Alissa seethed, taking another sip from her stone cup.
Keribdis gracefully folded herself onto a chair with her hands on her lap. “Well, where is—Beast? Or are you not really in control? Is it a mistake that brings her on?”
“No,” Alissa lied. She glanced at Silla and then away. The girl looked frightened, and Alissa wondered again what Keribdis had told her. “But Beast promised she wouldn’t take over my actions, and she won’t, unless I pass out or I’m in danger.”
Keribdis’s eyes bore into her, but her words were for the crowd. “How convenient. A moral beast. But you are in danger. Tell your beast you’re in danger for your very life.”
Alissa took a slow breath. Her heart pounded, and she felt ill from the pain in her hand. “Think on the wind,” Beast said, confusing Alissa. “I’d like to be entirely me to answer her, so you must relax and trust me to give yourself back to you when I’m done.”
Aware that everyone had gone silent, Alissa nodded. An odd feeling of detachment slipped over her. She clenched, her fingers gripping her cup tightly. Then, with Beast’s admonishment,she relaxed, finding herself wondering why she couldn’t see the updrafts any longer and why the sound of the surf was muted. Her fear of Keribdis shifted to contempt. How dare the old female try to outfly her. To succumb to the strength of youth was the way of the world.
Alissa felt a shiver pass over her, and everyone gasped. Talon left her, hopping to Silla. The young woman didn’t seem to notice as she clutched Connen-Neute’s arm. “You’re old,” Alissa heard herself say, the words enunciated with more care than she ever took.
Keribdis went ashen, covering her sudden shock by standing up. “She’s putting distance between us,” Beast said into Alissa’s thoughts. “She knows we can outfly her.” Alissa felt a bewildering spin as she tried to look at the crowd, finding she couldn’t. Beast was concentrating on Keribdis with the intentness of a predator and wouldn’t allow it. “But I won’t talk to you,” Beast said to Keribdis. “You’re a child and would misunderstand anything I might say.”
“Child!” Keribdis exclaimed. Her fright was gone or hidden very well. She tossed her head to send her ribbons fluttering in a blatant attempt to pull all attention to her. Beast adjusted their posture slightly. It was a small move, but the men in the crowd suddenly had slack faces. Beast understood now she was encouraging them to try to bring her to ground, but as long as she was free to fly, filling them with a desire they couldn’t satisfy gave her power over them.
“I am not a child!” Keribdis said, gaining at least the women’s attention. “I am older than you by seven hundred years, you ash-ridden foothills spawn.”
Alissa felt her breath leave her in a languorous sigh. “I remember the birth of the wind,” she said slowly. “You only ride it.”
Keribdis blinked, her lips slightly parted. But her jaw returned to a clench long before the Masters behind her remembered to breathe.
“Maybe that’s enough, Beast?” Alissa questioned, not liking the lack of control she had. No wonder Beast liked to fly. It was the only freedom Alissa gave her. Perhaps she wasn’t being fair to her feral consciousness.
“Are you sure?” Beast said as she breathed in the sweet air, and Alissa smelled for the first time the difference in the mirth trees. “I could end this quickly if you would shift. This should be settled in the air as it has been for thousands of years.”
“No!” Alissa cried aloud, and snatched control back. The world seemed to hiccup, and Alissa blinked, startled to find herself seeing everything in the mundane way she always had.
The Masters exchanged uneasy glances. It was obvious they knew Beast was gone. “What did she say to you?” Keribdis asked, her predatory gleam shaken. “There at the end?”
Alissa allowed herself a smirk, though she was shaking inside. “She suggested we should settle this in the air as has been done for thousands of years.”
Keribdis drummed her fingers together as if to point out Alissa’s shorter digits. “Perhaps we should,” she threatened.
Beast surged forward. “You cheat,” she said through Alissa. “But you would still lose, winglet,” she added, then vanished.
Yar-Taw raised a hand to ease the soft murmuring. “Enough,” he said, taking a nervous glance at Alissa. “We’ve seen Beast, heard her speak. What say you, Keribdis?”
“I want it dead,” Keribdis said flatly.
Alissa jerked her head up. Swallowing, she went cold. The Master was playing no longer. The flamboyant dramatics were gone. Keribdis’s fear of losing control of the conclave, of her inability to control Alissa, had burned all emotions from her except an unbreakable determination. Even Keribdis’s fear had been destroyed. This was what everyone had warned Alissa of, and she hadn’t understood.
“I want it dead,” she repeated, loud into the shocked hush. “The feral consciousness that evolves upon first transition must be destroyed. Talo-Toecan failed. It must be done now.”
Keribdis stepped forward, and Alissa shrank back in her chair, her bravado vanishing as if it had never existed. “She is a dangerous mix,” Keribdis said. She leaned over the table so her trailing ribbons nearly touched it. “Not feral, not sane. She’s a carrier of disease, unable to succumb but infecting those around her. She made Connen-Neute feral. She might do the same to Silla.” She stood up and faced the crowd. “She might do the same to one of you!”
“No!” Connen-Neute shouted, standing up. “That’s not what happened.”
“Sit down, Master Connen-Neute!” Yar-Taw exclaimed over the rising murmur. Alissa looked from Connen-Neute’s anguished expression to Silla’s horror-struck one. Keribdis knew Silla was balancing on the edge, and she was going to make Alissa take the blame if she fell.
“Beast is not a disease,” Alissa said over the talk both aloud and unheard. “She isn’t something that evolved during my first shift to Master. She isn’t something foreign to be destroyed. She’s always been there, just mixed up with the rest of me.” The Masters stilled themselves, listening, and Alissa took a steadying breath. “I believe Beast was separated into her own being the first time I shifted to a raku. Beast isn’t evil, just out of place. Just like everyone else’s beast. None of you have destroyed your beasts. You only suppressed them.”
For a heartbeat, there was silence. Alissa became afraid when horror washed over the faces staring at her. Then the crowd roared denial. Keribdis looked satisfied. “I want it dead,” she said over the noise. “I want it dead, now. There’s no both. There’s one or the other. I do not have a beast in my thoughts!”
“You do!” Alissa exclaimed.
“Kill it!”
Frightened, Alissa stood, her pulse pounding. “You can’t make me kill her.”
Keribdis’s face went ugly. “Then I will rip your sentience from you and return you to what you really are: an animal.”
The noise fell to nothing. Alissa’s breath came in a panicked gasp. Then, realizing what Keribdis was proposing, she slumped. Relief poured through her so quickly and strong, she had to support herself against the table. It was over. Almost she laughed, catching it as they would think she had snapped. Keribdis had come out with the worst she could think of, and it was a threat that couldn’t harm Alissa.
A smile, unhelped and honest, came over her. Keribdis blinked, and Alissa let it grow. She dropped her eyes, almost embarrassed for the woman’s misunderstanding. “You can’t take my sentience,” Alissa said softly, her eyes on her stone cup. “You can suppress it, perhaps, but Beast won’t take control as your crushed, bound feral selves would.” She felt her pulse slow as Beast laughed within their thoughts. “I’d stay as I am. You can’t hurt me, Keribdis.” Alissa straightened, taking a clean, deep breath of air. “You can’t. There’s nothing you can do to me.”
Alissa looked over the assemblage, reading the fear on some, the awe of understanding on far more. Her questionable pact with her beast had made her untouchable by their severest punishment and immune to their gre
atest fear of becoming feral.
“I’m going back to my boat,” Alissa said, supporting her weight on the table with her good hand. Her knees were weak, but it was from realizing her position of power, not her fear. “As soon as the stores are restocked and the boom mended, I’m leaving. I hope some of you will return with me. Talo-Toecan is tired of being alone.”
Feeling more in control than she ever had before, Alissa turned and headed down the beach to the village. Her hand throbbed, and she held it close. Beast was silent, thinking.
“She’s insane,” Keribdis whispered. “You see?” she said louder, and Alissa continued on. “She is rogue when herself,” Keribdis raved. “She is an abomination when feral.”
Alissa shook her head and sighed. She had been called worse by her own townsfolk.
“An animal!” Keribdis shouted, and Alissa felt a pricking on her neck. “Dangerous and uncontrollable, like a half-tamed wolf. Bringing her in among us was a folly. It will turn and tear out our throats even as we feed it! We must destroy it now!”
“Keribdis!” Yar-Taw said in warning and Alissa spun.
The fear and hatred in the woman’s golden eyes shocked Alissa to a standstill. The woman’s proud face twisted, and she pointed. “You’re a—a—”
“Half-breed?” Alissa said, finding strength in the word. “In more ways than one. It’s why I can accept the truth, and you can’t.” She sighed. She would have to tell them the entire story. She knew they wouldn’t like it.
“Your numbers have been dropping since you learned to shift to human form,” Alissa said softly. “It’s because you’re suppressing your feral side instead of blending it back into your consciousness where it came from. I’ll admit I don’t have it quite right, but it’s better than what you have done, suppressing it so strongly that half of your children die trying to learn how to fly and the other half go feral to keep from becoming insane.” She looked at Keribdis, feeling pity at the hatred pouring from the woman. “I can help Silla find the balance where you cannot,” Alissa said to her alone. “And you know it.”
Having won, Alissa turned away.
32
“You will not walk away from me without leave!” Alissa turned on the path to give Keribdis a look she tried to keep from being mocking. There was a flash across Alissa’s tracings as a ward snapped over her, shocking her with its strength and quickness. Alissa gasped, finding herself warded to stillness. She had beaten Keribdis at her game of words, so the woman was changing the rules. Again.
“Keribdis . . .” Yar-Taw protested as he stood.
“Catch an updraft, Yar-Taw,” Keribdis warned, her gaze locked upon Alissa. “All of you. You’re too weak and naive to see what she is. I’ll take care of it. Like I always do.”
Alarm jolted though Alissa. Steadying herself, she sundered the ward. Fear flickered over them all. Alissa’s head thrummed with the unheard comments bandied between the Masters at her show of strength. Keribdis’s surprise was replaced with a savage determination. Too late, Alissa realized her mistake. By showing everyone wards couldn’t contain her, she had backed Keribdis into a corner. The proud woman wouldn’t accept Alissa unbroken and defiant. Keribdis needed to crush her to maintain her grip on the conclave. They both knew it.
“She will change the rules again,” Beast warned, almost sounding eager. “But if she takes this into the air, she will lose.”
Apparently Yar-Taw knew it as well, as he came out from behind the table with his hands raised soothingly. “Keribdis . . .”
Keribdis ignored him. “You were to have been my student,” she said, seeming to spit the words. “You will either respect me or you will be dead.”
“Keribdis?” Yar-Taw questioned, his face suddenly slack as Keribdis blinked slowly, clearly settling herself for something difficult.
Alissa’s resolve stiffened as Beast—always confident, always wise—grew fearful. “You can’t hurt Beast,” Alissa said loudly. “Only I can suppress her, and I won’t!”
Keribdis’s pupils widened to nearly cover the unreal Master’s gold. The lines in her face deepened. “You will kill that beast in you before the sun moves,” Keribdis whispered, “and you will beg me to forgive you for your reluctance.”
Yar-Taw moved, halting at Keribdis’s outflung hand. “Keribdis!” he warned. “Any action to be taken needs to be discussed.”
“You are too weak to see the truth!” Keribdis shouted, her face flushed. “You are too afraid to make the choice!” She took a breath. “I’ll make it for you.”
“Keribdis, no!” Yar-Taw exclaimed.
Alissa staggered as Keribdis’s thoughts crashed into hers. Anger, rage, jealousy, all hammered at Alissa. She stumbled to find her balance. Fighting back was not an option. She could only struggle to separate herself from the close mental contact Keribdis was forcing on her.
The woman’s thoughts freely mixed with her own. Alissa couldn’t move, shocked to find Keribdis was deathly afraid of being found lacking. The Master was consumed with her fear for Silla and the thought she might lose the girl’s love. The shame and doubt that Talo-Toecan might never come for her hounded her days, making everything she did seem inadequate.
Keribdis’s fears poured through Alissa with the unstoppable force of a wave. It was akin to raping the soul, and Alissa stood, too shocked to respond. “I will have your respect,” Keribdis whispered, and Alissa mouthed the words. “Until you give it to me, I will have your source.”
“No!” Alissa shrieked. Jolted into action, she expunged Keribdis from her thoughts with a frightened surge of mental force. Agony flared through her. Staggering, she clutched her chest. Keribdis was gone from her thoughts, but something was wrong!
A savage feeling of loss racked her. Helpless, she fell to her knees. She clutched her arm to herself. Struggling to breathe, Alissa pulled her head up and looked past her falling hair. What had Keribdis done?
The Master stood proud and savage above her as if she were the Navigator’s mouthpiece. A white sphere too bright to look at, too bright to be real, hovered above her outstretched hand.
“That’s—mine,” Alissa whispered, falling forward to catch herself with one hand. Her broken hand pressed against her chest as if to keep her soul from spilling forth. Keribdis had fastened about her source during their close contact. In forcing her out, Alissa had unintentionally expunged her source as well.
“Keribdis!” cried Yar-Taw in horror. His hand was on Alissa’s shoulder. “What did you do!”
Alissa knelt, gasping, wondering why she hadn’t died. Her soul lay within her, torn and ravaged. The bright glow of Everything was gone, leaving ragged edges where death began to consume her from inside. Her eyes closed. It was over. She could do nothing.
“She can’t be controlled!” Keribdis cried wildly. “She shouldn’t have a source! Talo-Toecan is wrong! I will do it the way it should have been done! She is mine!”
A tiny shriek of rage came from above. Alissa turned to the sky. “Talon! No!” she exclaimed, holding up her good hand in warning. But her bird dropped, talons spread.
Keribdis’s face became ugly. There was a flash of resonance across Alissa’s tracings. Talon’s cry ceased with a frightening suddenness.
Alissa felt her life end as Talon fell to the sand. Not wanting to understand, Alissa reached out and touched a disarrayed wing, tracing the familiar lines. “Talon . . .” she whispered, her vision blurring as she realized the bird was dead. “Talon?”
The Masters stood behind Alissa, too stunned to move. Alissa felt her lungs press against themselves as she lost the will to fill them. A blur came before her eyes. Keribdis’s shoes. Blinking the tears from her, she looked up to see Keribdis’s harsh face outlined against the sky.
“Your source is mine,” Keribdis said, the bitterness in her voice making Alissa think her words were like the black stains the gulls etched across the sky above her.
Keribdis didn’t care, Alissa thought. She had killed Talon without thought
and had forgotten it already. Despair forced Alissa to take a breath. “No,” she said, but it was a futile gesture. The woman had changed the rules and won.
Alissa’s source lay in Keribdis’s hand, a carrot to demand obeisance. And Alissa knew to the depths of her soul she would take it when offered. It was only the shock of Talon’s death that kept her from crawling even now to beg, to grovel, to promise anything to get it back. She would agree to be dominated forever by Keribdis even as her bird lay murdered at the woman’s feet. Her wounded soul cried out to have that warm glow of power and comfort within her again.
And Keribdis knew it, standing above her with a hard satisfaction mirrored in her stance.
Alissa closed her eyes. Catching her breath against a sob, she drew upon Talon’s memory to find the strength to steel her soul for what she was going to do.
She would not allow herself to belong to Keribdis, to anyone. She lacked the strength to wrestle her source back, but it was close enough to use. Still—close enough—to use.
Alissa slumped until the warmth of the sand brushed her brow. Only if her source was gone would she not beg for it. To use it up might mean her death, but she would rather be dead than belong to this woman.
Finding peace in the loss of hope, Alissa willed herself deep into her unconsciousness. She could feel a small part of herself crying, hunched in pain over Talon. Nothing mattered anymore. She sat up, and lifting her gaze unseeing to the sun, she set her thoughts on a mountain fortress—cold with night, peaceful with silence—and an old raku sitting atop it, waiting, listening at the point where night balances on the cusp of time before becoming day.
“Useless!” she cried, drawing, pulling, running every glimmer of strength from her source in Keribdis’s hand through her mind.
A blinding wave of force shot from her in a concentric, flat pulse. The surrounding Masters fell to the sand with hands pressed to their ears. Her eyes on the sky and her thoughts on Talon, Alissa felt the clean energy of her source race through her mind a final time. The light in Keribdis’s hand vanished to nothing, spent.