The Wilding

THE DELEGATION OF Kaim’eri left the H’karet as soon as their business was concluded. Of course. No one ever stayed in the Pri’tiera’s domain a moment longer than they had to. The only exceptions were his staff, of course, who were not permitted to leave.

The Pri’tiera watched them leave from the guest dock, each one in his own little transport. Afraid of sharing the same air, no doubt. He could still taste their paranoia on his tongue.

For a brief moment emotion threatened to well up inside him. What was it today, hatred or fear or simply envy? Probably the last. He didn’t deal well with seeing men of his own kind, with being reminded that he could never taste the freedom even the lowliest Braxin took for granted.

Too afraid, too afraid. All his world was fear, built on fear, maintained by fear, devouring fear for energy. A few brave Kaim’eri had once told his father that there were whispers in the Citadel of strange powers possessed by his family, and that a few had even dared to voice suspicions as to what those powers might be. His father never told him what he’d done about that. He didn’t know if the Pri’tiera had hunted the men down openly, arranged their deaths more quietly, or set loose so many rumors of his own that theirs were lost in a tempest of speculation. Any of those actions would have been within the purview of a Pri’tiera, and no one would have questioned their use. But they didn’t talk much in those days, he and his father. The family curse hadn’t claimed his soul yet, and he was too busy sowing his seed on the planet’s surface to sit still for lessons.

They’d always assumed they had time. Even with the notoriously shortened life span of the Priti’era’s line, there was no reason to assume they wouldn’t have their fair share. The Plague wasn’t due for decades. The diseases of the soul that typically felled those of his line rarely struck before midlife. The Pri’tiera was still in his first century, robust and strong, and there was no reason to think that time would be denied them.

Then there was the shuttle malfunction. And the safeguards weren’t enough. And the most powerful man in the Holding was suddenly a scattering of sparks in Braxi’s night sky, that soared down to the earth like the expiration of fireworks.

He wondered if the Kaim’eri knew how young he really was. He wondered if it would make a difference if they did. Certainly he’d aged a century in that day, when his father had died. Fencing for power with men he’d only known from stories before that. Struggling to hold onto a throne that was so new, compared to the length of Braxin history, that the metaphorical paint on its surface was barely dry. Having to convince dozens of hostile Kaim’eri that he was capable of ruling them, without ever being able to argue the point . . . because once you were reduced to the point of arguing, you had already ceded the battle.

And yet. Here he was. Was it because they respected him now, or because they had learned to fear him? Or was it because they feared the power his family had, that supernatural aura which exceeded even the legendary Braxaná presence?

With a sigh he walked through the public portion of the H’karet. He knew enough of its history to be able to pick out the parts that various Pri’tieri had added to it. There were only four, after all. Zatar the Magnificent had lived a full lifetime, but the rest had all fallen short. There was never a specific disease to blame, or a condition that scientists could attempt to control or cure. The cause was a mystery to outsiders, which they no doubt ascribed to the ubiquitous Braxaná demon, inbreeding. The price of power.

He knew what it really was. His father had, too. Knew it like a primitive gear, knew the mortality of the motor that contained it, feeling metal surfaces wear down over the years, knowing there would come a day when a bit of slippage here and there would add up to a skipped beat, and then to two . . . and then to nonfunction. It wasn’t happening to him yet, but he had watched it happen to his father. And he knew the day that the power had begun to unfold in him just what had caused it, and knew that it would claim him too, in time.

He found that his footsteps had taken him to one of the observatory chambers. Such places had to substitute for the real thing when you no longer trusted yourself to walk freely among the common folk. For a moment he balled his hands into fists, feeling a wave of frustration well up inside him; then it settled back down into the black recesses of his soul where such emotions normally simmered. Deep within the shadows of self where no one else could ever see.

It had taken him years to learn to control the curse. Frightening years. The family rings in his father’s library had said that was the usual way of it, that it rode the mad tides of puberty when it first appeared. Until that day, he’d hoped he might be normal. Even a dominant trait skipped a child now and then. Pri’tiera Semir had sired three children, of whom only one was affected. His own older brother had been perfectly normal . . . though the Pri’tiera suspected he would been happy to trade that normalcy for the kind of power the curse brought.

Through the observatory window he could see Braxi, and beyond it the tiny glimmer of Aldous rising. If he quieted his soul, if he reached outward with all his capacity, sometimes he imagined he could actually feel the people on those worlds. As if they were inside his head, whispering their little hopes and despairs and unfulfilled dreams just too softly for him to make out the words. Sometimes he thought that if he closed his eyes and just listened to the voices they would carry him away, and he would forget who and what he was and just become one of the whispers.

He never did, of course. Not while he was awake. Sleeping . . . that was another matter. The power he so carefully disciplined in his waking hours was uncontrolled while he slept. Most of the dreams he barely remembered, save for fleeting snatches that whirled through his brain as he awoke, sweat-drenched and shaking. Fragments sometimes remained, terrifying. Bits and pieces of alien lives melded to his own. Thoughts and sensations he couldn’t hope to understand, pouring into his brain like a flood tide, drowning out the Braxaná normalcy. Sometimes when he first awakened he had to lie there in the darkness and remind himself who he was, over and over, until his identity took root again. Sometimes he lay in the dark and could not remember who he was. Those nights were the most frightening of all.

There was a time when he could have sent agents to Azea to kidnap someone to help him.A minor psychic, perhaps, who knew all the appropriate Disciplines but lacked the power to be a threat to him. Or maybe a scientist from the mysterious psychic community, who knew their practices well enough to provide him with answers. Two centuries ago he could have done that. Not now. Now the psychics had fled the Empire, and if there were scientists who knew their ways they didn’t advertise their existence. The madness of the psychics had made them unpopular.

It was rumored that the fugitive psychics had gathered somewhere in unclaimed space, beyond the reach of Braxin and Azean law. What they were doing out there, or what they intended, no man knew. What kind of society did you have when nearly all its members knew they would go mad in time, that the seed of power they harbored would eventually turn upon itself and devour all rational thought? He remembered stories he had heard in his childhood, of what the psychics had done in the Empire when they were still living there. Terrible stories. Only the might of Llornu had kept the madness in check, and when Llornu was gone . . . no place would have them now.

He ordered the force field to give him a reflective surface and gazed at the image of himself which it provided. Purebred Braxaná—ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times over. The purity was a weakness, he knew that. If the small Braxaná gene pool was so in need of fresh blood that they were mating with outsiders, then the even smaller gene pool of the Pri’tiera’s line had blessed well better join the game. But where did you look for someone with the requisite traits who could also deal with the unique intimacy that the curse engendered? The only ones thus far who had proven capable of that were women so weak in spirit that being invaded by his mind was merely another facet of their subservience. Good for pleasure perhaps, but not what you looked for to breed a possible Pri’tiera.

He’d thought the little Kesserit traitor had potential. If not for politics he might have tried her out himself. But he didn’t think a soul with that many divided loyalties could survive the experience of being laid bare before her master.

She was an interesting one. Playing her ex-consort like a puppet across the length of the Holding, while seemingly unaware that the very contacts she used to do it were playing her as well. A true Braxaná would have understood that. A true Braxaná knew that there was no word spoken, no action taken, that did not serve some greater political purpose. Did she think that all she was doing was setting up her Kesserit puppet to fetch some genetic material the Pri’tiera wanted, to win the favor of his line? That was no more than the glove of the matter, its outer skin.

She said that she knew her princeling well, and if the right hints were set before him she could guess at the conclusions he would draw. Yes, but what would he do then? Retrieve a packet of DNA for the Pri’tiera, hoping for a favorable end to his Wilding? Or would he do what a true Braxaná would do and seek a living descendant of the crucial bloodline? Would he bring her back to the Mistress Planet? Would he give her over for breeding?

The Kaim’eri would have told him that it made little difference. They had long since passed the point when they would turn up their noses at a viable bloodline just because it was delivered in a bottle. The shadow of racial extinction was a harsh teacher.

But. To him! A woman of that lineage, stolen from among the psychics. She would be most likely be psychic herself, yes? And trained. She would know the ways of the curse, and would know how to discipline it. The value of such a creature to him was a thousand times greater even than Harkur’s blood. He would have sent men after such a prize long ago if not for the questions they would ask. Now there was Tathas, who was so wrapped up in his own personal melodrama that he wouldn’t think to ask those questions. Tathas, who probably would die en route and fail utterly at his task . . . but if he didn’t . . . if he brought home such a woman . . .