Flight To Exile

by Chris Reher

  “She’s gone.” Aletha put some distance between herself and the riser. “We did it! By Dazai, I’ve never been so scared.”

  Galen nodded, still on his knees, gasping for air as though he had just finished a foot race. “We have to hurry. Can you find the seal on Chenoweth?”

  She concentrated on the churning launch. “Yes, I can feel them all. I think. There are ten or so launch sites on Thali, more on the Homeworld. But there is only one on Chenoweth. Hey, you know what? This is the only launch that can actually connect to Chenoweth. Guess that’s why she picked this one, huh?” She laughed, still reeling from their success against the La’il. “This is so easy, now that I know what I’m looking for.”

  Galen heaved himself to his feet.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes. Open the seal on Chenoweth. Hurry!”

  “What about La’il? Shouldn’t we wait to make sure she’s—“

  “There is nothing she can do for now. But we need to get away from here and start working on a way to permanently destroy the launch sites.”

  Using what she had learned during her encounter with the La’il, Aletha probed the launch and was soon able to touch the crystal on Chenoweth. She probed the seal carefully, using as little chi’ro as she could to make the most of the meager resource even as she felt her own reserves drain along with the riser’s power, taxed by the distance to the moon. It took her a little longer than when La’il had been part of this, but eventually she felt the barrier dissolve. “I got it open! The way is clear. Hey, I think I’m good at this! But this riser is pretty much spent. We can probably shape a conduit but it won’t be very stable if there isn’t any chi on Chenoweth to draw on.”

  “Now is the time to find that out.” Chor joined his twin beside the launch and both men raised their hands to shape the conduit needed to reach Chenoweth’s launch site. Soon, a shimmering pillar began to rotate and rise gracefully into the sky. They watched it soar higher, arcing toward the hazy disk hanging in the sky until it thinned and faded from view. They lowered their arms when all of them felt the conduit touch Chenoweth’s crystal where the wealth of chi’ro surrounding the place allowed him to anchor it with the barest nudge of his mind. “It’s there,” Galen whispered. “So damn much of it.”

  Aletha came to stand beside Chor, marveling at the calmly swirling vortex on the launch, visible only because of the space and light it distorted by its presence. “This is incredible. Now that it’s anchored it’s hardly using up any chi’ro at all. Do we just step in there?”

  Chor shook his head. “No, I’ll draw chi through it to this place.”

  “How do you do that?” She furrowed her brow. “Uh, why do you need to do that?”

  “So I can send it to the Homeworld, of course. That’s what we’re here for, after all.”

  “No, it isn’t. What are you talking about?”

  Galen grasped the collar of her cloak and pulled her aside when Chor turned his full attention to the launch. “Watch this.” Ignoring the weakened riser hovering nearby, he began to siphon chi’ro from Chenoweth at a rate that actually began to feel like a strong wind against their bodies. Soon, he was able to form a second conduit and send it into the sky toward the planet where La’il waited. They could almost feel her reaching out to it, eager to merge it into the open launch on the Homeworld. “She wants to come visit,” he said and laughed. “She wants to meet you.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Aletha flung her hand toward the new conduit, thinking only of disrupting its supply of energy before it made contact. The conduit obeyed her command and they watched it dissipate like smoke in the wind.

  Galen, still gripping her collar and looking only mildly bothered by her antics, gave her a shake. She winced when her head snapped back and her teeth came together on the edge of her tongue. “Being annoying is not going to help you live through this day. Now I’m going to have to start over.”

  She peered into his face, which was composed and friendly as always. He might as well have been commenting on the weather. Aletha prodded him cautiously and found herself firmly shut out of his mind. “You can’t mean this,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “I can. And I do.” He lifted his hand to her face and wiped a bead of blood from her lip. It was a casual gesture that would not have been out of place during any of the past days and, for the insanity of the moment, felt far worse than the threat he had made. “Sorry about that. Try not to get in the way. It’s time to finish this now. This vacation is over; it’s time to put the toys away. Unfortunately that means you, Aletha.”

  She felt something akin to a whimper rise in her throat and fought it back. “What are you saying!”

  “Wake up! It’s over. The seal is open. You’re done here and I’m leaving this place now.”

  “What? Is this what you had in mind all along? To trick me into opening the seal?”

  “Of course not. What do you take me for?” He frowned and gazed beyond her as if to puzzle over something. “I changed my mind, that’s all. I’m going home.”

  “Home? Why? You said you didn’t belong there any more. And what about Chenoweth? What about Thali?”

  “They belong to La’il. They always have. If the few colonies on these moons must be sacrificed to sustain our planet, our people, then so be it. I’ve done what I was sent here to do and there is no reason for me to stay here now.”

  “You can’t mean this. You’d help her destroy all of these people? And what about me?”

  “What about you?”

  “Me and you! What about us?”

  “Us?” He scowled. “There is no us. You made that quite clear, I think. You’ve made your choice and now I’ve made mine.”

  She swallowed the panic and the tears threatening to rob her of her voice. “Damn you, don’t do this! I love you, Galen. You know that!”

  “Yes, I know.” He caressed her face, his eyes on his fingers. “You are making this too damn hard,” he said softly. “I love the way you move, your touch, that sweet smile. The way you feel inside my head.” His hand trailed to her throat and closed around it. “I love the way you taste, Goddess, but unfortunately you won’t fit into my bed any more. And that’s where it counts, doesn’t it?” He smiled and briefly closed his eyes as if savoring a pleasant memory. “Going to miss that, I’m sure. Of course I don’t want to hurt you. And so maybe, if you want to stay unhurt for a while longer, you can stop the damn hysterics and let me finish here.”

  His fingers dug into her skin when he pressed his lips to hers in a passionless kiss. When she struggled against him he drew back with a careless laugh. “Not in the mood? Or would you rather have Chor today? He’s a little busy right now.” Gripping her arms, he turned her to the left and shoved her to the ground. “Someone rather powerful up there is trying to keep all that lovely chi’ro out of Chor’s reach. I think they’re upset or something. It would take an earthquake to get his attention.”

  Aletha glanced from him to his twin. Something odd had passed through his eyes when, just for an instant, the flippant tone of his voice had changed as if to add weight to some point he was trying to make. She realized that she had fallen next to the riser.

  Galen turned away when an arrow sailed over their heads. In the distance, Delann’s frantic gestures suggested that he was ordering more of his men to aim at the demons who were clearly a threat to Aletha now. Shaking his head in amusement, Galen sent a wisp of flame across the clearing to set one of the emissaries ablaze. “Those priests burn so easily. It’s those dresses they wear. Impractical, with people like me around.”

  Aletha looked at the riser beside her. Why hadn’t he killed her? Why hadn’t he killed them all? He seemed entirely unconcerned when she shifted to put her hand into the faint emanation of chi’ro. “Stop this, please! You can stop her.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t have a good reason to want to. You don’t understand any of this, Aletha.” He rejoined his twin by the launch to help him regain
control of the flow of energy from Chenoweth. “She knows what’s best. We need Chenoweth’s power or the Homeworld will diminish.”

  “Then let it!” Aletha directed her energies toward an outcropping high above them on the mountainside, sobbing in dread and exhilaration when a deep rumbling sound echoed among the slopes and the ground began to shake.

  Galen and Chor looked up. Huge boulders had shaken loose and, along with currents of smaller rocks and pebbles, began to surge down the mountain on a gray river of stone and loam. The noise blotted out every other sensation, too loud to fit into their ears. Still not shaken out of the eerie calm that possessed them, the twins stood firm by the launch, arms raised, and the wave of rock and debris parted not thirty paces uphill to flow past them on either side, spraying pebbles and dust over the clearing. Aletha cried out when a shard of rock struck her knee, tearing her trousers and slicing into her skin.

  Silence returned grudgingly to the mountainside as the avalanche petered out and took its rumble down into the valley. They stood in a changed landscape strewn with sharp-edged boulders and broken trees whose split, shredded limbs looked too much like bones. Anxiously, Aletha looked for Delann and Yala in the distance, finding them safe on the far side of the rubble. Not everyone had been so fortunate and she could see some of the soldiers rush downhill to look for survivors. Dazed, Aletha realized that once again she had misjudged her abilities.

  The twins turned toward her, their bodies moving in perfect, disturbing synchronicity. “I thought you were against hurting people,” Galen said. “What a waste of energy. I had far too much time to react. You should have just picked up a rock and hit Chor over the head with it. I suppose you wish you’d paid more attention when I wanted to teach you fun things like that. But you wanted to be a healer. What a waste of your talents!” He strode to her and hauled her roughly to her feet. “Never too late, though. Let’s start now. Show me what you can do, Goddess. It’ll be just you and me.” He gestured in a casual sweep to erect an unseen barricade around themselves and the launch. “That’ll keep the boys from interrupting us.”

  Aletha backed away when he circled around her. Chor stood near the conduit to block her way to that escape and prevent her from accessing even a shred of chi’ro from Chenoweth.

  Nothing in Galen’s expression suggested his murderous intentions. She had seen him react to La’il’s torments, controlled by false emotion to boost the adept’s own abilities. He never looked like this at such time, never this dispassionate, so devoid of even a hint of anger. Both of him looked like Chor now, as when Galen was too busy with something to give life to his twin’s expression.

  “Are you in there, Galen?” Aletha said, feeling some hope. He was fighting La’il, she knew now, waging some unimaginable battle to keep her from infusing him with the sort of fury needed to actually harm Aletha. His eyes were flat gray spheres in a bloodless face. “Galen, please wake up. Please don’t let her beat you. Not this time.”

  “How about this,” he said, his voice strained as though he had to force himself to speak. “You stop trying to distract me and I’ll make this very quick. Not what La’il had in mind, but I guess it’s the least I can do.”

  Aletha glanced about for some way to escape the twins. There was now barely any chi’ro venting from the ground here and Chor had a firm grip on what was arriving from Chenoweth. She crouched as if to stanch the blood flowing into her boot but when she rose again her dagger was in her hand. “Don’t make me hurt you,” she said, hoping that she sounded braver than she felt.

  He rolled his eyes and lifted a hand toward her. The knife flew from her fingers and into his, where he snapped it like a twig. “Silly girl. The knife is nothing. The rocks are nothing. You’re going to have to use your head if you want to get at me. But you’re too scared. You’re scared because you know you can kill me. And you don’t want that.” He grinned broadly. “You’ll want to soon enough. So come on! Break my neck, rip Chor’s heart out, burst every vein in my body! Let’s have a real battle. It’ll be fun.”

  Aletha stumbled backward when she realized that his mockery of her was Galen speaking to her. Asking her to kill him to stop this madness. “No,” she sobbed.

  He scowled. “Well, that’s disappointing. Maybe you do need to stick to throwing rocks to see if you can get it right.”

  “Let him go, bitch,” Aletha hissed angrily. Perhaps she could stun him somehow. Perhaps incapacitate him so that La’il would lose her grip on his unconscious mind. At the periphery of her vision, she saw Chor’s hand reach for her shoulder. Startled, she projected the precious little energy she had hoarded at the twins and was surprised when they were thrown backward, onto the rocks.

  Chor and Galen lurched to their feet, his composure finally cracked. There was only an instant of comprehension before utter darkness descended. Aletha’s surprise attack had given La’il the opening she needed. She honed in on his new bruises and whipped this trivial irritation into the mindless rage that allowed her to break through his barriers. Things seemed suddenly much clearer to Galen. He no longer remembered why it had been so important to keep the La’il from taking over completely. A red slash of pain shot through his heads, coloring his vision, obliterating all reason. He seemed to be looking at Aletha through a long tunnel. She was causing this pain; of this he was certain. La’il had said so.

  Galen swung a fist at Aletha and missed when she ducked out of his way. His second blow grazed her. When she tried to force him back again with another burst of energy he was ready and diverted it easily. Whatever she was shouting was meaningless. He lunged again. Barely in time, she deflected a blow meant to kill and this time managed to sweep his feet from under him. He came down painfully on his elbow and heard something crack.

  “Kill her already and be done,” La’il shrieked into his brain. “She’s weak now. Finish it and get on with your work!” She laughed spitefully when Chor leaped toward Althea and grasped a fistful of her curls. Whipping her around to face him, he wrapped his hands around her neck. She had little energy left to keep his powerful hands from crushing her. “What did you tell me?” La’il cackled. “You’d rather die than hurt her? Is this killing you now? No? I didn’t think so.”

  Chor laughed. It was a harsh, triumphant, and utterly foreign sound. A terrible sound. Had it even been he who had laughed? He looked down at his hands and then into Aletha’s terrified eyes. Seconds skewed to hours as his mental focus shifted to Galen and he suddenly saw Chor like a stranger, someone outside himself carrying out the La’il’s murderous commands. Who was that? Galen came to his feet and rushed toward his twin - that alien, soulless monster who wanted Aletha dead. He gripped Chor’s wrists to pry him away. La’il shrieked in protest, unable to maintain her control of the two bodies no longer thinking as one. She fought to maintain Chor’s iron grip around Aletha’s neck while fighting to pull Galen away from his twin but she could not do both. Before she found the means to overpower him again, he severed his mental link to her and gave up his control of the launch. Aletha tumbled away from them, gasping for air.

  Something struck hard against his back, just below his shoulder blade. Galen saw the feathered end of a crossbow quarrel protrude from Chor’s back and he felt the searing pain that came with it. The surrounding shield of chi’ro had collapsed and now Delann was racing toward them, long dagger raised. He collided heavily with Chor and drove his weapon into his chest. Chor staggered backward and tripped over Aletha onto the launch.

  “Galen!” Aletha screamed although no sound escaped her tortured throat when Chor fell back, arms flailing. Galen flung himself after his twin and gripped his vest with both hands. The current of chi’ro was strong and in an instant both twins were swept into the conduit and disappeared.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Galen’s momentum catapulted both of his bodies through the instance of nothingness to land on a surface no less jagged and rocky than the battleground they had just left behind. They tumbled once or twice, and lay
still. There was someone nearby; he thought he heard voices and there was coughing and a groan that might have originated in himself. The pain in his back and chest was excruciating. When he finally opened his eyes he saw Chor motionless on the ground, the long dagger buried in his chest. Panicked, he reached out to grasp the hilt.

  “Don’t!” Several hands restrained him. “Let us help him,” someone nearby swam into focus. An older man, balding and stout, bent over him with an expression of mixed apprehension and curiosity. “There is much damage.”

  “Have to get back,” Galen moaned, trying to rise. The ground tilted dangerously and he sank back again.

  “You’re not going anywhere!”

  When Galen felt the slow torture of someone pulling Delann’s dagger from Chor’s body he had to agree. When he was able to breathe again he sat up more slowly, keeping his eyes averted from the slashed body of his twin lying next to him, too much blood trickling over the bare rocks in long rivulets. A quick inventory of his own limbs suggested that he was mostly unharmed, in spite of the pain. It was then that he realized that the La’il was no longer inside his mind. He shook his head, trying to remember. “Gods, I tried to kill her!”

  “Kill who?”

  Galen looked around. A dozen or more people surrounded him; some were staring at him in wonder, some up at the conduit soaring into the air. Others were bent over the dying man lying beside him, their hands on his injuries. Men and women, tall and lithe, dressed in rich layers of gauzy fabric loosely arranged for modesty rather than the need to shield them from the balmy weather.

  “What is going on? Who are you people?” Galen staggered painfully to his feet and as he straightened up he found himself overlooking a vast, shallow valley where open meadows alternated with swathes of forest. Brilliant sunlight flooded the area. From everywhere, Galen perceived the unmistakable presence of risers. But here the chi’ro did not arc through the air in an orderly stream, drawn toward some central collection point to be hoarded, and then meted out where needed most. Here each riser simply rose in an airy column until it spread out high over their heads to form an unseen dome over the valley. In the far distance, behind a gently shimmering veil of chi’ro, the jagged peaks of snowcapped mountains guarded plains of ice and rock. As if to confirm what he saw, both the Homeworld and the small blue and white orb that was Thali hung in the clear sky above him. “Unbelievable,” he marveled, drawing the moon’s immense power into himself and his twin. “We have to channel this to Thali! Help me!”