Rift in the Sky полностью

“I know.” They’d left him to confront whatever waited at Site Three, alone, because the summons had been impossible to resist. They’d left him a captive, to be abused and hurt, because she’d had no way to find him. They’d saved him as soon as they could, and been too late.

Words. None of it helped. None of it mattered.

But his eyes brightened at her agreement, just a bit. Which did.

Aryl leaned closer. “Marcus, let me try to help you. Please.”

“Problem is me,” he replied. “My fault . . . this, too.”

“No. None of it.”

“You’re a . . . good friend,” this with almost a real smile. “But this is . . . important. The truth between us. Mindcrawler no threat . . . to most Humans. Understand? Only to . . . some. Only to Human . . . telepaths.”

Aryl frowned. What was he saying? He had no Power.

Marcus continued. “Strong Human telepath . . . can talk like you do. Not teleport.” This with relief. “They can protect themselves. Others—” his hand lifted to his own chest “—vulnerable. Understand me? No ability. Only weak mind . . . easy target . . . weak.” A tear slipped from one eye, left a glistening trail along one cheek.

He wasn’t weak, in any way. “I cut off its head,” Aryl assured him. Whatever “it” had been. Not Human. Ugly. “Did they tell you?”

Enris leaned over her shoulder. “Made a mess,” he added. “You know Yena.”

The Human’s eyes widened, then he sputtered a laugh. “Friends,” when he could talk again. “Good friends.”

Now, she urged him silently. While trust was greater than fear.

As if he’d heard, Marcus shifted his hand until their fingertips met.

Aryl had touched his mind before. She knew, as the others didn’t, where the danger of trespass lay within the Human, the whisper-thin distance between emotion and intention, between memory and self. Careful to stay away from his thoughts, she lowered her shields and let her inner sense float outward.

No room for doubt. Sian was trained in healing a mind; she’d done it only once, in desperation, to help someone she loved. Myris.

Well, she loved this not-Om’ray, too, this Stranger who mangled words and smiled with his eyes, who’d set aside his life’s work to protect a people he hadn’t known existed a year ago. Who lay here in trust, more alone than anyone or anything in the world, while she was surrounded by the glow of her kind.

... Something.

There. Aryl didn’t reach. She paid attention.

More. Pain . . . confusion . . . fragments of emotion unwound, like a dresel wing unfurling from its stalk, slowly at first.

Memories came too, rattled like pods drying in the wind, bound in fear and pain. His capture. Rough hands. Waiting . . . waiting . . . knowing the worst was to come. Revulsion. Despair.

Aryl let the memories slide past, didn’t react even to her own face, hair wild, eyes calm, the blur of a knife. Though she smiled inwardly, sharing a joy as fierce as any Yena’s.

More.

Her breathing wanted to flutter like his; she moved somewhere else.

Here!

Discord! NOISE! Every biter in the canopy, buzzing in her head at once.

It wasn’t sound at all.

Aryl stayed. This was important, whatever it was. Her mind raced through words and images, tried to comprehend what wasn’t real. Noise or silence? Old bone or rock? Om’ray or Human? Differences fought each other, weakened her concentration. She became desperate for anything familiar.

Here. Safely distant from Marcus, a presence solid as the buttress roots that held the great rastis so they bent to the M’hir Wind but didn’t fall. Always.

He shouldn’t be with her, not here; that he was meant everything. Aryl steadied, sent sincere affection to her Chosen, then returned to what confused her.

Not-real. And not-Marcus either.

Tracks in moss. V-shaped ripples in a stream.

These—these were the wounds left by the mindcrawler as it ripped through the Human’s mind!

Her mother had scanned her. This wasn’t the same. This was no trained intrusion after a secret, an unpleasant invasion that left its victim whole, if exposed. This was the swarm consuming what it touched, full of greed and heedless of harm.

With mounting horror, Aryl followed the damage. She tried to grasp its extent, to find a place to attempt healing, but the more she looked, the more she found, as if the wounds festered and spread.

Or did they spread because she looked? Is this what Sian meant?

She backed away.

What to do? She had to do something . . . what? She didn’t know how to help an Om’ray with such hurts.

How could she help a Human?

Aryl. Her name; his grief. Stop. There’s nothing we can do.

Enris was right. She knew it, though it was agony to be helpless. She tightened her shields and opened her eyes.

Marcus’ eyes were still closed. He trusted her. Had he believed she could help?

All she’d done was learn she couldn’t, Aryl told herself bitterly. “Marcus—”