Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [38]
By pretending to agree to their demands, he had bought time to set a desperate plan in motion. But he could not tell Osira'h that, lest the hydrogues wrest the knowledge from her. I bought time . . . but after thousands of years of breeding and experimentation and planning, have we not had enough time?
The girl's odd expression and strangely alien eyes told him she was not satisfied with his answer.
"I am sending you away, Osira'h. You will go back to Dobro." He took her hands in his own, and the yearning on his face was not feigned. "Your mother is alive. Designate Udru'h kept her on Dobro, hiding her even from me. I am sending you to her. I want you with Nira."
The little girl's face lit up, and he wished he could tell her more, tell her everything. Questions seemed to geyser from her mind, but she drove them down, simply reveling in the surprise and joy. For the moment, she seemed to have forgotten her scorn for his cowardly response. Her happiness startled him, since he knew she had never even met her mother.
Jora'h averted his gaze to the treeling in its alcove, thinking of his beloved green priest. He missed Nira so much, wondered why it was taking Udru'h so long to bring her. Now she would have to stay on Dobro until it was safe again. What would she think when their daughter told her of his willingness to doom the human race? He stroked the pale frond of the worldtree.
Osira'h bowed, but he could see she was smiling. "If that is your wish, Liege, I will happily go to Dobro." At that moment, he wished the girl would call him Father, but he knew that was too much to expect.
21
DESIGNATE-IN-WAITING DARO'H
To help him locate the missing green priest on the southern continent, Designate-in-waiting Daro'h conscripted forty-nine Ildirans. Udru'h urged him to hurry. They had heard no further word from the Mage-Imperator about his negotiations with the hydrogues, but they were aware that time must be short. Daro'h had never seen his uncle look so guilty or anxious.
"Find her," Udru'h said again. "Find her, before more damage is done."
A group of scout ships raced south across the equator to the southern continent, the wide inland sea, and the island where the female green priest had disappeared. Satellite imagery had digested the topography of the southern continent into a detailed map, onto which a fine search grid was projected. Each ship flew low along a separate path, diligently scanning.
Daro'h had never received an entirely satisfactory explanation as to why his uncle had exiled Nira so far away in the first place, or why he had initially told the Mage-Imperator that she was dead. Daro'h himself had seen Nira's grave marker on the hillside, had watched his father grieve before it. All a deception!
Udru'h held his secrets in tightly clenched fists, and Daro'h feared he would have to do the same when he took over the reins as this planet's Designate.
All of the Mage-Imperator's noble sons were born to become Designates, assigned to planets according to their birth order. Thousands of years of history had established a clear pattern for how their lives would play out. The firstborn noble son always became the next Prime Designate as soon as the old Mage-Imperator died; the second became the Designate for Dobro, the third for Hyrillka, and so on. Daro'h had often wondered why the Mage-Imperator's second son would be assigned to such a seemingly unimportant place as Dobro. That was before he learned of the breeding program and its vital importance to the survival of the Empire. So many secrets!
Now he looked through the scratched side window of the fast flier. Below, the brown dryness abruptly ended in the sinuous shoreline of a blue inland sea. Daro'h intended to have his searchers take separate spirals, circling outward from the island to scour the uninhabited landscape for any sign of Nira. Designate Udru'h had made the odd suggestion that the green priest might want to avoid being found. Daro'h could not understand why. Surely she would prefer to be with