Whispers on the Wind (26 page)

The knowledge gave him added strength, strength he shared with Fricka, with Lenore, further depleting his own until, at last, Lenore merely slept, her mind whole, her body restored to what it should be, operating correctly in every sense. Rolling apart from her, he covered her with the
Grale
-like fabric to keep her warm, knowing her newborn
Kahinya
would not be equal to the task.

He aimed a swift thought at Fricka, instructing her to remain cloaked, to maintain a surround, not to project so much as a glimmer of their presence beyond these walls...
wherever these walls might be.

The power of Jon’s psychic surges as he battled against Rankin swept over Zenna, sending her reeling and smashing into an open storage compartment, sending a cascade of filled drug vials tumbling around her. They broke, smashed, spilled their deadly liquid across the floor and she clasped her daughter, holding her close to keep her from harm.

She felt herself falling, falling, falling, swinging and twirling as if she were a leaf caught in a cataract as the two men fought, Jon, with his bare mind, Rankin with the aid of the amplifier, fortunately close to depletion from a recent translation. But slowly, with great concentration and determination, she steadied her descent, struggled against almost irresistible forces that wanted to drag her out of it and into the battle on Rankin’s side at his demand.

She knew B’tar had been vanquished in the first instant of Jon’s response to Rankin’s probe. He was of no account, but she refused to let herself be used against her brother, no matter what.

She somehow regained her center, calling on her
Kahinya
to support her, to strengthen her, help her torn senses to reconverge within herself, to collect the spirit of her daughter and protect it with her own powers. Glesta’s simple
Kahinya
, with its few, precious
Aleeas
, was some help, but very little.

That incredible force of Jon’s energy might not have been aimed at her, but the effect was the same as if it had. All that had saved her from destruction was the fact he was her birth-mate, and hence she was insulated by her intimate knowledge of him. In it, she felt his fear, his anguish, as well as his fury as he refocused his power and squashed Rankin like the insect he was.

She picked herself up from the floor, wiped her hand across her top lip, saw it streaked with red; her nose streamed blood. She tasted it in her mouth. Her tongue was lacerated from where she had bitten it. Her eyes felt as if they had been half sucked from her head, or pushed, perhaps, by the pain that still screamed there.

Still holding Glesta close, both mentally and physically, she grabbed a cloth from a nearby rack and held one to her daughter’s face, pinching the bridge of her small nose to stanch the bleeding, the other to her own, as her gaze cast swiftly around the room, seeking Rankin and B’tar.

She found the former crushed into a corner as if by the force of a heavy, physical blow. He had dropped the amplifier, rendering him much more exposed to the power of Jon’s massive, second surge. Not only his nose spurted blood, but his ears showed trickles of it, too, and he was deeply unconscious, his mouth lolling open, also bleeding where he had sunk his teeth into his tongue.

B’tar showed little signs of life.

Between the two men, under a table near Rankin’s bunk, lay the amplifier. Zenna lunged toward it, but pulled back swiftly as she saw it was coated with the viscous fluid rendered from the salal leaves. To so much as touch it with unprotected hands, to breathe the fumes of that drug, could be deadly. What to some races was a pleasurable but addicting narcotic was, to the Aazoni, toxic, just one more weapon Rankin held over her head, threatening Glesta with it.

Carrying her limp daughter, she translated herself and Glesta to a camp far out in the Arizona desert, one they had not visited for some time.

She and Glesta rematerialized in cold and star-filled darkness, with blowing sand filtering around them. Slowly, aching in every joint and muscle, she made her way into one of the adobe huts where there was shelter from the wind. There, still dizzy, she lurched to a bunk with Glesta, her precious child, who lay curled in a fetal position, alive, but just barely.

Cradling the small form, she rocked her, humming a soft, familiar tune, one that comforted her as well. With infinite patience, she peeled back the protective layers Glesta had instinctively created to secure herself behind. Presently, she sensed a tiny glimmer that was the essence of her daughter’s consciousness. She fed light into it, and warmth, and strength. With the one hand pressed to the beads of her
Kahinya
, the other against those of Glesta’s, she gave the child back her knowledge of herself, knowledge of Zenna, of Minton.

The sun had risen on the desert before Glesta returned to herself.

Her eyes flickered open. She smiled. “Mama.”

Tears of gratitude stung Zenna’s eyes. “Yes, my love, my
letise
. Mama is here. You are safe. We are safe.”

For the moment
, she did not add.

L
ENORE WOKE TO FIND
herself lying, inexplicably, on the living room floor in the log house in the mountains, with a half-completed afghan, the crochet hook still attached, covering her. She blinked her eyes and focused on the shape of another person who sat propped nearby, her back against the front of the shabby old sofa. Though it was nearing twilight, she could see the woman was naked. Lenore shook her head. Was she having another weird dream? Somehow, she sensed this wasn’t the woman from her earlier dreams.

She fought loose of the covering she wore and struggled up as far as her hands and knees, then dropped back down again into a crouch as she spotted yet another person in the room.

This man wore a powder-blue ski suit of shiny, form-fitting material. The sleeves, revealing strong forearms covered with glistening hairs were much too short. With it, he wore no hat, no gloves, but, as unlikely as it seemed, he did have on a pair of red ski boots—still attached to the skis—skis, in the cabin! She shook her head, but the vision remained.

Long orange socks protruded from the tops of the boots and had been drawn halfway up his lower legs. He propped himself on his poles, looking as confounded as she felt, and stared at her.

At once, she realized her total nudity and grabbed the afghan again, pulling as much of it up in front of her while scrambling backwards in an attempt to get her knees off the rest of it. She was so damn weak! Her head spun dizzily as a result of the effort it had taken to get that far and she stayed very still for several minutes. Slowly, she rocked back onto her heels as she somehow sensed the skier meant her no harm. At least, he appeared to be frozen in position, making no move toward her or the other woman, who remained motionless, slumped in front of the couch, her eyes closed. There were signs of injury on her skin, but even as she stared, Lenore watched them heal.

Around the woman’s neck was a circlet of light...

In a flash, it all came back. “Jon!” she wailed in dismay, looking frantically for him.

At Lenore’s sudden cry the woman’s long lashes whipped up to reveal silvery eyes glowing intensely under a wide forehead. Dark, shiny hair lay in deep waves that touched finely arched eyebrows. She was impossibly beautiful, with high cheekbones, a small, pointed chin, and almond-shaped eyes. Whoever she might be, like Jon, she had to be a perfect specimen of whatever she was. Another Aazoni? A member of the Octad?

She glanced at the man who still stood as motionless as an ice-sculpture, his face appearing frozen in disbelief. He, too, was larger than life, incredibly well put together, with broad shoulders, narrow hips and long legs. His hair was black; thick and curly like the woman’s. It was longer than Jon’s, and his dazed eyes were so dark a brown they, too, could have been black. He also wore a necklace of light, a few beads visible where the neck opening of his ski-jacket had failed to close tightly.

Lenore clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering, and wrapped herself more closely in the afghan. Her crochet hook fell to the floor, rolling away. She watched it as it disappeared under the cold pot-bellied stove.

“Where is Jon?” she demanded.

The woman didn’t speak, but Lenore knew, without knowing how she knew, that Jon was all right. He was simply...recovering.

“Regaining his corporeal state?”

The answer,
yes
, occurred in her mind and Lenore quit fighting it. That, she knew, was a lost cause.

I am Fricka. Over there stands Minton. I sensed him during our translation and managed to create a surround strong enough to include him. You are Lenore. Jon was very angry that I killed you. It was not my intention to do so. I apologize.

“Killed me?” Lenore rose unsteadily to her feet, pulling herself up with the aid of an upholstered chair. She tripped on the blanket she wore, stumbled, and flopped down on the seat of the chair.

“How did you kill me?” Oh, yes, she’d definitely gone down the rabbit hole—or maybe just around the bend. The last thing she remembered, she and Jon had been in Port Orchard. And now she was back in the cabin with a strange man in not only a ski suit, but boots and skis as well, and an even stranger, naked woman who claimed to have ‘killed’ her? That part was madness, of course. Because she felt alive. Or at least halfway alive.

But hungry. And thirsty. And weak.

In my eagerness to reconnect with Jon and the rest of our Octad
—Her gesture included the skier—
I failed to control my willayin. I heard Jon after all this time of silence, and simply leaped that way, leading with my willayin, without thinking of possible consequences. That was very wrong of me and Jon has a right to his anger.

“Your what?
Willayin
?” It occurred to Lenore it was becoming easier to wrap her tongue around Aazoni words, even to add the drawn-out, almost hummed, consonant at the end, as Fricka had.

My ability to seek and find the others of my Octad. With it, I create a surround that is supposed to bind us together. During our translation to Earth, I failed.
Shame clouded the thought.
It is my specialty, the reason I belong to an Octad.

“Oh. Like Zareth’s ability to delude through illusion, your special talent is
willayin
.” Certainly. Of course. It all made sense now.

Zareth? You know where he is?
This time it was the thoughts of the skier, Lenore knew, without knowing how she did. She glanced at him. His face was animated. He stared at her, his eyes alive with eagerness.
Jon has found him?

“No, we...saw him. On a holo. But we could not reach him before he disappeared again.”

That is all my fault! A thread of lament ran though the other woman’s projected thought. Had I not been injured when the solar storm tore apart the Octad, I would have found Jon much sooner. It is my task to gather all in if we become separated, just as Wend is there in case we are injured. She is our healer. When my arrival killed you, Jon called out for Wend. His power was such that he gave away our position, alerting the criminal we seek, so he translated us to this location. I think. I do not know how we would have come here otherwise. But since neither Jon nor I had the strength to meld and carry yet a third, we all arrived naked. May I, too, have a covering? It is cold here, and my Kahinya is not yet recovered fully enough to keep me warm.

“You,” Lenore accused, “are talking inside my head.”

Why, yes. Since you are receptive, I choose not to waste strength I need for my recovery in vocalizing. This disturbs you?

Lenore laughed as she rose and got a bright green and white serape from Caroline’s last trip to Mexico and tossed it to Fricka, who wrapped it around herself. “Not half as much as it disturbed me in the beginning to think Jon could dip into my mind whenever he wanted to.”

But he has promised not to go farther than you are willing to permit,
Fricka assured her.
No Aazoni who has given such a promise will ever break it. When we were rebuilding you after your death, I was the one who had to hold the threads that are your...your deepest substance. Jon would not. He could do only the mending. I could know much more of you than he does had I let myself accept the knowledge—remember it. I did not, of course. Like Jon, I am aware only of what you freely offer.

I accessed none of what is in there
—She gestured at Lenore’s Kahinya—
because that is intensely private. Some of your memories and knowledge, of course, Jon accessed before you decreed he could not. It gives him great pleasure to accept the contact you do permit him, but he wants more, of course. It grieves him not to have it.

Lenore huffed out a large puff of breath. “Well, it grieves me to think of anyone digging around too deep in there.”
Even myself
, she did not say aloud, though suddenly she wanted to touch her
Kahinya
, to let herself fall into the safe and lovely memories the beads contained—at least those two that included Jon.

But the time for that was not now.

She gave Fricka a hard look. “Are you two snooping, or merely talking to me?” she demanded, including Minton in her sweeping glare.

Fricka’s silvery eyes widened with hurt.
We would not snoop! We would take only what is needed to make sure we are fully answering your questions. To snoop is not
—

“Is not the Aazoni way,” Lenore finished aloud as the other woman’s thought filtered through her mind.

“Ah...you know that,” Fricka spoke aloud this time, displaying a delicately mellifluous voice. “Jon has taught you some of our ways.”

“As many as she would let me,” Jon said and Lenore gasped as he regained his corporeal state at her feet, as magnificently naked as the first time she’d seen him. He sat erect while Lenore tried to decide where to look. It was one thing, the two of them being naked together when it was just the two of them, but to have him thus, with another naked woman in the room plus a fully clad man, embarrassed the hell out of her.