How did they keep the Songhouse people from coming for you? she asked. If they really wanted you back--
The empire controls the spaceports. Besides, if he could lie to me, he could lie to them. But that's past now. Time enough to set things right once we have Josif back.
Kyaren was baffled by the labyrinth of the palace, lost all sense of direction. But they went generally downward. Into the prison, she assumed. But they made a certain turn that Ansset had not been expecting-he was taken by surprise and had to retrace a few steps.
What's wrong? she asked.
He isn't in the prison, he said.
Then where?
Hospital, Ansset answered.
The guards stopped outside a door.
He's fairly drugged up. He isn't pretty right now, but Ferret said to let you see him as he is. I'm sorry.
Then the guard opened the door, and they walked in, and they saw Josif.
At first nothing seemed wrong with him, except the drugs. Josif saw them, but his eyes showed no recognition, and his jaw hung partly open. He sat on a 'narrow bed, leaning against the wall. His legs were loosely apart, and his arms hung slackly beside him. He looked as if he never planned to move.
Then Kyaren looked down, between his legs, just as Ansset saw and turned to try to block her sight. He was too late.
She screamed, shoved past him, and, still screaming, took Josif by the shoulders and pulled him toward her, embraced him in an agony of grief. He slumped against her, and with his head tilted down, he drooled. She still heard herself shouting hysterically; gradually she was able to stop, until finally even her spasmodic sobbing ended and all was silent in the room again. She looked at Ansset. His face was terrible, not because of the emotion on it, but because there was nothing on his face at all.
Carefully she leaned Josif back against the wall His head moved to the right, so that he could not see her, but merely stared at the wall. He did not attempt to move. The drugs had him well in hand.
They plan to fit him with a permanent tube tomorrow, said one of the guards.
Ansset ignored him, and Kyaren tried to. They started to push past him, but the guard raised a gun-It wasn't a laser-it was a tranquilizer. Ferret said that after you saw, you weren't to be allowed back to the great hall.
Ansset didn't pause, simply brought up his foot. The man's hand broke at the wrist; the gun dropped to the floor as the hand went slack and hung perpendicular to the floor. A moment for the pain to register, and the guard reeled out of the way. The other was too slow-Ansset took his face off with both hands, and Kyaren raced to follow the Songbird as he shoved past the screaming guard, who knelt with his hands in front of his face, blood streaming down his arms.
This was not the way they had come, Kyaren was sure. But Ansset seemed sure of where he was going, and it occurred to her that he would want to avoid the ways where guards might be waiting. Also, he avoided any doors, finally coming to the great hall through the main entrance, which stood wide.
Kyaren reached the doors a moment after Ansset passed through them, but already he was halfway across the floor, heading, not for Riktors, but for Ferret. Suddenly Ansset was in the air, and Kyaren was expecting him, in his fury, to destroy the emperor's assassin.
But a moment later Ferret and Ansset were grappling. None of Ansset's movements could penetrate the man's defenses; the ferret was unable to land a blow or a cut on Ansset's body.
Finally, exhausted, they held each other firmly, neither able to move for fear the other would be able to use the movement against him, Ansset's mouth was near the Ferret's ear. He moaned softly, and the moan was his agony of being unable to express what was in him, either with his body or with his voice. He could not kill, he could not sing, and he could not find another way to open what demanded to be opened inside him.
The ferret whispered triumphantly in his ear, You've forgotten nothing.
Riktors spoke from the throne, where he was sitting again, relieved that Ansset's attack was not against him, relieved that neither fighter had been able to win. Who do you think taught you how to kill that way, Ansset?
I killed my teacher, Ansset said.
You were told you were killing your teacher, Riktors answered. It was a lie.
You can't match me, said Ferret.
You were Mikal's servant, sworn to him, Ansset said.
I am the emperor's servant, Ferret answered. Mikal was old.
It was one betrayal, one injury too many. It tore something inside Ansset. The barrier broke, and all the hurt of the years he had thought the Songhouse did not want him, all the grief at Josif's mutilation, all the rage at Riktors's lies, all the vengeance and hatred that had bulk within him, unable to be expressed-it all came out at once.
Ansset sang again.
But it was not a subtle song, as all of his had been. Much of his technique had been lost in the years of songlessness, and there was no attention to filling the room or displaying nuances of melody. It was an instinctive song, one that depended not on the veneer the Songhouse had put on Ansset's ability, but rather on the powers within him that the Songhouse had only gradually discovered, the power to comprehend exactly what was in other people's hearts and minds, reshape it, manipulate it, and change it until they felt what Ansset wanted them to feel.
The song was terrible, even to Kyaren, who was at the edge of the room, and who could not understand it all because it was not sung to her.
But to Riktors, who understood almost all of it, it was the end of the world. It was all his crimes held up to him, and against his will he felt guilt for them, a terrifying guilt like the eyes of God staring down his soul, like the devil's teeth gnawing at his heart; the Furies fluttered passionately at the edge of his vision; he lifted up his voice in a vast scream that would have overshadowed any other sound, but not the sound of Ansset's song.
For it went on.
It went on, filled with the colors of Ansset's love for Riktors, betrayed; Mikal's love for Ansset, destroyed; and the timidity, the gentleness and passion of Ansset's night with Josif, forever out of reach. It was shaded by the darkness of Ansset's pain as the best joy the body can receive was torn from him and replaced by the worst pain the body can endure. And as all those griefs and agonies filled the air, they were intensified by Ansset's long, long months of silence, with his songs stolen from him, his Control partly broken. Now there was no Control. Now there was nothing holding him in.
The Mayor of the palace heard Ansset's song like the death of some forest animal, but it would have been impossible to hear the sound inside. And then he heard Riktors's scream. He shouted for guards; he raced for the great hall; he burst in; he saw:
Ansset, his face tipped upward toward the ceiling, the song still pouring from his throat like a volcano's eruption, seemingly endless, seemingly the death of the world. His arms were spread out, his fingers distended, his legs standing wide, as if the world were shaking and he was barely able to stay upright.
Kyaren, leaning against the door, weeping for the parts of the song that she could understand.
Riktors Mikal, emperor of all mankind, lying on the floor crying out again and again, begging for forgiveness, writhing to try to find a place where the sound wouldn't go. It had found him, almost all the song had touched him, and he was insane, tearing at his clothing, blood coming from his face where his own nails had raked him. Hours before, he had been serene and untouchable; now he had been felled by a song.
But not all the song. There were parts of the song that Riktors Mikal could not understand. Esste had been right about Riktors, when she felt that, like Mikal before him, he was cruel but not without limits. Riktors, like Mikal, had a love for, a sense of responsibility for, mankind. What killing he might do, he did because it was needed, because of the goal he had in mind. And when the goal was achieved, he did not kill. Riktors did not understand all the song because, while he was cruder than Esste had thought he was, he was also, in the end, partly kind.