Burning Stone (5 page)

The gouts of fire around her obscures her vision, but suddenly, she is standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking a green meadow untouched by the flames.

Within the meadow, she sees a house built of stone and glass, turrets rising from the main house and a wide doorway open and inviting her in.

She starts toward the building and a shadow rises from behind it. A creature made of rubies and smoke flies up and over the house before landing in front of her and approaching her.

As he touches down and extends his frightening head, Leyhara feels her heart speed up and she jolts.

Leyhara jerked upright and rolled her flaming bedding into a pile, smothering it in her cloak.

She sat on the floor and slapped at the fabric, putting out the fire. She hadn’t set the sheets on fire in years.

Leyhara sat and leaned against the door, chuckling. Bohr had said he wanted to be called if she was on fire, but she had handled it herself.

She checked the chrono and it was an hour before dawn. She had slept long enough.

Leyhara got into her clothing and brushed her hands over her hips, checking to make sure that her skirt wasn’t tucked into her bodice. One time was enough.

She wadded up the charred sheet and dropped it into the recycler, hung up her robes on a peg in the wall and crept out of her room as quietly as she could.

Bohr’s door was closed, so she tiptoed down the hall and made a pot of tea as quietly as she was able. She knew he had been cutting into his own sleep on her behalf and that was going to have to stop.

She dialled up her breakfast and noted that Bohr’s selection from last night was still on the screen. His food code was gold and it wasn’t one that she had seen before. She was going to look it up and find out a little more about her pilot and guardian.

She pulled a data pad toward her and brought up food codes. All it said about the gold code was that it was a high-protein blend.

Leyhara cross-referenced species that required high protein, were bi-pedal and had pointed ears. She got three hundred results and she started scrolling through them.

Her breakfast was gone and she was sipping at her tea when Bohr came out of his quarters and stumbled to the galley. It was nice to see that waking wasn’t easy for him either.

She held up a cup. “Here you go. Good morning, Bohr.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Do I smell smoke?”

She sighed. “Yes, I had a dream and my bed caught fire.”

He gulped down the tea and poured more. “What was your dream about?”

She rubbed her temple. “There was fire, music, a green meadow and a house made of stone and glass. It was quite a pretty house.”

He perked up. “Did you like it?”

“I didn’t get to really see it. A Drai rose from behind the house and I watched him land. I was going to touch him but that is when my sheets caught fire.” She wrinkled her nose.

“I think the music in my head must have mixed with the research vids that Kedna showed me.”

He nodded as if that was likely. “What did you do with the bedding?”

“I jammed the charred bits into the recycler. They weren’t good for anything else.”

He inclined his head. “Of course.”

Bohr moved to the dispenser and he summoned two breakfasts.

“Did you sleep all right? Your hair looks a little festive.” She bit her lip.

He ran his hands through his hair while he waited. “It was a little rough. I must have caught the scent of the fire.”

She nodded. “It does tend to travel.”

The light in the galley changed, and she smiled. “I want to see the dawn.”

He looked like he wanted to argue, but he sat instead and started on his breakfast.

She scampered up the ladder to the upper hatch, and she opened it, climbing out and standing on the ship. Light crept over her skin, and she raised her arms high to welcome the sun.

On the tarmac around the ship, her guards turned to watch her, but she simply welcomed the sun for two minutes, and then, she returned to the interior of the ship.

With the hatch sealed above her, she worked her way down the ladder and back to the galley. Bohr had his first tray empty, so she picked it up and put it away.

“Oh, sorry about the drunk talk last night. I will try and reel it in tonight.”

He smiled. “I didn’t mind it. At least now I know you have a weakness.”

She made a face and sat back in her chair. “It is only when I am in a lens-type situation. My power hits the rock but not all of it is absorbed, so I take it in and bounce it out again and again. You get the idea.”

“So the moment you strike the air…”

“There is a flash as I burn the air for a moment, but then, it is gone. I shut off.”

He picked up his tray and disposed of it. “How far do you think you can get today?”

“I don’t know. It depends on the makeup of the stone. Different minerals burn at different temperatures.”

Bohr inclined his head. “Well, ready when you are. I will stop you for water at lunch and you will have some ration packs. I do not care that you don’t need the food. You will have it.”

Leyhara got to her feet. “Let’s go.”

He escorted her to the site; they landed the skimmer in the mountains with a bit of effort.

“Why the wobble?”

“The mountains have a magnetic element. They interfere with navigation. The deeper you go, the larger the discrepancy. It is why they crafted the compass. It compensates for the pull.”

She nodded and clutched at his arm as they landed with a thud. She found the hole in the stone and lined herself up again. “Here we go.”

“I will be waiting on the other side. This is a long one. Take your time.” Bohr nodded and he backed the huge lizards up.

They might be intelligent and articulate beings, but to Leyhara, she just saw lizards.

Facing the stone, she fired up the air around her and stepped forward, finding the upper edge of the target zone, and she began her second day on another alien world.

She stumbled out of the tunnel and into the flare of her fire; she batted it away and sat down on the ground.

Bohr was waiting for her. She smiled brightly.

“Hello!”

He chuckled and rolled his eyes. “I brought you some water. Iskan says it will calm you down.”

She reached out with both hands and flexed her fingers like a child. “Gimmee.”

The water pack was cool in her hands, and it sizzled a little so she drank quickly. Her mind cleared a little, and she leaned back against the side of the mountain.

“How did you get here? I don’t see tracks from a skimmer and this is a darned narrow valley.”

He winked. “I have my ways.”

She took the ration bar he handed her, and she slowly munched. The sun was high overhead.

“That took a while.”

“You could say that. You walked three kilometers. I didn’t want to frighten you with the numbers before you started. You are two-thirds of the way to the final valley.”

The scent in the narrow valley was heady, and Leyhara knew it would get stronger. Now that she knew what was driving the migration, she could figure out what the plants did. Hormonal triggers were often found in plant matter and that was probably the cocktail required for either the males or the females or both.

She leaned back and closed her eyes, letting the shadows cool her skin as the hot breeze caressed it. She let her thoughts drift, and Bohr took a seat near her, instead of against the stone; he sat on a rock, nearly perching. His shadow increased her shelter.

The answer she was seeking struck her in a rush when she stared at the shadow. She kept her mouth shut and kept chewing. When she finished the ration bar, Bohr handed her another bag of water. She drank and handed him the empty.

“Thank you, Bohr.”

“You are most welcome. They are very excited and extremely grateful at the progress you have made. If you stopped now, you would still have saved a dozen lives this season alone.”

She smiled. “I am glad, but I am going to continue until I reach the end. I hate leaving projects half done.”

Bohr nodded. “Excellent. Well, I will see you underway again and I will meet you on the other side.”

Leyhara lined up with the hole, and she pressed into the stone, smiling as it yielded easily. She could melt it at once, but she didn’t want to. She needed to be careful to make it sturdy as well as a navigational passageway. Not reinforcing it would be inviting trouble.

Humming with the bounce of energy, her buzz quickly returned. She moved swiftly, always aiming toward daylight with the huge expanse of the tunnel echoing around her.

She began a skating jog to speed things along while putting the arches into place with every slide of her feet.

The next break of daylight came quickly, but she had to climb down and then up the next mountain to get into position. This required a different design to the exit and she cut two wide troughs on either side of her start position, heating them so that they would not cool when the flowing stone struck them.

Ready to go, she pushed into the stone, and after she had a foothold, it went quickly.

The idea in her mind was that if she could move fast enough, she would see Bohr landing and have her suspicion confirmed. His shadow had wings.

She should have been angry to learn that the Drai who had chosen her was masquerading as her pilot, but he actually was her pilot. It didn’t matter who got her from place to place as long as she could see and do what she had never been able to before.

He wasn’t making any moves on her, so she was content that he was not stealing her away to get her alone. He could have started something the previous night, but her virtue had been as safe as her clothing had been.

She stumbled into the light once more and put out the flames her entry caused.

To her astonishment, she was overlooking a flat plain covered with grass, flowers and low shrubs. A few steps away from the wall, she turned and caves were dug out to the left and right, every few hundred yards.

Leyhara’s head was buzzing with energy, but she ignored it and twirled in the fading light. She had had four days to do it and she had done it in two.

Now, she had to wait for her ride home.

She saw him coming, and his astonishment was on his face. “I knew it!”

He sighed, and once he was on the ground, his long strides carried him to her. “I did not think that you would get this far this fast.”

“It was a simple structure to the stone. Once I had a grip on it, it just melted away.”

“Do you wish to wait for the skimmer?”

She shook her head. “Can you carry me and fly?”

He grinned. “My people would not have become mythical for stealing maidens if I could not.”

He carefully lifted her in his arms and his wings flared wide. He bent his knees and pushed upward. His wings thrummed powerfully, and they climbed into the sky.

Squealing would have been undignified, but she was held so securely that she was able to wave at the skimmer full of Kremlod as they examined the tunnel.

Bohr’s hands were tight but polite. He gripped her only where she was covered by fabric.

He flew them back along the straight line that she had burned in the stone. The sun tinged a darker shade as it prepared to drop, and it made her sigh with satisfaction.

He landed at the shuttle and carried her inside once again.

“I believe we have much to discuss, but I need to make a call to the Kremlod and ask them to confirm the usability of the tunnel. Once that is done, we can leave and begin our trip to the next world.”

She nodded. “Right. I am going to try that language flash again. Maybe if I am tired, it will stick better.”

He went his way to the command deck, and she grabbed the data pad, setting up the flash.

When it went off, she gripped the pad instead of dropping it like she did the first time. The information in her mind still spun, so she waited until it ceased before putting the data pad down and heading for a nice solar shower. She didn’t really sweat, but ash did collect on her skin. Time to get clean.

Since her workday was done, she slipped on a floor-length tunic that tied at the waist with a sash. The dark green made her hair look even redder, but it wasn’t a bad thing.

She brushed her hair and went to meet Bohr on the command deck, her feet bare on the plates. Leyhara sat in her seat and pulled her feet up, wrapping her arms around them while staring out at the growing darkness.

He was finishing the conversation, and to her surprise, he was rejecting an invitation to dinner. He accepted effusive thanks and was told that the bill had been paid to Citadel Iskan as agreed. He thanked them for their prompt attention to the bill and that was the end of the hissing and gargling.

He sealed the ship, verified the readouts and lifted off.

“Next assignment is easy; it is a meditative pathway on Ciina. You will have to follow a laid-out path, but they want it in a smooth and even surface and you can create it in one solid piece.”

“A meditative pathway?”

Bohr nodded and glanced at her as he pulled them out of the atmosphere and into the eternal night of space.

“You changed.”

“I did. I figured I was done for the day and this was made for me for days I wasn’t going to use my skills. It is comfortable.” She felt it necessary to defend her clothing.

“It looks lovely. I was just surprised.”

“That clothing wasn’t dictated by me; it was Mockski’s talent that drove the shape. No matter what he tried, his hands came up with the same pattern over and over again.”

“His hands?”

“Yes, he morphs clothing using his hands. For the first sample, he has to make full contact with the substance.”

Bohr tightened his hands and flattened them with care. “I see. I think I may seek out another tailor for you if you have no objection. There is another sleeper at Morganti and I believe that there is a shaper there as well.”

She made a face. “I am fine with Mockski. If you have difficulty, then you will have to grapple with it.”