—The Ydrel, larger than the sky. He holds Kanaan and Barin in hands bloodied from the slashes on his wrists. He laughs—
—Tasmae’s hands, slick with blood, as she clutches her belly—
—Kanaan trembles—
—Tasmae dances with Gardianju and they laugh. I am the Queen of Riddles!—
The images vanished as abruptly as they appeared. Tasmae sagged against the table, nonetheless careful not to touch the Remembrance.
But they were of Deryl—and me. She shook her head. That doesn’t make any sense. How could Gardianju know about Deryl and me?
Which is why I have come, Leinad insisted. You must experience this Remembrance. You must learn its secrets.
Tasmae shook her head. She could not give her mind to…that. Not now, not so close to the war—
You would rather wait until we are in the war? Leinad countered.
I saw myself, she told him. How can I see myself in the memories of a woman dead five thousand years?
She felt his confusion. He, too, had seen her, clearly her, in the few visions the Remembrance shared with him. He could not explain it any better than she.
No, she thought. But she knew who could.
She pushed away from the table and, ignoring the protests of Leinad and Salgoud, stormed out of the fortress where they were staying. Once out of its protective walls, she ran to the clearing where she would Call the Ydrel.
The Ydrel would have the answers, and she would make him tell her!
*
“I don’t know why, Edith, but I can see that Dr. Malachai is not being totally forthcoming with us.” Joshua forced himself to use formal language and curb his growing temper. When he’d met Dr. Sellars in her office, feeling as low as he’d felt earlier, and heard the story Malachai had given her, it took all his control not to scream, “That jerk set us both up!”
“Joshua, I know you’re upset—”
“No, I was upset. Now, I’m suspicious. Why, if Deryl was as agitated as Dr. Malachai told you he was, did he sit still for the EEG? Malachai told me he got violent before that. Why, if he’s been having paranoid fantasies about Sachiko and me no longer ‘protecting’ him, would he have spent Friday drawing this for us?”
Edith looked at the sketch again, without really looking. He turned it to the most recent sketches.
“Why today is he drawing baseballs and Stargates? For that matter, has he ever talked about being protected by anyone? And why does he have to be so drugged he can’t put three words together?”
“He needs to be controlled.”
“He’s a zombie. If his aunt and uncle see him like this, of course they’re going to think he’s gone off the deep end.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?” Edith finally snapped. “Do you have any professional suggestions?”
“Matter of fact. Give him a blood test. Make sure he doesn’t have too much junk in his system. Better yet, cut the meds, even if it means putting him in a straitjacket and tying him to his own bed. Then we could get his side of the story.”
She placed a hand on her forehead, and he knew she was fighting between the desire to follow his suggestion and to throw him out. She’d taken a chance on hiring him, specifically to befriend Deryl. She’d given him a lot of leeway with the troubled patient, and suddenly, everything pointed to her having been disastrously wrong. He felt sorry for her, but his anger far outmatched his sympathy. He waited, stance determined, gaze strong and expectant.
“All right. I’ll approve the blood test. But the other I’d have to run past Randall, and I think we know what his answer will be.”
*
Run. Fight.
Deryl lay quietly on his bed. Behind closed eyes, his mind worked furiously. Earlier, Joshua had come in with one of the nurses and explained that they were going to draw some blood to check that he wasn’t over-medicated. That gentle suggestion was all Deryl needed; he used what energy he had to force the drugs still in his blood to the artery and out the piercing needle. He wasn’t sure it would work, but to his surprise, he felt his head clearing. The gibbering part of him still lay curled up, fearful, assailed by thoughts and senses that weren’t his, but the dazed, pliable part of himself began to fade away, leaving him in control.
His body felt sluggish and sore, and he didn’t dare try to move except with the same drugged lethargy. Psychically, however, he had more freedom. He gathered energy from the ley line.
If I can just teleport out of here, I can hole up somewhere, sleep off the rest of the effects, figure out some kind of real plan—
A familiar calling broke his thoughts.
I am the Miscria.
No! His conscious mind rebelled, but his fearful self latched onto the Call like a lifeline. As he struggled to keep control, his sense of the outside world faded—until a sharp prick on his arm brought him completely awake with a panicked start.
His eyes snapped open to see Sachiko, a pained expression on her face, pulling a needle out of his arm. Joshua stood beside his bed, speaking something reassuring, but he felt his friend’s suppressed fury. Behind him, Dr. Malachai stood: calm, controlled. Victorious.
I am the Miscria.
Run! Fight!
“No!” Deryl stood and lashed out with his mind, shattering the bathroom mirror. A shard flew to him. He caught it, at the same time half-psychically, half-physically grabbing Joshua and spinning him around. He held the broken glass against his friend’s neck. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, then louder: “Everyone get out of this room! Leave me alone!”
“Deryl!” Sachiko shrieked.
Malachai smiled an I-Told-You-So smile, and with a twitch of his hand, waved in the orderlies waiting outside. “Put that down, Deryl. You wouldn’t hurt Joshua. He’s your best friend.”
His fearful self yearned toward the Miscria. Toward Tasmae.
“Shut up! Get them out of here! I want two minutes alone.” He fought to keep his voice steady. His legs felt like jelly; if he hadn’t been leaning on Joshua, who was frozen with fear, he wouldn’t stay standing.
“Deryl, don’t,” his friend breathed.
Sachiko started to back up, but Malachai held his ground. “Stay there, nurse. Deryl, we’re only—”
“Randall!” Sachiko interrupted.
Joshua’s fright was as sharp against his mind as the glass cutting into his palm. Deryl tried to call the energy, to concentrate beyond his senses. The situation would not get better. He had to leave. He chanted, “I want to go someplace safe. I want to go someplace where I’m free. I want—”
“But that’s what we all want for you, Deryl,” Malachai’s smooth voice cut across his thoughts.
I am the Miscria. I call the Ydrel.
“Shut up!” He pressed the glass shard a little tighter against Josh’s neck. He could feel the glass cut into his hands, could smell the warm blood. His, not his friend’s, but they didn’t know that.
Sachiko fought back a second scream and turned on Malachai. “Dolfus Randall Malachai, let’s go!”
“Now, Sachiko, this is not the time to panic.”
Josh whispered, “Deryl, please, man.”
Concentrate! “…where people believe me. Someplace where I’m accepted. I want—”
Ydrel Mentor, Ydrel Guide...
Sachiko and Malachai arguing.
The orderly asking for instructions.
The drug taking effect. Things getting hazy.
“I want—”
Joshua’s fear as loud as if he were shouting.
Come to me!
“I want to go home!”
A great surge of energy. A pull like the vacuum of space yanking him from reality. Then nothing.
Chapter 3
Joshua returned to consciousness fully expecting to be in a hospital bed, his slashed throat sw
athed in bandages, his singing career over before it had started. His hands moved to his throat and found it bare and intact. He breathed a prayer of thanks before opening his eyes.
He found himself on his back in a small, tree-lined meadow, but he didn’t recognize the trees.
He sat up slowly, more disoriented than dizzy. Had he had amnesia? “Sachiko?” He called. “Mom? Dad? Anyone?”
He saw Deryl lying on his side, unconscious. Not far from him, near a break in the treeline, stood—
Joshua gulped.
A unicorn!
…or something like a unicorn. Its rhinoceros-like horn and thick neck and shoulders made it a far scarier version than any Joshua had read about in fantasy novels. It stared straight at them.
Joshua licked dry lips. “Easy fella,” he soothed, and reached over to shake his friend. “Deryl, time to wake up.”
Part of Joshua’s mind gibbered that Deryl was really psychic, that he’d teleported them to an alien planet. Another part argued that he was dreaming or had gone insane himself. He told them both to shut up, but he couldn’t stop his breathing from accelerating or his hands from trembling as he shook his friend. “Deryl!”
Deryl’s eyelids fluttered, then closed.
He’s drugged. Malachai’s zombiefied him again, and we’re stuck on another world!
He tore his gaze from the not-quite-unicorn and shook his friend harder. “Come on, man! Don’t do this to me. Wake up!”
Joshua heard hoof beats and turned in time to see several unicorns with red-clad riders approach from the trail. He vaguely noted they looked human before his eyes focused on the swords they drew.
He did the only thing he could think of. He raised his arms, palms open, and said, “We come in peace!”
The warrior he faced, a scowling man with a narrow head, wide-set eyes, and a pocked and scarred face, didn’t understand him or didn’t care. He arched his sword toward Joshua.
Joshua covered his head with his arms and ducked.
He heard a loud clang of steel against steel.
When he risked a glance up, he saw the warrior’s sword blocked by one held by a young woman with powerful arms. They strained together a moment, then the man backed off. Joshua recognized the woman from Deryl’s sketches.
“Tasmae! Oh, please be Tasmae. Look! This is Deryl. The Ydrel!” He’d propped up his unconscious friend toward her. Deryl flopped like a rag doll in his grip. “C’mon, please recognize him. Please, please understand me! It’s the Ydrel—your friend…” He was babbling and knew it, but couldn’t stop himself. “He’s drugged, um, poisoned? Sick! Please understand sick. We need your help. Oh, God, please make her understand me.”
When she knelt down to examine Deryl, the young man roused himself enough to smile at her in recognition. Joshua almost cheered with relief.
A warrior lifted Deryl and settled him on a unicorn, where he slumped, unconscious again. Tasmae mounted behind him to hold him steady. Another warrior directed Joshua to a ride of his own. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if there was going to be a problem—he was no virgin—but the mare neither threatened nor shied away. Nonetheless, he approached her slowly despite the swords at his back and spoke to her in gentle tones as he mounted, careful of the odd folds of skin connecting her forelegs to her underbelly. He glanced at Deryl as the unicorns moved toward the forest, and prayed they were doing the right thing leaving the glen. Tasmae would take care of them until Deryl was awake and clear-headed enough to return them home, wouldn’t she?
Despite the mare’s stiff-legged gait, she moved like a regular horse, for which Joshua was grateful. He was glad, too, that he’d done a lot of bareback riding back home.
They passed through the hilly meadow, green and lush and carpeted with delicate purple flowers that gave off a gentle sweet scent as the unicorns’ hooves crushed them, and entered a second thick wood of trees that seemed teasingly familiar. He ducked a low branch of what looked like an oak. He relaxed just a bit.
Then, the woods morphed into a cultivated forest of the most amazing trees Joshua had ever seen. Dark trunks held sturdy branches frosted with silver, like a sudden freeze had shrouded the trees in thin ice. It was much too warm, however, for frost. And the leaves! Though rounded like aspens, they bore no resemblance to any terrestrial foliage. Most were larger than his hand span—and transparent. He reached out to touch one.
“Yeow!” He jerked back his hand and sucked on his sliced finger.
The unicorn snorted, and he caught Tasmae, who had apparently been watching him more closely than he’d realized, rolling her eyes. Her expression mimicked Deryl’s when he found something particularly stupid.
They cleared the grove and paused at the edge of a cliff. Joshua’s hand lowered slowly as he gaped at the magnificent view. He whistled.
A gorge cut through the plateau, but he didn’t think any river had carved it. For one thing, he saw no river or stream, despite the lush vegetation. The cliff walls themselves were craggy and bare, and he spied shadows that made him suspect caves. To his left, the canyon curved sharply; to his right, it opened about a mile away, the cliffs curling away without losing their height. Were they on some gigantic mesa? He turned his body slightly and leaned back, trying to look past the soldiers around him to follow the edge of the land.
He felt his unicorn bunch her muscles, and reflexively grabbed her mane as the animal threw herself over the cliff.
Joshua screamed.
His shout of terror turned to a cry of surprise, then a great whoop of delight as the unicorn shifted her shoulders and in an non-equine feat of double-jointedness, spread her legs sideways from her body. The folds of flesh attached to her legs and side unfurled into great gliding wings. She banked and soared into the canyon, landing just before it curved to the right. Two of the warriors, then Tasmae, landed beside him.
“That was way cool,” he gasped, then said to Tasmae, “but how about some warning next time?”
She glared at him before retaking the lead.
“Hey, can you understand me? I know you talk with Deryl,” he called after her, but she didn’t so much as turn to acknowledge him. Joshua clicked his tongue and signaled the unicorn with his legs like he would a horse back home, but the beast merely turned her head to give him a You’ve-Got-to-be-Kidding look before filing in placidly behind Tasmae. The warriors on their rides took positions beside and behind him.
It took several minutes longer than Joshua expected before they rounded the curve he’d seen from above. A large wall of intertwined vines and branches ranged from one cliff wall to another, blocking the path.
As they approached, the branches and vines twisted and unwound, creating a gap just big enough for them to pass through single file. Joshua shivered, thinking of all the stories in which vines reached out and snatched unwary victims, and coiled his hands a little more firmly in the unicorn’s mane. The weird wall was almost as thick as his mount was long, its interior the same woven tangle of branches as the outer edges. When they were through, he glanced back and watched the wall shift to close the entrance. Creepy.
They rode on in silence.
Joshua gathered his courage. “Tasmae? It’d really help if you’d tell me what’s going on.”
The woman didn’t reply, but she did turn at the sound of her name.
Joshua clenched his teeth against a sudden anger that welled within him. Deryl had been telling the truth all along. He was psychic. He could move objects with his mind. He could teleport. He’d even been in psychic contact with an alien named Tasmae. Thinking back on Malachai’s behavior, Joshua bet he’d known it all along, too.
And I got called on the carpet for practicing psychology without a license, he grumbled. With the philosophy learned from his Neuro Linguistic Programming training, Joshua had taken Deryl at his word and had tried to teach him to control his abilities. He’d been mo
re concerned about the alleged telepathy that Deryl said left him prey to the thoughts and emotions around him. Now, he wondered how much Malachai had told him today was true. Had he inadvertently given Deryl the means to escape?
Doesn’t matter. He got us here. He’ll get us home. I just have to wait out the drugs. Patience. Firmly he pushed his mind away from negative thoughts and back to the world around him.
It was too quiet. Why hadn’t they seen any wildlife? He looked around, trying to find some animal sign, but the grass grew smooth until the shadow of the canyon caused it to become sparse before stopping altogether. There may have been creatures in the shrubby trees and tangled vines along the base of the cliff walls, but he hadn’t seen any yet. Nor had he heard birdsong, no call of an animal seeking a mate or warning off a rival—just the muffled footsteps of their mounts. He felt himself getting creeped out again.
He heard a sharp cry like that of a hawk, and looked up. Despite himself, he smiled with wonder as he saw an everyn, one of the small dragons Deryl had drawn in art therapy, when they’d had a very strange conversation about this world. Deryl had said they were friendly and worked with the Miscria’s people. This everyn, however, showed no inclination to join their group, though it circled overhead for a minute or two before heading back down the canyon.
They rode on. The sun had moved to the other side of the canyon, though that didn’t mean much to him. He glanced at his watch. Six p.m.! Sachiko must be frantic by now. Had anyone contacted his parents? He stifled a groan. They’d go ape. Certainly by now, the police were out searching for him and Deryl, not that they’d be anywhere to find.
Would Malachai call the police? He wouldn’t put it past the chief psychiatrist to find some way to cover his own butt while making Deryl—and me, for that matter—the villains. He could almost hear Malachai talking to his parents, blaming himself for letting their brilliant but young and inexperienced son get too close to a patient. “Edith had wanted Joshua to befriend Deryl, but we had no idea how seriously he’d take that charge. Who knows how long they’d been planning this escape?”
Mind Over Psyche Page 3
