“I’ll take some jasmine tea.” Bri’s voice was muffled.
“How can anyone drink tea and mead?” Marian asked Alexa, trying for a teasing tone and falling flat. Alexa shrugged.
“Really bad dream,” Raine repeated.
Bri got up and went behind her and began to knead her shoulders, comforting them both.
It took little enough time to pour the tea over a strainer packed with jasmine tea in each of their individualized mugs with a cowboy hat and their name. Jikata gave the first to Raine, the second to Bri, and took the third, the weakest, herself.
She sat and so did Bri. They all drank in silence until Raine said, “We were all dead, and Faucon…” She shuddered and it went around the table.
“Bad one,” Calli said and Jikata knew she was seeing the remains of her husband and herself and her beloved volarans.
After another long silence, Jikata said, “The new Master sent the dream. It and the Dark know we’re coming.”
Another mass shudder. Eyes showing fear then faces turning stoic.
“Shit,” Alexa said.
Jikata lowered her voice. “He has dreeths for the volarans, doesn’t think we can reach the hatchway in the bottom of the mountain.” She’d caught that flash of knowledge from the Master’s mind.
All attention focused on her.
Calli said, “The volarans will be fine.”
They stared at her, and Jikata was sure everyone was listening hard to her Song and hearing her absolute confidence…and a secret she hadn’t imparted.
Raine narrowed her eyes. “They can’t know how fast we’re coming.” She looked at Jikata. “Did you get that? That he knows when we’ll be there?”
Mulling over every nuance of her interaction with the Master, Jikata recalled that the weather seemed colder than she’d thought, more winter than autumn. The setting had always been determined by Ishi—by the Master Horror.
“Ttho,” Jikata said. “You’re right, I don’t think it knows how fast we’re coming.”
Raine switched her gaze to Marian. “You think that because I built the Ship and the Master doesn’t have any of my DNA or Jikata’s we can get through the island shield.”
Marian stirred from brooding at her mead. “Ayes.”
“I have a secret, too.” Raine looked at Calli, crossed her arms.
The mood at the table lightened a little.
“Good enough,” Marian said, then stared at Jikata. “Can you describe the new Master as he is?”
“Hai.” Jikata showed her teeth in a smile. “He doesn’t speak Japanese. He doesn’t know my Japanese name. He didn’t even know there was such a language.”
“No other languages in Lladrana, sí?” Calli’s smile was faint, but true.
“I’ll want an image of him to pass around,” Marian said with her old professorial authority.
Jikata grimaced. “No chance of missing him.” She drank her tea, finally noticing the good flavor, and sighed. She’d loved it once, but not now. If she made it, after they’d destroyed the Dark, she doubted she’d ever drink it again. “Another advantage, he doesn’t know our disguises.”
“That’s right,” Calli said, and swallowed. “I had blond hair.”
Alexa looked straight across the table into Jikata’s eyes. “Tell me one thing, Singer and prophet. In your visions, do any of us live?”
“Ayes, sometimes all of us,” Jikata replied immediately, recalling her previous visions, nothing the Dark had sent her. She still felt the heat of embarrassment at being duped, but set that aside, sending them all the truth in her heart. She looked around the table, hoping she lingered on each face equally. “And since we’ve been practicing, the more we practice, the better chance that we live, we all live.” Though she hadn’t had that in a vision lately, she was sure of it in her bones.
“Sign me up,” Alexa said. With a little raise of her cup in a toast to them, Alexa gulped the last of her tea and mead and said with a wobbly smile, “Think I’ll go make love with Bastien. It gets us through.”
“We guessed,” Marian said drily, finishing her straight mead. “But it works.”
Men filtered into the room. A serious Bastien, who lifted Alexa gently into his arms, his face so tender with desperate love that Jikata had to look away.
Jaquar took Marian’s hand and pulled her into waltz formation and they danced from the room, gazes locked.
Marrec held out his hand. “Calli, beloved?” She went to him, and he gripped her fingers, then sent her ahead of him down the short, narrow hall with a hand to the small of her back.
Sevair strode over to Bri, lifted her straight from her chair and put her over his shoulder, smiling as she giggled.
Faucon swung Raine into his hold, set his mouth on hers and walked out, obviously able to multitask.
Jikata sat at the table, examining every dream she’d had of Ishi, every nightmare. The Ishi dreams had been false, the Dark ones where it had threatened her all too true. But since embarking on the Ship, Jikata didn’t think she’d had a true vision. So the awful dreams showing increasing death and destruction were sent by the Dark.
Her mind was all too clear. Reality bit and bit hard. She was petrified. She could die.
Did she have a philosophy of death? Of course. And it wasn’t doing a damn bit of good now, in the middle of the night, with those visions of dead friends painting her mind. She hadn’t anticipated dying for a long time, maybe in her nineties when she was old, like Ishi.
Now they were sailing to death and it was all too close.
42
She stepped back from herself, looking at herself as if she were seeing a vision, and she didn’t like what she saw.
An infection had grown in her—from the Ishi dreams and the Dark nightmares. She’d been well on her way to becoming a woman like the Singer, or worse…and even more worse was that woman could have been easily manipulated by the Dark.
She’d nearly cost them all their lives.
Closing her eyes she sought music, the Song, and went to the very core of her to recall her own identity.
Ruthlessly she looked for the dark smudges of fear and arrogance and suspicion and hubris and eradicated them. She wiped them out with ideas of how she wanted to be, her own self-image she wanted to cultivate: understanding, supportive, confident. Not as easy to include those qualities in herself as it was to fall into selfishness.
She could and did nip most of the bits that the Dark had added to herself. The negative qualities that were innate, she’d just have to continue to work on, as always.
She was left with one stubborn bit of…something…from the Dark that she couldn’t change herself. She wasn’t as complete and as competent as she thought.
Sighing, she came back to herself, sitting at the table with a cup of cold jasmine tea. She saw a man in the shadowy doorway and jolted, realized soon enough that he wasn’t her man. Luthan had not sought her out. Too much distance between them since the Dark had influenced her? She hoped not.
The man walked in—Bossgond, the best Circlet Sorcerer. He took a seat opposite her, giving her a sympathetic look. With a pass of his hand over her cup and one low note, he heated her tea. She curved her hands around the mug and returned his stare.
He wasn’t the wizard of books and films, tall with long flowing white hair and beard, lines around wise eyes. He was shorter than most Lladranan men, skinny and boney. The knobs of shoulders and knees showed beneath his robe. His hair was golden. But when she withdrew her hands from her cup, he took them in his own—calloused, tough hands that matched the shrewdness, the sharp intelligence in his eyes.
She felt a connection to him—more than the common link they shared with Marian, his protégée. A great portion of the low vibrations of their Songs matched. Jikata caught her breath.
He squeezed her fingers, comforting. “Great talent makes great demands.” He bowed his head. “I thank you for coming to aid us, Singer.”
Then, without fanfare, withou
t any noticeable stress at all, he drew the last bit of the evil from her, through their grip. Siphoned every smidgen of it out of her, and cleansed her inner self, leaving her feeling as if she sparkled.
He withdrew his hands, held them stiffly straight into the air. Blackness streamed from his fingertips to hang in a greasy cloud. With a short, sharp hum, the cloud ignited, flamed, was consumed.
The air should have smelled sulfurous, or acrid, but only the faint scent of jasmine tea lingered.
Bossgond rose, inclined his torso. “Be blessed, Singer.”
He left, straight-backed, as silently as he came, and Jikata pondered his manner. Usually he was a grumpy, irascible old man. But she understood now that was a mask he wore to hide sensitive feelings. No one could have been gentler, kinder to her in this moment of crisis and doubt. She missed the potency of his Song.
She remained at the table, not wanting to return to the cramped cabin empty of Luthan. She thought back to when the Master had dropped his Ishi persona and she’d seen the true nature of the being—twisted and evil—and had been repulsed, as repulsed as Luthan had been with her that day on the beach.
Had he seen her monstrously warped and evil?
Ttho, never. Now, finally, Luthan had come to her. He stroked her hair, brushed it aside so he could trail his fingers down her face. Shaking his head, he said, “You were different, but never evil.” He bent down to kiss her lips, softly, softly.
Tears welled in Jikata’s eyes. “Thank you.”
He sat next to her, took her hand. “You are better.”
“Completely.” She grimaced. “Back to my own self, which is not as delightful as I think.”
“Very delightful.” He kissed her fingers.
She asked what she wanted to know. “I haven’t had any true visions on the Ship. Have you?”
His breath left him on a relieved sound. Nodding, he glanced around, narrowed his eyes, tilted his head as if listening. She followed suit, sensed everyone except the night crew, a few volarans and Bossgond were asleep. The Circlet was brooding quietly and she knew he wouldn’t eavesdrop.
Luthan kept his voice low. “Lately I’ve been seeing us all survive.”
Jikata let out a sighing breath. “I had a feeling, and one vision before we left.”
“It’s Faucon,” Luthan said. “He is the key. I don’t know how…but…”
Jikata nodded. “Ayes. I see a shining aura around him in the visions where we live.”
Luthan stood, drew her up, held her and closed his eyes. “Let’s go to bed, I have a need to sleep with you in my arms.”
Jikata woke before dawn and waited until all the Exotiques were above deck, where she could talk to them en masse, before she got up. Luthan still slept, and she stroked his head, the silver at his temples wider, the lines in his face deeper.
She loved him and didn’t want to die.
Most of all, she didn’t want him to die.
She could meditate…. no, that was putting the reckoning for her bad behavior off. Dressing carefully, she went up top.
So she went up to the deck and found the Exotiques had gathered to watch the dawn.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a bitch,” she said.
Alexa drummed her fingers on her baton sheath. “Visions?”
“Not so much.”
“Nightmares every night,” Calli said. “Chasonette told Blossom, who told me.”
“Yes. Or dreams of my great-grandmother who just died, sent by the Master to turn me back.” She looked at them all. “Can we mend the bonds between us that have frayed?”
Bri stepped forward and hugged her. “You only had to ask.”
After a ritual that included Bri’s laying on of hands to check her inside and out, some group mental activities—including untying a few spellknots with Song—and a volaran flight, Jikata felt as if she were truly grounded and whole.
“So, Jikata—” Alexa had calculation in her eyes “—can you finish that battle Song we want?”
It burst into her mind, fabulous notes, a strident melody. She scrabbled for pencil and paper, as if there’d be any on the deck of a Ship, but Calli handed her some and, muttering to herself, Jikata finished the Song with a flourish. That wasn’t the only Song that came to mind, notes and chords and bars and bridges all the way to full orchestral pieces dazzled like fireworks, as if they’d been dampened and suppressed and now could cartwheel and be recognized. “I want to get some new compositions down. See you.”
“Wait, the battle Song—” Alexa said.
Jikata shoved the paper at her and Alexa scowled down at it. “I can’t read music.”
With a sigh, Marian took it from her, scanned it and began to Sing, a strong alto. Chasonette joined in. Welcome back, Singer, she said mentally, thoughts loving.
Jikata smiled as she went down the hatch, all the women had good voices, but she’d trained them. She didn’t think that Marian would have read music or tried a new song in public before they’d met.
She was making a difference.
That’s why the Dark feared her.
That afternoon, spellknot unbinding and Singing practice went extremely well. Another subject was added to the training: mind shields. Taught by several Circlets, including Bossgond.
By the time the Ship sailed into night, Jikata knew the Dark could not penetrate her dreams.
The Ship was sailing fast, and so was time…sailing by with nothing Raine could do to prevent it. She was pleased with the crew’s response to the threat to Lladrana, and the new speed. They might match last year’s expedition’s time of three weeks. As if it were a race and not sailing to death.
But every second of speed she could squeeze from The Echo would lead to more surprise on behalf of the Master and the Dark.
Raine left Faucon sleeping in the tiny cabin and went up on the deck, too restless to stay stifled down below. She nodded to Jean, who Captained The Echo at night, but didn’t disturb the quiet or insult him by asking how the shift went. They were making good time by the wind against her face.
She was on a Tall Ship—oh, not quite, they were mostly schooners, and this was definitely more like a galleon—but a big ship with masts, the deck vibrating under her feet and creak of rigging and swish of air filling the sails. Going starboard, she looked toward the east and the land.
The sea and the wind and the rolling of the waves beneath the Ship itself soothed her until she felt sleepy. But like other times, she didn’t want to go back to the cabin. Despite the porthole, the cabin was too confining. So she gestured to Jean that she’d be bedding down on a mattress kept for sailors who wanted to crash on deck instead of below in their hammocks and settled down.
She drifted, the scent of the sea and the pretty night, and the rocking of the Ship sending her into a doze she didn’t want to give up for sleep.
They’d timed this night of sailing to reach the narrow passage between continents at dawn. Everyone seemed to think that she should be the one to Captain The Echo as they traversed it. That her special rapport with the oceans of Amee wouldn’t lead them aground. Since no one else had sailed the curving strait, she’d agreed.
Once they were through that passage they’d be in the northern waters commanded by the Dark.
A shadow loomed over her, the hair on her nape rose. Danger!
A flash of a blade and she rolled, hearing the thud of the knife into the mattress. Adrenaline surged through her, she kicked out, yelled.
A heavy fetid-breathed man crashed down on her. She struggled, freed a hand to rake his cheek. He flinched, but made no sound, his hands went to the sides of her head.
To twist, snap her neck and kill her.
Waves of wrongness, of fury, of madness, rolled over her from him. She struggled for breath to scream. Set her nails in his bleeding cheek to claw again.
Then she was free. More than one set of hands clamped around him and flung him away from her.
“Mutant,” he screamed. “Alien thing! You des
erve to die. You all must—”
Solid sounds of flesh meeting flesh and quiet.
Bri was at Raine’s side, crooning, expert medica hands checking her. Raine sucked in a hard breath as pain speared when Bri pressed a rib too hard. Finally, Raine could breathe again, short, choppy breaths, but air. She tried a smile, found that her cheek hurt and her lip was split. Wetness that wasn’t sea spray dribbled down her chin. “Haven’t we done this already?”
“Sshhh,” Bri said, soothing. “Let me care for you.”
Raine didn’t dare close her eyes. She felt the heat of Bri’s healing hands. Must have broken bones, then. Her cheek, maybe, her rib. Her arm hurt, too…so she concentrated on the little drama going on down the deck.
“How did he get on the Ship?” Faucon spit out. Anger radiated from him, being matched by Bastien and Sevair. Faucon glanced at Raine’s attacker, then came to her, settled beside her so he could hold her in his arms.
Bri cast him a glance of approval, but a whimper escaped Raine as she was shifted.
“How did he get on the Ship?” Bastien repeated.
Jean stood straight, but his voice was as cool as the brine at the depths of the sea. “He passed the trials with flying colors, same as everyone else. I saw no sign of that hatred reaction at any time. He masked it well.” Ire spiked Jean’s personal Song.
“He’ll be punished,” Alexa said. “You,” she said. Raine got the idea that she nudged the man with her toe. He was conscious then, not as hurt as Raine was. Anger spurted through her. Faucon kissed her forehead.
“You piece of shit, you’ll be punished.” Alexa’s voice went silky. “Where there’s one, there might be more. Covering for you as you hurt us, eh?” She chuckled and it wasn’t pleasant. “We’ll make you talk. By the time you’re finished you’ll sing us a pretty Song about this business.”
“You can’t,” Raine’s attacker said.
“Think not?” Marian said. “We have the Power of all the elements. Power such as you have never known. We have the feycoocus, also strange and disturbing to folk like you. We have,” her voice lowered, “the roc.”
Echoes in the Dark Page 40