“Indeed, you are fair, my love, more beautiful than the mountains of Tirzah.”
“Good,” Tallea said, then she yawned and stretched, lowering her head, arching her back so that her tail raised seductively in the air. Orick doubted that she had ever seen a female take the mating position, but she did it now quite naturally, then came and licked Orick once on the mouth. “Very good,” she whispered, “and good night to you.” Though it was not yet dark here on Ruin, Orick and the others were still running on ship time, and he indeed felt weary. Apparently Tallea, like Maggie, had decided to keep to the ship’s schedule.
She sent him from her room. Orick padded back outside, somewhat glad for the fresh air, where he lay on the ground thinking of that last inviting look she’d given him. For a moment, when speaking to Gallen, he’d felt as if he were truly a priest, speaking under the power of inspiration. Now he felt miserable, and he lay wondering how he would ever be able to spurn such a lovely creature once she went into estrus.
It was with these thoughts in mind that Orick was disturbed by the sound of flapping wings. He looked up to see the oddest creature soaring over the desert-a winged man, who soon landed at Orick’s feet, with a fascinating invitation for dinner.
Chapter 3
Lord Felph found himself muttering under his breath as he made his way down a long stone staircase to a tiny room on the lower levels of his palace.
Felph’s heavy robes dragged behind him on the staircase as he walked, and the cool air here in the tunnels chilled the bald spot on his head and his long, pale fingers. The dark sun shone thin and red through the oval, open windows along the staircase, windows that had long ago been carved by Qualeewoohs while digging their cloo holes.
Indeed, the lower lip of each window was worn from the feet of Qualeewoohs who had nested here over the millennia, wearing the oval portals into irregular shapes. Felph had had his droids clear away all the old nesting sites centuries ago, convert the nesting cells into passageways and chambers for his citadel. Most of the palace now showed no sign that Qualeewoohs had ever lived in this mountain. Only here, in the very western wing, did the anachronistic sites still exist.
Felph hated the old reminders. Perhaps that is why his daughter chose to live down here.
Once, Felph stopped to rest, breathing raggedly from exertion, and stared out one crumbled window to the sheer cliffs of the redrock mountains stretching out around him. The sky above held no clouds, yet the distant dark sun gave only muted light. In the valleys far below, at the base of the slopes, peculiar oily gray trees grew in an impenetrable tangle, and, as Felph watched, a flock of a dozen black-winged skogs leapt from the brush and began winging their way with bulletlike speed toward one of the garden ponds on the palace grounds.
Felph finished resting, but his heart still raced as he reached the bottom of the stairs, then knocked timidly at a wooden door which swung halfway open at his touch.
The weaver woman was inside, as usual, sitting before her great loom in a rocking chair that tilted away from the window. The frame of the loom was massive, spanning floor to ceiling along the far wall. The left wall was covered with bobbins of narrow yarn in a thousand colors of the rainbow, each in its place, each in a hue so subtly different that Felph could hardly distinguish one bobbin’s shade from its neighbor’s. The beveled glass from the window, which was cut in a starburst pattern, cast fractured rays of red light over the room, limning the weaver’s silver hair, illuminating her work. She wore her hair in small braids that cascaded casually down her back. A twisted net of gold chains, like a crown, gleamed dully on her brow, and she wore a simple but elegant shift of purest white. Over her bosom was a small vest of twisted wheat-colored fiber, a pretty thing woven by her own strong fingers.
Her back was turned to him, and she sat at her loom working the treadle with eyes closed, as always, weaving colorful scenes into a great tapestry. Her hands moved reverently through the wool as she worked a reed, beating the filling yarns into place to create her tapestry, yet the tapestry lay sprawled upon the floor near her feet, as if discarded. It was the making of the thing, not the completed product, that the woman enjoyed, for she was weaving images of things that would shortly come to pass, and the tapestry held the only record she kept of her prophecies.
Felph’s mouth felt dry; his hands trembled as he held the door to keep it from swinging all the way inward, and he did not want to look at the tapestry, did not want to be here speaking to the weaver now, but the sunlight shone upon the scarlet scene she was creating, and woven onto a colorful background patina of stones was an image of Felph himself, lying in a puddle of his own gore, his throat slashed, while over him stood his glorious son Zeus-a young man of stocky build and gray, brooding eyes-exultant as he held a bloodied knife up toward the dark sun.
Arachne tensed, listening to Felph without glancing. “What is it, Lord Felph?” she asked. He did not answer. Instead, Felph stared at the scene of his own murder and wondered at the weaver’s prophetic abilities. If you are as wise as I think you are, then you already will know why I have come, he told himself.
“You test me?” Arachne asked when he didn’t reply. “All right, then.” She took a deep breath, stopped as if listening to the air.…“There has been a change in the population,” she guessed, or seemed to guess, but she said the last word with conviction. Could someone have told her? Was she playing with him? Not likely, though his children enjoyed such mind games. Still, he could not fathom how she’d guessed. “Not a birth-Shira is not due yet for two weeks. A death?” she hazarded. Felph knew she wasn’t prophetic, that she was taking subtle clues from him, from the way he breathed, the intonation of his words, the position of his body relative to hers. She had sensitive hearing, could probably measure the beats of his heart. He wanted to give her no clues, so he tried to control his breathing perfectly, to maintain a steady rhythm, say nothing. “No … not a death, then.” She turned to him suddenly; a smile warmed her black eyes that stared through him. She knew he did not like gazing into her eyes-they were too wise, too probing-and he glanced away. “Visitors!” she said with delight. “We have visitors to our world. Tell me, Felph, who are they?”
“They’re landing now, out near Devil’s Bunghole. Four people, according to the ship’s logs, milady,” Felph said, smiling broadly in spite of his nervousness. Though he was her lord and her creator, Felph stood in awe of Arachne. The weaver woman had been made for this purpose, to comprehend mankind better than they comprehended themselves, to sift through subtle clues to the motivations and desires of others, then predict what they would do. Yet even as he’d designed her mind, trained and nurtured his creation, Felph had never imagined that Arachne would become what she had become. Felph felt immensely gratified with his creation. At the same time, he was humbled by her, frightened of her abilities. “Two-two of them are humans, a young man and a pregnant woman. The other two are genetically enhanced bears.”
“What class of starship do they command?” she asked.
“A TechKing Fleet Courier.”
“A fast ship. Expensive …” the waver mumbled. “They must be rich. But why would they come to Ruin? You say they’re landing at Devil’s Bunghole?”
She thought a moment. If they were tourists, they’d land at the salt pillars of Kloowee, or at the twelve towers of Sandomoon Breeze, or perhaps at the opal plains. If they were here to study Qualeewooh ruins, they’d have contacted Felph before landing. He was the foremost authority on such ruins.