Part 20 (1/2)
If she replayed the next few moments in her mind ten thousand times, Krystren would never quite fathom how he lost his grip on her flask. Perhaps his hand was stiff and sore from being used as a brake to halt his descent. Perhaps the flask itself was overbeaded with moisture. In any event, he lost control of it, and it began to bounce away. She watched Orujo reach for it, his outstretched fingers almost grasping it on its first rebound off the rubble, and then that stretch-the stretch of his beautiful sculptured, hard-muscled body, a body whose every square centimeter Courion knew and cherished-as he leaned out over the sheer slope. In that one gesture was embodied the very essence of his eternally open and optimistic personality, the absolute belief that anything he tried he would excel at. It was a moment, fixed in time as firmly, as irrevocably as the point of a compa.s.s, at once exquisite and horrifying.
And so he had stretched past the limit of any Sarakkon's ability, and grabbed the water flask on its way down. The weight, tiny as it was, had unbalanced him.
In a flutter of brilliant turquoise, he fell.
Down into the crisped center of the caldera he had plunged so shockingly, so quickly that Krystren was frozen in place. Rivulets of ash followed him down, disappearing with him, completely, irrevocably, with no trace at all that he had ever stood beside her.
Orujo!
She slipped into the Sea of Blood. Bright plumefish skirted reefs of coralbright and the ballet dance of the sea rays as they moved in and out of the slanting shafts of sunlight. They swam with Krystren, and wept for Orujo, understanding why a week after dazedly hauling herself out of the Oppamonifex caldera she was waiting at the port of Celiocco when Courion's s.h.i.+p had nosed in. Coming down the gangplank, he had seen the truth in her eyes before she could say a word, and that night, over her bitter protests, he had s.h.i.+pped out, never to return home.
Did he blame her for Orujo's death? He never said. And yet, his absence had spoken louder than any anger he might have raised against her, for he never wrote to her, and despite her best efforts she had failed for years to locate him. Until she had been summoned by the Orieniad. Cerro himself had told her that her brother had been sent on a secret mission on the northern continent, then charged her with the mission of finding him and delivering into his hands a small, wrapped parcel, sealed with wax. It did not seem possible that after all this time she would be reunited with her brother. How would he greet her?
What would she say to him? What was there left to say?
Only everything.
Everything that had been left unsaid, that had festered like an un-buried corpse in the house of theiryouth. The spectre of Orujo's death lay between them like a mysterious fen, fogbound and treacherous, causing them to lose each other forever. Except now, this mission had given them one last chance to remember who they once had been.
A shadow moving in the unknowable deep brought her up short. She backpedaled away from the searays, from the coralbright so full of life.
Though Courion had loved them and had professed to understand them, she had an unreasoning fear of orquidia. With a spasm of terror, she turned her back on the shadow and in fifteen long, strong strokes made it back to the safety of the tidal pool.
The sun had begun to melt into the Sea of Blood, turning the shallow water in which she lazed into a bowl of liquid silver. She had been on the island for several weeks now, sleeping during the day, never in the same grotto twice, making her reconnaissance at night, sticking to the moonslight.
It had been her initial intention to find a way off the island as quickly as possible. But when she had seen who was advising the sauromicians, she felt it her duty to learn as much as she could about the clandestine activities on the island before she continued her journey to find Courion in the dense crush of Axis Tyr. When Cerro had made her privy to the information she required to carry out her mission he had also revealed to her why Courion had been sent to the northern continent. He had left it up to her to connect the dots. So she had stayed in order to discover how much the Sintire knew of the Onnda's plans.
In the course of her eavesdropping, she had discovered, among others things, that the west side of the island was the most treacherous for a sailor. It also contained a hidden grotto choked even at low tide with deadly surf fueled by fiercely swirling crosscurrents. The discovery had almost cost her her life. But she had made it inside, finding an entrance up into the core of the granite towers, thick now with sauromicians, their new pupils, and their advisors.
The sun had bloodied the western horizon. The last crescent thumbnail of it emblazoned the sky with fiery color. Three of the five moons had risen. It was almost time for her to make her way into the Chaos Grotto, as she had named it, taking the winding staircase up into the heart of the sauromician citadel, there to begin her nightly session of spying. However, this evening she sat unmoving in the pale green moonslight.
She had heard the whisper behind her, an onsh.o.r.e breeze rustling the hems of long robes. Without turning around, she knew that two males had emerged onto a cave mouth almost directly above her.
They stood gazing at the same violet swath of twilit sea that stretched before her. The three moons were in a pregnant phase; their reflected illumination was bright as dawn.
”I would hardly believe it,” said a very deep voice she recognized as belonging to Haamadi. ”We have successfully killed a Druuge. And without possessing the Veil of a Thousand Tears.” Haamadi was the youngest, and newest, of the sauromician archons. From what Krystren had gleaned, he had been elevated following Talaasa's death in Za Hara-at.
”Talaasa's failure was inevitable, as we told you.” This voice was higher. ”It was a fortunate occurrence not only for you, personally, but for sauromician and Sintire alike.” The voice possessed the soft whispery insidious intonations of the Sintire Ardinal named Lujon. ”Through us, you see that you need not rely on the Veil. Through you, we have a long-sought-after toehold of power on the northern continent.”
”Leverage over the Druuge, you mean.”
”You said that,” Lujon said. ”We did not.”
”No, of course not. You wouldn't.” The sauromician snorted. ”The perfect symbiosis.”
”Is it skepticism, Haamadi, that we hear in your voice?”
”We were born sucking at the great teat of Miina,” the sauromician said. ”Now we are sucking at yours.”
”Caligo and Varda do not see it that way,” Lujon said. ”They have been archons for many years.”
”That is the problem,” Haamadi said. ”Their frustration makes them impatient. Their impatience makes them incautious.”
”You would do well not to discount their experience.””Their experience is in being thwarted by the Druuge.”
”This is why they have asked us for help in locating the ninth bane-stone.”
”And in return you have asked us to use our sorcery to find a certain Sarakkon. Tell me, Lujon, what is so special about this female?”
There followed a short pause. ”She is an agent of our sworn enemy.”
”And that is all?”
”That is more than enough, believe us.”
Haamadi grunted. ”And what of the ninth banestone?”
”What of this agent named Krystren?”
Their laughter spilled over the edge of the cliff, echoing harshly across the tidal pool where Krystren sat still, breathless, and, because of her power, invisible to them both.
”We discovered that the ninth banestone was hidden at Za Hara-at,” Lujon said. ”Unfortunately, it was taken from there before we could get to it. Rest a.s.sured that we will discover by whom.”
”I am counting on it.”
”But having it is not enough, is it? You also have to complete the Cage that has imprisoned-”
”Do not invoke the Dragon's name,” Haamadi cautioned. ”Not here. Not anywhere.”
”And why not?”
”Its power is vaster than your mind can comprehend, Lujon.” Another pause, after which Lujon said, ”Raiding a Ramahan abbey has been quite informative. Our knowledge has increased a thousandfold along with yours.”
”An unfortunate consequence of our new relations.h.i.+p.” Haamadi's innate paranoia could turn any statement into an implied threat. ”I foresee a time when your so-called toehold of power on the northern continent will increase to a point when an alliance with us will become disadvantageous to you.”
”You feel we are using you.”
Haamadi smiled with small, pointed teeth.
”But you are using us as well,” Lujon pointed out. ”This is the nature of symbiosis.”
”No,” Haamadi snapped. ”The nature of symbiosis is two ent.i.ties in a mutually beneficial relations.h.i.+p.”
”Your outlook is entirely too pessimistic.”