Aria considered taking the time to remove the belt, but a formless notion told her to leave it be. Part of her had been far too relieved to see Eric Born and that part might need reminding, or protection.
She rolled her clothes into her poncho and dropped the bundle beside the bed. She stretched out beneath the blanket and reached up until her hand found the lamp-light square. The room went black. Her mind quickly followed its example.
Behind his cabin door, Eric shucked his clothing and stepped into the cleaner. The sonics shook the dried sweat off his skin, but did nothing to shake the apprehension inside him.
War. Eric’s heart thudded. Over the Skymen. Has it reached the First City? Who’s backing Narroways?
I don’t care, Eric reminded himself fiercely. I DON’T CARE.
Clean, but not relaxed, he pulled on his spare tunic and trousers and sat in front of the cabin’s auxiliary comm terminal. He switched the input setting from keyboard to audio. The screen lit up to show a blank, grey background.
“Ready for input,” said a neuter voice from the speaker.
Eric licked his lips. This was going to be a risk. So far, there hadn’t been any sign of Vitae pursuit, but that didn’t mean they weren’t looking for him. Any transmission was a chance to be spotted and tracked. But running blind, as he was now, was even more dangerous than running scared.
“Wanderer,” he said in the language of the Realm. “This is Teacher Hand. Tell Dorias I need him.”
He settled back to wait. May 16 was light-years away, and getting farther by the second. Eric folded his arms and drummed his fingers against his forearm, trying not to think too much. Dorias had tried to get a warning to him. That meant he knew at least something about what was going on. Anything was better than operating in total ignorance.
At long last, the terminal let out a single, low chime. “Connection made.”
Eric pulled himself up straight. “Dorias?”
The blank screen did not shift, but the terminal’s voice deepened into an approximation of a male baritone. “Eric! What took you so long? Are you on your way here?”
“Dorias, wait a minute, will you?” said Eric. “I’m not on my own and the Vitae have all gone insane. I only got part of your message on Haron Station. What’s going on?”
There was a long stretch of silence. “Eric, where are you?”
“On the U-Kenai."said Eric with more than a touch of exasperation. “In flight.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Dorias seriously. “What contact have you had with the Vitae?”
“They tried to incarcerate me.” Memory added heat to his tone.
“Do they still have the woman?”
Eric stared at the terminal for a moment without answering. “How did you know about her?”
Dorias sighed. “It’s a very long story, Eric. I need to know, do they still have her?”
“No,” said Eric. “She’s with me.”
“Good,” said Dorias in the same serious tone. “We need you both here. She was being taken to May 16 when the Vitae waylaid the ship.”
“She was what!” exclaimed Eric. “Are Unifiers in the Realm!”
“Yes, Eric, listen…”
“There’s a war going on in the Realm!” shouted Eric. “It’s being encouraged by a group of Skymen…”
“Eric…”
“And you’re saying it’s your employers!”
“And I’m trying to stop it, Eric!”
Eric closed his mouth and clenched his fists. He was shaking.
Dorias took advantage of his silence. “The Rhudolant Vitae have been scouting out the Realm of the Nameless Powers for years now. We couldn’t find out why. So the Unifiers sent a team in to try to get the natives, the People, to agree to join the Human Family before the Vitae could get their hands on them. But there’re complications…”
“What kind of complications?” Eric demanded.
“Madame Chairman asked for volunteers to be brought to May 16. The Vitae hijacked the ship and took the cargo…and we don’t know why.”
“Dorias,” said Eric in a low, level voice, “don’t play games with me…”
“Eric, listen to me. You’re being invited to come here, of your own free will,” said Dorias. “The Unifiers want to hire you and offer sanctuary to the woman…”
“Stone in the Wall dena Aria Born of the Black Wall.”
“Eric, if the Vitae want the Realm, your best bet for keeping it from them is to ally with the Unifiers, and don’t try to tell me you don’t care,” he added. “We both know you’ve never stopped caring, Teacher Hand.”
Eric said nothing.
“I’m asking you to trust me, Eric,” said Dorias. “Like I’ve trusted you.”
After a long moment, Eric said, “All right, I’m on my way. I’ll be there in about thirty hours.”
“Thank you,” said Dorias, and Eric broke the connection.
“I trust you, Dorias,” said Eric to the blank screen and the universe at large. “But how can I trust those fanatics you’ve allied yourself with? They want her as badly as the Vitae did, and I’m not going to let any of you have her or me until I know what you want us for.”
Eric leaned back in the chair and stared at the deck between his bare feet. With startling clarity, he saw two bodies there, faces contorted with the shock and pain that had killed them. Seven years separated action from memory, but his mind still held every detail.
He’d scrambled onto his knees with his heart pounding and his ears ringing, barely able to understand the voice whispering an unbeliever’s prayer to the gods.
He’d helped Yul Gan Perivar hide the bodies while Dorias ransacked the ship’s electronic memory for anything useful they could carry with them. Three of them had run away in the U-Kenai, which was just a shuttle belonging to the bigger ship whose owners had taken him from the Realm and died when they tried to keep him for their own.
That was their mistake. The laws of the Nameless Powers couldn’t keep me enslaved. What made them think a pair of human beings could. He tried to feel some measure of pride, or at least satisfaction at that, but all he felt was tired.
Eric shook himself and switched the terminal back to keyboard input and then into intercom mode. He typed a series of new directions to Cam and then opened up an outside channel to a world called Kethran.
Perivar would be willing to help keep Aria out of the hands of the Vitae. If not out of friendship, then because Eric could do him too much damage if he wanted to.
One of these days, there’ll be somebody around who helps because they want to. Not because I owe them, or they owe me. One of these days.
Until then, there was nothing to do but wait, and hope he was faster than even the Vitae could be.
Eric watched the spare cabin’s door open. As she stood in the threshold, Aria’s expression went from petrified fear, to unparalleled relief, to absolute embarrassment as she saw that the view wall was turned off, and that he was waiting for her.
She did figure out how to open the door last night. Garismit’s Eyes! Just as well for the Nobles that all the Notouch aren’t her grade of brainless! We’d all be dead in a week!
We? Eric winced inwardly. Them. They. I left that behind. Years and light-years behind.
In whose dreams was that, Teacher Hand? Not yours.
When he’d finally fallen asleep last night he had dreamed about the Walls. Broken Canyon, where the Nameless Powers had argued over the name for “stone.” Tiered Side, where the Servant Garismit kept watch for the Aunorante Sangh. Red Stone, where the first battle between the Nameless Powers and the Aunorante Sangh took place. Old places, holy places, and he still knew the litany and the celebration that went with each.