by Traci Loudin
“Must find a way to get these necklaces off.” Dalan didn’t care that the mysterious person behind the necklaces could hear him through Ti’rros’s sliver. From now on, he intended to remain transmelded just enough that the pendant’s poisonous words couldn’t manipulate him.
“Or must figure out who’s pulling our strings and convince them to let us go.” He’d finally found his problem of consequence, and now he had to solve it by removing the necklace. “One way or the other.”
It had taken her more than a day to swallow her pride, but Nyr eventually decided to return to the camp Dalan and Ti’rros had set up. The boy had completely settled into the body of his tail-horse meld and hadn’t changed back since she arrived.
Irritation bubbled up within Nyr as she gazed at the large, golden-haired beast with its long front leg stretched out in the grass. The Joey had cleaned and wrapped the wound the tail-horse had suffered in the fight from her clanmate Shiv. Out of all of her clanmates, ruthless Shiv was one of the few she truly wished dead.
Dalan’s muscular tail twitched through the grasses again, leaving them flattened in a semicircle around his horse-like body. Unlike a Joey’s tail, Dalan’s was covered in the same fine hairs as the rest of him.
Nyr wondered how well he understood them while fully transmelded. “He’s just going to keep moping around, isn’t he?” She watched him for a reaction.
“The ways of humans are a mystery to me.”
The Joey’s high-pitched voice irritated her. And Dalan hadn’t flicked an ear or given a snort to betray whether he understood their words. No amulet hung from his thick neck, which annoyed her even more.
Nyr got to her feet. “I think that’s a nice way of saying you don’t give a damn. I for one am tired of sitting around.”
“It is not my place to judge or decide.” Ti’rros remained seated, which always looked awkward to Nyr, what with the Joey’s backward knees.
“Because you’ve become the fool’s servant?”
“No, because I’m exiled. I’m considered pathetic and undeserving of life.” She hesitated, then said, “Dalan has given my unimportant life meaning, if only for the moment. And yet again, my fate is delayed.”
“And to think you wanted us to leave you for dead under that boulder.”
The Joey didn’t immediately respond, and Dalan raised his head, looking sidelong at them out of one of his large eyes.
With a long, delicate finger, Ti’rros caressed the pendant around her neck. “While the code among my kind is to give aid to those who have aided, it is unclear whether that applies to helping humans of any race—Changeling or otherwise. You, the inferior breed who ruined our kind’s chance to return to the stars and our homeworld.”
The Joey shook her head, a strangely human gesture. Nyr wondered if the Joey had picked up mannerisms from traveling with her and Dalan.
“But we three—” the Joey looked up as Dalan’s dragonfly buzzed overhead, “or four, depending—have become like a small clan ourselves. Defending one another, standing watch over one another, hunting for each other. We rely on each other for survival. If I weren’t exiled before, my people would certainly exile me now.”
“Oh, magnificent. Now you’re moping too.” It was contagious. Nyr felt hollow, thinking about how much she’d lost. She’d once dreamed of being clan master. Now she had no clan at all—the Joey’s sentimental nonsense notwithstanding. “I can’t go back to my tribe either, okay? Let’s all just sit down and die.”
Dalan sighed, his great barrel chest expanding before forcing the air out of his small nostrils, blowing the grasses down in front of him. As the stalks stood back up, Dalan’s body melted into a smaller shape, with the legs of a horse but a strange head and body. When she recognized his face emerging, he stopped transmelding.
“That’s disgusting,” Nyr blurted.
“Sorry. Need to stay far enough in the meld to heal.” His voice was higher-pitched than usual, owing to his warped body, no doubt. He hesitated before saying, “But… wanted to apologize.”
Nyr looked away, refusing to meet the gaze of those half-human, half-equine eyes. Neither she nor Ti’rros said a word, which forced Dalan to continue.
“Am ashamed… Feel terribly guilty about what happened the other day. I’m sorry.”
Nyr waved him off. “Nothing to apologize for. I’m used to it. It’s the closest you’ve come to acting like one of my own clanmates.”
Dalan’s teeth clamped together. Then he took a breath and tilted his face up toward the Fragment. “I know. Why didn’t you change into your feline meld?”
Nyr plucked a piece of grass and folded it over, unwilling to admit the truth. Like the time she’d apologized to Klin, she hadn’t been in complete control. The trinket hadn’t spoken to her, but it had caused her to freeze up. Part of her wondered if, having heard their earlier conversation, the Ageless behind the trinket wanted her to suffer for revealing his secret. Maybe the trinket had made Dalan attack her.
No, that wasn’t me, the trinket told her. I certainly don’t want you attacking each other.
And I’m supposed to believe you? If she’d spoken the words, they would’ve come out in a hiss. You made me hesitate.
Dalan waited with an expectant expression.
Her hands kept moving, folding the grass. “Oh, old habit, I guess. If you were one of my kind, and I’d turned into a cat, things would’ve escalated a lot worse than they did.”
I couldn’t very well let you hurt my other wearers, could I?
Lay off the bullshit. I know who you are, Ageless.
“Of course.” Ti’rros pulled her attention away. “It makes sense. Animals often avoid aggression by acting submissive.”
Nyr felt her blood ignite. “Stupid Joey, what would you—”
“Calm down, Nyr,” Dalan said in his strange voice. “Until we can come up with a plan to find the person you say is behind the necklaces, we need to stay together. Like a little clan, as Ti’rros said.”
“And here I wondered how well you could understand us.” Nyr smirked at him, her pulse still pounding.
The golden fur covering Dalan’s part-human features no longer seemed as impressive as it did on a full horse. Or whatever that creature was.
Yes, please stay together, my dear.
Dalan’s misshapen head jerked toward Saquey, who buzzed along just above the grasses, following the gentle curve of the hills.
I’m sending someone to show you the way.
“Saquey sees a lone traveler heading toward us from the northeast,” Dalan said.
Nyr felt the fur sprout from her skin. “It’s a messenger from the voice behind the amulets.”
Dalan struggled to stand, but with the awkward shape of his half-melded body, he fell back on his side. “Going to have a look.”
The boy’s golden fur shifted into reddish brown sprouts, which turned into feathers as he rapidly shrank. His front legs wrenched in their sockets. Bones creaked, transforming into wings, making him scream in pain. Nyr hoped the traveler didn’t hear.
Ti’rros came to stand shoulder-to-shoulder beside her as Nyr faced northeast, her eyes straining toward the distant horizon. “Lead the traveler back to us, Dalan.”
With a flurry of flapping, Dalan rose into the air and followed his dragonfly across the grasslands.
Nyr felt the beginnings of bloodlust stir within her. “It’s time to find out what’s really going on.”
Chapter 18
Korreth awakened to the sound of the lever turning. He sat up and shook his head. The room he shared with Jorrim was dimly lit, and the other man hadn’t awakened. As the door slid to the side, light shone in on his face. Jorrim squinted and groaned.
Soledad stepped inside, followed by a young woman. She was fair of skin, though not nearly as fair as the Advisor, her face dotted with freckles.
“This is Edanna.” Soledad motioned to the girl. “She’s here to check on Jorrim’s bandages. Please see that he stays abed
.”
Korreth noticed Soledad had cleaned up and changed clothes. Unlike their homespun clothing, their mistress’s light blue top was Ancient material, though he wasn’t sure about her black pants. A man named Tephen had brought him and Jorrim water to bathe and fresh clothes last night.
Soledad met his gaze. “Do you want to stay with him?”
Korreth tried not to let his surprise show on his face.
“I don’t need you standing over me all day, that’s for sure,” Jorrim said before he could answer. “You’ll just be bored anyhow.”
Korreth laid a hand on Jorrim’s shoulder, and Jorrim tapped, I’ll gladly have her company though.
He didn’t have to guess which her his friend meant. Before he and Soledad could make it to the doorway, Jorrim was already chatting with the young woman. “So has your tribe always lived here?”
Korreth followed Soledad outside. She twisted the lever on the outside of the yellow partition, and the door closed. They passed purple and blue partitions on their way back toward what the townspeople considered the temple. Flanking the statue in the middle of the town square stood ranks of young men and women in uniform with a variety of weapons. Off to the side stood an older man with graying hair.
With an expression of distaste, he announced, “The Advisor is waiting for you inside.”
One of the soldiers broke rank and rushed toward the entrance they’d gone through yesterday. He twisted the lever, and the door clanked open to reveal the Advisor. This time when Korreth and Soledad went in, they turned left.
The first room they entered contained nothing but short walls with desks between. The second was much the same, with more gray walls. This time, though, two doors stood in the far wall, one the same bland gray, the other painted red.
“I suppose you can’t be separated from your bodyguards for long,” the Advisor remarked as she took them through the gray door. This room’s walls were covered by filmy surfaces.
“As long as they’re in a certain radius, it’s fine,” Soledad said, making Korreth wonder what subtext he’d missed and whether their exchange contained a clue to understanding how Soledad’s technology worked. He knew better than to ask anything that might give him away.
Unlike the adaptable pillars Korreth had sat on yesterday, the chairs in this room seemed solid, though most faced the walls.
Soledad sat down next to Kaia. “I thought for a moment you were going to take us to the chamber of the Sacred Artifact.”
“What sacred artifact?”
Korreth took a seat further down from his mistress near the filmy wall. He could see through its surface to the southeast, outside the town. A long bar at about waist height attached to the translucent window, as though to keep people from trying to step through it and out into the grasslands.
Soledad sounded amused when she answered, “I just imagined that if you told your people anything about the tracking device at all, it must be considered some kind of holy relic.”
Kaia snorted. “The Prophet didn’t want us abusing our powers, so they don’t know anything about it.”
“The Prophet’s dead, Kaia. He may have foreseen the Catastrophe, but apparently he never guessed we might be greedy enough to start killing each other. We need that tracking device now more than ever.”
“I try to use it only rarely. I don’t want to abuse my powers, like some people.”
“Oh, I’m sure you only use it when necessary.”
“You seemed to appreciate my directions to Rollick, Gryid, and Cerrit’s bases at the time.”
“I did.” Soledad paused. “Indeed, that’s my point. It was necessary then, and it’s necessary now. Give me the locations of the others, and I’ll go warn them about Zen. Before it’s too late.”
Kaia got up and put a hand on the bar. “This was a place of knowledge, of learning.” Looking over her shoulder, Kaia’s eyes slid across Korreth and fixed on a point behind him. He glanced in that direction, but determined that she gazed at nothing more than memory.
Soledad went to stand beside her, but faced outward toward the grasslands. “Yes, and I know what you’re thinking. When humanity needed us most, we failed. We didn’t understand how the K’inTesh communicated until too late. Long after the Catastrophe.”
Korreth’s mind whirled with the implications. He found himself asking, “You never communicated with the aliens before the Catastrophe? They just attacked…”
“The truth is far more complex than that, Korreth. I don’t have time to give you a history lesson,” Soledad snapped. He couldn’t remember a time she’d done that. She must really be worried. “Let Kaia and I talk.”
His eyes narrowed. “Yes, Soledad.” They knew the answers to humankind’s greatest question: what brought about the Catastrophe? But he dared not challenge her again, lest Soledad send him away. If he stayed and eavesdropped, he might be the only non-Ageless to learn what happened all those centuries ago.
Kaia’s voice carried a depth of sadness Korreth couldn’t comprehend as she said, “We’re bringing destruction down upon ourselves, just like we always do.”
“Kaia, just let me warn them.” Soledad searched the face of her fellow Ageless. “You owe them that much, at least.”
The Advisor faced her. One side of her mouth twitched upward as if she wanted to smile, but no amusement shone in her eyes. “We’ve gotten good at manipulating people since the Catastrophe, haven’t we? For survival. I wonder what you actually would tell the others?”
“What? Why would you say that?”
“I lost contact with everyone over the centuries. I should’ve paid better attention.” Kaia shook her head. “Seven. That’s how many died before I bothered to check. I didn’t want to use the technology the Prophet left in my care, not at first. But after I noticed seven had died since the Catastrophe, I began checking once a decade, and then twice a decade. And I saw when the next beacon went dark—Henka’s. And then Liang. Rollick. Cerrit…”
The Advisor blinked rapidly, as though genuinely struggling to hold back tears.
Soledad reached out as though to shake her, but then put her hands down. “Let me tell them, then.” She gripped the bar with both hands, as if to keep from strangling her fellow Ageless. “Before any more names get added to that list. Like your friend Gryid.”
Kaia smiled. “His beacon is back. I thought he’d been killed too… I couldn’t see his beacon or contact him. But he’s safe now.”
“And I’ll bet you warned him, didn’t you? The others deserve the same chance.”
“I always knew everyone’s locations, but I didn’t want to contact them because of the Prophet’s Mandate.” Kaia spun on her heel, gesturing at the empty room. “Don’t you remember what happened here?”
“There were plenty of lectures about the K’inTesh here. Which one do you mean?” Soledad’s voice betrayed her rising annoyance.
Korreth hoped she wouldn’t do anything stupid. Despite the amazing work Kaia’s Ancient machines had done, Jorrim still needed time to heal.
“The last time. The most important lecture of all.” Kaia’s eyes lit up with a zealot’s faith, making Korreth shiver. “The Prophet told us what we must do to keep the world from ever suffering another Catastrophe.”
“You know what I think?” Soledad stepped in front of Kaia, cutting off her line of sight to whatever memories she imagined. “If I hadn’t told you what happened to Rollick, you wouldn’t have told me about any of this. You’re lying. Or hiding something. What’s really stopping you from telling everyone that Zen’s coming to kill them?”
The Advisor’s shoulders slumped, and her years fell away, leaving her a middle-aged woman. “Because I’m the reason he’s doing it.”
“What?” Soledad pulled back.
This wasn’t what Korreth had hoped to learn. Kaia and Soledad’s conversation had taken turns he’d never expected. He was willing to bet he now knew more about the Catastrophe than any other non-Ageless in the world.
&n
bsp; Kaia took a deep, shuddery breath. “A century or so after the Catastrophe—who knows when?—Zen’s sister Rafia was killed by her own people. As far as either of us knew, none of the other Ageless deaths up ‘til then had been murders. It broke Zen’s spirit. A few years later, there was another of us who died for her technology. A Purebred tribe conquered hers in an effort to attain her tech, and Timar was killed in the fighting. I learned of it after.”
“Pretty sure you’ve told me most of that already,” Soledad said. “What are you saying? Was Zen with the conquering tribe?”
Kaia faced Soledad, her expression resolute. “No. Zen contacted me, and I gave him my condolences. I don’t know why I told him about Timar being killed for her tech; I guess to somehow give him solace that his sister wasn’t the only one. When he learned that a second Ageless had died for her secrets, his rampage began.”
Kaia paused and then motioned with her hands as though backtracking. “You see, when he asked where Timar’s body could be found, to pay his respects, I believed him. I thought he wanted to mourn for her as he did for his sister. I was a fool. He violated the Mandate and stole what was left of her technology and notes. I watched as Seamus and Zen’s beacons approached one another. Not long after that, Seamus’s beacon went out. When I asked Zen what had happened, he stopped talking to me. That was the last time we spoke. Then Zen went after Henka and the rest.”
Soledad nodded, and although Korreth had trouble following their conversation, his mistress had put the puzzle pieces together. “And Henka possessed knowledge of cellular manipulation and… some kind of neurological information?”
Kaia gave a curt nod. “Even without my help, Zen eventually tracked her down.”
Soledad’s brow creased. “And you didn’t tell anyone else about this, even though you knew it was happening? You just let Liang and Rollick and Cerrit become his next victims?”
