by Lauren Esker
"Are you sure we're not going to run right into them?" Meri asked on one of these breaks.
Tamir shook his head. "They're over that way," he said, jerking his thumb in a vague direction into the trees.
"You can tell that?" They'd been in occasional communication with Lyr, but mostly it was just a little mental tickle, letting them know he was still there. She didn't think he'd been talking to Tamir without also talking to her.
Tamir nodded. He was still short of breath enough that it took him a moment to go ahead and say, "Practice. You can learn to do it."
She tried not to be jealous that Tamir and Lyr had known each other so much longer, as well as resentful that he hadn't told her he could do that. "Can you teach me?"
"I don't know." Tamir propped himself on his elbows. His already scruffy fur was plastered with leaves and dirt, caked on with sweat; he looked like he'd been living in the woods for months rather than hiking through it for half a day. Meri had a feeling she looked just as bad. "I'm not a telepath myself. I can't do a thing without Lyr to facilitate it. I guess I'd say he just feels stronger in one direction than another. It's like when you close your eyes, you can tell which direction a sound comes from." He paused for breath, then said, "Actually, closing your eyes might help."
She did that, shutting herself into the darkness behind her eyelids. The afternoon was quiet, the absolute silence of a planet without highways or airplanes or cities. And yet, as she had learned over the last few days, it wasn't really silent at all. Leaves rustled, insects droned, small creatures skittered in the grass. So far they had seen no large wildlife, but from the size and well-beaten state of the animal trails they'd been following, it was pure luck that they hadn't run into anything so far, and they already knew Tamir's cuffs wouldn't be much help against this planet's wildlife ...
Not helping!
"I can't," she said, opening her eyes.
Tamir gave her an encouraging smile. "Well, you can practice the next time he says something to us. Try closing your eyes and focusing on it, and see if you can feel which direction he is." He grunted in pain as he struggled back to his feet. "We better move."
Dusk found them high enough on the mountainside that the trees were starting to give way to low, shrubby brush and boulders. There was little cover here, and Meri was reluctantly grateful for the darkness; it made her feel less horrendously exposed, although it also covered the approach of anything that might creep up on them in the night.
"Are we going to stop?" she panted as darkness settled around them. Tamir lit their way with a cuff glowing ever so faintly, just enough to make sure the next few feet of the path didn't suddenly vanish into a crevasse (as their paths occasionally had done before).
Tamir shook his head. Teeth gritted, he lurched onward, one dogged step at a time, clinging with a white-knuckled grip to his walking stick. "I want to get to the pass before we stop," he explained finally.
"Pass?" Meri looked ahead. The sky was still faintly luminous above the peaks, allowing her to see how the jagged line of the mountains cleaved sharply downward. It was impossible to tell how far it was; she'd already discovered how deceptive the steep angle of the mountainside could be, making her think they were mere minutes from boulders and other landmarks that could take an hour or more to reach. The darkness made it worse.
"We're ahead of them now," Tamir managed, between short, sucking breaths. "They will almost certainly angle for the pass in the morning. It's the place with the best chance of setting a trap."
She almost said something like, We're going to attack them? but managed to close her mouth before the words came out. It helped that she was so out of breath she could barely talk anyway, her feet and legs in agony. She had no idea how Tamir hadn't fallen over by now.
A feather-light touch of worry brushed her mind. *How goes it, my love? Where are you?*
My love. Pleasure rippled through her, despite her exhaustion. *Above you, according to Tamir.*
*They've stopped for the night. I helped them along by subliminally pointing out how tired they were, until it finally sank in.* He sent her an image of a flickering fire with the pirates squatting around it, roasting small lizards on sticks. Stupid space pirates got to sit down and eat, Meri thought resentfully.
*Tamir says he's planning on setting up a trap,* she told Lyr. *I hope he knows what he's doing.*
*He generally does,* Lyr said. *But you should rest. I can tell you're ready to drop. They're going to be fresh in the morning. You don't want to be exhausted.*
She hadn't realized he was talking to both of them until Tamir muttered, "I know what I'm doing, kid."
*My mate's life is in your hands, old man. I'd rather have you protect her than risk some ill-planned venture for rescuing me.*
"I can do both."
*Not going to argue about the poor planning?*
"It's not like there are a lot of options here."
Lyr was giving them something to focus on other than the misery of the climb, Meri realized. She guessed that he used to do this kind of thing for his sept-siblings too. Lyr had been the glue holding them together.
*What are you planning, anyway?* Lyr asked.
"We're going to try to beat you to the pass and set up some kind of trap," Tamir said.
*Can you be more specific?*
"I don't know yet. I need to see the lay of the land first." He panted for breath for a minute, then added something mentally that Meri only caught the edges of. It was nonverbal encouragement, a general sense that Lyr just needed to hold on, that they were coming for him.
Lyr didn't answer in words, but Meri continued to be able to sense him as they climbed higher. He sent a steady feeling of encouragement, supporting their stumbling steps, lending them some of his strength. His mental voice was a resonant hum in the back of her mind, a familiar song without words.
Still, by the time Tamir finally stopped and sank to the ground, Meri was so exhausted that she felt like she'd been physically beaten. For the last half hour or so, they'd been picking their way up an incredibly steep slope covered with rocks that threatened to twist underfoot and send her sliding all the way down the mountain. She couldn't tell how Tamir was choosing which way to go; there were no paths, just a steady, endless climb. It was fully dark now, although their way was lit by the faint luminosity of the sky and a moon low on the horizon, at least enough to tell if they were about to step over a precipice. Most of the light, she realized, came from the luminous band of the planet's rings arching overhead, as bright as if the planet had another moon.
When Tamir collapsed, her first thought was that his strength had given out. She managed to struggle the last few steps to him and bent over to put her hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay?"
"We're here," he rasped out, raising his head with an effort.
But where was here? To her, this part of the mountain looked the same as any other. "We're in the pass?" she asked.
"We're above it." He waved a hand, the faintly glowing cuff darting like a firefly.
Meri took a few cautious steps in that direction. He was right: in darkness lit only by the dim luminosity of the sky, the ground fell away suddenly and sharply in front of her. She couldn't tell how far down it went; all she had was an impression of depth and space. In her current exhausted state, unable to see her footing clearly, she didn't dare go closer. She tottered back to Tamir and sank down next to him.
"Drink some water," Tamir said hoarsely. "We're both probably dehydrated."
Meri took a few swallows. "I don't have much left."
"We need to look for a spring." He sighed and let his head flop back down. "Soon."
Meri eased the strap of her purse off her aching shoulder. She had been switching it back and forth between sides, with the strap across her chest to help spread the weight, but all she'd managed to do was bruise her shoulder on both sides instead of just one. She fingered the welts with a hiss of pain and then opened the purse. "Do you need painkillers? I have
some with me."
It took him a moment to answer; then he struggled weakly to an awkward, half-reclined sitting position. "Let me see what you have."
Meri dug in her purse, initially searching for the aspirin, but then she found the handful of injectors she'd brought with her from the infirmary on the pirate ship; it seemed like a million years ago now. Tamir picked out two, a painkiller and one of the ones that Lyr had identified for her as—
"That one's a stimulant," she said.
"I know." He pressed the painkiller to his arm and squeezed the trigger. There was no hesitation; he'd clearly done this before. "I suggest you take one as well. Once we've rested a bit, we need to start rigging our little surprise for the pirates."
Meri tried to muster an argument, but he was right. She was exhausted and now that she was sitting down, the ache of her strained muscles was making itself known in a major way. If I do this, I'll be in a world of hurt tomorrow. But she had to. There was no time, and this might be their only chance to get the jump on the pirates and rescue Lyr. If they didn't, he might die.
Tamir, on the other hand ...
"I have to tell you, as a medical professional, I really don't recommend doing that," she told him as he unwrapped the second injector. "The combination of painkillers and stimulants is dangerous, especially for someone recovering from a major injury. You could rebreak your pelvis or worse. There are a lot of major blood vessels in that area. I don't think Lyr's going to be happy with you if you bleed out on this mountainside."
"Lyr's not here to have a vote," Tamir said as he injected himself.
Meri stared down at the stimulant. They had one more left after this. She blinked, her eyelids growing heavy as her exhausted body tried to drag her down into sleep.
There was no choice, not really. At least, no choice that would save Lyr.
She pushed it against her forearm as Tamir had done, and felt the sting of the needle sliding home.
***
They spent the night in small bursts of activity, moving rocks and wedging logs under boulders. Tamir explained he was setting up a sequence of avalanche traps. Meri decided to leave the details to him. Her brain felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool, vibrating unpleasantly as the stimulant poured artificial energy into limbs that still trembled with exhaustion. She'd worked long hours as a nurse, including shifts that went on for upwards of 24 hours, but she couldn't ever remember experiencing this particularly unpleasant combination of physical exhaustion and inability to give in to it.
Lyr's mind prodded her gently awake in a gray dawn, after she and Tamir finished their preparations and collapsed to catch an hour or two of exhausted sleep. Even the stimulant couldn't keep her from sleeping at this point, and Lyr had to coax her gently and carefully back to wakefulness.
*They're breaking camp to move out,* he said into her mind. *Are you all right?*
*I'll be fine. Are you?*
*As well as I can be. Listen, if fighting starts, just stay out of the way, okay? You don't have any weapons that can get through their shields, or any shields of your own.*
*Trust me, I'm not planning to wade into a fight against people with high-tech alien weapons.*
Lyr's response was a dry mental image of Meri back on Earth, attacking pirates with pepper spray.
*Hey! I didn't have a choice, buddy!*
*You were fierce and beautiful. I had never seen anything so magnificent.*
Her cheeks grew hot. *Well, you should see me now. I'm the exact opposite of magnificent, unless you find filthy women with sore muscles and sticks in their hair sexy.*
*I would find you sexy with any number of sticks in your hair.*
The thing about telepathy was that she could feel his sincerity, turning what would otherwise be a hopelessly cheesy statement into a heartfelt compliment.
*You too. We're going to get you out of there.*
Lyr didn't answer, and a moment later Tamir groaned and rolled over, so she wasn't the only one being prodded by their very own dragon alarm clock.
It was time to get moving.
Meri tried to sit up and sank back down with a faint moan. Everything hurt: arms, legs, back, feet. She didn't know she had muscles in some of these places. Even her fingers hurt, bruised and scraped and hot to the touch from yesterday's work.
Somehow she got herself on her feet. She'd fallen asleep with all her clothes on, shoes included, so at least she didn't have to try to pull shoes onto her aching, swollen feet.
After all this is over, I deserve a week at a spa. Or, if one isn't handy, a nice long soak in the ocean.
Her mouth was dry and crusty. She drained the last of one of their makeshift canteens down her dry throat and limped behind a boulder to relieve herself. Crouching down to do her business was a new circle of hell for her abused legs and calves. She had to hold onto the boulder to keep from falling over.
Did I say a week at a spa? How about a month. With daily massages and skin treatments.
She emerged to find Tamir poking around in her purse. "Sorry," he said, jerking his hand back guiltily. "I was seeing if you had any injectors left."
"One painkiller, one stimulant." She knelt stiffly to get them out of the pocket she'd zipped them into. "You're going to take them, aren't you?"
"No choice. I need to be able to fight."
"Well, you're an adult. I can give you medical advice, but I can't tell you what to do."
Meri watched him inject himself. She thought about asking if she could have some of the stimulant, but remembered the fuzzy-headed, jittery feeling from last night and decided she'd rather not.
Instead she took a few aspirin and opened one of their last ration packs. Tamir tried to wave it off, but Meri shoved it into his hands. "I don't care if you're not hungry with that drug cocktail you're on. You have to eat something."
She opened another for herself and limped on sore, blistered feet over to the edge of what turned out to be, by daylight, quite an impressive cliff. They were high up on the side of a steep-sided, saddle-shaped pass. She wondered if Tamir expected the two of them to somehow climb down there, picking their way down the loose rock slides, past terrifying cliffs and patches of gravel that looked like it would start sliding at the slightest touch.
She could see why he'd picked this place for an ambush. She just wasn't sure how they were actually going to help Lyr from up here. At most, they could give him a distraction to get himself free. Maybe it would be enough.
The view was certainly beautiful. She could see both sides of the mountains from here, the sea stretching off endlessly in one direction, and when she turned the other way, a hazy patchwork landscape of forest, swamp, and lake on a high plateau.
Despite the warmth of the newly risen sun on her face, the mountain's cap of snow was very close here. She could have easily climbed to the nearest patches of snow if she'd had the time. Snow-fed waterfalls threaded between the rocks, reminding her achingly of her thirst. Some of them were pretty close. She and Tamir could refill their canteens here, maybe boil the water over a campfire to make sure it was safe—
Sudden movement in the pass, along with a clatter of rocks, caught her attention. At first she thought the pirates and Lyr were already here. But this was higher on the hillside. Something had set the loose gravel on the far side of the pass to sliding. She followed it back up with her eyes, to a dark cleft among the rocks where something was moving.
Crawling.
Spreading wings ...
Meri crouched down among the boulders and watched in shocked amazement as something straight out of her old dinosaur books—pterodactyl? pteranodon?—spread leathery wings and shook out its dull, scaly body. It wasn't graceful and beautiful like Lyr, but it was impressive in its own right, especially when it launched itself into the thin air over the pass. It dropped like a rock until the wind caught its wings, and then it rose in a slow, gliding circle.
"Tamir!" she whispered urgently over her shoulder. "Tamir! Come here!"
He joined her a moment later, leaning heavily on his stick. "Is something wrong?"
"Look," she said, pointing.
By now two more of the flying dinos had joined the first one, all of them gliding slowly upward on thermals. They weren't exactly pteranodons, but certainly made her think of them, with their heavy, oversized heads and wide membranous wings.
"Watch out," Tamir murmured. He placed a hand on her shoulder, and there was the by-now-familiar tingling sensation as his shield covered them both. One of the pteranodons swooped overhead so low that Meri could hear its wings creaking and see the glitter of its small reptilian eye turned down to look at them.
Tamir lifted his hand and the tingling stopped as the pteranodon banked and vanished behind the peak.
"What do we do?" Meri asked.
"Hope that they're more dangerous to the pirates than to us, I guess." He beckoned her. "I found a spring. Come here."
The spring was little more than a thin trickle of water behind a boulder, but it was deep enough to dip her hands in. Meri washed some of the dust off her face, while Tamir began filling their canteens from a little waterfall upstream.
"Is it safe?" she began, and then, "Wait, you can test that with your cuffs."
"Correct. This high in the mountains and fed with snowmelt, it's not contaminated."
It still felt like a leap of faith, but she slaked her thirst from the refilled pouch of water and then from cupped hands. The water was cold and good.
*Heads up,* Lyr said suddenly into her mind. *We're just below the pass.*
Tamir gave Meri a tight smile and set the canteen aside. "You know what you need to do?"
"I'm ready."
"Good." He reached out and touched the skin on the inside of her wrist. "You can't wear cuffs at all, can you?"
