Destiny's Lovers

by Speer, Flora

  “Tamat!” Reid shouted into the fog. “Thank you, Tamat! Thank you!”

  Janina did not understand why he was so elated, or what he was doing, not until he picked her up with one arm and rather roughly tossed her onto a wooden deck. Then she saw that what had nearly run them down was no sea monster but one of the fishing boats from Ruthlen.

  Reid finished tying their smaller boat so it would trail after the larger one, then came back to Janina, who was still crumpled upon the deck where he had left her.

  “It’s no use,” Janina cried. ‘The fisherfolk will throw us into the water for the monsters to eat. They have to, Reid. They dare not save us for fear of their own lives when they return home. Don’t you understand that?”

  “There are no fisherfolk,” he replied, lifting her to a sitting position and holding her in his arms. “There is no one else aboard. Tamat would not have sent us a manned boat.”

  “Tamat?” Janina pulled away to stare at his damp, shining face. “Tamat would never -” She bowed her head in grief at the thought of Tamat and of what she had done to that kind, beloved old woman.

  “She did send the boat to us. I know it.” Reid held her so she had to look at him. “When I told Tamat to enter my mind, I filled my thoughts with anything that might be useful to her. I told her what Sidra and Osiyar had been doing, and I told her I remembered sailing when I was a boy. I let her know that if she could provide a boat, I could sail it.”

  “Do you know what Sidra is doing? She and Osiyar whisper together all the time. I worry about Tamat.” Janina had seized upon the one statement that made sense to her. Reid shook her a little, stopping the flow of her words.

  “Sidra and Osiyar are irrelevant just now. I’ll tell you all about it some time later. The important thing is that Tamat sent us this boat.”

  “She did not,” Janina stated firmly. “We have broken the law and must be punished. We must die, Reid. The sea monsters must eat us.”

  “Didn’t you feel the little boat stop? We were dead in the water, becalmed, yet the current flowed all around us. For a while, I almost believed one of your sea monsters had caught hold of us, until I saw this boat. Janina, all of the fisherfolk stayed home today, because of the festival. All the boats were moored at the wharf or anchored off-shore, and all but a few of them were on their sides in the mud because the tide was so low. Yet this boat followed us, and found us. Tamat did this. She is powerful enough, isn’t she?”

  “Reid,” Janina insisted, “we have been so wrong. We have broken the law. We deserve to be punished.” She stopped trying to convince him of that simple fact when she was overcome by another spasm of shivering.

  “Come below.” Reid pulled her toward the cabin. “There should be at least a blanket to warm you a little. Come on, Janina.”

  Reid’s hasty search of lockers and the hold revealed not only blankets but several changes of clothing in waterproof bags, along with a full store of preserved food in the galley. Reid wrapped Janina in a heavy blanket, toweled her dripping hair, then brewed herbs and made her drink two large cups of strong dhia. Finally, he pushed her down on one of the bunks and covered her with a second blanket.

  “Sleep,” he ordered.

  “I can’t sleep. The sea monsters -” She stopped, afraid she would begin to cry. He bent low to kiss her, his mouth warm and tender on hers. He was still naked, as he had been since they had removed their garments in passion in the sacred grove. When he straightened, she caught at his hand. Though she was close to tears, and ashamed to have him see how cowardly she was, she did not want him to leave her.

  “Janina.” He sat down beside her. When he tried to put his arms around her she cringed in renewed shame and guilt.

  “Very well,” he said sternly. “I will tell you now what I had planned to tell you much later - or perhaps never tell you. I believe Tamat wanted me to escape from Ruthlen. I also believe she wanted me to take you with me. She knew you would never be safe with Sidra in power. I think Tamat understood what we did today in the grove, and despite what she had to say in public, she did not condemn us, for she certainly sent us this boat.” He told her all that had been said during his last interview with Tamat, and why he thought she had given him an unspoken directive.

  “If she had implanted the idea in my mind, which would have been the easiest way to make me do what she wanted, Sidra might have discovered what Tamat had done and could turn the information against her. But this way, even if Sidra were to invade my thoughts, it would seem to her that I had thought of it myself, which was true. Thus, Sidra could not hold Tamat to blame. Do you understand this, Janina?”

  “Yes.” She was not so agitated now. Reid’s words had calmed her enough to allow her to think more clearly. “What you say makes good sense. Tamat would think that way.”

  “Don’t ever forget that Tamat wants us to live.” Reid pushed gently on her shoulders, forcing her backward onto the bunk. “You need to sleep. I’ll wake you if anything important happens.”

  She almost told him that if the really important event - the arrival of a sea monster - happened, he would have no time to waken her, but she knew that if she started to think about the sea monsters again, she would never sleep, and he was right; she needed to rest, so she could help him.

  She lay back, mulling over his account of his meeting with Tamat. She knew Tamat had a reason for everything she did. If Tamat had saved Janina and Reid, it was because she wanted them alive for some specific purpose.

  She touched her cheek, recalling the fleeting sensation of a kiss, and the whisper in her mind: Save Reid. Help Reid. And she knew, as certainly as she could have known if she had truly been a telepath, that Tamat’s purpose in saving them had been to send Reid back to his own people. Tamat had found a way to grant Janina’s plea to save him, and to answer Reid’s frequently repeated request to let him leave Ruthlen. Therefore, Janina was duty-bound to do everything in her power to help him. It was what Tamat wanted.

  Sighing, almost asleep now, she turned over onto her side. Through half-closed eyes she saw Reid rubbing himself dry. His body was so beautiful, so large and strong-muscled, so utterly masculine. She felt a thrill of pleasure just watching him draw the rough towel across his naked skin. She thought with a drowsy smile that what they had done earlier that day wasn’t such a terrible crime after all. She wanted to put out her hand to touch him, but she was too weary even for that small gesture.

  Her last conscious thought was that she did not know what she could do to help Reid, because she was such a coward, and as Sidra had so often told her, she was not very intelligent. But she would try. She would do her best, for Tamat, and for Reid.

  * * * * *

  Just before Sidra and Osiyar reached the temple, the ground began to shake. Sidra stumbled, weaving her way awkwardly through the entrance in the surrounding wall. She quickly recovered her balance before turning to the High Priest with an eager expression.

  “This rumbling won’t last long. Come to my room,” she urged. “We will be safe there, on my large bed. Adana and Philian surely won’t return for some time yet, not if they walk back from the wharf with Tamat. Lately, Tamat walks so slowly that I often grow impatient with her. Come and lie down with me, Osiyar. Lend yourself to me once more. This day has been so exciting. I want you to end it by giving me pleasure. And I will please you, too, as well you know.” Her blue eyes shone; her lovely face glowed. She caught at Osiyar’s hand to pull him along with her. Osiyar stood unmoving, holding her loosely by one wrist.

  “Tell me, Sidra, why were you so afraid when Reid suggested that Tamat enter his thoughts?”

  “I wasn’t afraid.” Rocked nearly off her feet by another earth tremor, Sidra shot a surprised glance in the direction of the smoking mountains. “What a lot of steam. They shouldn’t be doing that. What do you suppose is wrong?”

  “Answer me.” Osiyar’s hand tightened around Sidra’s wrist until she winced. He spoke with his usual cold precision. “If you do not answ
er, I will ask Tamat when she returns, and she will tell me.”

  “Perhaps not. She may not want to speak to anyone. She will need to preserve all her strength for the Sacred Mind-linking. I think Tamat may not live very long after that is completed, so she will be too weak to tell you anything then, either.”

  Osiyar dropped her wrist abruptly. When he spoke again, it was with deceptive quiet.

  “You forget, Sidra, that I am High Priest and Co-Ruler with Tamat. By our ancient laws, I can command your obedience and set limits to your power. I think I have been too lenient with you, too indulgent because of your beauty and your…skills.” He drew himself up until he towered over the shorter Sidra. “Tell me why you were afraid of Reid.”

  “I touched his mind once or twice,” Sidra said reluctantly.

  “Without permission?” Osiyar was deeply shocked at such a breach of an immutable law.

  “Reid was an alien, an unknown factor,” Sidra said. “I wanted to be certain he was not concealing some greater telepathic skill than ours, that might be harmful to us.”

  “Only Tamat is permitted free access,” Osiyar said. “You know that full well, and you know Tamat is satisfied that Reid is harmless to us.”

  “Was,” Sidra reminded him. “Reid is dead now, along with that stupid Janina, and I am glad of it. He had seen us together, Osiyar, in your room. The barbaric fool was filled with disgust at what we so enjoyed.”

  “As am I, now.” Osiyar stared coldly at her, not heeding the renewed trembling of the ground beneath their feet. “Did you plot his downfall, along with Janina’s? Did you think to break Tamat’s heart and thus destroy her so you could become High Priestess at once?”

  “I shall be High Priestess by tomorrow night,” Sidra shouted over the sudden roar of the mountains. “You and I shall be Co-Rulers.”

  “Of what?” asked Osiyar, struggling to keep his balance. “Of this? Look around you, Sidra. The mountains have awakened to rain fire and death upon the village, as our ancestors claimed they did in times long past. When the mountain spews its insides across Ruthlen and into the sea, will you help the villagers then as a High Priestess ought to do? Or the farmers? Will you tend their wounds and bless the dying? Or will you retire to your khata flower-scented bed to dream of lust and sweet degradation?”

  “If not with you, Osiyar, then I will find someone else.” Sidra glared at him, her long golden hair whipped by a sudden gusty wind, her blue robe billowing. Then she smiled her lovely, false smile. “Come, I will forgive your cruel words. The temple is the strongest building. Let us go there. It will be the safest place until this storm passes.”

  “It is no mere storm, and it will not pass,” Osiyar said. “Do you not realize that if Reid knew what we have done, Tamat also knows? This is her Cleansing.”

  “If it is, then Tamat is dead by now, killed by her own Gift, and I am High Priestess already.” Sidra gave a wild, high-pitched laugh of triumph, but at Osiyar’s sudden threatening movement, she stepped back, away from him. “Why, Osiyar, I thought you loved no one.”

  “I may not be able to love, but I am capable of respect. I know goodness when I meet it day after day. I know evil when I see it naked before me.”

  Osiyar stopped talking. He retreated inside himself, concentrated, and found Tamat. He experienced a burst of joy at the contact, and thanked the twin moons and the sun that she was not dead, though he could tell she was weakened by her last great effort.

  I am here, Tamat. Accept my help. He opened his mind to her, let her fully know his foolishness and vanity, his loveless dalliance with Sidra, and his deep remorse over the laws he had broken.

  You may enter my mind, Osiyar, Tamat told him, but know this task I have set for myself will kill me and may well kill you, too, if you choose to aid me.

  How else can I redeem myself? asked Osiyar. My life means nothing unless I give it to you now.

  Come then, High Priest, and do my bidding. Join with me.

  Tamat opened her mind to him completely, letting Osiyar know her great wisdom, the centuries of stored memories, her anguish at what must now be done, and her understanding of his own guilty pain. With the ground rolling and trembling beneath his feet and Sidra screaming at him, Osiyar, High Priest of Ruthlen, stood in the temple complex, withdrawn and silent, his mind totally linked to that of Tamat on the shaking wharf.

  The mountains split open to spill molten lava toward the sea as the Co-Rulers, in complete accord at the last, joined together to destroy their corrupted domain.

  Chapter 11

  “Tarik, come outside and see what has happened to the lake. There is no wind, but the water has suddenly churned up into high waves, and they are reaching far up the beach, almost to the trees.”

  “Tarik, look at this.” At the same moment that Alla entered the headquarters building and began to talk, Narisa also spoke, pointing to the screen above the computer-communicator to show her husband the finding that had so startled her. “Is it an earthquake? A volcanic explosion? What do you think?”

  “It looks like both,” Tarik said. “That’s strange; it’s near the area where we picked up Herne and Alla. But there are no volcanoes there, only forest and cliffs. I don’t understand this new information. It makes no sense. Alla, you say the lake is covered with waves?”

  “Yes. Do you think there might be some connection to what Narisa is seeing on the screen? Could an earthquake so far away make the lake water here so rough?” Alla, while hurrying across the central room to see for herself what had disturbed her friends, glanced down at the table containing the computer-generated holographic model of the continent. She stopped, staring at it, not believing her eyes at first. She needed a moment to find her voice, and when she did it was not like her own voice at all, for it crackled with excitement, and the words tumbled over each other in her haste to speak them.

  “In the name of all the stars! Tarik! Tarik, look! See here! The cliffs are gone. Look!”

  Before she had finished speaking, Tank was at her side, regarding the model with the same fascinated astonishment that Alla felt. The computer model was generated from information gathered by the spaceship Kalina, which had been placed in permanent polar orbit above Dulan’s Planet. They had traveled to the planet aboard the Kalina, and now Tank kept one or two of his people there at all times to maintain the ship and monitor the information sent to his headquarters.

  “My readings indicate that part of the eastern coastline is slowly changing shape,” Narisa said, joining the other two at the model table. She looked from the model to her husband. “Gaidar is on duty on the Kalina until noon today. Shall I check with him, in case it’s an instrument malfunction?”

  “Please do. It’s the first thing we should investigate, but somehow I don’t think it’s the instruments.” Tarik did not take his eyes from the model. Where once it had shown cliffs, six steep mountains now rose, while on the far side of the mountains a narrow crescent of lower land edged the sea. After another glance at the model, Narisa returned to her post. She spoke into the computer-communicator while Tarik and Alla waited.

  “Gaidar says he was just about to contact you, because something strange is happening down there,” Narisa reported. “In addition to the topographical changes we can see on the model, there has been a series of violent explosions.”

  “We can tell that from here,” Alla said impatiently. “Doesn’t he have any more information? If Reid is still alive in that area -” She did not finish the sentence, but stood watching as the top and side of one of the mountains on the model split open.

  “Gaidar says,” came Narisa’s calm voice, “that it’s as though some kind of shielding mechanism is slowly being shut off, allowing the true contours of the land to be gradually recorded on our instruments. He says it looks as though the cliffs and part of the forest were false readings.”

  “A shield?” Alla repeated. “And Reid is caught in that?”

  “Or,” Tarik said slowly, his eyes still fastened o
n the model, “it’s like a magical spell that dissolves as the wizard who wove the spell dies.”

  “Spells? Wizards? Are you mad?” Alla tried to laugh, but could not. This was too serious for laughter. “A shield has to be generated by someone with considerable intelligence and technological skill, which makes me wonder if Cetans are on Dulan’s Planet without our knowledge, and if Reid is not dead, as I’ve been telling you all along, but is their prisoner.”

  “Not Cetans,” Tank said. “Telepaths.”

  “What?” Alla cried, and saw that Narisa had turned from the computer-communicator to stare at Tarik.

  “Do you remember when we found you and Herne?” Tarik asked Alla. “I awakened that day absolutely certain we would find you exactly where you were. Narisa, don’t you remember how we laughed about it afterward? We thought then that the Chon had something to do with our sudden ability to locate them.”

  “Of course,” Narisa replied. “It could be telepaths. But, Tarik, it would take incredible mental powers to create such a shield and keep it in place over a long period of time. You see, I know you well enough by now to believe I know what you are thinking.” She smiled at her husband, and he smiled back at her in complete understanding.

  “If I’m right, that shield has been in place for six hundred years,” Tarik said softly.

  “I know you love fantastic stories, Tarik,” said Alla, “but that sounds impossible to me. It would be much more practical to suspect the Cetans of having a secret monitoring base on this planet, just as we have.”

  “We’re all only speculating.” Frowning deeply, Tarik watched the still-changing model. “Whether it is Cetans, or telepaths, or some peculiar natural phenomenon, we need to know for certain. I think another expedition to that area is in order.”

  “Surely,” Narisa exclaimed, “you aren’t going directly into that mess now, with volcanic debris in the air, hot ashes and lava, repeated earthquakes? Not to mention dangerous gases? If the computer is right about what is happening, that’s what you will find.”