Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

Beside Karr, Jenette lowered the starlure and switched it off. Her arms hung slack at her sides, defeated.

"How are you holding up?" Karr asked quietly.

"I'm fine," Jenette replied, keeping a brave front. "I didn't really expect to convince him."

Karr had not been asking about Kthulah. Jenette's father had been found with his heart ripped out.

She had found out during Karr's six-day interaction with Tlalok. Karr did not know how she was taking it. There had been precious little opportunity to speak to her during the preceding, highly stressful days.

Ferals and Enclave humans had now been allied for three days; they had been enemies for far longer.

Enmity on both sides was in constant danger of erupting and it was a testament to Jenette's diplomatic abilities that she kept the two sides focused and more or less working together. Outwardly she appeared to be under control, but Karr did not know how she was holding up, inwardly. It would be disastrous if she broke and succumbed to grief at any point in the next few critical hours. Karr did not get an opportunity to ask further questions and set his mind at ease, however. Tlalok was also atop the ghutzu mound with Karr and Jenette; Karr was wary of how the fierce alien would react to any mention of Prime Consul Olin Tesla.

And Karr was downright afraid of how Tlalok would react to what Karr must say next.

"Night is coming," Karr said, marshaling his nerve.

Tlalok's glowering head swung to face Karr.

Karr held up a black sack, which he had been clutching behind his back.

Simultaneously, Jenette spoke into her comset. "Relay command: Ferals put protection hoods on."

"Urr, protection hoods on," came the replies of numerous Khafra voices. A flashing of light code then erupted, single points of light in the island's sailtrees stuttering as domestics stationed there translated and relayed the command to all the Ferals on the island? all the thousands and thousands of Ferals of Tlalok's horde, who were crowded onto the single floating island.

Karr felt the eyes of all those Ferals turn in his direction as he continued to offer the sack to Tlalok.

Jenette used the word protection to describe the hoods which had been distributed to the Ferals, but the aliens were not fooled; the sacks might be made of a special human-manufactured fabric which blocked light while allowing sound and air to pass freely, and they might also all have a single human glowbead affixed in the lining to lessen the utter darkness within, but they were blinding hoods, plain and simple.

The Ferals did not care if it had taken a phenomenal human effort to construct so many in such a limited time; they did not care that if they did not don the sacks, the Burning Heart of Night would surely perish.

The Ferals did not want to put them on and they would not put them on if their leader did not put his on.

And none was more loath to don a blinding hood than Tlalok.

"The human Karr will never truly grasp what he asks," the large alien growled. In the following seconds, Karr feared that Tlalok would break their covenant then and there, that suddenly the thousands and thousands of predatory aliens would revolt and cut Jenette's sixteen hundred Enclave humans to shreds. But Tlalok abruptly snatched the hood from Karr's grasp and pulled it over his head. Karr sighed with relief as he then heard the reassuring rustle of thousands more hoods being pulled over thousands more Feral heads.

Wind moaned through the sailtrees.

The blinded juggernaut continued its charge downwind.

The Clash of Radiance erupted.

The islands of the Feral blockade lost headway and drifted at the mercy of air and sea currents as countless incandescent points flared along their shores and on scattered scouting vessels arrayed across the ocean. Kthulah unleashed the might of his Radiance. Cloud bellies reflected artillery round flashes, broadsides of light volleyed toward Tlalok's island, but not a single one of Tlalok's Ferals submitted to the power of Kthulah's radiant commands. They surely would have, except that they could not submit to that which they could not see. Harder and harder Kthulah tried to win the battle of light. Even Karr, an illiterate in the alien language, could see the urgency building in Kthulah's display and its single-minded focus on making Tlalok's Ferals submit.

That was fine by Karr. The longer and harder Kthulah and his Ferals fought, the less chance they had of noticing anything else. Karr could not help glancing back to a luminescent wake, which was spreading out behind Tlalok's island. Fifty yards back, barely discernible on either side of the v-shaped trail, were two shadowy blots, each a few dozen yards across, each rimmed by faint crescents of ocean froth.

Enclave domestics, who wore no blinding-hoods, responded to the Clash of Radiance, flashing ineffectually in reaction to the entrancing lights. However, when the Clash came to an end, those domestics were no longer affected. The domestics' bonds to their humans were too strong for Kthulah to break, just as Arrou's bonds to Jenette had been too strong to be broken by the Clash of Radiance that he had witnessed from high up in a shooting-star palm along the shore of FI-716.

"Maintain heading. Maintain speed," Jenette's voice commanded in Arrou's comset.

Arrou's blood was still afire from the euphoria of the Clash of Radiance; he had enjoyed a particularly spectacular view from halfway up the island's leading sailtree. Trying to calm his racing heart, he concentrated on translating Jenette's human words into Khafra verbal language.

Keep wind at backs! Keep leaves fully unfurled!

Teeth clattered affirmatively inside blinding hoods near Arrou and the verbal command was relayed by Ferals up and down that sailtree's mighty bole? just as it was also being translated by domestics and relayed by Ferals in all the other sailtrees on Tlalok's island. The four hundred hunters in Arrou's tree held their positions, heads motionless in the featureless black hoods, glowbuds rippling faintly with both fear and determination. They were brave.

They were blind; Arrou was their eyes.

That was a position of great responsibility, Arrou knew. It made him edgy. Ferals did not like or trust domestics and Arrou wanted very much to prove that they were wrong about domestics. He fidgeted, scrubbing his claws on the tree branch he was perched upon.

The Feral closest to Arrou in the tree, the Feral appointed by Tlalok to speak for all the Pact in the tree, was a female. Trim and graceful of body, her glowbuds sparkled sharply, like ice under stars. Arrou felt that she was somehow observing him despite the hood over her head.

What is your name? she asked him.

Arrou, he replied.

Do not be nervous, Arrou. Tlalok has placed trust in you.

Arrou did not know if he believed that. Probably the female was just trying to be nice. Not that there was anything specifically wrong with being nice, he decided.

What is your name? he asked her back.

Kitrika, she replied.

Does Kitrika trust Arrou? he asked.

Kitrika thought about it. Yes, she decided.

Arrou believed her, since Kitrika not only spoke her vote of trust, but also flashed it on her glowbuds, the radiant language of truth, and that calmed Arrou's worries.

Thank you Kitrika. Arrou will try to be as brave as the Khafra of Tlalok's pack.

The female's colors smiled enigmatically. Try only to be as brave as Arrou. Then you will be brave.

Tlalok's island continued its charge at Kthulah's blockade.

The battle lines did not stay disorganized long after the Clash of Radiance fizzled. The islands swung into the wind once more, tightening their spacing as more islands crowded in from further along the blockade to meet the intruder. None of the islands were very large; these were the nimblest, fastest sailing islands in Kthulah's armada, but the numbers were daunting. Plus, they were not content to play a waiting game. They immediately began to close against the wind, tacking diagonally to the north and then back to the south in an effort to take the battle to their enemy. At the end of each leg, light code staccatoed from one island to another along the tips of high trees and the islands heaved around in perfect synchrony. The rustle of many leafy sails going slack and then snapping back taut to the wind was audible across the ocean even at a distance of three kiloyards.