“The Dragon House.” The young man squirmed under Alyssa’s hard stare. “Uh, building D.” He indicated the black band tied around his head. It had been around his arm marking him as a prime prospect when they brought him in, and when they’d had to cut off the sleeves of his tunic to treat his burns, he’d refused to part with it. “All the black bands live in that building. That’s why we call it the Dragon House. When can I get back to training?”
Alyssa wanted to shake him. Was he that anxious to take another life? Ha. She shouldn’t be too worried. Judging from his wounds, he was more likely to incinerate himself before he could hurt someone else.
“I can only heal your wounds. I have no idea if you’ll be able to even handle fire again. That’s up to—” What should she call her? Tanisha? Dr. Tanisha? She’d heard some use military rank, which she had no idea about.
“Captain Tan?”
“Yes. She’ll have to clear you to resume training.”
Nicole appeared in the doorway.
“Nicole, can you process Anwar’s return to his quarters?”
“Sure. What about your visitor? He insists on waiting.”
Alyssa closed her eyes and dropped her chin to her chest. She was physically and emotionally exhausted. The constant flow of training injuries barely left her time to sleep, so it hadn’t been hard to avoid Jael, but not talking to her had created what felt like an empty crater in her chest where her heart used to beat. “I’ve got nine more patients to see on this ward alone. I don’t have time.”
“Not even for an old friend?”
The rush of confusing emotions nearly drowned her. She wanted to burst into tears, and she wanted to scream in anger. Her mentor, the man who had started her on this tumultuous journey, stood in the doorway, smiling. “Honored Advocate.”
Han accepted her flat greeting with knowing eyes and a polite nod. “Perhaps if I could lighten your workload by seeing some of your patients, we would have time to talk.”
To refuse would show disrespect, and she recognized this was not a request, but a gentle command. He did outrank her in the temple hierarchy. She nodded and indicated the beds lining the left side of the ward. “I’ll work this side if you take the other. This is the burn ward, so almost all need bandages changed and wounds evaluated.”
She figured he must be well over ninety years old, but he still moved with an easy grace. She’d never thought about it before, but she wondered fleetingly if he was a pureblood of Asian descent. The emphasis on DNA over the past weeks had made her see people differently. Was this how people in the previous century viewed each other? Grouping themselves by hair color, eye shape, and complexion? Was it different from the way she’d always grouped people by whether they possessed a talent or not? Did she view those who did not have a special talent as less then her? The questions were too hard to ponder in her depleted mental state. Or maybe the answers were too hard to accept.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts and picked up the next chart. “Bast, let’s have a look at the burn on your leg.”
The young woman, not more than eighteen years, was long-limbed and athletic. Her Mediterranean coloring and features hinted at an ancient lineage. She had a quiet manner but had proved to be a tireless worker when they were setting up the clinic. Although her only experience was lifting large boxes and hammering shelves together, her questions about the herbs and their uses had Alyssa considering her as an apprentice. Those plans were dashed the day Bast rushed into the clinic to show off the black band tied around her arm.
“Can you use the regenerator on it? I want to get back to training as soon as possible.”
“This is a pretty deep burn. It’ll be a lot less painful if we let the muscle heal slowly. Then I’ll use the regenerator to repair the skin.”
“How long will that take?”
“Several weeks for the muscle to heal.”
“No! I can’t miss that much training.”
Alyssa frowned and sprayed the wound with a numbing solution. “How did this burn happen?”
“We were learning to refract.”
“Refract?”
“Bounce our flame off metal or rock to hit a target.” Bast’s usually guarded expression was animated. “Different materials refract at various angles. You have to learn to take that into consideration when you bounce a flame off something. It’s sort of like the angles in billiards. I’m pretty good at it. Top in the class, actually.”
“If you’re so good at it, how’d you manage to almost burn your leg off?” Her enthusiasm only irritated Alyssa more. She activated the debris scanner. She was becoming used to the stench of dissolving skin as the scanner evaporated dead tissue from the wound.
Bast grimaced. The numbing solution couldn’t fully anesthetize the live flesh when it was still covered with dead tissue. “Got…careless. Won’t…do that…again.” She let out a breath when Alyssa switched off the scanner.
“Hurts, huh?”
Sweat beaded on Bast’s upper lip. “I can handle it.”
“If I use the regenerator on the muscle and force those nerves to repair quickly, it’ll hurt even more. And the pain won’t stop until the nerves have fully regenerated.”
“How…how long?”
Alyssa studied her patient. “Three days minimum, maybe as long as a week.”
“Then I’ll be healed? I can get back to training?”
“A week of constant, shooting pain. Medication can dull it, but it’s impossible to stop it. I don’t recommend it.”
“How long if I don’t do it?”
“Four weeks for the muscle to heal enough for me to regenerate the skin and close the wound.”
Bast shook her head firmly. “I’ll miss the bonding.” She sat up straighter, her eyes boring into Alyssa’s. “I can’t miss the bonding, ma’am. I have to be a dragon-horse warrior. First Warrior is counting on me.”
“First Warrior?”
“Jael, ma’am. She’s First Warrior to The Collective. She’s the…the general over everybody.”
“General?”
“That’s a military rank—the highest you can be.”
“Yes, I know.”
“She’s amazing.”
Alyssa gritted her teeth. She wanted to roll her eyes at the reverence shining in Bast’s eyes. She wanted to grab her and shake some sense into the young woman. But then she’d have to shake some sense into every other patient in the ward. They all idolized Jael and The Guard.
“Do you know what my name means?”
“No.”
“It means born of the sun.” Bast held out her hand and a small fireball appeared over her palm. “I was born for this.”
“Bast, do you understand what they’re training you to do?” Her question was gentle.
Bast looked away, but her expression was stoic. “Yes. I do.”
“You may have to take another person’s life. Do you think you can do that?”
When Bast looked up, her eyes were filled with certainty. “I haven’t experienced a lot of things, seen a lot of places like you have. I’m just a girl who grew up on a farm cooperative. But I know about doing what has to be done. When my family was hungry and grain stores were low, I had to slaughter the animals I’d help birth and tended. If I didn’t, my family would starve.”
“Taking a human life isn’t the same. You’ll live the rest of your lifetime with your regret.”
“If the First Warrior says it must be to protect The Collective, then I will not regret doing what must be done.”
Alyssa sighed at the absolute conviction in Bast’s quiet declaration. This was a battle she couldn’t win. “Muscle regeneration must be done in a surgery room. I’ll schedule you for tomorrow morning, if you’re sure.”
Bast nodded firmly. “Very sure. Thank you.”
The rest of the burns were much like Bast’s. As the warrior candidates drank their daily elixir, their pyro abilities intensified and the burn injuries coming into the clinic became m
ore severe. Still, those candidates hoping to be dragon-horse warriors never faltered. Not even when four were severely burned over eighty percent of their bodies because they couldn’t control their own flames. Not even when one of the four died.
To Jael’s credit, she held very public funeral pyres for the unfortunate candidate and another who died almost instantly from a violent allergy to the elixir. She didn’t try to hide the danger or consequences of their training and mission. But, apparently, the possibility that it could be just as easily one of them burning on that pyre to release their soul didn’t dissuade the eager candidates. She remembered her reluctance to embrace her own talent and felt a bit ashamed in the face of their unflagging dedication. Maybe it was part of their warrior DNA.
She looked up from making notes on her final patient and found Han, his last patient resting peacefully, waiting patiently for her by the door. She was still mentally working through her warring emotions and wasn’t ready to explain herself, to argue her case. But what was there to argue? Peace could not be won by violence. She believed that with her very core. A wide, roaring river separated her and Jael, no matter how much she wanted to bridge their differences.
“Walk with me,” Han said when she approached.
She followed silently as he led her to the southern edge of the encampment, past the animal pens to a small grove of banana trees that were in various stages of ripening their fruit. They walked among the wide, tattered fronds of the plants, and he picked two of the ripe fruit for them to eat.
“Did you know that bananas are the number-one fruit consumed in the world?”
As bone weary as she was, she recognized Han’s tone. A lesson was coming, and she was surprised to feel the weight of her internal conflict and responsibilities lighten a bit as they slipped into their familiar teacher-student roles. “More than strawberries?”
He smiled at his intelligent pupil’s expected question. She never accepted a lesson without challenging him with questions.
“More than strawberries, because this fruit is a food staple in many tropical regions. It’s not a dessert but essential to their diet.”
They walked through the grove and Han pointed to different varieties of the fruit, all growing in the same stand of plants. He cited their names and uses: cooking bananas versus those typically eaten raw.
The sound of chopping grew louder as they neared the center of the grove, and they came upon a man wielding a machete to hack the large plant into sections and toss them onto a ragged blanket spread on the ground nearby. They watched until the shoots of the plant were gone and the man picked up a shovel to dig.
When he’d exposed the corm, the huge bulbous heart of the plant, he knelt and laid his hand on it. “Forgive me, old friend. You have borne fruit and fed my family for many years. You have multiplied, and now your children that surround us feed many families. I thank you for your service.”
He stood and began to dig around the corm, cutting through the roots that nourished the plant.
“Sir, why are you killing your banana tree?” Han asked.
The man didn’t look up. “A fungus has infected it,” he said as he continued to dig. “If I don’t remove the plant, I could lose them all.”
“Is there no other way?”
“The fungus lives in the corm and spreads through the roots, so I must kill the heart of the plant to stop the disease. It must be done to save the rest.”
Han nodded and they walked on until they reached a clearing bathed in warm sunlight and carpeted with thick grass, where he indicated for her to join him in sitting cross-legged, hands resting palm up on their knees. She closed her eyes and turned her face into the sun, absorbing its warmth and energy as they rested in companionable silence. She relaxed into their meditation and began to drift.
Jael’s meadow was filled with an explosion of color—wildflowers dancing gently in the breeze. Children she recognized from the school at her old temple played around her, shrieking and laughing as they chased each other. She laughed, too, and tied daisies into necklaces for them to wear. She felt rested and happy for the first time in weeks.
A loud bellow from the edge of the woods startled her. The children froze in terror as a great bear lumbered out of the tree line and stood upright, its small, dark eyes finding the youngsters. It roared again and pawed at a wood shaft protruding from its ribs. It was wounded and angry.
The children’s shrieks were filled with terror now, and they ran to her. She reached out to the bear, but a wall of delirious fury and pain met the soothing thoughts she projected. It charged and the children screamed. The house. They needed to run to the house. She turned, but it seemed impossibly far. She shouted to the children, but they only clung to her in their fear so she couldn’t run either. The bear roared and gnashed its great teeth as it galloped toward them.
Suddenly, great balls of flame exploded in front of and around the bear. Jael! The silver uniform of the dragon-horse warrior glinted in the sun. She threw fireball after fireball, but the bear didn’t alter his course. Alyssa’s ears rang with his snarls. She could almost feel his foul breath and smell his fetid wound when a swirling ball of white-hot flame enveloped him in a huge whoosh. The force of it knocked her to the ground and seared her skin. She covered the children with her body to shelter them from it, and the bear vanished with a sharp yelp.
The yelp, she realized was her own as she jerked back to reality, panting against the terror that constricted her chest. Her heart thudded in her ears. There was no bear—only Han sitting across from her, watching.
“Stars.” She scowled at him and started to rise.
“Sit.” His command was gentle, but she sank back to the ground, her legs too weak to stand. The vision had been so real, it had sapped what little strength she had left after her long hours in the clinic.
“Why did you shelter the children with your body?”
The question wasn’t what she’d expected him to ask. “It was a natural reflex.”
“The natural reaction to fear is flight. But you did not run.”
“I wanted to, but the children were too afraid to run with me.”
“Perhaps if you’d let the bear eat just one child or maybe two, he would have been satisfied. You could have escaped with the others, and the First Warrior would not have killed him.”
She stared at him. That was ludicrous. She stood again. “Look. I know where you’re going with this. But taking a human life isn’t the same. We have time and options other than incinerating people.” This conversation was headed nowhere and she needed to return to the clinic. She turned to leave, but he stood and stopped her with a firm grasp on her forearm.
“Time? Do we? You’ve been sequestered by your duties in recent weeks and unaware of what’s happening. This group that calls itself The Natural Order already has hijacked food distribution in the Third Continent. People are choosing sides for and against them. The cities are filled with bloody rioting. Do you need to hear the cries of the hungry children? Do you need to see the bloodied bodies of those who are fighting for control of the food supplies? The fungus is already spreading to the grove. The First Warrior and her army must destroy the root so the fungus will die.”
In all the years she’d known Han, she’d never heard him speak so ardently. Was it fear or anger that hardened his eyes?
“Peace cannot be won with violence.”
“Was the meadow again peaceful once the bear was gone?”
She stared stubbornly at the ground, refusing to concede the point. “You can tell Jael that sending for you was a waste of your time.”
He cupped her chin to raise her eyes to his. “Jael didn’t summon me. The Collective Council sent me. Even ones as evolved as they still grow in understanding. They have a message for you.”
Her breath caught. “For me?” The Council was sending a message to a first-life?
Han nodded. “War and peace may seem like night and day. But without the dawn, day would not break. Withou
t dusk, night would not come. The Collective can only be restored when the warrior finds peace and an Advocate takes up her mantle.”
“My mantle? What does that mean?”
“The message is repeated as spoken, but I believe they are saying that it will take both the First Warrior and the First Advocate to make our world right again.”
“First Advocate?”
Pride shone in Han’s eyes, admiration for her. “The Council has declared it.”
Alyssa wavered. “I can’t.”
“Compromise. Meet in the twilight and seek the dawn.” His voice softened and he took her hand in his. “From the time your parents first brought you to the temple, I knew there was something great in your future. You must let it happen. You must go to her.” He raised his hand to stop her protest. “Just as it was inherent in you to shelter the children, the First Warrior has been born many times over for one purpose—to protect The Collective. She is doing what she must, and your condemnation is a wound that has left her vulnerable before she ever reaches the battlefield.”
She hung her head. She knew her words had been harsh, but she expected that they’d bounced right off Jael’s stubborn sense of right. Had her anger actually wounded her? She couldn’t bear the thought. Stars, she wanted to go to her. She wanted to massage Jael’s temples and offer her respite from the voices, the pyres that weighed so heavy on those strong shoulders. She wanted to feel Jael’s arms around her again. She wanted those callused hands on her breasts and her hands on Jael’s naked body. She wanted Jael’s mouth everywhere. She shuddered. “She probably doesn’t want to see me. I said some mean things to her.”
He smiled. “Then a twilight truce is in order. You will learn to apologize, and your warrior will learn to forgive.”
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