Golden Torc - 2 (13 page)

Calmcalm relax Stein. Remember VenerableMayvar's directivepromise + that AikenDrum: no harm to Sukey.

Disbelief! FURY. I hear her she is crying afraid bellspun falling reach out Lady Dedra to her find her tell me why she cries!

Verywell I will look but do not betray yourself Tagan-Coercer freshaware your inattention.

Aloud, Stein said, "Those fellows have the moves, Lord Tagan. I'm no expert, but they look damn impressive. But I don't see how they'd have much of a chance in a contest against one of your Tanu brain benders."

"Most of this lot will only fight in the Contest of Humans-against one another. It's only the best who get to fight side by side with the metapsychic warriors in the High Melee against the Firvulag. Brave and strong-minded grays have managed to give a good account of themselves in the High. It's a matter of resisting the fear-provoking illusions of the Little Folks and keeping your mind on business. Of course, ultimately most of the grays..." The vision winked out almost as soon as it formed in Tagan's telepathic projection; but it had been clear enough to Stein.

The Lord of Swords peered obliquely at the Viking. Tagan looked more weather-beaten than most of the other Tanu, with a drooping gold mustache, and shaggy brows hedging sunken green eyes. "There have been exceptions to the usual fate of the gray fighter. A really superlative gladiator can expect a reprieve. And not just until the next year's Combat, either. Permanently. To serve on my staff here at the school."

Dedra said, "You know, Coercive Brother, that Stein's assignment must come ultimately from the Lady Mayvar, who has taken to kin the Candidate Aiken Drum." Putative master of this perhapsbriefliving gray.

The blue-armored Tanu gave a mental sneer, dismissing both Mayvar and her upstart protege. "We'll see you in the Combat one way or another, Stein. You're a natural, boy! I saw you at the supper. Just a few weeks of work here..." The coercer reached out: comradeship, adrenalin, challenge, release, gore, sweet shattering fatigue! "How about it, lad?" Stein opened his mouth to curse the Lord of Swords. But what he said was, "I thank you, Lord Tagan, for thinking that I might be worthy to study under a great champion such as you. After my master and I dispose of the loathsome Delbaeth, we'll be free to think of the upcoming Combat. My master will confer with you in good time."

I didn't speak you spoke damnedDedra let me go let me go let me

"We will leave you now, Coercive Brother," Dedra said, bowing and drawing her lavender chiffon cloak about her slender body. The sun had gone down behind the rim of the arena, which might have explained why she had begun to shiver. "You may be sure that Stein and his master, Aiken Drum, will consider your generous offer most seriously." Stop it! Stop fighting me you great blockhead!

Tagan smote his armored breast with a sapphire gauntlet.

"I salute you, Farspeaking Sister, Exalted Lady Mary-Dedra. Remember me to your President... And you, valiant Stein. We hold the City Games thrice weekly here and at the Plain of Sports. Join us! Tomorrow our top wrestlers will test the first of the giant apes that were recently captured in the North African hills. It promises a bit of excitement!" Stein was forced to remove his horned helmet and abase himself before the Lord of Swords. And then he had to hurry along after the gold-torc woman through cold, echoing passages that led beneath the arena to the carriage-yard where their caleche waited. The corridors were dark and deserted.

Stein called for Dedra to wait for him, but she threw a glance over her shoulder and began to run instead. Her mind, operating on the coercive mode, reiterated:

You will submit to me you will be calm you will submit-

"Something's happened to Sukey, hasn't it?" he cried out.

You will submit to me you will be calm-

"You're afraid to tell me!" His stride lengthened. "I can't hear her calling me any more!"

Youwillsubmit youwillsubmit YOUWILLSUBMIT!

The pressure of his rage built into a great igneous flood, undermining her restraints, melting them. "They've killed her, haven't they?" the berserker roared. Dedra dodged away from him, almost falling on the damp stone floor. "Answer me, you stupid bitch! Answer me!"

YOU WILL...

Stein gave a shout, mingling pain and triumph, as the last of the mental shackles dissolved. A single leap brought him up to Dedra and he snatched the human woman into the air, spinning her around so that the panic-stricken, lovely face stared up helplessly. He bent her spine backwards and drew her into a dark niche, clammy and odorous, at one side of the corridor.

"I'm going to break your back if you make one sound! And don't call out in the farspeak mode, either, because I'll hear you. Understand? Answer me, dammit!"

Stein O Stein you misapprehend we wish no harm we would help-

"You listen to me," he hissed, relaxing the tension slightly. "There's no one down here but you and me. No one to come and save you. Mayvar should have given me a stronger keeper than you, Dedra. She should have known you'd never be able to hold me."

"But Mayvar would-"

He gave her a brutal shake. "Stop trying to get back into my mind, bitch!" She moaned and her head lolled sideways. "I want to know what's happened to my wife! You know and you'll tell me-"

"She's alive, Stein." Jesus God man you're crushingbreaking me ease up the spinalnerve bruising ahhhh...

He relaxed, propping her sagging body against the rough stone wall. She hung there like a cut-string marionette, belly swelling against her rucked-up lilac gown, lavender-and-gold headdress awry. Her mental explanation came rushing out. As with all silver torc human women your Sukey gone to Bybar for fertility restoration.

"They promised me she wouldn't be harmed! Mayvar promised and that bloody little gold grannybanger. They promised!"

Tears white arms reaching compassionbalm... "She hasn't been hurt, Stein. Can't you understand? We had to treat Sukey like an ordinary candidate. If an exception had been made before Aiken's position among the battle-company was affirmed don't! Don't hurt me again! Can't you see I'm telling you the truth? Mayvar and Dionket must move cautiously at this stage or all the planning goes for nothing. There's more at stake here than you and your wife!"

Stein let her go. She sank to the dirty floor. Her mind was numb, shallowly adrift. The violet human eyes looked at him from amidst runnels of tears.

"We never meant Sukey to go to the Thagdal. There's time. At least a month before her female cycle is reestablished."

"When will your Tanu bastard be born, bitch? To hell with Mayvar and Dionket and their schemes! To hell with all of you! I could hear Sukey calling me, dammit, and now she's stopped. You prove to me that she's alive and unharmed or-"

Take him to her.

Stein gave a start. His hand dropped to his sword hilt and he looked wildly about. The corridor was empty.

"I warned you, Dedra!" His face clouded again with fury.

She raised one shaking finger to her golden torc.

"It's Mayvar. She's seen and heard. I'm to take you to Sukey. Now will you believe that we're on your side?"

He pulled her to her feet. Her gown was snagged and stained. Swiftly, he unpinned the brooch of his own short green cape and flung the covering garment about her shoulders. "Can you walk?"

"As far as the carriage. But give me your hand." Outside, the bareneck gaffer who waited with their caleche was dozing as the cicadas turned up for their evening performance. Ramas were going about with short ladders and slowmatches, lighting the streetlamps. The broad promenade that skirted this side of the stadium had only a few cabs rolling along and no pedestrians except for the busy little apes. Respectfully, Stein handed the Lady Dedra into the carriage before going around to the other side and climbing in.

"Where to, ma'am?" the driver croaked, coming to life with reluctance.

"Redact House. And quickly."

The driver whipped up the heilad and they trotted off. The carriage drove through the central city and its western suburbs before reaching the road that led to the heights. Muriah had no city wall. The natural isolation of the Aven Peninsula was deemed protection enough here in the southland where the Tanu were most powerful. Dedra did not speak and Stein sat stiffly at her side, not looking at her. Finally, when they were well above the city, the woman said, "There's a fountain ahead. Will you let me stop to clean up? If I enter the precincts of the redactors looking like this, there are bound to be questions." Stein nodded and she gave instructions to the driver. After a few minutes they pulled into a deeply shadowed wayside. Some kind of bird was going doink doink among the crags. A spring emerged from the yellow limestone into a triple-tiered basin and the hellad was permitted to drink from the lowest pool, after which Dedra had the driver lead the beast to where it could crop from the thick shrubbery. She bathed her face in the central basin and produced a small mirror and a golden comb, which she used to repair her straggling coiffure. The ornate headdress was badly crushed. After a futile attempt to restore it, she threw it into a waste receptacle. "Let some trash collector have a treat. I think my hair will do for now, but we'll have to hope Tasha is too stoned to notice my gown."

"Can you stop her reading our minds?"

Dedra gave a sour little laugh. "Ah! You don't know about our dear Tasha-Bybar, the Anastasya Astaurova that was, prime benefactress of the Tanu breeding scheme. Well, relax, lover. She has no metafaculties at all! Her gold torc is honorary-a token of Tanu esteem. Tasha is the human gynecologist who first showed the exotics how to reverse our sterilization some sixty-odd years ago. There are about a dozen other gut choppers doing the work now as well as Tash, of course, but none as competent as she is. She does all of the silvers herself. Literally keeps the old hand in."

A picture of the bell-dancer was projected before Stein's mental eye. "I've seen a few," he muttered. "But that's a different shade of kink!"

Dedra dipped one hand into the topmost pool of the fountain and drank from her cupped palm. "She's quite insane now. She must have been borderline when she passed through the auberge... Don't give me that old-fashioned masculine look, lover! I think she's a traitor to the human race, just as you do. But what's done is done. Most of us women make the best of it."

Stein shook his head. "How could she?"

"There's a crazy kind of logic to it... How do you like frustrated motherhood for starters? Here's this too dreadfully sexy bod that can't grow babies-so why not be a mother by proxy? All these perfectly healthy female time-travelers could have lovely Tanu children if only some good doctor repaired the mischief done by those gyn-folk with the little laser scalpels back at the auberge. The fix is quite tricky, because Madame's people seem to've anticipated some kind of jiggery-pokery among the philoprogenitive. But dear Tasha perseveres! Finally she gets it right, and she passes on her skills to a select squad of Tanu students. And here we all are, ready to be plowed and planted."

"If she's such a wiz of a doctor, why doesn't she have one of her prize pupils fix her up?"

"Ah! That's the too-barfmaking tragedy of it all, lover. Within that voluptuous female form with the enhanced secondaries and the estrogen implants there beats the heart of a true XY."

Stein glared at her in impatience. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Dedra climbed down from the fountain and sent an imperious mental command for the carriage. "An XY, lover. Tasha is a transsexual. Oh, you could stow away some real woman's fertilized egg in her fake uterus, and maybe shoot her full of preggy hormones, if you could get them in this primitive world-and perhaps the embryo would live a few weeks before dying. But that's all, lover. Maternity is a marvelous and tricky symbiosis. And of course, no one in our Galactic Milieu or anywhere else has ever made a true mother out of a male." She stepped lightly into the caleche without assistance. "Well? Don't just stand there. Do you want to see your wife, or don't you?" Stein climbed in and they rode away.

When the red and white lights of the Redactor Guild buildings were quite close, Dedra said, "You're going to have to be careful when we get inside. Tasha can't read you, but there will be plenty of others who can. Heavy screens aren't my specialty, although I'll do the best I can for you. But if you start thrashing around and break through me it's going to be both our asses in a sling."

"I'll relax," he promised. "Sukey taught me things when we-on the trip down the river when we wanted privacy."

"Trust me," she pleaded. Looking up at him in the dusk, she tried to find one small scrap of empathy; but all that mattered to him was the safety of his precious, funny-faced love.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," he conceded. But that was all. She stared straight ahead at the slouched beanbag shape of the old driver. "Think nothing of it. My fault for standing in the tornado's path. Lucky little Sukey..."

The carriage drew up to the entrance. Once again, Stein played the solicitous gray-torc esquire and Dedra, the Exalted Lady. There were two guards in garnet-colored half-armor on station beneath the portico. A peevish silver male came to escort them up to Tasha-Bybar's eyrie.

"Most unusual," he fretted. "The routine is completely upset, Farspeaking Lady. You know, it was necessary for the Lord Healer himself to use his good offices-"

"We're very grateful to Lord Dionket, Worthy Gordon. It's a matter very important to the Venerable Mayvar Kingmaker."

"Oh, well, of course then. Along through here and up we go. Gwen-Minivel will still be groggy, you know. Lady Tasha likes them to rest well afterward."

"I'll bet," growled Stein. He lurched slightly as Dedra administered a psychic correction.

"We'll not be long, Worthy Gordon. How peaceful it is in your precincts at night! It seems we at Farsense House never really seem to settle down. In and out, in and out. Someone always has an important message or a data-search or a surveillance or a lost dog or something even more vital. I must say, I prefer your tranquil atmosphere."