"Descend into the crater," Tagoth instructed. "But do not land. I will show you where to fly."
Becker obeyed. Suddenly Tagoth said, "Now turn back toward the desert... sharply, yes... and fly into that shadow between the inner wall of the ridge and the crater."
This, too, Becker did. They found themselves flying right into a fissure in the side of the crater.
It looked as though hundreds of fireflies floated in the dark in front of them, their lights tiny pinp.r.i.c.ks that were hardly enough to illuminate the darkness of the pa.s.sage.
Then Tagoth said, "Descend and land."
Becker, who had no idea what lay beneath them, began doing so. The pinp.r.i.c.ks of light grew larger, and flickered and drew nearer, until they were clearly visible as the flames of torches carried by a parade of people converging on the flitter. Behind them, rising almost to the ceiling of the ridge, were torches set into the face of the rock.
Tagoth said, "Behold the Aridimi Stronghold."
The people under the torches were armed with a glittering a.s.sortment of knives, spears, and swords. Light glinted off the coin-bright eyes of still more guardian cats. None of these cats hopped onto the hatch in curious greeting as they had back in the forest Temple. The Hissimi guardians, tired and shaken from their journey through the sandstorm, waited warily to see what would happen next.
"Have you friends here?" Acorna asked Tagoth.
"A few know me. But my journey here was long ago, and probably those young enough to defend the Temple will not remember me. Besides, there is something you should know. The
highest-ranking priests speak a special secret language and I was never privileged to learn it. I was not especially trusted in my time here."
"In that case, I"ll go first," Acorna said. Becker started to protest, but she smiled and put her hand on his shoulder. "There should be some advantage to being the one whose coming is prophesied, after all."
The hatch opened and immediately the torches, guardian cats, and men drew close until she could count the whiskers on the cats" faces and the hairs on the arms of the men. She stood, holding her horned head erect on a neck nearly as long as and far more slender than one of her Ancestors".
"h.e.l.lo," she said pleasantly in the Makahomian dialect she had learned from Nadhari. "My name is Acorna. I am the Linyaari amba.s.sador. I believe you have met one of my race before-the one you call the Star Cat"s Companion. I"m told my arrival is expected." Becker and RK stepped outside the flitter as well and stood at attention on either side of her, ready to take on anyone who raised a hand to hurt their friend.
"Greetings, Kh.o.r.n.ya, and welcome." The speaker -a small, shriveled figure- emerged in front of the torchbearers. "Your arrival is indeed a cause for celebration. We are so pleased that you bring with you Joh and Riidkiiyi." His utterances were in somewhat broken and laboriously p.r.o.nounced but nonetheless unmistakable Linyaari.
Nadhari Kando was no coward, and many of the entries in her extensive resume proved her fearlessness and offered evidence of her superb fighting prowess.
It wasn"t exactly fear that gripped her now as she sat bound hand and foot in the back of the flitter while Dsu Macostut drove. No, what she felt was more like revulsion for Edu, and even more for herself. Both she and Edu recognized the possibilities of this scenario, one that she thought she had long ago put behind her as she had gained in strength and fighting skill.
When he turned and grinned at her speculatively, possessively, she knew she should dismiss him as an incestuous a.s.s and disregard his stare while she considered how to escape. But to her amazement, there was a very angry and frightened younger Nadhari inside her that wanted to hide, wanted to run away, and was something her older self hadn"t been for some time - ashamed. Not ashamed for some great wrong she had committed, as she had when, under the influence of drugs, she"d been used by General Ikwaskwan and his friend Count Edacki Ganoosh as a torture machine to harm the Linyaari. No, it was the way Edu looked at her that shamed her, the way he a.s.sumed some complicity on her part had put her at his mercy this way. Probably several hundred men had made overtures to her in her life by now. More of them than she cared to admit had even been successful, but none of them had made her feel as dirty as Edu could just by looking at her.
Facing Edu on her own two feet, surrounded by her friends, she had thought she was over those feelings of shame and helplessness. But now, bound and at his mercy again, part of her felt she that was no better off than she had been at six, eight, and ten. During those times, whenever he had a chance, he had culminated victories over her in their "fighting exercises" with fondlings, gropings, and eventually much worse indignities, things he"d told her were his right by conquest. The last, worst time for her had been just before he left to join the Federation. The consequences had devastated her in a way that made warfare seem laughable by comparison. When she heard Edu was returning to Makahomia, she"d arranged to ship out herself.
Macostut was flying flat-out across the desert when Edu turned his chair around to face her and reached out his hand to cup her face. She pulled her chin up and back to avoid his touch. He smiled a little at her small rebellion.
"I"m so glad you came back, Nadhari. It"s very good having you like this again," he said. Edu"s voice took on a cat-like purr. In fact, the only resemblance this supposed cat-priest bore to the Temple guardians was the self-satisfied rasp in his voice at such times. He reached out, gripped her hair in his fist, and dragged her head forward with one hand. With his other hand, he held her chin so tightly that it would later sport a hand-shaped bruise. Once he had her satisfactorily under his control, he gave her a grotesque parody of a lover"s kiss. He did not, however, try to slip her any tongue. This disappointed Nadhari. Her teeth were very sharp and strong. She would have used them well.
Edu, as if reading her mind, pulled away long enough to begin licking her face, but not in the grooming way the guardians had. It was more like a predator tasting her in preparation for devouring her.
"Hey, what"s this?" Macostut asked. "Something just popped up behind us."
Looking over Edu"s shoulder, Nadhari recognized the shape of a Linyaari flitter against the horizon and sent a warning message to Acorna. Knowing her friends were near strengthened her resolve to survive, to escape, to put Edu in his place. Even more beneficial, the sight of the flitter distracted Edu from his little dominance game. The Mulzar patted her cheek, mouthed "later," and turned around to face the screen again.
It was a funny-looking flitter, Edu Kando thought, shaped like a winged beast of some sort, but painted in bright, unnatural colors. For something that moved like a sophisticated craft, it looked like a particularly well-done piece of primitive artwork. It landed, and at that point something else in the landscape popped into view that neither the Mulzar nor Macostut had previously seen - a. giant cat. It bounded toward the winged flitter, then, as the hatch opened, suddenly turned into a naked man. A familiar naked man.
Brother Bulaybub, back from the alleged grave! So he was one of the shape shifters? Just went to show you couldn"t trust anyone ever, really. And that explained who clawed up the corpse of Edu"s man in the Aridimi Stronghold. Which meant that Bulaybub would have seen the map on the man"s skin, which meant that Bulaybub would know the way to the stronghold.
The flitter blinked out of sight as it rose, and Edu uttered a blasphemous expletive reference to the mating habits of the Temple cats.
"What"s the matter?" Macostut asked.
"That creature who just climbed into the flitter and disappeared knows the way to the stronghold, and now we"ve lost him."
"I"m afraid so. They"re shielded."
"Hail them and tell them we have Nadhari and will kill her if they don"t surrender him at once."
"You know I can"t do that, Edu. None of the com equipment works beyond the gate. Your Makahomian rule, remember? I"ll just have to head in the same direction they took and hope for the best. I tell you, we"re going to find that stronghold if we have to cover every inch of the desert on this planet. We"ll be able to spot it when we see it. It may be a secret to you low-tech types, but it can"t stay hidden from the air."
Edu"s face wore a murderous frown for a moment; then he turned a ferocious smile on Nadhari. "Oh dear, cousin. Apparently you"re not going to have any value as a hostage. I seem to be the only one able to appreciate your charms."
Nadhari decided that if he was going to go after her again anyway, she might as well make it interesting enough so that he didn"t get any bright ideas about pursuing that flitter just now, and maybe find Tagoth and the others.
With her own purr she said to Edu, "Better get out your stun gun again then, cousin. Because that"s the only-way you"re going to get the best of me even now, with me all tied up. You used to
fight fair, at least. I suppose your position as Mulzar has made you soft."
"Not as soft as you can be, cousin," he said. "I"ll give you an even chance. I"ll free one of your hands. Just one, so you can put it to good use."
"Oh, stop," she said. "A girl can only take so much sweet talk before caving right in. But, Edu?"
Yes:
"How are you planning on justifying to the Aridimi elders visiting their sacred stronghold in a bit of alien technology, in the company of a Federation official?"
"I don"t have to explain anything to anyone. I am the Mulzar. I rule the high plateau and the steppes. After my gifts are delivered to the all the Temples, I"ll rule the rainforest as well. And the Aridimi Stronghold has made itself vulnerable by its very isolation. The priests weaken themselves with their self-imposed privations."
"What would you know about privation, self-imposed or otherwise?" Nadhari asked.
The Mulzar smiled.
"Ummm - I have my sources, you know. My last spy among the Aridimi was murdered recently, but he was in place for years. He managed to sneak out bits of intelligence to me throughout that time using the priests" supply caravans. Without the meager contributions they bring in from the outside world to augment their supplies, you see, the priests are quite helpless. They even deprive themselves of water to avoid defiling the sacred lake any more than necessary.
"I, however, have no intention of depriving myself in anyway. In fact, I plan on doing a lot of so-called defilement right away. First I"ll defile you, then the lake. Then, when the priests and all of the "wretched cats are purged from this world, our society will enter a new and much more progressive age than the blasted stone age we"ve endured for so long. The stones we"ve wasted as
mere ornaments will be sold to mining concerns and terraforming companies and weapons manufacturers all across the universe. Their sales will provide me with a nice little war chest. It shouldn"t take long, my dear, for our stones are very valuable. The size of our chrysoberyls is so rare, I am told, that their like is unknown in the universe.
"Once I have done that, we will begin training our own people to manufacture the machinery our stones will augment-particle beam accelerators and weapons. We will have a viable economy based on industry on this planet, instead of catering to all of these foolish animals. People are surely beginning to see, after my little demonstration with the recent plagues, that animals, even the cats that they so foolishly worship, are far too fragile to depend upon. The cat temples will be replaced with factories. All those cat statues, if it is not too immodest for me to say so, will be replaced with statues of me."
"You"d make a good statue," Nadhari said. Her cousin failed to understand the humor or the veiled threat behind her words.
"Thank you. You can be beside me when I take over this planet. Of course, you"re a bit old for child-bearing, though there were rumors when I came back, rumors that our last encounter... ?"
He let the question hang and Nadhari willed her face not to flush. Just like Edu to count his stones before he found them. She forced herself to continue regarding him with cool amus.e.m.e.nt. She would never give him the satisfaction of knowing the pain he had caused her, and the loss.