I will come soon, she told it, projecting as much confidence as she could summon.
The feinna would not be so easily dissuaded, for it had access to levels of her mind where fear could not be suppressed by reason. Glynn desperately visualised an image of her returning to the chamber and draping the feinna around her neck, before leaving again and going to the mural garden. Immediately the feinna’s level of agitation dropped, and to Glynn’s relief, she felt its crooning approval in her mind. She allowed the feinna to feel her relief, and at the same time, fought to calm her mind and emotions. As had been the case since her link with the little He, this was no easy matter. Focusing and calming her mind required far greater efforts than in the past because part of her mind was feinna now, and not susceptible to human arguments and rationalisations.
When her mind was as serene as she could make it, she sent softly and regretfully that the escape which they both desired must wait a little.
Must prepare way for going, she sent, indicating that this was her current errand.
Coming withsisterling. Protecting, the feinna responded.
Not needing protecting, littlebrotherling. Needing waiting, Glynn returned more firmly. This time she sent an image of the youngling hiding in the crevice beneath the bed and waiting patiently and quietly for her return.
There was a cessation of agitation and pressure. Waiting, the feinna acquiesced forlornly. But it repeated Glynn’s image of her return with a vividness that made it a command. Even distracted as she was, the strength of the little animal’s communication skills amazed her. The feinna was still immature, yet it had already surpassed its mother. What would it be capable of when it was fully grown?
The draakira appeared, pushing her way through the throng. ‘Come,’ she said brusquely and turned on her heel. Following obediently, Glynn thought of one of Wind’s sayings: ‘Always appear to be and do what is expected, until you strike, and then show the utmost in originality.’
So, what was unexpected? she wondered. The Draaka would expect her to be afraid, but to do the unexpected, that is, not to show fear, would be suicide. The draakira expected fear from underlings and cultivated it. Defiance on Glynn’s part would only make the Draaka feel that she was not properly respectful.
Glynn was so preoccupied by her thoughts that when the draakira turned to her unexpectedly, she stumbled and clutched at her arm. ‘Clumsy aspi!’ the woman hissed, lifting a hand to strike her. The feinna part of Glynn urged her to respond to the woman’s physical aggression by striking first, and Glynn had to force herself to cringe. The woman’s rage faded into irritation and then into a sneering superiority as she cut off Glynn’s stammered apology and gestured at the door. Glynn moved to the threshold, thinking how often the draakira cut one another off halfway through sentences. It happened so often that it could only be a deliberate mannerism cultivated to unnerve and belittle. She had never been permitted to see the training of draakira on Acantha, but Wind had said an opponent’s training could be deduced from their behavior and reactions and she had seen enough of the draakira to know that they were taught to use fear and all its variations as a mode of control. They were adept at causing and shaping fear to their own ends because that was how they were controlled and instructed. Glynn thought it was not unlike the punitive response to failure or error used by some martial-arts teachers, which was then adopted by their students. Bad teachers, Wind had called them.
Not his way to use disharmony against disharmony. One might defeat an opponent with such an approach, but the ultimate result was not harmony. It was always Wind’s preference to approach all deeds with the desire to restore harmony to the flow of things. His teaching had emphasised channelling violence into harmony. Before action, always words and a manner shaped to defuse and gentle aggression. When force must be used, then only enough to defend and disable, ceasing as soon as possible to allow harmonising techniques.
Glynn suddenly realised that this might be the key to dealing with the Draaka. She could offer aid and willingness rather than fear. The Draaka would certainly be unlikely to expect that, and was unlikely to be threatened by it. The door to the chamber opened and Glynn’s heart began to pound as a draakira looked out and bade her enter.
The first thing Glynn noticed was that the room had changed again. Or better to say that what had been in the process of being made the day before had been completed. The window that had offered a view of the citadel and the sea was covered completely by scarlet draperies, as were most of the bare walls. No daylight at all entered the room now, and as the lanterns that had hung from the walls had been removed, the only light came from clusters of fat brownish-red candles in low wide stands around the perimeter of the room. Their shifty light fell on thick, red-dyed pelts that Glynn had first seen in the chamber of the Draaka on Fomhika scattered over the floor, and she wondered if the rugs had been purchased on Fomhika or had been gifts from Gedron.
Two enormously tall carved stone pillars flanked the dais and the cloth-draped chair atop it, each supporting a truly dazzling display of clustered darklinstones. Glynn knew all too well what an incredible display of wealth this represented, for the stones were unused darklins which throbbed with their unleashed potential.
A dark-clad figure occupied the cloth-draped chair, but it was impossible to see the Draaka’s face, because banks of candles were set up before the dias, and shielded at the back in order to throw all of their light forward onto whomever stood before the chair, and making it impossible to see who sat upon it. But even if the chair had been well lit, Glynn found it curiously difficult to direct her eyes at the Draaka, for it must be she. Her fienna senses told her that her reluctance was the result of the darklin clusters, which drew the eyes into their gleaming depths, and which also gave off a flow of energy that drew the eye away from the chair to the outer edges of the room where tiny candles flickered in the gloom like the eyes of animals. Despite her feinna abilities and knowledge, Glynn found she was unable to resist the hypnotic energy of the darklins. She found her gaze dragged away from the dais and sent into a slow spiral around the room; a movement which became seductively faster. Trying to look at the Draaka was rather like trying to swim against or out of a strong current of water. The harder you tried, the more dizzying the drag away.
A person without feinna senses would likely be terrified by what seemed to be the power of the person on the dais to repel their eyes.
Thinking again of Wind’s advice to win by surrender, Glynn allowed the darklinstone current to take her mind, this time without resistance. Immediately, she found herself in a calm state that was not unlike that induced by the drug sharap’n. Fortunately, only her human mind was affected; the feinna part of her registered the current and its effect, but was untouched by it. Glynn knew that she had only to exercise her feinna senses and they would clear her human mind.
Someone pushed Glynn from behind, and she tottered forward to the dais and bowed low. Waiting to be given permission to rise, her eyes rested on the small black-shod feet showing beneath the hem of the gown worn by the Draaka seated on the chair. The fabric of the dress was a crimson so dark and thickly napped that blackness seemed to collect in the folds. From the corner of her eye Glynn noted the senior draakira standing to one side of the dais, all clad in formal black robes upon which the red embroidered sun of the Draaka cult flared dully. A shiver of unease ran through her.
‘So, girl.’ The husky mellifluous voice of the Draaka was as appealing as ever, but there was a surge of potency in the room when she spoke. Glynn’s feinna senses registered that the darklinstones were keyed to surge at the sound of the woman’s voice. ‘You may stand,’ the Draaka said and, abruptly, all of the forces and currents in the room reversed and began flowing towards the older woman, as if her words had been a signal.
Glynn could have resisted the summoning but she lifted her head, mugging obedience.
The Draaka was still virtually invisible behind the glare of the candles, and Glynn’s m
omentary apprehension began to fade because, after all, this was little more than stage effects designed to render a supplicant malleable and fearful. An ordinary Keltan would be completely intimidated; even Kalide might feel less sure of himself faced by this display. But even if she had not benefited from the clarity of mind imposed by the feinna link, Glynn came from a world where people made an entire career out of creating illusions and special effects, and she felt herself immune.
There was a rattle of paper and Glynn saw that the Draaka had opened out a scroll. Was this intended to remind her of her unimportance? Glynn willed her feinna vision to allow her to penetrate the darkness and see the Draaka clearly.
Immediately the shadows began to thin and a queer dread stabbed at Glynn at the thought of what might be revealed. Idiot, she chided herself. Hadn’t she seen the Draaka drooling and slack-mouthed before her bath only two nights past?
When she could see the Draaka at last, it was all she could do not to scream. For seated upon the throne was not the mature beauty who had won the affections of the chieftain of Acantha, a white streak shining through her black hair. Here was a raven-haired beauty of no more than twenty with full red lips and sharp, even little teeth. There was no doubt that it was the same woman, yet it was as if the Draaka had shed quarter of a century of age, or had been replaced by her own daughter. Her skin, devoid of any paint or powder, was so flawless that it seemed to glow.
The Draaka looked up from the scroll she had been given by Mingus, who stood at her elbow, and Glynn felt her blood freeze in her veins, for the glittering black eyes with their dirty yellowish whites were not those of a twenty-year-old woman nor even of a woman of forty or fifty; they were eyes so ancient as to belong to an immortal or an alien.
The moment she met that gaze, Glynn felt as if two merciless black spikes had been driven into her. Every hair on her body stood on end as she felt herself drawn into the will behind those eyes like a hooked marlin. She knew that she had made a terrible mistake, but it was impossible to turn back. Her feinna senses had begun to shriek at her to flee, registering such visceral revulsion that it took all of her human will to remain standing there. Glynn was left to fight the pull alone, while being drained and distracted by feinna terror.
She tried to tell herself that what she was seeing and feeling was just another illusion. How could it be otherwise? A person could not reverse time. She suddenly remembered hearing talk of a drug produced by Iridomi olfactors, which came in the form of a fine light dust that had to be sprinkled into candle flames to activate, and which caused vivid delusions.
That must be what this is, Glynn thought. The Draaka and her people have all taken the antidote.
‘Who are you?’ the Draaka asked. The white, perfectly sculpted nostrils quivered like an animal’s scenting prey as Glynn struggled to formulate an answer. But now her feinna senses had begun to pick up something under or behind the Draaka’s voice; a jibbering vibration that had nothing to do with the darklinstones. It was coming from the Draaka herself. From inside her.
The superstitious fear she had tried to rein in burst free into a dreamy floating horror at the sudden dreadful notion that it was the Chaos spirit looking out at her through those bleared eyes; a grotesque monster whispering, Feed me.
The feinna part of her mind shrieked of danger, and Glynn bit her lip hard enough to taste blood and tried desperately to look away from the Draaka. But she had undone herself, for by enabling herself to see into the shadows, she had been caught by those two burning eyes. Even as she watched, it seemed to her that they now merged into one; a black whirlpool, sucking at her. Drawing her into a hot, sick radiance.
Neither her human nor feinna senses could disengage. And now she could also sense the feinna-He behind the screen she had erected to keep it from her mind during the interview with the Draaka. Clamouring for her to let it in so that it could protect her. She dared not obey for fear that it would distract her further.
‘Tell me …’ the Draaka’s voice invited, and to her horror, Glynn’s mouth opened and she knew that she would tell the Draaka anything she asked. Everything.
In desperation, she opened her mind wide and the feinna entered, instantly occupying every part of her mind and body. She had thought herself merged with the feinna, but in that second she knew it had not been so. They had been separate and now they were not, and something inside her alchemised to become a thing that was neither feinna nor human, but something else altogether.
This inner self, too new to name or comprehend, drew her powerfully back from the voluptuous black summoning of the Draaka’s eyes; pulled her mind and spirit back and back and away.
But still the blackness held her, and now she felt its claws.
No!!! Her mind screamed out and instinctively she flung her own awareness away from the devouring black maw of the Draaka’s gaze. Out and away her mind flew. Dimly she saw …
… Solen dropping a piece of yellow cloth and echoing her cry …
… Ember waking from sleep to rise up and cry out, her eyes wide open …
Out and out and out, her feinna-human awareness flew and she seemed to hear a tearing sound as if the very matter of the universe was torn and she saw …
… a boy with red hair sitting bolt upright, the pigeon on his finger spreading glorious crimson-flecked wings …
… the old man from the Greek taverna strumming a jarring chord …
… a man rocking a baby, clutching it to him in sudden fright …
… a middle-aged man holding the hand of an old woman lying in a bed, throwing out an arm as if to ward off a blow …
… a Chinese woman looking up at the moon in fright …
… a powerfully-built woman weeping and gathering a smaller woman into her arms …
… a young uniformed policeman stopping in the process of handcuffing an adolescent with a bruised cheek. ‘It is true!’ he whispered.
Out and out and out, and then the motion reached its furthest point and there was a moment of stillness. For a moment – a split second – she saw a manbeast in a round room rise from an armchair, a shocked look on his face.
No! he snarled, baring his teeth. He flung out a claw-tipped hand and Glynn was a fly, swatted into the darkness.
segue …
Battered by what it had done, the watcher segued to the Unraveller’s world. Again it had shown its hand, but there had been no choice. The girl had been about to open herself to the Chaos spirit and, if it had entered her, it would have known that she was a stranger. Then the Chaos spirit might begin to look more closely at all that Lanalor had done. The blonde girl was proving to be more of a wild thing than it had expected. Certainly what had shaped itself between her and the feinna was unique and transcended many things, but still it was not more important than her purpose on Keltor. The Chaos spirit must not be allowed to learn the truth of her.
The watcher allowed itself to drift on the currents of the dreams and thoughts of this world, and was drawn to a mind that was familiar. An older man, whom it had entered before, climbed onto a bus. As the bus set off with a jerk, a younger boy began to be mercilessly bullied by his older schoolmates. One of the tormenters stood out because he was older and wore casual clothes, black to match the hair that brushed his collar. His handsome face was twisted into a mocking smile and the man was repelled by the cruel pleasure in his eyes. Retreating into the pure sorrow of his own grief the man turned away. Entering him, the watcher was struck by the beauty of his sorrow at a child who had died. His son who had first been blinded by a tumour, and then had died of it.
I don’t know if there is any point in us staying together, he was thinking. It feels wrong to love or laugh or anything now. We are only reminders of unbearable loss for one another. We are our own torturers. It will never end while we are together. The baby will be dying forever and always and we will be mourning him forever because to cease would be a betrayal …
Strange, the watcher thought. The man’s sorrow was so pu
re that it made the man impervious to despair.
My own pain was not so fair, it thought, and segued to two women, one of them ill; more ill than either of them realised. Yet she had courage and love shimmered about the pair.
‘You’ll be up soon enough,’ the woman beside the bed assured her sick lover, patting their entwined fingers as if they were a little animal between them.
‘Of course I will, Faye. But listen, what about that boy? The glue-sniffer. Did they ever find out who he was?’
‘No,’ the big blonde woman frowned. ‘At least, his street name is the Shadow, but no one seems to know his real name or anything much about him, and he can’t tell us who he is because he still hasn’t woken.’
‘He’ll wake,’ the thin woman in the bed avowed.
‘Maybe. I saw Johnny the other day,’ Faye said, looking troubled.
‘Still worrying about that boy he gaoled?’
‘Yeah, but it’s more than that. I … I actually think he might be headed for a nervous breakdown. He was saying some pretty wild things and I don’t think he’s getting much sleep.’
‘Is he still talking about quitting?’
‘Yeah. I tried to talk him out of it but maybe he needs to take a break. A lot of people crack under the strain of being policemen.’
‘Why don’t you suggest he take a holiday. You know. A long one but not permanent. That way he can still feel secure about his job. He should go somewhere warm and simple where he can lie around and …’