Chapter 9 - Alien Ally
“Seek elsewhere for your food. This one is not for you.”
With amazement that pushed all other thoughts from his mind, Xan saw the girl place her hand on the beast’s snout, and it didn’t try to bite it. It was growling, but also rubbing its head against her hand. It had to be an hallucination, for there was a faint purple glow around the girl’s hand, and it was spreading around the beast. The sound it was making changed to a low continuous rumbling, and then it turned around and disappeared, glow and all, back into the undergrowth.
Xan swallowed hard, feeling extremely nauseous. He felt he would have been sick if he had anything in his belly. Seeing that girl tame that ferocious beast, was more frightening than when she was fighting him, and he had realised how skilled she was.
This, if nothing else, proved to him that the girl and her brother were not the weak, pampered Royal whelps that Kellex had claimed them to be.
He heard the voice of the boy. “There is a rocky area, not far from here. It will provide us with some protection. I have left some of the gourd leaves there. Any trouble?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” the girl claimed.
The boy’s voice spoke again, from right next to him. “Do you think you can walk?”
Once again, Xan tried to move, and couldn’t. Then he heard the girl say, “You told him to Lie Still.”
Odd, the girl’s voice seemed to echo in his head, as the boy’s had when he spoke first.
“Oh, sorry!” the boy spoke, this time without the echo. “I didn’t realise I had done that. I just needed you to be still while I checked you over. You can get up if you want, or I can carry you - but we have to leave.”
Xan felt the weird paralysis evaporate. He could move again. When he tensed his muscles, to push up, the pain in his back erupted once more.
With out asking, the boy lifted him and set him on his good leg. The feeling of the cool breeze, eased the pain, but he had to accept the boy’s tacit offer of help, just to hobble along.
During that next period of travelling, when he had to be carried up some of the steeper parts of the trail, he continued to feel the cool, soothing breeze - even as he marvelled at the strength of the boy. The girl, he knew, was following him, and very so often, he heard a swishing noise. It was like dragging a branch over the ground. He wondered why, she was bothering to wipe out their tracks - the felines used smell to tack their prey, not marks in the dirt.
When they arrived at the proposed shelter, some kind of cave, judging from the way the sounds of boots on the rock floor echoed, Xan had no strength left. The boy lowered him to the ground, just before he blacked out.
Tymos looked around his chosen campsite, with an eye to defence. As far as he could tell, this was not a place used by any of the felines. It wasn’t perfect, too open for a cat to use as a lair, but enough to give them shelter from the night-time chill of the mountains.
He sought for his sister’s mind. She was doing a precautionary scouting foray as well as collecting more bloated gourd leaves and some edible wild tubers. He had things to do too, before he began to tend the alien’s wounds.
First, he released the cape that was part of the camouflage gear. When he didn’t need it, it was kept behind him by his belt. Then he released it from the fixings at his shoulders. The material was not the best thing for washing wounds, since it was meant to be waterproof, but it was all he had. All he had to cover the deepest of the wounds too. It would at least, keep dirt out of them. He hoped to heal the worst of the alien’s injuries before they left this place. While he waited for Kryslie to return, he used his knife to begin cutting strips from the bottom of the cape.
Kryslie returned and placed her foraging with his. She spoke mentally. “I hoped to find some hoppers around here, but I couldn’t sense any at all. And nothing of that freaky other alien either, thank the Guardians. How is he?”
Tymos glanced at the injured alien. “As good as unconscious, thankfully. I think he still expects us to start torturing him for information. Though if he were awake, just having to use the stuff in the leaves to clean his wounds would seem like torture. If we have to pain block for him, that will be less energy we have for healing him.”
“While I was scouting, I found a place where I could look down the hill. Even though the fire is out, the heat energy glow is still blindingly bright. We should be able to draw energy from there, to heal him and to heat the air here while we work.”
“Can you try feeding energy to me? This will take a lot …” Tymos paused. “You know, our companion here was right about one thing. He should have died a few times over today. I am amazed that he could even get as far as he did.”
“I picked that up too,” Kryslie agreed. “I think the Guardians of Peace led us to him, and perhaps even that they protected him.”
“Even from that cat? Our companion here was more than impressed by that. You must have picked up a lot from Keleb about handling animals.”
“Even though empathy with animals is Keleb’s special talent, I don’t think that he could have convinced that cat to go away. I think it felt the aura in me, as if I was part of the forest. From my point of view, it took a lot of concentration to convince it that the nice, juicy, and bloody morsel it smelt wasn’t there. So shall we make that a fact? No bloody morsel?”
Without further discussion, they began. First, they eased the tattered clothing off the alien, needing to use some of the precious liquid to loosen crusted blood where it stuck cloth to the wound. Then, with Kryslie’s eyes adjusted to see in the dark, and Tymos making his able to see the injuries to the alien’s flesh, they began the task of healing.
Kryslie drew on the aura, bringing heat energy away from the fire, to take the chill from the ambient air, and to fill her reserves - ready to share it with her twin.
“Kellex must have been livid,” Tymos thought at his sister with controlled anger. “Who ever he sent to question this one, must have intended to whip him to death. And for what? Failing to make us docile prisoners? To kill us? Kellex is as guilty of that as this one. There can’t be much skin left on his back. Even the mauling that feline gave him is less in terms of damage.”
Kryslie sensed the full extent of this alien’s injuries, and shared her brother’s outrage. This being, who was their enemy, simply because he had been born on a distant world, had done his duty as best he could - despite finding the orders abhorrent, and this was his reward.
She sent energy in a steady stream to her brother, who was willing the wounds to close, and new skin to grow. She did not forget the freaky alien that they had encountered. That one was in the mountains for a reason. It might a saboteur, but she thought that unlikely. An agent, protected that well, would have a more important mission. Perhaps he was a back up, in case this alien had failed. He had certainly been elated by finding their packs. Could he have known they belonged to Tymos and herself, rather than to two fleeing mutants? What would that creature do if he found them with this alien?
What ever it was doing, she would be alert for the feel of that mind. She hadn’t heard actual thoughts from him, just the malevolent emotion. That one would kill with out the slightest hint of compunction or regret.
After several hours, Tymos sat back, and eased his stiff muscles. Kryslie took the remains of the cloak and covered the alien’s nakedness. She took off her own cloak and made it a second layer.
“The back is a lot better,” Tymos said mentally. “The leg has muscle damage. I might be able to do something, but it would take a lot of time and concentration. I have Xyron’s memories of how it needs to be treated, and surgery is the best option, but I have no way to do anything helpful, here.”
“Let him rest for a bit. His body can continue the healing,” Kryslie suggested, and she moved to where she had dumped her foraged roots. She tossed a white one at her brother and began to eat one herself.
As Tymos ate, he thought, “If we had kept our packs, I could have loaned our patient a change of clothes. I wouldn’t want to put his back on, but it is all he has.”
“He can use my cloak over his tatters,” Kryslie suggested. “At least it will help him keep his dignity.”
Xan awoke when the darkness in the cave had begun to lighten. He wondered where he was, and without thinking, began to sit up. He realised first, as his covering began to slip, that he was completely undressed. He grabbed the covering and held it around him. As he finished sitting up, he became aware of the hard ground beneath him, the fresh cool air, with only the faintest trace of smoke. His right leg twinged, and he realised that it was firmly bound up. He looked around him, and saw someone lying asleep nearby.
Memories returned with a vengeance, making him tense with fear. He felt twinges of pain in his back, and recalled the agony of the previous day, but that did not return. He jerked around, looking for the other Tymorean, and saw a figure silhouetted in the cave opening. Instead of a return of terror, and the knots in his stomach, he felt and heard his stomach rumble with hunger. He realised then, that his mouth was as dry as the ground he sat on.
The rumble from his belly was enough to get the attention of the figure in the entrance. That one came closer, stopped and picked up something from the ground, and finally crouched a polite distance from him.
“You’ll be needing a drink,” the boy said, as if stating a fact. “It is a side effect of the healing that I did last night. We don’t have water, but we do have some gourd leaves. They contain a liquid that is a bit tart, but which will reduce your thirst.”
Xan watched as the boy took out a knife, nicked the leaf near the stem, and passed the leaf carefully to him.
“Suck where I have cut it.”
Since to free one hand caused the covering to slip, Xan had to reorganise the makeshift covering. When he took the leaf, the boy helped him position it.
The first suck brought a rush of liquid, and Xan fought the compulsion to spit it out, even though it felt like it was burning his mouth. However, the initial sensation passed, and he greedily sucked all the moisture he could from the leaf. It really did help cure his thirst.
He handed the limp leaf back to the boy, and was offered an odd-looking orange root.
“Wild carrot,” the boy said, as he munched on another like it.
Since Xan’s gut felt like it was trying to eat itself, he took a bite from the root. It was crisp, juicy, and delicious. The boy passed him a second root when the first was finished, and then walked over to where his sister still slept.
“Wake up lazy bones,” he said softly, nudging her with his foot.
Xan saw her wake immediately, heard her growl a rude comment at him, before rising and walking from the cave.
“Are you feeling better now?” Tymos asked.
“Still hungry,” Xan dared to admit. He hoped his Tymorean accent was understandable.
“Yeah, I guess you are, and I am pleased to hear it, but we will have to scrounge more as we go on. I meant, how do your injuries feel? We washed all the open wounds, and bandaged your leg to provide some support. Do you want to see if you can walk?”
“Yes, but…”
“Oh! Yes, I guess getting you dressed again would be a good idea. You’ll have to put that apology for a uniform back on, but Krys says you can keep the cape.”
Xan felt his face heat up with embarrassment. The boy seemed to sense it.
“We needed to treat your wounds, and really, it was better done while you were out to it. It was dark, okay?”
“I…” Xan tried to find the words to apologise.
“Forget it, all right.” Tymos suggested. “Let me help you dress before Krys comes back.”
Xan tried to stand by himself, while Tymos fetched the discarded Aeronite uniform, but he sank back onto the ground. He did not have the strength and the faintest pressure on the injured leg, made it hurt.
“Let me look at that leg again,” Tymos directed, with a faint sigh. He helped Xan straighten his leg, and once again ran his hand over the area of cat bite.
Xan watched, wondering what this boy was doing, and then he became aware of the odd purple glow about the boy’s hand. It was like the glow about the girl, when she had tamed the cat.
The boy removed his hand and collapsed into a sitting position on the ground.
“You could see that glow?”
“Huh? Yes…”
The boy’s face took on a blank expression for a few moments, and then he said, “Kryslie and I are heading to the nearest city. You can choose to come with us, or you can continue heading wherever you were going.”
Xan’s jaw dropped in astonishment. They were going to let him go? Just like that? The mystery of the odd purple glow went right out of his head. Then reality intruded, and he remembered that he had no weapons, no food, he couldn’t even walk. He would be easy prey for any of the other felines. Were they regretting helping him?
Then his warrior training argued, “It is a warrior’s duty to escape if captured.” Escape? Escape where? If he returned to Kellex’s ship - he would be killed on sight. They called him a traitor.
Perhaps he was - since he could not accept these two young Royals as enemies. They rescued him, treated his wounds, and protected him from wild animals…
Aloud, he asked, when he could find the words, “Why? Why help me, just to let me go…I’m in no condition to protect myself. Are you regretting helping me?”
“No!” Tymos said immediately. “Nor do we consider you, personally, an enemy. We abhor what your superiors are trying to do to Tymorea, and how they are waging an undeclared war with us. We would willingly accuse Warlord Kellex for stealing or killing, our father’s other children. But you, we have no issue with.”
“Surely, you would want to question me…” Xan proposed, but his face paled when he said it. He both feared the idea, because his superiors claimed that Tymoreans tortured their enemies to get information, and wanted a reason to stay protected by these young Royals.
Once again, Tymos stopped his swirling doubts, fears and feelings of low self worth. “Let me help you get dressed. We have to leave here, and keep moving. You are welcome to stay with us, and to leave whenever you wish. I know you have been taught many things about us that are not true, and I don’t have the time or the means to straighten all the misconceptions out.”
Xan was silent, as Tymos helped him to dress in his tattered uniform, and helped to arrange the cape to cover most of the gaping holes. As soon as they finished, Kryslie reappeared, as if she had been keeping tactfully out of the way.
“I will come with you,” Xan said softly. His mind was saying, “For now,” and part of it was telling him he was indeed a traitor, even though his people had cast him out, and he now owed them nothing. Another part was deeply afraid for all his kin back on Aerdna, and for having no way to help them.
Kryslie approached with one of the bloated gourd leaves, and offered it to him as she said, “My name is Kryslie, and I am sure you know who I am, but you can leave off the title out here. My brother is Tymos. We haven’t had a chance until now to ask your name.”
“I have no name,” Xan said. He saw the girl glance at her brother.
“Why not?” Kryslie asked, quietly, not challengingly, as if she already knew and wanted him to admit it.
“Because my own people cast me out as a traitor. They made me nameless…” There, Xan thought, now they know I cannot call on powerful allies to help me. I have invited them to feel free to torture me.
He looked at the ground, feeling hopeless and worthless. He felt Kryslie’s hand take his.
“Before you became a warrior, and a chattel of your Warlord, what did your parents call you?”
He looked up and met eyes of a piercingly clear blue. Without thinking, he said, “Xan.”
“Then I give you the name, Xan. I give it to a person of great courage, great determination, and great honour. To someone who did not even consider the easier option of dying, and who remains true to his values, even when his fellows see only failure.”
Kryslie took the little warrior’s dagger from her belt and presented it hilt first to Xan. “This is yours, I believe?”
Xan stared at the dagger, and thought of all that it had once meant. Finally, he reached out and took it. He couldn’t find the words to say thanks, but he saw a warm smile on Kryslie’s face, full of welcome and friendship. He had the fleeting thought that she knew exactly what was going through his mind.
“Xan, we need to get going, and you are not going to be able to travel on that leg - would you object to us carrying you?”
His thoughts were jerked from introspection once again. “I’d be too heavy.”
Now Tymos grinned. “Friends don’t weigh too much.”
Xan felt foolish, as he was carried like a young child clinging to a parent’s back. Yet he wasn’t sorry to be leaving the area where so much pain had been inflicted on him. He was also amazed by how strong the Tymorean boy was, and how fast he moved over the open areas of the trail.
For most of the time, he didn’t see the girl. She had set off after her brother, though several times, she had appeared carrying gourd leaves and more of the tasty orange roots. At those times, Tymos had eased him to the ground and helped him to and from the cover of bushes to relieve himself.
At the third break to eat and drink, Xan dared to admit, “I did not realise that Tymoreans were so strong.”
Kryslie merely answered with, “There are a lot of things you and the other Aeronites don’t know.”
“Kellex was surprised when jet aircraft came searching for you,” Xan offered unexpectedly. “He didn’t admit it, except to say he didn’t know where they had come from.”
“Is that why he spooked and blasted off so fast, and incinerated the Tymoreans he had prisoner?” Tymos demanded.
Xan saw the implacable look on Tymos’s face and wanted to shrink away. “He had made them practically mindless before that, and ordered them dead before dumping them.”
Tymos’s expression hardened further, until Kryslie said quietly, “He will be judged…”
“Sorry, Xan. I am not angry with you. You are not to blame for Kellex’s atrocities.”
Having someone apologise to him, was unexpected. The voice of Kellex seemed to whisper in his ear that these Tymoreans were being nice to him, just to tempt him into treason. He still half believed that. He glanced at his companions, trying to sense if this was true, when he became aware that they were not even paying attention to him.
Kryslie was walking around the small clearing, pausing to listen, and then moving again. Tymos, who had been squatting nearby, and eating a root, was now on his feet, also seeming to listen.
An unexpected spasm of terror went through him as Tymos came to him and spoke abruptly. “Come on. Hop up.”
“What’s the matter?” Xan asked to Tymos’s back view, but he got no answer. Tymos began trotting along the barely visible game track, concentrating on where he was going.
In fact, Tymos was also communicating with Kryslie, who was again obscuring their back trail.
“I don’t know how he found our trail,” Kryslie was thinking at her twin. “And I can’t tell you how close he is. He has to be able to travel as fast as we can. If we knew this area better, we could skip ahead using our transmitters.”
“I checked his clothing and didn’t find any kind of locator,” Tymos thought back.
“Maybe that little dagger?” Kryslie proposed the idea.
“Well, it is some kind of ceremonial thing that he got when he graduated as a warrior,” Tymos pointed out, having seen a lot of things in Xan’s mind while they talked. “Though why would they have a locator in it, and is it specific to Xan if they did?” He sensed his twin’s mental shrug.
“I would suggest ditching it, but his self-esteem is so fragile right now. Having me return it to him, was all that stopped him death wishing himself.”
“No, let him keep it,” Tymos decided. “We ought to be able to keep up the pace longer than any Aeronite. We can draw on the aura, and see well enough in the dark, so I suggest we push on through the night and take a brief rest halt near dawn. We need to get distance from that creature right now, but we also need to find out if Xan knows who it is, and what he can tell us about him.”
Kryslie took a turn at carrying Xan during the night, freeing Tymos to scout ahead and behind. He had seen the energy aura of the follower, and would see it clearer in the dark. She was relying on sensing the terrible malevolence of the creatures mind.
Near midnight, she thought at Tymos, “I think he has stopped to rest. I haven’t felt that mind for nearly an hour.”
“We will keep going. We should be over the next ridge by dawn. When we’re closer, I will scout ahead for a cave, and we can hide our trail.”
Tymos found a suitable cave as the sun was just rising. He sent an image of the location to his sister, and moments later, she arrived beside him. Xan stirred from sleep as she eased him to the ground.
“We’re a couple of miles off the trail,” Tymos said quietly.
Kryslie collapsed beside Xan, and let the energy of the aura replace what she had used. “If he finds us again, there must be a locator. I haven’t even felt the spy planes going over.”
“We’ll see, but I’m going to look for edibles, and more gourd leaves. I will try not to be gone long, but I didn’t see any on the way here.”
“I’ll warn you if I sense anything,” Kryslie promised. “And I will look to see if I can create a spring. If I have guessed where we are closely enough, it might be possible. We are near one of the storage basins.”
Kryslie stood up after a while and began to circle the inner walls of the cave, touching it with her hand. Looking at her from where he had been placed, Xan could not think what she might be doing. His mind was still full of the realisation that it had been a mere girl carrying him while he had slept.
“What are you doing,” Xan finally decided to ask.
“Trying to find if I can make a spring here,” Kryslie answered immediately. “There is a fault line running from here, towards the storage basin. Or it might be a crack caused by sabotage.”
Xan cringed. He knew that the water basins had been targets. He had not understood the logic of it, because if his people had succeeded in gaining control of Tymorea, they would need the reserves.
He heard his thought verbalised by Tymos, returning with some wild roots, and he found himself blurting, “They think our weather control techniques will bring more rainfall here.”
He found two sets of piercing blue eyes, staring at him, then Kryslie turned back to the rock face and Tymos said, “We’ll rest for another hour and go on.”
“Have I said something to anger you?” Xan asked, looking at Kryslie.
“No, we already know that your scientists are playing with the weather, and doing many other nasty things to upset the ecology. It’s just…” Kryslie stopped, and seemed to look with sympathy at Xan. “Surely the Aeronites who are skulking around doing damage, are suffering from the lack of moisture too.”
“And we really need to talk to you. There are probably lots of things you know, that we need to learn.” Tymos said.
Xan felt his stomach churn, there it was - they wanted him to betray his people, tell them all the Aeronite secrets. Tymos’s next words were so unexpected that they caused all colour to drain from his face.
“Someone is following us, wearing a stealth suit that is way better that the one Kellex used when he tried to take us from the Estate. We can only see him when he is close.”
“You should leave me, get away…”
“No way,” Kryslie objected immediately. “It occurred to me that your dagger might have a locator in it. May we look at it?”
Xan felt for where he had tied it by fabric strips to the makeshift belt. The request stopped his spiral of terror and worthlessness. “I have never even heard a suggestion of anything like that.”
He drew it out, studied it, and then put it in Tymos’s outstretched hand.
The action reminded him too vividly, of when Villeni had demanded he surrender it. An order that was the ultimate in humiliation for an Aeronite warrior.
He looked away from the Tymorean as he felt his expression about to betray him, but a flash of light drew his attention back to Tymos. The dagger was between the boy’s palms, and they were once again glowing purple. However, that was not what caught his attention - it was the oddness of the boy’s eyes. He did not have a chance to look closely, for Tymos said, “It seems alright,” and the eyes were normal again.
Xan accepted his knife back, and watched Tymos join his sister in the cave by one particular spot. From the sounds, she was using her knife to dig into a crack in the rock. He heard them speaking in soft whispers, and sighed. It was probably fair for them not to trust him.
“I was right,” Kryslie murmured. “Did you neutralise it?”
“I think so. Need some help?”
“The water is close. I think I only need to make this crack bigger.”
“We don’t want to make it permanent, just to last long enough for us to use,” Tymos suggested, pu