Star Bridge (Chaterre Trilogy Book 1)

by Jeanne Foguth

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Nimri propelled herself out of the dragon’s mouth, but slammed against the bridge of the beast’s spear-like snout. Immobilized by fear, she hung on for dear life.

  Never had she imagined such speed. She twisted, trying to see where she was. The dragon dove toward a bluish ball. Or perhaps the ball was being hurled at them. As it neared, it gained character and definition. Memories of the mind-meld with GEA-4 brought the word planet to her mind. The world appeared to be equally divided between land and water. Perhaps the huge fern-shaped blue they were heading for was the ocean, which Thunder had spoken of. As if sensing the presence of the water, the dragon veered to its left. Nimri watched the panorama increase in size and detail, more interested in this view of her world, then afraid. Fingers of land jutted into the water. The term atoll came unbidden into her mind. Some landmasses were larger than others. Some were flat; others were rugged. Thunder hadn’t said anything about their ocean having islands. She tried to determine if they were heading back to her world or if this was another one. Nothing looked familiar. A moment later, the dragon soared high above the clouds, which looked soft as whipped egg white. What should she do if the beast had taken her into the stars and they were near a different world? Could she wake without Thunder from so far away?

  Light flashed off to the right. She recognized Sacred Mountain. Relief washed over her. This was her home world. Perhaps Thunder had brewed the storm. The valley certainly looked black enough. My job is to get this beast into the trap. She gritted her teeth and slid to the right. The dragon didn’t change direction. She waved her fist at the creature’s injured eye. It rolled sideways, toward her. Nimri held on. The dragon slowed, as if looking for her. She glanced over her shoulder, trying to gauge where she needed to lure the beast. They were heading directly at a thick white cloud-mass. Beyond it was a dark cloud. The beast stopped and began to turn. She scrambled onto its snout, and began to dance.

  The dragon roared in fury and surged forward. Darkness abruptly fell. There was a terrible boom. White light bloomed over the dragon and Nimri. It screamed. Scalding humidity wrapped around her. Thunder had done it! Despite the pain, happiness thrilled through her.

  More lightening flashed. The heavens rumbled. Each stronger, louder, closer. Sheets of water fell; each drop got a fraction closer and cooler before it disappeared, then the dragon altered course and headed upward.

  Not again. Nimri danced down the massive nose until she saw her face reflected in both of the monster’s crimson eyes.

  “Focus on me. Come get me!” She stuck out her tongue. When that didn’t distract the beast from the rain, she punched its eye. “Come on! Get me!” The dragon’s gyrations became frenzied. “That’s it.” She moved to her left. It turned to chase her. She imagined that it didn’t realize that it couldn’t catch her by pursuit. She divided her awareness between making certain how fast the storm was approaching and keeping the dragon’s attention focused on her.

  Suddenly they were back in the dark cloud. A fraction of a moment later, she realized they were diving straight at the ground. Nimri leaped clear.

  A moment later, the beast plunged head first into the land. Vegetation and dirt shot upward in a wild whirlwind. The turbulence caught Nimri and she was sent tumbling through the vortex.

  She somersaulted through the eruption. Her foot snagged on a tree branch. A shaft of lightening showed the dragon’s body standing straight as a sequoia on the edge of the river’s bank; legs extended as if reaching for the distant trees and wings flapping over the fast-disappearing water. By the time the light faded, its head had embedded up to the first set of wings. Debris and rain swirled around the rigid body.

  For a moment, the only sound was the water sizzling into vapor.

  By the next flash, Nimri had regained her balance, and was trying to decide what to do next. She was in a thick cloud of mist and so close to the beast that its smell turned her stomach. A moment before darkness returned, Nimri thought she saw its body move toward her.

  The next bolt showed its spiny back falling directly toward her and gaining momentum. Kazza shot out of the mist, tackled her and knocked her into thick mud. She should have been in the middle of the river, but all the water was gone and the mud she’d landed on had already begun drying and cracking. A wingtip was headed straight for her heart.

  “Wake from the trance…Now!” Thunder’s alarmed disembodied voice shouted.

  Suddenly, she was freezing wet instead of scalded. Her body lay on painful rock, but her right hand touched skin and blood. She knew it was Larwin, but when she opened her eyes, she didn’t recognize the crushed form as anything mortal.

  Still, she felt a faint pulse of life beneath the torn flesh and knew that somehow, he lived.

  “Eight ribs have been shattered,” GEA-4 said. “A lung is pierced. His skull is fractured. His legs and spine have been pulverized.”

  She’d only listed the most obvious damage. Nimri looked within his battered body, marveling that anyone could survive such mutilation.

  “I can not restore him,” GEA-4 concluded.

  Could she?

  She had to try.

  Kazza sat on the other side of Larwin’s shattered body, his paw on what should have been Larwin’s chest, and stared at her as if waiting. Nimri sat up and placed both hands on either side of his paw. She closed her eyes and concentrated. Several bones had been smashed to dust. Larwin took a ragged breath. She began by willing the rib in his lung back into position, then getting the blood out of the lung and myst-mended the puncture.

  Slowly, carefully, Nimri worked. When Larwin was breathing better, she started on the other broken ribs. Then, she treated the fractured skull and reduced the cranial pressure.

  It seemed to take forever to repair the crushed bones in his lower extremities.

  When the last particle of bone was realigned, she proceeded to repair the torn tissue, starting with his face. He took a ragged breath, then stopped breathing.

  “Larwin!” She opened her eyes, but he looked dead. Felt dead. Nimri felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “He doesn’t want to live,” Thunder said.

  “No! He has to.” Grief blurred her vision.

  “Unless the person wishes to live, you can not help.”

  She couldn’t stop the tears. Thunder lifted her and hugged her to his chest. “Remember our bargain?”

  A sob caught in her throat. Forehead against his tunic, she stiffened while she nodded.

  “Remember our bargain,” he said again. “I told you that you’d know what I wanted in your heart.”

  Not now.

  Not when she’d just lost Larwin.

  How could he?

  No wonder the Lost seemed so cold and emotionless.

  “Remember our bargain,” he repeated. “Focus on something you can achieve. Your pledge.” Thunder’s voice was soft but insistent.

  Nimri looked at Larwin and saw lost dreams.

  Thunder’s arms tightened around her and his fingers caressed her back. “I want what my parents wanted. I’d hoped you’d remember. I can see you haven’t. Think back...Remember your mother.”

  Not now.

  Nimri struggled to kneel by Larwin.

  Thunder’s grip was too strong.

  “Concentrate!”

  She buried her face against his chest and bawled like a newborn baby. He cradled her as if she was one. “Wh-at d-did your p-p-parents want?”

  “Think back. Remember your mother.”

  Despite her misery, Nimri smelled roses and saw a dark haired woman humming as she picked coreopsis.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Concentrate.”

  But she couldn’t. All she could do was blink away tears and stare at her lost future.

  Thunder stopped rubbing her back. His hands clamped the sides of her head, much as GEA-4 had done when she imparted understanding for the words. This time, she saw herself at two years old. She sat on the floor and played with K
azza, who was a roly-poly kitten.

  Nimri blinked, but the image remained steady.

  Thunder was making her see this. Why?

  The scene changed to a dinner table. For the first time in twenty years, Nimri saw her mother’s face clearly. For the first time in her life, Nimri realized she looked like her mother.

  Thunder came into the room and tickled her under the chin. Except he wasn’t Thunder, he was her father. She was Thunder! She was…

  Nimri yanked away Thunder’s hands and stared at him. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “I hoped you’d remember on your own.” He shrugged. “Besides, we had a dragon to fight.”

  “Rolf made me forget, didn’t he?” Thunder nodded. She remembered a vow he’d given her. “Why didn’t you come for me? You promised you’d always protect me.”

  Her hands fisted and she wanted to hit him for the broken pledge.

  “At first, I didn’t know you survived.” His eyes clouded. “Even if I’d known, I was only six.”

  Why was she blaming him? He’d only been a boy, unable to defend himself, let alone her.

  “Rolf did things because he liked having the power and control.”

  Nimri swallowed her anger. “We’re together, now. We can accomplish what they died for.”

  He looked past her, into the distance. “Perhaps we already have.” Thunder’s attention turned back to her. He took her hand the same way he had the day he taught her to walk; the same way he had two days before when he’d taught her to use her power.

  Hands fisted, Nimri felt angrier at her great-grandfather than she’d ever been in her entire life and irate at the way she’d allowed herself to be used by him. “I hope you’re right.” She blinked back tears, ashamed of having forgotten ever having a brother.

  A pain-laced groan made Nimri jump. She looked down and saw that one of Larwin’s eyelids was twitching. “Larwin!” He was alive!

  “N-im-ri.” Larwin’s tone was laced with regret.

  Kazza’s tail smacked Larwin’s leg with a resounding whack.

  “Glad to see you changed your mind and decided to live,” Thunder said. “I’m sure my sister is relieved.”

  Larwin blinked then frowned. “Sis-ter?” Except for the pain-laced word, he still looked like death.

  “Our great-grandfather, Rolf, wanted to have an enemy so his position as Keeper of the Peace would be important.” Nimri knelt next to him and touched Larwin’s cheek to make certain his life force really beat and it hadn’t been her imagination. A faint, but steady rhythm assured her. “Our parents found out great-grandfather’s plans and decided to move across the river to assure peace.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “But great-grandfather found out and murdered our parents with the flood. Thunder and I were separated when the boat capsized.”

  She couldn’t go on. Couldn’t remember the horror, yet.

  “For years, I thought I was the only survivor. I didn’t think Nimri knew how to swim,” Thunder said.

  “I didn’t. Kazza swam for both of us.” She hugged her dear friend. “For years, water terrified me.” Nimri looked past Kazza’s tufted ear and addressed her brother. “Now, I know why. And I understand why great-grandfather was so angry when I got over my fear of water; he felt his control over my mind was slipping.”

  Kazza purred.

  “An elderly Lost couple gave me a home and their name,” Thunder said. Thunder hunkered down and held out his hand to Larwin, who struggled to sit up. After a moment’s hesitation, while he felt his body for injuries, Larwin clasped Thunder’s hand with his left hand, gripped the Staff of Protection with his right and stood up.

  Larwin fingered the dark wood. “How could your parents crossing the river bring peace?”

  “There’s a millennium old law, which probably began as a petty threat during an argument,” Thunder said. “As a result, my tribe crossed the river and vowed never to return. Except they didn’t have the skills to make pottery or any laying ducks for eggs, so they decided to return. When they came back, the Chosen enacted laws that stated those who had crossed the river could only return to trade on Market Day and had to be gone by dusk. If a Chosen ever crossed the river to come here, he or she automatically became traitor, and were forced to live as a Lost from that day forward.”

  “Most people don’t want to venture into the unknown when there is no return,” Nimri said. “So, you can understand why our parents were the only ones to ever try to challenge the law.”

  “If they couldn’t break the law outright. Our parents knew that once Rolf died, the Chosen would be forced to cancel the law.”

  “Why?” Larwin asked.

  “Keeper of the Peace is hereditary.”

  “And she or he needed to live with the tribe,” Nimri added.

  Larwin frowned at her. “Does this mean you can’t return to your home?”

  Nimri nodded. “Until they change the law. By now, someone has missed me, and I refuse to sneak back in the middle of night.” She blushed, as she admitted how desperate she’d been for help. “The only other alternative is to walk over water. Since the river never freezes, I’ll be here forever. Or until the law is changed.” She smiled at her brother. “But becoming a Lost has its benefits, since I’m now in the position my parents decided was their last chance to right a wrong.” Of course, if Zurgon didn’t want her back, the elders would probably vote with him.

  She sighed. She’d miss her home and garden, but maybe it was for the best.

  “There’s a law against building bridges,” Thunder said. “I want to change it.”

  “Guerreterre doesn’t have bridges, because my planet has no water other than what circulates in the reclamation system.” Larwin rubbed his temple. “But I’ve seen them on other worlds. Some arch high over the water, others float directly on the surface. If I can help, I will.”

  “The madrox will require a week to cool. After that, it could be employed as a bridge,” GEA-4 said.

  It took a moment for GEA-4’s meaning to sink in.

  Nimri looked from the odd little woman to the mist-shroud. Initially, she only saw torn earth and devastation circling a mountain of mist, then as a gust displaced the fog. It arched, legs straight up as if warding off the clouds and wings splayed over the parched ground, but there was no water. The vapor surged back in to cover the desolate ground.

  Gooseflesh tingled over her. “Is it really over the river?” she asked.

  “For now, it spans a wide stretch of dried mud,” GEA-4 said. “But the water will return to normal as the carcass cools.”

  Nimri squinted upstream, well away from the beast, the riverbed still held water. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  “GEA-4 is correct,” Larwin said. “A madrox’s body resembles lava more than animal flesh. Once cured, it should withstand anything.”

  Nimri remembered the overpowering stench and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think too many people will want to use something that stinks worse than rotten eggs.”

  Larwin laughed. “Once it has cooled the disgusting odor will leave.” He looked at Thunder. “There’s no law against adding earthen ramps and guardrails to madrox carcasses is there?”

  “No…” Thunder frowned. “But I’d hoped to mine it for minerals.”

  “There are easier ways to mine silica and carbon,” GEA-4 said. “Of course, for proper water flow, the wings should be removed. You could have those.”

  Thunder grinned at the cloaked dragon.

  “It will probably take centuries to crumble,” Larwin said. “That should give us plenty of time to change the bridge building law.”

  He’d said “us.” Happiness bubbled within Nimri. “Will you stay that long?”

  When Larwin didn’t immediately answer, Thunder turned to him. “Do you want my sister for your cherished partner?”

  Larwin looked at Nimri. “How does one ask someone to form one of these partnerships?”

  “I guess one would ask the other to s
hare their life and future.” Her neck felt as hot as it had in the dragon’s throat. “To raise a family in harmony, should they be so blessed.” Her face felt as fiery as the dragon’s eyes “To stand by each other as they grow old,” she said.

  “To be willing to face death for the other?” Larwin asked. She nodded. He smiled. “I accept.”

  While Nimri wondered what had just happened, Kazza reared up, gently put his paw on Larwin’s chest and stared at him.

  Larwin smiled and tousled Kazza’s ears. “No kidding. We’ll have a baby?” Nimri had never felt so confused. He grinned at her over Kazza’s shoulder. “This cat of yours is always right. You have no idea how relieved I am to know we’re physically compatible,” Larwin said.

  “It would be illogical if you were not,” GEA-4 said. “Guerreterre and Chatterre were both colonized when Solterre’s sun went nova.” When everyone stared at her, she added, “It’s all in the journals.”

  Nimri massaged her temple. “You’re not a magical guardian?”

  “Absolutely not.” As if to prove it, he gave her a tender kiss. “Kazza might be, though.” Dazed, Nimri stared first at Kazza then at Larwin.

  “I’d always wondered what happened to the scientists,” Thunder said. Thunder tickled her under the chin. “Kazza has been your partner and protector since you were born. His ancestors opened this side of the Star Bridge and bequeathed us this valley.” He tilted his head as he looked at her. “Didn’t you realize mystics need two or more for proper control of their power?”

  “Is that why great-grandfather’s temper brought lightening out of a clear blue sky?”

  “Probably.” Her brother shrugged. “Before she died, great-aunt Violet partnered with him.”

  “After she died his control did seem more erratic.” Several odd memories fell into place. “That’s why he tolerated her, even though I never thought he liked her.” She frowned. “Did great-aunt Violet help him kill our parents?”

  “I don’t think so. From what I remember, the storm seemed more like a violent rage.”

  Thunder turned to Larwin and made a sweeping gesture, which encompassed the land. “Life on Chatterre is simple. Are you sure this is what you want?”