Heart Sight

by Robin D. Owens

  The fact she’d created a holo for the temple piqued his curiosity. She’d left the dominant faith of Celta two years before, the one that worshiped the Divine Couple, the Lord and the Lady. Avellana had become an adherent of the Intersection of Hope religion. That creed had developed on the starships during the centuries-long trip from Earth to Celta.

  When she’d learned of the precepts of the Hopefuls, they’d made more sense to her than the doctrine she’d grown up with. So Vinni found it surprising that she sat in the middle of Circle Temple. But on the other hand, she’d only been here on the island for a few months. Not enough time to design an Intersection of Hope chapel and have it built, even if she found other devotees.

  She stared at her work, finally nodded and added the deep purple curlicue of her signature, then glanced at him. Of course she’d sensed when he’d arrived on the island and stood in the doorway, even if he’d masked his emotions.

  “One moment, Muin, while I finish my project, please,” she said coolly.

  He did visit her at least once a week when she resided outside Druida City, but she wouldn’t have expected him tonight since she’d be back at D’Hazel Residence the next morning.

  With a glance at him, her fingers snapped and all the three-dimensional holographic paintings and murals in the temple activated. He missed a couple of steps toward her as he staggered through one of the Lady and Lord planting a garden. He swore he could smell the rich herbs, the equally fertile dark-brown earth.

  A joyful dancing tune began and echoed through the huge temple chamber. Avellana stared at him with watchful eyes, so he wrenched his gaze from her to study the art . . . all the art, including the parquet patterns of the wooden floor around the rose-streaked brown marble center stone.

  Circles of holograms projected at regular intervals from the middle of the temple to the walls. Marking the size of various ritual circles depending on the number of people. On the walls hung old-fashioned paintings and tapestries.

  He stared at the two-meter, exquisite mural that only Avellana could have done. “I’m surprised you’re working on a piece in a temple for a religion you no longer believe in.”

  “That is not quite true, Muin,” she said, standing.

  Another pulse of attraction as she said his name. Only his beloved Avellana called him by his given name.

  With a Word she removed dust from her clothes. She wore a simple tunic-and-trous set, roomy enough to move around in, of a dull brown . . . and very soft and thin from many cleansings. Her comfort clothes. “I believe the predominant religion is right for those who believe in it, and, of course, it pervades our society so there is no escaping it, so one must acknowledge that. I am also a product of my training and my Family’s beliefs; they suffuse and influence me.”

  She gestured for him to join her, and he did so. As soon as he caught her fragrance, his shaft went hard. With a thought he loosened the front of his trous so they wouldn’t bind, and wouldn’t show at a glance that he fought for slippery control over his libido. The desire that just standing next to his HeartMate and breathing her scent caused.

  Another flick of her fingers and all the paintings and murals vanished except for hers. Unlike most of them, her holo was a perfect lower half sphere reflecting the actual bowl of the Great Labyrinth to the north of Druida City. Studying it, she brought her hands from shoulder width together, and the painting collapsed upward on itself until it appeared like a two-dimensional rendition, hanging vertically. She stepped back a couple of paces and he matched her strides.

  Then she angled the painting to horizontal and pushed it down until it touched the floor and the center round stone and matched the keystone in size. Muttering encouraging words to herself under her breath that Vinni couldn’t quite catch, she sank her painting into the stone, so the top of the stone showed her work. Long minutes passed and sweat beaded her forehead.

  With the lightest brush of his fingers, Vinni touched her temple and whisked the excess moisture away. She chanted a couplet, fast and loud, that rang in his ears, shouted, “Engrave and Set in Stone!” and clapped her hands. Flair surged through the room, knocking Vinni back a step, sending shudders rippling through his body. Secondary creative psi power or not, Avellana matched him in the potency of her Flair.

  She moved to the middle of the temple and crouched, scrutinizing the circular center stone that now showed her painting. It looked perfect to Vinni. She turned and grinned at him, nearly danced to him, the satisfaction of fulfilled creativity limning her face. His less-spiritual self yearned for a different kind of fulfillment with her as he recalled her face during climax. Do not think of that. Shut it down and up and behind a solidly locked door.

  After taking his hand, she quickly dropped it, stepped aside, and focused her gaze on her painting. She inhaled and exhaled, then raised her arms and said, “Activate the holo mural titled ‘Great Labyrinth.’”

  Around them the Great Labyrinth formed, filling the room. The rim of the crater matched the top of the walls before they gave way to the dome of the temple. In the three-dimensional mural, Vinni stood at the exit from the center onto the meditation path that wound up the bowl.

  “It’s a fabulous work.” He turned in place. “I would guess this holo mural is an exact miniature replica of the Great Labyrinth.” Automatically, his gaze went to his own shrine the Family had established—saw the trellis supporting blackberry vines around a wooden-and-glass enclosure, the marble-topped no-time food storage unit stocked with wine and cheese. If he strained his ears, he could imagine he heard the tinkle of the tubular wind chimes he’d made of glisten metal and glass.

  “Of course it is an exact replica.” She sounded offended.

  “Of course.”

  He watched as her own gaze went to the tiny depiction of the Hazel Family shrine, close to the bottom of the crater. The Hazels had dowsed for water decades ago and chosen a parcel where they could free a spring for a pond. A hazel tree stood beside the water. Unlike ancient legend, the spring didn’t house any Earthan salmon. Those fish hadn’t done well in the waters of Celta, though the starship Nuada’s Sword had some swimming around in its great greensward garden pools.

  Slowly, Avellana turned in place, studying her work as if checking for errors. As far as Vinni could see, there were none. Truly time to feel her out about staying on Mona Island. “Will you be sad to leave here tomorrow, Avellana?”

  She met his eyes with a serious gaze of her own. “No. I am weary of not being home. I left matters undone, such as my murals for my faith.” She hesitated, dropped her eyes; their bond blocked a little spurt of something. Avellana had a secret project she kept from him? That’s how it felt. And from the size of the block, an undertaking important to her that she didn’t wish to share with him. Intriguing.

  But their relationship was never static, always in flux. One of the reasons he loved her.

  Avellana gestured to the illusion of the Great Labyrinth rising around them. “I have paid for my food and lodging, my use of a free workshop, and all the lessons I received, with this piece of work.”

  “No one could say you didn’t give full value,” he murmured, sending his huge pride in her through their bond.

  Dipping her head, she said, “Thank you. I thought I would see you tomorrow when I returned to Druida City.”

  Carefully, keeping his face set in serene lines and his tone bland, he said, “I would prefer you remain here.”

  Her entire body snapped into straight rigidity. “Absolutely not!”

  Two

  Her eyes darkened from summer blue to stormy ocean sapphire, and she accused, “You have seen more danger for me, haven’t you?”

  He reached out to clasp her fingers, but she whisked away from him, stuck her hands in her opposite sleeves.

  “Yes, I’ve felt more menace aimed at you.”

  Her jaw tightened, then released as she asked
, “What is this danger?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it localized to Druida City?” she said, persisting.

  He couldn’t answer.

  “So it could even be here.” She pulled her right hand from her sleeve and swept a gesture around the chamber, including the open door he’d come through and foolishly hadn’t shut and locked behind him.

  He said, “I don’t sense any threat to you here.”

  “Now, tonight.” She stamped her foot as if in emphasis to the place and time.

  “Now, tonight,” he agreed. “But peril stalks the streets of Druida City.”

  Her brows went up and down. “More populated areas will always include a higher percentage of accidents—”

  “Not accidents. Deliberate threat directed toward you as its target.”

  Eyes remaining angry, she said, “So you believe that whatever danger I might have been in three months ago in Druida City continues.”

  “Yes.”

  “And when did you determine this?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Just tonight.”

  She sighed and he felt her quashing her irritation. Stepping forward, she put her hand on his forearm and he caught her fingers and linked their hands. Thank the Lady and Lord, he touched her and she touched him, skin to skin, finally.

  When she spoke again, her words were too even and proceeded in a rhythm that warned him she’d given the topic much deliberation. “You sent me away from you and my home and Druida City when the plague came six years ago, and when it resurged eighteen months after that.” She squeezed his hand. “Thinking back, could you, ah, give me an actual percentage of how much danger I was in from the sickness?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  His nape continued to tingle but he wouldn’t rub it again.

  Her gaze sharpened and she said too quietly, “At that time could you gauge the amount of danger I was in, Muin? During those plague years?”

  He wanted to lie, but never would to her, not to mention she’d know truth from lies through their bond. “No.”

  She paused, still considering him. Then she jerked a hand toward a wall bench that ran around one-quarter of the temple, barely able to be seen through the illusion of the labyrinth.

  “I have been thinking, you see,” Avellana stated.

  As he’d figured. She’d been thinking. Unfortunately.

  Withdrawing her fingers from his grasp and tucking her hands in her opposite sleeves, she moved with stately grace as if in a formal dance across the floor to the bench. And he understood that they now danced—dueled—with words.

  When she sat, he did, too, and she angled a bit toward him and he could only touch her knee with his thigh.

  “You never told us, told me, how much threat you sensed to me, ever. Not when you spoke to my parents or us as a Family. I know that during your professional consultations, you understand how likely the future or futures you see are to come to pass. I know you are very capable at using words to . . . finesse . . . your clients into taking the path you believe is right for them.”

  He stiffened. “Manipulate, you mean.”

  “I deliberately did not use that word, Muin.” Her chin jutted. “But the fact is that you are accustomed to using your primary Flair of prophecy to see what will happen, then you have lifelong experience in analyzing those visions and choosing what you think is best.”

  “You’ve said that twice. That I determine people’s futures.”

  She hesitated. “You guide them. As any counselor or mind Healer would.” She looked away, then back at him and met his eyes. “I know you ache when your clients do not take your advice or when you . . . misjudged . . .”

  He flinched but said nothing. She’d been around him a time or two when he’d read his visions wrong and someone had suffered.

  She gave him a straight look. “To return to my previous point, I know that you do not experience visions of your own future, and I have thought long and hard on our various discussions—”

  “That must have been depressing.”

  She lifted her brows at his interruption that meant to deflect. “—discussions when I have been persuaded to leave. Yes, they and the memories of them have been trying, particularly in contrast with the nights where we make love in our dreams.”

  He stilled, swallowed, didn’t look at her, because this nicely pillowed stone bench would make a fine place to have sex.

  “As I was saying. You do not receive visions about yourself, and it has occurred to me that you do not receive visions with enough detail about me, either. I do not think that you are able to distinguish how . . . deadly . . . a threat to me might be.” She waved a hand but he felt the intensity of her focus upon him. “For instance, whether it was, say, a ten percent likelihood or ninety percent probability that I would succumb to the plague when it swept through Druida City six years ago.”

  She gave him a quick, oblique glance, then stared upward.

  He followed her gaze to a huge three-dimensional holo mural curved around the dome of the ceiling showing the Lord and Lady embracing, looking at each other with complete love and trust in their eyes.

  While he felt the trust between himself and Avellana slipping away from his grasp.

  “Can you tell me such a percentage?”

  “No.”

  “Not then, nor now?”

  “No.”

  “So,” she said with her standard exact deliberation. “You felt danger to me from . . . something . . . three months ago.” Without turning her head, she looked at him from the corner of her eyes. Her lips had pressed together.

  He didn’t reply.

  “You intimated to me, to my parents, that I might be caught in the accidents happening to youngsters—the balcony giving way under Aurea Holly, the terrible introduction of poisonous celtaroons where they could bite the children of Walker Clover in the GuildHall.”

  “That’s right. I’d felt a threat to you at that time and that’s what I believed.” He needed to watch her expressions, so he angled toward her and now only their knees touched.

  “Exactly how much of a threat, Muin? Twenty percent that I might be harmed? Forty? Eighty?”

  He stayed silent.

  She turned to gaze at him with darkening eyes. “You cannot gauge the danger to me, can you?” Then she bit off her words. “All this time, when you felt danger and convinced my parents or me to leave, you couldn’t tell whether I was in slight danger or truly doomed to perish.”

  “Any threat should be taken seriously.”

  “Not quite an answer, Muin. Could you ever weigh the accuracy of your premonitions about any danger to me?”

  He clenched his jaw, then replied. “Not since your psi power began fluctuating when you neared First Passage.”

  “All this time,” she whispered with a voice foggy with tears, her head averted.

  Scooting over, he curved his hand over the soft pliancy of her cheek. His woman. His. “The dreams and feelings are always intense.” He paused. “I can’t take chances with you.”

  Her jaw flexed before she answered. “I will consider why that is so, and we will discuss that point later. What concerns me this moment is the result of this overprotectiveness, Muin.”

  “I can’t take chances with you,” he repeated. “I did sense danger in Druida City for you during that time when the fanatics of the Traditionalist Stance political movement targeted people to kill.” His own jaw clenched.

  Inclining her head, she said, “You felt the danger to me, and as usual, in that time of fear and anger by the FirstFamilies, you convinced my parents and me that I would be, as usual, better off outside Druida City.”

  “I was right, the fanatics did nothing outside Druida City.”

  “That is true, but I was—am—unlike the other pro
spective victims. First, I am an adult, and those other assaults were on children.”

  “You are fragile.”

  She hissed in a breath between her teeth and snapped. “I am not as fragile as you and my Family believe.” Another of her deep breaths raised her breasts beneath her work tunic. Fleetingly he recalled how those breasts felt in his hands, and the thought distracted him when he couldn’t afford for his mind to be derailed.

  “I am an adult and not fragile. Second, unlike those others, one of my parents was not a Commoner. I am the child of two Nobles of the FirstFamilies. I would not have been considered a proper victim by those terrible fanatical killers.”

  Her hands remained in her opposite sleeves. He reached out and touched the wrist of her close hand, drew it from her sleeve. He enfolded her hand, his palm warming her cold one. Then he linked fingers, made sure their bond was large and steady. “Yes, dear one, you would have been a target.”

  She gasped, then he saw her swallow and finally she moved close enough that they touched all along their thighs. He wished she’d allow him to take her on his lap.

  “You believe that,” she said.

  “The Traditionalist Stance aimed their hatred at those who were different—children of FirstFamily Lords and Commoner women. Offspring of a new nobleman who rose to become the most powerful man on the planet, the Captain of All Councils of Celta.” He paused. “People recall that a member of my Family tried to kill you because he didn’t deem you acceptable to be my wife and GreatLady D’Vine. Despite the fact that your Family and mine and the Ashes have kept your powerful Flair secret, others know there is a secret. A deadly secret involving you. The secret that made someone of my Family think you so different and unusual that you don’t belong with me.”

  “That I deserve to be killed before I beget children who might also be so very different,” she said flatly, extending the line of reasoning to its final point.