Стивен Браст - Tiassa

“What of it?”

“Well, Dragaerans grow slowly, right? I mean, by the time they’re grown up, a human would be dead.”

“Yes, that’s true, now.”

“Now?”

She nodded.

“When did it change?”

“Gradually, over an immense length of time. You know how long the Empire has existed.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Yes?”

“That seems an odd thing to happen.”

“A natural side effect.”

“Of what?”

“Of the way the Jenoine tampered with the world.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It was a result of their whole effort. No, not effort. Experiment.”

“Experiment?”

“They live a long time, Vlad. Long by Sethra’s standards, long by mine. And they’re observers, and they are absolutely heartless, at least where other species are concerned. This world is an experiment to see if a society can be made to stagnate.”

“I am lost.”

“Societies develop and change, Vlad. There are inventions, and inventions have repercussions throughout society; associations among people grow and become different.”

“If you say so.”

“You’ve never seen it, because, for one thing, you don’t live long enough, and for another, that hasn’t happened here. Or rather, it has, but it has been very, very slow. The formation of the Empire, from scattered tribes, took tens of thousands of years. Without the interference of the Jenoine, it would only have taken hundreds.”

“That’s—I don’t know what to say.”

“I was one of their servants, and I didn’t enjoy it. My sisters and I took offense at the whole idea, not to mention how they treated us, so we took action.”

“The Great Sea of Amorphia.”

She nodded. “It didn’t undo what they’d done, but it introduced a certain amount of slow, gradual progress. Between that and our efforts to keep them from interfering, things have moved. A little. But now…” She smiled.

“Now what?”

“I should have realized it, of course. Adron’s Disaster. That was it. Seventeen Cycles. They built in their stability, and I destabilized it. That was the proof it worked. I should have recognized my own handiwork.”

“Um. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about Devera, my granddaughter, my little seed of catalyst thrown into the swamp of stagnation. Catalyst, yes, the silver tiassa. How did I not recognize it?”

“Goddess, I have no idea—”

“Devera. A product of the Interregnum.”

“That makes no sense. Her mother wasn’t even around during the Interregnum. I know, I rescued her myself.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “From the Halls of Judgment. Where she came in a disembodied form because of the actions of her father. It was, after all, why I introduced that ability into the e’Kieron line so long ago, though I had no idea in what way it would bear fruit.” By now, I was generating questions faster than I could even remember them. She kept talking. “But there it is, time out of time, stretching from the first disaster to the second, and the second brought everything—even you, my oh-so-tough Easterner—together to create little Devera, the perfect catalyst to unlock—everything. This is splendid. I should open another bottle of that wine.”

“Yes, that would be—”

“Tell me everything that happened.”

I was done trying to fight her on it. I gave her a more-or-less complete version of events, leaving out things that were none of her business, or that I’d promised not to mention. She listened, nodding occasionally, her eyes fixed on me like they’d keep me pinned to the chair.

When I finally stopped, she sat back and rubbed her chin with one of her weird fingers. At length she said, “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Stuff,” I said.

“How did she end up trapped there?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask her?”

“Our conversations kept being cut short by her vanishing abruptly.”

She nodded. “Of course, yes, that would happen.”

“Why?”

She brushed it aside as if it didn’t matter, which, with my luck, meant it was the key to the whole thing (it wasn’t, but I didn’t find that out for a bit).

“All right, then,” she said. “It makes sense now.”

“I’m glad it makes sense to someone. Can you explain why, when I struck the mirror, it brought me here?”

“I am certain,” she said dryly, “that if you put your whole mind to it, you can work out why it was that when you, in your typical subtle, discreet, and nuanced way, blasted a big hole in the fabric of the universe, you happened to come here.”

“Uh…”

Verra, I hope this doesn’t kill me.

“Right,” I said. “Got it.”

She shrugged. “That’s a relief. Come with me.”

I followed her down a narrow white hallway, trying to organize my questions into something coherent. The hall ended in an arched opening, with a large room on the other side, also white, except that it didn’t. I followed her through the arch, and we were in an entirely different room, circular, not especially big, with windows looking out—

“Hey,” I said. “This is Morrolan’s—”

She unceremoniously pushed me. I fell backward into one of the windows, and ended up—

Of course. In the manor, on my back, just outside the mirror room.

“Boss?”

“Loiosh, you wouldn’t believe—”

“I think you should get up.”

I know that tone. I did so. “How long was I—”

“Not long, just a couple of minutes. But just as you vanished, there was that sound.”

“What sound?”

“You know, like, stones rolling?”

Crap.

“Yeah, I must have set off an alarm.”

“Uh-huh. Should we run?”

“To where?”

I glared at me in the mirror I’d just tried to break, and I glared back.

That’s when I heard a scuffling sound behind me, just as Loiosh said, “Boss!”

I turned around, and there was the big, ugly, misshapen thing making its way toward me from down the hall. As far as I could judge, it wasn’t coming to raise my Imperial county to a duchy.

No messing around this time; I drew Lady Teldra.

“Plan, Boss?”

“Can you distract it?”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s go for that.”

It was coming very fast, and it was very big.

Okay, thing. Let’s do this. I dropped into a crouch, watching how it moved, gauging distance. Loiosh and Rocza were on its back, biting it, filling it with venom that none of us expected to have any effect, at least not soon. It didn’t even seem to notice them, and I could tell that Loiosh was offended. As the thing got up to me, Loiosh left its back and flew into its face; I rolled to the side as it continued right up to where I’d been and stumbled into the mirrors, which caused nothing whatever to happen, unfortunately.

But it did leave the thing’s back exposed.

I struck, and it twisted like it could feel it coming and I missed, and at the same time it lashed out at me and I caught a hand to my head and saw spots in front of my eyes and felt a little sick. I backed up as fast as I could, but it was faster; at the last minute I rolled forward, scampered between its legs without a shred of dignity, and came up behind it, but I didn’t even try to take a shot; I just put some distance between us. Loiosh and Rocza landed on its back again and bit it some more, and it still didn’t seem to even be aware of them.

It was really fast, that thing. Inhumanly fast. I scrambled to the side and ducked, avoiding another great thump—I swear the air of its fist passing almost knocked me down. I looked for an opening, but it stopped and turned too quickly for me to do more than gaze wistfully at its exposed back before its teeth were in my face again.