Allie's War Season Three (119 page)

"He was Elaerian.”

"He was," the seer agreed at once, smiling faintly. He tapped a long finger thoughtfully on the organic metal edge of the window into the deep water. "...Yet, he chose to incarnate in the same form as you, for much the same reasons, I suspect." His eyes shone amusement briefly from the dark. "...And what race would you presume
your
soul to be, my dear? Have you forgotten that the Four are also, by definition, of the First Race?"

"Family," Cass muttered, looking back out the window past him.

"Family, yes," the seer said thoughtfully. "...Indeed."

There was another silence.

Exhaling a bit, Cass folded her arms, gazing into the blue water.

“You really think I’m her, then,” she said, speaking almost to herself. “War.”

The seer smiled, his eyes openly amused.

"So?” Cass said, blowing at her bangs to get them out of her face. “What 'reasons' were they, exactly? Why would I come back like this? Why would Galaith?" Cass gestured down at her own body. “What’s the point, to be only half of what I am?”

"Empathy," the seer said at once. "A deeper understanding of the challenges faced by those of the last race." He paused, as if letting her think about his words. "Tell me something, Formidable Sister. What would you be doing now, back in your home town, as a human? Respectfully...if you were not the most exalted of the Four, but only the lowly human to which you pretend...where would you be? If you had never known the Bridge or the Sword, but continued to live as a human in San Francisco?"

“I’d be dead,” she grunted. “Like everyone else.”

“Pretend that your home town remained intact,” the seer suggested smoothly. “Or that you had moved to a different city, in the intervening years.”

Cass felt her lips purse. After a longer pause, she realized he expected an actual answer and let out an involuntary snort.

"Probably getting drunk at a bar on Haight Street," she said, stuck somewhere between embarrassment and irritation. "...Bitching about one crap job or another. Or some guy I was sleeping with who'd stolen my money." Trailing when an edge of anger crept into her voice, she looked up to see the seer smiling. "...And fuck you," she added, sharper. "If that was supposed to be some exercise in showing me how worthless all of us are."

His smile grew more serious.

"Not worthless," he corrected gently. "Confused, War Cassandra. And whether they were once or not, they are not your people anymore, Formidable One.”

Cass gave him a harder stare.

"If they aren't my people, then who is?" she said. "If you mean Allie and Revik––"

"I
do
mean them," he cut in. "I also mean Feigran and Galaith and all of those who chose to stay behind for the betterment of the lesser races."

"You're saying I'm Elaerian," she said.

"Most certainly you are," he said, patient. "Was there ever any doubt?”

Cass blinked, then felt her mouth twist in a frown.

"Am I telekinetic?" she demanded.

"That, I do not know," he said, sighing a bit as he folded his hands. "I would very much like to help you find out, though, War Cassandra. I suspect that you have come to this incarnation much more heavily armed than your wildest dreams would suspect. Whatever words and beliefs best suit your living form at this time...”

Cass stared at him warily.

She strongly suspected she knew what he meant, when he said he’d like to ‘help’ her find her abilities. Cass had seen Revik's back...up close and personal, in fact. Cass also sat holding Allie one night after Revik turned back into Syrimne, listening while her friend cried and told her and Jon in excruciating detail, exactly how Revik got a lot of those scars. Maybe because she was upset, or maybe because she didn't think about what Jon and Cass had already seen Revik endure at the hands of Terian, Allie told them a lot. She told them pretty much everything she knew that Revik’s uncle had done to him, or paid to have done to him, primarily to wake up his telekinetic abilities.

Cass had seen the scars. She knew Allie hadn't been exaggerating.

Layers upon layers marred Revik's skin, covering his back from his collar to his waist, bad enough in places that his skin shone nearly white. Baguen told her once how difficult it was to scar a seer. They healed so much more quickly and completely than humans, especially when they were young––

"It won't be like that for you," the ancient seer told her softly. "The Sword's path is the hardest in this...as all the scriptures foretell."

"You made sure of that," she muttered, feeling her jaw harden.

The ancient seer went on as if she hadn't spoken.

"....He is the first to arrive. His is the sole light on this world, with the responsibility to reignite that flame...
'so that, like the first Light, he could touch it to the others and thus share what he has wrought through blood and sweat and effort.’”
The seer purred softly, inclining his head. “It is his honor. And his curse."

"More scripture," Cass muttered, watching a sunfish as the submarine glided past. "I'm sure he appreciated that, growing up. I'm sure it was a real comfort for him."

"He grew to understand his role, yes. He accepted it."

"Bullshit," she retorted. "He had no choice.”

"...Nor do any of us," the seer reminded her softly. "I did not design his fate, War Cassandra. He understood that, too, once upon a time. Until his wife corrupted his mind." Pausing, he held his lips tightly together before continuing. Cass saw the cold hatred that flared there, right before he slipped back into his usual repose. "...For her, the time spent among humans was a handicap, not a benefit.”

“According to scripture, she’s in charge,” Cass reminded him.

The seer made a noncommittal gesture with one hand.

“Not the scriptures I believe,” he said. Pausing, he added, “There is more to that piece I quoted above. Would you like to hear it?”

She didn’t answer, but he seemed to take her silence as permission.

“‘...The last spark of all will need the least to ignite, for Hers shines the brightest, in the very darkest of times...’”

Meeting her eyes, he made his voice more stern, almost a command.

“You are wrong, War Cassandra,” he said. “It is not you who refuses to let go of the past. It is her...your sister, the Bridge. You remember what is important. She remembers what is convenient...whatever allows her to retain her previous views on the world. It has always made her weak, this refusal to face reality.” The Sark shrugged eloquently with the same hand. "Perhaps it was too easy for her. Perhaps she was too sheltered by the Seven in those formative years, when she most needed an education."

An image flickered in Cass' mind, of her own father, drunk, kicking in the door handle to her room, his face shining with sweat from the hallway light. She heard her mother's voice rising on the other side, even as her father’s eyes lit on Cass herself. She saw the hatred there. He shouted at her in Thai, then in broken English, then more Thai...his words slurring until Cass was almost grateful, almost relieved when she could no longer make sense of what he said.

The old seer’s voice broke into her reverie.

"Yes," the seer agreed, his voice soft. "Yes, it was hard for you, War Cassandra. You know what they are capable of...more than most. More importantly, you face that truth honestly, with dignity. With truth itself." He sighed, giving a graceful wave of one hand. "That is not 'holding on,' my dearest of friends. That is learning. That is taking what you need from the experience your incarnation offered you, and using it to benefit."

"And what 'experience' will you offer me?" Cass said. She let the sarcastic edge hit her voice harder that time. "...Will they be filled with butterflies and puppies and rainbows?"

"Oh, most assuredly, they will hurt," the seer conceded smoothly, his face and tone unapologetic. "But you are stronger now, War Cassandra. You have proved that. You have proved it again and again. And the duration will be short, even in terms of subjectivity. A mere blink in the totality of this life that spreads before you..."

"Like Revik?" She gave him a harder look.

"No."

"How long?" she pressed.

"A fortnight at best," he replied without hesitation, surprising her by being specific. "As much as ten months, if you are particularly resistant to the process. But I don't foresee that you will be, and I am rarely wrong about such things." Pausing again, as if waiting for her to think about his words, he added, "As I said, I am rarely wrong about such things. I also generally estimate in the conservative."

She snorted a little. "I bet."

"Without exception," he said. “We all have our basic natures, I’m afraid.”

Still watching him warily, Cass finally shook her head, but not really in a 'no.' Her eyes shifted back to the dark-green waves. Now she could see nothing but vague shapes in the curl of water pushed backwards by the prow of the underwater ship. After watching the water shimmer past for a few seconds more, she sighed again, feeling her stomach growing cold.

"What do you want from me?" Cass frowned, remembering Revik's back, the scars that now practically defined him. The echoes of pain from her time with Terian followed, the memories from that ice-like cave under the snow of the Caucasus Mountains.

The flash of a gun under the Arizona sun.

"...Besides my body, that is,” she said. “Besides my ability to withstand pain?"

"You will not withstand this, my dear," the seer told her, his voice holding the barest tinge of sadness. "Not in the way you mean."

Cass nodded, folding her arms tighter as she glanced back at the green water. Something about his honesty was a relief. She followed bubbles with her eyes as they cascaded up and back across the thick, organic pane, moving faster as they reached the widest edge of the curve.

Her shoulders slowly began to relax.

She knew, in the way a person always knows such things, what she wanted.

Maybe she’d always known.

Either way, the decision had already been made.

1

HUMVEE

I THOUGHT I knew about death.

I knew enough to know that you never get used to it.

You don't get used to it when it happens gradually, like from a disease like multiple sclerosis. You don't get used to it when it happens suddenly, like seeing a friend gunned down in front of you. The how of it is incidental, really, when it happens to someone you love.

I thought I'd gotten past the soul-crushing finality of it, though. I thought I’d outgrown that feeling that nothing would ever be right again.

Like
I'd
never be right again.

After all, I'd lost a fair few number of people I loved already.

"Allie?" he murmured.

The one voice that could have pulled me out of my near-trance, did.

It was only then that I realized I'd closed my eyes, maybe to do the same thing I'd done as a kid. Ignore a reality that wanted to bludgeon me right in the face.

Instead of looking out the window, I looked at him. His fingers wound into mine. His light came through my skin as he touched me, strongly enough that I felt his worry along with that pulse of warmth, as if through his pores.

"Allie," he murmured again. He tugged me closer. Wrapping an arm around my back, he caressed my face. "Baby...are you all right?"