Serpent's Reach Read Online Free PDF Page B

the Workers, who tried frantically both to walk and to remove the untidy moisture.
    The tunnel seemed all at once defined, the first light her unused eyes had perceived in uncounted days. It was the only proof she had had that she was not blind, and yet it was so very faint she doubted that she perceived it at all…circle patterns, oblong and irregular patterns. She realised with a surge of joy that she was seeing, realised the shapes for apertures, opening onto a faint greenish phosphorescence, in which majat shadows stalked, bipedal, deceptively human in some poses, like men in ornate armour. Raen hastened, misjudged, almost lost her senses in the warmth and closeness of this place. She gained her balance again, aided and supported into the Presence.
    She filled the Chamber. Raen hung in the grip of the Workers, awed by the sight of Her, whose presence dominated the hive, whose mind was the centre of the Mind. She was the one, if there was any single individual in the hive, with whom they of Kethiuy had so long dealt…the legends of all her childhood, living and surrounded by the seething mass of Her Drones, a scene of fever-dreams, males glittering with the chitinous wealth of the hive.
    Air stirred audibly, intaken.
    “You are so small ,” Mother said. Raen flinched, for the timbre of it made the very walls quiver, and vibrated in Race’s bones.
    “You are beautiful,” Raen answered, and felt it. Tears started from her eyes…awe, and pain at once.
    It pleased Mother. The auditory palps swept forward, Mother inclined Her great head and sought touch. The chelae drew her close. Mother tasted her team with a brush, of the palps.
    “ Salt ,” said Mother.
    “Yes.”
    “You are healed.”
    “I will be, soon.”
    The huge head rotated a few degrees on its circular jointing. “Scouts report Kethiuy closed to them. This has never happened since the hills have stood. We have killed a red-hive Worker on Kethiuy’s borders. Young queen, majat Workers do not enter an area until Warriors have secured it. We tasted it in traces of greens, of golds, recent in red-hive memory. Of humans. Of life fluids. Greens deal with golds and avoid us. Why?”
    Raen shook her head, terrified. Her mind began to function in human terms. Majat were still in the valley, when the Pact dictated restrictions. Red-hive. Ruil’s allies. The whole Family might have risen against Ruil; it had not; it had agreed, and red-hive remained. She forgot the other questions, ignored logic. Reason could not be on her side. “I’ll take Kethiuy back again,” she said, knowing that it was mad. “I’ll get it back.”
    “Revenge,” Mother said.
    “Yes. Revenge. Yes.”
    More air sighed into Mother’s reservoirs. “Since before humans were known, blue-hive has held this hill. Humans came, We majat killed the first. Then we understood. We under. stood stars and machines and humans. One Family at last we permitted, all, all, red-hive, blue, green, gold…one human ship to come among us, one human hive. One ship, which brought the eggs of other humans. We were deceived so. Yet we accepted this. We permit Kontrin-hive to trade and breed and build, instead of all other humans. We permit Kontrin. hive to keep order, and to keep all other humans out. So we have grown, majat hives and Kontrin. We have gained metals, and azi, and consciousness of things invisible; we have enlarged our hives and sent out new queens beneath other suns. Azi work for us with their human eyes and their human hands, and trade gives us food, much food. We can support more numbers than was so in many cycles. We have ridden Kontrin ships to Meron and to Andra and Kalind and Istra, making new extensions of the Mind. We have been pleased in this exchange. We have gained awareness far surpassing times before humans. Your hives have multiplied and prospered, and increased nourishment for ours. But suddenly you fragment yourselves, and now you fragment us. Suddenly there is division.