One more day, maybe two, and he'd find the strength to really believe that he was alone in this forsaken place. One more day, maybe two.
12—Aboard the
"She stood up straight before him, and she said 'I know you.'"
—Fragment from The Apocrypha, Anonymous
"This is getting to be a habit."
Her voice hurt him. Everything hurt him; the mattress against his back, the light against his eyelids, his pulse in his wrists.
I'll die now, there'll be no more pain. The thought drifted through his numb mind and he was too exhausted to either choke it off or pursue it. It just hung there.
There was a pressure against his neck and he screamed. After a moment, it subsided to the level of all the other pain. Lethargy seized hold of him slowly.
Thank you, he thought as his consciousness slid into darkness.
Eric came awake all at once with his heart in his mouth. When he saw his own cabin surrounding him, he collapsed back on the bed, weak with relief.
Not a dream. We made it out. The thought gave him the courage to try sitting up all the way. It wasn't too difficult. The blinding pain had subsided to a dull headache, which he could cope with.
Eric stood carefully, finding his balance was a little tricky, but he managed it. He walked to the door without staggering and opened it.
Aria sat in the common room. Slices of real breads and meats lay on plates in front of her, along with a jug of something that steamed. Eric surveyed the feast. It looked like over half his luxury stock. He sank down onto the sofa and she slid a plate of meats toward him. His stomach rumbled. He folded a random selection of meat into a slice of unleavened bread and devoured it, stopping only to swig down some tea.
Aria watched him with her air of wry amusement. "How are you feeling?" she asked.
"Almost well, I think." He looked toward the closed view wall and all around the common room. "Do you know how Adu managed to find us?"
"Us?" Aria said incredulously. "You were the only one who needed finding. I was along to help pull you free."
Eric felt himself begin to stare. "I thought…I thought…"
"That because my Lord Teacher had been captured that this despised one must have been also?" She gave a sharp laugh. "Not so, my Teacher. You did a better job at hiding me than at hiding yourself."
"Did I?" he asked the tabletop. "One more idiot action."
He waited for an acid reply that did not come.
"What has happened?" she asked.
Eric ran both hands through his hair. "The Rhudolant Vitae are the ones the Words call the Aunorante Sangh. I have met the Aunorante Sangh, Stone in the Wall dena Aria Born of the Black Wall, and I, Teacher Hand kenu Lord Hand on the Seablade dena Enemy of the Aunorante Sangh was promptly captured and stuffed into a box for dissection."
He waited for her to demand explanations, to invoke the Nameless Powers, or just to swear, but instead she sighed and dropped her hand onto the pouch that held her namestones.
"What I do not understand is why they call us Aunorante Sangh," she said. "I wish I had the learning of my ancestresses and not just their stones."
"You knew?" Eric gaped at her.
She rubbed the backs of her hands, tracing her scars with her fingertips. "I guessed, after I heard they claimed the Realm as their home. It wasn't exactly a long leap in a high wind." She gave him her twisted grin. "If you'll permit…" She broke off. "You should, I think, be getting some more rest, Sar Born."
"I don't want to rest." Eric heaved himself to his feet and paced to the comm station. "I want to think. I need to think." He gripped the back of the chair with both hands and stared at the blank screen in front of him.
"Well, we've two days yet before we reach the Realm," she leaned back. "That should be plenty of…"
Eric whirled around. "Who set us on course for the Realm!"
Aria sat up straighter. "Adu did," she told him. "At my direction."
"You idiot N…" He bit the word off. "The Vitae may already be there!"
"They are already there," she replied calmly. "Adu checked. We will have to be careful how we proceed, I think."
"Careful!" roared Eric. "They'll pick us up as soon as we poke our noses into the system! They'll…" The air caught in his throat and he coughed, sending a shudder through his entire body. He staggered and caught himself on the sofa's corner. Aria grasped his shoulders. She eased him onto the seat and leaned him forward. When the coughing died, she let go and stepped away. Eric did not miss the hesitation in her eyes, or the fact that she hid her hands behind her back.
"The Realm is the last place in the Quarter Galaxy we want to go," he croaked, reaching for the tea.
She sank back onto the sofa. "Those are not the words I expected from a Teacher who has just met the Aunorante Sangh in open battle."
"Battle." Eric filled his cup and swigged down a long draught. "Oh yes. Five minutes after I stood up against them, they had me tranqued out and in a life-support capsule. A great battle indeed for dena Enemy of the Aunorante Sangh." He swirled the dregs of the tea. "Those poor ones in the Temples will go down twice as fast."
She gaped at him. "What are you saying? You, you're sitting there alive and recovering. You held them at bay, you signaled for help from the depths of their ship. You beat them."
"I ran away from them," he said. "I woke up and I panicked. I was so afraid, I couldn't control myself. I just…I just…" He dropped the cup onto the tabletop. It wobbled and tipped over, letting amber liquid spill across the clear polymer. He watched the puddle ooze toward the plate of breads. He remembered the awful pulling in the capsule, as if something were trying to drag his soul out through his pores. A sick yielding sensation had come over him, and whatever dragged at him took him…took him…
"I don't even really remember what I did," he said. "All I know is that I was scared nearly into senselessness and if Adu…if you hadn't been there to pull me out, I would be a set of molecules in a lab dish."
Aria narrowed her eyes. "You did something, or your power gift did. I got that much from the little Vitae who released you from the capsule. He was babbling about you taking over the lab. I don't think he knew very well what he was saying. There was blood on him." She frowned. "Is the power gift always under your command or does it ever work on its own?"
"What kind of question is that?" Eric hunted around the table for a cloth to wipe up the spill and didn't find anything.
"The question of a Notouch seeking wisdom from her Teacher," she retorted. "It should be obvious even to you that what everyone, from the Unifiers to the Kethran to the Vitae, has sought is the understanding of how the gifts the Nameless laid upon us work. So, if we gain that understanding first, we will have something to bargain with, or fight with."
"What is obvious to me is that you are wandering around in a night storm of your own thoughts." He met her eyes. "Don't you understand? There is nothing we can do. The Nameless alone can count how many Rhudolant Vitae there are. There are maybe three thousand Teachers in existence, counting the students. Even if we could all be united, which I doubt, we would be drowned in the flood of sheer numbers." He turned up both his hands so he could see his blank, smooth, empty palms. "We can't be blinded by our superstitions, not now. This is not some mythic battle we can win because we're touched by the Nameless and they're not. This is real. This is happening. This is a primitive and, probably, dying people, against the oldest and most coherent power in the Quarter Galaxy. All we can do is keep out of the way."