Radix

He diverted his mind from them and continued to lather himself. He had much to do now. There was no time to ponder the raels' anomie.
On the other side of the cottage, Sumner and Nefandi were moving around. He could feel their fear, and that made him smile. All morning he had been sensing their approach, and now that they were finally here he could relax. The ritual would take place as planned, and Jeanlu would have her chance to be fulfilled.
Corby dropped the sponge into the tub and waded out into the pool. He kicked forward and rolled to his back so that the water lapped over him. Floating face up, watching huge galleons of clouds sailing over him, he thought about Nefandi.
Though he had never met him, he saw the taut, one-eyed face clearly: shiny scar, roistering beard, coiled hair, and bloody eye. It was as if he had known him all his life. And in a way he had. When in trance, his mage-self alert in its cellular darkness, all voor memories were his—every thought crafted by his people was open to him. Iz. So it was called. A mysterious sameness that linked all voor minds. A dimension broader than time, changing, shadowy, impossible to compre-hend.
Iz revealed Nefandi to him. He knew the man and his treacheries well—but now was not the time to dwell on memories. Memories begin and end in the blood, he re-minded himself. Stay close to the blood.
He did no more thinking until Nefandi, followed timidly by Sumner, edged around from the front of the cottage. Then he slipped under the water to get the last of the suds out of his hair. When he surfaced, they were staring at him.
Nefandi was startled by the creature rising out of the pool. It was white as porcelain, small as a child, moving slow and lissome through the green water. The tamarind trees along the bank were leafing the sunlight so that the mud-rim of the pool sparked. In that dappled light the creature seemed to waver like a mirage. Closer, its features stood out from the blank white of its face, an unknowable mask: colorless eyes, flat and mindless beneath a heavy bone-build of brow; nose, lips, and chin of a doll. Where's his kha? Why does he have no kha?
The sensex wasn't responding to the boy at all. He appeared as a gray shade, devoid of biospectral energy. As if he's dead, Nefandi thought. Or— He strained his sensex, and as the boy stepped to shore he saw through him, his child-body clear as air. — or retaining all his psynergy. But that's not possible. He has to use something to keep his body alive.
Then he saw it. The distort looked at him, its head transparent, except for a black seed deep in its brain.
Go into the house. I'll come for you later.
The words crisped in Nefandi's mind, and he whirled toward the house and started walking. Before he knew what he was doing, he had rounded the corner of the cottage. The thought-command had been as vivid and compelling as his own will. It was only after he had gotten to the doorstep that he was able to assess what had happened: Lami! The voor's a godmind! Corby had compacted all his power to a point so violet it looked black. Is it possible? Nefandi was numb. He opened the cottage door and entered without thought. Com-plete control of me. Complete!
Inside, the compulsion tensing his muscles snapped, and he was himself. How? No physical form can sustain a kha with that high a frequency. Impossible. But it's happened. I just saw it. Damn, I— He broke off. For the first time in many years his thoughts were scrambling without direction. It was a frightening sensation, for it meant that he was losing control. Lost control. It's already happened. Mother of Time, that thing out there— He seized control of his mind, focused on the moment. His muscles unlocked fluidly, and he looked about him.
The room was spacious and filled with delicate creatures of windowlight. Smoky scents of seasoned wood and drying plants lingered in the air, though there were no stalk charms to be seen. From one of the thick-grained rafters, a multihued carpet hung. Nefandi identified it immediately as a veve. The traditional eleven scenes were embroidered on it, all but one of which he recognized as voorish ancestral homes. The rest of the room was commonplace—table, bed, oilstove. He walked over to a shelf above the stove and selected a tin filled with yellow tea. At a ritual pace he took down a small pot from a row of utensils
hanging above a narrow bed, filled it with water he found in a jug beside the table, and lit the stove.
It was important, he understood, to stay calm. Not only because an anxiety-riddled mind was no help, but especially because he knew that everything he felt and thought was being remembered by this room. In his sensex he could still see the electric yellow glow fringed red where he had first stood upon entering the room. The rest of the place was empty of psynergy, smooth and blank, as if no one lived there.
To keep his own psynergy contained, Nefandi shifted his mind into selfscan. Waiting for the water to boil, he stood at the window beside the stove, hearing the trees that rattled in the wind, letting the sound fill him and unlitter his mind.
The last of his tension drifted away, leaving him entirely what he was—so much cheese-soft flesh, so many gravity-thick bones. He watched the dim attenuation of afternoon light, dust motes rising and falling in the windowgleam. A jay flashed through the dead branches outside, and he looked out at clouds that plumed the wind, feathering over a chain of hills. Beside the crater pool, the voor child was walking off with Sumner. Before he could think to wonder, he focused on the mist rising from the soaked mudbank, rising and knotting in the shadows, dissolving in the air.
The pot on the stove clattered to life, and Nefandi turned his attention to it. He found a hard clay cup among others on the windowsill. It was glazed a ruddy brown with a black sea squid tangled in its own tentacles etched on the side. He put several pinches of tea in the cup and poured in the steaming water. The brew swirled up green and smelled spicy. He brought the cup to the table and sat down by a front window. A live cloud of flies swarmed back and forth between the scabby trees. Several of them banged against the window so viciously they dropped to the sill, their small jeweled bodies rolling crazily for a moment before flying off. The rusty trees looked tormented, the earth-skin of their bark peeling off, knobby with fungi.
He sipped the tea, and the fluid warmth filled his whole chest. Thoughts were trying to muscle through the sheen of sensations that occupied him. What's happening with the fat boy? Where was he being led? What's going to happen to me? But he gave them no focus, and they shadowed away. The skin of the tea with its satin light caught his eye, and he studied the blend of color and scent and warmth. His face was islanded in the green water. There was nothing to think about.
Sumner was terrified. As soon as he saw the white child's head break the surface of the pool, his insides tightened, and he asked himself again but with more fervor than ever: What am I doing here? Imust've been luned to come back here.
And when Nefandi suddenly lurched about and stalked off, Sumner was overwhelmed by a desperate urge to flee. But he was rooted. Corby's black-gummed smile was a gash in his white face, his pale eyes unsmiling, cold as fever. He slogged to shore, and an odor of muscadine rose around him. "Welcome back. I've missed you," he said in his soft, sincere voice. He held out his hand, but Sumner refused to take it.
"Where's Jeanlu?" Sumner asked.
Corby's face was emotionless in the freckled light. "She's dead."
Sumner looked down at the long, soft fingers of mud reaching into the water. He searched but could find nothing to say.
"Would you like to see her?" Corby asked.
Sumner looked dismayed. "Her body?"
"Her body's waiting. Back there." He nodded toward a trellis overgrown with red moss and the furry shafts of shag-bark vine.