“You don’t have a gift for me too, then, after all the trouble I took?” Ynyoldeh said querulously. “I gave you such a beautiful one, and you still don’t understand what I mean by it….”

  “I refuse to utter another word, my Lady. Listen to the man’s voice! Just look at the artful artifice of the cloud-sculptors, how they shape their images to the lines of melody!” Davaryush murmured, floundering in a tempest of pretension.

  “You always were such a philistine, Daavye,” said Ynyoldeh. “Yet I must confess, it is a little boring to talk about art when we can talk instead about the destruction of star systems.”

  Davaryush did not answer. The music surged and soared and did not touch him. Instead he found himself thinking of the ones who had fled from the Dark Country, how he had doomed them by his own command, just to save face in front of a mere thinkhive, a mere machine. … His loneliness was complete, he thought. In trying to save the Dispersal of Man he had had to become utterly ruthless, unbecomingly compassionless. The paradox tormented him, even as he tried to tell himself that he was forced to act this way, that there were no alternatives, that it was destiny. He sipped at his zul, finding it so sweet as to seem bitter.

  A stunning storm dispersed the cloud-choreographer’s phantasms. The audience was roaring like wind over the firesnows of Ont. It was then that Davaryush levitated his hoverthrone and rose above the crowd, forcing immediate silence. He spoke very quietly; die ears of the throne picked up his voice and sent it booming above the pavilion.

  “I’m sure we have all been very moved,” he said. “And now I would like to make public my gift for the Lady Ynyoldeh. I wish to give her the opportunity to extend her Inquestral compassion, to be an example for us all . .. for so many see the Lady only as Queen of Daggers, Mistress of Death. Lady Ynyoldeh, would it please you to accompany me?”

  The silence was complete now. He dropped the hover-throne on a cushiony bank of artificial clouds and waited for Ynyoldeh. The robot, still cradling the girlcorpse, rose stiffly from its throne and came to the balcony’s edge, then vaulted with surprising grace onto the forceshield floor beneath, a floor that was firm as metal and yet provided an illusion of great aerial spaces. It came towards him, and he saw that the girlcorpse was sitting up in the lotus of its arms, her face quite stern. How beautiful she was, even enraged!

  Davaryush said, “A little encore, for all of us.” He clapped his hands, and a portal irised open in one of the cloudbanks.

  There came from the cloudbank old men, old women, some dozens of them, hideously emaciated: walking skeletons. Davaryush himself could hardly look upon them. Yellowing rags covered them; their bones protruded, their skin was speckled with sores, their genitals hung wilted in their bald crotches. They shuffled slowly by, and Davaryush studied the face of the servocorpse Inquestor carefully for any signs of distress; for he knew that for such artful servo-corpse technology there must be a direct link between the wasting facial muscles of Ynyoldeh and the corpse’s. The parade came to a halt. At a gesture from the Kingling they lurched forward, threatening. Their eyes were hungry chasms, lightless, lifeless.

  “They are some ancients of this planet, Ynyeh,” he said sweetly, “who suffer from some strange wasting disease. They are old, they suffer terribly, Ynyoldeh. Will you not relieve them of their anguish? Here—” Plucking a slicer from his cloak, he went on. “I give you, as a present, the privilege of extending to them personally the Inquestral compassion. For it is indeed rare, my Lady, that our worlds intersect: I mean, of course, the worlds of the rulers and the ruled, the players of makrúgh and the makrúgh -fodder. It’s well, isn’t it, that we should sometimes remember such things?” Davaryush walked up to the tall mechanical, more confident now. “Take the slicer, Ynyeh . . • and thank you for the charming tables.”

  “Release me!” Ynyoldeh cried, addressing the mechanical. It set her down. She seized the slicer grimly. Davaryush stepped out of her way.

  “You must be artful,” Davaryush said, repeating one of the earliest lessons he had learnt on Uran s’Varek. “You must not seem rageful or vindictive; that is not our way—”

  “You dare to instruct me?” Then, with arsenic-laced sweetness: “I thank you, Ton Davaryush z Galléndaran K’Ning. J will never forget this—”

  A single spurt of laserlight from the slicer. A dramatic whirl, graceful as an aerial dancer, a zigzag leap …

  Sliced bodies crumpling in pitiful heaps on the force-shield, looking as though they were floating in the blue sky among the clouds. “Have I done well?” Ynyoldeh said.

  A thunder of applause from the stands….

  “Very well,” said Davaryush, hoping that she had not read his mind, did not yet know what he had done.

  And then she said, “You will come to my palace immediately. You slime, you worse than slime! You have wrested my dignity from me. You’ve won!” Again she smiled, curtsied sarcastically at the wildly cheering crowds, and the mechanical knelt to pick her up and place her so delicately in its four silvergleaming arms, and the strange pair made its way back towards the Inquestral pavilion.

  What a strange reversal, Davaryush thought. The monster and the innocent. That poor machine … it w the innocent, and the beautiful young girl is the monster. He felt sweat pouring down his face, felt the shimmercloak trying to accommodate him with a flush of cool air. The audience was dispersing now. No time to find Varuneh. He would have to confront Ynyoldeh alone, without her help, hoping that he had made the right move.

  Presently the hawk-palace rived the clouds, whirring and screeching. He mounted his hoverthrone and flew towards it, his heart beating with confusion and hope.

  When he entered the navel of the hawk-palace, he found the reception chamber in disarray. The shimmerfur of the carpeting seemed faded. A sickly yellow light played over the marble walls, turning the inlaid rubies into slimy teardrops.

  “Where are you?” he called out. He trod further. The mechanical stood in repose, deactivated, its ape-arms dangling and its eyes blank. The girlcorpse was slumped over a crook of metal arm, at an unnatural angle. It too seemed no longer to be functioning… . Davaryush called out again into the echoey stillness. “Ynyoldeh!”

  A quiet cackle. He could not perceive its source. And then he saw that it issued from the corpse’s mouth… .

  “History there is, and no history,” whispered the corpse. “No, don’t bother to answer, Daavye. I’m not playing anymore.”

  Motion. The hawk-palace was rising; he could feel the gut-wrench of a gravity-shift. “Where are we going?”

  “Did you not want to see me as I am? Sadist!” said the corpse, never righting itself from its crumpled position.

  … The walls deopaqued. They had thrust through the atmosphere and it was as though Davaryush were standing on a shimmercarpet floating against star-blazoned blackness.

  A huge black shape, blotting out a circlet of stars, coming closer • . . turning … a coronal glow suffusing it now, as it turned to reveal a nest of mirror metal stranded and tubed, drifting towards them….

  “Your palace.”

  “Yes. The hawk’s nest.”

  He knew now that it was they who were moving towards the nest that was the cradle of the hawkship. And now he saw within the nest an ovoid shape of burnished gold resting on twiglike columns bathed with soft clingfire.

  “When the hawk comes to rest over my nest,” said the voice of Ynyoldeh—and it came without irony, an innocent voice such as a small girl might truly have—“then you will descend into the egg, and you will see me as I really am…

  A dark room. More like a tomb than the throne room of one of the most famed of Inquestors. A small room, dank and stale-smelling.

  Then, a light-shaft piercing the darkness—

  A throne, carved from a cube of lucent amber, lined with feathers. Old feathers, feathers from so many kinds Of birds, and all of them dulled by dust … patches of fluorescent green that were long-dead lighthawks, flashes of firephoenix wings, threadbare peacock’s feathers with their eyes misted with age….

  And on the throne, a living corpse. He could just see it breathe, painfully, wheezingly. “The Lady Ynyoldeh,” he said formally.

  “Varuneh, you treacherous insect! You have Varuneh! How else could you know?” spluttered the voice. Eyes snapped open behind folds of jaundiced paper-flesh. “I have not spoken in a hundred years, and you make me speak … Daavye, Daavye….”

  “My gift pleased you?”

  “Drop your pretenses, Daavye. I know what it is you want.” Her shimmercloak, creased like crepe paper, rustled as she tried to raise herself to look him in the eyes. “Shall I tell you what I know?”

  “If you wish.”

  “Davaryush, the Inquest is falling! The thinkhives are buzzing with it. It may take a millennium more, but it has begun, it is implicit in our very philosophy, our very glorification of transience as a natural order of things—”

  She’s testing me! Playing with me, trying to trap me in some hideous heresy so she can destroy me! he thought. “Perhaps,” he ventured. “But for now, makrúgh goes on, and if I have pleased you—”

  The eyes flapped closed. A deep breathing, more like a death-rattle than something that gave life, was the only sound for several moments. Then Ynyoldeh said, ‘Tell Varuneh … don’t deny it, I see her handiwork in everything you’ve done today, you devious old bastard … tell her she wasn’t wrong. She saw right through me. I was too compassionate. …” A spasmic laughter racked her body, making the faded shimmercloak twinkle for a moment. “Answer me one question! If you please me, you shall have your bluff to destroy Gallendys … what do I care?” She laughed again, a ghoulish, croaking laugh, her withered cheeks jouncing with the rhythm of it.

  “Of course, Lady Ynyoldeh.”

  “Those people I killed … what were they? Were they inhabitants of your city, of your villages, plucked away from their homes to be a vehicle of my compassion, or were they something else? The truth, Daavye, the truth!”

  If I tell her the truth— It was time for the gamble. He would have to tell her the truth, or he would have to lie. The truth! he thought, and said, “They were servocorpses.”

  There was a long silence. Then the eyes opened again, slowly, studied his face.

  “I believe you, Ton Davaryush z Galléndaran K’Ning. What a charming conceit of yours! The dead killing the dead. You are certainly of an artistic bent.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “This is a dangerous moment for the both of us, Ton Davaryush. I must now gauge whether or not you have revealed yourself to me for what you really are, and then I must gauge whether it would be safe to reveal myself to you … powers of powers, Daavye!” Without warning tears began to flow from her withered eyes, an incongruous, pathetic sight. “It was I who enabled Varuneh to escape the Inquest. It was just a game of mine, a private revenge against them for giving me this terrible affliction, this anguish and terrible compassion. I am tired, Daavye! If they say the Inquest will fall, so be it, so be it! Take your toys! Do what must be done! Know, Daavye, that I forswear makrúgh , and that this is no game anymore.”.

  “I—” Never had he expected this. That the Queen of

  Daggers should all the time have been burying her hatred of the Inquest, been waiting for a moment such as this. …

  “Are you glad you told me the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “And remember, I disclaim all responsibility! On your head be it! This conversation has never taken place!” She was spent now. Davaryush forced himself to look at her for a long time. A suppurating ribbon of burst flesh ran like a serpent from the crown of her bald head down her cheeks into a fold of the shimmercloak.

  We have won, he thought. The revolution can now proceed without hindrance. We will rain fire on the Skywall Mountain and murder the helpless delphinoids, who have existed only to be our victims since Man burst as a god into the Galaxy…. He turned to look at Ynyoldeh, but the light was fast dimming and a portal was opening in the wall of the chamber. The audience was over.

  Why do I feel no joy? he was thinking. Why do I not feel that I have brought about a great utopia? He searched for joy but found only emptiness. 7 have become as they are, he thought, and remembered the dead killing the dead.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE QUEEN OF GHOSTS

  Darktouch remembered—

  Sea of quivering green things, thrashing towards her, hard oily arms grasping her, dragging her, chalk-powder rubbing off on her, and then—

  The pit. Here it was … what Kelver would have called dark, but to her it was almost familiar. It was barely wide enough for a few men, its walls ribbed by human bones lashed together with al’ksigark leather. She rested her eyes and ears now, relying on her old senses to feel out her surroundings. The smell of dead al’ksigarkar was in everything, even in the sand of the pit-floor, a smell of crushed fresh leaves compounded with rotted meat. The roof was a patchwork quilt of human and al’ksigark skins, clumsily stitched with strips of leather. She could reach up and feel it with her hands and smell what it was made of.

  She had lost everyone now, even the strange boy who had tried to become her Touch-sibling. This was the end. She told herself to expect nothing more. The half-familiarity of the pit was a comfort, even.

  But then she forced herself to remember the way the un-dark looked over the Sound, and she knew she could not let herself die….

  Who are the Inquestors of which they always spoke? she thought. She wondered if they were as powerful as Wind-bringer in his glory. If they could breathe life into a whole world as Windbringer did. The gods of the lightworld seemed so remote. They lived apart; you could not hear them in the howling of winds or the scent of Windbringer freshly brought down and returned to the Dark Country.

  A moment of blinding light as the cover of the pit was ripped loose. Then Kelver was beside her, and the darkness closed up again.

  He could not speak at first. Her fingers played along his lips; they v/ere bruised, newly scabbed. The desert dust, ground into the sweat, made sandpaper of his body. She touched a long scar on his arm. You are weak, Boy-before-Naming, she signed. For this “Kelver,” this sound made with a quiver of the throat and a buzzing of the lips, was no true name. I will have to give you a true name, she signed.

  He stirred, moaned, tried to speak.

  “Oh, Kelver,” she said aloud. The words, wrung from her in the speech of the light-people, seemed to violate the close darkness of the deathpit.

  His hand moved. Touched hers. Followed the line of her arm, the shallow curve of her new breasts. And touched her most profane of places. Ignorant of custom, he let his touch linger. Her cheeks warmed; she was ashamed, for Touch-brother was hardly cold, and she had not been the one to consign his body to the angels.

  You are not my Touch-brother, she signed. One day I must cut off a joint for him, a finger or a toe. And mourn for many sleeps. You should not touch me like that.

  The boy scratched one word crudely on her arm. Dead. Dead. His hand was cold. She felt his desolation.

  What did it matter now? They were near death. Yes. Touch-brother is dead. She made as though to push him away; but he was so weak, dead weight pushing down her arms. He grasped her more firmly now. With one hand she soothed him, stroking his cheek; with the other she signed No. Not that way. This place is like the Dark Country. You cannot see; and you can hardly hear. But l, who am of the Dark Country—1 feel, hear, see, smell, not with the touching of my eyes but with the true touching … and I will show you how it is that we love. And I will take you for my Touch-brother, against all custom, because the land of those customs is in the past, and I am free of it now.

  Did he understand her? she wondered. But he relaxed in her arms. Slowly, her hands barely brushing his chest, fingers mirroring each other, she danced the sign for love on him, over and over, loves within loves; with her fingertips she danced, onto his belly now, now almost touching his swelling penis, now darting away from it. With her lips, chapped and charred in the wind, she danced her name upon his lips: Dark … touch. Dark … touch. She grazed the tittered clingfire of his cloak, shedding it in a single motion; in the same motion she shivered herself free of her garment. She only touched him in one or two places at a time, toying with his desire, proffering, denying; this she had learned from her Touch-brother long before, when they were very little. Then she let her hair fall on his face, just one or two strands of it, drawing paths on his cheek. With her hair she drew her name on him in huge, passionate strokes, loosening the clinging dust. Oh, her lips danced, tasting salt and bitter things. And then again her name with her hair, the word’s edge barely reaching his profane places. At first Kelver seemed not to understand; but then he fell into the pattern. His fingers danced artlessly, but tenderness tempered their crudeness. She knew then that she loved him. Oh, her lips danced, skimming his genitals; with his lips he sought hers, but she made her body shiver, quiver, in and out of his reach. He moaned; the vibration of it radiated through her body from where his lips touched her. And so they played. Until the brushstrokes hardened into clutchings, and the mouths met as though by accident, and the tongue-tips tickled one another, and in another moment, again as if by happenstance, their bodies arched into a single curve, and they melted into a single soul, dancing for joy on a bed of bones and dead things.

  After, they lay in each other’s arms. The stench of decay was laced with a sweet scent of sex. He was silent so long, hardly breathing even, that she feared for him. She spoke first, breaking loose from the constraining silence of the Dark Country.