The Search for Kä Read online

  “No!” Tarani screamed, and began to struggle furiously, but with no real intent to free herself—which surely saved me some bruises. I held on to her arms throughout the spell of activity, and she suddenly went quiet. She stood in front of me, panting, her fists tightly clenched above the wrists I held.

  “How long has your friend been ‘helping’ me?” she asked in a low, vicious voice.

  “I think—since Recorder school,” I said. “You told me about a period of confusion, when you left the school. I think she came then, and you knew she was here, and part of the reason you have refused to use your Recorder skills is that it would remind you of that time. I think you have been afraid of her, Tarani—but she doesn’t deserve your fear or hate. She had no more choice about this than you did.”

  “You truly believe there is another person inside of me?” she asked in that same quiet voice.

  “I do. I—have spoken to her.”

  “And that she has ‘helped’ me—to debase myself with Molik, to bond with Yayshah, to—” She faltered. “—to learn to love you? That there is nothing in my life, since school, for which I can take responsibility, whether it be credit or blame? Her voice had risen.

  “Is it such a terrible thing to understand your past in this way, Tarani?” I asked. “She meant you no harm—”

  “She—who?” the girl demanded. “Who is she? Who was she, to you, before you both came here?”

  “Her name is Antonia,” I said. “We had only just met when the disaster struck.”

  “Then how can you speak for her intent?” Tarani demanded.

  I was losing patience. Resistance, I had expected—but jealousy? “I can’t,” I said. “Why don’t you ask her what you want to know?”

  Tarani became very still.

  “Is that possible?” she asked.

  “I think the sword can make it possible,” I said, and released her arms. She lowered them and stepped back, seeming to cower against the wall. “Do you remember, in Dyskornis, that I asked you if my being a Visitor disturbed you? You asked if that wasn’t the very reason why we were involved in this mess.

  “Tarani, when I arrived in Gandalara, Markasset was dead. I didn’t even have full control of his memories—until I touched Serkajon’s sword. You have touched this sword with no effect. But there are two of us, and two of these swords.”

  “And you think the one left in Kä will release the one called Antonia?” she asked, the bitterness in her voice shocking me.

  “I don’t know what it will do,” I admitted. “Your situation is very different. But I do know that the two of you can’t go on existing entirely separate in the same body. It’s impossible to expect that your judgment won’t be affected by Antonia—and, now that you know about her, by your suspicion of her interference. The sword may do nothing at all,” I said. “But it seems to be the only possible key.”

  “This is the true reason you came in search of the second rakor sword,” she said flatly. “Well, let us find the thing!”

  She ran out of the building and down the roadway, heading straight for the large square in what we had guessed to be the government section of the city. I followed her with a goodly measure of panic troubling my breathing. We went into the biggest building and searched every room. Suggestion of the rich furnishings still remained in wall paintings, petrified wood carvings, and paper-dry bundles of tapestry, long since fallen from their hangers.

  The sword was not there.

  17

  “Zefra said the sword was cast aside by the Last King in anger with the Sharith, as he was leaving Kä,” Tarani reminded me. “If so, it would have remained in plain sight. It easily could have been stolen by profiteers.”

  “It was too valuable a thing in itself to be destroyed, and no one has heard of it since the last days of the Kingdom,” I said. “It has to be here, still—somewhere.”

  Tarani leaned against a wall and crossed her arms. “Because your ‘destiny’ demands you be united with your friend?” she asked.

  I threw down the crumbling tapestry I had just tried to move and turned to face her. “I want you to listen to what you just said: ‘your’ destiny; ‘your’ friend. Since when is this only my business, my need? In Dyskornis, we accepted a joint destiny, Tarani—and everything that has happened since has only brought us closer together, made us a more effective team.”

  She rearranged her position, but did not interrupt me.

  “Antonia has been a part of that team all along,” I said. “You haven’t known about her—I didn’t know about her for a long time. But she is here and, hard as it is for you to accept or even tolerate, she did guide your life toward our meeting point, though I doubt she was doing that consciously. I have given up speculating why this is all happening, and why, in particular, to us.” That wasn’t quite true, but such speculation was definitely a side issue to the point I was trying to make. “I just don’t think it would hurt anything to make Antonia an active and visible part of the team.

  “And yes, I do believe we are meant to find that sword.”

  She sighed. “How? It will take us days to search every building; we do not have that much time.”

  “You can find it,” I said. “Or you can help me find it.”

  She put her hands flat against the wall, as though she were preparing to launch herself from it. Her arms were trembling.

  “You mean to use me as a Recorder?” she asked.

  “I think it is the only way to find the sword, Tarani. Don’t you want to get this over with?”

  “I do—more, perhaps, than you,” she replied. “But you are correct about my reluctance to use the skills I was taught in Recorder School. The mere prospect of doing so frightens me terribly. It may be unreasonable, but the situation is unchangeable. I am sorry.”

  “What scares you about it, Tarani? The memories? It should be easier to face them now. Please, for your own sake, please try.”

  She stared at the floor, breathing hard, her entire body now trembling.

  She’s terrified, I thought, and began to have second thoughts about asking her to do this. It was too late; I had convinced her.

  Her hands balled into fists and she moved determinedly into the clear center of the room—we had started and ended our search in the audience hall. “Come here,” she ordered. “Quickly, before I change my mind!”

  I ran to join her.

  “I will have no success at all if I cannot become calm,” she said. “I was taught a method—it will take a few moments of quiet. Say nothing until I speak again.”

  I nodded, and accepted her hand as we lay down together on the dusty stone floor.

  She’s putting herself into a trance state, I guessed as I heard her breathing become more quiet and felt her hand relaxing its deathgrip. She is probably still terrified, though. This woman has been through enough, I thought fiercely. If she’s got the courage to go through with this, it has to help her!

  Her hand tensed, and she laughed.

  She sat up.

  Antonia sat up, leaned over, and kissed me.

  “This is what she feared,” Antonia said, with her hand still on my chest. “To enter the All-Mind takes submission and self-release. She was doing this when I arrived, and that was the last time I had control.”

  The woman who was, and was not, Tarani stood up and stretched, then strolled across the room to touch a carved stone panel. I was too stunned to move, and I said the first thing that popped into my mind.

  “You’re speaking Gandaresh.”

  She laughed, Antonia’s light rhythm sounding odd in Tarani’s throaty voice.

  “I see, Dottore Carillo, that you still practice your studies.”

  I stood up, beginning to understand what was happening, beginning not to like it much.

  “Antonia, you know everything that has happened, don’t you?” I asked her.

  “Yes, Ricardo, I know. I have heard your truths and your lies, your talk of destiny. I have loved you—with her bod
y.”

  She came toward me, touched my cheek with her hand. I marveled that the same flesh could change so dramatically with the mannerisms of a different personality. Tarani’s presence was solid and competent, regal and elegant. Antonia gave off an air of less substantial power—sophistication, learning, beauty for its own sake. Her face was somber.

  “You must help me, Dottore,” she said.

  Whatever I can do,” I said, puzzled. “As long as it won’t hurt Tarani.”

  “Ah, there is the sadness,” Antonia said, with a rueful smile. “I have indeed, as you suspect, influenced the life of this girl. But two things she has won on her own—the bond with Yayshah, and your devotion to her. I would share both, if I could,” Antonia said. “But I know that, if you were forced to choose one of us, she would live and I would die a second time.”

  “Don’t talk of dying,” I said. “How can I help you?”

  “You must help me accept the possibility of dying,” she said, sadly. “For only then can I release this body to Tarani again, and let her find the sword. Ah, Ricardo, if you loved me, I would damn destiny and relegate the girl to the prison which has held me these long years. I cannot say it has not been interesting. I freely admit that existence in such circumstance was quite preferable to true death. But it is painful to have words that cannot be spoken, feelings that cannot be expressed. It is a trial to influence rather than control.

  “This sword promises an end to it,” she said. “But there is no telling what form that end will take. Serkajon’s sword united you with Markasset’s memories. Zanek’s sword may purge Tarani of my presence.”

  “Surely—” I began. She put her fingers on my lips.

  “Do not lie to me; the possibility exists,” she said, and I nodded. “Then help me. Tarani is stronger than I; her courage astounds me. I believe she knew, when she began the trance, that I would emerge—and I know that she had no certainty that I would ever again relinquish control.”

  “Perhaps you don’t have to,” I said.

  “Oh, but I must,” she responded. “As Tarani pointed out, the All-Mind is Gandalaran—I could not act as a Recorder, even if the knowledge were my own and not second-hand. I did wish one more breath to be truly mine, and I felt a need to be close to you in my own body, even though it is a borrowed one.”

  I pulled her into an embrace and kissed her. Even that gesture was different under Antonia’s direction—practiced and evocative, delicately sweet—but as sincere as Tarani’s touch.

  “Now,” Antonia said, as she disentangled herself from my arms, “I will lie here again, and you will talk to me of the things which mean so much to Tarani. Speak of destiny or of Yayshah. Say anything about Gandalaran things, and I will let myself slip away.”

  “Antonia,” I said, as she lay down precisely where she had been, and offered me her hand. I was too moved to say anything more; she seemed to understand, and squeezed my fingers.

  “Talk to us, Ricardo. Hurry.”

  Gandalaran things, I thought frantically. Zanek! Tarani has never asked for detail about what I learned in the All-Mind—probably because of the emotional load associated with Recording.

  I began to talk of the man I had met while I had been, physically, in Omergol with Somil. I talked of his ideals, the tragedy and loneliness of his life, of his commitment to a peaceful future. I described the years of daily decisions, their burden and satisfaction. And as I talked, a mood of kinship settled over me, as if I did not require the All-Mind as intermediary to visit Zanek. It was a feeling familiar to Ricardo in the ancient places of my other world—a connection made of time and curiosity, a sense of continuity and commonality.

  Tarani’s voice did not disturb the mood, but deepened it.

  “Lie down,” she said, and I obeyed. Our hands still touched.

  “Will you seek?” she asked. The familiar timbre of power thrummed in her voice as, like Somil, she accepted the role of Recorder.

  “I will seek, Recorder,” I replied.

  “Then make your mind one with mine, as I have made mine one with the All-Mind,” she said, guiding our minds with the words.

  “We begin.”

  I felt the same jarring wrench I had experienced with Somil, with the single difference that I had been expecting it, and we entered the brilliant vision of the All-Mind.

  “I am inexperienced,” Tarani’s mindvoice said. It was clear and strong, but impersonal, reprising Somil’s sudden shift into ritual formality. “Can you assist me in locating Kä?”

  I would not have thought so before she asked, but I knew I could. “This way, I think, Recorder,” I said, and we began to move along a shining cylinder—slowly, at first, then more quickly as Tarani became more confident.

  After a moment, she spoke again. “Yes, we are proceeding correctly.”

  I made no effort to verify that—both because I trusted her, and because my experience with Somil warned me away from it.

  “I see in your mind,” she said, “that you have some understanding of seeking. An object such as the sword cannot be our goal—rather, we must locate a lifememory with knowledge of the sword. It is my intent to seek out those who lived at the end of the Kingdom, and to share memory only briefly with several, rather than deeply with only one individual. Do you consent?”

  “Willingly,” I said, remembering the pain of separation from Zanek. I did not care to suffer it again, and I did not want to put Tarani’s Recorder skills to the test of dragging me out of the All-Mind against my will.

  We sped ever faster along the glowing spokes. While the experience was similar to my search with Somil, there was a different quality to being with Tarani. I put it down to my already knowing Tarani, while Somil had been a stranger. I also wondered if Antonia’s presence had anything to do with it—I could sense no trace of the human woman’s thoughts in the mind which carried mine through the shining network.

  “She is here,” Tarani’s mindvoice said, startling me. “Even as you carry Markasset’s memories within you, your friend lies within me” She must have sensed my surprise, for she continued. “I do not know her,” Tarani said, “but I acknowledge her. I am aware of the choice she has made, and she was correct—if she had failed to relinquish all control, I could not have accomplished entry into the All-Mind. I am also aware that her eagerness for resolution is as strong as my own, and her uncertainty as great. She has won my respect.”

  We moved along in silence toward the center of the All-Mind, then slowed down and, as had happened with Somil, began to move along an arc of the sphere as Tarani scanned individual life memories for knowledge of the other sword.

  “I have located those who lived in Kä at the end of the Kingdom,” she told me. “This is not an ordinary seeking, in that seeker and Recorder both have need. It would be well, also, to limit our physical time as much as possible. Therefore, I shall share memory, and you shall view.”

  She did not ask or wait for my consent, but I would have given it gladly. Doing it this way gave me more detachment, so that the experience was even more like watching a film—a collage of well-directed character sketches.

  We felt the fear of a court official, who was hastily packing up for the long march to Eddarta. He did not know about the Ra’ira; he merely knew that the slaves had stopped working, and that the Kingdom was finished. It was a credit to him that loyalty to Harthim was uppermost in his mind.

  We labored with one of the workmen who removed the giant bronze sheet from its wall mounting and grunted under its weight, carrying it outside. We watched it being mounted on a special sled-like arrangement equipped with vlek harness. We, too, felt anxiety about the coming change, and speculated whether we should move our wife and children to Raithskar. Would there be work?

  We were Harthim, and learned that Zefra’s description of his handling of the sword had been correct. We lifted it from its place of honor in the audience hall, then threw it from us in disgust. A slave crossed the room to retrieve it, and we ordered him to
leave it where it had fallen. We felt a deep sense of betrayal, remembering that we had admired Serkajon and sought his admiration, remembering—but not admitting—that we had loved him. We knew it was not Serkajons act alone that drove us from Kä, but the absence of the Ra’ira. We felt crippled without it, suspicious of everyone, vulnerable as we had never been to the hidden thoughts of our friends and enemies, incapable of trust. We looked once more at the sword, then turned our backs on it.

  We were the last person to leave the audience hall, on the day Harthim abandoned Kä. We were a slave, sent there to collect anything that might have been left, with the exception of the sword. We hesitated, calculating the value of the sword, but we recognized that discovery of such disobedience would mean death. We left it, in the corner against the wall.

  Tarani paused, and skimmed along several cylinders. “There is no more here,” her mindvoice said. “These people remember the sword, of course, but did not see it again. Harthim’s leaving seemed to be a signal to which the entire city responded, and Kä was empty within a generation.”

  “Harthim left it on the floor of the audience hall,” I said, “but it is gone now. Someone had to have moved it.”

  “Agreed,” Tarani said. “It could have been anyone, at any time.” There was true sadness in her mindvoice. “If we could trace places, as well as people, we might merely ‘watch’ the audience hall. Without that capability, I believe that we cannot discover who removed the sword.”

  I kept silent and thought hard. I was aware that Tarani was growing concerned about the passing of time, but I was still certain that we would find that sword, still hopeful that it would help Tarani. If we are meant to find it, I thought, then I must know something to help us find it …

  “Serkajon!” I said. “How did he know about the Ra’ira’s power?”

  “I cannot say” Tarani replied. “And I see no connection between that mystery and the sword.”

  “There is no obvious connection,” I admitted. “But except for Harthim, Serkajon was the individual most involved in the end of the Kingdom. The sword and the Ra’ira were both symbols of power, and both are connected to Serkajon—the Ra’ira, because Serkajon stole it; the sword, because it represented the loyalty of Sharith to King, which Serkajon violated.”