True Son (12 page)

“There is much that both our history books have left out,” Taemon acknowledged, returning the general’s icy stare. “But know this: Nathan’s path was
not
the coward’s path. Only a narrow-minded fool would see it that way. And so we choose to follow Nathan’s path and do what is best for our people.”

The general laughed, startling the delegates from Deliverance. “You are asking me to leave you in peace! As if you can get what you want by saying ‘please.’ You have nothing to bring to the bargain, not one thing. And you are asking me to risk
my
people by leaving yours alone.”

“What do you want?” asked Taemon. “Other than our land?”

The general grew serious. He placed his hands on the table and leaned forward. “There is something you can do. Something to show me that you are powerful enough to withstand the Nau.”

“What is it?” Taemon was certain he wasn’t going to like anything that General Sarin asked for.

The general leaned back in his chair. “You are acquainted with my son, Gevri, are you not?”

Taemon felt his stomach clench into knots. Where was this going? “Yes, I am.”

“Gevri has been taken prisoner by the Nau. He is being held in a stronghold near Lake Simawah. If you will go there and free him, I will honor your request to leave Deliverance alone.”

Gevri? In a Nau prison? “You have plenty of other archons. Why do you need me?”

“The group of misfit archons that you worked with at Kanjai — you remember them as well, I assume?” The general’s look was steely cold, and his voice gave away no emotion.

“Of course I do,” Taemon answered.

“They have been captured as well. Gevri and his unit, they are all very young. By now, I fear they have given the Nau the answers they are looking for. If the Nau understand how we use dominion, they will undoubtedly begin looking for a way to counteract it. I cannot afford to send any more archons to the Nau until I know what they have learned.” The general nodded to one of his soldiers, who immediately laid a map on the table and shoved it toward Taemon.

“Lake Simawah is about seven hundred miles northwest of here,” the general said. “I will provide a vehicle and a driver.”

Taemon looked at the map, but it meant little to him. Seven hundred miles? In a vehicle driven by one of the general’s men? Whether Gevri and the other archons were really imprisoned or not, Taemon could hardly ignore the fact that this would be a convenient way of getting him out of the picture so the general could invade Deliverance without any resistance. What was it that the general had said when the delegation first arrived? That Taemon was the only one with any power? Taemon was the only person standing in the general’s way of taking over Deliverance.

Taemon folded the map and slipped it into his pocket. “I’m sorry, General. I can’t leave right now. As you yourself explained, Deliverance is vulnerable at the moment. We could be attacked at any time. I cannot abandon my people.”

The general rose to his feet. “Then we have nothing more to discuss. I will honor the protocol of allowing the delegation to return to your land in peace. In due time, we shall meet again on the battlefield.”

“Understood,” Taemon said.

“Wait just a minute,” Yens said. “I’ll go to Lake Simawah. I’ll rescue your son. I’m sure we can come to an agreement somehow.”

Hannova took Yens’s arm and tried to lead him away, but he yanked his arm out of her grasp. “We can’t just let him —”

“The discussion is over,” the general boomed. “If you break the protocol of leaving peacefully, you invite us to break it as well.”

In a heartbeat, the soldiers unholstered their weapons and stood with the guns held against their chests. It was a show of force, an open display of weapons with no direct threat. Yet.

“We are leaving peacefully,” Mr. Parvel said to the group from Deliverance. “Now!”

On the way back to Deliverance, the mood in the hauler was grim.

“Now we have to go back and prepare for war,” Hannova said. “We’ve done everything we could.”

“Have we?” Yens turned to Taemon. “I don’t understand why you don’t just use psi to crush those war machines you keep talking about. Or for that matter, you can just kill that insufferable Sarin. If I were you, I would just reach into his heart and . . .
ungh
!” Yens made a squeezing motion with his fist to illustrate.

The others in the hauler stared at Taemon with wide eyes.

“You can do that?” Hannova asked.

Taemon looked at his feet.

“Of course he can,” Yens said. “All I know is, if I had telekinesis, and remote viewing, and clairvoyance, I would use every one of them together and kill all the soldiers before they even set foot in Deliverance.”

“I could,” Taemon said, not looking up. “But I won’t. Psi is not meant to do harm to others. Nathan knew this. It’s why he was exiled.”

“Exiled!” Yens said. “Nathan
chose
to leave the Republik. They were ignorant fools who didn’t realize how powerful he was. He left to start his own society of psi wielders. And if you hadn’t gotten rid of psi for everyone but yourself, we’d be the invincible society Nathan had envisioned and there’d be no talk of wars or invasions!”

Taemon was about to launch into an explanation of what he’d recently learned about Nathan, but he felt Da pat him on the back. “You are right about Nathan, son. His way was the way of peace. If we die, we die without anyone else’s death on our conscience.”

Yens scoffed. “If anyone in Deliverance dies because you didn’t defend them, won’t that be on your conscience?”

As the argument became more heated, Taemon cradled his head in his hands, rocking gently. What should he do? What was his duty?

You will yet act on behalf of the people of Deliverance
.

I did act!
Taemon protested.
But the negotiations failed miserably. General Sarin is determined to invade Deliverance. And if he doesn’t, the Nau surely will
.

You will yet act
.

What action was left? What could he do? Deliverance was caught between two fearsome forces that were intent on annihilating each other. So long as their city remained geographically valuable, the people would never be safe.

Suddenly an idea came to Taemon. It was crazy. It was desperate. But . . .

Will it work?
he asked.
Is this what you had in mind?

The Heart of the Earth was silent for so long that Taemon had nearly given up on hearing back. Then:
The future is for you to choose. You must choose your path, and all the consequences that follow. Once the choice is made, you are not free to choose its effects
.

Hardly the ringing endorsement that he’d hoped for. But Taemon knew the Heart of the Earth spoke the truth. All he could do was try his best; the rest was outside of his control.

Taemon interrupted the argument that was still going strong. “We must leave Deliverance. As soon as we get back, we will tell the people to pack everything up. We’ll move everyone out of the way of the fighting.”

That quieted them.

“Leave everything?” Hannova said.

“We can’t just hand it over to the Republik!” Yens said.

“Or the Nau,” added Solovar.

But Da was nodding. “It’s not an easy solution, but it might work. It’s better than trying to fight when you’re the only one without a weapon.”

“The people won’t like it,” said Solovar.

Amma huffed. “They’ll like it better than war.”

“I don’t know,” Hannova mumbled. “I’m not sure we have time. . . .”

“I’m not leaving,” Yens said. “I’m going to stay and fight for my country.”

Solovar nodded. “We’ve worked so hard to rebuild it.”

“We can rebuild it somewhere else,” Da said. “After all, Nathan led his people out of their land and into Deliverance.” He looked hopefully at Taemon. “Do you have a place in mind, somewhere we will be safe?”

All eyes looked at him. Slowly Taemon shook his head. “I don’t yet know where we should go. All I know is that leaving is our only option.”

Immediately the group started grumbling again — Yens the loudest of them all.

Drigg cut in. “As soon as we get home, I’m going to start packing,” he said. “Just in case.”

The bickering continued, but Taemon tuned out the discussion. He knew he should be thinking about the next steps of this crazy plan of his, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what the general said about Gevri and the other archons being held prisoner by the Nau. Was that a lie meant to lure Taemon away from Deliverance? Or could it be true?

He felt in his pocket for the map that showed how to get to Lake Simawah.

Could it be true?

It was dark when they finally arrived in Deliverance. Mr. Parvel told Amma she could go home while he stayed to help unload the truck.

“No, thanks,” she said. “I’ll stay and help.”

She and Taemon carried the tents into Drigg’s workshop.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk about the books at all.” He dropped the tent on the floor and stirred up a bit of sawdust.

Amma shrugged. “It wasn’t the right time, I know. But I actually think it worked out for the best.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been thinking about it, and if there’s going to be a war here, the books are probably safer in the Republik. And if we have to evacuate, there’s no way we could take loads of books with us.”

They dropped the tents onto the workshop floor and went back to the truck.

“When this is all settled,” Amma said, “I
will
find those books. And you’re going to help me.”

“Yes, sir,” Taemon replied with a salute.

Back at the truck, Drigg handed them each a box that contained cooking utensils. They turned around and headed to the workshop. They discussed the meeting with the general, and Taemon asked the question that had been puzzling him all day.

“Do you think Gevri is really in prison?”

“I’m not sure,” Amma admitted. “It could’ve been a ruse. But if it’s not . . .” She frowned. “What I can’t figure out is why the general asked you to free Gevri. Admitting he needs help doesn’t seem like something he would do.”

“It must be a trap,” Taemon concluded, setting the cookware down with a rattle. It would be just like the general to invent some horrible lie about Gevri and the other archons being held prisoner — being interrogated or even tortured — in order to manipulate Taemon into leaving Deliverance undefended.

Suddenly he remembered the message that Jix had delivered. She had been in a cage, starved and tortured and waiting to die. Till Gevri had shown up and helped her escape.

Had the jaguar been trying to tell him that
Gevri
was locked up and needed someone to save him, just as he’d saved her? Was the general telling the truth?

He couldn’t risk leaving Deliverance, leaving his people vulnerable to attack.

But what if there was another way to save Gevri and the others — and secure peace between Deliverance and the Republik?

Gevri’s legs were getting worse. He couldn’t even bear to move them. He felt hot and sweaty, and he knew what that meant: infection. Someone shoved food into his cell once a day, but Gevri didn’t even bother to eat. He was dying; that was certain. Why prolong it by eating?

He drifted in and out of reality, sometimes reliving memories, sometimes redreaming nightmares, waiting for death to claim him. It was all a jumbled haze of pain, until something came to him.

Gevri could not say what it was, exactly. It did not feel like the other hallucinations he’d experienced. This time, he was fully aware of what was happening, more aware than he had been during his entire captivity.

Someone was with him. He felt a distinct presence here, in this dank misery of a cell.

Taemon.

He knew it with more certainty than if he’d actually seen him with his eyes. He knew it the same way he could feel Saunch or Neeza in his head with telepathy — though he hadn’t been able to detect them since their capture. He just knew who it was, the way he knew when he tasted mustard or smelled the ocean.

It was Taemon. Not physically in the room, but his influence, his dominion, was here.

At first, nothing changed other than the feeling that he was not alone anymore. Gevri had a feeling that Taemon was watching, searching, observing and probing.

When something did happen, it was excruciating. Gevri felt the bones in his left leg shift. He couldn’t stop himself from crying out. Then a burning sensation began, like a fire deep in his bones. Gevri was pretty sure what was happening. His bones were knitting themselves back together. Sure enough, once the agony had subsided, his leg looked straight again, his foot angled the way it should.

The same thing repeated in the other leg. First the stab of exquisite pain — Gevri only gasped this time — then the burning. Now both legs looked straight.

After that, Gevri watched with wonder as the swelling in his legs disappeared in a matter of seconds. Bruises, crusty wounds, lacerations — they all healed themselves and disappeared with only the faintest of scars left on his skin.

A surge of energy blazed through his legs and moved throughout his body. His dizziness and fever dissipated. He felt good. No, not good. Perfect. Not even hungry or tired.