That night Soz left the home, the place where she had known so much joy and love—and that was now forbidden to her.
Shannon sat in a curtained alcove on the third floor of the house. He pushed into a corner where the stone bench met the wall, pulled his knees to his chest, and laid his forehead on his knees. The roar of the departing Jag had long since faded. Nothing could fix this wound. Father had sent Althor away. Forever.
It was his fault.
Shannon knew the truth. He hurt people and they left. He gave nothing. He had nothing. Loneliness was breaking him apart.
The door of the outer room scraped open, glasswood on stone. Shannon raised his head. He looked through the crack where the curtain didn’t quite meet the wall and saw his father shut the door. Eldrinson walked heavily to a table in the center of the room and sat in one of its high-backed chairs. Resting his elbows on its surface, he put his forehead in his hands.
His shoulders were shaking. He was crying. Shannon had known many moods from his father, but never this heart-deep anguish. It was his fault. He had seen his father’s anger, heard him banish Althor. Because of him, Shannon. He never meant to cause pain. He had simply gone to Althor. It had done so much damage. He couldn’t bear to be the cause of this. Nor could he bear more rejection, more anger, more pain.
The door opened again. Roca came inside, but Eldrinson didn’t look up as she closed the door. She went to the table and sat in a chair near him.
He lifted his head. “Are they gone?” Tears streaked his face.
Her face was wet as well. “Yes. They left.”
His voice cracked. “They are dead to me.”
“Eldri, don’t do this.” Roca reached for his hand.
He pushed her away. “You could have helped me. You didn’t.”
“It is wrong to make her stay.”
Eldrinson stared at her. “But it isn’t wrong for her to go? To show so little respect for her parents?”
“She is no longer a child, no matter how we may feel. We must respect her wishes.”
“Kurj will destroy us. He will tear apart our family. Gods know, I’ve never done anything to him. But it will never change his antipathy toward me.”
She exhaled. “It is true, he will probably never accept you as his stepfather. But he no longer tries to destroy you.”
“No, now he does it through our children.”
“He didn’t want to name any heirs. The Assembly forced him.”
“I was so happy today.” Eldrinson’s voice caught. “So proud of Althor, so overjoyed to have the family together.”
“Eldri, give this time. It will heal.”
“That woman, Colonel Tahota—why did Kurj send her?”
“To answer our questions.” Relief at his quieter tone showed on Roca’s face. “She has much status within ISC. They did honor by sending her.”
His anger sparked. “Your son couldn’t come himself?”
“Would you have wanted him to?”
“No.” Eldrinson grimaced. “When he comes here, I feel his aversion every moment. He loathes Lyshriol. He judges everything I do and say.”
Shannon strained to understand their currents of emotion. He felt how much they hurt, but he couldn’t interpret their complicated moods. He hardly knew Kurj; it had been over six years since his half brother had visited Lyshriol. Shannon’s life had been even more an ocean of moods then. He remembered Kurj as huge and taciturn. Imposing. But not hostile. Shannon had liked him.
“I talked to Tahota this afternoon,” Roca was saying. “Kurj intends honor by Althor and Soz.”
Eldrinson shook his head, his face drawn. “My children have—” He stiffened, the rest of his sentence lost.
“Eldri?” Roca leaned forward. “What—ah, gods, no.”
A strange static crackled in Shannon’s mind. His father’s gaze turned vacant, a frightening lack of person. Roca stood up suddenly, grabbing her husband as he went rigid and sagged to the side. She caught his arm, but his weight was too much. He fell out of his chair, pulling Roca with him, and they crashed to the floor, knocking away the chair. Shannon soundlessly cried out when his father’s shoulder smashed against a table leg and his mother’s head struck the chair. Roca recovered immediately and leaned over her husband, moving fast, laying him on his side.
Then the demons came.
Terrifying spasms wracked his father’s body. He convulsed as if invisible creatures shook him with violence. His arms and legs hit the floor, and his head jerked back and forth.
“Father!” Shannon jumped off the bench and swept aside the curtain.
His mother snapped up her head. “Shannon, good gods, where did you come from?”
Shannon came to them and stood over his father’s body, staring in horror, his hands out from his sides.
“Shannon!”
Her voice penetrated his shock. He looked at her, silently pleading with her to make it all right, to fix this new shock. His father continued to convulse.
She spoke fast. “Go to the master suite. Bring me the holotape and air syringe in the top drawer of the nightstand by the bed. Can you do that?”
Help. She needed his help. He focused. The master suite. Air syringe. “Yes.”
“Hurry,” she said.
Shannon ran outside and down the halls, his hair flying back from his face. It took ages to reach their suite, but finally he was there. He raced through its entrance foyer and slammed open the inner door. Night darkened the room inside. He ran to the stand and rummaged in the drawer, sending trinkets, memory cubes, and disks flying. He found the syringe immediately—but no tape. He searched frantically, throwing a necklace on the floor, a timepiece, a cluster of strings for his father’s drummel. No tape!
Shannon dropped to his knees and scrabbled through the debris on the floor. There! He grabbed the glimmering spool and jumped to his feet, the syringe clutched in his hand as well. Then he tore out of the suite and ran back through the house.
He found his mother still kneeling by his father. Eldrinson had gone limp—no, his father couldn’t have died—
Eldrinson’s chest rose, slow and shallow as he breathed. With a gasp of relief, Shannon crouched next to his mother. “Here.” He pushed the tape and syringe into her hands.
“Thank you.” Her voice had a gratitude he didn’t deserve.
Unrolling the tape, Roca laid it along Eldrinson’s neck. Holos appeared above it, diagrams and statistics. For a moment she studied them, her forehead furrowed. Then she released a breath. She adjusted the syringe and dialed in a prescription. Shannon watched anxiously. Had he caused this, too, bringing demons to his father’s body?
As Roca set the air syringe against Eldrinson’s neck, she spoke softly. “He will be all right.”
His voice shook. “Why do they come?”
A hiss came from the syringe. “Who comes?”
“The demons.”
Roca glanced at him. “There are no demons, Shani. It’s just epilepsy.”
He didn’t believe her. Yes, he knew his father had epilepsy. He had read about it, as they all had, learning what to do if he had an attack. The Skolian program of treatment was supposed to prevent seizures, but they could still happen. This was the first time Shannon had seen a big one. He knew the truth, regardless of what his mother or any doctor claimed. Spirits of malice attacked his father, probably brought here by Shannon’s misdeeds.
Roca set the syringe and holotape on the floor, then eased Eldrinson onto his back and straightened his limbs. With a sigh, he settled back, breathing more naturally now. His eyelashes lifted and he stared blankly at the ceiling. Comprehension gradually returned to his gaze.
“Eldri?” Roca said.
He looked at her, his face tired. Then his gaze shifted to Shannon. “Shani? Where—?”
“I was in the alcove,” Shannon said.
“You … heard?”
Shame swept over Shannon. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was already there when you
came in. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Ai …” Eldrinson closed his eyes. After several breaths, he tried to sit up. Roca slid her arm around his torso. He got onto his knees, pulled up his booted foot, and tried to stand, but he sagged so much, he almost knocked Roca over.
“Shannon,” she said.
He slid his arm around his father’s waist. With the two of them as support, Eldrinson managed to stand. Then he drew away from them and tried a step on his own. Immediately his legs buckled. He grabbed the table and hung on, his face pale, his jaw clenched so hard Shannon could see the bones against his skin.
Roca reached to help, but he shook his head, sharp and angry. “Leave me.” His usually resonant voice was flat and dull. He stared at her with a suppressed fury that frightened Shannon, not because he believed his father would ever hurt any of them but because he feared it would bring on another attack.
Roca stepped back, giving him room. Eldrinson pushed away from the table and walked slowly to the door. Shannon started after him, but his mother caught his arm.
“Not now,” she murmured.
He understood. The Bard needed his pride. Eldrinson opened the door and left the room.
“I’m sorry.” Shannon’s voice broke. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” His mother dropped into a chair at the table and bent her head.
“I should go.” Shannon didn’t know where, only that he had to free her from his presence.
“Shani, wait.” His mother motioned to another chair at the table. “I need to talk with you.”
Unease swept over him. He went to the chair and laid his hand on its high back. “Yes?”
“Sit down, honey.”
That didn’t sound ominous. She called him Shannon Eirlei Valdoria when she was angry with him. He sat slowly, watching her, trying to read her mood. She was tired, very tired, and afraid for his father. Her pain over today went deep; he could skim only its surface.
“This afternoon,” his mother began.
“Does he really mean to banish Soz and Althor?”
“I don’t know what will happen.”
“Tell me the truth,” he said in a low voice.
Shadows darkened her eyes. “Yes. I think he means it.”
A part of Shannon died inside. “Althor will never come home.”
His mother’s gaze sharpened. “What did your father mean about Althor looking at you?”
Hai! He couldn’t discuss it with his mother. He didn’t even understand it himself. “Nothing.”
“That ‘nothing’ contributed to his disowning his son.”
“I don’t know why.” That was the truth.
“What happened between you and Althor?”
“Nothing.” He dropped his mental barriers and let her sense the truth of his answer.
Roca’s shoulders sagged. “We’re frightened, Shani, all of us, your father, me, Kurj, Althor, Soz. War leans on us and I don’t know if we can stand under its weight.”
Her words poured over him and sheeted off like water that couldn’t soak into a dry sponge. “I thought all war had ended.”
She looked at him oddly. “What makes you think that?”
“Althor ended it.” Shannon knew the story well, how Althor had ridden into battle five years ago with their father, mounted on a great war lyrine, wearing disk mail and leather armor, with his sword at his side, his bow and quiver on his back—and a laser carbine over his shoulder. Two days later Althor had stood on a ridge above the Plains of Tyroll and slaughtered over three hundred of their enemies with one carbine. It had taken only minutes. Men with swords and bows couldn’t combat the technology of an interstellar empire. That day, Althor had ended war on Lyshriol.
His mother spoke tiredly. “I wish we could end the wars among my people. More than anything, though, I would wish for my children a gentler life than one of killing.” Her voice caught. “But it seems they must follow pipers I cannot hear.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Roca squeezed his hand. “I am so very glad some of you stay.”
Shannon stared at her drawn face and he knew without doubt that he had failed her, failed his father, failed Althor. That moment last night when he walked into his brother’s room, he had started a tragedy. He had hoped the person he trusted and loved above all others would help ease his loneliness, but instead he had caused more trouble than he could bear.
He knew what he had to do.
The stable was dark, but Shannon needed no light. He walked straight to Moonglaze’s stall. The lyrine nickered, stepping restlessly behind the green glasswood half door.
“Hai, Moonglaze,” Shannon crooned, giving the lyrine sweet bubbles he had picked from a shrub outside. Moonglaze pushed his nose into Shannon’s hand and crunched on the delicate orbs.
“Come on.” Shannon whispered, though no one was out this late to hear him. He had waited until everyone went to bed. He put a soft pad over Moonglaze’s back and settled his travel sacks across the lyrine’s haunches. Moonglaze whistled a low protest, and Shannon made soothing noises, all the time scratching in the thick purple hair curling at the lyrine’s neck, until Moonglaze quieted.
Shannon strapped his quiver of silver-tipped arrows onto his own back. He was carrying his bow. Then he walked Moonglaze outside and across a courtyard. He didn’t leave by the main gate, which had a watchman. Instead he snuck out a small gate no one used, one overgrown by vines and prickly glasstubes. He pushed through the screen of growth and brought Moonglaze out into tangles of bagger-bubble reeds. Light from the Blue and Lavender Moons filtered through the foliage. Moonglaze lifted his great head and shook it with pleasure.
“Good Moon.” Shannon fastened his bow to his back, then mounted and guided the lyrine along an overgrown path that wound around the house. They were on the edge of Dalvador, and within moments they reached the stubble that marked the onset of the plains. Shannon gave Moonglaze his head and the lyrine took off. He had never understood why his mother thought the name Moonglaze was too poetic for a war mount. This lyrine flew through the night, fluid and silent, no more visible than a glaze on the moon. The stubbly reeds of the plains brushed his hooves, then his legs, then even higher, but it didn’t fetter the lyrine. These plains were his home, just as they had always been for Shannon.
Until now.
He would probably never find the Blue Dale Archers. But he would search all of their legendary territory in Ryder’s Lost Memory and the Blue Dale Mountains.
For he had nowhere else to call home.
6
The Empty Stall
Soz had always expected it would thrill her the first time she sat in the cockpit of a Jag fighter. Today she felt only subdued. She and Althor were side by side in the cockpit. Althor slouched in the pilot’s seat, dozing, its silver exoskeleton covering him like a second skin. Although she couldn’t see its prongs, she knew they had plugged into sockets in his neck, wrists, and at the base of his spine. He also had sockets in his ankles, but his boots covered them.
Tahota was taking her turn in the auxiliary chair crammed into the Jag’s tiny cabin behind them. Her seat had enough smart-ware to adjust for its passenger’s comfort, and the colonel was sleeping for the first time since they had left Lyshriol, leaving Althor to tend the Jag by himself. He didn’t have much to do; its Evolving Intelligence, or EI, could pilot the ship.
They were superluminal now, traveling in inversion. It was one of Soz’s favorite areas of study. Light-speed was like an infinite tree limiting the speed of the ship. They could never go over the tree; mass and energy became infinite relative to the rest of the universe at the speed of light. The solution turned out to be simple, at least in mathematical terms. They needed only add an imaginary component to their speed. It let them “go around” the tree by entering a complex universe where mass, energy, and speed had imaginary components. In mathematical terms, the relativistic equations became functions of a complex variable. It let the
m circumvent the singularity at light speed. Scientists called it inversion because it inverted constellations relative to their subluminal positions.
Now they raced through inversion, headed for Diesha, home world to ISC headquarters and the Dieshan Military Academy.
The cockpit mesmerized Soz. She knew roughly what to expect, but this Jag had more components than she expected. Its full design was probably kept secret from the public, including eager young applicants to DMA. Transparent panels had folded around her body and come alive with holomaps and other displays. She wanted to memorize it all. It kept her occupied; otherwise, she would have nothing to do but brood over what had happened at home.
Althor stirred and pulled himself upright and stretched his arms. He scanned the panels that had clicked into place around his body, but Soz doubted he needed to look. The Jag’s EI brain fed data straight into his node. He and the EI were getting to know each other, developing the symbiosis they would need to work together. This fighter would be his when he graduated from DMA. It would fly for no one but him or a pilot he granted permission.
He glanced at Soz. “Did you sleep?”
“I can’t.” She waved her hand at the controls. “It’s like a great big puzzle. I have to solve it.”
He smiled. “You probably knew more about Jags than most novice cadets even before this ride. And none of them are coming to Diesha in one.”
She wanted to be excited, but her enthusiasm felt damped. To succeed in her lifelong dream meant so much less when it came at the price of losing her home.
Althor settled back and studied views of space displayed on the holoscreens over his head. Soz didn’t think he was paying much attention to them. After a moment, he said, “I can’t believe he said that about Shannon. He knows me better than that.”
Soz knew he meant their father. “He was angry. At me. At you for taking me. He didn’t mean what he told you about not coming home.”
“Like hell. He meant every word of it.” He spoke under his breath. “Nothing like having your father out you in front of your family.”