Forgotten Suns (60 page)

He bent his head to her: acknowledgment, respect.

No love, no. But they understood one another.

Aisha didn’t need to eavesdrop to know what Rama was up
to. She felt it inside, where he always was.

She waited all day to catch him alone. That was hard: he was
saying goodbye without telling anyone, wandering all over the tent city and the
expedition’s compound. He spent a long time with the antelope, but the stable
was full of mages asking endless questions about the horses, and interns trying
to take care of the horses while that went on, and Malia half answering the
questions and half translating the interns’ and Vikram’s answers. Malia had shown
a talent for translating, and was well on her way to being indispensable.

At about the time Aisha decided to grab him and drag him off
into the nearest empty room, he slipped away. She almost missed it. One minute
he was standing with his forehead against the antelope stallion’s. The next, he
was gone.

Then she saw him slipping around a corner, and darted after
him.

He was fast, but she knew the territory. She also knew where
he was going—and how to go straight there while he took the long, wandering,
goodbye tour.

~~~

She was sitting on the top of the hill when he got there,
watching a flock of plains doves swarm and swirl over the rubble of his tower.
Something had flushed them: a raptor, probably.

“Plains cat,” he said, dropping down beside her.

“Oh, no,” she said. “That’s bad. We’d better tell Vikram
before it gets wind of the horses. Or the interns.”

“It won’t,” said Rama. “Though your father might not mind
about the interns.”

Aisha couldn’t help the snort of laughter at that. “You can
talk to it?”

“Plains cats are highly intelligent. One adopted my son when
it and he were very young. It was never tame, exactly, but it was more loyal
than any human guard. This one knows our people have come back. She’ll have her
cubs up there, and send them to find companions among the mages.”

“Not if Vikram shoots her first.”

“Vikram will not be shooting anything without the mages’
leave. It’s their world now.”

“Not yours?”

“It will always be my world,” he said.

“But you’re leaving it.”

There. She’d said it. She glared across the plain and
refused to look at him.

“Aisha,” he said with tight-stretched patience. “I have to
go. I’ve left too much undone. I have to finish it.”

“What, getting yourself killed?”

“I would hope not.”

“So you do want to live? Then stay here. You’ll be safe.”

“Nowhere is safe as long as the Corps keeps your people
ignorant and stunted. I’m going to finish bringing them down.”

“Nobody can do that. They’re everywhere. They’re like a
virus in the system.”

“So they are. What do you do, or Jamal, when you run into a
virus? You kill it. You scour the system and wipe it out.”

Finally she turned and strafed him with her glare. “I’m
sorry we ever taught you what a computer was.”

He grinned at her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d
seen him that lighthearted.

Damn him. She wanted to cry. He was laughing. He couldn’t
wait to get away from here—and from her.

“Oh, no,” he said, reading her as easily as he ever had. “I’ll
never be glad to leave you.”

“You won’t. If you go, I go.”

“No,” he said.

She set her chin and her mind. She didn’t want to go. She
wanted to stay here and learn all there was to learn; study everything she
could study, and get ready for university. She had doctorates to get.
Archaeology and xenoanthropology. Cosmology. Interuniversal physics. But—

But.

“You will get your doctorates,” Rama said. “That’s your
path. Mine is out there, honoring my promises and atoning for my sins.”

“My path is with you,” Aisha said out of the bottom of her
self. “It’s always been with you. From life to life.”

“Not yet,” he said. It was hard for him to say it. She could
feel it in the pit of her own stomach. “Maybe not at all in this life. You have
so much to do and be. You’ll find whole worlds to conquer. You’ll forget me.”

“I will not.” She thought about hitting him, but that was
too weak for what she was feeling. She wanted to blast him to ash.

“Aisha,” he said, sealing her with her name in this world.
Because names had power. “Meritamon. Beloved of the Sun. I’ll come back. I
promise.”

“Alive?”

He blinked. He should have expected that. He knew her well
enough. “Alive and as well as possible,” he said.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“From life into life,” he said.

“Oh, no. You don’t get to slither out from under. You’ll
find me in this life, or I’ll find you. I won’t sit around waiting for you. Don’t
you even think about me doing that.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.

~~~

Ship hovered just above the grass, glimmering in the
starlight. A storm was brewing, a last hard blow of winter, but the sky was
clear overhead, and the air was still. The only sign of what was coming was a
thin line of cloud along the northern horizon.

The mages had protected their tender new crops with what
looked like sheets of plastine. Dr. Ma was almost persuaded to stay after all,
to find out what it was and how they made it, but she had a universe to study,
and a grant that she didn’t want to lose.

The scientists were on board and cradled in. So were six
blackrobes from the tribes, who had appeared that afternoon with their kit and
a message for Rama from the grandmother. “These you have earned. They’re to
follow wherever you lead. Don’t waste them.”

That was a gift Rama couldn’t refuse, even if he wanted to.
He handed them over to one of the mages who would go with him, and made sure
they were settled in the ship.

Ship would jump as soon as it lifted above atmosphere. Rama
hadn’t stayed for goodbyes. Aisha hadn’t wanted him to. She still wanted to be
here, watching Ship power up for launch.

Mother and Pater were there, too. Jamal, of course. And
Vikram. And Khalida and Daiyan and a few other mages. Elti. Some of the tribes.

None of them said anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

Something blew warm breath on the back of Aisha’s neck.
Something big.

She turned very, very carefully. The antelope stallion
butted her gently and lowered his head for her to scratch between his horns.

She’d wondered, somewhat distantly, why he hadn’t galloped
and screamed this time and raised holy hell because Rama was leaving. He’d been
suspiciously quiet, now she thought about it.

He leaned on her, not hard enough to knock her down, but he
was definite about it. They would both sleep in in the morning, what with the
late night and the snow. Tomorrow she had better be in the arena, and she had
better be ready to work. He wasn’t spending another half a year waiting for
someone to wake up and pay attention.

“Did he put you up to his?” she asked him.

He snorted wetly all over her clean shirt.
He
had to go and ride that outsized
space fish. She was here. She knew how to ride, more or less. She would do
perfectly well.

“Until he comes back.”

Maybe, the antelope said. Or felt. Or wanted her to feel.

This psi thing was hard to put words to. Impossible, most of
the time.

She meant to make it easier. Some of the mages had promised
to teach her. Daiyan especially. Aisha was half dreading it, and half beside herself
with excitement.

The stallion shifted until he was beside her, and leaned
again, so that she had to drape her arm over his back or fall down. He was warm
and his winter coat, though shedding, was still thick, and he smelled of dust
and grass and clean animal.

Ship lifted without warning, straight up. The sight of it
blocking the stars brought a brief, fierce memory of the eater’s prison rising
over the mountain on the rogue moon.

This was no eater of souls. It was a swimmer of seas beyond
human understanding.

Unless that human was Rama. The humans on Ship were already
drugged and dreaming, but he was wide awake.

Aisha could see him in her mind, standing on the bridge with
the screens around him, all showing stars and planets and moon. In her mind he
met her stare and smiled.

He would always be there, deep inside, wherever he went and
however far away he was. Psi and spacetime—that was another study for Dr. Ma
and her scientists.

Maybe it would be Aisha who studied it. The best way to get
a job done, Vikram always said, was to do it yourself.

She stayed till Ship was long out of sight. The others had
left by then, all but the antelope.

When it was finally gone, diving into jumpspace with an
eruption of joy like a whale’s tail slapping the sea, Aisha turned to go, and
ran into the antelope.

He knelt, inviting her. She was probably crazy, but the wind
was picking up and it was a fair way home. She climbed onto his back and let
him carry her toward the first faint light of dawn, and the warmth of the
stable, and so much to do and learn and be that she could hardly get her mind
around it.

The stallion bucked under her, not enough to send her flying,
but enough to make her pay attention. Be, yes. Be now. Later would come when it
came.

That was a good rule to live by.

She crouched down over his neck and wound her fingers in his
mane. He belled into the wind, loud clear antelope laughter, and stretched into
a gallop, and carried her home.

Forgotten Suns

Judith Tarr

Book View Café April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61138-477-2
Copyright © 2015 Judith Tarr

Production Team:

Cover art Copyright © Rolffimages | Dreamstime.com — The Eternal Explorers

Cover design Copyright © 2014 Knotted Road Press
www.KnottedRoadPress.com

Beta readers: Sherwood Smith, Dave Trowbridge, Doranna Durgin

Proofreader: Nancy Jane Moore

Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Digital edition: 20141231vnm

www.bookviewcafe.com
Book View Café Publishing Cooperative
P.O. Box 1624, Cedar Crest, NM 87008-1624

Judith Tarr’s first fantasy novel,
The Isle of Glass,
appeared in 1986, and went on to win the Crawford Award. Her YA time-travel science fiction/fantasy/historical novel,
Living in Threes,
appeared as an ebook from Book View Café in 2012, and is now in print. In between, she has written historicals and historical fantasies—including World Fantasy Award nominee
Lord of the Two Lands
—and epic fantasies, some of which have been reborn as ebooks from Book View Café. A short story, “Fool’s Errand,” a prequel to
Forgotten Suns,
appeared in the January/February 2015 issue of
Analog.
She lives in Arizona with an assortment of cats, two dogs, and a herd of Lipizzan horses.

The Epona Sequence

White Mare’s Daughter

Lady of Horses

Daughter of Lir

Avaryan Rising Series

The Hall of the Mountain King

The Lady of Han-Gilen

A Fall of Princes

Avaryan Resplendent Series

Arrows of the Sun

Spear of Heaven

The Hound and the Falcon Series

The Isle of Glass

The Golden Horn

The Hounds of God

Novels

Ars Magica

Alamut

The Dagger and the Cross

Forgotten Suns

Living in Threes

Lord of the Two Lands

A Wind in Cairo

His Majesty’s Elephant

Collection

Nine White Horses

Nonfiction

Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting it Right

BVC Anthologies

Beyond Grimm

Breaking Waves

Brewing Fine Fiction

Ways to Trash Your
Writing Career

Dragon Lords and Warrior
Women

Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls

The Shadow Conspiracy

The Shadow Conspiracy

The Shadow Conspiracy II

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