I HAD TO give her a warning from the One, Kadar sent. I can’t believe she let them kill feli.
Sulis could feel the frustration in Kadar’s mindvoice. There seemed to be more to his frustration with Farrah than this one incident, but that could just be her sensing his anxiety from all the events from Illian. It was frightening, thinking about her family living in the city in the midst of riots and murders. She worried the townsfolk would turn against Southern people as well as the Forsaken.
Maybe you should leave and bring Datura back to Shpeth, Sulis sent him. Where she’ll be safe.
That’s what Farrah said as well, Kadar confirmed. But I’m not leaving again, not with so much unrest in the city.
Underlying that sending was the frustration that Farrah loved the cause, loved the Forsaken, more than Datura and him. Sulis sighed, shaking her head at her brother’s naivety. This is what she was born to do, like I was born to serve the One, Kadar. We both serve in our own way. She wouldn’t be the woman you love if she didn’t have that dedication.
There was a pause. I’m not sure the woman I love still exists, he sent. Before she could ask, he changed the subject. How is Ava? And the rest of the group?
Sulis hesitated. She decided nothing good could come of sharing Ava’s strangeness. Ava was seeing the healers regularly since running away, and the strange episodes had gotten less frequent. They’re all good. Clay had to leave again, but we’re starting to work well together, so we hardly need his guidance when we practice.
And Ashraf? How are things with him? Kadar’s mind voice was teasing.
Sulis just gave him a slight mental shove and felt his laughter.
Ooooh, look like things have heated up! About time you realized you were something more than friends, Kadar snickered. Then the voice sobered. Oh, speaking of old friends, you’ll never believe who is going to be Parasu’s new Voice. Your fellow pledge, Jonas.
Sulis sent a wordless burst of shock down their link. Jonas? But he isn’t experienced enough to be a Voice.
Alannah tells me it’s because of the way all of you pledged on your own, without the Voices’ guidance. It gave him a special bond with Parasu. He won’t be the leader, not until he’s had more training, but he’ll channel Parasu.
Sulis wondered why Kadar was meeting with Alannah. It seemed strange that the two would casually meet, and surely a Counselor for the One wouldn’t be involved in the Forsaken rebellion.
She has been visiting our ward, Kadar responded to her query. It seems they are connected somehow, much like you and Ashraf are. Ugh, headache forming. Have too much to do to have one, must break off now. Love and misses.
Love and misses, Sulis sent back.
Their ward? Kadar was being cryptic, so he must be worried that mindvoices could be overhead. He must mean the girl Grandmother thought might be the Weaver. But connected like her and Ashraf? Sulis couldn’t picture Alannah in love with another female.
Sulis blushed. Not in love, bonded. Alannah must be the Weaver’s Guardian. No wonder the Weaver was still in Illian and not here training with them. Sulis looked out the window and realized she was missing breakfast. She shook herself and stood, dislodging Djinn from her lap. He took the warm spot she left and stretched out.
So much was happening in Illian. The riots and murders of the Forsaken were enough to unsettle the city. To appoint a new Voice, the Tribune must be ill and dying, which would unsettle the city more. And the new Voice was inexperienced, which would shake things up even more. Sulis strode to breakfast, thinking about the events.
“You look serious,” Palou said when she settled in with her food. She glanced up to realize that everyone except Clay was at the table, staring at her as she muttered to herself. “Bad dreams?”
“Kadar found me again, with his mindvoice.” Sulis quickly explained what was going on in Illian. Ava exclaimed at the riots and the murders of the Forsaken, and Sulis quickly reassured her that her family was fine.
“Alannah seems to be a Guardian of the Weaver,” Sulis said, “though I don’t understand how that would work. She’s not a fighter. She’s a Counselor.”
Her grandmother tapped her lips thoughtfully with a finger. “There will be enough physical fighters surrounding all of us. It is the mental attacks that the Weaver will need to be guarded against. You’d said before that Alannah was strong with blocks. She is obviously very strong for the One to have taken her with so little training. I must admit, I would rather have had the older, more experienced Counselor for the Weaver’s Guardian, though.”
“Counselor Elida,” Sulis said, nodding. “Maybe she’ll be needed to keep peace in Illian.”
“Or her mind is too set,” Anchee said. “The older we get, the harder it is to bond with someone new. Sometimes I feel as though we are perhaps too old for this game, Joisha and I. Not malleable enough to survive what needs to be done.”
Grandmother’s face was sad and serious as she looked over at her old friend. She seemed to sense Sulis’s worry and smiled.
“Speak for yourself,” she said lightly, nudging Anchee. “I intend to tell my great-grandchildren tales of our glorious battle.”
“Is there any way I can contact Kadar?” Sulis asked. “He always gets terrible headaches, and so he doesn’t get in touch with me as much as I’d like. I want to know more about what is happening up there, and these tiny glimpses are driving me mad.”
Anchee shook his head. “It’s not your gift. You don’t sense other mindvoices, so you wouldn’t be able to sense him. I’m not surprised he gets headaches. I’m more surprised he can reach this far at all. The combination of his very strong mindvoice, your twin bond, and the fact that you both seem to be using a feli bond has stretched the entire length of the desert. Be grateful that you can speak with your brother. I am. We are learning about these events days, sometimes weeks, earlier than we could normally relay them.”
Sulis applied herself to her food. She didn’t want to look around at the faces. All their relationships had gotten more uncomfortable since Ava’s disappearance. She hadn’t lied to Kadar; they were working at raising energy together better than ever. But outside of their training, things were tense.
She’d tried to approach Ava about what the girl had seen, and Ava told her that she ran because she saw someone who looked like her rapists. But they’d searched Kabandha for the men she described and found no one. When Sulis tried to press her to say more, she became distraught and cried, and Sulis felt guilty. Ava had started avoiding Sulis by leaving earlier or later than Sulis for meals and plunking herself in the middle of the kittens when they weren’t at meals. The mother feli accepted Ava as one of her own kittens now but still hissed if Sulis got close.
Grandmother was trying to restrain herself from going back to criticizing Sulis for everything even though Clay had left Anchee in charge of Sulis’s training. She often grimaced and turned away when they were all working together, like she had to resist correcting Sulis or the others. And Sulis was angry that Grandmother hadn’t told Clay about Ava’s blocks, leading to Ava’s pain. Sulis wanted to either scream at all of them or go back to the house and have a crying fit.
“Well, this is a gloomy group,” Clay said, and her head snapped up to find him standing beside the table with a plate piled with food in his hands. They shifted on the bench to make room for him, and he sat and happily started eating his mounds of food.
“That was a quick trip,” Sulis said.
“I told you it would be,” Clay said around a mouthful. “I had to intercept your uncle Aaron, send him north. How have all you been doing with your training?”
“Things seem to be coming together,” Anchee said. “We are lifting more energy, becoming more precise with the patterns.”
Clay looked over at Ava.
“And you, little one? No more running off?” he asked.
Ava looked down at her mostly empty plate. “The healer wants to speak with everyone. She said once you were back, we all needed to talk.”
Everyone looked at her, but she refused to look up, picking at the rinds on her plate, her face set. Anchee and Grandmother exchanged a look, and Clay patted her on the arm.
“Have her meet us in the main hall,” Clay said. “I want to see this energy you are doing. Go tell her now since you’re finished.”
Ava returned her plate to the kitchen and left, not looking at any of them. Clay looked between Grandmother and Sulis and sighed. “All that good energy wasted. Everyone is all at odds again.”
“I am not patient enough for teaching,” Grandmother admitted with a laugh. “Next time, I’ll go in your place, and you can stay here.”
“But you were better than last time,” Sulis said, patting her on the arm. “You glared instead of criticizing. That’s a start.”
Clay nodded. “Just so, just so. Sadly, I don’t think the healer will have news we want to hear. But we will work with what we have, all of us. It is all that is given, so it must be enough.”
They walked as a group to the main hall. Ava hadn’t arrived yet with the healer. Ashraf, Palou, and a third guard assigned from the warriors spaced themselves out as guards against the wall. Master Tull had decided that Ashraf and Palou needed to pay too much attention to the lessons and their Shuttles to be proper guards, so an elite guardsman had been assigned to them.
Clay crouched and examined Ava’s mandala from the day before. It was the most common mandala they worked with, used for several dances and forms. It was still usable, mostly unscuffed from the previous day’s work, a testament to how precise their steps were getting, and how well they were matching their energy with Ava’s.
“Yes, the energy is still here,” Clay said. “You worked with a great deal to have it remain overnight.” He stood and clapped his hands once. “Now, we will start to divide the energy.” He pointed to lines on the floor. “Dancers, work with just the yellow lines.”
Anchee and Sulis stared at each other, baffled, then at their Prophet. He looked at their confusion and burst out laughing.
“Oh, the look on your faces,” he chortled. “But think about it, really think. Yes, you learned the dances as one long chain of moves, but what happens every time you step in time with yellow lines, the core energy?”
Sulis had stare at the pattern to mentally trace every step of the dance until she reached the yellow line, but Anchee was faster.
“Warrior. We are in some sort of pose signifying the Warrior stance,” he said. He walked around the pattern, his face in a frown, and Sulis cocked her head, trying to figure out what he was seeing. “Every yellow line has some form of Warrior stance. Which makes sense, since we use core energy to lift into the Warrior pose.”
“Yes,” Clay confirmed. “But there are four expressions of Warrior pose. Can you understand why you do them in the order you do?”
Sulis looked at the lines again, and something clicked. “It depends on what comes after, right?” she ventured, and Anchee nodded in agreement. “Like this yellow line connects to the green, and that means we have to go from the yellow of core chakra to green heart-chakra energy, so we need to use a more open, heart-lifting warrior so we can open to the green heart energies.”
“Good,” Clay applauded. “Now I want you to take up positions on the first yellow line. Then you will find the shortest path, in the dance, to the next yellow line. Always move in a sunwise spiral, though, as your chakras move within you. Never counter unless you are trying to dissipate energy rather than lift it.”
Sulis stared at the pattern, feeling overwhelmed, and Anchee stood beside her. “Look,” he said, pointing to a blue line. “If we move to that, the throat chakra, then the red grounding chakra, we would be at the next.”
Sulis nodded. “But if we are going to blue, would our Warrior form change? We were moving to red last time.” She shook her head, trying to figure it all out. “And what pose do we do at blue?”
“Ummm,” Anchee hummed, then laughed. “Cloud hands? Parting waters? Argh, I thought I knew my form, but taking it to pieces like this is impossible.”
Clay nodded. “You have excellent habit energy,” he said. “You know each pose as they came in a sequence, but not on their own. Like when you learned the alphabet for writing. Can you take just one letter and know what is before and what is after? Automatic reflex will serve you if you are being attacked, but it does not allow for creativity and change. So now I want you to learn each move as a separate energy center. Notice when you take your third Warrior in this set. How does the pose you took before it and the pose you take after it change the energy flow? Notice that for each pose.”
“I’m going to need some paper,” Sulis said. “I can’t just think through these things and remember them like you can. I need to draw it somehow, find how they all connect, find the patterns.”
Clay nodded. “Yes, that’s fine to begin with as long as you don’t get too attached to the writing. It is good to work through thoughts on paper as long as the paper doesn’t become your memory. You may . . . ah, here is Ava.”
Ava came in small group, along with a healer and Master Ursa.
“Healer Rana, Master Ursa.” Clay bowed respectfully. All except the three guards pulled up bolsters and sat in a circle. Sulis made certain to sit beside Ava for support. Ava stared at the ground, her expression bleak.
The healer cleared her throat. “We have been working with Ava the past ten-days, trying to help her understand what caused her to run off. We’ve spoken with Joisha about the nature of the blocks she and the healer put on Ava.” She looked around at them. “Master Ursa has also spoken to Ava’s teachers, just to see what their thoughts were on Ava herself.”
“It depended on the class,” Master Ursa said. “In weapons class, her teacher mentioned her being girlish one moment and deadly the next. That when she focused, she forgot she was working with other humans and would sometimes go for killing blows to finish off her opponents, even when told not to. This was especially true against male opponents. When in history and religious class, she was a typical fourteen-year-old girl—forgetful sometimes, average scholarship, average focus on her tasks.”
“With us, she is pure focus, as I’m sure Anchee told you,” Clay added. “I’ve never seen such concentration in someone so young.”
“And with the healing classes we’ve been giving, she is calm in every emergency, unflappable,” the healer said. “I could hardly believe what her warrior teacher was telling me until I spied on her training class.”
Ava stirred and looked up at them. “They all turn into different people from Illian. Sometimes I get confused and I think that Master Ursa is Farrah, the healer is my mother, or a warrior I’m sparring with are those men in the warehouse . . .” She shuddered and hunched forward, hugging herself.
The healer shook her head. “Ava was never able to deal with what happened to her. And because the blocks were in place, she also did not fully understand her mother’s death. The blocks have suddenly been wrenched away, and everything is cascading on her at once. They’re causing her to have delusions.”
A gasp from behind Master Ursa made her turn to look at the warrior against the wall. “Is there a problem, warrior Turin?” she asked, her voice hard.
The warrior shook his head and snapped back to attention, trying not to look at any of them. “No Master Ursa, no problem,” he snapped.
“This goes no further than this room,” she warned him. He stood straight and looked ahead, the model of a perfect soldier, and she turned back to them.
Ava looked around at them miserably. “Sometimes I don’t even know what I’ve been doing,” she admitted. “Everyone tells me what a great job I’ve done on the mandalas, and I don’t even remember drawing the energy lines. I’m just standing there, and I remember getting to the hall, but not doing anything while I was there.”
“So you don’t remember running away?” Sulis asked.
Ava shook her head. “I remember having to get away. Then I found myself in the woods. I barely remember trying to find my way back. I woke up with you and Master Anchee beside me, and felt like I’d been scratched up and bruised, but I didn’t know how I even got into the room,” she admitted.
“Can’t you go in and put the blocks back in?” Sulis asked.
“Not without damaging her more,” The healer shook her head. “As well-intentioned as the blocks were, because they were removed so quickly, they did much harm to her mind.”
Grandmother shook her head. “I did not know she would be the Loom when we put in the blocks. I didn’t realize that she would be channeling so much energy. I am terribly sorry we did this to you, Ava.”
Ava looked up. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. And they did work, for a while.”
Master Anchee nodded thoughtfully. “Currently, Ava has no control over how she processes these memories,” he said. “How do we help her keep in control and recognize when memories overcome the present?”
The healer spread her hands. “We will be working with her,” she said. “Trying to see if we can give her more control and ultimately draw all the facets back together into a whole. I will be looking to Clay and the rest of you to help with the task.”
“I didn’t want it to be secret from you,” Ava said. “I don’t have any family here, but you’ve all become my family. I wanted you to know, in case you want to replace me, find a new Loom.”
Sulis put an arm around Ava. “You are one of us. There is no replacement for you. We’ll make this work, somehow.”
Master Ursa nodded. “I’m assigning Healer Rana exclusively to Ava. She will attend and guard Ava, so she can guide her interactions. We will lighten Ava’s workload. I’ve already spread the story that Ava might have healing talent, so there is a reason for Rana to focus on her.” She looked around the circle seriously. “I don’t want this talked about except within this circle of Chosen. It would be very bad for morale here if people learned that the Loom was struggling with such a difficulty.”
“But we can talk among ourselves, right?” Sulis said. “We won’t be much help to Ava if we are gagged.”
Healer Rana nodded. “The more we can figure out among ourselves, and work with Ava, the better. We want to protect her from the judgment of people who wouldn’t understand, who would see this a serious weakness.”
“We can help her not feel so pressured,” Anchee said. “Ava, if you start to feel like we are pushing you too much, tell us or Rana. Maybe we can lighten your burden.”
Master Ursa stood, and they respectfully stood as well. “Keep me informed of all of your progress. If there’s any way I can ease your paths, I will.” She put a hand on Ava’s shoulder. “Stay strong, little one. We’ll solve this difficulty. I’ll let you get back to training.”
They stared around at each other a moment, not certain what to say. Then Clay rubbed his hands together.
“Ava, I was just breaking down the energy of the positions for Sulis and Anchee using the mandala you chalked and energized yesterday,” he said. “You and Rana may want to settle and watch. Joisha, start to think about what your dance feels like, when they are on the yellow energy. You will need to echo that energy back at them so you can give it to the Weaver.”
Sulis hung back, talking to Clay when they were done, letting Ava and the rest of the group wander off to midmeal. Ashraf came to stand beside her. Once Ava was out of sight, Ashraf put his arms around Sulis.
Clay grinned at them. “Good energy,” he said.
“I wish we could help Ava,” Sulis said. “Didn’t the One warn you about this, send you dreams?”
Clay shook his head. “I can only have faith that this will not affect what happens in the future since I was not warned about this possibility. I did see a future where the community of Kabandha was divided and a feeling of warning that this must not happen, or we will fail. But nothing specifically about the Chosen.”
Ashraf spoke from behind Sulis. “Maybe that means there is another Loom out there that isn’t broken?” he queried. “I love Ava like my own sister, but if this pressure is literally tearing her mind to pieces, we should send out a search for someone to replace her.”
Sulis was going to protest, but Clay was already shaking his head.
“It has never worked that way,” he said. “Throughout history, since this prophecy was recorded centuries ago, the elders have gathered the names of those called to be trained as Looms and Shuttles. Never has there been more than one Loom and three Shuttles. Even when one of the Shuttles went mad, another was not born until that man died. I do not know why that is so, but the histories seem to prove it. It is Ava or it is failure in this lifetime.”
“Has it been tried in another lifetime?” Sulis asked. “Has there been another attempt by the deities to regain their lost powers?”
Clay shook his head. “This is the first I’ve heard of a Weaver’s being born.”
“So this could be it,” Sulis said. “This could be the only chance to make the One whole again?”
Clay shook his head. “I believe there is always another time, another chance. If we fail, there will be others to take our place. It will be more difficult for them; this could be the easiest chance. But I don’t believe it is the only. The world will not end if the deities get back their powers. It will be a less kind place to live in, but that will motivate others to step forward as they did with the first sundering and fight to protect the ones they love.”
“So what do we do about Ava?” Sulis asked, miserable.
“Love her,” Clay said. “Let her cry, scream, and remember her past. See if love can make her whole again.”
Clay left the two of them in the hall. Sulis turned and faced Ashraf, and his hands moved around to her back as she roped hers around his shoulders. He bent down and kissed her. She could feel a flare along their bond when she kissed him back, but she kept it damped a bit, kept her emotions in check.
“Not bad,” he graded. “I preferred white-hot flames, but a little heat can be nice as well.
“We need to give you to the healers for the day,” Sulis advised. “They’re the ones who taught me to block those lines of energy. You know I’m not always in great control of my temper, so there’s a chance we could lose it again if you’re not blocking as well.”
Ashraf smiled and kissed her again. When they came up for air, he reluctantly released her. “We’ll miss midmeal,” he said. They started for the eating hall hand in hand. When they got close, they dropped hands and went into the hall, shoulder to shoulder.
“I wish there were more privacy around this place,” Ashraf said. He shot her a sly look. “I can’t wait until we can lose control again, in a private room, with nothing pulling us apart and an entire night ahead of us.”
Sulis flushed all over. “I second that vision,” she said with a sigh. “Add a fine liqueur and a soft bed, and I’ll be living a dream.”