by Tobias Roote
He soared further than the dark prairie he was trapped on, wider afield - over the far mountain pass, through its valley, and into another. Beyond his immediate horizon his mind flew, fast and high. He felt the rush of non-existent air. It was only a sense, a feeling, but it gave persistence to his thought, which blossomed like a flower in full sunlight and expanded.
Several times he believed he had reached the limit of his mental range, but each time he flew past it and pushed further and further into, for him, unknown territory. He knew what he was attempting to do was enormously difficult. He didn’t know why, but he truly believed he had to survive this night. More than at any time in his past, he realised this test was like no other and knew he had to try, even if the effort broke his mind; he probably wouldn’t know if, or when, he failed. The Grith would arrive too late, his heart or mind would already have failed him.
Holding nothing of himself back in reserve, Aaron reached out and took what he could find. There were minds. None that he could use. He passed them by without pause and reached further than any Sar had ever done before. Never, until tonight, had he found it necessary to test his own mind’s limits. If his sense of need hadn’t been so desperate he might have marvelled at how his power had grown. Instead he pushed further seeking help, aid of any kind. Then, at the furthest reaches of his perception he found it.
A source of mental strength of sufficient power to aid him was there, concentrated in one place. So swiftly did he overcome their personal shields that they had no time to acknowledge what had occurred. Their energy was his to command and he drew it to him in seconds without regard, binding it to his will, dispersing it around him like a shield. The psychic power coursed through him, imbuing him with fresh purpose and confidence - and none too soon - the Grith had arrived.
They were the biggest Grith males he had ever seen in his entire life. Eight in all, one hanging back, slightly smaller than the others, weaker perhaps. They approached him, snarling, fangs bared, trapping him against the wall. He had no hope of evading them or physically defending himself. Even if he’d had something to distract them with, he had no means to move beyond the small area where he now stood.
As he drew the power to him he channelled the energy outward until he felt their minds. Noting their tendency to defer to the one at the rear initially confused him, but Aaron realised that the smaller one was, in fact, a female, possibly their leader, and was controlling the others in front of him. Not only were they travelling in a pack but they had a hierarchy. It was unheard of. He wished he had time to learn more but his need to survive was currently a pressing issue.
He didn’t know whose strength he used, and at this moment he really didn’t care so long as it lasted until he managed to deal with these Grith. Aaron knew that if he had any chance of surviving, he would have to meld with the leader while holding off the other seven. No easy task when he lacked any familiarity with any of their mental signatures.
He conjured up an image taken from the other Grith’s mind of mewling infants in a den and carefully, so as not to stir the mental picture he placed in front of the other seven, Aaron sent a tendril of emote towards the smaller Grith.
Astonished at the activity in the animal’s brain, Aaron nonetheless tried to assess its thinking which, compared to the others, seemed more highly developed. He realised this was going to take finesse rather than blanket interference and promptly moderated his approach.
He laid a temporary screen over the Grith’s thought processes, enough to muddle them sufficiently that it would delay it the necessary seconds it took to make a decision. He then crafted an alternate thought pattern suggesting the effort required was too much for so little a reward.
He slipped it into the delicate flow of thoughts - the very real risk of drawing attention from the two-leggers - was this puny example worth it. Killing and eating one of them would result in her pack being hunted down, something every Grith feared. When the two-leggers approached manhood, many came out to hunt the Grith and it was always a bad time. Aaron impressed this over the mind of the Grith leader, inserting pictures of Sar ‘two-leggers’ hunting down her pack. In fact this memory was false as Sar never hunted anything. He wondered briefly at the memories in the Grith female’s mind, but he had no time to dwell.
Sensing the ideas begin to take hold Aaron eased back his control, doing the same with the seven Grith in front of him. Grunts and growls signalled the animals fighting the compulsion to withdraw. Aaron persevered and increased the pressure. He kept his mental net ready to swamp the beasts in utter confusion if the need arose, to give him a moment of possible distraction, maybe enough to find more cover, a cave perhaps.
He sensed the small leader calling them, distracting their attention further and realising she was, in fact, placating them, he relaxed his hold on the enormous carnivores sufficiently for them to follow her commands to retreat. He observed her now, haunches raised prepared to pounce at Aaron if he made a move. Her huge, muscle-bound males strutted around her, still in hunting mode but controlled. She had their attention momentarily.
Realising he had been holding his breath for the moments it had taken in controlling the Grith, he now took steady, shallow breaths, so as not to overtax his brain with the sudden influx of oxygen. He’d felt the blackness at the edges of his consciousness creeping inward and fought it back. This was no time for weakness.
Aaron watched as the males, bored now, began to drift one by one into the brush and disappear. His own efforts to keep his scent and image from their minds was taking its toll, but he dare not relax yet. They were still too close and would immediately retrieve his scent from the air. They would not be deterred a second time.
The leader was last to leave. With the early light of dawn approaching, Aaron got a good look at her. He had already realised it was a female, which was why it was smaller than the others. Then, when it turned back to look back at him he thought he was lost. He should have been - he knew it then and the memory would live with him forever. The beast actually acknowledged him. The intelligence in its eyes told him she knew exactly what he had done. She was informing him in a single look that she had accepted his reasoning and had made the decision to move on based on acceptance of that alone.
His legs felt weak. As he collapsed to his knees he looked for her again only to see an empty clearing. He released the retained mental energy of the unknown others he held. As he felt them fade, his mind folded, having taken far more from himself than from them.
He knew he would not be eaten this night. He had seen respect in the Grith’s mind. She had accepted him into her pack and would protect him from further harm. As he passed out he sent her a single weak tendril of gratitude.
- 3 -
Melbray sat up slowly from where he had fallen off his ferrel. He cast around him to see if anything was amiss, any pieces of body not where they should be. His head ached as though he had worn the wine too well the night before, yet he’d had none. He decided he was in one piece and struggled up on a pair of unsure and trembling legs. Were they his? They felt odd.
Had he been attacked? He couldn’t remember. Whatever happened had sucked the strength right out of him and left him feeling like a newborn ferrel.
What of his friends?
He looked upward to stretch his back and neck. The cloudless sky looked back at him. The sun was not yet high. He decided that he had been unconscious barely a few hours, three at most. He vaguely remembered that it had been dark, the dawn just peeping over the horizon. They had been making haste to their favourite camp, thinking to catch an early fish for breakfast. His stomach chose that moment to grumble, reminding him it had even missed that.
Looking around, he saw that he was still on the main track. His ferrel stood looking at him dejectedly. It was still saddled, so he guessed he hadn’t been robbed. There was no sign of the others, so they must have been affected too, otherwise they would have returned to find him. All three of them were mentally bonded, they would have
known immediately when he had fallen.
He tried to summon up the mental strength to check on them, but whoever or whatever it was that drained him, had been powerful enough to leave him too weak to cast far. A weaker talent might not have survived at all, but even at his advanced age, he was still stronger than most Watchers.
Walking gingerly to his ferrel, he pulled himself into the saddle. He made ready to go in search of his friends and as the ferrel walked forward, the memory of his last conscious moments began to surface. He reviewed the power that had thrown him – Him! The Second Lord Sentinel. It had come from over there, he realised, as he leaned around in the saddle and looked back at the mountain range behind him.
A strong talent had reached out to him as if he were a baby with no defence, and had ‘taken’ his strength, using it for their own need. Never before had Melbray encountered such a strong ability. Also, he could usually identify all the talents, but he didn’t recognise this mind’s signature. A wild one, he decided.
An after-image of the event was embedded in his memory as if it was his own. As he rode he fast-replayed the Grith attack. By all the gods, when did they start running in packs? Melbray shuddered at the thought and completely understood the boy's fear. Being flanked by such ferocious beasts was something that would instil terror in the stoutest of souls.
Still unhappy at the theft of his strength Melbray peered sourly across the valley and beyond the distant mountains as he considered the ramifications of the ‘taking’. It was a long way, too far even for him on a good day, to reach with his abilities. Yet, this was such powerful, raw strength that he’d had no choice in the matter.
Lightly nudging his ferrel into a gentle lope, he sought out the others to see how they had fared. They had not been close together when the ‘taking’ occurred and they might well have been untouched, but he doubted that. The absence of their mental signatures worried him, but he had so little strength to cast his own mind, that they might be fine and just sitting waiting for him..
Melbray coaxed his animal onward, searching with his weak eyes that which he could not find using his depleted faculties.
He found Gedrack sitting on a grassy mound with his head in his hands, groaning. He was older than Melbray by a good ten summers and looked as if he had fallen hard. Melbray dismounted, taking a flask of water from his saddlebag, handed it to him as his friend looked up, registering his approach.
“What the drick happened to me?” he groaned. “I feel like I was punched by my ferrel.”
Melbray straightened his back trying to relieve his own aching body.
“I think we have a wild mind that just found it could meld,” Melbray answered him.
“They had sore need of our help, but not the wit to ask for it?” Gedrack moaned as he too caught the replay of events.
Melbray looked west again wondering at the power that must have been required for the mind to pull from such distance.
“We need to make haste to the Tower,” he said as he looked down at his friend, who like himself, was already looking much improved as he drew strength from reserves carried within.
A call came from further up the trail, accompanied by a howl as Junto came into view on his ferrel. The animal was not remotely happy at being saddled with its corpulent rider, and was complaining loudly at having carried his unconscious body on its back for the last few hours without any relief.
None of them, it seemed, were the worse for wear for the experience, except for some bruises from falling in Melbray’s and Gedrack’s case. Junto appeared to have remained on his ferrel despite losing consciousness along with the others. None of the animals had been harmed either, as while they too had mental powers, they were not advanced or powerful enough to communicate other than in a herd, and when tamed, with their rider on a basic level.
The animal deliberately jostled Junto as it trotted. The effect on the big man’s frame was a comical picture to behold and Melbray smiled. The ferrel plucked the image out of his mind in a snap and brayed loudly, its humour evident.
Some of these ferrel had too much personality, Melbray thought, but chuckled along with it, nonetheless.
- 4 -
They gathered together and pooled their thoughts. They had all replayed the events in their own minds and had no doubt that the stranger’s need had been great. The importance of the ‘wild’ mind was not lost on any of them, only the lack of knowledge of its origins made them wary.
Melding was usually an event that was only managed in a local manner such as this. Their minds came together, each separated in a private area, but linked to each other in a public stream. They could choose to add, or exclude others purely by creating or removing additional tendrils and linking them to other minds.
The power required to do this with a large number became exponentially harder, especially over distance, which is what made this unexpected event so important. A mind with that much power was much sought after in the Sar world. The Watcher Society was responsible for finding and training such minds, when discovered.
Melding took their memories of the event, shared them, then gave back to each a composite picture of what had occurred. Their problem was they had not been given a choice in the meld. That, in itself, was rare because each had control over their own mind. One who could over-ride this on more than a single Sar, and over such a distance, meant it was extremely powerful.
Melbray was the first to withdraw, he had gained all he needed from the exchange.
They had each recovered snippets and seen one young male talent mentally handling eight large adult Grith on the hunt, yet overcoming all of them. Handling one was hard enough, a pack had never been recorded in Melbray’s memory.
As the others surfaced, their minds were equally aware of the full story of what had transpired with the young man. The series of images, for that’s all they could glean from the shared memory, told them this was no society member, you could not hide from the Watchers, ever. This was most assuredly, a wild talent.
They considered catching up with him, but the distance to travel would be too much for them and their ferrels. They hadn’t enough supplies and the possibility of the individual remaining there awaiting their arrival would be unlikely in the extreme.
Junto turned in his saddle, preferring to talk to the others verbally as his head still ached. Neither of the others objected. They too, still felt the after-effects of the enforced melding.
“You know, there was rumour of a child that had the potential to be a Psi builder,” he offered from his vast repertoire of anecdotal gossip he collected on his travels. This one was well known amongst the Sar generally; a child who could use the full capabilities of the mind to build, or destroy, whichever it chose. It was almost a tale, but it lingered on the lips of the people. Despite efforts by the Watchers, there had been little evidence of such a person in their midst. A telepathic society such as the Sar would find it difficult to hide anything of note amongst them.
“If this is an indication of an untried and untested ‘wild’ talent, properly channelled it could prove to be an exceptional asset to the Watchtower,” Junto added positively.
Gedrack, nodded agreeably. “It would at that, Junto. However there is one problem with that scenario.”
“Aye, and this is the nub of the problem for any strong talent coming into the Tower these days - Krendar,” Melbray affirmed from his position at the tail of the small procession.
They all seemed to dwell on that for a moment. Krendar was indeed a problem. He had been stifling the acolytes with the strongest talents for years, damaging their potential by giving them tasks that weakened their abilities, rather than strengthening them.
Krendar wanted nobody strong enough to contest his position as head of the council. A position he had maintained by threat, bullying and intimidation rather than by skill and ability. He wasn’t even a leader, bedrummed.
He had secured his position and retained it through a cabal of self-serving Sentinels who wou
ld rather feed off the masses than provide the services they expected. As a direct result the frequencies of Ripple fever occurring had risen alarmingly across the planet.
The people thought it was because the individual emote problems were increasing amongst them and looked into issues of breeding and proximity to others, but in reality it was because the Watchtower society were expending most of their efforts mind-meddling in the affairs of state instead of doing their duty.
The number of active Sentinels were dwindling and the Watchtower was seemingly unaware of the unrest and unhappiness prevalent throughout Sar society. Krendar’s group were the main ones chosen and they repressed much of the dissent, instead of watching out for, and dealing with the emotes that could disrupt the Psi balance.
Melbray watched his friends. They were more the firebrands than he, who preferred to smoke quietly in a corner and watch the play from afar. He attracted too much attention to himself by being the leader of the opposition, and not because he was elected to it, but because he alone was strong and knowledgeable enough to withstand Krendar.
Krendar hated Melbray deeply because he had repeatedly foiled efforts by the weasel to take over the whole council and use the Watchtowers talents to run the State. A takeover of the State Council was on the cards regardless, and Melbray wasn’t strong enough to stand alone against a concerted attack on their movement. So, he watched, waiting for a day when the chips would fall his way and he could remove the cancer from their civilisation.
- 5 -
The Grith watched the young Sar from the seclusion of its hidden lair. She had been thinking long and hard about the incident with the youngling two-legger. She knew that the youngling had changed the way she viewed a threat, although her own ability to understand didn’t extend to the knowledge of how. She had never considered the action of killing a two-legger might be responsible for further persecution of her kind.
