Crystal Healer (7 page)

Silence fell over the room, growing thick and uncomfortable as Xonea skimmed through the data. The datapad went flying across the patient's room, smashing into the wall and dropping in pieces on the floor. The patient's eyes widened, and she yanked her linens up over her head. Squilyp went to the wall panel and signaled security.

Reever, his face blank and his eyes so dark they looked black, took a step toward Xonea.

I put a hand on my husband's arm. "No." I watched my ClanBrother's face. "Wait."

Xonea regarded me as he spoke to his men. "We are finished here. Return to your stations."

I felt a twinge of sympathy for him. "Xonea, I know you were only trying to do what you thought was best. But your efforts on my behalf are not necessary."

"Your behalf?"
His tone may have been soft, but a lethal rage filled his eyes. "I have done nothing for you."

I gestured from the patient to the shattered datapad. "Then why all this?"

"Your neurologist is wrong, Omorr. Nothing lost is gone forever." Xonea looked down his nose at me. "You think because I do not use your name that I do not know who you are? I know. You are not Cherijo. You may have her skills, her voice, even her bondmate and child, but you can never be Cherijo."

"No." My spine turned to ice. "I can't."

He leaned down, his voice going soft. "Do not become too comfortable in that skin, Akkabarran. Someday my ClanSister
will
return to us, and when she does"--he looked from my head to my footgear and back again--"she will take back all that you have stolen from her."

Three

Xonea's prediction sat like tainted food in my belly for some time after we left the medical facility. I had long wished him to acknowledge that I was not Cherijo, but now that he had, I could take no pleasure in it.

He had been angry; I knew that. His reason for saying such things to me may have been only to strike back at me for depriving him of revenge. Still, the blow was a heavy one. To be called an Akkabarran, as if I didn't deserve my name, was surely the worst. Since leaving my homeworld, I had struggled daily to prove my worth. I did the work and adjusted as best I could to ensleg ways. I believed that I had helped those in need.

In Xonea's eyes, however, it meant nothing. Just like me.

Despite my own curdled feelings, at least now I grasped the cause of all of his maneuverings. He was not simply angry at us for leaving Joren. He saw me as an intruder, a thief who had stolen what did not belong to me. He wanted me gone and Cherijo returned. Which was the same as wishing me dead.

Reever said nothing about Xonea or his ugly behavior as we went to the HouseClan pavilion to return the scroll to Xonal, but I sensed his concern hovering between us, silent and watchful.

I stopped in the courtyard and turned to him. "Stop it."

His eyebrows rose. "Stop what?"

"You are watching me out of the corner of your eye, waiting for me to have some sort of hysterical female reaction," I told him. "I was an Iisleg woman. A
skela.
I have been despised for simply breathing. I have been shot, beaten, starved, and left for dead. I have walked the ice fields and dragged the dying from them as Toskald ordnance exploded all around me. Believe me when I say that some harsh words thrown at me by one angry man will
not
make me collapse."

"I would, but I have this one problem." He tucked the scroll case under the belt of his tunic and then framed my face with his scarred hands. "I love you."

"Well." I rested my hands against his chest. Once I believed that he had loved only my body, as it was all he had left of his dead wife. Now I knew better. "I suppose I could tolerate it a little longer," I said gruffly.

"Xonea does not know you," Reever continued, stroking the curves of my cheeks with his thumbs before taking his hands away. "He looks at you, but he sees Cherijo."

I recalled the set of the Jorenian's face, and the savageness in his voice as he lashed out at me.
You can never be Cherijo.
"Evidently, he did not see her today."

"Jarn, Duncan." Darea entered the courtyard and crossed it to join us. She also carried a cylindrical case, but this one had been fashioned of clear plas and held other, marked rolls of plas inside. "Do you have a moment? My ClanDaughter discovered something quite interesting about the scan you sent us."

We went to a table and sat down together. Darea removed several rolled sheets of marked plas from her case and spread out one of them onto the surface of the table.

"Fasala studied the copy of the original map, but she was not able to decipher some of the Aksellan symbols," Darea said. "Over the centuries, Joren has collected an extensive star chart library, with records from all known space-traveling species. I scanned the map's symbols and input them for comparison, but they are not recorded in our database."

"The Trellusan who gave us the map claimed it was very old," I told her. "Perhaps they predate your records."

"We believe the same--and there is more. As Fasala could not use the symbols, she filtered the scanned image to show only the star systems and the Aksellan's marked travel routes. Here is what the map looks like without the symbols." Darea pointed to circles and lines on the transparency. "Salo has traveled through some of this region, so he was the first to notice the mistakes in the route patterns."

I knew little of star charts, but Reever had extensive pilot training and had traveled a great deal on his own. "What is wrong with them?"

Reever frowned as he leaned over to inspect the plas. "The lanes are too long and convoluted."

Darea smiled at him. "My bondmate was not so diplomatic; he called them utterly ridiculous. He said no ship's captain would waste the time or resources by following such courses over more direct routes. But to be certain, we checked each course on the map against the trade routes presently being used in those systems. The lanes the Aksellans marked on this map are three to five times longer."

"Perhaps it was for trade purposes," I suggested. "They may have diverted their ships to worlds in need of the ore they mined."

"These routes took the ships away from the most populated planetary systems," my husband murmured as he studied the transparency. "The Aksellans were diverting their ships away from these worlds. It may have been to protect from raiders the ore they were transporting."

Darea nodded. "I, too, thought they may have taken the routes as a security tactic, until Salo began checking the symbols I had removed." Darea unrolled another sheet of plas and placed it over the transparency of the planets and shipping routes. "The systems they avoided had two things in common: inhabited worlds, and a dark triangle marking all of them. But we do not know what that symbol means."

"We do." Troubled now, I met my husband's gaze over the map. "The miners were avoiding worlds with deposits of black crystal."

My former self had encountered the black crystal several times in her past. She had found it to be the cause of diseases on Catopsa, Taercal, and Oenrall. I, too, had witnessed its effects on Trellus, when it mesmerized Reever. But we knew that nearly all of the worlds presently infected with the mineral were not even aware of its existence, or how it might be affecting their population. "How could they have known it was there so long ago?"

"The Aksellans have always been a highly intelligent species, but I do not believe these map makers knew of the crystal," Xonal said, startling me as he appeared at my side and leaned over to inspect the transparency. "According to legend, they were far more reserved than their modern descendents. They avoided other sentient species, and mined only unclaimed comets, asteroids, and meteor fields." When we all looked at him, he moved his hands in an easy gesture. "As a youth I was as interested in geology as well as exploring space. I spent two years serving as chief navigator on an Aksellan ore hauler."

Reever straightened. "You think that they avoided these worlds because they were inhabited, not because they have deposits of black crystal."

"This symbol here." Xonal traced one of the dark triangles. "It is a greatly simplified form of two modern Aksellan glyphs. One represents the number three, the other means 'outsider.' Used together, they translate to
threat
."

That made more sense, until I considered another interpretation. The black crystal affected only living, sentient beings. If it was as lethal as my surrogate mother had promised, it might infect worlds only where it could find some prey. "Are there any inhabited worlds on the map that are not marked with the dark triangle?"

Reever consulted the transparency. "Yes. Joren, Akkabarr, and oKia, in the Saraced system." He pointed to each planet.

Joren was on one end of the map, Akkabarr in the center, and oKia on the opposite. "Is it possible that at the time this map was made, the black crystal had not yet reached these three worlds?"

"The mother's cloak has always protected our planet," Xonal said. At my surprised look, he added, "Her cloak is a thick layer of volatile gases in the upper atmosphere. Free-falling minerals cause them to ignite, so that nothing smaller than a large asteroid could pass unprotected through the layer successfully."

"Akkabarr's
kvinka
--the storm currents enveloping the planet--do the same for the Iisleg," I said. "What of oKia?"

"I cannot say if they have escaped the black crystal, but it seems unlikely," the ClanLeader told me. "It is an ordinary, cold-climate world with no unusual atmospheric conditions. The dominant species, the oKiaf, are sentient tribal hunters, much like our ancestors were."

"Are they primitive?" If they were, that would present different problems.

"Not since the turn of the century," Reever said. "The League recruited oKia to join them by offering advanced technology in exchange for the service of their trackers in the military. oKiaf were said to be the best troop marshals in the quadrant."

I used my datapad to access Joren's planetary database, but it listed only a scant amount of statistics on its solar system and planetary surface conditions. "There is hardly any information recorded about this world."

"Few sojourn to oKia or any of the planets within the Saraced system," Darea admitted. "That region of space is too remote and sparsely populated to tempt many traders, and too ordinary to lure our explorers. After Skart was destroyed during the war, many have avoided it."

"oKia recently resigned from the League, canceled the contracts of all their people serving in the military, and recalled them to the homeworld," Reever said. "They also banned all contact with offworlders."

"They follow Joren's path." Darea exchanged a wry look with Xonal before she added, "They are not the first to break with the League since the war, Duncan. After Raktar Teulon revealed the truth about the Jado Massacre, and how the League's finest officers were responsible for causing it, many worlds have chosen to do the same."

"I would agree with your theory," my husband said, "but they have banned contact with all other beings, not merely the League. No member of any species is permitted to travel through their space."

"During the war, the Hsktskt destroyed Skart, one of the neighboring worlds in oKia's solar system," Darea said. "That may have decided everything for the oKiaf."

"If their planet still remains free of the black crystal, we must find the reason for it." A sojourn to the Saraced system might also keep the mercenaries hunting us from invading Joren, and give Reever time to discover who was offering the bounty for us and why. "We should go to oKia and survey it, even if we must do so from orbit."

"The oKiaf will have something to say about that, I think," Xonal said. "As will Xonea."

My ClanBrother's desire to keep me on Joren was going to be a problem. "We can't fly a scout to the opposite side of the galaxy. We will need a vessel capable of interstellar flight." I regarded the ClanLeader. "Perhaps you could persuade Captain Torin to permit us to use the
Sunlace
as transport for the expedition."

"I believe that can be easily arranged." He smiled, made an affectionate gesture and left us.

Darea gave me a shrewd look. "I think you are not so interested in traveling to oKia as you are in leaving Joren."

"I do wish to know if the oKiaf have something that has prevented the black crystal from infecting their world," I said. "Whatever has spared them could prove invaluable to removing the crystal from other worlds it has already infected."

"But after all that Xonea has done to spy on you and Reever, why would you wish him to transport the expedition?" Darea asked, perplexed.

"My ClanBrother has done all these things so that he can keep me here on Joren," I said. "What better justice is there than choosing him to be the one who must transport me off the planet?"

After our experience with Alek Davidov forcing us to crash-land on Trellus, and now this new bounty being offered for our capture, I knew we would once more have to leave our daughter behind on Joren. The League still did not know of her existence, and for her sake, we intended to keep it that way. Yet the thought of being separated from Marel again, so soon after our reunion, made slow, sharp daggers of guilt stab into me.