“I think she’s unconscious,” Amma said. “We need to get her to the healers as quickly as possible.”
Drigg rubbed the bald spot on his head. “It’s at least a day’s walk to the colony. And sundown’s in a couple hours.”
“Then we’d better start walking,” said Taemon.
Drigg looked longingly at the quadriders that had been abandoned in the parking lot after the Fall. Taemon knew exactly what Drigg was thinking because he thought the same thing every time he saw the useless quadriders. They were surrounded by vehicles that no one could drive again.
“I hate to say this,” Drigg said, “but maybe we should stay here for the night and get an early start in the morning.”
“I’m not spending the night in that place.” Taemon shuddered.
“I’m with Taemon on this one,” Amma said. “Besides, if people really are living in the woods around here, we may not be safe overnight.”
Taemon turned back toward the asylum. “I’ll go find something to carry Mam with.”
“I’ll see if I can find any food pouches,” Amma added as she followed.
It had been fully dark for at least an hour before they agreed to stop. Drigg had put together a stretcher from some poles and rough canvas Taemon had found at the asylum. They had taken turns as they walked, two of them carrying the stretcher and one resting. Even so, they were tired and hungry, and they still had a long way to go. This was the kind of situation where psi could really be helpful. Taemon and Amma could have used psi to carry the stretcher with very little exertion. They might even have been able to press on through the night and arrive at the colony by midmorning.
Instead, exhaustion forced them to stop and rest. They sat down next to another abandoned quadrider. They’d passed several since leaving the asylum. The windshield of this one was smashed; the owner had probably had to break it to get out. Without psi to open the door, a person could easily get trapped inside a car.
Taemon wondered if the days of quadriders were over. Would people go back to horses and carts? Or would someone take the time to convert the quadriders to corn fuel? Drigg was the only person who knew how, and it took weeks to do just one conversion.
This would be a good one to convert. It reminded Taemon of the quadrider Uncle Fierre used to own before he bought his unisphere. He’d let Taemon drive it once and made him promise not to tell Mam.
Mam. He should be looking after Mam, not daydreaming about quadriders.
Taemon checked on her again while Amma pulled out the food and drink pouches she’d found in the asylum.
“How’s she doing?” Amma asked.
Taemon shrugged. “Same, though I worry she’ll be cold now that it’s dark. I wish we could have found a blanket for her.”
“I know,” Amma said. “But the blankets must have been the first thing people took from the asylum. We’re lucky we managed to find food and drink.”
He ran his hands through his hair. “It’s my fault. I tripped. Skies, if something happens to her, I . . .”
“She’s been through a lot,” Amma said. “None of that is your fault.”
Taemon looked up. It was his fault, he wanted to tell her. All of it. But he couldn’t say that in front of Drigg. He would have to bear the weight of his decision secretly, because if word got out that he was to blame for the Fall . . .
“If anyone’s to blame, it’s Elder Naseph,” Anna continued. “He’s the one who started all this business of using psi for evil.” As if adding an exclamation point, she slapped a mosquito on her arm. “We’ll get her to the colony, and everything will be fine,” Amma said. “You wait and see.”
Taemon nodded. He appreciated the encouragement, but things had not been fine in a long, long time. He had a feeling that fine was a good way off.
Amma handed him a pouch with a picture of an apple on the label. He was fiddling with the cap, trying to figure out how it opened, when a cloud blocked the moonlight.
“Amma, can you help me with this?” he asked, holding out the bottle toward her.
“You’re worse than a child,” Amma teased, her hand brushing his as she felt for the pouch.
Taemon was glad for the cover of darkness, which hid his flushed cheeks. He wasn’t sure if it was the teasing or the brush of her fingers, though, that embarrassed him.
Suddenly, a man’s voice echoed in the darkness.
“Everybody stop right where you are.”
Taemon looked up to see a figure stepping forward from the shadows. A figure who had a bow with an arrow nocked and aimed right at him.
Slowly, Taemon raised both hands. “We mean no harm.”
“Maybe you don’t,” said the man. “But maybe we do.”
More archers stepped into view. It was hard to count them in the dark, but Taemon thought he could see at least six. Were there more? The surrounding trees would make it easy for them to hide.
For a moment, everything was silent except for the distant throbbing of cicadas.
The archers were a ragged, scrappy-looking group, some men, some women, with mismatched clothes, lean bodies, and wild looks in their eyes. The one aiming at Taemon had stringy hair that hung in waves around his narrow face.
“What’re you doing on this road after dark?” said the archer.
Taemon swallowed. “My mother’s hurt. We’re taking her to get help.”
“That’s your mother?” The man jerked his head toward Mam, but his eyes never left Taemon.
“Yes,” Taemon answered. “We have to get her to —”
“Well, ain’t that interesting?” The man smiled eerily. “The boy came for his mam.” The others chuckled dutifully. “Get up slowly, now. The big man can carry the lady. We’re takin’ you to see Free Will.”
“Look, she’s hurt,” Taemon protested. “Just let us go. We won’t bother you.”
His words had no effect.
“Who’s Free Will?” Amma asked as one of the archers gathered up the food.
The man’s grin grew wider. “You’ll know soon enough.”
“Should we tie ’em up, Lervie?” another archer asked.
“Nah,” said the man — Lervie, apparently. “They won’t do anything that might injure the lady. Just use your arrows to keep ’em in line. Now get goin’!” He shouted that last part and motioned with a quick twitch of the arrow.
Unfortunately, Lervie was right: they had no choice but to follow. Taemon set his mind to finding a way out of this. If it were just him, he could chance doing something reckless, like charging the leader and hoping the others would be too surprised to stop him. But there was Mam to think about. And Drigg and Amma. Still, there had to be a way out of this.
Under the archer’s watchful eye, Taemon rose to his feet and inched closer to the quadrider. Perhaps he could push it over and distract Lervie long enough for them to get away. But a quadrider must be immensely heavy — far too heavy for him to tip over on his own.
If only he still had psi! He could tip the quadrider over with ease. Or better yet, they could pile into the quadrider and tear out of these woods before the archers knew what was happening. And Mam would be at the colony and under the care of the healers in no time.
Stop it! Useless, stupid thoughts like that weren’t going to help. He had to think of a plan that had at least a chance of working, even if it was slim.
Still, the urge to drive the quadrider and get the blazes out of there was overwhelming, and the image of the engine came unbidden to his mind — the gears, the springs, the coils that stored energy as the driver gradually released it to the transmission. Before he realized what he was doing, Taemon reached out for psi. As if he had it. As if it had never left him.
An automatic response, he thought. Like trying to turn on the lights even when you know the power is out. A mindless attempt at the impossible.
But the engine roared to life.
The noise startled him and everyone else. The archers momentarily lowered their arrows.
; Taemon’s mind was reeling. Had he actually started that engine? There was one way to find out. In his mind, Taemon held the image of the doors opening and gave the order: Be it so.
All four doors swung open.
How had he done that? He pondered the impossibility of it for an entire second before snapping into action. The archers reacted, too. They raised their bows, and Taemon used psi to deflect the arrows harmlessly into the trees. Amma and Drigg hustled Mam inside the quadrider and settled her into the backseat. Drigg climbed in beside her, and Amma took the passenger’s seat.
Taemon flung himself into the front seat, closed the doors, and threw as much psi as he dared into the engine. The quadrider rocketed forward, tires squealing as it sped past the archers.
Drigg leaned forward in the backseat. “What happened back there? I’m not complaining, mind you, but I’d really like to know who’s driving this thing and how.”
“I’m driving,” Taemon said, not daring to turn around.
“How in the Great Green Earth can you do that?” Amma shouted over the roaring of the wind through the broken windshield.
“I don’t know! My psi is back. Is yours?”
Amma was one of the few people in the powerless colony to have had psi before the Fall, though it had been a carefully guarded secret. Her family had been in charge of protecting a hidden library; there would have been deadly consequences if it had fallen into the hands of the city dwellers. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. A stupid mistake on Taemon’s part had led to Elder Naseph and Yens discovering the library, and the books had been looted.
Amma frowned in concentration. Taemon wondered what she was trying to move with her mind. Was it working?
She blew out a breath. “No. How is this happening? Did the adrenaline trigger your psi somehow?”
“I’ve never heard of adrenaline, but there’s no mistaking the feel of psi,” Taemon said. He was turning his head to see how far they’d gotten when pain burst like starfire in his left shoulder.
He cried out, and the engine sputtered.
“You okay?” Amma leaned forward. “Taemon, you’re hurt!”
He looked down and saw an arrow lodged in his shoulder just next to the joint. Skies! What now?
The arrow had come from the front. Flame it all! There must have been more archers hiding in the trees. How many more were there?
Faster. He had to go faster. They’d just have to outdistance the archers. He locked away the pain and poured all the psi he could manage into the engine. The back tires fishtailed before finding traction and rocketing the quadrider forward.
“It doesn’t look like it’s bleeding too badly,” Amma said.
Drigg’s voice came from the backseat. “Can you get us to the colony?”
Taemon clenched his jaw. “I have to.”
The engine faltered, and the car swerved. Taemon had to focus entirely on the quadrider to correct their course.
“We can talk later,” Amma said to Drigg. “Right now he just needs to drive.”
Taemon tried to ignore the pain in his shoulder and focus on his psionic connection with the engine.
Holy Mother Mountain, he had psi!
Why? How? Psi was gone. For everybody. The exact words he’d said were burned into his mind: “Let all psi in Deliverance be done away. Let each man and woman work by the power of his own hands.”
Other words were spoken that day as well.
Skies, he knew that voice in his head! The Heart of the Earth was speaking to him again.
Let me help you remember.
Without his bidding, his memory flashed to a moment before the Fall. Taemon and Amma had been caught trying to expose Yens and Elder Naseph as false prophets, and Elder Naseph had just ordered Yens to kill them. Taemon, who had lost his psi months earlier and been banished to the powerless colony, had asked the Heart of the Earth to restore his psi so he could save himself and Amma and stop Yens and Elder Naseph from wielding their terrible psi weapons.
Once again, he heard the Heart of the Earth’s response:
Consider carefully. You cannot request a gift only to discard it at will. If you ask me to restore your power, the restoration will be permanent.
Was that it? Had her warning meant that his psi hadn’t gone away when he’d willed away the psi of others? Did he alone have psi?
The thought was chilling.
But how hadn’t he noticed this before? Certainly life had been difficult for everyone, him included, since the Fall. Why hadn’t his psi kicked in earlier, when he’d been so exhausted from rebuilding destroyed homes in the city or gathering and distributing food and supplies? Why hadn’t he just moved the endless parade of heavy objects around with his mind and spared himself the blisters and cuts and bruises?
Then again, had he even tried to reach out for psi since the Fall? Had he even once tried to move something with telekinesis or see something with clairvoyance? No, he had assumed he was powerless, just like everyone else. Only tonight, when he’d felt threatened and desperate, had his mind longed for psi enough to reach for it.
His shoulder was stiffening up. He clenched his jaw and drove on.
He had psi. It should make him happy, he supposed. After all, it had gotten them out of that mess with that gang. And it meant getting Mam to the healers much sooner, for which he was grateful.
But the truth was, psi did not make him happy. It never had. He’d actually liked using his hands and feeling his muscles ache after a hard day’s work. He also liked using touch to show affection, hugging his friends or holding hands with Amma. Da had always insisted that the family honor the Sabbath by not using psi on that day, which other families had scoffed at. But Da had said that doing so brought them closer to the Heart of the Earth, and when Taemon had become powerless, he’d finally understood what Da had meant by that.
But now he was the odd duck once again, the freakling, different from everyone else. Only this time he knew he would face something far worse than banishment if anyone found out.
The pain in his shoulder had changed from a burning fire to a crushing weight. The quadrider swerved, and the engine sputtered multiple times. About thirty minutes away from the colony, the pain became unbearable. Taemon was forced to pull off the road.
“I need to stop,” Taemon panted. Drigg snored softly in the backseat. At least someone is comfortable, Taemon thought.
Amma looked at him with concern as she lifted a water pouch for him to drink. “What can I do?”
Skies, his shoulder hurt like blazes. “I have to do something about this pain. It’s making it impossible to use psi. The arrow has to come out.”
“Don’t even think about doing that with psi,” Amma said. “Let the healers do that. You can do a lot of damage if you try to use psi on yourself, Taemon. Even I know that. Besides, if the arrow nicked an artery, it might be safer to keep the arrow in place.”
“I can’t drive like this,” Taemon said. “I’m not even sure I can walk.”
“I can walk. I’ll go get someone from the colony,” Amma said. “We can come back for you with the farm hauler.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, but it would take time — a couple of hours at least. And Mam might not have a couple of hours. By the look on Amma’s face, he could tell that she knew it, too.
The arrow would have to come out. He was pretty sure he could remove it with psi; moving an arrow a couple of inches was a lot easier than operating a quadrider engine. But that bleeding part didn’t sound so great.
“What’s an artery?” Taemon asked.
Amma sighed. “I can’t believe they didn’t teach you these things. It’s terrible not to understand your own body.”
Lots of information had been kept from the city dwellers, especially the type that could be used to harm others — like human anatomy. If a psi wielder knew how to manipulate the inner workings of the human body, there would be no limit to the damage he could inflict on others. But in the powerless colony, even little ki
ds knew how their bodies worked. There was no harm in that knowledge for them.
Taemon tensed and grunted as another wave of pain crashed over him. Then it subsided. “So teach me. What’s an artery?”
“Arteries are the tubes inside your body that carry blood from the heart to all the other places in your body. There’s a big one right around your armpit somewhere.”
Pushing the pain aside, Taemon tried to think. If he had psi, then he should be able to use clairvoyance to see what was happening inside his body. Taemon closed his eyes and sent his awareness toward his wounded shoulder. If he could find a way to remove the pain, they might have a chance at getting to the colony. He began with his heart, then followed the tubes that carried blood. They went everywhere, branching into smaller and smaller tubes. After a few wrong turns, he managed to follow the blood all the way to his shoulder. Amma was right: one of the bigger tubes went through his shoulder into his arm. But the arrow hadn’t touched it.
“The artery’s fine,” he told Amma. “I’m going to use psi to pull out the arrow.”
Amma frowned. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I won’t be using psi on myself; I’ll be using it on the arrow.”
“Which is inside you. Same thing,” Amma said. “I’ll run to the colony. It will only take an hour.”
Just then, Mam moaned from the backseat.
“That might not be fast enough,” Taemon said, grimacing through his pain. “I have to try.”
Amma gripped his hand, and Taemon felt a surge of strength from her touch that had nothing to do with psi.
He sat back. “Just give me a couple minutes. If it doesn’t work, I’ll need you to go for help.”
She nodded gravely.
Using clairvoyance once more, he examined the arrow inside his shoulder. The arrowhead was a nasty piece of barbed metal, but the shaft was smooth and straight, so he started with that. He separated the wooden shaft from the arrowhead and slid it smoothly out of the wound. He was relieved to find that it didn’t hurt at all. But when he released his psi, the pain came flooding back.
Archon Page 2