The voice changed, the face changed, stilled, became even more skull-like. “Mirami? Dead? Why?”
“Because she killed him. He was mine and she killed him.”
“I still needed her!” the huge voice howled. “She is my flesh! I need my flesh! You had no right to interfere in that way.” The Old Dark Man stood away from the machine. “Hold her,” he said.
Quick as the strike of a snake, the machine reached long arms, like tentacles, like cables with hands at the ends, hands that took her and held her.
“You will do whatever I tell you to do,” howled the Old Dark Man. “You have been overeager, undisciplined. In future you will do only what I tell you to do! You will be impregnated. You will give me another one of you, for later! Then you will give me flesh!”
He came close to her, staring into her face. Horrid sickness bubbled up inside her; a flood rose in her throat. She dropped the things she was holding, her father’s things, to clutch at herself, to clutch at this sudden opening inside her, like a great thrusting flower of horrible pain, pushing up, swelling, bursting, petals going into every part of her! She writhed in the machine’s grasp and vomited, a great spew that drenched the Old Dark Man. Blood. Blood on the linen, the ribbons, blood on her precious things . . . her father’s things.
“What is the matter with you?” the Old Dark Man said, glaring at her. “Are you ill?”
“No!” she screamed defiantly, as honestly as she knew. “Just sickened at the thought of you.”
The pain came again. Past the machine, on the floor, she saw the shattered fragments of a capsule. Jenger’s. It was Jenger’s. It had to be, that was the only one left. She had used the machine five times. First was Xu-i-lok. It had been long ago, not done well, but done. The woman had died, finally. All right. And the second time she hadn’t made any mistakes. The second time was Chamfray. She’d attached the capsule to a pigeon’s leg and sent it to Ghastain. Whoever took it from the pigeon and tried to open it would have squashed it, and released it, and the pigeon loft was close enough. So that one was all right. Then her archers had brought Jenger’s hairs from the tower; she’d used those to make one for Jenger. That’s the one she had left here. Then one for the abbot. The prior had sent the materials and she’d made it and returned it by pigeon inside the message tube. He was dead by now. All right. Then she had made one for Mirami. The one she’d kept material for ever since her father died. She’d done that one right, taken it to Ghastain herself. She couldn’t have mixed them up. Unless she’d mixed Marimi’s with Jenger’s before she left for Ghastain.
If she’d done that . . . if she and Marimi were sisters, genetic sisters, maybe . . . maybe it had been close enough to kill her! No, and it wouldn’t have acted this soon, would it? It had only broken a short time ago when she saw Bear . . .
She reached up to brush her hair from her face, remembering that night with Jenger, poor Jenger, he was gone, and she had brushed her hair away from the branch that . . . the branch that . . . did it catch her hair? Because someone was out there in the woods. No. It had been dark. Too dark. No one had seen, no one could have seen. Besides, it was too quick. The capsule had only broken a little while ago.
No. No, the capsule broke before she fell asleep. She had been so tired that she had slept a long time. A long, long time. If the capsule had been Mirami’s, it wouldn’t kill her. Make her sick, maybe, but it wouldn’t kill her. Unless those hairs had not been Jenger’s hairs . . .
It was the last coherent thought she had. She never heard the Old Dark Man raging through the cellars of the Old Dark House. She never heard him screaming at her, asking her what foolish, foolish thing she had done to allow her own methods to be used against her. “Mirror defense,” he cried. “Didn’t I teach you about mirror defense?”
Later, he left the place in a rage, like a spout of black fire. Generations he had bred to hate Tingawa! Generations to kill those who had foiled the aims of his makers! Now it was all to start over. He would have to do it all again!
Eyes from the forest watched the Old Dark Man go southward through the trees, a blazing black shadow, faster than anything natural could move. Eyes in the forest looked down at the Great Bear of Zol, lying dead among the leaves. Bear had been a great warrior. The thing that had defeated him was a greater warrior, but that thing was only partly human, and not the greater part.
The emissary from Tingawa leaned down and put his hand on Bear’s body, bloodied as it was. “I am of your people,” he said. “I respect your clan. I will carry your soul to the clan of Zol in Tingawa. You are not forsworn and I will be your Xakixa.”
He sat there for some little time, his head bowed, while the soul made up its mind to come with him. It was very confused and ashamed. The confusion often happened in battle. Men did not really expect to die. He guessed where the shame came from. Poor warrior. He had been tempted past his strength. The emissary kept his hand in place, forgiving whatever the cause had been. When the emissary knew, finally, that the soul had come to him, he arose and went into the Old Dark House.
