Compared to other children his age, Klane was frail and a sickly pale color. He spied Ram, a seven-year-old and a favorite of the warriors. Ram stood atop a man-sized boulder, with his stout legs splayed wide. Ram sneered at the rest of the children—four other boys—standing at the base of the boulder. But he saved his worst sneer for the fifth child, for Klane, standing among the others and looking up.
Despite his age, Ram’s brown face was a slab of sternness. His scarred right hand clutched a knotted club. Klane noticed the clouds drifting high above Ram and the club. There was a taint of ozone in the air, foretelling of coming rain.
“Who is the toughest here?” Ram shouted down. “Who is the hetman of the hill?”
Klane and the other four boys glanced at each other. Each could tell what the other was thinking. They nodded, and together, they lunged up the boulder, scrambling to take Ram down.
Ram knelt and swung his club, hitting the first boy on the side of the head with a decided thud. The boy didn’t cry out, although he lost his hold and tumbled down onto the dirt, landing on his back. He lay here, stunned. Another child crawled up on the other side of the boulder. He sneaked up an arm and grabbed Ram’s left ankle. With a fierce grin, the boy yanked.
Ram shouted in alarm. He must have been surprised and hadn’t been able to swallow the inarticulate sound. The club flew up as Ram hit his head on the boulder. He flailed for a purchase and failed to gain it, falling onto the boy who had tripped him. Together, the two tumbled off, struck a third climbing boy, and all three thudded onto the dirt below.
Klane’s young heart soared. This was glorious. The club landed on top of the boulder, rolled, but remained there. He had never been the hetman of the hill. This was the chance of his life.
He scrambled up faster than the last boy and picked up the club, swinging blindly at the other. Luck aided him today. He connected with a meaty thwack and watched the boy of six pinwheel his arms before falling out of sight.
While gripping the club, Klane stood up on the boulder. He laughed wildly. Then he pointed the blunt end of the club at Ram. “I’m the hetman! I rule the boulder.”
A warrior happened to be passing by and noticed the interplay. He halted and put both fists on his hips. “Ho ha!” he scoffed. “The pale one has defeated the noble Ram. What ails you, child? Have you been feeding from your mother’s teat? Do you lack the strength to defeat the weakling?”
Klane’s grin slipped a little. Ram had a terrible temper.
Ram pushed another boy’s legs off his chest and scrambled upright. He scowled like a grown-up. Pointing at Klane, Ram shouted, “Get off the boulder! You didn’t win it fairly.”
Klane was afraid of Ram, but stubbornness boiled in him. A warrior had seen his victory. That was good. “No!” he yelled at Ram. “I’m the hetman of the hill! And I’ll knock down anyone who tries to push me off.”
Ram growled with rage, kicking dirt. With a savage yell, he shot toward the boulder, and he climbed like a rill.
Klane set himself, judging the moment, waiting for it. As Ram’s head came into view, Klane swung the club two-handed. The wood caught Ram on the shoulder. The thud of it numbed Klane’s small hands, but the blow only enraged Ram that much more. With a surge, Ram made it up and he shoved Klane in the chest.
Klane sailed backward off the boulder. It was a sickening feeling. He struck the dirt with his back, a stone poking him between the shoulder blades, knocking the wind out of his weak lungs. Ram’s dirty feet thudded beside him. Working his mouth, Klane tried to speak. He couldn’t. The air had been knocked out of him.
With his blunt, brown features scrunched up with rage, Ram picked up the fallen club. He swung, hitting Klane’s side. He swung again, striking the legs. Scrambling around to the other side, he bashed a body blow against Klane’s chest.
Klane doubled up, trying to protect himself. He expected the warrior to stop Ram. A glance showed him the warrior nodding with approval. Then knotty wood thudded against Klane’s head, and the world spun crazily.
The warrior finally strode forward. With a single blow, he knocked the club out of Ram’s grasp. “Off with you, young warrior,” the man said. “Don’t kill the pale one. It might make the seeker angry.”
“No!” Ram shouted. “I’m the hetman of the hill. I’m teaching him a lesson he’ll never forget.”
The warrior slapped Ram across the face, knocking the boy to the ground. “Don’t argue with a warrior, boy. Go. Play elsewhere.”
Sniffling back tears, Ram jumped up and ran away, with the other boys following him. The warrior glanced once at Klane, grunted something under his breath, and went his way.
Afterward, after the hurt faded, Klane groaned and spat out dirt. A cut inside his mouth tasted like blood. His entire body ached. To his astonishment, Klane spied the seeker rising from a rock fifteen feet away. Had the old man been there the entire time? Why hadn’t the seeker helped him? He was the man’s apprentice, right?
The seeker moved near and squatted beside him. He muttered as he tended to Klane’s wounds.
“I’m fine,” Klane finally said.
“Then why are you lying on the ground like a sicker?”
“Because I’m hurt,” Klane said.
“Bah,” the seeker said. He produced a stink beetle, putting it under Klane’s nose.
Klane shot to his feet, vigorously rubbing his nose and swaying as his vision blurred.
“Come, boy,” the seeker said, gruffly. “Let me instruct you in the proper way to play such games.”
Klane limped after the old man, drying the tears that trickled from his eyes. No man in Clan Tash-Toi cried—at least they weren’t supposed to.
The seeker led Klane to a secluded area among bigger boulders. His ribs ached less by now and his lip had stopped bleeding. The seeker motioned for Klane to squat, which he did.
“Listen to me, boy. You will never become the hetman. The others would kill you if they thought you had a chance of succeeding. Only a true Tash-Toi can be the hetman. Do you understand?”
Klane’s little heart beat rapidly. He sat on the ground, feeling alone and outcast. He nodded, though, wanting to please the seeker, the only person who had ever been friendly to him.
“Good,” the seeker said. “Remember, you’re a lemper, not a rill. The rill is brave and stalks any prey it wants. It fears nothing and uses its power to pull down weaker prey. Yet, because it fears nothing our warriors can easily trap it.” The old man held up a gnarled finger as he grinned. Several teeth were already missing. Even so, Klane loved the old man.
“Ah,” the seeker said, as he waggled the finger. “Warriors capture the rill, but who captures the crafty lemper?”
“Have you?” Klane asked, softly.
The seeker lowered his head, and whispered, “Once but only once, and I’m the only one in the clan to do it.” The seeker reached behind his back into a pouch and pulled out a small, spotted skin. It was lemper leather. The old man unwrapped it and dropped a smooth, oiled stone onto his palm. “The lemper skin holds my most powerful junction-stone. It helps to give the stone cunning.”
Klane’s right eye had puffed shut. His ribs still hurt and so did his gut. At that moment, he knew he never wanted to be beaten again. He wanted to defeat others. He wanted to win, and to do the beating.
“Yes,” Klane whispered. “I want the cunning to hurt Ram, to hurt anyone who attacks me.”
“Ah,” the seeker said. “The fact that you want to be cunning shows you have the ability to be cunning. In time, perhaps, I can teach you the deeper guile.”
With his one good eye, Klane glanced up into the old man’s face. Pride swelled in Klane’s chest. “I’m already cunning. I baited Ram with my words.”
The seeker sighed. “Yes, you baited him, but you took a beating in return. That isn’t cunning, but stupidity.”
“I didn’t cry,” Klane lied.
“So what?” the old man said. “What does that prove?”
Klane blinked with confusion.
“Listen to me, young one. What you just did was the way of the warrior. But you are not a warrior-to-be. You are a seeker-to-be.”
“Which is more powerful?” Klane asked.
“Ask rather, which gets hurt less? Which understands more? Which is more cunning?”
Klane scowled. He wasn’t sure he liked those questions.
“Have you ever seen anyone hit me?” the seeker asked.
Klane’s eyes widened with horror. “No one would dare hit you.”
“Exactly,” the seeker said, as he chucked Klane under the chin.
Klane thought about that as the seeker waited, watching him.
“How . . . how can I make it so no one ever hits me again?” Klane asked.
“That is the question,” the seeker said. “First, you must never play with the other boys again.”
Klane began to sniffle. “Who will I play with then?”
“With me,” the seeker said.
Klane stared at the old man, wondering how that would work.
“In truth, you will have little time to play,” the seeker said. “You will be too busy learning how to act like a lemper.”
Klane nodded, and he told himself he mustn’t cry.
“Good,” the seeker said. “You can accept hard news. Now, you must begin to make your own junction-stone. Tomorrow, we will search for a suitable rock.”
Klane grinned. He knew that junction-stones were powerful—deadly, in fact.
“Afterward,” the seeker said, “you need a plan for when Ram comes around to hit you again. You will have to learn how to twist his words, and baffle him and the others with cunning. Would you like to think up a seeker sort of plan for dealing with Ram?”
“Does the plan include hurting him?”
“More than you can imagine,” the seeker said.
With his tongue, Klane touched the cut on his lip and recalled how he’d gotten it. “Yes. I want to learn,” he said.
“Excellent,” the old man said, with an evil grin. “To begin with . . .”
He spoke for a long time concerning cunning: how to use a person’s beliefs against them. Klane became weary until his head drooped and his eyelids fluttered.
“Klane, you need to wake up. Can you hear me?”
Klane felt a soft hand on his knee. The hand squeezed and it shook his leg. Drowsily, he lifted his head, and he shouted in alarm, shooting to his feet to stand there trembling.
A naked woman was crouched beside him, with shining things on her breasts. She was exotic, alluring—wasn’t she cold without garments?
“Klane,” she said.
“How . . . how do you know my name?”
“I’m a figment of Mentalist Niens’s imagination. He sent me here to talk to you.”
Klane began to tremble. None of this made sense. She took a step toward him. He scrambled back, and he picked up a rock, lifting it, getting ready to strike.
“I’m here to help you,” she said.
“Go away,” he said. “The seeker was talking to me and now you’re here. That doesn’t make sense.”
She studied him and finally she waved her arm in a wide arc. “All this is false. It’s make-believe.”
“Seeker!” Klane shouted. “Invaders have sneaked into the camp.”
“You stupid little boy, don’t you understand what I’m telling you?”
The anger in her eyes and the name-calling made little Klane grin. “The warriors will do things to you, make you scream.”
“No,” she said. “They won’t, because I’m not real.”
He scrunched his brow. “That’s silly. I see you. I hear you.”
“None of this is real. The Kresh have you under a reality field. You’re actually a full-grown man thinking this. No doubt you’re playing back an old and painful memory.”
“Who are the Kresh?” Klane asked.
“The aliens you call demons.”
“Why are you here?”
“Mentalist Niens wants to warn you.”
“I don’t know anyone like that.”
“Yes you do. You let him live once.”
“What?”
“Don’t you remember killing Chengal Ras, one of the Kresh, one of the demons?”
Klane laughed.
“Niens was the mentalist,” she said. “He’d been working on the seeker, before you came to save him.”
Klane began to blink. He looked up at the sky, looked at the rocks, at his hand, and finally at the pay girl. “I remember the hive, and after that . . .”
“You’re a prisoner, Klane. Niens . . . Niens wants to know if you’re the Anointed One or not.”
Something happened to Klane’s eyes. They aged and became wary. “This is a trick,” he said. He’d read Niens’s mind earlier and knew this was a pay girl.
The pay girl shook her head. She opened her mouth, but then she began to fade. As she did, Klane’s dream also faded and became a sizzling, fuzzy dome above him.
Klane rested under the reality field, regaining his equilibrium and mental strength. He understood the shimmering curtain for what it was now. The pay girl had shown him the truth.
His consciousness had returned to his flesh. This was where he belonged. He was determined never to leave his body again.
Because of the strange field, dreams and old friends tried to call him. Klane studiously ignored the ghosts. He had been to the hive and to the approaching cyborg fleet. He had expanded his mental powers considerably. The best thing would be to gain time to understand all that he’d learned. Right now, he didn’t have the time. He had to escape the demons—the Kresh.
I’m trapped under a reality field. My only ally is the dubious Mentalist Niens, a man in love with pay girls.
Klane’s understanding of his place in the Fenris System had also grown. A war raged on Fenris II. A Chirr fleet readied itself for launching. Are the insects and cyborgs allies? He hadn’t sensed that in the Prime Web-Mind, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
In any case, that didn’t matter in the here and now; escaping the Kresh did. Klane didn’t think the Kresh would believe him concerning the two approaching threats. Besides, how would it help him or help humanity if the Kresh killed him? They will kill me. Once they realize the extent of my power, they cannot afford to keep me alive.
Klane tried to sit up, but found that impossible. The reality field played tricks on his nervous system. His mind had likely become the strongest in the Fenris System, but it couldn’t operate with full potential under this numbing energy blanket.
You must play within the parameters. You are the lemper, and you must turn your opponent’s strength against him. Maybe Niens had shown him the way to do this. His psi-power was useless at the moment. He’d have to rely on simple imagination and craft, just as he’d done most of his life.
Turning his head, Klane stared at the shimmering field. He willed his small, six-year-old self into existence. After a time, a fuzzy image of the boy appeared.
“That isn’t good enough,” Klane whispered. Remember . . . remember. He did, until the boy Klane held a small stone that he religiously polished with gat skin. The boy regarded him.
“Who are you?” the boy asked.
“You know who I am.”
The boy frowned. “You’re me?”
“That’s close enough. Do you know where you are?”
“In a demon . . . laboratory,” the boy said.
“Right,” Klane said. He wondered if devices picked up his speech. Most certainly, they existed and recorded everything he muttered. He’d seen that in the flash of Niens’s surface thoughts. He would have to remember that.
> “You know what to do,” Klane said.
The boy frowned as he rubbed the stone. “I have to relay a message.”
“Then do it,” Klane whispered.
The boy heaved a great sigh. He faced the shimmering field and walked into it.
The boy Klane walked out of the reality field and halted. The seeker had never said anything about such marvels as this. Strange men in odd garments worked before flat things with flashing lights. It was bewildering. At times, the men glanced toward the reality field. Mostly, they watched the . . . the . . . machines.
A different man, a tall, lanky individual in a white coat approached him. He stared down at Klane. Then the man pointed. Klane turned his head, and started at the naked pay girl he’d seen earlier.
“Remember me?” the pay girl asked.
“You’re Mentalist Niens’s fantasy,” young Klane said.
She nodded.
“I want to talk to Niens,” Klane said.
“You are, by talking to me,” the girl said.
“Wouldn’t it be easier if I just talked to him?”
“No,” the pay girl said. “The Bo Taw and other specialists record everything in the chamber. But they can’t see us, because we don’t exist except in our creators’ minds. As long as we’re near the reality field, the psi-spies can’t look into our thoughts.”
“I understand,” Klane said.
“I know you do. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Klane thought about it. Finally, he nodded.
“Do you have a plan?” the pay girl asked.
“Explain how the reality field works.”
She did, and she indicated the machines and the uniformed technicians.
“Do you understand all that?” she asked later.
Klane shook his head. “But I’m sure my older self will.”
The pay girl giggled in an artful manner. “I’ve told you a lot of things,” she said.
Alien Shores (A Fenris Novel, Book 2) Page 26