The Rebel of Rhada (9 page)

Fear the Vulk, for he sees without eyes and knows the black arts and dreams of the blood of children. He is not as men. He is without loyalty.

Preface to
The Vulk Protocols,
authorship unknown,
Interregnal period

The Vulk known to humans by the name of Erit stood rigidly against the stones of the spiraling passageway cut into the citadel wall. All around her in the darkness, the Vykan warmen waited for her to waken from her dream. She was conscious of them, conscious of the slender girl in mail war-harness kneeling at her side, but their nearness was only a distraction, and Erit forced the luminous images out of her mind and reached into the night.

A tremor shook her slight form as the contact grew stronger. So near. So very near. It had been a very long time since Erit had touched one of her own, and it would have given her great pleasure, but there was death and danger in the air, in the night, everywhere.

Where?

Near, sister. Very near. Above you.

A thousand greetings. Peace.

Impatience.
You are young, sister. There is no peace.

We will come to you.

Can you?

We must. We are in a trap.

No more than we.

But you hope. I can hear it.

Forgive me. I should have known she was with you.

The warmen muttered in the darkness. There were only five. The sixth had died in the tower room. But there were nine dead Vegans there. The youngest soldier, fresh this last month from Vyka, thought about the mountains and lakes of his home world and wondered bleakly if he would ever see his land again. Then he glanced uneasily at the trance-held Vulk and wondered if it could truly read his thoughts as people said. He squared his shoulders and rubbed the thin sword cut on his arm. It didn’t matter if the Vulk could, though it would be unfitting if the creature should tell the princess of his feelings. He swallowed hard and moved closer to Ariane. He would give his life for her, and he very nearly had when his detachment had sneaked back into the city from across the river to attack the Vegans guarding her. He stole a glance at the face hidden under the cap of god-metal and thought, with all the sincerity of his eighteen years:
I shall defend her with my last breath.
Then he thought sadly that in a palace now suddenly filled with mutinous Imperials, it seemed likely that he would soon be called upon to fulfill that promise.

Ariane said, “Erit, can you hear me?”

The Vulk did not reply. Her hands clenched and opened with the effort to maintain contact.

Do you see what is around me? Do you know where we are?

Erit trembled with eagerness.
Yes. Now I see. You are in the tower.

Can you bring her here?

She will seek your
--The idea was a Vulk concept for which there was no human counterpart. It contained elements of brotherhood, devotion, kinship, almost symbiosis. It was to the other Vulk what Ariane was to Erit--that human person without which no Vulk could be complete.

Excitement. Hope.

Find him! He is in pain. I can feel it.

It will endanger her.
The ancient Vulk conflict now: one trapped into opposition with another because their human symbiotes’ interests might clash.

Erit felt an overpowering command. The Vulk Gret was far older and more nearly mature than she. Her mind wavered under the power of his authority. Erit shivered and withdrew. She sank to the cold stone ramp, trembling and exhausted.

Ariane cradled Erit in her arms. Presently, the Vulk murmured, “Rhadans. In the tower. Somehow they think they can escape--”

“Kier’s men. Gret.”

“Yes, Ariane. Gret.” Erit shivered again as she said the name. “They said to come, if we can.” “And Kier?”

The Vulk remained silent.

“Gret must know where he is. He has been with him since childhood.”

“As I have with you, Ariane.”

Ariane’s anger flashed suddenly. “Where is he? I command you, Erit. Speak or I send you from me!”

Erit did not reply that in their present circumstances-- or for that matter, in any others--what Ariane threatened was impossible for them both. She shrugged her thin shoulders in a Vulk gesture of resignation. If Ariane died, then Erit would die as well. So in the cosmic eternity, what did it matter?

“He is with the Questioner,” the Vulk said.

The question room lay deep in the tel under the Citadel. To reach it meant a journey along passageways that had once, long ago, been lined with rails of god-metal. No one knew how long ago these tunnels through Tel-Manhat had been built nor for what purpose. In most places the ancient rails had rusted away, and in others the metal had been removed to be resmelted into armor and weapons.

Kier had tried to remember the route the squad of Imperials had taken, but he was unaccustomed to these underground warrens, and by the time he had been delivered to the black-garbed executioners who served the Questioner, he was thoroughly lost. His Rhadan courage sustained him, but his Rhadan melancholy prepared him for a lingering and painful death.

At the moment he was thinking of Gret. The contact was very strong. Gret was still alive and filled with strange Vulk excitements, perhaps caused by the nearness of freedom. It would be almost time for the starship to appear.

The Questioner was a large masked man in black. The post was traditionally anonymous to safeguard the person of the state torturer from the vengeance of his many victims’ relations and dependents. And the man’s very anonymity surrounded him and his domain with dread.

The Imperials had stationed themselves outside the torchlit room, and the executioners, seven of them by tradition and law, had delivered the young Rhad to their master in silence.

In the question room all commands were given by signal, and only the Questioner himself spoke to the detainee.

The huge, black-clad man had a surprisingly high-pitched and effeminate voice that heightened the feeling of increasing horror.

“A Rhadan star king, no less.” The lips that showed through the opening in the sable mask were red and shining. The teeth were long and white, like flat slabs of porcelain. “What will they send me next, I wonder?”

He signaled to his helpers. They crowded around Kier like demons. He could sense their eagerness for the questioning to begin.

“Now, my pretties,” the Questioner said. “We cannot begin this minute. We have to know what questions to ask, don’t we? But we
can
prepare, yes. By all the cybs and little demons, we
can
do that.”

His movements were graceful for so large a man. He walked around the chamber lightly, examining his devices. The hands on Kier’s flesh felt cold and dry, like the hands of corpses.

The room had a concrete floor and white tiled walls. The railed tunnel extended through one side of the chamber, and heavy wooden doors had been built where the roadbed entered and left the open area. That part of the room had been planked over to the level of the floor, and the remainder of the chamber contained a devilish assortment of god-metal and wooden machines intended to stretch, break, and twist the human body.

“What shall it be?” the Questioner murmured happily. “Not the rack. No, not the rack for a star king. Too common, a death without style.” He turned toward a dark brazier containing rods and pincers. “The fire? How would the fire suit you, King?”

Kier regarded him coldly and hoped that the dread in his heart did not show. A stinking way for a warman to die; under torture in a hole in the earth half the sky away from his own lands.

“The Queen,” the Questioner said. “Yes, I think so. For a star king--the Queen.”

Kier followed him with his eyes as he walked to a statue of god-metal formed in the likeness of a woman with extended arms. The metal face was serene, the standing pose voluptuous.

The red lips smiled, and the eyes behind the mask glittered. “Look at our beautiful lady, King. See how she waits to embrace you.” He giggled grotesquely. “I hear that the royal Rhad are great lovers of women. What could be more fitting than a tryst with the Queen of the question room?”

Kier studied the metal woman and saw that the arms were hinged at the shoulders. From the back of the statue projected a screw device, like the twist handle of a great wine press. A shudder of horror passed through him.

The Questioner signaled his helpers, and they pulled Kier across the room until he stood facing the metal woman. They raised his bound wrists and forced them over the head of the statue so that he hung helplessly against the cold body.

“Now gently, gently,” the Questioner said. “Let her embrace him.”

An executioner began to turn the screw, and Kier felt the unyielding touch of the arms closing about him. It took all of his will not to struggle, not to give his torturers the satisfaction of seeing a Rhadan warman flinch from what must come.

The arms closed more tightly about him, crushing him against the metal breasts, driving the breath from him. A cold sweat broke out on his face, and tiny lancets of pain shot through his chest. The Questioner was studying his face with the interest of an expert, gauging his pain. He signaled a quarter turn on the screw and smiled in satisfaction as the metal arms sent a streak of agony through Kier.

“Ah, there. We’ll leave him so for a time.” The heavy black figure shook with enjoyment. “Let him become accustomed to his Queen. Too much love is a bad thing, even for a mighty Rhad.”

There was a hollow roaring in Kier’s head. His compressed lungs struggled to breathe. A darkness flickered before his eyes, and he wondered how long his superbly conditioned body would betray him by staying alive and in such pain.

He imagined he could hear the sound of clashing weapons beyond the wooden door to the question room, but he was certain he must be mistaken. Perhaps it was only the iron sound of the gears inside the Queen.

The executioners had left him. He could not turn his head to see what was happening, but one moved by him holding a weapon. There was a crashing of bodies against the door and then the noise of combat inside the question room. Kier strained to free himself from the machine’s embrace, feeling blood flow down his side as his own mail tore his flesh.

The Questioner gave a womanish cry of mingled fear and anger, and suddenly he was at the screw, throwing his weight against it with that desperation of executioners-- that vindictive rage that demands a victim should die rather than be set free.

The Queen’s arms tightened. Kier knew that in another moment his chest would be crushed. Two warmen, Vyks by their harness, appeared in the torchlight. Behind them one of the Questioner’s helpers staggered against the wall, his black clothing stained with red.

A warman pulled the Questioner away from the Queen, and the other, with a quick motion, passed a blade in and out of the fat body. Kier did not see him fall. For the young star king there was only pain and darkness.

Hee tooke a course, which since, successfully / Great men have often taken, to espie / The counsels, or to breake the plots of foes.

Attributed to John Donne (or Dunne), poet-religious of the pre-Golden Age period.
Fragment found at Biblios Brittanis, Mars

Men called her Princess
Men called her Queen
Wore she armor of purest gold
And loved she well her Rim-world king
She whom the warmen called--Ariane!

Guest Song, authorship unknown,
early Second Stellar Empire period

“He will live, Ariane,” the Vulk Erit said.

Kier opened his eyes and drew breath after breath into his aching lungs. He could see Vyk warmen standing over him; his head rested on someone’s mailed thighs, and a Vulk’s hands massaged the bruised muscles of his chest.

He looked up to see who was caring for him so gently. The girl dressed in Vykan war harness was young and very beautiful. Her hair was dark and cropped so that it formed a dark crown around the clear-featured face. The eyes were dark blue and slightly tilted.

He half smiled and said, “Is this the crystal starship, then? I’m on my way to paradise?”

“Kier of Rhada,” the girl said with mingled anger and relief, “how could you have walked into Mariana’s trap without a thought?”

Kier sat up carefully, testing his battered body. The Vulk had done well with him.

He looked long and silently at the girl. “It’s Ariane, isn’t it? I remember you.”

The blue eyes flashed with swift anger. “Should I be complimented, Rhad? You didn’t answer my question. How could you have been such a fool?”

Kier flexed his arms, wincing at the pain. “I suspected misfeasance, not treason”--he frowned and his face grew dark--”and murder.”

Ariane’s shoulders sagged under the mail. “Is it true, then? They have killed my brother?”

Kier’s voice was low. “They say so, Queen.”

At his use of the title, the Vykans murmured among themselves and looked at Ariane with a new, almost fearful expression.

Kier stood unsteadily and rested his weight against the dark figure of the god-metal woman whose embrace had almost been his undoing. Then he took Ariane’s hands and pulled her gently to her feet. Her eyes were shining with sudden tears, but he pretended not to notice them. He swept the room with a glance. The Questioner and his men lay still on the concrete floor. The Vykans stood uncertainly. Kier spoke directly to them. “How many more of you are there still here?”

A young warman, a boy of eighteen, not more, said, “Only what you see, King. They ordered the whole division of us across the river into camp. When we got there, five hundred Imperials were there with missile weapons to watch us.”

“But you five came back.”

“There were six of us. Our sergeant died when we fought the Veg guarding Ariane. There were nine of them,” he added with a touch of pride, “and they are all dead.” He paused uncertainly, not knowing how exactly to speak to a Rhad captain without sounding boastful. “The six of us, King,” he added, “are from Vyka. From Ariane’s lands.”