darknadir, page 6
"Varza was from the plains, just as I am," Vartra said quietly. "We became one Entity."
"Why would I need to dream-walk? And why would anyone want to prevent me from doing it?" Guardians, protecting the soil of their world: it had the guildmark of the ravings of the Human mystic, Derwent, yet this was coming from Vartra.
Vartra leaned forward. "If you're called by an Entity, given permission to enter their realm, then you have power, Tallinu. The power to speak to them, to learn from them— to negotiate with them and change the way things might otherwise be. As Ghyakulla negotiated with me to bring you here."
His unease grew as he remembered that physically he wasn't in a highland cottage, he was actually meditating in the temple of Ghyakulla at Vartra's Retreat, deep in the heart of the Dzahai Mountains. "Where's here exactly?"
"It's a stepping stone," Vartra said, reaching for the jug. "A starting point, where one such as you begins your journey."
Kaid felt his temper rising again. It always came down to this: more work for Vartra. "I've done enough for you," he said warningly, the rumble of anger obvious in his voice. "You've used me once too often, Vartra. It ends here."
"You came here of your own free will," Vartra pointed out as he poured water from the jug into both beakers. "Into my realm, and my home. Your choice."
Kaid made a derisory noise. "So what? It means nothing to me. You tricked me into believing Ghyakulla had called me."
"She did," Vartra reminded him, picking up one of the beakers and taking a sip. "She called you because She knows what I need of you."
His anger finally dispelled his unease. He slammed his open palm violently against the top of the table, making the jug and the remaining beaker jump and shake. "What is it now, Vartra? You've taken everything from me, even my faith in you!"
"I was driven to do what I did during my life, Tallinu, by forces higher than myself. If I hadn't, it would never have been possible for you to have met Kusac, or Carrie, your Human lover."
With a wordless roar of anger, Kaid's hands closed, claws gouging deep tracks in the surface of the wooden table. "I knew it was your doing! Is there nothing in my life you haven't shaped with your meddling?"
"You forget yourself, Tallinu." Vartra's tone was icy as he regarded him unflinchingly. "You chose to come back to my time, to leave the blood of your Human lover with me. Without that, none of this would have been possible. You and Kusac shaped your own futures, used your own free will. I merely— enhanced the options. Did I interfere when you tried to burn down my temple?"
That hit him like a shower of cold water.
"You thought I didn't know?" Vartra flicked his ears in a negative as he put down his beaker. "Foolish, Tallinu. You know better than that. I didn't cause your Triad, that I swear, nor your love for this Human."
This time, Kaid could read compassion in the other's eyes. He looked away, not wanting to see it.
"Just as you've been guided by dreams and visions, so was I. We both serve Shola and Ghyakulla, Tallinu." He stopped for a moment before continuing. "You ask what I want. I'll tell you. To free Sholans from the threat of the Valtegans forever."
Kaid looked up at him again. Vartra's eyes had taken on a luminous quality that filled him with dread. It had been easy till now to forget that this was no ordinary male he was dealing with.
"If the Valtegans return, Tallinu, Shola will be lost forever, its land polluted by them, its people enslaved till they have no will to break free. That must not happen. You and the En'Shallans are the key to preventing it. That is what I want, Tallinu, nothing less! When it's done, then we can all rest in peace."
"Why should I believe you? You used me, told Jaisa to steal from my body and bear my cub!"
"Not me, Tallinu," Vartra said softly, picking his beaker up again to take another sip from it. "Not me. Vartra the geneticist did that. I'm no longer the same male. He died fifteen hundred years ago."
"You're the same person! No one can change that much!"
"Am I? Tell me, Tallinu the Brother, the priest and killer, what place in the life of one such as you does a fragile, hairless alien female hold?" Vartra's voice was growing louder. "You, once second in command in the Claws, the most feared of the Packs on the streets of Ranz, their top killer— the Brotherhood's best Special Operative at hunting down and killing rogue telepaths: what place has any female in your life, let alone one who poses a threat to your whole species? One who's responsible for altering the best of the few telepaths Shola possesses till they're infertile with their own kind? Tell me now that you haven't changed!"
Kaid's anger and anguish had built in equal portions. There was no denying the truth of what Vartra was saying. "You made it happen!" he roared, pushing his seat back and springing to his feet, tail lashing angrily from side to side, ears plastered flat against his skull.
"I did?" It was said very quietly. Vartra leaned back in his seat, brown eyes looking up unconcerned at him. "How so? You did that yourself as a child. I watched it happening during the long drive to Stronghold. How could I make a cub barely three years old become sexually attracted to a female so alien and unlike his own kind? You know the answer to that as well as I do. Why do you have to question what you feel for her? Why can't you just enjoy having her as your lover and third now you've finally achieved what you longed for?"
"Because I need to know what's real, dammit!" he swore, clenching his hands till his claws pricked his palms. "You pull me about like a cub's toy, Vartra, as if I'm there for your whims and your use! I'm not! I have needs of my own!" Uncertainty and insecurity as well as anger threatened to overwhelm him. "I've visited too many dream worlds, Vartra, I don't need yours! I need to know what's true, what's real!" He needed to know that what he felt for Carrie was his, not engineered by the male— be he God or Entity— who sat before him.
"Sit down, Tallinu. I brought you here to do just that. And to tell you what I need you to do now."
"I refuse. If I have the free will you say I have, you can't make me," he snapped, fighting to slow his breathing and prevent the mist of rage from forming before his eyes.
"Sit down, Tallinu." The voice was even quieter now, persuasive. "I will offer a compromise, then. A deal, if you like."
"What do you offer?" Kaid asked through clenched teeth.
"I promise I will never again call you back to the time of the Cataclysm."
He snorted in disgust. "And what use is that? You already know whether or not you've done it again! That's using your foreknowledge, not making a concession!"
"Sit." Vartra waited, looking up expectantly at him till Kaid reluctantly sat down. "We're outside time for now, Tallinu. The past, the present, all are one for this moment. What we decide now will happen, this I promise you. I have never lied to you, no matter what else you think you can accuse me of. I will not return you to the past. You have my word on that."
Automatically Kaid began reciting his litanies, calming his mind while measuring Vartra up with all the senses he possessed. This was the time for clear thought. Dispassionately, he looked back over his encounters with Him. He spoke the truth. Whether as God or mortal, Vartra had not lied to him. It mattered little what Vartra wanted him to do, if he could use it to buy the peace of mind he desperately needed. "I want more," he said at length. "No interference between me and my Triad partners. We'll find our way, or not, on our own."
Vartra raised an eye ridge. "My Triad, Tallinu? You accept it now?"
"It exists. I have to deal with it, no matter how or why it formed. I want no more interference between the three of us."
"We need your Triad to work, Tallinu. You must be welded together as one, able to support each other."
He could hear a note of uncertainty in the other for the first time. "No interference, Vartra," he said coldly. "And I'll father no cubs with her."
"Some things are not dependent on me, Tallinu," Vartra murmured, mouth opening in a faint grin. "That rather depends on your actions, doesn't it? Cubs are Ghyakulla's gift to us all."
"You know exactly what I mean," Kaid growled. "No confusing me, sending me fevers or visions so that I lose my senses when I'm with her."
"Do you think I did all that? You give me more credit than I'm due. Agreed, on one condition."
"No conditions, Vartra. This is my deal with you, remember?"
"One. You work at this Triad, Tallinu. No taking the easy option and letting it die. You work at it. You owe me that much at least by the oaths you swore to me when you paired with her the first time, and at the cub's Validation. What was it? I'll do anything you ask, only let this be real."
Kaid regarded him impassively. "I have never been foresworn in my life. I have no intention of going back on my oaths now."
"Yet you leveled similar accusations against me. I want to hear you swear that you will work at this Triad of yours."
"I swear." A low growl accompanied his oath. "Tell me what you want me to do, then we can get this over with."
Vartra pushed the other beaker toward him. "Drink," he said. "You must be thirsty by now."
Kaid hesitated. He still didn't completely trust Vartra.
Again the other gestured to the beaker. "It's safe. I'm drinking it."
He picked it up, sniffing the contents suspiciously. "It's water," he said, surprised.
"Of course."
Cautiously, he sipped it, making sure it was indeed water before taking a longer drink.
"I need you to lay aside your mistrust of me, Tallinu, and finish the healing you began at Noni's. I know how much you suffered, not only at the hands of Fyak, but also Ghezu. But you're En'Shalla now, the Brotherhood and all of Shola look to your Triad as the public face of our Order."
Kaid continued to sip at his drink. He was finding it suddenly hot and airless in the room; the palms of his hands were becoming filmed with sweat. He leaned forward, straining to catch Vartra's every word as the God's voice became fainter.
"I need you all to be strong, stronger than you've ever been before, because for the sake of Shola, to beat the Valtegans, you will need to make a pact with the Liege of Hell Himself. Be prepared, Tallinu, for it may cost you your life, or that of one you hold dear."
He jerked in bed, shouting out in fear as he came instantly awake.
"What is it?" demanded T'Chebbi from beside him.
"A dream," he said, shuddering as he passed his hands over his brows, pushing his ears flat against his hair. The dream memory held him still in claws of steel as it dragged him back, even though awake, to relive the last portion.
"This is what I know, Tallinu, what you may have to face. I wish I had more to show you, but so far from Shola, we Entities hold little sway."
Hands bound behind him, he was being dragged toward a large window that gave onto the room next door. The hand holding his scruff pulled his head painfully back, claws gouging his flesh as he was hauled to a stop.
"Look, even now they betray you in this act of reproduction!"
He looked, seeing enough to know that one of the two figures in the bed was Carrie. The other— was Sholan, that was all he could tell. He turned his head aside, saying nothing.
A hiss of anger from his captor and he was flung against the transparent screen, his face pressed painfully against the cool surface.
"You'll watch till I say otherwise! That is your mate, linked mentally to you! Would you die for them now? You're a bigger fool than I thought!"
He shuddered again as the vision finally left him.
"More cryo nightmares?" T'Chebbi asked sympathetically.
"Yes." He'd told no one about this vision from Vartra, managed to hide it even from Kusac and Carrie when they had been intimately linked. Then the potential danger had seemed distant, avoidable. Now, out here in the dark between the worlds, with Carrie and Kusac both lying in cryo units, he wasn't so sure anymore.
The memories were fading so fast he couldn't visualize them enough to remember any more details. It was the first time they had recurred since Vartra had shown them to him all those months before. Why should they come to his sleeping mind now?
T'Chebbi's hand touched his arm, and with an effort, he turned to look at her. He tried to force a smile to his face in a reassurance he couldn't give himself.
"I'm fine now," he said, sliding back down under the cover. He closed his eyes, focusing his mind, trying to recall the scene, desperate for any clue that would answer the questions it had generated.
T'Chebbi remained sitting up. "I don't like this, Kaid. Something is wrong."
He raised himself back up on one elbow. "You sense danger?" All Brotherhood members had a gift, hers was the foreknowledge of approaching danger.
"Yes. No— I'm not sure, Kaid," she said, clutching her arms across her chest. "Not yet, maybe not at all, but there's something out there. Something and nothing."
Vartra had said as much. He lay back, staring up at the ceiling, remembering the words that had followed the vision. He'd still been groggy from the water he'd been given.
"The water is from Ghyakulla's fountain, Tallinu. The purest you'll ever taste. It opens the inner eye that lets us see what may be. You needed to take it to see the vision. Darkness is gathering between the stars, threatening the lifeblood of Shola. All that stands between us and it is your Triad."
"Who told you that?"
T'Chebbi's voice made him jump. He hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud. "Vartra. It was a warning." He turned toward her, pulling her down beside him. "Tell me if the feeling of danger grows stronger. You're sure it isn't here now? Because of Carrie's injury and us being on the U'Churian ship?"
"The warning would have come sooner. This one is just beginning."
"Yet you sensed nothing before the fight at the spaceport." It was a statement, not a recrimination.
"Maybe because there was no serious danger to her once she was put in cryo."
"Maybe." He wasn't convinced. Tirak was honest enough in his intent to take them to their rendezvous, but he felt that any species that trusted another to navigate their military ships was worthy of suspicion. Their current situation involved two unknown variables— the U'Churians and the Cabbarans.
"What is it the Cabbarans do that's so different?" T'Chebbi asked sleepily as she curled up against his side.
Recently she'd shown a knack of following his thoughts that would have disturbed him if everything else around him wasn't so volatile. "They can navigate during jump, allowing them to do two jumps in one flight. That's why we can reach Tuushu Station so quickly."
"How?" She was instantly awake. "And why only two jumps?"
"Tirak says it's a natural ability, a skill they use when planet healing and one they found useful when they got into space. As for only doing two jumps, they can't make a hull for their craft that is strong enough to withstand the stresses caused by the time it would take to jump a greater combined distance."
"They have a psi talent?"
"Sounds like it, but they're not telepathic, I checked. It may just be a convenient lie to mask their technology. Tirak was certainly keeping something back when he told me."
"Think of the military advantage that would give us over the Valtegans when we do find them."
"I have. That's why I requested the interview with Annuur."
"And?"
"And if his sept is only a commercial one, then I'm a jegget. Tirak's mission was military, he admitted it. If this were an Alliance undertaking, Annuur would have an equal rank with the captain— if we used another species to navigate for us." Talking about this was preventing him from thinking about the remainder of his meeting with Vartra.
"So what did you do?" she prompted, nipping his jaw in frustration at the delay. "Don't spin this out!"
"Made a formal application for Treaty talks to begin between the Cabbarans and the Alliance on Jalna," he said, grabbing her chin to prevent her nipping him again. "I also spoke to Captain Kisha, as you call him, with instructions on how to contact the Cabbaran home world." He released her.
"Two new allies. The Alliance will be formidable when we do meet the Valtegans."
"Three if you count the TeLaxaud, but first we have to find them. They trade only rarely at Jalna, and there's no one who knows how to contact them."
"Curious, considering they helped build the port."
"It happens that way with people, why not with a species?"
"So what woke you?"
He bit back the answer just in time. She'd nearly caught him by switching the topic so abruptly. "I told you, a dream of danger. Now sleep," he said, reaching out to kill the night-light.
Sleep took some time in coming, and when it did, it was laced with more of the memories he'd tried to avoid.
