Wizards At War

“You do not have to be afraid of me,” Memeki said. “I am nothing to fear.”

Nita shook her head. “I had a little scare when we first got here,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault.” Then she put out a hand and laid it on that shining carapace. Memeki shivered a little under her touch. “And as for you being nothing to be afraid of—not for us, maybe. But someone else is scared.”

Nita had to hold herself very still as she said that, for the touch had told her something about the reasons for that fear. Inside Memeki, Nita clearly felt a growing power, a core of something like heat or light—like a heart quietly beating, getting stronger. But also inside Memeki were a myriad of tinier glittering points of power, and these were of a darker fire. They scorched the testing mind, cruel as sparks spun up from a fire intent on burning.

“I know now who’s afraid,” Memeki said. “It’s the creature that speaks through the King. It’s my enemy… and my other self.”

Nita swallowed as she felt the sudden surge of power inside the voice. “And it’s inside me,” Memeki said. “I never really knew that until now.”

Nita hesitated a moment, then nodded. “It’s inside all of us, a little.”

“But not in the same way,” Memeki said. “You understand. In you, it’s far less. Inside me—It has me outnumbered. And unless something happens very soon, It will put an end to me.”

“Not if you don’t let It,” Nita said.

Memeki combed that palp down again, that uncertain gesture. “There is no way to stop what’s coming!” she said, distressed. “You must know! You can feel them all.”

“The eggs,” Nita said. “Yes.”

“They won’t be eggs for long,” Memeki said. “Soon they’ll hatch, each one of them with its spark of the Great One, the Darkness. They’ll belong to It. And when they hatch, they will turn to their mother for food.”

Nita shivered, suddenly glimpsing a scene Memeki had seen again and again in the grubbery of the city-hive: the little closed-in cells where the handmaidens, the Favored, were kept and ministered to until their time came… until the eggs hatched inside them, and the grubs within turned outward and began to feast on the flesh that had sheltered them.

“It will happen very soon,” Memeki said. “A sunrise more, perhaps two, and I’ll be taken to the incubatory inside the grubbery, there to wait my time. When Ponch found me I was spending my last hours in freedom, walking, and working and walking again, fearing what was about to happen—and not knowing how to speak of it, not daring to. Knowing that everything was about to be lost, everything from the time the strange voice spoke to me…” She pulled her claws close to herself. “But you are the one who knows the way,” Memeki said then, looking up again. “You know how it will be. You had a mother…”

Nita held still in pure shock. After a moment she said, “We all had mothers. Well, maybe not Filif, and as for Spot, he—”

“But only your mother did what all our mothers do,” Memeki said. “Surely you understand! I can hear it in you when you touch me.”

Nita went abruptly blind with memory. The moments that followed were full of towering darkness and the sound of rushing waters, and a woman’s voice saying, in the face of the Lone Power Itself, “You can do what you like with me, but not with my daughter!”

Nita wasn’t sure how long she stood there in that remembered darkness. When she could see her surroundings again, she was leaning against Memeki’s shell with both hands, and her eyes were stinging. She blinked hard, working to get control of herself. Strangely, the feel of those swarming, furious little sparks of dark fire was helping her a lot. Not again, Nita thought. Not this time. And not this mom!

“She died,” Nita said, straightening up. “Yes. She died.”

“So you understand how it must be for us, for all the Yaldat. How it will be for me.” Memeki shivered again, and Nita noticed that those shivers were getting more frequent. “It’s the greatest honor that a Yaldah can achieve. I was called to the King. I became his vessel. Inside me, the eggs grew. Now they’re almost ready. The Great One’s children will come forth.”

“And kill you,” Nita whispered.

“Of course they will. This is the holy Sacrifice; this is Motherhood. What kind of mother would not die for her children?”