No Other Love

by Speer, Flora

  “Then you had best go at once,” Tula urged, “for Hotan and his friends have learned of the Cetans’ arrival and they are marching on the Gathering Hall even now. We came here to warn you. Dulan, they are convinced that Herne and Merin called the Cetans here to destroy us, and Hotan claims to believe that you helped them. He says you are all Jurisdiction spies, in league with the Cetans. Listen, you can hear them shouting.”

  It was more than shouting they heard; it was running footsteps. Hotan burst through the doors of the Hall and into the garden. At the same moment when he appeared, the green Chon spread its wings and flew away.

  “I knew I’d find you here,” Hotan shouted, sprinting down the steps to grab Merin’s wrist. “You and the other spies. We’ll kill all of you in the town square and leave your bodies for the Cetans to find.”

  “They are not spies!” Saray was at Hotan’s side. “Here is Ananka. She and I brought them to Tathan, just as I told you, and Ananka will verify that. Merin and Herne have nothing to do with the Cetans.”

  “Nothing?” scoffed Hotan. “Then what is Jidak doing here with them? I’ll wager he’s a spy, too.”

  “We all know,” Dulan said, “what Jidak endured before he left Ceta to join us on our journey to this world.”

  “We only know what Jidak told us,” Hotan declared. “A one-armed Cetan is still a Cetan.”

  “Have we come to this in our own time of peril?” cried Tula. “What has happened to our dream of a city where all the Races of telepaths could live together in peace?”

  “Keep your dreams, old man,” Hotan told him. “This is war. I’m going to see these spies dead in the square and then I’m going to fight and kill as many Cetans as I can.”

  “Wait.” Saray caught at Hotan’s arm. “My love, only talk to Ananka. She will tell you the truth, and she might even help us.”

  “Don’t look to me,” Ananka said, laughing. “I merely promised to send Herne and Merin home again. Which I will do, Herne, if ever you are able to reach your shuttlecraft and get it into the air. As for you, Saray, since you refuse to help me any longer, why should I help you? Fight your own battle.” With that, Ananka vanished.

  Hotan still had his fingers around Merin’s wrist. He began to drag her up the steps toward the Gathering Hall. Herne leapt after him, followed by Dulan, Saray, and the others.

  “Good.” Hotan bared his teeth in a mirthless grin. “I knew I only had to capture this one and the others would follow.”

  “Hotan, stop this at once.” Saray was faster than Herne. She reached her lover and the struggling Merin first. She threw her arms around Merin’s waist, trying to pull her away from Hotan by using all the weight of her body. “I won’t let you hurt her. Please, Hotan, we have to organize a resistance. Let Merin go and help me rally our friends.”

  They had all reached the interior of the Hall by now. Ignoring Saray’s continuing pleas, Hotan pulled the two women in the direction of the Chon statue. With Saray still clinging to her, Merin kicked and scratched at Hotan, finally bending over to bite his hand. He did not loosen his hold on her wrist, but only swatted at her with his free hand as if her struggles were as unimportant as the buzzing of an insect.

  The double doors of the main entrance stood open, allowing the roar of noise from the square to reach those inside the hall. Turning her head toward the sound, Merin caught a glimpse of frightened-looking people rushing about. Suddenly a group of obviously angry young men and women surged through the door and raced across the hall to surround Hotan, Merin, and Saray.

  “Death to the spies!” yelled one woman, a Denebian by her pale grey skin and hair.

  “Kill them! Kill all the Cetans, too!” shouted a red-antennaed Jugarian, whom Merin recalled seeing with Hotan at the Gathering she had attended.

  To Merin’s perception, the crowd about them quickly disintegrated into fragmented bits and pieces. Someone snatched at the gear she still had slung over her shoulder. She heard a loud snap as a strap broke, but she did not have time to look for whatever she had lost. She caught glimpses of Herne’s furious face as he bare-handedly pushed through the mob toward her, with Jidak on his right side and Imra on his left.

  Hotan is right about one thing, Merin thought wildly, seeing Jidak sweep aside two young men at a blow, once a Cetan, always a Cetan. Even with one arm and no weapons, he fights as a Cetan should.

  She saw two other opponents pull away when Imra bared her reptile’s teeth and hissed at them. Behind Imra, Tula was struggling with a muscular young woman. Somehow, Dulan had reached Merin’s side. Someone reached out to pull off the concealing blue hood.

  All motion, all sound, ceased at the sight of smooth, colorless skin stretched over the ruined bones of a once-noble face. Dulan stood immobilized.

  No, Merin thought, her heart aching for Dulan’s sake, not like this, revealed so that rude, uncaring folk can see. Struggling against Hotan’s hold on her with renewed purpose, she stretched her free hand forward. At the same time Saray released her grip on Merin’s waist and stepped toward Dulan. Together, Merin and Saray lifted Dulan’s hood back into place.

  The few moments of hesitation on the part of Hotan’s followers had given Herne the opportunity to reach Merin. He landed a well-placed punch on Hotan’s jaw. Letting go of Merin’s wrist, Hotan staggered a step or two, and Saray went to him.

  Merin and her friends were left standing with their backs against the pedestal that held the Chon statue, just as they had stood two nights before. As on that night, Hotan and his group were separated from them. But not for long. With Hotan leading them and Saray dragging on his arm to hold him back, the angry rebels advanced toward the statue.

  “Chon. Chon-chon. Chon!”

  Merin had never seen an angry Chon before. From the frightened reactions of the others in the Hall, she thought no one else had, either. There were three of them, a green one that Merin was certain was the same bird who had been in the garden earlier, and two blue Chon.

  “Cho-on! Cho-on!” It was a fearful sound. The birds spread their wings wide so they hovered just above the golden statue. With another ear-piercing cry, they extended their talons in a terrifying display of fury while their long beaks opened to show their teeth. The threat was unmistakable. Anyone who harmed those gathered by the statue would be torn to shreds. Hotan’s people fell back. A shimmering barrier rose between them and the statue.

  “Merin!” Saray shouted from the far side of the barrier, “Go! Love Herne until you die, as I love Hotan. Leave now, before it’s too late.”

  “Come,” Dulan said to Merin. “The birds will protect us for a few minutes more.”

  “Saray?” Merin could not take her eyes from Saray’s tear-streaked face. Anything they might have called out to each other would be lost in the roar of outrage that Hotan’s followers now set up as they realized they would be deprived of their intended victims. Merin saw Saray’s lips move, made out the single word, good-bye, and then Herne was pulling her toward the back door and the garden. Their friends followed, all of them running across the garden and into the alley behind it, where Tula’s blue-and-yellow cart stood ready, the twin ixak harnessed to it.

  “Get in,” Tula ordered, clambering onto the front seat and picking up the reins. “Hurry!”

  Herne’s hands were at Merin’s waist, lifting her upward. Imra, already aboard, caught Merin’s wrists in scaled three-fingered hands, hauling her into the cart. A moment later, Merin was sitting between the Styxian and Herne, in the back seat, with Tula, Dulan, and Jidak in front, and Tula was racing his team through the streets of Tathan. It was no easy task. It seemed as if every citizen of Tathan was frantically seeking a safe place to hide, and some were trying to take all of their belongings with them.

  “The Chon have warned them,” Dulan said, answering Merin’s unasked question as to how the alarm had been sounded so quickly.

  “Herne,” Tula called over his shoulder, “we are heading for our own safe place, the underground computer room
. Once there, we will seal it against detection and do what we can to resist the coming attack.”

  “But you two must go to your shuttlecraft,” Dulan added, “as Ananka told you to do. It is the only hope you have of seeing Home again. Tula, it’s best that you unharness the ixak and let them ride the beasts. It will be faster than taking the cart. They will have to outrun any pursuit that Hotan might organize.”

  “But you will need the ixak,” Merin protested, “to carry you to Lake Rhyadur.”

  “We have sssmall air vehicles,” Imra hissed. “They are faster and safer than travel by land.”

  Tula pulled up in front of a red stone building that looked no different from the other houses near it. Herne let Imra lower Merin to the ground while he went to help Tula free the ixak from their traces. Merin put her hands on Imra’s shoulders and the Styxian swung her down.

  “Do not fear for Dulan,” Imra hissed softly into her ear. “Or for Tula. Jidak and I will guard both of them with our lives. They will reach Lake Rhyadur in sssafety.”

  “I’m certain of it.” Merin smiled at Imra, at a fierce, supposedly untrustworthy Styxian reptile, knowing she could depend on Imra to keep her promise.

  “Go in sssafety yourself,” said Imra. “You are brave, for a human female.”

  “Dulan.” Merin turned to her dearest friend.

  “We have no need for words, or for an embrace,” Dulan said. “We understand each others’ hearts.”

  “I thank you all,” Merin said, looking at each of them in turn.

  “And I,” said Herne. “I haven’t always been polite, but I appreciate everything you’ve done for us.”

  “You should hurry.” Tula’s voice was rough, as though he was trying not to weep. “The attack could begin at any time.”

  Merin had never ridden an animal before. With Imra holding the ixak steady, it took Herne and Tula both to boost Merin onto its back. They would not have succeeded without Jidak’s help. He caught the seat of her treksuit in his single hand and raised her into the air. Merin was terrified. She clung to the reins with her right hand and clutched the ixak’s mane with her left. She wanted to tell Herne that she could not possibly ride this huge beast, but Imra caught her eye. If a Styxian thought she was brave, then she would try to show courage. She straightened her spine and sat proudly. Imra nodded, hissing her approval.

  “After you reach your ship,” Tula advised, “turn the ixak free. They will be safe enough, and may even find their way back here when all is peaceful again.”

  “Farewell, my friends.” Dulan’s head was bowed. Tula waved to them. Imra raised her left arm high in the ancient Styxian salute. Jidak’s clenched fist thudded against his broad chest in a gesture of great respect. Then Herne urge his mount forward and Merin’s ixak followed it. They rounded a corner and the telepaths were lost to view.

  Swallowing her tears, Merin looked about her at the chaos engulfing Tathan. The streets were jammed with carts, with other ixak, with lost pets howling, screaming children and anxious mothers of all Races. Many males brandished weapons in protective gestures if anyone came too close to their loved ones. Above them, the Chon circled endlessly, as if to guide the fleeing. The single bridge across the River Tath was impassible. Herne pulled the reins out of Merin’s hand.

  “Hold on tight,” he said. “I don’t know how strong the current is, but we’ll have to go through the water. It’s the only way. From what I know of Ananka, I don’t think she’s going to allow us much time before she reneges on her promise.”

  Merin now had reason to be grateful for the renewed vigor the Chon had imparted to her and to Herne. Through every moment of the next half hour she knew that without the Chon’s fortification they would have been unable to survive.

  The water of the Tath was far from cold, and the seaward current was not strong, but Herne had reckoned without the tide. They were halfway across the river when the incoming bore caught them in a rush of churning, salty water. Merin was submerged by it, nearly torn from the ixak’s back. Closing her eyes against the stinging wetness, she wound both hands through the ixak’s mane and clung to it as hard as she could. When her head was above water for a few seconds she gasped for air before she was pulled beneath the surface once more. She did not know where Herne was, if he still had hold of the reins, or if he had been swept away by the tide. She could only trust to the ixak’s instincts and hope the animal would reach the farther shore before they both drowned.

  Without any warning she felt the heat of the late summer sun on her face. She opened her eyes just in time to be tossed to the ground when the ixak collapsed under her. She lay where she had fallen, only a foot or two from the water’s edge, breathing deeply of the clean, hot air and watching the ixak struggle to its feet. Before she could get to her own feet, Herne was pulling her upright.

  “You’ve lost your coif,” he said, pushing her wet hair back behind her ears. “It took a Cetan attack and a raging river to get that thing off your head in daylight, out in the open.”

  “You’re alive,” she cried, placing both hands on his chest to make certain it was true.

  “So are you,” he replied, grinning at her, “in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Where are all these people going?” she asked, looking about. The fields surrounding Tathan were filled with folk hurrying away from the city. More were pouring across the bridge and onto the only road, while a few, perhaps inspired by Herne’s bold decision, were trying to swim or to ride ixak across the river.

  “Who knows where they’ll go?” Herne replied. “They are just hoping to find safe shelter before the Cetans arrive. Come on, help me get the bridles off the ixak. After that swim they are too exhausted to carry us any farther. We owe it to Tula to give his animals a chance to get away.”

  It took only a moment or two. The ixak gave no trouble, nor, when Herne slapped each on the rump, did they move off at any great speed.

  “Got your breath back?” Herne caught her hand. “Can you run?”

  “I’m sure of it. I’m fine now. Thanks to the Chon, I feel healthy again.”

  “Me too,” he said, pulling on her hand to urge her along.

  “I’ve lost my recorder,” she said. “I think it happened during the struggle at the Gathering Hall.”

  “Never mind that. Just concentrate on reaching the shuttlecraft.”

  They set off at the fastest pace they could manage while weaving their way among the hordes fleeing Tathan. Herne held tightly to Merin’s hand so they would not be separated.

  “There it is,” he said. “We’ve moved off the common track now, which is good. We don’t want to have to fight off terrified refugees who might want to go with us. I don’t know how I could tell anyone to stay behind, but I believe Ananka’s promise applied only to the two of us.”

  Freed of the press of so many people, they picked up speed, running as fast as they could toward the ship. Herne unbolted the manual latch and pulled the hatch open. As soon as they were inside, the hatch automatically slid shut again.

  “That’s encouraging,” Herne noted, watching the hatch operate smoothly. “Let’s hope Ananka keeps her word about the engines, too.”

  “I’ll pilot.” Merin took her familiar seat. Across the aisle, Herne strapped himself into the navigator’s position. Finished with her own safety harness, Merin lifted her hands to the controls.

  “Wait.” Herne stopped her. He spoke in rapid, disjointed phrases, but to her ears, and to her heart, he made perfect sense. “When Hotan grabbed you – might have killed you – and the river – could have been lost. If we don’t get out of this alive – want you to know – in spite of everything – I don’t care what you are. I love you. You, Merin. Everything about you.”

  “I love you, too,” she said. Frightened as she was, and uncertain whether Ananka would keep her promise to them, Merin had never been so happy. “In this time or any other, I don’t think it’s possible for me to forget what I feel for you.”

&nbs
p; “Nor I for you.” He loosened his safety harness so he could lean across the aisle to kiss her. A long, blissful moment slid by while they reveled in tender emotion.

  “All right,” Herne said, laughing a little as he pulled away and settled back into his seat, “I’ll finish proving it to you later. For now, let’s go home.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” She laughed back at him.

  The engines started on the first try. On his side of the aisle, Herne flicked a switch.

  “Viewscreen and all navigational instruments are working,” he reported, then swore a blistering Sibirnan oath. “The Cetans are here.”

  Chapter 17

  The viewscreen came to life as Herne spoke, the screen revealing small, rapidly moving ships. Merin recognized them as an earlier version of their own craft.

  “Cetan shuttlecraft coming in fast,” Herne noted. “More of them than I expected, considering the size of the mother ship. Poor Tathan. Poor telepaths. If only we could help them.”

  “Perhaps we can, once we are airborne.” Merin went to work at the controls. Their craft rose off the ground. “Ananka said to hover over Tathan until she does whatever she plans to do for us. We have weapons, Herne. We can distract the Cetans as long as we are in this time.”

  “Every moment we can keep them occupied in the air is that much longer the people on the ground will have to reach safety.” Herne nodded his agreement. “Let’s try it.”

  Just as Merin brought the shuttlecraft into position above Tathan, a burst of light on their starboard side rocked the little ship.

  “Nasty people, the Cetans,” Herne grunted, concentrating on their own weapons. “Give the word when you’re ready.”

  “Fire.” Merin’s voice was cool. “Fire again.”

  “Got one! Will you look at that!” Herne pointed to the viewscreen. “We have help. Those are Chon, maneuvering to confuse the Cetans, who probably don’t even know the Chon exist. Are they going to be surprised! They may think the Chon are a whole fleet of small shuttlecraft. Now there’s some fire coming from Tathan. Our friends aren’t as defenseless as we thought. Our scanning instruments show hidden weapons placed all around the city and, from what I can see, they are using them well. I’m sure it’s Jidak’s doing. He will know how other Cetans would plan an attack. It’s just possible that more telepaths than we believe will survive this battle.”