Arda: The Captain's Fancy

by Annie Windsor

  A thousand touches. A hundred thousand, or more. Mayhap as many hands. How old is this pole?

  A primitive keepsake, either by design or necessity. She focused on her pa, letting it tell her what it could about the room’s dimensions with the minimal information it carried about space, light, and motion.

  Her accommodations were small and dark, judging by the gray of the light filtering through her makeshift blindfold. It was nighttime, but…oddly bright. The rhythm of movement was almost imperceptible, steady and slow, definitely not a spaceship. Moreover, there was no rotation at all, no deep vibration from an axis.

  Tidal lock. So, I am on a planet’s satellite, and it must be small in comparison to its world. There are Chimera here, too. The state of her body, still clothed and unsoiled, suggested she hadn’t been captive long, less than a day, maybe only a few hours.

  Barring use of illegal transport technology or other factors, she was likely still in the Ardani system, or close. Close enough to support Chimera life, and Chimera only survived in and around Arda.

  But where, exactly?

  Ki and the fleet had searched endlessly for the Outlander base; however, The People only made themselves known when they chose to do so. Fari had deduced that the rebels must live primitively, perhaps in caves thick enough or of proper composition to avoid both mechanical and psi searches.

  Krysta shifted against the pole, scrubbed her feet against the ground, and listened to the sounds.

  If she was in a cave, it had a packed dirt floor, not rock. With a throw-rug, no less. The general shape of the room as conveyed by her pa was square, not rounded. The clincher, though, was the air—arid and warm, with no hint of mold or moss.

  So much didn’t make sense. So much didn’t add up!

  A new fear found its way into Krysta’s heart.

  What if the Outlanders had affiliated with the OrTans or some worse, more violent world? They could be using all manner of illegal technology, and to what end, only the gods would know. Whatever it was, it would be dangerous to Arda—and Ki and Fari had thus far not taken the threat of The People seriously enough.

  Thoughts of her family made her soul ache. Her little niece, who might already be born… Fari’s children, who would no doubt soon be on the way… Her brothers, her sisters-by-marriage…

  These people were her ties to life and happiness, and Krysta realized with a dull throb behind her temples, they meant everything to her.

  As did Arda. All of Arda. Her home.

  No matter what, I must stay alive long enough to free myself and warn my brothers about how seriously they have underestimated this Outlander threat.

  A nearby rustling caught her attention, and her overwrought mind quickly informed her she was hearing moving robes. A thick fabric woven from stout hair not unlike Fergilla wool.

  The whispering, sliding sound entered the space where she stood helpless, blind, and unable to scream. Krysta bit her gag and snarled. When she fought her bonds, the zipper of her jumpsuit gave her bush a tear-jerking yank.

  “Easy,” said a voice so familiar to her she almost cried.

  More rustles told her that Akad—it had to be Akad—had come to stand before her. She felt his hand on her head, first stroking her hair, then loosening her blindfold. Instinctively, she closed her eyes as he pulled off the cloth, then opened them slowly, letting her sight adjust to the glowing gray.

  Hut…thatch, mud, wood, lit by candlelight and reflective rays. Yet this room seems…deliberately basic and empty. Chair, small table, glowing altar…

  Glowing altar?

  Yes, the small wooden altar in the corner of the room had an odd, light golden glow that seemed to come from deep inside the hand-smoothed wood. For a moment, Krysta’s befuddled brain saw a shimmering dark feather floating in the glow, and then the triangle from her dreams, the one with the darkest of dark centers.

  She blinked, and the image—and the glow—vanished.

  “I need to speak with you before I remove your gag,” said Akad in his typical low, steady tone, distracting her from the altar. “Mind to mind, but it will be painful.”

  Krysta turned her eyes to the priest in confusion. He stood in front of her like some out-of-place vision, his silken brown locks spilling down his broad shoulders. Intricate, twisted vines of pa glittered on his cheeks, highlighting his dark eyes—which seemed unusually narrowed and fearful. He kept glancing over his shoulder like someone else might burst through the door at any moment.

  She wanted to ask him why their psi-contact would be painful. They had spoken mind-to-mind since they were children, so what would be different now?

  Akad deftly stroked her breasts like the familiar lovers they had been, first bringing brief relief to her pa-aggravated flesh, then pulling the folds of her jumpsuit together. Almost as quickly, he disentangled the zipper from her lower curls and slipped it back up carefully.

  “There are powerful psi-dampeners here. Only the initiated may communicate freely.”

  The initiated? Krysta’s eyes widened and she made fists against her energy bonds. Akad was talking like an Outlander. Was he a prisoner, too, as she had assumed?

  Or a traitor?

  No. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—believe that.

  “Are you ready?” he asked quietly, once more glancing over his shoulder. “You must not cry out.”

  Krysta nodded.

  Akad reached both hands toward her temples. “You will…learn things, shocking and uncomfortable. I cannot help that. You may lose consciousness again. In time, I may be able to teach you to withstand such deep contact, given your bloodline, but I don’t know.”

  Grinding her teeth against the cloth in her mouth, Krysta nodded. If she could have spoken, she would have yelled at him to get on with the task.

  Still, the priest hesitated, but finally pressed the tips of his fingers to either side of her head, in the hollows beside her eyes.

  For a moment, Krysta felt nothing—and then it seemed a sword cleaved her head in half, leaving her shocked and near to dying from the lancing agony. She started to cry out against her gag.

  Please, do not make a sound! Akad’s leveling energy bathed her thoughts. He will hear, Darkyn Weil. And he is…not himself. He might kill me.

  Krysta was so overwhelmed she couldn’t move. She hurt, gods—so awful—as Akad’s mind found hers in a way she hadn’t imagined possible. She realized she was touching him more deeply than she had ever touched another human being. Until that moment, she had believed Ardani psi-joinings were total. Now she knew the truth, that they were no more than a psychic hug.

  This contact was so total, so completely intimate, that she could barely sustain it. For a moment, she thought she could understand and project every emotion in the universe. That she could send and receive every thought. That she could feel every rock and bird and tide on every planet everywhere, and reach her hand out to turn them to her will.

  Just before absolute madness claimed her, the light of Akad’s soul took her full attention. His essence blinded her more completely than the cloth that had covered her eyes. She knew he loved her in his cool, measured fashion, as he did many other occasional lovers. She knew he was frightened and angry, and uncertain about how to proceed. More than anything, she knew what he was.

  And it wasn’t completely Ardani.

  He was…other. Something more primal? More dangerous?

  Within the light of Akad, she saw, somehow, bits and pieces of all he knew. All he had ever known, and all he would ever learn. Stones of many colors, blending to black. Joining with pa. Yes, some Outlanders had pa. The powerful ones. The ones of the “old blood,” carefully preserved and mingled by tribal breeding traditions. The blood of the Ta, ancestral leaders of The People.

  I am Tanna Kon’pa, Akad admitted in a voice that sounded not unlike Chimera song. I am one with The People, and one with those who carry that old blood.

  The tears Krysta had been holding spilled from her wide eyes, bathing her dr
y, tight cheeks. He had been her friend, her lover, the high priest of her people. So many times, he had held their lives in his gentle, steady hands!

  And always, I treated you as my own family, because you are. Akad stroked her head as he spoke, chasing back a dark web that threatened to block his contact with her. The People are simply of old Arda, stronger in psi and a sense of the universe, and still able to see what will be as clearly as what is.

  No one has reliable future-sight any more, Krysta shot back. Even as she did, she knew he was telling the truth.

  More information rushed in, images of Arda of eons past, living in huts, migrating with the seasons and the herds. She saw meteors blazing from the sky, saw the landscape changing, slowly at first, then faster and faster. The pictures slowed long enough for her to see what looked like a round tower on a round hill, with a silver thread drifting from its center. The silver thread grew to connect a vast triangle with three worlds at the points, the space within the figure too large for the mind to comprehend.

  A new silver thread danced in her mind, thicker, more tangible, connecting Arda to its most distant moon, Arda-yi. Like a staircase, that one. Strange men stood like shepherds on the staircase, picking and choosing who would ascend.

  Earth men? Men with stones in their chests? Men with pa? All of them? And beasts, too, so many colorful Chimeras, like a walking, singing rainbow…

  Her thoughts blurred. The images sped up again before she could make sense of them.

  You are on Arda-yi now, Akad intoned over the rapidly-changing scenes of Ardani evolution. Only we call it Uhr. You are in Gese, the Blessed City, and you are prisoner to Darkyn Weil. This is his home, his meditation room.

  Krysta stiffened, seeing the bitter images of her kidnapping and Kolot’s attack. Bastard! You set me up, didn’t you?

  Akad’s denial was instant and completely believable, but she still wanted to kill him. She knew almost as fast that Weil hadn’t sent his goons to capture her, that Weil had been in Camford, searching for Ki and Fari. She saw how the leader of The People, the sworn adversary of the Tul’Mar clan, had ministered to Elise and Katryn Ilya Tul’Mar, Krysta’s new niece. She saw how Darkyn Weil saved Georgia by fighting his own men, burning a corridor somehow, to enforce his will that his men leave Georgia, Elise, and Katryn Ilya at Camford. Next, and perhaps most strange, she saw him opening corral gates, beckoning Chimera aboard ships readying to leave, with a dark falcon keeping watch in the skies above.

  And then she knew three even more startling things.

  First, Akad was more than a mere Outlander. He was Darkyn Weil’s brother by birth, his a’mun twin, called such because he was missing the stone in his flesh with which many of the People were born.

  Second, Darkyn Weil didn’t know Krysta was a Tul’Mar, or that a woman named Krysta Tul’Mar had ever been born. Like all of The People, he kept himself free of Ardani affairs, relying exclusively on the reports of his brother, who had been left for fostering on Arda long ago. Akad had carefully omitted Krysta’s name from the information he provided to The People. In fact, he omitted her very existence, following and respecting a deep instinct about…something…he was shielding from Krysta even now.

  Third, and most impossible of all, the Outlanders truly believed Arda and the universe were at risk from something called the Barung.

  And they were correct.

  According to Akad’s deepest beliefs, if she, Krysta Tul’Mar, did not remain on Uhr to meet her destiny, the Barung would triumph and kill them all.

  When Barung returns, six shall lead him home, blended from the triangle, joined by the stone…

  Krysta swallowed hard.

  From the corner of the room, the altar began its golden glow again. So bright. So hot. It chased away the essence of Akad, taking over her mind completely. The pain in Krysta’s head magnified beyond her ability to stand it. She fought not to cry out, but lost the battle even with Akad attempting to help her. He was pulling back from their link, covering her mouth, but she couldn’t fight the agony any longer. Screaming with all the force of her lungs, fighting the gag, choking, she started a headlong tumble into darkness as a barely-human roar blotted out all sound.

  Someone jerked Akad from the ground and flung him out of the room like a child’s toy.

  Krysta’s dimming mind registered a huge man beside her, dressed in animal skin breeches and bearing a ruffled black falcon on his left shoulder. The bird glared at her with something akin to hatred. The man’s presence, however, affected her like a stellar magnet, jerking her sanity inside out and turning her pa to liquid fire.

  Burning more than she had ever burned, Krysta fought to turn her head, taking in the man’s bare, heavily muscled chest. She saw the tanned flesh, the scars—and impossibly, a pa-mark in the shape of a two-headed axe with a stone set between the blades.

  The stone was glowing the same color as his wild eyes—a brilliant, fiery yellow.

  It should be black, but it’s yellow. Something about that gave her deep qualms.

  And then she saw nothing at all but that yellow-gold, slicing through endless, raging blackness.

  A blackness that had a heartbeat and a voice.

  Chapter 4

  Darkyn Weil fought to remember where he was, who he was. Akad’s elixir coursed through his veins, cooling the primal heat. Not fast enough. Not strong enough. His chest was on fire. His stone was changing!

  This couldn’t happen to him. It wasn’t possible. He was Tanna Kon’pa, trained in the most ancient of mental disciplines. The People could master mating fervor, unlike their modern Ardani cousins.

  “It’s a mistake,” he growled, holding his head. “I have no mate. I cannot have a mate!”

  Yet, the more he shouted, the more his blood and his stone blazed. His cock felt like it would burst through the soft hide of his breeches. Guardian left him in a rustle of wings and muted jealous chortling, sailing directly out the open window of the main room. She gave one last disgruntled shriek before falling silent in the night sky, and Darkyn took the admonishment for her opinion on the matter of their guest.

  Before Darkyn, the woman sagged pale and limp against the pole, supported by only her bonds, looking more dead than alive. Her beautiful pa patterns seemed drained of energy, and someone had zipped up her black jumpsuit.

  The fergilla who had been touching her, causing her pain.

  Darkyn growled again and clenched his fists. He would kill the fool and have done with it. No one would ever touch his woman but him, not without his presence or consent, ever again.

  And yet…something bothered him even as he turned to stalk into the hall and pound the man he had torn away from his shanna…

  No!

  He staggered. The prone figure in the hall looked familiar.

  “Akad?” Darkyn grabbed the door facing to keep from falling forward on the priest. “Brother?”

  Akad stirred, groaned, then swore and brought himself to a sitting position against the wall. He rubbed his shoulder. “Quicker to act than usual, Darkyn.”

  “I need more elixir,” Darkyn managed to say through grinding teeth. “Now.”

  “More would kill you.” Akad pushed himself upward, using the wall to support his weight. “For years, I suspected, and I tried to keep this from happening.”

  “You know it can’t happen!” Darkyn bellowed, then wanted to vomit and fall on his face, maybe knock himself out until morning at least. Anything for relief. “She isn’t of an allowed clan. And the Barung! You know what I must do. It isn’t proper for me to mate at all.”

  By now, Akad had regained his balance. Darkyn felt relief at the lack of visible bruising. He swore to himself, acknowledging he hadn’t even known his own brother when he attacked. He could have killed Akad, his beloved a’mun twin, the one man he was honor-bound to protect with his life’s blood—miscreant cousins aside.

  Still, Akad had touched the woman, and Darkyn had a sense it wasn’t for the first time. Heat charged thr
ough his muscles, and he thought about killing his brother again.

  “You can kill me,” Akad said, speaking low and soft, in the eternal way of their people, “but fate is fate nonetheless. This fervor is primitive, and stronger than I have ever tried to manage. Elixir or no, if you do not mate with her soon, you will die.”

  Darkyn shouted his frustrations and swayed back and forth, clutching at the throbbing stone in his chest with one hand and clinging to the door facing with the other. He gripped the wood so hard his knuckles went white.

  ”Mun’halla, Brother.” Akad stretched his arm and rubbed his shoulder again before pointing to the now-glowing yellow stone in Darkyn’s chest. No longer black. No longer the same.

  Golden, like the spiritually transformed leaders of old.

  “The burning stone, straight out of ancient history. It glows because our Ta has found his soul’s mate.”

  At this, Darkyn sank slowly to his knees. He felt mad and pursued, as if hounds bayed at his back and greenwild vines bound his arms. A mouthful of dryland sand, a belly full of hot, bubbling water from Uhr’s Steaming River.

  He could deny much, but the stone in his chest spoke only truth. As Ta, and among the purest of preserved blood as dictated by the Council of Worlds at the Tower on the Tor on Old Earth, in the time before time, he knew the stone’s truth above all things, save the scroll carefully preserved beneath the altar in his meditation room.

  What would become of him now?

  And The People—Arda—the Universe—what of them?

  Firm, guiding hands rested on his shoulders, and he heard Akad say, “All things in time, Brother. When we plan, the gods laugh, remember?”

  “They will laugh as the Barung swallows us all,” Darkyn murmured, thinking of sex and death at the same moment.

  “For now, tend to yourself and your mate. I warn you, keep her bound until you win her heart, her trust. Otherwise, she will find a way to kill you.”

  Darkyn grunted, thinking his brother’s words wise. He didn’t know his mate’s name as yet, but he could tell she was hallas, made of fire.