“I know who I am!” Reede said hoarsely.
“Then answer the questions. …” Jaakola waited, and the silence stretched Reede’s mind echoed with whispers and cnes, the stray fragments of a puzzle that had long since been jumbled and thrown away. “Or can’t you?” He chuckled, water going down a dram.
“Mundilfoere!” Reede shouted, crying out for her to bridge the pit of bottomless terror that had suddenly opened below him. “I want Mundilfoere here!”
“Of course you do,” the Source murmured, “to stroke you and make love to you until you forget, to tell you it doesn’t matter, to try to keep you sane until you’ve served our purpose. You love her more than your own soul, don’t you? You should … she took your soul away from you.”
“She loves me—”
“Yes …” Jaakola murmured, “I believe she did. But then, she was a woman—weak, flawed, for all her brilliance. A foolish mistake, to fall in love with her victim … an inevitable mistake … a fatal mistake. She wouldn’t give you to me, even to save herself.”
Reede felt his heart stop. “No. You said she wasn’t at the citadel—”
“She wasn’t.” The Source’s shapeless bulk shifted. “I said she wasn’t there … but I didn’t say she was still alive.”
“I don’t believe you.” Reede pushed the words out between bloodless lips. Sweat crawled down his cheek, but he couldn’t wipe it away.
“Things changed, while you were away—as I said. Power shifted … to me. Destiny delivered her into my hands … and with her, you. I had waited a long time, for her, for you. She took a very long time to die … I saw to it personally.”
“I don’t believe you,” Reede whispered again, shutting his eyes. “It isn’t true. Mundilfoere will come for me, she won’t let you hold me here. …”
“You want Mundilfoere? More than your soul? More than life itself?”
“Yes. Yes—” Reede said, grasping at futile hope like a drowning man; not caring what Jaakola wanted in return, willing to give him anything he asked for to make the unbearable untrue. “Anything you want. Anything—”
“Then have her …”the Source whispered. “What’s left of her.”
Reede felt something drop into his lap; something very small. He looked down, blind in the darkness, unable even to move his hands to touch it. He began to tremble helplessly.
A thin beam of brilliant white light lanced out of the darkness in front of him, striking the crotch of his pants, illuminating what lay there. Reede blinked, dazzled by the brightness; forced himself to look down at it, dizzy and sick.
A human thumb. The dried blood crusting it was almost the same darkness as the desiccated skin. And still circling the meaningless stub of flesh and bone was a ring of heavy silver, set with two soliis. The ring he had given to Mundilfoere before he left, a marriage troth.
Reede screamed, a raw souldeep cry of agony and loss, that went on and on, until at last he had no voice at all left to scream with. And that was when the single beam of light went out.
When there was nothing left in the black silence but the sound of his sobbing, the Source’s laughter began.
And when that was finished, the Source said, “I waited a long time for this, too, Reede. To hear you scream like that. You arrogant, strutting piece of garbage, calling yourself the Smith, wearing the genius of the ages in your brain and thinking it was your own. Acting as if you were our equal—believing it, when you were nothing but her creature. I only wish that she could have heard you scream … that you could have watched me take her apart.”
Reede groaned, a mindless, animal noise of grief that echoed in the blackness.
The Source made a low sound of satisfaction. “I knew there was nothing 1 could do to your body that would hurt you this much, and let you go on living. And you will go °n livmg. Reede. You’re my creature now. … I have great plans for our symbiosis. You’ll breed the stardrive, I’ll control its spread, causing the Kharemoughis the most inconvenience possible and bringing the Brotherhood the most influence possible. And when the time is right, you will return with me to Tiamat, and give us the water of life—”
“I’ll die first,” Reede whispered, his throat, his eyes as dry as dust. “I’ll kill myself.”
“No … I don’t think so,” the Source murmured. “And you won’t break down and go insane either. Do you want to know why? Because already some part of your mind is telling you that if you go on living, you’ll find some way to pay me back.” He chuckled again, as if he could see every thought in his prisoner’s mind. “You’ll live a long time trying, Reede… . But cheer up. I’ll keep you in comfort. You will have everything you need, the best equipment, the best researchers money can buy, plenty of credit to spend as you like—as long as you produce. There’s only one thing you had from her that you won’t be getting from me … unless, of course, you really want to share my bed.”
Reede’s head jerked up, as the Source’s obscene laughter ran its fingers over him. He spat, the only form of defiance left to him.
The Source made a wet kissing sound, and laughed again. “I even know the one thing you needed more than her. I even have it waiting for you. I believe you call it the ‘water of death’ … ?”
Reede stared, his burning eyes filled with darkness. Something that was not—could not be—relief caught in his chest.
“Oh, yes, Reede … I know everything about you now. All your most intimate secrets. You miserable, self-destructive lunatic. You finally found something to do to yourself that frightened even you… . And I don’t blame you for being afraid. I had the water of death tested on one of my own people. The results were truly unspeakable, simply to witness. I cannot imagine what they must have been like to endure. And incurable—? Oh, you are brilliant. …” His voice dripped acid. “You forged your own chains—and now you’ve handed them to me. You’ll have the water of death, Reede; and as long as you are cooperative, you’ll have it on time. In fact—” the Source paused, and Reede could feel his smile, feel it like a blade slowly slitting his throat, “I expect you’ll be needing a fix soon. That is the real reason you were in such a hurry to get back to Humbaba’s, isn’t it? Because you’d run short, poor planning, and you were getting desperate. Not even Mundilfoere had that kind of hold on you… . You’ll find a maintenance dose waiting for you in your new lab. You’ll be permitted to make more, as long as you do your work.”
Reede said nothing. He swallowed the hard lump of loathing in his throat and took a deep breath, inhaling until his lungs ached.
“Any questions about your new existence?”
Reede said nothing.
“Any last requests?”
“Go to hell,” Reede said, his voice breaking.
“Didn’t you know—?” the Source murmured gently. “I’m already there, my pet. And so are you.” The dull-red glow that revealed nothing, worse than a lie, dropped suddenly, completely, out of Reede’s visible spectrum. The darkness around him was utter again, as it had been at the beginning.
Kedalion sighed and shifted position on the couch, glancing at his watch. The couch was not as comfortable as it had looked. He wondered if the perversity was intentional. Or maybe it was just him. This shouldn’t take long, Reede had said. Reede had been wrong.
Ananke had actually fallen asleep again, curled up with the quoll against his belly. Kedalion envied him his exhaustion. He was tired enough to sleep anywhere, himself … except in the middle of an enemy citadel, surrounded by guards. The fact that nobody had been harmed—yet—filled him with relief, but not reassurance. He listened to water dripping like a dirge, somewhere in the garden below the window that might or might not be reaclass="underline" to the distant noises, both strange and familiar, that drifted down the corridors and into the space around him.