Love and Intrigue Under the Seven Moons of Kordea

by Helena Puumala

  “Steph,” Coryn confirmed, adding: “And Fiana, too. She’s a very competent judge of character. I should know, having listened to her criticize me on a number of occasions, and having had to concede, in the end, that she had the right of it.”

  He grinned wryly.

  Sarah grinned back at him.

  “I guess that I should feel honoured since she liked me immediately, when I first met her. And, at the time, I was as green as they grow them in Laurentia. Definitely wet behind the ears.”

  “All right, then,” Marlyss said leaning back in her chair. “I’ll take it as a given that your new employee is trustworthy.”

  Coryn had expected more of an argument from her, and wondered what exactly was going on. It did not do to query the august lady, however; she would get to the point in her own good time. He merely nodded, waiting for what was coming next.

  “We have been experimenting with that half-egg-shaped mechanism,” The Eldest of the Twelve said after a moment’s silence.

  “Yes?” Jaime leaned towards her, looking very interested.

  “Have you succeeded in doing anything with one of those mechanisms?” Marlyss turned her attention to him.

  “With the help of one of the other employees of the Liaison Office I took one of them apart,” he replied. “The components are now sitting on my desk, carefully sorted, and labelled. It should be possible to put it together, if that seems advisable, at any time.”

  “Did you find it just another piece of the electronic equipment that you Terrans are continuously producing?” Marlyss asked.

  “Not quite,” Jaime furrowed his brow.

  “Electronics are not really my specialty, but I have never had any problem giving first aid to ailing gadgets, or making sense of the inner workings of such. I’ve handled heat detectors, sound detectors—including sounds outside of the human hearing range—magnetic field detectors, and a handful of other, similar items. But this time I was puzzled. Some of the connections seemed to be different from the other detectors that I have known, and there were a couple of wee components the inclusion of which made no sense to me. I couldn’t figure them out, although I did make the assumption that they must somehow relate to the functioning of the detector.”

  Marlyss nodded.

  “You were told about Sarah’s discovery that the detector that was used to determine her location, amplified the emotions that its users were displaying at the moment that their gadget keyed into her use of her amarto?” she asked.

  “Yes. I had to admit that I do not know enough about amartos and their use, to know what to make of that. I gather that, in Sarah’s opinion, this side-effect was not something that the Hounds were intending to produce.”

  Marlyss smiled thinly at him.

  “Carefully spoken,” she said. “Wisely so.”

  She paused, and drew a breath before continuing:

  “After toying and experimenting with the detector, we, in the Circle of the Twelve, have come to the conclusion that the effect was created intentionally by whoever built these gadgets.”

  Now Jaime was sitting at the edge of his seat, staring at her. Coryn, too, was staring, trying to make sense of her words.

  “Go on,” Jaime encouraged. “You do have more to say, right?”

  “Indeed.” Marlyss gazed upon the object under discussion as it sat on her desk. “We have come to the conclusion that it’s a cry—more than a cry, a powerful shout—for help. A shout which cannot be ignored by any amarto-sensitive person who comes into contact with it.”

  If Marlyss’ intention had been to make an impact on the two men, she succeeded.

  Coryn was the first to react.

  “A call for help from The Organization Territory,” he said. “Probably from deep within their sphere of influence. Sent by someone who was quite familiar with the power of The Witches’ Stones, and capable, as well, of making use of it. Someone who also has the know-how to build detectors as sophisticated as the one we’re looking at, as the one Jaime and Texi took apart in the Liaison Office.”

  “Someone, who, I suspect is being forced to employ his or her talents, or, more likely, their combined talents to subvert the power of the Stones into the hands of their overlords,” added Marlyss.

  “The Witch Anya,” Coryn guessed.

  “Along with her son and grandson, I would think,” added Sarah. “My father and brother.”

  “Also the girl who was lured from Trahea, some time ago,” Coryn added. “The one who was screaming—assuming that she’s still alive. Plus, there could be others of whom we know nothing.”

  “So, what’s to be done?” Jaime asked, looking around at the others. “I’m presuming that someone has an idea or two about that.”

  “My first reaction was that I wanted to use the power of the Seven Circles to pull them out from there,” said Marlyss. She spoke slowly, almost hesitantly.

  “Is that possible?” Jaime asked.

  “I don’t know.” The Eldest sighed. “In theory, yes. However, there are complications. To begin with, we’d have to locate these people, and I understand that we’re talking about what amounts to a number of inhabited planets spanning several solar systems.”

  “Yes,” said Coryn. “The Organization corner of the galaxy is much smaller than the Confederation, but it, nevertheless, is a vast expanse of space.”

  “And, I presume,” added Jaime, “if you search using Stone power, thanks to the technology under discussion, you’ll be opening yourselves up for detection. So the enemy will know that we’re up to something. They may even have a way of thwarting what you plan to do.”

  “You’ve got it,” said Marlyss. “And that’s another problem. We just don’t know enough about what these Organization people can do. We don’t know what kind of a combination of Terran technology and amarto-power they have succeeded in putting together.”

  “Whatever it is, we need to destroy it,” the Witch Dian said, opening her mouth for the first time. “It seems to me that no-one will be safe, especially those of us who are amarto-sensitive, as long as these people have—whatever it is that they have.”

  “I’m not happy making this statement, since the people we are talking about are basically my own kind,” said Coryn, “but understanding what I’ve come to understand about the mindset of those who are in control of The Organization, I thoroughly agree with your assessment, Witch Dian. They cannot be trusted with the kind of power that you Witches wield.”

  “The Stone power is not supposed to be a weapon with which a few people subdue the many to their own benefit,” said Marlyss. “One of the first lessons an Apprentice Witch learns is that that is precisely why we, the amarto-sensitives, live on a world which requires that we spend much energy just keeping it liveable. And it is why the talent is given only to women, since of the two sexes, they tend to be less willing to violently misuse power. Now it seems that both of those precautions put into place by The Creators have been negated.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The upshot of the meeting was that Witch Dian accompanied Coryn and Jaime to Trahea. She would not be staying long; Coryn promised Marlyss that either he or Texi would fly her back as soon as she and Jaime had learned what they could from the dissected gadget, as well as from experimenting with the intact ones. In the meantime the most accomplished of the Apprentices would take turns replacing her in the Circle of the Twelve; it would be good practise for them, Marlyss maintained. Sarah would be among them; it was time for her to learn some of the basics of working within a Circle, and since the next days’ projects were routine ones, this was a good opportunity to introduce her to it.

  Witch Dian’s arrival at the Official Residence and the Liaison Office caused a stir among the employees. The Kordean natives, including Dili and Curt, were flabbergasted to find themselves dealing with a Circle Witch, albeit, the youngest of the Twelve. Although the rumour mill had it that Marlyss was training Dian to take on the role of the Eldest, once she herself decided to retire.
That eventuality, however, was still far in the future, no matter how talented Dian was—and she was talented—since Marlyss was in excellent health, and her people were long-lived.

  Dili and Curt, at the Residence, did their best to disappear into the woodwork when the Circle Witch was around, even though Dian clearly took her cues from Coryn and Jaime, and made an effort to treat them with respect.

  “I’m really not used to looking down my nose at people,” she confided to the men when they made their way to the Office after dropping her things at the Residence. “I grew up in the poor part of Trahea. My family is still there. I go for visits once in a while, but it’s hard because they, and everyone else around, treats me like I’m something to be venerated.”

  She sighed.

  “I can’t even talk to my sister. She resents me. She married very young, and now has two small children, and a husband who works in one of the big houses. Even though she works, too, they’re barely making ends meet, and she’s really afraid of getting pregnant again.”

  “If you give her name to the Second Liaison Officer, Jillian Ashton, I’m sure she will arrange for her to be seen by one of the Medics at the Port Clinic,” Coryn said. “They can equip her with clips to keep her from getting pregnant again. If, later, she wants more children, the process can be reversed. Jillian would jump at a chance to help someone like that. She’s a feminist, and a democrat.”

  “Sis might accept that,” Dian said, sounding a bit more hopeful. “I offered to help her, but she turned me down flat. No Witch, not even her own sister, was going to mess with her body. Even though the woman who helped birth her babies is Stronghold-trained, one of those women who have some talent, but not enough to become Circle Witches.”

  “People can behave irrationally,” said Jaime.

  *****

  “That’s a tiny shard of an amarto,” Dian said after examining the fleck of green which had been attached to a very small metal component, and which had defeated Jaime’s analytic abilities the other day. “It’s too small to be used by a Witch, but it has been keyed. I can sense its presence, and its identity with a finger, but likely a lesser talent would not notice it.”

  The last statement was merely that, a statement; there was nothing boastful about it.

  “What about this one?” Jaime picked up another item which looked almost exactly the same. “Does this have a Stone shard on it, too?”

  Dian took it into her fingers.

  “Yes,” she answered almost immediately. “Two tiny shards, probably cut from the same Stone. I wonder..., feedback of resonation, perhaps, sort of like an echo echoing itself?”

  Jaime grinned at her.

  “That’s where my thoughts are going,” he said. “Maybe you’re not really a Witch, but a Scientist. Maybe the Magic of the Kordean Witches is, at least partly, a Science.”

  Dian shrugged, even though she did look pleased at his reaction.

  “Only what’s echoing is not sound, but emotions,” she added. “That explains the amplification that hits us amarto-sensitives, when we use Stones in the vicinity of a turned-on detector, but it does not explain how the detector works to zero in on our Stones.”

  “True,” agreed Jaime. “So we still have a lot of work ahead of us.”

  *****

  Meanwhile, routine Stone-work was proceeding at Ferhil Stones.

  The Circle of the Twelve was in the Tower Room, all twelve of the Witches seated, cross-legged, on cushions, on the wooden floor. Moonlight was streaming in through the windows; the night was well advanced.

  “We need to check the position of Lina,” Marlyss subvocalized, mostly for the benefit of the night’s newest Circle member who happened to be Sarah. “Follow me, and feed me energy.”

  Sarah had no trouble doing so. She had had plenty of instruction in the art of sublimating her egotistical tendencies in order to function as a part of a greater whole, which is what a Witch Circle was. Marlyss’ teaching, and Dian’s exhortations to not insist on having her own way had had their effects: she was perfectly capable of participating in a Circle. If the ability was basically superficial in her case, that hardly mattered; she was talented enough—just like Dian was—that her rebellious underpinnings remained just that, and did not interfere with the work, especially when the task at hand was mere routine.

  Only, something, this night, turned out to not be routine.

  “She’s shifted too much,” came Marlyss’ thought after she had mentally taken stock of Lina’s position. “Any change, since we last nudged her, to keep her in orbit, should have been minimal. But this is not minimal; this is enough that we will need to get the cooperation of the other Circles to right her. I don’t quite understand... but these things sometime happen for no discernible reason.

  “Let’s put in a call to the other Circles.”

  They did that, and then came out of trance to wait for the other six Circles to respond. As Sarah already understood, getting all of the Seven Circles to work in unison took an hour or so. The Circles were scattered around the dry globe that was Kordea; the planet’s water was mostly underground, except when, occasionally, wild storms buffeted one or another portion of it. Even then, the water was quickly absorbed by the soil, to gather in subsurface reservoirs whose location was easy to gauge by the areas of vegetation, and animal life, including humans.

  Some of the Circles would be under daylight at the moment, and their workrooms would have to be shrouded by the heavy, insulating drapes. That was not a desirable circumstance, and Marlyss did not call for the Seven to work together without a good reason. Therefore, Sarah deduced, she must consider Lina’s shift serious. Of course Lina was the most important of Kordea’s seven moons; because of her steady, unvarying if unorthodox path, the nights were never dark on the planet. If she should escape from gravity’s pull, life on Kordea would become much more difficult for its human inhabitants. And should Lina fall into the surface of the planet, instead—well, that notion did not bear contemplation.

  It occurred to Sarah to wonder if Coryn’s new Scientific Advisor might have been able to figure out what had affected Lina’s orbit. He was not present to be questioned, however; perhaps Dian could ask him about it, later. She had seemed really pleased to have been assigned to work with the young man; Sarah had been amused by the fact. Did Dian find him attractive? Possibly, though he was not Sarah’s type.

  What or who is my type, Sarah asked herself wryly, as she sat by a Tower window, staring into the moonlit landscape. A certain fair-haired form with its attractive facial features swam into her mind’s eye; she immediately banished it into the background. She did not need the complication of thinking about the man at the moment—or ever, for that matter—she told herself fiercely.

  “We ought to go down to the cafeteria for a snack during this break,” Marlyss suggested. “It’ll be getting on to morning by the time we have all the Circles coordinated. Since I don’t know how difficult our job will be, we better be prepared to work through dawn.”

  Which meant having servants accessible to draw the curtains in the Tower room the moment the sun peeked over the horizon. Fair enough. Sarah trooped downstairs with the other members of the Circle where one of the Apprentices had already alerted the kitchen help to prepare a cold meal for the greenhoods, and Sarah.

  What sort of difficulties was Marlyss anticipating?

  *****

  “All Seven Circles—that’s sixty-three women with their Stones—are pushing at Lina, and she’s not moving!” The thought was that of Marlyss, the Eldest of the Twelve, and Sarah could sense the frustration in her mental tone.

  What was happening? She, Sarah, was channelling energy into the leader of her Circle just like the ten others in her group were. Just like the other Witches in the other six Circles were doing, through the Eldest of each of those Circles, who were directing their Stone-power to Marlyss. The power available to Marlyss was phenomenal; shifting Lina ought to have been easy. Sarah knew, even as every other W
itch involved in the process, knew, exactly how much of a nudge was necessary, and what its shape had to be.

  What sort of sabotage were they dealing with? And how was it even possible? What was going to happen if they could not counter it?

  Marlyss was going to harm herself if she kept trying to push against whatever wall she was pushing, and perhaps the rest of the women in the Circles would also be harmed. Sarah did not quite understand where her sense of clarity about that had come from, but it was as if somebody was telling her that she, as the odd person in the arrangement, was the freest to move, and to discover what was going on.

  “Please, Marlyss, if you stop pushing for a moment,” she subvocalized to the Eldest, “I’ll try to discover what is stopping you, and see if there’s a way to clear the energy path.”

  Surprised, Marlyss did as asked, and Sarah found her mental self (an image of a slim black-haired woman in a cream-coloured robe) slipping by the Seven Witch Circles, the Twelve now missing one—she herself, who was doing the wandering.

  She plunged towards Lina to examine what was going on there. Her mental being hit a barrier before she reached its physical substance; what could possibly be happening there? The barrier must have been what was preventing Marlyss and the Circles from affecting Lina, but what was the barrier?

  No sooner had she asked the question when she could visualize the barrier; she was looking at an energy mesh of sorts. Lina was caught in a giant mesh bag, it seemed to her, one which was holding it like a suspended ball, with a cord of pure energy leading from the point of suspension to—she had no idea where. She stared at the mesh bag with her astral sight for a moment, determining that it, like Lina herself, was partly supported between realities. Only someone with the talents of a Witch could have invaded there! But she had no time to worry about that; she had to break the bag, and free Lina, so that the Witch Circles could do what they needed to do. The longer it took to get Lina back on track the more difficult, and energy-intensive the job would be!