EL-HAZARD : MORTAL ENGINES
by Alan Harnum
Chapter Eight - Miroirs
El-Hazard is a copyright of AIC/Pioneer LDC. This story,
however, belongs to me, and I request that you don't publicly
post or archive it without my permission.
Mortal Engines and all my other fanfics (along with those of Mike
Loader and Susan Doenime) are archived at Transpacific
Fanfiction: http://www.thekeep.org/~mike/transp.html
As usual, commentary is very welcomed.
* * *
"Thank you."
Ifurita accepted the steaming bowl of... something... from
the hands of the wide-eyed child, and tried to convey with her
smile what she was obviously failing to do with her words. The
little girl's eyes grew even wider, and hurried back to her place
in the circle, beside a Phantom Tribe woman. Ifurita presumed it
to be her mother.
Ruddy flames shifted on the cold white stone of the
low-ceilinged cavern, a place that served, if the hundreds of
sitting mats of knotted grasses any indication, as a meeting
hall. Forty-three members of the Phantom Tribe sat in the
circle, with her at the centre. Some of them were members of the
hunting party that had brought her back here, down sculpted
tunnels lit at intervals by torches, to this great cavern below
one of the icy mountains. They had stopped trying to speak to
her on the journey back, after they realized she had no knowledge
of their flowing language. All the words seemed to be very long,
and they spoke them very fast.
Their mood, once they'd decided she wasn't a threat, had
become welcoming; almost reverent, oddly enough, but with a hint
of fear. The woman who had led the hunting party was not
present; she and some of her companions had apparently gone to
gather more of their tribe. Every few minutes, a half-dozen or
so Phantom Tribe, generally in what appeared to be a family unit,
would arrive and join the circle. The gem-studded bows and
spears lay near at hand for the warriors, but they didn't seem to
have any inclination to use them.
Perhaps she should stop thinking of them as the Phantom
Tribe. This was obviously no longer El-Hazard, after all; the
Eye of God had thrown her here, into what was clearly the
originating dimension of the Phantom Tribe. In Makoto's
memories--hard, sometimes, to differentiate them from her own--
she recalled Gallus atop the Eye of God, bitterly recounting the
story of the Phantom Tribe's origins.
But she didn't really have any other name to call them.
They whispered back and forth to each other in their quick
language, and watched her. It made her feel rather
uncomfortable, almost embarrassed; she wondered what they wanted
her to do. Her language centres were having great difficulty
assimilating their tongue, as it had no relation that she could
find to any of the languages she already knew.
Oh yes. The food. Meals were often given to guests as a
means of welcome, and to not eat was rude. She took a spoonful
of dark grey mash and swallowed it. Bland, grain-based. Very
nourishing, but uninteresting. A sense of taste, far more
refined than any humans, was a basic part of her construction.
Not that she'd had much chance to test it out in the past.
Her eating of the food seemed to relax them, and their
voices gradually rose above whispers. Ifurita listened and tried
to figure out the basic structure, but it didn't seem to have
one; words seemed to be placed almost randomly, sometimes
repeated four or five times in a row. Two or three words would
often alternate in a series for up to a minute between speakers.
She waited, and ate more of the food, as more and more of
the people entered through the numerous side passages. The
circle around her grew increasingly larger as time passed, but
she'd begun to grow used to the curious stares and the rapid
music of their conversation. Better, some darker part of her
thought, than fearful gazes and terrified screams.
Patience was not hard for her. Eventually, something would
happen--perhaps something that would come closer to bringing her
to Makoto's world, where she would wait to transport him to
El-Hazard. Again, an image rose from his memories, the memories
he had given to her: herself, barefoot and tattered, staggering
out of the chamber, falling against him, barely able to stand...
A shudder ran through her body. She had not known she was
capable of shuddering, perfect artificial being that she was.
Makoto had no idea what had happened to her--her future self,
that was--after she had sent him to El-Hazard. And neither did
she.
The idea of time paradox were not easy for Ifurita to
handle. There had been no need to program her with such a thing.
What little understanding she had came from Makoto's memories,
and whatever as-of-yet untested abilities she'd acquired through
the Eye of God.
But she had to somehow get to Earth, or she would never send
Makoto to El-Hazard, and then he'd never synchronize with her so
that she became free, and she would never enter the internal
mechanics of the Eye of God, and...
Yet somehow, she had to go from here to Earth, and she
didn't yet understand all the new concepts floating around within
her well enough to safely approach piercing the dimensional
walls. So, the her of the future--or the past, it was all very
confusing--had somehow learned. Or gotten very lucky. And it
might be that the answer lay here.
A hush had fallen over the circle now, and Ifurita looked
up, scanning the faces as she did. There were over a hundred
people gathered in the circle now, in three rows. She sat at the
centre, like the axle of a wheel. From one of the side passages,
the leader of the hunting party--tall, almost gaunt, face still
painted with grey camouflage--entered, followed by a dozen of the
other hunters. As the hunters joined the circle, the woman
walked through it, threading her way carefully through the
people, and entered the ring created by their bodies. Ifurita
watched her calmly.
The leader dropped into a squat in front of Ifurita, hands
on the smooth white stone of the floor, balancing on the balls of
her feet as through about to spring. Smoothly, Ifurita matched
her posture.
Face revealing no emotions, the Phantom Tribe woman reached
out and touched Ifurita's hair, drawing two pinched fingers down
the length of one white strand.
Tribal greeting customs, Ifurita thought. And she did the
same, running a considerably shorter strand of blue-black hair
between her own fingers.
The woman sat back and crossed her legs. Ifurita did the
same. They stared at each other in silence. After a moment, the
woman touched her own hair. "Nasalasalanasala."
"Ifurita." She indicated herself.
Nasalasalanasala pursed her lips, as if trying to wrap them
around the unfamiliar word. "Ifurita." Then she raised her
voice, addressing the entire circle in her own language. Ifurita
heard her name mentioned perhaps a half-dozen times in the rapid-
fire stream of Nasalasalanasala's speech. Nasalasalanasala's name
was mentioned about the same amount, usually at the beginning of
the sentence--although it was hard to tell if there were
sentences at all, the language was spoken so quickly. It seemed
that they had no pronoun for the first person, if what her
analysis of the language was telling her was correct.
A small, hunched figure in a dark cloak was brought forth
from within the circle, supported by two tall members of the
tribe. Ifurita thought at first that it an old man or woman, but
then she caught a glimpse of the face. A small male child, no
older than ten. Slim features, but with a sense of slackness to
them; a thin trickle of drool escaped his mouth as he approached,
and one of his attendants wiped it away with a white cloth in an
instant. Ifurita felt a stab of pity--the child was obviously
mentally retarded.
His posture was caused by a deformity upon his left
side, a large hunchback hidden beneath the cloak.
Nasalasalanasala stood up and moved aside, and the attendants
gently eased the boy down, a reverential tremble in their hands
as they touched him. Other than the cloak and a pair of
trousers, he was naked, his body lean and muscular. He would
have been beautiful, except for the hump and the blank look upon
his face. The boy slumped down where he sat, head almost
touching his chest.
Some sort of seer? There had been tribes in El-Hazard who
had placed special value on the prophetic abilities of the
insane. This might not be all that different.
The attendants drew the cloak away from the boy. Revealed
to the light, the handsome, bearded head growing out of his left
shoulder and back blinked its eyes, and then focused on her.
"Hello, Ifurita," it said.
***
Something in the dark horizon told him even before he pushed
his way through the Bugrom crowded at the railing--some prophetic
angle of the clouds, or was it that oracular blood was cast into
them by the setting of the sun? He recognized this place, though
how could you know one blank stretch of sea from the other?
And I will question not, he thought, I shall merely know
what I know; trust that it is true. His sister followed him, and
last came the faceless god.
"Mister Jinnai? Mister Jinnai?"
Deva's voice interposed itself between him and the haze. He
found himself at the railing, not quite sure how he had got
there. "Yes, Queen Deva?"
"What are we going to do about this?"
This: Nahato, arms unbound, floating in the ocean, as
bereft of animation as any shipwreck fragment. The waves rolled
him back and forth, back and forth, a cradle for a lost child.
Blank and depthless, his eyes stared up at the onrushing night
and stars as though with mute horror at their vastness.
"Do?" He licked his dry lips. "Leave him. He won't
survive long."
"No!" Nanami reached for his shoulder; Lethiaphan's
gleaming hand, mask of flesh long-vanished in the currents of
the ocean, caught her wrist. She cried out. The sound brought
him back further.
I have touched something greater than myself, he thought, as
time stood still and the stars winked out above. He was axis
mundi, he was...
"Let her go."
Was there some reticence in Lethiaphan as it released his
sister's wrist from its steel-hard grip? No, of course not; it
was a machine, and it had no face to show reticence with.
"Katsuhiko, you can't just leave him to die." Nanami seized
him the lapels of his school uniform, a desperate pleading in her
eyes. "What kind of monster are you?"
"Monster!" he snapped back. "I'm not the monster! Makoto,
and those damn priestesses, they're the monsters... getting in my
way, opposing me at every turn, never letting me be!" Nanami
shrank back before his tirade. "Why can't they just leave me
alone? All these weak, unworthy people, holding me back..."
"Oh, Katsuhiko," Nanami said, something like pity in her
voice, "you're weaker than Makoto will ever be."
He almost struck her, barely stopped himself. The sight of
Nahato--who he had intended to die, and who had not died--had
stolen his control from him. One, two, three times he drew the
deep, calming breaths--and then took from his pocket the comb,
and ran it through his hair before speaking again.
"Lethiaphan," he said, speaking as slowly as he dared,
"bring the boy aboard. I want to discover how he was freed."
Pausing, he turned a frowning gaze upon Deva. "Unless your
threads aren't so strong as they appeared."
"No child could break my threads," Deva said. "Nor adult,
either."
"Then how?"
Deva shrugged. "I know not how. You are the messenger from
God; the inexplicable is your dominion, not mine."
Lethiaphan took one long step to the railings; the Bugrom
shrank back before it. It clenched its fist, and the water
around Nahato clenched like a fist in time; raised its arm, and
the sea's hand deposited the boy, salt-soaked and staring-eyed,
upon the deck.
"You did the right thing, Katsuhiko," Nanami muttered. "I
didn't know you had it in you."
"Talk!" he shouted, ignoring his sister as he bent and
grabbed the blue-skinned boy by the wet collar of his shirt.
Scattered bloodspots indiscriminately freckled his clothing.
"How were you freed? Who did it?"
Nahato's head lolled like that of a rag doll, shifted by
Jinna's grip. His eyes blinked rapidly, closed; snapped open
again, moon-blank.
"TALK!"
"Look at him, Katsuhiko," Nanami said, kneeling down beside
him. He saw the motion to touch him with her hand rise and die
in a second--Lethiaphan stood too near, faceless sentinel. "He's
catatonic. Something obviously happened after you... tossed him
over."
Weary, Jinnai released the boy's collar. Nahato's head
flopped back and struck the deck with a thud. "Take him below,"
he ordered the Bugrom. "Take them both below."
"Hey! Just a--" Nanami's protest was cut off as she was
urged belowdecks by the Bugrom, one of whom paused to scoop
Nahato up under its arm before following. Jinnai was left alone
on deck with Deva and Lethiaphan.
"Your sister bears small resemblance to you."
"Few siblings do."
"I have had many mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers,"
Deva said, "all those who came before me and were queen. And I
have many children. But I have never had, and will never have, a
brother or a sister."
Lost in thought, Jinnai chuckled, hardly having heard her at
all. "Edmund and Edgar."
"What?"
The Shakespeare Society of Shinanome. He remembered the
past, and hated the remembering. In memory lay all defeats,
every casual dismissal of his abilities by Makoto Mizuhara.
Hateful, hateful foe--see how he defeats me without even seeming
to intend to...
It had been long seconds since Deva had spoken. Her stare
was fixed oddly upon him. Doubt in that gaze? Could not be, he
thought; she could not doubt him, he was God's messenger.
"Now that we may speak privately, Queen Deva..."
The pointed glance switched from him to Lethiaphan, and he
felt a strange relief, one which he tried to conceal.
"Privately?" she said, edged words of equal sharpness to that
pointed glance.
"It's only a machine." And so are you, he added silently,
but a more human machine--and thus, you are more of a threat to
my power. "It won't repeat anything."
"Unless it is turned from our side, as Ifurita was." The
words cut him nearly to the very bone, and humiliating laughter--
the laughter he knew to be behind Makoto's eyes, never voiced--
sang in his flesh and rose the rage. He choked it back,
wondered: does silent laughter lurk behind your eyes too, o
Queen?
"Take a swim, Lethiaphan. Don't go too far, though."
"What is too far?" Hard to tell it was a question, that
voice was so empty of inflection.
"Just be back in five minutes."
It left the deck in flash, and soon was lost to sight. When
its speeding shape was gone, Jinnai turned again to Deva, and
took two steps to bring him close.
"Deva," he asked, "why did you not inform me earlier that
what I saw were not God's angels, but the Phantom Tribe."
The tiniest pink tip of her tongue--so human a motion, oh,
those that had built her built her well--moistened her lips. "I
thought that perhaps you knew, and only spoke in metaphor to make
the concept better understandable to me. The Bugrom hold no more
love for the Phantom Tribe than they do for the Roshtarians.
Perhaps they inadvertently served our purposes, and to reveal
them to you would cause our endeavour, whatever its end may be,
to fail. They did bring us safe down the Holy River, after
all."
She fell silently, but with unsaid words hanging in the air.
Jinnai prompted. "Why else?"
"Nothing." She shook her head.
"Why else?" He put an edge upon his voice, one that he knew
he could make cut her like her edge, cut her to the bone as she
cut him before. Remind her of her station and his, lay her low--
leave her weeping on the deck, however it was a machine might
weep, as he had made her weep before.
"I feared your anger if you were contradicted," she said.
"You are like a mighty juggernaut in what you do; you will sweep
me along, or you will crush me. I do not wish to be crushed."
The answer he'd expected and wanted. He smiled benignly.
"Queen Deva, do not hestitate next time. While I am far wise
beyond my years, I am but new to this world, whereas you are
not." It burned him to say it, true though it might be to some
eyes--even hers, and that was why he said it. And yet some part
of him longed to say the rest, to pour out all his fears that he
might be wrong; if the Phantom Tribe could deceive him once,
could they not do it again? Have done it before? Were not even
dreams safe from their illusions? Had this journey been in vain,
was their destination something of no use to them? No, no, no,
he repeated mantralike. There was still Lethiaphan. Something
had sent that to him, passed the ownership to his hand; surely
that was proof that not all of this was lies?
"I am glad to hear you say such things, Katsuhiko Jinnai."
A supple gloved hand touched his face; beneath it, he could
almost feel the pulse of life, not machine-cold, but human-warm.
How human these Ancients made their machines, he thought--surely
they were workers of wonder. Human, and with the human
weaknesses brought on by their emotions. So easily manipulated.
Better like Lethiaphan, he thought, than like her, so long
as I remain my own master. A distant spot of sea churned with
the motion's of that faceless one's immiment return. There would
be no more conversation now.
***
It was the night of the school talent show. He was
fourteen. Mom and Dad were in the third row, next to Katsuhiko
and Nanami's mother. Sawdust was flaking off from the top of the
hole they'd cut in the crate, itching as it fell onto his neck.
He wanted to scratch it, but his arms--all of his body except his
head and his feet, actually--were in the crate.
The stage lights made his face feel hot and flushed. Steely
gleams raced along the surface of the saw, and died upon the
jagged teeth. A patina of dark red rust lay upon the blade. He
hoped it was rust.
"And now, for my next trick, I, the Fabulous Jinnai, will
saw my valiant assistant IN HALF!"
The audience cheered, but it was an empty cheering, canned
like the laugh-track on a bad sitcom. Katsuhiko lowered the saw
and began to raspily cut into the wood of the crate.
"Katsuhiko, what do I do? I don't remember." A switch?
Some lever he had to pull? How did he escape being sawn in half?
"Quiet," Katsuhiko hissed. "You'll spoil the illusion."
His tongue, covered in facets like the eyes of a fly and
obscenely long, flicked out of his mouth.
Makoto closed his eyes and tried to think. There was some
way to get out of this...
He could feel sawdust falling onto his abdomen and chest.
Katsuhiko had sawn through the wood at the top now. There
seemed to be a hungry note in the rasp of the saw, but that was
impossible.
Nanami ran onto the stage, still in her leotard, tap shoes,
and top hat. "You've got to stop this!" she yelled to the
audience. "It's all a trick!"
"Of _course_ it's a trick, Nanami." Katsuhiko smiled, and
something faceless and awful dragged Nanami back into the wings.
Her tap shoes rang like bells as she struggled, and then the
sound faded into nothing.
No one in the audience moved. Their eyes stared like blank
marbles. A beautiful girl with white hair watched him with
infinite sadness in her eyes.
The saw bit flesh, and Makoto screamed. Katsuhiko laughed
shrilly, and then the laughter began to change, becoming deeper,
crueller. Pale blue suffused his face like a dye, and it grew
broader, more powerful. His hair lengthened, then turned white.
The rusty blade scraped across bone.
"Do you like my illusions?" the blue-skinned man said. "Are
they not more wonderful than reality?" And then there was a
sound like a thousand tongues of thunder, and blood spilled from
his mouth as he fell back, but the saw kept on moving, tearing
him apart--
He woke with a scream, the Power-Key Staff clutched to his
chest as thought it were his only hope of salvation. Cold sweat
ran down his face tiny beads. It seemed he could still hear the
saw biting wood, over and over...
With a shaky laugh, he glanced over to where Fujisawa-sensei
snored, arms and legs askew all over the floor of the tiny cabin.
Afura had been given the sole bed--the cutter really wasn't
designed for long-range sea use, but they'd had no other option--
and her body was an almost foetal ball beneath the sheets, only
her head visible. Ura was curled up at her feet, a round,
nearly shapeless ball of fur. Shayla slept with her back against
one wall; sometime in the night, Alielle had made her way over
and gone to sleep with her head in Shayla's lap. It would not,
Makoto decided, be fortuitous to be awake when Shayla awoke. And
there was no way he was going back to sleep after a dream like
that.
Moving quietly as he could--though if his scream hadn't
woken anyone up, his footsteps probably wouldn't either--he made
his way up on deck, after quickly and somewhat self-consciously
changing into some fresh clothes behind the curtain they'd
rigged up to make a small dressing area in one corner.
Out on the deck, the new day's sun, just barely risen, gave
the scattered clouds a rosy tinge. Miz was at the helm, guiding
the cutter as it skimmed through the Sea of Tears, riding almost
atop the waves at times. One day, Makoto decided, after he
figured out how to bring Ifurita back, he was going to explore
the other technology that El-Hazard had to offer.
"Good morning, Makoto," Miz greeted pleasantly as he
approached. "Did you get enough sleep?"
"Yeah." He decided not to mention the nightmare. "How
about you?"
The priestess nodded. "I grabbed some sleep before Alielle
woke me. She had the middle shift; that's the toughest." She
glanced back at him as he sat down on the short flight of stairs
leading up to the helm. "We're still on course, right? I know I
was supposed to wake you every hour to check, but you needed your
sleep, and the sea can give me a sense of what vessels have
passed recently..."
He nodded. "They haven't changed their position at all.
They're heading in a straight line; we're following that line."
Miz's lips pursed, as though in disapproval. "This cutter
is much faster than their boat. And they didn't have too much of
a head start. So why haven't we caught them yet?"
"Well..." Makoto rubbed his chin as he thought.
"Lethiaphan has control over water. Maybe it's somehow making
them faster?"
"I suppose that makes sense." Miz admitted, although it
sounded somewhat grudging. "It is extremely powerful. I don't
think we saw its upper limits."
"No," Makoto murmured to himself, "I don't think we did
either."
"Is Masamichi sleeping well?" Miz asked with false
casualness.
"He seemed to be."
"I'm a little worried about him, you know." There was still
that fake lightness in her voice, a failed attempt to disguise
the real depths of her concern. "Ever since the fight with
Lethiaphan, he's been different... no, even before that."
"Well, his powers are changing," Makoto said. "More than
anyone's. I don't blame him for being worried."
"But he's only getting stronger, more powerful," Miz said,
not seeming able to comprehend why a thing like that could upset
someone. "Even more of a man." The last sentence was said with
a throaty purr.
Makoto coughed. "Umm... I'm sure he'll adjust to the
changes."
"He'd better," Miz muttered. Then her voice turned
sprightly again. "Anyway, I think I've figured out where
Jinnai's heading."
"What? How?"
"Well, I am a water priestess, after all," Miz said in
slightly miffed tones. "I wouldn't be a very good one if I
didn't know oceanic geography. From the readings on the compass,
and the charts, I'd say we're heading towards Turanga."
"What's that?"
"An island," Miz explained. "Volcanically formed. It's the
main home for the Lilaian sect..." Suddenly, she frowned. "Oh
dear. I never even thought of that. This might be awkward..."
"What?"
"Well, we'll deal with that if and when it happens." Miz's
voice was dismissive, leaving no room for him to ask further
questions. "The Lilaian's are a religious sect. They're
complete pacifists--won't even kill animals for their meat."
Makoto felt as if he'd just swallowed a ball of ashes.
"They won't even resist Jinnai, then. What's on that island that
he could want?"
"Nothing, to my knowledge," Miz said with puzzlement. "It's
got fertile soils and a good climate in the low-lying areas, and
a bunch of large, impressive, and extremely inhospitable
mountains. The Lilaians settled it about five hundred years ago,
after fleeing the... persecutions." She said the last word with
a touch of shame. "It's one of the stains on the history of the
Muldoon sect, but we were one of the leaders of that." She
sighed.
"Why's Jinnai going there, though?"
"He's had a religious experience and wants to convert? I
don't know. If it's got something to do with the Lilaians,
there's plenty of enclaves of them on the mainland."
"Is there something about them that's really different? Do
they have some kind of knowledge he might want?"
Miz frowned. "I don't know enough about their doctrine to
say. You might ask Shayla, although..."
"Shayla?"
She nodded. "She used to be one. When she was very young."
"Shayla?" Somehow, being a member of a pacifist sect, even
a former one, didn't fit with any mental image Makoto had of
Shayla.
"Yes." Miz nodded again, looking back at him for a moment
rather than at the sea surging before the boat. Her eyes were
sad. "That's why things might become awkward."
***
Come on, Nanami, it's not so high.
It's too high, Katsuhiko.
You won't fall. I promise.
She didn't fall, but he did. Broke his leg. God, did he
ever scream. It was autumn, and she always thought of her
brother screaming every time she smelt leaves burning after that.
How old had they been? Not very old. Maybe she was eight? When
had they had that treehouse, again?
Can you dream just a smell? I dream burning leaves; what
does it mean? Burning, burning, burning.
Nanami opened her eyes. The phosphorescence given off by
the walls and ceiling of the Bugrom ship had dimmed, giving the
small cabin a twilight look.
Her mouth tasted sour, and her head still hurt. Not much
chance of getting a toothbrush or an aspirin from her captors,
though. At least they'd let her have the bed. Or, more
precisely, she'd taken it by default, after they'd left her down
here with the catatonic Nahato. He didn't make for very good
converstation--even if she'd had something to talk to him about
anyway, he seemed more interested in staring off into space and
occasionally drooling--and her headache had been getting worse,
so she'd finally just lain down and let herself go to sleep and
uneasy dreams.
The cabin was almost entirely filled up with sleeping
Bugrom, legs tucked into their shells. Her brother was sprawled
asleep, back and head resting on the shell of one, one leg thrown
up upon another. It didn't look very comfortable. Nahato was
still in the corner, hands and feet bound. He looked to be
sleeping too. In another corner, Lethiaphan stood like a statue.
Its blank features made it impossible to say whether it was
dormant or not.
Gingerly, she got out of bed. Her clothes weren't too fresh
either. Maybe Deva had something she could borrow, she thought
vaguely, and almost giggled. Then they could talk about boys.
Her whole life had turned into some weird surreal nightmare. She
was probably in a coma somewhere, dreaming all of this. The
thought appealed to her; it meant she could wake up.
Stepping between the closely-bunched shapes of the Bugrom as
though through a colourful minefield, Nanami made her way towards
the stairs. A few feet away from them she tread down, hard, on a
spindly limb, and froze. A purple head emerged from within the
shell and stared at her with unblinking yellow eyes. Antenna
twitched, and then it squeaked something at her that sounded like
a greeting. And went back to sleep.
Nanami sighed with relief, and went out on deck. A new day,
with a new sun, but not with any new hope. Deva was at the wheel
of the ship, guiding it through the calm morning sea. She didn't
even look back as Nanami stepped out on deck.
"You are Nanami Jinnai."
"Yeah. And you're Queen Deva."
"Yes."
"I'd say I'm pleased to meet you, but I'm not."
"Somehow, I am not surprised. You have, no doubt, heard all
that the Roshtarians have to say of me and my children," the
Bugrom Queen said acerbically. "I doubt you have heard anything
of what was done to us."
"I never really did get a chance to hear the Bugrom
perspective," Nanami said coldly. "Maybe because they were too
busy trying to kill us and destroy Roshtaria."
Deva's head turned, and she fixed Nanami with a cold, bitter
gaze. "Little girl," she snarled, "I wish I could show you the
memories that are in my head of the Holy Wars, and what the
Bugrom were used as by your kind."
"That was a long time ago, no matter what happened."
"Justice denied is not justice fulfilled." Deva turned
away. There was an almost fanatic edge to her voice. "We were
slain by the hundreds of thousands, driven out of all fertile
lands, forced to gather in the wastelands... and now they have
turned the Eye of God upon our home, and we are wanderers upon
this earth again."
"You were the ones who invaded Roshtaria," Nanami said,
vaguely wondering at the safety of arguing with Deva. She was
too angry to care, though. "They just fought back. You used
Ifurita to destroy an entire city before the Eye of God was even
unsealed."
"Your brother was my war leader. I did not make the
decision to awake Ifurita, or to use her in the manner he did."
Though the day was warm, Nanami suddenly felt cold. It was
really just the confirmation of her fears, but somehow... somehow
she'd wanted to hope that it hadn't really been her brother who
had ordered that city destroyed. So many thousands dead...
"And how could we ever be safe, with a weapon like the Eye
of God in the hands of our oldest foes? All it would take is one
ruler deciding once and for all to purge the Bugrom from El-
Hazard. How could we not take the chance to remove Roshtaria as
a threat, when they had such a weapon?"
Deva's words didn't seem to fully penetrate for a few
seconds. When they did, Nanami just shook her head. "No one
ever fights a war thinking they're wrong," she murmured. She
felt sick.
"No one does," Deva agreed. She paused. "But it doesn't
mean they aren't. And this is not like a war between two
nations. This is for the life of my race."
But aside from a few insectile markings on her face, Deva
looked human. Acted human, too--spoke the language, displayed
emotions, reasoned like a human. It was hard to reconcile the
beautiful queen with her inhuman subjects. Nanami decided not to
raise the point. Instead, she stepped closer, and sat down on
the edge of the raised platform that held the boat's wheel, near
Deva's feet. "Where are we going?"
"I don't know," Deva said. "I'm just going where he told me
to."
"My brother?"
The delay in answering was just a little too long, as though
she were unsure. "Yes."
Nanami craned her head and hunched up on her knees to peer
off at the horizon. "Are we heading for land? I think I can see
something. Just a speck, but..."
Deva's eyes narrowed. "You're right. You have very good
eyesight, for a human."
As they watched, not speaking, the speck became a line, and
then resolved into a long sandy coast. In the distance, forests
could be seen; beyond them, tall, cloud-wrapped mountains
reminded Nanami of the mountains of Japan. It gave her a pang of
homesickness so sharp it was actually painful.
"Look," Nanami said. "There's a boat."
It was small and neat in appearance, riding smoothly over
the waves. From the direction, it had been launched from the
shore to meet them. There were two occupants, a heavyset man
with a thick beard who piloted, and a figure of indeterminate
gender in a hooded cloak.
Deva's face twisted into a frown. Nanami didn't see her
touch any controls, but the boat stopped in the water. They
waited.
As the small boat neared, the man removed his hands from the
controls and cupped them together to shout through. "Greetings
in God's name, strangers. Your ship is unfamiliar, but you are
welcome on Turanga, whoever you are."
Nanami stood up to get a better look. The man's head turned
to look at her, and shock came onto his face. His hands dropped
to his sides, and he stopped talking.
"So what are you going to do now?" Nanami asked Deva. The
queen didn't reply; more than anything, she looked confused. The
man began to pilot the boat closer, face pale, hands trembling on
the controls.
Deva said, "I remember that I do not remember this place for
some reason which I cannot say."
"Huh?"
The figure in the back of the boat stood up and pulled the
hood down, revealing itself as female. "What wonders have you
sent to us, oh Lord?" she said. Though it was a whisper, Nanami
heard it like a shout.
She stared. The other girl stared back. Her face was
darker, tanned; her hair was much longer, done up in a bun at the
back of her head. Other than that, they were identical.
This must have been how Makoto felt meeting Fatora, Nanami
thought. My own face, looking into my own face--my own eyes into
own eyes.
"Well," Deva said slowly. "This is interesting."