Flight To Exile

by Chris Reher

  “So she can’t hurt you if you don’t let her in? Why do you let her in at all?”

  “Because I work for her. All prime adepts do. That is why we exist. But most of them cannot communicate with her the way I do. It’s the main reason I was sent up here instead of someone else.”

  “It seems so, well, magical. She is so very far away. How can she do these things?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Galen said. “Somehow, the La’il knows how to find something unique to each person and use it to find them and to touch them with her thoughts. It’s a rare gift. Communicating like that is not a common talent among my people. Other than the La’il, there are only a handful of adepts on the Homeworld able to do this and I am one of them. Not very well, really, but each generation improves. It’s wonderful, but hardly magic.”

  She nodded and turned her attention to carefully folding her map again. “I think I’ve pried enough. But you frightened me yesterday. Should I lock my door in case she comes back?”

  He peered at her closely and after some time decided that she was joking. Hopefully. “Aletha, if anything happened to you the La’il would come up here herself to roast me over a slow fire.”

  She grinned back at him. “Listen,” she said, changing the subject once again. “While we're traveling around like this, why don't you teach me some of the things you can do with this, this magic you showed me? Like the way I was able to fix your shoulder.”

  “There isn't much to work with here.”

  “Maybe you'll find some along the way. Please?”

  He had already decided to help her develop her talents, if for no other reason than to keep herself safe from the emissaries. Besides, it would be a sure way to displease the La'il. “Sure,” he smiled. “Why not?”

  “This is so exciting! What sort of thing will I learn? Like calling up a waterspout like you did?”

  He nodded. “We’ll take it slow. I don’t want any accidents.”

  “Accidents!”

  “You saw that missile, that fireball, in the garden yesterday. Things like that can get away from you. You can underestimate how much chi you need or end up applying too much. I know of no novice who hasn’t collected a fair share of pain while learning how to handle chi’ro. Your mentor’s job is to see to it that there aren’t any bystanders also getting into some of that pain.”

  “You got some pain?” She snickered. “Other than that nasty slice there?” She gestured at his side.

  “Hey, that is an honest battle scar. But, yes, my training was no easier than anyone’s, or what yours will be like. I remember one year I fell out of the sky twice!”

  “You can fly?” she gasped.

  “Well, let’s call it floating. You can learn that, too. But not on this rock.”

  “I can’t wait!”

  “You have to know it takes a long time to learn how to do anything more than just push things around. Just wanting something to happen works sometimes, like when you want to heal someone. But imagine how much better you could heal someone if you knew exactly how they were hurt and exactly where to apply chi’ro. You have to know how you want something to happen, and what you must do to accomplish that. These things aren’t easily explained, or mastered.”

  “Like how you steered the ship today. I was terrified.”

  “Well, actually, that wasn’t very difficult and didn’t even take much chi. It’s a boat on water; it moves easily. We only had to make sure there was always some distance between it and the rocks. If the water in the channels had been shallower we would have crashed. But even with the little chi’ro it takes to do this, it took all three of us to get us through. There just isn’t enough of it on this moon. And as you saw, it knocked us off our feet.”

  “I meant to ask about that. I was exhausted.”

  “Remember how you felt when we were steering the ship? When we pulled in the riser?” Galen watched her nod; that much chi’ro channeling through her body, whipped into palpable energy by the two adepts, would have been a matchless sensation. “It’s easy to feel invincible when you’re sucking up so much chi. You can lose track of the riser itself and when it’s used up there is only the ambient chi’ro. That’s gone in moments and you can end up draining yourself before you even notice that there isn’t any more to work with. We call it going over. It’s like bleeding bits of yourself to continue doing whatever it is you were doing. It’s dangerous and we receive much training to handle shortages like that. But today we couldn’t just stop before we got clear of the islands and so we ended up going over. Happened to us a few times already on this moon. On the Homeworld this would have been easier.”

  “It wouldn’t have made us so tired?”

  He smiled. “We wouldn’t even have noticed. We wouldn’t have to pull in the riser. In fact, we wouldn’t even have to steer the ship.” He reached for her hand to grip it tightly in making his point. “Aletha, on the Homeworld you could have picked up the Ruane and flown it across the islands. You could have sunk all four of those emissary ships with a thought. You could have reversed the direction of the tide itself!”

  She looked from him to Chor, her eyes wide in astonishment. “You can do that?”

  Chor shook his head. “You can.”

  She stared at nothing for a long time while the twins watched her immobile face, wondering if she was beginning to understand the enormity of what lay before her. Galen did not for a moment doubt his estimate of her abilities. During those harrowing minutes in the island channels he had felt the power of her mind as clearly as he saw her face. The talent was there, sleeping and untrained, never tested with any fuel but the pitiful shreds of chi’ro produced by Thali moon. The only time he had stood in the brilliance of a mind such as this was when he was tethered to the La’il.

  He was surprised when Aletha suddenly laughed. “Wouldn’t it be funny if that dreadful Tsingao could see that? He gets so incensed when someone whistles up a sleep-song, imagine what he’d do if he saw a ship flying through the air!”

  He joined her laughter and even Chor fell in. None of them were aware of the two men at a nearby table, hunched over bowls of wine. They continued to strain for bits of conversation from the three travelers but talk had turned from magic to a list of gifts the woman wanted to purchase in the morning to take to Alarit Dunn. When a musician arrived to fill the cabin with the gentle sounds of a stringed instrument, the men left to hurry to a boat moored not far away. Under the large moon lighting their way in shades of gray and silver, they slipped away and headed for the strait.

  Chapter Seven

  The next morning dawned through a blanket of mist, promising rain later in the day. After purchasing some supplies and gifts for Aletha’s people, she and the twins headed onward with the tide, hoping to cover many miles of shoreline before rain-whipped waves would make it impossible to sail the boat any farther. Aletha knew of a sheltered cove where some caves worn into the seaside cliffs would let them stay dry during the coming night. On the following day, she promised, they would reach the small village she had once called home.

  The day on the water was anything but monotonous. Aletha had many stories about her life in Phrar Thali and the people she had encountered. In turn, Galen told her about the wonders of the Homeworld made possible by the powerful force emanating from the ground, useful to those who had the talent to recognize it. He began to coach her to recognize the power she had found in Delann's garden and try to locate it nearby. He was surprised at how easily she came to pinpoint the directions of distant risers, accurately describing even the size of the emanation. Past noon, they detected a source close by and, with Galen's help, Aletha was able to draw it near. Once captured by Galen's mind, she tried to shape it into a simple gust of wind to propel the boat, delighted when the small craft accelerated. Galen was pleased with her efforts and a little awed by the talent that so effortlessly absorbed this new knowledge. Her tentative experiments grew bolder with each success and he had to guide her progress on only a f
ew occasions.

  The ominous clouds had not yet overtaken them when they reached the shelter of a small inlet. They unloaded what they needed and left their craft to beach itself with the receding tide. Galen had detected a curiously strong riser in the distance and so they set out to find it once their camp was made in the cave she had promised. He hoped it was powerful enough to show Aletha more interesting things to do with it. A few hours’ walk after two days at sea seemed an enticing prospect, even if their hike took them through dense, humid forest. She was completely at home here now and delighted in showing the twins how to orient themselves in the dense underbrush, avoid poisonous growth, and recognize the bewildering confusion of animals that thrived in these parts.

  “Look, lobefruit!” Aletha sprinted ahead of the twins toward a stand of squat, green-stemmed trees. Galen looked up, thinking that one tree here looked much like the next, to see clusters of green-orange fruit weighing down the branches. “I think they might be ripe. I’ll get us some.” Aletha climbed into the tree, apparently not encumbered by the laws of physics. Galen smiled as he watched her reach her prize, stepping closer to catch a few choice specimen – or her, if necessary. “The seeds are the best part,” she called down to him.

  He handed some of the fruit to Chor. “We have something like this on the Homeworld, too. Not as large.” He took a bite. “Or as sweet!”

  She leaned forward to stretch out on her branch and studied the twins with a thoughtful expression. “What did you do on the Homeworld?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do people work on the Homeworld? What do you do with your day? Here we have fisherfolk and builders and traders. What sort of things do you do on the Homeworld?”

  He furrowed his brow. “We’re gods, remember? We just lounge about all day and do godly things.” Still unsure of her sense of humor in this matter, he was glad when she laughed out loud. “We do all of those things there, too. Most people work at something. Not quite as much fishing,” he added dryly.

  “You’re an adept. Adepts work?”

  He nodded. “You need adepts to wield chi’ro and so we are builders or weather makers or healers or we transport things around the planet, each according to their degree of aptitude.”

  “And you?”

  He thought for a moment. “Hmm, I wanted to be a… a healer and I studied for a few years after I was ranked as prime adept. But then La’il needed me for other things and I became a, hmm, a guard I guess, a hired soldier, like those you have here. I hunt people who harm others, or the way we live. As does Chor.”

  “Oh, like a watchman.”

  He thought about the drunken hoodlums hired by the townspeople of Phrar to discourage others from acting like even worse thugs. “Not exactly. We work mainly for the La’il and her ministers. You can probably imagine that there are ways to misuse chi’ro. We try to prevent that.”

  “You said your world is perfect.”

  “Did I say that? I think I said we live well and want for nothing. For some people it’s not enough. We have our share of law breakers.”

  “What do you do to them?”

  “Do we have to talk about that?” he said, feeling rather peculiar about standing in the middle of a forest and talking up a tree. “Come down from there before you break something.”

  “You do something to their minds, don’t you?”

  “That’s rather harsh.” He looked to his twin, trying to determine the direction of her inquisition. “Well, if we have to. If there is no other way. Sometimes we use chi’ro to… to control them.”

  “Are you a good adept?”

  “Well, as things like that are measured, I suppose so.”

  She continued to gaze at him as if observing a particularly interesting insect. “But you’ve killed people also.”

  “Why do you say that?” he asked, a little annoyed by her questions.

  “You killed that trader in Phrar. And his men. They weren’t the first you’ve killed. You knew how.”

  “The work we do means we make enemies along the way. There isn’t always chi’ro about when you need it. Certainly not up here! And so, yes, I’ve had to learn how to do my work without it. You were dying. Should I have waited and bought you fairly the next day?”

  “You didn’t have to kill them.”

  “They might have sent people after us.” Her exploration into his line of work was a little too reminiscent of the one to which he had subjected himself only yesterday.

  “They did anyway, alive or not. You were angry. Because of how they treated me. Because that man hit me. You don’t show it, but you’re angry all the time. La’il knows this.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “Chor’s not angry. That’s why she doesn’t bother with him, I think.”

  Galen glanced at his twin. After some silent exchange Chor laughed and started to walk onward, shaking his head as he went.

  Aletha dangled from her branch and then dropped to the spongy ground. “Do you have a family?” she inquired blithely as they continued their walk through the forest.

  “Yes,” Galen said. “I was born near the mountains. That’s far from where I spend most of my time. But I visit as often as I can. We do, I mean.” He gestured at Chor.

  “I meant do you have your own families? Wives? Children?”

  He shook his head. “Perhaps I will, when I’m older. We live so long now that we choose our time carefully. La’il has seen to it that we don’t have many children. She foresees a time when we might run out of room for everybody.”

  “How could that be?” Aletha marveled. “The Homeworld is so huge!”

  “These things can happen, Aletha,” he said. “It happened before and it’s why our ancestors left Earth.” He shrugged. “And so the La’il has slowed the rate at which we multiply. It seems to be for the best.”

  Aletha looked from Chor to Galen, incredulous. “Um, so you don’t… I mean… uh…” Involuntarily, her eyes moved down along his body, causing a deep blush to color her cheeks.

  Galen laughed. “Yes, we do.”

  “Then how did she do it?”

  “She made a law,” he said. “People need permission to reproduce. Not everyone is happy with that, but for the most part it works. Or were you expecting some magic at work here?”

  “Hmm, yes.”

  He considered for a moment and then decided to dodge the subject of contraception. “And you’d be right,” he said.

  “Here on Thali people have many children. Not all of them live, of course, but there are enough to keep a family growing.”

  “We don’t have families like you do. My people form clans and raise the children as part of that group. So when they have permission to have another one, they choose the parents carefully, usually at least one adept. Everyone wants their child to be born with some talent.”

  Aletha stopped walking, her hand halted halfway to lifting a branch out of her way. “You are joking with me now,” she accused.

  “I’m not. People look to the adepts to provide their offspring with some advantages. Because of that each new generation produces more adepts and also more powerful ones. I’ve done that a few times, myself.”

  “You’ve done what?”

  “Passed on my genes. We’re prime adepts. This sort of genetic material is in demand. And if we manage to breed some talent into someone’s kid our worth as adepts increases.”

  She frowned. “So you sell your children.”

  “What? No, of course not. Why do you say that?”

  “Well, if you give away your children and receive some favor or wealth or status for it, then it’s like you’re selling them, isn’t it?”

  He gestured for her to keep walking, once again made uncomfortable by her explorations into his life. “No, that just the way it is on the Homeworld. Those are not my children. They belong to whoever raises them. I just… helped to cause them to be, that’s all. We weren’t raised by our birthmother, either.”

  “Your
mother gave you away?” she exclaimed. “It’s not just the men who do this?”

  “Some women do. But she didn’t. We were supposed to be part of her clan. But there was an accident and she died. Something happened to our father, too, but I’m not too clear what that was or who he was, even. We were raised by another clan. A farming place. I loved it there. La’il took us away to the schools when our talents emerged.”

  Aletha’s eyes shifted to Chor some distance ahead of them, as usual seeming content in his silence. He moved steadily through the underbrush, like Galen showing no sign of tiring as he leaped over obstacles with easy grace or effortlessly moved deadfall out of their way. “You were… made to be like that? To look like that? To be adepts?”

  Galen nodded, embarrassed by her scrutiny. “Both of our parents were prime adepts. And their parents. Some of our children are, too.”

  “It would seem to me things like that ought to be left for the gods to decide. Breeding people like farm animals! What a world! But I suppose it must amuse you to bed so many women.”

  He shook his head, biting back a grin. “That isn’t always appropriate.”

  “Then how do you do it?”

  Galen pondered her question, wondering how he would explain such matters to someone likely ignorant of the finer points of human anatomy and certainly the more scientific applications of chi’ro. “Magic,” he said at length. “And it doesn’t happen as often as you seem to think. A lot of rules of selection have to be followed or blood lines would get pretty tangled. We have people who do nothing but keep accounts of who is related to whom. They help find suitable sires when one is needed.”

  “This sounds awful! Don’t you want to keep any of your… your offspring?”

  “Sure, some day.”

  “If La’il lets you,” she amended.

  He shrugged. “I qualify within our law. I’m too busy for that sort of thing, though. We’re away too often right now.”

  “Hunting renegade magic users for the La’il?”