by Allynn Riggs
Yenne chuckled. “At least they all did a great job of keeping your Lrakiran identity a secret. Do you know if he got the message?”
Shaking her head, she said, “No. I suppose that’s one more thing we’ll have to check on.” Even with this new understanding of the man in front of her, she didn’t explain that the we she had in mind did not include him.
The tower bells were muffled through the closed window, but they could still be heard. It was perfect timing as far as Ani was concerned. She stood. “It’s late and there’s much to do in the morn. I have to meet with the Singers again, and my mind is playing blade games with all that has happened.”
Yenne came around the table and tried to pull her into a parental hug. Sidestepping out of range, she said in apology, “I’m not ready.”
His nod of understanding chipped away at her heart.
“Kela, let’s go.” She waved the canine toward the door. Yenne reached it first, palmed it open, and politely let her cross the threshold ahead of him.
“Sleep deep, Ani.” The rumble of his bass voice followed her as she struggled to avoid running down the hall.
The Stone Chamber was cool in the early morn though Ani thought it was most likely cool all the time. The embroidered tapestries that hung against the stone walls were not just there as decoration, they were also there to abate the cold.
Ani studied the scenes depicted in the fading threads. The most frayed showed a night sky filled with unfamiliar star patterns surrounding what appeared to be an orange comet racing closer to the people at the bottom of the weaving. Curiously, the people seemed unaware of the danger. In fact, they appeared to be sleeping or dead. Ani stood on tiptoe and ran her fingers across the patterns. She decided to look at it positively and chose to see them as sleeping.
When she brought the hanging closer, she could see six or seven robed people in the background on a hill at a distance from the sleeping piles of people. The robed ones stood in a tight circle, their hands holding short blades aloft, tips joined in a pyramid above their heads. A rainbow rose above them and branched in two groups of three colors arching in opposite directions. There were six colors to the rainbow instead of the seven she was used to. Curious. The scene was both sad and joyous. She wondered if there was any significance to the design.
A shaft of light brightened the Stone Chamber, washing out the colors of the stitching. Ani turned to greet the pair of Singers, her questions about the worn tapestry forgotten in the urgency of the current circumstances.
Pointing to the black box on the pedestal next to the Anyala Stone, Diani raised her eyebrows in inquiry.
“Yes, the blade is within,” Ani said.
“Open it, please.”
Diani and Layson stared at the green crystal blade nestled against the blood red silteene fabric. Diani nodded. “Yes, that is the Anyala Stone’s blade.”
As Layson hovered her hand above the blade, Ani watched closely and felt a tingle of cool green slide through her mind. Somehow she knew that the injured Stone was using the blade to communicate with the Kita Stone’s Singer.
Layson smiled. “The Stone greets me through the blade. The Stone is stronger with the blade here.”
A humming from the Kita and Pericha Stones followed, warning the Singers, including Ani, that though the Anyala Stone was strengthened by the blade’s presence, its communication would be limited to conserve energy and give Ani and Renloret time to retrieve The Balance.
Ani felt the blue and amber Stones retreat from her mind to confer with their Singers and she tried not to fidget. A questing tune snuck into her awareness. She looked at the Anyala Stone. Its dim life light flickered in rhythm with the tune. Stepping to the pedestal, she placed a hand on the Stone’s surface as far away from the hilt of the amber blade as possible. Would her touch soothe the ache mirrored in the tune? A sigh escaped her lips as the physical contact increased the volume of the Stone’s song. Ani glanced at the other Singers. They appeared to be meditating, their eyes closed, expressions relaxed. Matching the notes she heard in her mind, she blended her mental voice with that of the Anyala Stone. A higher-toned descant, apparently from the blade, enhanced the Stone’s song.
Return The Balance and all will be well. Though softer than a whisper, the Stone’s tune carried a deep sadness that wound its way into her mind before fading.
“Anyala?”
She jerked her hand away from the Stone and turned to find both Singers studying her.
“It was singing to me. I could barely hear it. As you mentioned yesterday, it was louder when I touched it. I did not know you were waiting for me.”
“No need to apologize. What did it tell you?” Diani asked.
The melancholy of the Stone’s statement colored her voice. “Everything will be well if I bring The Balance back. It is sad and … in pain.” Ani reached out and pulled Diani closer. “We’re wasting time. The Stone does not know how long it can survive. It needs The Balance as your people needed The Blood.”
Diani wrapped her hands around Ani’s and nodded to Layson to join them. Layson stepped forward and embraced their interlocked hands. “The fastest ship in the fleet has been outfitted. They await final travel orders and passengers. I suspect you can leave whenever you wish.”
Ani smiled and was surprised by her own fleeting desire to stay on Lrakira so she could learn from them and perhaps even become friends. They were so different from the cold, hateful countenance of her grandmother. She bowed her head and backed toward the door. “Then I should find Renloret.”
About ten days later, Lrakira’s fastest starship maneuvered into position behind the fifth planet of Teramar’s solar system. Ani knew that Renloret had argued, unsuccessfully, that the ship was far larger than necessary for the simple search and retrieval mission. At least he had gotten his superiors to agree on this location for observation and waiting. Now there was only Commander Yenne Chenakainet to handle — or rather convince that a single star runner could do the job. The commander could not argue against the smaller ship because it would be less noticeable in the sky than the huge ship now peeking out at the edge of the gaseous planet’s horizon.
Ani sighed and shifted her gaze downward as she attempted to relax her overworked mind a little. Renloret interrupted her contemplation of her feet when he entered the conference room rubbing his forehead. He was probably trying to ease the headache he’d mentioned was now a regular feature of any meeting that included the commander. She couldn’t solve that problem for him.
A frown creased her brow as Ani crossed her arms tightly. She jerked her head toward the man standing with his back to them and shrugged. Renloret sighed. Kela peeked out from under the table and winked at the pilot. Ani shoved her foot at the canine but made no comment, either audibly or telepathically.
Renloret cleared his throat to get the commander’s attention. Yenne turned from the ship’s view screen, pulled out a chair, and sat with a huff, glaring at Ani. Ani pressed two fingers to her lips and shook her head. It was the signal she and Renloret had come up with to indicate that neither of them had gotten the stubborn man to agree to their plan.
There was no question that her father frustrated her. Yenne’s shipboard duties had made him less available to her than she’d hoped for, and this lack of contact had not enabled them to begin building any form of father-daughter relationship. She knew it did not make sense in any logical way, but it had left her feeling abandoned by the father she’d believed had already abandoned her by dying twenty years ago.
Renloret dipped his chin in greeting to Ani, snapped a proper salute to the commander, and then reached under the table to scratch Kela between the ears before taking a seat. “Commander Chenakainet, I have to supply the complete roster to the captain before she’ll let us disembark. It must be okayed by you before I can submit it to her.”
“I gave it to you already,” Chenakainet replied. “Why are we wasting time? Do we even know how much time we have?”
Renlor
et shook his head. “We don’t know precisely, Commander. In their last message, the Singers said that communications with and between the Stones continues to be compromised by the injury to the Anyala Stone. No one knows if it will die if the blade is not removed, or even if it can die. I agree with you that we need to expedite this search, but there is a problem with your list.”
“You’re still opposed to the number of searchers, pilot?”
“I think twenty is excessive.”
Ani snorted in disgust but otherwise remained quiet. She was supposed to let Renloret handle this part of the mission.
“How many would you suggest?” the commander asked, sarcasm drenching the last two words.
“Three.”
The commander stood. “Good, I’ll meet you two at the launch bay in one bell.”
“Wait.”
Ani was surprised at the force behind Renloret’s single word.
The commander hesitated.
“The three will be Ani, Kela, and me,” Renloret said. “It is the only way we can return. The three of us left and the same three will return. Others, especially you, Commander, will raise alarms about a Southern — or worse, an alien — invasion, and I am not going to march into the arc of that swinging blade if I can help it.”
“You chose the canine over me?” the commander sputtered.
“Yes.”
The hurt was obvious in the commander’s stunned expression.
Ani turned to Renloret. “Excellent. We’ll meet you in ten,” the tone of finality silencing further argument from her father. The whoosh of the door closing behind her as she left the room felt like an exclamation point. Surely her father was mature enough to understand and accept the right decision.
Ani and Kela arrived in the launch bay on schedule. She watched Renloret check over the sleek star runner. He looked in their direction, smiled, and waved them over. The trio quickly boarded and Ani was pleased when they were given immediate release. A few more hours and she would be home.
“That’s Teramar?” she whispered as her planet filled the view screen. “It looks smaller than I imagined.” She pointed at the equator. “The islands really do look like a necklace around the center. The few photos I’ve seen from Southern’s satellites only show specific areas, not the whole thing.”
“Southern’s optics are better than the usual early attempts at satellite imagery. I’d say Teramar is off to a good start when it comes to joining us out in the stars, which I suspect will be in a few generations.”
She pointed to a spiraling cloud formation. “Is that a storm front?”
“Yes, looks like a significant moisture carrier. Do you often have large storms this time of year?”
“Mid to late summer there’s usually three to four drenchers, so I guess that would be one of them.”
Kela whined at her side. Can he show us Star Valley?
She smiled. “Can you show us home?”
Renloret returned the smile and adjusted the view to show Northern’s central highlands in topographic clarity. Ani gasped. “Look, Kela, there’s Starlight Ridge, Sour Water Creek, and …” her voice caught, “Star Valley. Home. It’s beautiful. My home is beautiful.”
Renloret made one more adjustment.
“Oh, my,” she whispered as she grasped the pilot’s shoulder. Seen from above, her family home, the lake house, stood in sharp contrast to the soft natural edges of the trees and outcroppings. The view widened as Renloret moved the optics to the small village in the valley’s center. Anyala was silent as he panned over the geometric patterns of crops in various shades of green, red, and yellow, then tapped his shoulder when the sheriff’s office building came into view. “Did you ever get that message to Taryn?”
“Yes. I sent it directly to his tel-com as you requested when we left Lrakira. There is no way for him to reply, so I don’t know when he actually received it.”
Ani nodded. It was the best they could do to forewarn Taryn of their return. She watched the screen as the visual moved down the road.
“There’s the dance hall,” Renloret whispered.
She chanced a glance and caught the blush that crossed his cheeks. Evidently, he remembered “the dance.” Would there be another? She wished it had ended differently. In retrospect, she had mangled pretty much everything between them since then. The few times they had been alone and he had brought up their relationship, she’d changed the subject.
There was still too much to digest. Her understanding of her own identity had been wrenched into the impossible. Why hadn’t she been told about being The Blood after reaching menses, or at the very latest, after achieving the continental blade championship? What exactly had her mother and uncle been waiting for? Perhaps they didn’t want to tell her until they knew for sure they could get her to Lrakira. If only Renloret had arrived a year or two earlier, then perhaps her mother would still be alive and able to assist Ani in reconciling the twenty year time change caused by the Stones’ ruined time-song.
Without her mother to run interference, Ani was struggling to grasp the concept of time manipulation. She knew that twenty years was a mere blink for the Stones. But for her and her father, twenty years was, perhaps, a gap too wide to cross. The fact that he had not aged more than a few months while Ani had grown into adulthood was difficult to swallow. He was hardly more than a decade her senior, yet he acted as if she was the five-year-old he’d left behind. Any progress they may have accomplished after the skills tests had disappeared once they were headed for Teramar. For the past ten days their terse conversations had either ended in shouting matches or with one of them storming off, leaving much left unsaid and unresolved. Ani pulled her bottom lip between her teeth as she realized the truth in her mother’s frequent lament that she had inherited her father’s stubbornness, then she expelled a noisy breath through her nostrils.
“What now?” she asked Renloret. Now that she was away from Yenne’s overbearing presence, the search for her twin could commence and she wouldn’t have to think about her father or the impossible explanations they would have to concoct — yet.
“I’m receiving an automated permission from the launch tower behind the old research center to complete landing procedures. Don’t worry, all the signals are scrambled and wave coded. They won’t know we’re here.”
“But the ship itself … won’t the villagers see it?” She couldn’t imagine what they might think upon seeing the star runner.
“You’re not the only ones with camouflage technology.”
“Oh.” Ani sat back in the chair. How silly of me to forget. Indeed she had forgotten the holographic devices designed by her uncle that she had often used when playing games as a youth. Once, she had even used the camouflage technology to hide the mess in her room to buy some time to actually clean it up. And she had used three of the machines to protect the crash site from the prying eyes of the military when Renloret crash-landed near her cabin on his first trip to Teramar.
She crossed her arms and glared at the screen as lines of Lrakiran script appeared, replacing the visual of Star Valley. She was still adjusting to the idea that she was actually Lrakiran, though she had been born on Teramar. Technically, she had always been an alien on Teramar, though she hadn’t known it and didn’t feel like one. She could not even tell the difference between Teramarans and Lrakirans, apart from the difference in language and technology. They looked the same, sounded the same, smelled the same, and behaved the same. The only thing remotely alien about Lrakira was the three guardian Stones, and even that was not really alien to her. Until she had met the Stones, she and Kela were the only telepathic beings she’d known. But even with that difference between her and others, she had never doubted that she was Teramaran.
Renloret was obviously concentrating on the screen. His fingers flitted across the keyed panel in front of him. Ani scratched the base of Kela’s right ear and shifted in her chair. “Teramar is my home, not Lrakira.”
Renloret glanced at her over his
shoulder but said nothing as he completed the landing procedures. For the moment, thankfully, her comment could not be their focus. The mission had been clearly stated. Locate and take her twin to Lrakira so the Stone would live. What would happen if they couldn’t find the twin in time … or at all? And whether or not her twin was found, was she, Ani, required to return to Lrakira as well? Did she even want to? What about Renloret? If she stayed would he come back for her? Ani shook her head, reminding herself that she could only sharpen one blade at a time, and the most important blade was finding her twin. All other decisions had to be put off until then.
Renloret interrupted her thoughts, saying that they would be able to disembark when a certain blinking yellow light flashed to a solid green. Ani stared at the light. Her heart beat in harmony with each blink.
A slight bump and metallic clanging startled her. Had the ship landed? Ani checked the light. It was green. Renloret released his seat belt and stood. “Have to check the moorings.” He paused, smiled at her, and waved at the screen. “Ready to go home?”
Ani looked out to see the actual view from the ship instead of Lrakiran text, which had occupied the screen during the landing process. Manufactured walls with various cubbies or drawers and doors backed a bank of workstations. The view slid sideways as the ship rotated. Mesmerized by the unexpected view, Ani stared at the screen.
“I don’t recognize this room. Are you sure this is part of the research center?”
“I don’t think it’s exactly part of the research center, but there is at least one access point between them. That’s how Taryn and I found you. Actually, Kela led us to you. This launch tower was built inside the mountain behind the research center.”
Ani stared at Renloret. “Whoa. Kela led you to the research center and to me that night?” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kela’s ears dropped flat against his head and felt his private barrier slide into place.