Nyranna was inside the castle and Strode away just before the Moonrider attack, and later she returned to Staggenmoire to confirm the destruction. And she carries the spiders used as an assassin’s poison.
Rynn
Rynn wanders the ridgeline of a jagged peak above the station. Pale sunlight bleeds in through the clouds swarming around her, clouds that mask the plunging cliffs on either side.
She recalls anger storming from her heart out to her extremities, her face hot with rage earlier this morning. Those emotions seemed so fabricated, so not her, but they budded and blossomed inside her anyway.
Rynn feels less broken, less afraid, less than she should given what happened to her. And quickly recovering emotionally isn’t something familiar.
She hikes up an incline, the faces of boulders protruding from the dirt, leading her on. Her sutured eyelid stings, her skin actually frostbitten by whatever happened in that dream in the sarcophagus.
Fogged images of Rynn’s dreams inside the sarcophagus run through her mind. The shadowless creature and her dad. Some other little girl.
Who was that girl supposed to be?
The creature seemed to want to help Rynn run away from the merchant, possibly because the creature lived in a similar situation with the Northrite. Thoughts of the creature send a cold shiver jumping down her spine.
Was it all a dream? You see more than dreams, Rynn, her dad’s voice replays in her mind.
What she’s learning from the shadowless creature in the make-believe cannot be ignored.
Did Prabel actually trap her in that sarcophagus? His beaming smile appears in her mind, his sharply trimmed beard, his flamboyant feathers and clothes. His sweet meals. Nadiri was also a victim of his, then, as Jaycken freed Nadiri from the other sarcophagus, saved them both.
If what Forgeron said about Prabel is true, which now seems likely, she will stay on with them Frontiersmen. The chance of locating her mom in a vast galaxy also seems more promising while working with the military of the mind rather than a single merchant.
How many times has Rynn been put to sleep inside that box of granite and forced to not remember when she woke? She must have been drugged, like when her dad took her eye.
There is a reason she’s been so tired and weak every morning.
“Rynn!” a voice rolls up the ridgeline and through the clouds. Jaycken’s voice.
“I’m just a little farther up.” She turns back.
Rynn would not return to Prabel’s tower, ever, but after the rescue, she needed to get away from people, clear her head, to find a place where she felt safe in this foreign environment: in solitude, hiking in the mountains. So much of her is still her dad. She will never escape him.
Jaycken’s dark hair appears between a swath of clouds, droplets of moisture gathering his locks in clumps and clinging to his cheeks.
There he is. The young man who saved her. Who might have washed her with his emotions like a Beguiler. Does he even know it? How powerful is he? He’s only a recruit but carries more confidence than an officer of the Frontiersmen.
“Rynn.” Jaycken heaves for breath. “We need to go. There are orders for us to Stride to Pseidoblane in under an hour. I’m sorry they’re doing this to you after what happened, but you should probably come if you want to be offered a place to stay here. Teschner’s guards wouldn’t let me talk to her about what happened in the tower, but I told Officer Ethanial. He’s also going to Pseidoblane and said we’ll have to deal with it after we get back, that we’ll have to gather evidence before any arrest can be made. The best he can do now is to have a watch set on Prabel and not allow the merchant to leave the station. Ethanial knows it’s important to me and you but said it’s not as important to the general wellbeing of the galaxy as the beating sun. Teschner’s guards seemed to feel the same way.”
It’s not, not compared to protecting an entire galaxy. If no one cared when my dad took my eye, why would they care that Prabel made me sleep in a sarcophagus?
Rynn will stuff down her fear, her weakness, her need to know about Prabel and step up as a potential recruit of the Frontiersmen, which seems noble compared to Prabel’s vocation. She will put on an act, show them she can fit in here, isn’t scared, and can offer something to the Frontiersmen, something of herself.
“We can gather evidence when we get back.” Rynn attempts to mask her wavering voice with determination, as if she wishes to put the galaxy before her own desires as well.
Then, maybe after Prabel is arrested, the Frontiersmen will help me locate my mom.
Jaycken forces a smile and leads her down the mountain trail, back to the station, across swaying bridges, to the plateau.
A team of Frontiersmen is gathered there in two lines, everyone holding on to each other’s shoulders. Teschner stands directly behind an Elemiscist in gray and blue glass robes.
Jaycken runs up to her. “Officer Teschner, I need report what I found in the traveling merchant’s tower. The sarcophagi he—”
“Grab your gear and get in line, Recruit,” Teschner snaps, her face darkening. “Your father’s status doesn’t sway me. Your brother barely made it in time as well. We depart in five minutes. This is no time for ghost stories. The fate of planets, an entire system, and more is at stake.”
Jaycken lines up behind Kiesen, who stands behind Jaycken’s friend, Bruan, and Nadiri.
Rynn grabs a pack of gear, steps up behind Jaycken, and places her hand on his shoulder: firm, determined. As if he will smash everything in his path head on, including this enigma of the beating sun. So unlike her dad. The stark difference rattles at something in the back of her mind. The dissimilarity seems pleasant, but something nags at her.
“Hold on,” Jaycken says. “Having someone Stride you may be a bit disorienting if this is your first time.”
Something pulls at Rynn’s insides, seeming to spiral her organs around themselves as she feels herself get sucked away.
A moment later, her feet crunch into black dirt, her head spinning. Jaycken marches away, and her hand slides from his shoulder down the back of his suit.
Jaycken
Jaycken’s breath rasps inside his filtration mask. He feels heavier, but the gravitational forces on this planet are not too far beyond standard.
Tattered green clouds hover low over the landscape, banners of toxic gas in the night. Trees hunch together in copses of exiled life. Pseidoblane, the other inhabitable planet in the beating sun system, and this planet is in decent shape compared to Iopenia and its layers of soot.
Jaycken marches with the Frontiersmen over brown hillocks, across dirt valleys, between dying trees. A crater looms in the distance, piles of dirt creating a small mountain at its far edge.
“Just like on Iopenia,” Teschner says through their v-rim comm.
“Was there a battle here?” Rynn asks, her voice timid, quiet. She stumbles a bit, still disoriented.
“Not that we know of.” Teschner’s tone piques.
“Do you know something, Recruit?” Ethanial asks.
Recruit? Maybe Rynn has already escaped the merchant’s clutches.
Rynn’s head hangs as if she’s unable to absorb the attention of the team. “Are the Northrite involved in this destruction?”
Nearly a full minute of silence follows.
“I can’t say they aren’t,” Ethanial says, breaking a tense silence and the feeling of Jaycken’s guts gathering and pressing tightly together in apprehension for Rynn. “But we have no evidence or reason to suspect them. Why do you ask?”
“I saw the same thing on a drifter,” Rynn says, “a planet Prabel told me no humans visited. The invading forces were sweavers.”
“Sweavers?” Ethanial stops marching. “How’d you know?”
“Their bronze uniforms.”
“The other planet you saw looked this bad?” Jaycken asks Rynn.
“Worse. There was an alien race there that was slaughtered.”
Anger bubbles, then seethes in Jay
cken’s blood.
The Northrite are probably responsible. They have the power and resources. The Northrite, the ruling council, a corporation his father spoke highly of, of their business wit and good deeds for the economics of the galaxy. A corporation that commandeered his dad’s waking hours with meetings and negotiations for trade and sales.
I’ll have a good long talk about the Northrite with Dad sometime soon … although we’ve never had a good long talk, ever.
Rynn stumbles again, blinks, and shakes her head as if still acclimating from the Stride, or as if she has a migraine.
Ethanial looks to Teschner and flashes her some hand signal.
“Don’t mention the Northrite in the report on Pseidoblane, Satrina.” Teschner’s voice is harsh and grating.
Jaycken huffs through the comm, almost shouting as heat splashes his face. “Why would we protect any organization if they’re responsible for such injustice? My dad’s told me if sweavers are involved, so is the Northrite.”
“Easy, Jaycken.” Kiesen places his hand on Jaycken’s arm.
“Stop!” Their Whisperer Elemiscist in gray and blue glass robes holds out a hand. “Someone sent a Whisper to the entire galaxy. Someone with a garbled voice unlike anything I’ve heard. Maybe their first Whisper. It sounded broken and interrupted and distorted. A sort of … shadow Whisper. They accused the Northrite of the destruction of Iopenia, Pseidoblane, and some drifter.”
Everyone pauses, then turns to Jaycken.
“Did you?” Teschner’s voice is cold and brittle.
“I—I don’t know.” Jaycken holds his hands up in defense, uncertainty, and confusion.
He felt something weird … anger pour out of him like water, like the other day with Rynn, and he wants whoever did this held accountable.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Teschner says. “You’ve put us all in danger.”
Kiesen nudges Jaycken, a wide-eyed look of encouragement and awe on his face.
“Teschner,” the Whisperer says through the comm. “If it’s the first Whisper the recruit’s ever sent, not a single Elemiscist will know his voice or contact point. They won’t know it was us.”
“Keep any and every thought to yourself from now on, Recruit.” Teschner marches around the lip of the empty crater.
A Shadow Whisper? About the Northrite’s atrocities. Did Jaycken actually send a Whisper unintentionally? It sure felt that way, although he doesn’t know how he sent it or what sending a Whisper should feel like. It felt just like Beguiling Rynn, a wash of emotion.
He’s a Whisperer, and although the officers don’t know it yet, he’s also a Beguiler, is able to influence the emotions of others through his own. An uncommon amalgam already. Maybe soon he will be able to control even more elements.
Jaycken used his first real power to help Rynn, to save her from a horrid situation. His back ached a bit afterward, but the pain receded quickly. His back feels completely fine now, even after the Whisper. Maybe he’s growing stronger already.
“Do we have enough information to return to Jasilix?” the Whisperer asks. “We shouldn’t stay here.”
“We might have learned a little,” Teschner says, “but we still don’t know why the sun started beating and why, by all readings, it’s still a normal yellow dwarf. We don’t know why only our new recruit, Rynn, sees it as a normal yellow dwarf. Why Iopenia ignited with fire, killing everyone there. Why this planet’s grown toxic, and why the outer crusts of these planets look like they’ve been ripped apart even if there’s no mist on Pseidoblane. We continue searching until the sun rises.”
After marching for an hour, a looming city appears and sprawls outward as far as Jaycken can see. Towering buildings. A ghost city, weeds and gases blowing around like spirits. No lights. No people. No answers.
“What’s that?” Rynn asks over their shared comm, pointing into the night.
Jaycken looks up. Nothing but sky. He zooms in on the area with the telescopic application of his v-rim. Something is moving way up there, but he can’t make it out. Ships, satellites, birds? How superior is her vision?
“Nayaks and skoalers,” Satrina, the bronze-haired female Frontiersman, says, lowering a viewfinder from her mask, then hefting her pulser. “A flock of them. Hovering over an area seven kilometers to the northwest. They’re behaving abnormally. Swooping down toward the atmosphere.”
“Can’t be.” Teschner grabs the viewfinder and looks. “Skoalers are exceptionally territorial and don’t mix with others. They prefer the depths of space.”
“The beating sun’s been calling them to this system,” Ethanial says. “They’re already acting out of sorts.”
“The beating sun’s otherwise acting like a normal yellow dwarf.” Satrina shakes her head, which fans her hair.
“Can we shine a pulsing red light at them?” Rynn asks quietly, timidly, not specifically addressing Teschner or Ethanial. “A flare near but not on them?”
“Why?” Kiesen’s mask is thick with condensation and perspiration from his lack of conditioning.
“So that those monsters can home in on us and attack us, One Eye?” Axford mutters to Rynn. “The Frontiersmen don’t need your jaded suggestions.”
Jaycken steps between Axford and Rynn, folds his arms, and stares at Axford.
Satrina pulls something similar to a pulser from her pack, adjusts a few settings, and holds a trigger. Red light strobes across the night sky.
A minute later, Satrina says, “They’re moving toward it.”
A low whistle escapes Teschner’s taut lips.
Teschner whirls to face Rynn. “So, these skoalers and nayaks are drawn to beating red light? Except they’re here outside Pseidoblane and not flying to the sun as people first thought.”
Rynn shrinks but nods, unable to hold the officer’s gaze.
“So,” Teschner continues, “you’re suggesting that these creatures are more attracted to something on this planet than the beating red sun?”
Rynn shakes her head, her gaze on the ground, her gloved fingers knit together as if she’s thinking, putting something together or building up courage.
Rynn slowly lifts her head as she begins to speak, looking at Teschner with her one good eye and that sparkly blue jewel inside her mask. “If they’re attracted to beating red light, they should still be moving toward the sun even now, as they did with the strobe. They don’t see the sun as beating and red. They see a normal yellow dwarf, like your analyzing equipment. Like me.”
“Maybe the sun’s only a sign.” Jaycken doesn’t know where he’s going with this, is simply throwing out an emerging idea, something he heard. That girl makes me feel like an imbecile. “A sign to call something in, but not the skoalers. Maybe the Ruin.”
“Then what are the creatures here for?” Teschner’s scowl fades a bit as she paces. “Turn off the strobe. Lead us to the coordinates directly below them.”
“I need to return to Jasilix.” Ethanial’s face is almost as pale as the combed hair on his head, the whites of his eyes a bit black. “To inform the station of what we’re seeing.”
One of their two Striders opens a mirror in the air, droplets of green water running upward over its surface. The Strider grabs Ethanial’s hand, steps into the mirror, which flares with light, and they both disappear.
Rynn
A gliding antelope leaps out from between buildings in the outskirts of the ghost city. It stumbles through a haze of green fog, alone, no herd in sight. It bleats, chews brown grass in quick chomps, and lopes off into the night, stilted, more of a stagger, into a copse of twisted trees.
Rynn’s breath rasps in through her filtration mask.
She turns and follows Jaycken and the Frontiersmen team toward the area below the swarming skoalers.
Memories of another planet rattle around in Rynn’s head, this planet so similar to that drifter with the battlefield of all the dead aliens, and some sweavers.
At least she shouldn’t have to harvest any sacs.
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Rynn looks to the night sky for the next planet farther from this supposed beating sun she could not see, a planet her dad taught her about for its unique climate and wildlife, Climice—a winking dot in the sky.
Hopefully only reflecting sunlight and not fires of its own.
Did Jaycken send a Whisper to everyone out there? His power is growing exponentially.
“You got lucky,” the tall Frontiersman, Axford, says only to Rynn as she passes him. “What the fuck do you know about the galaxy? You’ll never amount to anything here with only one eye. Go back to fucking Prabel or sell yourself to someone else before you end up in Jasilix’s port city working street magic.”
Rynn stares up at him. The heat of embarrassment lights her cheeks like torches.
Axford pushes past her and marches on.
Rynn’s dad made her an outcast on sight here, made it so that even if she does have some power, she will never amount to much.
A minute later, Teschner marches past Rynn; Rynn involuntarily hunches and sidles away.
“Why did you just cringe?” Nadiri asks, her timorous voice muffled through her mask, not using her comm.
“What do you mean?” Rynn straightens and marches on.
“Whenever there’s an officer near, or even that merchant you came in with, you seem to shrink. They couldn’t all have done something to you. Now I’m thankful I can’t remember what happened inside that sarcophagus.”
Rynn is silent. Nadiri should have been the more broken one given Rynn’s quick emotional rebound.
A memory unfolds: the only person Rynn has ever loved coming at her with a sonic blade, then Prabel locking her inside a granite box after feeding her sugared pastries, honey bars, and candied fruit. Is she afraid of anyone who holds power over her?
Maybe Rynn should live in isolation like her dad. She sees herself a hermit, hiding in a cave in the mountains, her hair turning gray, wrinkles setting in around her eyes, her forehead, and her body.
“I—I’ve been through a lot recently,” Rynn says.
The Forgotten Sky Page 25