I felt like I was being slowly crushed.
When Balidor sat next to me, I could only look at him.
He didn’t say anything either. Wrapping his arms around me, he pulled me up against his chest. He wrapped his coat around me as best he could and we just sat there, silent, for what felt like a long time.
I BIT MY tongue accidentally and made a sound, jostling up and down in the back of what must be a truck, or a van of some kind.
I tasted blood, but it seemed pointless to complain.
A black hood covered my head...or some kind of hood anyway, that blackened my physical sight. I had on a collar, and I found myself fingering it nervously in spite of myself, touching the organic metal.
I understood now, why Revik hated the damned things so much.
At the thought, my mind tried to shut down again.
Since I couldn’t distract myself by looking around, I counted bumps in the road instead...and I listened. I heard the breathing of at least four other people in the back of the vehicle with me. I tried to identify them by their breathing alone, but could only make partially-informed guesses. One smelled like Jon.
I know that probably sounds odd, but being awakened as a seer changed my senses, so I actually could smell people sometimes...people I knew well, anyway.
I guessed one of the others to be Balidor, but that may have had more to do with my knowledge of him and Adhipan protocol than anything to do with my seer spidey-senses. I heard a laugh then, and realized in some surprise that Cass was there, too...which meant likely the Wvercian giant, Baguen. That might account for the smell of hiri to my right...since I knew he smoked pretty regularly.
“Alyson,” Balidor said, soft. “The idea was that you would not pay attention to your surroundings. Or mark your companions as targets...”
I felt my throat close.
“Can’t you tell me a story or something, ‘Dor?” I said, fighting to smile, although I knew he couldn’t see it. “You know...get my mind off things?”
“No need,” he said, laying a hand on mine. “We are here.”
The vehicle (‘truck’ my mind supplied unhelpfully) began to slow.
Then it came to a stop.
There was a pause while everyone around me seemed to be picking up luggage. I smiled to myself...one benefit of being the prisoner of Zendor...porter services.
“Very funny, Alyson,” Balidor murmured. He handed me a bag, which I took, awkwardly. “Your hands seem to work just fine...”
“You’re a riot, you are,” I said.
He caught hold of my arm. Someone else took my other one, and I found myself being led across a relatively-even ground. It was actual ground, though, not cement.
“Allie...” Balidor growled.
“Sorry!” I said. “It’s a little hard not to pay attention at all. Especially since I’d prefer to keep from falling on my face...”
“A little faith in your escorts, if you please,” he said. “Step,” he added.
I did as he said. I followed him and the person to my left, doing my best to blank out my mind, stepping when they told me to, following the pulls of their fingers when I needed to change direction.
So when I tripped on something hard, a root or a stone or something, I nearly fell.
“Jeez! So much for my faith-invoking escorts...”
Balidor chuckled a bit. So did the person to my left, who I immediately realized was Jon. I managed to keep hold of the bag Balidor had thrust on me, somehow.
“Dicks,” I said, after we’d been walking a little longer.
“Charming, Esteemed Bridge,” Jon smiled.
The acoustics sounded different now, and the surface under my feet was flat. Not exactly flat...but flatter certainly, almost like paving stones...
“You’re doing it again,” Balidor said.
“You’ve got me collared,” I said. “What more do you want from me?”
He laughed again, and I realized he was teasing me.
“So it doesn’t matter what I think at all?”
“No, Esteemed Bridge,” he said, and I heard the grin in his words. “You’ve been in a construct since the van stopped...”
I cursed him out, which of course only made the two of them laugh harder.
“Step,” Balidor said again, still laughing. “Step...”
“Okay,” I said, in mock irritation. “...I get it already. At a certain point you just say ‘stairs,’ Balidor...and let it go...”
“She’s awfully touchy,” Balidor remarked to Jon.
“You can say that again,” Jon replied.
I snorted, but let out a kind of gasp when someone, probably Balidor, picked me up in their arms. I felt myself being passed from hand to hand before I got to the bottom of wherever it was, and then my feet again touched a floor, this one as flat as cement.
With a flourish, someone pulled the hood off my head.
I found myself in the dark, surrounded by smiling faces. I could see them, because on a table in front of me, stood a cake, with what looked like about thirty candles burning on it.
I turned my head, and found Balidor’s face, smiling at me below gray eyes. Next to him, I saw Jon, Cass, Dorje. I was still standing there, bewildered, when Tenzin kissed me on the cheek, squeezing my hand.
“Happy birthday, Bridge,” he said, smiling.
I looked at Jon, who gave an apologetic shrug.
Fighting back my emotional reaction, I forced a smile, looking around at all the faces surrounding me. I must have had a funny expression though, because most of them laughed.
Balidor clapped me on the shoulder then.
“Hurry up with the cake part,” he said. “We’ve got presents...”
I nodded, wiping my face self-consciously.
“Blow them out, Allie,” Cass said. She stood with the giant, Baguen, holding his hand. Next to Jon, Dorje stood smiling too.
Hesitating only another half-second, I leaned over the table, staring down at all the different-sized candles they’d dredged up from wherever. Some where white and as thick as my finger. At least one was twice as big, but the rest were close to the size of regular birthday candles.
Smiling down at them, I took a deep breath, and was about to blow...
When a shriek from the corner of the room made me jump about a foot in the air. I’d barely comprehended that the sound was real when Balidor had thrust himself between the origin of the yell and me, his gun out, aiming into the dark.
“Something touched me!” Illeg said, one of the female seers.
“Unge, hands to yourself!” Tenzin joked.
“It wasn’t me!” he protested.
“I’m not going crazy!” Illeg snapped. “It wasn’t one of us! Do you think I would have yelled like that if it was?”
Balidor kept a hand on my shoulder, his gun still pointed to the darkened corner of the cave-like room where they’d taken me.
“Show yourself!” he growled, pushing me further behind him.
Trying to look around his shoulder, I stared into the same space of dark, holding my breath as I waited for an answer.
I could hear breathing, a near-hysterical series of pants that sounded like some kind of animal. Balidor exchanged glances with me, and I saw he’d heard it too.
All of the seers had backed away from that corner. Jon and Cass had, too. Several others unholstered their guns.
I flinched as an organic yisso torch sparked in the hand of one of the Adhipan or Seven. The crowd of us had clustered now on the far side of my cake, whose candles still flickered and guttered in the breeze from the stairs.
Holding up a hand against the glare, I made out the outline of a form against what appeared to be a stone basement wall. Whatever the form was, it moved just enough to tell me it was alive, its chest heaving in rapid pants, as though about to have some kind of seizure. I tried to make sense of the shape of it. Narrow shoulders stood above a thin body, large hands and feet. The ears stuck out on either side of a squarish
head, but from what I could make out in the dim light by the wall, the face itself had delicate, almost feminine features despite the sharp line of a masculine jaw.
I found myself thinking it had to be a seer, but with the collar on still, I had no way of knowing for sure.
Whatever it was, it looked severely underfed.
“Come out of there!” Balidor commanded. “Right now! We are armed. We are not afraid to take action, if you do not...but you have nothing to fear from us if you are peaceful...”
From Balidor’s formal speech, in Prexci no less, I had to assume I’d been right, that the creature crouched before us was seer, not human.
It took a hesitant step out of the shadowed wall, still breathing in rapid pants. The face reached the circle of light in a slow steady unfolding, like the moon illuminated by the sun. The skin of the stranger shone so pale under the light of the yisso torch that it looked almost like a searchlight next to the reddish brown hair on his head.
I blinked, still trying to make out the puzzle of what I was seeing.
I found myself looking at a face I’d never laid eyes on before, but that somehow held a glimmer of familiarity to me, despite that fact.
Then I saw the eyes.
A sharp amber in color, they blinked at me, owl-like.
Looking at the ghost-like, spindly arms, seeing the faint smile at the edges of the full mouth under bruised-looking, hollow eyes, I found I knew exactly who I was looking at.
“Holy cow,” I breathed. “It’s Feigran!”
8
HORSEMEN
BALIDOR’S GUN ROSE higher, now aiming at the oval face that contrasted the shadows of the dark.
“Feigran?” His jaw clenched, just before he looked at me. “Did you say Feigran, Alyson? Are you absolutely sure?”
I took a step towards him...or it...or whatever it was.
For a long moment, I could only stare, taking in the narrow form wrapped in what looked like a dark red monk’s robe and scuffed, white sneakers. Human clothes, likely stolen from one trash bin or another, they had burn holes and ash marks on them.
The amber eyes darted from face to face in our little company, and I saw flashes of inconsistencies there, as if, whoever he was, he watched several movies on the inner screens of his lenses all at once...or maybe one after the other in rapid succession.
“It can’t be,” Jon said. “That’s really Feigran, Allie?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Why is everyone asking me?”
“Because you said it was!” Jon said.
I hooked my thumb under the collar I wore, jutting out my neck.
“Why not ask a seer who can actually see right now, Jon?”
“Why did you say that then?” Cass said.
I gestured towards the odd-looking face of our stranger. “I don’t know. Look at him! Look at his face!”
“She is correct,” Balidor said. His voice held a faint thread of incredulity, and he didn’t take his eyes off the stranger’s darting gaze. “It is Terian...” He looked over the length of him. “...In some form or another. The markers are in his light.” He glanced at me. “...All of them, in fact, Esteemed Bridge.”
His eyes remained puzzled as they flickered down to my collar.
“Happy birthday to you...” the owl-faced seer muttered, sing-song. “Happy birthday to you...happy birthday dear Allie...”
We all stared at him.
The sounds trailed off as the creature blinked at us.
Balidor looked at me.
“Respectfully, Bridge...Jon is right. You said he was Feigran. We all heard you. And yet I see nothing in his physical form to indicate his identity. How did you know who he was?”
I opened my mouth, about to form some kind of answer.
Before I could speak, however, the owl-eyed creature...for I still couldn’t quite see him as a man, not yet...sniffed loudly, promptly rubbing his face with a nervous vigor as he answered for me.
“I have the answer,” he said.
Jon jumped, at my left side.
“She is my sister,” the seer proclaimed. “She will always know me...as they will always know one another...”
I stared at him, bewildered. Then I looked at Balidor.
“I don’t think being reunited with his fellow Terians has improved his sanity ratio much,” I commented.
“What do you get when you combine forty-five psychos in the mind of a single psycho and a cantaloupe...” Jon joked.
He’d always been a nervous funny guy.
“What the hell is he talking about, Al?” Cass said.
“I have no idea.”
“She is correct,” the owl-eyed seer said. He sniffed again, louder, then promptly added, “It is I. I am he. We are family...”
Again, I looked at Balidor, raising an eyebrow.
“Should I shoot him, Esteemed Bridge?” Balidor asked.
I almost smiled. His voice was so polite.
I found myself studying the face and body of the nervous, owl-like man. He looked like he’d been living in his own filth, eating garbage for weeks...possibly longer. I wondered how the hell he’d found us. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, him being here. Then again, I didn’t know where “here” was.
As if he knew his fate was being decided, Feigran/Terian folded his arms. It looked to be too careful of a gesture, though, as if he’d practiced it in front of mirrors.
“I am Feigran,” he added, as if we might have missed it the first time. “I am very pleased to meet all of you. Very, very pleased...”
He looked at Jon and blanched. I wondered if he could possibly recognize him.
Jon’s eyes held something like disgust.
“This really is him?” he said. “...This is the original Terian?”
“I think so,” I said. “Yes.” I looked at Balidor then, hesitating. I looked at Cass, then back at Balidor. “Do you have another of those collars?”
“You’re going to keep him?” Jon said. The disgust on his voice grew more audible. “Why, Allie? What possible use—”
“Revik wants him,” I said, looking at the owl-faced seer. “I’d like to know why. Wouldn’t you?”
“If Syrimne wants him,” Balidor said, emphasizing the name ever-so-slightly. “That is all the more reason to shoot him, is it not, Esteemed Bridge?”
“Maybe,” I said.
But Balidor’s eyes were focused on mine, wary now. He looked at the spindly-armed seer for a long moment, then back to me.
“No, Allie,” he said.
“You haven’t even heard my idea yet,” I protested.
“I have heard it,” Balidor said. “I’m telling you, no.”
“I thought I gave the orders around here,” I said, letting a warning reach my voice.
“It won’t even work,” Balidor said, exasperated. “Vash couldn’t do it. What makes you think this...” He gestured at Feigran, his lip curling. “...Thing could accomplish it for you? His mind is likely so broken it will be years before we can get anything at all of sense out of him...”
“Hey,” Jon said, angry. “How about letting us all in on the crappy plan?”
I gave Balidor another warning look, but he ignored me, looking directly at Jon.
“She thinks this crazy dirt-blood can help her.”
“Help her?” Jon stared at me like I was nuts. “Help you how, Allie? With what?”
“What do you think?” Balidor said.
For the first time, I heard real anger in his voice, enough that I turned my head, looking at him. His light gray eyes remained fixed on Jon’s, though.
“She thinks this sack of shit can help her get her husband back,” he said in accented English. “...That he can make him like he was before, when he wasn’t Syrimne...”
There was a silence after the Adhipan leader spoke.
In it, I realized every eye in the room stared at me.
Then, as if the strain of silence grew too much, Feigran let out a high-pitched la
ugh, somewhere between a giggle and a shriek.
I SAT DOWN at the scratched metal table, staring at the creature across from me.
I knew Balidor sat in the other room, watching through the one-way organic they’d outfitted for that purpose. He still wouldn’t let me take off the collar, even though he and the other Adhipan had built up the construct to where they felt it sufficiently protected us from the Rebels.
Balidor seemed to feel that wouldn’t be enough to keep Revik out, given that we were still mates.
Hell, he was probably right...but I hated wearing the damned thing.
Now I sat across from the creature, Feigran, who also wore a collar.
Since I’d insisted on being involved in the interrogation, Balidor thought I might be able to act as their front person...meaning the one to get his mind on the right information, to speed up the process of reading him. Which was fine with me. I knew Balidor’s preoccupations would be with my safety, with whether or not other Terian bodies lived anywhere still, with Terian’s relationship with Revik...but my concerns were slightly different.
Terian’s collar looked heavier than mine, but instead of the more elaborate two-way blocking mechanism activated in the one I wore, his was relatively standard issue...more a precaution than anything, since there wasn’t much he could do to us at that point, other than give away our position to Revik.
Given that he seemed terrified of Revik so far in our initial questioning, there wasn’t a lot of chance he’d give himself up to the other Elaerian willingly, but we still had to worry about Revik tracking us through him. Considering Revik’s professed interest in Feigran in Delhi, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to advertise that we had him.
Feigran blinked at me, his eyes still holding that odd profusion.
In some ways, I was glad I wasn’t the one reading his actual mind.
“Do you know who I am?” I asked him first.
He gestured yes in seer.
I nodded. “Okay. So who am I, Feigran?”
Allie's War Season Two Page 10