“Pop his screen,” Kit said. “See if you get any manual functions. Roshaun?”
Roshaun opened one cupped hand, the gesture he usually used to bring up the little matrix of light that was his implementation of the manual. But nothing happened. He shook his head at Kit.
“Fil?”
Filif rustled all his branches, No.
Nita swallowed. She reached for her otherspace pocket … and couldn’t find it. She pulled the rowan wand out of the belt of her jeans, and found it nothing but a peeled white stick. She lifted her charm bracelet, shook it—
But now it was just a bracelet, and the charms jingled harmlessly. A lightning bolt, a circle with the number 26, a little fish, a few other symbols.
Dairine had been tapping at Spot’s keyboard. Now she was scowling harder than ever. “No manual,” she said. “He’s still in there, he can communicate through the software, but that’s all. No access to the manual functions. And he can’t hear his homeworld, or any of his people.” She let out an unhappy breath, closed Spot up again, and went back to hugging him. “We’re cut off.”
Kit had also been feeling in the air for his pocket; he couldn’t find his, either. “Okay,” he said, “we’re supposed to become useless, now, because we think we’re marooned, completely isolated, and totally powerless. Forgive me if I don’t feel like cooperating. What can we do?” He looked around at them. No one volunteered any thoughts.
The warrior who had been blocking the door before them now moved away from it, and another figure came through.
It was the Arch-votary in its patterned shell. Slowly, it approached, those massive claws raised. Nita held her ground, and saw that the others were doing the same, though Ponch, sticking close to Kit’s side, growled softly, and the fur over his shoulders and down his back was bristling.
The Arch-votary stopped, looming up before them. “Evil ones,” it said, “enemies of the Great One, come and be judged.”
Roshaun lifted his head and gave the Arch-votary an inexpressibly haughty look. “Killed, perhaps,” he said. “But your dark Master has neither authority nor right to judge us. Therefore stand away, lackey, and keep silent in the presence of your betters.”
And Roshaun swept straight past the Arch-votary, right on through that doorway into the central cavern, leaving the angry and befuddled Yaldiv staring after him. Dairine went straight past it, too, throwing it a dirty and dismissive look, and followed Roshaun. Carmela and Ronan and Filif went after her. After a moment’s hesitation, Memeki followed Filif through the doorway, and Ponch, with a glance back at Kit, trotted after her, growling.
Kit and Nita threw each other a glance and headed after Ponch. “Roshaun really comes into his own in situations like this,” Kit said under his breath, glancing over his shoulder as the Arch-votary and the warriors followed them in.
“You’ve got a point,” Nita muttered back, “but if it’s all the same to you, I don’t want to be in any more situations like this.”
“If we don’t get real lucky in the next few minutes,” Kit said, “you can relax, because we won’t be.”
They passed through the door, their guards following.
The lower bowl of that huge elliptical cavern was empty except for the warriors who blocked the many other entrances. It was a long walk for the group across that strangely soft, papery surface, and after the first look at the huge swollen shape of the King, Nita started to feel her confidence ebbing away, feeling more like ill-founded bravado every moment. The massive, bloated bag of body that lay there on the dais at one focus of the elliptical bowl, with handmaidens constantly bringing food to its little chewing jaws and going away again, felt to Nita as if it was absolutely heaving with millions of those sparks of angry fire, endlessly being spun off like stars of a dark galaxy from that core of evil at their center, the Lone One’s presence in the King. And it was strong, stronger than she’d thought. She could feel it sucking at her will as they got closer, as if it was trying to empty all the thoughts out of her brain, every sense that she was herself, that she was anything but a slave, to do what she was told, to obey orders.
She shook her head. There was something she was supposed to be doing, but she couldn’t think what.
Something jabbed her in the side. “Neets!”
Her eyes went wide. Nita realized that she’d been walking toward the dais without even being aware of it. She glanced sideways, and saw Kit looking at her in concern, but ready to elbow her again if necessary. “You there?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Count inside your head, or sing yourself a song or something.”
Nita made a face. “You wouldn’t want to hear me sing,” she said. “Dair’s the school-choir department.” But she started reciting a series of primes, and tried not to walk in rhythm.
She managed to keep herself from vaguing out again, but as they got closer and closer to the dais, a straightforward horror of the King itself started to set in. The idea of giant bugs had been a problem for her when she was little, a fear mostly exorcised now, but not entirely. Nita had pretty much come to terms with the claws and shells and fangs of the Yaldiv, but this was different. The flabby, pallid, distended bag of the King’s body, swollen, gross, heaving, beating with little veins, made her shudder at the very sight of it—and the closer she got to it, the farther away Nita desperately wanted to be. I don’t want to scream, she thought, but if anybody makes me go up to it, makes me touch it—I really don’t want to scream; it’ll just set Dairine off.
“What a gigantic ugly sack of crap,” Dairine said, in a tone of completely clinical interest. “Truly disgusting. And would you look at the ugly wiggly bits! But it’s so deluded, it still thinks everybody ought to be bowing and scraping to it. Isn’t it beyond pathetic? Don’t freeze up, Memeki, it’s not worth your time.”
Nita gulped again, but at the same time felt strangely reassured; she was certain the remark hadn’t been entirely directed at Memeki. She gave Kit a glance and saw him roll his eyes in amusement, even here, even now. A shadow on her left made her look that way: Filif was there, rustling against her, saying nothing, but all those little berry-eyes looked surprisingly serene.
As they got close to the dais, the warriors behind reached out claws to stop them. The King’s flesh-buried little eyes peered down at them, black, unreflecting, empty… though not nearly empty enough: Nita could feel the darkness behind them, looking out at them all with cruel recognition.
Roshaun held his head up. “Bright star that was,” he said, “dark star that falls, in your downward arc with defiance we greet you. Do your poor worst!”
A few moments’ silence passed, and then the King spoke. The voice that came out of it was a shock to Nita, a perfectly human sound, though she had no idea how Filif or Ponch or Memeki might be hearing it. “That will not take much doing,” said the Lone Power through Its tool, “for the evil power which the Enemy gave you is now yours no more.” Nita wasn’t sure how that inhuman face could smile, but somehow it seemed to be managing it.
The King tried to hitch itself forward a little; Nita winced at the long water-bed ripple that this sent up its body. Then the Lone One looked at Memeki through the King. “Here, then, is our little heretic, doomed to die so soon, doing my will as she must, no matter how she desires to do otherwise.” It paused. “Though she might still die in my good graces, and so achieve as much salvation as she ever will.”
It bent Its gaze on her. “Handmaiden, Favored of the Great One,” It said softly, “give up this vain dream of oneness, of being one’s own self! Don’t you realize this is all an evil plot by the One’s enemies? They would drive you away from your own kind, from the right way to think, the right way to be. Come back within the mind that bore you; come back and be one again with those who will always honor what you have done as a mother of your people, a daughter of the Great One, honored by the King.”