That he now understood why the Nale'nid were so mischievous among the humans, and that it no longer mattered—
because he understood?
"Let us go find a drama," he said, letting all those thoughts fly away like bits of kelp loosed in a current.
Anger-drama,
Lo'ela said calmly, and with a sharp scissors-kick towed him away from his resting place and propelled him toward a grotto entrance, partway down the slope of the amphitheater. Despite its being inconspicuous, the opening was fairly large and only moderately dark inside. When they entered it, Seth could see that it was the start of a wide and curiously formed tunnel giving access to an entire hidden series of chambers and passageways, many of them little more than arched alcoves or arterial channels, and all of them illuminated by indirect sunlight that seemed to sparkle luminously from even the dullest surfaces of
krael
and stone. Lo'ela shushed Seth, who was remarking at each new sight, and guided him down a sloping passage and into a larger chamber.
The chamber was dark walled and smooth, and illuminated almost entirely by hazy bioluminescence from recessed sills along the walls. It was a comfortable place—roomy, but small enough that the far wall was quite clearly visible even through the slight mistiness of the water. As Seth glided after Lo'ela to a position alongside other Nale'nid waiting by the walls, he wondered how such a comforting, secure place could qualify as a setting for an "anger-drama."
Follow the players along the floor and ceiling,
Lo'ela told him, closing her hand tightly about his.
Okay, he thought—but he was not sure which direction was the floor and which the ceiling; the apparent references seemed queerly tilted, especially when he tried to gauge the vertical by the faint upward tug of the air in his film-mask. No matter, he decided—perhaps that was intended as part of the effect. He set himself comfortably, bumping against the hard, smooth wall, and adopted a set of references based upon the scattering of Nale'nid around what seemed as good a horizontal plane as any.
Here . . . now
. Lo'ela's second signal made him aware of two male Nale'nid approaching each other from opposite ends of the grotto, one at the top and one at the bottom. The players, apparently. The entrance made his blood pound faster, and he shivered in the chill of the water, wondering if this would be a sea-human variation on the eel-fight.
He was not to be disappointed. But the first action, when it came, was not visible at all. It was a thought-scream of outrage from the spectators—dissonant mistuned chimes, and bashing cymbals, and piercing horns all hurling their awful cry directly into his skull. Seth reeled; the outcry drilled, and drilled, and echoed and drilled in his head without letup. Finally, he shouted back, exploding in anger at the pain in his skull, the blinding, deafening pain—but his cry fell deadened, he had neither the skill nor the power to muster a telepathic cry. Lo'ela, beside him, touched his hurt nerves, ready to intervene to mute the deafening shrill at its receiving point—him—but he shouted back her help, he would have no relief without wresting it for himself.
He bellowed his pain, his voice a watery moan . . . and the clamor died. But not on his account; the two players had been primed, loosened, and now they fell to in their roles, circling one another in their projected thoughts, circling, playing and toying, and toying and waiting for openings. If Seth expected a physical demonstration, he was in that regard disappointed. The assault when it was launched was mental—but none the less brutal for that. Sem'bol had challenged A'nit, and the challenge was joined—it would be a test of unleashed wills, bloodied emotions, crimson dark hate: the anger-drama. A match of treachery, of panic, of betrayal.
A'nit led with a taunt, an awful feedback screech that rocked Seth to his bones—and summoned forth a thundering vision of mountain peaks quaking in concussions of sound, escarpments trembling and shivering and slowly, helplessly coming apart as the whole mountains disintegrated in endless avalanches. Sem'bol maintained dignified silence for the moment, withstanding the cataclysmic noise tearing at his strength; he allowed his anger to build, like tectonic strain, beneath the smooth surface of his outer calm. A'nit paused for a moment to consider the effects of his efforts—and that was when Sem'bol exploded, driving lances of derisive fire into A'nit's smug calm, lightning bolts crackling in a dry forest kindling the primal fury of consuming fire. Burning, dark choking vengeance, while Sem'bol strutted high in the clouds crowing his riposte, his quick victory over the attacker.
The return of A'nit was slow, as he seemingly gathered himself, weeping and broken, from the ashes of debacle. But quietly, into the deep flowing currents of ground water, he poured the venom of his anger, his humiliation, his spite. And as Sem'bol danced his satisfaction, the winds buffeting with his laughter, he grew thirsty, and after a time came to earth and drank deeply from the sweet valley wells. Slowly, in a trickle of pain, of numbness and horrible dizziness, he became aware of the treachery, of his folly in trusting the very earth beneath him—while in the breezes of the air now was heard the shrieking laughter of A'nit, the trickster, the foe. And Sem'bol's reply was shattering—the explosion of the earth, the wind, the end of all that was, in the heat and tidal fury of a passing rogue sun. The shock waves boomed, reverberated nonsensically in the darkness, and the smoke of vengeance.
Armies collided on the night plains of unknown worlds, stirring Seth the watcher to the darkest abyss of his own soul, releasing a swirling flood of hatred from noisome reservoirs, and without being aware of it Seth was growling, spitting, screaming his own bitterness, his own venom at faceless assailants. The storm of blood-lust around him, of aroused dark souls, grew in orchestration—the energies mushrooming in sweetly bitter musical
focus
, in violently conceived kinetic-motion
focus
, in the liquid aching beauty of anger-hatred
focus
.
There was no way of knowing the time for which the drama played, or when it might end—the laughter and the strutting, the undercutting and bludgeoning. He lost knowledge of time and place in a frenetic eagerness for violence, the will to destroy with his thoughts, with his soul. Only when he heard the rasp of his own shriek over the background mutter, the hoarse cry of his own bloodied brain, did he slowly, confusedly become aware that the energy, the source of the hatred had died, had withered and gone away. And then he knew that the drama had ended, it was over, and that all were quiet except him . . .
. . .and that Lo'ela was shaking him, trying to reach him through his insensible shouting.
It has ended, it has ended!
And there was the sea-woman floating before him in the mist, her hair any like gold-dust, her eyes wide and frightened and staring, reaching.
He brought himself to a shuddering silence, held every muscle of his body rigid until he felt calm taking hold. He swallowed hard. "Yes," he managed, suddenly half laughing, half crying, spirit pouring out of him in enormous relief. He was floating upside-down, though he had felt no motion, no turning. The chamber was dark and quiet, still—no players in sight—and the rest of the Nale'nid were already leaving or were gone.
He nodded, still laboring sternly to control himself. "Yes, I see," he said. It was a shock to realize that he was still underwater, still encased in a divesuit. He had forgotten. "Who won?" he said—and forced a grin.
No winners,
Lo'ela said.
Come
. She swam off toward the exit of the chamber, ignoring Seth's querying expression. What was the matter? he wondered. Why was she upset? But he had no time to ask as he hurried, kicking his fins to follow. No doubt she would let him know in her own time.
He had completely lost his bearings by the time Lo'ela took him to a higher place, which gave way to another cavern, much larger and almost as dark as the last one. Wheeling lightly in mid-space for a quick survey of this new place, Seth was surprised to see the shimmering mirror of an air-water interface. They were, apparently, back in the high chambers of the grotto. Lo'ela headed with one sharp, smooth kick to the surface. Seth followed.
Water broke around his head and ran in rivulets down the outside of his film-mask, and he struggled ridiculously for a moment, discomfited by the feeling of his heavy head pushing him back down into the water; then he breathed easily once he got his water-sense back and sculled quietly after Lo'ela to the nearby solid rock bank, which turned out to be the edge of a broad ledge or floor extending some distance back into the cavern. He heaved himself out of the water with a great show of clumsiness, and a good natured grumble about the ease with which Lo'ela had accomplished the same thing. He stood, dripping and shivering, and said, "What now?"
You may take off your diving suit here
. She was already reaching to assist him.
Seth was glad to be rid of the suit for a while, minor encumbrance though it was. He breathed sharply and rubbed his arms, trying to get his circulation back to normal both for full gravity and for the damp, chilly air. "You set?" Lo'ela asked aloud, studiously. Seth nodded, and they set off back into the cavern. He was amazed at how clearly he suddenly could see; the faint mistiness of the water was coming to seem natural to him. As usual, the illumination was apparently from indirect bioluminous sources—or perhaps it was indirect sunlight, he was finding it hard anymore to tell.
A number of Nale'nid were congregated in a narrower off-shooting cave, and they went to investigate. Seth peered through the group eagerly, his senses warmed up for something intense like the anger-drama. "What is it? Can you tell?" he asked Lo'ela with a quick sideways glance. She had squeezed close to him, and he slipped an arm around her waist. She acknowledged the action with a tight glance, but she was tense.
"You—" she started, then switched back,
you may not like this
.
"Oh?" He stared at her, and shrugged. "Well, let's find out." Whatever had tempered Lo'ela's enthusiasm had not affected his own, so he pushed forward with her into the crowd until they found a spot from which they could see.
The view was not particularly upsetting: a young Nale'nid girl was reclining on a flat, smooth stone slab, and standing next to her were a sea-man and a sea-woman. Doing nothing, apparently. Seth stared, whispered sideways, "What are they doing?" Lo'ela gulped, watched, and said nothing. "What's happening?" he whispered insistently.
Her focus
, came the answer, finally, though Lo'ela kept her eyes fixed straight ahead,
is upon the senses beneath her aura, the senses stripped bare
—
and the others are suppressing her aura, depriving her of it to help her focus. They have only just begun
.
Seth rolled that answer over in his mind, and decided that it was an intriguing idea, though surely it must be traumatic in execution—being stripped of the most basic outward manifestations of self, being left without aura-contact with others or with the physical world. The result surely would be, at the least, dreadful fear and loneliness—and perhaps irreparable autism, or catatonia. And yet it was a voluntary thing; it apparently was what she wanted, and whether or not she would still wish it after a prolonged time was a moot point. Interesting; he decided he would like to see more, perhaps something developed to a higher extreme.
But Lo'ela—she was so subdued. Was she developing a conscience—that most unNale'nidlike of faculties—even while Seth was losing his?
"Let's move on," he urged. "Is there something further advanced that we can see?" Lo'ela gave him a thoughtful look, and reluctantly agreed. They went deeper into the cave, which turned out not to dead-end but rather to continue for some distance. There were noises, not quite identifiable, coming from the deeper chambers. They stopped to listen more carefully. The sounds wailed, echoing queerly from the convolutions of the walls, so queerly in fact that it took Seth a minute longer to realize that it was a voice, a peculiarly tortured voice—like the howl of a demented cat, or an enraged grissom pony. It reverberated quaveringly, making Seth shudder, even as it quickened his interest.
He urged Lo'ela forward, hurried with her around a bend. The wail was peaking—its source was clearly undergoing exquisite torment—and for a moment Seth was afraid that it would halt, or the victim would pass out or die before he could get close enough to watch and to feed on the intensity of its pain. There was another crowd in the chamber ahead, and he made ready to push by anyone in the way. His heart was racing, his neck muscles tense, quivering—was this another aura-deprivation, a victim driven all the way to gibbering insanity?—but as he tugged forward, Lo'ela resisted. He wheeled irritably, and was shocked for just a moment by the dread filling her eyes. Then: "What?" he demanded impatiently.
She shrank from him.
I am afraid of this
.
Still holding her hand, he edged sideways, trying to see what was happening beyond the crowd as he spoke to Lo'ela. The wailing trailed off to a moan.
You
—
you will not like this!
"These are your own people!" he rasped. He let go Lo'ela's hand and pushed forward through the crowd. They were an equally determined audience, so finally he had to be content to stretch high and peer over the front lines of watchers. The setting was the same as that of the other aura-deprivation, except that here two sea-men were standing over a third man on the stone slab. The subject at the moment was lying motionless, unprotesting; but his face was utterly masked by horror, by naked emotional stress, and he was breathing in strange, inhumanly melancholy tones.
Seth stared intently, absorbing the scene,
focusing
on the torment being wrung from the victim's soul. And then he froze, paralyzed in a half step forward.
The man was not a Nale'nid at all. It was Racart.
Curious thoughts engaged in Seth's mind as he tried to react to this revelation. His excitement remained strong, but it was suspended in a timeless moment of horror and of guilt; the energy of his body was directed toward the
focus,
and a part of his mind clung tightly to that even as his deeper thoughts churned in a terrible quandary.