Asaro, Catherine - Skolian Empire 7 - Quantum Rose.pdf - Catherine Asaro - przemosta

The Quantum Rose: Part One

By Catherine Asaro

"The Quantum Rose: Part One" first appeared in the May 1999 issue of Analog

Science Fiction and Fact.

Ironbridge

First Scattering Channel

Kamoj Quanta Argali, the governor of Argali Province, shot through the water

and broke the surface of the river. She tilted her face up to the sky, a violet

expanse punctured by Jul, the sun, a tiny disk of light so brilliant she didn’t

dare look near it. Curtains of green and gold light shimmered across the

heavens in an aurora borealis visible even in the afternoon.

Her bodyguard Lyode was standing on the bank, surveying the area. Lyode’s

true name was a jumble of words from the ancient language Iotaca, what

scholars pronounced as light emitting diode. No one knew what it meant,

though, so they all called her Lyode.

Unease prickled Kamoj. She treaded water, her hair floating in swirls around

her body, wrapping her slender waist and then letting go. Her reflection

showed a young woman with black curls framing a heart-shaped face. She had

dark eyes, as did most people in Argali, though hers were larger than usual,

with long lashes that at the moment sparkled with drops of water.

Nothing seemed out of place. Reeds as red as pod-plums nodded on the bank,

and six-legged lizards scuttled through them, glinting blue and green among

the stalks. A few hundred paces behind Lyode, the prismatic forest began. Up

the river, in the distant north, the peaks of the Rosequartz Mountains floated

like clouds in a haze. She drifted around to face the other bank, but saw

nothing amiss there either. Tubemoss covered the sloping hills in a turquoise

carpet broken by stone outcroppings that gnarled out of the land like the

knuckles of a buried giant.

Kamoj exhaled. What she felt wasn’t unease exactly, more a sense of troubled

anticipation. The afternoon hummed with life, golden and cool. Surely on this

beautiful day she could relax.

Still, as much as she enjoyed swimming here, invigorated by the chill water

and air, perhaps it was unwise. She had her position as governor to consider.

Kamoj glided to the bank and clambered out, reeds slapping her body.

Her bodyguard glanced at her, then went back to scanning the area. Lyode

suddenly stiffened, staring past Kamoj. Then she reached over her shoulder

for the ballbow strapped to her back.

Surprised, Kamoj glanced back, across the river. A cluster of greenglass stags

had appeared from behind a hill, each with a rider astride its long back.

Sunrays splintered against the green scales that covered the stags. Each

animal stood firm on its six legs, neither stamping nor pawing the air. With

their iridescent antlers spread to either side of their heads, they shimmered

in the blue-tinged sunshine.

Their riders were all watching her.

Mortified, Kamoj ran up the slope to where she had left her clothes. Lyode

took a palm-sized marble ball out of a bag on her belt and set it in the sling on

the targeting tube of her crossbow, which slid inside a accordion cylinder

attached to the bow string. Drawing back the string and tube, she sighted on

the watchers across the river.

Of course, here in the Argali, Lyode’s presence was more an indication of

Kamoj’s rank, and her desire for privacy while she swam, rather than an

expectation of danger. And indeed, none of the riders across the river drew

his own bow. They looked more intrigued than anything else. One of the

younger fellows grinned at Kamoj, his teeth flashing white in the streaming

sunshine.

"This is embarrassing," Kamoj muttered. She stopped behind Lyode and

picked up her clothes. Drawing her tunic over her head, she added, "Thas-

haverlyster."

"What?" Lyode said.

Kamoj pulled down the tunic, covering herself with soft gray cloth. Lyode was

still standing in front of her, with her bow poised. Kamoj counted five riders

across the river, all of them dressed in copper breeches and blue shirts, with

belts edged by feathers from the blue-tailed quetzal.

One man sat a head taller than the rest. He wore a midnight-blue cloak with a

hood that hid his face. His stag lifted its front two legs and pawed the air, its

bi-hooves glinting like glass, though they were a hardier material, hornlike

and durable. The man riding it gave no indication he noticed its restless

motions. His cowled head remained turned in Kamoj’s direction.

"That’s Havyrl Lionstar," Kamoj repeated as she pulled on her leggings. "The

tall man on the big greenglass."

"How do you know?" Lyode asked. "His face is covered."

"Who else is that big? Besides, those riders are wearing Lionstar colors."

Kamoj watched the group set off again, cantering into the folds of the blue-

green hills. "Hah! You scared them away."

"With five against one? I doubt it." Dryly, Lyode said, "More likely they left

because the show is over."

Kamoj winced. She hoped her uncle didn’t hear of this. As the only

incorporated man in Argali, Maxard Argali had governed the province for

Kamoj when she was young and was shifting his role to that of advisor now

that she had reached her adulthood.

Lionstar’s people were the only ones who might reveal her indiscretion,

though, and they rarely came to the village. Lionstar had "rented" the Quartz

Palace in the mountains for more than a hundred days now, and in that time

no one she knew had seen his face. Why he wanted a ruined palace remained

a mystery, given that he refused all visitors. When his emissaries had

inquired about it, she and Maxard had been dismayed by the suggestion that

they let a stranger take residence in the honored, albeit disintegrating, home

of their ancestors.

However, no escape had existed from the "rent" Lionstar’s people put forth.

The law was clear: she and Maxard had to best his challenge or bow to his

authority. Impoverished Argali could never match such an offer: shovels and

awls forged from fine metals, stacks of dried firewood, golden bridle bells,

dewhoney and molasses, dried rose-leeks, cobberwheat, tri-grains, and

reedflour that poured through your fingers like powdered rubies.

So they yielded–and an incensed Maxard had demanded Lionstar pay a rent

of that same worth every fifty days. It was a lien so outrageous, all Argali

feared Lionstar would send his soldiers to "renegotiate."

Instead, he paid.

With Lyode at her side, Kamoj entered the forest. Walking among the trees,

with tubemoss soft under her bare feet, made her more aware of her

precarious position. Why had Lionstar come riding here today? Did their

lands now also risk forfeiture to his wealth? She had invested his rent in

machinery and tools for farms in Argali. As humiliating as it was to depend on

a stranger, it was better than seeing her people starve. But she didn’t think

she could bear to lose any more to him, especially not this forest she so loved.

Drapes of moss hung on the trees and shadow-ferns attended their trunks.

Far above, the branches formed a canopy that let only stray sunbeams reach

the ground. Argali vines hung everywhere, heavy with the blush-pink roses

that gave her home its name. Argali. It meant vine rose in Iotaca.

At least, most scholars translated it as rose. One insisted it meant resonance.

He also claimed they mispronounced her middle name, Quanta, an Iotaca

word with no known translation. The name Kamoj came from the Iotaca word

for bound, so if this strange scholar was correct, her name meant Bound

Quantum Resonance. She smiled at the absurdity. Rose made more sense, of

course.

Not all the "roses" in the forest were flowers, though. Camouflaged among the

blossoms, puff lizards swelled out their red sacs. A shaft of sunlight slanted

through the forest, admitted by a ruffling breeze, and sparkles glittered where

the light hit the scaled lizards, the scale-bark on the trees, and the delicate

scale-leaves. Then the ray vanished and the forest returned to its dusky violet

shadows.

Suddenly a thornbat whizzed past her, its wings beating furiously. It homed

in on a vine and stabbed its needled beak into the red sac of a puff lizard. As

the puff deflated with a whoosh of air, the lizard scrambled away to safety,

leaving the disgruntled thornbat to whiz on without its prey.

Powdered scales drifted across Kamoj’s arm. She wiped off the shimmering

dust, wondering why people had no scales. Most everything else on Balumil,

the world, had them. Scaled needles fat with water nestled among the leaves,

and roots swollen with moisture churned the soil. The trees grew slowly,

storing water and converting it into energy as a bulwark against summer

droughts and winter snows. Seasonal plants had other methods of survival.

They lived only in spring and autumn, but their big, hard-scaled seeds could

lie dormant for long periods, until the climate was to their liking.

If only people were as well adapted to survive. She swallowed, remembering

the last winter, when nearly a fourth of Argali had died in its blizzards and

brutal ices. Including her parents. Even after so long, that loss haunted her.

She had been a small child when she and Maxard, her mother’s brother,

became sole heirs to the impoverished remains of a province that had once

been proud.

Glancing at Lyode, Kamoj wondered if her bodyguard shared her concern

about seeing Lionstar on Argali lands today. A tall woman with lean muscles,

Lyode had the brown eyes and black hair common in Argali. Here in the

shadows, the vertical slits of her pupils had widened until they almost filled

her irises, like black pools. She carried Kamoj’s boots dangling from her belt

by their laces.

"Do you know the maize-girls that work in the kitchen?" Kamoj asked.

The older woman glanced at her. "Three children? Tall as your elbow?"

"That’s right." Kamoj smiled. "They told me, in solemn voices, that Havyrl

Lionstar came here in a cursed ship that the wind chased across the sky, and

that he can never go home again because he’s so loathsome the elements

refuse to let him sail again." Her smile faded. "Where does all the superstition

come from? Apparently most of Argali believes it. There is some story he’s

centuries old, with a metal face so ugly that if you look at it you’ll have

nightmares."

"I’m not sure." Lyode paused. "Legends often have their seeds in truth." With

a dry smile, she added, "Though with the maize-girls, who knows? The last

time I talked to them, they tried to convince me Argali is haunted. They think

that’s why all the light panels have gone dark."

Kamoj chuckled. "They told me that one too. They weren’t too specific on who

was haunting what, though." Legend claimed the Current had once lit all the

houses in the Northern Lands. But that had been centuries past. In fact, in the

North Sky Islands the Current had died thousands of years ago. The only

reason one light panel still worked in Argali House, Kamoj’s home, was

because before Kamoj’s birth, her parents had happened upon a few intact

fiberoptic threads in the ruins of the Quartz Palace.

The threads were only one part in the panel, which used many components,

all linked by cables and threads that extended into the walls of the house and

to the few remaining sun-squares on the roof. No one understood anymore

how any of it worked. Lyode’s husband, Opter, had replaced the fiberoptics.

Opter didn’t know how the panel worked either, nor could he fix damaged

components. But given undamaged parts, he had an uncanny ability to figure

out how they fit into gadgets.

"Hai!" Kamoj grimaced as a twig stabbed her foot. Lifting her leg, she saw a

gouge between her toes welling with blood.

"A good reason to wear your shoes," Lyode observed.

"Pah," Kamoj muttered. She enjoyed walking barefoot, but it had its

drawbacks.

A drumming that had been tugging at her awareness finally intruded enough

to make her listen. "Those are greenglass stags."

Lyode tilted her head. "On the road to Argali."

"Come on. Let’s look." Kamoj started to run, then hopped on her good foot

and settled for a limping walk. When they reached the road, they hid behind

the trees, listening to the riders.

"I’ll bet it’s Lionstar," Kamoj said.

Asaro, Catherine - Skolian Empire 7 - Quantum Rose.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: