Icarus Unbound (13 page)

Jaran turned his attention to his brother's mate. "Do you agree with the committee? Do you think, because she's fully human, Lara isn't good enough to rule with me?"

Jehri hesitated. Her worried gaze bounced to Odan as if she sought his permission to answer truthfully. In response to her silent plea, Odan shrugged his wings.

"I like Lara ... very much. But she
is
human."

"And this makes her inferior?" Jaran held Jehri's gaze. She moved toward Odan as if she feared Jaran's wrath.

"No, but our parents and grandparents never wanted our race to transform into something else. They had no choice but to breed with humans, of course, but now we need to work on breeding Icarians again."

"None of us are pure Icarian, and even our children who bear Icarian traits will still be part human. Their DNA is in us and it will be part of us forever now."

"We should help her succeed, my liege. I don't want to see her taken away from you if you love her."

Love. The word stung Jaran. Icarian mating was not about love, it was about compatible DNA, pairing couples who would be good helpmates and companions for one another. Love 117

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came after—usually once the mating bond produced a child and daily life settled down and became routine. The tribal leaders always took care to place compatible individuals together, and no one was forced to mate with someone they openly disliked, but love ... was not supposed to be part of the equation, especially since the time breeding had become difficult and the population began to falter.

"My concern is for her safety," he said, refusing to admit anything deeper. What he felt for Lara wouldn't matter if he lost her.

"But you do love her, don't you?"

"Jehri." Odan stepped between his wife and his brother, cutting off the awkward conversation, but Jaran held up a hand.

"What do you know about love, Jehri? You've been mated for three days."

Jehri smiled. "I love Odan. I would do anything to stop it if someone wanted to tear us apart."

Odan put an arm around her delicate, white-feathered wings. "Of course Jaran cares for Lara, as he should."

"I haven't been with her long enough to love her." The lie tasted sour on his tongue, but he hoped he delivered it with enough conviction that Jehri and Odan would believe it.

Jehri tilted her head. "Yes, my liege." Her tone belied her words.

Jaran might have stayed to argue, but he needed to know Lara was safe. "I'm going to search for her, Odan. Call a meeting of the committee and tell them I petition them to vote today."

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"Today? But that won't give Lara any time to—"

"She should not have to prove herself to them. Tell them my secret, and tell them whatever they decide, Laramee is to remain my mate. I will step down if I have to, but I will not give her up."

Odan gaped, and Jehri clutched his arm. "Who would be your successor?" the petite female asked, her voice small.

Jaran eyed his sister-in-law and answered her hopeful question solemnly. "Odan, of course."

"I never wanted—"

Jaran cut off his brother's protest. "If you don't want to rule, you'll have to see that the committee makes the right decision today, and then you'll have to hope both Lara and I return from this foolish quest alive."

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Armed with several days' worth of food, Kiala's maps and an extra pouch in which to carry her treasure back to the royal aerie, Lara arrived at the nearest symbion nesting site by mid-day.

She didn't expect the search to take long. Symbions balanced their eggs on the tops of cone-shaped nests made of alor fibers, shells, feather and sand mixed with a secretion from their bodies that hardened the natural mortar to a rock-like consistency. The wide base stabilized the nest, and the cement-like building material made it tough enough to withstand the constant buffeting of the waves.

A quick scan of half a dozen nests showed normal eggs on each cone, pearly white and perfectly round.

Lara made a risky landing on a volcanic boulder and checked for any hidden nests, but found none at this site.

"One down, two dozen to go," she said as she took to the air again. It would take her days to visit all the sites Kiala had circled on the maps, days away from her lab and her work, days away from Jaran.

Maybe this absence would cool her desire for him and help prepare her for the dissolution of their union if the committee ultimately found her lacking. She had to face the fact that she might not succeed in her quest, but at least they wouldn't be able to say she hadn't tried.

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With her wings already damp from the relentless ocean spray, she took to the air again, undaunted. She'd come back with a black egg or she wouldn't come back at all.

Odan reluctantly did as Jaran instructed. He petitioned an emergency meeting of the administrative committee and asked that the vote on Lara's status be moved up, but rather than present the truth about Jaran's parentage as his argument not to dissolve their union, he had other plans.

Along with him, he'd asked Kiala, Jehri and a number of the research station personnel, both human and Icarian, to attend the meeting. When they were all finished speaking, he asked Daralei to administer the vote.

With twenty-seven members, there could not be a tie, but the decision was a precarious one, nevertheless. Once the committee handed down their decision, it only remained to inform Jaran and Lara, and Odan was chosen for that task.

All he had to do was find the couple.

He was preparing to leave the royal aerie and follow the same path Kiala had suggested Lara take throughout the nearest of the symbion rookeries when the zoologist herself caught up to him.

"Odan, I'm glad I found you. You should ask the research station for a shuttle to help find Jaran and Lara."

"A shuttle won't be able to land near enough to the rookeries to allow them to board."

"No, but if you find them you can tell them to come back here right away. I just spoke to Breon, and he says the weather station is reporting a large storm headed down from the north. It will cross at least half of the areas on Lara's list, 121

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and if she follows the path I recommended for her, she'll be flying right into the worst of the weather by tomorrow."

Odan instinctively scanned the sky. On the northern horizon he saw a bank of darker clouds, but they seemed so far away. Surely he'd locate his brother and Lara before the storm arrived.

"I'll be back with them as quickly as I can. Don't worry, Kiala. They'll be safe."

Lara's friend eyed the distant clouds also, then she dropped to one knee and bowed her head. "As you say, my liege. Good luck on your journey."

Jaran's pursuit of Lara took him to over a dozen symbion rookeries, and each time there was no sign of his mate. By nightfall, a steady warm rain had begun, and the wind was churning the normally calm sea into frothy whitecaps around the rocky base of each island he visited.

The farther islands on Kiala's list were still uninhabited, but at least they had aerie's atop them where Lara could take refuge from the worsening weather. Jaran knew he should have done the same, but he couldn't rest until he knew she was safe.

When a winged figure appeared in the sky above him, Jaran allowed himself to hope for a moment it was Lara. He tried to hide his disappointment when he recognized Odan.

His brother circled the rookery once, then climbed toward the flat top of the island and gestured for Jaran to follow.

Fighting the increasingly strong wind, Jaran managed a clumsy landing in front of the island's long-abandoned living 122

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quarters. Odan met him there, his expression grim. "I don't think I have to tell you about the storm," he said.

Jaran eyed his brother. The moment a young Icarian was joined with a symbion at age ten, they became acutely aware of the dangers of flying in inclement weather, especially around the rocky bases of the island chains. "It's a shame you didn't consider this when you encouraged Lara to go on this quest."

"Jaran, I was trying to help. I didn't want you to lose her."

"The committee can take my position away from me, but I would never have let them take Lara. I won't forgive them for putting her through this if she's injured in the storm."

"I'll stay with you until we find her." Odan spread copies of Kiala's maps on the dusty table inside the dry refuge of the old aerie. In the dim moonlight filtering through the clouds, he marked off the places Jaran said he'd already searched.

"The research station is trying to reach her by radio, but the storm is interfering."

"She's a brilliant woman, Odan. I want to believe she's riding out the storm in a safe place, or she's already given up this foolishness and gone home."

"Then why won't you trust her enough to do the same?"

Jaran ruffled his wings. "I can't rest until I know she's safe.

I won't go home until I hear that she's made it back to the royal aerie or Alpha Island."

"Then at least stay here until first light. Then we can continue in the pattern Kiala laid out on the maps."

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Jaran stared at the maps and shook his head. "Then all we'll be doing is following her and we might never catch up.

We should try to intercept her course."

"Or we could split up and each take one end of the spiral and meet in the middle. One of us will come across her."

"And if she's injured, we'll have to wait for the other one to arrive in order to carry her to safety."

Odan contemplated this. "True. Then tell me where you think she'll be by morning."

Jaran pointed to a rookery in the middle of the array Kiala had highlighted. "Assuming she hasn't found a black egg on any of the nests she's already searched."

"Fine. At dawn we'll head there and—"

"I'm heading there now." Jaran stretched his wings. "I'll wait in the nearest aerie until dawn. I don't want to chance missing her."

"Jaran, you've lost your mind. Dying out here won't win Lara's love."

Jaran squeezed his brother's shoulder. "She seems to think it will win mine. I'm part of the reason she's doing this too. As much as I want to blame you for all of it, I was the one who always made her doubt herself. She says she wants to prove her worth to the committee, but she really wants to prove herself to me."

"And what will happen if you stop her from doing that? Do you think she'll ever be happy?"

Jaran didn't answer. He dropped his hand and marched toward the open archway of the aerie. Odan only hesitated a moment before following him into the turbulent night sky.

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Lara huddled next to the fire she'd built in the hearth of an empty aerie. She'd eaten well, and the heat from the fire had sufficiently dried her sodden wings and hair enough that she'd finally stopped shivering.

A search of ten rookeries had turned up nothing. She wasn't surprised.

Kiala had explained the rare circumstances that caused black eggs to occur. A female symbion either refused or failed to achieve fertilization by a male, but rather than discard her dud into the ocean, she would lay the egg in her nest anyway and attempt to incubate it. At the end of her fertile cycle she would continue to incubate the egg, which, if the shell remained unbroken, would rot from the inside out. The proteins inside the egg would harden, turning the useless yolk black and causing it to expand just enough to crack the white outer shell which would then fall away, leaving the desiccated interior. Salt air and sunlight would further ferment and harden the blackened core of the egg, which ultimately became stonelike.

In a future fertility cycle the female symbion might abandon the unhatched egg and build a new nest, often in a different rookery where she had access to a new array of viable males, or she'd ascend to the aeries above, searching for an Icarian host to join with, thus ending her ability to lay any more eggs and give birth to her own young.

The abandoned black egg might remain atop its nest for decades before the pounding surf finally dislodged it and sent it sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The odds of finding one among thousands of active nests were astronomical, but to 125

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beat the odds Lara was prepared to journey hundreds of square kilometers, searching every rookery and thousands of nests.

Of course, she could circle the globe and never come across a black egg.

She could waste her life on this quest and never prove herself to the committee. Or she could wise up, go back to the research station and accept that she would never be anything more than a human with symbion wings.

Tears stung her eyes at the thought. The Icarians were her people. Icarus was her homeworld. How could she be less than anyone else who was born under these turquoise skies?

"Damn you, Jaran." It shouldn't have mattered. Whatever he thought of her shouldn't have made any difference to her.

Whether or not he loved her shouldn't have been so important.

But it was.

She'd asked herself over and over again if she was doing this for the committee, for Icarus or for Jaran, and finally she'd decided she was doing this for herself because she needed to do it.

Therefore she wouldn't give up, no matter what.

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Morning did not bring an end to the storm. In fact, the winds were stronger and the rain colder.

Lara scanned the horizon from the safe vantage point inside her borrowed aerie. She sighed. "I suppose I could go back to sleep." The alor bedding was stale and stiff from lack of use, but at least it would keep her warm until the cold winds subsided.