Fire Sanctuary Read online

  “Does Moran know that you are pregnant?”

  “Braan! I have run no tests, had no signs—I have not even spoken to Elana!” She could feel Braan’s smile in the soft darkness, his pleasure at cracking her beautifully mannered facade. If the foremost healer on the planet had not questioned her health, why did he? He always knew everything....

  “Elana knows everything,” Braan said gently, insistently, interrupting her thoughts.

  “Not this time,” Roe replied. “With so much illness in her family, and of course—“

  “I know. She is often with Enid, and when she is not, Shinar stays with her. The child will make a good doctor someday.” The image of Elana’s lovely daughter brightened their thoughts momentarily.

  “That ‘child’ is a year older than Liel, and there is already talk of sending our sister out traveling early,” Roe murmured.

  “No.” Braan’s voice was hard again. Of course, the decision was up to their mother, Ila the Ragäree, and their mother’s twin brother Baskh Atare. Decisions of the Atare and of the Mother of the Heirs were final. Only their father could have challenged the verdict, and he had been dead ten years. But no Atare, no Nualan had left the planet before their sixteenth birthday, unless to emigrate. And Roe knew Braan saw no reason to change now. Only those values instilled before adulthood seemed capable of withstanding the wreckage the Axis had become. And Liel was very innocent; too innocent for Axis games.

  “Do you like Moran? You have never really told me,” Roe suddenly asked.

  “You never told me if you liked Enid,” Braan responded. “Strange, how no one questions the choice of an Atare, and yet few of us have chosen badly.”

  And yet I have always wanted your approval, and you have always wanted mine.... Ronüviel did not play at “who asked first.”

  “I grew to care for her. Enid’s warmth was reserved for you and the children.” Roe’s voice was non-committal, careful, and Braan relaxed. It was true. Roe knew he was thankful for the friendship she had offered Enid. The woman had been—she was—a secretive woman, not cold but cool, a bit overwhelmed by the joyous warmth of the Atares, of Nuala. It was not what the average off-worlder expected.

  “I shall be proud to call him brother,” Braan answered.

  Roe waited, her thoughts chaotic. His reply was as ambiguous as his turn-about question. A brilliant war hero, high in the Axis eyes for one so young; yes, of course he is good for the family. But Roe did not want it to be as Enid and she had been, always a barrier—

  Braan turned toward her. “And, if he will let me, friend.”

  Now it was Roe’s turn to relax. “You think too much,” she began abruptly.

  “So do you.”

  “But I do not brood.” The tone was slightly accusing, and Roe cursed it even as it passed her lips.

  “You do not have anything to brood about,” Braan replied, apparently not offended.

  “You ...”

  Braan glanced up. “Touché” came the archaic answer. He rolled over on his side, facing her. “Do not worry, I will take a quick hike around the capital when we get back. Use up all my excess energy.” Roe flashed him an irritated look. “Take a hike around the capital” was one of Baskh’s favorite brush-off sayings to his children, sister’s children and advisors alike, used whenever they stepped out of line. Braan heard it often, before he left the planet, and after, before Enid’s illness. For over five years he had kept silent, openly volunteering no suggestions, no criticism of the regime. His friends worried about him and his detractors fretted, expecting an eruption of the fiery Braan of old.

  “What do you wait for, belaiss?” she asked gently, dropping down on one elbow. He stirred at the old endearment, not looking up. A night breeze touched them, sending a shiver through Roe and blowing Braan’s dark hair away from his face.

  “For Enid to die ... so I can try to live again,” came the steady answer.

  “You know—”

  “That is not what you mean? What can I do, Ronüviel?” Now he met her gaze, eyes very dark in the starlight. “I am well beyond the schooling of the young ones, and I have no specific interests other than sculpture. The art pays and I gain a name—but I need more. I do not have the heart to seek another woman. I am not sure I could bear the pain, should something happen again....” His voice was very soft, perfectly controlled, as he spoke of things she had no doubt he had told no one else. “Yet I do not think the synod would consider two children my full contribution to the gene pool and would bar me from the military. I know, such is the burden of a 20—what I would not give to be a nameless 80!”

  “And the synod is also barred.”

  “I could give up my land holdings, even my claim on the throne. It would not be enough. If Tal sat the throne, ‘they’ would talk collusion. If Deveah, between us we would destroy the people. Shall I forsake home and family, never to return? Is freedom its own reward?”

  “If Arrez—” Roe began very carefully. The high priest, so unlike what the off-worlders seemed to think a man of God should be, was Roe’s dearest of friends. Even he walked as softly as akemmi on this subject.

  “No!” Braan sat up abruptly, staring out over the distant, twinkling lights of Amura, the swift disintegration of a shooting star.

  “I am sorry ... but, Braan, never have I felt the spirit so strongly in any man—as much as Arrez in deep prayer—and you wear it like another skin.”

  “Ah, yes, St. Braan.” His attempt at self-mockery always failed; the spirit was too much with him.

  “There is a reason that the best to rule is third son, not first.” Barely a whisper, though the guaard hidden on the ledge below would repeat nothing, ever. Braan turned to silence her, but she sat up, freezing his lips with a touch of her finger. “Tal is a scientist at heart, Deveah a fanatic. You know that. I do—Baskh does. As much as I wish you were as devoted to art as I am to medicine, I know that there is purpose in this. I fear it, but I know you will not be given a burden greater than you can bear. I love you, crazy brother, and I am not alone in that. Your time is coming. I only wish I could lighten your heart, to ignite the cunning, witty, brash young cad you used to be.”

  “I grew up.”

  “No ... you aged. I do not think you will ever grow up.” She smiled then, her perfect teeth reflecting starlight, her strange eyes, the only set like his in this generation, a kaleidoscope before him. He managed a faint smile, the burden of silence slipping from his shoulders. He held her a moment, sharing the invisible strength from her molten fire within.

  “I wish to stop at the shrine on the way down. How about your fire?” He released her and dug around in the pack he had used as a pillow. Zair leapt up to help, the huge descendant of Terra’s kingly dogs forgetting he was no longer a puppy.

  “Down, fool, you will crush the heat disks!” Braan tried helplessly to fend him off, the beast retaliating by pushing him over with a large paw and cleaning his face for him. Roe’s low, golden laughter rang back from the waterfall.

  Chapter Two

  AMURA, NUALA

  FOURHUNDRED TWENTYFIVEDAY, SEXT

  Braan leapt out of the solar car, still tying the waist sash of his long-sleeved mandraia shirt. Idiot, slow down, you have beaten the transport, it has not even touched down yet! His feet slowed to a walk as his mind continued to race. Moran and Lyte, Lyte and Moran—it had to be Lyte, who else would be coming to Nuala at High Festival? He touched the packet of radiation pills in his pocket. Tourists remained in their hotels through the religious services, a sevenday of confinement—We know what is in his file; we are prepared for him. Calm down. Braan’s kaleidoscope eyes recorded the presence of his younger twin brothers, Kalith and Kavan. They lounged before the gates. One was sunning himself in the blazing rays of Kee, now at her zenith, while the other meditated in the shade of a towering neudeya evergreen.

  “Tracking says the ship is here. Can we pull this spectacle together?” Both youths leapt at the sound of his voice.

&nbs
p; “Braan! How did you get back so fast?” It burst from one of them, the energy and worshipful tone revealing him as Kavan long before Braan was close enough to see that his left iris was topaz brown, his right emerald green. Kal’s eyes were reversed; left green, right brown.

  “Sprouted wings and flew. The duty officer sent word he has two for us. Perhaps Moran finally talked Lyte into coming.” Without a backward glance Braan sauntered toward the launching bay.

  “We finally get to meet the mysterious Lyte?” Kal asked, his voice soft in the afternoon heat.

  “He undoubtedly thinks just the opposite—that he is arriving on the mysterious Nuala,” Braan replied. “Come, let us go.” They started inside the huge landing bay. “Are you two ready to return to the Axis?”

  Kavan’s expression immediately turned to one of disgust. Kalith remained impassive, as Braan had expected. Only seventeen, the twins were already working at cover trades. Kal posed as a merchant’s son, polishing his already considerable diplomatic skill, while Kavan worked as a navigator’s apprentice, submerging his fierce Atare temper in endless detail. The High Festival marked the coming of autumn, the new year, and heralded their return to the Axis guilds. Neither of them wanted to leave, but for different reasons. Kavan was having “feelings” about the Atare and did not want to leave the old man. And Kal did not want to leave Shinar. Ah, the problems that could bring, Kal and Shinar....

  But Lyte, now—why did he choose a serious religious festival as the time to visit, why this particular furlough? Moran had asked him many times, but the gambling worlds had always held a brighter lure. Now, Lyte came to them ... who was he, really? He had his own law and own sense of honor—this was well known—and Braan doubted they coincided with anyone else’s. Moran alone had any control over him at all, and then only a strange, entwined mutual respect and friendship. The disowned son of aristocrats, the silvery, ice-eyed Lyte went his own way, always.

  They stepped to the loading platform, and Braan’s musings faded. The three stood elbow-to-elbow in the landing bay gateway, watching the drifting Gerrymander silently drop into the launch hole. Amazing how gently the self-propelled junk heap could set down when she—Braan’s thoughts broke off at the tremendous squeal of the hatch hinges, grating as they opened. Two Nualan security guards appeared, as if from nowhere, and were behind them, just in front of the white pillars.

  The legendary white pillars. Not the originals; they were in the museum. These were stone copies and filled with intricate devices capable of detecting anything from a gamma cannon down to the tiniest powdered poison. When the Nualans stated that Nuala was a sanctuary planet, they did not jest, and the white pillars marked the beginning of Nualan domain. Following interstellar law, anyone passing through them was given a place of safety until they could, or wished to, continue their journey. Many never left. As it was difficult to lie to a Nualan, criminals did not bother trying to come to Nuala. Only those desperate—the misjudged, the oppressed, those without power or friends—came to Nuala.

  Moran and Lyte hurried off the craft, their personal tackle in hand. Moran deflated visibly at the sight of the three men—Lyte noticed and smiled grandly, giving his friend a sly nudge. “My, we have the love sickness badly, don’t we? You’d better check into clinic when we get back, take a pill or something.”

  Moran gave him an unsettling glance as Braan gestured to them.

  “You finally talked him into it?” Kavan asked as they walked over. Kal poked him; the young man retreated for the moment.

  “Atares, this is Lyte. Braan, Kalith and Ka-van,” Moran said clearly, raising an amused eyebrow at Kavan.

  “Bra-an?” Lyte asked, trying not to stare at the trio’s eyes. The man smiled faintly.

  “Close—softer on the second a. Most humans miss that—the Setteos are better with our vowels for some reason.”

  “There is a lot of inflection in Nualan. In human terms it’s a very old language,” Moran said. “What did you do with my woman?”

  “She is at the palace cleaning up. We were in the mountains last night. Shall we go? The solar car is right outside.” As he spoke, Braan started walking toward the gate. Moran and Lyte followed, passing the pillars and stepping on the platform before the actual exit. Lyte looked around curiously as they stepped out into daylight, apparently glad to leave the strange launch bay with its huge automatic ceiling hatch. Braan received the impression the man felt he had been coerced into coming here. How to reassure him? Moran had mentioned he liked mountains....

  oOo

  Running, running, stop—listen ... run again. How long had she been running? Running. Who would have believed a military wheel had so many corridors? Running. Had security been alerted? A general alarm? Running. Running. Damn! Why did you leave Mercury 7? Never, never on the spur of the moment, you know better—She rounded the corner to find herself in the midst of bodyguards, facing the bottomless eyes of her patron —

  She awoke with a soft cry, quickly stifled by her own fist. Fighting back tears, the woman tried to make herself comfortable, re-arranging her shapeless, coweled dress to make the most of its heavy fabric. Why couldn’t this dilapidated heap of a transport ship—what was its name, Gerrymander?—be tempra-controlled? Too much of a luxury for the cargo, she supposed. But she had traveled this way once before, fleeing the bombed-out wreckage of Capricorn V.

  Suddenly she noticed the change; the numb vibration of the floor and walls had ceased. They had landed. She was on Nuala. Nuala. Her heart froze at the very thought. Nuala. Close to the war zone. A sanctuary planet. They aren’t even human here, not even —

  Stop it! She had seen only two Nualans in her entire life. One was a handsome older man, an officer spending his furlough on Mercury 7. The other was an example of the genetic disasters caused by the Nualan System’s natural radiation, a horrifying memory from a holographic history tape. Ancient, ancient history, they’re not like that anymore.... Every myth and legend she had heard in the past tenyear rose up to choke her. Forcing them down, she reminded herself it was merely sanctuary. She did not have to stay.

  How would she live? It had been three long years since she had worked as a planter—the restricted agriguilds had seen to that. And what had Tyr said? “There are no hustlers on Nuala. They don’t need them”. Then her dissipated brother had laughed, abandoning her in the docking bay. What had he meant? How would she earn money to leave? How —

  Calming herself, she reached into memory, dredging up her name, the name she had not spoken aloud in three years. And still could not—not yet. Teloa. I was Teloa. I have survived the destruction of Capricorn V, the half-way camps, the tratore worlds. Nothing can be worse than Mercury 7.

  Quietly she clicked open the hatch to the passenger corridor. She was unable to control a smile. Fortunate that stowaways were so rare; it would have been harder to slip out the cargo doors. She allowed herself to simply listen for a while; what she could see and hear through the opening disturbed her.

  Only two passengers for this sanctuary world. The pillars—she had to pass the pillars. They marked the beginning of Nualan domain. Gods, the outer hatch was going to close. It was now or never. She slipped out from behind the packing cube, through the inner hatch, and into the corridor. Teloa touched the outer railing, barely two steps down the ramp.

  “Hey! You! Hold it right there!” It was the duty officer; it had to be. He knew every cube and passenger by sight, and she was certainly not on his list. Horror at returning to the military wheel lent wings to her feet. She charged down the porta-ramp and sprinted for the gateway. The duty officer hesitated a moment too long, not believing anyone could move that fast in such high-heeled shoes. Then he ran after her, still yelling.

  It was impossible not to hear the commotion. As the group on the platform turned, Teloa pushed by one of the burly guards and through the wide pillars. The pale blonde man moved first, grabbing her around the waist as she passed and pinning her in a commando grip. She struggled, but could not bre
ak the hold. The two guards stepped forward and seized the young duty officer; much to his dismay, for the men were unbelievably tall and magnificently proportioned, as big as ober players. The duty officer’s face was changing colors, his fury at the breaking point.

  “She’s a stowaway! I claim Axis—” he screeched.

  “I seek sanctuary!” Teloa blurted out.

  The officer stopped in mid-gasp. Teloa was startled at the immediate and almost imperceptible shift in the reactions of the Nualans. Before, they were observers. Now, it was as if they were lined up behind her, supporting her. The two dressed as commandos also noticed; only the one restraining her seemed surprised. So it was true. On Nuala the ancient law still applied—the accused was innocent until proven guilty. It was one of the few places in the Axis Republic that this still held true.

  “Why do you seek sanctuary?”

  Teloa turned, recognizing the voice as the man who called himself Braan. He gestured at her silvery captor, who released her. Composing herself, she took in the Nualan’s appearance at a glance. About her height—then she remembered the heels—graceful, compact, dark-haired, with intense green eyes that—she was startled. Eyes that were marbled with a soft topaz brown! She felt the assurance and knew this man was someone of importance. Amazement crept through her. Rarely did she encounter a man who was not covetous of her statuesque beauty or embarrassed, even angered, by her height. This man gave her a steady, all-encompassing gaze. He knew exactly what—even who—she was and did not care in the least.

  “Why do you seek sanctuary?” he repeated gently. Teloa started to speak, and hesitated. “The Nuala do not lie and therefore are not easily deceived. If you wish to stay, you must state your reason, even if you have lied all your life. When you pass through the gate, your past disintegrates. We do not care what you were, or claim to be ... only what you become.”

  “I was working on Mercury 7, and was invited by a wealthy man to tour the tratores of the Seven Systems at his expense. He arranged for my transport to the military wheel Annular 14 and then refused to pay my passage through. I—retaliated....” Teloa began.