“Well, it couldn’t do that without attracting attention,” Lydiah said. “Besides, if it had come back to you, how would you have explained it? Didn’t your mother drag you off and ask you about a thousand questions after that first challenge?”
“Yes, she did.” Nadiah shuddered. “She demanded to know where the tharp was and everything else. If she’d caught me with it…”
“But she didn’t because it was smart enough to come to me.” Lydiah stroked the living garment affectionately. “But it belongs with you. Keep it safe, dear friend. It has served you well.”
“It certainly did and it will again.” Nadiah looked up at Rast. “Hold me closer—I’m going to wrap it around both of us.”
He started to protest, then realized that he was still wearing the traditional Tranq Prime outfit of a fur skirt and furry boots. His chest, legs, and arms were bare and it was past nightfall outside, so the temperature was going to be in the double digits below freezing.
“All right,” he said, pulling her closer. “Do it.”
With a little help from Lydiah, they got the tharp wrapped around themselves. Either it was bigger than Rast remembered or it was stretching itself to cover them both. Whatever the reason, once it was fastened securely around them, only their faces stuck out. Nadiah murmured some words to it and it puffed out, putting any down jacket Rast had ever worn to shame.
“Wow, that’s warm!” he exclaimed. “Let’s get out of here before I fall over from heat exhaustion.”
“You’ll need every bit of heat you can muster to get from here to your ship,” Havris said grimly. “Winter is coming—its chill is already in the air.” He raised an eyebrow at Rast. “Are you ready? You’ll have to run for it.”
Rast took a firmer grip on his precious burden and Nadiah squeaked with protest. But she was smiling so he knew she was all right. “Ready,” he said, nodding. “If you’ll open the door we’ll get out of here.”
“On the count of three then,” Havris said. “One…two…”
“I love you, Lydiah! Be sure to call me when you’re bonded,” Nadiah said, smiling at her friend from the cover of the tharp.
“I love you too, dear friend. You do the same.” Lydiah’s eyes shone as she waved a last farewell.
“Three!” Havris called and flung open the door.
A blast of icy wind so cold it nearly stole his breath away hit Rast like a slap in the face. And then he was off and running.
Chapter Twenty
“Please, please help me. I’m begging you. I’ve tried everything but nothing works. I don’t know where else to turn. Who else to ask.”
Sophia fell on her knees in the green and purple grass of the sacred grove. She lifted her hands in supplication to the priestess who towered over her, a forbidding look on her face.
“Of what do you speak, human female? What troubles do you bring before the Mother of All Life this day?” she asked, her green-on-green eyes flashing.
“I am…barren.” Sophie could barely get the word out—it stuck in her throat like a bone. But it was the only way to describe her situation. The only word that fit.
“Barren, you say?” The forbidding look in the priestess’s strange eyes softened a bit. “How do you know this? You have only been bonded to your warrior a little while, have you not? Perhaps a few more months of trying…”
“That’s not going to help,” Sophie told her. “After my cousin, Lauren, got pregnant I had Sylvan run some tests. I…my eggs actually reject his seed. They repel it for some reason—some kind of syndrome. And even though he’s been working at the lab day and night, he can’t find any way to solve the problem.” She put her face in her hands and sobbed. “I just want a baby so badly. A little boy I can love and care for and raise.”
“I see.” The priestess nodded. “And how does Sylvan feel about this?”
Sophie shrugged helplessly. “He says he’ll love me no matter what. But I know he wants a son of his own as much as I do. There’s so much sadness in him since we found out. It’s like…like he’s grieving for the son he’ll never have. The son we’ll never have.”
She broke down crying again, all the stress and pain and worry of the last few days catching up to her. Sylvan believed that their problem might be due to a rare disorder which sometimes ran in Kindred bloodlines and became active when introduced to the right stimulus. When a male with the condition came into contact with a female who activated the disorder, the very genes which enabled him to trade with other species somehow got flipped, causing them to do the exact opposite and reject a pairing with an alien female. Which in this case is me, she thought miserably. I’m the one who set him off, it’s my fault we can’t have a baby!
“If you will allow me, I must lay hands on your head and try to see into this matter,” the priestess said.
Though that feeling of cool fingers rifling through her mind was on Sophie’s list of top ten hated things, she nodded humbly. “Yes, of course.”
“Very good.” Two strong hands descended onto her hair and Sophia held her breath and closed her eyes, waiting to feel the strange tingle of an invading mind inside her own. But somehow, it never came.
She opened her eyes again and dared to look up. The priestess, her hands still buried in Sophie’s hair, was staring up at the artificial green sun which hung above the sacred grove and chanting something under her breath.
At last, after what felt like a very long time, she removed her hands from Sophie’s head and looked down at her. “Rise, daughter of another star. I believe I have your answer.”
“You do?” Sophia looked at her with hope. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!”
“Silence!” The priestess’s voice cracked like a whip. “You may not be pleased with what you hear.”
“I…I may not?” Sophie faltered. “Oh, please—”
“The Goddess has revealed to me that your womb has been closed for a reason.”
“What?” Sophie said doubtfully. “I mean, what does that even mean? For what reason?”
“To prove that he who was lost has returned.”
“But who? Who was lost and when is he coming back?” Sophie wished the Kindred priestesses wouldn’t always talk in riddles but there seemed to be nothing to do but try and follow along.
“One who comes from the mists of time to claim the Empty Thone.” The Priestess’s voice had taken on a hollow, ringing tone and when Sophie looked at her she saw that the woman’s strange green-on-green eyes had rolled up in her head. It reminded her a little of what had happened to Nadiah when she had an al’lei or waking dream.
“Uh…are you all right?” she whispered, taking a step back. “Do you want me to get you a doctor?”
“Be silent,” hissed a voice in her ear and Sophie turned to see another priestess standing barefoot on the holy grass beside her. This one was younger—only the irises of her eyes were green, not the whites—but she was somehow no less forbidding than the older one. “The high priestess is having a vision,” she told Sophie, taking a firm, pinching grip on her arm. “Kindly be silent and let her continue.”
“I’m sorry,” Sophie whispered. “I didn’t mean to—”
“You must go to him,” the first priestess intoned. “Go and stand before the Empty Throne which shall be empty no more. Now it shall be filled as the Goddess decrees it must.” Her eyes rolled further up in her head and a narrow stream of spittle started to leak from the corner of her thin-lipped mouth. “They are coming…The Blackness which Eats the Stars…the nameless horror from ancient times. Something has awakened it, has awakened them. They are evil, horror…they are legion. And when they come all of creation will be devoured by their insatiable hunger. The Blackness…it comes…ahhh!”
Suddenly she fell to the ground and began to convulse. With a little cry, Sophie shook off the younger priestess and ran to her. “Get some help,” she yelled. “Somebody help me—call the med station!”
But before the words completely left her mouth the seizure or vision or whate
ver it was stopped completely and the priestess was still, her long, green streaked hair spread on the grass around her.
“Priestess?” Sophie looked down at her anxiously, but sightless eyes stared back into hers. “Your Holiness?” she said. Timidly, she touched the woman’s arm, then her cheek. “Oh, her skin is so cold.”
“That’s because she’s dead.” The voice of the younger priestess was flat and calm but the grief in her eyes was terrible to see. “Dead!” she cried, rising to shout the news to the entire sacred grove. “The high priestess is dead!”
* * * * *
“Now, tell me again what happened?” Sylvan held her trembling form close to his chest and tried to speak soothingly.
“I…I k-k-killed the high priestess.” Sophia was crying so hard he could barely understand her. He held her tight, feeling helpless to end her grief and terror. All he could do was stroke her back and try to soothe her until she cried herself out.
At last the worst of the tears seemed to be over and he was able to get the story out of her. In a shaky voice, Sophie admitted what she had done and told him exactly what had happened.
“So she had a vision and fell over dead?” he demanded. “That doesn’t sound like anything you could have done, Talana.”
“It was my fault,” Sophia insisted. “If I hadn’t gone to her asking for help, she never would have had the vision that killed her. I did it, Sylvan—me.”
He shook his head. “No, you didn’t. It sounds to me like the vision she had was a very serious one. Whether it was responsible for overloading her brain or heart or whether it was simply her time to go to the Goddess, it wasn’t your fault. If the message is that important, the Goddess would have sent it sooner or later anyway.”
“Do…do you really think so?” Sophia’s voice still wavered but there was hope in it now, which made him glad.
“Really, Talana.” He kissed her tear stained cheeks gently and brushed a strand of her chestnut brown hair away from her forehead. “And you didn’t have to go to the priestess in the first place. You know I’ll love you no matter what. Even if we can never have sons, it doesn’t matter to me as long as I have you.”
“Oh, Sylvan, I know that.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “It’s just…I want a baby so much. And I know you do too. We can adopt, I guess—I know you’d love any child we chose like your own. But I can’t help myself…I want a little boy who looks just like you. With blond hair and blue eyes and that serious expression you get when you’re thinking…” She sniffed and blotted her tears with her sleeve. “I’m sorry, I should have told you what I was going to do. I just thought, you know, if the priestess had a solution for me I could surprise you with it.”
Sylvan frowned. “We may be able to find some hope in her words. Tell me again, if you can, exactly what she said.”
Sophia shook her head. “I can’t really remember it all but I’ll try. First she said my, uh, womb had been closed for a reason. Then she said I have to go stand before the Empty Throne.”
Sylvan was surprised. “The Empty Throne? You’re sure that’s what she said?”
Sophia nodded. “Reasonably sure, anyway. I remember thinking how weird and spooky it sounded. What is the Empty Throne, anyway?”
“The seat of the Counselor —the rightful ruler and defender of the Kindred home planet—First World as we call it. But the last Counselor died thousands of years ago and ever since the Seat of Wisdom he sat on has been known as the Empty Throne.”
Sophia frowned. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t they just elect another Counselor ?”
Sylvan smiled. “The position is not like your American President, Talana. Counselor is an inherited position. Only one who has a very specific genetic heritage and traits can take the Seat of Wisdom and see with the Eye of Foreknowledge.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “So this throne has been vacant for how long?”
“Centuries. Ever since the last Counselor ’s blood line ran dry.” Sylvan frowned. “It was said that he had one heir but the baby was lost somehow or else killed in the battle between the Kindred and the Grimlax.”
“The what?” Sophia shook her head. “Could you repeat that? My translation bacteria didn’t get it at all.”
“That’s because it’s spoken in a dead language—the language of the Grimlax. They are a race so voracious in their appetites, so evil in their intent, and so mindless in their violence that they were simply called the Hoard.” He shrugged. “Or sometimes in the ancient legends, they were referred to as The Blackness which Eats the Stars.”
To his surprise, Sophia jumped as though she’d been stung. “The Blackness which Eats the Stars!” she gasped. “That’s what she said—she said The Blackness which Eats the Stars was coming!”
Sylvan felt his heart clench in his chest. “Are you certain? Because if you’re right, this is a very serious thing indeed.”
“But…but I thought they were just an old legend. You just said so yourself.”
“I said we had ancient legends about them but that doesn’t make them untrue. A millennium ago the last Counselor of First World waged a mighty war upon them. He won, but at the cost of his own life and that of his female. Some say he killed every last one of their relentless number but others say a few survived to grow and multiply under the burned crust of their arid world. Hiding until their numbers were enough to wipe out the stars.”
Sophia looked scared. “But that’s still just a story, right? And besides, how bad could they be? I mean, the Kindred defeated the Scourge, right? The Hoard couldn’t be worse than they were.”
Slowly, Sylvan shook his head. “The Scourge were a dying race led by a mad male. The AllFather was sickened and corrupted by his own power. In the end, they had almost no true warriors left, only vat grown soldiers without the sense the Goddess gave a child. But the Hoard…” He looked down, trying to think how to put it. “Have you ever heard the expression, ‘he fights like a demon?’”
Sophia nodded. “Sure. But it’s just an expression.”
“Not in this case. The Hoard are demonic, or what we consider to be demonic, anyway. They are soulless, seeking only to devour, to torture and maim and kill and ruin every living thing they come into contact with.” He sighed. “The Scourge were a twisted race but they grew that way gradually, polluting their home world and selling their virtue for monetary gain. The Hoard on the other hand…they cannot be reasoned with, cannot be tamed or bargained with. They can only be killed.”
Sophia bit her lip. “You make them sound like monsters.”
“Let me put it this way,” Sylvan said grimly. “The legends say that if a ship was boarded by a tribe of the Hoard, the passengers would be tortured, raped, skinned and eaten in that order—all while they were still alive.”
“Tortured and eaten and sk-skinned?” Sophia’s voice wavered. “That’s horrible. So barbaric! But what…why did they skin them?”
“According to legends, the more primitive Hoard tribes delighted in making garments from their victims’ skin.” Sylvan said. “They wore their trophies as a warning to the next ship they boarded.”
“Ugh!” Sophia shivered. “I’m so glad that all happened in the past and that it’s far, far away from us, near the Kindred home world.” She frowned. “What if by some chance they did come back? Would they be able to fold space and come get us?”
Sylvan shook his head. “The ability to fold space is a technology known only to the Kindred and the Scourge. So now, of course, only the Kindred have it. We guard its secret closely. But honestly, even if a hostile alien race were to get hold of it, it wouldn’t do them much good.”
“Why not?” Sophia asked.
Sylvan shrugged. “Because, it takes vast quantities of energy to create and sustain a controlled tear in the space-time continuum. Energy which now only Kindred Mother ships are able to make thanks to the artificial sun at their centers.”
“I see.” Sophia nodded. “So without the secret of the green sun a
nd the technology to use it…”
“Any hostile race that wanted to spread through the universe would have to rely on existing worm holes,” Sylvan said. “And they are mostly too narrow and unstable for anything but a small scout craft to fly through.”
“So then we’re safe, no matter what the priestess said. Aren’t we?” Sophia looked at him hopefully.
“Yes, of course.” Sylvan drew her to him again. “Of course we are, Talana,” he murmured into her hair. But deep in his soul a stirring of unease had begun and he couldn’t tell if he was telling his beloved wife the truth…or a lie.
Chapter Twenty-one
“All warmed up?” Rast asked as she stepped from the bathroom into the tiny living area of their ship.
“Yes, thank you. You were right—a hot shower was just what I needed.” Nadiah smiled shyly. She had dried herself off already and had her tharp draped around her in what Kat had called “toga style” with one shoulder bare. “You, uh, can take one now too, if you like. There should still be plenty of hot water left,” she said.
“Thanks.” Rast nodded. “I think I will. And don’t worry about anything, we’re already out of orbit and the autopilot has all coordinates locked in for the fold.”
“Will it take us five days to get back to it the way it took five days going?” Nadiah wanted to know.
“No, I don’t think so. If the calculations are correct, it should only take three days or so, Earth time.” He smiled. “So we’ll be back on the Mother Ship with all your friends in no time.”
“Oh. That’s…nice.” Nadiah tried to look happy but to tell the truth, she was rather disappointed. She’d been hoping for more time than that alone together with Rast.
He picked up on her mood at once. “What is it, sweetheart?” he asked, taking her hands in his. “Come on, we’re bonded now. You can tell me.”
Nadiah bit her lip. “It’s true we have a bond but it’s not…well, it’s not sealed.”