Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [4]
The scene was cool and inviting. She walked wearily up the center of a wooded valley until the sun went down and then stopped by a creek to rest.
Troi looked up at a sky full of unfamiliar stars, then down at the mossy ground.
“Are you still here?” she asked the Matriarch.
The Matriarch laughed.
“Where would I go?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about that animal?” Troi asked.
“This place is full of living beings. You must have known that, or you wouldn’t have come.”
“I still can’t remember. Why don’t you stop playing games with me? Why are you keeping me alive by giving me little tidbits? Am I here just to amuse you?”
Troi felt something rumbling underneath the ground. More than that, she perceived the Matriarch’s anger.
Then she heard cracking and sliding sounds from the mountain slopes nearest her. Rockslide. She took cover behind a tree and watched the rocks and dirt tumble past her.
When it was over the Matriarch spoke in a grim voice.
“That’s just a small sample.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Your questions are foolish. You should already know all about me. It’s not my fault that you cannot remember. Anyway, I know all about you. I know that you’re not married. You don’t have time for men because you devote yourself to your work. Your mother is also single and very much in need of a man. You could end up permanently single like her. Do you want to hear more?”
Troi was too stunned to speak. How could the Matriarch know so much about her private life? She felt mushrooming anger at the intrusion, but put it aside.
The Matriarch went on.
“Look for the road that begins up the valley a ways. Follow it to its source, and there you might find some answers about why you came here. It’ll be up to you. Start now; don’t wait for dawn. And be careful, there is a danger on that road.”
Troi was about to ask more questions but decided not to risk offending the Matriarch again.
“Before you go I want you to see my mate,” said the Matriarch.
Troi sensed an unspoken admonition: “Everyone should have a mate.”
“Look up,” said the Matriarch.
Troi looked at the trees.
“No, all the way up.”
Troi looked at the stars. The night was magnificently clear and beautiful.
“I don’t see anyone,” she said.
Then something slowly rippled the night sky the way a breeze stirs the undulant surface of a pond. Troi felt another vast old intelligence. The Matriarch’s husband.
“Now go find the road,” said the Matriarch.
The road was a dirt causeway, wide and flat, winding up the valley. The trees around it were dense, and getting denser as the road climbed.
At one point she heard a sound like someone chopping wood. She stopped to listen, then remembered the Matriarch’s warning, and hurried onwards in the darkness.
The chopping noise continued, following her, turning into something that sounded more like breaking branches.
Then a shape leapt in front of her. She yelled reflexively.
He had the shape of a man, but larger. Larger even than the Lioness. He was covered with a hard, mirror-like surface on which foreboding crimson, purple, and black reflections danced like flames. His left foot was missing; he balanced on his right.
His eyes were maddening: two shifting mirrors, flashing hot fission-fire, dark smoke, and reflections of herself back at her.
The Mirror Man advanced toward her. She could sense a cold evil, different than the Lioness’ predatory urge—more insidious and calculated, more intellectually cunning.
Troi tried to back away but found she was rooted to the spot; her whole body had become cold, numb, and heavy. It felt as though it were being transmuted into another substance, like ice or iron.
She wanted to cry out—for the Matriarch, for anybody, but she was immobilized. The huge Mirror Man stopped and stood still right in front of her, his burnished surfaces reflecting her own paralyzed form back at her.
Then she became empathically aware of many other beings around