Beneath the Thirteen Moons (19 page)

“Water-rat.”

A ghost of a whisper in the darkness. Mahri sat up with a start, reached for a bone staff that was no longer there, and tried to make sense of her surroundings. Memory flooded back and she looked down at the man at her side.

“Korl? What is it?”

“My enemies… S’raya. Boyfriend.”

Mahri ran into the adjoining room and grabbed a light globe. Did he always dream in nightmares in his palace? She placed the ornate globe next to the bed and gazed at his face with a frown. His eyes were wide open but that didn’t necessarily mean he was awake, and she saw fear in their depths, as if he struggled against some evil thing.

“Korl, are you awake? What’s wrong?”

His broad chest heaved as if he ran a race. His eyes wouldn’t blink and Mahri felt a small trickle of fear blossom in her chest.

“Wake up!” she commanded.

“Not… asleep.” Korl panted. “S’raya… stupid.”

Mahri frowned. What did that mean? Then she remembered their conversation during that strenuous
dance, when he’d said that S’raya was unscrupulous, but not stupid. Stupid enough to attack him with Power in the guarded Palace Tree? Is that what he means?

“Jaja,” she called, hoping her pet hadn’t eaten his way into a complete stupor. But he already stood at her shoulder, those huge brown eyes watching Korl with concern. “Zabba—I need root. Did you sniff out any earlier?”

He looked from her to Korl.

“I think he’s being attacked with Power, Jaja. He needs root!”

Her pet chattered and scampered down the bed, through a small archway into the bathing room. Mahri had already searched it, but Jaja stopped before a tall chest of carved bone and pointed at it. She opened it again, spilling shells of soap and baskets of herbs onto the floor, their sharp scent combining into an overpowering aroma.

“Where?”

Jaja climbed up the shelves like a ladder and tapped on the back of the chest. Mahri felt a small seam, and an even smaller hole where a key could be inserted. She ran back to the bed.

Korl hadn’t moved, but the golden tan he’d acquired in the swamps had faded to white, so that the scars on his cheek stood out in relief. His breathing had slowed, but that didn’t reassure her, for it looked as if he struggled still—but weakly now.

“Where’s the key, Korl? The key for the chest in the bathing room. You need Power.”

“Yesss… no. Mas… R’in.”

Mahri spun. “Jaja, fetch Master R’in. I don’t care how, but find him and bring him here.”

Jaja chirruped and slipped out the balcony.

“He won’t get here in time, Korl. Where’s the—” and she added some colorful descriptions, “key?”

His chest heaved again. By-the-moons, thought Mahri, nothing can happen to him. Not now.

“Pink,” he gasped, and lay still, as if that one word had taken all the strength he had, his chest now rising and falling painfully.

Goosebumps prickled Mahri’s skin in the chill night air, the sound of falling rain a muted roar from the open balcony doors. Pink, she thought furiously. What could that mean? Was it the name of someone, the name of some kind of filing system, the color of a pocket on one of his jackets?

Color?

And she remembered the pink table that Jaja loved, and sprinted into the other room, banging her shin against a chair and yelping a curse. She swept the feast from the table, fruits and shells of candies and cheese and cold fish crashing into a messy heap onto the floor.

Mahri uncovered all the light globes and used her fingers to search the legs, top, and sides of that shiny table. Nothing. Not a seam or crack or anything to indicate a secret drawer. And she couldn’t think of anything else pink. She’d always hated that color, anyway. Looked horrible with red hair. By-the-moons, what could she do? How could she help him without zabba?

Korl began to moan and call out senseless things. How did someone kill another with the Power, anyway? She’d never conceived of such a thing. One body organ would be all it took for someone with a Healer’s knowledge. S’raya wouldn’t know such things, but that Seer?
Would he know how to deliver the longest, most agonizing sort of death?

“Korl!” she screamed in frustration, and fear turned to rage.

Where would that arrogant man put the key? What if he didn’t hide it? What if he—a typical male—had just laid it on the table? Mahri dove into the pile of food, searching through the muck, squeezing cheese through her fingers and flinging it away, picking apart fish filets and tossing them aside until her fingers felt the hard shape of a bone key.

Mahri wiped it as she ran back into the bathing room, inserted it into the hole after several attempts, and grunted with relief when she heard a click. A panel sprang open. Her mouth gaped at the amount of zabba in that space, enough to supply her entire village for a year, before she snatched the nearest pouch of it and dashed back to the bed, stuffing zabba into her mouth and gagging at the bitter taste of it.

Korl’s beautiful green eyes darted around the room in terror, his mouth slack and babbling meaningless phrases. Her own eyes sparked Power, the root rushing through her system, and she fed it to Korl through the pathways, feeling him eagerly draw it from her. His face showed reason for just a moment and he looked up into her own.

“I know what… love is. It’s you Mahri. Simply… you.” And his eyes glazed, his next words meaningless drivel about monsters and murderers and horrors she couldn’t begin to imagine.

Mahri clenched sheets in her fists. Hard. What were they doing to him? She could only guess that somehow they attacked his mind, not the body.

She hadn’t even known it was possible to enter another’s mind unless there was a Bond, until it had happened to her with the overdose of root—and even then she only accessed the native life of Sea Forest. And they seemed to all possess an exclusively natural mental connection. Could someone acquire that ability another way? How could she possibly know?

Mahri grabbed up a blanket from the bed and wrapped her naked body in its warmth. All she knew was that the only way to help Korl was to break down the mind-barrier and meld with him. Again, she’d be forced to an action that she’d only take to save another, and although she could refuse to do so, she knew she couldn’t watch Korl die and do nothing. How did she manage to get into these situations?

She chewed as much zabba as her stomach would hold down, cracked her mind-barrier and reached into her pathways, following the sparkles of green light when it connected with his, until she reached the nub where the Power entered his own mind. She hesitated a breath, then followed, surrounded once more by his thoughts and memories, the essence of this man.

Korl
, she thought-whispered, trying to ignore the black shapes that darted through his mind.
Focus on me. Link with me.

Mahri
? So weak, that call.
It’s hard to stay with you, so much of my mind is gone. Get out while you can, before they twist you too.

Who
? she demanded.
S’raya and that blackrobe
?

Yessss
. So faint.

Korl! Remember when you melded with me, when I Saw too deeply into the essence of matter? Our souls
joined and we survived. Join again with me now and hold on to that part of you.

No
. Firm denial in that.
Then if they destroy me, they take you too.

You arrogant—just do it
!

No answer.

Mahri raged with fear that she’d lost him, hoped beyond hope that he’d do what she’d told him to. A golden form took shape in her Sight, in the maelstrom of his mind, and began to float toward her. But two of the black shapes solidified, blocked his path, and Mahri knew one to be his sister.

Korl said you were stupid
, she mind-spat.
If he dies you’re the first they’ll suspect and I’ll make sure to tell them what happened.

Laughter; loud, long, and echoing, screeched through Korl’s mind.

Think they’ll believe your word, you ignorant water-rat, over mine
? S’raya’s mental voice sounded old and evil.
Especially after that scene at your so-called joining. They know you hate Korl, that you kidnapped him and he forced you as lifemate. They’ll think you made him insane somehow through the Bond. Thank you, Wilding, for the opportunity—again—to destroy my brother
.

Mahri drew on the Power, not knowing how it would affect the body she’d left behind, only caring that she needed as much as possible to save Korl. She fisted a hand and looked down with astonishment. In his mind she shimmered as a ruby-red shape, and in her hand she held a fireball of green Power.

She ignored the two solid black shapes and started hurling green balls at the other monstrous things that
whirled around her. The Power flared when it hit one, and the shape vanished.

Ha!
thought Mahri.

Stop her
, screeched S’raya, and the black shape next to her own lifted a hand and green lightning flared and shot towards Mahri. When it hit her she reeled with the pain of it, but gathered more Power and flung it at the Seer.

He flickered to ghostly black and his thought-words wavered.
This Wilding has more tolerance for the Power than I’ve ever seen! No wonder he Bonded with her. Give it up, S’raya
.

And within the beat of a heart he left Korl’s mind.

No
! S’raya screamed and her black shape rushed at Mahri, hit a fireball straight on, and her cries died into nothing.

So quickly, thought Mahri, had she defeated them. Yet, they could have just as easily snuffed out her during that timeless battle.

Then all Mahri could See was green and she felt her own mind thud back into her body.

Drained but thankfully not root-fried, she sank her head onto Korl’s chest. The warm, smooth skin of it rose and fell in an easy, steady pattern and she sighed with relief as she listened to the strong beat of his heart.

Jaja chattered from the adjoining room and Mahri rose to her feet, clutching the blanket around her and trembling more from fatigue than the cold. She leaned against the archway and watched with hooded gaze as Master R’in surveyed the shambles of the room.

“You did it again,” he said in disbelief as he gazed at the seaweed that dripped from tapestries and the fruit
that splattered framed artwork and the shredded fish that littered silk cushions. “And to think I was curious to see what you’d do with Power.”

Mahri’s eyes flashed sparks from the dregs of zabba still in her system. “I was looking for something.”

The old man entered the room, skirting the worst of the mess, and motioned the guards at his back to stay at the door. “Did you find it?”

“Aya.”

“And my prince?”

Mahri shrugged. “He’s still abed.”

“Your pet dragged me from my own,” Master R’in replied with a frown, “as if the Royal couple were in need of my services. Am I correct?”

She hadn’t the strength to answer, just turned and stumbled back to the bed and collapsed next to Korl. She felt the old man follow and use the Power to probe her, give a satisfied grunt then do the same to Korl. His gnarled hands paused over that head of pale hair.

“Who dared?” he gasped.

“His sister,” mumbled Mahri. “And that Seer. You’d best see to them, old man, for they’ll be the ones needing your ‘services’ now, not my lifemate.”

R’in gasped again. “
You
saved him?”

Mahri felt familiar strong hands sift through her hair and looked up into Korl’s face. No madness there now, but a tenderness that made her shiver and forget even the presence of the old man.

“Of course she did,” said Korl.

He pulled her face to his using a fistful of dark red locks. His mouth captured her own, with a reverent inquiry that Mahri knew the meaning of. That he
could want her again, so soon, and after what they’d just went through… perhaps even because of it. She groaned into his mouth and his hand fought beneath her blanket, hot fingers ripping up her back and down, lower, to her bottom…

Master R’in cleared his throat. “Er, well, then if you don’t need me your Highness, perhaps I will check on your sister.”

Mahri heard the words through a haze of arousal. Korl only needs to look at me, she thought, and no one and nothing else exists for me. And when he touches me, it’s even worse, the total domination of my senses.

She whimpered and Korl growled.

The old man picked up the ends of his robe and ran from the room, with quite an astonishing display of agility for one of his age.

M
AHRI KNEW SHE’D AGAIN HAD TOO MUCH ZABBA, FOR
an overdose had brought her to this same place before. She walked along an enormous branch of the Mother Tree, the curls of mist parting to again reveal that door of strange carvings.

As she entered into that cavernous room hollowed in the bark of the tree and that circle of light, she tried to remember how much root she’d chewed before she’d entered Korl’s mind. Surely not enough for an overdose. But had her body continued to ingest zabba while she’d fought that inner battle? Had it provided her with what her mind needed to survive, without thought of the ravages it would cause in her system?

Mahri shrugged, making Jaja scramble for purchase on her shoulder. “Too many unanswered questions,” she muttered in disgust.

It’s why you’ve called me,
answered an alien voice inside her mind. The Speaker entered the circle of light and Jaja immediately hopped to her shoulder to rub cheeks.

“Me? Call you?”

The Speaker nodded, the scarlet and deep blue feathers of her headdress fluttering with the movement.
You… angry with us. Feel like… we play with you?

“Aya, a pawn that you spy on, to move at your whim.”

The Speaker shook with almost human indignation.
No, no! We
help… guide.

Mahri began to pace that circle of light and noticed that just like the last time it already started to shrink. “You said that before. Maybe what you consider guiding, we consider manipulation.”

Do not know word. No understand.

Mahri sighed in exasperation. If they couldn’t communicate with each other, how did these aliens expect to guide them, anyway? They made decisions based on their concepts, not a human’s.

“Why don’t you just explain everything, as you see it. Then I can decide whether you’re right or not.” By-the-moons, she sounded as arrogant as Korl. But she didn’t care. They seemed to want her cooperation—why else try to communicate with her—and she wasn’t going to just go along with their plans. Regardless of what had passed between her and Korl already.

Then she grimaced. Not that she’d had any luck fighting their control anyway.

The Speaker stroked Jaja’s ears, and her pet extended them into the huge fins they were, brown eyes wide in appeal as he wagged them at Mahri. She fought back a grin at the sight of that tiny face surrounded by those huge, waving fins, her anger fading a little.

I already… yes, I try harder to make understand. You come from above, yes?

“You told me that before, however hard it is to believe. I’ll accept that my ancestors came from another place than this.”

Good. Now, Sea Forest wild… death easy for your kind. We help, give root, but problem. Only some can
chew zabba, others die. But good too, your… differences. We all same, us natives, peaceful… but go nowhere.

Mahri nodded, wishing the native would hurry up, for the smaller the circle of light got, the quicker it seemed to shrink. It might’ve helped if she’d talk back with mind-speech, but she wasn’t willing to break down that barrier, to allow them access to her in anything other than this dream-talk.

Your species also… mad-angry-war. Always one with more power than other, seek to have all. But we choose to let you become part of our world anyway. See long… future. No war, our people become your servants, to guide, protect, choose path to peace.

Mahri nodded, remembering what the Speaker had told her before. That these natives had given up a part of their world, worse, made themselves virtually slaves to her people, to avoid war and the annihilation of her kind. They truly were aliens to her people. She couldn’t imagine humans going to such lengths to preserve another species, even if it were for their own good. Still, she couldn’t see what her and Korl had to do with any of this.

The alien fluttered impossibly long lashes in excitement.
But we must all become one with Sea Forest! Your minds all… closed. Must have equal root… knowledge for to happen.

“And if we don’t?” asked Mahri, unable to imagine her own mind left open to mingle with the thoughts of thousands. Would it be even possible to retain one’s identity? The aliens seemed to have done so, but her own people?

The Speaker bowed her head.
Your kind will not… survive-live-continue. But your people may come again,
and then be war, for will not understand Sea Forest and number of you too great to… reach all.

Mahri’s heart pounded. Of course, if her ancestors came from somewhere else, it made sense that more people were out there, among the stars. And they wouldn’t understand the Power or the dependence this world had on everything in it. “But how can a Bond between Korl and I help all our people become one with Sea Forest? He can only touch minds with me. If I let my barrier down I can reach your native life, but he can only touch mine.”

Many connections can be made. Sometimes… twisted.

Mahri nodded, remembering the forced entry into Korl’s mind by his sister. She knew she should ask if the native knew how they’d done it but…

No evil. Must go slowly.
The Speaker continued on, shaking her head again.
Not so much at one time. Little things add to greater good. You make Prince of Changes choose path that lead to greater good.

Mahri still didn’t understand. Maybe she never would, their minds were so unalike. Fear fluttered in her stomach, at the thought that if they didn’t someday understand each other, her kind might not survive.

Jaja folded his ears and chattered. The circle of light had shrunk so that Mahri and the Speaker had to stand almost nose-to-nose to stay in it. There wasn’t much time and Mahri didn’t relish the thought of another overdose just to answer her one burning question. When she woke, if she woke, who knows what damage she might’ve caused herself this time. The memory of that mind-trip through the essence of all things made her clutch at the Speaker’s narrow shoulders and squeeze.

“Did you make him love me?” she blurted.

Then cringed at her own selfishness. The fate of all mankind seemed to rest with her and Korl, yet all she could think to ask was if he truly loved her.

But without that, nothing else seemed to matter.

The Speaker grunted a wheeze that could only be laughter.
This is true reason angry? Fight us?

“Aya.” Shame in that admission, but defiance also. The circle of light had shrunk until she could barely see the alien’s face surrounded by those brilliant feathers.

And then only blackness and the sound of the Speaker’s mind-voice.
We only chose the door. The rest… up to you.

The door? wondered Mahri. Aya. At the Healer’s Tree, when she’d chosen a door seemingly at random, and later cursed herself for the ill fate of choosing a Healer that turned out to be a prince.

Not so random a choice, after all.

Mahri walked through the elegant corridors, trying to remember the directions she’d overheard to Master R’in’s rooms. Between her recovery from another overdose, and then Korl’s persistence in making sure she was healthy again (in mind and especially body) she hadn’t left their apartments for almost three turnings of the moons. And she had no idea of the palace layout.

She’d been walking for some while before she noticed that laughter had erupted several times after she’d passed an open door. Mahri wondered if it had anything to do with her and back-tracked to the last doorway she’d just footed by.

A circle of busily sewing women dropped their skeins and hastily rose to their feet and bowed.

“Your Highness,” greeted a raven-haired woman. “How may we assist you?”

They didn’t ask her to join them, and although Mahri hadn’t expected them to, she still felt a bitter twinge of disappointment. “I’m looking for Master R’in’s chambers.”

A young girl giggled behind a gloved hand at the hoarseness of the princess’s voice. Mahri felt her face turn red and swallowed hard on the gravelly feel in her throat. It seemed her screams had been heard beyond her and Korl’s apartments and she blushed again at the memory of the delicious cause of them.

The raven-haired woman shushed the girl before replying. “He’s two levels below us, Your Highness. Third turning on the right. Do you not have a guard to escort you?”

Mahri shrugged. She needn’t tell them she’d given the guard Korl had assigned to her the slip. Besides, they hadn’t been for her protection, or status either. They’d been ordered to keep her a prisoner. “I didn’t want one.”

“Of course not,” whispered a small thin woman amidst sudden muffled snickers.

“Do you sew, my lady?” asked someone else in the group. Mahri felt them advance on her like a pack of vulture-rays.

“No.”

“Of course not,” said the same woman, this time much more snidely.

“I mean, yes,” snapped Mahri. They made her so nervous she could barely answer a simple question.
“I mean, I sew seams and such, but nothing like what you’re working on.” She gestured at the skillfully embroidered tapestry that lay stretched on its frame in the middle of the room.

“No matter, Highness. I’m sure your talents lie in other areas.”

Another round of giggles followed. Did they think her stupid, wondered Mahri, that she didn’t understand their game of words? For all their friendly smiles and manner, she detected the underlying hostility within their jesting.

“Aya, I’m also quite skillful with this.” And she pulled her bone staff from her belt and flicked her wrist in the subtle yet complicated pattern that extended it. With much persuasion on her part, Korl had returned her weapon and had her snar-scale leggings and top copied in silk for her to wear when she refused the dresses that had been sewn for her. She regretted the decision to wear the boating outfit now, despite the comfortable familiarity of it, for it made her more of an alien to these women.

She swung the bone and managed to at least back the women away from their predatory advance on her. So they wouldn’t accept her—no surprise that—but at least she’d make them show a little respect. Mahri made three successive moves and snapped the top of a swan-shaped table in half.

“I’m quite skillful at killing,” she growled, and managed to bare her teeth without bursting into laughter.

As one, the women sucked air through their teeth and backed away from her in horror. Except for the young girl, who eyed the Wilding with awed fascination. “Have
you really killed? Do you truly have Master tolerance of zabba? What’s it like to pole a boat? Are the swamps really full of monsters?” Her questions poured forth so quickly Mahri had no chance of answering them, even if she’d had a mind to. The small woman pinched the girl’s arm and brought her to heel.

Mahri sighed. Perhaps, if she had a mind to try very hard, it might be possible to make a few of these women her friends. But it wouldn’t be worth the effort, for she didn’t belong here, and wouldn’t be staying once Korl came to his senses and realized he could never make her into a princess.

Mahri spun and left the room, snapping her wrist to shorten her staff and slamming it back into her belt with feeling. And a ridiculous belt it is, she thought as she caught sight of the gleam of crystal imbedded into it. Worth a small fortune, the gilded thing, just to carry her worn old staff. But it seemed that if she refused to wear the crown, Korl had to identify her as Royalty somehow, and the belt was his attempt at a compromise.

She ignored the peals of laughter and half-frightened imprecations of “savage” and “barbarian” that echoed down the corridor—and no longer had to wonder about the laughter that greeted the sight of her. The courtiers were having a grand time at the expense of the prince’s new bride.

It didn’t make her feel any better that she’d expected their scorn and derision.

How she hated this place! So he loved her—so what? He still chose to keep her a prisoner and no matter the elegant trappings, the palace was still her prison. His definition of love—again—was greatly different from her own.

After her dream with the Speaker, she’d decided to help Korl rule if it came to that. But she’d admitted to herself that she didn’t know how to help him. She knew how to be herself, and every ounce of her being rebelled at staying in the palace. As long as she lay in Korl’s arms she could be happy, but they couldn’t stay abed all the time, no matter how much she longed to do so, and Mahri wondered how long it would be before her hatred for this place extended to him as well. She didn’t want it to come to that.

Mahri took the circular, carved stairwell down the two levels, aware that the Royal Family had their own Powered elevator, but refusing to take advantage of it. Only in these small denials could she exert some semblance of her vanishing independence.

She wished Jaja were with her. He’d done an admirable job of distracting the guards for her though, and she’d bet that afterwards he’d gone back to gorging himself again. If he kept it up she’d have to roll her pet out of the Palace Tree.

After Korl had allowed her to leave their bed, her first thought had been to seek out Master R’in, and she wasn’t quite sure why. But she felt for some reason that he might be her friend.