by Allynn Riggs
The Lrakiran words, foreign to her tongue but not her memory, came to fit the music. The blade was hot and glowed with an internal green fire. She was surprised when the green haze gathered first about her broken wrist. Warmth spread out and back, the pain eased, and she actually felt the bone mend.
As she continued to sing, a green fire leapt from the blade, centered itself over Taryn, and appeared to lick out and into his body. Tears coursed multiple paths to drip onto her hands. White knuckled, Ani gripped the blade hilt as it moved. She seemed to see each injury under the bruises mend within a green haze, and she knew, without doubt, that alien magic — the combination of song and connection with Taryn through the blade — was causing an unimagined miracle.
Her hands trembled uncontrollably, but larger hands covered hers, halting the tremors. Renloret picked up the song. She followed with a descant and felt the power unleashed through the blade. She took a breath and added joy as she sensed what the blade was doing. Together, they shared the healing of Taryn’s knee, the straightening of twisted intestine, and the calming of his heart. They sang until their voices cracked and the blade allowed her to release her grip.
When Ani opened her eyes, Renloret was staring at her, his eyes filled with wonder. Then he bowed almost to his waist and touched his left index finger to his forehead. “This salute, the oldest I can verify, is given to acknowledge a Singer as is proper when she has shown the truth of her bonding.”
“I sang the song and the blade directed the magic. You assisted when I faltered. I did not accomplish a healing on my own. How is that a sign that I am a Singer?” She wondered if she would be accepted as one because she’d needed help in accomplishing the healing.
“A successful healing is the strongest and oldest sign of a true Singer,” Renloret said. “And this healing is not the only one. Ani, you have succeeded four times in healing.”
“Four?”
He nodded at Taryn’s body. No bruises showed, his heart and lungs seemed to be functioning with ease, and only a few scar lines were visible, marking where the flesh had been cut or torn. “Taryn was your fourth. The third was when you healed your broken wrist, just before you healed Taryn. The second was when you healed yourself after the coma device was removed. The first and most important was after you were poisoned and implanted with the device. If you had not been blade-bonded, I am not sure Taryn and I would have been able to save you. The blade allowed me to use it to heal you. That would only have happened if you were a Stone Singer.” He repeated the honorific gesture.
Ani lowered her head in acceptance and relaxed her grip on the blade. It no longer glowed with internal green fire. It was no longer hot. It was a plain, green, crystal blade. Ani studied Taryn’s still form. Had she and the blade truly succeeded?
Ani gingerly removed the bandages from Taryn’s body. All the cuts and bruises were gone; even the twisted knee was straight. Renloret tucked a blanket around Taryn’s form and pulled the sealing tab up the length of the stasis bag. Ani backed away, arms crossed, and Renloret noticed the shiver of her shoulders as he secured the stasis bag’s lock.
“He will be fine until we reach Lrakira,” Renloret said. “The device will be removed, and then he can save the Anyala Stone.”
“Will he become its Singer?” She seemed afraid of losing her newly accepted title.
“I … I don’t know. I suppose the Stone will tell us when it has healed. When I was younger, I once asked if I could be a Singer. The answer was a simple and emphatic no. Instead, I read all I could about them. In all my explorations of the history of the Stones, I have not once read of a male Singer.”
“Not a single one?”
He shook his head. Renloret did not know how this part of The Blood and The Balance prophecy was supposed to end. He knew only the first verse of the song, and like all songs, it was cryptic enough to cause a multitude of arguments. The Singers would have to read the whole song. Perhaps this incident would encourage the Singers to communicate more closely with their Stones. Hopefully, the Singers would then pass on their rediscovered past to the entire population of Lrakira and not just to the next generation of Singers. He allowed a smile to soften his face.
Admitting that the Singers did not know everything about their crystalline charges would cause ripples of disbelief and trouble across his home world. Some portion of the populace would not trust the Singers to guide them if they could not be honest about the knowledge gained from their connection with the Stones. Perhaps the Singers had never been “in charge” of the Stones as was commonly believed. Perhaps — and this made Renloret a bit uncomfortable — the Stones were really in charge of the Lrakiran people, not the other way around.
Seeing Ani frown, he asked her if she was worried that she might not be the Anyala Stone’s Singer once Taryn was healed.
“Perhaps a little, but it’s a subject I haven’t really had time to digest. Since no one seems to know what’s going to happen next, I think we’ll all have to wait until the Stone is saved,” she confessed.
With that comment, she turned to the long-sleep compartment, gently lowered the sliding door, and pressed the sealing pad. Her shoulders shivered slightly but she maintained a straight, calm face as she double-sealed Taryn into the confining space.
With her brother cared for to the best of their abilities, Renloret could now send a message to the waiting ship and Ani’s father, letting them know that the twin had been found and they would be leaving Teramar after picking up the bodies of his original team from their temporary burial place in the canyon above the cabin. His thoughts on those two things, Renloret started toward the star runner’s bridge, expecting Ani to follow. She did not.
He backtracked. Ani was crouched beside the compartment with one hand on the transparent barrier and the other covering her mouth. She was crying. Kela had wedged himself between Ani and the compartment, bracing her, his icy blue eyes staring accusingly at Renloret.
The pilot settled on the floor and pulled Ani into a cradling embrace. “For the second time, I am sorry, Ani. We don’t know how much time the Stone has and we need to get Taryn to Lrakira as fast as possible.”
“I have to tell his parents something.” Her words were blurry through her crying.
“Stones and blades! I have forgotten Melli and Gelwood. Aren’t we supposed to let the sheriff’s office know when we will be there so they can meet with us?” Renloret wondered what Ani would — or could — tell them at this point. A great deal had happened within a very short time, and neither Melli nor Gelwood had been privy to most of it.
She sat up, wiping tears away with fists like a young child. “Isul Treyder may have tried to take him away but we found him, and that Lrakiran doctor, Sholoret, or whatever his name is, can take that thing out of his head and bring him back. Right?”
“I am confident, Ani. The surgeon has done it once already with great success.”
“I thought I had this all figured out before we healed him. Now I’m not sure. What are we going to tell Melli and Gelwood? I can’t tell them he’s an alien and is needed to save the life of an intelligent crystal. And I can’t tell them he’s my brother. I won’t, not when even he doesn’t know.”
Kela whined.
She grabbed the canine by the scruff of his neck and pulled him close to kiss his muzzle. “Yes, Kela, that’s a good idea.” She scrambled to her feet and headed toward the exit ramp.
“What is Kela’s idea?” Renloret asked as he hurried to follow.
“We’re going to lie … sort of. I’ll explain on the way to the sheriff’s office. The Anyala Stone will have to wait a few more bells.”
Before heading into the village, Ani called the sheriff’s office to inform them of their target arrival time. During the dash down the mountain to the village, Ani talked through the plan with Kela and Renloret, occasionally pausing to hear their input and answer questions. She was thankful that the drive to the village took about twenty minutes because it gave them time to colle
ct themselves and get their story straight.
Daneeha looked up from her desk as Ani and Renloret strode into the reception area of the sheriff’s office, Kela padding close to Ani’s side. The secretary flipped the switch on the interoffice com. “Yantel, they’re here.”
Taryn’s office door opened and the acting sheriff, Deputy Yantel, beckoned them in. Ani nodded approval when Yantel asked Daneeha to come in as well. Daneeha moved a chair close to the door so she could keep an eye on the reception area then climbed up and sat — her face serious, a notebook and pen at the ready.
Yantel offered his forearm in greeting to both Ani and Renloret then sat on the edge of the desk. Like Daneeha, he had a notebook and pen poised. Ani felt her lip curve upward at the similarity between the deputy now in charge of Star Valley’s security and the missing sheriff. If needed, she knew that Yantel would make a fine sheriff, having learned from Taryn.
Yantel cleared his throat and looked directly at Ani. “Miss Chenak, I’m glad you’ve recovered from the trauma caused by General Dalkey. The sheriff said that your parents’ village is safe and healing because Renloret here,” he nodded at the pilot, “was able to get you to Southern in time.
“Now, as to our immediate concerns, I’ve told Gelwood and Melli that we had news of Taryn’s whereabouts. I will send a deputy to pick them up when I have the details. Start talking.” He was ready to take notes.
Ani found herself rolling her lip between her teeth. She took a breath and began. “Well, I’m sure you’ve read Taryn’s report of what happened at the cemetery and the research center.” Yantel nodded, and Ani explained that when Taryn and Renloret found her, she was only able to tell them that she’d been poisoned before losing consciousness.
Renloret then took up the narrative and gave Yantel the story he and Ani had agreed to about rushing Ani to Southern to counteract the poison and see if her blood would save the village. “But when she did not regain consciousness after the antidote was administered, the Southern doctors ran a complete body scan and found a very small device lodged in her head.”
He paused, and when he did, Yantel looked up from his note taking.
“Once the device was removed, Ani quickly recovered and appeared to have no ill effects from either the poison or the miniature machine, with the exception of memory loss, which was attributed to one of the side effects of the poison. The doctors then tested her blood for signs of the virus and when they confirmed she was immune to it, they were able to create a vaccine.”
When Renloret paused again, Ani continued. “Renloret and I stayed in Southern until all the women of my home village were inoculated and deemed safe. Then I spent the ensuing weeks researching the genetic implications of the disease and found reference to my mother having twins. But only my name was in the record.”
Yantel stopped the telling at that point. “So that’s what Taryn was helping you with? To find your twin?”
“Yes. Mother had never talked about a twin, and I had no idea if she was even alive. If she was, I wanted to find her — not only because she was my twin, but because she would need the vaccine if she was not also immune. I thought that perhaps Mother would have made notes somewhere about the disease and my immunity. And maybe she had written something down about what had happened to the twin. So we needed access to her old notes at the research center.”
“And that’s why you and Taryn were working at the new center.” Yantel nodded. “That makes sense. Go on.”
“Well, we went to see if Doctor Ganevek had any of my mother’s old records and ended up talking to a Doctor Isul Treyder. He seemed to recognize me but I have no specific recollections of him, though he did say he’d been gone for a number of years and only recently returned. While we talked, I got a creepy feeling about him. I mean he, well, ah, just acted a bit odd.” Ani paused and grimaced. “I mentioned it to Taryn and Doctor Ganevek a bit later, and Ganevek agreed that the man was odd but that he was also a mechanical genius. Then Doctor Ganevek showed us one of the amazing machines Treyder designed. Well anyway, I’m thinking that the combination of Treyder’s behavior and the machine must have triggered something in Taryn — suspicion or a gut feeling — and that’s why he went back that eve.” She pointed at Taryn’s open notebook on the desk. “He probably made notes on it.”
“Yes, I’ve already read them. Now I understand the references.” Yantel added to his notes. “So now I want to back up a bit. Did you ever discover the identity of the twin?”
Ani glanced at Renloret, and he gave her a short nod. “Yes, but according to Melli, who was present at the birth, the twin died shortly after birth. The baby may never have taken a breath. My mother asked Melli to keep it a secret, but when I told Melli that I knew about the twin, she told me what had happened. Melli also told us that Taryn was meeting with a doctor that eve, so Renloret and I decided to wait until morning to tell him that the twin had died. Then when we got here, Daneeha told us Taryn hadn’t checked in yet, so we went to the research center to see if Treyder might know where Taryn was, but the doctor wasn’t in his office either.”
“All we found was a note on Treyder’s desk with a tel-com number on it and a piece of fabric we think belongs to the sheriff’s uniform jacket,” Renloret added as he pulled the scrap from his pocket and handed it to Yantel.
The acting sheriff took a step toward Renloret, shaking the fabric evidence in his face. “Blades, man, why didn’t you leave it there so we could have found it? I could charge you with destroying evidence in a possible criminal investigation.” Yantel looked at Daneeha, who grimaced and nodded.
Renloret shrugged and added that they had entered the number from the doctor’s note into Ani’s tel-com and it had connected to Senator Nelham’s committee office in Saedi City. They wondered if Taryn and the doctor had gone to the capital to discuss something with the senator but couldn’t figure out just what, so they had asked Daneeha to trace Taryn’s tel-com to be sure.
Yantel nodded and said he remembered, then asked to see her tel-com. Glad she had not yet disposed of it, Ani pulled it out and showed the coordinates to Yantel. When Yantel said he was keeping the tel-com as evidence, she pursed her lips and was about to protest when the stern expression on Yantel’s face convinced her to back down.
“At the government building we were told that Dr. Treyder had met with Senator Nelham very late that eve and that we should speak with the senator if we had questions. We were directed to a committee meeting room to wait for the senator to conclude his business. He came out of the room with another man. We overheard him asking the man if the sheriff was alive, and the man answered that he appeared to be in a coma and was concerned that his condition wasn’t what they expected. When he asked if Treyder was still in town, the senator said he wasn’t and gave him a number to call. Then they went in opposite directions. We decided not to waste time confronting the senator and followed the man he’d been talking to.” Ani took a breath. “He led us to a medical building in the warehouse district of Saedi City. We found Taryn already in a comatose state in a guarded laboratory on the fourth floor.”
Yantel and Daneeha both scribbled in their notebooks as Ani gave a bare blade account of the rescue, leaving out Mroz’s participation and anything that smacked of alien devices or vehicles.
Yantel listened and added notes, his frown deepening until he apparently couldn’t hold back his reaction. “What in all the hells of Teramar made you think you could — or should — pull that off without any assistance or backup?”
Ani shrugged. “Well it worked, Yantel. We got him out, and he’s prepped for evacuation to Southern so that machine can be removed. I wanted to go right away but Renloret suggested, rightly, that you and Taryn’s parents should know what happened before we left. I promise we’ll bring him back as soon as we can.”
“You better,” Daneeha said, breaking her silence.
Yantel threatened to arrest both of them for taking matters into their own hands and not informing him of wha
t had transpired until after the fact, then grudgingly admitted that if the blades had been turned the other way, Taryn himself would have committed the same hotheaded caper. The difference would have been that he would have taken the deputies. But his straight-lipped smile did not bode well for Renloret and Ani.
“Please, Yantel. We’re positive Taryn has been injected with a device similar to the one removed from me. We should get him to Southern as soon as possible.”
Yantel closed his notebook. “Daneeha, please ask the deputy to go pick up the Averes. I’ll want to pass on this information to them.” Daneeha left the room, and the acting sheriff turned his attention back to Ani and Renloret. “How long do you think it will take to get to Southern, have the device removed, and return Taryn to health and home?”
Ani glanced at Renloret. “I’m guessing about a month. At most six weeks. I’m sure the doctors there will want to make sure he was not subjected to any unseen abuse or injected with anything else.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask to be given examples.
Yantel pursed his lips and rubbed his hand across his forehead. “Okay. I will fill in the Averes. While you’re gone, we will get some help from the Saedi City department and track down the doctor and see if he has any connection to the senator. If you’re wrong, I will hunt you both down, no matter where you are.”
She didn’t dare smile at the knowledge that they wouldn’t be anywhere on Teramar.
“Bring him back, Ani.”
She stepped close and hugged him. She was relieved, but she also felt a large amount of guilt rise up as she realized that Melli and Gelwood would hear from Yantel about the coma device and that she had been the first recipient of it — something she had deliberately kept from Melli in their earlier discussions. They would be alarmed that Taryn had such a device in him, taken aback by his quick removal to Southern, and probably furious with Ani for the lie of omission. She couldn’t imagine what they would think or how they would feel if they knew the full truth. As much as she wanted to be the one to tell Melli and Gelwood, she appreciated the acting sheriff’s sense of urgency and understood that, in any event, it was his prerogative to be the one to tell them. And she knew that getting the device out of Taryn as soon as possible had to be her priority.