The Bearens' Hope: Book Four of the Soul-Linked Saga

by Laura Jo Phillips

  “Who the hell are you?” she demanded abruptly. “I was told that I was to speak with the Arimas, not some servant. This is crap. I’m not saying a word to you.”

  The other woman did not respond by so much as a flicker of an eyelash. She simply stood there, staring at Mara with intensely blue eyes.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Mara asked, fighting to keep the fear out of her voice. “Too stupid to talk? You can’t possibly be as stupid as you look.”

  The woman moved so quickly that Mara barely saw it. One second she was standing there with her hands at her sides, the next second one hand was raised slightly in her direction, and a black handled knife was quivering between her fingers on the table in front of her, the tip buried a good inch into the wood.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Mara yelled, jerking her hand off the table and away from the blade. “Are you crazy or something?”

  Darleen slipped another knife from her belt and tossed it casually into the air, catching it between two fingers without taking her eyes off of Mara. Mara folded her arms across her chest and tucked her chin down, feeling exposed and threatened. The woman continued to stare at her, waiting.

  “Fine, I apologize,” Mara said grudgingly.

  The other woman considered her for a moment before returning the knife to a sheath in her belt. Mara relaxed a tiny bit. There was still a knife sticking out of the table a foot in front of her, but no matter how fast the other woman was, surely Mara was fast enough to grab that knife long before the other woman could.

  “I’m Citizen Jasani,” Mara said belligerently. “You can’t touch me, not legally, not without breaking Clan Jasani laws.”

  The other woman smiled, but there was no humor in the expression. Mara shivered. “You aren’t Clan Jasani, are you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  The woman’s smile widened fractionally.

  “So what is it that you want?” Mara asked.

  The woman tilted her head slightly and continued to stare. Mara was becoming quite unnerved by those damn blue eyes. Who was this woman, anyway? Why wouldn’t she talk? Could she talk?

  Mara thought about that last question for a moment, then sighed.

  “Fine, I won’t be rude when they come in,” she said. “That’s what you want, right? Me to mind my manners? Be polite?”

  The other woman smiled again, this time baring her teeth a little. Mara recognized a threat when she saw one. “I’ll be polite.”

  The woman stared at her for a moment longer, then walked toward Mara, her steps smooth and silent, as though she were gliding across the floor instead of walking. The closer she got to Mara, the harder Mara pressed herself back into her chair. The woman reached for the knife still sticking out of the table, pulling it out of the wood with a flick of her wrist. She returned it to its sheath in her belt along with several others, then walked behind Mara.

  Mara held her breath as she waited for whatever was coming. She was sure the woman meant to use one of those knives on her. After a few long seconds she turned her head slowly to look over her shoulder. The woman stood a couple of feet behind her, her arms at her sides like before, her eyes trained on Mara.

  Mara turned back around until she was facing forward again. Apparently the woman wasn’t satisfied with Mara’s agreement. She was going to remain there to make sure that Mara watched her tongue.

  A few moments later the door opened again, and three women entered the room. The first to enter was a tall, slender woman with long black hair carrying a long sword in an enameled sheath at her hip.

  Mara blinked, hardly able to grasp that the woman was really and truly carrying a sword. Then she smiled inwardly. Did these women really think it would be that simple? That all they had to do was dress up with a scary looking sword and she would be so frightened that she would tell them whatever they wanted to know? Well, they were about to learn different. Mara Winicke did not scare quite that easily.

  The second woman was shorter than the first, with dark brown hair and pale green eyes. The way she moved communicated a sense of danger to Mara that she tried, and failed, to shrug off. The sword might be a joke, but this woman was one to be cautious of.

  The third woman was very petite with emerald green eyes and long, flowing red-gold hair. She wore a thin gold circlet with a blue star sapphire on her forehead, marking her as Princess Lariah Dracon, though Mara did not need that to know who the woman was.

  Mara recognized all three of the women, though she had never been introduced to any of them. The first was the woman her sons had seemed so enamored of on that fateful day when she’d been caught trying to collect a blood sample from the Princess’s daughter. It was a bit of a shock to realize that the woman was an Arima. The second was the woman who had transformed from a wolf, and of course the third was Princess Lariah herself.

  Mara had thought of these women as young, air-headed upstarts who had nothing going for them other than a lot of luck. She very much wanted to sneer at them, but there was something about them that warned against it. It wasn’t anger, or danger or even threat. It was power. These women had real power. Not just the power to have their orders obeyed. Something deeper. Something that lived inside of them, that flowed through them like their blood. Power of a kind that Mara had never encountered, and wasn’t sure how to react to.

  Princess Lariah stood behind the chair at the opposite end of the table from Mara, her emerald eyes studying Mara with curiosity. The dark haired woman stood behind the chair on the left, and the wolf woman went to the right.

  “I am Arima Summer Katre,” the dark haired woman announced, shocking Mara. As she spoke, her long, graceful arms changed. Within seconds, the images of Loni and Ran, in their golden furred katrenca alter-forms, appeared on her arms, their bright eyes seeming to stare directly at Mara. Mara glanced up in surprise, and saw the image of Maxim’s katrenca around the woman’s neck and shoulders.

  She had heard stories of the lau-lotu, but she had never thought to see them for herself. In truth, she had doubted that the stories were even real. She wasn’t sure whether she was more surprised by the sudden appearance of the binding marks, or the knowledge that this woman was Arima to her sons.

  “Then you are my daughter-in-law,” Mara said, without her usual sharp sarcasm. She had not forgotten about the woman standing behind her.

  “No, I am not,” Summer contradicted. “Your former sons have disowned you. I am nothing to you, as you are nothing to me.”

  Summer’s voice was cool and dismissive, surprising Mara. She had expected anger at least. Angering other people was her specialty, and she was very good at it. When they were angry, people did all sorts of things that they normally wouldn’t do.

  “I am Arima Saige Lobo,” the second woman said. Mara turned her gaze to Saige, noting that her lau-lotu of three black and white striped wolves were also now on display. Mara did not meet Arima Lobo’s eyes. She remembered her, and her eyes, all too well, and knew that they saw far too much.

  “I am Princess Nahoa-Arima Lariah Dracon,” the third woman said. Mara looked at Lariah, this time expecting to see the three leopard spotted dracons on her arms and shoulders. She was not disappointed.

  Mara wanted to meet this woman’s eyes directly, and she tried. This was the woman who had started it all, the one who had set off Mara’s downfall. But even as Mara lifted her eyes to the Princess’s she knew she wasn’t going to be able to do it. Her gaze got as far as the deep golden eyes of High Prince Garen’s dracon just below Lariah’s throat, and she could raise them no further.

  “What is it that you want from me?” Mara asked abruptly in an attempt to cover her confusion and nervousness. So far, this whole thing was not going as she had expected.

  None of the women reacted to her question. Instead they all pulled out the chairs they stood behind and sat down.

  “Ms. Winicke,” Princess Lariah began in a soft, rich voice that seemed at odds with her petite figure. “Before we begin, I
would ask you a question concerning your brother, William Winicke.”

  Mara was so shocked by that statement that she had no chance to hide her surprise. How did they know about William? she wondered in a near panic. Did they really know, or were they guessing? She could not even acknowledge the question without giving something away, so she said nothing.

  “Were the two of you close?” Princess Lariah asked.

  Mara found herself wanting to answer the question, which seemed odd to her. If she admitted that William was her brother, she was admitting more than was allowed.

  “I understand your hesitation in answering the question,” Princess Lariah said calmly. “Since you do not wish to answer, I will tell you that your brother is deceased. If you were close, I offer my condolences for your loss.”

  Mara was stunned by both the news, and the feeling of sadness that hit her. She blinked several times rapidly and swallowed hard as she shoved away the mental image of the chubby baby William had once been.

  “How do I know this is true?” she demanded, trying hard to cover her emotional reaction to the news.

  “I am certain that you do not intend to question Princess Lariah’s word,” Saige said.

  “I am certain that you cannot expect me to believe everything you tell me,” Mara retorted. “I am a prisoner here, after all.”

  Saige’s eyes narrowed, which gave Mara a secret sense of satisfaction. Until she heard the low growl coming from the woman. That scared the hell out of her.

  Princess Lariah lifted one hand from the table top and Saige subsided.

  “You make a good point,” she said to Mara. “When we have finished our interview with you, we will make arrangements for you to travel to Berria where you can see William for yourself, and pay your last respects.”

  Mara opened her mouth, then closed it. On second thought, asking the Princess how she was supposed to believe her again did not seem like a good idea. Mara nodded instead, keeping her eyes carefully away from Arima Lobo.

  “Our next question is one which you may, or may not know the answer to,” Princess Lariah said.

  “What question?” Mara asked.

  “Was your mother a berezi?”

  Again Mara was stunned. How the hell had they learned so much? Should she confirm what they seemed to know, or not? For reasons that Mara could not understand, she felt a strong urge to answer the question. She struggled against the urge for a few moments, then decided that since she couldn’t think of a good reason not to answer the question, she would.

  “Yes, she was,” Mara replied, feeling a ghost of the old anger rise up in her. She had not thought of her mother for many years, and did not want to think of her now.

  “Your mother was also William’s mother,” Princess Lariah said.

  “Yes,” Mara replied, even though it had not been a question.

  “The big question now is, who, or what, was William’s father?” Summer asked.

  “No,” Princess Lariah said. “The big question now is, what happened to your father, Mara?”

  Mara leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms in front of her, clenching her jaw in an effort to keep her own mouth shut. She had the strangest urge to reply, to spill her whole life story to these women that she did not know, and did not like. Had they worked some sort of magic on her?

  Arima Lobo cocked her head. “We’ll help you out a little,” she offered. “We know that William was Brethren, and we know that his father was Brethren. We know that Brethren must mate with berezi, and we know that Brethren are descendents of the ancient Narrasti.”

  Mara dropped her eyes to the table in front of her and thought hard. They knew so much more than she could have imagined. What difference would it make if she told them her story? Her story had nothing to do with the Brethren. Well, a little, but not much. Nor had they asked about the Brethren. They were asking about her.

  She wondered briefly why they wanted to know her story, then dismissed the question. She actually wanted to tell it, and that was the strangest thing of all the strange things that had been occurring since she entered this room. She raised her eyes to Princess Lariah’s, and began talking.

  “My earliest memories are of myself, my mother, and my father traveling all the time. We never stayed in one place for very long. We would be on a beach near the ocean one week, and in the mountains the next.” Mara hesitated, her eyes softening with the memories of her early childhood. “I was happy. My parents loved me, and we had fun together. My father was always teaching me things. I used to think he was the smartest man ever born.”

  Mara’s expression cooled. “Then it ended.”

  “What happened?” Princess Lariah asked.

  “We were staying in a little house by a lake. It was a simple house, nothing fancy, but the lake was beautiful. It was mid-summer, and my father spent weeks teaching me to swim. It didn’t come easy to me, but my father was always so patient, and so gentle with me.

  “One night I kissed my parents goodnight and went to bed. When I awoke the next morning, my childhood was over.”

  “How old were you?” Princess Lariah asked.

  “Ten,” Mara replied. “There was a man in the house that I had never seen before. He didn’t look right. His skin was scaly and sort of green. He had yellow eyes with narrow pupils, and his teeth looked too big for his mouth.”

  Mara swallowed the sudden lump in her throat that the old memories caused. “He told me that my father was dead, and that my mother belonged to him. He said that my father had stolen her, and that he had come to take her back.” Mara shrugged. “It made no sense to me, but I didn’t ask him any questions. I wanted to, but my mother was sitting next to me on the couch while he talked, and she squeezed my hand hard whenever I opened my mouth. I knew she wanted me to keep quiet, so I did.

  “After he told me that my father was dead, he watched me really hard. I didn’t want him to know what I was thinking or feeling, so I pretended that I felt nothing. I didn’t know it then, but later I realized that it was a test. He wanted to know if I could be trusted to hide my feelings.

  His name was Stalnek, and he told me that he was going to let me live, in spite of who my father was, as a gift to my mother. But if I ever betrayed his trust, or disobeyed him in any way, he would kill me, no matter what my mother said.”

  “So you lived under a threat of death from the time you were ten years old?” Summer asked.

  Mara glanced sharply at the dark haired woman, searching for any hint of sympathy, but she found none. That was good. Mara did not want sympathy.

  “Yes,” she said. “And it made me strong.”

  “Then what happened?” Princess Lariah asked.

  “Then we went to a place in the desert where there were other people that looked a little like Stalnek. I never left that compound again until the day I left Earth for Jasan.

  “My mother changed. She never smiled, rarely spoke, and refused to go out of the house for any reason. She left me to fend for myself.” Mara could not hide the anger she still felt toward her mother, and she didn’t try. She glanced at the women seated around the table, but their expressions revealed nothing of their thoughts.

  “About a year later, William was born. He was a cute little baby with chubby cheeks and pretty blue eyes. He looked completely human.

  “Mother seemed to liven up a little bit after Winkie was born. She didn’t talk, but I saw her smile a few times when she was holding him, and I thought maybe she would get better after all. Then, when Winkie was about six months old, she was holding him and suddenly she screamed. She jumped up and shoved him into his crib. I don’t think she ever looked at him again. She certainly never touched him again.

  “He had started to change, you see,” Mara continued. “His pretty baby skin started to get rough and scaly, like Stalnek’s. After that, about once a month or so, you could see a little change in him. I got used to it pretty quickly because I was the one who had to take care of him.

  “
When Winkie was about a year and a half old, my mother had another baby, only this time both she and the baby died.”

  All of the women raised their right fists to their hearts and bowed their heads, surprising her greatly. She knew what it mean, of course. She had lived on Jasan for five hundred years. But nobody had ever expressed sympathy to her over her the loss of her mother. Not even to the young teenage girl she had been at the time.

  “Thank you,” Mara said in a low voice. She felt her face heat as she said the words, but nevertheless, they were meant.

  The women lowered their fists and waited. Mara took a deep breath and continued.

  “Once my mother was gone, Stalnek wasn’t sure what to do with me. He had let me live for my mother’s sake, or rather, that is what he had told me. By then I had figured out that the real reason he let me live was that he hoped I would turn out to be a berezi like my mother. Only I wasn’t.”

  “How did he know that?” Summer asked.

  “Stalnek was able to scent berezi,” Mara replied. “As far as I ever knew, he was the only one with that ability. When I reached puberty, he told me that I was not a berezi, and that I was worthless to him, and to the Brethren.

  “He ignored me completely after that, but he didn’t kill me. He needed someone to take care of William, and I was it. I didn’t mind though. William was a fun child, and it gave me something to do. Until he got to be about twelve years old. By then, he didn’t look too human any more. His skin was green and scaly, he’d lost all of his hair, and his jaw was beginning to grow. I saw other Brethren that were older and looked even less human than William, but only a few. There was no telling how much more he would change by the time he was an adult, but Stalnek was very proud of how regressed he was already.”

  “These changes were considered to be a good thing?” Saige asked.

  “Oh yes, absolutely. The Brethren’s main goal, their main purpose, is to return to their former glory, before they began breeding with humans. That’s why they breed with berezi. Berezi are the key to their regression.”

  “Why do they want to regress?” Summer asked.