Telepath Read online

  The Third Chronicle

  of the

  Guardians of the Word

  TELEPATH

  Jolea M. Harrison

  Copyright 2012 by Jolea M. Harrison

  All rights reserved

  Chapter 1

  A grated floor flashed into view—of a ship, he thought, but didn’t know for sure why he would be on a ship. He saw his brother, Dain dragged onboard, bloodied and unconscious. Booted feet charged by, clanging sharply, jarring through the pounding of his head. There was someone beside him, but he couldn’t see who. The hand of a woman came into view, dabbing at his face with a wad of bloody cloth. When he tried to look up the dark came in, leaving only sound for a moment, exploding noise all around him - the ship trying to rise, its engines struggling against a constant barrage of jarring hits, the alarms sounding. It came through that laser fire must be striking the ship, since that was the only thing that made sense. Why was he on a ship that was under attack?

  Sight flashed back into being. A boy with dark red hair sat on his knees beside Dain, clinging to him in the pounding vibrations that shook everything at the same time as trying to help him. Dynan thought he should know him, but pain exploded through his mind, rising to take vision and sound and thought, and all the questions eroded until there was nothing but the dark.

  ***

  “I don’t think he’s breathing.”

  Geneal Elger nodded tersely as she watched Dynan fall unconscious again. She gave him an injection of bueterel, a drug that ought to help stabilize his condition, except of course, she didn’t know exactly what that condition was, and she was fighting the usual issue that sometimes meant no drug would work on a telepath. If this was a medical problem, it would help, but if it was telepathic...

  The noise of the engines straining to lift them off the shore, the blasts of lasers striking the ship, the responding fire the XR-30 cannons combined to make thinking coherently almost impossible. Someone had attacked their minds. Tortured them. There were only two people she knew of who had the capability and she hoped it wasn’t true for both.

  Geneal thought about Carryn Adaeryn, whose disappearance made others suspect she was involved with the attack, and her brother, Maralt.

  The ship’s inertial dampening system was on and rising, making movement difficult and painful. Geneal shook herself into action. There’d be time to think about it all later.

  She clawed her way to Dain’s side through the unrelenting pounding. The boy was wrong. Dain was breathing after all, but only barely. Nothing the biomonitor said explained why he was having so much difficulty. She noticed his brain activity levels were excessively high. Dark, scribbling lines covered the entire depth of the chart. The same was true for Dynan.

  Before she could treat Dain, the ship jarred violently out from under her. She fell backward when the floor came back up, pounding into her knees. The boy caught her at the same time as he fell too, and kept the rest of her from smashing into the deck. The next strike threw them both against the back wall of the hold, into the bolted chairs next to the control station. Dynan and Dain were thrown the opposite direction. The dampening system failed, and then came right back on. That one moment jarred every bone. Geneal thought for the third time that night, she wasn’t going to survive.

  The boy crawled over to her, picked her up and maneuvered them both back under the control station, using his boot against the chair stand to keep them wedged in when the ship was struck again. Geneal wondered if they’d fall into the sea. The engines screamed, making a high-pitched whirring sound that no space ship she’d ever been on normally made. The noise was deafening and constant.

  The engines sounds dropped an octave. Geneal wanted to recognize what was happening, but feared she was wrong. The boy holding her gasped.

  “We’re making the jump,” he said and his arms tightened around her as if that would help if anything went wrong. She understood he meant the jump to sublight speed, which would instantly remove them from the vicinity, and throw them across space.

  The noise of laser fire stopped. Geneal felt the thrust of forward motion for a moment, and then silence. The boy was panting in her ear, shaking. His hands were covered in blood. Probably Dain’s. She was breathing fast too, but after a moment of blissful silence, managed to recover.

  “What’s your name?” she said and eased out of his grasp, looking him over to make sure the blood wasn’t his.

  “Gaden Ahreld.”

  She smiled at that. “I know your brother,” she said as she tried to stand. Her legs weren’t cooperating. She went on hands and knees instead, unsure what might happen next, but needed to treat her patients. She found most of the contents of her Medic kit scattered on the deck. Nothing seemed to be broken. The biomonitor worked and she picked it up. She crawled over to Dynan first.

  “How did you end up onboard?” she asked to fill the silence, while she quickly set up her supplies.

  “Trevan invited Allie and I to go on the flight with Dain,” Gaden said. “With that girl’s grandparents.”

  She nodded to that, knowing that Jaiel and her grandparents were now dead.

  Trevan Golyin came from the flight deck of the XR-30, having just saved everyone’s life. He glanced at Dynan and Dain, sprawled on the floor, but went straight to the control station. “Everyone all right?”

  “Mostly,” Geneal said.

  “Are they alive?” Trevan asked. He was an engineer by trade, one of the best, having created the ship they were now in.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Trevan was also a Lt. Commander in His Majesty’s service, or rather, the Regent’s service now, wearing the short blunt haircut of most military people, reducing what would have been dusty brown hair to stubble. He was older than everyone onboard, and looked like he knew what he was doing. He started pressing keys, activating different screens. They made little chirping sounds when touched, and other sounds when activated.

  The noise of others coming to the hold clanged against the grate. Ralion Blaise and Sheed Lasser came from the laser cannons, looking tense and angry, still ready for battle. A brief flash of the raging fight on the shore went through her mind, Ralion killing four or five men in a row, one after the other with Sheed behind him lunging after any the other missed. Sheed moved to Dain’s side, kneeling down beside him.

  “He’s bleeding.”

  “I know,” Geneal said, running the biomonitor over Dynan again. The brain scan was no longer mad scribbling lines, but flat ones. “Well, at least I’ve seen that before.”

  Allie Ahreld came back, moving to the control station beside Trevan, hardly sparing his brother a glance while he worked. That left only one missing. Geneal knew Lycon Tylam was flying the ship. They were all of them in a state of near rage, contained only by years of professional training, except for Gaden who hadn’t had any training and was still curled up on the floor.

  Ralion fixed that when he went over and held down his hand to him, but then ended up lifting the boy into a seat by the controls. “You hurt?”

  “No,” Gaden said, but leaned over his knees.

  Alarms sounded, ringing through the hold of the ship and freezing them all in place. Ralion swore as he looked over the screens. Trevan left the station for the flight deck. “Border patrols,” he said as he rushed by, making Geneal’s heart stutter in her chest. “I’m changing course!”

  “Why?” Geneal asked while she moved over to Dain. “What good will that do?”

  “The XR-30 profile wasn’t ever entered into the system,” Sheed explained while he started helping with Dain’s wounds, applying bandages he dug out of the kit. “The King didn’t want the ship tracked by just anyone. Right now, they’re tracking a ghost signature. They don’t know it’s us, except for the las
t heading they had us on. We keep changing course, until we lose them.”

  Geneal nodded as she sealed closed one of the deeper cuts on Dain’s shoulder with a cauterizer. She didn’t ask why they were being tracked and chased and shot at, since the answer meant a drastic shift in what she knew of the world. Being chased from the Palace was one thing. Being chased from the Cobalt System meant a broader, vastly different reality. Dynan and Dain were being hunted by people sworn to protect them. She wanted to believe it was a mistake, rather than the downfall of the Telaerin Throne.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, but Sheed could only shake his head that he didn’t know. “Help me get them to some place I can work. They need to stay together.”

  Ralion was already lifting Dynan off the floor.

  ***

  Voices reached him, drifting in and out. The words didn’t register, but the tenor of fear and concern did. With conscious thought came ripping pain, overwhelming every sense. He heard his teeth chattering. He wanted to scream, but couldn’t get enough air. He felt his body curling inward and there came with that movement a desperate wish to escape this torture.

  One of the voices drew closer, distinguishing itself from the others as female. He thought something touched his forehead. He realized he wasn’t on the floor any longer, but in a bed, or at least it was soft. A blinding light struck his eyes.

  ***

  “Why does this keep happening?” Ralion asked. “You said you didn’t have a medical explanation. What does that mean? It’s like the light is killing them or something. What is causing it?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Geneal said, tucking the covers around Dynan again. He kept thrashing and knocking them off. She had to put a restraint field on Dain.

  “You know and don’t want to say,” Ralion corrected. “I saw what happened on the shore. They were standing there, having survived the fight, and the next instant they were both down acting like they were being tortured. I know a little about Maralt Adaeryn too. Did he do this to them?”

  “I don’t have enough information to say for certain what happened,” she said, knowing that Ralion only wanted the answers to combat the sense of utter helplessness they all felt. Nothing she was doing helped. “Their symptoms are similar to the memory block they had back after Dynan nearly died, only magnified to the point that being conscious is excruciating. It’s also somewhat like what used to happen to them when they were separated. The only thing I can do is keep them sedated. Doing that time and time again causes its own set of problems. As long as I don’t have to keep doing it for too much longer, I think they’ll be all right.”

  “But you don’t know for sure.”

  “No.”

  “What do you need to be sure?”

  “A Medic Center.”

  ***

  “I need to know where we’re going,” a woman said.

  “Trea,” a deep voice answered. “It’s really the only option.”

  “Is there any word on what happened at the Palace?” she asked.

  “We can’t afford to get into the com system to find out. They could track us, so no. I’m sure your father is all right, Geneal. When we get to Trea, we’ll be able to find out for certain.”

  “I know. It’s just that...I shouldn’t have left him.”

  “Dain was right,” the man said. “He was absolutely right. They would have killed you, or worse. You remember the stories of what happened in Rianamar back during the war, when the Murians landed? What they did? That’s what those men were capable of. No doubt about it.”

  “Wait...he’s trying to wake up.”

  “Well, don’t let him.”

  Dynan felt something prick his neck as the questions rose, and the pain started to supersede existence, but almost immediately, the process reversed itself and the dark blanket that held him tightened its grip.

  “How much longer, Ralion?”

  “Another day, if they let us land...”

  ***

  Trevan looked out the view screen, hesitating before he opened the ramp. “There are a lot of guards,” he said, with a glance at Ralion.

  Geneal noticed too. “Well, we insisted that the King of Trea come see us, without a lot in the way of explanation, so of course there are a lot of guards. That man coming down the line is the Trean Lord Chancellor, Rupart Olorond. He’s going to decide if we stay or not.”

  “It’s not like we can make an announcement that we’ve got Dynan and Dain Telaerin on board,” Ralion snapped.

  Sheed pulled himself off the bulkhead, glancing at Ralion before he turned, listening toward the rear hall where Dynan and Dain were still lying unconscious.

  “Don’t you think they’d recognize the ship?” Gaden asked, straightening his clothes. None of them were able to do much to make themselves more presentable. There weren’t fresh clothes onboard the ship. There wasn’t much food either.

  “I see the King,” Trevan said. “They know who’s onboard.”

  Ralion didn’t like that idea at all. “Is the ship ready to go?”

  “Yes,” Trevan said, “but where? What do you think we can do?”

  “I’m not surrendering them to anyone. Before I open that ramp, everyone should understand we might be fighting our way out of here.”

  ***

  “I understand the difficulty, and some of what’s happened,” Drake Mardon said. Finally, a voice Dynan knew. He tried not to breathe too much or think too much since every time he had, pain was the result. He remembered that much anyway.

  “We don’t have anywhere else to go, Your Majesty,” said another voice Dynan didn’t recognize. Behind his eyes, the pressure started to increase. He knew what was coming. He pried his eyes open to slits, testing to see if the pain would get worse, and it did almost immediately.

  The King of Trea stood in the doorway with the woman, Geneal, who he knew was Eldelar Elger’s daughter, but not why she was here, with a Palace Guard, a tall, blond, muscular man Dynan thought he should know, but couldn’t place except that he was from the Palace. But then he had it. Sheed Lasser. One of the Hounds.

  “I already know the accusations aren’t true,” Drake said, “and that they didn’t have anything to do with the attack, or with the death of Princess Shalis—”

  Dynan’s eyes flew open, jarred out of the state of semi-consciousness, and instantly assaulted by pain. Memory flashed through his mind. He saw the guard who brought him the news, dying at the foot of the main stairs, the noise of laser fire pounding into him. He heard the squeal of a biomonitor going off next to him.

  “What...what’s happening?” Drake asked.

  Geneal rushed to Dynan’s side, picking up a dermal injector. “If I don’t get them into a Medic Center soon, they’re both going to die. He has a weakened heart, Your Majesty, since he was stabbed. He’s never recovered from it.”

  “Of course,” Drake said, though there was a lengthy hesitation. “Bring them inside. There are dangers, you understand.”

  “We were chased all the way to your boundary,” Sheed said. “We understand the dangers.”

  “These aren’t the same kind of dangers. Ambrose was my friend. I’ll do what I can. Bring them...”

  ***

  “What have you been giving him?”

  “A pain medication, cordalin, and a strong sedative,” Geneal said to yet another person whose voice Dynan didn’t recognize. He didn’t know where he was again, the hum of the ship missing from the sounds filtering in through the haze.

  “You’re not going to this time.” She was a woman, though her voice was deeper than Geneal’s.

  “It’s the only thing that’s worked to keep him from dying. Every time he wakes there’s so much pain it’s affecting his heart. I have to give it to him.”

  “You have to trust me. He won’t recover if you keep him sedated like this and...He’s waking now. Don’t interfere.”

  “If I need to treat him—”

  “You’ll end up killing him. Dyna
n, open your eyes and look at me. My name is Carryn Adaeryn. You knew me once. I’m a telepath. I’m going to help you understand what’s happened, but you have to come with me.”

  She spoke in a low voice, and he could feel her next to him, leaning close. She took his hand, twining her fingers through his and squeezing as he tried to open his eyes. That was harder than it should have been, but he finally managed it, looking up into grey eyes full of concern and determination.

  She reached into his mind then, doing something no one but Dain had ever done before, except then he wasn’t sure about that the next moment. There was a sense of the familiar around her thoughts. She kept hold of his hand, pulling him away from the dark wall that started encroaching and somehow held back the pain that by this time had usually barreled over him.

  “Come with me,” she said, communicating silently, mind to mind and smiling gently at his confusion. “It’s the only way. I’ll explain, but not here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

  The darkness dissipated, melting into a fog that surrounded them both. He looked at her, slightly shorter than he, black hair framing her face and ruffled by a slight breeze. Green encroached as they walked, filtering through in patches only, but growing into larger spaces interspersed within the mist.

  “Where is this?” he asked, looking down at the clothes he wore, only they weren’t normally the kind of clothes he would put on. These were off white, loose, without conforming to any of the usual styles. He wasn’t wearing shoes or boots. She wore the tunic of lector, and he remembered seeing her that way.

  “You’ll see in a moment. We’re almost there. It’s just over this hill.”

  There was a hill of green grass that opened all around them, and when they crested it, he saw a small cottage nestled at the foot against the edge of a forest. It was a tiny house, with a single chimney emitting a slim ribbon of smoke. The roof was tile, and covered in moss. The walls were cream. A window overlooked a flowerbed and a path of flat stones led to a door painted blue.