“He’s ready, Lady.”
“Thank you, Jean-Paul. The headpiece, if you please.”
The man brought a simple silver coronet with five points and placed it on Richard’s head. Epone turned to a construction on a table beside the chair, which Richard had mistaken for some kind of elaborate jeweled metallic sculpture. The apparatus glowed faintly in its crystalline parts, the multicolored lights waxing and waning in what was evidently some malfunction. Epone gave the largest prism, a pinkish thing the size of a fist, an impatient flick with thumb and forefinger.
“Ah, bah! Will nothing function in this cursed place? There! Now we will begin.”
She folded her arms and inclined her gaze on Richard. “What is your given name?”
“Go to hell,” he muttered.
A tremendous throb of agony seemed to lift the top of his skull.
“Please speak only to answer my questions. Obey my orders at once. Do you understand?”
Sagging against the chair clamps, he whispered, “Yes.”
What is your given name?”
“Richard.”
“Close your eyes, Richard. Without speaking, I wish you to send out the word help.”
Sweet Jesus, that was an easy one! Help!
A man’s voice said, “Minus six farspeak.”
“Open your eyes, Richard,” commanded Epone. “Now I want you to listen carefully. Here is a dagger.” She drew a silver blade from somewhere within her draperies and held it toward him on both open hands. The palms had only a few faint lines in their milky softness. “Force me to plunge the dagger into my heart, Richard. Revenge yourself on me. Destroy me by my own hand. Kill me, Richard.”
He tried! He willed the death of the monstrous bitch. He tried.
“Minus two point five coerce,” said the minion standing behind the chair.
Epone said, “Concentrate on what I am saying to you, Richard. Your life and your future here in Exile depend upon what you do in this room.” She cast the dagger down onto the table, less than a meter away from his pinioned right arm. “Make the knife rise up, Richard. Send it at me! Drive it into my eyes! Do it, Richard!”
There was a terrible eagerness in her tone this time, and he tried desperately to oblige her. He knew now what was happening. They were testing him for latent metafunctions, this one psychokinesis. But he could have told them…
“Minus seven PK.”
She leaned close to him, fragrant, lovely. “Burn me, Richard. Bring up flames from your mind and let them blacken and cook and turn to ash this body that you will never know because you are not a man but a poor worm without sex or sensibility. Burn me!”
But he was the one who burned. Tears coursed down his cheeks and caught in his mustache. He tried to spit at her but his mouth was clotted and his tongue swollen. He twisted his head because his eyes would not close to shut out the blue and primrose coolness of her cruelty.
“Plus two point five create.”
“Interesting, but not good enough, of course. Rest for a moment now, Richard. Think of your companions upstairs. One by one they will come to this room as so many others have come, and I will get to know them as I know you. And some will serve the Tanu in this way and others in that, but all will serve, save a few blessed ones who will find that the gate into Exile is the door into paradise after all… You have one last chance. Come into my mind. Feel me. Probe me, take me to bits and reassemble me in a more compliant image.” She bent closer toward him until the flawless skin of her face was only a few hands-breadth from his own. No pores, no creases on that face. Only pinpoint pupils in the nephrite eyes. But beauty! Vile and tantalizing beauty of incredible age.
Richard strained against the damps of the chair. His mind screamed.
I hate you and violate you and diminish you and cover you with excrement and I call you dead! I call you rotted! I call you writhing in pain everlasting, stretched on the rack of the superficies until the exhalation of the universe dies and space falls in upon itself…
“Minus one redact.” Richard fell forward. The coronet dropped from ms head to strike the stone flags with a bell tone of finality.
“You’ve failed again, Richard,” Epone said in a bored voice. “Inventory his possessions, Jean-Paul. Then put him in with the others for the northern caravan to Finiah.”
CHAPTER THREE
Elizabeth Orme was so dazed by the shock of the translation that she scarcely felt the guiding hands that urged her up the pathway toward the castle. Someone relieved her of her pack and she was glad. The soothing mumble of the guide’s voice carried her back to another time of pain and fear long ago. She had felt herself awakening in a cushioning womb of warm solution where she had been regenerating for nine months in a web of tubes and wires and monitoring devices. Her eyes blinded, her skin deprived of tactile sensation by the long immersion in amniotic fluid, she could nevertheless hear a gentle human voice that calmed her fear, told her she was whole again and shortly to be freed.
“Lawrence?” she whimpered. “Are you all right?”
“Come along now, missy. Just come along. You’re safe now and you’re among friends. We’re all going up to Castle Gateway and you’ll be able to relax there. Just keep on walking like a good girl.”
Strange howls of maddened animals. Open the eyes in horror and shut them again. Where is this place?
“Castle Gateway, in the world you call Exile. Take it easy, missy. The amphicyons can’t get us. Just up these stairs now and well have you lying down for a nice rest. Here we go.”
Opening doors and a small room with, what? Hands were pressing her to sit down, to lie down. Someone lifted her feet and arranged a pillow under her head.
Don’t go away! Don’t leave me here alone!
“I’ll be back in just a few minutes with the healer, missy. We won’t let anything happen to you, bank on that! You’re a very special lady. Relax now while I get somebody to help you. Washroom behind that curtain.”
When the door closed she lay motionless until a surge of nausea rose in her gorge. Struggling up, she lurched into the washroom and vomited into the basin. An excruciating pain lanced her brain and she nearly collapsed. Leaning against the whitened stone wall, she gasped for breath. The nausea receded and so, more slowly, did the agony in her head. She became aware of someone else entering the room, two persons speaking, arms supporting her, the rim of a thick cup pressed to her lips.
I don’t want anything.
“Drink this, Elizabeth. It will help you.”
Open. Swallow. There. Good. Now sit again.
A voice, deep and honey-rich. “Thank you, Kosta. I’ll take care of her now. You may leave us.”
“Yes, Lord.” Sound of door closing.
Elizabeth clutched the arms of her chair, waiting for the pain to come back. When it didn’t, she let herself relax and slowly opened her eyes. She was sitting at a low table that held a few dishes of food and drink. Across from her, standing beside a high window, was an extraordinary man. He was robed in white and scarlet and wore a heavy belt of linked squares of gold set with red and milk-white gemstones. Around his neck was a golden torc, thick twisted strands with an ornamented catch in front. His fingers, holding a stoneware cup with the medicine, were oddly long, with prominent joints. She wondered vaguely how he had managed to slip on the many rings that gleamed in the morning sunlight. The man had blond shoulder-length hair cut in a fringe above his eyes, which were very pale blue, seemingly without pupils, and sunken deep into bony orbits. His face was beautiful despite the fine web-work of lines at the corners of his smiling mouth.