by Gayle Greeno
Ah, to never, ever let her go again! “Oh, my mindmate, my love, she sobbed, hugging Khar close, rubbing her face into her fur, more sensuous than silk or satin, but with a faint, smoky tang rising over the normal talc-like scent. ”Where have you been? Are you alive? It’s not a dream?”
“Love,” the ghatta moaned, muzzle crimped in the hollow of Doyce’s collarbone. But her tone veered immediately practical and intense. “Down now! Pat me down. Before it’s too late. We have to fight!” And with a twist and a slither she struggled to free herself from Doyce’s embrace.
In mute obedience, she dropped the ghatta between her feet. Vesey and the others within the center of the circle—Evelien, Cloud, Jenret, Mahafny, Harrap-remained transfixed, faces ranging the spectrum of emotions.
Flurries of activity harried her vision at various points along the rim of the circle where the spectators sat and watched, outbreaks of roiling activity, punctuated by shouts of dismay and surprise. The Erakwa seemed to be the cause of the action, as if her reunion with Khar had served as a catalyst.
Vesey’s arm stretched, finger stubs pointing in accusation. “You, Doyce! The medallion, now! Even better that the ghatta is here to witness this. I will have it now!” She looked at the medallion as if seeing it for the first time, then shrugged and thrust it into her pocket. He spoke aloud again, intent on commanding not only her but everything and everyone around her.
“Be strong,” Khar directed her. “I will be vigilant.”
“But what can you do to stop him?”
“Perhaps not stop, but thwart, deflect. Try to hold strong a bit longer. Believe in our Bond, our love, as you never dared before.”
Deflect? It didn’t make sense. What could Khar possibly do to keep Vesey’s mind from hers? And already she could sense Vesey gathering his powers, the air around him crawling with phosphene waves of energy as he gathered his strength for his next assault. The air blurred, as did her vision. A vague humming sound emanated from Khar, growing in pitch and intensity, a steady monotone she felt creeping up her legs, around her chest, and over the top of her head, cocooning her.
Everything beyond an arm’s length away trembled, moved in limpid slow motion, faintly distorted as if staring into the depths of a lake, magnified. Easy now to pinpoint the running Erakwa, weaving their way amongst the frightened spectators, dashing to the pile of discarded baggage and slashing at large wicker panniers, knives flashing as they sawed and struck at the stubborn withes. Panniers? The panniers that imprisoned the ghatti? A smile split her face and a laugh of pure joy rumbled deep in her chest, but then she had no time to think further because Vesey’s mind howled and clawed at her, searching for a hold at the very center of her being.
“Hurry!” Khar begged, but the message wasn’t directed to Doyce.
Intent on the opening gambit of this new confrontation, muscles and sinews and mind rigid with anticipation, braced for the onslaught, she was oblivious to this opening move, so subtle the visitation.
Her feet sank deep in a carpet of richly verdant grass, soft, cushiony, the fragrance of unbridled spring hurtling toward summer. She could feel the lush texture of each individual and exuberant emerald-hued blade pushing its way between her toes, shooting up around her ankles, waving and stretching and unfolding in the sunlight as it danced greenly around her knees.
“It’s not real, think about it,” Khar instructed.
Delicate green fingerlings of grass tickled at the backs of her knees as she protested. “But it’s so peaceful, so refreshing. Smell it! How could it possibly be....”
The ghatta’s voice, flat and prosaic. “It’s not real.”
She reveled in unfettered, luxuriant growth, each green slip free and unrestrained. Interesting. Each limber shoot sprouted sensitive hairlike tendrils, each questing finger of green grasping and clawing, pinching, clasping her in sinuous celadon loopings of vines harsher than bands of iron. A band, a vise around her chest, crushing her lungs, mocking each attempt at breath.
Choking, hard to breathe ... how did it grow so fast, a whole spring and summer compressed in the blinking of an eye? Tighter, harder... no, expand, no, inhale ... what made Khar insist that it wasn’t real? And then the answer struck her as incredibly obvious: all ghatti could identify the truth in any given situation, even if the truth were unpleasant to hear. Falsehood could not and would not be transmitted by the ghatti; they were incapable of being misled by it. She managed a shallow breath. That she could question the sensation, not just accept it, meant that Khar was battling to deflect at least some of the falsehood, the false images invading her mind.
Vesey’s expression tightened, eyes torch-enflamed, lips compressed white-edged and hard as the scarring on his face. Poor little boy! The ghatti never ... what? And as the grasping fingers of green trellised higher, probing, wrenching, slithering up into ears, gouging behind her eyes, prying open her mouth, creeping up her nose, she forgot, dropped the thread of rightness she had tethered herself to ... it was gone. Writhing terror immobilized her more strongly than the vines as the living green ran its tendrils over and around her brain and prepared to seize it, drag it forth in victorious display.
“Now!” Khar howled, and a familiar, lower baritone thrumming joined with the ghatta’s, increasing the force around Doyce, causing the tendrils to hesitate and recede. A deep, rumbling purr so intimately familiar yet withheld from her so long. If only the tendrils would escape her ears, she might recognize it.
“Next! And carefully!” A tenor trill wound in so butter smooth that its melding with the other two spun together without dissonance. No hesitation, no misstep in the joining, as perfect as if they had rehearsed for eons. The vines receded farther, began to wither and shrink, some blackened and rotting as if from the aftermath of a killing frost.
Of course! The ultimate rightness and sense of it left her breathless with relief, even though bands of vine still crushed at her chest. The baritone—Saam! Restored at last, mindspeaking, weaving his mind with Khar’s, adding the warp to the woof to loom and weave the fabric of protection more densely with his baritone, and Parm, the tenor, sliding in with a practiced grace that belied his clowning mask.
“Enter!” Finally the bass joined in, ragged and cautious of its own power, but gaining resonance and rhythm as it continued, its deep vibrato adding the final resilience to the cloak of love that sheltered her from falsehood and deceit. Rawn, clumsy at first, but with a vibrant richness that melded all the others righter and tighter together in harmony.
The vines and greenery withered, decayed, leaving her gasping but aware, deep, shuddering breaths of relief whistling in and out of her lungs as she panted, staring back at Vesey triumphantly.
“You’re not the only one to have friends to give you strength!” he screamed, furiously beckoning Evelien to his side. They clasped hands in front of the fire, Cloud materializing from nowhere at their feet. “I’m tired of toying with you, Doyce. I could do this on my own, but I want you to feel our combined power. Yield me what’s mine and perhaps I’ll let the others go.”
She hesitated. “Khar?”
A harsh sob of exhaustion shook the ghatta. “No! No compromise.”
“And the white one is mine,” Saam added matter-of-factly. “No other’s. Understood?”
“Agreed,” Parm sneezed in mock alarm. “I’ve other interests.” But Rawn coughed a polite ghatti cough of contradiction, “If you should decide you’d like to share....” He delicately left the thought unfinished, but the image cut crystal sharp.
Vesey and Evelien faced each other, hands clasped together near their hearts for all the world like a couple plighting their troth, their mindmeld blinding them from seeing, knowing, caring of anyone else’s existence. When they turned, hands still intertwined, tiny flames flickered in their eyes, and a wave of power washed over Doyce with such lapidary brilliance that it reached beyond the very boundary of her soul and swept her away, helpless.
The night shivered and pulsated wit
h wave after wave of sound above the threshold of human hearing, but it vibrated them to the core, teeth buzzing, skulls throbbing, metalwork on saddles, bridles, and armor tingling, tinging and setting off their own sympathetic janglings. They galloped. Guardians and Seekers alike, exhaustion tossed aside as the strange sensation propelled them forward, faster, ever faster.
Rolf gasped with agony as the cold, thin air stabbed through his lungs. It seemed as if they galloped so fast that he could barely draw breath. Sound that was not sound transfixed all four ghatti, their more acute senses swimming in it so deeply that they seemed unaware of their Bondmates and their private terrors.
Laboring to force words through clenched teeth, Rolf wrenched himself sideways to shout at Swan Maclough. “What is it? What’s causing it? By the name of all we hold sacred, what is it?” Give it a name. make it a thing and he could cope with it. conquer his fears and fight it. Without it, he felt craven, frozen by his own private phantoms of fear.
Indigo cloak whipping behind her, Sergeant Balthazar riding protectively at her side, at first it appeared she hadn’t heard him. Then he saw her mouth move, the words dashed away, lost in their headlong rush. He pushed his own straining mount closer, lashing him with his reins, digging his spurs in, and he heard her this time.
“Battle! The sounds of battle as we’ve never heard before!”
It was not what he imagined it would sound like. The awed expression on Balthazar’s face gave credence to that.
The ghatti conversed agitatedly amongst themselves, feverishly testing and tasting each wave of sound as the mindnet stretched to its limits, beckoned them.
“There! Now!”
“No hold! Wait!” Koom snarled back at T’ss. “Don’t break in yet!”
“Too perfect, too seamless,” Per’la wailed. “If we meld wrongly, our bridge will shatter them, not strengthen them!”
Slit pupils dilating wide, Chak concentrated, listened to the music of his own heart, then launched his mindvoice through space with eerie precision, humming pinned to the pitch needed to merge with but not shatter the fragile melody of protection they all heard.
With a deep, steadying breath Koom balanced against the security of Chak’s song, joined in without slipping or sliding. Soon the others followed suit. Four near, four far distant as yet, the eight sang their heartsongs.
She could feel the ghatti’s concentration stretching, straining to encompass and protect her, leaving her cast up against the welcoming shore of their minds, brief respite from the devouring current of Vesey’s thoughts.
But the water imagery abruptly ceased, abandoned. Instead, a crack appeared in the earth in front of her feet, zigzagging between her and Khar. It grew deeper, ever deeper and wider, until she stood trembling, tottering on the brink of a chasm that separated her from Khar.
“It is false. Step across. We are right here.” Khar strove to bridge the gap with her mindspeech, but it grew fainter, more indistinct. “It is ... right here,” was the last Doyce heard.
Right here, and so it was. Her boot tips sought out the edge of the chasm, her toes testing the edge, unsurprised at the granular separation and crumbling, minute shifts and rivulets of sandy soil set free that she could distinctly feel through the soles of her boots. So easy to slide over the edge... right here....
And she was falling. Down, down, and down again into the void, the walls of the chasm invisible to her eyes. Faster, faster, falling toward the heart of the earth... and then, suddenly, wheeling upward, soaring faster, ever faster in the opposite direction to seek out the very eye of the universe.
Nothingness sucking her up, spinning her round and round in an ever-expanding whirlpool of emptiness. Stars spinning by until they created a continuous band of light, a nimbus of brilliance wheeling around her and lifting her farther and higher and farther away from her world.
A faint cry wafted from the emptiness so far beneath her, probably only her imagination.
“Doyce, I am here. Do not believe in his lies, please!” And a triad of companion voices, “Here, here, here ... do not believe.”
Easy for them to say. There was nothing else here, any fool could see that: even the diamond points of light, the whirling disk of illumination had faded behind her in the immeasurable distance.
And with the totality of emptiness a groveling fear resonated, nagged, and twitched at her brain from all directions. She screamed with all the power of her lungs and heard no sound, no echo. She cast a thought out to all the compass points and it evaporated, faded away without trace. The only thing... in all this emptiness... a small mote, flailing and bobbing in a sea of nothingness was ... Doyce?
“So... you are nothing,” a voice said. “Absolutely worthless. Worth nothing, for you are nothing.”
“But I am,” she insisted, fighting back tears. “I am, I know I am. I exist. I am a sentient being, aren’t I?”
The rich boom of laughter tickled her, spun her head over heels or heels over head, no sureness to top or bottom. The laughter pealed again and then tapered off into a series of mocking chuckles. “You are, are you? What makes you so sure of that?
“What makes you think you’re not a figment, a shard of some colossal cosmic joke that cracked into a billion pieces, a richly ludicrous fragment of nothingness unable to realize and appreciate the enormity of its nonexistence? And once you’ve dissipated the last of your puny ‘thoughts,’ as you seem to call them, nothing else remains.” The laughter bounced her higher into the ether, dropped her in a belly-swooping descent, then snapped her from side to side as a dog shakes a rat.
“Am I really nothing?” Doyce asked in wonder. “Nothing.” It seemed to make sense. “I am nothing.” And she began to unencumber her mind, casting errant thoughts loose, sending them spinning free on their way to oblivion, except that they were already there.
“If you are nothing, then ask the voice what it is! Doyce, you must ask it! How can it exist if everything is nothingness?”
How unpleasant to have to assimilate a new thought when she was so busy casting out everything she had pack-ratted into her brain for so many years. Such clutter! She shook out each thought and idea and cast it off, watching it float and dissolve. But the new thought kept battering at her from all directions. Well, she had better let it in. The sooner she did, the sooner she could cast it forth. Now what was she supposed to ask?
“What are you? Who are you?” There, that was it.
“I am ... Nothing.”
A curious answer. “But how can you speak to me if I don’t exist?”
An uncertain pause, and then the voice strove for a haughty tone. “Cannot Nothing speak to nothing?”
She worried it back and forth in her mind. “No, I don’t think so,” she responded at last, catching at the thought, examining it and thrusting it back into her head for further use. “In fact,” she gathered her courage, “I think it’s absurd!”
“Good, Doyce! Now more, more! Do it now!” The protective voices grew louder, jubilant, eight-strong now, their melody purling around her.
“Do what now? Oh!” And with dawning comprehension evolving faster and faster, she plummeted back down or up through the layers of nothingness as she realized what she must do. The brightness in front of her eyes grew, a beacon, a signal, a beckoning.
Doyce dug deep into her pocket and with all her remaining strength pulled the medallion free, stared down at it, felt it staring back at her. It glowed, pulsated with a rhythmic, throbbing cold heat that did not burn her hand but illuminated the very bones and blood coursing through it, translucent and fragile—but real. At last it began to spin in her hand, swifter and swifter, or perhaps she only imagined it, a spinning disk of fire and flame so whitely incandescent that the sight was beyond bearing in its purity. It spun, engulfing her very being in a fiery wheel, no beginning and no ending, locking her within it, a mote in the fiery eye of god. She held her hand higher, higher, the pale white beams blinding as a searchlight, cauterizing in its purity. An
d then, with something approaching regret, she flung it into the very heart, the core of the blazing bonfire in the center of the circle, like calling to like, and she could but obey.
A high, keening wail tore from Vesey’s throat as he spun around and thrust his mutilated arm deep into the center of the fire, groping for the medallion. “No, no! Oh, Mother, no!” he screamed. Evelien grabbed at his good arm, struggling to pull him back, and the hair on Cloud’s back stood stiff as he spat and screamed in unison with his mindmate, enduring the pain that he endured. With a burst of superhuman strength, Vesey broke free and threw himself into the maw of the fire, the flames welcoming him, caressing and wreathing him with a white-hot, lucent brilliance, a circlet of fire crowning his brow.
With a percussive slap of sound, a fireball exploded outward, cannoning square into Evelien’s breast, flames quenched in her heart, and she dropped with a tiny murmured cry of dismay, charred crimson cloak puddled around her.
Bright as shooting stars but far more deadly, fire rained from the sky. From the outer rim, Erakwan after Erakwan nocked and set loose a frenzy of arrow torches, setting an outer perimeter of fire around the bonfire. One shaft, in passing, whispered by Cloud’s hackles, setting him alight. He rolled in a frenzy, legs flailing, but the flames fanned themselves to greater heat. With a final undulating scream, he dove headfirst into the fire after his mindmate.
Other fireballs, large and small, shot in random, erratic patterns of bursting, spidery light, like a cache of fireworks exploding from a misplaced match. And as each burst into scintillations, chrysanthemum-petaled with sparklers of light, Doyce saw a face inside, staring at her, young and old, innocent and dangerous alike. Some grimaced in rage, others smiled serenely, and she knew, knew without a shadow of a doubt that they introduced themselves as Gleaners, Gleaners spread across the whole of Canderis and beyond, some confident in their powers and their ability to hide them, others completely unaware they had the gift.
