The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

  The shielding makes the one around Arenrhon pale by comparison. It isn't controlled by the malachite marble, and is giving the greysuits something to argue about, since turning it off would leave the city exposed to the Winter storms. But they'd found a door. And wanted to poke me at it, of course. It was situated about halfway up the valley, at a point where two of the mountains came together, and was damn big, obviously designed to impress new arrivals, and gorgeously covered in carvings of leaves and vines and trees and water and animals peeping through, but no godlike people.

  "The shielding runs through the walls, but the signature is very different through these doors," Islen Tezart said. "We've tried Ena manipulation with no response. We're hoping it will react to you."

  Since everyone had been in the process of packing up and gathering ready to go back, I ended up with quite an audience and felt completely idiotic, especially when I put my hand on the door and nothing happened. "Feels warm," I said. Then added: "Open Sesame" hopefully and was really shocked when it worked.

  Well, I don't think the words worked so much as me wanting it to open, giving it some sort of mental order. It opened outward, with a cracking noise I later realised was ice breaking, and I was hit by a full-on gale and everyone was pelted with snowflakes. Par hastily moved me a long way back out of the frigid wind and Second Squad, who had been sitting about in the Diodel hoping for a break in the weather, came inside for a brief reunion. Opening the door allowed the drones to communicate clearly with the satellite and they decided that it was better to just block it physically instead of closing it.

  Pleased to no longer be the only way into Kalasa, I was a cheerful taxi back to Pandora for the night, and fell asleep in the middle of a big group dinner in the main building. I woke up back in my little building, with Lohn and Mara playing babysitter in the next room.

  I didn't know I'd lost my beanie till Ruuel gave it back to me, just after I'd transported Fourth Squad. He told me there'd be training tomorrow, if the medics cleared me, and then walked off with Taarel, but I was in too good a mood to be conflicted and sad, and was distracted trying to remember enough of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves to tell it properly to Isten Notra.

  Sunday, June 15

  Hot/Cold

  After playing taxi this morning for a good half hour, with Glade carrying me, I spent some time in the main building having a very in-depth medicking session. My legs look amazingly horrible. The greysuits seem fairly confident that they'll be able to get me fixed up without significant scarring (after all, they can regrow skin, muscle, bone – probably everything except a missing head) but I'm not to try walking even short distances for a few more days. Part of the problem is I basically did 'everything' to my legs all at once – burns, deep tissue bruising, hairline fractures and massive gouges. All from the knee down, which makes managing it a little easier – though Ruuel did give me a few bruises stopping me from kidnapping myself.

  The medics neutralised my pain meds completely during the first bit, which nicely demonstrated to me that my legs hurt an awful lot. It was Mori and Glade's turn to baby-sit me, and Mori did a lot of hand-squeezing and tried to distract me and I tried to pretend my eyes weren't full of tears. My new security arrangements seem to mean I have two Setari with me at all times, even when I'm just sleeping. Not suffocatingly so – they stay mostly in the next room while I sleep and will let me alone to read and things – but they don't allow anyone, even the greysuits, to be alone with me. Even Shon, who came to chat when I woke up for lunch. Fourth Squad is covering my days, and First and Third are rotating through covering the sleep shift. Eeli was part of my babysitting team during the dawn shift last night, and is a quite overwhelming person to have breakfast with.

  It's hard to tell what Fourth Squad thinks about being taken off Kalasa-exploration to baby-sit me. Not visibly annoyed, at least, but I wouldn't expect that of them. Nor particularly wary of me, even though I'm probably as dangerous to them as I am to myself at the moment. Mori and Glade patently had no idea that they were guarding me from Kolarens.

  After lunch, it was Ruuel and Sonn's turn, and time for some training. Ruuel was at his crispest and most efficient, levitating me into the second room and onto the scan chair after the scarcest of warnings. "Until you've recovered strength, these sessions will be confined to objects in the immediate area," he said. "And concentrate on the manifestations in this world. Keep your eyes open."

  He had me try and make a copy of a mug which was sitting right in front of me. Keeping my eyes open was harder than it sounds, almost as bad as keeping your eyes open when sneezing. Every time I started to shut them, Ruuel would say "Eyes." He never sounded impatient, but I came dangerously close to trying to manifest a mug, preferably full of something hot, falling from the ceiling onto his head. Though he probably would have dodged.

  But I did do it, eventually. The cup looked exactly the same, and not blurry either, so it probably wasn't floating around out in the Ena at the same time. I felt like I'd been trying to tie knots in cherry stalks with my tongue, but it was there.

  And something else was too. I didn't notice it until Ista Temen took a deep breath. Sonn picked up the mug gingerly, and I could see the steam rising off it before I recognised the smell. Unfortunately, that surprised me enough that the mug vanished.

  "What was it?" Ista Temen asked as I sat back in disappointment. "It smelled delicious."

  "Hot chocolate," I said. "Earth drink. All these planets, and none of them have chocolate. Severe oversight in world creation."

  "Was its inclusion deliberate?" Ruuel asked.

  "No. Well, I was thinking about hot drinks." I gave him a bland look, but he was being all business as usual and didn't show any sign of knowing my thoughts.

  "Repeat the exercise without letting your attention wander," he said, and kept me at it until I could produce the mug without taking ten minutes to manage it, and had the inevitable headache. But they're decreasing in severity.

  "Is it warm again today?" I asked Ista Temen while she was giving me another dose of drugs. "Can I go outside?"

  It was, fortunately – much warmer than when the morning shift went to Kalasa. Ruuel called the rest of his squad down and had them try and hit each other while he watched, offering the occasional critical comment. No approving nods this time, and I decided it was stupid to feel let down just because he hadn't given me any either. He's very strict with his squad.

  I watched for a while, then searched for birds out on the lake, but I think they must have all migrated somewhere warmer. I was wondering how much trouble I'd get in if I tried to make a mug of hot chocolate without permission – and whether it would be possible to drink it – when Ruuel (standing just behind me and not at all where I'd thought he was) asked: "And would you have survived a Winter here alone?"

  Barely managing not to jump out of my skin, I tilted my head back to look up at him, surprised he'd asked me a question not related to any assignment. That Isten Notra had obviously shown him the log of my conversation with the Kolarens wasn't unexpected, but I wanted to see if there was any hint of anger in his face. He was looking out, though, not down at me.

  "Barring accidents, probably," I said. "The Ddura was keeping the Ionoth away, and the local predators had plenty of more familiar things to hunt. I would have had to stop being so squeamish and try to kill some of the sheep, though. Living on fruit and nuts wasn't doing me a great deal of good, and along with the meat the skins would have given me clothes, blankets and hides to block the windows with. Only had the vaguest idea how to cure hides, though, so probably would have been very smelly." I grinned, remembering the 'filthy creature' comment from The Hidden War, then sighed. "But the blood would have attracted predators, and the rams might have attacked me to protect their ewes. I don't think I'd have been able to manage a broken bone, though I suppose it's just barely possible the aether would have helped that heal. Probably wouldn't have survived that chest infection if moonfall had been a day or two later.
Very handy."

  I paused and looked speculatively toward the old town, but Ruuel said: "You can no longer risk exposure."

  Because, like the Setari, I was now too dangerous to get drunk. It's lucky I'd more or less given up drinking already, or I might have had to be annoyed about that. It's moonfall tonight, too. I'm not even allowed to go outside and watch it because it gets very cold once the sun drops.

  "I doubt I would have enjoyed surviving Winter very much, though," I said, looking back out at the lake, beautiful and indifferent. "And eventually I'd have gotten sick or hurt myself, and died."

  He didn't say anything to that, but he stayed standing behind me for a while, maybe like me thinking about all the things which would have been different. Then he dismissed his squad, and took me to the amphitheatre for the afternoon's taxi service.

  It sounds like a minor thing, but he carried me as Par and Glade did, which was mildly embarrassing when it was them, and with Ruuel sufficient to throw me into mute confusion. It's never a small thing for me when Ruuel touches me. Even a finger-brush of enhancement can send a tingle through me, and I'm always aware that Place Sight will tell him way too much about my reactions. It's very rare that he carries me – Par is my Fourth Squad toter. Even the standard carrying position is something I usually have to prepare myself for, so that my heartbeat doesn't skyrocket too obviously. All I could think of when he lifted me today was how close his face was to mine.

  They've been carrying me about like that because my legs hurt more if they're not elevated, as well as the need for contact for the platforms. Floating above them won't trigger it, but someone standing on them holding me does.

  I could feel every breath. And fell asleep while he was waiting for them to load the platform for the second trip. Kind of contradictory. It was like those dreams on the Diodel. Very peaceful, and yet sharply defined. I could hear his heartbeat, since my head was resting on his shoulder, and was almost glad when the Ddura showed up, noisy as it is, since the platform room is chock-full of drones no doubt busily recording a projection of me gazing up at Ruuel in the Ena. The Ddura could certainly see us, and was being all chirpily pleased until I told it to shut up – and was pleased in turn, because it seems more obedient when I'm dreaming.

  The platform room in Kalasa looked different, too, quite distractingly so, pulling my attention away from Ruuel until he was flying me back, when I indulged in gazing up at him, enjoying all the tiny fine detail of a close-up view which wouldn't be recorded by drones or second level monitoring. He is so worth looking at.

  When we returned to my little building, Ruuel put me carefully on my bed, then said: "Your instructions were to wake yourself whenever you began dreaming lucidly."

  No surprise that he'd known. I made myself wake up, winced, then said: "Didn't need the headache."

  I drew a breath to tell him about how different Kalasa had been while I was asleep, but he said in a distinctly cooler tone: "Keep to the training plan. You can't have forgotten the consequences of letting your guard down."

  "No." My face burned and I looked away. "Sorry."

  I pretended to still be very tired while Ista Temen checked me over, and after a while they all went into the next room and I worked on keeping perspective, but still cried just a little, and then did visualisation exercises until I dozed off. Lohn and Mara are babysitting me now, sitting out the evening shift.

  I should have accepted Ruuel's offer to change trainers. He's definitely the best person for keeping me calm, but I don't seem able to stop wanting more than that, or ping ponging all over the place after the tiniest, mildest of reprimands.

  An anchor doesn't work if it's trying to pull away from you.

  Monday, June 16

  Day Off

  Fretted myself into a fever, having spent the night compulsively forcing myself to wake up, and racking my brains for some way to not ever have to see Ruuel again, yet somehow not let anyone know that's what I wanted. The dreams were all about trying to kill sheep, which I was very glad to stop as soon as I was aware of them.

  When Ista Temen decided I should stay safely in bed and not do anything today I relaxed and slept for most of the day. I imagine there were a few frustrated greysuits, but it's not as if they can't get in without me now. I'm sure they're having fun over in those snowstorms. With any luck tomorrow my legs will be improved enough that I can stand and no-one will need to carry me.

  I'm tired of all this.

  Tuesday, June 17

  Say Nothing

  Maze and Zee were my dawn shift babysitters – Third Squad and Squad One went to Kalasa via the Litara yesterday, so we're down to two squads at Pandora. After Ista Temen had decided I was fit enough, Maze took me over to the amphitheatre for taxi duty. I asked Maze if I could stay upright today, but Ista Temen lowered my pain medication and let me try out standing, and I couldn't cope with it. She says I'm making good progress, but it feels like I've been like this forever.

  "We're pushing to be sufficiently set up here to support the investigation without continuing to use you like this," Zee told me, after I'd shuffled everyone through to Kalasa and we'd gone out into the central square for another look.

  "How's the exploration going?"

  "Still going."

  Maze laughed at her tone of voice, and gave me a wry smile. "It's an enormous place, and there's simply so much. We've a site map now, but actually cataloguing and making sense of what we've found could take years. The Sight talents have marked places for early investigation, but the Lantarens recorded on paper, and it's so fragile. We've wanted records so badly, and can hardly complain about having a library to sift through, but the need to do it slowly is remarkably frustrating." He paused. "Everywhere there are reminders that this was a school."

  I hadn't failed to notice the skeletons scattered about, nor the small size of many of them, but I had something else on my mind. "Have you been in near-space here?" I asked carefully.

  "Can't get to it. Even after you opened the door, the shielding keeps us out. And there's a reason you're asking that, isn't there?" Maze isn't slow.

  "Fell asleep last time here. I can't be sure, but...just had a vague impression that Kalasa looked different in near-space. Though I didn't see much more than platform room."

  "Different how?"

  "Lights," I said vaguely. "Wasn't here long enough good look. Also, I guess the Ddura can't come here, because I haven't heard any when in Kalasa, no matter how much fooling around on platform."

  Maze thought this well worth looking into, but since I wasn't the least bit tired right then he took me back to Pandora and told me not to have any midday naps so that they could try and recreate the experience this afternoon. He and Zee went to get some rest and Alay and Ketzaren took over babysitting, so I asked if they could help me have a shower. I've really lost all tolerance for being grubby, and the greysuits had told me that my nanotech bandages 'breathe' and thus shouldn't have scads of hot water run over them. Not until the burns are in better condition.

  Coping with that took up a lot of the morning, and made all three of us rather giggly, but I felt a lot better afterwards. It was nice to see Alay laugh. She seems to open up a little on Muina, to talk more and hold her head higher. She loves watching the lake, but the daytime temperature's dropping here again, so they decided not to let me sit outside, and instead we watched the latest aerial survey information together and then the latest episode of The Hidden War, which had aired right after we came to Muina. It focused on the main character training fake-me and barely being able to understand the garbled Taren, and not being able to talk about her assignment with the rest of her squad. We were having lunch when I had a channel request from Ruuel, something now possible even though he's in Kalasa because the door's been opened and more satellites are in place.

  The request had a text opener of "Kalasa near-space," and when I accepted he said without preamble: "Should I interpret 'just a vague impression' as 'very certain but you were cut short la
st time you tried to tell someone and now need a reason for the delay in mentioning it'?"

  It was difficult to tell if he was angry. And everything I thought of in reply made me sound like I was being a smartass, so eventually I just said: "Yes."

  "What precisely did you see?"

  "The walls have glowing patterns in them, like electrical circuitry. The platform has more. They change colours when people go near them. They reacted to the drones as well as to people. They changed to a different colour near me."

  Not a vague impression at all. The uncharacteristically long silence before Ruuel responded told me nothing useful, then he said: "My error. An unnecessary lecture at that juncture."

  I wonder how often he does something he considers a mistake. I'm willing to bet he hates being wrong, but always acknowledges it meticulously. And to be fair I had to admit that his lecture hadn't been totally misplaced.

  "Spirit of scientific discovery not exactly the initial reason I delayed waking myself up," I said, and dropped out of channel. Not making Ruuel have to deal with my crush is a kind of weird gentleman's agreement we have. He clearly doesn't want to respond to it. Whether because he's in love with Taarel, or just doesn't think I'm attractive, or whatever, the end result is still him carefully keeping me at a distance. So long as it's not open it's something handled relatively easily. But I'm finding it more difficult not to react to him, to want to push him to react to me, which is why he gave me that little reprimand – because I didn't do what I was ordered just to prolong a dream about him. I'm making his job harder.

  Time to go back now. I'm definitely going to be able to sleep – between Ista Temen's fortifier, and my general tendency to be kitten-weak at irritating moments, I've barely been able to keep myself conscious to write this.

  Friday, June 20

  Hard Rest

  The Kalasa sleeping experiment was both positive and negative. After ferrying some people and a pile more equipment to Kalasa I was established on the roof of a building one tier up from the flat central valley of the city. A number of seats and a couple of tables had been set on the main portico above the door, sheltered on three sides by higher sections of roof, but with an excellent view out over most of Kalasa. Ista Temen, very excited at being in Kalasa, and Maze and Zee sat with me, just generally chatting. The idea was to keep me feeling comfortable and unstressed and safe, and for me to pay attention to any oddnesses I observed if I had a dream of Kalasa, but to not feel pressured to have one and most particularly to wake myself up if I had a nightmare or felt threatened in any way.