Stargate (45 page)

… She touches me, and I am young again. …

I am beginning to be afraid of this Lady. He pulled the window-closed and was standing absently brushing snow from his chest and shoulders when the door opened. The captain who had felled Chilka glanced in, and Nenan was behind him.

“You won't escape that way,” he snapped, seeing the little pool of water forming at Chilka's feet. “The Lady herself has summoned you into her presence, together with your son and me. Hurry up.” Danarion saw the fear behind the bluff words. Fear of the Lady and fear of this, the man whom he knew without doubt he had killed.

Chilka went to him, and he backed onto the stair. Nenan stepped to his father with anxious eyes, but before he could speak, Chilka smiled, shook his head, and led the way to where the double doors stood shut, high in the darkness of the jagged roof where neither smoke nor any sound from the hall below could reach.

The captain was breathing heavily by the time the three of them gathered in a small, frightened huddle at the top of the stair. On their left the stair spiraled away into nothingness. Behind them there was only the vast hollow core of the House, funneling down to the unseen floor below, and to the right a tiny locked door had been let into the undressed rock. Nenan was trembling. “This is not at all like climbing the mountains,” he whispered to his father. Danarion took his hand, and with the other struck the copper doors. The sound was faint and muffled, but in instant obedience they swung inward. More steps mounted into the timeless dimness of a gray winter afternoon made darker by walls and a roof of black rock.

Hesitantly they went forward, and as their feet found the sixth and last step the doors closed with a click behind them. They were standing at one end of a long, dark hall. Under their feet massive flagstones glided away into distance, their gloom broken only twice by pools of pale, indistinct light that fell from two thin, arched windows high in one wall. The roof, almost lost in shadow, was the jumbled, jostling interior of the sharp spires Danarion had seen rising over the wall as he and Nenan had approached the city. There were no coverings on the cold floor or hangings on the rough, somehow hostile brutishness of the thick walls, but at the far end they could make out a raised dais running the width of the hall and, in the center of it, an enormous chair. Something or someone sat in the chair, but nothing could be made of the shapeless shadow.

“Come forward.” It was Yarne's voice, a drifting, cold echo. “Don't be afraid. You are not criminals here to have your execution pronounced. My Lady wants to ask you some questions, that is all.”

The captain winced, as though Yarne's voice had caused him pain, and wiped his sweating palms against his shirt. Nenan let go of Chilka's hand, and all three of them began the long walk to the foot of the dais. Familiarity tugged at Danarion's mind as the vastness filled with the echoes of their feet. He remembered Ghakazian's mighty mountain fastness with its rock funnel diving straight to the mountain's roots, its long hall and stone dais. Light washed over him for a moment, and he glanced up at the thin window, its sill heaped with snow, but then he was in half-light again, Nenan beside him, the captain behind, his breath ragged with fear. Danarion knew that he must not endanger himself by remaining in control of Chilka. He was facing an unknown in the Lady, and her powers were great. Carefully he relinquished the body to Chilka's memories, the mind that had been his guide for so long now that every corner of it was as familiar to him as his own. Chilka my brother, he said to it gently, be careful. Remember all you have lived for, all we have been through together. Hold on to your temper and your courage for both our sakes. As always when he gave Chilka's body back to its mind, he was filled with a desolation for Lallin. It was the one overriding purpose in Chilka's life, the one unstanchable wound.

As they approached it the dais seemed to widen and gain height. The chair became solid and held the tall form of a woman. When they were only a few feet away, Yarne uncurled from its foot and came striding toward them. They halted, and he patted Chilka reassuringly on the shoulder. The slackness of the morning had gone. Once more he was tight-skinned and lithely graceful, and even in the dimness his eyes sparkled and glittered ice-blue. “You wanted to see her,” he said triumphantly, “and she sends for you! There is nothing she does not know.” Chilka smiled weakly. The captain bent his knee to the figure in the chair. Nenan held his breath, his eyes riveted on the small movement there.

Then a cold light began to grow. It seemed to seep sluggishly from the walls, the floor, the chair itself, an orange-yellow, heavy sulkiness that made Chilka feel all at once very tired. Slowly it grew in strength until there were no more shadows, yet it was hard to pierce, as though one were gazing through murky water. The figure moved, sat upright, and leaned forward, and Chilka looked for the first time on the Lady of Shol.

Danarion quickly suppressed the second of uncontrollable shock, for hanging from the long neck was a necklet sparking dully in the low, colored light, its gold almost orange in the distortion, its bells blue as the deep ocean. It was stained and broken in places, but it was recognizably Sholia's. Wild hope engulfed Danarion, but it quickly faded. This creature was not Sholia. The Lady was swathed in a stiff brocaded robe of bright red, high at the neck, with voluminous, stiff sleeves that fell from her thin wrists and met the hem of her garment where it touched small black-clad feet. Her face was stark white and so smooth that her light found no lines or hollows to shade and so slid over the skin like soft oils. Blue-black hair coiled about her small skull, heavy and thickly shining, and it was matched by her eyes. They were large, black, and utterly level in their appraisal as her gaze was fixed on each of them in turn. She looked at Chilka for a long time, and try as he might, he could not hold her gaze. His eyes dropped, and she laughed, a high, tinkling sound that shattered around him like breaking icicles.

“Welcome to my hall,” she said. “You are more honored than you know. Only judges and criminals on their last day of life have seen me. Are you then judges, or are you malefactors? We shall see.” Her voice fluted into the softly moving airs of the great room, the tones high and brittle like her laugh, and white fingers tipped in long, curving nails fanned and circled as she spoke. “It has come to my ears that a certain extraordinary event has taken place. I dismissed it as foolish rumor of the marketplaces, but it did not die away. It grew and would not be dispelled. Still I put it from my mind, having greater things to ponder than the lies that feed my housewives and my gullible young men. Today my brother comes to me in distress. He has dreamed, he tells me. I cannot have a single anxiety trouble the mind of my dearest kin, so I must investigate this unquenchable story. Captain, tell me how you killed a slave.”

The man stepped forward on shaking legs. He tried to speak, but his voice broke. He swallowed, and all the time the Lady sat watching him, a tiny smile on her red mouth, her hands now resting on the arms of her chair. Then he tested his voice again, and it finally obeyed him, a husky rumble that strengthened as he went on.

“Chilka the slave ran away,” he said, not looking at her. “It was the third time, and it meant his death.” He cast a sidelong glance to Yarne, who was once more perched immobile at his Lady's feet. “I did not consult your brother. I took four soldiers and rode after the slave. I was angry, because Chilka had always been treated with more consideration than any slave has a right to be, and he rewarded your brother by constantly trying to escape. I took the road that foots the cliff and then skirted the Mountain of Mourning, and I came upon Chilka by a lake, close to the foothills. He had been running and was near spent. I took an arrow, fitted it to my bow, and shot him as he lay to drink.” He paused and licked his lips. The Lady still smiled encouragingly. Yarne had not moved. Nenan was staring at the ground, his expression unreadable. “My men and I dismounted and walked to the body, turning it over. The eyes were already filling with sand, and the mouth also. The heart did not beat. There was no more breath. I have killed many times,” he insisted, his voice rising emphatically, “and this man was dead! We took his knife and his coat, but the afternoon had begun, and I did not wish to be close to the Mountain after sunset. I should have brought the body back to the city, but I was afraid to tarry, afraid to be slowed by it. We left it in the sand. That is all.”

The Lady had stopped smiling. Her curving nails rattled against one another as she clasped and unclasped her hands. “Captain,” she fluted sweetly, “will you swear an oath on my name that, to the best of your knowledge, Chilka the slave was slain by you, there on the verge of the lake?” She did not need to add a threat to her words. It was said in the city that her anger could slay a mortal though she did not touch him.

The captain pursed his lips, but his speech had given him confidence. “I swear on your immortality, Lady, that what I have told you is true.”

She nodded. “To the best of his knowledge,” she whispered half to herself, and her gaze left him and traveled to Nenan. “Nenan one-mind!” she called suddenly, some deeper, more vibrant note beneath the fragile splintering of her ice-voice. “Is this man your father?” The nails clicked together as she pointed at Chilka. Nenan lifted his head and met Chilka's eye. He tried to read his father's message but saw only love and puzzlement. Nothing alien flickered behind the dark eyes.

“Tell her the truth,” Chilka said quietly.

Nenan looked at her face, and then his gaze slid to her black feet. “He is.”

“He cannot be. You have heard the captain swear an oath. Your father is dead. Who is this man?”

“He is my father. He was not killed, only wounded. The captain feared the coming of night and did not wait to verify the death. When he had gone, my father's friends found him and took him home.”

“Yet you had not seen him for six years, in which time you grew from child into man. You are deluded.”

“No.” Nenan stepped closer to Chilka. “My mother knew him. The people of the village knew him.”

She stirred pettishly. “It is no use asking an oath from you, one-mind. You have nothing sacred to swear by, and I do not trust you.”

“I will swear by Sholia.”

The name galvanized her. She stood suddenly, and they saw that she was very tall. Her arms went rigid, and her eyes blazed. “You will not swear by that name! A name of myth, of dreams! To speak it is death!”

“You have given Yarne permission to speak it, for he is Shol's history-reader.” The voice was Chilka's. He had pushed Nenan behind him and was facing her with courage. Her anger died as swiftly as it had come, and she lowered herself onto the chair.

“Be quiet!” she snapped and fell to brooding, her eyes gliding from one man to the other, her tiny pointed chin resting in one pale palm. Chilka could feel her will questing him, and Danarion, buried deep, walled himself further from the feather-light brushes of her mind. “Where did you shoot this man?” she asked finally, and the captain croaked, “In his left side.”

Chilka felt Nenan stiffen against him. That's right, in the left side, he told himself feverishly. A bloody wound. Why do I feel such anguish, such confusion? I remember the pain and the blood on my hands and striving to pull out the arrow.

The Lady gestured, and slowly Chilka pulled up his shirt to reveal the long, jagged scar, now whitening. She raised her eyebrows and made a small, polite grimace. “So,” she said. “I have finished with you all, except Chilka. Wait outside the doors.” The captain bowed and stumbled eagerly away, and Nenan followed unwillingly after meeting his father's smile. Yarne did not stir.

It was a long time before the doors at the far end creaked open and then clicked shut, and during the wait Chilka fought against his awe and panic. The sullen orange light still hung about the dais, but out of its reach the noon shadows had begun to lengthen as Shol's sun began its western journey. The echo of the closing door rolled toward him and was dissipated in the lofty ceiling. The Lady rose and began to pace the dais with noiseless, catlike steps.

Presently she said, “Why did you cut his hand?” Her own hand rested briefly on Yarne's silken head as she passed him, still slumped on the dais. He did not acknowledge her touch but sat with head bowed, unseeing and unhearing, motionless as the dead.

“It was an accident, Lady.”

She turned to face him. “Why did you cut his hand?” The tone was harder now.

Chilka shook his head helplessly. “I did not do it on purpose,” he reiterated desperately. “It was …”

“It was no accident!” she roared at him suddenly. “You sneaking, crawling, one-mind liar. Liar! Everything about you is a lie, your words, your eyes, your body. Yes, that lying body.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, the rustle of ice rain against cold windows. She sprang from the dais and came to him, and he shrank away in terror. “I know who you are,” she hissed, and her breath in his face was cold and odorless. “You are Tagar. Tagar, my wingless one, old traitor. Ages beyond ages ago I hurled you from the sky because of your disobedience. Do you remember how it felt? The rush of air, the horror of falling, the crunch of your bones against the road?” She put a hand to his throat, and her nails dug viciously into his skin. “Still you defy me, your lord. They fear you, skulking forever on the Mountain of Mourning. A presence, they say, a hovering evil. Impotent old fool! You brought agony to no one but yourself when you would not take a body in the palace. But you have weakened at last.” She shook him and flung him to the ground, her strength irresistible. Her voice no longer fluted but rang through the hall, deep and masculine, like the howling of a winter wind. Chilka cowered on the floor, his hands over his ears. Yarne sat on, eyes glazed, oblivious. “I do not understand, Lady,” Chilka cried out, and she kicked him and began to pace again.