WOLF DAWN: Science Fiction Thriller/ Romance (Forsaken Worlds) (5 page)

Someone was trying to kill her.

“No!” Screaming, Sartha woke, sitting bolt upright with shock, heart pounding. She trembled and swallowed and smelled fresh blood. That nightmare had been so vivid, so real! She felt death still upon her, and in her dream she had intentionally slit her own throat.

Sartha’s soul was burdened, crushed by the Dark Sankomin. And like Ash, Sartha had no one who could provide a healing touch. 

Mind-touch is a secret ability unique to those that are Trueborn of Delian. This gift is the power to contact another’s thoughts, to be inside another individual’s body, to in fact BE another person. Mind-touch is also a healing tool used to relieve the Dark Sankomin.

— Prof. Chris Lampton,
The Interpretations

T
hree weeks passed while they traveled in normal space. During that time Ash made no attempt to press his mother for more information.

In normal circumstances he would have been determined to find answers to the mystery of the strange illness, but instead he had let it go. He feared a return of the Dark Sankomin — it had taken days to be free of it. Luckily his mother had started his Trueborn training, and that unexpected novelty demanded all his attention.

Ash had read the Testimonials and had begun to memorize them. Today was the first day he would attempt mind-touch. His mother had warned him that it took some students years to master the skills necessary to be in another person’s mind and body, to know another’s soul. Would it be like slipping into Tynan’s skin? His mother would help — after all, it was she that he was attempting to touch. But the skill and power to do so would need to come entirely from him.

Ash lay on the bed in his room with his eyes shut, concentrating. His mother, Sartha, sat nearby. They had started with relaxation exercises until he had become calm and hyper-aware. His body was a light weight on the bed — it seemed far away, almost detached from him. Sartha had been giving instruction for some time now, speaking in a soft, quiet voice. The tone and rhythm of her voice was hypnotic. The subtle scent of her perfume lingered. It was a safe, familiar smell that gave him confidence.

“Detach yourself from the physical, son, as you do when practicing the Disciplines. In order to mind-touch me, you’ll need to
become
me. Ignore your body, Ash. Reach for your power. Can you feel the energy of it? Some perceive it as water; some sense it as air. It could even be an impression of time or dense matter.”

“I feel it,” Ash whispered, an echo of an answer to her murmured directions. He knew this flame that burned within him. He had felt it before. His voice was strange to his ears: a high-pitched whisper that seemed separate from himself. His power was enormous, like an endless heated ocean, an immeasurable … something. It felt larger than his insignificant childish flesh … or
Assurance
or even space itself. It was vast. Limitless.

“Very good,” Sartha said. There was a delicate hint of surprise and excitement in her voice. “This is your gift, Ash. It waits only for your command.” Her words became distant, like sound reverberating from far away, down a long, narrow tunnel.

“
Yes,
” Ash thought. Warmth. Heat. A flowing vibration came from the ocean within him. He consciously pulled on his power, something he’d never attempted to do before this moment, this timeless moment. His gift reacted like water, a fluid quicksilver sensation, pouring a burning wave of flame over his skin. Heat cascaded through him.

He began to feel good —
really, really good
. Ash knew that if someone asked, he would be unable to describe it. He had felt a glimmer of this with the seer. He knew moments of it when he slid into Tynan’s skin. For the first time he really examined the sensation. It was unique, something he had never really known before, yet it was an impression and awareness as familiar as his own right hand. Exquisite pleasure rippled through him. This was the opposite of the Dark Sankomin. There was a lightness of spirit to it. It felt … right.

“Command it, son,” his mother directed, her voice echoing with an abnormal musical precision. It was as if he used more than his ears to hear her.

Hyper-aware yet completely relaxed, he thought of his mother, a simple thought: “
I want to be there.
”

Contact was immediate.

His viewpoint shifted and his entire world changed.

Ash
became
his mother
.
He was in her body. Within her skin.

It was an entirely new experience for him to feel such human physical vitality. His mother’s body, compared to his own, was strong, yet it was so soft, so womanly. He breathed with her: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. He felt the rise and fall of her breasts. Breasts! They seemed so foreign to him and yet, while he viewed the world from within her flesh, they seemed familiar and right. Her physical form was quite unlike his own. Such superior size and strength! She had just had a coffee, and while Ash thought the taste of coffee was bitter and unpleasant, on her tongue that same burnt flavor tasted good.

Ash was looking through her eyes, still awed by the differences in height, in weight — in the entire experience. His mother sat in a chair next to his own resting form, legs crossed with a feminine grace. Together they watched the holovid wall beyond, at a view set to a dark, star-filled, moonless night. Sartha was dressed in a soft blue bodysuit. It was made from a fiber that molded for comfort and would have been almost common, but Ash knew she had had it specially designed. His mother loved the feeling of synthetic silk. She wore it with her usual casual elegance. Ash had seen her in such garments before.

The difference this time was that
he was her.
He was aware of the silk as it caressed her skin. So extraordinary. Descriptions filled his mind: feminine, graceful, alluring, light, delicate and beautiful. Ash, of course, was none of these things, but within his mother’s body he was. Time passed while he savored the experience. And always, while he was within her, he knew the now familiar background of white noise, the ocean of his power, the fire and heat that surrounded him. Breathing. Inhaling and exhaling. The rise and fall of breasts. The taste, the smell, the feel: the sensations that were her essence. He had thought he knew his mother well. But now, from within her flesh, he understood her better than he ever had before.

Sartha’s face turned toward his own slight form. Ash was incapable of controlling his mother’s body, but his viewpoint moved as hers did. He shifted his vision within her and saw his own motionless form, slight and undersized on the bed before him.

I look so frail.
This thought caused a physical reaction.
Anxiety.
Ash felt his mother’s heart speed up, her pulse pounding, and he became aware of a sense of longing, of a vital need. He was drawn to his own small, childish form as it lay alone on the bed.

He tried to puzzle out these potent feelings.
I’m worried about my body
, he realized
.
He wondered if those were his own thoughts or his mother’s. Was he reading her mind?

“You are not reading my mind, Ash. These are your own thoughts, but you are having them as the result of being within my body.”
This communication came to him directly from his mother, mind to mind.

Sartha had given birth to him. Her genetic imperative was to reproduce, then to nurture and protect. He was within her flesh and he knew the feelings of her body, but they were being filtered through his own thought processes. “
Ah, I see,”
he reflected, remembering the teachings.
“Body, mind, soul: all three distinct and separate, with purpose and plan unique to each. Every individual is a composite of being.”

“Yes, son,”
Sartha thought.
“You understand.”

Minutes passed as Ash listened with his mother’s ears, touched surfaces with her hands, smelled, tasted … these senses were all similar to his own. It was her womanly body that felt so different.

Ash had studied anatomy, so the female body held no real mystery. But his mother’s emotions and physical sensations — they awed him. There was an innate quality within this feminine form. The yearning that it communicated: womanly softness and kindness combined with that compelling desire to be a mother, to love and nurture a child. Ash’s reaction to this was simple and it surprised him. He thought,
“If this were my body, then I should be glad to be a woman and a mother, too.”
It was so obvious, yet it was an astounding realization. He knew now that his true self was separate from the masculine identity of his own boyish flesh. He had always assumed that maleness was a part of his essence, of the soul that was uniquely his, yet he now understood that this was simply not so.

It was the body he inhabited that made him male, a boy even now growing into manhood.

But this fleshly form he wore was not his true self.

“Yes,”
his mother responded, “
Very good, Ash. You know my body, now learn my mind.
”

Ash concentrated, shutting mental eyes, putting away the distraction of his mother’s scent, the feel of being within her skin, and her feminine yet robust physical form. With effort he focused. Many minutes passed.

He heard nothing.

There was nothing there.

He wanted to know his mother’s thoughts. He wanted to push against the barriers that separated him from them. He began to experience a growing bubble of discontent and aggravation which built and built and grew out of all proportion. Instinctively he sensed that struggling wouldn’t help. He waited for these overwhelming feelings to pass, and when they finally did, when the frustration had at last finished flowing through him and ebbed away like a receding tide, he found that he was left with nothing.

Nothing.

He was surprised at how liberating this was. Awash in the heated ocean of his power, he did nothing. He thought nothing. Freed of emotion and freed of thought, he allowed himself simply “to be.”

It was like opening a door.

Words from Sartha’s mind flew into his consciousness, her thoughts filling his awareness like billions upon billions of air molecules being sucked into a vacuum. It was as if she were shouting, “
My son, my son, my beautiful son
.” The love his mother felt for him! He knew she loved him, but there was no way he could appreciate the nearly infinite depths of her affection until this one mental touch showed him. Ash knew an awkward need to pull away. The intensity of it was thrilling, yet at the same time embarrassing.

“Enough, son. We’ll do more tomorrow. Imagine opening your eyes.”

Ash’s eyes opened and he found himself back in his own flesh. Small, weak, male. The astonishing difference between the two physical forms struck him, as well as his extraordinary achievement. His smile was so big he jaw almost hurt.
I did it. I can mind-touch.

“Mother,” he said. “That was amazing! Much easier than I imagined.” He stood up and found he was a little dizzy. He sat back down.

“You need to eat something, Ash. That empty feeling is normal.”

“You projected those thoughts, didn’t you?”

“Yes, son.”

“Then I wasn’t really able to read your mind?”

“So greedy,” Sartha said. “You should leave something to achieve later. With more experience you’ll be able to look deeper than the superficial. You did well for your first time. While I helped you to connect, I honestly didn’t expect that you would. Most Trueborn take months to achieve mere body contact. Yet you were able to hear my thoughts, projected or not. You are quite gifted, son.”

They moved to the meal area, where the auto-chef prepared lunch. While they ate, his mother answered Ash’s questions. He didn’t have many. He found it difficult to do more than simply bask in a sense of wonder. He had mind-touched. He had
been within his mother.
It wasn’t unlike touching his wolfhound, Tynan. Of course he guessed that it would be more difficult to mentally contact a stranger. Once they arrived at Kalar he could try that.

For days Ash had been searching Icom, seeking information concerning the obscure planet to which they were headed. Kalar was remote, at the opposite end of the known galaxy, parsecs away from most inhabited worlds. The first colony had arrived around 2090. Kalarians tended to be Traditionalists, not holding with the usual “Body Beautiful” ideal of the rest of the Freeworlds. They minded their own interests and liked to be left alone. He and his mother would be safe there, where privacy was a sacred right.

They finished their meal and Ash returned to reciting the Testimonials. He could almost recite them faultlessly. He said, “
Hold thee now and pay heed, Trueborn of Delian. I speak now of thy Power, a gift from Jana the Goddess of Truth to our people that provides sanctuary, sword and shield from Taro the Deceiver.”

Sartha nodded as she checked his narration against the Testimonials.

“
Hate crushes the power. In blindness thou shalt see a world of enemies, eyes cast toward revenge, not gentle truth.”

“Excellent.” Sartha smiled in encouragement. “Continue.”

“Evil thought and deed shall surely burn and fester. Poisoned arrows …”

“No,” Sartha interrupted. “These
poisoned arrows.
”

Frowning in annoyance, Ash didn’t trust himself to reply.

Sartha, undisturbed, was well aware of his irritation. “Son,” she said calmly, “as you know, the Testimonials must be word perfect. Once you know them you can read the Interpretations. The Interpretations are a pleasure to study, much easier to understand, and you are not required to memorize them.”