Kei's scarred face glared with brazen directness at the dark-gray Line Mother and her outrage crackled through the air. The clusters of onlooking lesser-ranked females were stunned to silence, while Heyoka, half hidden by the monolith, could not decide whether he wanted to charge out there to stand by Kei's side, or tear his throat out for interfering.
On the one hand, he knew all too well what Levv's disgrace had cost its few survivors, including himself. He flashed back to the burn of the slaver's whip, and the difficult years afterward, trying to be something he was not and never could be. But then too he thought of the flek infesting the plains, making ready to lay waste to this world while the Hrinn dallied here, arguing about events that had happened over thirty Standard years ago. This was not supposed to be about Levv, but the flek, and he could not let Kei spoil the only chance he had to rally the Hrinn against them.
Seska prowled across the inlaid stone into the center area of finely crushed gravel. Gold and silver jangled around her ankle at each step. There was death in the set of her jaw, and cold naked fury in the wicked line of her claws. "Get out of that seat, you miserable excuse for a male!" Her eyes glittered like chunks of black diamond. "No male has ever been allowed to desecrate this circle since the Beginning!"
"You dare to speak to me of desecration?" Kei sprang back onto his feet, his black fur contrasting starkly with the striated gray of the surrounding stones. "After what you, all of you, committed against Levv?"
"Fool, why bother to speak of Levv now?" Beshha's voice was smooth and lazy. "There is no Levv. A few of the lower ranked females might have escaped to breed brats with plains hrinn, but such progeny could never be considered truly Levv."
Kei raised his muzzle high, proud and fierce in his coarse brown robes. "I bear only the blood of old Levv! Your noses know the truth of that!"
"Evidently he bears the same madness that brought Levv down." A snub-nosed pale-ginger female spoke from the Qartt seat. Much younger and more muscled than her counterparts, she leaned forward, eyes fever-bright. "It was said none of the males carried it, but apparently that is not true."
"The penalty for madness is death!" Seska wrenched the shocked eyes of the crowd back to her. "Long ago, the Council acted to prevent this scourge from spreading to the other Lines. How can we allow this diseased male to live, knowing he could breed with our unsuspecting daughters and taint our Lines?"
Almost forgotten in the center of the circle, Vexk slipped between Seska and Kei. Her eyes were luminous, as though she saw far beyond that particular moment. "If we are speaking of madness, Seska, then make us understand why you concerned yourself with an Outsider. Your actions make no sense."
This was of no help either, Heyoka thought, debating how to interrupt. Over on the far edge of the circle, a dark-gray figure skulked through the crowd, a male, watching him with fervid black eyes. His hackles raised.
"Why," Vexk continued, "bring the Outsider back to Vvok in the first place, and then, if you wished to preserve its life, why not send it back to its own kind? Why, instead, contract for a restoration, for which you were obligated to pay, and then afterwards beat the poor creature for information about Levv until it was senseless, before trading it for lights-that-kill?"
Next to Vvok on the great circle, a brown-furred Line Mother sprang to her feet, ears flattened to her skull. "Lights-that-kill?"
Seska hobbled back to her seat and eased down onto the carved stone. "In exchange for the return of the wounded one. Outsiders trade with all of us from time to time. They might give you something of value too, if you were more clever at bargaining."
Unable to wait any longer, Heyoka entered the circle. "Among Outsiders, the penalty for giving you weapons would be death." He was suddenly overwhelmed with the sobering knowledge of the identity of those who must have dealt with Vvok. "It was not humans from the station who traded you those lights, but flek from the other side of the mountains, the same flek who intend to steal the land from under your feet and the air out of your lungs!"
"Another Levv heard from." Seska's face contorted into a bare-toothed sneer. "It seems we did a poor job of it when we sought to put an end to Levv's madness, but we can rectify that now!" She motioned to those waiting behind her and a double handful of tawny and dark shapes streaked toward Heyoka and Kei.
The suppressed other in his subconscious shook itself like an awakening wolf, then gazed out through Heyoka's startled eyes. Blood! it whispered all too eagerly. It was the pheromones, he realized, appalled. The females were almost upon him as he groped within for the power he had stored and for the first time purposefully shifted the faces around him into blueness.
It was easy.
The racing females slowed until they might have been stop-action tapes, advancing one leisurely frame at a time. He extended his arm and loosed a bolt of raw blue energy, bathing each attacker in turn. They drifted to the stone-inlaid ground like autumn leaves. He glanced behind him at Nisk, where the older male stood, a pillar of blue. He could feel his heart whizzing in his chest . . . the blood pounding in his ears like an overworked engine . . .
Control it . . . if he couldn't drop back out, he would die, and then this entire world would be lost, along with the proud, savage hrinn who ruled it. He held his breath, willed his heart to slow, color to return to the world, the garbled drawn-out sounds around him to make sense again . . .
"—him!" Seska shouted, then gaped at the seven females sprawled in a heap, fur still smoking. Snarls and growls continued as Kei battled the three who had come at him.
The savage other within him woke again and, caught by surprise, Heyoka spun and roared, a full-throated thundering which carried something of the blue power within it. His extended claws caught the sun and reflected it around the stone circle. The three remaining females, hard-pressed and bloodied, froze, staring at him with stunned black eyes. A shower of blue sparks burst from the tips of his handclaws.
The other glimmered behind his eyes, a brilliant, overpowering light shining through the cracks of his conscious mind. It longed for the taste of blood, but knew he could not give into it. "The matter of Levv must be settled later." His words rang out in the brittle silence. "Right now, death lies in wait for all of us on the other side of the mountains. We have a chance, one small opportunity, to stop the flek before they change Anktan into a death world where neither human nor hrinn can live." He turned to the multitude of sharp-nosed hrinnti faces pressing in around him. "And if you let them steal this world, a hundred others will die soon after."
"Black/on/black!" The whispers built into a cre-scendo, a rising tide deep enough to drown him. "Black/on/black! Black/on/black!"
"No!" he tried to shout over the chant, but Nisk fought through the excited crowd to his side.
"Without the Voice's protection, this one would have died with the rest when Levv fell." Nisk's earnest black gaze bored into the milling, expectant crowd of hrinn until there was silence again. "A pattern arose in the midst of that chaos to shape his life, and he has walked at its heart ever since." He stepped away from Heyoka and lowered his eyes in a pointed gesture of submission. "He is not merely directed by it, but at its center, so that all events flow from him. He is the guiding force!"
"He is not!" The dark-gray male he had noticed earlier, shouldered through the throng of females, striking with his handclaws at those who would not give way. "Since when have you heard the Voice, banished one? I remember nothing in my seasons at the Mish River Males' House about you hearing the Voice."
"I have never claimed to hear it, Priest." Nisk met the newcomer's eyes squarely. "But that does not prevent me from recognizing patterns, or him from being the Black/on/black."
It was Rakshal, Heyoka realized, who had challenged him that night back at the river when Nisk had fought in his place.
"He is the Outsiders' creation." Rakshal's gray muzzle swept around in a wide arc as he stared the crowd down. "Just as they make boxes that fly and talk, they have made this thing which only looks like a Black/on/black to fool us."
"No one made me!" The other's rage boiled through Heyoka until he thought that it would sear his brain. "You and I can settle this later, anytime you want, in any way. For now we must all work together and fight the flek!"
"You would like that, would you not, false one?" Rakshal bared his teeth and glided closer, balancing on the balls of his feet. "Do the Outsiders want our land so badly that they have to trick us into leaving it? What waits beyond the mountains? I say that any hrinn who follows this creature there will never hunt again!"
Rakshal's smell this close was overpowering, male pheromones full of acrid overtones that Heyoka suddenly recognized as the by-product of power. No doubt, he smelled much the same at that moment. Staring into the other's glittering eyes, the other's desire to kill built into a burning ache.
"Black/on/black!" Rakshal's tone was mocking. "If you really are a legend, then try to kill me, but beware, I have the power of the Voice in my claws!" He sprang, already moving faster than any normal hrinn could have moved.
A split second later, Heyoka dropped into blueshift too, fighting for his life against this male, who was both taller and heavier than he was, and whose muscles and bones had the advantage of developing in this gravity. Rakshal's charge carried him backwards and he struck his head against the stone-inlaid ground. Dazed, he struggled against the wicked double rows of teeth at his throat, then managed to thrust his feet into the pit of Rakshal's stomach and send the other male flying over his head.
He scrambled back onto his feet as, a few feet away, Rakshal faced him again. All around them, the onlookers, still in normal time, were as motionless as the great circle of stones. Then he rushed Rakshal again, fighting on in their private universe of silent, electric blue.
Rakshal's claws slashed at his throat, but this time he was ready and snatched his gray robes, using the priest's momentum to trip him. For a moment, the gray-furred male sprawled at his feet and Heyoka circled him warily. If he had any chance to win, it lay in his combat training and experience, although, perhaps, in the end, it would just come down to which one of them could hold blueshift longer.
Raising an arm, the priest suddenly blasted him with a bolt of sizzling blue fire. Heyoka staggered and sat down hard, the world fuzzing out around the periphery of his vision. The power sizzled through his body, then grounded out into the rock beneath him, leaving him weakened and confused.
"Black/on/black!" Rakshal sneered, moving in. He lifted his arm and seared another shaft of burning blueness into Heyoka's chest.
Heyoka fought the colors invading his vision. He had to hold on; if he dropped out of blueshift, even for a second, the priest would have him, then the flek would rule Anktan, and it would all be his fault.
Rakshal snarled. "Die, false one!"
Each breath bore the agony of a million gees, but then the dark-gray priest stumbled, and Heyoka sensed the attacks were draining him too. If only he could use the energy Rakshal was throwing at him instead of letting it drain back into the ground. Rakshal stretched his arm out for the final blow. Heyoka braced himself, heart leaden in his chest. Another such blow might well kill him. What he needed was additional power of his own . . .
The bolt of blue fire snaked out towards his chest. On impulse, he embraced it, opening the channels within and trying to draw it into his nearly depleted reserves as he had drawn the heat of the pool. A fierce burning shuddered through him, a molten red-eyed pain that faded to a tingle. He took a tentative breath, which came more easily, then another.
Rakshal blinked in surprise, then hit him with another bolt, weaker than the last. Heyoka took it more quickly this time and sublimated it into his own cells. He rose from the ground.
Rakshal backed away, moving more slowly with each step until he seemed not to be moving at all. He had lost the blueshift. Reaching within, Heyoka found the key faster this time and dropped back into normal speed. "We should not fight each other like this." Humanlike, he held his hand out. "Stand beside me to save this world."
Instead, Rakshal leaped, fastening his teeth into Heyoka's throat. Driven back with the force of his attack, Heyoka replied with a savage surge of blue fire, discharging as much as he could channel in one burst as they fell. Jaws convulsed into his throat, bringing blackness even closer, then relaxed and slipped away.
He heaved the priest aside and stumbled back to his feet, staggering with weariness. Nisk leaned over the priest's limp body. "He still breathes. Finish him while you can."
"No!" Heyoka's head hung wearily as he dabbed at the streaming gashes on his throat with the back of his hand. "I have beaten him fairly. He cannot stop us now."
Nisk's ears flattened. "Are you one of us?" His eyes reflected the morning light of the red sun, more alien than he had ever seen them. "Or are you just an Outsider that walks like a hrinn? You have to decide. He will never be beaten until he is dead!"
Heyoka paused, remembering. "But he let you live when he defeated you for Leadership of the males' house."
"Because he had not the strength left to kill me. And now, because I lived to be your sponsor, you will finish him."
Heyoka realized Nisk's logic was valid; Rakshal would only interpret mercy as weakness and attack him again the first moment he regained his strength. And they had no more time to waste in this futile infighting. It might already be too late to save this world. They could not delay a moment longer, but the overlay of more than thirty Standard years of human culture bound him. Revulsion swept through him as he gazed around the crowd of expectant sharp-muzzled faces, knowing what they wanted.
At his feet, Rakshal's body shuddered, then the angry dark eyes slitted open, glimmering up at him like wells of black ice. His lips wrinkled back in a weak snarl. "False hrinn! I knew you were not the Black/on/black! I knew—"
As though it belonged to someone else, Heyoka's arm rose, then discharged blue fire into the priest's body until his stored energy was gone and he was drawing from the energy needed for normal cellular function. At his feet, Rakshal writhed and twisted, blackening into a blasted, lifeless thing until Heyoka's vision grayed out and he had to admit he had nothing more.
"Black/on/black!" All around him, the chant began again, softly at first, then louder, building into an ear-splitting litany he could not shout down. "Black/on/black! Black/on/black!"
Heyoka stared at the people he had crossed a galaxy to find. The fire of fanaticism was written across their furred faces, yet he was painfully aware there was very little truth to this Black/on/black mythology. At the most, he had only a slight edge in the number of certain power-absorbing cells in his body which obviously all hrinn must have to some degree. He wanted them to stand against the flek because they understood the danger, not because of a chance-generated genetic combination that made him resemble an old legend.
But moments before, they had been ready to tear out his throat because he was born of Levv. Now that they had caught him up high on the wave of their expectations, they were his because he had taken command in the only way they understood.
A few feet away, Nisk lifted his gaze briefly from the charred form of the priest, speaking to Heyoka with searing ebony eyes: the Black/on/black was a weapon forged to their own hands. If he would be what they expected, the Hrinn would follow him and fight the flek with every life and resource they possessed. But if he insisted on being merely Heyoka Blackeagle, an outcast Levv male, he would share Levv's, as well as Anktan's, death. It was not a choice he faced, but a certainty.
He threw back his head, and with a roar that shook him down to the depths of his soul, thrust his fist high into the air.
The ear-splitting feedback from the testing of the transfer grid would deafen her in time—if she lived that long. Mitsu thought the latter unlikely, though, in those few moments left to her now when she could still think like a human. There weren't many.
Although she'd told the truth about her reasons for coming to this forsaken rock and then made up more, the flek seemed to be waiting for something—she wasn't sure what, no doubt something particularly flekish which her thinking processes weren't quite perverted enough yet to comprehend. Maybe tomorrow.
Hunching in the corner of her white-walled room, she beat out a flekish song of which she had become fond, though she lacked the necessary chitinous covering on her fingers to do it well. For some reason she could no longer remember, she'd resisted at first when Eldrich insisted she learn it, but now the tune was soothing when the human part of her was sad and worried.
As it almost always was.
Eldrich thrust his head through the slick whitish wall and stared at her impatiently. A bit of the special gas mixture needed for the hive to remain fertile slipped through and she sniffed appreciatively.
Soon she would be sufficiently flek in her thoughts to satisfy her captors and they would let her out. She would be able to investigate this base and find out if her human half retained enough control to do any damage.
Stepping into the small room, Eldrich drew the wretched silver tube out of his pocket and pointed it at her head. Closing her eyes, she braced herself for the wrenching dislocation and alien thought patterns to come. If she were strong enough, she would get her chance, if—
As the light faded, the main body of the crowd drifted down to the river to watch the supposed Black/on/black bathe his wounds, leaving three of the Line Mothers behind in the great circle. Seska dismissed her attendants in order to speak freely to Beshha and Fik, and they did the same. The mingled scents of the six Lines lingered on the grass and permeated the air, both heady and nerve-wracking at the same time. It might almost have been a Gathering, she thought. She prowled restlessly across the inlaid stone, cursing the pain in her joints that made her limp and seem less potent than she was. "Black/on/black, my ears and nose too!"
"But what if he really is?" Fik played with a strand of polished bluestones, staring moodily.
For one so newly ascended, Seska thought, her stance was overconfident, a fault that could be exploited.
Fik gazed at the distant figures at the river. "A powerful pattern is at work here. You saw what he did."
Seska eased onto the red cushions piled over the great stone seat of Vvok. Her lip curled in a silent snarl. What a pair of limp-eared idiots! If it were possible to do what had to be done alone, she would rip both of their hearts out just to have the blessing of silence once more.
Beshha selected a handful of ripe mottled-green mizb fruits from Seska's dish and popped them neatly into her mouth. "We may have been mistaken about the nature of this pattern." The cant of her ears was uncertain and her scent had an erotic edge to it.
Seska realized the Line Mother of Jhii was more than a little attracted to the Black/on/black. "Shut up!" She relaxed against the plush cushions. "You're making my head ache with all this whining!" She stretched an arm above her head, listening to the bracelets clink together. "It is not we, but they who mistake the nature of this pattern. It has been ours from the start. We have only to step into the center."
"But the Outsider does not answer the box anymore." Beshha fussed at her mane, tangled by the breeze on top of the hill. "What if it has gone away? What if it is dead?"
"Those creatures never die unless someone kills them." Seska studied the other two, who apparently could not smell beyond the ends of their dull noses. "You haven't done something stupid, have you?"
"No!" Beshha looked horrified. "I have not even seen one for seasons now."
"Nor I." Fik sneezed twice in quick succession. "Fitila is the only one who has crossed trails with an Outsider in recent memory. Perhaps she killed it."
"You have only to listen to that disgraceful gray-and-white cubling to know better than that." Beshha's eyes crinkled slyly. "How could you let that happen, Seska?" Extending her handclaws, she worked at a snarl. "Really, Jhii has not lost a youngling to that barren bunch of thieves for seasons now."
"Only because Jhii has not bred a cubling with a single scrap of talent since long before I was born!" Seska pinned her ears back. "Which is a great deal longer ago than either of you two lackwits is equipped to understand." She gazed down at the crowd wading in the river, the figures so tiny at this distance, so vulnerable looking. "Tomorrow, we will rally our daughters and follow this supposed Black/on/black across the mountains with the others." She flexed her handclaws. The last of Ankt's gaze reflected redly along the curved edges. "This part of the pattern is not yet clear to me, but he speaks of a battle. If there is fighting, stay close to his back."
Her eyes sagged closed, but the red afterimage of Ankt lingered on the inside of her eyelids. "You know how dreadfully easy it is to make a mistake in the heat of battle."