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- 75 -

Filtered sunshine. Cloth moved in the wind with a snapping sound. A pavilion. She remembered waking and the sky had been cloudy, the real sky, not this white haze of cloth. She had been dreaming… or was that a dream too? And the Zimmer pod? Ulanda tried to sit up but couldn't make it. “I'm thirsty,” she said.

En'talac licked a finger and ran it over Ulanda's lips. “I'll give you a drink in a moment. I want to make sure you can handle it”

“My arm?” She glanced towards it but didn't really look. She had woken to the pain but it was fading, the taste from the woman's finger on her lips was stronger. More real.

“It happened during the dancing.”

The brightest point of light was behind the other woman's head. “It's… was I asleep?”

Another lick of her finger and En'talac held it to Ulanda's lips. “This last time, yes, I think you were.”

“My arm?”

“Will heal. As the world-pattern gets stronger, being home will help you as well.”

Home? She had asked for something… her mind felt too far away to think. Moving her other hand, she touched her side. “I'm cold,” she said, surprised at feeling frost-bumps. She was shivering.

En'talac took her hand and held it down against her body as she arranged the blanket. “You're in shock. It's actually quite warm in here.” She smoothed fine material against Ulanda's stomach. “Being cold is an improvement. I want you to concentrate on any physical sensations. You were working a mantra when you were awake before… try it again.” She chuckled. “I've been told your mantras are better than mine.”

The medic's hands arranged the ends of the braiding from the good arm then smoothed them down, following the curve of Ulanda's stomach and between her thighs, her small hand warm. Then quick fingers checked points near her groin.

The laughter stopped and the smile looked forced, thumbs of either hand rubbing the g'ta points at her solar plexus. Ulanda looked away as one of En'talac's hands slipped under the blanket. The rings on bare skin burned, then the sensation was gone. “Don't, please.”

En'talac sighed. Her other hand joined the first. “Every flow line in your body is trying to recover some of what happened, to match it. That's an improvement too.” She chuckled again, but it was a tired sound. “It's an improvement that could still kill you. Damn it, Ulanda, if you want to live, you have to start trying now.”

She kept her eyes away. “Sarkalt won't let Niv….”

En'talac hesitated even as her fingers still checked points. “Niv is in the ship and the ship is next to the Zimmer pod. He'll be here when you're capable of responding to him.”

The glowing cloth sky hurt her eyes. It was too reminiscent of the light in her…. dream? En'talac supported her head as she held a mug of water to her lips, then when that didn't work, put an arm under her good one to lift her and tucked pillows under.

She took three swallows before she could even taste the water. Then gulped several more mouthfuls and wore more, pushing the bottom of the mug up with her good hand.

“No more for now, you'll be sick.”

“I spilt most of that cup,” Ulanda protested. Her head swam from sitting up and her mouth was still dry.

En'talac looked at her over the rim of the mug. Blue glaze with white specks, the base was the same color as the sky. The bright rings glinted in the sunlight. “How does the arm feel?”

“Arm?” Then she remembered.

Ulanda felt a hollowness in her start to rise. She might be sick after all. En'talac dropped the mug and rapidly moved her fingers in a simple pattern.

She swallowed hard and watched the flash of the rings to center her. “I want to live.”

“Of course you do.” En'talac sounded relieved.

“I'm sorry…”

“Don't ever say that. Ulanda, the will to live can make all the difference in this.” 

Not will. She shook her head. “That's what I was trying to tell you. I was still pulling… something. Time… did I sleep?” En'talac just look puzzled. “I was reliving… it was as though I was two places at once, one of them a memory, but it wasn't entirely a memory.”

“What memory?” En'talac asked softly as she wrapped a cloth around Ulanda's burnt arm. Cool—it looked wet—she could feel sensations, just not pain. “Like I told you before, it will help to talk about what you saw.”

Ulanda closed her eyes a moment, the only privacy left her. Memory. And a medic from Sarkalt's Household. The people outside the pavilion—she could see the shapes when they moved away, how their shadows collapsed into the brightness of the cloth sides—they would be the Overpriest's as well. Or Zimmer. Reach out and she could know who they were, same as she had with Anga and his helpers at the spiral on Lillisim. Reach out and she thought she wouldn't come back.

Who could she trust? Garm? She could see him looking at the Li-Cassa flower on the end of the girdle tie, not at her. A part of her could trust him, but not the part of her that was going to make a life here.

There was someone else. Rit? Like in a dream, she may have added new faces or people simply because she had seen them last. The man Niv had killed? She looked up from the finished wrapping to see the medic watching her. En'talac had been the Bearer, her rings… She took another long breath.

Bolda? She remembered him with his throat torn out. His blood dripping from Niv's mouth.

You'll die of this. Few hours… hours. Niv, not Garm. He was hers too—her Niv. Of everything that had happened or had almost happened, or could have happened in Anga's trap, she remembered a question and the answer she had given. To be an Altasimic Priest.

Out of that hope she spun a shape, making soft folds that opened as a flower opens its petals, drawing her in. Altasimic. Home. She had a part of its creation, how couldn't she be a part of the Unity growing here.

Freedom?

Life. As a Priest-Select. She wouldn't need the diamond to make another reality, this was all the one she needed.

And be Empress?

“What memories?” En'talac asked again.

“From when I was a child.” The lie grew and multiplied on her tongue. “Walking in the gardens at South Bay Temple. I think you're right, I used it as a pathway to find my way back here from pattern.” Panting heavily by the last words, Ulanda pressed her good hand over her mouth to keep from throwing up the water she had drank. “Niv. I'd see Niv…”

Blue lights flashed outside the tent, then leaped in crackling balls along the spines of the pavilion to explode into the air at the center. Energy fields like moiré patterns surrounded Ulanda as she instinctively countered. Blue and red. Then nothing, and she felt the clearing of her mind that came with the first moments of entering pattern, and again, in the moments after leaving it before the body remembers itself.

She managed to get to her knees. “Is there a different law for loom-masters?” It was Anga, with Quin'tat behind him. Then Simitta, a knife in his hand. The shadows on the other side of the cloth were now Zimmer and right now, she wasn't worried about being able to find her way back from being able to know that.

Anga snorted. “I don't see a High Justice Court and it would take one to say differently. And maybe even then, they might think better of it.”

“This discussion has to wait,” Quin'tat said. “Anga, you had no authorization…”

“I'm here. That's all the authorization I need.”

“… to leave the ship or to…”

Simitta was between her and the Piltsimic, standing in the residue that dripped from the charred ends of her braids. Quin'tat's words faded, his eyes on the embers as the black sizzled and burst in a rainbow of fire to fill the pavilion knee-high with color. Simitta didn't move from guard position and Ulanda felt more than saw, two other Zimmer enter. Gennady and a third she didn't know.

One foot under her, then she would have fallen but for En'talac at her side. Then standing, then on her own. “Do I need a Law Court?” She meant the power she could raise, meant that in some way she was Cassa. But saw knives in the loom-masters mind more than fear of anything she could do.

Anga at Red Band Depth. Anga at Ri-altar, the ocean in the distance. She didn't ask herself where the images came from. He didn't like heights. And he didn't like the idea of being killed.

En'talac stepped between Simitta and her husband. “Quin'tat, get him out, now. She can loose control in an instant, she's barely started to come down from the dance.”

“Not out,” Ulanda said. “I want to see him dead, here, now. Tell me, loom-master, how far do you fall when you die?” Her body hummed as though she was a song she was singing. Another dance, she swayed to the sound. “Simitta, slit his throat.”

The order was a shroud, but for the Zimmer. Rain and the howl of centuries of wind. The Alisim world-altar slowly forming out of sand that had been fused to glass then shattered with a fist. A world-altar with Zimmer bones, with fragments of ship tiles still carrying in their heart the energy forms of their Spann makers. The bones of a people, bones and people, and both a haunting in the Altasimic mind. Zimmer—eaten by the unfolding world-pattern.

There were other traps in the loom-master's weaving, ones she hadn't seen, ones that weren't meant for her. Did they require triggering sequences or did the loom-master have them under conscious control? The former, she thought. Or she'd already be dead, the Zimmer with her. Killed with power Anga didn't have the ability to make on his own, just to manipulate. Her power.

Centuries and fractions of a second. “No,” she said softly, even now reluctantly, even though it was as much her death as the Zimmer's. Simitta stopped almost before starting to move. He fit into her hand so easily, her hand and her heart. If she had stayed longer in the last vision, would she have seen Simitta's death as she had Bolda's and Rit's? Or had he already died?

“I don't know,” she said in a broken whisper, hearing still the howl of the wind in her ears and through it, the sound of Cassa's laughter. Simitta sheathed his knife and turned to her.

Always when I think of her, it is winter…

“It was a long night and very cold,” she said, already turning away from him, afraid she would drown in the dark ocean of his eyes and never reach the hidden green depths. Silver and violet yuin sight. Then to Quin'tat: “See to your own people's survival, or do your oaths to Sarkalt mean allowing the loom-master to kill him as well? If he's capable of twisting anything I do to his own ends, what about Sarkalt's power?”

Quin'tat appeared to be waking from a trance. “Kill…?”

En'talac had his arm. “Did you think he had only come to visit her?”

Anga snorted. “If killing her takes my death and Sarkalt's, it would still be a bargain. If you're thinking about oaths, medic, think of the one you've made to Empire.”

“Which Empire?” Ulanda said. “And, in any case, this time, I'll do the agreeing and any deals will be said plainly.”

“Well, if you're talking plainly, tell me I'm wrong when I say you didn't pull Altasimic pattern just now.”

“You wouldn't know, you're guessing. And would say I wasn't even if the world itself was dripping from my braid ends.” She looked at Gennady. “You at least aren't shy of what I am. What is your service to me worth?”

Honor teeth flashed. “To keep the loom-master in check? It will be months until the Temple ships will be here with news of the reality we're in. I'll talk about any further payment due then.” He looked at Quin'tat. “What can Temple offer me that the Empress can't?”

Her or Cassa? Ulanda saw the question in Quin'tat's eyes. She didn't have to look to see it in Anga's. Loom-master. Did he find his creation interesting?

Quin'tat shook his head. “We want the same thing—survival until the Temple ships arrive. With Anga on our ship, Ulanda on the Ladybug…”

“I won't be on the Ladybug. I have no intention of waiting out the time until someone else decides what my fate will be. I'm staying here, this is my home.”

Quin'tat looked to Anga as though expecting confirmation or denial. Then to her: “Home?”

“En'talac?” she asked, ignoring Quin'tat's question. “A robe… or I'll leave wearing this blanket.”

The black robe she had worn to the dinner on Lillisim. The medic fitted one arm through, Ulanda's bad one first, then the other, and tied the girdle loosely. Then sandals. “This won't last,” she whispered into Ulanda's ear as she tied her hair back. “Trust me when I say you'll be safe here.”

“No, not here.”

Anga stepped aside as she left the tent into the blinding sunlight. And saw a watery world as she blinked back tears. Hills on one side, or rather, her mind said they were hills, her eyes saw only a flat purple colour splashed against what could as well be painted scenery. Two dimensional. And between: a dirt-colored land, shades of pale brown and red. Her home? She barely remembered seeing it while waiting to dance. A different person had, she thought.

Bolda was just outside. “So? What now?”

“If Cassa can create something like the diamond, surely I can create a life for myself here.”

“For a few months.”

She shook her head. “The Empire ships will arrive to an established Temple with me as the ranking Priest. I'll make it happen. Cassa's given me this.” And turning, added: “Simitta?” The Zimmer walked out past her, his eyes on the horizon as hers had been. The crest of hair along the top of Simitta's head blushed pink, then rose and smoothed out again, only to loose to the wind. For an instant, she saw through his eyes: heat rising from campfires outside the warding line. The people.

When she turned back, En'talac was at the door to the tent, her husband behind. She would follow her; Ulanda saw her footsteps set in time and place. More possibilities. And made a motion of Closure that stopped the woman in her tracks. “You wear the Overpriest's oath band. As you said, I have to look to my own people first. And I have to find those people.”

En'talac bowed.

“Lady Priest,” Quin'tat said from over his wife's shoulder. “I can make an agreement in the Overpriest's name.”

Bolda answered: “One that takes her rank into consideration.”

“Rank?” Quin'tat asked.

“Rank,” Bolda repeated. “Are you capable of guaranteeing a truce from your end?”

Quin'tat glanced down to meet his wife's eyes looking up. “Yes, but only if our ship's Net remains as it is. If there is a Challenge, a change in absolute ranking, the Overpriest to…” He shook his head as his eyes returned to her. “The controls are all linked to Sarkalt. If you want his support, they have to remain that way. We weren't your enemy on Lillisim, we're not…”

“On Lillisim, you still wanted something from me. Don't patronize me by thinking I'll believe you won't follow your own interests. What could you want here?”

“The Overpriest is leaving that question open.” The admission sounded forced as Quin'tat looked past her to Sarkalt's ship. “He's leaving all questions open.”

A chance to live. And what was owed the Overpriest in turn? She turned her back on Quin'tat and almost fell with her first step away from him. Her sense of her own body came and went. Land and body, mind. Each had too few dimensions; she kept falling from balance as though normal reality was a razor's edge she walked.

And if she fell from the razor's edge? What would she have? Freedom? The word had lost its urgency. “The dance… I wore lives woven into cloth, and in the dance, wove a different cloth still. Am weaving, will weave. The people…” Those caught with her in the dance. By the last word, her voice was scarcely more than a whisper. Only Bolda would have heard her. And Simitta. “Make the arrangements,” she said to the weaver. “Niv…”

“Sarkalt keeps his own council. Arrangements have been made, you get Niv.”

For how long? She had him, then had lost him, would have him again. Arrangements made with someone else. She was shivering. Slipping. Niv was hers only in how much he was Cassa's.

“Who else?” Bolda asked. “Garm?”

Small dark eyes were boring into hers. He had the same eyes as the loom-master. “Can I walk away from him? Ever?” And what would be left of her if she could?

“You're walking now.”

Not for long, not in the literal sense that Bolda delighted in twinning to the metaphorical. Each step wasn't so much an effort, as a lack of effort, of letting her body remember how to walk. She didn't have a direction except away from the tent and Anga. To one side was the Zimmer pod and the Overpriest's ship, to the other, the native encampment. With the discriminating sight that came of walking the edge, she saw a woman turn from one of the fires and look towards her. On her face were the same lines that had been carved into the head that Gennady had brought back to the spring. Xintan. Then her ability to control the pattern threads slipped and she was again in a body rapidly loosing the ability to function.

Dropping to her knees, Ulanda raised her eyes to the sky. Blue-white, the light was blinding, and in her tears she saw the lines of opal fire that made up the Altasimic world-pattern. She had worn the sky on her face and danced this place into being. “A camp by the spring… the Mouth of Winter, not here, not where the dance…”

In how many ways could she leave what she said she was and still be it? In how many ways could she leave what Sarkalt and Cassa had caused to happen and still have the result?

Bolda had squatted, putting them face-to-face. Behind him, his expression lost against the brightness of the sky, stood Simitta. She could feel Gennady at her back. “Rit…,” she said. “He was there.”

Bolda gave one long earlobe a pull. “So he was.”

Rit was her twin in the same way that she was still walking away from the tent and not kneeling in the dust. She might still need what he could give her, she might need to take his hand and retrace her steps. “Arrangements made have to include his survival as well. He's mine.”

End of Book 1