To The Princess Bound (5 page)

…
Fear?

Dragomir kept his head down, but frowned.  She was afraid of the Praetorian?  Her own royal guard?

Then she stood up, and in a commanding voice, said something in Imperial.  The Praetorian responded with a polite bow and a few crisp words, then the room suddenly exploded in a blast of gut-wrenching terror.  Dragomir choked on it, having to shield himself from the energy before he was washed away in it.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the royal woman try to bolt.  The Praetorian caught her, and the fear in the room began to build, radiating from the robed woman like blood spilling from a severed limb thrust into a bath of water.  Soon the room was awash with it, so thick Dragomir was having trouble breathing.  He heard the woman whimper and babble in Imperial.

He had a sudden, strong vision of a man atop him, pinning him to the ground, grunting with the sounds of passion.  His eyes flickered toward the woman in shock. 
She thinks I’m going to…?

Their eyes met, and her emerald eyes went wide.  In that moment, Dragomir felt like he’d been hit by a sledgehammer.  He
knew
this woman.  He didn’t know from what time, or place, but he knew her.  The feeling went all the way to his core.  He felt a connection buried there, something very old…

No.  His heart began to hammer like a sledge in his chest.  The soul-link, made from across an entire planet, completely dormant, yet
still
radiating residual fear to him for an entire month…  It was
her
?

A thousand questions pounded through Dragomir’s mind with each thunderous beat of his heart.  Had the Imperials found some way to trap Emps?  Was the woman a decoy?  Was she faking her terror?  How had they found him?  How did they even
know
?  Was she, too, an Emp?  A royal Emp?  Or a betrayer?  An Emp seeking out other Emps, turning them over to the Imperials for land and money, forging connections with strangers to make it impossible for them to hide?  Had she located him in trance, then sent her minions out to find him?

Dragomir was about to throw up a shield around himself and fight in earnest when the woman suddenly started screaming and battering at the Praetorian, wrenching him back to the present.  Her terror amplified, slamming Dragomir out of his light trance, seeping into his
au
, its raw power threatening to overwhelm him.

Whatever the fear was, it was genuine.  Not an Emp, then.  A royal?  One of the legendary brainiacs that the Imperials put on pedestals and worshipped as demigods?  One of the mutant descendants from early cryogenic space travel who, using their increased brainpower, had wrested control of the Imperium from the other Gifted?  That could explain its strength.  And magnified by the dormant connection they shared…

Oh gods,
he thought, when he realized that even his strongest shields weren’t going to be enough.  The connection was so strong that it was impossible for him to hide from her emotions, there being a direct channel—however dormant—between himself and the woman for the energy to tumble down.  In a moment or two, her fear was going to seep into him, and he was going to try and bolt.

If he did, it would probably earn him another week on the rack, enduring the green-eyed man’s fury.  If they even let him live at all.

In desperation, Dragomir did what he did back in the village, when trying to determine the root cause of an illness.  He opened himself fully to the terror.  He threw each
rama
wide-open, so he could fully experience her emotions with her.

He grunted with the impact.

Men.  Many of them.  They suffocated him in a wash of pain, brutality, and horror.  He heard their voices—in lies, in passion, in violence, in disdain.  They told him they were going to kill him, that he was not worth the time it took for them to use his body, then took him anyway, violent and painful.  They told him he was dirty, that he needed perfume.  He felt the rotten fish on his back, chest, his knees.  He felt the cold, the rain, the snow. 

He whimpered, but somehow kept his feet steady, knowing that the visions were not his own. 

Then whose are they?
he wondered.  The woman on the floor was dressed in the greatest gems and finery that Mercy could produce, and she smelled of perfume and flowers.  Her bedroom was lavishly appointed with rugs, silks, furs, tapestries, curtains.  She lived in a palace crafted of solid black marble, with gold and silver designs inlaid into the floor, ceiling, and walls.  Thousands of Dragomir’s brethren had been enslaved to cater to her every need.

The Praetorian got up and left, and, when the woman tried unsuccessfully to stop them, more visions assaulted them.  His body was bartered and sold.  He was paraded by a metal collar around his neck, brought into roomful after roomful of lewd, dirty men, and was only allowed to eat his meager ration for the day after the last one had taken their fill of him.  He saw his belly swell up, experienced the horror of an impassive old man reaching inside, pulling his baby out, dropping it into the trash.  He felt a shot in the arm, was told it would never happen again.

Dragomir gasped and opened his eyes as the chain started yanking tight against the metal collar around his neck.  Again and again, the princess slammed into it, screaming and wailing and thrashing like a wild thing.

He stepped forward, despite himself.

The woman on the other end froze, and he felt the terror of the room crack outward like a rifle retort.  She screamed something at him in Imperial, holding her hand up between them.  Then she was sliding backwards on the end of the chain connecting them…

…
connecting them?

What is going on here?
he thought, deeply disturbed upon seeing the metal belt encasing her waist, the loop in its center holding the chain linked to his collar. 
Why doesn’t she just take it off?

It took him a moment to realize that she couldn’t.  The Praetorian had welded the chain in place.

He saw her scramble backwards, her panicked green eyes obviously searching for some weapon she could use against him.

“Sorry,” Dragomir whispered.  He wanted to say more, but, even if he hadn’t been admonished by the green-eyed man not to open his mouth, the spasm of terror that followed his voice was enough to stop him.  He kept his eyes down, the healer in him trying to decide just what was happening.  The connection was puzzling enough, but the horrible visions left him disturbed.

Bad dreams?  Night terrors?  Dragomir didn’t think the explanation was so simple.  Perhaps the cause was deeper.  Was she remembering some former life?  Some horror-ridden existence on Mercy, many years ago?  Or was she simply serving as the channel to another lonely woman, experiencing what the woman was going through?  Perhaps this Imperial royal had a split-Gift—and the habit of forging connections with random strangers.  Dragomir felt for a link to another woman, some sort of conduit that could be powering the visions, but found that every one of the woman’s energy centers were bound, if not completely closed.  Most of her links to others had been cut off long ago by the closing of her heart-
rama
.

In fact, with the blockages stopping up her gi, he only found two connections.  The first was withered, emaciated from years of disuse, but it still had loving emerald
gi
flowing down it, trying in vain to push past the clamped rama petals to feed the center’s malnourished core.  It was a small, but steady trickle.  Like a hand-pump or garden hose.

The second connection wound straight to his heart.

It was much larger, like a massive river-channel, but shadowy and inactive.  Beside the tiny trickle of the emerald gi-link, Dragomir’s link to the princess was deep, a vast, empty canal.  It had no flow of
gi
, but the potential was there, and its power breathtaking, strong enough for Dragomir’s heart to skip.  The translucent, dormant link was an open connection just aching to be realized.  He had no doubt that, the moment she relaxed enough to open her
rama
, the connection was going to knock him completely to his knees. 

Oh no
, Dragomir thought, feeling a welling of dread as he watched that massive, humming connection, just aching for its mate. 
I can’t do this.  Not again.
  The way the link was vibrating in his mind’s eye, Dragomir knew that it was close, that any tiny trigger could set it off.  He tried to shy away, to pull back.

But the visions kept bombarding him, shattering his defenses.  They kept getting stronger, more violent, and they didn’t appear to have an outside source. 
They must be coming from within,
he thought, confused.  He saw the visions emanating from her throat, her heart, her liver, her womb, her core…  About the only
rama
unaffected was her mind-
rama,
and it was completely shut down, the terror and images spiraling up from the lesser
ramas
making it lock itself away, leaving the lower
ramas
of instinct and emotion in charge.  Above it, the soul-
rama
had withdrawn, leaving the body to stagnate in its own emotions without the guiding hand of previous lifetimes of soul-knowledge. 

Without a healthy window into her spirit’s great wisdom and calm, she was trapped in the growing cycle of panicked silver
gi
building and spiraling within her lower
ramas,
crashing within her like a full-force hurricane.

She was rocking back and forth, now, babbling something under her breath.

On instinct, Dragomir closed his eyes and found the humming crystalline core that was his center.  He sank his mind into it, allowing the terror rushing through him to disintegrate under its power.  Then, gathering this calm, he gently reached out to her with his heart-
rama
, surrounding her with the tranquility, peace, and love that made up the essence of that energy center. 

He tried to forge a new link—
not
the dormant one, which he knew was in danger of exploding into being with the slightest touch—to feed his
gi
inside her body, but with her
ramas
all cinched shut on the tornado within, all he could do was give her external peace.  He concentrated on that, flooding her
au
with gentle, reassuring heart-
rama
energy.  The color changed from panicked flashes of sickly orange, red, and brown, to a warm gold as his own energy began to seep into the outer edges of the
au
, then slowly spread deeper, until it was touching the edges of her physical body.

Her rocking slowed, then finally stopped.  Dragomir let out a pent-up breath as he felt as the
ramas
slowly stopped pouring their poison into her being.  A few moments later, her heart rama unfolded a tentative petal.  Then another.  As gently as he could, Dragomir brushed it with the golden energy of his core.  A tiny, needle-sized passage opened within it, and the emaciated, emerald-laced
gi
link he had seen before jumped to push energy through it, into her center, instinctively trying to re-activate the neglected rama with a flow of emerald
gi
. 

The other connection, Dragomir’s, the bigger, dormant one, had started to almost keen with the intensity of its hum, almost painful to Dragomir’s mind as his soul ached to make the connection and help her. 
Life
, it seemed, wanted him to seal that connection and surrender to her.  For whatever reason, this royal, like that pretty gray filly, had been chosen for healing.

No. 
He actually had to avoid looking at that massive channel in his mind’s eye, just to keep from getting sucked in at the
need
buried there.  Life had guided Dragomir to this woman, but he would help her on his own terms.  He would not be surrendering to a royal, opening his heart to one of the invaders of this planet.  After Meggie, he would rather die.

But he was a healer, and the healer in him instinctively wanted to help this woman.  To do that, he had to figure out what was going on.  Avoiding the massive, dormant connection lest he accidentally trigger something he couldn’t take back, Dragomir gently grabbed the tiny green tendril woven through the rama’s petals and used it as a tether to carefully ease his consciousness into the swirling energy beyond.

He was staggered by what he found.

Unlike the screaming visage of terror that her body portrayed, the woman was a well of depth and passion.  He saw the loving, nurturing experiences of thousands of rich lifetimes stored within, all caged by the cold, brutal set of memories that had erupted only a moment ago.  Her trust, her love, was bound.  He tested the cage gently, found it firm.  The ramas themselves were utterly choked with the visions that plagued her, but he could find no outward connection that could be producing the images other than the emerald gi-line.  Troubled, he backed out of the heart-
rama
and turned to follow the emerald strand to its owner.

An old soul.  One who, like this woman, had experienced many, many lives in the past.  A man…

Dragomir froze when he realized which man.  He was ringed so heavily in worry and fury that there was no mistake.  It was the green-eyed general who had took him from his home, humiliated him, and whipped him bloody.  The shock quickly launched Dragomir back to his body, and he jerked with the impact.

They’re siblings,
he realized.