Lisen struggled with Jozan’s words, but understanding eluded her.
“Don’t worry about it now,” Jozan continued. “You’ll understand eventually.”
Lisen nodded, then heard footsteps approaching the infirmary.
“He’s coming,” she whispered.
“You will let the necropath do this. You will let him in so he can make you well enough to disentangle yourself from me and let me go.” Lisen nearly lost herself in Jozan’s melancholy.
“You don’t want this,” Lisen thought.
“It doesn’t matter what I want anymore.”
“Lisen?”
She gasped, then looked up from where she sat in the corner farthest from the door. She hadn’t heard the hermit enter, yet there he stood, resolute, hair brown but peppered with grey, head tilted in the infirmary doorway which was an inch or two short for him.
“Lisen, I am Hermit Teran,” he said softly, not moving, voice soothing, compelling her trust. “I’m a necropath. I want to help you.”
“It’s too late,” she snapped. “You can’t help me.” He stared at her, and she realized she’d spoken in English. “Go away. You can’t help me.” She tightened her hold on her knees, made herself small, invisible.
“The holder told me you were ready,” the necropath said, standing still, unthreatening.
“He was wrong.” She closed her eyes, turned towards the corner, giving him as much of her back as she could. Can’t do this. Can’t do this stupid thing I’m supposed to do. Halorin ended all that, now, didn’t it. Better for everyone if I followed Jozan out.
“If you really want to help…,” Lisen said, looking over her shoulder at him, trying to manipulate him with her voice the same way he was using his voice to manipulate her. If that didn’t work, she’d use the push.
“No!” Jozan’s horror filled Lisen, but she buried it.
“I do,” the necropath replied.
“Then,” Lisen replied, playing coy, “bring me a knife from the kitchen.” Lisen knew what to do—up the arm, not across the wrist. Across produced blood but not enough loss of the stuff to actually die. Up the arm’s artery would prevent them from saving her. She just had to keep this old fart from interfering. “A sharp one.” She sounded eerily serene, even to herself. Let the prick in Avaret have the throne and everything that went with it. It meant nothing to her.
“What?” Jozan screeched in Lisen’s brain. “Nothing? It means nothing to you? I died for that nothing.”
“Shut up.”
“I will not shut up. You will—”
The necropath interrupted the inner dialogue. “I’ll bring you that knife—” the necropath began, continuing his slow, calm control, but Lisen interrupted him.
“You will?” she said eagerly. He’d agreed, and she hadn’t even had to push.
“I will bring you that knife,” he repeated, “but you must do something for me first.” His voice lulled her into trusting him as he took a couple of steps towards the foot of the cot.
“What?” she asked.
He rounded the cot. “May I sit down?”
“When will you bring me the knife?”
“After we’ve talked a little. That’s what you must do. Talk to me.”
“And then you’ll bring me the knife?” He was right in front of Lisen now, and she had to lean back to look up at him.
He nodded and said, “If you still want it, then I will bring you the knife.”
He was a hermit and a necropath. Would he keep his promise? She assumed that he assumed that she feared failure and the madness failure would bring, that she preferred death to the consequences of failure. He was correct, in part.
“All right,” she agreed.
“May I sit down?”
“Sure.” She nodded to the floor beside her, a movement that made her a little dizzy.
He managed to fold his legs and arms to fit in the meager space available, and then he sighed. “Well, Lisen of Solsta, tell me how you became a necropath without our ever meeting.”
“I’m not a necropath.”
“I know. I would have trained you.” He smiled. “And I’ve never seen you before.”
“The hermits at Solsta recognized my gift, and because they have no necropath, they let me step in to help out when I could.”
“Without any training? Hmm.” He paused, settled a bit more, perhaps getting more comfortable, then asked the question. “So, what happened in Halorin?”
Lisen wished she could puke. But since she hadn’t eaten anything in days, her stomach was left on its own. How could she tell the story without revealing too much? What would she, this stupid little novice, be doing with the heir of Minol in Halorin of all places? And what about the captain? Should she even mention him?
“Heir Tuane,” she began, hoping she’d find a way to finish, “Jozan Tuane, we…we met when she and Holder Corday accompanied Empir Flandari on a retreat to Solsta.”
“But it became the Empir’s final retreat, didn’t it. Were you with the Empir when she died?”
Lisen looked down and closed her eyes. Her head and body were vibrating. “Yes. I was.”
“And was it an assassination, as everyone seems to think?”
“Why do you care? I completed that passing.”
“I’m sorry.” He rubbed his chin. “Tell me about Heir Tuane.”
Lisen shivered, but she covered by making it look like she was shifting around, readjusting her position. “Well, something…just…happened between us.” Yeah, that’s it—the lesbian angle. “So when she said that rather than accompany Holder Corday and the Empir’s remains back to Avaret she would be heading home to Seffa, I offered to join her.”
“And abandon your calling?” Hermit Teran asked. “So easily?”
“Your Grace,” Lisen began, then paused, struggling to drag a believable explanation from her addled brain. “I was abandoned at Solsta as an infant.” When the necropath did not object to that, she continued. “I never had a calling. I can help the dying, but I’m not sure I want to be a hermit to do it.”
“I see,” the necropath replied. “Go on.”
“We rode to Halorin first. Heir Tuane said she had business there. She didn’t tell me what.” “That’s my girl,” Jozan whispered from a spot in Lisen’s mind far removed from any chance of contact with the necropath. “That may have been—whatever she was doing, I mean—may have been what brought that man to our room that night. I hid when he knocked. She didn’t want me involved in her business. She answered the door without a weapon, and he barged in, making threats and then…well, then….”
Hermit Teran reached out and took her hand, and in a voice Lisen knew she could never resist, he said, “And then he killed her.”
Lisen nodded. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“Then what?”
She had to come up with something, but she couldn’t tell him the truth. Not all of it, at least.
“I must have made some sort of noise,” she replied, “because he heard me then and called me out. I’d found Jozan’s knife where I’d been hiding, but I hid it from him, pretended I was frightened—well, I didn’t really need to pretend. I was able to catch him off guard, and I killed him.”
“Is his soul in there, too?” Hermit Teran asked calmly.
“No, thank God. I blocked his soul and went straight to the heir.”
“Then that is where we begin.” He already held her hand in one of his, and now he started to rub it with his other hand. “Close your eyes. Good. Now breathe deep and even. Let your soul guide you. I will only interfere if you need me. Go to a quiet place, a safe place, and I will wait.”
Eyes closed, Lisen breathed smoothly, slowly without even thinking about it. Without the distractions of the outside world, she slipped thoughtlessly into…
…her mother’s arms. She’d just lost the soccer game for her team, failing to get the ball past the other team’s goalie in the last few seconds. If she’d made the goal, it would have
tied the game, putting them into overtime. But she’d blown it, and she’d never be able to face her teammates again. She cried as she sat on her mother’s lap and snuggled her face into her mother’s neck. Her mother said nothing, allowing Lisen to cry it out. It took longer than either of them had expected. Did I really cry that long? Or is this…
“I screwed up big time, Mom,” she said, sniffling back snot.
“Would doing it differently have changed the outcome?” her mother asked gently.
“Well, maybe.” But Lisen wondered because she was beginning to think that it wasn’t some soccer game from six years ago they were talking about, but rather something more recent, something more potent, something more lethal. Something where if she had handled it differently, she might not even be here now. “But maybe…it would have…made things…worse,” she admitted. It was hard to acknowledge the truth—that the decision to protect herself, despite the ethical cost, had saved her life.
“Actions have consequences,” her mother said. Or somebody said. The voice shifted, changed, as did the scene, the atmosphere, the location. From the Woodland Hills family room’s bright lights, the television rambling in the distance…
…to a world of flickering candlelight, a room in Halorin with barely enough space for four cots and a table. Lisen stood, a knife in her hand, a dying friend at her back, facing a man who would kill her if she didn’t kill him first. “Actions have consequences.” Korin had said it. “You must survive.” And she had—at a price. A hole in her heart pined for the innocence that had shattered into thousands of irretrievable pieces at the moment of action.
“It’s time.” Hermit Teran interfered lightly, only enough to remind her of the purpose of the revival in her mind of the place and the moment.
Lisen turned from the face of her attacker and looked to the friend whose soul she must release. She dropped to her knees beside Jozan, the life pulsing out of her, her blue eyes growing grey, losing their sight, and Lisen took her hand.
“There will be no intrusion this time.” Again, the necropath reassured her without stepping into the vision. “I stand guard. You are safe.”
Lisen took a deep breath. She reached out to the dying Jozan just like the first time. Unlike the first time, however, their connection reflected the two weeks of unity since that night in Halorin. No words, no pictures—only feelings, sensings. Of where they had been, together. Of where they had become lost, together. Together, they had explored much of what Lisen had left behind on Earth which now seemed more like a dream than what had once been the unreality of Garla. She might find music here, but never again Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” never again the Beatles whom she loved because her mother and father both idolized them. She’d never see Hagrid carry Harry from the dark forest in the movie of The Deathly Hallows. She wouldn’t even get to read about it again. She would have to rely on her memory for everything on Earth; it was all she had left.
“You will find new music to love. And tales both great and small, believe me,” Jozan reassured her.
The fifth Cylon—well, she’d never know now, would she? So she’d make one up, and the one she decided on was her hero, Starbuck. The pieces all fit, although the pieces had fit before on Galactica, she and Rusty arguing over which way they fit, and then they had both turned out to be wrong. Now, with no one around to contradict her, it was left to her to decide, and Starbuck it was.
“And what of this ‘Little Alex’ in the bath?” Jozan asked. “What was that all about?”
“Why?” Lisen answered with her own question. She’d forgotten about that, about how that had triggered her grief over the loss of the “Ode to Joy.”
“I sensed violence,” Jozan replied, “and I sensed joy.”
“Oh,” Lisen thought. “I…. It was a bath. I was covered in mud and blood, and I’d been through hell. And there, in my mind, was Little Alex, in a bath, recently covered in mud and blood, also having been through hell. Seemed right at the time.”
“I was afraid you were going to succumb to the joy and never come back.”
“But wasn’t it you who said that I’d have to lower myself to my brother’s level to win?”
“I didn’t suggest you take pleasure in it.”
Lisen stared down at the still body of the friend whose soul continued to caper with her own. “It’s time to let go,” she thought very, very softly, hoping not to be heard. A hopeless hope, of course, since Jozan could hear everything.
“Yes. It is.”
Lisen still held the dead woman’s hand, fully aware it was a vision, a dream, yet it was more real than life. Then, as though The Terminator had reached in to tear the heart from Lisen’s very essence, leaving her empty and lifeless, Jozan’s soul withdrew with a sucking sensation, and Lisen felt the dark shadow of possession fade as Jozan returned to her own body. They remained one for another moment, and when that moment ended, Lisen couldn’t breathe. She felt unwhole, as though a piece of her soul had stuck to Jozan’s as it left. Only a fraction of a person, she thought. We failed.
“No,” the necropath told Lisen. “Complete the passing. You’re nearly there.”
Oh, great. “Complete the passing,” Lisen thought in her secret language. What the hell does that mean? “Tell me what to do,” she asked the necropath.
“Reach out to her soul, but this time leave it where it is and guide her from this life.”
Lisen inhaled. Her lungs filled with oxygen, and then she turned to the only person in Garla without a stake in her success. She closed her vision-filled eyes, took two much deeper breaths this time and allowed herself to connect with Jozan’s soul within its own body. She sensed loss and fear and a whole slew of disappointments, but she also felt joy and the love of a close family. She’d experienced none of this while Jozan had remained a part of her. It was as if she—Lisen—had dominated the singularity present then; whereas now, two very separate entities communed.
“Don’t mind Nalin too much,” Jozan said.
“What?”
“He can be difficult. Rigid and bureaucratic. Probably why Flandari chose him. But he’s everything you’re going to need in a spouse.”
“In a what?” Lisen could not believe that anyone, especially Jozan, would make that suggestion.
“Damn,” Jozan muttered. “Of course you wouldn’t understand. Listen to me. There isn’t much time. You could join with anyone, but having spent no time in court, you’re not going to know how to summon a servant, much less how to run a Council session. Beyond that, you’re a stranger to everyone there, and you’re going to need the trust of the holders and councilors. They will grant you that—eventually. Until then, Nalin will bring that with him.”
“You’re saying I should marry…I mean, join with him?”
“You like Rosarel, don’t you.”
“It’s nothing. Just a fantasy,” Lisen admitted, embarrassed. She was only seventeen; she couldn’t possibly know what she wanted, but she doubted it was Holder Nalin Corday.
“Give Nalin a chance,” Jozan said. “He’s not nearly as dour as he seems. He actually has a sense of humor. But he’s mourning Flandari. Me, as well, I suppose. He’ll come out of it eventually, and then you’ll see a different man.”
“Release her,” the necropath commanded from a non-intruding distance.
“How do I do this?” Lisen asked of Jozan.
“Trust Nalin and you’ll be fine.”
“And the captain? Can I trust him?”
“I would. I did. Nalin doesn’t, so you’re going to have to trust your own instincts.” Jozan paused, then said brusquely, “Let’s get this over with. Farewell, Lisen of Solsta, Ariannas of Garla.”
Lisen watched as Jozan started down the tunnel of famar. “No!” her mind wailed, fracturing the peace of Jo’s departure.
Jozan paused, turned back and smiled softly. “I have to go.”
“You’re my only friend. What will I do?”
“You will survive, just like the capt
ain told you to. And I will move on, proud that I could call you my friend.”
And, abandoned at the livings’ opening into the dark tunnel, not even far enough inside to see the light at the other end, Lisen watched as Jozan slipped from view into the void. “Farewell, Jozan Tuane.” Then she blurted out, “I’ll miss you.”
“And I will miss you, too,” Jozan’s voice called out from far away.
Lisen opened her eyes to the infirmary at Rossla and to Hermit Teran. He still held her hand, and she pulled away slowly from him. “It’s over,” Lisen whispered. “She’s gone.”
Hermit Teran smiled, still kind, still soothing, and said, “I know.” He rose, unfolding long limbs slowly as though he had not moved them for some time. “Do you still want that knife?” he asked.
Lisen shook her head. “No.”
Hermit Teran smiled again. “You would make an excellent necropath,” he said, looking down at her, his blue eyes inviting. “We have so few. You should stay and train with me.”
Lisen, too, stood up, found he was at least half a head taller than she. “No, I have a more urgent calling.”
“A loss for all of us,” the necropath said with a nod, then started to leave.
“Oh, I hope not,” Lisen said, and Hermit Teran turned at the door.
“Whatever it is, May One Be, Lisen of Solsta.”
“One Is,” Lisen replied, but he was already gone. She sat down on the cot, touched her flat and empty chest and slid her hands down for a casual exploration of the opening of her pouch through the material of her sleeping gown. Then she closed her eyes and for the first time, she saw only the Haven at Solsta, the mountains and then the plains they had traveled—she, Jozan and the captain. She saw Halorin, winced at her last moments in that place but didn’t run from them. She could never completely leave Earth behind, never stop missing everyone she’d loved there, but her life was here. She looked around the room, this infirmary for hermits. It seemed medieval in comparison to the world she had once known, but they had cured her.
Fractured (Lisen of Solsta Book 1) Page 28