat.

Then
did he feel the full weight of what resided in Othdaliee.

Twice since entering the gardens of Othdaliee had we been beset by creatures intent on turning Mahrlys’ prophecy of our deaths into truth. First, the guerm attacked upon putting us ashore at a flight of hand-hewn steps leading toward a crevice from which spilled amber light. And we had killed the guerm, and Mahrlys had wept, and Chayin had growled, and Sereth warned them both that he was near the end of his patience.