Janet Morris - Kerrion Empire 03 - Earth Dreams

This Berkley book contains the complete

text of the original hardcover edition.

It has been completely reset in a type face

designed for easy reading, and was printed

from new film.

EARTH DREAMS

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with

the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley-Putnam edition / June 1982

Berkley edition / December 1982

Cover Illustration by Don Ivan Punchatz

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,

by mimeograph or any other means, without permission

For information address: Berkley Publishing Corporation,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 0-425-05658-9

A BERKLEY BOOK ® TM 757.375

Berkley Books are published by Berkley Publishing Corporation,

200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

The name "BERKLEY" and the stylized "B" with design

are trademarks belonging to Berkley Publishing Corporation

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES" OF AMERICA

Prologue

v- f

1 !

? •1

•?

This is a tale of the pivotal days of the Kerrion-

led Consortium, of the changing of the guard outside the

citadel of power.

When Chaeron Ptolemy Kerrion, second surviving son

of the house of Kerrion and the cartel Kerrion, came

home to ancestral Earth, disgraced—a lowly proconsul

charged with the impossible task of bringing the deter-

minedly rebellious primitives of Earth into his society as

civilized citizens—he forbade his wife, Shebat, the heir ap-

parent, to accompany him.

But she came upon her own initiative, piloting her own

spongespace cruiser, Kerrion Experimental Vehicle 134

Marada, forsaking the administrative sphere Draconis,

where she was consul, for the rocky hills where she was

raised. For Shebat was born into Earthly destitution and

Earthly superstition, and imagined herself an enchantress

until Chaeron s half brother Marada—now consul general

of Kerrion space—had chanced upon her and spirited her

away into a universe which Kerrions ruled from great plat-

forms skewed among the stars. Adopted into the Kerrion

family for political reasons by its patriarch, she had be-

come a spongespace pilot, a dream dancer, a fugitive, a

revolutionary, and at last heir apparent and Draconis

consul.

When she put her cruiser into orbit and without so much

VI JANET MORRIS

as a greeting descended into the wilderness that was Earth,

Chaeron could do little but go planetside personally to

seek her out: she commanded her own cruiser, and all its

prodigious intelligence; she was afflicted with the madness

all pilots contract; though they were man and wife, it was

a marriage he had forced on her through blackmail and

guile while still he strove to become heir apparent, himself.

When he found her, he strove to watch his tongue: she

outranked him.

And he was not unaware that she might easily bear him

a grudge. . . .

Chapter One

Far back from the cave of the oracle who was

called Shebat the Twice Risen, five mounted enchanters

waited amid a stand of trees, lounging in their saddles

trapped with gold. Their fearsome black steeds cropped

grass that greened their bits and rolled blue, wicked eyes

at the sixth, riderless horse, who grazed by the cavern's

very mouth.

At first sight of them, all the folk gathered to consult

the sybil had scattered to the winds, robes hiked up,

switching their oxen dementedly while their toddlers

clutched the wagonboards and youths trotted quickly be-

side complaining wheels.

It made no difference that some enchanters now

worked their spells in the name of Kerrion and fought

those who had ruled Earth under the Orrefors banner for

over two hundred years. Innocents died daily while the

mages warred. And tonight was Halloween, no time to

attract the notice of sorcerers. So, despite the fame and

elusiveness of the oracle (come again among them as it

had been whispered by the prophets that she would), the

people had fled—all but a scout who hid high above the

cave.

From behind a sheltering boulder, the youth whose

face and arms were smeared with mud and browned with

weather had watched while one enchanter rode straight

2 JANET MORRIS

up to the cave, dismounted, and strode within. Whatever

the hated opressors wanted with the people's oracle,

boded ill. Cluny Pope's commander would not be pleased

to hear that evil had befallen the seeress whom he had

marched his men far out of their way to consult. With

painstaking care the scout scrabbled back among the

rocks until he could round the ridgetop. Out of sight, no

longer fretful that a dislodged stone might give him away,

he sprinted for his pony tethered in the pines.

"All speed, horse," he urged it, his seat not fully

gained before he reined it about and off toward his

band's encampment. Those heroes, from south of Troy,

from west of Ilhaca, from every family in New York who

remembered honor, would not fail to rally to so desper-

ate a cause.

To Chaeron Ptolemy Ken-ion, stepping out of the

ground-to-space multidrive on Earth had been like step-

ping into antiquity. Finding his wife, Shebat, dispensing

portents from a cave like Delphi's long-vanished

priestesses only heightened his sense of the illusory. At

any moment, it seemed, she would pull out a sprig of bay

leaves, shake it at him, chew one, and tell him his

destiny. . . .

But no, it was A.D. 2251 and he was here to uplift the

masses, in default of which task he could never return to

far Draconis, stars away. His exile was virtually com-

plete; his wife need not share it.

Yet there, across a low-burning fire, she sat, in a cowl

and madonna's smile. She had thrown back her woolen

hood. Her eyes burned like charcoals through the cave's

shadows, forcing darkness back though the fire grew no

higher.

Chaeron said, "Why did you choose to come here in

secret? It could have been a dangerous move, shipping

into an embattled space like this one without even identi-

fying yourself to the Stump's traffic authority. And they

do not love me, my new subordinates. Up there," he let

his eyes flash heavenward, where beyond ridge and sky

the Stump and its ring of subsatellites hung in orbit,

"things are little better than here."

"That is why my cruiser advised me come in unob-

EARTH DREAMS

3

trusively and unannounced, take a low space-anchor, and

see what could be seen. The Marada," she spoke her

spacefaring vessel's name with affection akin to love,

"was concerned. So much activity, up there. So much

construction. What are you doing, Chaeron?"

In answer, he pulled out a scrambler, activated it, and

set the unfolded V-shaped unit between them. "There."

He smiled his patrician smile. Then: "I am jettisoning the

Stump. It is worthless—worse, dangerous. It is no better

than a museum of a habitational sphere. And so many

systems on it went down in the upheaval connected with

its transfer into Kerrion hands that it's more economical

to scrap it. By the end of the next month, the platform

Acheron will be operational; during the month after that,

I will move the entire one hundred forty thousand inhabi-

tants di the Stump over there. Then, for the first time in

six months, I will be able to get a good night's sleep."

"And the Stump?" Shebat, born of Earth, murmured,

her eyes on the pocket-scrambler, indicative of Chaeron's

need to preclude any penetration of their security,

though they spoke together under tons of ridge.

"The Stump? My tugs will tow it out of orbit, aim it

straight at the sun. You cannot imagine how much I de-

test that platform. It is more corrupt than antiquated,

more contemptible than outmoded. I have got to sepa-

rate these Orrefors personnel whom I have inherited

from those reminders of their past which define them. I

did not expect them to become instantly Kerrions, simply

by proclamation, and they have not disappointed me. Do

you understand? Things are very precarious here."

She merely stared at him, owl-eyed.

"I must confess that I am wondering whether you are

here, as you say, for love of your people—and of course,

of my inimitable person—"—he bowed where he sat, a

wry caricature of his courtly Kerrion self—"or because by

the letter of our long-standing agreement you are ready

to claim this world as your personal property. Although

technically you are entitled—"

"Chaeron, I am here because I wish to be here. To

help, nothing more. I signed every release that crossed

my desk while I was acting Draconis consul: if you bank-

rupt us both, it will be in a good cause. And we will still

4

JANET MORRIS

have all which our eyes can now survey. Do not think

that I would turn upon you." Her piquant, heart-shaped

face was somber. "1 will gladly give you everything I

have, or ever will have, except the title to my cruiser.

This one thing, never ask of me. Short of it, I wish only

to stay here with you and build what you are building. I

told you—it is what I have wanted for us ever since your

half brother spirited me off among the stars."

He laughed then, and something invisible in him

eased. "I will never, ever, ask you for the Marada." Did

the slightest shiver course his flesh at the mention of that

name which was also his half brother's name—the name

of Kerrion space's presiding consul general, who had

banished him here?

"Let us slate it into the record," she proposed, eyeing

the scrambler, suspicious of him because he employed it.

When he had folded up the scrambler, they repeated

their agreement, Shebat saying first, "Slate" and after-

ward, "End, slate."

Five thousand miles above their heads, the worried

spongespace cruiser Marada, empty but ever watchful,

made a record of the pact between his pilot/owner Shebat

and her husband, who for a time had used a scrambler to

defeat the cruiser's benign surveillance. The Marada had

not been able to dissuade Shebat from coming here, as

he had not been able to prevent her from going

groundside, alone, where even his prodigious abilities of-

fered his beloved pilot little protection. Twenty thousand

additional miles distant, Chaeron's orbital data pool

made its own entry, neither concerned nor comprehend-

ing. The reaffirmation of their bond thus slated into legal

being, both humans let their mind-actuated links with

their sources lapse, sure that should they need them fur-

ther, only a subvocalized code was necessary to connect

them again with mechanical intelligence, as men through-

out the universe used this attunement of mind to com-

puter to extend their rule over a multitude of stars.

Then, as neither had wanted, they found themselves

staring, wordless, at one another. Chaeron—seeing a

gaze come over Shebat that was infernally intelligent and

somehow inward, full of cruisers and her illusion of magi-

cal powers so that she seemed to grow tall and numinous

EARTH DREAMS 5

and from her eyes reflected firelight glowed—shivered,

thinking: /'// never manage to get through this without a

quarrel, without worse than that, what with her hatred for

my pilot and her dreams for Earth I can never make true.

If only my father hadn't given her that cruiser ... /or

good reason is it said that all pilots are mad.

And Shebat, returning his stare in kind, wondered

when it would come—when he would deride her enchant-

ments and sneer at her primitive origins, while seeking to

see if any star-bom superciliousnsss yet rested in his

eyes, which could not have failed to mark the disarray

into which her homeworld had fallen. And she sought

any trace of guilt there, for she was sure he felt none

over the fact that his mother and half brother had con-

spired to murder Shebat's instructor in the arts of pilo-

try—her "master," David Spry; the first thing she had

done when he had come striding into her cave all Kerrion

and arrogant was tell him that cruisers' intelligence ac-

cused his mother of Spry's murder, and he had betrayed

no surprise. If what she feared was so, and he had

known, or even suspected, she could never, ever forgive

him—never lie with him again. And she would have to

guess eternally at the truth of it, for Chaeron was past-

master of duplicity, and canny enough to know how she

must feel. As man and wife, they had never been success-

ful, she told herself; what kept them at the pretense of it

was the simple fact that both of them were constitu-

tionally incapable of admitting defeat in any matter what-

soever, though she had been told by pilots, often enough,

that success in a fleshly union was impossble for one who

had made the cruiser/pilot bond his own.

"And what, now, shall I give you in return?" he asked,

to break the awkward silence come between two who had

given much for one another, on principle, yet on princi-

ple could not trust each other. "Will you come up to the

Stump and be a wife to me? Or to New Chaeronea, the

test-city I am building in the north to dazzle the locals?

Would you like it there, on Mount Defiance? I will have

a temple made for you, get you a tripod. . . . You might

become a renowned sybil. ..."

"I am a renowned sybil," retorted Shebat, shaking her

head so that he saw a swatch of freshly shown curls swing

6

JANET MORRIS

against her cheek. "You will find that out soon enough, if

you stay in Bolen's town. As for what I want—give me a

hundred dream dancers; there are that many in prison at

space-end. Bring them to me and I will create a dream

dance which will predict and ensure that you can turn

Earth into a paradise. But no less: it will take that many

to secure Earth for us."

Chaeron let out an explosive breath. "It is nice to hear

you say 'us.' Though you have sorely wounded me with

this arbitrational attitude of yours, you shall have your

dream dancers, to do with as you choose." As he spoke,

he thought that surely it was from him she had learned

caution, suspicion, and worse. In three years of marriage,

he had got little joy of her. Fugitively, the past rushed in

upon him—all the errors they both had made, for which

he had repeatedly forgiven her, but never himself. At

least, with her words, the odd firelight and the ethereal

glow and the disturbing "presence" of her had receded:

she was merely a girl, simply his wife, back to normal

size. "In two months, you will have them," he promised,

unfolding his legs and rising. "For now, why not come

with me north to the city's site—?"

A whistle, harsh and shrill, interrupted them. When

she heard it, Shebat sprang up from behind her fire and

sought him, putting a finger to his lips to silence him;

while from without, Gahan Tempest, Shebafs intel-

ligencer/bodyguard, called their names. They hastened

toward the cave's mouth together, so nonplussed by the

urgency in Tempest's summons that it was not until a

long time later that Chaeron thought to ask Shebat how

that short lock of jet curls had come to be shorn, starting

all the trouble he hoped to avoid thereby. And it was to

be as long an interval until Shebat had the opportunity to

question Chaeron as to what other intiatives he was un-

dertaking that had necessitated the massive funding she

had sanctioned over the past months from her Draconis

office: Chaeron could have made Acheron out of solid

gold, for the kind of money he was spending—on some-

thing.

Right then, there was time only for running, then skid-

ding on loose stones, then blinking hard at sundogged

shadows.

EARTH DREAMS 7

"What is this?" Shebat demanded, stepping past Tem-

pest, out into the light of waning day (though she knew

already: in her inner sight, a falcate profile shimmered,

rubbed a week's growth of beard on a heavy jaw. Yes,

she saw who awaited—on Earth, her enchantress's gifts

were no dream, but all too real).

Gahan Tempest stood leaning against the cave's arch

with arms folded, a disgusted look twisting his fish's

mouth. His voice came from behind her back, as her eyes

adjusted and she could count the mounted men in rough

clothing who milled before a stand of trees, just beyond

the evenly spaced rumps of five enchanters' horses:

"You've customers. Feel like prophesying?"

Shebat put her hands on her hips and stared at the

milling men until they pulled their horses up and as-

sumed a ragged formation. Behind her, she heard

Chaeron query Tempest: "Any danger?" and Tempest

reply, "Sir, a horse might be able to kick her before your

orbital hunter-killers could verify a target for take-out—

but not before the Marada can."

Shebat stopped listening; she had seen Chaeron's satel-

lite arrays, so much more intensive than those the Or-

refors bond had orbited about Earth. If her husband and

the intelligencer who had served his family for nearly

twenty years wished, they could destroy the whole of

Earth without ever stepping upon it—they did not need

to invoke her cruiser, as Tempest was hinting. Rather

than debate the matter, she walked at measured pace to-

ward the stand of trees, arms raised in salute and wel-

come, head high, a breeze stirring her curls.

Beyond the men and the trees, the sun was settling

over the Hudson, and the hilly plain sloping up into co-

balt mountains seemed grassed with fire. In two unmixed

groups, the enchanters and local horsemen trotted to-

ward her. She held her ground, waiting, conscious of

Chaeron's eyes on her, of a hawk circling off to her right,

of the cruiser Marada's thoughts brushing hers, assuring

her that Tempest was right: any who sought to do vio-

lence upon her person would not have time to accomplish

it.

Then the horses drew near, and a voice came out of

the gathering gloom, "Little mother, are you safe and

8

JANET MORRIS

sound?" It was a calm and whispery voice, laconic, and

its accent reminded her of unhappier days when she was

not "Shebat of the Enchanters' Fire" or "Shebat the

Twice Risen" or "Shebat Alexandra Kerrion" but only

Shebat, Bolen's drudge who had no say in anything, not

even her life.

"Dismount, petitioner, and see for yourself. AU of

you, get down, and tell me who has dared the sancitity of

these grounds. If you men are bent on evil, do it

elsewhere. This is a free zone, where enchanters do no

magic and soldiers make no war. You!" She pointed out

the man who had spoken. "I need no fire to see your

face, no cave to reveal you. Someday, you will look into

a stream and cower at what you see. Now, you wish to

hear that you are right, that you are fated. Well, make

no peace, man of Ithaca, and you will see that you are

not right, but truly fated. Follow your heart, instead, and

live to see your grandchild play."

The man stopped at his horses's head, stroking its

muzzle, "Who am I, sibyl? Tell me that if you see so

far," He was clad in a quilted leather vest and old trou-

sers. Like his men, he was bearded and unkempt. But his

squint told her stories and Shebat's tongue, oracular

beyond control in the face of this specter from her

Earthly past, named who he must be: "Child of a magical

bed, no Earthbom father spawned you, Jesse Thome.

But do not trade upon the trident."

The men with the flowing-haired fellow muttered, but

their leader, nodding, understood: he had had a trident

pendant, once; his mother had always told him he was an

enchanter's son. And, too, he had come a long and dan-

gerous way to consult the oracle, whose cult was bom in

the razing of Bolen's town and had grown fierce and

strong in the ensuing years. At worst, she was a clever

fraud; were it so, his men believed in her healings and

her auguries, and that made her useful enough. But

though he vaguely recalled a churlish child who swept

Bolen's floors and served his patrons, he too, wanted to

believe that one of his own kind had gone up to heaven

and returned, bearing the spark of salvation, which revo-

lution might fan into a blaze to scour all the Earth. His

war with enchanters, were she not what she seemed, was

9

EARTH DREAMS

foredoomed, merely a chance to choose a better death

than craven servitude's. Should she give a portent favor-

able to the ragged militia's cause, it would spur them on

to heroic effort, where now every one of them, himself

included, was resigned to eventual failure, shuffling on-

ward, uncaring toward that "better" death. In the face of

the casual ravaging of scattered human enclaves during

the year past while enchanters fought among themselves

for unfathomable advantage, the pastoral communities

subsisting on their sufferance had fared worse, not bet-

ter, than before. Seeking his sign, some word of endorse-

ment, he spoke too quickly, without making himself

clear: "Little mother, what will be the ending of this

war?"

"When the best of the Kerrions quarrel, Chaeron will

prevail on Earth." She answered the larger question, not

the part of it he had in mind.

The man silhouetted by the setting sun behind him

rubbed his nose. "And we?"

"Choose your side most carefully, but choose a side

you must." Shebat, mouth dry, heard the words coming

of their own accord from her suddenly unwieldy lips. Of

all men, Jesse Thorne came here to face her with ques-

tions no one should have to answer, now when her hus-

band stood looking on? Jesse Thome of her adolescent

dreams and hopeless fantasies, whose whispery voice and

calm deadly eyes had long been acknowledged the single

voice of freedom and the only eyes keen enough to track

revolution among the dispirited peasants of the north-

east? In Bolen's town and wherever men gathered in sim-

ilar inns to plot desperate resistance against indomitable

masters, Jesse's name and exploits were invoked for

guidance, for inspiration. When he came to your town,

the hale boys left with him,and old men straightened

their backs and walked sprightly, an almost-forgotten

glitter in their eyes. When he had come to Bolen's town,

even Bolen gave food and drink and shelter to him and

his without even mention of fee—or the danger of har-

boring fugitives with such rewards upon their heads. The

part of Shebat which longed to recapture the simplicity

and comforting ignorance of her previous life here ex-

ulted, that he should seek her out. Her better half, which

10 JANET MORRIS

knew that time will not ever let us recoup the price we

pay to enter our own futures, saw in him a greater threat

to her marriage, to her bond with her cruiser, to her very

equilibrium, than any she had dreamed canny Earth

might mount. To break her train of thought, and the

spell his physical presence cast over her so that she

hardly had the strength to look away, she whirled side-

ways and pointed at an enchanter in the midst of others,

whose hair seemed as red as the eagle on his black cloak,

ablaze with sunset. "You have two heads on you, and

one will fall afoul of the other."

She turned back to the balance of them, some of whom

were softly urging their horses backward, into the dusk,

away from the seeress suddenly burning without flame in

the tricky light.

Then the militia's commander went down on one knee

and all his men followed suit.

A cough came from among the enchanters, but when

she lifted fiery eyes to them and raised an arm with finger

pointing straight at them, they held back smirks no

longer, but bent their knees as well.

Forthwith Shebat, nodding, still full of power, sent out

a dream to engulf them, so that each man sank to the

ground. And their horses, after awhile, drifted away

where the cropping was better, and the sun set entirely,

loosing misty night upon the land. Yet still she held

them, motionless and dreaming, upon the ground. She

had never held so many; she had never felt so strong.

With Chaeron watching her, she proved her worth that

day. Seventeen men she held enthralled until the dew

covered them—and then she let them out of dreams only

when her husband came to her, shaking her shoulder

gently, nuzzling her hair: "Enough. I yield. You can do

more with dream dances than I can do with every other

tactic I possess. Let them up, Shebat, or leave them as

they are. I am going to make supper, and you are going

to eat it."

It occurred to her then, from the forced levity in his

voice, that perhaps she had shown him too much, pushed

him too far.

But since it was done, she could not undo it, only

rouse the dreamers, one by one. The rebel leader Thome

u

EARTH DREAMS

she left until last, and when she bade him wake, she did

it with a touch upon his brow. "Come again tomorrow,

militiaman, if you dare."

She left him yet knuckling sleep from his squinty eyes

among his horses and his men, while the enchanters she

had charged to let his little band pass unmolested grum-

bled that it was madness to allow such an infamous ma-

rauder to escape.

And that grumbling waxed strident as the enchanters

bivouacked their inflatables before the cave's mouth.

While they interlocked them, disgruntlement ran amok,

and disagreement among the five grew heated as to

whether it might be wiser to desert now with honor, or

stay on in hopes that the Kerrions would mismanage

themselves into a no-lose situation. Hooker, a blond

cultural attache from the Stump, was sure that this would

Janet Morris - Kerrion Empire 03 - Earth Dreams

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: