Ties of Power (Trade Pact Universe) (55 page)

No, Morgan realized, dropping his hold on the Retian, staggering back until he felt a wall. It wasn’t a memory.

It was her voice in his thoughts.

Good-bye, my love . . . a whisper.

Forgive me . . . silence.

Chapter 53

THEY had drained me of almost all I had. I accepted it, too full of the joy of touching Morgan’s mind at last to care about the cost.

It had been the only choice, the right choice. I rolled my head over to gaze at the ort-fungus waiting nearby. Others hung in the branches or floated at the shoreline like the foam produced from rotting leaves. They were polite scavengers. I was dying; they were patient.

Rek hadn’t come back. I’d spent the long day resting, drinking only from water I knew had fallen as rain that morning and so was less likely to be full of the abundant life that existed everywhere else. I checked it for eyes out of habit. The ration tube lasted until the noon hour. I saw nothing at all appetizing near me and was too weak to travel farther.

I’d hidden myself once, pulling the by-now well soiled blanket over me as a Retian mudcrawler—a large one, perhaps a farming machine by the sound—sent its broad wake surging against the fragile shore, washing another layer of the island from the roots of its few embattled trees. There was no sign they were interested in my refuge, though the marks of the aircar crashing farther along the island must have been plain. Possibly they guessed them the result of a grass fire set by lightning, an unimportant event to a species focused on the water and its bounty.

My middle burned like fire. I didn’t remember this particular pain from the earlier attack—if indeed Baltir had performed the same or a similar operation on my flesh, and I wasn’t simply suffering the lack of care given to me by Withren and her villagers. The thought of my own flesh beginning to rot under the medplas haunted me. At times, I imagined the stench rising from any disturbance of the black soggy ground arose from me.

It was at sunset, well past the most pessimistic estimate I’d made about Rek’s return, when I recognized the final choice I faced. The ort-fungus who had stayed near me, I thought in hopes of my dropping the ration tube, had been joined over the hours by a host of others. They busied themselves with fallen leaves and litter along the shore, never approaching me, but I knew why they had come. Scavengers survive by being able to spot the weak and the dying. My choice? To save my strength in order to thwart them for another night at best, or spend it.

I had not forgotten Morgan. There wasn’t a moment of the time I was alone when my awareness of him dimmed or faded. Our minds might not be Joined, but I knew a closeness to him that had to be more.

As I’d promised Huido, I owed Morgan his freedom from my rage, from the vow I’d made him take: to seek my enemies, to retrieve what was stolen. I no longer cared about the first, and I had taken care of the second myself.

So I thanked the ort-fungi for their patience, wrapped myself in my blanket where I could see tomorrow’s sunrise if I lived, and opened my heart and soul to the M’hir without hesitation or fear.

Morgan!

I poured power into my search regardless of the frenzied gathering of the M’hir life-forms, continuing as they instantly fastened their cavernous mouths on the stream of energy and sucked it to a pale shadow. What remained, as long as I could feed it, sought the mind, the golden place that was both part of me and someone else.

There! His presence blinded me, a brilliance drawing me near even as I recognized with grief and regret the heaving walls of emotion binding his power and thoughts. I tossed away my last shields, massing all I was into a reaching, pulling back to me all the rage, absorbing it, shunting it aside, furiously clearing away anything standing between us.

Until I stared at the perfection of my Morgan in the M’hir, feeling once more his caring, his need for me. Nothing of what lay between us had been lost or destroyed. If I’d had eyes here, I would have wept with the joy of it.

Until I felt the rising of the Power-of-Choice within me, heard its dark, wet demand for the Test, and knew I couldn’t stay.

Good-bye, my love, I sent to him. Forgive me.

Somehow, I twisted free of those feeding on my power; somehow, I found my way back.

Morgan would be all right; I knew that now.

I closed my eyes.

It had been, in the end, all I’d ever needed to know.

It wouldn’t happen! It couldn’t!

The litany repeated itself over and over in Morgan’s mind, as if his protest had the power to force away his fear, thrust away the feel of Sira’s touch, so warm and real, fading away to nothingness, her vast strength exhausted.

She wasn’t dead. He didn’t dare accept the possibility.

If sheer will could have hurried the Enforcers’ aircar, they would have broken the sound barrier before lifting from the shipcity. As it was, Morgan stood behind Terk’s pilot seat, clenching the back of it with his hands until the knuckles were white.

’Whix, in the nav chair, kept rolling one eye toward him as though expecting Terk to protest this proximity. But the big Human merely found a little more speed, ripping through lanes of opposing traffic with a recklessness that suggested he’d only been waiting for an excuse. The aircar, mostly engine and weaponry, much of it likely Trade Pact secrets, was the best available in the quadrant. Bowman made sure of her equipment as well as her people.

She’d been sure of Morgan, coming to him as he sobbed, half-broken by the strain of finding then losing the other part of himself. She’d held him, he remembered dimly, as though he’d taken some blow in a fight and needed comfort while awaiting the meds. Her voice came back clearly enough: ordering the Drapsk in no uncertain terms to allow Rael and Barac full use of their abilities to help, assuming control of both prisoners—if Huido would move his crusty hide—and would Lord Lispetc prepare himself to immediately accompany a battalion of her troops to see firsthand what was going on in the Baltir? A visit, she added, to which the angry Drapsk were not invited.

Morgan should have been grateful, but stood numbly as others took control of the situation. The aircar arrived within seconds, depositing a pilot and two guards for Bowman, scooping up himself, the two Enforcers, and Rael.

Minutes only, but minutes might be too long. Barac and Rael had agreed vehemently with the Drapsk, that to use the Talent to go to Sira would only lure Faitlen to her just as quickly. So now they hurried at Human speed.

Morgan kept his own power tightly inside, hoarding his strength for what might lie ahead. Rael was their key. She’d picked up the scent of her sister’s power in the M’hir and now guided ’Whix and so Terk with graceful gestures of her long white hand.

“There!” she called out, pointing ahead. Terk grunted, slowed their rush through the air, then pushed a control to release the aircar’s portlights, sending them soaring outward, their broad white beams slicing through the night. Water. Water. Then a shoreline, reed grass burned in a long streak, wreckage—Morgan heard ’Whix muttering into a com—then the edge of a tiny forest, dwarf trees toppled this way and that, as though tossed by a giant before taking root.

“We’ll land back at the wreckage,” Terk began, slowing the aircar even more and beginning a banking turn.

Morgan didn’t listen. His every sense insisted Sira was below them—and there was no time left. His hand was already on the latch to the emergency door. He heaved it open with one quick jerk.

Then threw himself out into the darkness.

Chapter 54

A LOUD splash brought me closer to consciousness again. I cracked open one eye, seeing light, and congratulated myself on lasting until dawn.

The splash had an echo; several echoes. Weight shifted off my legs as the orts abandoned their perch; I’d felt no discomfort with them there, but now my skin itched fiercely, as though inflamed.

What was coming? I fought waves of dizziness, quite sure I didn’t want to die in the jaws of something slimy and large. If I wanted that kind of ending and still had the strength, I could push myself into the M’hir. There was, naturally, nothing I could do about either.

“Sira!”

Much better, I thought, relaxing and letting the darkness creep over me again. To fade away dreaming of Morgan’s voice? My mind was kinder to me than I’d imagined.

“Sira!? Answer me!”

I smiled, sinking deeper. What a convincing dream.

Sira, wait for me. I’m here! His sending flooded my thoughts, pulling me away from that brink like a spray of cold water wakes a sleeper.

This, I told my subconscious, was going too far. How could I die peacefully with—

With someone dripping all over me? With urgent hands lifting me up?

I opened both eyes. The light was too harsh to be part of the afterlife I’d planned on and the face of my love, so close to mine, was too haggard, dirty, and scared to be anything but real.

“They’ll be here in a few minutes with the med gear,” Morgan was saying, the words coming out hard and fast, as though he needed the reassurance more than I. I probably, I thought, looked alarmingly like a corpse—and a freshly buried one.

“I’m sor—” My voice was another part of me in advanced shutdown, I discovered.

My dear Human wasn’t really listening. I endured the discomfort of having the feeling restored to my arms and legs as he straightened them. I heard him curse under his breath as he eased open the blood- and mud-encrusted coat—suspecting the worst, I was sure, and finding it.

With each second, I moved closer to wanting to live and farther from being sure I could. I managed to twitch the fingers of my right hand. He saw, taking it immediately in his own. The warmth of his hand, even wet, was almost more than I could bear. Jason, I sent through that touch, giving him again all that

I was, all that I felt.

He returned it, multiplied a thousand times by his own. Loving and loved, I drifted deeper into the darkness—knowing what was happening, I tried to push him back. This was not a journey he could follow.

No! he sent, the denial seeming to come from his very core.

Power . . . raw, unrestrained, forced into my mind as though I were drowning and Morgan tried to breathe his own life into my lungs. I grabbed at it, feeling the unbelievable as my body absorbed the energy and began to fight its way back.

With it came the eager tide of blackness; I was helpless as the Power-of-Choice surged through the link to smash against Morgan’s outpouring of strength. We whirled into the M’hir together . . .

I was the center of all things, the glow around which all else revolved. I would fight to keep out the Other. This was my domain.

The Power-of-Choice, my deadly gift from the M’hir, lashed out. There was no memory here of who tried to save me—no cause except the Test.

The blow was met by one with the will and power to match it.

A struggle, endless, yet over in an instant. I resounded with desire, sensing completion at last . . .

Too late. I was lost, dying. Power bled from me in countless streams, to feed countless mouths.

I was empty, a husk, a need . . .

A flicker of brightness. I reached, feeling power flowing toward me, replenishing with a shock tasting of joy.

Another. I reached again. And again. It was as though there could never be enough of the flickers to satisfy me, yet there were always more to hold.

In the distance, if there was distance in this place, the streams of my bleeding power began to merge, seeking a new destination. One by one, then by their thousands, the feeders lost interest and faded away. The last, largest and with a mouth seeming to hold all of the darkness of the M’hir, passed through me as it left, leaving behind the taste of fate.

The M’hir was abruptly empty of all but pathways of power, crisscrossing its black eddies and depths in the closest this place could ever come to peace. Brightest of all were the ties of power newly forged between us, more real to my other sense than all the other pathways combined.

I was whole. And I was more. As I reeled with the delirious wonder of it all, I knew what Morgan and I had achieved.

I pushed . . .

Beyond all of my fear and on the edge of death, we had Joined.

. . . I opened my eyes to the solid, smelly world of Ret 7, and met the wondering eyes of my love, feeling the warm link between us in that other place as the way it should be and would be as long as we lived.

“Is everyone all right?” a deep voice shouted, causing the ort-fungi hanging overhead to drop to the ground and hump away in disappointment. “Morgan, if you ever pull a stunt like that again when I’m flying—” The voice trailed away.

“S’okay,” I croaked cheerfully, my right hand squeezing Morgan’s as tightly as I could. “Not dead yet.”

“And that better be a promise,” my love whispered, chill wet lips brushing mine, before standing to take part in greeting an astonishing assortment of beings and equipment.

I decided it was high time to faint and let Morgan take care of everything.

So I did.

“Yes, yes. They’re both all right. Will you stop asking me?” Barac took longer strides to keep ahead of the anxious Carasian.

The Drapsk were just as bad. Everyone here seemed to think he was some sort of animated com system. The aircar had a perfectly good one of its own, he was tempted to retort to the next anxious query.

Except that the news from Rael was so much better than he’d hoped, it was worth retelling—at least a few more times.

“Are you ready, Clansman?”

“At your service, Chief,” he said, amazed, as always, by Bowman’s ability to move faster than anyone else when she chose, without seeming to hurry at all.

They joined a growing bustle of activity around the Makmora’s fins, Bowman’s chosen staging ground. Three Port Authority aircars were already loading their share of battle-suited Enforcers, having sent armed Retians to provide a local presence in the massive troop transport. Lord Lispetc stood in the center of it all, snapping orders as though this virtual assault by offworlders on a facility within his capital city had his full support—surely an unusual attitude for a Retian of any caste.