Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

“This,” she said.

Danyilyn regarded the pyramid suspiciously. She knew immediately what it was. She also knew of its danger. “You won’t be able to contact Pelmen with that! Instead you’re liable to get his archenemy!”

“True enough,” Bronwynn grunted, “but at this point I’m willing to talk to anybody who knows anything!

Besides,” she added haughtily, “I’m a shaper now, too!”

“My Lady, be careful!” Danyilyn warned, but she was too late. Already the crystal object’s inner radiance was flaring into a brilliant, beautiful blue.

Bronwynn stared into the pyramid, as did Erri and did Rosha. The link was made.

“Bronwynn?” Rosha cried.

“Rosha?” his astonished queen replied.

“By the Power!” Erri muttered incredulously.

“Is that really you?” Bronwynn squealed, and Rosha eagerly assured her that it was. “Where are you?”

she demanded.

“I’m in the Mar.”

“Well, I’d guessed that,” she snapped. “Where in the Mar?”

The magical pyramids did not transmit the user’s voice alone. If Rosha peered into one facet of the three-sided object, he could see the faces of the other two speakers looking up at him from the other two facets. He could clearly see the scolding arch of Bronwynn’s eyebrows, and it irritated him. His answer sounded gruffer than he’d intended. “I’m safe.”

“Are you with your father?” she probed. She was shocked by the expression of grief that seized her husband’s features. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice suddenly tender and solicitous.

“By all accounts, my father is dead.”

“But how—”

“It’s a long story, not yet fit for the telling,” he said brusquely. His own attitude surprised him. A few moments before he’d been sitting joylessly in his opulent guest room, longing for contact with this very woman. Now, he suddenly didn’t feel much like talking. “Erri, is that really you?” he asked, trying to deflect attention from himself.

“Yes, it is,” Erri said soberly. He seemed unwilling to go on.

“Are you safe?” Bronwynn asked doubtfully, her eyes still watching Rosha’s.

“I think so.”

“Where are you?” she asked, now turning her full attention to the prophet.

Erri hesitated. “I… don’t think I can really say. In fact, I’m positive that I don’t rightly know where I am. But I think that may be just as well. Does Pelmen know of this conversation?”

“He should,” Bronwynn reasoned, “if he’s anywhere near one of us. Do either of you know his whereabouts? I have a message for him.”

“What is it?” Rosha asked.

“It’s bad news…” Bronwynn hesitated, reflecting a moment, then chose to go ahead. “Made worse, I fear, by your word about your father. If you see him, tell him Yona Parmi is dead.”

“Yona?” Rosha frowned. “How?” His grim expression grew more so as Bronwynn recounted the events of the clawsp attack. Erri listened to this news with evident interest—and appeared somewhat relieved at its outcome. Rosha grunted as she finished her story: “Terril. Did he escape?”

“I don’t know,” Bronwynn said. “We swept millions of insects from the Imperial House—”

“But no strange bodies were found?”

“If so, I wasn’t told.”

“Then he escaped. When a shaper dies in altershape he reverts to his human form. So. Terril is against us.” Rosha pursed his lips in concentration.

“You’re forgetting something,” Bronwynn snapped, and he looked up at her inquiringly. I am with you.”

Rosha could usually absorb Bronwynn’s inherited haughtiness without giving it any thought. For some reason, however, today it made him want to snap at her. “What do you mean by that? You think just because you killed some clawsps you’re ready to match powers with Mar-Yilot?”

Bronwynn was stung by his sharp reply. Hurt, she fired back an unthinking retort. “I’m ready to match powers and armies with anyone!”

“What does that mean?” Rosha goaded.

“It means, Rosha, that I’m sitting on your border with forty thousand troops, ready to invade and offer aid wherever you need it! Now if you’ll just tell me where you—”

“Did I ask you to do that?” Rosha shouted. “Did I ask for you to come in here and rescue me?”

“Well—no, but it just makes good sense, if you’re in trouble—”

“I’m not in trouble!” Rosha barked. “I’m safe, I’m with friends, and we can handle our own problems without the Golden Throng interfering!”

“All right then, tell me, if you’re so safe and secure, why you’ve not contacted me until now?” He’d asked for it, Bronwynn decided. She had a lot of anger inside her just waiting for release. Now she let it spew.

“You left me in Chaomonous without a word! Not a word! What am I supposed to do, sit at home knitting until you decide to return? I had to send word to Pelmen to track you down, and I wouldn’t have known anything if my own magical ability hadn’t surfaced in a dream and allowed me to meet him on your precious Mari rock of dead people!”

“That’s the Rock of Tombs,” Rosha said icily.

“Whatever. I finally figured it out for myself that you’d gone off looking for glory! Talk about me sounding bold! What were you trying to do? Take on Flayh single-handedly?”

Rosha’s jaws clenched, primarily because her barbs were striking so close to a target made tender by guilt. He struck back. “How do you think I’m able to talk to you? I took this mystical device from Flayh’s tower with my own hands! I’m currently in league with the two most potent shapers in Mari history, and together—”

“No!” The word was thunderous. It came from none of the three, but it echoed in Erri’s cave and vibrated the walls of Bronwynn’s tent. The three sat in stunned silence. Then they heard something else—something chillingly dark and evil, emanating from some distance away.

“That was Pelmen,” Bronwynn whispered.

“The ‘no’ was,” Erri said calmly. “The laughter was someone else. My children—I think I can call you that by this time, since you’ve certainly treated one another as such—these devices were never intended for this purpose. I understand from our mutual mentor that any conversation through them ends in bickering. Now I’ve seen evidence of it, and that’s confirmed by my own feelings. I’d like to grab you both by the ears and shake you! Now let us put these things away as we’ve been instructed and keep them safe! The Power has some purpose for them or we would not possess them now. But this is most certainly not that purpose!” With a head-splitting snap, Erri broke the link.

Rosha sat on his bed, awaiting the knock on his door. At last it came. “Come in,” he mumbled.

Pelmen stepped in, as he’d expected; but he hadn’t expected Serphimera to follow, or Mar-Yilot, or Syth. He hung his head in humiliation. No one said anything until he broke the silence. “The laughter,” he said. “Flayh’s?”

Pelmen nodded. “It was Flayh.”

“Then he heard everything.”

“Didn’t you know he would?” Mar-Yilot flared, and it crossed Rosha’s mind that he ought to feel fright.

Suddenly, he realized that he did. Not only was he frightened of the Autumn Lady’s wrath. He felt the backlog of days of terrifying circumstances suddenly catching up with him. In that moment it was as if Rosha awoke at last to the mighty forces at work around him— forces he had not a breath of control over, forces he was’nt even aware of. He realized, vaguely, that Pelmen had come to his defense.

“No, he didn’t know. That’s my fault. I’d thought the object lost at the bottom of the reservoir. It never occurred to me that he’d managed to hang onto it, so I felt no urge to explain its full properties to him.”