It became important to know. It became more important to know than to continue hiding herself from herself.
“I think I would be less afraid now, Jon. Try. Please try. I will do my best to let you search as deeply as you must.”
“Later, letise. Now, we will prepare plans for locating our Octad members without alerting Rankin. Fricka must regain much strength, and all of us more geographical knowledge before we can leave here again.”
“How will you approach Rankin?”
“With great care, and with great stealth,” Jon replied. “Fricka’s surround will give us much-needed protection. As we collect the others, their individual talents, added to those we already have, will offer us more defenses, and the greater strength there is in unity.”
“If we can find them,” Lenore said, trying not to allow the guilty hope to arise that they never find the others. To prove to Jon, Minton, Fricka—and to herself—that she would continue to assist with the search, regardless of what the outcome meant, personally, to her, she said, “Where do we start?”
“We go back to where Zareth was,” Jon said. “Even cloaked, as he must be, he surely felt my command. He, as are the others, as Minton did when he learned the perils of translation within the field of Rankin’s enhanced range, will be making their way overland in search of me. He will not have traveled far.”
Zenna awoke to another desert dawn with a glowing golden sky streaking high above sharp, black mountain-peaks, visible through the narrow window across the single room. Glesta, still sleeping, lay curled beside her, tight fists nestled under her chin. She soothed the sleeping child’s troubled mind, casting strong reassurance over her, promises she knew not if she would be able to fulfill. But she must try!
Rankin, as exhausted as any of them by the travails of the previous day, still slept, the amplifier cradled as close to him as Glesta was to her. Could she get it?
Stealthily, leaving Glesta on the bed, she slid off, crept across the floor, careful not to stumble on the hard-packed earth floor, littered with detritus blown in on the desert wind, just as careful to keep from crossing the narrow band of sunlight beginning to peek through the window in the adobe wall. She wanted to cast no shadow, to cause not change in the level of dimness. Three steps away...two...one. A swift lunge, and she would have the amplifier. Another, to grab her child, and she and Glesta would be gone.
Patán! She berated herself silently. Why had she not carried Glesta with her? Did she risk waking her now and having her make the leap to her side? Glesta had some levitation abilities—more than Zenna herself—but were they developed enough yet? In secret, she had been working with her daughter to help her enhance the talent. But could she expand the privacy bubble wide enough to reach out now to Glesta, or would her probe escape, alerting the sleeping men?
She hesitated, deciding, one foot poised to place itself in position for the final stride that would put the amplifier within her reach.
The time was now! She made that last long stride, grasped the amplifier and as she did so, heard Glesta cry out. She whirled.
B’tar held the child, one arm around her middle, clutching her struggling body to his, oblivious of her heels drumming against his thighs, her torso twisting as she flailed her arms in a futile attempt to claw at his eyes.
“Mama! Make him put me down!”
“You heard her,” Rankin said, and she tore her gaze from the sight of her child captured and held, saw him still lying in exactly the same position, but now with his eyes open, a baneful smile on his face. “B’tar will let her go—when you return the amplifier to me.”
Still, Zenna hesitated. She held it. She controlled it. Could she, somehow, use it to translate the four of them back to Aazonia, this minute? She fed her mind into it, linked with its intuitive fibers and felt it waver. She backed out of it swiftly. No! It lacked the stability to translate four minds.
Translating only two with it was perilous enough. She could not, would not, risk her daughter’s life this way. Slowly, defeated, she held out the amplifier to Rankin.
He smiled again, sitting up, then standing. He shook his head, refusing to accept it. “You wanted it,” he said. “So you keep it.” He crossed the room and lifted the still struggling child from B’tar’s ungentle hold. “I,” he added, “will keep this. Fair trade?”
“No!” Zenna shrieked, flinging herself bodily at him.
He sidestepped her, allowing B’tar time to block her physically. “Oh, I think you’ll agree. I think you will have to. The device grows more unstable with each interworld translation, does it not? Even I can sense that. It requires tuning, Zenna. Tuning only you can perform, since it is keyed primarily to your mind.”
“I can tune it no further,” she said. “It is going to die, and those connected to it, also. If not in the next translation, then in any one soon after that.”
“You will have to tune it differently, then. Already, it has the power to amplify my thoughts, to cast my net wider. Now I want more from it.”
“It has no more to give!”
Rankin tossed a terrified Glesta toward the overhead beams, and caught her as she came down, holding her upside down by one foot, swinging her from side to side like a pendulum, eyeing the thick adobe wall as if measuring the arc of travel her head would have to make in order to miss—or hit it.
Zenna sent quieting thoughts to her daughter, whose struggles ceased as she slid into a safe place. Zenna sent her even deeper, into a place Glesta had never been before, into one of her own hide-outs, one where she had even, on occasion, hidden from her brother, just to tease. There, she knew, not even Jonallo could find the child.
Despair flooded her. The amplifier could be fine-tuned no more. She had done as much as she could to it. It was due to fail. It would fail. And if Rankin continued to insist she repair it so they could make one more trip, she also knew she—and he—could die. She flicked an exploratory thread into the cesspit that was his mind and knew, knew he expected only one more translation out of the amplifier.
His escape trip.
That he would readily sacrifice B’tar, she had long known. He had no scruples. B’tar, who considered himself Rankin’s partner, was nothing but a tool, however weak, to use. He would abandon him in a flash, if that best served his own purposes.
The only way Rankin could get back to Aazoni and his amassed wealth was with the amplifier—and Zenna—even, maybe especially—if it killed her in the process. The one holding the device, the one whose mind was linked most intimately with it during translation, was the one most at risk. The passenger—Rankin in this case—would likely survive.
Unless—The thought horrified her. Unless he tried to link himself to it and took Glesta as the supporting mind.
So. It was to be now. Or was it? That fine connection she had maintained, however horrible it was, with his mind, told her he had a germ of a plan. She couldn’t begin to read what it was, but sensed his glee, his growing belief that there was another way.
What other way, she could not ascertain. Nor could she trust Rankin’s machinations...
Deep within the cocoon of safety where she had sent Glesta, she fed the knowledge that her own time was nearly over. When it was, when her maternal signature was no longer a part of Glesta, then the child was to slip out of that safe place and find The Other. That Jon might be in contact with the potential foster mother was a chance she had to take.
Surely, he would be compassionate with an innocent child, even if he was sure her mother had betrayed every code of honor. And Minton...he would want their daughter. Even if, without the amplifier, it would be impossible for him to take Glesta home, he would want her safe and loved until she was old enough, strong enough, to make the translation as part of an Octad. Minton, or Jon, or both, would return for Glesta in time.
Her preparations, her decision, had taken only a split second, and now she looked again at Rankin, still swinging the apparently lifeless child in ever widening arcs. Her tawny hair w
hipped against the pale wall. With the next swing, her skull would connect.
“All right!” She leaped to catch Glesta in mid-arc. “What do you want me to do?”
Moments later, as Rankin finished explaining, Zenna gasped. “I cannot do that!”
“You will,” Rankin informed her, holding Glesta’s limp form, upright now, but with one hand at the back of her fragile neck, the other cupped around her chin. “And you will do it now.” He nodded at the amplifier. “Tune it as I have ordered.”
“If I do, then you will never get home.”
His smile sent a shudder through her. “When I have your brother, your bond-mate, and whoever else they may have brought—or the other amplifier, if that is how they traveled, then I shall have no difficulty in returning to Aazonia.”
Still, she dared to defy him. “Where you will be captured and put to death if you refuse repatterning.”
“Repatterned, I would have no knowledge of the life I now enjoy. Repatterned, I would be unable to make use of my wealth.” He tightened his hands perceptibly around Glesta’s neck. “I will not be captured, Zenna. You will see to that.”
He flung a vicious mental stab at her which, amplified, sent her reeling outside through the partially opened door, to fetch up with her back against a tall saguaro. Its spines dug into her viciously, but their pain was nothing compared to the pain of watching Rankin stride through the door with her helpless child still dangling from between his hands, heading toward her threateningly.
Scrambling to her feet, she left her Kahinya to take care of her physical wounds, and ducking past Rankin, returned to the hut. There, she wove her mind into the intricacies of the amplifier, creating from it an entirely different device.
Rankin knew when she had succeeded. There was no way she could prevent that. As the amplifier caught Jon’s essence, it transmitted that to Rankin, who laughed in soft triumph and tossed the child like a rag doll to B’tar, who nearly missed.
Put her inside the other hut, Rankin ordered. Keep her out of my sight. And away from her mother. He snatched the amplifier from Zenna’s hand and let his mind bite into it, mentally projecting all it permitted him to see—simply to torment her.
Helplessly, Zenna tried to block out what Rankin blared forth, but was unable. She yearned to hide far down inside herself, to join Glesta in oblivion, but could not.
“Jonallo,” Rankin gloated to Zenna. “Ah, and as I thought, your beloved bond-mate. Does it not feel strange to you, after all these years, to read his signature so loudly, so clearly? To see him standing as he does, looking so close, yet knowing he remains oblivious to your presence?”
She refused to answer, and he grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking it viciously. “Speak to me, woman!”
She spat on his feet.
He flung her away, leaving her lying in the baking sun. “Ah!” he said. “But they disappear, their signatures blocked. A surround, do you suppose? Now who would Jonallo have chosen for that task? Who has the most powerful willayin?”
Though she strived to retreat, to keep him at bay, the new and different focus of the amplifier made that impossible. “Fricka. Fricka of Nokori,” he said, picking the information right out of her mind. “An old childhood playmate of yours and Jonallo’s, am I right?”
She did not deign to answer, but both of them knew he did not require her to. He knew, without her confirmation.
Moments passed while he let the amplifier’s strength pick out another, and another of Jonallo’s Octad from their different points on Earth.
“Zareth,” he said, “and Ree. Soon, Jonallo will find them. Oh, the pickings will be good.”
In three long paces, Rankin stood over her, bombarding her with the knowledge that he had most of Jon’s Octad pinpointed, that he could pick them off whenever he chose. Grabbing her hair again, he yanked her to her feet. “The moment they are together, you will speak to them,” he said. “You will call them to you with the amplified voice of this device. They are five. We are three. Together we complete an Octad.”
She defied him. “I will not.”
“Then your child dies.”
“If she dies, you have no further hold over me, do you?”
That, finally, gave him pause. He backed away from her, keeping out of her reach, both physically and mentally.
But Zenna knew he was not done.
There were others of the Octad still out there. Who would they be? And where? With the amplifier, it was only a matter of time until Rankin discovered their hiding places. She closed her eyes.
In having retuned it at his orders, she had sentenced the others to death.
Chapter Seventeen
THE NEXT THREE DAYS passed swiftly in the mountain cabin while they all healed and rested, and while Jon tried repeatedly to penetrate the powerful barriers Lenore could not break down within herself, barriers that, once breached, would permit him access to her deepest places—and information as to Zenna’s last sure location.
Each attempt had left her exhausted, frustrated, because she knew there must be information inside her mind that would help Jon find the place where Zenna had been—the place where Rankin would still surely be...only a part of her resisted so strongly he feared he would harm her unless she, herself, could break through the blocks she erected each time, and offer him a safe way in.
“It will come, letise,” he assured her after each session. “We approach closer with each attempt. You were so swift to protect yourself from Rankin’s rough probe, you instinctively blocked—and without restraint. What we must do now is break down those blocks, one by one, but this is new to you and while you say you are not an infant, in many ways, you are the same as an Aazoni infant. To force your development too quickly could destroy you.”
Lenore could only believe him, trust him to know things she could not possibly know. But still, each time she fingered her Aleeas, returning to the places she and Jon had visited together, she was more and more tempted to enter into the one her mother had given her.
In there, would she find the means to allow Jon full melding? If she let him touch it, let him examine those memories minutely, let him borrow from the knowledge her mother had left in her, couldn’t he protect her from whatever it was she feared so deeply? Many times, while they lay close and warm in the glow of baloka, she wanted to suggest it, but that deep sense of privacy, her human need not to have her mind invaded held strong, making her shudder. Instead, she enhanced her new powers by focusing Aleeas where she knew she could be safe, and happy.
“Jon,” Fricka said the morning of the third day. “My willayin is strong again. I am ready to move us in whatever search pattern you wish.”
He considered for a moment, then shook his head. “I think we must separate, the better to search. Minton, you will seek out Wend, of course. As birth-mates, your minds will link more easily than any others.” As he spoke, Lenore caught the sense of despair he projected, because of his belief in his own birth-mate’s death.
She is alive! Lenore insisted in their private zone. Jon, I know this.
But...did she? Or was it simply that she longed to give him peace in whatever way she could? Never before had the mental comfort and emotional ease of another been so important to her. She yearned with a terrible intensity to give him relief from his internal pain, to succor his heart. Was that a function of love? Of...baloka? She reached out soothing thought-fingers to him, felt his gratitude, but knew she was accomplishing little. How could she? She was not a healer. She was not even a full Aazoni.
She, being half of Earth, was of small use to him. She could not even become a member of the Octad, should they discover one of the others to be permanently missing. Nor could she travel to Aazonia with Jon when he left. It was not possible for her, with her limited powers. Perhaps, in time, much time, if she developed, it would be possible. But not soon. Not soon enough.
Grief closed off her throat, grief she kept locked within herself, lest it escape and Jon detect it, and it
added to his already heavy burden.
“First, though,” he said, “We must risk the return to Lenore’s other home now that we are in better condition. Fricka, will you create a surround in which we can move undetected?”
Lenore felt less disoriented on their arrival back in Port Orchard. Was that due to the security of translating within the surround Fricka’s willayin had created, or was it simply that she was growing more skillful herself? Stronger, more accustomed to this strange manner of transportation?
“We will require clothing in order to move around inconspicuously here on Earth,” Jon said the moment they rematerialized, all naked, from the cabin. They had left behind even Lenore’s clothing to lighten the burden for Fricka. “Lenore, can you provide it for the others, as you did for me? It will need to be durable, as we have no way of knowing what situations me might find ourselves in with each new translation.”
As before, it took her little time to meet his request. When all were clothed—he and Minton in identical, dark blue one-piece garments with plenty of room for their shoulders, and enough length for arms and legs—and Fricka clad similarly to Lenore in a paler colored version of the suits the men wore, Jon declared them ready. But for sustenance. “We must eat and drink before we leave, and check Lenore’s machines for news of mysterious happenings.”
While Jon and Lenore prepared food, and Fricka made the coffee she had come to enjoy greatly, Minton stood leaning against the table. He lifted first one foot then the other, twisting his ankle from side to side, admiring the soft but strong ankle-length boots he wore now. “These,” he said with a grateful smile aimed at Lenore, “are far superior to the ones I found in that dwelling under the tumbling snow.”
She had to grin at him over her shoulder as she tossed salad in a large bowl. “I’m sure they are. At least you can walk in them.”
“I expect to be doing little of that,” he said, and sent the finished salad into the living room, where their dining cushions already lay heaped on the floor. “Within a surround, I will translate wherever our investigations tell me there is something to be investigated.”
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