The Wilding

Breathe deeply and they fade one into the other, all the borrowed lives, all the injected pain, grafted to this current life like scar tissue over a livid wound. . . .

Such things were to be expected, when the throne of the Community passed from one to another. So it had to be, when the one who had borne the position before initiated full mental contact with her successor—communion without reserve, communion without defense, until the very boundaries of identity were put to question—and poured her memories into her, making her Lyu.

Memories. Foreign lives. They scurried in her brain like insects, tripping over synapses as they did so. The lives she remembered were not whole, of course, nor were the memories necessarily coherent. Only the most volatile images survived such a transfer, and each Lyu that had contained them had left her own mark upon them. The oldest memories were the most impure, for having been passed through so many brains, while the more recent ones spoke of incidents and people so familiar to her that sometimes it was hard to sort out which memories were her own, and which were implanted.

It had taken Irela five Standard Years to find her center again, and to submerge the foreign memories into her own subconscious so that her conscious mind could function again. It had taken her another five to learn to draw upon the foreign memories at will, without becoming lost in the wonder and fear of what she had become. It had taken her yet another five to become the composite creature that the Lyu must be, in which all these things were a natural process, so that she no longer had need to question the source of every thought, the veracity of every memory.

Now, as she paced the golden audience chamber, memories stirred. Dark tidings rising up from the depths of her as if from a lightless sea. These were ancient memories, among the oldest she carried, and the thought that she might thus be accessing the mind of the Founder herself was a terrifying one. Those memories, more than any other, bordered on true insanity.

The Founder must have been truly mad, the Lyu often thought, or else the passing down of her memories through so many brains had distorted them enough that she seemed mad now in false retrospect. Certainly the current Lyu could make no sense of the storm of conflicting instincts which accompanied every Braxin image from Mitethe’s memory, nor imagine how a human being might contain such a maelstrom of emotions and still appear to be sane.

They were bringing a Braxin to her now. The mere thought of it set her deepest borrowed memories to stirring, and sent an unnamed heat coursing through her veins. She had never seen a real Braxin before. Never tasted the mind of one of the Enemy. Never had one before her, in her physical presence, so that she might touch him with her special senses, exploring those depths which had given birth to the darkest of legends among her people.

This Braxin—this Tathas—had been searching for psychics. The Hasai had plucked that fact from his mind, along with the information that it wasn’t for the usual motives of power or vengeance, such as one might expect from a Braxin. What a curious thing. Did he have some latent psychic ability perhaps, newly manifested, that had made him flee in fear from his people to hers? It wasn’t impossible. There was at least one bloodline among the Braxaná that had given birth to a psychic strain; it was reasonable to assume there might be more, as yet undiscovered. If so, if that was why he was here, the breeding potential of it was truly stunning. Though she wasn’t sure how well the Community would receive the thought of Braxin DNA being injected into its carefully nurtured gene pool.

But whatever will make the psychic strain stronger must be done, she thought. That was the first tenet of the Community, the Law they were all sworn to follow.

Memories that were not her own rose up in a tidal wave along with their attendant emotions, compounded by the life experience of all her predecessors: so strong, this response to the simple presence of a Braxin! She drew in a deep breath and forced them into the background of her mind, accepting only those few tendrils of recall which would feed her the information she wanted. The fact that she had mastered such techniques years ago didn’t mean that a particularly powerful stimulus might not upset the whole balance. One always had to be careful.

She sat on her golden throne, smoothed her golden robes into their most perfect folds, and settled the precious keepsake of her rank between her breasts with a hand tipped in golden nails. The vial was cold to the touch, as always.

A few seconds passed in silence, then three figures entered the far end of the chamber. The two guards were both men, she noted; no doubt a deliberate choice. The third man, walking between them, was of a race she had never set eyes upon before in this life, though the memories she had absorbed from her predecessors offered up images from times and places when the others had, as well as a melange of shared hatred so intense that it took all of her skill to absorb it without showing sign of it to anyone. Far, far more than political hatred; even as she tasted it in her mind she wondered at the source of it.

They had chained him to a bar not unlike the yokes used on working animals on primitive planets. A force field could have held him more securely, but no doubt they had wanted the primitive drama of it as a means of humbling his proud Braxin spirit. The weight of the bar across his shoulders, the chafing of manacles that bound his wrists to it, the frustration of not being able to drop his arms by his sides, or gesture with them as he spoke . . . these were things done by primitive peoples to bring their enemies down to the level of beasts.

It hardly made him helpless, she observed. Oh, he was unlikely to get out of this chamber alive, and he’d never make it off the homeship, but if he swung that bar the right way he could certainly take out both his guards before either one knew what was happening. He probably knew it, too.

She reached out to his mind and tasted his forethoughts. Hatred, of course, and the fury of a caged beast . . . but those were to be expected. He was almost at the breaking point, she noted; probably driven there by the Hasai’s experiments as much as anything which came before. One of her imbedded memories stirred to life at the thought of that, relishing the thought that he might indeed snap, and have to be brought down like the beast he was, right in front of her.

My presence before him is the ultimate insult, she thought, for I am the embodiment of all that his people revile. A woman commanding not only men, but an entire nation. If he could, if he dared, he would rip me to pieces with his bare hands, for I am a thing that goes against Nature in his eyes.

But then up from the abyss there rose a whisper, softer than all the others, darker than them. Such was its nature that all the others seemed to fade before it. Yes, it said. Do it. You cannot control this one while he wears a woman’s chains.

She trembled inwardly, sensing the source of that particular memory, its age, its madness. It was not often she accessed the Founder’s memories directly, but when she did it always left her shaken. Thank Hasha there were two other lives between them, who had filtered the woman’s memories through their own minds before passing them on. She wasn’t sure she could have handled Anzha lyu’s memories directly.

By then the chains were coming loose, and the bar was removed from the Braxin’s shoulders. He glared at his captors but made no move to hurt them. Or her. When the last of the shackles had been removed he rubbed his wrists to restore their circulation, but his eyes never left hers.

Then she stood. She was a tall woman in her own right, and the dais her throne rested upon made her taller than him by several heads. The blood-red feathers of her headdress rustled softly as she tasted his surface thoughts again. Calmer this time. Better.

She gestured for him to come closer. After a moment he did so. She stepped closer to him, to the edge of the dais, close enough to feel the heat of his body against her own skin, and to catch the scent of male defiance that hung in the air about him like mist.

He stiffened for a minute as the alien thoughts inserted themselves into his brain, but he didn’t panic. Very good for a Braxin, she thought. Normally the telepathic invasion of their brains by a woman was enough to blunt the edge of their pride, but this one wasn’t flinching.

That it was a bluff went without saying; she could taste his fear behind the words. But he did it without letting the fear show, which was more than most Braxins were said to be able to manage.

His skin was pale but not without color, a pleasing olive undertone; his hair was dark brown and as wild as a beast’s mane. His beard was cut in the Braxin style but it hadn’t been trimmed in some time, giving him a faintly disreputable air. He was an attractive man, with strong shoulders and a hard, well-muscled body . . . but he lacked the surreal beauty of the Braxaná tribe, just as he lacked their coloring, and their notorious obsession with physical perfection. A Braxaná in confinement would have trimmed his beard if he had to pluck out every stray hair by hand.

A pause, then. She could sense the flurry of thoughts inside him, but didn’t intrude further. He was coming to terms with just how much information they might have lifted from his mind without his awareness, and it would take a few moments for him to assimilate that.

“I sought information,” he said evenly. It was a good evasion, true enough to pass inspection, yet revealing nothing. How quickly he had learned the rules of this new universe, she mused, and how quickly he adapted to them! She remembered Braxin prisoners taken by her predecessors who had not lasted nearly as long, nor borne themselves with such confidence in her presence.

A worthy enemy, one of the Lyu-memories whispered. A flutter of admiration accompanied the thought. And something darker, that stirred like a chill serpent in the depths of her shared soul.

“Tathas,” she said quietly. “It’s the end of the road now, you understand that? Others have danced around your secrets for fear of doing permanent damage to your mind, for they knew I wished to see you in your natural state. So they have not done all they could have to you, only gained those essentials of knowledge which we must have to arrange this interview. But now you are here, and after me there is no one. You can provide the information I seek, or I can take it from you. I would much prefer the first—”

Because you may be a useful tool, she wanted to say. Because the Hasai found in you such sentiments that I believe I can use you for our purpose, if you prove malleable enough.

That clearly stunned him. He started to open his mouth but no words came forth. She opened her mind to his and sensed the doubts that were skittering across his surface thoughts: What would they gain from such a move? Do they mean to program me to serve them somehow? Do they expect me to spy for them? But he was a man of control and voiced none of them.

“I assume,” he said slowly, carefully, “that if you meant to do such a thing, it is because it would serve some purpose for you, not out of concern for my affairs.”

She took a step back from him, then turned away from him to face the throne. She took two steps with her back to him before she turned to sit down and was facing him again. It was a challenge and he knew it. How was his Braxin mind reading such a gesture? As a sign of trust? I have allowed you to stand here with dignity, surely you would not harm me. As a sign of confidence? You know the price of moving against me in this place. You would not dare do so, even when faced with such temptation. His expression was unreadable, so she reached out to his mind for the answer.

He bowed his head ever so slightly, a token of respect to her rank. She had enough knowledge of his culture to understand that he was stressing its bounds to do even that much. “What is it you desire of me, Mistress of Psychics? What is the price for this . . .” He smiled faintly. “. . . ticket home?”

“It is a tribal designation. My people once ruled in Nasqua, and briefly held the Kast’ran Reaches. That was before the tribes were amalgamated under Harkur.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I give you an opportunity to cooperate. Do you forget you are a prisoner? We can take the information we want, if you will not offer it freely.”

With a faint smile he shook his head. “No. You can’t. I will tear apart the mind of anyone attempting it, if I must drive myself mad in the process . . . and then you will have nothing, Mistress of Psychics. Ask your interrogators, if you like. Ask them if they got one piece of information from me that amounted to betrayal of my people.” A faint smile quirked his lips. “Ask the one called Rho what happened when she pushed too hard.”

The Lyu nodded inwardly. That was what Rho had said as well . . . while her mind had blazed with a hatred greater than any the Lyu had seen in her before. Whatever this man was, he left his mark on those who got too close to him. “You’re very arrogant, for one surrounded by enemies.”

“No, there isn’t.” The green eyes alone blazed with fury; the rest of him was so steady it might have been the weather they were discussing. “The Braxaná outlawed all acknowledgement of tribal identity, outside their own circles. Any historian daring to mention that another tribe remembered who and what they were would have been deemed a traitor to the state and executed.”

Memories rose up in him then, sparked by his own words, and she could see his jaw clench as he sought to keep the illusion of control. She reached out to touch his thoughts and images flooded her brain, hot and seething and painful as a fresh wound.

—Braxaná cutting down his people, his faithful and brave people, while he launches himself at them in battle-rage, ready to die rather than ever submit to the hated Pale Ones—

His expression hardened. “Harkur sought to create one nation. In the name of that nation we abandoned the ancient ways and accepted his vision of the future. Then he handed the keys of the Holding over to the Braxaná, who have ruled it since. Is that what you want to know? That a few remain who resent that transfer of power, and its cost in tribal blood? That should be no surprise.”

She shut her eyes for a moment, focusing her senses inward. Deep, deep within her own mind she went, to that dark and fearsome place where the most alien memories nestled. She needed them now, enough to brave the sea of emotions that surrounded them.

Deep, deep inside. Past the barriers she had set in place, to protect her from the madness of the Lyu’s shared consciousness. Past the barriers she had absorbed from her predecessor, erected to do the same. Past the work of her predecessor, into whose brain the ancient madness had been poured directly . . . Elis the Mad, whose brain had cracked from the assault and who had spent nearly two decades lost in the maelstrom of someone else’s emotions, before she finally managed to assimilate the memories of her maker.

Beneath that . . . beneath that was a strata of memory and experience so saturated with violent emotions that one could not access facts without absorbing them. Into that sea of emotion she dove, knowing that what she sought could only be found at the heart of it.

A roar of despair engulfed her, monstrous in its intensity. She absorbed the self-hatred that had driven her line to the edge of suicide once, ten, a hundred times . . . all of those memories bound up together in one blazing firestorm of despair. Elis the Mad, trembling as she held a dagger against her wrist, too weak—too strong?—to make the cut. Anzha lyu Mitethe, trembling as she held a dead lover in her arms, knowing that her own power had consumed his life . . . screaming fury at the forces which had made her what she was, determined to defy them—

Inwardly, she screamed. It was a terrible, voiceless sound that could be heard by everyone except the man standing before her. All over the homeship Receptives cringed and dropped what they were doing, desperately muttering the keys to Disciplines as they fought to shut out the agonized sending. Telepaths blinded by pain alerted their ships to the need for possible flight, not knowing what had prompted the cry. While here in the audience chamber of the Lyu the Braxin stood quietly, even calmly, unaware of anything that went on beneath the surface of the physical universe.

Damn them for their blindness, their arrogance, their strength! Irela reeled as the ancient memories poured into her, along with emotions so raw and powerful she could barely contain them. Velvet black eyes—predator eyes—gazed deep into her soul, sparking such primal response in her that she could hardly breathe. I will destroy you! a memory screamed. Braxaná eyes, coldly dispassionate, gleamed at her like black diamonds—repellent, enticing, maddening. I will cause you such suffering that at last my hunger for vengeance will be satisfied, she remembered promising. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. Each new Lyu had taken the ancient memories and twisted them, adapted them, given them new strength. New hunger.

Not enough to torture one man. Not enough to weaken his people. Not enough even to seed the whole galaxy with defeat for his nation, so that no matter where the Braxins went they would find themselves reviled and rejected, and all their imperialistic plans would end in catastrophe. In the end the Enemy had proven stronger than expected, and had risen above the trials she had set him, to establish a line that ruled the Holding. The blood of the first Pri’tiera still prospered in the fourth generation. It ruled. It had triumphed.

Slowly she opened her eyes and gazed at the Braxin before her. He was a tool, no more. All human beings were tools, that the gods of war used and discarded as they saw fit. The generals of this war had made her what she was, had provided her with training and purpose, so that when a moment of opportunity came that the battle might be rejoined she would know it for what it was, and not shirk her duty.

“No. It is no question.” In fact it had been, but his mind had already answered it. “We know your desires, Kesserit, for they showed in the dreams you were given. Our Hasai are experienced in interpreting such things.”

“Then.” He spread his hands casually, but the intensity of his gaze revealed it for a subterfuge. Every sense he had was fixed on her, every brain cell working overtime to anticipate her next move. “What next?”

Tathas’ gaze hardened. “Are you asking if we fear Azea? I know what strength lies hidden beneath the surface of our society. We won’t falter long enough for them to take advantage of it.”

Would I admit it to you if I did? “There are enough tribal leaders ready and able to take over. Disruption is unavoidable, but in the long run . . . the Holding will survive.”

You’re lying, she thought. I can taste the lie. There’s a part of you that wants the chaos—hungers for chaos—believing that those who are best suited to lead will arise in such a time and their competence will be proven. How alien the Braxin mindset was, with its casual acceptance of violence! It was nothing to this man if millions died in the turmoil of a weakened Holding, if the end result was a more powerful ruler coming forth. No, even more: it was good for millions to die, for war was a competition that weeded out the weak. The more brutal the exchange of power was, the more likely it was that the strongest candidate would persevere at the end of it.

She steepled her fingers thoughtfully and pretended to study them, while all the while her telepathic senses were reading him on levels he could not even imagine. “And if I gave you the means to bring down the Braxaná?”

“No,” he said. “But you’d blessed well come up with a bit more convincing argument that you can strike down the Braxaná from out here . . . otherwise, quite frankly, this is all rather meaningless. No offense to you, Mistress of Psychics—” his bow of respect was ever so faintly sardonic “—but I can name a hundred men better placed than you and better trained than you, who pitted everything they had against the Pale Ones and lost. Or do you think psychic power alone will give you the edge? One telepath will succeed where whole armies have failed?”

She stepped down from the throne, down the steps of the dais, close enough to stand in his personal space once more. He didn’t back away, or even flinch. Of course not. No Braxin male would give ground to a woman, especially one in power. How predictable they were. . . .

She drew a finger up to the neckline of her tunic and traced its edge down to the inner curve of her breast, with a gold-tipped nail. She could see him following the gesture, could taste his instinctive male response to the suggestiveness of it. Deep within her décolletage her medallion of rank rested, golden filigree with a frosted vial suspended in its center. This she touched, and lifted from its resting place just far enough to draw his notice. “Do you know what this is?” she whispered. Softly, for the sexual tension of the moment required softness.

“Do you know what’s inside this, Tathas?” She waited until his eyes lowered to the medallion again and stroked it lovingly. “DNA. Samples taken from the Founder, before she died. The last remains—and complete genetic record—of Anzha lyu Mitethe.”

She could feel the shock of it inside him as she spoke the name. The hunger that attended it. Yes, her Hasai had been right; this was what he had wanted so badly, to cross half a galaxy searching for it. To complete a quest begun nearly two hundred years ago, when Braxi’s first Pri’tiera had vowed to mix his bloodline with that of Harkur the Great. But he had failed to find a descendant of that famous line. Likewise his progeny had vowed the same, and failed in turn. There was only one known descendant of the great Braxin ruler, and by the time her heritage was made known she was out of Braxi’s reach forever.

Was not the essence of the woman preserved in those precious double helixes, as much as in the memories she had bequeathed to her successors? Between the two of those things it might truly be said that Anzha lyu Mitethe would never die.

“You would rather have found a woman, wouldn’t you?” She allowed a note of scorn to enter her voice. Let him fear that she had revealed his prize only to deny it to him. “That’s the custom, isn’t it? To abduct a woman and bring her back to your homeworld, to be raped at leisure by the Pale Ones—isn’t that what you came for?”

With effort—great effort—he forced his gaze away from the medallion, and met her eyes once more. The turmoil within him was visible now; no mere Braxin could hide such things from a telepath of her skill.

“As I said.” Her voice was a whisper, soft and seductive. “Our purposes in some things may be the same. What would you say, for instance, if I told you I had the means to destroy your Pri’tiera?”

“Ah,” she said. “You see, there’s the catch. I’ve had the means . . . but not a delivery system for it.” The smile left her face. “That’s what you would be, Tathas.”

For a long time he said nothing. She could sense his thoughts racing—weighing risk, appraising options—but she didn’t eavesdrop. Now that she was proposing a formal alliance, it would have been rude.

The thoughts settled. The green eyes glittered with hatred—but not for her, she thought. For a man far away, who was infinitely powerful . . . and infinitely flawed.