Chapter Thirteen

 

Altered vision floated into view, integrating itself with gradual kindness.  Jim began to realize he was inhabiting his physical body, lying on a surface of living field grass, looking up at a night sky so black and brilliant he was almost afraid to take another breath for fear the atmosphere was gone.  Obviously an alien world __and not Muuye, the stars were wrong__  yet, there was nothing alien about it.  A welcome surged up through the soil so intensely it came close to possession, touching him with warmth and presence.

 

It came to Jim, what he felt was… recognition.

 

“Ysaulte, we’re on__”

 

“Oh, for Gods’ sakes, James, don’t say it,” she moaned out loud, the truth screaming in the voice unspoken.  It was a truth Jim blurted, too caught by her shock and his to guard his tongue.

 

“We are there__ here__ on ZaworthIa!”

 

“Worse,” the native of that world informed them.  “We are ten thousand Standard years in the past.”

 

“What?  That’s impossible!”  Bones squeaked, grabbing Spock with one hand and Dyer with the other.

 

“But we’re here.  I can tell,” the ul ku Tuura child said with his remarkable presence of mind.  “What did you say to Radomil, Lady?”

 

Ysaulte rolled over until she could press her forehead into the dirt, mentally stuck between joy, despair, and outright panic.  It was hard to talk, in any fashion.  She was struck by the same recognition Jim felt, that otherworldly Presence all around them.

 

“I told it to show us the circumstances of its creation,” she mumbled into the grass roots.  Her time-traveling companions still heard, one way or the other.

 

Jim sat up slowly, pulling himself off the ground as reluctantly as he would leave a lover’s embrace.  He silently ordered himself and everybody else to stay calm.  He could feel the effort Ysaulte was making to obey.

 

“I didn’t think it was going to be this… real,” he ventured.

 

“Nor I,” Ysaulte managed to reply.

 

Starshine provided all the light Jim needed to look around.  Spock, Bones, and Dyer were sitting up to his right, and Ysaulte was a couple of meters to his left.  She had turned onto her back, staring up at the night sky with irises that matched its glitter, which only betrayed her bone-deep shock.  This time, the ZaworthIan herself was nearly ‘overset’, and nobody knew it better than Jim.  He scooted over to sit next to her and looked into her eyes.

 

“It is real,” he reassured them both, hearing her wonder if she’d finally lost her mind.  They were surrounded by grass, a great plain stretching away like midnight velvet in the dark.  It was as endless as the reality of shared perception, which he told her, adding,  “More than we expected, my Lady Ysaulte.  As usual.”

 

“As usual, beloved,” she agreed, catching breath and balance in his steady hazel gaze. 

 

Jim got up and held out his hand.

 

When she felt able, Ysaulte let Jim help her stand.  Another effort, for all his touch enhanced the force of their bond.  She felt it go through him like lightning in his nerves, conducting the murmured rumble of psionic amplification, and reminded him.  On this world, that force had a life of its own.

 

“I hear… voices,” Jim told her silently, like she didn’t know.

 

“You hear the voice of our Mother Za, and those voices of her children as wish open hearing.  Thine, as I swore to thee, for thou art du Mes Ily’ar sha’deh.”

 

Ysaulte jerked her hand free and turned her back on all of them.  It was then Jim realized, with his friends, what the ZaworthIan had known from first waking.  The Daysword was gone, with the KamarIa.  Vanished.

 

“Uh, Ysaulte,” McCoy cleared his throat.  “About the sword.  Where is it?”

 

Even here, especially here, his Lady couldn’t hide her answering thoughts from Jim.  He repeated them word for word, which took more restraint than he’d believed he possessed, his tone perfectly even.

 

“Radomil will be in the hands of she who will bid its being.”

 

“Aw, hell, Jim, you don’t mean__”

 

“We’re here ahead of it,” Dyer confirmed as if he’d known it all along and earned himself some sharp stares.  “Well, don’t look at me.  We’ll have to get it back, of course.”

 

“Oh, of course!”  Bones threw up his hands.  “Care to tell me why there’s a damned ‘of course’?”

 

“We cannot go home without it,” Ysaulte volunteered quietly, regarding them with crossed arms.  Her irises were a restless wash of swirling hues.  “Do thou not worry after Radomil.  Once it is created, it will come to my call, and Time has no meaning for it.  However long it takes to retrieve, it will return us to the same moment in the future from which we left.”

 

“Are you sure about that, or did you just make that up to reassure us?”  McCoy demanded with a suspicious squint, struggling to his feet to face Ysaulte directly.

 

“I am sure, unless you would prefer a different time, Brother,” the ZaworthIan offered, one eyebrow rising.

 

“Hmmm.  So it’s free time.  A vacation.  They won’t miss us at home.”

 

Finally figuring out what Leonard was getting at, Ysaulte smiled.

 

“They will not miss us, because when we get home, we will not have been gone,” she explained, and Jim watched her irises lighten with amusement.  He tried to conceal his relief at her limitless capability… and her choice of words.  If Ysaulte still considered Enterprise home, she’d stop at nothing to get them there.

 

“Where else?”  She wondered with an irritation that faded when she realized Spock had yet to comment.  The Vulcan knelt unmoving with one hand pressed firmly on the ground, wrapped in his matchless serenity and as heavily shielded as Ysaulte had ever seen him.  It frightened her.

 

“a’he Ra, art thou unwell?”

 

Spock beheld the violent thunderstorms of anxiety in those ZaworthIan eyes, and unbent enough to answer out loud.

 

“There is a degree of intensity within the empathic expression of the planetmind to which I am unaccustomed.”

 

“Of course,” Ysaulte said, nonplused.  “You have only to listen to hear our Mother Za’s voice.”  Aware of Spock’s disbelief, she approached the Vulcan to kneel beside him, curling her fingers around his and pressing his touch into the dirt and grass.  “Understand as James does, this most precious gift.  We are beloved of Za, and all of us Her children, here.   Za speaks her mind, and ours.  You have only to wish, to make it so.”

 

"As on Platonius?”  Spock inquired, and found himself the target of the Lady’s star bright gaze.

 

“Hardly that,” she said in an insulted tone.  “This psionic amplification is no dietary byproduct, and it is in no way artificial.  Accept it, for at any given time survival may depend on it.  We are who we are, embraced by mind in our Mother’s heart.”  She touched the pulse beating at the base of Spock’s neck.  Spock, eyebrow on the fly, surprised his audience by wrapping the fingers of his free hand around Ysaulte’s throat.  “Spock, you are not powerless here,” she promised, seeing what lay behind his momentary surge of unease.  The Vulcan’s fingers tightened.  Ysaulte wondered audibly if he was going to choke her and maroon them all, but she asked it with an indulgent smile that fair took their collective breath and Spock loosened his grip.

 

“I speak it to thee, t’hy’la of my bondmate.  Be there on this world none stronger than we, with the possible exception of the Zaltana… and she is not Zaltana yet,” she reminded, still emerald-eyed with her wry amusement.  “Can you not feel it?”

 

“I cannot shield against it, or you, Ysaulte,” Spock admitted heavily.

 

“I will serve shield for thee, even from me, as thou wish it, beloved.  I believe I offered to do so once before… although why I should offer escapes me.  Really, Spock.  Platonius?”  She smiled at him, irises thawing to that angelic turquoise, and Spock could not help but return the expression.

 

The ZaworthIan held her breath, fascinated by the rare beauty in the Vulcan’s smile.

 

“No one will hear you while you wish yourself unheard.  In this time and place, you too are a warlock lord.”

 

“I fail to find comfort in the prospect of personally affecting this present,” he told her, adding, “I doubt I can prevent it, however.”

 

Ysaulte flinched as if struck.

 

“We spoke of faith, you and me.  You will recall, I swore by your safety.”  Raising her hand to Spock’s face, Ysaulte took the Vulcan by mind after the fashion of his father’s people, and since there really was enormous faith between them, Spock allowed it.  “Believe me now.  This cannot harm thee.”

 

“It has been my experience that time travel invariably results in tampering with the time line, the results of which are seldom desirable.  I cannot be sanguine about the prospect of altering the history of any world, let alone a world not my own…  I am who I am, Ysaulte.”

 

“Yes.  And what is mine is thine, for thou art mine, understand me?”  She said, willing him to comprehend and accept it.  Spock did, his touch becoming an unthinking caress.

 

“I understand you very well, my Lady Ysaulte,” he assured her in a voice that made Jim’s mouth go dry.  He was struck by the vision in his mind and sight; Ysaulte and Spock on their knees, amidst miles of grass.  ZaworthIan and Vulcan, daring everything to trust, and Jim, who felt his Lady’s thoughts and impulses like his own, breathed out as his gut clenched.  Nothing was hidden to him, not the murmuring voice of the world, nor his friend’s reactions…  Spock’s profound astonishment only the most surface of those.

 

“I would not be shielded from you, Ysaulte,” the Vulcan silently confessed his own devotion, doing her the honor of an unguarded response.

 

“Then allow me to worry about the time line, and permit me to teach you your place on our world, unless, of course, you feel insufficient to the task.”

 

“Have I yet refused you anything?”

 

So consented, the ZaworthIan freed Spock’s perception to become a part of her homeworld’s unvoiced chorus, instructing him on the proper coordination of its varied frequencies, until handling it came as easily to him as the mind rules of his own planet.  When she decided he could handle it, when he decided he could, Ysaulte gently released Spock from her mental grasp.

 

Jim followed the entire thing, hiding behind his silent realization that he already understood how to manipulate all this wild psionic energy.  He belonged to her, and through her, to this world.  She’d warned him__ warned them__ over and over.

 

“So I did,” Ysaulte remarked mildly, congratulating him on his reach, standing to hold out one hand to him, the other pulling up a rather pale green Vulcan.

 

“There are bound to be gaps in our knowledge,” Jim warned.

 

“I shouldn’t worry, James.  What you are unsure of, you will guess at, and you will be right.  A less self-confident person than me might find this insufferable,” she teased, taking a moment to settle Spock’s stomach for him before she let go his hand.  “Next question?”

 

“Well, now that you ask,” Bones put it, “We’re obviously not in Kansas anymore.  Where on this world are we?”

 

“Kansas?”

 

“Never mind.  It’s a Terranism.  Do you know where we are?”  Jim asked quickly before she could insist on an explanation.

 

“Do I know!”  Ysaulte hooked her hand in the crook of Jim’s arm, leaning back to stare at her stars.  “I am knowing this field, or will.  We stand on Asar, fronting os’khul sha’deh… or rather, where the Sisters’ Hall will be, in six or so millennia more.”

 

He shouldn’t be surprised, but he was, Jim decided.

 

“I did hope to walk here with you someday,” he told Ysaulte huskily, relaxing under her strong sense of coming full circle.  “How far to a’d’Kef?”

 

“Good memory.  a’d’Kef  lies some three hours walk that way.  That’s north,” she informed them, pointing left.

 

“How can you tell?”  McCoy grunted.  “All this grass looks alike.”

 

“Leonard.  Do you know nothing of navigations?  Look up!  Learn these stars.  Above us, Za’rai jha’Kefoa, the Swordsman.  See how his weapon ever aims, towards ZaworthIa’s upper pole.”  Jim craned his head back to look, vaguely aware of Bones, Spock, and Dyer doing likewise.  “To Za’rai’s right, his bond companion Yrenda tal’Iare.  In our mythology, Za’rai and Yrenda bore their children to the heavens.  Sons aShaiLan, our sun.  His brother Za’ir, the wind.  Daughters ZaworthIa, and Shan ai Shuah, our moon.  There, running west flees Orsidr, the BaneKing.  At Yrenda’s right hand, the Guardian, palShasar.  These are the constellations of ad’Kefirah’za’de, and they will ever guide you.”  Ysaulte’s voice softened.  “I tell you, these are the stars of Asar, and the same stories of creation are new to every ZaworthIan child.”

 

“It doesn’t feel ten thousand years away to you,” Jim murmured, seeing the imagined Watchers in the now familiar points of light.

 

“Is it, really?”  Ysaulte wondered, her eyes on Jim pulling his gaze off the sky.

 

“No, I don’t suppose it is.  Even Terran poets say time is but the other side of night.  What’s ten thousand years next to the things that endure?”  He caught her to him with the question and saw those irises wash over gold.

 

“What things, beloved?”  Ysaulte whispered, absolutely lost to her starlord’s spell.  Considering the circumstances, remarkable in itself.

 

"What things?”  Jim echoed, just as lost in the magic of her eyes and mind.  “Where’s your sense of romance, my Lady fair?  The only things that last forever…  love, and the memory of love.  Love of justice, love of land, and the love between people…  between bondmates.”

 

“James, thou sorcerer,” she named him in that second before he lowered his mouth to hers; this delightful interlude interrupted by Dyer’s impatient curiosity.

 

“Do they do that all the time?”

 

“Spoken like a true pre-adolescent,” McCoy snorted, forgiving the amber-eyed Lady for silently wishing she and Jim had come alone.  “I think the young man wants to see more of your world, Ysaulte.  What time will the sun rise?”

 

Pretending to be less affected by her lover’s touch than she was, Ysaulte gave Leonard’s words a little thought.

 

“If we start walking within the hour, we should arrive on a’d’Kef with the dawn, although I cannot say I wish to hurry.  Maybe it’s better ad’Kefirah’za’de once again Akilah’s, and the doing done without us.”

 

"Are you sure about that too, Ysaulte, or do Spock and I have you spooked?”  The doctor asked gently.

 

“Explain.”

 

“I got the impression from something Spock said a few minutes ago that he’s warned you about meddling in history.  He’s probably produced dire examples from our own experience.”  Now Bones had Ysaulte’s full attention.  He looked from her to Jim, who stood watching him.  Jim, who was relying on him to say the right thing and mean it this time.  He nodded.  “Ysaulte, you’re the one who’s going to have to do whatever it is you’re going to have to do, and you’re going to have to do it your way.  This is ZaworthIa, not Sarpeidon, or the Guardian planet, and I’m willing to bet Spock didn’t mention the times when we were supposed to be there, in the past.  I remember a few.”

 

“Do you think this is one?”

 

“Don’t you?”

 

“I think I must have been mad to bring you, that’s what I think__”

 

“__because it occurs to you, you aren’t going to be able to just take the Daysword and go.  When we get the information we need to reverse Q’rin’s entrapment, we’ll have to convince Akilah herself to send us back, which means we’ll have to involve ourselves in the events surrounding its creation, because we can’t take the sword to Muuye from this time period.”

 

“Or it won’t be here for talSherea to give Iananthe in six thousand years.  I salute thee, Brother,” Ysaulte said evenly, despite a sudden pallor.

 

“Indeed, Doctor.  Well reasoned,” Spock noted, to give her a moment’s grace.

 

“Thanks, I’m sure, Spock.  Ysaulte, I’m not trying to make it worse, you know.  You do know what I’m trying to say?”

 

The ZaworthIan’s irises warmed.

 

“Yes, Leonard.  I should not listen to you, or Spock.”

 

“Exactly,” Bones answered her smile and saw it reflect in Jim’s eyes.  “I think we all know, there’s only one voice you have to listen to,” and he inclined his head at his captain.

 

“Not mine!”  Jim protested with a short laugh.  “This is your world, Ysaulte.”

 

She sobered, eyes black as the night as she went to her knees before Jim.

 

“My Lord, the orders thine, and thine alone.  Even here.  Thou art given vision most clear.”

 

Jim heard the individual words some seconds prior to understanding their significance.

 

“You don’t trust your own instincts.  Because of me__ us?”

 

Ysaulte hesitated, and Jim grabbed her upper arms and raised her to her feet, so he could look her straight on when she answered.

 

“I am not sure, any more, what my instincts are,” she admitted with that peculiarly vulnerable honesty Jim found her greatest strength.   “Bravado aside, the idea of actually speaking to Akilah du’Zaltana strikes real terror in my heart.”

 

Dyer went to Ysaulte and took her hands, tugging her his way until Jim released her.

 

“Do thou not worry after Akilah,” the ul ku Tuura boy paraphrased, his smile irresistible as he forced Ysaulte to meet his gaze.  “The Daysword comes to your command, remember?  Since it knows you, and time has no meaning for it, Akilah will have its testimony to support your word.”

 

“Dyer.”  Ysaulte bowed at him.  “Very well.  No more worrying.”

 

She smiled in Jim’s direction and he had to laugh at them both.

 

“I expect Akilah is the one who needs to worry,” he quipped.

 

“I am sure she is.  Spock?”

 

The Vulcan’s eyes became distracted and vague for the briefest of moments, as he listened for something only he heard.

 

“There is a great deal of disturbance in the psionic atmosphere.  It seems to be centered several kilometers north of here,” Spock pointed out, with no more inflection than he’d allow in reading a tricorder screen.  He pretended not to hear Ysaulte’s silent praise of his perception.

 

“Thank you, Mister Spock.”  Jim tried to straighten his face.  “Maybe we’d better start walking, Ysaulte.”

 

“Won’t we look suspicious to any other ZaworthIans?”  Bones wondered before she could answer.  “What about our irises, Ysaulte?”

 

“Clothing, or the lack thereof, is an individual choice, Leonard, and as for our irises, ‘tis Dyer’s and mine which are the exceptions.  The mutation was created with Radomil, by legend.”  The ZaworthIan looked at Spock and rubbed her chin.  Jim lost the battle he was waging with his amusement when he overheard her thoughts.

 

“It’s the ears!  She can’t explain the ears!”  He informed them through his laughter.  “No mechanical rice pickers?”

 

Electing not to dignify this with a response, Ysaulte took the Vulcan’s offered arm and turned him north.

 

“Shall we go, my friend?”

 

“Please, Ambassador.  Certainly you and I can come up with a suitable story.”

 

“Spock!”

 

Buoyed on Ysaulte’s scandalized giggles, the little party of time travelers began their night walk.

 

***

 

The longer they walked the lighter the sky became, the universal gray of dawn giving way to an eastern brightness that promised singular hues in amber and turquoise.  It also revealed to sight what they had been suspecting for the last hour or so.  The land in this area was sickened, poisoned.  The grass was pale, stunted and sparse, spotted by a few scrawny bushes that only made it look worse.

 

Ysaulte had been soundlessly cursing for some minutes, a repertoire that impressed Jim with her multilingual range.  She’d gone through all the known Kzinti epithets and had started on the Erdar declensions of the Benecia colony worlds when the sun finally pried itself over the horizon.  The ZaworthIan silenced herself in favor of the dawn, which in spite of (or because of) their unhealthy surroundings broke with a blaze of glory.

 

The quiet held until the sun was an orange-red ember burning in an increasingly emerald sky.  Ysaulte stared at it with such an odd expression Jim had to ask what was wrong.   He had to make it an order.

 

“Tell me what’s bothering you.”

 

“Everything,” she whispered, looking past him at the bitterly eroded land, wracked with dryness and decay.  “That the Me’ereden could treat the ground so ill…  the lack of wind… and most of all, aShaiLan’s color, which change alarms me.”

 

“The sun is different?  That’s not possible, surely,” Bones remarked, surprised.  “On a solar scale, ten thousand years really is nothing.”

 

“Normally, I should agree, Leonard, however, there is little normal in this.”  Ysaulte shook her head.  “Over that rise the palace will become visible, and we to it, I might add.  By legend, Matope du Me’ereden will be yet in possession, under siege…  and of course, there is legend, too, about the color of our sun.”  She held up her hands and shrugged, as if to apologize.

 

“Let me guess,” Jim said, looking at her narrowly.  “It involves the second Zaltana, doesn’t it?”

 

The Lady sighed, plopping down without ceremony and patting the dirt beside her.

 

“Sit, then, and I will tell you, for it does in fact connect to Akilah’s tale.  We have time,” she added, waving them down.  “If today is the day, it will be midafternoon before she creates the Daysword.”

 

“’And bids the sun fall from the sky,’” Spock added quietly, proving once again he was always listening.

 

“Yes.”  Ysaulte inspected her feet sourly.  “I suppose if I take these boots off__”

 

“__you’ll never get them back on.  AMA, Sister,” the doctor recommended.

 

“Sah’des ka,” the ZaworthIan muttered.  “At least I can get off my feet for a bit.”

 

“I agree.  Wait a minute.”

 

Jim scooted far enough upslope to see a’d’Kef in the distance.  At about five kilometers away, he couldn’t see much detail, but it wasn’t what he expected.  Just a collection of dingy stone walls in the foothills, flanked by a sere and withered forest.  He tried to imagine it the way it should be… would be, alive with grass, trees, and flowers.  Even with Ysaulte’s memories it was difficult.  The desolation was absolute, not a living thing in sight.

 

“There doesn’t seem to be much going on right now,” he reported, returning to sit next to Ysaulte and ignoring the dust.  The doctor sat beside them with a grateful sigh.

 

Spock lifted one eyebrow and remained standing, the ul ku Tuura boy at his feet.

 

“I’ve never heard anything about the second Zaltana,” Dyer announced, leaning against the Vulcan’s legs like that was Spock’s sole reason for still standing, which provoked a trio of answering eyebrows.  “Then again, I never heard about Akilah, either,” the child went on, happily unaware of his elders’ amusement.  “Are you going to tell it now?”

 

“Impatience is not a desirable trait in world leaders, Dyer,” Spock said sotto voce, to give Ysaulte a moment to relax.  She nodded her thanks, turning her face up to the warming sun.

 

“It’s going to be hot,” Jim murmured.  “This is the cooler continent, you said.”

 

“Yes.  It’s midsummer, James.  aShaiLan his nearest in Za’s revolution.  It’s much hotter further south,” she paused, and informed him of another impossible fact.  “In our time, the climate more temperate.”

 

“Which brings us back to our story,” Jim grinned at Dyer.  “The second Zaltana?”

 

“I have hardly forgotten.  Was the one Zaltan’ohr, actually.  The Zaltan’ohr Drazailte a sorcerer lord.”  Ysaulte marked their surprise.  “You are believing Drazailte an exception, and he was exceptional, indeed.  More than I can adequately explain.  For one, Drazailte was not born of Akilah’s bloodline, although I do not suppose I have ever really explained what that means.”

 

“I think we have a pretty good idea,” Bones told her impatiently.  “Go on, Ysaulte.”

 

She made a rude face at him.

 

“Leonard, I cannot feature your desire to hear yet another ancient ZaworthIan legend.”

 

“When we’re sitting in the big middle of one?  Chalk it up to curiosity and shorter life spans, if you need reasons.”

 

“You’re not gonna believe it,” she griped under her breath, amusing Jim with her use of the Standard slang.  He patted her on the back.

 

“Of course we won’t.  We don’t believe any of this, either, right, gentlemen?”

 

“Oh, all right.”  It wasn’t that she didn’t want to tell them, precisely, Ysaulte thought…  it was more because she’d never believed this particular tale herself, the ZaworthIan realized.

 

“I’ve heard it said before.  Kagan’s law of first contact.  You’ll surprise you more than they will.  It fits, don’t you think?”  Jim asked, so aware of her mind, working.

 

“First contact.”  Ysaulte pinched the bridge of her nose, only to feel Jim’s hands take hers down.

 

“I didn’t mention it so you could add another item to your worry list,” he told her in the voice unspoken.

 

“I know, beloved, but there it is.”  They looked at each other and started to laugh, for no reason except the universal need to keep from crying.  “It fits, yes.”

 

“Maybe you’ll find a new appreciation for Drazailte’s legend,” Jim added, which also struck Ysaulte as funny.

 

“No doubt.  So, Drazailte’s legend.  His time some three millennia from now, a few generations before Yutkiye and Thanasios.  You will recall that tale.”

 

“All of us but Dyer, yes,” Bones added, hoping this story wasn’t as bloodthirsty as that one had been.

 

“Yes.  Well.”  Ysaulte cleared her throat.  “Perhaps you will have noticed, the Talent of a Zaltana given by our Mother rarely, and in times of great need.  Akilah was met with ecological disaster, and talSherea with invasion.  What then, you may ask, was so dire as to call for a Zaltana’s resolution.”

 

Ysaulte raised her chin, motioning their attention toward the sun.

 

“It occurs, my friends, that history is nothing but one series of mistakes after another.  By legend, Drazailte came into his Talent and regenerated Za’s brother, aShaiLan, who was dying.  The mortal blow was struck by the Zaltana Akilah herself in her creation of Radomil.”

 

“One series of mistakes after another is probably as good a definition of history as any I’ve ever heard,” Bones reassured Ysaulte gently.  “ZaworthIans don’t have a monopoly on monumental mistakes, you know.”

 

“You are very kind, Healer,” she replied.  It had been so long since she’d charged McCoy with that accusation he had to look at her twice to make sure she wasn’t being sarcastic, but ZaworthIan sincerity was self-evident.

 

“Drazailte du’edan was as near a disadvantaged person as one of Za’s children could be.  The one was orphaned while still a boy, his parents killed in border skirmishes along the southern continent.  Drazailte was the last surviving descendant of clan Me’ereden, the family long since changed of name and habit.

 

“Drazailte, according to legend, spent several years living along, surviving off the land, and on his ceaseless attacks on any raiding party which happened across his path.  By the time of his youth, Drazailte managed to enforce a certain peace throughout most of the region.  Hearing rumors of war to the north, he elected to go there next.

 

“Of course, the one knew nothing of the land of his forebears, but the land knew him, and consequently Drazailte’s travels made long and difficult.  Neither did the weather cooperate, for aShaiLan writhed with storms that alternately roasted then chilled our Mother.  Heard the one all manner of fears, dangers, and woes, for such was Drazailte’s Talent.  By the time he arrived on the field of Asar__ this field__ he was knowing All, the voice of our Mother audible to him.”

 

Ysaulte picked up a handful of dirt and let it trickle through her fingers, mood suddenly pensive.

 

“Pled Za with her child, Drazailte.  It was time for him to answer the call to blood.  Time he make his reparations.  Such is the Way, demanding accountability.

 

“Drazailte, child of Za, did not argue the unfairness of it.  Rather, the one asked our Mother what she wished him to do, and Za gifted him with the revelation of the palace a’d’Kef along with those residing there.  Drazailte, strong with faith, walked right inside and presented himself.  He was stopped neither by physical nor psionic barriers… a feat not repeated since done by Tal Reiss three thousand years earlier.

 

“At that time, a’d’Kef was held by the Tohrza Yvethe and the Tohr Iantaeus du’Kefirah, who shared a blood tie, being distant cousins, as well as being bond-companions and direct descendants of Akilah herself.  That was not the extent of the family, by the way.  Living within the area, either inside a’d’Kef, within the forest, on the plain itself, or in the Wabani hills was every single member of the family with Talent residing.  All were called together to seek some answer to aShaiLan’s turmoil… yet there was no answer to be had, until Drazailte du’edan appeared.”

 

Ysaulte paused to catch her breath, irises dark with the discovery that she did, in fact, feel an amazing degree of appreciation for her not-yet-born ancestor… whose story she now believed.  Completely.

 

“They must have thought he was nuts,” Bones concluded quietly.

 

“At first, but Drazailte spoke with that voice none can deny.  Nobody could gainsay him, and neither known the proper course of action.  Long debate ensured, for not even Drazailte knew what to do, except that he had to be there… and our Mother spoke no further on the subject.  So, it was the opinion of the Tohrza Yvethe that our Mother’s wishes prevail.  Drazailte would stay in a’d’Kef, and nothing else was done.  No plans made, pending Za’s spoken will.

 

“Days passed, aShaiLan staring with his great bloodshot eye, and Za’s heart breaking for him as his pain grew.  Drought commenced, the heat without mercy.  Even at night, there was no relief, for this our moonsister Shan ai Shuah bled with aShaiLan’s reflected agony.  aShaiLan became swollen, burning the very life around him, evaporating Za’s seas… and still Drazailte waited, at Yvethe’s urging.

 

“As it happened, a dream came to Yvethe on the night of the seventh day following Drazailte's arrival.  For the Tohrza, it was a nightmare.”  The ZaworthIan swallowed audibly, feeling an odd pain of her own.  “The given Talent of my family awareness of the voice of truth, Yvethe had no choice but to listen to our Mother speak.  Because it was Yvethe’s ancestress Akilah, whom with Drazailte’s ancestor Matope who bore responsibility, certain due demanded of the Tohrza.

 

“Za adjured Yvethe.  ‘Daughter, forsake ye all that hath ye, all that art ye, surrender ye land, abandon home and family.  Declare ye all bonds broken, all souls ceded, all future forfeit.  See ye these things done, for me’.  Yvethe, daughter of Akilah, daughter of Za, had no choice but to obey, for all she saw no possible solution in it.

 

“Rose Yvethe with the dawn, aShaiLan a fire in the sky.  She first called by mind upon Iantaeus and foreswore their bond… ‘Tchen’hath sheres.  The family next; including by legend her own children.  Stood Yvethe at the door of a’d’Kef for all to hear and All to witness, making farewells.  When she finished, the one walked Asar.  Alone, in what was arid desert at the time, bare of foot and dressed only in her nightwear and without food or water.  Yvethe gave of herself to our Mother’s care, yielding in perfect faith to her manifest destiny.

 

“You will understand what happened, perhaps, better than most ZaworthIans.  The family responded to Yvethe’s actions by deciding the one had quite lost her mind, with, unfortunately, the widespread opinion that Drazailte du’edan bore the responsibility for this.

 

“Drazailte, believing this too, left a’d’Kef to follow Yvethe into the drained and wasted land, afraid for her life.  Day passed to night passed to day before he came upon her.  She who was Tohrza lay dying of the heat and thirst.”

 

Ysaulte looked at McCoy with another apologetic shrug. 

 

“Forgive the tale if not the teller, Brother.  Drazailte picked up a stone, with which he opened his wrists and forced Yvethe to drink his blood.

 

“Our Mother Za, knowing all and thus constrained by her own guilt, accepted their devoted sacrifices and founded strength upon them, which she returned unto her children as Talent…  creating again Life over Death from their purity of spirit.  Yvethe and Drazailte linked in a fashion greater than any other, being joined in Za’s will and commanded by the power of the world, which they in turn commanded.

 

“Ordered Yvethe in the voice unspoken the catenation of every mind of every living thing, there being none capable of silencing the one in her truthtelling.  Welded a’hava Yvethe these divers wills, energy she gave over to Drazailte for his wielding.  Thus became Drazailte Zaltan’ohr, and he turned the full force of the living world squarely upon aShaiLan, yoking too Za’ir and Shan ai Shuah, until heaven and earth moved to Drazailte’s word and borne on Za’ir’s eternal breath.

 

“Held best beloved, aShaiLan absorbed this spirit-sent healing, filled heart and soul with their combined, consummate faith… and held so, did our Brother find his strength restored.  Starchild once more, the one shrank, self-controlled and spectrum paled.  His warmth immortal, everlasting, his life begun again.

 

“ZaworthIa rewarded Drazailte and Yvethe, removing the burden of Talent and restoring them as they had been… yet leaving them sourced one in the other, for so changed were they still there was no comfort for either alone.  Drazailte and Yvethe left a’d’Kef again, together, traveling across the face of our Mother Za and adding a new generation to her children.  Many of whom, by the way, later made their ways back to a’d’Kef as family.  One among them by legend of my immediate family was my namesake Ysaulte d’vethe, who ruled ad’Kefirah’za’de for two centuries, grandmother of Yutkiye.”

 

“I think that’s the most astounding story I’ve heard you tell us yet,” Bones pronounced after a few silent moments.

 

“I warned you that you would not believe it.”

 

“Oh, no.  I didn’t say it was unbelievable.  What color is the sunshine in our time?”

 

“Ah, Leonard.  aShaiLan glows in white hot youth… and thank you, my friend.”

 

“Any time, Ysaulte.”

 

At Jim’s nod, Bones got up and helped Ysaulte stand, the Lady turning right around to counterbalance Jim.  Dyer stood up last, heaving a soulful sigh.

 

“What’s wrong, little Brother?”

 

“Who’s Yutkiye?”

 

Ysaulte groaned, moving her Terran listeners to laughter.

 

“Perhaps, Dyer, you can be persuaded to wait until we have returned from this side of time and space,” Spock offered gravely, delighting Ysaulte when he added,  “you may rest assured, the Tohrza Yutkiye is another stubborn ZaworthIan female__”

 

“__with the heart of a lion,” Jim interrupted, just to see his ZaworthIan’s eyes lighten.  “Thank you, Ysaulte.  Hearing Drazailte’s legend makes me grateful.”

 

“Really?  Why?”

 

“Oh, it’s got to do with the relative order of magnitude,” he remarked, grinning wryly.  Ysaulte, understanding, grinned back.

 

“Indeed, we are lucky.”

 

“Have you noticed,” Dyer piped up,  “the Gods are always harshest with Their most faithful servants?”

 

“’Hast thou considered My servant Job’?”  Ysaulte nodded.  “I read the book, Leonard,” she said defensively, although the doctor had not spoken out loud.

 

“So have I.  Silivia says it’s one of the best pieces of literature within the known galaxy,” Dyer informed them.  “Have you read it, Mister Spock?”

 

“I have.  The section on Job is also the section that teaches ‘Man that is born of woman is of few days, and full of trouble’,” Spock responded as if on cue, his smooth tone drawing McCoy’s narrowed gaze.

 

“Well, Spock, that doesn’t exactly exclude you, you know.”

 

“Enough, gentlemen.”  Jim was quick to stall them.  “’To everything there is a season’, remember?  We should be discussing our next move.  At some point we’re going to need food and water, ourselves… and I’m not anxious to try Drazailte’s solution.”

 

“Yeah, Spock’s blood would kill us quicker than starvation,” the doctor thought quite audibly, a comment politely ignored.

 

“The closest food and water is there.”  Ysaulte motioned toward a’d’Kef.

 

“We can’t walk right in… can we?”  Jim looked at her doubtfully and watched that wicked emerald sparkle take her irises.  “We can.”

 

“Of course we can.”  Ysaulte twitched her clothes straight and stared down her nose at them.  “Am I not descended of both Tal Reiss and Drazailte du’Zaltan’ohr?”

 

“Oh, boy!”  The ul ku Tuura boy actually rubbed his hands together, his anticipation plain… and this time, it was Jim and Bones who groaned.

 

"Don’t worry,” Ysaulte commiserated, biting her lip to keep from open giggling.  It was an effort she could have spared herself, given the clarity of her amusement.  “Dyer’s enthusiasm aside, it was not my intention to ’walk right in’.  The situation calls for more subtle planning.”

 

“It’s those subtle plans that worry me the most,” Bones admitted, but he was smiling when he said it.  “What do you recommend?”

 

“a’d’Kef much larger than it seems from here.  An… oblique approach might better serve.”

 

“You mean, sneak in the back door?”  Dyer asked, scandalized, and Ysaulte surrendered that murmuring laugh in response.

 

“Forgive me, yes, little Brother.  Are you very disappointed?”  She teased, and Dyer had the grace to blush.  “There will be excitement enough.”

 

“Is the palace defended now?”  Jim wondered seriously, taking everybody’s attention off Dyer, to the boy’s eternal gratitude.  Ysaulte started to speak, thought better of it, and startled them all by closing her eyes and sending out a quick psionic probe.  Far-flung curiosity soared beyond perception, reflecting a brilliant myriad of impressions she processed too fast for Jim to follow.  Reminded of her telempathic reconnaissance within the ul Nru caves and from the bridge of his ship, Jim realized right away that what he was seeing now went far beyond that.  Here was a ZaworthIan Sister at the top of her Talent, in the heart of her homeworld and time notwithstanding.  The only thing that surprised him was how… stimulating… he found his sense of her power.

 

“Thou shameless Terran,” his Lady whispered in his mind, straightening to regard him with shining eyes.  “Shall I report, Sir?”

 

“Please,” Jim answered graciously, his tone hiding none of his own laughter.

 

“a’d’Kef near deserted.”  Ysaulte’s irises darkened with her words, betraying sudden pain.  She kicked at the dirt with the toe of her boot and sighed.

 

“Oh, I know it won’t be like this for much longer.  I must say, it increases my sympathy for Akilah.  There is great sorrow in the land.”  Ysaulte shook her head.  “Not much of a report, neh?  You would prefer to know, Matope indeed within the palace, with a few retainers, the Me’ereden having set some few barriers such as the ones we met going into the mage’s chamber.  None we cannot handle.  Of Akilah herself I cannot say.  She of course in shields, as we must be.”

 

“I understand the need for shielding, Ysaulte, but does that mean we’ve been__”

 

“Never so, Leonard.  James and Spock will verify, from the beginning our shields secure.  Doing this for me comes as naturally as breathing and without any strain.  If Akilah was listening, my farsent interest audible, but even if the one searched we should be as nothing to her, and Matope not a consideration.”  Eyes black with that fierce arrogance, the ZaworthIan raised one finger in the direction of a’d’Kef.

 

“Matope’s days numbered.”

 

“Not today, then,” Jim noted, not sure if he felt his relief or hers.

 

“No.  Today Matope’s, given him by Akilah for deliberation of his fate.”  Ysaulte thought a minute.  “I imagine Akilah within the hills somewhere.”

 

“Isn’t that where the ‘back door’ is?”  Bones wondered doubtfully.

 

“You fear us running into her there?  True, the possibility exists.  Unlikely, but possible.”

 

“What do you intend to say if somebody asks us who we are?”  Dyer inquired rather hesitantly, so Ysaulte took extra care with her reply.  She really hadn’t meant to embarrass him so acutely.

 

“If it is merely ‘someone’, I might dissemble.  If Akilah herself asks, I can only tell her.  Believe me, the idea gives me pause.”

 

Dyer stuck his hand in hers and nodded.

 

“I understand.”

 

“I believe you do.”  Ysaulte squeezed his warm fingers, appreciating the child’s wish to comfort her.  “What else?”

 

“How is a’d’Kef supposed to be?  I really want to know.”  Dyer shrugged.  “I feel the land’s pain too, Ysaulte.”

 

“Of course, you are a blood descendant.  Remember, this situation is temporary.”  Temporary.  “A moment, please, Dyer.”

 

Jim heard Ysaulte’s instinctive realization that it could be even more temporary than it already was__ at her wish.  Her Talent was sufficient, she could restore the health in the local ecology, yet how could she?  To interfere so in the course of what was to come would court disaster…  Spock was right.  She’d have to live this through, find some way to endure it, with the land, but damn!  To know she could change this, and be unable!

 

None of this showed in her face or her voice as she smiled at the boy and carefully disengaged her hand… and such was the ZaworthIan’s shielding that nothing showed in her mind, either, except to Jim.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said to her frustrated anguish, speaking in the voice he knew she needed to hear.  “Can you live with it?”

 

“As long as thou art with me, a’shas,” and her smile became real, irises calming to a lucid blue as she framed an answer for Dyer.

 

“a’d’Kef as will be, yes?  Since the days of Akilah and Tal Reiss, it serves as a world capital, and as much a center of government as ZaworthIa possesses.  Za’s children are a wandersome lot, yet there is an adage that every ZaworthIan born must see a’d’Kef in either this life, or the one after.  There are those, like the Kefirah descendants, who choose to stay, being bound to the land.  Inside the palace grounds, artisans trade wares.  The school for the Talented is there, and those wanting concerns aired gather inside the palace Hall for their open hearing.  After talSherea’s time, and her creation of the Sisters’ Circle, a’d’Kef becomes even busier.  Especially after the advent of interstellar travel.”  Ysaulte sighed.  “I wish I could show you.”

 

“Show him by mind, then,” Jim told her.

 

She gave him that sideways glance that said he knew her too well.

 

“Spock, if you will watch our defenses,” and receiving the Vulcan’s nod, Ysaulte reached out and touched the ul ku Tuura boy’s throat, but her vision seized them all by mind.  Dyer and the landing party saw ad’Kefirah’za’de as it was meant to be.  The ground covered in rich blue grasses, the sky a pure tourmaline green, and in the distance glowed the pearly sheen of the palace a’d’Kef.  A clean blue river circled around west of the palace, and Ysaulte pointed out silently how the water branched off underground to come up inside the palace grounds in a spring fed pool.

 

“The river ha’limeda.  By legend, there should be three walled fences around the palace itself.  There are the entries.”  She pointed out the northernmost arc of the outer wall, the far left of the second wall, and the far right of the inner wall, and again at an opening in the lower, southern area.  “There are gates here.  The ‘front door’ is hakan gate; the ‘back door’ is olokon gate.  These are the only gates in the outer wall.”

 

“How did the Me’ereden get in?”  Jim wondered, not seeing how an invading force could easily get to the palace itself.  “Did they break through the walls?”

 

“No.  I am unknowing any secret to their entry.  The belief extant the Me’ereden were met as friends and welcomed inside ere commencing their attack.”

 

Ysaulte lowered her hand, and the mental picture faded.  It was almost painful to look upon their surroundings, as they were this day.  The ground cracked and bare, no river in sight, the sky dark with dust and the walls they could see grimy and neglected… 

 

“Do all the gates have names, and what do they mean?”  Dyer asked interestedly, fascinated by the whole thing and full of questions.

 

“The second wall gate is called oshun, which means ‘riverside’.  The third wall gate is called harith, which means ‘plough gate’, because it opens onto a’d’Kef’s gardens.  The front gate, hakan, means ‘fire’, which is a play on its psionic overlay.  Hakan gate, when shut and locked, appears to burn.  Olokon gate, which crosses over ha’limeda in the rear, translates best as ‘mountainview’.  Ha’limeda itself means ‘thinking of the sea’, for of course, that is where the river goes,” Ysaulte said, taking a deep breath.  Dyer, for the moment satisfied, relented on his inquisition.

 

“Thank you, Lady Ysaulte.”

 

“Welcome you are, Brother.  Understand me.”

 

Dyer did, giggling at her hinted suggestion that he see a’d’Kef for himself someday, on their side of time.

 

“In this life or the next,” he promised, still smiling… an expression the Lady shared before turning to look up at her prince of stars.

 

“My thought, Captain, we approach a’d’Kef from the west, circling around to olokon.  Once inside, we can proceed to either oshun, or hakan, depending on whether hakan’s defenses activated.  Matope is without exterior guards.  We do not need to enter the palace itself.  There are sentry houses at each gate which as a rule are stocked with provisions.”

 

“Don’t need to enter the palace, huh.”  Bone snorted in disbelief.  He knew Jim too well, and was coming to know Ysaulte’s own curious nature.  He had a feeling they’d end up inside a’d’Kef, regardless.

 

Ysaulte stood and stretched, avoiding Leonard’s gaze.  She had much the same feeling herself.

 

“Let’s go, people.  No sense in delaying further,” Jim remarked.

 

“Yeah, I’m thirsty.  Is the water in your river drinkable, Ysaulte?”

 

“It used to be__ I mean, it will be.  I rather doubt it now.  Ha’limeda must be dry in its banks.  It is generally visible from here.”

 

They resumed walking, staying downslope of the palace and working their way west.  Jim found Spock beside him and shot his friend a rather cockeyed glance.

 

“Yes, Mister Spock?”

 

“Are you all right, Jim?”  The Vulcan wondered seriously, touching thoughts as in meld.  It was so simple to do here.  “This world quite defies logic.”

 

“You seem to be doing all right with it, Spock.”

 

“Are you?”

 

“I’m a little… dazzled, but I’m okay,” Jim reassured, meaning it, and watched some subtle tension drain out of his friend.  “She’s so strong here, Spock… and I don’t know if that should encourage me or make me nervous.”

 

Spock watched that lopsided grin and was hard pressed to restrain an answering smile.  Jim felt it in his mind, anyway. 

 

***

 

aShaiLan was high overhead before anyone spoke again.

 

“The riverbed,” Ysaulte announced tonelessly after carefully removing the small stone from her mouth that Jim, with his distant Plains Indian ancestors, had suggested they try as a remedy to McCoy’s complaint of thirst.  Ysaulte and Spock had been most impressed, for two reasons.  The ancient remedy really did help, and it kept the doctor quiet.

 

Ha’limeda was essentially dry, the banks crumbling into dust.  A few oily puddles of water scattered across the riverbed, along with the bones and carcasses of hundreds of fish and small animals.  The smell of corrupting flesh surrounded everything.

 

Less than a kilometer away, a’d’Kef’s soot dark outer wall was separated from the dying river by a stand of lifeless, leafless trees that extended into an equally dead forest on the opposite bank.  Nobody needed extrasensory perception to verify the absence of any watchers.  The five of them seemed to be the only living creatures around.

 

By sheer effort, the ZaworthIan suppressed her outrage at the sight.  It was an effort her Terran companions weren’t prepared to make.

 

“God, Ysaulte!  How could this happen?  What did Matope’s people do to this land?”  McCoy demanded, while Jim managed to confine his shocked anger to his mind.  That didn’t mean it was less obvious… in fact, the converse was true, reflecting in the spacedark coldness of Ysaulte’s gaze.  She maintained her control even still, permitting herself to meet Spock’s eternal calm.  Mastery of the Unavoidable.  Kaiidth!  Or in the words of her own world, sah’des ka.  It is what is.

 

The Vulcan lowered his head in a half nod, and Ysaulte found the will to answer Leonard’s questions, after a quick check on Dyer’s stability.  The ul ku Tuura boy was fighting his own battles, and doing just fine, shielding himself from the nightmarish countryside as well as their reactions. 

 

“In the beginning, perhaps, the blame deserved of the clan du Me’ereden.  Their treatment of the land harsh, by legend,” she informed them, deliberately softening her voice out of consideration for Dyer.  “Please understand.  For this land, their very presence of occupation was like a cancer eating our Mother’s spirit.  In rejection of it, the land slays itself.”

 

“I don’t understand, Ysaulte.  Why does it matter so much who lives in the palace?”

 

Amazingly enough, Ysaulte smiled at that, her irises swirling turquoise.

 

“You’re going to make me tell you?”  She asked out loud, startling them with her good-humored Standard.  “The House d'Kefirah was created by Za’rai jha’Kefoa and his bond-mate Yrenda tal’Iare, formed with their starchildren out of their love for one another as caretakers and inheritors of the All.”

 

“Divinely inspired?”  Bones stared at the ZaworthIan like he’d never seen her.  “You’re saying, Ysaulte, you believe your family is directly descended of your Creator.”

 

“Yes.  The funny thing is, Leonard, I never used to believe it,” she admitted, filled for an instant with the most incredible serenity.  Heart and mind, she believed now, despite the confusions of existence.  The real discovery here lay in finding her faith; faith that could move mountains.

 

It occurred to Ysaulte what she felt, by legend, was the perfect faith of a Zaltana.

 

“O Lords of Air and Fire,” she swore reflexively, startled into her father’s language.  “James__”

 

“I know, Ysaulte.  I feel it,” Jim reassured without speaking, steadying her when she would have stumbled and working through his own astonishment.  He understood better than she, perceiving implications in her awestruck wonder that made him tremble.  Everything that was happening here was meant by some One as a lesson, meant to restore this very faith to a people who had rather misplaced it over the last four thousand years.

 

Jim looked at his friends, and knew both Spock and McCoy, with their classical education and their intuition, saw the same possibility he did.  Were they midwives to the birth of the fourth Zaltana?

 

“Oh, no!  I refuse to believe that!”  Ysaulte protested wildly, shivering against the force of his conclusion.  “I cannot accept__”

 

“Then don’t.  Don’t try to believe it, don’t try to accept it.  Not yet,” Jim ordered, gripping her upper arms and holding her through the first wave of panic.  “It doesn’t matter what we think.”

 

“I doubt that!”  One sable eyebrow lifted, an achievement Jim appreciated and admired, as the colors warmed in her irises.  Ysaulte of ZaworthIa was always going to be too proud to give in to fright…  not without a fight, anyway.  “I shall quite happily obey thee, a’Tohr, for I don’t want to think about it,” she averred in muddled Standard, elevating the level of her control accordingly.  She would live out these days, act on the moments, by the All.

 

“Spock.  Perhaps my shielding lapsed.”

 

“Our shields secure, Ysaulte,” the Vulcan answered, knowing what she asked.  The Lady’s approval reached him with her smile.

 

“Thou art as palShasar to Yrenda, guardian companion,” she thanked him by mind and watched the tips of his ears darken.  “And you, Leonard?”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“Dyer?”

 

“Oh, I am all right, Lady of stars,” the boy replied by mind.  He was far more aware of things than his elders realized, like most children, and he shared a bone-bred understanding of Ysaulte’s position.  The suicidal anger in the land screamed just beyond the range of his inner hearing, which he well recognized could only be due her protection.  He would not presume to add to her burden by protesting.

 

Ysaulte tilted her head to one side and searched Dyer’s guileless blue eyes (Dyer having decided to match the cool hue of McCoy’s).  She frowned, favoring him with her own glittering stare.

 

“Which one among us sees most clearly, Dyer?”  She asked in an odd tone, and not even Jim could tell whether the Lady reminded, warned, or really wanted the boy’s opinion.  His already high estimation of Dyer went up another notch when the ul ku Tuura stood his ground without flinching, taking the time to think over his answer instead of speaking to Ysaulte’s impatience.

 

“None of us are blind, Elder Sister,” he finally remarked.  “But we don’t see the same things.”

 

The ZaworthIan’s lips twitched.

 

“My thanks, Brother.  You are quite right.”

 

“A rather egalitarian view, however,” Spock, of all people, teased her into laughing out loud, that reflected amusement warming everybody.

 

The Vulcan, satisfied with his efforts, gave them the minute’s peace before motioning north.  Once the party passed through the few dead trees, they would be walking right beside the palace’s outer wall.  Spock had a question.

 

“Is it safe to walk so near?”

 

“The stone itself will shield us,” Ysaulte replied with a lingering grin.  “Course, we could walk in the riverbed with the bones and mud.”

 

“Or we could cross the riverbed and go through what’s left of the forest until we get into the hills,” the doctor pointed out, feeling as qualified as anyone to offer an alternative.  “Jim?”

 

“I have to admit, Doctor, that sounds like a good idea.  Ysaulte?”

 

“As you wish it, James,” she informed him silently and shrugged.  She did not think it mattered, frankly, so he could please himself.

 

“Now, there’s a thought,” Jim said to her blush.  “Let’s go, then.”

 

Half-sliding down the crumbling banks, they picked their way across the riverbed.  It was all too easy to step from dry spot to dry spot; all too easy to avoid what little oily water remained.

 

At the top of the opposite bank, Jim made a circling survey of the land behind them.  There was still nothing and no one to suggest they’d even been noticed.  He gave Spock a hand up the embankment, then Dyer, and watched the Vulcan pull Ysaulte up while Bones stood ready to push.  The scene brought back a lot of memories.  Absolutely unable to help himself, Jim wondered what Ysaulte would look like in Eleen of Capella’s condition… only heavy with his child…

 

Ysaulte gasped audibly, prompting both Spock and McCoy to worriedly ask what was wrong.

 

“Have I injured you, Ysaulte?”

 

“No, Spock, really,” she mumbled, having to say it aloud because every second her anxious friends stayed her from James's side was agony.  The Vulcan finally turned to aid Leonard, freeing Ysaulte to approach her waiting lover and his all too visible dreams.  Trying to be discreet, she held out her hands.

 

Jim wasn’t feeling discreet.  He pulled her hard against him, holding tight and hiding his face in her hair (Spock shepherding Bones and Dyer a bit farther down the bank).  Ysaulte was so warm, flushed with his wishes… and Jim realized how much he wanted wishes, instead of duty.  How much he wanted her.

 

“You’ve got to help me.  I’m so tempted to stay with you here, on your world… take care of everything together.  Matope, ad’Kefirah’za’de.  We could send Bones and Dyer home,” such a given, that Spock would choose to stay.  “We could even release Q’rin from here.”

 

“Oh, my love.  My best beloved James, this temptation great indeed, and the ambition grand, well worthy of a duty sacrificed… yet I cannot risk it.  Neither thee.  What if there is no ‘home’?  This time not ours, a’Tohr du’Enterprise,” his Lady argued with gentle reluctance, holding him as fiercely as he held her.  Jim took a deep breath and felt his pulse slow, calming with his mind while she recalled logic to their situation.  No amount of logic could hide the answering hunger in Ysaulte’s soul, and he drew back enough to see her eyes, dark ZaworthIan storms.  She still wanted part of his dream… and Jim knew which part.

 

“If I wish it, will you make it so?”

 

“Well, yes, my Lord, but thou needs must do a little more than merely wish,” she murmured, amber lightning in her irises.

 

“I do want a permanent place in this dynasty, my Lady fair.”

 

Jim brushed his mouth across hers with a delicacy that stole the air from Ysaulte’s lungs.

 

“For the next ten thousand years,” she promised him, then begged him to please kiss her properly, before she quite lost her mind__ an order Jim delighted in obeying.

 

***

 

Dyer kept his lack of patience to himself this time, better understanding how the Lady came by her fantastic strength.  There was diversion to be had in watching Spock and McCoy.  The Vulcan monitored their surroundings without ever looking at anybody, while the Terran healer stared at the dirt.  It seemed to Dyer his face was sad.

 

“What troubles you, Doctor McCoy?”  He asked in a whisper, unaware of the curious sharpness in his sibilant question.  It brought Spock’s attention.  Particularly when the boy added,  “Do you disapprove of the Lady?”

 

“Not that it’s any of your business, young man,” and McCoy surprised Dyer by reaching out and rubbing the top of his head, “but no, I don’t disapprove of Ysaulte.  How could I?  I disapprove of pain.”

 

“Really, Doctor.  When you yourself have quoted Tennyson to the Lady?”  Spock wondered softly.  “’It is better to have loved and lost…’?”

 

 “Like Ysaulte said, it’s an optimistic view.  How is it going to end without one of them dead?”

 

“It will not end then, Leonard,” the Vulcan replied, astonishing McCoy to a degree that distracted even Jim and Ysaulte.  Spock, helped by Dyer, exorcised the subject of their conversation before it could be apprehended, the doctor dismissing his thoughts as well.

 

“Problem, Bones?”

 

“No, Jim, thanks.  Hadn’t we better get moving?”

 

“Yeah, I guess.”  Jim released Ysaulte rather unwillingly, keeping one of her hands, which he raised to his lips.  “Can’t live on love, huh?”  He teased in the voice unspoken, rewarded with her smile.

 

“I should like to try sometime,” Ysaulte told him wryly, before they turned to join the others.  Jim thanked Spock by mind and felt his unseen grin. 

 

The party started north through the trees, and for whatever reason, the surroundings seemed a little less bleak.

 

***

 

“It must be about two in the afternoon,” the doctor noted unnecessarily, staring over Ysaulte’s shoulders at olokon gate, a few hundred feet in front of them.

 

“If we measured time, it would be,” Ysaulte made the idle reply, her attention focused on sensing past the gate.  Any chance of obtaining supplies from the exterior sentry house had been rendered null by its appearance.  The door swung off its hinges and the roof was gone.  Flat gone.  Ysaulte could only imagine what kind of battle must have taken place to result in this much damage…  probably the very one in which the Me’ereden had slain the Kefirahs, to judge from this aged neglect.  As for olokon itself, it stood open and defenseless.  It looked altogether too easy, which made Ysaulte suspicious.

 

“Spock.”

 

“You need not ask.”  The Vulcan monitored their psionic shielding while Ysaulte made a closer inspection.

 

“There’s nothing there,” Jim said for her.  “So what’s the matter?”

 

“There’s nothing there,” she explained, tone full of self-directed irony.

 

Jim grinned, commiserating.

 

“Still not used to it?”

 

“Never so.  In our time, there are no walls around the Hall.  The gates themselves are just stone markers.  Watchers.”

 

“What happened to the walls?”  Jim wondered.

 

“Legend says when talSherea passed into the next life, the Lady Zariel asked them taken down.  It had been talSherea’s life-long wish to see the walls gone, yet she would never do it, because of the Rihannsu, and because she believed it was not her place.  After all, the walls had stood for six thousand years.

 

“Zariel, however, in her grief at her mother’s death, requested they fall for the memory of the Zaltana, and Za agreed, swallowing the walls whole into the ground.  By reputation, Zariel was what Leonard would call hot-headed… and no remarks about my heritage, Healer, please.”

 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Ysaulte.”

 

“Huh.”  She drew their attention to a smaller hole in the stones, below and just right of olokon gate… an aqueduct for the creek leading off the river, as sere and dusty as poor ha’limeda.

 

“This goes beneath all three walls, and comes up in a pool near the palace gardens.”

 

“How big is it underground?”  Jim inquired with an interest that made Ysaulte frown.

 

“I am quite sure I do not wish to tell you, given your thoughts.”

 

“Just for future reference then,” he coaxed, mainly to see her react.  One of the benefits to telepathy was knowing whether an argument was warranted or a wasted effort.  Jim had a pretty good idea into which category this fell.  “Is it wide enough?”

 

She did not pretend to misunderstand.

 

“An that one crawled,” the ZaworthIan retorted icily, irises crystallizing.

 

“What’s the difference?  We’ve spent half our time in caves lately,” Jim prodded, and watched that eyebrow rise.  “You just don’t want to crawl into a’d’Kef.  Admit it.”

 

“Truth told,” his Lady shrugged, a spreading smile on her face.  “Given the choice, I should rather crawl out.”

 

Dyer thought this was pretty funny, and started giggling, his amusement fueled by the doctor’s muttered memories concerning some of the places he and Jim had crawled out of… and in what condition.

 

“Ahem.  Bones.”

 

“Right, Jim.”

 

They crossed dry ha’limeda and walked easily toward olokon gate.  Going through it was a distinct anticlimax, no physical nor psionic barriers encountered.  Ysaulte steered them right, past another dilapidated sentry house, one of a number of small structures built along the walls which were separated by a good ten meters.  Each wall was about that high; too, smoothly mortared stone bearing the unmistakable stamp of master craftsmanship.

 

“Ysaulte, who built the palace and the walls?”

 

“I do not know.  Legend holds it was created by Mother Za Herself, as womb to the children of her spirit,” she answered absently, pausing here and there to peer inside a few of the nooks passed as they headed southwest.  The gently curving walls evoked a happy familiarity, being reminiscent of the saucer section corridors on Enterprise.

 

“Ah.  Here.”  Ysaulte finally found what she was looking for, ducking inside a cubicle and rummaging through a box from which she dragged several large pieces of dark green cloth.  These turned out to be burnoose-style hooded cloaks.  “Lined, see?  They keep the heat off.  They do!  Really, try it!”

 

They reluctantly complied with her impatient demand, and Jim’s initial self-consciousness faded with the realization that she was right.  The material, supple and finely woven, did manage to draw away their body heat as well as deflecting the sun’s rays.

 

“Well, I like it.  Nice and theatrical,” the doctor commented, watching Spock with a grin.  “Spock, you always look good in a cape.”

 

“As you do, Leonard,” Ysaulte assured, kneeling to measure the excess of Dyer’s cloak and wishing it gone with a quick, barely perceptible push of force.  “There.  That’s better.  All are suited to b’mohsaid, the walkers’robe.”  She got up and pulled hers on, quite unaware of Dyer’s wondering stare.  The three men were at least able to keep their eyes down.

 

“Is there a significance to its possession, Lady Ysaulte?”

 

“Indeed, yes, Mister Spock.  The walkers’robe demonstrates to all you were welcomed here at a’d’Kef,” and despite her best efforts, the ZaworthIan’s irises blackened with her dark anger at the destruction around them.  Jim caught a sense of what drove her, and what made crawling into a’d’Kef so abhorrent, and he could only ask himself why he hadn’t seen it earlier.

 

“You’ll be born here inside these walls, heiress to the palace.”

 

“There are no walls and it is no palace in our time,” she said shortly and walked on, cloak swirling.  Chuckling under his breath, Jim took Dyer’s hand and followed her, Bones and Spock behind them.

 

“It will be,” Jim guessed silently, and met with her denial, dropped the subject.  “Do we look like real ZaworthIan pilgrims now?”

 

“So long as Spock and I keep our hoods on,” Ysaulte replied, sparing a wry glance over her shoulder at the Vulcan’s somber compliance, which she then echoed. 

 

***

 

"We near oshun.”

 

That gate was more impressive.  Shut and locked, paired stone panels as high as the walls were carved top to bottom with a delicate flowing script Jim felt he could read, given time.  A lot of time.

 

“Translation?”

 

“Word for word?”

 

“Condensed version, please,” Jim shook a finger at Spock.  “You are a bad influence, Mister,” he teased in a stage whisper, relieved when he felt Ysaulte’s gradual amusement.  She’d been as tense and impenetrable as these walls while they’d looked through oshun’s exterior sentry house.  It was in better repair than the first two, but just as bare of provisions.  Jim knew Ysaulte was scared to death he was right about this fourth Zaltana business, and he was willing to quit thinking about it.  Consciously, anyway.

 

Ysaulte sighed, and commenced reading.

 

“’Welcome ye worthy travelers’, da da da… ‘Come ye upon our Mother’s heart ye seeds of her perfect union’… the standard warning about being ‘pure intended’ or else… and the key to oshun’s opening.”

 

Before Jim could stop her, Ysaulte laid one palm flat over the sealed seam separating the panels.  She gasped and winced, and Jim felt with her a sharp, glittering pain that vanished without leaving even its memory.

 

“Oshun, a’khar sha’deh du Khyn, al sha’tr,” the Lady requested politely, and the gate proved itself a creation of will by parting soundlessly open.  Ysaulte didn’t step through, turning to ask Jim for orders.  “Do we go in here, or go on to hakan?”

 

“Give me your hand,” he commanded instead, and such was his tone Ysaulte obeyed at once.

 

Jim held her palm open.  A shallow laceration crossed its center, oozing that peculiar purplish-red blood.

 

“Damn, Ysaulte!”

 

“It’s nothing, really.  Look, now,” and the cut disappeared, leaving a thin white line.  “A necessary test, verifying us in oshun’s view.  Otherwise, it would not open.”

 

Jim dropped her hand, wanting to shake her so badly he was afraid to touch her.

 

“I’d appreciate it if you’d discuss these things with me beforehand, Ambassador,” he said out loud, giving some unspoken orders with a lot less diplomacy.  “I absolutely forbid you to spill another drop of blood on our behalf, Ysaulte.  Do you understand me?”

 

“Yes, Sir,” she answered, voice properly meek and not quite reflecting in her eyes.

 

They glared at each other until it got funny, then startled their companions by laughing together.

 

“Presumptuous of me, given my recent suggestions,” Jim dared to tell her, smiling into those emerald irises.  “Give me your hand,” ordered this time by mind.  Jim bowed over Ysaulte’s fingers with that studied conspicuous gallantry she so adored.  “Thank you for opening the gate,” he murmured, kissing her palm then straightening to offer his arm.

 

“You are welcome, a’Tohr.  It was your own idea, truly,” Ysaulte informed him, wrapping her fingers around his forearm to still their trembling.

 

“I had a feeling it was,” Jim admitted, remembering his ‘heiress to the palace’ remark.  “I’m going to have to be more careful,” he noted, walking his Lady through oshun gate.  Dyer, Bones, and Spock followed, all three shaking their heads.

 

“Right to hakan, left to harith?”

 

“Which opens onto the gardens, yes, James.”  Ysaulte motioned toward the fourth sentry house, in the best condition of any yet.  “We should look here first,” so they did, again finding nothing.  “Harith provides more cover as we enter the palace grounds.”

 

“Harith it is, then, a’Tohrza,” Jim decided, and the party started off northeast.  There was actual grass along the grounds of the inner ring, pale and stunted.

 

“Greater ease from ad’Kefirah’za’de’s wrath lies within the palace walls,” Ysaulte said to confirm their observations.

 

“So the Me’ereden used a’d’Kef’s own defenses.”

 

“To a point.  Akilah will remove that option from Matope.”

 

This walk was longer, but was made more tolerable by their cloaks.  By the time they came upon harith gate everyone had their hoods on to protect themselves from the midafternoon heat.

 

There was a well inside the fifth sentry house that held brackish water.  Ysaulte wished it clear, figuring the walls would shield her too.  Thirst was becoming an imperative, especially Dyer’s, although the boy labored mightily to hide this.

 

Jim used the tail of his cloak to wipe out the well’s bucket, lowering it to fill, enjoying the peace of Ysaulte’s loving thanks when he raised it up and handed it first to Dyer.

 

“Slow to start, little Brother,” she advised, smiling over his head at Jim.  The boy took a few cautious sips, then passed the bucket to McCoy, who drank and gave it to Spock.  The Vulcan had a mouthful (that tasted like magic, he thought), giving the pail next to Ysaulte.  He correctly interpreted the determination on his captain’s face.  She sensed it, or course, taking her portion without speaking, but when she handed the bucket to Jim her insistence showed just as plainly.

 

He grinned at her and drank, agreeing with Spock on the taste before refilling the bucket.  There was enough for everyone to have another swallow.  The fifth sentry house boasted nothing else of use to them, so Jim and Ysaulte turned their attentions to harith gate itself.

 

Two more stone panels reached for the top of the walls, but these were polished to an almost gemlike luster that would have blinded them if the sun had been in the east.  There was no writing on them.

 

“You will tell me what has to be done__”

 

“Before I do it.  Yes, my Lord.”  Ysaulte rubbed the back of her neck and inspected harith with narrowed gaze.  “I shouldn’t think there’d be much mystery.  May I ask it?”

 

“Do you really think it’ll be that easy?”  Bones asked, interrupted by Jim’s nod.

 

“Harith, al sha’tr vi, a’khar sha’deh du Khyn,” the ZaworthIan said to the stone, and no one was more surprised than she when harith gate answered.

 

“Drei’kharil’hma sud’shadhehkhyn ij’al, ris va’badur”

 

Ysaulte stepped back a few feet.

 

“What did it say?  I didn’t understand it.”

 

“Harith says ‘of first blood and sister thou art but out of thy time, begone’.”

 

“Can you reason with it?  It doesn’t feel… sentient, not like Radomil,” Jim said.

 

“It isn’t.  Harith so long exposed to Talent it holds some of its own, and not enough for reason, I imagine… but I shall try.”

 

Ysaulte held her still-scarred palm up to the gate.

 

“Al sha’tr voih khar, sha’deh du Khyn, al’tris h’va t’lanh suhl’t, harith.  Oshun tr’sha al t’sai.”

 

“Drei’kharil’hma sud’shadhehkhyn ij’al, ris va’badur,” harith gate repeated without inflection, then added, “Oshun al’t’sha misihwo’rdu.  Khar’sh?”

 

Ysaulte cleared her throat.

 

“I said to harith ‘open for me, thou art commanded, for I am a Sister of the Way speaking the voice of truth to which oshun yielded’.  Harith says, ‘oshun has its own price, and so doth it, and will I pay’?”

 

“Oh, hell,” Bones swore quietly, sentiments Jim shared.

 

“What’s harith’s price?”  Jim asked, disliking the diamond bright aggravation so evident in her irises.

 

“Or’du misi’hwo, harith?”

 

“Khar’sh va’badur.”

 

“’Pay or begone’,” she translated with a patience she did not feel.

 

“The order yours, James.”

 

“Handle it,” he told her reluctantly, aware she did not intend to submit to a damned thing.  “Should we move away?”

 

“Jim__”  McCoy began to protest, dazzled into silence by Ysaulte’s brilliant smile.

 

“You do me much honor, beloved,” she said to her lover, hands on her hips as she faced harith directly.  “Al’minowa tal’sha’deh, harith.  A’hara du’mis hwo’du ba.”

 

“What’d she say?”  The doctor whispered, taken aback when Dyer answered.

 

“She said ‘I speak with my Sisters’ moving voice, harith.  I seize the due, price mine’.”

 

“What?  Jim!”

 

“No, don’t disturb him, Leonard.  He supports her.”  The boy didn’t get a chance to explain anything else before the ZaworthIan pitted her will against harith’s, taking their breath with her focused, balanced strength.

 

“Al’minowa asa’Za, alj’hava w’kaen’d khar’badur.”  This threat translated itself into their minds.  “I speak with the moving voice of my Mother Za, of whom I am well beloved.  Must I myself order thine own departure?”

 

One minute… two… and harith gate parted, stone doors swinging open.  Had Ysaulte, Jim, or Spock been less quick-footed it would have struck them.

 

“Sore loser,” the Lady sneered, making a rude hand gesture at the gate as they walked through that startled Jim and Bones to muffled laughter.  All five stood at last on the palace grounds; a’d’Kef’s neglected gardens before them.  Not everything was completely dead, although the surviving trees and bushes had a withered, scabrous appearance.

 

There was more land enclosed by the three walls than Jim had fully appreciated.  He could see two single story stone buildings almost three hundred meters away.  They still looked deserted.

 

Ysaulte stopped to close harith.  The panels had scarcely joined when the sun came out from behind a passing cloud, backlighting the entire party in its reflected glare.

 

Jim watched the corner of Ysaulte’s mouth tilt in an expression of pure satisfaction, and it occurred to him she had also willed that cloud… so no one in the palace would question harith’s interrupted flash.

 

“Akilah has to have sensed that.”

 

“She will think was Matope.”

 

“”And Matope?  Who will he think it was?”

 

“Akilah, of course,” she told him, laughing inside.  “Calling storms a family Talent.”

 

“Well done,” Jim complimented, lowering his head in soundless tribute and hardly able to straighten against the fierce love and pride he felt for her, and in her.  “I don’t know how you do it.”

 

“Thou doth.  I do nothing without thee, James.”

 

“You can believe that if you want, my Lady fair,” he answered, smiling into her mind.  One of these days she was going to see herself the way he saw her, wearing her power like the walkers’robe, as visible as the rainbow glow thrown by harith gate… mirrored in those irridescent irises, truest evidence of her capability.  “You have no limits here, Ysaulte.”

 

“The notion comforts you?”  She realized, surprised.

 

“I’m out of my depth.”

 

“Thou art mistaken,” she scolded in that tone which defied argument, her gaze skewering him.  “Be thou not over modest, nor presuming too great a humility.  Walk thou a’d’Kef, my sorcerer Lord James.  The palace thine as much as mine, so sworn by my oathwords to thee and time notwithstanding.  Know too, wast ye not so, wast ye less to me, thou wouldst still be deserving of our Mother.  Believe me… and don’t you get spooked now,” she tacked on in worried Standard, making him laugh at the contrast to her formal, unspoken ZaworthIan.

 

“Forgive me my disarray,” he quite deliberately used her language to reply, winning the warmth of amused reassurance, carried with her understanding through their bond. 

 

“Yes, James.  You see whatever you want, and hold, therefore, more power than any.”

 

“As long as I hold you, Ysaulte,” Jim told her, not for the first time.

 

Turning his attention back to their surroundings, Jim directed Spock into the last sentry house.  The Vulcan emerged with an empty rucksack and an oddly shaped flask that dangled at the end of a woven strap.

 

“There appears to be nothing in this canteen, however__”

 

“Spock!  A calth!”  Ysaulte accepted the flask from Spock with a pleased chuckle.  “Surely our Mother smiles.”

 

She rubbed her hands over it, brushing off the surface dirt, and they could see the bottle was carved of wood, completely seamless, and taking on a gleaming shine under the Lady’s touch.

 

“You sensed its psionic overlay, Spock,” Ysaulte remarked, wiping off her palms then working the stopper out of the flask’s top.  “Here.  To the finder, first drink.  It’s tradition,” she added firmly, handing it back to him.

 

Spock peered into the bottle, eyebrow rising when he discovered it was full of liquid.   He put one long finger in, brought it to his nose, sniffed, and finally tasted; a process the ZaworthIan observed with a silent demand of her Mother for patience.  At length, he lifted the bottle to his lips and tried a sip.  That eyebrow climbed even higher.

 

“The calth is a seed from the tree cal’dr’anth tem, which grows in the mountains at that place where ha’limeda begins.  Given into the proper hands, and the proper Talent, the calth once hollowed, polished, and correctly, ah, ensorcelled will never run dry.”

 

The Vulcan spared her another disbelieving sideways look, but took a deeper drink then passed it to Dyer.

 

“It is not water.”

 

“No.  Neither is it fermented nor mood altering.  The nearest description would be tree sap.  Nectar.”  Ysaulte put her head down and toed her way along a furrow, turning up what looked like dirt clods.  She picked one up and dusted it, presenting it to Jim.  He could see now it was some kind of bulb vegetable, and tried not to eye it too… dimly.

 

“Taste it,” she encouraged, with rather more forbearance than she’d shown stubborn harith.  This was not lost on Jim.  He bit into the thing with his eyes closed, amusing Ysaulte to no end.  Surprisingly enough, while stringy and tough, it wasn’t flavorless.  He lifted one eyelid.

 

“Well?”

 

“Oh, it’s the best thing I’ve eaten in the last twenty-four hours,” he answered straight-faced.

 

“Huh.  The only thing,” she snorted, handing some to Dyer, Spock, and Leonard, who passed the calth back to her.  “These are called degula,” she informed them, taking her drink and giving Jim the bottle.

 

Bones raised one in her direction.

 

“A toast.  To Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,” he announced, biting into his degula.

 

“Nietzsche?  Spock?”

 

“A nineteenth century Terran philosopher who is best remembered for the quote__”

 

“Wait, Spock,” the doctor mumbled.  “They’re not bad.”

 

“__’that which does not kill me makes me stronger’.”

 

“I see,” the Lady retorted frostily.  “A theorist on evolution, I suppose.”

 

“That’s right.  Survival of the fittest,” Bones said in a hurry, and had another bite, using the excuse to shut up.  Dyer started giggling, nearly choking himself, and Jim added to the general distraction by pointing out the calth was still full, even after his drink.

 

“Why did it look empty to Spock?”

 

“He did not rub it, James.  Are you not knowing of Aladdin’s lamp?”  Ysaulte teased, patting Dyer on the back and politely ignoring McCoy, to the doctor’s relief.  “In truth, Spock did not ask the calth to reveal its contents, so I shall offer yet another example of the way things work on this world, my friends.”

 

“’Ask and ye shall receive’.”

 

“As thou wish it, so shall it be.”

 

The calth made another round, its cool, faintly sweet liquid thirst quenching.  Ysaulte took the rucksack from Spock and dug up several more degula (which was precisely what the Vulcan had predicted to himself she’d do, having seen the gardens, when he’d come across the bag).  She moved over a row to add some carrot-looking tubers to their collection, and gave them a few more idle moments before ambling back with a question.

 

“So, Captain.  We have food.  We have drink.  What do you want to__”  She cut herself completely off, head lifting and cocking to one side as she listened.  “We have company.  Be not alarmed, but do not move, please.”

 

“Ysaulte.”

 

“It’s all right.  Watch.”

 

Through the trees stalked a large, long-limbed felinoid, which could have been a cousin of Muuye’s irritable nammle, although on closer inspection, Jim had to judge this animal’s teeth and claws bigger.  And sharper.  It padded towards them, fixing its gleaming green eyes on each of them in turn, and Jim didn’t think he could have moved if he wanted.

 

“Haidar,” the ZaworthIan murmured, and the animal paused in front of her with a huffing growl that sounded like a greeting.

 

Ysaulte opened her palm to its muzzle, the same palm already marked by her time here.  Jim found he could indeed move, and did, starting for his Lady when the animal took her hand in its mouth.

 

“Halt, James,” she ordered by mind, the demand overwhelming reaction.  “I am not injured.”  With her free hand, Ysaulte stroked the top of that great head, and a rumbling purr issued forth, tickling her fingers.  “Praise the All, he only holds my hand, yes, haidar?  Kha’al d’su?”

 

Forced to stillness, Jim heard her ask the animal its name, sensing an intelligence in it that the Muuyean version  had lacked.

 

“I am Tohon,” it answered in the voice unspoken, with eyes only for the Lady who continued her caresses.

 

“Tohon.  Thou art a fine haidar,” she acknowledged gravely, and Jim understood this animal was very young.

 

“Kha’el d’su, a’Tohrza?  Fi’lsht’ il’hja do?”  The haidar tugged at her fingers, asking Ysaulte who she was, because he knew she belonged here, yet he had never seen her.

 

“Al’sud Ysaulte d’Kefirah, Tohon,” she answered, telling it simply that she had been on a long journey, which the haidar seemed to accept.  Its reasoning was not up to space and time travel, being at a mental age akin to a five year old Terran.

 

“Approach me slowly, James, and I shall introduce you, and you, Dyer.  You did wonder at my treatment of your ul ku Tuura sentry, yes?”  Jim and Dyer came nearer, cautiously, and Ysaulte dropped to her knees to put her eyes on a level with the boy’s.  "The haidar are a’d’Kef’s sentries, understand?  This is Tohon, and he is very young.  I expect his mother does not know where he is,” she added by mind, and the haidar lowered his head in a shamefaced gesture that confirmed her words.  “Tohon, al’du loe Dyer d’Kefirah, t’khae’l d’Tohr James, al’du’Kefirah,” she told the haidar, who obediently released her fingers to sniff at Dyer and Jim.

 

"Spock.  Leonard.”  She called them over and made sure the haidar knew them too.  The animal huffed his hot breath on both men and padded off with a broadcast wish for food that sent a chill up Jim’s spine.

 

“Haidar eaters of fish, mostly,” Ysaulte assured him.  They watched the animal disappear back into the underbrush at the northern edge of the gardens.  She sighed to herself and blessed every truth in every old legend she’d ever heard; as good as a confession to her listening starlord.

 

“You weren’t too sure it’d stop to ask you who you were, huh.  Just how big will that thing get?”  Jim asked with well-played calm, helping Ysaulte back on her feet.

 

“Oh, about twice his current size,” she replied wryly.  “And no, I was not sure.  A grown haidar might not have been so relaxed about our presence here.  Tohon will tell his kin he met us, and it is well for us that we did, for they will sense no threat in us through him and will not challenge us now.”

 

Jim shook his head, and didn’t let her go.  Not yet.

 

“Remind me to play poker with you sometime.  Did Iananthe take them to Etumuuyea with her?”

 

“No.  The species differ, nammle is less evolved… but I expect the Lady ancestor cultivated their presence among the ul ku Tuura because of our fondness for the haidar.  In our time, they co-exist among us, self-governing sentient partners__  Did you think we bipeds the only intelligence on Za?”

 

“It’s one of those stupid human assumptions.  We thought that about our own world for centuries.  Why haven’t the haidar attacked the Me’ereden?”  Jim asked curiously.

 

“I imagine they have.  We do not see Matope out walking the grounds, do we.”  Ysaulte rubbed the back of her neck.  “Your wishes, James?  We have no need of entering the palace itself, as I hoped.”

 

“Don’t we?”  Jim moved behind her and massaged the back of her neck himself.  Her muscles were tight with apprehension.  “You’re afraid to go in.  Why?”

 

“I am filled with resentment for the Me’ereden’s doings, and would not willingly lay mine eyes on Matope.  Even knowing the one’s fate, I might be tempted to interfere,” she told him, relaxing under his hands.

 

“That’s not the only reason.”

 

Feeling too well understood, Ysaulte bent her head forward to give him better access to a particularly painful spot.

 

“I am fearful of actually stepping foot in a’d’Kef palace.  It is not my Sisters’ Hall.”

 

“You have just as much right here as there, if not more, and you should see it, Ysaulte.  This is the living past of your world.  When we go home, and you report this to your Sisters, do you really want to tell them you didn’t go inside?”

 

“Rather than explain the taking of unnecessary risk?  Absolutely.”  Jim felt her smile.  Poker, huh.  “Raise or fold,” she challenged, twisting about in his arms.  That shining gaze transfixed him, empowering while it weakened.  Never able to resist her, Jim laughed and kissed his Lady.

 

“I want to see it,” he informed Ysaulte, lifting his head.  “Call.”

 

“Unfair.”

 

“But it works.”

 

“Even so, a’shas,” Ysaulte agreed helplessly.  “I fold.”  She caught Spock and Leonard looking at her and shrugged in their direction.  “What can I do?  Win some, lose some.”

 

“Well, I for one am glad.  I was afraid the captain wouldn’t convince you,” Dyer remarked with an impish grin.  “How much do I owe you, Doctor?”

 

Spock’s eyebrow went up, which was all the ZaworthIan needed to see to free her own laughter… which was all the rest of them needed.  They started across the gardens with a push from shared amusement.

 

“How do the haidar get in?”  It occurred to Jim to wonder.

 

“The haidar possess their own ways.”

 

“Are there other intelligent species besides people and haidar?”  Dyer asked next, his interest further aroused when she had to think over her answer.  “How many?”  He rephrased at the Lady’s preoccupation.

 

“At last count, our time, forty-seven forms of animal life with some sort of intellectual capacity, including two species believed more advanced than we.  Also twelve types of plants given the voice unspoken and the will to use it.”  She pointed to the calth, which Spock had ended up carrying by default.  “One the cal’dr’anth tem tree.”

 

“More advanced species?”  McCoy inquired doubtfully.

 

“Yes.  Hryba, living in Za’s oceans, and the tal’Adares.  They are shapechangers.”

 

“Have you ever seen one?”  Dyer was fascinated.

 

“Once,” Ysaulte replied.  “When I was a child, one visited my Sisters to petition them for their help.  There was an illness among the tal’Adares beyond their skills to contain.  A cure was reached by my mother, the Healer e’Sherea.”  Memories clouded those ZaworthIan irises, and nobody needed Jim’s lifted hand to keep silent while they waited for her to continue.  She paused near the end of the rows, looking through the brush and trees at the featureless stone walls of a’d’Kef palace.  Jim knew she was seeing a past that wasn’t going to happen for another ten thousand years.

 

“Dasan Yarkona came himself, Prince of the tal’Adares, from their home in the deepest part of Nahele forest.  The first of his kind to do so since Drazailte’s days.  Understand, the tal’Adares are regarded with great awe, even by the sha’deh du Khyn.  Knowing this, it was Yarkona’s choice to come appearing as a child himself in the hope of avoiding undue… fright.”  She turned to grin at Dyer.  “I was the first to see him, as it happened.  My age then less than yours now, Brother, and my Talents immature, but I sensed a presence and left the Hall.  On the banks of ha’limeda I found a boy.  He was a stranger to me, which I thought immaterial, for as I told you, many strangers come to see this place.  It seemed to me this one was stranger than most.  He was fair, pale of eyes and hair, which is uncommon among our people.

 

“I went right up and said hello, of course.  Not for Aesaulte’h of ch’Rihan to be afraid of a boy! and me, with my reputation to maintain, escorted the one directly into the Hall, where he was recognized immediately.   Ah, my, what a scene ensued!  e’Sherea almost attacked Yarkona herself before he had a chance to explain.

 

“I never saw him actually change shape, Dyer, for which I apologize.”

 

“Is the palace entered on the west side?  I see no openings,” Spock commented, distracting them all.

 

"From here no portal seen, and I will tell you, were you nearer, still the portal hidden.  These doors lie beyond the reach of mortal vision, gained only by mind,” Ysaulte said, marking their bemusement.   “Shall we go?”

 

“Oh, please,” Bones insisted graciously.  “I can’t wait to get a load of this.”

 

“Huh.”  She picked a path through the brush and walked up to the first building with no particular caution.

 

“You know where Matope and his men are,” Jim inferred.

 

“Of course,” Ysaulte said, going left around the structure.  “In our time, the three buildings are joined.  This wing belongs to the School of the Way.  The Great Hall, properly named a’d’Kef’dn, is the larger building in the middle.  The west wing is used for visitors.  In Akilah’s time, the west building is a barracks that housed her father’s army.  That is where Matope is, with his retainers.  Small wonder the Me’ereden cannot bear the Hall itself, for it does center power, and carrying those attendant risks.”

 

Turning the corner, Jim could see how the three buildings faced south.  He finally caught sight of hakan gate.  Instead of the stone panels that had fashioned the other gates, this gap in the walls was welded together by a veritable bonfire, a tiny sun caught in constant nova.  Hot air shimmered around it, increasing its supernatural appearance.  This was further enhanced by a lack of visual fuel.

 

“It seems so real.”

 

“Who said it wasn’t?  I promise you, if you stick your fingers in it, they will burn.”  Moving until she stood directly between the palace and the gate, Ysaulte looked through the flames.  “Hakan is activated only at the inner level, see?"

 

“I’ll take your word for it.  What about the palace?”  Jim was impatient to get inside, uneasy without cover even knowing they were shielded.  “Sorry.  Human nature.”

 

“Primitive instinct?”  She countered with a wicked smile.  “I forgive you, and what about the palace?  No doors are hidden to you.  If you need to hear it said, beloved, you opened your mind to me, and you don’t rely on open eyes to see.”

 

Taking his shoulders, Ysaulte turned Jim away from hakan’s fire to face the soot gray stone of the palace wall.  He laid his hands against the rock, rubbing a spot clean on a whim.  It glowed like a pearl, almost opalescent, and Jim shivered at the temptation to merely wish it clean, knowing he could make it so.  a’d’Kef restored, gilded in the sunset.

 

His Lady sighed beside him, that ache of want once acknowledged, easing.

 

Jim touched her cheek, leaving a dusty smudge neither noticed as he told her again how much he loved her for giving him a voice.  It was more than that, though.  She’d given him a world.

 

“a’d’Kef’dn, al sha’tr vi,” he requested of the palace wall, in perfect confidence a door would appear and open.  One materialized instantly, fully parted to the Hall’s shadowed interior.

 

Jim bowed Ysaulte inside and followed, blinded by both the rush of her pleasure and the changed lighting.  His sight was a minute adjusting, particularly when Dyer, Bones, and Spock came in behind them and the entrance vanished.  It was another long moment before Jim could comprehend what his eyes were telling him.

 

By science or sorcery, a’d’Kef’dn’s interior represented a grand example of metamorphosis.   Vaulted ceilings stretched away above their heads, far steeper than the simple stone exterior could explain or support.  The Great Hall came into view; a span longer than it was high, studied in elegance and function despite the lingering evidence of damage to walls and furnishings.

 

The ZaworthIan flinched, caught unawares by the telempathic echoes of murder and bloodshed.  Once again, Jim was called upon to hold her.  She hid nothing this time, trusting to his balance  __Khorodon du’Kefirah, locked in battle with Malik du Me’ereden, the King of the Fire Throne defending family, lives and land …  right here, struck down by his assassins’ swords, the Lady Adia next; Adia, who swore revenge on the Me’ereden’s eternal souls, dying screaming her warnings to her daughter “Akilah!” such a cold and bitter thing…  Khorodon!  O Khorodon!  Woe to we without thee, Fire King child of Fire__  then the bitterness faded, replaced with a memory of grief that forced their eyes shut before it too passed… and older memories took their place.  Khorodon, tall and broad and handsome, laughing with an auburn-haired baby dangling in his arms; the Lady Adia, slender and beautiful, laughing with him, love and joy and happiness all entwined before that, too, faded away.

 

Opening their eyes, the party found itself standing inside the Hall as it really was, a long low room plain but warm, an atrium to this spellbound building that radiated a number of closed doors.  At its north end the floor rose a little, meeting the far wall in heavy panes of leaded glass that were coated with opacifying grime.  The sole piece of furniture there was an unremarkable wooden chair, set with its back to the north.  Ysaulte approached it like one hypnotized.

 

“James, the Fire Throne!”  She stopped herself with an effort, without concealing the sudden wild hunger she felt, a demand generated as much from the chair itself as from her own mind.  Sit, and take her due__

 

Ysaulte turned away, putting out one hand to stop Dyer when he would have walked past her.

 

“No, Brother.  For thee or me to take the Fire Throne would send out a message for all the galaxy to hear, even as we hear it now.”

 

“But it’s ours, Ysaulte,” the boy could not help but argue, shaking in the psionic winds of need and trying to fight… an endeavor sustained by the Lady’s own fierce will.

 

“Ours, yes.  Ours by blood, yet not by right, Dyer.  Fault not the Fire Throne for calling thee, for thou too a child of fire, du’Kefirah.  Rather, find the logic the Throne lacks.  This within thee, Brother,” and she took her hand away, waiting.  Dyer did not disappoint her.  Who among them could?  He sighed, and shielded, wishing that siren song of possession out of his head before he remembered their otherworldly audience.

 

“Forgive me, friends,” he apologized with that innate courtesy they all admired.  “It is a thing of our shared blood.”

 

“I understand,” Jim responded quietly, and he did, feeling his Lady’s every mood and whim as well as a few of his own.  One glance at Spock’s dark gaze told him his Vulcan friend felt the chair’s emanations too, and what McCoy couldn’t feel he could certainly guess at.  Jim rephrased himself.  “We understand. It’s all right.”  He laughed shortly.  “Can you imagine, Bones, standing in Camelot, with Excalibur in your hand and the Empire at your feet?”

 

The doctor nodded, something close to sympathy in his eyes.

 

Ysaulte found the strength to move at last, motioning to a door on the left side of the room.

 

“There are the kitchens.  They are deserted.”  She sounded very calm, but she kept her back to the wooden chair with telling deliberation.  Jim understood another unhappy, unspoken fact and had to give it voice.

 

“No member of the House du’Kefirah will ever sit in the Fire Throne again.”

 

“Never,” Ysaulte answered steadily.  “On the morrow, with Akilah’s destruction of a’d’Kef, so will go the Fire Throne into eternity.  I could wish Dyer’s vision satisfied, for to see the Throne seated is to see aShaiLan’s power brought to ground and wielded, the power of which hakan gate merely an echo.  It cannot be.  That power died with Khorodon du’Kefirah, and I will not interfere.”

 

“And when Akilah recreates a’d’Kef?”

 

“It does not include the Fire Throne.  Price paid.”

 

“The price for destroying the palace?  Leaving Drazailte and Yvethe to pay for Radomil’s creation?”  Bones asked, wondering if he had it straight, ever would, or even could.

 

“Destruction always carries a price.  Neither can one create something from nothing, although creation is more kindly regarded by the All than destruction, and therefore payment may be postponed,” Ysaulte tried to clarify the doctor’s confusion.

 

“For thousands of years.”

 

“Yes.  The stars turn by the millennia and know not time, Leonard.  How much more the will of All?”

 

“It doesn’t seem fair, Ysaulte.”

 

“It is not a question of fairness.  It is a question of balance.”

 

“I’d like to see more of the palace,” Jim put in smoothly, interrupting any further debate.  “Including the kitchen, Ysaulte.”

 

“As you wish it, James,” Ysaulte was glad to reply, moving to the door.  There was nothing supernatural about this portal.  Plain wood hung on beaten metal hinges, latched with string and bar like an old Earth colonial cabin.

 

“What are our chances of finding anything else to eat?  Not that I’ve got anything against those degula, now,” the doctor added hastily as they proceeded down a corridor, Spock closing the door behind them.

 

“I expect rations are growing most thin, but perhaps we will find the cupboard not quite bare,” she hoped, leading them into a large room that housed a number of hearths, cabinets, and stone ovens.  Spock’s luck still held, the Vulcan coming across some hard rolls and a couple of jars of nut-flavored paste that joined the vegetables in the ZaworthIan’s sack, which Jim insisted on carrying as it grew heavier.  McCoy found a bag of dried fruit chips that she was pleased to add, but Dyer won the most congratulations for discovering, wrapped in soft cloth and hidden under a loose stone in the corner, a fair-sized round of yellow cheese.

 

“I don’t know how the Me’ereden overlooked this,” he remarked as he put it in the rucksack.

 

“Their vision insufficient to a’d’Kef’s secrets,” Ysaulte told him, her head tilted to one side in that listening posture she unconsciously assumed.

 

"Someone’s coming?”

 

“Time for us to go,” she said softly, pointing to a half-door set in the north wall.  “That will take us back outside, behind the palace.”

 

“Why is it so short?”  Dyer asked in a whisper, opening it.

 

“It is a haidar door,” she said, irises glittering when she gave the boy one more instruction.  “Leave it open after we pass.”

 

“Ysaulte.”

 

“James, these doors are not to be closed.”

 

“But if the haidar are in here tomorrow__”

 

“They won’t be, not by the time of Akilah’s coming.”

 

Jim quit protesting, crouching down to squeeze out the door, followed by Spock and McCoy.  He felt Ysaulte join her mind to Dyer’s and lay their will on the door, wishing it to look shut after they left to all eyes but their own, and the haidar.  Jim had known this was a thing she could do.  He’d sensed the possibilities of her reach through their shared perception, and still he had trouble accepting the evidence of his physical sight.  The door looked sealed, locked, and part of the wall, impervious… until he focused on it by mind.  Then he could see it wide open.

 

Ysaulte stepped away from the wall, Dyer in tow, inspecting the results with a satisfaction that didn’t mask her relief at not having to pass by the Fire Throne again.  Enforcing Dyer’s and her own denial of their inheritance had proven most difficult.

 

Jim was aware of that.  He took his Lady’s hand and led her back toward the gardens.  Dyer, Spock, and Bones stayed close behind with that subliminal empathy they shared here__ would have shared anywhere, on any planet.

 

“I should like to leave a’d’Kef now, before I talk myself out of my better judgment, please,” Ysaulte entreated earnestly.  “I confess to thee, my Lord, it calls me still.  Be thou not mislead by the Fire Throne’s meek appearance.  Seen by mind, it burns.”

 

“How far away do you need to get?”  He asked her, feeling the pull of the Fire Throne himself.  It was as if the thing had flung unseen arms out to grab at Ysaulte, begging her not to leave it…

 

“At least through harith,” she said, immediately contradicting herself with a shake of her head.  “No.  That’s ridiculous.  We could stay in the east wing tonight in perfect safety, for Matope can open no door I close.”

 

Jim recognized this arrogant bravado and ignored it.  The strain on the ZaworthIan’s mind was incredible, created by more than the Fire Throne’s siren song, as bad as that was.

 

“You want off the palace grounds.  Why?  What are you sensing?”

 

“I… perceive the disaster impending.  Past simply knowing of it, I mean.  Tomorrow smells like lightning on the wind.  Come to think on it, that may be precisely what Akilah intends.”  Revelation lit those swirling irises.  “Perhaps she warns our gracious host du Me’ereden.”  The faintly malicious sarcasm lacing Ysaulte’s voice only hinted at the wrath that smoked along her every nerve.  Quite apart from her anger at Matope, and at the blight on her homeland, she was furious with herself.  Not even she could protect them from Akilah’s unspoken promises, with their horrid foretelling.  Worse, she had only herself to blame for their being there at all.

 

“No recriminations,” Jim ordered, answering her thoughts, as always.  “Akilah broadcasts that guilt, too, don’t you think?  You’ll be able to handle it when you aren’t so distracted by what’s back there,” and Ysaulte finally realized they were halfway across the garden and heading for harith gate.  The captain, acting, and in doing so coming out of his own shock.  She applauded his strength.

 

“Thou art all the shield I need, a’shas,” she swore, the silent truth bearing its own barriers.

 

Harith’s stone panels swung open at their approach, no questions asked.  The sun was so low in the sky the gate parted to shadows, and full dark met the landing party’s arrival on oshun.  Jim reckoned the daylight hours a little less than Earth’s or Vulcan’s, stopping at the sentry house on the gate’s west side when oshun let them pass.

 

“Far enough?  Then we’ll stay here,” he decided to Ysaulte’s nod, making both her and Dyer sit.  Neither was up to protest, being wearied near to exhaustion and collapsing at the door with a pair of heartfelt sighs.

The doctor stooped to check them over while Spock accompanied Jim inside.

 

“A logical choice, Captain,” the first officer approved, helping right furniture and brush away the worst of the dirt.  “The outer wall will provide additional shelter from the local ecosystem, yet leaves two routes of escape.”

 

“Thank you, Mister Spock,” Jim said and sneezed forcibly.  “The walls will also provide Ysaulte and Dyer with some psionic shelter, I hope.  You’re all right?”

 

“The Lady’s protection blocks me from sensing most of what she feels, Jim.”

 

“Do you think she’s… overreaching herself?”

 

Spock granted him that almost imperceptible smile.

 

“Do you believe that is possible?”  He asked, and Jim had to laugh.

 

He went to the door and collected Ysaulte and Dyer.

 

“Come survey our humble abode… our very humble abode.  We’re roughing it, Ambassador,” he warned.

 

“No matter, love,” she assured him, steering Dyer in.  The boy was almost asleep on his feet.

 

“It’s got four walls and a roof.  What more do you want?”  Dyer wondered in that crabby voice peculiar to over-tired children.  Ysaulte shot Jim a grin, mouthed her thanks, and led Dyer toward an open spot on the floor at the back of the room, where she plopped down unceremoniously.

 

“Join me, little Brother,” not a request, and Dyer could not help but obey.  He sat, and the Lady drew their walkers’robes around them.  “The watch changes, neh, beloved?”  She asked Jim, mentally ceding resignation of their defenses to his care; lost with the boy to consciousness a scant moment later.  Jim shook his head, dismissed any notion of waking them to eat, and turned to sit with Spock and McCoy at a battered table near the door.

 

“That fast?”  Bones inquired, putting himself in charge of rationing each of them a sample of their native fare.  “I guess I’m not surprised.  I forget Dyer’s just a kid… and Ysaulte’s not as tough as she thinks she is, although she’s awful damn tough.”  The doctor’s soft Georgia drawl underlined his admiration.

 

“She’s had to be.  Look at her family’s history,” Jim murmured, watching her.  “Tested time after time, and for what?”

 

“Their fitness as heirs to their world,” Spock startled them by replying, his space-dark gaze going from Jim to the sleeping Lady.  “It is an eminently logical method of natural selection, albeit harsh.”

 

Memories fluttered across those Vulcan eyes.

 

“You’re thinking of the kaswan trials.  Is there any comparison, Spock?”

 

“Isn’t there, Jim?”  To Spock’s surprise, McCoy rose to his defense.  “They’re both life or death, do or die, meant to hone esper skills and self-reliance.  You’re the one who thought Ysaulte might be the fourth Zaltana.  Didn’t you think this was all happening for a reason?”

 

“Bones, I can’t think about that.  She’s not ready.”

 

“How do you know, Jim?  Because she’s afraid of it?”  The ZaworthIan shifted in her sleep, and McCoy lowered his voice.  “Ysaulte’s a smart woman, of course she’s afraid.  Haven’t you seen the big picture?  There’s more to this than Q’rin, and more than Etumuuyea.  There has to be some kind of threat to this world, or there wouldn’t be a need for a fourth Zaltana.”

 

“What’s your point, Doctor?”

 

“As your friend, Jim, I’m advising you to start thinking about it.  How else are you going to be prepared when__”

 

“When Ysaulte leaves me?  When I have to leave her?”  Jim managed to whisper.  “I know you mean well, Bones, so I’ll be honest with you.  I’ll never be prepared to lose her.  Not if I had every single day of the next ten thousand years to live with her.”

 

Unable to meet that brilliant hazel stare, McCoy looked away, rubbing his face.

 

“Jim, the last thing I want to do is make this any harder.”

 

“I know.  I’m not saying I won’t… find some way to handle it, if it happens.  When it happens,” he tacked on, just to show them he hadn’t completely lost his grip on reality.  “Let it go, Bones.”

 

Bones nodded, studying what he could see of the night sky, tranquil in starshine and moonlight, visible through the open door.

 

“Despite everything, it’s beautiful here.”  He took a swallow of calth nectar.  “I wish we could see it the way it’s supposed to be.”

 

“Be careful what you wish for, Bones,” Jim cautioned, a chill traveling up his spine.  Across the room, Ysaulte moved restlessly, and Jim wondered if the warning was already too late…

 

End Chapter Thirteen