I sat on a rock, brushed free of the previous night's snowfall, looking down on the huddled cabins from my perch halfway up a steep slope. Smoke trailed from the chimneys, blue and thin. I idly kicked a rock. It rattled down the hillside, bouncing across the narrower terraces before finally rolling to a stop on one of the wider ledges. The whole hillside was painstakingly carved into flat ledges. It was their garden in the summer, or so Lanoni'lai had told me. She was the one who had dug through my mind, lifting all of my memories out so the whole village could judge if I was telling them the truth. Part of the sharing of minds involved me getting her memories in return. I now knew the names, ages, and personal information on all three hundred and twenty seven inhabitants of the village.
Not that it did me much good. They left me alone in my cabin after stealing my memories. Hours later they came back and told me I was narushui'zhri and I was welcome in their village. There was no word of apology for leaving me an emotional wreck. I was accepted as one of them and they expected me to be happy about it. I hated it.
I was trapped in their valley. They wouldn't hear of me leaving. After I made my first demand to be taken back to Milaga they assigned people to watch me. Someone was always behind me, no matter where I went. I hadn't been very calm about my insistence on leaving. In fact, I'd been more than a little out of control. The strange feeling of being someone different hadn't helped. Something had cracked in my mind during my trek up to their village, something woken by the contact with the wolves. I could read minds, talk telepathically. I could also sense and send emotions. And other powers I couldn't begin to describe. The colonists of Jericho had been scrupulous to keep crossbreeding between the three classes to the minimum necessary for healthy children. So the shrua'zhri kept their telepathic powers to themselves, the inoru'zhri kept their empathic powers, and the notu'zhri kept their talent for keeping the others out of their minds and emotions. On Tivor, out of necessity, there had been a lot of inbreeding. They hadn't ever heard the terms before, either. It was something that grew out of Jericho. They figured out what the terms meant, it was clear enough in my memories. The knowledge had also caused a crisis of faith. The leaders of the village had spent most of the last week closeted together in one cabin discussing the error of their ways. I would have pointed out to them that Jericho's rules no longer applied, to anyone, except they wouldn't have listened.
I kicked another rock and watched it bounce down the mountain. Here I could gain at least the illusion of privacy and isolation. The people of the village, the forest spirits my grandmother had told me about, were not satisfied with just my memories. They wanted me to explain everything to them, in great detail. I was hounded with questions until I literally screamed, mentally and physically. It hadn't stopped them for long. I'd climbed up here to try to get a moment of quiet.
It hadn't done me any good. I heard footsteps crunch up the steep path to my perch. I looked away, at the flanks of the mountain that rose still higher above the narrow valley.
"You missed lunch, Dace." It was Lanoni'lai. I would have known it was her long before I could have seen or heard her, except I was deliberately trying to ignore my newfound senses.
She settled herself on the rocks not far from me. I smelled the food she'd brought, still warm. It was cold on the mountainside, even though it faced south and the sun was bright. I was warm enough in a thick quilted jacket and lined leggings. They'd insisted on giving me the clothes. After all, I was narushui'zhri, holder of all three powers. Anything I wanted was mine. Except the freedom to leave.
I gave in to hunger and ate the meat pastry. I glanced at her once while I ate. She stared into the distance, a faint crease between her eyes. She stayed quiet, waiting patiently for me to finish, to indicate that I was ready to answer her questions.
"Were you assigned to be my guard this afternoon?" I asked as I brushed crumbs from my lap.
"No one is assigned to guard you. You are not a prisoner."
"No, I'm an honored guest who isn't allowed to leave. And you're right. It's a lot better than most of the times I've been held hostage. No one beats me up or starves me here."
"But it doesn't make you happy."
I didn't answer. There wasn't any point. The breeze swirled around us, carrying the winter silence of the mountain. She didn't say anything for a long time.
"I do have a question," she said, breaking the silence and startling me.
"Only one?"
"You were soul bonded and yet your mate died. Why didn't you die with him?"
I debated not answering her. My personal love life was none of her business. But she already knew everything in intimate detail, what little of it there was to know.
"You took my memories," I said. "You should know why."
"I examined your experiences, true, and yet those do not include your inner thoughts, your motivations. Please, explain to me."
I didn't want to. I didn't want to think about the past. I wanted only a future that didn't involve Tivor. She wasn't going to go away, though. Lanoni'lai was persistent, more than anyone I had ever met, including Lowell. I'd learned from him that sometimes it was easier to just give in than to keep fighting. Losing was inevitable.
"The bond was forced. It was set up so Mart and I didn't have a choice. They wiped his memories so he wouldn't suspect until it was too late. And I didn't know any different. I didn't even know what bonding was until after it was too late."
"You did not know who you were." It was a statement. "Yet the soul bond was real. I felt that in you. Like a ragged edge of cloth where something has been torn past repairing."
I thought I'd healed the frayed edges of my soul. I was also good at making myself believe whatever I wanted to believe. Mostly.
"It's complicated," I said.
"Perhaps it is because your bond was never physically consummated." She said it as if she were commenting on the weather.
"Maybe it's because Mart chose to sacrifice himself so the rest of us could get free," I said. "He didn't want me to die with him. He pushed me away."
"There are those who think you are an abomination because of it."
"They also think I'm an abomination because of my grandfather. I'm a half breed or less. And yet I'm narushui'zhri."
"They are jealous of you for that," she said, smiling. She had a dimple in one cheek. She looked much younger when she smiled. "Perhaps it is your other soul bonds that saved you."
That got my attention. I turned to stare at her.
"You are surprised? But the other bonds are ones of your choosing. They are not the…" She hesitated, searching for the word she wanted.
"Zhrianotui?" I offered. It was the Hrissia'noru term for the bond between me and Mart. It meant, literally, one life spirit in two forms.
"Exactly," she agreed.
"What other bonds are you talking about?" Her comment bothered me. Had the Hrissia'noru meddled with my life again without me knowing?
"It is something we have observed with the villagers, down the mountains."
She thought they were little better than animals. I could read every emotion she had. It offended me, but I didn't say anything.
"They choose pair bonding," she continued, unaware of my feelings about her feelings, "without regard to the genetics of their offspring. And without considering future implications of their choice."
"It's called love."
"Love is not unknown among us," she said, a gentle reprimand. She was so understanding of me I wanted to spit. "But soul bonding, zhrianotui, is much more. One can be bonded without love. It is best for the children if the parents are bonded. It is the stronger force, more powerful than love."
I didn't want to be discussing this with her. Their whole way of life bothered me. They lived off the villagers, whether they believed it or not. They took what they wanted, leaving useless bits of junk in exchange, believing the villagers treasured their garbage. I'd been with my grandmother less than a week, but it was long enough for me to learn that the mountain folk would much prefer their goods and food over the scraps the Forest Spirits left. They thought a visit from the Spirits was a curse where the Spirits thought they were bestowing some grand gift on the primitive villagers. The condescending attitude stuck in my throat. They treated me with a mixture of pity and deference that was almost as bad. Especially because I could sense the undertones of revulsion caused by my mixed parentage. I was tolerated because I was powerful, because I was powerful and narushui'zhri.
"Why are you so unhappy here?" Lanoni'lai asked me, picking up on my emotions. It would have been hard not to, I'm sure I was broadcasting them quite heavily. Another reason I'd sought seclusion away from the village.
I turned to study her face. The expression on mine made her uneasy. She looked away across the valley.
"One of the mountain birds," she exclaimed, pointing at a distant shadow in the air. "One of the large hunting birds. We call them tre'asu."
I ignored her, sinking back into my brooding thoughts. This time she didn't try to talk to me. She just sat near me. I felt her emotions and thoughts nibbling at me, though. There wasn't enough distance between us for me to ignore her.
"What?" I finally barked at her. She was getting on my nerves. I was irritable anyway.
"The others, your choice-bonds, who are they?" She turned her big innocent eyes on me. I wasn't fooled. She had other reasons for probing. They still didn't trust me. Stealing my memories hadn't been enough to convince them.
"You looked in my head, you know them."
"But it's different when you tell me about them. I'm not inoru'zhri. I cannot read your emotions. The story is not complete without them." She said it as if it were the most logical reasoning in the universe.
I looked away from her, to the gray rocks of the mountain peak, now mostly buried in white snow. I didn't want to talk to her about Tayvis. He was the only one I could think of that I might have chosen to bond with.
"Tell me more of the one named Jasyn," Lanoni'lai asked. "She is very important to you, is she not?"
The question caught me off guard. "Yes, she is."
"What is it like? To share a bond with her?"
A bond? With Jasyn? Now that I thought about it, there was a bond there. We trusted each other. It hadn't been easy for me, not for a long time, but now I would trust her with anything. The thought brought an ache of homesickness. I missed her.
"Tell me." She reached across the space between us to lay her hand on mine. Hers was warm and small and browned by the sun.
"Why do you want to know?"
"You don't trust me." She left her hand on mine, though my comment and suspicion had hurt her.
"No, I don't."
"I am curious, nothing more. All I've ever known is this valley. I've never even been to the dancing meadow. You have traveled to dozens of worlds. I have never known any but my own people and their ways. I merely wish to understand."
I felt the truth of her words. I couldn't hold her responsible for the suspicion of the others, or for their demeaning attitudes about me.
"Where do you want me to start?" I had nothing better to do for the afternoon.
She heard the softening in my voice and smiled again, showing her dimple. "Tell me how you met her."
"You saw it in my mind."
"But that isn't the same. Tell me, like a story."
"I met her in a blizzard," I began. The rest of the story poured out of me.
Lanoni'lai may have been a mind reader. She was also a very good listener. Once I started she kept me going until the shadows crept across the whole valley and the smell of supper cooking finally reached us.
It didn't make my frustration go away, but it helped me forget. For a while.