The Namura Stone

by Andrews, Gillian

  Ledin had nodded. Raven was a handful. She was quite capable of taking it into her head to disappear in any direction, especially if she felt her father was not taking enough notice of her. More than once they had been forced to send out search parties.

  Six had given Grace another hug. “Diva knows, Gracie. Whether you are there or not, she knows.”

  Grace had nodded dumbly, eyes full of tears. There had been nothing else to say.

  Arcan had to be there at the canth farm. The possibility that the lost animas might be able to form into an astrand themselves was of prime importance for any of the orthospecies. It was something he should be there to witness. He was also the canths’ strongest protection.

  Diva looked around as she arrived and managed to spin slightly as she spotted Arcan. The orthogel entity scintillated. It was enough. They understood each other.

  Now the canth keeper stared at the morphic who was Diva. “Is that really you?” She was almost transparent with loss of energy and barely able to maintain herself in the air. “—I can sense your canth, so it must be.”

  Diva shivered. “Yes.”

  The canth keeper’s face broke up with sorrow at the sight of her evident illness. “What can I do to help you?”

  Diva told him what she had come to do, and the canth keeper bowed before her. “It is a truly noble thing to do, when you are feeling … as you are. You are beyond colour.”

  That was literally true. Six examined her pallor, and his lips grew thin. He knew how she must be hating having to admit to any weakness.

  “Sure.” He made his voice sound unconcerned. He would not be the one to make this any more difficult for her. Not him. He nodded to the canth keeper, who immediately turned and began to open all of the corrals, leaving the gates fastened back so that as many canths as wanted to could get into the upper paddock. Six and the others spread out, one to each cardinal point, where they could be useful as sentries. As the canths began to enter the central corral he looked up at her.

  “Diva, you don’t want us in the mindmerge, then?”

  “No. Once the canths manage to form an astrand they will reject any other minds anyway. I shall only be in the diamond at the beginning. I think it is better that only I go; any more of us in a mental merge with them when they try this would only be confusing.”

  Tallen was staring at the firemorph. “You look terrible.”

  “Thank you, Namuri. I might have known you would be as polite as ever.”

  “Well, you do. You are all pale and shaky. What in Sacras happened to you?”

  “I got too close to the Ammonites. Didn’t Six tell you?”

  “Well, yes, but he didn’t say it was this bad!” Tallen was clearly aghast to see just how ill she was.

  Diva tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. She felt tears come to her eyes. Lumina knew what that would look like to the others, but it felt horrible to her.

  Six saw the quivers which suffused the small body. He glared at Tallen.

  “Perhaps you should concentrate on keeping guard, instead of talking so much?”

  Tallen looked across at Bennel, who shook his head warningly. This was not the moment to speak out, he felt.

  “We will be here, Valhais,” the older man said formally. “We will be alert.”

  Tallen gave one of his ferocious scowls and then nodded, although everyone could see that he was having to bite his tongue not to reply.

  Diva smiled at Six. Then she wondered what that would look like too. Oh, this was getting far too complicated. She just wished that awful, degrading pain would go away. This was not something you could simply force into the back of your mind; it was a grinding, continuous scorching pain that made it impossible to think, to be, to do anything. It was wearing her down, and she hated it for that; she hated herself for succumbing to it.

  They all watched as the canths slowly began to gather in the upper paddock, crowding in through the gates until there must have been at least 150 of them in the reduced area. They clustered around Diva, forming a circle with the firemorph in the centre.

  “Go on, Diva! Don’t wait any longer.”

  Diva looked at the canths and felt reassured. She could feel their simple minds, their trust in her. They were not spooked by this meeting, she saw with the part of her which was still canth, still lost anima. They were curious but not frightened.

  She held her arms out and began to spin. The canths saw only the round shape of the firemorph revolve.

  Diva let her mind take over and was aware when it began to transmit to the canths how they should position themselves to form the astrand.

  At first, the canths were reluctant to move out of their usual diamond shape. It was something they were used to, and it was hard to change the habits of thousands of years.

  But Diva was insistent, showing them mentally over and over again how to pull themselves out of the single, brilliant diamond, and fragment into the shards that would begin to build up the astrand. First, each fragment needed to become part of a base diamond, much smaller than the normal one, and then each new diamond shape needed to bond with others in just the right way until the whole could bind together in the unbreakable meld, the brilliant formation that would permit the new mind to emerge.

  It took time. The formation of the small diamond shapes was the problem. The canths were used to slotting neatly into the one huge rhombus; it was hard for them to fragment into smaller cells. They automatically tried to slip back into the more comfortable diamond shape that was easy for them, that they were used to. They didn’t want to expend the extra energy that such a new formation would demand of them. They didn’t like the idea at all.

  Diva refused to accept their complaints. She pushed and pushed at their set minds, gradually forcing them to accept the small changes required in order to make the bigger, more powerful, shape.

  TIME WAS PASSING slowly for those whose watchful eyes were scanning the central corral at the canth farm.

  Six was looking out over the temaris trees where Temar had been born. It seemed a long, long time ago, and the journey since then had been hard. He could visualize Diva as she had been, crouching over Grace and defending her with the ferocity of a tigress. He found himself wishing, yet again, that Diva hadn’t gone. His throat worked as he visualized the scene, and he made himself look away. There was nothing to be gained by thinking about the past. If anyone knew that, it was him. He had learned that as a very young child, and nothing that had happened since had made him change his mind.

  He had been lucky to have the good times he had. He also knew that, despite the intense feeling of loneliness, he wasn’t really alone. He had good friends around him, people who really knew him, and who cared about him. And he had been given a second chance with Diva, with the person he loved. How many people could say that? It seemed churlish to resent what he had not got. He knew that he should accept the hand he had been dealt and be thankful. It sounded easy, but it wasn’t. It was so hard that he knew he was changing inside from the continual effort just to go on, to appear anything like normal.

  Tallen was looking out over the pastures too. Although he never took his eye off the landscape, his mind was taking him back to his sister, and her death.

  Petra had been gone for nearly three years now. His heart still curled up inside his chest when he thought about it. But they were right; it did get easier. Yet that was equally hard to take. How could something like that get easier? What sort of a person did that make him? It was as if he had failed the namura stone in a way that she would never have done. Yet the namura stone had turned out to be crucial to Arcan, had saved him from a terrible fate at the hands of the Dessites. Tallen sighed. So, what did that mean? And why had it taken Diva? The sibyla seemed to have known that she would never go back to the village. How had she been able to see that?

&
nbsp; Tallen muttered under his breath. Everything that had happened was proof of the power of the namura stone. But he could not forget what those last few seconds must have felt like to Petra, how she must have felt when she said the words of the chant for the last time.

  There was the quick movement of a bird in the Eletheian tree in front of him. It distracted him for a moment, and he watched it as it searched for berries amongst the leaves. Then his mind went back to Petra. Now she was gone. Gone back, gone to the sacred marshes, gone with the stone. She had not failed. He hoped to Sacras that he never would, either. It was a huge challenge, one he knew he would one day have to face.

  Bennel was staring over a rather hazy morning towards the Xianthes. It was going to be a very hot day, he thought. His head followed the towering colossus of rock up into the sky. He would take Lannie there soon, he decided. Neither Sanjai or Quenna had been, and it was a place he felt they simply had to see. Especially after what had happened to Grace up at Lightning Corner, and the way that the visitor had saved her, despite being condemned to death by his own people for doing so. It was part of their history, something he needed to honour. Now that Quenna was on her way to overcoming heights, it would be beneficial to her to force her boundaries a little more, too, although he knew it would take great resolution on her part.

  He thought of Lannie. She had blossomed since coming to Xiantha; her asthma was almost completely gone. And she loved the place so much; it was a true blessing.

  Bennel thought of the Valhais. It was sad that Valhai Diva had had to die – or whatever had happened to her – in order for his Lannie to come here. He didn’t think it fair at all. But he couldn’t be completely sad, not when Lannie was so happy. She had deserved it so much, after suffering without one word of complaint for all that time. He lifted his chin, decision made. Yes, he would definitely take them around the dark Xianthe, when it was convenient. He made up his mind to speak to Valhai Six about it. Perhaps the Valhai would like Raven to go with them. They might be able to make an outing for all of the children.

  The canth keeper, who had taken up the last watching station, the western one, was also lost in thought. He was excited that Diva might be able to show the canths how to link in an astrand. That was going to be momentous! How very lucky he was to have lived at this time! It was a true blessing. How much colour would come to the lost animas through the astrand, if they were indeed capable of achieving one!

  He could faintly hear his own canth struggling to adapt to Diva’s exigencies; they were finding it very hard. He thought soothing thoughts and was relieved when the creature took notice, calming down somewhat. You will do it, he transmitted. This is what you were all meant to be doing. You just lost the ability some years ago. This is something you know how to do; you just have to remember.

  DIVA WAS ALMOST at the end of her patience and her physical stamina when the first signs of success appeared. She felt a tremor of exultance in the canths’ mindmerge and froze in place herself as she finally saw the small diamonds knit together in just the right way. One moment there had been the familiar chaos, and the next many of the canths had fitted neatly together, whilst the others were clustering around the mental shape, eager to slot into their own places.

  Once the process was started, it seemed that there was no going back. The lost animas almost jostled each other in their haste. Diva watched as the last few pieces fitted neatly into their places, and then gave a broad smile as the astrand finally formed. She was suddenly outside them, merely an onlooker.

  For it was slightly different to the Ammonite astrand. Instead of just one diamond forming each of the hundreds of vertices on the star, several diamonds had joined together at each vertex, making the whole astrand seem less sharp, more benign, and rather more beautiful.

  As Diva watched, the astrand began to shine and a patina of brilliance covered it. It shimmered in her mind, and then she felt some other consciousness examine her own. There was a sudden flash of something between her mind and the astrand, and she caught her breath. The canths thought that they could help her! They wanted her to open her thoughts to them.

  It was hard to submit to the inspection of this other mind, although she was now expecting it. She knew that the astrand was simply exploring her own mental patterns, trying to find out how to cure her.

  She shivered a little as the astrand examined her, because it was hard to leave her own mind open. Gradually, she felt the massed intelligence focus on certain areas of her intellect and deepen their study. She was aware of surprise, and then perplexity.

  She felt that the astrand was almost forming one with her own mind. It was as though there were an echo of the canths’ collective mind resonating with her own. They were actually co-existing alongside her own thought paths. She felt their astonishment at the hard-wiring of her neurons, at the existence of the phantom limbs. Then she felt their psyche move down to the affected parts of her legs and arms, just as if they still existed, as if there really were flesh and blood pulsing through a real bipedal body. They saw the wounds in her non-existent skin, saw the haemorrhages, saw how much blood was being lost, how much energy was being drained out of her depleted reserves.

  They honed in on one particular part, and Diva cried out aloud. Just the force of their mind had caused such a shaft of pain that she couldn’t help it.

  Now she felt satisfaction within the astrand. They were pleased. Progress had been made. Another node in the neurons was subjected to pressure. Again she cried out involuntarily at the severe pain, but again she noticed satisfaction on the part of the astrand.

  She became aware of a hum of intense concentration as the astrand focused all its attention on the two spots already found. The mental meld formed a narrow beam which seemed to be of a different type of light; a beam so tight that it didn’t dissipate out into space, very similar to the lasers which the Ammonites had used to create stopped light. This thin beam was directed onto the first spot, and Diva felt a sudden blast of agony as a small part of the neural pathways were eliminated, burnt out of her brain. She was left gasping, having to use all of her upbringing not to shout out loud. She knew herself to be trembling uncontrollably. But the gaping wound had been cauterized, the debilitating bleeding had stopped.

  The astrand turned its attention to the next faulty node they had found. Again the beam burnt through the mindmerge they had with her, scorching through the extra neural pathways, correcting the neurons which were giving her erroneous data, stopping the seeping blood.

  It took over an hour to finish their work; by that time Six was at the end of his tether. Although he knew that they were trying to help her – that much the canth keeper had been able to pick up – he could hear her cries inside his head, and it was heartbreaking not to be able to run towards her, to help her. He wondered if she were aware of his concern, if she could feel how much he was hating this, how much he would have liked to alleviate her suffering, drain her pain away into his own mind. It was terrible to be sidelined, to have to stand back and accept his own inability to help her. His face got stonier and stonier as the hour passed, until he was so tensed up that he began to shake himself with the effort of not moving.

  Diva could sense Six, as if out of the corner of her eye. He was anguishing almost as much as she was, she realized. She tried to send calming thoughts out towards him, but he was not in the mindmerge, and she doubted if he would capture them, where he was, hovering on the very periphery of the mental meld.

  Then she screamed as they probed another spot within her psyche. Six’s shadow quivered and went still. She could sense part of him withdrawing, part of him feeling so impotent to help her that he was sinking into utter depression.

  “NO! No, Six, please! Stay with me.”

  The shadowy figure at the edge of her consciousness took no notice whatsoever, and she could feel it moving away from her, closing inside itself, shut
ting down.

  Perhaps, if he couldn’t hear, he would feel it if she signed to him? She concentrated her mind on what would have been her fingers, pressing against the fence that he was resting his hands on.

  “Stay with me Six, please. I need you.”

  She slowly became aware of a reaction within the shape on the edge of her perception. It began to relax. She felt an answer form, on whatever part of her brain had previously been connected to her fingers.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I am. They are finding where the pain is. It has to hurt me. Please, don’t worry.”

  She felt such a sense of relief from him that she almost fainted herself. “I am still here,” she told him. “This is only passing. With their help, I may get better.”

  “I miss you so much.”

  “But I am here.”

  “You seem so far away to me. I need to feel your presence.”

  “However far away I am, I am always close.”

  “I am here for you.” Then he maintained a light pressure on her fingers as she went through the extirpation of ten more damaged nodes. The weak contact helped. She felt connected to Six once again, felt his concern wrap around her like a blanket, protecting her from the echoing loneliness of unshared pain.

  The astrand carefully finished its work, and then withdrew. Diva slipped out of the mindmerge and collapsed onto the sandy ground of the central paddock, barely able to maintain her shape.

  As soon as he felt the astrand break back into its constituent parts and the canths return to their normal state, Six ran towards Diva, his heart beating much faster than was good for it or him.

  He was white-faced as he slid to a stop beside her. She was lying motionless on the ground, her shape dull and cloudy.