Sarah Zettel - Reclamation

Eric ran both hands through his hair. “The Rhudolant Vitae are the ones the Words call the Aunorante Sangh. I have met the Aunorante Sangh, Stone in the Wall dena Aria Born of the Black Wall, and I, Teacher Hand kenu Lord Hand on the Seablade dena Enemy of the Aunorante Sangh was promptly captured and stuffed into a box for dissection.”

He waited for her to demand explanations, to invoke the Nameless Powers, or just to swear, but instead she sighed and dropped her hand onto the pouch that held her namestones.

“What I do not understand is why they call us Aunorante Sangh,” she said. “I wish I had the learning of my ancestresses and not just their stones.”

“You knew?” Eric gaped at her.

She rubbed the backs of her hands, tracing her scars with her fingertips. “I guessed, after I heard they claimed the Realm as their home. It wasn’t exactly a long leap in a high wind.” She gave him her twisted grin. “If you’ll permit…” She broke off. “You should, I think, be getting some more rest, Sar Born.”

“I don’t want to rest.” Eric heaved himself to his feet and paced to the comm station. “I want to think. I need to think.” He gripped the back of the chair with both hands and stared at the blank screen in front of him.

“Well, we’ve two days yet before we reach the Realm,” she leaned back. “That should be plenty of…”

Eric whirled around. “Who set us on course for the Realm!”

Aria sat up straighter. “Adu did,” she told him. “At my direction.”

“You idiot N…” He bit the word off. “The Vitae may already be there!”

“They are already there,” she replied calmly. “Adu checked. We will have to be careful how we proceed, I think.”

“Careful!” roared Eric. “They’ll pick us up as soon as we poke our noses into the system! They’ll…” The air caught in his throat and he coughed, sending a shudder through his entire body. He staggered and caught himself on the sofa’s corner. Aria grasped his shoulders. She eased him onto the seat and leaned him forward. When the coughing died, she let go and stepped away. Eric did not miss the hesitation in her eyes, or the fact that she hid her hands behind her back.

“The Realm is the last place in the Quarter Galaxy we want to go,” he croaked, reaching for the tea.

She sank back onto the sofa. “Those are not the words I expected from a Teacher who has just met the Aunorante Sangh in open battle.”

“Battle.” Eric filled his cup and swigged down a long draught. “Oh yes. Five minutes after I stood up against them, they had me tranqued out and in a life-support capsule. A great battle indeed for dena Enemy of the Aunorante Sangh.” He swirled the dregs of the tea. “Those poor ones in the Temples will go down twice as fast.”

She gaped at him. “What are you saying? You, you’re sitting there alive and recovering. You held them at bay, you signaled for help from the depths of their ship. You beat them.”

“I ran away from them,” he said. “I woke up and I panicked. I was so afraid, I couldn’t control myself. I just… I just…” He dropped the cup onto the tabletop. It wobbled and tipped over, letting amber liquid spill across the clear polymer. He watched the puddle ooze toward the plate of breads. He remembered the awful pulling in the capsule, as if something were trying to drag his soul out through his pores. A sick yielding sensation had come over him, and whatever dragged at him took him…took him…

“I don’t even really remember what I did,” he said. “All I know is that I was scared nearly into senselessness and if Adu…if you hadn’t been there to pull me out, I would be a set of molecules in a lab dish.”

Aria narrowed her eyes. “You did something, or your power gift did. I got that much from the little Vitae who released you from the capsule. He was babbling about you taking over the lab. I don’t think he knew very well what he was saying. There was blood on him.” She frowned. “Is the power gift always under your command or does it ever work on its own?”

“What kind of question is that?” Eric hunted around the table for a cloth to wipe up the spill and didn’t find anything.

“The question of a Notouch seeking wisdom from her Teacher,” she retorted. “It should be obvious even to you that what everyone, from the Unifiers to the Kethran to the Vitae, has sought is the understanding of how the gifts the Nameless laid upon us work. So, if we gain that understanding first, we will have something to bargain with, or fight with.”

“What is obvious to me is that you are wandering around in a night storm of your own thoughts.” He met her eyes. “Don’t you understand? There is nothing we can do. The Nameless alone can count how many Rhudolant Vitae there are. There are maybe three thousand Teachers in existence, counting the students. Even if we could all be united, which I doubt, we would be drowned in the flood of sheer numbers.” He turned up both his hands so he could see his blank, smooth, empty palms. “We can’t be blinded by our superstitions, not now. This is not some mythic battle we can win because we’re touched by the Nameless and they’re not. This is real. This is happening. This is a primitive and, probably, dying people, against the oldest and most coherent power in the Quarter Galaxy. All we can do is keep out of the way.”

“It was tried,” Aria folded her arms. “It only worked for 150 generations.”

“What?” Eric looked up.

“These now are the Words of the Servant Garismit, ‘I have moved the Realm. The Aunorante Sangh will search for a thousand years to find you again, but only the Nameless Powers know now where you live.’” She quickly touched the backs of her hands, first the right, then the left, to close the quote. “If that is not trying to keep out of the way, what is it?”

“You would have the gall to quote the Words to a Teacher,” Eric muttered. “I’m telling you…”

“You’re telling me not to be blinded by superstition and you refuse to look into the Words and see that there might be truth under there.” She stabbed a finger at him. “What is that if it isn’t blindness?”

“The Words are lies!” Eric shouted. “Lies! They told us if we obeyed, if we kept the bloodlines straight and true, that we would be ready when the Aunorante Sangh came back! Well we did, and they have, but we haven’t got a rat’s chance in the Dead Sea!” His head spun. Visions of Lady Fire, her curses as he carried their baby away, his father’s calm voice, his brother-in-law’s sneaking glances stabbed at his vision. He cradled his head in his hands. “We did everything we were told and they are still going to take us all.”

“That does not have to be true,” she said softly. “Our ancestors somehow bested theirs; we may be able to repeat what was done.”

He raised his head. “Who has been putting this salt water into your head?”

“I have had plenty of time for thinking while you were recovering,” she said. “Adu helped some, but mostly I…” She touched her pouch of stones. “Reviewed what I had learned on Kethran.” She moved her hand away from the pouch with a quick jerk. “Think on this. The Words say we were named individually by the Nameless. Zur-Iyal then tells me our ancestors must have been constructed individually by some great technology. The Vitae say they lost their home-world. The Words say the Realm was moved to rescue it from the Aunorante Sangh. The Vitae have been searching for their world for years. The Words warn they would be back. There’s also the story that the Servant was aided by a Notouch who ‘made the Realm hear his commands…’”

Eric started. “Where did you hear the apocrypha?”