Chapter 41 - Escape
“Jon, can you remember the route you took to get here?” Tymos urged.
“Yes,” Jonko told him still running but not out of breath.
“Think of a place!” Tymos told him and saw a picture in Jonko’s mind. They transmitted to the place where Jonko had ambushed the guard.
“Visualize another point that you passed getting here!” Tymos asked again. He stopped running, but kept scanning the area around them, they were still very close to their enemies. Keleb groaned, and Kryslie put the child down to go to him.
Once Jonko had visualised another waypoint, but before they moved onward, Kryslie took Keleb on her shoulder and told Jonko, “Take the child.” The next transmission took them into the centre of the clearing where the alien leader had first left them.
“Another coordinate please,” Tymos instructed and the process was repeated.
After the third jump, they had reached the more open country where the small alien ships sat idle. They discarded the notion of trying to fly one. Tymos had knowledge coming into his mind, but they had no actual experience. They also did not know if the ships could be traced by the leader or remotely disabled. Kryslie looked around for a place to stop. This was still too close to the enemy. They went further.
Jonko and Keleb had needed to take many flits to reach the enemy area, and one of the waypoints Jonko remembered was to an open area on a ridge of a mountain. He had come that way in the dark, but his sense of distance and direction was accurate.
Normal eyes would see nothing, but the Tymorean High King’s children were not ordinary. Part instinct, part perception and an instinct for the planetary aura, showed Kryslie a place to stop.
“Tymos, there is a cave over to the north, on the hill side near the dip in the ridge!” Kryslie indicated. “We have to stop, Keleb cannot go further.”
Tymos obeyed the tacit command and transmitted them just short of the cave. Jonko put the child down by Kryslie and he and Tymos entered the cave to scout for signs of aliens or other creatures.
Tymos returned. “There are signs of old occupation but it is empty now. It will do for tonight.”
Kryslie carried Keleb into the darkness of the cave moving with sureness and placing Keleb carefully on a patch of sandy ground. Tymos followed with the child.
Tymos turned to Keleb and touched him gently, realizing with a shock how weak his friend was.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Tymos asked.
“We needed to get away. I have been giving him some of my power,” Kryslie explained.
“Why did that Kellex do this to him?” Tymos asked softly. “Should we have killed him when we had the chance?”
“No!” Kryslie answered equally softly. “Having encountered him and his ways we can foresee his likely actions. If he were dead, the aliens would appoint another in his place. I fancy his superiors will not be happy that he let us escape and I know he is angry and perhaps that will make him act foolishly. Help Keleb, Tym, I must speak to the child.”
The child had become conscious and was struggling to get free but Jonko gripped him firmly.
“Why did you take me?” he spat at her when he became aware of Kryslie’s approach. “My guardian will find me. He will destroy you!”
“Steady, my young friend,” Kryslie said gently. “Do you know who I am?”
“I remember who you said you were, but I don’t believe you!” the child spat again.
“Are you not even curious as to my resemblance to Vila and my brother’s resemblance to Jordan?” the question was sent mentally. “Are you curious as to why I would claim you as kin?”
“No!” the child reacted violently. “You are not my kin, you are a barbarian!”
“Am I? I am not talking to you vocally. Does your guardian do that or any others besides Jordan and Vila?”
“No, Jordan says the ability is degenerate; that it is bad, evil and I must ignore it.” The child’s assurance was breaking. He was remembering his brother telling him to say nothing about it to their guardian unless he wanted to be beaten.
“Why did your guardian torture my friend?” Kryslie asked still very gently, for pictures came into the child’s mind that he would rather forget. He had seen what his guardian had done to the prisoner.
“I want to show you what sort of person Keleb is.”
Kryslie made vivid pictures in the child’s mind to replace those of the tortured Keleb. The pictures showed how gentle Keleb was and his affinity to animals.
“Leave me alone! Why are you doing this to me?” the child screamed.
“I wanted to show you that we are not evil!” Kryslie told him steadily. “I wanted to give you a view of those your guardian would have you fight. Perhaps you won’t believe me when I say I am your sister. One day, if you choose to accept the truth, we would welcome you.”
Kryslie took the child’s hand in the darkness. He tried to pull it free, but couldn’t. She spoke aloud, softly. “Release him Jon.”
She said to the child, “We would like you to travel with us for a while.”
“I don’t want to!” he said with a trace of defiance.
“Please yourself!” Kryslie answered calmly. “I would not suggest that you leave yet; you would lose yourself in the wilderness and we are a long way from your ship. If you truly want to return, I will take you back.”
“Yes! I want to go back.” the child spoke positively.
“Then I will keep my word. Jon, stay with Tymos, I will not be long and I will explain later.”
Still holding the child’s hand, she asked suddenly “What is your name?”
“Pyr,” the child replied without thinking then asked, “How can you see where you are going in here? It is so dark that I can see nothing.”
He was curious in spite of himself. Kryslie decided that was a good sign.
“I’ll show you,” Kryslie showed his mind what her eyes were seeing. Everything had a reddish tinge, brighter where the rock of the cave was warmer.
“Stand close to me,” Kryslie told him. He obeyed and Kryslie took him back to the alien ship. She wasted no time between stages and finally reached the darkness beneath the ship. There was light enough from the sunlight beyond the ship for the child to find his way, instead he shouted for the guards.
“Goodbye for now!” Kryslie told him softly and she was gone before the alerted guards came in answer to the summons.
Keleb was only vaguely conscious and moaning faintly.
Tymos lay both hands on him and opened himself up to feel his friend’s injuries. He felt an echo in his own body and from that sensation he decided Keleb had been beaten, possibly had concussion, and did have many acutely painful spots on his chest and back.
With his adjusted sight, Tymos began to examine Keleb – gently moving torn clothing aside to find patches of burnt skin. Some very impolite descriptions of the alien leader, Kellex, came to mind. He spoke a few aloud.
“What did that bastard want Keleb to tell him?” Jonko responded to Tymos’s curses.
“Probably he wanted to know more about us. Where we came from - in case there are more unpleasant surprises like us lurking somewhere.” Tymos spoke as he moved his hand down the length of Keleb’s prone body. He was using his hand as a focus to see the energy aura. Purple was normal for where there were no injuries, but little of Keleb’s aura was that colour. Most was reddish green, though one place was brilliant green, and looking at it made him feel nauseated. Tymos sat back, appalled. He normalised his eyes to do as he did when he wanted to see in the dark, but could still see the ‘mark’ as a glow when seen in light just into the UV range of the spectrum.
He wondered how to start helping Keleb. Kryslie had said he had a healing gift, and he had used it to help the old woman, Leonie, but that had been instinctive. At the time he had not realised he was doing anything. He had helped Kryslie with her shoulder, but again, that was different. She and he were closely linked. It was as if he was pain damping himself.
Tymos summoned power, surprised and relieved at the strength of the aura in the cave. He went to work. A pale mauve glow began to surround Keleb, appearing green where the wounds were worst. With one hand on Keleb’s forehead, he moved the other to touch the green glowing areas. His reaction when touching these areas was an arousal of an inner revulsion. He found it hard to master.
Keleb began to struggle against him.
“Kel, it’s me, Tymos. You are free and I am trying to help you.”
The struggling didn’t stop. “Kel, you are free. Lie still, I’m trying to help you.”
This time, Keleb lay quietly.
“Kel, I’m going to try something. Governor Reslic taught me to block pain. I am going to try to do that for you, okay?”
Very slowly, Keleb moved his hand to where Tymos was touching him.
“I take that as a yes,” Tymos said aloud and he once again allowed himself to feel Keleb’s pain, and began working to block it. He sensed when Keleb relaxed into sleep and paused then to consider his next move.
He reached out to touch where the green aura was brightest. Once again, touching it brought on a strong revulsion and he had to remove his hand.
His mind began to babble that he didn’t have enough power to remove the alien taint. He felt a flick of derision from his sister. “Kellex would like us to believe that! We have as much power as the Governor’s and he is an unweaned puppy.”
Tymos realised then that Keleb was not just physically wounded. “I’ll do what I can,” he told himself. “While Keleb is asleep, he won’t resist me.”
Working again, instinctively, Tymos drew on the aura and allowed it to flow back to the ground through Keleb.
He thought carefully of Keleb getting better, but nothing seemed to change. The reddish green areas stayed the same.
Oblivious to his sister’s return, Tymos only become aware of her when she knelt beside him.
“I’m not helping him,” Tymos thought in desperation.
Kryslie made her own examination. “Wanting him well is not enough. Kellex has made sure those injuries are well entrenched. Keleb is an empath, and I think, this was too much for his mind to bear. Or, that green area is stopping you. I…think I have seen something like that…with Sacul.”
Kryslie’s mind went to that area and she murmured, “I found I needed to find an analogy - a symbolic battle as a means to fight this unhealthy influence. Don’t try forcing the blight away – it will resist. Think of Keleb as he should be, as you want him to be, and pretend that what you are doing to him is worse than what has already been done.”
She sensed his moment of amazement at the suggestion, and then total comprehension. He let her do what she was doing, and acted on the suggestion - trusting her instinct. It seemed to him that her presence began the improvement for very slowly, as he sent his power into Keleb, the green glowing areas faded - replaced by mauve. Only the bright green area remained, and that seemed to be writhing within invisible hands.
He felt Kryslie’s intention, not in thoughts or words or even images. In a form of communication that was deeper than mere telepathy, he linked to her mind, solidly shielding it, Keleb’s and his own. He felt the glow as the writhing creature Kryslie envisioned it, was ready when she released her grip fractionally. The glow snaked around her arms, moving like it wanted to reach her head. Kryslie was fighting it, and she forced her arms down so her hands reached the ground. Tymos sensed her draining her power, and she slumped to the ground. The green glow writhed impotently, and gradually diminished until no trace remained.
Tymos reached over and nudged his sister.
“I’m fine,” she answered his wordless question. “It’s gone. And no, I don’t know what it was, but it died when it thought that I had.”
“You said it was like you felt in Sacul,” Tymos prompted, standing and helping his sister up.
“Yes, and so much stronger. This is like a real tiger, when Saculs’s problem was merely a picture of a tiger.”
“We’ll let Keleb sleep and regain his strength.” Tymos suggested. He withdrew and went with Kryslie to where Jonko sat waiting at the cave entrance.
“I could not have done it without you,” Tymos thanked his sister.
“Tym, I simply leant my strength to yours as the Governors once did for me. I offered advice because I could visualize why you were having trouble. You certainly had no trouble applying your gift once the psychic leech was impotent.”
Tymos nodded an acknowledgement.
Jonko spoke from the darkness. “How is he?”
“Weak,” Tymos told him. “His wounds are healed and Kryslie healed the shock to his mind. The aura is strong in here though, and that will help him regain his strength.”
Jonko sighed with relief. “Perhaps now you might answer a question that has been puzzling me.”
“What?” Kryslie asked.
“After you made such a point to catch that child, why did you let him go?”
“That child was our brother! As much as Llaimos is,” Tymos said flatly, finding the confirmation in his sister’s mind.
“Yes,” Kryslie admitted. “I knew he had to be as soon as I set eyes on him. He felt to my senses, just like Tym does. He can’t be more than nine or ten years old. He already he is a strong telepath, but I could not sense any power in him yet.”
“Why take him back? Surely you can’t leave him with the aliens- with the person who tortured Keleb?” Jonko objected.
“It is a risk,” Kryslie admitted. “But at this time, he is not ready to accept the truth of our kinship. If we tried to keep him with us, he’d fight and try to escape. We can’t watch him, tend Kel and avoid pursuit. The aliens have trained him and in their presence, he would betray us. He yelled for guards as soon as I got him back. Besides, I could not tell if his guardian, Kellex, has a way of tracking him.”
“How likely is that? Kellex would not have expected you to get free and see him,” Jonko continued to argue.
“It is more than that,” Kryslie decided. “Kellex told us that he knew of a prophecy in which it is stated that three of father’s children would stop them taking control of our world. However he got Pyr, and convinced father he was dead, I don’t know. But he would not want to lose him.”
“But, prophecies come from the Guardians,” Jonko insisted. “Surely the guardians would not help our enemies?”
“Other races might have foreseers, Jon, but allowing that the Aeronites were once Tymorean, someone might have had a vision, meant to help the Aeronites, and not harm us – but the Aeronites interpreted the wrong way.”
“But it has meant,” Kryslie stressed the word, “That Kellex has either abducted or killed all of father’s children – until us. And he has kept the truth from Father.”
“Are there others?” Jonko wanted to know.
“Yes. I was mistaken for someone called Vila, a ward of Kellex, and that guard that fell on me was - is – the image of Tymos, only older by about ten years. Pyr called them his siblings.”
“I still think that if Kellex wants him so much, it’s more reason to take him away,” Jonko suggested.
“Pyr doesn’t know any other life. We’d be taking him from his siblings and the only one he knows of as a father. I don’t think I want him the target of Kellex’s anger,” Kryslie said thoughtfully. “I don’t like the idea either, but I think I got through to him.”
“How so?” asked Jonko.
“I made him curious, and I showed him another side to the power he recognises in his siblings.”
“How will that help? Wouldn’t that get him into trouble? What if he were missed?”
“It’s a risk, like I said. However, I am willing to bet that he won’t mention me to his guardian. He is a gentle child, and he saw the treatment Keleb received. It shocked him to think that his guardian was responsible. I know that his brother, Jordan, told him not to mention his telepathy to their guardian – ostensibly, to avoid a beating, but it might be that Jordan is trying to protect him from being used by Kellex. No doubt, Kellex justifies his actions by painting Tymoreans in a bad light, but I emphasised the wrongness of that by showing him mind pictures of Keleb with animals. Pyr might talk to Jordan about this, but I can’t see him saying anything to Kellex. I also used mind speech with him all the time and he did the same to me. For him, it’s a natural ability.”
“What if he was missed, and made to talk?” Jonko asked.
Tymos answered that. “They would not think he was with us long enough to be influenced. We gave him a shock too, but Krys took him back when he asked, just as we offered. So he knows we kept our word. I think he will hope no one realises anything happened. If I were him, I would say I escaped and ran off, and so look better in the eyes of his elders. ”
“What about the other two?”
“I didn’t see Vila, but I know Jordan is receptive to telepathy, and can sense his sister’s presence. However, I don’t think he uses telepathy,” Kryslie began. “He has Tymorean power – not surprisingly, and it seems to be roughly under control. We have no way of knowing how Kellex has trained him.”
“I don’t like it,” Jonko persisted. “It might be too late for the older two, but that child…”
“We’ll get him away from Kellex if we can,” Tymos promised.
“The older one saw you,” Jonko pointed out.
Kryslie gave a short laugh. “Kellex calls us children. Naturally, anyone older than us will think they are better than we are. I really detest that attitude, but it is to our advantage. In the last few moments I had before we left, I used my power to erase from his memory his psychic perception of me. He won’t remember me clearly except as the woman prisoner that escaped. He will not realize that I know what he is.”
“Are you going to tell your father?”
Jonko’s question was one they had not yet come to terms with.
“You will have to tell him. He has the right to know.”
“We will have to find the right time,” Tymos hedged. “I know you are right, Jon, but…”
“What? Why don’t you want to?”
“Jon, it isn’t easy,” Kryslie spoke for her brother. “Jordan probably doesn’t recall being anywhere else either. My impression of him is that he is an obedient ward, and he believes his guardian…”
“Brainwashed,” Jonko translated.
“That is not his fault,” Tymos insisted.
“I was in the same room with him,” Kryslie went on. “I didn’t get the sense of rogue power. However, I did feel that in some of the guards that were looking for us. I don’t want to hate Jordan or wish his power removed.”
“He has commander rank, though, and one day he will lead their armies to try to crush us,” Tymos admitted. “I don’t like that idea. How he goes about it would decide if he has become an enemy or not. He has to be intelligent, above average. Surely, he will come to see that conflict is wrong.”
“You two are damn idealists,” Jonko said with exasperation. “It could get you killed. If you don’t tell the Governors about this, as soon as possible, I will! And you will have to explain your feebleminded notion to His Excellency.”
“Yeah,” Kryslie agreed sardonically.
“What I don’t like,” Tymos admitted. “Is what Kellex said about taking Llaimos and training him to lead his armies.”
“We need to get home,” Jonko blurted. “Urgently. If that Kellex has done what you said, Llaimos is not safe. He will not stop until your little brother is in his control.”
“And us?” Tymos suggested. “I’d say we royally aggravated him.”
“I don’t think he will try to warp you stubborn minded mavericks. I will leave it to your imaginations what he will do.” Jonko warned them.
“Jon, you are right,” Kryslie admitted soberly. “I know Stenn is guarding Llaimos, but we do need to get home, and I don’t think we can afford to wait for help to find us. They don’t know where we are. At the same time though, I am reluctant to do so until Keleb has rested longer and regained his strength. We are a long way from home and we can only transmit in short stages. We can’t afford to be burdened with the need to protect Keleb; it halves our fighting strength. We can try to contact Father, though I am not sure of the limits of our telepathic gift.”
“Try it,” Jonko told them. “I’ll keep watch.” He turned his attention back to the outside.
“We should all go back closer to Keleb,” Tymos suggested. “The cave doesn’t end at the wall back there. Use your power to sense the coming of others. If you need to speak, touch one of us on the shoulder. We will need to concentrate.”
Jonko obeyed the suggestion and leant against the nearest wall. He heard only faint noises as Tymos and Kryslie adopted poses of meditation, which they maintained for half an hour.
Hands joined, sitting cross-legged in identical poses of meditation, Tymos and Kryslie faced each other, linked minds and sought to reach their father’s mind. They put everything into their summons, knowing that their father could send messages over long distances. They sensed no response, perhaps the High King slept. Finally, they drew apart and relaxed.
“We must find a way to tell our father what we have learnt.” Tymos thought at Kryslie.
Suddenly he tensed as Jonko’s hand touched his shoulder. Kryslie sensed his sudden change from relaxed to alert. People were approaching.
“Aliens?” Jonko asked softly.
“No!” Kryslie answered in a nearly inaudible voice. “Not aliens. Let them approach.”
Jonko crouched down beside them, all three were protecting Keleb.
The people came from both the passage deeper into the cave and from the passage from the track outside. They were armed with a mixture of crude and primitive weapons and weapons taken from the aliens. The approach was stealthy; and they knew their way without needing light. Jonko could not even perceive them except as a sense of living creatures. He knew that the darkness was no hindrance to the eyes of his friends, so he waited, sensing that the beings had surrounded them.