Gryshen knew that there were sacred times in the iloray journey when you could experience visions, clear visions of reality, even the parts you hadn’t seen with your own eyes. Visions of the past and future that made the bits fit together, or turned the entire picture around.
She had heard of such encounters, and it suddenly dawned on her that this was not a physical exercise, but a spiritual one.
This must be a part of her Forms that was supposed to make her wiser, stronger, break her down and build her up into the leader she was meant to be. But at that moment, the very idea of being trapped in this transformation sickened her.
She wasn’t looking for depth.
She didn’t need breaking down; she had already broken several times over, and this bizarre shell role play wasn’t going to save her, or strengthen her, or turn her into a chieftainess.
Getting the pearl was the only thing she could do now. It was the only thing that was going to save anything.
In a flurry, Gryshen leapt out of the shell, piercing straight ahead through the oppressive nothing, straight in the direction of where she had last seen the opening.
“Let me out!” she signaled. Her fists found wall, and she began beating against it. “I have to get out! I need to get the pearl!” Gryshen slammed her palms against the stones, and tucked her fingers in, searching for the rock that barricaded the entrance.
“I get it!” she yelled. “I’m supposed to look deeper, see the whole image . . . honor my father!” She found it. The edge of the rock. Gryshen took a deep gulp, and forced against it. It didn’t move. A bigger gulp, and a push of all that was in her. Barely the tingle of movement. They could have warriors sitting on it, guards on top of it . . .
They must have tied it down, she thought, ignoring the bruise she was guaranteeing herself while she persistently jammed her shoulder against it. Pointless.
“I under-STAND now!” she screeched. Now the flurries were back in focus, and this place was beginning to crawl on her skin more than any dry net. Whatever story I have to tell them, she said to herself.
Jode as a little lax trying to teach her how to throw a spear, laughing when she missed and her miniature arrow found its way into Bravis’s then teenaged tail.
Jode frantically shaking when their father first told them he was dying. Her silence. Her frozen, useless silence. Bravis pulling her brother aside to comfort, doing her job. Just like he had to only days ago.
Her brother, broken over the casket again.
Bravis standing over her wounded body. Bravis fighting her and Apocay, trying to stop her. Trying to make her heal.
Once again, in the presence of her broken baby brother, perilous nothing.
But this? This barrage of memories, coming out like the eels that had electrocuted her hours before?
This was everything.
Sweet freedom on her beast, sweeping the ocean.
A gentle stroking of her hair from her mother, whose face was clearer now than ever before in her mind’s eye.
Every image doused her in a feeling, but they didn’t wash away with the next one. They just kept piling up.
The incessant singing of the iloray chorus. The judgment she saw from Helda and Velda when she was only a babe, when they were all so small. The looks unsettled her. She knew she wasn’t fit to lead even then. She knew she wasn’t made of the same stuff as her father.
“Are you ready?” She could feel Coss’s warm grip, his eyes pressing into hers, the burning in her heart when he asked her to marry him.
Again, fighting with his father.
“I can’t do this to her!” The frame swung forward, so much in her space it was as if she were there.
“Son?” Morfal used the word the way she had heard him call for his food. “Son.” Now his tone was mocking.
“Yes, father.” Coss’s teeth were clenched.
“Do you actually have an attachment to this iloray?”
Coss kept his jaw tight, his gaze low, remaining silent.
“I should have known. I should have known you couldn’t handle this. Betraying your family for—”
“I’m not betraying anyone. Surely there’s another way . . .”
“Another way? What do you propose, child? Asking their waste of a chieftain to ‘share’ their pearl?”
“Father, he would. I’m certain of it. I’ve been listening, and he—”
Morfal broke into Coss’s words with a roaring sputter of laughter, spitting bubbles in his son’s angelic face.
“Child. You child. They will always hold onto the power. They will always be in control, our pod’s destiny left up to them, if they keep it! Is that what you want for us? To be wholly in need of their kindness? Completely reliant on their mood, forever?”
“No, but—”
“Yes, to be sure, Frall would offer us a piece of their pearl’s energy. But it would not be enough to sustain us long-term. And its power would be watered down. We’d have to move our whole pod close to them to get anything of sustenance. We’d be like leeches, draining off of their energy.”
“I don’t want that, you know I don’t. But is it so much better if we are thieves?”
Gryshen gazed wild-eyed, gape-jawed at this. Could it be that Coss didn’t want to . . . ?
Could it be that he cared?
This possibility swung open a fresh door of pain in her heart, but a pain traced with excitement.
Idiot! she hissed to herself. She had fought for days, fought harder than any pace she had faced to keep all entrances to her heart closed. And now, in some dark delusion, she was risking destroying all of it for this crazy, vain wish. Cared enough to leave you for dead. Cared enough to steal the only thing that kept her pod alive and healthy, even after admitting that he knew they would have shared.
And they would have. Yes, her father would have had to make adjustments, as the pearls had shared energy with their individual pods for so long, since the beginning of their ceasid existence, that they were spiritually marked, almost like the way an iloray was branded to their vocation.
The pearl’s power would be weakened when shared between two tribes, even if Rakor all set up camp in her pod’s cavern. The Rakor had to know that it would never quite connect with them the way it did with its true pod, that even in stealing it to take back to their home, they were only going to get a pale version of the full energy that had sustained her own tribe all this time.
They must have considered all this, and counted on the idea that a foreign pearl in their possession was still worth more to them than one shared and kept in its home pod. And they were right.
Gryshen pushed back the reality that faced her own tribe, whose only chance of survival without the pearl would be to ultimately abandon their home, break off into factions, and be absorbed by the other ally pods. The choice was available to them; it had been long understood that should one of the friendly pod’s pearls be destroyed, that this was one solution. Each group, depending on its size and resources, could absorb ten to thirty ilorays. It was the last option, and one which could involve the breaking up of larger families, not to mention loss of home and ancient heritage, as well as health risks to the very young and elderly in Rone. It was unthinkable. It was never her father’s option, and it was never her option.