Heart Sight

by Robin D. Owens

  He stepped from the shower and let blasts of air dry him. All right, then.

  Her huge sigh trembled through their bond and he sensed her mind fuzzing with incipient sleep. Go to sleep, Avellana.

  You must rest, too, Muin, she murmured, then her thoughts faded.

  Soon, he replied, and held her mind gently until it slipped away. He took the omnivator to his sunroom, then opened the dome. And he focused on the emotions flowing between them, mostly simple love.

  Letting out a breath, he walked to the southeastern point, and there in the dark distance showed pinpricks of light where there had never been any before. Multiplicity.

  Checking on Flora, he found her back in her basket in the corner of his sitting room. He placed his hands atop the low wall. No night chill of stone here, nor any lingering warmth from the summer day. He stared at those lights and shifted his shoulders as he became aware again of the burden of Family and Flair.

  If he returned to bed, the nightmare might plague him again.

  Another few lights in a line appeared—the town wall going up around Multiplicity—and a twinge of sadness flicked through him. He had insisted on that wall and now felt the loss of . . . freedom, expansion . . . that Multiplicity represented.

  Yearning suffused him, the continual instinctive need to sleep with, be with, bond with Avellana.

  Instead he turned away from the sight, his gaze sweeping the top of the tower, the walls of T’Vine fortress, the one glider way up and down the hill, and in the near distance the other walled town, Druida City.

  He took the omnivator back to his rooms.

  “Residence?”

  “Yes, T’Vine?”

  “Set a morning meeting of the Family at WorkBell in the mainspace. Morning Family duties will be excused until after the gathering.”

  “Yes, T’Vine.” The silver sphere of his calendar sphere popped into existence. “Done.”

  “Thank you.” Yes, time to find and vanquish his enemies.

  To that end, he arranged papyrus around him in his bed, then began to read reports of the recent Loyalty Ceremonies that the Yews and the Clovers had sent him, and finally fell back to sleep in his comfortchair.

  • • •

  This time when Avellana and Rhyz left D’Hazel Residence before dawn, they took a Family glider. Rhyz lay on the passenger seat, all four paws up. His abdomen appeared fatter than when they had stepped off the ferry from Mona Island an eightday ago.

  Avellana had dressed in shabby tunic and trous good for physical work. Not so good to impress buyers, so she had left a message for Antenn that she would not be available to meet prospective community members today unless he felt she must. Then she would initiate a Whirlwind Spell. Since like most people, particularly men, he hated that spell, he would probably order their salespeople to be on site and enthusiastic.

  A few notes had passed between them, left in their scry memory caches. Arta Daisy had participated in the raising of her home and been rapturous. Reporters from the Druida City Times had documented the process, so more observers should show up today to watch the building of Multiplicity.

  Antenn had also communicated that he and a night crew had constructed a sixty-centimeter-thick wall around the community, and that Muin T’Vine had purchased a parcel, as had twelve others.

  In return, Avellana had informed her business partner that she had traded one of her own estates to Loridana D’Yew and that transaction had already been legally recorded. Avellana had agreed to meet him that afternoon to discuss their partnership, Multiplicity, and their success.

  The glider stopped at the tall gates now blocking off the town. She frowned at the equally tall walls and the slight shimmer indicating a midlevel shieldspell dome had been placed. No more than a couple of seconds passed before the gates opened for her, and then they passed silently through the mostly undeveloped streets of the village until the vehicle drew up in front of her brand-new home.

  The community consisted of all sizes of lots, but Avellana, a child of a FirstFamily, had chosen one of the largest, in the area for bigger homes, though her house itself was a modest one, suitable for one person, or a couple.

  She had lived in tiny cottages, rattled around alone except for Rhyz in huge and empty vacation houses, D’Hazel’s as well as dwellings Muin had arranged.

  Not anymore.

  Now she had her very own home, designed according to her own needs.

  Others must have felt like her, wanted houses or studios or homes that would reflect their individual selves rather than an established Family castle constructed by the colonists for an enormous Family. Or they wanted to found their own Family line, and do it here, in a new community.

  Though she saw a couple of lights in occupied homes, no one stirred outside in the cool dawn.

  She and Rhyz stepped from the glider as the sun came over the eastern ridge, spilling light into the valley. Shining on the large front windows of her home. Her pent breath released at the sight of her octagonal house. Angles instead of the curves.

  Her suite in Muin’s tower, and her very own round tower in T’Vine Residence, awaited her—very pretty places, and she would grow to love them, but this building reflected her. Not the colonists who became the Hazels and built their castle, nor the Vines who erected that massive Residence.

  Her. Antenn Blackthorn-Moss had interviewed her, and they had looked at house shapes and structures and . . . He had designed a building that made her smile whenever she thought of it.

  As she entered, the sprightly smell of newly turned earth and cut wood beams and mortared stone made her stop and grin. Her very own as no place she had lived in had been.

  Perhaps others who lived in Residences or Family houses identified more with their home, but she never had. As soon as she became truly aware of herself as a person, an individual of the Hazel Family . . . Muin had informed everyone that he and she were HeartMates. She learned that she would spend most of her long Celtan life in T’Vine Residence. So she and D’Hazel Residence had not closely bonded.

  Then she had been sent away to live with the catalyst, D’Marigold, during all three of her Passages to free her Flair.

  And, later, whenever Muin sensed danger to her, which was far too often, she had been stashed in one town or another.

  Now, and here, she had built a home of her own. For a while.

  All planned out. She would leave D’Hazel Residence and move here within a couple of days, and live here until she and Muin finally wed, then she would keep this as a studio. Slowly she walked through the open first floor that contained mainspace, kitchen, playroom, dining room, and waterfall.

  Rhyz tore around the level, then up the stairs, claws clicking on the greeniron.

  Avellana dropped the personal armor and spread her arms, breathing deeply, all constraints on her . . . mostly . . . gone. The glint of her amulet caught her eye, but T’Ash, like Antenn, had fashioned a piece completely to her taste, so she loved the necklace and enjoyed wearing it.

  So very light, this house, and she could see all around her. Just what she wanted. Now she cherished these first moments of being in her own home by herself—Rhyz had thinned one of the windows or exited through a FamDoor to check out his property. A place no other Fam had lived, or would live without his permission. They both prized that.

  Pausing for a moment, she watched the sun clear the hill, again felt the emptiness; only light and her own energy filled the air. Never had she been in an unfurnished house—or cottage, or, By the Four, a Residence.

  She paced through the open level, then went upstairs. The second story held her wedge-shaped bedroom-sitting-room-waterfall suite, two guest rooms with waterfalls, and a tiny teleportation closet big enough for two people, all chambers accessible from the inner balcony. The doors stood open. She did a quick check of energy in her home and found only the solid and reassuring
presence of Rhyz rushing in and out. No old and lingering patterns, all bright and new and shiny.

  She entered each room, visualizing the furniture and accessories she would move in today. Most would come by glider, but a few smaller items she would bring over from D’Hazel Residence. Soon enough she would learn the light in various spots of the house instead of the small, windowless closet with the same steady glow used in all the D’Hazel Residence teleportation rooms. She closed that door, then mounted the steps to her studio.

  As she sat on one of the uncushioned window seats and looked west to the ocean two kilometers away in the blue-gray distance, she understood that she had modeled her house somewhat on D’Marigold Residence, where she had spent weeks before, during, and after her Passages.

  The greater part of that house stood in tall circular plaster layers like a wedding cake, with huge arched windows that kept the place light.

  Now, straight walls of mostly glass surrounded her, and she could see south to the foot of the hills, or look out to her neighbors in the valley, or to the northern plain that showed a good view of the Hopeful Cathedral, one of the reasons she’d wanted this particular plot.

  Yes, she had followed instinct and joined with Antenn and would make a lot of gilt on this venture, but she also had her own home.

  Standing, she called mentally to her FamCat, Rhyz, I am returning to the glider for the HouseStones!

  Yesss! Me, TOO! I will ’port and meet You at the glider!

  She preferred to run down the steps, then through the empty house and out the front door she had left open. Once outside she let the early-morning summer air fill her lungs, caress her nostrils with the scents of Multiplicity—plain grasses, cultivated grass and flowers planted in the spring and now thick and blooming, the hint of humans, and the freshening ozone of building Flair and new materials.

  Only her home stood on the street, no one across from her or to either side. Right now she could see the town circle east of her . . . and the carillon bell tower that had also gone up last evening. To the north, at the very top of the valley, the semicircular horizontal stories of Arta Daisy’s armorcrete-and-stone home rose dark against the sky, about twice the size of Avellana’s own house. Arta would be moving in furniture today, too. Just beyond Arta’s home loomed the new wall, and that would comfort the woman.

  Turning, Avellana frowned at the wall now behind her home, at the end of the grassyard and cut into the bottom reach of the hills. Antenn had placed a thick, elaborately carved oak door in the wall where the stepping-stone path to the ocean lay. Avellana grumbled.

  I am here! Rhyz enthused, hopping up and down. He kept his neck tilted back so the bag holding the HouseStones Avellana had gathered did not brush the ground.

  She turned away from the sight of the tall wall and shrugged; the barrier marched around the valley, no going back now.

  Avellana checked the glider doors; they were secure, so Rhyz had teleported in and out of the vehicle. She took the sack from him and walked back into her house, shut the door, and secured the whole building with two layers of shieldspells.

  Her home contained a basement, windowless, a tiny shrine to the four guardian spirits who guided the Hopeful traveler on her journey. And in the center of that small four-armed-cross chamber lay a trapdoor that opened into a narrow chute, straight down into another room, this one small and oval, no more than three meters long.

  Avellana had negotiated with the moles who had excavated other HouseHearts to make one for her own home—that would someday become a sentient House.

  Now with the smell of rich earth surrounding her, she let Rhyz dig the hole where she would place the Flair-imbued stones with the tiny sparks of life and incipient intelligence. One smoothed nugget of dark amber came from the HouseStones of D’Hazel Residence. It had already been linked in a network of cognizant stones, as had the variegated agate Muin had given her from the cache of Vine HeartStones in that Residence.

  Done! Rhyz said, and when she went to the hole and knelt with the sack, she felt what her Fam must have, the point of throbbing Flair that gathered all the energy lines of their home together into a node, or sent energy flowing from that place through the new building. The heart of the house, the HouseHeart.

  She upended the bag, let pebbles roll out . . . small rough-edged rocks, smooth stones, crystals . . . from places she and Rhyz had lived, the last being a piece of rose quartz that she had found on Mona Island. She settled back on her heels and Rhyz butted in again, stirring the new HeartStones with his paw.

  Done! he announced again.

  Avellana slowly ran her hand above the arrangement of the new HeartStones, reached down and ensured that they touched each other, felt the zing of Flair through her, sent an equal amount back into the stones. When she practiced rituals here in her house, she would funnel more strength to those stones so the intelligence would grow. Sometime in the future, the Flair would reach critical mass and the House would become an aware individual with a personality. Since that usually took two centuries, she would probably not be around to see it happen, but the thread stretching into the future, from her and Rhyz, satisfied a need within her. She had founded a House.

  Then she stood and cleansed her hands, flicked dirt from her clothes and Rhyz’s paws and fur with a spell. “We will lay the red sandstone flag floor ourselves this evening, as the twinmoons shine brightly in the sky.”

  Vinni and Flora will help us, Rhyz insisted.

  Avellana paused, wanting to keep her house to herself, held the selfish feeling close for a moment or two, then let out her breath and the egotistical need, inhaled the acceptance that sharing would make the experience richer.

  “Yes.”

  Twenty-six

  That morning when Vinni awoke after too little sleep, he let his brain unfog naturally, lying back and considering the embroidered canopy over his bed. Another antique mural, sensing his wakefulness, activated and moved, showing a view of walking through a forest.

  He should talk to Avellana about this, someday, as he preferred this particular position for thinking. Someday she’d share this ancestral bed with him. No, don’t think of that, not right now, when he had problems to ponder.

  Avellana wouldn’t leave. Wait, that wasn’t what she said. Avellana wouldn’t leave without him. So he would go.

  At that thought, absolute relief washed through him as if he’d averted some danger. He had to get them out of here, Druida City. And not just because of the danger that had passed by them. He needed time with her, alone, and without anyone watching and judging. Where, he didn’t know. The five estates the Family owned, two here in Druida, three outside, all were occupied by Family members.

  Multiplicity was too close.

  And the more he thought, the more he recalled the nightmare-vision last night and how it had tarnished his loving with Avellana, as well as their previous triumph of the First Quarter Twinmoons Ritual. And the more sensitive he became to the energy flows of his relatives.

  He got up and dressed for the Family meeting at WorkBell, then took the omnivator down to the bottom of his rectangular tower. There he unlocked the door to the round tower that held his public rooms, stepped through, and stopped at a whiff of treachery.

  The same trace of hostile feelings he’d sensed last night. The slight current of rot that must have triggered his vision-dream.

  He had to face the fact. The person who worked against him in the Family might not just be concerned about Avellana and him marrying, but might be a true and vicious enemy.

  He’d refused to see that before. Hadn’t wanted to believe that one of his own relatives might be a member of the Traditionalist Stance.

  Might be the one threatening Avellana. One of his own Family.

  Might even be the secret head of the movement whom they hadn’t been able to find or catch when the also-betraying Yews and their group went down.
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  Furthermore, he’d have to acknowledge that he hadn’t rooted out enemies years ago, when they’d harmed Avellana and he’d disinherited several, then had another Loyalty Ceremony. Somehow they’d hidden and remained in the Family, like a viper waiting to strike.

  He had to accept that someone he knew, and might love, plotted the death of his HeartMate. A Family member he might care for, cherish, work hard to help, would betray him.

  Yes, that hurt, enough so he doubled over and panted.

  T’Vine? asked the Residence, telepathically.

  Not able to speak, Vinni replied mentally, too. Lock down this tower and my own.

  Done!

  He couldn’t leave a threat to Avellana at large. Not one embedded in the heart of his Family.

  He had to consider his options, and the first was right here, talking with him. Residence, you know of the Traditionalist Stance movement?

  I know, T’Vine. We have held meetings with our FirstFamilies allies within my walls. A pause and a slight creak. Though there were aspects of that particular political platform that were excellent ideas.

  The shock of that last statement shouldn’t have surprised Vinni. The Residences, as nonmobile sentient beings longer-lived than any human, had proven to be more entrenched in the past than interested in the future.

  He cleared his throat, answered aloud, “I agree. The Traditionalist Stance may have had some valid points, but they did not propound them in an acceptable manner. From the beginning, an element of greedy self-interest tainted the first leader, then the movement rapidly deteriorated into murderous fanatics. Targeting children.”

  “I do not forget.” T’Vine Residence’s voice came aloud and stony. “Many suffered from those fanatics, including one of the oldest Residences and the youngest babe-in-arms of a FirstFamily. Taking life—any life—is a crime. We act unto others how we wish others would act unto us, and WE HARM NONE along our journey of self-discovery and self-actualization.”