Garlin’s voice cracked as he spoke in their language, and his reassuring tone had the sound of desperation. As Eldri’s eyes closed, his face went slack. For one horrible instant Roca thought he had died. But no, he was breathing, the rhythm shallow but regular. Her surge of relief was so intense, it almost hurt.
With great care, Garlin slid one arm under Eldri’s legs and the other around his back. Then he lifted his cousin and stood up, holding Eldri’s limp body. When he turned to Roca, she saw the same guilt in his eyes that she felt in her heart. Had their argument done this? She couldn’t speak, couldn’t ask that damning question.
Garlin carried Eldri up the stairs and she followed. Eldri was sleeping now; the firestorm in his mind had ended.
In Eldri’s suite, Garlin laid him on the bed and pulled off his boots. As he drew the quilt over his cousin, Eldri opened his eyes and spoke. Roca recognized none of the words except her name.
Garlin stiffened. He straightened up and stood, staring at Eldri, his face frozen. Then he turned to Roca with a leaden gaze. “He wishes to speak to you alone.”
She answered quietly. “Thank you.”
He just shook his head. Then he left. Roca watched him go, wishing she knew how to heal this pain. Turning back to Eldri, she sat next to him on the bed. “Are you all right?”
His lashes drooped. “Now you know.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “Do you have the seizures often?”
He opened his eyes, struggling with the effort. “More as I am older. Every ten or twenty days. Lately…every few days. It is why we came to the mountains. I improve here.” His voice was fading. “Happens more if I become upset…”
“I am so sorry,” she whispered.
“Not your fault.” He gave up the struggle and let his eyes close. “The demons have come all my life…long before you and Garlin didn’t like each other.”
“Demons?”
“Garlin says they shake my body.”
“Ai, no.” Roca felt as if her heart ached. What else would he believe, in a society with so little health care, one where they became old in their thirties? She hated to think what he must have felt, spending his life convinced angry spirits wracked his body with such violence, growing stronger each year.
She spoke softly. “There are no demons, Eldri. You have a medical condition, a treatable one. I think it is epilepsy.”
“I do not know this word.”
“It means your brain has a problem.”
He smiled wanly. “When I was young, Garlin said similar. I often got into mischief. He would intone about my behaving myself. But really, he liked fun, even if he tried to be stern…” His voice trailed off.
After a moment, Roca realized he had fallen asleep. She watched him for a while, smoothing the hair off his forehead when he stirred. He looked younger in sleep, hardly more than a boy.
Brad Tompkins had asked if she had ever had to watch someone she loved die because they lacked medical care. She remembered all too well her self-righteous response. Gods, she wished she could take back those words. Of course she had never suffered such heartbreaks. Everyone in her circle had the best medical care possible. Eldri lived on the other side, in the bleak struggle to survive an illness with no cure among his people, no treatment, no explanation.
The severity of his attack frightened her. Having so many of his neurons fire at once had to be like a storm sweeping his brain. And psions had extra neural structures. She had never known an empath or telepath with epilepsy before, but she could see how having so many more neurons could worsen his condition. His seizure had lasted longer than the one or two minutes predicted by her node. Her files listed a condition, status epilepticus, in which the seizures didn’t stop, but kept on going. Mercifully, Eldri’s had ended. But if he experienced such severe attacks often, increasing in frequency as he grew older, then without treatment he had no chance of a normal life. It was no wonder he wanted to live his life with such intensity now, fearing he might die tomorrow.
He could be right.
Roca walked down the Vista Hall, a long, narrow room that overlooked the northern mountains, behind the castle, on the side opposite the approach from the plains. The windows here were twice the height of a person and wider than she could stretch her arms. Normally they let in copious sunlight, but today most had their shutters closed. At the end, one pair was open, letting light and freezing air pour into the hall. Outside, across the canyon that surrounded Windward, a secluded valley nestled in the cliffs. The Backbone Mountains rose above it like gigantic, contorted needles.
Garlin was sitting on a bench by the window, with one foot up on the cushion, his elbow resting on his bent knee. He faced away from Roca, gazing at the snow-covered peaks, his hair blowing back from his face.
His resilience daunted her. He had on only a fur-lined tunic, trousers, and boots, with no other protection from the icy wind. She wore heavier clothes and a jacket, and her nanomeds had boosted her metabolism, but the cold still bothered her. She had never faced weather like this without the computer-regulated warmth of garments that included their own climate-control systems. Eldri and his people lived this way every day, with no heating except fireplaces, no electricity, and only marginal plumbing. It brought home with inescapable bluntness just how much she took for granted.
She let the tread of her feet alert Garlin to her approach. He didn’t turn as she reached him, but she felt his recognition. Although he had nothing resembling Eldri’s luminous mental gifts, he was an empath.
When she stopped next to him, he continued to gaze at the mountains. Then he said, “How is he?”
“He sleeps.” Roca came around and sat on the bench facing him. “Will he be all right?”
He finally looked at her. “Yes, I think so.” His pain showed clearly on his face. “This time.”
Roca chose her words with as much care as if they were blown glass that might shatter. “In my life, over the years, I have developed a certain cynicism. Many people have wished to make use of what they thought I could give them, either physically or from my position among my people.” She spoke quietly. “If I have judged you unfairly because of that, I apologize.”
He regarded her, the wind tossing his hair around his face. “The people who have come to Dalvador, these resort planners, do not treat us well. I have watched them make their plans with little concern for Eldri or our people, as if we were quaint displays to use for entertainment rather than the custodians of this land. Eldri understands it less, but he feels it. When you came, so beautiful it hurt to look at you—” He pushed back his blowing hair. “If I have made unfair assumptions about your motivations, I too apologize.”
“Perhaps we might start over, fresh.”
“Yes.” He sounded weary. “Let us try.” He moved his head in the direction of Eldri’s room. “If not for ourselves, then for someone who matters more than either of us.”
Now that his animosity toward her had eased, Roca sensed what she had missed before. She felt the depth of his love for Eldri, his only family; she heard it in his voice and knew it in the lines that furrowed his face. Perhaps she might have seen before, had she been less armored against the pitiless intrigues that drove the powerful and the wealthy among her people. Eldri and Garlin were like their world: primitive, beautiful, harsh, and pure.
“How long has he been this way?” she asked.
Garlin answered quietly. “All his life.”
“Even as a baby?”
He nodded. “The demons first came the day his family died.”
“They aren’t demons.” Roca willed him to believe her. “It is called epilepsy. Our doctors can treat it. We can relieve his seizures, maybe stop them.”
Garlin gave her an incredulous look. “You people from Earth, or Skolia, or wherever it is, you speak glib, impossible words. The planners for this resort tell their fantastic stories with such ease, I question whether they even comprehend what ‘truth’ means.”
She met his
gaze. “I’m not lying to you.”
“How can you do what no healer or maker of magic has managed throughout my cousin’s entire life?”
“It is no magic I offer.” Roca didn’t know the right words for this. “My people understand medicine better, that is all.”
His voice hardened. “If you raise his hopes and then crush them, I will see that you pay for causing him pain.”
“I cannot promise miracles. But we may be able to help.” She glanced out at the cloudy day and towering mountains. As long as she was trapped here, she could do nothing for Eldri. Looking back at Garlin, she said, “Please know that when I asked Eldri to—”
“Eldri?” His anger sparked so fast, she almost saw fire jump off him. “Do not presume to call him such.”
Roca blinked. “He said that was his name.”
“He asked you to address him that way?”
“Well, yes.” She hesitated. “Is that wrong?”
“No.” He turned away from her and stared at the valley, his tone taking a new chill, though this time it seemed more to hide his own pain than push her away. “Not if he allows it.”
Roca bit her lip. Although she had noticed Garlin used Eldri’s nickname, she hadn’t realized until now that Eldri allowed her a familiarity he had granted to no one else but Garlin. She spoke gently. “Please believe that I would never have asked him to go down the mountain if it wasn’t vitally important. I would never be that cavalier with his safety.”
“Why vital?” He turned and narrowed his gaze at her. “Do you report to these resort people?”
“No. I have nothing to do with them.” She shivered in the gusts coming through the window. “If I am not at the port tomorrow, I am not able to leave with the ship. If that happens, I will miss an important meeting among my people.”
“A meeting?” His manner remained guarded.
“I am not sure of your language, but Eldri thinks I am similar to what you call a Memory.”
Garlin raised an eyebrow. “Memories are mature women.”
“As am I.”
“You look like a girl.”
She knew he didn’t mean it as a compliment, which was refreshing, though she doubted he would believe her if she told him. “It is the truth that I have a son your age.”
He shook his head, apparently one of the few gestures his people and hers shared. “It is not possible.”
“I age differently.”
“Then why do you make yourself look so young?”
It startled her that he intuited it was a choice rather than a natural process. She would never reveal how much she resented that “choice.” Her contract with the Royal Parthonia Ballet stipulated that she must maintain her appearance and youth. Although she danced far less now, she hadn’t stopped completely, and every dancer with the Parthonia Ballet had to sign such a clause. The reasoning was blunt; the more beautiful the dancers, the more tickets the ballet sold. If Roca aged, they would fire her.
Parthonia was a premier company; for every one of its dancers, a hundred others were waiting for their chance, just as brilliant, just as beautiful, and just as driven. She could be replaced that easily, Ruby title or no. She loved her art, but years of having her worth based on appearance rather than character or intelligence had drained her. In some ways, it had been a relief to curtail her performance career when she became Foreign Affairs Councilor.
Even if she had known Garlin better, she wouldn’t have felt comfortable telling him. The age difference between her and Eldri made her self-conscious, even here, where no one understood.
She said only, “It is part of a contract I signed.”
“I do not like this word ‘contract.’” Garlin frowned. “The resort people use it. We have no such thing. We do not ‘sign.’”
Roca wondered how she could explain legal documents to a people with no written language. “You make agreements among yourselves, yes?”
“Of course.”
“How do you verify them?”
“You say you are a Memory, yet you do not know this?”
Ah. Now she saw. “A Memory remembers the agreement.”
“Of course. You do not do this?”
“Not myself, no. My assistants do. But I am part of our governing Assembly. They meet soon and I must be there.” She wished she knew how to convince him. “My people may have a war. Many will die. I could stop it, but not if I am here when the Assembly meets.”
Garlin had tensed. “This war—will it come here?”
“I doubt it.” Skyfall had neither strategic nor commercial importance. In fact, its value as a resort came from its distance, both physical and metaphorical, from the centers of civilization. But Roca feared many other worlds would suffer the ravages of the first open interstellar conflict ever fought by humanity. Now her people skirmished with the Traders in shadow battles; this would take it into an unprecedented full-scale war.
“Please,” she said. “If there is any possibility I can reach the port tomorrow, I must try.” According to the estimates made by her node, days here lasted twenty-eight hours, fourteen of night and fourteen of sunlight. It left her so little time.
“Does Brad know you must meet this ship?” Garlin asked.
“Yes, definitely.”
“Perhaps he will send his silver bird for you.”
“The flyer?”
“He calls it that.” Garlin rubbed his chin. “You say it is no magic your people have, and Brad says this also, but his flyer is a metal room that floats, having light without candles and warmth without fire. His house is the same. If this is not sorcery, what is it?”
“Technology.”
“I know not technology.”
“Your people must have, once.”
He spread his hands apart, his palms to the ceiling.
Roca gathered he was indicating confusion. “Have the people here no legends of great machines in times long past?”
“Our myths are of gods and goddesses.”
“From the sky?”
“Sky. Moons. Suns. Stars.”
She motioned upward. “Your ancestors came down from the sky just like my people do.”
He smiled wryly. “Brad does. He tries not to, though.”
“Not to?” Roca wasn’t sure what he meant.
Garlin sighed. “Not to come down from the sky. Always this flyer of his has problems. He has to send for parts.”
Roca didn’t like the sound of it. “How long does that take?”
“He tells the supply ship what he needs. The next one brings his supplies.”
“How long between supply ships?”
Garlin thought for a moment. “My friend’s son was just born when the last one came. The boy walks now.”
She stared at him, aghast. “That could be months.”
“Can you send a message for someone to come sooner?”
If only. She could do nothing without access to the webs. Two ways existed to communicate across space: by starship, which could take days, even months for a remote outpost like this; and through the Kyle web, which was almost instantaneous. But the Allieds had no access to the web; they used it only by arrangement with Imperial Space Command. Brad couldn’t swing an arrangement like that on such short notice. Eventually the Allieds would probably petition for access here to the Kyle web, but for now, the supply ship was Brad’s lifeline to other worlds. Roca didn’t miss the irony, that her family created and maintained the Kyle web, yet she had no entry into it when she needed it most. She couldn’t even contact the port because she had ditched her wrist comm on Irendela to make it harder for Kurj to find her.
“The ship is my only way to send a message,” she said.
He tilted his head toward the window. “It snows again.”
“No.” Roca felt as if walls were closing around her. Snow drifted down from the sky, turning the world blue, making it hard to distinguish where the land ended and the air began.
“Even if it stopped this moment,” Gar
lin said, “the path down the mountain wouldn’t be safe for several days.” The regret in his mind was genuine. “And I have seen weather such as this before. It will not stop snowing, I don’t think, for many days.”
Roca held her hand up to the window, letting flakes gather on her palm. They dusted across the bench and Garlin’s legs, light blue powder, so beautiful, so bitter.
Her voice caught. “I have to try.”
“If you leave here, you will die.” In an unusually gentle voice, he added, “You must stay. I am sorry.”
Roca stared out at the snow. “So am I.”
8
Legacy
In the observation sphere, Kurj felt as if he touched a piece of his soul, a part he had never truly understood. The sphere curved out from the hull of the Orbiter space station like a transparent bubble. Space surrounded him in its infinite beauty, the fire of stars, the spumes of nebula, and the mystery of secrets known only to the cosmos. He stood with his hands resting on a clear railing and gazed at the great void. Despite what many people believed, space was no more “empty” than his heart: void was a label others used to define what they couldn’t see.
The view stirred his memories of flying a Jag, the exhilaration of joining his mind to the EI brain of his ship, plunging into the magnificent reaches of the Kyle web in another universe. When he accessed that web, he could contact any place in human space that also linked into it, letting his mind expand throughout the far-flung settlements of humanity.
A memory stabbed him: hurtling through space with his squadron, his mind submerged in the web, he had sensed another squad. Eight enemy fighters were headed their way. Traders. Six of the pilots were slaves, but with so much Aristo blood, they were hardly less cruel than their owners. One was an Aristo, his insatiable mind thirsting for the agony of psions. Kurj had felt his cruelty, his pleasure in killing, his desire to inflict pain, until finally Kurj vomited. To this day, it made him ill to hear the whir of the miniaturized droids that cleaned a pilot during battle.
But what had horrified him most had been the eighth “pilot.” The man was a psion, a slave, a provider. The Traders had bound him into his ship, with two Aristo copilots in control. They used him to locate the telepathic Jag pilots, torturing him to force his compliance. With no training to defend his mind and no natural protections, the provider had been in agony. His screams had reverberated in Kurj’s mind, drawing him into a link so intense, Kurj had lost his identity, becoming that anguished pilot. Tears had poured down his face. Pulling free of the link had taken a mental wrench so severe, it had forever scarred Kurj’s mind.
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