Whispers on the Wind (30 page)

“Jonallo,” Rankin gloated to Zenna. “Ah, and as I thought, your beloved bond-mate. Does it not feel strange to you, after all these years, to read his signature so loudly, so clearly? To see him standing as he does, looking so close, yet knowing he remains oblivious to your presence?”

She refused to answer, and he grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking it viciously. “Speak to me, woman!”

She spat on his feet.

He flung her away, leaving her lying in the baking sun. “Ah!” he said. “But they disappear, their signatures blocked. A surround, do you suppose? Now who would Jonallo have chosen for that task? Who has the most powerful
willayin
?”

Though she strived to retreat, to keep him at bay, the new and different focus of the amplifier made that impossible. “Fricka. Fricka of Nokori,” he said, picking the information right out of her mind. “An old childhood playmate of yours and Jonallo’s, am I right?”

She did not deign to answer, but both of them knew he did not require her to. He knew, without her confirmation.

Moments passed while he let the amplifier’s strength pick out another, and another of Jonallo’s Octad from their different points on Earth.

“Zareth,” he said, “and Ree. Soon, Jonallo will find them. Oh, the pickings will be good.”

In three long paces, Rankin stood over her, bombarding her with the knowledge that he had most of Jon’s Octad pinpointed, that he could pick them off whenever he chose. Grabbing her hair again, he yanked her to her feet. “The moment they are together, you will speak to them,” he said. “You will call them to you with the amplified voice of this device. They are five. We are three. Together we complete an Octad.”

She defied him. “I will not.”

“Then your child dies.”

“If she dies, you have no further hold over me, do you?”

That, finally, gave him pause. He backed away from her, keeping out of her reach, both physically and mentally.

But Zenna knew he was not done.

There were others of the Octad still out there. Who would they be? And where? With the amplifier, it was only a matter of time until Rankin discovered their hiding places. She closed her eyes.

In having retuned it at his orders, she had sentenced the others to death.

T
HE NEXT THREE DAYS
passed swiftly in the mountain cabin while they all healed and rested, and while Jon tried repeatedly to penetrate the powerful barriers Lenore could not break down within herself, barriers that, once breached, would permit him access to her deepest places—and information as to Zenna’s last sure location.

Each attempt had left her exhausted, frustrated, because she knew there must be information inside her mind that would help Jon find the place where Zenna had been—the place where Rankin would still surely be...only a part of her resisted so strongly he feared he would harm her unless she, herself, could break through the blocks she erected each time, and offer him a safe way in.

“It will come,
letise
,” he assured her after each session. “We approach closer with each attempt. You were so swift to protect yourself from Rankin’s rough probe, you instinctively blocked—and without restraint. What we must do now is break down those blocks, one by one, but this is new to you and while you say you are not an infant, in many ways, you are the same as an Aazoni infant. To force your development too quickly could destroy you.”

Lenore could only believe him, trust him to know things she could not possibly know. But still, each time she fingered her
Aleeas
, returning to the places she and Jon had visited together, she was more and more tempted to enter into the one her mother had given her.

In there, would she find the means to allow Jon full melding? If she let him touch it, let him examine those memories minutely, let him borrow from the knowledge her mother had left in her, couldn’t he protect her from whatever it was she feared so deeply? Many times, while they lay close and warm in the glow of
baloka
, she wanted to suggest it, but that deep sense of privacy, her human need not to have her mind invaded held strong, making her shudder. Instead, she enhanced her new powers by focusing
Aleeas
where she knew she could be safe, and happy.

“Jon,” Fricka said the morning of the third day. “My
willayin
is strong again. I am ready to move us in whatever search pattern you wish.”

He considered for a moment, then shook his head. “I think we must separate, the better to search. Minton, you will seek out Wend, of course. As birth-mates, your minds will link more easily than any others.” As he spoke, Lenore caught the sense of despair he projected, because of his belief in his own birth-mate’s death.

She is alive!
Lenore insisted in their private zone.
Jon, I know this
.

But...did she? Or was it simply that she longed to give him peace in whatever way she could? Never before had the mental comfort and emotional ease of another been so important to her. She yearned with a terrible intensity to give him relief from his internal pain, to succor his heart. Was that a function of love? Of...
baloka
? She reached out soothing thought-fingers to him, felt his gratitude, but knew she was accomplishing little. How could she? She was not a healer. She was not even a full Aazoni.

She, being half of Earth, was of small use to him. She could not even become a member of the Octad, should they discover one of the others to be permanently missing. Nor could she travel to Aazonia with Jon when he left. It was not possible for her, with her limited powers. Perhaps, in time, much time, if she developed, it would be possible. But not soon. Not soon enough.

Grief closed off her throat, grief she kept locked within herself, lest it escape and Jon detect it, and it added to his already heavy burden.

“First, though,” he said, “We must risk the return to Lenore’s other home now that we are in better condition. Fricka, will you create a surround in which we can move undetected?”

Lenore felt less disoriented on their arrival back in Port Orchard. Was that due to the security of translating within the surround Fricka’s
willayin
had created, or was it simply that she was growing more skillful herself? Stronger, more accustomed to this strange manner of transportation?

“We will require clothing in order to move around inconspicuously here on Earth,” Jon said the moment they rematerialized, all naked, from the cabin. They had left behind even Lenore’s clothing to lighten the burden for Fricka. “Lenore, can you provide it for the others, as you did for me? It will need to be durable, as we have no way of knowing what situations me might find ourselves in with each new translation.”

As before, it took her little time to meet his request. When all were clothed—he and Minton in identical, dark blue one-piece garments with plenty of room for their shoulders, and enough length for arms and legs—and Fricka clad similarly to Lenore in a paler colored version of the suits the men wore, Jon declared them ready. But for sustenance. “We must eat and drink before we leave, and check Lenore’s machines for news of mysterious happenings.”

While Jon and Lenore prepared food, and Fricka made the coffee she had come to enjoy greatly, Minton stood leaning against the table. He lifted first one foot then the other, twisting his ankle from side to side, admiring the soft but strong ankle-length boots he wore now. “These,” he said with a grateful smile aimed at Lenore, “are far superior to the ones I found in that dwelling under the tumbling snow.”

She had to grin at him over her shoulder as she tossed salad in a large bowl. “I’m sure they are. At least you can walk in them.”

“I expect to be doing little of that,” he said, and sent the finished salad into the living room, where their dining cushions already lay heaped on the floor. “Within a surround, I will translate wherever our investigations tell me there is something to be investigated.”

“We will translate only under cover of dark,” Jon decreed once they were reclined and sharing food, the holo tuned to a tab viewer at one end of the living room, reporting news of oddities from all over the world. “And once in a location, we will walk or travel in other Earthly manners so as not to attract attention.

“We will meet back here once each day to report in person.”

Hands linked, the four circled the table and sank to various positions of repose in preparation for the sharing of sustenance.

When they were finished and Minton had sent the clutter away, Lenore waved on the holo newsie where she thought they might best find information.

“Stay tuned,” the image of the announcer said, tossing her improbably purple hair back from her face. “Next up, we have live footage of a naked woman who is, even as we report it, causing a near riot in Berlin.”

Then, for five frustrating minutes, she showed commercials for everything from better nutrient pastes with ‘more flavor, more vitamins and minerals and fewer carcinogens’ to reduced prices on jumps to Moonbase, and a wide variety of other thirty-second dribbles of ‘important’ information.

Then, finally, the holo showed a long shot of a woman running along what appeared to Lenore to be an invisible tightrope over a canyon between two enormously tall buildings to gain the sanctuary of a rooftop while a crowd of thousands gawked from the street below, or hung from windows to stare aloft.

As a police helicopter landed near her, she sprinted across that rooftop and stepped out into what could only be thin air. Continuing her dash, she crossed high above another street. Vehicles, drivers trying to avoid surging crowds, all gaping upwards, smashed together, ending in untidy heaps, cluttering the streets for blocks around. Three more police helicopters and several news choppers circled a distance out from the woman, each hovering over a building, as if waiting to see which one she would next approach.

A close-up revealed no wire under the sure and steady strides of the tall, naked woman with flaming red hair.

The voice-over intoned, “In some undetermined manner, this woman you see here, live, in the privacy and safety of your own home, has crossed from one side of the city to the other, evidently walking in air. Is this some kind of magic? Is it illusion? Is it—”

“It’s Ree!” three voices called out in unison as one of the newsie cams managed to capture her full-face.

Jon leaped to his feet, dragging Lenore with him. “Berlin. Where is this Berlin?”

Lenore keyed her compad to search. “There are three. One in the European Union, two others in the North American. Of those, one is in the Great Lakes Corridor, the other the Atlantic Seaboard Corridor.”

She popped a few more keys and established contact with the newsies in each of those three, did a quick search for the words “Berlin,” “woman,” and “naked.”

“Bingo!”

“That signifies success?” Fricka asked, crowding in to peer over Lenore’s shoulder at the image on the screen.

“Yes. Your friend is in the Great Lakes Corridor, Sector Madison, and”—she did a rapid rewind of the holo—“unless I miss my guess, she’s trying to escape from someone. The cops, I’d say.”

Another police chopper landed on a roof in the woman’s path. Ree made an immediate ninety-degree turn in mid-air and aimed her fleeing feet at another building, this one lower down.

“Can she really run in the air like that?” Lenore marveled at the unlikely sight. “Why doesn’t she just fly? Or disappear?”

“She is not running in the air. She is a caster.”

“A caster?”

“She is able to cast. Just now, she’s casting a filament upon which to place her feet. Disappearing at will is not something she can do. She will dematerialize if she is ill or injured and her
Kahinya
is unable to hold her corporal state, but for Ree, fleeing is the best option just now. She must be too depleted to translate alone. We have to get to her.” Jon spoke rapidly.

“Fricka, a surround, now. For the three of us.”

“Not so fast,” Lenore jumped in, clinging tenaciously to Jon’s arm so as not to be left behind. “I’m part of this team, and if Ree is in trouble, escaping from someone, you’re going to need a person on hand who’s better equipped than any of you to deal with Earthly authorities if they catch up to her before you reach her. If you go, I go.”

“She is right, Jon,” Minton said. “I had great difficulty with the Earthly beings I was forced to deal with. Several times I had to translate out of tight situations. Each time, I grew weaker. As it appears Ree is now, too weak to translate.”

Jon took no time to decide. “A surround. For Lenore and for me, then.” When Fricka would have protested, he raised a controlling hand. “Your
willayin
is not yet strong enough for a long translation with all of us contained. Take yourself and Minton to where Lenore and I saw Zareth. Leave signature trails for him. If he lives, he is cloaked. He might be seeking. Leave him small surrounds, with directions to get here.”

He stepped apart from the other two, still with Lenore clutching his arm. “Now,” he said, and there was that moment of disorientation, then Lenore was high on a rooftop, with the buzz of helicopters filling her ears, Jon at her side and the red-headed woman racing toward them, her eyes wide and wild, her face filled with terror. Lenore felt Jon reach out to her mentally, felt him capture the panicked mind, and then they were three within their surround and the helicopter buzz was gone and she was back in her own living room, half-collapsed against a chair.

She blinked rapidly at the newsie as the purple-haired woman said excitedly, “You saw it with your own eyes! Two other people appeared from nowhere on the rooftop with the fleeing woman and the three of them disappeared! This is not a trick, folks! This is not our cameras fooling you! What you saw was real. And unbelievable. And you saw it here, live, on JRLO in Berlin, Sector Madison!”

The shot panned over the pandemonium continuing on the streets and in the air, the confused hovering, tilting, sliding flight of too many choppers in a confined space, exactly as it had been only seconds before...except now, there was no naked woman running from rooftop to rooftop.