Halcyon Nights (Star Sojourner Book 2) (17 page)

Shasra watched me.

“Shasra,” I said, refrained a sideways nod and smiled instead.

“Jules,” she answered politely and nodded in a very Terran manner. Perhaps she was studying to be an anthropologist. She smiled at Lisa, took her hand as we walked, carefully turned it over and studied the small fingers as though they were porcelain. Lisa, just as interested in Shasra's elongated, crinkled hand, closed her tiny fist around the hooked claws of the Kubraen's fingers.

Shasra purred in her throat and brushed the back of her hand over Lisa's smooth cheek. She murmured something to Hasril and nibbled lightly on Lisa's fingers.

Lisa squealed, rested her head on Briertrush's stiff-haired crown, and touched Shasra's velvety lips.

Hasril murmured something to Shasra and Shasra wagged her head and chortled. So make me a grandmother, already! I couldn't help thinking for Hasril. Shasra rubbed Lisa's hand across the gland in her neck and licked Lisa's sticky fingers.

I threw a frown at Briertrush. He found something interesting to stare at on the ground. Shasra dug inside her cloak, removed a small delicately-carved wooden animal and handed it to Lisa. “Goodbrye, Lishra. Do not wear down your teeth, shmall one.”

Lisa turned the gift over in her hand, sniffed the pungent wood, and reached into her jacket pocket.

She took out the toy hovair and gave it to Shasra. Damn! That toy might've come in handy again with its light.

“Thank you, Lishra!” Shasra's tone was soft and lisping. Mother and daughter moved away, their heads wagging in figure-eight patterns that looked for all the world like neck exercises. They touched shoulders as they walked, scraping off flakes of dead skin.

Shasra glanced back at Lisa and stumbled over the black lizard as he ran under her foot for the skin. This time the spider grabbed it first.

I wondered what animals the Kubraens had evolved from?

“Beertush?” Lisa patted his head. “Can I get down now?”

He swung her off his shoulders as we hiked through the snowy woods. I looked back at Shasra, walking with a group of young females now. Frightening that one sterile generation could spell extinction for an entire people. “Do the other Kubraen villages still produce children?” I asked Briertrush.

“Weaken threy as Kubraish Spirit weakens.”

Someone, somewhere, gave a signal and everyone stopped at once and settled under trees.

Briertrush took my arm as I looked around and led me to a tree with a bed of dry mulch beneath broad leaves with silver veins. Dripping leaf fluid had frozen to ruby icicles that clinked like wind chimes. He broke off an icicle, chewed it and folded himself under the tree.

I dropped down with a weary sigh, my back against the glazed trunk, then scrambled up as Lisa snapped off an icicle and was about to put it into her mouth.

“No, Lis'!”

She gasped. Her lower lip quivered as she let the icicle slip from her fingers.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean to scare you.” I picked red ice off her glove. “But you can't eat anything on this planet without checking with me first. OK?”

“It was just an icicle, Daddy.”

“A red one.”

”I'm hungry.”

“Come here.” I sat beneath the tree, lifted her onto my lap and rubbed her arms through the wet jacket, then took out the last packet of soy burgers and french fries, still warm from my inner pocket. “Who made the decision to rest?” I asked Briertrush, opened the packet and gave it to Lisa. “Here, baby.”

“No one,” Briertrush answered. “An' all.” He hooked a claw into bark, peeled it back, caught something that squirmed and stuffed it into his mouth.

I grimaced. “Uh, then you don't have a leader?”

He let his tongue roll out and rubbed his chin with it.

On a chance I said, “Am I embarrassing you?”

“Daddy, you feed me.”

I fed her a french fry.

“Only brabrarans have leaders, see you, Julesh? Ta civrilized being laws ta himself.”

“Only brabrarans? But Terrans have leaders. Oh.” I fed Lisa another fry.

Groups of people beneath trees ate with their hands from common bowls, often feeding each other.

“Feed me a fat one, Daddy, like that crawly thing Beertush ate.”

“Lisa,” I said, “you know how to say Briertrush.”

“OK.” She glanced at him with a guilty expression.

I wiggled a fat fry between fingers. It was pulled from my hand by her tel force, did loops in the air and spiraled down into her open mouth. I laughed with her, hoping she wouldn't sense my anxiety. Our scouts were at their posts, but where could we hide if the attack came in this flat valley? Had the czar planned the attack for a box canyon ahead? Then again, would the czar figure on the Kubraens heading back to their mountain? If not, where would he look for us? In Laurel? A pleasant thought came to mind. Perhaps he only wanted the land the Kubraens had vacated. The lieutenant said they figured there was a rich lode beneath it.

Lisa's small body against mine was comforting, though my stomach growled from hunger. She took the last french fry and offered it back to me. I ate it slowly. I guess food is even more the universal language of love than music. Though the Kubraen chanting, to the tune of a wooden flute, was soothing and reassuring in the cold white woods. I glanced southeast at the empty sky. Now that soothing.

“Lis'?” I scraped up the last fry bits, gave them to her and wiped her mouth with my gloved hand. “What kind of stories did Starspeaker tell you about Spirit's children?”

She told me all about the beautiful children who danced inner light and the Kubris Spirit who sang for them. Before the Terrans came. She giggled with her tongue between teeth. And how the Kubris Spirit went to the Sun God's temple and the Sun God gave him a wonderful immoral tree with sweet fruit for his people to eat. She played with a button on my jacket collar. “So they could always have good things to eat and a nice place to live in the mountain.” She stuck her finger through a tear in the jacket's seam. “Daddy, did you sew your pants yet?”

“Not yet. An immoral tree?”

“Immortral,” Briertrush almost corrected. Lisa put out her palm to the drift of snow through branches, then shivered. I hugged her closer. ”But then the dragon came,” she said, “and took their tree and their mountain.”

“Oh yeah? Well, it's just a story.” Sure. A dragon called the czar. I glanced southeast again. It was becoming a compulsion. “Briertrush, haven't we rested long enough, considering the circumstances?” He didn't answer. His head was back against the trunk, eyes closed. How could he sleep?

“You want to hear the rest of the story, Daddy?”

“Oh, sure,” I said absently.

“So then the Kubris Spirit called the dragon's good brother and the beautiful young princess from the faraway land of Terror.”

“Terra?” Our story! “And
then
, Lisa?”

“And then he told them to come and slay the dragon so the Kubrans could live on their mountain and have their tree back again.”

I stared at the mountain. To assassinate the czar, the ravager. But why did he need Lisa? I took in a shaky breath, then remembered to lift my shields against her tel. Damn this whole planet. Her purpose in life was not to stimulate egg production among the alien women! And why couldn't the silver crotefucker kill the czar himself? “Did, uh, Starspeaker say why the princess had to come too?”

“Uh huh.”

I hesitated, afraid to hear the rest.

“Because if the dragon kills the good brother, then the beautiful princess has to…” She frowned, trying to grasp the thought.

I waited.

“She has to turn into a war, and the Spirit will give her a sword to slay the dragon.”

“A warrior?” My throat clenched.

She nodded. “Daddy?”

I took a ragged breath. “Yeah, Lis'?”

She rubbed a hand across her nose and leaned her head against me. “I think it's the sword that cut my doll at Grandpa's.” She looked up and I saw tears in her wide blue eyes.

I pressed her head against my chest and rocked her. “I think so too, baby.”
Starspeaker!
I sent for the hundredth time.
I have to talk to you. Don't go to the stars. Not yet. Your people still need you. I need you.

Nothing.

“Croteshit!”
Listen to me, Speaker. You have no right to use Lisa to execute the czar if I'm killed. You hear me? I want your word that –

A fist of tel power slammed into my mind. The silver being! His power ebbed like simmering bubbles on hot water, ready to boil up again.

Where the hell have you been? On vacation? Keep my daughter out of this mess of yours, or I swear by whatever gods, I won't do your killing for you. You
want the czar dead?
Be my guest! Or keep Lisa out of it. Where's Speaker?

Daddy?
Lisa said.
Who are you talking to?

Briertrush awoke and sat up.

“The tag who brought us to this planet, Lis'.”

The Speaker with Stars can no longer communicate with you,
the silver being sent.

Then you communicate with me!

I will assist when the attack comes.

Will you assist if my six-year-old daughter is alone on this godforsaken dirt ball? What then? Tell me your plan to get her home to Earth or I'm through with you starting right now. Right here! You understand me?

Speaker has given you that knowledge through the story. Why do you tax me?

I want to know the end of the story. So far, all I've heard is what my daughter and I can do for you. Nothing about how you'll get her back home! You're so damn powerful. Kill the czar yourself!

I will direct the czar's death if I must, but all of Laurel will go with him into what you call geth state.

All – Croteshit! I don't believe you. You can't even affect a non-tel. And why would you want to destroy Laurel?

My tel power is great, Terran, and diffused throughout this world you call Halcyon. If I release my destructive power against the czar, it will spread to all Terrans, including yourself and your daughter. Though I might try, I cannot do less.

And if I fail to execute the czar, and I'm killed, what can a six-year-old kid do to complete your damn mission?

The child will become a powerful tel in time. She is already capable of moving the elements. I would use her to cause a disruption under Wolf Ridge that would destroy the compound and all within it.

With the elements themselves?
Fear ate at me.
Then what will become of her after that? What if she fails?
I didn't really want to hear the answer.

Her tel is strong, but her brain is not fully developed.

I pressed my hands to my temples, afraid of his next words.

Disrupting the elements themselves is the deepest of all probes. I will direct her, but it is conceivable that the act will destroy her tel power.

Just her tel power?

Her power is woven into the myriad cell clusters of her young brain and it would

destroy –

Don't say it! She might be listening. This is not acceptable. Do you have honor? A code of ethics? If not, find yourself another executioner. I never wanted the job, and Lisa is an innocent, trusting child. A pawn in your high and mighty game! Do you understand me?

He didn't answer, but I felt his anguish for his people, saw Wolf Ridge in my mind as blackroot branches strangling energy from his amorphous being.

What are you?
I sent wearily.

The soul of World Tres Cruash.

The Kubraen name for this world?

Yes. I am the Giver of Life
.

I thought that was God's territory.

What Terrans call crystals is my being, woven into the mantle of this world. As they cut me apart, the blood of Cruash is taken in pieces to your Earthworld. As I am weakened, the life force of my world is weakened.

You mean you are the crystals?

What you call crystals. I attended the birth of this young planet, begotten from the crucible of a supernova and cradled by its sun. I followed its path and saw that it alone held promise for life in this system. I seeded it and endowed it with my gene gift. I became the Giver of Life. I caused the life forms to evolve. I made it my home.

And then the ravagers came. Right?
I looked toward the mountain, disappearing up into radiant mist, and felt myself grow wearier, as though that great mass had settled upon my shoulders.
And why not use members of the ravagers own race to set things right again.

He remained silent, though I knew he was still there.
Teach me how to kill the czar, and teach me well.
Wind flicked tears from my frozen cheeks.
If you hurt my child, I'll curse you with my last breath. I am cursed.

I lowered my head.
So am I. By you.

* * *

I fell silent as we continued west, grateful to Briertrush for entertaining Lisa with songs and stories of Kubraen animals. I put all other concerns aside for now and pondered the immediate question of what strategy to use if…when the czar's troops attacked.

The sky had lightened to flaxen clouds, the shimmering air, silvering the edges of things as though we moved through reflections in old mirrors, warmed us as we walked. I'd taken off Lisa's wet snowsuit. I caught a hint of sweet honey on the air and the snow turned to soft rain. Strange, since we were still climbing. “Did you do that, baby?”

She shook her head.

Well,
strange
was normal on this mountain's dreamy landscape, where the morning sun failed to burn off a luminous ground fog that clung to groves of leafy trees on green hills upslope from us. Beyond the hills, beyond the sudden plunges to valleys, early rays bloodied the walls of that impossible mountain, while the plains far below were still beaten white by winter.

I listened for the whine of engines, heard only calls of small creatures and the brush of hundreds of pairs of feet through soggy ground-cover as we moved west.