Schism: Part One of Triad (32 page)

As they rode beyond reach of the tangler field, Shannon began to recover his equilibrium. Lifting his head, he peered into the darkness. The camp continued to sleep. A few voices called in the distance, but none here. Anyone close to Vitarex’s tent would be affected by the tangler, except perhaps Archers; if Shannon had partial immunity to its effects, a full-blooded Archer probably had even more. At least he hoped so. He didn’t want them hurt.

As they climbed the ridge, leaving the camp behind in the fog and the night, Shannon finally loosened his grip on Moonglaze’s neck. The lyrine whistled, as close to an expression of relief as he would express. Shannon sat up slowly. Although he still felt clammy and sick, his dizziness had receded.

His mind spread into trance state, holding off the guilt that hovered within him. He would soon have to face what he had done, but he had to survive first and make sure the Archers were taking his father to safety—if any safety existed anywhere.

Shannon didn’t know how long Moonglaze carried him through the night. He sat with his head hanging down, only half aware of his surroundings. Gradually he became aware of a shadowy figure riding near him in the fog, a darker patch in the darkness. He stiffened, lowering his mental barriers, and reached out with his mind. His thoughts joined a swirling pool of emotion…

Blue Dale Archer.

Moonglaze snuffled.

“Shhh.” Shannon patted his neck.

The other rider spoke in a low voice. “Shannon?”

“It is me.” He hesitated. “Elarion?”

“Yes.” The Archer came in closer to ride at his side.

Alarm surged through Shannon, disrupting the precarious calm he had attained during trance. “My father! You must take him—”

“He is safe,” Elarion told him, soothing. “He is up ahead, in the caravan.”

“The caravan came out of the mountains?” That they had even accompanied him out of the Blue Dales into the less massive range known as Ryder’s Lost Memory had stunned him. Never in an octet of eons would he have expected them to enter Rillia.

“Don’t you know where we are?” Elarion asked.

Shannon hesitated. During his trance, he had let Moonglaze go where he would, trusting the lyrine. Belatedly, he realized they were climbing more steeply now rather than walking through the rolling hills of Rillia. “Are we in Ryder’s Forest?”

“It is Ryder’s, yes.”

Fear caught at Shannon. “And Varielle?”

“She is fine.”

He whispered what he feared most to know. “And my father?”

Silence.

‘Tell me,” Shannon said. He couldn’t bear to know but he had to hear.

Elarion answered softly. “I’m sorry.”

Shannon’s world seemed to end. “He died?”

“No. He lives.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“He is—hurt. We can move him no more. It would kill him.” Fear washed through his mood. “We are only a few hours’ ride from the Rillian camp. They could still find us.”

‘Tarlin will bring my mother and ISC.” Shannon said it as much to reassure himself as Elarion. “No one on Lyshriol can stop Imperial Space Command.”

Except they were too late.

If Elarion had doubts about Shannon’s claim, he kept them to himself. Instead he asked, “And Bard Vitarex?”

“He is dead.”

Elarion let out a long breath. They rode in silence.

A skeetel-puff hummed. Shannon saw nothing, but the skeetel buzzed again.

Then Elarion hummed exactly like a skeetel. Another buzz came through the night, much closer now. Two riders took form out of the darkness in front of them like spirits coalescing in the foggy night. Archers. They joined Shannon and Elarion, and rode at their sides without a word.

Shannon didn’t even see the caravan until they were within the camp. The Archers had kept the tents dark and lit no fires. More sentries paced among the trees than Shannon had previously seen in his time with them. He hated that he had brought this danger to them, his newfound people, but he would be forever grateful for their help with his father.

They led him toward the center of the camp. When they stopped before a small tent, Shannon slid off Moonglaze, better able to move now, though he remained stiff and sore. Dried blood flaked off his hand. He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat.

Varielle was waiting at the entrance of the tent, her bow in her hand. She touched his cheek as he came up to them, her gaze solemn. He took her hand and hinged his palm around her four fingers. He couldn’t speak. He could barely breathe. She squeezed his back, then let him go. Steeling himself, he lifted the flap and entered the tent. The only light inside came from the dim glow of a brazier in one corner. It cast almost no light over the pallet a few paces away.

His father lay there, unmoving.

18

Tbe Node

oca raced to the starport, through orb-tipped reeds and the overcast night.

Tarlin ran at her side. He seemed stunned, even in shock. He had ridden hard and fast over the mountains, making the journey in less man a day. He could have killed himself thundering through the upper ranges of the Backbone at such speeds.

He had her eternal gratitude.

She spoke into her wrist comm. “Brad, is the flyer ready to go?” She was sprinting so hard, the words came out in gasps. Reeds snapped against her legs.

“Yes.” Brad’s voice came back sharp and fast. “I’m cold-starting it now.”

The reeds thinned out as Roca and Tarlin neared the port. The flyer waited on the brightly lit tarmac, glittering gold and black. Tarlin hesitated at the edge of the field, his face pale. Roca doubted he had ever seen anything like the flyer nor touched a material like the tarmac. But he faltered only a moment and then picked up speed again.

They reached the flyer within seconds, and Brad grabbed Roca’s hand as she reached up to him. Without missing a

stride, she jumped up into the cabin. Tarlin swung up behind her, his ashen face the only indication he was dealing with technology that had to look like magic to him. Her respect for him went up another notch. Eldri had always chosen his friends well.

“You’ll need to strap in,” Roca told him as she dropped into the copilot’s seat. “The webbing will wrap around you. Don’t be alarmed; it’s for safety.”

Even as she spoke, her own webbing was folding its silver mesh around her body. She fastened the catches.

Tarlin lowered himself into a seat set slightly back between the pilot and copilot’s chairs. He copied her actions, strapping the webbing around his body. Roca knew what it took for him to accept all this. The Lyshrioli lived the same, year after year, change disturbed them. Yet he never flinched.

The comm crackled. “Dr. Tompkins, this is Colonel Ma-jda on the Ascendant. We still don’t have a lock on either King Eldrinson or the Aristo Vitarex.”

Brad spoke into the mesh. “We’re headed out now. Do you have a fix on us?”

“To the centimeter,” Majda said. “The shuttles are on then-way. ETA in six point three minutes.”

“Understood, Colonel,” Brad said. “We will meet you at the Archer camp.”

Just hearing the word “Aristo” made Roca ill. The Traders had violated her most treasured retreat, the haven for her family. They had brought great agony to her husband. No mercy existed in her now. Vitarex would pay. She was the Foreign Affairs Councilor of the Assembly, her life dedicated to dealing in diplomacy with other governments, including the Traders, but right now she could think of only one thing, that she wanted him to pay long and hard and forever, to suffer the same torments he had inflicted on her husband.

First they had to reach Eldri—before his injuries ended his life.

Eldrinson floated in a drugged sea. He never lost consciousness, but he drifted in and out of awareness. The pain had receded. The hot beverage these strangers gave him to drink hazed his mind and dulled the worst of his agony.

After many hours, or perhaps only a moment, he became aware of someone nearby.

He struggled to focus. A man was speaking, softly, brokenly, tears in his voice.

“… don’t die,” he pleaded. “Please. You must live. I beg you.” His voice broke. “I couldn’t bear it if you died.”

Eldrinson tried to speak, but no words came. He wet his lips and tried again.

“Shannon?” It was barely a whisper.

“We’re bringing help.” Shannon’s words were ragged and earnest. “Tarlin went for Mother. Help will come.”

Eldrinson knew it was too late. His life was slipping away. He was too tired.

But somehow, incredibly, he had achieved his goal. He had kept his secret from Vitarex long enough to stop the Aristo from taking him off Lyshriol.

A hand touched Eldrinson’s forehead, a hinged palm cool against his fevered skin. “Father, can you hear me?”

“I hear,” Eldrinson whispered. “I am—glad you are here.” He paused, gathering his energy. “I don’t want your mother to see me—see me like this.

To see … my death.”

“You won’t die.” Shannon brushed back his hair.

“Can’t see….”

“We’ll fix it,” Shannon whispered. “We’ll make you better.”

Urgent voices came from outside and the scrape of booted feet. Eldrinson’s sensitized mind reacted to nuances his ears couldn’t yet discern. “No! She must not—see me—”

“Who, Father?” Shannon asked.

The voices resolved into Skolian Flag, a tongue flat and harsh after Shannon’s Trillian. Then a woman spoke in Trillian, almost chiming, though she had never learned to make the true sounds. Didn’t have the right vocal cords …

“They’re here!” Shannon’s boots crackled as he jumped to his feet.

Eldrinson reached out to stop him, but Shannon’s footsteps were already receding across the tent. Rustles came from the entrance, men the scuff of feet and someone’s abrupt intake

of breath. The sharp odor of the oil Brad used in the flyer cut through the air. Currents moved across his face as people knelt around him, creaking, scraping, clinking.

“Eldri?” A soft palm cupped his cheek. Tears filled her voice. “Eldri, can you hear me?”

He pulled his head away. “Roca, leave me.”

“I can’t.” She was crying now. Her hair brushed his arms, his hands, his face, its clean fragrance painful in a way that no medicine could help. She pressed her lips against his forehead and he wanted to weep with the bittersweet agony of knowing he could never again be the man she had fallen in love with.

Other people were doing things, placing cool strips on his neck, moving blankets from his body, no doubt examining him with marvels of medical technology he couldn’t see. A syringe hissed against his neck. He felt Roca’s anguish and it tore him apart. Someday their children could be the ones lying broken and tortured, victims of the Traders, and he couldn’t stop it from happening no matter how hard he tried, because they had chosen to fight and nothing he did, nothing he said would ever stop them. A father had to protect his wife and children, always and forever, but he couldn’t, not even in his own lands, and it was killing him more than his shattered body.

He meant to tell Roca to leave. But for the first time in days, forever it seemed, the pain was leaving his body, truly leaving, not muted by herbs but genuinely going away.

“I can’t feel anything,” he whispered, switching into Skolian Flag for the doctors.

A man whose voice Eldrinson didn’t recognize spoke in Flag. “We’ve given you a neural blocker, Your Majesty.”

Majesty. He wished they would stop calling him that. But he was grateful they had stopped the pain.

“Can you heal him?” Roca’s voice asked.

Silence followed her question. Then another voice spoke. “We will do our best, Councilor.”

“Where is Shannon?” Eldrinson asked.

His son answered from farther away. “Here, Father.” The scrunch of cloth and mail came from Eldrinson’s right. Then Shannon spoke next to him. “The doctors will fix everything.”

Eldrinson reached out and his knuckles brushed a tunic. Someone grasped his hand.

“I’m right here,” Shannon said.

“You saved my life,” Eldrinson whispered. “Even more. You stopped Vitarex …

from taking me offworld. He was ready to leave.” Roca and ISC wouldn’t have made it in time to stop him.

“I should have never run away.” Shannon wasn’t trying to hide his guilt-torn emotions. “Then you wouldn’t have come after me and he wouldn’t have caught you.”

Roca spoke in a murmur. “Shannon, no, it’s not your fault.”

“Listen to your mother.” Eldrinson took a breath, determined to put strength in his words. “Had Vitarex not captured me while so many people were searching for you, we would have never known he was here. Until too late.” He kept going despite the drugged lemargy overcoming him. “His plan might have succeeded. You stopped that. You. Shannon.”

Silence followed his words, as everyone in the tent absorbed the implications. By running away, Shannon may have averted an interstellar war.

“But what about Althor and Soz?” Shannon sounded bewildered. “What if mey are captured?”

A man, one of the unfamiliar voices, spoke quietly in Flag. “Jagernauts have options. If necessary, we can end our lives using the biomech web in our bodies.”

Would it come to that? Would war force his children to commit suicide? Would they die in the cold reaches of places unknown and unimaginable? Nor was it only Sauscony and Althor. Kelric would go someday, when he was old enough.

Wanderlust drove the boy. It was too much. Unbearable. Eldrinson rubbed his useless eyes. If only he, too, had a biomech web so he could finish tins, for he couldn’t live in

a universe as harsh and inexplicable as the one his wife’s people and their enemies had created.

“Love, don’t.” Roca brushed her knuckles against his cheek in that way he cherished. “You will get better. Our children will be fine. We will protect Lyshriol. You will see.”

He wished he could believe her. But those pretty words meant nothing against the truth.

The white ceiling blurred. Soz lay on her back, aware only of the pain in her legs. It shouldn’t hurt this way. The tests all said her body would easily take the biomech. She refused to believe they had been wrong, that her body was rejecting the augmentation.