“Now I have made you mine,” she said. “Our dreams are one. We are joined by scent and birth and death.”

  He said, “I was afraid you were too wasted with grief. For that other boy. I was jealous of the dead.”

  “Perhaps we too are dead.”

  “Shhh … never say that. What happened to your great secret, the one that drove us into the desert?”

  “I don’t know.” She was crying softly; she turned so he wouldn’t know.

  “I believed in it. Look, why would they be trying to kill us if it weren’t for that? Why would those terrible angels come for us? Why did our village die, if the thing you have to tell isn’t important?”

  “I did not think of these things when I fled. Only that we had murdered the greatest beauty my eyes and ears could ever touch.”

  “Hush now. You are the most beautiful thing I will ever touch.”

  She laughed; she had learned to do it well. The laughter echoed; a bone, dislodged somewhere, rattled. Through the skin-covered pit-mouth came a sickly green light.

  “Sleep now,” Kelver said. “Sleep. Tomorrow we’ll find a way free. Tomorrow, my love, tomorrow.”

  After it seemed one or two sleeps, when they had lain delirious with hunger and thirst, and had begun even to gnaw on the bones in the pit, the ghost people came to drag them from their prison. They were bound and dragged over a terrain of jagged stones; they were glazed with frost and did not cut their feet, but burned them numb.

  An encampment now: tents, made from the hides of al’ksigarkar with their heads and teeth still intact, dangling here and there from the tent-sides. The suns, low behind the tents, blackened them and bathed them in fire. The ghost people pushed the children forward, down onto the cold ground. A fire burned. Kelver saw the outline of Sky-wall, far yet near, bursting through twilit clouds. They had come nowhere! There was no escape from the Skywall. .. .

  The ghost people were silent And then, all at once, they uttered a series of syllables, half grunt, half moan, in unison: Hanh, hanh, hanh. From the largest of the tents emerged a woman.

  “Queen!” the nearest ghost man rasped, shoving their heads into the frost.

  The woman laughed. It was a beautiful and haunting sound, like the sound a jangyll-bird makes when it knows it will be slaughtered for dinner and may sing only once more. Kelver looked up quickly, before his head was forced down again. He reached out to find Darktouch, to find a twinge of warmth. In that moment he had seen the woman’s face; she was not of the ghost people.

  She had once been beautiful, he thought; she was old now, a hundred years old, two hundred … he could not imagine such age, not without regular somatic renewal to preserve the appearance of youth. She was quite bald; a wig of shredded al’ksigark hide sat on her brow, a wilderness of straggly green threads. She wore a green robe of the same material, and a necklace of frozen human fingers, half decayed.

  “Meat, I see!” she said. She spoke the hightongue. That was how the ghost people knew some words of it then! Who was this woman?

  She gestured. They forced Darktouch and Kelver up on their feet. Kelver looked at the ground; but Darktouch stared at the woman, and he knew that her senses were still drunk with the joy of seeing even the ugly things, the deadly things.

  The queen of the ghost people looked from one to the other. Especially at Darktouch.

  “You are from inside,” she said at last, abruptly. “How? Your eyes are opened.”

  “You know?” kelver said.

  “Never mind. You will be meat for my people soon. For a century I have led them to food, and for a century I have been queen here. Queen of a patch of desert. Ha! But queen, but queen.” Her voice was high, clear, hard. “Not a lackey of the High Inquest!”

  “We are seeking the Inquest,” Kelver said.

  “Silence! I speak to the girl. This girl .. . she must have seen what I saw … and I am driven mad for it! The palace … the Inquestral Seat… there was music, songs, I remember still the songs….”

  “You know what Darktouch saw?” Kelver said. “You aren’t from the ghost people….”

  But she was singing now, her eyes closed in remembrance. Kelver could barely make out the words, so intertwined were they with melismas:

  Den om verék entinjet

  in dárein shirenzheh

  zenz kel skevúh varúng

  e varande

  Aivermatsá falláh setálikas!

  tekiánveras yvrens ká!

  O-tinjet

  in dárein shirenzheh!

  sarnáng, varunger shentraor!

  eih! min zhalà, zhalà,

  hokhté Enguester, min zhalà, zhalà,

  sarndng,

  varunger shentraor, varunger shentraor….

  He translated the words to himself in the lowspeech: “No man alive has touched the silence between the stars without being driven mad, or reaching enlightenment. For now the delphinoids fall through the overcosm, and the tachyon bubbles burst through the cosmos. But I have touched the silence between the stars! I, the mad singer! Ei, envy me, envy me, thou High Inquestor, envy me, the mad singer, the mad singer.”

  ‘Did you like my song, boy? Boy eking life from the coolness of mountainside, boy without dreams, without knowledge? Such as you seeks the Inquest?” She laughed again, a laughter tinged with sorrow.

  “Please, Queen … are you from the Inquest? Can you tell us where to find them?”

  She gestured. A ghost man came forward and struck Kelver in the face. He tasted blood. “Never speak to me of them! They have betrayed the universe!” cried the queen of the ghost people. “Did you like the song? It was sung to me by the great Shen Sajit once. He grasped a shadow of the great beauty. A shred. A nothing. But I have seen, and now Tm mad, Fm mad, mad, mad, mad, mad.” And she began to dance as the frost melted around them. Her joints moved stiffly, but she held her head high and bent her wrists in an elegant gesture; Kelver had seen this dancing sometimes, in an image crystal bought from the city by his uncle Aaye, in a holosculpture set in a cast of shoddy searock ringed with the cheapest grade of clingfire.

  “You are,” he said, “a person fallen from greatness. You’re a shadow of something that should long be dead.”

  “How dare you tell me this?” she said. “Know me then! I am Yeng Saryodha of the Ferret-Clan, a spy for the great thinkhive of this world. Once I was of the court of Ton Elloran nTaanyel Tath; I was lent to this planet long ago, for my great skill in prying out secrets, in finding those things about people which even they themselves cannot know.”

  “Saryodha—”

  “Do not call me that nowl I am queen, queen, queen, the mad queen, the mad, the mad, the mad queen, queen, queen.”

  The savages, hearing those words, echoed them: queen, queen, in high creaking voices.

  “She has seen, then, has seen, has seen,” the queen said. “She haa touched the light on the Sound, and she is mad as I.”

  Darktouch said, “Then you know why we must go to the Inquestors. You must release us, Queen, help us.”

  Saryodha screeched with laughter. The ghost people echoed her. “And take my people’s meat from them? Their meat, my survival?”

  Kelver said, “Now I know that what Darktouch told me is true. I didn’t before. I trusted her. But you’ve seen, too, and so you don’t dare return—”

  “The delphinoids fly the overcosm, and the Inquest holds us in its high compassion, so I learned, I learned, I a child, no queen yet If I go back I will tell them, kill them. Ha, ha, ha, ha, the end of the Inquest is locked inside, inside, hidden, hidden. You too, you have the key. You do not know. You, girl, have touched, but do not know the power of what you touched. Listen to me who heard the immortal Sajit sing:

  “Shenom na chítarans hyemadhá!—

  We long for the heart’s homeworld.

  “The thinkhive sent me to the country of the blind. A hundred years ago maybe. Routine investigation, check on status of artificially tailored society, the blind, the deaf, the children of darkness on whom the shadow falls forever. I saw, I saw, children, I saw, I saw the light on the Sunless Sound, on Keian zenzAtheren. Better to hide here in the desert than to have known such things. Sajit in his song— he touched a shadow only, only a shadow. You, girl, and I have touched truth. Am I then driven mad, while you attained enlightenment? This death I give you is a gift, a gift from the mad, mad, mad, mad queen.

  “Better to die than to bring about the end of all things, the death of the high compassion, the death of a million worlds.”

  Kelver said, “I don’t understand. How can what we do be so monstrous? I don’t believe it. If we find the Inquestors, if we tell them the truth … and maybe I’ll win my wings and be free of this backworld, and the girl and I will walk the starfield in our love.”

  “Children, children, your love is not forever, no, no, not. I am old, I have seen, have seen the Inquest in its majesty. Riding the sky on floaters of precious metals, the shimmer-cloaks flying, blushing, billowing in the wind. You cannot imagine how old I am, I the queen, queen, queen. So it is always: the dreams of the young, bursting with joy and vigor, are stronger than the realities of the old; the airy nothings that in your heads will topple the skies themselves, topple, tumble, topple, crumble, crumble.”

  Then Darktouch went forward; before they could stop her she had seized a withered arm and had begun to sign upon it. But the old woman pushed her aside, and they were seized again.

  “Bring them to the tent; feed them with old scraps of al’ksigark flesh, so they are filled out a little;, they can die tomorrow, tomorrow.”

  “Queen—” Kelver whispered.

  “Enough, children, enough, enough. I tire easily. It has been a pleasant conversation which I shall not prolong. Help me now, guards, take your queen to her bed….”

  They were bound with thongs made from the guts of the al’ksigark. Darktouch stirred, dreaming of running down the passages of her old home, of familiar ridges of stone telling her feet the way. And then the floor dissolved, became a featureless thing of mirror metal, and in her dream she was blind as Touch-brother, she was thrusting out in random directions, the smoothness dark to her feet, the air stretching forever without walls to gauge space and distance, and it was driving her mad, her mad, her mad—

  Kelver woke.

  Someone had touched his shoulder.

  “Quick! Quick, quick, before the madwoman changes her mind!” a voice whispered. He grasped the thin wig of leather strips. Darktouch moved in her sleep, near but unreachable. But his bonds were being loosened.

  Torchlight suddenly: a brand of human bone, coated with al’ksigark wax, an eerie green light.

  The queen kicked at Darktouch. She shuddered off her dream. “Come, children, come, my little ones, come, come,” the queen said. “No, not the oven of the wicked queen, not the pit of the lovely temptress, this isn’t a story. Come, come, come….”

  They followed her. He wanted to hurry, but reined himself, afraid of discovery. Outside it was quite dark; only the one sun shone, and it was low against the distant Sky-wall. All around them the ghost people slept, frozen into angled poses, more like statues than men, their bodies whitened with fine sand.

  “The lair of the serpent mistress,” the queen hissed. It was her own tent, the largest one that they had seen before.

  When they stepped inside they saw that it was carpeted in a cloth of clingfire; a cold light flickered along the sick-green walls. She pulled at the carpet, uncovering a patch of sand and throwing a circle of ceiling into shadow. “Are you ready, children? I will tell you more, more.”

  “Why did you wake us? If you’re going to kill us, could you not let us sleep for an hour?” Kelver said sleepily.

  “I remember so much, children. I remember … being a child, loving, loving a boy, a boy like you, Kelverelverelver, straight, not tall, bright-eyed, comely. They took him to be a childsoldier. His lovely eyes they took from him, they gave him eyes with laser-irises, eyes that could saw a small mountain with a glance and a command and a smart swirl of his lithe body. They took me too, took me out of the people bin, for my planet had been blown to powder in a war; my sister became Tash, a Rememberer, for she had seen the childsoldiers fall upon her world; I became Yeng, a Ferret-woman, for I had hidden in a water-jar that stood in the village square, and I had heard two childsoldiers talking among themselves, and I knew where they would strike next. I ran to warn, to warn my father and my mother, but they were charred, charred, gingerbread-charred, with raisins for eyes, raisins, raisins. And after, I served the Inquest well. And I heard Sajit, the master of the Princeling’s music, with his songs of the Inquestors* pain. For they have taken all the evil of man upon themselves; and man is a fallen being, fallen, fallen. Listen! he sang to me:

  “Af chátaras seréh chom aish,

  chom daras fáh—

  Our hearts too shall become as dust,

  just as the stars have become.

  “That is why I free you, free you. And myself, for they will kill me for it, me, their queen, who has ruled wisely. They know no better, being the trash of old gene-changings that the thinkhives dumped on the desert, dumped to grow wild, wild, wild, and live on the sand and the frost, frost, frost.”

  Kelver’s heart leapt up at this. He inched nearer to Darktouch. She smiled, not speaking.

  “Thus I plant the seed that flowers in end and beginning,” the queen said. “Now dig. Here, here,” she said, pointing to the patch of sand.

  He bent down on the tent floor. He scooped up the sand with his hands and piled it on the clingfire fabric; as he did so it doused the tattered flames, peppering the ceiling with shadowspecks. Darktouch helped him, digging with both hands.

  Underneath the sand was a glint.

  “Do you see? Do you see, my children?”

  Kelver stood up, radiant. “A displacement plate. Queen, you are saving us!”

  “And this, too,” she said. She pulled a disk from its hiding place in the sand. It was a crystal messagedisk, circumscribed with curlicuish highscript.

  “What is it?” Darktouch said, taking the disk from her, fingering it dubiously.

  “The key to the Cold River.”

  “What does that mean?” said Kelver.

  “The key, the key, the key! Must I tell you everything? Am I a thinkhive? An oracle?”

  “Where does it lead? The displacement plate.”

  “Go! Ask no questions, you are my death, you are my private angels, delivering me into the hands of my subjects”

  Darktouch said, “You must come with us. You, who have seen the thing inside the Skywall. Perhaps my word won’t be enough. You are so wise, so old, you’re not mad at all, I see, you’ve seen what you never wanted to see and you’re hiding, but you can’t always hide, you who come from high places….”

  The mad queen laughed bitterly. “I’m no use, I’m mad, mad, mad, mad, mad now, madder than the universe, madder than the Inquest.”

  Then Kelver embraced the old woman; she was like a doll in his arms, although she was the taller by a full head. Her eyes were red with weeping now. And he pitied her. The thing in the mountain had cursed her. It had made her flee, just as it had made Darktouch flee. And him, too, though he had not seen it. Its power had compelled him even at second hand.

  “Come. Quickly, come,” he said to Darktouch. They stepped onto the displacement plate, she grasping the key. He paused; he had no idea what command to subvocalize, and he knew the queen would not help him.

  For she was laughing again now, and again the sound reminded him of the doomed jangyll-fowl.

  He formed an image of the Cold River in his mind. As the image crystallized, he felt the disorienting lurch of the displacement field, and then they were out in the open. The blue sun was rising now, and they would soon be burned to death unless they could reach the shelter of the Cold River. And now he saw it, a flashing snake that spanned the sandscape from the far Skywall to the limits of vision.

  “Quick, quick,” he whispered urgently to her, and they began to run towards freedom.

  Burning… burning….

  The Cold River was nearer now, but the suns had danced their way to the zenith, wringing the sweat from him. Darktouch was tired now; her skin, pale from never touching the sunlight, was fire-red and sensitive to every sand particle.

  “We’ve got to run,” Kelver was saying, “before the suns get us and we rot alive and the al’ksigarkar come back—”

  They were about a third of a klomet away when Dark-touch looked up. And screamed. “The angels! The angels!” And the sky was black with them. At first the Skywall’s shadow had concealed them, but now they had left their hiding place and were flying serenely towards them. They looked like a flock of silverdoves until you saw the claws and the metal tentacles.

  “Faster!” They hurried now; Kelver couldn’t feel the sand lacerating his feet As they reached the Cold River the sudden chill enveloped them. Darktouch leaned for a moment against the columns, for here the Cold River flowed far above ground and was supported by thick pylons of metal. She was hyperventilating now. Kelver grasped her, pulled.

  Nowhere to hide. They were coming now, slowly, surely. If they stood near the river, surely the angels dared not harm the river, but they couldn’t stay there forever—

  They were bigger now. Flying reptiles of metal. And now the earth v/as shaking. Kelver looked wildly about, and then saw—

  Worming out of the ground, more of them! Corkscrewing snouts of metal were emerging, and they were angels of the ground, monstrous spiders sending the sand flying •around them, whirring and chittering—