Hammerfall by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online Page A

him.
    â€œIs there a dispute within Tain’s house?”
    â€œHe’s threatened them. Keep them safe. Provide for them. And I’ll get your answer.”
    â€œI don’t bargain.”
    â€œI do.” His effrontery stung the guards. They began to move; they laid hands on him; and desisted, perhaps in fear of lightning.
    â€œI shall provide you all you need,” the Ila said mildly, “and appoint you a captain as you ask, and give you all the resources you ask. And I shall set my seal on your mother and your sister and have them safe. Do you agree?”
    It was surely a trap, a trick, a mockery. But the roaring burst like a dam in his ears, and the madmen turned and twitched together, some falling on the floor.
    â€œLeave,” the Ila said, motioning toward the doors. “And take them out!” She pointed at Marak. “You stay!”
    Her guards slowly, with backward glances, gathered the mad, some of them standing, some on the floor, and cleared the room even of themselves. The au’it hesitated, last, but even to her the Ila made a sign, and the au’it gathered her ink and her book and slunk away to a door behind the pillars.
    Then the Ila rose from her chair and descended three steps, silk whispering, falling like old blood about her movements.
    Then she sat down, like some marketwife, midway on those steps. She was that close, as fragile as temple porcelain. But pain ran through Marak’s joints like knives and reminded him at every breath what those gloved hands could do.
    Those hands joined, made a bridge against her lips. Highborn women might whiten their faces with cosmetic to show their lack of exposure to the sun, and come outdoors only by night. Her skin left no mark on the gloves. It was translucent white, alive. The eyes were deep as wells.
    â€œI wish your loyalty in this,” she said. “Will I have it?”
    He asked himself what other choice he had, compared to life, and being given power to rescue those two on earth he loved. The opposite was implicit in the Ila’s gift: that all he loved were still under her seal.
    â€œI see no recourse,” he said. “No choice.”
    â€œWhen I heard you were among the mad I gathered, I knew I had a resource above the others. What coin will truly win you, Marak Trin? A province? A great house?”
    She mocked him. And he searched his soul and knew to his distress that in company with her offer, life itself interested him, and her proposition interested him. He had lived with death all the way to the holy city. She gave him tomorrow instead and offered him the lives of his mother and sister into the bargain. All his principles ebbed away, gone like the strength in his limbs.
    She had sat down like a marketwife. In deliberate mockery of the fear he felt he sank down and sat like a field hand, cross-legged, at the last in a hard collapse against the stone. All she offered might be a lie, but from a posture like hers he answered and he listened, having been caught and corrupted by this idea of hers. Everything in him longed for answers, longed for reason, for purpose, for some logic to his life.
    â€œWhat if I do this?” he said. “What do you expect me to find out there?”
    â€œIf I knew,” she said, “would I have to send anyone?”
    â€œIf I’m that mad, how shall I remember to come back?”
    â€œIf you are that mad,” she said, “will you care? And if you are not mad, will you serve my needs? I think not. I think only the mad can find this answer.”
    â€œIt may be,” he said.
    â€œYou attacked my city.”
    â€œSo I did.”
    â€œAnd failed.”
    â€œAnd failed,” he said.
    â€œWhy?” she asked, as if she had no idea at all. “To take? Or to destroy?”
    A wise question, an incisive question. It told her everything of his wishes in a word.
    He made a move of his hand, about them, thinking of the machines.