Deryl tried to find a comfortable seat on the log without looking like he was squirming. He hadn’t thought his “fresh start” would include roughing it, but Salgoud had sent a warrior to his room with a uniform and instructions to meet him at the unicorn fields. The outfit fit like a wetsuit, but proved surprisingly comfortable while riding to where the warriors had set up for their next exercise. He’d spent the day observing their maneuvers until the sun had set, and the “kills” were racked up and a winner declared. Now, he sat around a campfire with Salgoud and his aides as they awaited his assessment.
He looked around at the circle of people who were focused on him. Salgoud, the equivalent of commander-in-chief of the world’s army, peeled a piece of fruit with his dagger. The firelight played off the scars on his face. Despite his fearsome appearance and Joshua’s misgivings, Deryl felt most comfortable around him. He seemed confident in his ability, yet ready to listen to what Deryl had to say. Ocapo eyed Deryl with barely restrained hero-worship. At first, he’d enjoyed it, but now it made him almost as nervous as the expectant, dubious looks of Salgoud’s staff did.
Anything he said, anything important, they would relay, in perfect detail, to the rest of the warriors. Should he say anything stupid…
No pressure, he thought.
They watched and waited. Their expectation grew. He couldn’t even stall by filling his mouth with food.
He shut his eyes and thought about the battle. They were definitely missing something, something obvious. He focused on the cliffs. Why weren’t they utilizing these?
He heard a snort from one of the commanders. Apparently, some expressions were universal.
Fine. He had a better idea, too. He showed them his sight of the battlefield, all the people in red. He showed them from Spot’s eyes—red and red among the green. Then he showed them Spot sitting in a tree, his mottled pattern blending. He concluded with the memories of a veteran who had spent time at SK-Mental, and how their battle dress uniforms with the mottled greens and browns let them blend into the scenery.
He felt that sense of expectation come crashing down: That was the best the Ydrel could do? The Ydrel, an oracle of God? Giving fashion advice?
Well, if it’s so simple and obvious, why haven’t you done it, then? Nervousness made him snarly. When he got no answer, just a sense of disappointment, nervousness morphed into anger. He welcomed the anger, wrapped it around himself like a shield, and let it feed his natural arrogance. I don’t know what miracles you expect from me, but understand this: I am the Ydrel, but my skills are limited. I didn’t come here to win a war for you. For millennia, I’ve done one thing, and only one, for your people. Offer my wisdom and advice. Even that has its limit. God may be all-knowing and all-powerful, but He has not passed that on to me. Now, you want what I have to offer? Here it is. If you don’t, I can go.
He felt their surprise—how could one be so haughty about his limitations? He didn’t acknowledge their feelings. All he had aside from his knowledge was his arrogance. He had to bluff. Where would he go? He didn’t know how to get back to Earth, though he’d have to figure it out for Joshua’s sake. Still, they didn’t know that, and his shields were strong enough that they couldn’t have picked up on his thoughts if they’d tried.
He felt a second disappointment, from the liaison to the healers. She had hoped the Ydrel had come to prevent the war.
I’d like nothing better than to find a way to keep the Barins away from your world, he teleped. But I don’t know how. God has not told me how, any more than He’s told you. What I do know is how to help you better defend yourselves, to try to minimize the loss of life. That’s what I’ve always tried to do. Whether or not you accept my ideas, big or small, is up to you.
He held himself tight against their doubt. He didn’t want to argue, and he did not want to sit there, where their doubt pressed upon him like the muggy heat back home Joshua used to complain about.
Know what? I don’t have to. I’m a free man here. He stood up, gave a respectful bow, and left.
He headed through the campground, ignoring the warriors gathered around their own fires as they turned to look his way. If he paused now, they might see his own self-doubt and consider it weakness. No. First rule of engagement: maintain the high ground. He reinforced his mental shields and kept a stern frown on his face, while he let his feet carry him through a dense but narrow wood and his mind bounced and brooded.
Was Joshua okay? Salgoud spirited me off without explaining his plans. Someone would have told him, right?
I should have snagged a memory from Joshua’s mind and taken us both to Colorado. But no, Tasmae had to Call me at just the wrong time, and my stupid, scared and drugged mind latched onto it.
Tasmae. Was she all right? Salgoud said no one, not even Leinad, thought she was ready to experience the Remembrance. My changing things between us forced her into this. What if he was right?
Salgoud said even the most skilled Miscrias would lose themselves in Gardianju’s memories—sometimes, permanently.
He shivered. Come back to us, Tasmae. We need you. I need you.
That thought surprised him almost as much as the fact that he had left the woods and stood in a large meadow. A thick blanket of stars bathed the meadow in silvery light almost as bright as a full moon. How long he stood there, looking and not thinking, he didn’t know. Then it occurred to him that if they were in their own galaxy, they had to be near the core. He turned in a slow circle, taking in the view, until he faced a small, bright disk.
Barin. Once, when he was at SK-Mental and Tasmae had called him away, she’d shown him the planet in the night sky and explained that when it grew to a certain size, the invaders would come in their ships and fight like demons to secure a foothold while the world waxed in the sky.
Each time the war grows longer, she’d told him. Each time, they succeeded in killing more of her people, taking a bit more of land, but they could not hold it. Yet they kept coming back, and no one understood why.
This whole thing’s whacked. He glared at the disk, as if he could will answers from its blue-bright form. Why fight a pointless war? Are they that evil or that desperate?
Deryl knew what the Kanaan thought. Tasmae may have used the proper name for the planet and its people, but the warriors had other “names.” Contagion, Hell, Asylum.
An entire planet of criminally insane—generations of criminally insane? Deryl shook his head. Maybe this is how they purge their world of the violent? Then why let the worst of the lot—the survivors—return?
You don’t make sense! he thought at the planet, and despite his shields, he felt a flare of anger that wasn’t his own: Demon sun—bringing its evil to us!
No, this isn’t me!
The anger grew, morphed into vision, and he was standing on a dry and thirsting Kanaan, staring into a sky with two suns.
Stop it! These are not my memories!
Anger and vision became heat and pain. Every cell in his body caught fire with the pain of the world. In the vision, he screamed.
NO! This isn’t me! Get out of my mind!
Something “pinged” on his mental radar, throwing him out of the vision. Without thinking, he spun, one arm up to block a blow he didn’t consciously realize was coming.
Salgoud’s sword impacted against the telekinetic shield he’d projected.
Salgoud’s eyes widened in surprise. Then he smiled.
*
Joshua did a cross step that led into a full turn and down into the splits. He held the pose a moment, looking at himself in the salle mirror and trying to imagine the positions and poses of the rest of his friends. He frowned in thought, then noticed Deryl’s reflection. Deryl lounged in the doorway, wearing a grin and one of the tight red uniforms of the warriors. “Hey,” Joshua called. “Come on in. I’m about done for now.”
“That looked cool,” Deryl said as he walked all the way in and took a seat on the bench. Cochise looked up from his nap to give a chirrup of greeting. Deryl scratched the top of the everyn’s head. “How’s the routine coming?”
“Not bad. Still too complex to teach the guys in a couple of hours, though, but I can tone it down. I’m not sure I’ll remember all of it, anyway, but it was fun to make up. Did you know they haven’t invented paper? Who doesn’t need paper?”
“A psychic people with plants that record memories?”
Joshua held up his hands in defeat, then snagged a towel and rubbed the sweat off his face.
“You been doing this the whole time I was gone?” Deryl asked. His friend certainly seemed more relaxed, even like he was enjoying himself. Deryl wished he could say the same.
Joshua jerked his head to where Cochise perched on a weapon’s stand. “For all that he’s a winged lizard and my jailer, Cochise is a pretty perceptive guy and a good guide. He took me out to the unicorn fields, too. I didn’t realize how much I missed my horse.” His wistful smile turned to a smirk as he looked Deryl over. “So, snazzy outfit.”
Deryl rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Salgoud’s insistence. I felt kind of silly in it at first, but this stuff is tougher than Kevlar.”
“Serious? You look kind of super-hero-ish. Just don’t tell anyone I said so. Have a good time?”
Deryl grinned. “I think I know our purpose.”
Joshua cocked an eyebrow.
Deryl held out his hand to the everyn. “Cochise, bite me.”
“What?” Joshua yelped. Cochise cocked his head.
“Well, I know you won’t hit me. Go ahead, boy. Give it your best shot.”
With a humanlike shrug of his shoulders, the everyn snapped his teeth around Deryl’s hand. They stopped with a click before hitting his skin.
Deryl laughed. “Remember when those monsters from the Netherworld were attacking me, and you told me to concentrate on defense—making a physical shield and wearing it like armor?”
“I thought you were delirious. I was just trying to keep you from trashing your room and hurting someone.” Joshua rubbed his hair and set the towel around his neck.
“Yeah, well, your lesson worked, and yesterday, when Salgoud tried to ambush me—”
“He what?”
“He does that a lot, apparently. Keeps people on their toes. Anyway, without even thinking, I put up this shield and blocked him. I thought he was going to drop his sword, he was so surprised! They don’t know how to do that. So we’re going to teach them.”
Cochise continued to gnaw on Deryl’s shield, worrying at it like a bone. Deryl grinned at him and withdrew his hand.
“We?” Joshua sat down on the other side of Cochise. “I don’t know how to do that. Anything I know about psychic powers—or magic, for that matter—I got from reading fantasy novels, and then I tossed in some basics from my Neuro Linguistic Programming training for you. You figured it out.”
“Do you want to get out of here or not? I figure if I get stuck teaching them, you’re the one with the ideas. I’m the Ydrel, remember? I’m just a conduit for information.”
“You are more than that.” Tasmae startled them with her words.
Deryl spun on the bench and looked at her, aghast. At first, Joshua thought he was afraid because of what he’d just said, but instead, Deryl asked, “What are you doing here? The Remembrance—” He paused, then frowned with worry.
“I…was thrown out of it,” Tasmae said, still lingering in the doorway. “It should not happen that way.” She pinned Deryl with her stare, and Joshua had the idea that she was wondering if he had something to do with that. From the way Deryl squirmed under her gaze, Joshua thought his friend wondered the same.
If something happens to the Miscria and they decide it’s our fault...“But you’re okay, right? No harm done?” Joshua asked.
She gave a shrug that didn’t reassure him in the least.
“Okay,” Joshua said, though he didn’t find anything okay about the situation. “So! Uh, Deryl has a great idea for you.”
“That’s right!” Deryl grinned and sat straighter. “Hit me—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Tasmae struck him with a roundhouse kick that knocked him off the bench. Cochise squawked and flew to a high shelf, where he crouched and gekkered.
Joshua looked at his prone friend and burst out laughing.
“Yuck it up,” Deryl said as he rolled to a stand. He was grinning at Tasmae, who, Joshua noticed, looked confused. “She didn’t touch me.”
“You mean you flinched? That hard?” Joshua chortled.
“It’s a personal shield,” Deryl explained as he approached Tasmae. “Telekinetic. I imagine it covering me like armor, but I control it. I can protect myself from anything, but if I want to touch something—“ He reached out and brushed back a strand of her hair. “I can,” he finished, his voice softer than before.
Tasmae raised her arm to knock his away, but again encountered his shield. Slowly, she set her hand on his arm.
He smiled.
Tasmae raked her nails across the back of his hand.
“Yeow!” Deryl jerked his hand away. He backed up fast when she followed up with a kick.
“Must you always concentrate on them?” She asked. Though she continued to advance on him, swinging and kicking, she didn’t sound angry at all. Just calculating.
“Only to alter them,” Deryl replied, puffing a little as he ducked and blocked her blows. She kept pushing him back to the far wall where practice weapons waited neatly in a rack.
“Do we teach this to children, then?” She demanded. “Or can you fight and keep the shield?”
“Oh, I can fight!” Deryl spun, snagged a sword in his left hand and lunged toward her, swinging the sword wide. When she stepped back, he returned to a more natural stance while swinging his blade in a back-handed figure eight.
“Nice,” Joshua called from the other side of the room.
“Sachiko taught me that one,” Deryl replied. He started to make a “come on” gesture at Tasmae, but she didn’t give him a chance before grabbing her own blade and coming at him with a fierce attack.
“Sachiko has four black belts,” he informed his friend. Even though he puffed a bit and continued to let Tasmae drive him back, he kept his voice level, as if this were nothing. “She’s something to watch. You know she’s got a temper. Sometimes, on really bad days at work, we’d sneak into the gym after hours and go at it with broomsticks.”
Joshua settled more comfortably on the bench and watched the two spar. This was at least as interesting as the stuff he’d seen in the movies; perhaps more so, since the swords were real and the steps not choreographed. At first, he marveled at some of Deryl’s moves—real, Jedi-style combat acrobatics, but without the help of wires. He wondered if his psychic friend was unconsciously using a little telekinesis, then his thoughts turned more personal as they headed back in his direction. Despite himself, he leaned back in his seat as they drew near. Then Deryl swatted Tasmae with the flat of his blade and skipped off in another direction, drawing Tasmae away from him.
“Why do you keep running away? I gave you that opening!” She snarled as she again drove him in Joshua’s direction. “This is battle! You accomplish nothing treating this like a game!”
He laughed as he parried her attack. “Au contraire, I seem to be doing just fine keeping your attention.”
She spun through her deflected thrust and swung toward Joshua.
With a yelp, Joshua threw himself backward behind the bench. His towel fell on the floor. Cochise shrieked and flew to protect him.
“Hey!” Deryl lunged to stop Tasmae. His foot hit the towel and he slipped, crashing into Tasmae and knocking her to the ground. Both their swords went flying. They rolled and he ended up on his back, with her knee in his gut and her dagger at his throat.
“You would both be dead!” She shouted. “I do not know how you make war on Earth, but when you fight on my world, you fight to win! If you have an opening, you follow through!”
“What?” His voice was hoarse with shock.
She leaned back and returned her dagger to her hairpiece. “I said you didn’t follow through.”
He shoved her off him and backed away, shaking his head. In fact, he shook everywhere. “I didn’t come here to fight—not with you, not in a war. And if that’s your plan for me, then you can go to hell!” He turned and fled the room.
*
Tasmae shrieked in frustration. “What is it with you humans?” She shouted at the closing door, not sure why she was still speaking. “How will you defend yourselves when the invaders come?”
“Who said we’re staying for your war?”
Tasmae spun at Joshua’s hard, quiet voice and faced the tall, dark man. He no longer cowered. In fact, she recognized his calm. Salgoud took on that same kind of calm just before calling her to task for something terrible and stupid she’d done. Like she sometimes did with Salgoud, she stuck out her chin stubbornly. “You will remain until God’s purpose for you here is fulfilled,” She snarled.
“Really? Are you really sure that’s what you believe? Or are you keeping us here until your purpose for us is fulfilled? Because you’re afraid to deal with the next war alone?”
“How dare you!”
Joshua merely raised an eyebrow. “I think your people are a lot closer to God than mine. Maybe you should ask Him about it. And while you’re at it, you might want to think about who it is you want by your side—the Ydrel or Deryl. I’m not sure you can have both, anymore.” He bent down, picked up his towel and pointed at her with it. “And the next time you want to make a point, don’t do it with my life.” He strode away, whistling to Cochise, who settled down on his shoulders. The everyn sent one parting thought her way—not words, but anger and embarrassment at her actions.
She waited until the door folded shut behind them before letting out another, though more subdued, howl of frustration. Even the Beasts sided with the humans!
With a lifetime of habit, she picked up the swords and returned them to their places, but she shook inside. She’d hoped when she’d been thrown from the Remembrance that perhaps the mystery had been solved, the reason behind the Ydrel’s appearance discovered. Instead, he revealed unimagined abilities, then spurned her—and his companion has the nerve to tell her she must choose—the oracle or the man.
The Ydrel, duty answered. Her people needed his wisdom. Yet he claimed to be just a conduit. And when they had touched…
The Remembrance. She clenched her fists in determination. Gardianju had the answers. She must.