The Farris Channel (50 page)

Now the six of them stood in the narrow, dim underground hallway. Solamar paused with a hand on the door opposite where Clire still lay.

With Shani, her husband Marliss backed up by BanSha, and Rushi sitting with Clire, that left Fengal in charge of the Dispensary, Xanon in charge of the Collectorium and nobody with appropriate skills on duty in the infirmary. If something happened that Val or Dakin couldn’t find someone to handle, their session would be interrupted.

“Let’s go, Solamar, I’d rather get this over with before we have to deliver Clire.” She was massively malnourished because they could only get her to swallow liquids, and her body was failing in ways they’d never seen happen before. Nobody knew why she was still alive.

“So let’s do it,” said Lexy, opened the door and stopped dead.

Solamar had removed the furniture from the room and hung one wall with the large black cloth that had been on Rimon’s chair during the ceremony. Now the roll of martyrs was embroidered on it in white. In front of the cloth was a table with a big ceramic bowl filled with water.

The bowl held a pile of river stones that supported an oil lamp burning a scented oil. The room was warm, but the fire had burned down to embers. The oil lamp provided the only light reflecting from the dark, still water.

Solamar closed the door behind them and stood a moment, both hands on the door, tentacles spread, as if he wanted to sink into the door and be somewhere else. When he stepped back, he drew his toe across the dirt floor. His nager, deep inside his showfield, blazed.

Rimon asked, “So what do we do?”

“
Out of Death Was I Born, Unto Zeor, Forever.
We are all here because of those who have died. Lexy, call the roll of martyrs.” He gestured to the huge black cloth.

It was too dim to read the names even by the oil lamp, but they had been embroidered in high relief. Lexy read them by zlinning. Picking up the old familiar rhythm of this roll call, she pronounced each of the names clearly.

Rimon found himself mouthing the names with her and heard the others whispering them as well. They knew the stories behind the names. Listening, he half remembered and almost saw the people who had lived and died before he was born. It was as if they had gathered here in the shadows around him. These weren’t the ghosts who had driven his father mad. This visitation was familiar, warming.

Suddenly, he knew what to say.

* * * * * * *

Solamar had worked hard to create a space that might let both these Farris channels journey together. So many people had helped without knowing why he wanted these things. There was a strong spirit moving through this new family, his own pledge making him part of it.

When Lexy finished the roll call, Solamar had no clue what should come next, and neither did she, but she stood there so proudly pregnant he wanted to hug her.

Apparently Rimon had retrieved a memory from his journey through time. He said, “All of these have died for...for the House of Zeor without even knowing it. Lexy, uhh, Farris ambrov Zeor, step forward if you would become the vessel through which the power of death will brighten and grace the world of the living.”

Solamar watched her think about that. He couldn’t guess how it must sound to her, but he knew where Rimon had gotten it and she didn’t.

Eventually, she stepped toward Rimon, the light illuminating half her face, hair, and one eye.

Rimon asked, “What is Zeor?”

“The acceptance of death as part of the cycle of birth. The acceptance of failure as the necessary condition for success. The knowledge that we exist separate and outside of failure and success, birth and death. That knowledge obliterates fear. Zeor is the fearlessness that protects from the Kill.”

There was a long silence while Rimon hid behind his showfield. Solamar wasn’t sure even Lexy could zlin his reaction. Lexy was so focused on Rimon that she didn’t even look over at him.

That was when he realized they were no longer in the room.
We’re out of body together, the three of us, four counting the baby.

The room he perceived around them was now only a construct formed of imagination and will. He set himself to hold that construct steady.

Rimon nodded and held out his hands to his daughter, handling tentacles and laterals extended. She reciprocated and they made lateral contact, Rimon zlinning her deeply.

Then Rimon said, “Dive deep within yourself and search for Zeor within your own soul so you will recognize it when you find what I have left for you. This is a dangerous journey from which you may never return, and if you do return your soul will be forever changed. You will gain nothing for yourself, but only for others. Are you willing?”

“Yes.”

“Go then fearlessly. Reach out, find the gift I have left for you and return.”

Forever after, Solamar berated himself for his carelessness in that moment. He should have known then that she had slipped too deep into trance.

Without warning, she streaked for the door and flung it wide open, breaking the protection he had counted on.

Instantly, as if she’d been waiting outside the door, Clire appeared, wispy, translucent, limbs fraying to nothing. She screamed in wordless rage and flew at Lexy.

Rimon hurled himself at Clire and knocked her away from the portal, tumbling as he grappled with the apparition.

Lexy whipped through the open portal and shot off into formless mist.
I warned her illusion is the real danger here. She thinks Clire is a phantom.

Before he could go after Lexy, Rimon and Clire hurtled at him, spinning end for end. Clire rammed into him, slamming him into the wall. Her image frayed. Rimon, still solid fell through her arms. Astonished, Solamar lost his grip on the image of the safe room.

They were floating in formless mist, and Clire’s image was all wrong. “Rimon, she’s not pregnant!”

Rimon whirled and stared at her. She flew at him again, streaming the fraying mist of her body behind her while her arms and outstretched tentacles solidified, laterals extended and dripping selyn conducting ronaplin.

“She’s dying, Rimon!”

“You murdered me! You murdered my baby! You denied me transfer!”

Rimon opened his arms to receive Clire’s transfer grip, “Go! Save the baby!” Tentacles locked to tentacles.

“Solamar!” screamed Lexy. “Solamar!”

The boy is born. Alive or dead, he’s born.

Solamar dove through the two Farrises to get to Lexy. Clire’s body rammed into Rimon and kept going. Blazing white mist, virtual selyn, flowed Farris to Farris. Rimon’s image drained, paled, dissolved and combined into Clire’s tattered remnant of a body.

Solamar flowed to a stop in the selyn-filled mist laced with blazing nageric filaments that seized his body, brain, nerves even bones and left him hanging helpless.

It’s not really selyn. He can’t be giving her transfer. He’s not anywhere near her body.
Yet Solamar felt caught in the side effects of a real transfer of Farris speed and volume. His nerves would never survive this in reality. He closed his virtual eyes and strove to reform himself so he could help Rimon then get to Lexy.

When he opened his virtual eyes, a last whirling teardrop of mist was draining away through an invisible hole in the mist-walls around them. Otherwise, nothing.

“Solamar!” called Lexy’s voice.

“Lexy!” He
reached
for Lexy and he was by her side.

They were on a misty plane, at the mantle and hearth Rimon had built, the painting of Lexy on the wall over the mantle. A sprightly fire burned in the grate and Rimon’s white lined blue cloak hung on a rack.

Lexy held the coffer in her left hand, the lid back, her right hand reaching inside it, handling tentacles spread, laterals sheathed. From the knuckles down, her hand had turned to mist that curled around a replica of the Zeor dagger made of some strange, glowing material. Solamar wasn’t sure if she was pulling the dagger out or trying to shove it back in and let go.

She whimpered, “Solamar!”

Solamar gathered her up from behind and held the arm that supported the coffer.

“Solamar! Don’t panic!”

Ruing Farris sensitivity, he confessed, “This isn’t what I’d expected.” Oddly, his uncertainty steadied her.

“Help me. I’m stuck! It won’t let me go!”

Cradling her back against his chest, he ran his right hand down her right arm, feeling for what was happening.

Suddenly, his father was lounging against the mantle. He had his winter cloak pushed back, hands in the pockets of his formal green robes. He wore the official jeweled Starred Cross emblem on his chest, as if interrupted amidst something important. He exuded an “I told you so” attitude.

Then Lexy looked up and saw him, and forgot about her own plight as she compared him to Solamar. Suddenly Rhodilan Grant was very interested in Lexy.

“Father, I’d like you to meet Lexy Farris uh, ambrov Zeor. Long story there. She’s Rimon’s daughter, and my intended.”

“You’re Solamar’s father? I mean, I’m very glad to meet you, Tuib.”

Rhodilan Grant ran an appraising eye over Lexy. He knew her baby was not Solamar’s. He didn’t know that Rimon, Clire and Clire’s child might be dead.

“I’m very glad to meet you, Lexy.” Then his face transformed into a warm smile filled with gentle affection as he added, “Got your hand caught in the cookie jar, I see.” This was the father Solamar had had before First Year, before he’d become Rhodilan’s student who could do nothing but make trouble testing wild ideas.

She looked back down at her disappearing hand, and the panic vanished in laughter as her showfield assembled around a clinical detachment. “It seems I do,” she chuckled. “I’ve tried letting go. I can’t. Do you have any ideas?”

Rhodilan pushed away from the mantle. Keeping his hands in his pockets, he strolled over to walk all around the two of them, peering at the coffer and the disappearing hand from every angle.

When he came around in front of Lexy, he crouched down and scrutinized the problem from beneath, then rose, muttered, “Excuse me,” and pushed his face close to the point where the knuckles evaporated into lighted mist.

Lexy peered at Solamar.

He mouthed, “Shhh.”

He had told Rimon and Lexy any number of times that he was no expert to be teaching them these things. He’d rarely mentioned his father, though.

“Ah, I see the problem. Lexy, your only way out of this is through that box. It’s a risk, but you’ll have to just let it suck you in, then follow along through it until you get back to your body.”

“My body’s in there?”

“The way back lies through.”

His father must have been able to find that Lexy’s cord now ran through the box, probably from underneath so he hadn’t seen it from the top. “How could that happen?”

“I have no idea.” His father straightened and looked him square in the eye. “It probably has something to do with the unique qualities of the Farris mutation triggered by the exercise of the channeling abilities.”

There was no censure in the elder Grant’s tone at all.
Something has changed.
Warily, Solamar said, “Lexy has great channeling skills, but no Wayfarer instruction. I had her in a heavily warded room and she broke out of my wards.”

His father didn’t note that he should have practiced more when he was learning. “I think you’ll find the Farrises will always do the unexpected.”

“They always surprise me.”

“That is no doubt the reason why they will succeed.”

They will?

Following his thought, his father merely shifted his gaze to the coffer’s contents.

“Excuse me?” said Lexy. When she had their attention, she asked, “How can I climb into something so small?”

“Hmm,” said Rhodilan. “My son can handle that, and he can fix it so this won’t happen to the next candidate to receive Rimon’s legacy.”

I can?

His father told Lexy reassuringly, “Rimon put too much into that coffer. Each person should find only what they’re able to absorb, not everything that’s there. With good shielding installed, it should only destroy a few candidates, but only those who couldn’t survive the burden anyway. Select and train the next candidates carefully and there should be no problem.”

“So I’ll have to absorb it all because there’s no shielding in there now?”

“Basically,” agreed Rhodilan. He made eye contact, riveting her attention. “You won’t have to remember anything that distresses you. You will forget what you can’t understand, or would prefer not to. You will remember only the one most important message about your, hmmm, House of Zeor. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

His father nodded at him. He reached around and found her cord connecting her to her body, stroked it and sent a tiny charge of selyn into it and the baby’s cord, then let go of her and stood back commanding, “Go!”

Her body swirled into the coffer following her hand. The coffer snapped closed and reformed on the mantle.