Telepath

by Jolea M. Harrison

  “Is everything all right?” he asked, baffled by the hesitant way she was acting. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she said, rubbing a finger across her palm before stuffing her hands into the pockets of her tunic. “Unless you count everything that’s going on. Otherwise, everything is great. Aside from the fact you could die out there. No, nothing is wrong.”

  Dain went to her, taking her in hand and sitting her down on a chair, since she looked like she was going to cry. He knew he couldn’t stand it if she did. He got down on his knees before her. “I’m going to be fine.”

  “There’s no way you can say that, or know it. This is crazy, you going out there running from planet to planet. Maralt is going to find you and you’re going to end up dead.”

  “He’s going to find us here. Any moment now, he’s going to figure out where we are. We can’t stay here and keep you safe.”

  “You have to promise me you won’t do anything stupid,” she said and he laughed. “No unnecessary risks. No heroics. You run.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I swear it on my life I’m going to do everything I possible can to stay alive. I promise.”

  She didn’t seem satisfied by the vow, but finally nodded. He started to get off the floor, but she stopped him, sliding her hands from his shoulders up to his face. And then she kissed him, something he wasn’t prepared for and didn’t expect. He found himself pulling back from her, and before he could stop himself, he shook his head.

  “I don’t want you here because you think you’re never going to see me again like this can never happen,” he said and wasn’t sure what he meant except he was in sudden, unfamiliar territory.

  “You never say no to anyone,” she said, almost indignant.

  “That’s not fair. It’s only girls I don’t care about.”

  “Carryn?”

  “That was different, besides it’s never going to happen again, Geneal,” he said. “You’re different. For me, you are different and I don’t want you to be here for the wrong reasons because of fear. I want more than that.”

  “Well then you better come back for more,” she said and kissed him again. “I’m not waiting.”

  She kissed him a third time and that was the end of his ability to resist. She did her best to show him how much more she wanted. It took all night.

  ***

  They left the Exile Base the next morning at dawn. A heavy mist clung to the ground, nearly obscuring the XR-30 from sight. Dynan, Dain, and their guards boarded the ship after brief farewells.

  Carryn stood back from the ship with the others who had gathered to see them off while the engine’s hum rose quickly to a roar. She still felt a nagging sense of foreboding that sending them out from the Base was a mistake. She remembered the High Bishop’s warning, that Maralt would hunt them and they had to keep moving. She didn’t think they were ready to face him yet, if they could ever be. The latest attack made moving a necessity. She understood that too. None of it left her with a feeling of assurance.

  The ship lifted off the ground, rose quickly, and soon disappeared from sight. The others shifted, moving off to return to their duties. No one, other than the upper Command knew that Dynan and Dain were leaving on a semi-permanent basis. The others were told that the twins were going to Galar for a break, and nothing more. Of course, Carryn mused, that story wouldn’t hold up for long, but it would give them time to lose themselves should Maralt have so close a source of information. Carryn didn’t believe he did, but she wasn’t going to risk it by letting too many people know what Dynan and Dain were doing.

  She saw Trevan glance up sharply a moment before everyone else did. A high-pitched whistle grew quickly to a deafening roar. Through the fog they couldn’t see anything, but everyone knew it was Dain piloting the XR-30. Trevan covered his ears, ducking as the roar erupted, booming overhead, and he wasn’t alone. Carryn laughed silently, looking up as the sound diminished, while Geneal and Xavier joined him. Behind them, the slight tinkle of breaking glass reached their ears.

  ~*~

  Chapter 8

  The journey to the Suma System, ruled by Queen Trayanna Moren, took a little more than a week. Each morning, simulated by the slow brightening of the XR-30’s interior lights, found Dynan and Dain with their guards going through a regiment of exercises, followed by sword practice that Boral insisted they keep up with, and target practice in a newly installed simulator down in the cargo hold. They finally reached the Suma System perimeter, and Crinalda loomed large before them.

  “So far we’ve avoided detection by border sensors, and Central Control,” Ralion said, while Sheed piloted the ship toward the planet. They were still in sublight, which made the ship invisible to tracking. “But I don’t know how we’re going to avoid Port ground sensors. We need to come out of sublight soon.”

  Dain motioned Ralion from the co-pilot’s seat and shook his head. “Watch and learn, gentlemen.”

  “No,” Sheed said immediately. “You are not flying us in.”

  “You want to avoid ground sensors? This is how you do it. Everybody in?”

  Sheed quickly increased the restraint field, and reluctantly relinquished control of the ship, glancing nervously at Dain the entire time.

  The ship angled sharply toward the planet, and Dain increased power to the engines, exactly the opposite of what a normal landing was like. Ralion leaned back, watching the planet rushing toward them. Internal sensors began buzzing as Crinalda barreled toward them. “I can’t watch this,” Ralion muttered, but he kept looking.

  “You probably don’t want to,” Dain said easily while his hands flew over the controls as alarms started sounding, warning that they would surely crash into the surface. Dynan didn’t especially want to watch either, wanting to trust in Dain’s skill, rather than the sight of the planet spinning rapidly toward them. He wondered when Dain was planning on taking them out of sublight.

  “Dain, you’re going to get us all killed,” Sheed said, ashen and working as furiously to stay ahead of the alarms.

  He didn’t respond, never taking his eyes off the controls, his hands moving across them in steady precision. He smiled for an instant. “Hold on to yourselves.”

  He dropped them out of sublight speed and angled the ship downward. It bumped sharply as though hitting something hard, the shudder running the length of the hull, but then the ride smoothed and they pulled around the planet in an arc. They remained in that formation for one circuit around the globe. They were still moving incredibly fast, inside a layer of the atmosphere that was difficult for ground sensors to track through and avoiding the sensors in stationary orbit. They were also moving too fast.

  The ship twisted then, and Dynan felt the engines slow slightly. They were in a steep dive, nose down and the ground rose toward them. Dynan began to make out formations, trees mostly, and it looked like they may plunge into a nearby lake. The ship shuddered violently, then turned sharply. Dynan was jammed down into his seat, thinking that if inertial dampening failed at that particular moment, they’d all be squashed like bugs.

  The forward view screen showed the ground rushing up to meet them, but slowly their descent eased and the shuddering stopped, smoothing to a steady hum again. Dain leaned back, finally relaxing.

  “Welcome to Crinalda,” he said, and stood, relinquishing the controls back to Ralion, who sat limp, eyes closed in relief. Dain clapped him on the shoulder, and moved back to his room.

  Dynan followed him, sitting on the small couch, while his brother dropped into the chair across from him. “What was that about?”

  Dain laughed. “Really, I wanted to scare the life out of them so they wouldn’t be so up-tight about being here.”

  “Relieved that we made it at all?” Dynan supplied. “You’re going to be the death of them.”

  “I’ll behave. I promise,” he said, but his smile said something else.

  “You’ll have to. Th
is isn’t a game.”

  “Sure it is. A dangerous and sinister one at that. Here, let’s take a look at this town we’re going to be living outside of for the next few months.” He activated a view screen embedded in one wall of his room, and a map of the town Uldian appeared. Together they looked over the ship’s approach, making certain their route was devoid of other inhabitants.

  It took them two days, but Ralion finally obtained the use of an abandoned farmhouse, tucked back on the edge of a large wood, far enough from town to serve their purpose. Activating the new cloak, they left the ship behind a dilapidated barn that still housed a few scrawny chickens, and a nearly starved pig, along with a fair number of large rats. Dain spent several hours a day after they’d moved their things in, taking a somewhat perverse pleasure at using the rats for target practice with a laser rifle, but he soon had the surrounding area cleared of the pests. The pig they let go to forage for food, but all it did was follow them around, even breaking into the house, and making the most pitiful sounds that Ralion relented, and fed it.

  It took them the better part of three weeks to get the place cleaned out, but they found the building reasonably sound, and the furnishings in decent repair. They purchased horses, and a small cart for hauling supplies. Like other places within Brittallia, the general populace here didn’t embrace transfers and things that floated so much. The deprivation of technology was more pronounced on Crinalda than most other places, and Uldian didn’t have more than a comterm at the Guild Hall. There wasn’t even a Port for ships to come through.

  They soon had the house in working order. They installed a security perimeter along the property line, devised by Trevan to alert them should anyone or anything cross the invisible barrier. That caused them some problems at first, but Dain tuned the indicators to screen out animals that moved on four legs. Another sensor perimeter surrounded just the house that they engaged only at night. The XR-30’s systems remained active as well, with a relay set up in the main parlor, and Ralion’s bedchamber.

  They settled in, and quickly established a routine that kept them from getting on each other’s nerves too often. Dynan and Dain split their time between training exercises, the telepathic training they needed to block Maralt, exploring the forest behind the house, and riding around the wide expanses of near wilderness that adjoined this remote farm, but they never strayed far without their guards.

  Ralion came back from town one day with a milk cow and her calf, another pig, and half a dozen chickens, returning happily to his childhood days on his family’s farm. Gorge, the pig they’d found and named because he never stopped eating, set himself up as lord of the sty. The pig Ralion bought had a large brood of piglets. Sheed managed the household, preparing all their meals, and accepted very little grumbling over his food choices. He showed himself a stickler for neatness, making them all help with cleaning chores, which to everyone’s surprise Dain went about cheerfully. Dynan didn’t share his enthusiasm, and soon began to feel more like a scullery maid than a Prince.

  The months passed, leading from a pleasant summer into a cooling autumn. The weather turned wet. The threat of danger grew remote, though Ralion and Sheed never relaxed their vigilant guard. A little less than three months into their stay, Dain began to show signs of restlessness, and a growing unease. Dynan noticed it first, but the two guards began to see a level of irritability that hadn’t been present before, and mentioned as much to him.

  “What’s wrong, Dain?” Dynan asked one night, joining Sheed and his brother by a newly kindled fire that was necessary to combat the growing chill. Ralion was doing the dishes.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “You’ve been a little jumpy lately,” Sheed said, pouring them each a glass of wine.

  Dain shrugged, and stared into the fire for a while. “Maybe it’s time we moved on.”

  Dynan looked at him surprised. “Why? We’re supposed to stay here another two months.”

  “I know we’re supposed to, but, well, I just get the feeling it’s time to go. It’ll take us a month to get rid of these damn animals anyway, but I think we need to get started.”

  “You’ll break Ralion’s heart.” Sheed smiled, and sipped his wine.

  “I’m serious, Sheed.”

  “You’re sure you’re not feeling this way because we’ve been cooped up inside the last week? Bad weather and all?” Dynan asked him.

  “I don’t know what it is, except a whisper in the back of my mind that’s saying it’s time to move.”

  “You think it’s—”

  Dain cut him off. “Might be. Want to stick around to find out?” He shook his head then. “I don’t know. I really don’t, which is why I haven’t talked to you about it. Now that we are, that whisper is turning into a shout. Look, in two months it’ll be the dead of winter here. Hasn’t Ralion been saying the townspeople think it’s going to be a hard one this year? Do you really want to spend the next two months shut up in this house? Have to dig the ship out when it’s time to go?”

  “All right,” Dynan said easily. “Let’s take a look at our next stop. Make sure it won’t be worse there.”

  Sheed started shaking his head. “I’m not sure we should pull up stakes without any real reason for it. Carryn won’t know it, and I don’t think changing our plans that drastically without her knowledge is a good idea.”

  “We’ve got the low frequency transmitter,” Dynan said. “We send the message now, so she’ll know we’re getting ready to move.”

  “No,” Dain said. “Low frequency transmissions can be intercepted.”

  “Rarely,” Sheed said and would have gone on but Dain cut him off.

  “Do we really want to get into a statistical analysis about how often that happens? Or do we want to avoid the risk we could end up on the wrong end of that equation where we only pinpoint our location. If we send anything at all, we’ll send it from Thylin.”

  “Then doing so on Thylin will—” Sheed said.

  “Sheed, by the time we get to Thylin, I probably won’t have this funny little feeling racing around my brain.”

  “There’s no guarantee of that, especially since you can’t tell us where this funny, whatever it is, is coming from.”

  “What’s all the shouting about?” Ralion asked as he came in, wiping his hands on a towel.

  Dynan explained, and for the next few hours, they argued the merits of leaving Suma for the Thylin System, but in the end, Dynan agreed with Dain. “First thing tomorrow we start packing out of here. Sheed, you work up the Thylin location. Ralion, the animals—”

  “I know, all right. I’ll make arrangements next trip into town.”

  Dain insisted on accompanying Ralion when he went to Uldian a few days later. The XR-30 was nearly loaded again. The last major undertaking was to get the animals into the cart and sold in town. After chasing a bunch of squeaking pigs half the morning, Dain was in no mood for argument. Only Boral would have appreciated the quagmire he found himself wading through.

  He changed from his mud soaked clothes into clean ones, and found his horse waiting outside with the cart. Dynan stood by the rein, holding the restive animal for him. “Be careful. If anyone recognizes you, Drake will have a lot of explaining to do.”

  Dain only nodded, wheeling the horse around, and set off after Ralion. “You know why he’s going in, don’t you?” Sheed asked, standing on the porch, watching them depart down the lane to the main road to town.

  Dynan looked at him. “I know why you think he’s going. Not this time. Let’s get the rest of this stuff onboard. I want to be ready to go when they get back.”

  “Tonight?”

  “If we need to.”

  ***

  The village that was Uldian huddled against a small hillside, almost surrounded by the forest that marched over the majority of the planet. Dain considered it small, but the people here thought it as big as any city. Crinalda didn’t have the large metropolises that Suma boasted. For people to live out here i
n the middle of nothing made him think they must have wanted it that way.

  Ralion went directly to the livery at the far end of town, but Dain drew up at Uldian’s only tavern. The village didn’t have an inn, with so few travelers coming through. “I’m going to see about some food. I didn’t get breakfast, and I’m starving.”

  Ralion didn’t answer, but shot Dain one dark, unbelieving glance, which he returned with a sneer. The small room was surprisingly full, other townspeople going about getting their morning meal. Dain didn’t think he’d be recognized. People based their assumptions on expectation. They wouldn’t expect to find a Prince in this little inn. He wasn’t dressed like a Prince. He wasn’t surrounded by the usual entourage most Princes walked around with. When he glanced around, he saw that no one was paying him any particular attention even when everyone saw him come in. He found a table in the back corner, sat down, and waited to be served.

  He was in a quick moment by a young, pretty girl. She wore her shawl adjusted around her shoulders, revealing a slim waist, and breasts that rose and fell invitingly inside a tight corset. Dain gritted his teeth, then smiled up at her. He ordered a large breakfast, and when she brought it, she leaned over him while setting the food down, affording him a view that he couldn’t really avoid.

  “Need anything else?” she asked, her tone leaving little to imagine what she meant. “You’re new in town, aren’t you? There’s a spare room upstairs. Maybe you’ll be wanting it. I could show it to you, after you eat, if you like?”

  Dain almost laughed, the thought of food nearly driven from his mind with her close proximity, but he shook his head, unable to escape the whispering warnings in his mind. He thought about Geneal too, and even though she never said she expected him to be faithful to her, he guessed she wouldn’t like it much if he wasn’t. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t stay. I’m just passing through.”