“They are right outside now, but there’s something strange out there with them. I can tell it has thoughts, but I can’t hear them like I can’t hear Elan.”
Elan broke into this huge grin. “Tati is out there. I’ve already let her know not to kill them.”
Isolde perked up. She had been dying to meet Tati once she knew she was Elan’s bond animal, even if she knew they wouldn’t be able to speak. “Can I peek?”
Elan kissed her cheek. “Be patient. When she’s done with them, I’ll bring you out. I think she sensed us together and came.”
Could Tati sense their bond had already started? Ever since the night before, there was a subtle buzzing when Elan was close and it was quite pleasant when they touched. She couldn’t hear Tati at all, but she picked her up outside. That never happened when she was hunting. She had to hunt the hard way. She couldn’t sense other Qunelopes like Soelva in the forest, but she could always sense her own bond animal.
“They are scared,” she said, listening to the two men scream in her head. “I think Hikmat is out and only Koswara still stands. No, Koswara just went silent too.”
“Tati said it’s okay to come out,” Elan said, taking her hand.
There was a black cat outside larger than any cat she had never seen before. Tati’s head came about four inches above Elan’s and she was roped with muscle. Her eyes were red like Elan’s too. Isolde thought she was beautiful and wondered it Tati would be offended if she petted her. She wondered if Tati heard that thought because she came into her personal space.
Elan threw back his head and laughed. “Tati was trying to frighten you into my arms. She says we feel nice to her when we touch, but apparently, you don’t scare easily.”
Galih was right behind them and quite impatient. “Talk to Tati later. We need to find out what we can from these men. Isolde, can you hear them like this? Are more coming?”
“I have to touch them to hear them since they are out cold. It’ll keep them out longer, but I’m probably going to faint too. Can we get them inside?”
“Tati wants to watch you in action,” Elan said as he and Galih struggled to drag the two men inside.
Once they were both unceremonious dumped in the middle of the small room, it was pretty cramped in there with Tati and the extra bodies. The tracker in Meida’s neck was similar to those of Avala, but they didn’t have the same materials they did there. The Avalian trackers were undetectable unless you knew it was there. Meida had a distinct, clunky lump behind her ear. The first thing she did was inspect Hikmat and Koswara’s necks for trackers. It was as she expected. Koswara had one, but Hikmat didn’t. She performed the same surgery on him that she did on Meida, but she wasn’t even trying to be gentle.
She looked down at the two men. Hikmat was short and squat with a rotund belly. He wore his white blonde hair long like the rest of the men she had met there, but it was starting to thin on the top. It looked like he had tried to comb some of the long strands over to hide it.
“Does anyone oppose if I start with this man first?” she asked, prodding Hikmat with her foot. “It’s probably going to take me a while and I’ll pass out before I can get to his assassin. Is there somewhere you can keep both of them so I can get back in his head? This place is out.”
Elan came and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Tati thinks you can stay in longer if we are touching.”
She nodded. She sat on the floor next to Hikmat. She felt Elan come up right behind her and pull her into his lap. She was pressed right again his chest and could feel his steady heartbeat. She didn’t really want to touch Hikmat and she didn’t really want to look at his thoughts either. He put off some sort of creepy vibe and it wasn’t just because of what she knew about him. She tugged under his arms so that she could get him close enough to reach his head.
It was always the same when she did this. Instant blackness when she made the connection before she started getting snippets and images. She had to focus on which image was important to grab onto it before it slipped away. Once she had it, she could expand it into a bigger picture. With Hikmat, she wasn’t sure what all she was supposed to pull first. She didn’t recognize most of the people she was seeing. She saw images of Koswara after a fight and stopped. He was much younger then than the man on the floor.
It was difficult to speak like this. She was sure she sounded like some sort of machine.
“Koswara started out in your military. He received a dishonorable discharge for burning a child for thievery without a trial. One of his fellow guardsmen turned him in. He had a trial and it looked like he would be burned, but Hikmat swooped in to testify for him. They aren’t blood, but Hikmat claimed to be a relative and Koswara was simply pushed to his breaking point and snapped. Several members of The Children gave testimony that they knew him and he wasn’t in his right mind. He was left in their charge after getting off on insanity.
“They wanted someone like that in their fighting ring. Someone who wouldn’t flinch or blink. They had been watching your military to recruit champions. They still do. Some of the men who fight against Elan are all straight from the men who are supposed to be protecting your people. I can see what Hikmat is trying to do.
“The Children were mostly just cult before his father. He’s recruiting soldiers for his pits and when they lose against Elan, he’s trying to pervert it. He still doesn’t know it’s Elan and he’s been trying to figure out who the man behind that mask is since Elan bested Koswara. When a soldier loses against Elan, he uses it as an opportunity to try to pull them into The Children. He’s building an army. A handpicked army.
“He’s found a way to communicate with the slaves on Avala. A distant relative was taken captive in the war, centuries ago. He never stopped fighting, even after the truce. He was assigned to one of our high born. A flighty woman who was constantly losing her COMMs. It was almost too easy for him to swipe one and find a way to contact his family. That man and his father gave birth to The Children of Fia over secret COMM conversations on different planets.
“All of the slaves on Avala are members of The Children. They try to steal our tech when they can. Some of them work cleanup in research facilities or in medical. They’ve been sending what they know verbally over COMM, but no one on Cendis has been able to make sense of it or reproduce it until recently.
“Hikmat’s family has been trying to keep their blood pure so they will be blessed by Fia. Meida said Hikmat has been getting a lot of women pregnant, but it didn’t used to be that way. Brothers and sisters, cousins, fathers and daughters, they were all lying together to produce pure children. Hikmat has a relative, they are related several different ways, but he’s sort of this mad genius. They keep him locked up because he has fits, but he made the trackers. He’s close to building a weapon that’s similar to one of ours, but it’s a big secret and I can’t tell what it is from his thoughts.
“The Children of Fia has grown larger under Hikmat. Before Hikmat and his father, it was maybe thirty followers and it was kept in families. All of the slaves on Avala are followers. Our slave population is fairly large since Avala has had them so long. The Children of Fia has grown much larger since they started the fighting pits. They are almost three hundred now. The original families have been joined by high born, your military, and angry low born.
“Now that he knows the sixteen have fire, he plans to find a way to take it from them. Halah, he’s sixteen. He’s the one they have locked up building this weapon. Once he completes it, Hikmat is going to have him try to teach your warriors who joined to make more. That’s when they plan to strike. They will overthrow the palace first. Capture Elan and Hikmat will crown himself king. They think Elan is helpless and will be the easiest to take fire from.
“They plan on converting Elan while they study him. Firm him up and turn him into a fighter. Once Elan is on their side and they all have fire, they will all go after the other fifteen. They can convert or die. Once they’ve taken
over Cendis, The Children on Avala will revolt and the members here will come to their aid. They want to enslave our fifteen after killing me on Cendis. They will bring our scientists and doctors to Cendis and destroy the planet.”
Isolde let go of Hikmat. That was the longest she had ever been in anyone’s head before. She always fainted before she got that much information. Tati must have been right that contact with Elan would make her last longer. Her head was still pounding and she could feel blood trickling out her nose. Her hand was shaking when she went to wipe it off her face. Elan tightened his arms around her. She just wanted to sleep, but she had more to do.
“You need to get on COMM and warn Fjola about the slaves,” she told Sartika. “And that man who was worried about me and Elan, Commander Ace? If your military is being converted to The Children, then maybe it’s time to bring him into the faction.”
“Let us take it from here, Isolde,” Galih warned. “You need to rest. We will probably need you again. You got way more than I expected. Was Elan’s bond animal correct? You can do this longer with him? I thought you hadn’t attempted the bond yet.”
Isolde heard Tati growl and looked up to see her bare her teeth at Galih. Elan squeezed her waist again.
“I think it would be best if everyone stopped asking us about it. Stop asking for updates and stop pushing us. Tati knows we are on the right path.”
Galih looked wholly irritated with both of them, but wasn’t about to say anything with Tati’s sharp canines in his face. “The two of you get back to your chambers. Feed her and you two rest. We’re probably going to have to repeat this several times.”
Isolde’s nose was still bleeding freely, but she thought she could still make the long trek through the tunnels. She was wrong. As soon as her body lost contact with Elan’s her vision went black.
Chapter 16
Sartika watched as Elan had to carry Isolde away yet again. They both swore it wasn’t fatal and Tati seemed to understand it a little. She was left in the cabin with Galih, Meida, and Nia. Meida was still tied to the chair and that didn’t seem to bother Nia in the slightest. They sat in silence for a few minutes before Galih got up and started pacing.
“Nia, untie Meida. We need to plan. I need to get these men to another faction safe house and you need to warn Fjola. Isolde got a lot, but I don’t know if she got everything. I didn’t like watching blood flow out her nose and I hate she fainted like that, but none of our sixteen can do that.”
“They all have mental abilities. I think it’s time you tell me what they can do because we may need them!” Sartika snapped. The time for secrecy was long gone.
“Nothing like Isolde and Elan. Nia, she can send pleasant pictures, right? Atikah can torture people with her mind. You can imagine, that’s difficult to train. Gareng, he can manipulate your memories. Karta can send this high-pitched frequency into your head that’s supposed to be nearly unbearable to hear. Eros can change your dreams to anything from soothing to a nightmare. Oleh can sort of put up a barrier in your mind. Anything he puts a wall up against, you’ll never be able to access it again. Things you’ve learned, things you want to remember, things you want to forget, he can put a barrier up against it.
“Rusita was probably the easiest to train. All she has to do is touch someone like Isolde does, pick out what she wants to learn, and she instantly knows how to do it. Like Isolde, she’s got limits. She has some sort of fit if she tries to dig too much out at once. Wida could be an asset. She can do mind control on anyone from any distance as long as she’s met them before.
“Jaka has visions of the future, but he seems to be hopeless at focusing it. All he’ll talk about are his visions of a beautiful Avalian girl he’s meant to be with. Dasimah could give Isolde a break. She’s supposed to be able to put her mind into someone else while putting theirs into her body. I’m not sure what would happen if we put someone like Hikmat into her body. It could pollute her.
“Sura can see things, some sort of energy around someone that tells him a little about what kind of person they are. He’s still learning what the different colors he sees means. Diah, she feels things other people feel. It affects her quite strongly. She understandably likes to be alone. I’d keep her far away from Hikmat and Koswara if any of them are using those gifts on him. If they are hurting them, it’s going to hurt Diah too.
“Parta’s abilities help him in a fight. He has some sort of intuition where he knows what move is going to be used against him. If he knew about those fighting pits, he would have snuck down there once he knew how. Odah can sense when someone is about to die. It doesn’t matter if it’s natural or unnatural, he knows. Ani, she can cause a complete mental breakdown.
“As you can imagine, some of the other sixteen, they know they can do these things, but they aren’t fully trained. How could they be without hurting someone? I think they should all practice on members of The Children. Wipe them out after what they planned to do to both planets.”
She totally agreed with him. She sat there fuming while Isolde was talking in a trance. They intended to hurt so many people. They were past just wanting their fire back. They were intending domination and power. Sartika was starting to think Hikmat didn’t even want fire anymore. He was so used to the adoration of his followers, he wanted the entire planet to worship him now.
“What are you waiting for?” Galih snapped. “Fjola has an entire planet of slaves stealing technology and planning a revolt. Get her on the COMM and warn her.”
“What about me?” Meida said softly. “The Children know me. Hikmat liked to parade me around. His inner circle knows about Nia. We need Isolde again.”
“No, we don’t,” Galih snapped. “Did you not bother learning names and faces?”
“The inner circle wears these gold masks. They have small slits for eyes and they are designed to look like the wearer is suffering, crying. Like all of the things they’ve done was such a huge suffering for them. Hikmat is the only one I’ve seen without the mask.”
Galih went to open his mouth and Sartika cut him off. “You don’t need Isolde for that either. From what you’ve told me, there are several out of our sixteen that can get that information. Either through torture or similarly to how she does it. Look at him,” she said, nudging Hikmat’s cheek with her foot. “He’s soft. He probably likes to give out torture, but probably can’t handle it himself.”
“I’ve no idea what they put that girl through on Avala, but she’s more advanced than our sixteen, except Elan. Our sixteen with defensive mind skills had no one to practice on. The ones that can do things like Isolde, I don’t think they’ve done it near enough to be as effective as she is.”
Sartika never learned to fight like Isolde and the rest of the sixteen. Even innocent faced Nia probably knew how to throw a punch better than she did. She kept her skin soft with perfumed oils and lotions. She’d never struck someone before, but she walked over and slapped Galih. It probably stung her hand more than it hurt him. He didn’t lose his temper, He just caught her wrist so she didn’t slap him again.
“Did you have selective hearing when you were listening to her? It’s not just Isolde and Elan that are expected to marry. Fjola and I will be the first to admit letting Isolde believe the lies about Elan was the wrong thing. Don’t you see how close they’ve gotten in a short time now that she knows they’re evenly matched? Tati can sense her. Our sixteen are expected to mix with their sixteen. They will be Elan and Isolde’s council.
“If the rest of the Avalian sixteen are like Isolde, what do you think is going to happen when they meet ours if we know that can do these things, but we don’t know the full extent? I don’t know what the hell went on during her training on Avala that she had test subjects, but Isolde needs to be spending as much time with Elan as possible right now and our sixteen need to be on her level. Nia did well today and helped distract them. Elan, Isolde, and Nia can’t put down The Children on their own.”
“It
was nice to be able to help like that. I helped Elan,” Nia piped in. She had a high-pitched voice in addition to her baby face. She looked like she was hopelessly in love with Elan now that she saw him in form-fitting clothes and whatever she had been thinking had Isolde glaring at her and occasionally growling. “Isolde already gave you part of the solution. Bring that man in the military in. He can weed out the soldiers who have joined and if that crazy kid ever figures out the weapon, they won’t be able to make them. While the military is rooting out their defectors, let us do what we were born to do. This is the perfect learning opportunity and now we have people to practice on.”
“Don’t you argue!” Galih shot at Meida. “Nia proved she can use her gifts in battle. We have work to do. All of you need to be brought to a different safe house. Hikmat wouldn’t have even suspected Nia if you hadn’t been careless training her.”
“I don’t want this baby. It’s probably cursed.”
“The high born have ways around it, but you know you’ll be burned if you’re caught and Hikmat makes a claim,” Sartika pointed out.
She wasn’t as furious with Meida as Galih was. Meida made a huge judgment in error training Nia somewhere she could be seen. If Isolde and Elan hadn’t seen her in the secret passage and gotten into her head, they wouldn’t be at this cabin. Galih and Sartika only intended to find out what Meida knew, but that tracker gave them Hikmat and his assassin.
“Enough!” Galih snapped. “Sartika, get back to your chambers immediately. Call Fjola and tell her what’s going on right under her nose. Find out how she didn’t know about it. Summon Commander Ace and fill him in. It’s probably going to rock his entire foundation. Talk to him last because you will talk to him the longest.”
With that, she was shooed out the cabin and out to the hatch to the underground tunnels. Tati was already gone and had left with Elan and Isolde. Her sleek black body wedged itself out the cabin door in front of them to make sure no one was out there probably. Sartika wanted to go check on Isolde and question Elan on everything Tati might have told him. They didn’t know much about bond animals anymore aside from old written documents, but they only bonded to one person and weren’t supposed to be able to talk to anyone unless the ritual had been completed.
Child of Fire, Child of Ice-A Sci-fi Romance Series Page 11
