“It’s bad,” Vasiht’h said without preamble, joining him outside the ship’s clinic. “At least this time they have the power for a stasis field, though.”
Lisinthir glanced toward the closed door, through which he could feel Jahir’s focused attention like the heat of a naked summer sun. Would Sediryl sense it in her state? How could she not. “How bad is bad?”
“’She might die’ bad.” Vasiht’h rubbed his forehead. “I’m glad Jahir’s in healer ‘I can help’ mode because if he wasn’t, he’d be falling apart. Thank the Goddess those Faulfenza were there to pull her out.”
“Yes. I’m told we’re making best speed for the station.”
“I hope ‘best speed’ is ‘we’ve thrown all the safeties off things’, because she needs it.” Vasiht’h peered up at him. “What is it with you people and nearly killing yourself for the good of the galaxy?”
“An over-developed sense of duty?” Lisinthir offered, though his heart wasn’t in the exchange. His heart was in that room, with his cousin and the woman he’d loved nearly all his life. If she died…
What would they do if she died? Not just Jahir, but the Eldritch as well?
“I’m for the chapel,” Vasiht’h said heavily. “If ever we needed divine intervention…” He trailed off, feathered ears splaying. “All right, ridiculously I can’t say that anymore, because we’ve been through things even more hopeless-seeming than this. But on a personal level…” He looked over his shoulder at the clinic door, and it struck Lisinthir, that they were both staring at it, and in very much the same attitude.
“I think,” Lisinthir said, “I shall go with you.”
“Do you pray, then?”
“Often,” Lisinthir said. His mouth quirked. “Perhaps more often than both my admirers and my detractors believe.”
Vasiht’h nodded. “Well, it’s this way. I’d know, I’ve been in courier chapels enough by now.”
As with many crises, the periods of inaction were pierced by periods of freneticism, and they entered one when the Jerisa docked and the airlocks opened on the medical team waiting to rush Sediryl to the hospital where Lisinthir himself had woken after nearly dying. That was, he hoped, a good sign, and he held it close as he followed the men and women in medical scrubs. Unlike him, they were running, and Jahir was pacing them—not just pacing, but socketed into their formation as if falling into an old pattern. And perhaps he was; Lisinthir had not asked for the details of his hospital work. He would have to after this. If it could be borne, speaking of it.
Vasiht’h, loping at his partner’s side, looked the competent professional he would no doubt deny being. Lisinthir was glad to see them thus, after all they’d been through. The war had tempered them, and they had not broken in the quenching.
Unlike them, Lisinthir was not so deeply engaged in the medical mysteries, and so—he thought—he was the only one to sense that they were running toward… something. Something that bent the attention toward it like gravity. The walls around him faded in significance, compared with that weight, and every instinct warred in him: foe, and ally and bloodkindred and peril. By the time they’d rushed into the hospital and past it, he could barely see. And then someone was trying to stop him from going farther—“medical personnel only past this point, excuse me”—and it didn’t matter because he had to ensure that source of power was not a danger to them. Someone squealed, or shrieked, or both, because he’d drawn a sword and shoved past them.
Sediryl had been whisked around the corner into the acute care section. Standing at its door alongside a Tam-illee garbed for surgery was an Eldritch, dressed the same way, and the man knotted the world around himself so densely Lisinthir had to strain not to fall toward him. He halted. The man raised his head.
“Lord Nase Galare,” he said, in a mild baritone. “My cousin told me to expect you.” His brows lifted. “God and Lady, but you are a power, aren’t you.”
Just like that, the memory of Sediryl’s voice in an abbey: You’re not the only mind-mages that have appeared recently. Liolesa’s cousin, once Jisiensire’s sealbearer, came into Corel’s powers and used them to defend the world.
Lisinthir sheathed the sword. “Apologies, my lord.”
“None needed. What can you tell me about what happened?” He glanced at the Tam-illee standing alongside him. “We have… a few minutes? While they prep her.”
“Maybe less,” the Tam-illee said. “But I’ll get started. You find out what you can.” She vanished around the corner.
“Very little, I’m afraid,” Lisinthir said. “She set an entire pirate base on fire, and from what little we can tell almost destroyed herself in the effort. I am no healer to know the details, but my cousin is, and you’ll find him with her.”
“That would be… Jeasa’s son?”
“Yes.” Lisinthir paused. “He heals with his mind. He kept me from dying that way, with the help of his Glaseah.”
“Did he? How…?”
“I don’t know,” Lisinthir said, rueful. “Magic. Corel’s legacy, perhaps. I should stay, I imagine. The staff here tried replicating blood for me and it failed, but transfusions didn’t. Perhaps I might be useful.”
Now the other man was frowning. “Replicated blood shouldn’t fail.”
“So they told me, and yet.”
“Then, yes, stay. We’ll talk more.” He considered Lisinthir. “Yes. We shall talk more.”
“My lord,” Lisinthir said, and couldn’t finish the title because… ‘once Jisiensire’s sealbearer’?
As he touched the toggle that generated the hygienic face shield, the other mind-mage smiled faintly. “Hirianthial Sarel Eddings Laisrathera. But most simply call me Lord of War.”
God and Living Air, a Lord of War. How long had it been since their people had had one? And yet, how appropriate to appoint one who crushed the fabric of reality around him just by breathing. “Lord of War. I will dispose myself in the waiting room against my cousin’s need.”
If he hadn’t been needed so desperately and so immediately, Hirianthial would have tarried to marvel at what had sprung out of Imthereli’s breast. Liolesa had mentioned the newest Eldritch mind-mages, but to hear tell of them was a matter entirely different from experiencing them in the flesh. Valthial had accustomed Hirianthial to reaching for and sensing the shape of another mind-mage’s powers, but Valthial had spent his life honing his talents, until the feel of them was smooth as honey and mellow as an antique brandy: one could almost mistake him for a minor power, the way he presented himself, all smooth shields and clear aura.
Lisinthir Nase Galare was a defiant fire, and no modest planetbound bonfire at that, but the rage of an exultant star, violent and vitalizing. Who had trained him? Who would dare have come close? God and Lady, but Val would find the man bewitching—the priest was desperate to teach anyone with even a modicum of talent and had been scouring their world in search of candidates. To think this had been incubating before their eyes in their court! What a sense of humor the Divine had.
But he was needed, and the Nase heir could wait. Liolesa’s couldn’t. He stepped through the decontamination field and into the surgical theater… into another surprise, a pacifying aura so powerful it evoked lullabies from his cradle—no, that was no evocation. He could hear singing, and not with mortal ear, because all the noises of a medical team attempting to keep someone from dying were entering through those.
Hirianthial stepped to the heir’s bedside, and the aura billowed around him, like a morning breeze. He both felt its calming invitation… and a call, gentle but insistent: Come back, come back. Come back, come back. It wove through the words of a lullaby, the one about the morning lark that loved the evening sky so much that he refused to sleep before he could sing to her.
The second of Liolesa’s new mind-mages was sitting at the heir’s head, beside the anesthesiologist. Behind him, a Glaseah had a hand on his back, head bent forward. Hirianthial thought he was in trance with his Eldritch, but no… he slitted one brown eye open and said, “We’re working on it.”
God and Lady, working on what? He glanced at the head of surgery, who shrugged and said, “Whatever they’re doing, it’s helping immensely. Which is great because we’ve got a lot of work in front of us.”
Hirianthial finally read the monitors and grimaced, despite his long experience. “Yes. I see that we do.”
“Let’s get this done. The first session, anyway.”
The Tam-illee was prescient, as one might have expected given her seniority. If nothing else, Hirianthial now had a data point on the dangers of sudden, explosive emergence of mind-magic in Eldritch… because Liolesa’s heir was doing her best to bleed to death from the inside. He had little time for contemplation of the newest additions to the ranks of Eldritch mages, though it occurred to him to marvel at it when directing the Nase heir to the technicians to draw blood, or observing that the Seni heir had fallen asleep in the corner and was somehow still generating that enveloping field, if less powerfully. But when he was awake and properly tranced, Hirianthial felt it working on him and the other medical technicians: it promoted, somehow, a unity of purpose, as if the friction of normal interactions had been smoothed away by flowing water. The mood in the theater was far less frenzied and jangled than it should have been given the severity of their patient’s injuries.
Four sessions later—Hirianthial had lost track of time, having fallen into the usual routine of catnapping when possible on whatever flat surface was available—Sediryl once-Nuera Galare could be left unattended without crashing. He stepped out of the acute care ward to find the sunfire brilliance of the Nase heir blocking his way. “You must drag him out of there or he’ll never rest, and then he’ll be your next patient.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My cousin,” Lisinthir said. “The mind-healer. If you don’t walk back in there and carry him out, and that Glaseah of his with him, then I will, and I’m not gowned for it.”
Had he—he should have known that what the Seni heir had been doing had been work. Deeply physical work. Hadn’t he wound up in the clinic himself after too great an effort? Suppressing a curse, Hirianthial ducked back into the room, feeling the fire-brilliance of the Nase heir at his back, just behind the field.
“The Glaseah first,” Lisinthir called. “He’ll bring Jahir out gradually.”
Sensible. How had a Glaseah become adept at mind-healing trances? God and Lady, how had anyone? Such a thing was entirely unknown. Hirianthial brushed the Glaseah’s shoulder, receiving with that touch the unexpected sensation of sun-warmed earth beneath his feet, and chocolate melting in his mouth. Come to that, when had he eaten last?
Blinking blearily, the Glaseah said, “Mph. Yes? Is it safe to stop now?”
“For now, yes,” Hirianthial said. “You and your friend should rest.”
Shaking out his back legs, one at a time, the Glaseah straightened. “Thank the Goddess.” He glanced at the monitors. “I can’t read those with Jahir asleep. Is she going to be all right? It’ll help to tell him.”
“For now, she’s stable,” Hirianthial said. “I can’t promise more than that.”
The Glaseah sighed, shoulders slumping. “Oh, Sediryl.” He rubbed his face. “All right, well, we’re in this to the end, and Goddess willing, that end will be a good one. Let me bring him home.”
An astonishing way of contextualizing that act: bringing him home. Hirianthial could feel the experiences that had created it like echoes in the words… could see it, now that he had the leisure to bring his own abilities to bear to watch the Glaseah’s aura spreading until it engulfed the Eldritch’s, like an embrace. The merging was so seamless, and so easy, that it had to be the product of years of experience… which was yet another astonishing revelation in a set of days with many.
Jahir Seni Galare welled back into himself: that was the only way to describe it, that pouring of mind and spirit back into a shell, and with that empowered his unique aura, subjugated too many days to the needs of their patient. Yet another vast power, but one that evoked the mysteries of the sea, its calm, its inexorability. And the wistful beauty of music, heard in the distance.
What did they see when they looked at him, he wondered? And was it as improbable, and as unforgettable?
/Come back, ariihir. You’ve got to rest. Really rest in your body, not in the Pattern./
Good advice that, and yet Jahir instantly regretted his return because every part of him had revolted against his long work. Cramped muscles, headache, hunger faintness, thirst, God and Lady, what had he done to himself?
/Overdid it, as usual,/ Vasiht’h replied tartly, affection dusting the words with powdered sugar. /But I’m serious. You’ve got a window to rest and you’re going to take it or all of us are going to tie you down. Lisinthir’s standing outside looking like he’s about to try to scoop you up and carry you off. And uh… this Eldritch I don’t know is actually in the room with us, and he’s big enough to actually manage it./
Another Eldritch? He tried opening his eyes and couldn’t see for the shining in them. /Why… are the lights so bright?/
/They’re not? They have them dimmed now they’re not working./
Jahir looked up without lifting his head, and found the shining was shaped like a man, and it made his eyes water. “Tell him to turn it down,” he managed, and thought he was speaking aloud but couldn’t tell.
“Living Air, Galare,” came his cousin’s voice. “Don’t make me come into that room and make you mind your health.”
“I might prefer that,” Jahir murmured, and felt Vasiht’h helping him up. “Sediryl?”
“Stable for now,” said a stranger’s voice, who was not a stranger because Jahir had felt his presence for… hours… days… eternity, while in this room. “But still seriously ill, I’m afraid. You should sleep while you have the opportunity, as we will need you again. What you do…” He paused. “You do that on purpose, don’t you.”
“I don’t think we know you,” Vasiht’h said from beside Jahir. “I’m Vasiht’h, Jahir’s brother, and mindbonded partner. This is Jahir Seni Galare. We’re xenotherapists, and he’s a healer-assist. We figured out the ‘use Eldritch abilities as medical procedures’ thing on Lisinthir over there, when Lisinthir was almost dying on the way back from the Chatcaavan Empire.”
The shining stranger hesitated. “I find myself with a great deal of questions, all of which can wait. I am Hirianthial Sarel Eddings Jisiensire, Liolesa’s cousin and the Eldritch Lord of War. And the second mind-mage since Corel, since I have discovered that Valthial was hiding his light beneath a basket. You and Lord Nase Galare… you would be the third and fourth.” A pause. “And Sediryl Nuera, the fifth.”
Jahir heard his thought as if he’d said it aloud. “She’ll survive,” he said. “She wouldn’t let this kill her.”
Another pause. More gently, “Perhaps not. But she’ll need help to make good on that desire, and so, you should dispose yourself on that bench outside the decontamination field, eat, and sleep. In that order.”
“What he said,” Vasiht’h agreed, helping him stand. /You’re weak as a new puppy, ariihir. You’re no help to her like this./
Vague memories of Allen Tiber’s puppy Sarah gamboled through the mindline, made him smile. “Yes.” He staggered as he tried to walk, grimaced. /My cousin will be displeased with me, won’t he./
/Fortunately for you he’s already vanished to get you food./
/I am spared his belt, then. Alas./
Vasiht’h chuckled wearily. /You really are tired, to say something like that without blushing./ Jahir felt his partner twisting to look over a shoulder. /So there are more mind-mages, and Liolesa’s cousin is one of them!/
When he was less tired, it would strike him… that he and Lisinthir—and now Sediryl—were not alone. That in fact they might not have been the first. When he was less tired, it would relieve him… would give him an ethical and cultural context for his talents outside the one he and Lisinthir had so painfully carved out for themselves while struggling with their abilities on an Alliance starbase on the eve of a war. But he could not give himself to that now. Not with Sediryl still so ill, and he… he had work to do yet, to sing her home.
By the time Vasiht’h had disposed him on the bench, Lisinthir had returned. Jahir leaned on them both and let them feed him, and then with his head on Lisinthir’s lap and his hand in Vasiht’h’s, he fell instantly asleep. In his dreams, he piloted a small boat bearing precious cargo, and a lighthouse drew him unerringly to shore.
“My heir?”
“Is in serious condition, I won’t lie, Lia. But she’s strong and young, and the facilities here are extraordinary as you well know. They’ve told me they don’t need my services any further, so they think she’s past the point of heroic measures. She’ll be ill for some time, though.” Hirianthial chose one of the decanters on the sideboard and poured for himself. Some sort of cognac; he added another glass for her. “The negotiations?”
“Quite well. I should be able to leave soon, and I must. There are things that need my attention at home.” She accepted the crystal, sipped. “I suppose you will be going home with me, then.”
“Yes. I have every faith in the personnel here.” Hirianthial sat across from her, finally admitting to the fatigue that pulled at his joints. “You have developed some rather astonishing additions to your fold of mind-mages.”
“Ah! You met them! What do you think?”
Hirianthial tasted the brandy, savored the trail it burned down his throat. “I think,” he said, “that we are well on the way to developing a very dangerous defense for our world. That is your plan, isn’t it?”
“You say that as if I had at all a hand in the surfacing of these talents!”
He snorted. “I would put nothing past you, Lia. Even magic.”
Something about her smile—but her smiles were always complicated, and her motivations and thoughts even more so. “Thank rather the Lord and Lady, to whom we address all our gratitude for the mysteries. But truly. Your opinion? As Lord of War?”
“As Lord of War?” Hirianthial thought of the Nase Galare’s sunfire aggression, and the inevitability of the sea in the Seni Galare’s soul… finished off by the chocolate-and-sunlight normalcy of a Glaseah who could blend auras with them so effortlessly. “They’ll suit. Very well indeed.” He glanced up at her. “Why, Lia? Is there some new war you have an eye on waging that you haven’t told me about yet?”
“Oh… no,” she said. “But… one never knows. It’s wisest to be prepared for every contingency.”
Hirianthial watched her take another sip from her glass, effecting that breezy non-concern for which she was so famous, and knew better. Val was very much not the first mind-mage since Corel’s death, if he was any judge, and all of them were her instruments. As, he thought, it should be. “As you say, my lady. One never knows.”