by Unknown
"Do you recognize this place?" he asked.
She shook her head, even as she continued to peer into the gloom beyond the reach of the headlights. She had no recollection of ever being in the spot where the Tevingi craft entered their subterranean home.
"I thought they landed on the surface," she told him, struggling once again with her anger at the priests for having taken away her memories.
Then she thought she saw something high on the wall just beyond the light cast by the headlights. She asked Miklos to turn the hovercraft and aim the lights in that direction. He did soand any doubts she'd begun to have about this being the home of her people vanished.
"What is it?" Miklos asked, his eyes also on the delicate-looking sphere that clung to the wall.
"It's one of the lights we use down here. But why isn't it glowing?"
The sphere was cloudy and giving off no light at all. Jalissa felt a slowly gathering fear. These were not ordinary lightsand they never went out. They were bits of the magic fire, captured inside glass balls. They could be made to glow brighter or become dimmer merely by focusing on them for a moment. She did that now, and the sphere suddenly began to glow brightly.
"Did you do that?" Miklos asked nervously, scanning the area. "Yes. But I don't understand why it was off."
"It could be the Coven's way of not welcoming us," he suggested.
"That would be foolish, since they know that I can turn it on again. Something is wrong, Miklos."
She started to open the door to the hovercraft, but he put out a hand to stop her. "Will any weapon I have work against themif it becomes necessary?"
"No. Either the stunner or the laser weapon might work, but you'd never get a chance to use it. They could wield the fire instantaneously just by thinking about it, while you would have to raise the weapon and aim it and fire."
She touched his cheek gently. "You must trust me again, Miklos. I won't let them hurt you."
They both got out of the hovercraft and she noticed that, despite her warning, he still carried the laser weapon with him, as well as the stunner attached to his belt. She knew that he had a need to cling to the weapons he understood, so she said nothing.
Turning in a circle, Jalissa reached out with her mind to the other light-spheres until all of them were glowing brightly again. Then she sent her mind out beyond this cavern, seeking her people. There was no response.
"They're all shielding themselves from me," she said in a whisper that still echoed through the room. "Why would they do that, when they know we're here?"
There was a slight pause before Miklos spoke the words she didn't want to hear. "Maybe they're not here."
His words, spoken in a normal tone, bounced off the stone walls, echoing through the room and through her mind as well. Surely he was wrong! Where could they have gone? Nearly seven thousand people could not have been removed that easily, especially now that she knew they could not have been picked up on the surface.
The gods could have taken them away, she thought. But why would they do thatunless they wanted to hide them from meor from Miklos?
Carrying two bright flashlights, they walked through the stone archway into another corridor, where Jalissa saw more darkened spheres. She didn't bother to bring them back to life because the flashlights were adequate.
The corridor ended at a sight that was both familiar and terrifying. They were on the upper level of a huge room that served both as a market and a meeting place for the entire Coven. Wide walkways cut into the stone traversed the high walls, with doorways leading to living quarters. The utter silence of the place was frightening, so frightening that a few seconds passed before she saw the place for what it was: a home that had been abandoned long ago.
She uttered a small, strangled cry that brought Miklos's arm around her waist quickly. She huddled against him, seeking his solid warmth as a chill settled into her very bones.
"They're gone!" She cried. "Look at the dustand the cobwebs! It's impossible!"
Dust lay heavily on the beautifully carved stone benches and on the many tiers of the ornate fountain at the center of the room. Cobwebs were strung from tier to tier, where water had once gurgled pleasantly.
Jalissa began walking down the series of walkways to the floor, scarcely aware of what she was doing. Every time she passed a light-sphere, she turned it on, although she wasn't really aware of that either.
When she reached the lowest level that held the benches and the fountain, she stopped and turned around to see the footprints they'd made in the thick dust. There were no prints other than their own.
Then she spotted something lying on the stone floor, and cried out as she ran to pick it up. Her fingers began automatically to push and pull the interconnected wooden pieces into place.
"It's a toya puzzle. We all had them."
"Is there someplace they could be hiding?" Miklos asked gently.
She shook her head. "They know I could find them. They're gone." Her final words came out accompanied by a choked sob.
Miklos drew her into his arms. ''They aren't just gone, Jalissa. They must have left a long time ago. It would take years for this much dust to cover things down here."
She'd known that at some level, but hearing him say it now only made the chill deepen inside her. She nodded miserably.
Miklos continued to hold her in his arms. His hands stroked her back soothingly. "We already knew that they changed some of your memories. Maybe they changed more than we thought."
She stared at him in horror. "You mean that I never actually lived here?"
He nodded. "What you remember could be someone else's memoriessome older person who did live here. The Coven must have lived here at some point."
She felt empty, drained of her very essence. It had been a long time since she'd given much thought to her childhood here, but that didn't lessen the impact of knowing that those buried memories must be false. The Coven had truly abandoned her, cut her off from her heritage.
They spent several hours walking through the silent underground city. All of it was as she remembered it, but all of it had clearly been abandoned many years ago. Miklos guessed that it had been empty for at least a few decades, although he admitted he couldn't be sure. In what she thought was an attempt to make her feel better, he said that it was possible that she could have lived here. After all, nearly years had passed since she'd left this place.
But that proved to be of no consolation to her. Even if her memories were accurate, the Coven had still abandoned her childhood home and kept their new home secret from her. And in any event, she could not understand why they would have left.
She told all this to Miklos, who nodded, frowning. "I could understand it if they had left recently. They might have been afraid they would be found, given the fact that the Warlock made their presence known to us."
"Even so, they must have known you couldn't find themunless I helped you." She added that last phrase in a choked voice.
Miklos grasped her arms. "Listen to me, Jalissa. They're the ones who sent you to the Federation. They must have known they were dividing your loyaltiesthat they could lose you. Even that encounter we had with the demons proves that. They apparently felt it necessary to prove to you the existence of the old gods."
"Or to prove it to you," she added.
"Yes, well, if that was their intention, they succeeded," he said with a grim smile.
Finally, they reached the children's quarters. They passed by classrooms filled with small desks and old-fashioned chalkboards that drew smiles from Miklos, who'd seen such things only in pictures. He asked what sort of education she'd gotten here, his tone indicating that it couldn't have been much.
Jalissa explained that they had been taught only the rudiments: reading, writing and simple math. "It's all we needed, really. And of course, we spent much time on history and learning to develop our talents."
"Then you must have been very much behind children your age when you went to Tevingi."
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br /> "I was," she admitted. "The Kendors found a private tutor for me, though, and I caught up."
She looked around the classroom they had entered, and shuddered. "I was happy enough here, but seeing it now is like looking at ancient history to me too."
Miklos drew her into his arms. "You don't belong with them, love. Don't even think of going back to them."
"I may have no choice," she said, fighting back tears. "But I can't very well go back if I can't find them."
She moved out of his arms and led him back down the corridor to the dormitory-style living quarters for the children. "This was my room," she told him as they paused in the doorway of one of the huge rooms where narrow beds lined both walls.
"Or at least my memory tells me this was my room," she added. They stared at the beds and chests lining the stone walls. She saw it as Miklos must be seeing it: an impossibly grim and impersonal place, like something from an old horror story.
"It wasn't as bad as it must seem to you," she said as he looked around.
He turned to her, his green eyes lit with love. "What amazes me is that you have become the person you are after this."
She considered his words. "I think the Kendors are responsible for that. They gave me love and a sense of family. I owe them a lot.
"The Coven is not cruel, but I realize that to outsiders it must seem that way. It's just that they live in their minds more than others. Even the choice of a mate is more a matter of compatible minds than anything else.
"To understand them, you have to understand their sense of themselvesnot as individuals, but as small pieces of a whole. Even the funeral rituals speak not of the death of an individual, but rather the loss of part of the whole."
"There were ancient civilizations that once believed that," Miklos said, "and they were all tyrannies of one sort or another because someone always took advantage of that belief to drive out individualism and force others to a single will."
"But that hasn't happened with the Covenunless you consider the gods to be tyrants," she added, thinking that they were, in a way.
As they talked, they'd been walking along the rows of beds. Jalissa reached the bed that had once been hersor at least occupied the same spot. Like the others, it was covered with a dusty blanket. Without giving it any thought, she used her talent to send the blanket flying off the mattress in a cloud of dust, then sank onto it. She felt suddenly very tired. She glanced up at Miklos to see him staring at the blanket that now lay in a heap on the floor, and only then realized what she'd done.
Rather to her surprise, he chuckled. "Life with you is going to be very interesting, Jalissa Kendor."
She smiled, but it was a smile tinged with sadness. He saw it, and sank down onto the bed with her. "It will happen," he said softly, drawing her into his arms.
Then he raised his head and gazed off into the space around them. "Hear this, gods," he announced in a voice that echoed through the silent room. "You will not take her from me."
"I wouldn't try to anger them," she warned. "Especially not here."
"I intend to make them very angry," he replied, just before his lips claimed hers.
Jalissa felt that familiar surge of heat that seemed to melt her very bones. But she was still uneasy. The ghosts of the Coven hovered about this silent place, even if the gods themselves might be keeping their distance.
And yet she wanted to make love with him in this place, for reasons she didn't fully understand. Perhaps it was because she wanted to assert her right to live in two worlds, rather than to be drawn once again into the dark life of the Coven.
There was an urgency to their lovemaking that had been absent before, a fierce hunger that dissolved all reason and had them both tearing off their clothing with reckless abandon.
Pale, silken skin met hair-roughened bronzed flesh in a frenzy of need that grew explosively as he entered her and she welcomed him and they succumbed greedily to the ancient rhythms of love. Proud of their passion, they defied the ghosts and even the gods, and gave themselves up to the cataclysm, a love-storm that swept them both away from their bleak surroundings.
Then, surrounded by the soft afterglow, they held each other, whispering their love, stroking exquisitely sensitive flesh until the chill in the room forced them, reluctantly, to seek out their hastily discarded clothing.
The magic of their lovemaking followed them as they made their way back through the silent corridors toward the hovercraft. But bit by bit, reality crept in. They had stolen a few moments and certainly neither of them regretted that, but their problems still awaited them.
When they were once more back aboard the spaceship, with the hovercraft stored again in the cargo hold, Miklos began to switch back and forth among the frequencies, listening to the dis- embodied voices and then punching in the code that gained him access to the Special Agency's secret communications.
Surprisingly, they heard nothing about themselves. Instead, the screen was filled with the situation on Ker. A large contingent of Federation troops was on its way to that vital world now, due to arrive within a day.
"But they'll be shot down," Jalissa protested.
"My guess is that they're planning a massive invasion," Miklos stated grimly. "Ker's defenses won't be able to withstand it."
"But they'll still manage to shoot down some of them, won't they?"
He nodded. "There's going to be a heavy loss of life."
"I can't believe that the Council would approve such a thing, without at least trying to negotiate with them."
"The Council has nothing to do with it. You forget that the Special Agency has emergency powers in such a situation." He paused, his expression bleak.
Then he went sadly on. "This will tear the Federation apart, regardless of the outcome. When it's over, the Council will demand that the emergency-powers clause be nullified, and my people will refuse." He leaned back in the seat with a sigh.
"I can see both sides, unfortunately," he said. "As a Vantran, I too can't accept this challenge to our supremacy, but as one who believes in the Federation, I can understand the position of the other worlds as well."
"Is there nothing we can do?" she asked.
He was silent for a moment, then began to work the computer again. Jalissa watched as mostly meaningless words filled the screen. She understood it just well enough to realize that he had called up the information on Ker's defenses.
"There might be," he said after a long silence. Then he shook his head. "No, it's too dangerous."
"What are you talking about?" She demanded.
"Because this ship is small, I could get us close to Ker without our being spotted." He hesitated, and Jalissa understood his thoughts even before he spoke them.
"We could 'port the rest of the way," she said.
"It's still more than a thousand miles. You were drained after a couple of hundred miles before."
Jalissa nodded. "Wait here for me. I won't be gone long." And before he could protest, she 'ported herself from the spacecraft and back into the home of the Coven.
She landed at the end of a corridor, where a heavy carved wooden door faced her. For just a moment, Jalissa hesitated, her Coven upbringing overriding her intentions.
Beyond the door lay the stairs to the secret place where only the priests could go, the room deep within the Coven's underground home where they sought the advice of the gods. Coven children were warned from the time they could walk that they must never open that door, though given its weight, it was doubtful that they could have done so in any event. By the time they grew to a size that would have allowed them to invade this sacred place, the strictures were too strong.
Jalissa felt the weight of those strictures even now, but she put out her hand and grasped the gold handle, telling herself that in all likelihood there was nothing beyond the door now, since the Coven had fled.
The massive door was heavy even for her, but she pulled it open and stared into an impenetrable blackness. She hadn't brought along a flash
light, so she sent out her mind, seeking the light-spheres. Immediately a soft and eerie bluish light glowed along the walls of the stairwell, revealing only a short part of its length before curving away out of sight.
She started cautiously down the steps, picking up her pace only when she thought about Miklos, now locked out of the Coven's home and undoubtedly worrying about her. She had little hope that this would work, but she knew that she had to try.
When she reached the bottom of the long staircase at last, she found herself beneath an archway that opened into a small, perfectly circular room. The only thing in the room, save for some more of the light-spheres that she set aglow, was a huge bowl with low, curved sides that took up more than half the floor space.
She began to circle it, frowning. What could it mean? Clearly it had had some purpose, though it was totally empty now. She leaned over the low side, peering at dust in the bottom, seeking some indication of why it was there.
Then, after a few minutes, she backed away from it and closed her eyes, sending out her mind to try to touch something, even though she was nearly certain there was nothing there to be touched. And within seconds, she felt something: not the gentle touch of another mind against her own, but something far deeper and more powerful.
She opened her eyes as the vibrations pulsed through herand then gasped as she saw the bowl. It was now alive with arcing lines of blue fire, the design so mesmerizing that she couldn't have taken her eyes from it if she'd tried. And as she stood there, transfixed, the voice-that-wasn't-a-voice spoke in her mind.
Jalissa knew instantly what it was. She'd heard those who'd claimed to have spoken directly with the gods describe it.
"You have our blessing, Child. Your request is granted."
Jalissa drew in her breath sharply as the presence withdrew from her, while at the same time, the blue fire in the bowl died away, leaving only a faint glow that itself vanished within seconds. She backed slowly out of the room, then ran up the steps. She hadn't even told them what she wanted. At the top, she stopped for a moment, gasping for breath. Then a strange giddiness came over her and she laughed aloud. In her eagerness to tell Miklos what had transpired, she suddenly remembered that she could return to him as quickly as she'd left him.