Seen (Heartstone Book 2)

by Frances Pauli

  “Doctor.” He staggered to the wall and eyed Dovali, perched on his couch, watching Tchao through narrow eyes. “The drugs you used. The sedatives.”

  “Gone. Spent on the girl, Tchao.” He leaned forward, and the steely gleam of curiosity reflected in his gaze. “Why?”

  “Never mind!” He stormed to the hatch again. Maybe there was a way to exorcise it completely. Dovali’s transfusion had minimized the thing, temporarily evicted it. When this was done, perhaps…NO!

  Tchao doubled over, grabbed his twisting gut and groaned. The cat clawed at him from within. Run, run.

  “Are you well?” Dovali stood up. “What is it?”

  “Nothing!” Nothing, at least, that his worthless doctor could fix. “I just need to breathe.”

  Outside, he could fill his lungs. In the open, he could wrestle with the animal alone. Tchao stood, gritting his teeth against the razor claws of his own mind. He dragged three steps to the hatch and then gripped the edge of the opening until his knuckles whitened. The pain helped. His enhancements blinked and compensated, and the effect dulled his nerves enough to make the last few steps. To toss back with some measure of dignity, “Stay here, Dovali. Wait.”

  Tchao Rimawdi stumbled down the ramp of the Lightstrike. He held at the bottom, paused before setting foot on Choman soil. The voice in his mind whispered now, hunched and ready to spring. “Run.” He could handle it, had always handled it.

  The second he stepped down, he knew he’d miscalculated. It roared in his mind. His hands flew to his head. He looked back, looked up to the skies, and howled in both voices while his muscles rippled and shifted. His implants tore free, sparking and bleeding and adding to his beast’s frenzy. His body changed. His view lowered and he felt the surge of strength and power unleashed. He was Uraru, and he was home.

  “Run now!” He shouted it and heard the roaring aloud for the first time. His skin shivered under a thick, silver pelt. His muscles trailed long, sparking blue wires, and the beast laughed at them. It leaped forward, shot ten feet into the air and twice that distance ahead. It ran, and the ground thundered under its paws.

  Tchao flew through the jungle like a shadow. When his wires snagged, he tore them free, of bush or flesh, he hardly cared. He ran, and he hunted, and he’d nearly reached his goal when it exploded.

  The concussion knocked him down. He rolled and fell into the ravine, into the place he’d sought. He could smell them here, their fear, their blood…even over the scent of fire and char. It rained down now, smoking rubble, detritus from the once great seat of Choman culture. He’d done it! He, Tchao Rimawdi, had destroyed the Grand Temple, killed the clergy, and made way for his people’s return.

  He shook from nose to tail tip and lowered his head. The wounds throbbed, but the beast could turn its thoughts away from pain. It wanted its prey, and now it knew exactly where to find that. Springing over logs, rocks and still-flaming chunks of masonry, the cat flowed down the ravine toward the noises and the scent and the sweet song in its mind. Run, run, run.

  When he neared them, however, he stalled to a creep. He lowered until his belly brushed against the vines, and he moved without sound. They hunkered in the bottom of the impression, wounded, terrified. Tchao stalked them on cat’s feet, peered through the jungle and found his people at last.

  *-*-*

  Rowri fell over the lip. She tumbled down the ravine with a wall of flame behind her. Somehow, she kept her grip on the woman, on the Senior Priestess who would not thank her for the rescue. Her nose shrank from the burn in the air. Her cat remembered the volcanoes, the black sky. Today, it closed its eyes, kept its jaws tight and rolled away from the remains of the Grand Temple.

  Omira made no sound, and when they finally stopped against a fallen log, Rowri knew she lived only by the sound of her breathing and the scent that did not yet ring of death. That which is seen… She rolled over and pushed to her feet, sniffing the prone form and then nudging the Senior with her paw.

  “What have you done, child?”

  Rowri shifted back, felt the whisper of hot air against her skin. Her robes were shredded, her body scraped and bleeding, but she lived. She lived, and she was home. Except home fell from the sky, and she only wanted to leave it again, as swiftly as possible. “You’re welcome, Senior.”

  “That which is—”

  “I don't care.”

  “Rowri.” Omira sat up. Her limbs wobbled and she had black smudges across her face and arms. “To avoid the seeing is only to bring something worse.”

  “Worse?” Rowri waved her arms, pointed up to the smoking ruins at the top of the plateau. “What could be worse than dying in there?”

  A beastly howl trampled over her words. Behind Omira a cat landed, bunched and ready to spring. It had silver fur and trailed long, flaring blue wires from wounds all along its face and body. Rowri recognized it, even though it couldn’t be. Tchao Rimawdi crouched in the Choman jungle. He tensed, and sprang, and she would never have time to shift before he hit her.

  Omira rolled over. She screamed. The cat pounced, and Rowri felt her body changing. Slowly, too slowly. Omira might do the same, had years of training on Rowri that might speed the transformation. Unless she chose not to. Unless the Senior chose to die.

  Tchao vaulted over Omira. The force of his impact threw Rowri into the air, still changing. She twisted and felt his claws connect with flesh that was only half cat. She screamed her fury and fell down the ravine to land in a cat’s crouch, bloodied at her flank, snarling, but with the strength flowing from her even as Tchao struck again.

  He landed on her back and Rowri twisted away. His claws raked the wound on her hip wider, but his teeth snapped on air, on the space where her neck had been. She rolled in his grip and brought her rear legs up, toward his gut. If she could just end it quickly… Tchao caught her intention, a little late, a little slow compared to her years in a cat’s form. She sank claws into his rear leg and dragged a measure of flesh and wire from his body.

  The others came. Rowri could hear them prowling up the slope, fast, tearing branches in their haste. They wouldn’t make it in time to see the fight’s end, but if she lost, Tchao would face more than one cat today. She pushed with all four legs and sent him tumbling off of her. He sprang back, but Rowri was ready. She circled to the side and the silver Uraru landed in the spot she had vacated.

  She spun on it, bit down on his shoulder and earned a bite in return from his wiring. The electric shock sent her reeling back. The jungle spun now, and Rowri dropped. She pressed her belly to the vines and rolled up hill this time. Too slowly, Tchao’s Uraru landed with his forelegs across her chest. His beast weighed more than hers, and he pinned her there easily. His muzzle snapped in front of hers and their eyes locked.

  There was no man inside this Uraru, not any longer. The beast had won, had pushed any sense to the bottom of an already twisted mind. Rowri struggled, but knew it was futile when the silver lips rippled. The cat opened its jaws, snarled, and Rowri closed her eyes. When no death came, she opened them again. When the weight lifted from her chest she rolled and caught the streak of white and silver as it rolled away.

  Omira.

  The Senior’s Uraru held onto Tchao’s, and her snow white body dwarfed his silver one. She had lived her entire life sharing her body with the beast, and any feral rage that might have given him advantage, fell to pieces under the skill of a Senior Priestess in cat form. She forced him beneath her, pinned his neck in her wide jaws and held him, though he twisted and yowled to the moons and back.

  The white cat moved fast, her rear legs reached up and raked back, and Rowri turned her head down to the vines. She closed her eyes while Tchao Rimawdi died, and she heard his Uraru’s whisper in a corner of her mind. Run?

  The jungle silenced. The Choma priesthood crept forward, slinking, mainly in Uraru form. They came, and sat amidst the broken leaves and bent vines. The clergy of the Grand Temple, lost, homeless, and waiting for a word from their leader. />
  Omira’s Uraru shook itself and launched free of Tchao’s slackening grip. She spun, facing the ring of on-looking cats, and then she sat down and shifted back into their Senior. That which was seen, that which did not come to pass, the defiance of all they believed, and the one they would look to for instruction.

  Rowri lay in the fronds. She bled, but not too freely. It would hurt more when she shifted back, and doing that would be much wiser when there was someone handy to tend her wounds. The woman did not have the cat’s strength, the tolerance, or the will to shut out its damage. Perhaps, that was what drove Tchao down. The wires still sparked, showered his satiny corpse with embers. Perhaps the man had known just how badly those would hurt.

  “Gather together,” Omira shouted. “There may be more of them. We’ll need to contact the capitol. A battle rages in our skies, and we are not free of the Tolfarians because one man fell.”

  They took a moment to move. Frozen, the same as at the temple. Eventually, Omira goaded the clergy to act. She ordered, and the Choma-uraru listened in the end. When they did, the Senior spared a look for Rowri, a backwards glance that held something new. She might have imagined it, the note of awe, and then again she might not have.

  A shout rang out before she could decide. The sound of a motor rumbling drew her attention up to the top of the ravine, to a wall of rolling smoke. Something drove through it, a dark shape, a vehicle that pulled to a stop and released three separate figures. Rowri knew who they were before they’d reached the lip, before the fumes parted and showed her who had come to find them.

  Shayd.

  And though the Chomans backed away, looked to Omira with fear in their animal eyes. Rowri knew she was saved. Even when the Tolfarian came down at her heartmate’s side, she knew he’d come to take her away, and she would go. She would go wherever the Shrouded Seer asked her, and she would never once look back.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The capitol of Choma was called Yiang. The city was humble compared to Vade, but far larger than any on Shroud. It was cleaner than Eclipsis, and boasted more plantings than the atrium on Base 14. Shayd gazed out the huge hotel room windows and watched the parade pass.

  Haftan would be in the thick of it. He deserved the attention after negotiating the truce between the Choma-uraru and the few of their kin, led by Mr. Prill, who actually wished to remain on the planet. Most of the Tolfarians, to the great displeasure of the Galactic Summit and Tout, departed again under the leadership of a man called Raig.

  The local troops had taken some hits during the battle too, another strike on the books against both Choma and, somehow, Shroud, but it had been Mr. Prill’s order that stopped the fighting, and Shayd guessed that would have to count for something. That and Haftan, the king of schmooze.

  The hover floats drifted past, trailing streamers that changed colors and blinked like the lines of blue wire in the Tolfarians’ skin. One of the Tolfarians sat on this one, nervous, waving with one hand and keeping his gaze locked on the giant cat that rode beside him. It was a start, anyway.

  “Is it over?” The soft voice behind him boomed in his heart, echoed by a tiny pulse from the ring on his finger.

  “Not quite yet.” He turned around and found her just past the bed, halfway to the window and, if he judged correctly, not coming another inch closer. She’d made her opinion of staying on Choma very clear, and her choice had only relieved him. He held his arms open and went to her. Let the parade go by. Let Haftan enjoy it. “Rowri.”

  She sighed and let him come all the way to her before curling into his embrace. Her body trembled, weak still and full of their bonding. He wrapped her in his arms and held her up until the shaking settled. “We’ll leave soon?”

  “Yes, love. As soon as Haftan is back.” He bent in and breathed her scent, the soft tickle of her hair and the wild hint of the cat inside them both now. “Mofitan has the ship prepped and waiting.”

  “Good.”

  This time, they went where they would. This time, no one could make them part again. Even so, the knock at their door had them both straight and shaking. “Come in!” He barked it with the cat’s fury, and Rowri giggled. She stopped when Senior Priestess Omira appeared in their doorway.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but your Haftan said you’d be leaving first thing after the Peace Ceremony.”

  “Before,” Shayd corrected. “As soon as the parade is done.”

  “Yes.” The priestess looked uncomfortable. She let the moment stretch, and he could tell she wanted to talk with Rowri alone. He’d made promises on that count as well, however, and he held tight to his heartmate and refused to budge. “Well, I have this for you. It’s a recorded message, but…well, here.”

  She held out a data pad, and Shayd motioned for her to place it on the bed. Rowri turned in his arms, but she made no move to leave them. She faced the Senior, and she waited. Their cat rumbled a soft background to the moment.

  “Rowri, are you certain you won’t stay?”

  “My life is mine, Omira. I won’t live it for any vision, for better or worse.”

  “It still could be worse,” Omira said. “You think you’ve proven something, but who knows how I will end? I could linger, waste away painfully, suffer, or die in a horrible accident and take many others with me.”

  “But would you not make choices? Would you not accept the consequences like anyone else?”

  “I have made many choices.”

  “And so have I.” Rowri stood taller. “I will own my own fate, Senior.”

  “Very well.” Omira shrugged. It looked odd on her stiff frame, and she seemed smaller afterwards. “You are always welcome here, Rowri, but I wish you the best of fates.”

  “Good seeing, Omira.”

  “See well, child.”

  They waited for her to leave. When the door had closed, Shayd leaned down and kissed the deep black shoulder of his bonded. He nuzzled her hair, and heard her sigh. She relaxed, and that was something he’d waited days to feel. “You are certain?”

  “More than you can imagine.”

  It would make Shroud home again, having Rowri with him. He sighed and wished they’d already left. It would make the smoke and the incense bearable, maybe even delicious again. There was a message for him on the bed. He led her to it and they sat down and opened the file together.

  King Peryl’s giggle blasted into their quiet. Rowri cringed, and Shayd hurried to adjust the volume. “That’s our king,” he said.

  “To my Council members on Choma, my Seer, and…oh can’t I just call them by name? What? Oh.”

  There was a pause, during which they watched a mosaic of different colored Shrouded wraps drift by. Then the king’s face reappeared, looking far more serious, but with a glint about Peryl’s eyes that said he was still playing.

  “It seems that you have negotiated a semblance of peace on Choma. Well done. The Galactic Summit has offered to approve our membership, which I nobly resisted the urge to accept on a probationary status.” He grinned again, and the formality cracked with it. “They want Haftan as Ambassador, but I’m tempted to send them Mofitan. No offense, Mof. Either way, I’ll wait to hear if Haftan is willing or not.”

  Shayd’s chuckle earned him a curious look. “It’s funny,” he said. “I’ll explain later.”

  Peryl continued, and this time his expression darkened for real, and Shayd sensed a shadow of worry in amongst the smile lines. “The corequake has us hopping here. We could use you back as soon as possible. The casualties are small, considering, but the prison was destroyed. The rescuers haven’t reached the lowest levels yet, but we suspect that the traitor, Dielel, Jarn, and Jadyek perished in the disaster.”

  “Jadyek?” Shayd frowned. He hadn’t seen that coming, had been so certain the Heart had its eye on the young Council member.

  “Are you okay?” Rowri stroked his arm, and the threads sang to him.

  “Yes. Confused, but okay.” Peryl’s message
trailed away after one more petition for their prompt return and another flutter of silk. “It’s a good thing we’re leaving now.”

  That earned him a smile he would have killed for.

  How young Jadyek had ended up in the bottom of the Shrouded prison baffled him. He was sorry for that loss, in fact. And that Dielel had also gone sat only slightly less painful on him. For all his errors, the man had been a Prince alongside him. As to the devil Jarn, well, that one was far less dangerous, far less of a threat without breath. If the Core had seen fit to end his life, Shayd could not argue with its logic.

  Shroud belonged to the Heart—he pulled his bonded into his arms and heard the stones calling even across the vastness of space—and the Heart was never wrong.

  *-*-*

  It was Jarn who found the weapons underneath the rubble. Dielel brought them masks, and they crept out from the crevasse and into the blowing Shroud. Jadyek had found two working bikes, one for Dielel to share with him and another for the slinking man that set a chill of fear in his bones. Jarn.

  How had Dielel come to work with such as that?

  They rode through the storm, followed the probes and Jarn too. The man would have left them, if he could have, if he hadn’t seen a need for them should the platform bar his way off Shroud. The platform would be a problem. They were fugitives, Shrouded or not, and security was certain to be aware of that.

  But there was the mag rifle, slung low beside Jarn’s leg, and Jadyek knew the man hadn’t brought it for anything short of murder. He wanted off of Shroud, and he’d kill anyone who got in his way, at the platform, at the moon base, anywhere.

  His bonded’s arms wound around Jadyek’s waist. Dielel was weak. His grip faded as the hours passed. They needed off of Shroud as well. They needed this Jarn, though Jadyek didn’t trust the man any farther than he could see. They had no choice but to follow him for now, to trust in the foreigner as they had trusted in the Heart.

  At least the latter hadn’t let them down. He rode on, still hearing the beat of his heartbond over the howling of the Shroud in his ears. They’d have to trust a little farther, just a little more, and then, at last, they’d be free.