Stamina was one of the benefits of the Meeric constitution. Regeneration was another. Shredded flesh and depleted blood mended and replenished. Each time Shiva let her fall bleeding and insensate to the ground, Ra recovered just enough to utter her petition to the great Meer: “Vetma, ai MeerShiva. Again.” She submitted to the punishing sting of Shiva’s switch far beyond the endurance of an ordinary person, mindful that this was all the more reason the punishment remained insufficient. Ra lost count of how many times they’d been through her crimes against Jak, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. Perhaps it might, if she could die of it.
It seemed, however, that it was at last enough for Shiva.
At Ra’s latest plea for punishment, her chastiser sighed with impatience. “Your atonement, MeerRa, has become self-indulgent.”
“Self in’ulgent?” The word slurred from Ra’s tongue without meaning and dripped with her blood to the floor. She tried to focus on Shiva’s face but saw only a haze of ruby—Shiva’s hair, perhaps, or more blood.
With a gloved hand, Shiva gripped Ra by the hair and pulled her close while crouching before her, so that the green eyes burned into her own. “You seem to think I’m at your disposal, as if I came to your Soth AhlZel on Munt Zelfaal to wait upon your whim.”
Blood dripped into Ra’s eye, but she ignored it, too tired to lift her hand to wipe it away. “Why did you come?” She hadn’t meant for it to sound so impertinent.
After a dangerous silence, Shiva answered, her placid voice showing no sign of offense. “There was disquiet in my blood. I came because you were in agony.”
“I thought”—Ra paused to breathe against the burning in her lungs—“You said—I was a fool.”
“A fool in agony,” Shiva agreed. She ran a finger through the blood on Ra’s face. “And quite pointlessly.”
“You think—I shouldn’t have taken from them what I—” Ra’s breath caught in her throat as dissipating endorphins gave way to the rising throb of each stripe Shiva had laid into her flesh. “What I took. You think I should have let them suffer.”
“What I think, little fêt, is that you show a penchant for masochism. As if suffering itself were a virtue.” Shiva loosened her grip on Ra’s hair and lifted Ra’s chin with the tip of her switch. “Easing the suffering of the ordinary is admirable. But I have always preferred taking vengeance upon those who cause suffering. Which is why I’ve been indulging you in your vetma.” The Meer withdrew the switch and let Ra’s chin drop as she stood. “You’ve caused great suffering, and so you merit great punishment. But the punishment is not for your enjoyment.”
“Enjoyment, MeerShiva?” Shocked at the accusation, Ra struggled to lift her gaze to Shiva’s but could only manage to fix on the long, slender fingers stroking the switch. “I do not enjoy punishment.”
A low, almost sensuous laugh came from above. “Lying, my dear, does not become the Meer. I’m surprised you can manage it without bursting that swollen tongue.” The switch turned slowly in Shiva’s hands, the impossible razor sharpness of it slipping through her fingers like butter yet leaving them unscathed. The motions were mesmerizing. “But neither is it for my enjoyment. And I freely admit to having taken pleasure in it. Which is why we shall now set aside your atonement for your crimes against Jak na Fyn and move on to the next.”
Shiva slipped the switch into the sheath at her hip and clasped her hands behind her back, legs planted firmly apart on the grassy floor of her conjured tower. “It’s time for you to face your crimes against the mortal who was once your concubine. The one who came to me—after your mistreatment of her brought down all our race—so full of hatred for her own form she sought a vetma from the very sort she loathed. I granted her vetma, and she left me no longer the woman she’d been, but a man who supposed he might make his way more easily in this world in his new countenance.”
“Ahr.” Ra choked out the name, the sound almost unintelligible, a mere syllable imbued with inexpressible sorrow.
“Ahr.” On Shiva’s tongue, the name was like another blow. “After attempting to force Ahr to assault the one he loved, what further crime did you commit against this mortal?”
Gripped by uncontrollable shaking, Ra couldn’t speak the words. To speak was to create, and she would not create this again. But it was already done.
The stiletto heel of Shiva’s boot rested on Ra’s hand where it lay against the heather. “What crime?” When Ra still didn’t answer, the heel dug in, grinding against bones and cartilage until Ra howled. “What—crime?”
Weeping and defeated, Ra surrendered. “Vetma, ai MeerShiva. I took his life.”
Shiva lifted her foot and let Ra drip to the ground, and Ra heard the Meer walk to the door and go out. She waited in the darkness, dazed, wondering with what worse punishment Shiva might return. But Shiva did not.
“I took his life.” The words came to Pearl through the flow, though he’d tried to shut it out, with a terrible permanence. But they also brought an unexpected respite from the bloody images that had sought to drown him. In these words, Ra’s madness, at last, was silent.
Seated at the table in his library, Pearl could finally draw without depicting decapitations and disembowelings. The first image he was able to conjure on paper that didn’t come from that dark, oppressive place was a sky full of stars. Like the underside of the dome at Ludtaht Ra, the image had a depth to it that belied the medium. At the temple, the “stars” in the deep blue-black mosaic were pieces of diamond.
Pearl rendered his diamonds with pricks of his stylus on the thin, onionskin parchment, laying the drawing over another sheet he’d painted with a pearly pastel, so that the sparkling white base came through when held up to the light.
“Most impressive.”
Pearl turned at the nondescript voice behind him. A member of the Permanence he hadn’t encountered before had entered the library as silently as light. Except for the voices, he found them somewhat difficult to tell apart. With the loose flowing garments they wore and the long, elaborate hairstyles on both the men and the women, even differentiations of sex weren’t always obvious, but Pearl supposed his own sex was difficult enough for others to ascertain, so that didn’t bother him. He’d focused instead on the timbre of their speech, and this one’s gave nothing away.
“You may call me Mnemosyne.” This was a feminine name—and this was the first time Pearl had met anyone here who had a name and not a function. An almost-smile lit the icy-pale eyes as if in acknowledgement of Pearl’s thought. Mnemosyne approached him, the colorless hair, he now saw, sparkling with something like pale gemstones woven into the spiraling fall at her crown. Mnemosyne examined his drawing. “Where did you see this?”
Pearl thought for a moment. He hadn’t considered where the image came from, though he knew his drawings were manifestations of the Meeric flow. He couldn’t invent something that had never been—or if he did, he would conjure what he drew to life; something he’d never attempted.
“The sea,” he said after a moment. He could smell the sea air in his mind, and hear the susurrus of waves. He’d drawn the sky over a great ship on the ocean at night. The thought of trying to explain this in words made his throat ache. Instead, he titled his image, writing in the bottom right corner, “Night Sky Over the Deltan Dream.” He wasn’t sure where the ship’s name had come to him from.
“Lovely,” said Mnemosyne. “I hope you’ll draw more. We want you to feel comfortable here with us. This is your home.” Pearl flinched as she lifted his arm from the parchment without warning, running her fingers over the ribbon at his wrist. “Your sutures have healed nicely. Yet you seem to have woven the cloth into them.”
Pearl looked down at his upturned wrist, and then lifted the other to examine it. It was true. The satiny fabric was part of him now, braided intricately with the healed flesh. He supposed he’d done it unconsciously with his will. He liked the ribbons, and he’d been afraid of what he’d see underneath when the Permanence took them away.
Mnemosyne released him with another almost-smile. “You are very imaginative, young Pearl. I see you creating great things.”