We hadn’t known how to refuse, and the memory rankled. I don’t forget, I snapped back. In Om’ray, less connected to the M’hir, a remnant of a Chosen’s mind was left behind: enough to keep the body alive, sometimes for years. They called such the Lost, for such individuals had no personality or will, and they became wards of the Adepts.
And useful servants.
Reminders of our vulnerability. Aryl’s sending was sharp. Useful now, Sira, when you deal with two acting strangely, not just one.
Good advice. Unfortunately, I didn’t know Luek di Kessa’at, other than her rumored fondness for pet birds. On second thought, they might not have been pets; after all, she’d answered my summons to the M’hiray wearing a coat of feathers. Though Luek hadn’t been with Nyso when the Assemblers attacked, they’d been inseparable since coming to Sona.
The same could be said for most of the M’hiray Chosen, the instinct for self-preservation overriding mutual dislike. In the Trade Pact, Clan Joinings had been dictated by Council, determined to breed for greater Power in the M’hir; while instinct drove the reproductive urge, very few such pairings involved affection. Some, like my parents, had actively loathed one another and met in person only when ordered to produce offspring.
We’d done it to ourselves. Before Morgan entered my life and heart, I’d thought my mother, Mirim sud Teerac, and her group of M’hir Denouncers foolish in their belief our ancestors had Joined for love. She hadn’t lived to know she’d been right. For those who’d never left Cersi, the Om’ray, had Chosen who shared a deep, fond connection, often passionate. Their overt affection for one another was all the more startling to us for being so commonplace to them.
As Aryl reminded me, I wasn’t dealing with Om’ray. I was dealing with M’hiray Chosen who hadn’t behaved normally since leaving the Trade Pact and now hid in a dark room like something wild.
Or something afraid.
Wishing for Morgan’s handlamp, I took a cautious step forward. The room shouldn’t have furniture, but they could have ’ported in some of the few loose pieces on the ship. “Nyso. Luek. I’m here.” I kept my voice calm and steady. “Are you all right?”
Where were they?
I couldn’t fumble around in the dark. Sona, I ordered. Lights but only a—I squinted in full simulated daylight. Stupid, annoying metal brain—
There.
Morgan’s instincts had been right. The pair huddled side-by-side on the floor, their backs pressed into the far corner of their little room as if to face some threat, eyes closed. They were dressed as they’d been when they’d run for their lives from the Assemblers, Nyso in a laced shirt and embroidered pants, Luek in her evening wrap of brilliant bird feathers. His shirt was torn and her wrap was soiled, feathers broken or missing. Neither wore shoes.
Neither reacted to the light.
Drool glistened at the corners of their mouths. The ends of Luek’s thick black hair twitched fitfully; otherwise, they might have been frozen in place.
Terrified, I wouldn’t—couldn’t—reach for their minds. The M’hir linked us, one to the rest; at its deepest level, beneath consciousness, below self, lay neither control nor defense. Not against what I suspected here.
Madness.
Even with my Power, even with shields stronger than any, I knew better than to touch either with my bare hands. Such a physical bridge brought Clan minds close: an ease for those weaker, a polite means of private exchange, an enhancement to intimacy.
Only a Healer trained to deal with ills of the mind, and with the Talent to do so, could dare help them.
We’d two on Sona. An Om’ray Adept, Ruis di Nemat, once of Rayna.
And Jason Morgan.
Who’d insist on helping—and whom I wouldn’t risk, given another choice. I sent an urgent summons to Ruis. No point sending a locate; she was among the few Om’ray so far unable to ’port, which meant waiting while she ran here.
I looked down at the di Kessa’ats. Ruis, is there anything I can do?
Let them hear your voice, came the quick, confident reply. Let them know they aren’t alone.
I took a deep breath, then squatted near the pair, out of reach. “I’m here. You aren’t alone.” As if that sounded convincing. I firmed my tone. “Nyso, it’s Sira.” Did an eyelid flicker? “You’re safe, both of you. Nothing can hurt us on the ship.”
Nyso’s eyelids shot open, too wide, revealing pupils dilated despite the bright lights. “A ship? What ship? Where are you taking us?” The Clansman thrust himself to his knees, his lean face haggard, and I scrambled back. “You’ve no right!”
Luek covered her eyes and shuddered. “This isn’t real. I’m at home. I’m at home.”
“No right!”
“I’m at home. Home. Home!”
Their voices overlapped, protest and denial a chorus of misery I couldn’t help or stop, their emotions stirring the M’hir. I moved away, going to the door in a nonsensical instinct to block it, fearing where they’d try to go.
Not that they’d use the door.
I could stop their ’port, if I must. But should I? Did I have that right, if dissolving in the M’hir was their choice?
Sira!? Morgan, feeling my agitation. I’m coming!
The pounding of running feet made me sag against the doorframe. It’s all right, I sent quickly. Help’s here.
I waved the urgent trio of Om’ray into the room, sharing with them my relief and concern.
Ruis went straight to her patients, gesturing back the rest.
I might have guessed Destin di Anel, Sona Clan’s First Scout, would answer a call that could mean trouble. She’d been the first Om’ray we’d encountered on Cersi and steadfast through our adventures there. The formidable Clanswoman continued to wear the leather jerkin and gauze leg and arm wrappings of her former life. Paired knives hung from her belt: one long, with a wicked hooked tip, the other short; both incredibly sharp, by Morgan’s account. How he’d convinced her to let him handle her prized weapons was beyond me.
Why Destin expected to need them, shipboard, was the greater mystery and disturbing to contemplate, but I wasn’t about to argue. She’d helped save her people and mine.
By her quick dismissive glance at the di Kessa’ats, the First Scout rued making the effort for them, but I knew better. The athletic Om’ray of the jungle canopy might view the rest of us as soft and overfed, but above all they valued life.
“Sira.” Destin gestured a respectful greeting as she came to me, one I returned. She was taller, her black hair confined by a metal net, her pale skin dappled with rich brown markings; a di Licor trait reduced among the M’hiray to freckling. Her comely face also bore the scars of a stitler attack, a creature I’d no doubt she’d killed for its presumption; a face that lost expression as the third Om’ray joined us.
The former Speaker for Sona, Odon di Rihma’at had changed his garb for that found in the ship’s stores: a soft, light brown, pocket-rich garment so like the spacer coveralls Morgan and I had worn on the Fox I’d been astonished. My Human had merely shrugged, saying when a design worked, it worked. He’d cut the sleeves from his, saying he found the ship’s temperature, set for Om’ray, too warm. If he’d go without his vest, it wouldn’t be, a thought I kept to myself.
No matter what he wore, Odon was handsome, even for a Clan Chosen, with elegant lines to the bones of cheek and jaw, and thick black hair above a high brow. A brow now creased, his lips thinned. What is this? he sent with a snap.
I chose not to be offended. Honesty was more useful than manners, especially in someone I trusted as part of the ship’s governing Council. “I don’t know,” I replied with matching bluntness but quietly. “I found them like this.”
“Some malady of your people, no doubt.” Odon had lowered his voice, but Ruis sent him a sharp look over her shoulder. He subsided, a six-fingered hand reaching to his breas
t, then dropping.
He hadn’t lost the habit, to handle the pendant that hung there when he’d acted as Speaker for his Clan, the only one permitted to negotiate with their Tikitik neighbors. I’d worn one, too, briefly, a heavy bit of metal that had proved to be more than a simple badge of office. Not only could the Tikitik sense some material used in its construction and locate them—and thus their wearers—but the pendant itself was a transmitter. Oud, Tikitik, or Om’ray: every Speaker had had a pendant. Meaning every conversation had been overheard.
Who’d eavesdropped on the doings of Cersi’s three species? Among the possibilities, an installation on one or both of Cersi’s moons; there were Tikitik who believed the Makers “watched” their world from that vantage, ready to pass judgment. Morgan and our scientists felt there was another, not mutually exclusive. They suspected the Cloisters within each Clan might have used the transmissions to share and record data on the Hoveny experiment.
A puzzle of no concern to me. Who or what had gobbled up the pendants’ data was a moot point, in my opinion, the experiment being over. To be sure, I’d ordered the revolting devices left behind on Cersi.
They had been, except for mine, snapped up by Morgan in case of some unforeseen eventuality. It sat deep in his pack, wrapped, he’d assured me, to mute any detection. I hadn’t tried to dissuade him; my Human’s curiosity was boundless.
I forced my mind to the present, watching Ruis. Lightly, with the tip of her smallest finger, the Healer-of-minds stroked Nyso’s forehead, then Luek’s. Each closed their eyes and slumped in one another’s arms. I eased the part of my Power I’d held ready to stop a futile ’port, relieved.
“They’re no danger to anyone but themselves,” the Rayna Adept pronounced, getting to her feet. “They should be brought to the Core and kept as they are. From what I sensed, they haven’t slept for too long. Such confusion can be the result.” Calm. Convincing.
Liar, I thought with some admiration.
Destin and I concur. Aryl’s sending was subdued. A scout posted too many nights in a row might give a false alarm—we’ve never known one to forget where she was or fall.
“I can take them,” I told Ruis. Two could play at confidence.
The First Scout’s eyes flashed to me, but she offered no other objection. Odon’s frown deepened. “I don’t like the idea of having them close to anyone else.”
Ruis drew herself up. “Are you a Healer-of-minds?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Sira. If you could take me as well? Remarkable,” she murmured at my nod.
I’ll meet you there, Morgan offered.
No need, I replied. Ruis plans to keep them asleep for some time. She thinks that may be all they need.
The Om’ray Healer could be right, I told myself as I concentrated . . . gathering Nyso and Luek with Ruis . . .
I wasn’t inclined to bet on it.
Interlude
BETWEEN, it was called, the darkness that separated NothingReal from the living vastness of AllThereIs. Touching it, ever aware, were Those Who Watched. Theirs was willing sacrifice, for to dip into Between brought memory, with its attendant confusion. Some went mad rather than bear it. Others, overwhelmed, became lost, Between. A few, more powerful, held intact; could be heard at need or by desire by those able.
All Watched for what didn’t belong, for instability. Vigilance had failed once, long ago. Through the resulting breach had come such destruction, AllThereIs had reeled.
Never again.
One such Watcher stirred. Not alarmed, not yet. Watchers were beings of patience and caution, when there was no need to act. This one reached outward, seeking what had caught her attention. Was it here? A hint of changespice, perhaps, escaped its bed. A forgotten song, or new one, let roam free. Such things and any could happen, in AllThereIs.
Such things and any, here, weren’t the worry.
Between, was. To be certain, she’d need to be closer. To move within AllThereIs required purpose as well as direction, and claim the attention of others in turn. Unkind.
Unwise.
She would wait, here.
And Watch.
Chapter 3
I WASN’T SURE what caught my attention. This wasn’t the Silver Fox, prone to mechanical muttering just when I’d settled to sleep.
The Fox was gone, reduced to a mound of slag in a shipcity an unfathomable distance away from here and now, and the great starship we’d continued to call Sona for lack of a better name made no perceptible sound as it traveled.
Maybe that was it, I told myself, closing my eyes. The silence.
If I didn’t count the deep, slow breathing of the multitude sharing the Core, the loudest of which was right beside my ear. Normally, I quite liked to hear my Chosen, not to mention feel the beat of his pulse against my skin; depending on the moment, such sensations were as apt to arouse as soothe or, as now, reassure me he was here and no longer roaming the ship.
From the current pace of his breaths, and to my inner sense, Morgan slept soundly. If he hadn’t wakened me, I thought with a smidge of disappointment, what had? I resisted the impulse to sit up and look around. The faintest possible glow outlined the bases of the beds, to prevent stubbed toes during visits to the accommodation, and I was unwilling to disturb Morgan or anyone else. It was, after all, the middle of shipnight.
Were lights on in the rest of the ship?
Morgan, who’d again missed the evening meal in order to continue exploring, thought it likely the ship reacted to his presence, illuminating wherever he wandered, corridors going dark behind his back. There were lights on, I’d checked, whenever a door opened. Except if that door opened into here, during ship-imposed night.
I could ask Sona, I supposed, but then it made the whole question of lights seem overly important. I refused to guess what the ship might do then.
Our tenth shipnight, lying here together, speeding through subspace. Already a challenge to tell one shipday from the next. How many more before they blurred into a sameness? Until more of my people lost themselves like Nyso and Luek?
Not thoughts to help me fall back to sleep, I scolded myself, pushing them aside. We’d get there—all of us, including the di Kessa’ats, who’d be back to being a nuisance—when we did.
Wherever “there” was.
That did it. Like an itch impossible to scratch, thinking about our destination. I’d ordered the ship to take us home. In hindsight, that may have been—
. . . what was that?
My right hand rested on my belly, not yet round with the life inside. I’m sorry I woke you, Aryl.
It wasn’t you. With a hint of consternation. Something’s not right—look here.
She’d felt it, too, whatever had wakened me. Where?
Come.
I let her draw my mind after hers, into the M’hir. With no outward sign, Morgan came awake, instantly alert. Just as well, I thought, glad of his warm golden presence as I entered the dark.
The M’hir. Aryl had named it after the violent mountain winds that swept across her home on Cersi each year. The wind brought the Harvest.
The M’hir I knew was nothing so benign.
Its darkness moved, to Clan senses. Sometimes with a snap of pressure or unpredictable and crushing weight; sometimes, as now, a heave as if it sought to rid itself of me and mine. I didn’t take it personally. Not a good place to linger, the M’hir; it was, however, part of us.
For a portion of each Clan mind was rooted in that darkness; it claimed the rest upon death, consciousness become ghost, to dissolve and disappear.
Enough of us, surely, to fill it, those past terrible days.
I let myself reach for the living. Their resting minds showed as fragile, distant lights; I took great care not to draw them deeper.
I felt— Aryl’s mindvoice trailed away. But where?
Morgan’s, strong
and familiar, Here. As if he’d taken my hand to guide me, I found myself near one light in particular as it sputtered, about to fail. Nyso? Luek?
Heedless where I was, I cried out in furious protest, NO!
The M’hir reacted to my emotion, as of course it would, darkness whipping to maelstrom. Before it could get worse, I yanked the three of us to safety.
Morgan rolled to his feet, snapping on the tiny handlight he’d packed in anticipation of an uncertain future. Practical, my Human. I freed myself from blankets to pad after him between the beds.
The Core was more a village than dormitory. Yes, everyone slept together, finishing their day by changing into the sleeveless white shifts the ship provided, but where there’d been simple rows of beds, enough for twice our number, now stood organized clusters, with space between.
To create that space, about a third of the beds had been removed and stored. Others, stripped of their padding, became low tables. The modest reorganization helped us deal with the reality of our forced confinement here. If there was a hint of getting back at Sona, I was the last to argue.
Family groups took up the middle, male unChosen and the Choosers who might find them irresistible on opposite ends of the long chamber. Although there’d been no incidents, no one wanted a repeat of Ermu sud Friesnen’s blatant ambush of her Candidate in the shower; the success of their Joining had owed more to blissful ignorance on both sides than sense. Since, to the simmering disgust of at least one M’hiray Chooser, I’d put Eand di Yode and her Chosen, Moyla—Om’ray Adepts and former Councilors of Sona—in charge of future matches. Tle could rail at them until exhausted, but she wouldn’t. The elderly pair were among the few she respected.
Most importantly, Eand, however minimal her Talents as Sona Clan’s remaining Healer, had the strength to help Tle, should we ever have a Candidate who could survive her. Time was on Tle’s side, a Chooser’s physiological age unchanging until Choice, or not. It depended on how frustrated she became.
The Gate to Futures Past Page 4