“You were injured.”
She flinched. “Yes.”
“Had been very hurt, for a long time.”
She nodded.
“Your father did not ask about your injuries.”
A strangled noise came from her and she turned into him. “I don’t think he even noticed that I am fully healed.” She held out her hands to him. “This is not our home. Can we link and try to project our thoughts to Lladrana?”
“Good idea.” He took her hands.
Love, hope, fear cycled between them.
Alexa! Calli shouted, sending all her Power in a burst toward the first Exotique. She thought the scream got lost in whistling winds.
Marrec squeezed her hands. Try visualizing Marian. She’s a Circlet. Has a Powerful Song.
Telepathy didn’t work as easily here. Calli formed an image of Marian, and she was leaning back against Jaquar.
Good, Marrec said. He took her image and layered it with his own—Marian’s dress against her full figure, refined the shape of her breasts and hips, added shades of color to her hair. Calli chuckled. Then she concentrated on Jaquar, the blue, blue of his eyes, the line of his jaw—and his shoulders. When she glanced up, one side of Marrec’s mouth had quirked up and his eyes gleamed amusement.
She closed her eyes, gathered her Power, felt Marrec’s Song and Power join her own. Mar-i-an! The yell echoed through her head. She thought it might have circled the world. Her shoulders slumped and she opened damp eyes to look at Marrec. His expression was somber. He shook his head slightly. “Ttho. I did not reach her, either.”
Her lips had been pressed tightly together as she’d sent everything with her mind. “We’ll try again.”
He nodded, but she felt no hope from him.
They walked down the stairs and heard bustling from behind the kitchen door that was open a crack. Roy was saying, “But how did they get here? Looked like they walked in. They sure didn’t drive the truck Calli won last year. We’ve been using that. Put a lotta miles on it.”
Calli stopped in the mudroom. Luckily, neither Roy nor her father had seen her and Marrec descend the hillside path.
“Her fault if she left the truck for our use.” Her dad snorted. “Bert, next door.”
The next ranch over was about five miles away, if you rode.
“Huh?” said Roy.
“The Honorable Trent Philbert next door,” her dad said patiently. Calli had never heard that tone from him in her life. Something niggled at her mind as she heard Bert’s name, but she lost it as her dad continued.
“The guy with those fancy horses? He’s a big shot in Denver. The Philberts have had the spread down the road for the last eighty years, but mostly live in Denver and use the place a coupla times for vacation. Damn shame. He and that new flaky wife of his and those horses came down the day before Calli left. Bert’s always had a soft spot for Calli.” He grunted. “She gave him some money to invest from her winnings.”
“Really?” asked Dora. “How much?”
“Dunno,” her dad said.
Neither did Calli. She’d given Bert five percent of her first year’s winnings, and a little more every year when she’d seen him at the National Western Stock Show in Denver. Wonder how much she had. A soft sigh escaped her at the recollection of that money. If nothing else, it would give her and Marrec a stake. She hadn’t known Bert had arrived, with or without fancy horses.
“But their clothes!” Dora tsked.
“Yeah, those looked weird,” Roy said.
Marrec met her eyes, looked down at himself in his dreeth leathers. Calli had changed into some of her old clothes.
“Probably came from onna those theme parks,” her dad said indifferently. “Guy had been callin’ Calli to persuade her to work for him—Renaissance Past, or somethin’ like that.”
Calli blinked. That was true. Interesting how her dad spun a story. How easily he’d accepted and explained her disappearance. She bit her lip as anger spurted through her.
The clock in the living room bonged five.
“It’s suppertime and they’re lat—” Dora started.
Pulling the door open, Calli went into the kitchen. All places were set. With flowered paper napkins, too.
“Good evening, folks,” she said.
“Good evening, folks,” Marrec echoed.
After dinner, Calli showed Marrec around the ranch, helped with the evening chores and introduced herself and Marrec to the new horses—cutting horses, appropriate for a cattle ranch.
If…if they couldn’t get back to Lladrana…nerves jumped in her stomach…but she shoved that thought into a little box and locked it away, because otherwise she teetered on the edge of panic. Continued to plan for a future here on Earth. Had to. Keep moving forward.
But there was no way she’d get the ranch now that Dora had taken possession. Everyone in the area would favor her dad and his new wife over Calli. Calli was younger, would be expected to make her own way, live at her husband’s home. She swallowed hard. How she wanted that.
She’d fight, but didn’t expect it would take long. Only the time to talk to the bankers, negotiate with her dad, probably three weeks at the most. Three weeks to find a way back through the crystal to Lladrana…after that, the best Calli could do would be to walk away with money in her pocket to find a new place, another Power point to reach her home.
Time and again, Calli touched Marrec—more often than she ever had since those first few days in Lladrana. And each time, he returned her affection…even if it was only a warm look in his eyes.
Her fears calmed. She wasn’t alone with people who disliked her, had no use for her.
She gave Marrec the penny tour of the house, too, noting with wide eyes that the place now had three computers. The one she’d installed for the ranch business was replaced by a much newer, fancier model, and the desk papers looked arranged in a different pattern than her dad used—Roy, or Dora. Another, smaller desk made an L and sported another new computer.
Roy had a computer in his room, the spare room on the second floor. From what she could see at a glance, he had a stack of college texts—mostly on agriculture and ranch management.
As soon as it was dark and the others had gone to the living room and switched on TV, Calli took Marrec up to her room. She wasn’t up to explaining television, and Marrec, who’d been doing pretty well around the ranch, showed strain lines dug in near his eyes. He’d spoken little but observed everything. She got the impression that he was learning English quickly.
They showered, bumping bodies and making love, then went to bed after another try to contact Alexa and Marian, and a language lesson, with Marrec asking questions.
There, in the dark, Calli could whisper her real concerns. “Do you think we’ll be able to get back through the crystal? Do you think they’ll be able to Summon us back? Do you think they’ll even try?”
He didn’t answer her for long minutes. “The survey of the island must have been your task. You completed it. And have trained people to partner with volarans. It will depend upon the volarans, if they leave like they did before.”
She cleared her throat. “There was something else. Something I showed the volarans—how to turn invisible.”
He jerked beside her. “What?”
So she told him of the flight over the Dark’s nest, how she’d triggered an instinctive response in Thunder—for invisibility. She even took Marrec’s hand and tried to enter the same state of consciousness, but was too disturbed and tense. She almost laughed. She could manage to enter a different mind-set above an evil that gnawed at a planet, yet couldn’t throw off her own fears in a house that she’d known all her life.
She gave a watery sniff, rolled close to him, welcoming his hard body against hers, his arms around her. “Surely they wouldn’t think that I’d, we’d, abandon our children, would succumb to the Snap. They must know something went wrong.”
He stroked her hair. “I don’t know, Calli.”
> That night, after Calli was asleep, Marrec lay in the small, lumpy bed and felt the tension they’d released explosively in lovemaking claim him once again. He was petrified down to his toenails and trying hard not to think that they were stuck in this very strange world. Yet he had little hope. The Marshalls didn’t consider Calli essential. They had their own Exotique. Calli had fulfilled her task, and her techniques for training volarans had been taught to others.
She’d even shown the volarans how they could protect themselves. Whatever her task had been, she’d fulfilled it. Them. Exceptionally well, of course. Would they want her back? The Chevaliers were still an independent force and he didn’t believe they would muster the desire and the zhiv to pay the fee the Marshalls would want again to return Calli. If the volarans left again…but would they? They loved Calli, but she’d given them something new, too, would they consider that enough?
Did anyone even realize that the Snap had gone wrong? That Calli hadn’t left of her own free will?
He, of course, was of no importance whatsoever and wondered how much Power it would take to open the crystal in the mountain from Lladrana. He knew enough from the time he’d spent this day to understand his Power—and Calli’s—was much less here.
He tried not to think of his children, of how Jetyer would feel abandoned. Nothing he could do there. He’d tried on his own to contact his son, to no avail, and was hesitant to ask Calli to send to Jetyer. Would people believe the boy if he said he’d heard his father and mother? Somehow Marrec didn’t think so. They’d put it down to grief.
Marrec pulled Calli closer, closed his eyes as they prickled when she snuggled close, threw a leg over his, as if to keep him near. He was glad he was with Calli. Despite the way it appeared, with him knowing little of the language and nothing of the society, he sensed she needed him more than ever.
This little trip had certainly unblocked his hearing in some ways. The air here was different, with an odd metallic tang he didn’t like. The sky was not quite the correct color blue, and the machines he’d seen were frightening. He hadn’t much cared for the food, and had listened hard to the quiet Song between himself and Calli to sense what was going on. Just from the abrupt and sharp tones others used with her, he’d known she was fighting battles where he could only stand beside her and offer support, not even understanding.
All this time, he hadn’t fully comprehended how hard it must have been for Calli on Lladrana. She’d seemed to fit into life—his lifestyle—so easily. He was smart enough to figure that the Song would Summon only those people who could adapt to Lladrana, but still it was a major accomplishment that he hadn’t given her credit for.
When they’d had that argument, he’d been right. Their priorities should have been with their children, and Calli wanted to please everyone. He could see why that was, now, with that hard old man who didn’t care a brass coin for such a lovely daughter. But she’d also felt as if there were other duties she had to fulfill—which he hadn’t truly realized.
He had been the one most at fault. He’d embraced his new life, wanted to be the best landowner in Lladrana. Wanted his estate to be considered a model for others. Wanted to implement every good idea he’d dreamed of over the years.
Underneath everything, he’d still been looking for status. His motives hadn’t changed, only the means—which Calli had given him when she’d chosen him. He’d drawn away from Calli—as much as a Pairbonded person could—and now he regretted it.
Now he could make amends. His life had changed once more, for the worse, riding down the wheel of fortune instead of up, and he knew he’d be lost forever on his own. But Calli would never leave him. The idea wouldn’t even enter her mind and he Sang a quiet prayer for that blessing. If they had to, once again, they would make another start together.
He slept little that night, woke as soon as he heard stirrings below, yet he didn’t get up. He wasn’t ready to face this world on his own, not even to stride across a room that wasn’t too different from those at home. Calli opened blurry eyes and smiled when she saw him. “Marrec.” She rolled a little closer, her gaze sharpened and he saw the joy drain from her.
No, this was not a good place for her, either.
She rolled back and stared at the ceiling. He’d studied those cracks himself.
“I’d forgotten.” She blinked hard and he saw tears on her lashes. “We aren’t home.”
She awoke and it all came rushing back. Her children had been torn from her. Curling up in a ball, she moaned. He held her as she cried, sobs shuddering through her body. He let her weep for them both. Wiped her tears with a handful of funny soft cloth from a box on the bed, and kept her close, stroking her back, making soothing noises.
Finally, she sat up and rubbed her eyes, glanced at a flat circular thing on the wall. “I want to know where I stand, and don’t want to take anyone’s word for it. We need to visit town—Bellem—to look at land records and go to the bank.” Her words were a mixture of Lladranan and English, but he got the drift.
He was glad she’d said “we.” He picked up her fingers and pressed a kiss on them. “Pairling.”
That made her face soften, a smile curve her lips.
“I’ll follow you, just as you followed me.”
She looked stricken, her gaze fell. “I didn’t. I didn’t follow you on Lladrana.”
He cleared his throat. Brushed his lips to her fingers again. “You did those first days.”
She snorted. “We were bound together.”
Brushing hair back from her face, he said, “True, but later you followed your Song, and did what was needful.”
“As you did.”
“Calli, I’m sorry. I should have been less demanding.”
Sighing, she said, “There weren’t any good answers, once we adopted the children. But now it’s different. If—when—” Her lips quivered. “We’ve done enough and we have a family. We can contribute by training, on our estate, not by fighting.”
“I’m glad you see it that way.” He kissed her, long and slow and deep. His body readied. So did hers as he tested it.
“Breakfast, Roy!” called Dora.
Calli flinched.
Marrec gritted his teeth and accepted that he’d find himself in a cold shower shortly. Still, he wanted her happy. So he kissed her brow tenderly. “We will go into this Bellem, then check the crystal again.”
She rolled out of bed, all business. “Yes, Koz transferred money for gems and brought them to Lladrana. I can do the same, but I need to know how much I have…and…” Her eyes were too bright when she rushed into the little bathroom.
He knew what she meant. If they couldn’t get back to Lladrana.
37
Marian knocked on Alexa’s door in her Castle tower.
“Entre!” shouted Alexa.
Opening the door, Marian saw Alexa pacing. The Swordmarshall hadn’t been still since Calli’s and Marrec’s volarans had returned to the northern camp without them.
“How’re the children?” Alexa asked.
“As well as can be expected. Settled here in the Circlet Apartments with us. Thank the Song the feycoocus used major magic to bring us back, and you and Bastien, too.”
“I tell you, she’d never leave those kids of hers. And wouldn’t take Marrec, either.”
“Marrec had to go, he’s Pairbonded,” Marian said.
Scowling, Alexa said, “And how does that happen? I thought a Pairbond was a pretty damn good guarantee that an Exotique stays.”
“We know hardly anything about the Snap.”
“Don’t give me that shit.”
With a weary sigh, Marian sank into a plush chair. “It’s true. I’ve gathered journals, letters, other papers and items from previous Exotiques.”
“Really?” Alexa looked a little distracted from her worry.
Marian smiled. “Yes, I’ll let you have them as soon as I’m finished.”
Alexa scuffed the carpet with her foot. “I still don’t r
ead Lladranan well, especially handwritten cursive. What’s with the Pairbond Exotique thing, though?”
“You’re right, as far as I can tell, no Exotique, male or female, who was bonded to a Lladranan returned to Earth.”
“There’s something screwy going on here,” Alexa said, fiddling with her jade baton.
“There’s always something strange going on.” Marian sighed again, clasped her hands, unclasped them. “Every day something new happens that I’m not prepared for.”
Alexa grunted. “Got down to every few days with me, ’til lately.” She walked to the curved windows of her suite, staring to the west, where shadows still draped the land. “She wouldn’t leave the children.” Her face set in stern lines of determination. “I want her back. Her and Marrec.”
“The volarans didn’t abandon the Castle like they did before she came.”
“Yet.” She shot a glance at Marian. “I can feel the wrongness of her not being here in my bones. Can’t you?”
“It’s as if a major theme is missing from the melody.”
“Got that right,” Alexa said. “I can’t settle.” A brief grin flashed. “Bastien has liked that—for now, more active sex. But I want Calli back.” She looked up at Marian, eyes shadowed. “I don’t think we can win this war without her. This could be the work of her enemy. Or the Dark. Or both. Tell me we can get her back.”
Pain swirled through Marian. She felt it all, Calli’s children’s anguish, the volarans’ shock and distress, the Chevaliers’ wariness, the Tower Community’s deep unease. She promised something she didn’t know she could deliver. “We’ll get her back.”
Marrec had learned early in life that it was near-fatal to show fear, so he kept his locked down around the men and the older woman. And with Calli, too, since he didn’t want her to know how extremely disturbed he was.
He was being very, very careful, like the first weeks on the noble’s estate after he’d been orphaned. For the first time in his life he’d realized the three great streams of luck he’d had. When he’d claimed the trained volaran on the battlefield, which led to being taken with the winged steed to the estate, when Calli had claimed him, and now, surviving once more in a place completely alien to him—with Calli as his guide.
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