Heart Fortune (Celta) (2 page)

One

EXCAVATION OF
LUGH’S SPEAR
, THE LOST STARSHIP,

421 Years After Colonization,

End of Summer

A
dventure beckoned in the form of a girder angling down into the
brown earth. The whole excavation of the ruin of the starship
Lugh’s Spear
was a challenge, an adventure. And Jace Bayrum was always up for one.

This project had it all, physical challenges: Yeah, he’d dug, and operated machinery to uncover that girder, along with the rest of the camp. There were intriguing mysteries: One of the three starships that had brought the colonists from Earth to Celta lay under his feet. The ground had collapsed under it only days after landing. Who knew what treasures were inside—knowledge, that data bank of the colonists’ genetic psi traits—but ancient artifacts, too. And he got a cut. The pay was acceptable, if not great.

Good people to work with, though sometimes, like now, when ten different people checked out that very intriguing beam angling down into the rough man-sized hole, they seemed too damn slow for him. They all wanted to get into the ship. He wanted to be first. He’d volunteered and won the right.

Everyone in the camp was standing around, staring at the cleared and dusty area, talking. Sweating lightly, like he was, in the hot and humid summer air, under the bright blue sky.

This job came with the spice of danger that got a man’s blood pumping.

And it came with a whiff of fame. Fame—though he wasn’t too interested in fame, at least not the go-down-in-the-history-book kind. The past didn’t matter—well, only the past he was digging up right now, the project, the adventure. The future didn’t matter much as long as he had enough gilt to take care of himself. The now, and what was happening, and enjoying himself, that was more important than all the rest. Though he did like the buy-you-a-drink-at-the-bar kind of fame.

As they opened more of the hole, he
itched
to walk along that wide girder, go down into the bowels of the midsection of the starship. He shifted his feet, wanting to go already, explore. See things no one had for centuries, that was a rush. Aces high. He wanted to
do
, not hang around with the rest of the expedition everlastingly talking.

He’d objected to the physical harness, not wanting the chance of getting tangled in something down there, but was now layered with enough spellshields that his entire body itched at the feel of them, including his eyes.

“Go!” said the owner.

Jace stepped onto the piece of metal two-thirds of a meter wide, felt the settling as it took his weight. Light-footed, he headed toward the opening.

The beam moved under his feet, threw him off balance, and he fell. Shouts from watchers. The earth giving way beneath him. Dust. Rocks pounding him. Plummeting down.

He thumped hard enough that his breath went from his body. He fought passing out and remained conscious by the skin of his teeth. He’d fallen under the beam, and rock crowded around him but didn’t crush him. Hard to tell how big the pocket of air he was in was . . . maybe enough that he wouldn’t die, even without the spellshields.

It was colder down here, and he shivered. The whole thing made him recall the first time he cheated death. Shudders racked him at the memory.

He and his father and mother had gone over to the nearest city to purchase some fancy worked metal box his mother had insisted on having—one both he and his father had worked hard to give her the gilt for. Not that his father had cared about that; he blindly adored his wife.

Jace had been almost seventeen, close to becoming an adult and not so blind to his mother’s greed.

Evening was turning into night when they reached the river. The box had cost enough that they didn’t have gilt for the return ferry, but there was a free rope across the river and a raft to pull along. His and his father’s massive muscles should be enough to get them across with help from his mother’s small Flair.

They’d been in the middle of the river when the guide rope had broken.

His mother had screamed, turned white-faced, and clutched her box to her. Her gaze went to Jace’s father, skimmed across Jace, looked to the opposite shore. “I can do it!” she cried. “I can teleport there if you bond with me and give me your energy. I can see the bank well enough, but it has to be quick. If you love me, link with me! Save me!”

“Of course, Marian.” Jace’s father set his one hand on her shoulder, held out the other to Jace. “We will save you.” His voice, deep, calm, as he confronted his and Jace’s own danger in heading down the rapid river on an old raft.

“I—” Mind frantically scrambling, Jace took his father’s hand.

“One, two,
three
!” his mother screamed and Jace’s strength, his energy, got yanked out of him to fund her teleportation.

His father fell to his knees, toppled sideways, breaking Jace’s hold. More sucking of . . . Flair? . . . from Jace, ripping from him.

And the raft . . . the Flair keeping the raft together fell apart, siphoned by his mother.

The shock of the cold and tumbling water took Jace’s breath. He strove to stay close to his papa.

His father’s head turned. “She. Made. It.” He sighed out, looking gray, wasted.

Jace grabbed his father’s great hand, panic and wild grief and fury crashing through him in great swaths of emotion. He tried to swim, swallowed water. Reached for a better grip on the man, ripped his thin, worn shirt.

“Papa!”

Slowly, slowly his father’s lips moved. “Take. Care. Of. Your. Mother.”

His eyes glazed, his whole body released, and his last words were, “Marian, love.” He let go of Jace’s hand and rolled facedown into the water, swept away.

Great emotions can trigger a dreamquest Passage, releasing inner psi power, Flair. That happened, though Jace didn’t figure that out until later. A huge burst of fever-heat flashed through him,
lifted and threw
him to the riverbank his mother had landed on.

He didn’t see her. She and her box were already away and not looking back.

So he didn’t either. He huddled under tall bushes that night and in the morning walked away to find work on a caravan heading for the northern continent a few days later.

He’d heard she’d remarried.

So much for love.

Now Jace shuddered so hard his body banged against rock. He couldn’t breathe. Darkness threatened, and with each shallow breath he struggled for better memories. Hell if he was going out recalling the worst day of his life.

The face of a woman flashed before him.

He’d had the best sex with her . . .

Everything went dark.

DRUIDA CITY

Her HeartMate was in danger! The vicious jerk on the minuscule bond between them blew it wide open. Yanking on Glyssa’s strength, demanding she pour energy into him—into shields surrounding him—to save him. She did, crumpling where she stood, watching in horror as time seemed to slow and the crate of ancient glass recordspheres—priceless books and journals—fell to the unforgiving marble floor of the PublicLibrary. Twenty-four original colonist tales to be shattered and she couldn’t lift a finger to help.

The cost for her HeartMate’s life.

Instant tears blurred her vision as she panted a prayer to the Lady and Lord to save the spheres. In the slowness of fear, caught between microseconds, she saw the spheres hit a small, thick rug that Glyssa had completely forgotten was there, bequeathed by a former patron. Sheer luck.

Except for one ball that hit and exploded into shards.

She huddled, gasping, all the exposed surfaces of her skin tingling, unable to move. Shock tears dribbled down her face. Good thing no one was on this study floor except her.

Her HeartMate was safe . . . and coming out of the darkness of unconscious. And as his feelings, his first instinctive fear at being trapped, filtered through her, she understood, stunned, that the adventurous man she’d had a fling with and couldn’t find later was now at the excavation of
Lugh’s Spear
in the center of the continent.

Gently, gently she sent a whisper of caring, of comfort, to him along their bond and felt him settle, thought she heard the same shouts of help he did.

Even as her own Family and friends began to react to her collapse.

“Glyssa! What’s wrong? I felt the pull on our bond!” Camellia Darjeeling D’Hawthorn, one of Glyssa’s best friends, ran from the teleportation pad to Glyssa, helping her to her feet.

What’s wrong?
Glyssa’s father demanded mentally,
You drew on our Family connection.

Stick to the truth, sort of.
I felt a little queasy. I’m all right now.

You may be getting the virus going around.
Glyssa’s mother’s voice in her mind was cool.
Leave work now. We don’t want you infecting any patrons.

Part of working with the public. Good thing none of the rest of us have it,
Glyssa’s sister, Enata, snipped, disgruntled even in her telepathic speaking.

I think I can stave it off if I take a little of my sick time,
Glyssa replied weakly, mind-to-mind with her Family, the FirstLevel Librarians of Druida City. Glyssa hadn’t finished her master program to become FirstLevel yet. Still needed a “field” trip and formal paper.

I’ll check on you after work,
her mother said absently, her mind already veering off into something more interesting. The attention of Glyssa’s father and sister, the pressure of their Flair, their psi power, dropped from Glyssa, too.

Meanwhile, Camellia had helped Glyssa to a reading chair, gathered the twenty-three recordspheres and put them back in the crate, and said a spell to reassemble the shattered one. Hopeless.

With a sigh and a flick of the fingers, Camellia gathered all the shards and dust and disposed of it. Lifting the crate from the floor, Camellia also smoothed out the chips in the wood, then placed it on the table next to Glyssa’s chair and tapped it. “Tell me that breaking these would not be a career-ending move.”

“I can’t.”

“Your Family’s standards are too high,” Camellia said.

“We keep all the knowledge of Celta,” Glyssa defended. “These are irreplaceable.” She stroked the nearest orb with trembling fingers.

“And they’ve all been copied, and more than once,” Camellia said.

“Nothing like hearing the original colonists’ voice, or seeing their writing, or experiencing the impressions of their memories,” Glyssa said.

“Huh,” Camellia said. “What’s wrong?”

Glyssa wet her lips, still feeling pale. No doubt her freckles were standing out against white skin, and her paleness made her red hair look all the more carroty. “My HeartMate needed my Flair and energy. To save his life.”

“Wow,” Camellia said, absently polishing each of the recordspheres with a softleaf she’d pulled from her tunic pocket. She must have been in one of her teahouses. “Did he demand it?”

“No. I just felt the need through our link and gave what I could. He asked for nothing. He never has.” Glyssa could tell her friend the whole truth. “This isn’t the first time he’s been in danger. Now and then I could feel a tug on our connection, but not quite enough to find him through our link.” She wasn’t going to let that connection go this time, would strengthen it. Right now the link was just physical attraction showing up in sexy dreams, a shared past of a wild weekend affair, and the potential for a lifelong love.

She tilted her head as she traced the golden bond.

“Now you can find him?” Camellia asked.

“Yes. Now I know where he is.” Determination fired within Glyssa, giving her the energy to sit tall. Determination and extreme curiosity. Her vision sharpened. “Camellia, my HeartMate, Jace, is at the excavation of the starship
Lugh’s Spear.
”

Camellia grimaced. “Your HeartMate is there, and my husband and HeartMate wants someone to be there on my behalf.”

“And your Laev is right,” Glyssa said. “You are a descendant of the Captain of that starship, by law you are entitled to a third of the artifacts, or the proceeds from the sale of the artifacts.”

Camellia’s mouth turned down. “That doesn’t matter to me as much as him being remembered and honored for the hero that he was.” They stared at each other for a minute.

“You’re going to your guy, aren’t you?”

“Yes. And I’ve been wanting to visit
Lugh’s Spear
, too. I can make it the field trip needed as part of my final process to become a FirstLevel Librarian.” She nearly wiggled in her seat—such an adventure for herself, too! A project of awesome discovery.

“Your parents aren’t going to like this.”

“No.” She’d work around that somehow.

Camellia tapped the empty hole where the shattered sphere had been. “And how much trouble is this going to be for you?”

Glyssa let out a puff of sigh. “It was the index of the other recordings kept in this crate. Lucky. I can say that a patron of the library wanted to see it and dropped it, and then make a new one.”

Smiling, Camellia said, “Not a lie. You are a patron of the library.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well if you’re going to the excavation, you can be the source of information Laev and the rest of the FirstFamilies council have on that project. I’ll have him contact you. You can go on our behalf if your Family nixes your field trip and paper on the expedition.”