Surfacing Ch. 09

Auslan felt a cold rush pass through him, but he managed to keep his head up. "I did confess the...connection I feel to her since healing her."

"And it's not your name bond?"

"No. She does not know it, of that I am certain."

"How can you be?"

His brows drew down. "You do not have such a name, it is impossible to describe, Elder. You will have to accept that I keep our agreement to be truthful with you."

D'Shea expelled a soft breath. "Very well. What is it, then? If not your name, it must be her psionics."

Auslan blinked. "Her...what?"

Her gaze sharpened even more and he felt frozen to the spot at her intensity. "Are you, or have you ever been aware of the fact that her mind was permanently altered in a fight with a psionic dwarf, shortly before she first attacked you on that farm? In fact, it was in that altered state in which you first confronted her."

He felt his middle tighten in anxiety as his breathing quickened. He shook his head. "No. I was not aware. I have never been."

"Shyntre didn't tell you about his sapphire necklace at all?" D'Shea looked at Auslan's absolutely baffled face and nodded. "He didn't. I believe you. So in light of this possible connection, what have your dreams been telling you? You have nightmares, often. So did Sirana for a while, after the psionic attack."

Auslan shook his head, truly afraid and speechless. Would he have to confess his visions to this Elder, too....? He looked away, feeling something trembling inside his chest as he seemed to lose feeling in his hands for a moment.

Sirana...attacked by a psion, even before the Illithid? Her mind changed in some way, but he never knew her before that event so he had no comparison. And D'Shea thought this might be the reason for his..."mannerisms," from when he healed her? The connection he mentioned, the desire, but without the true name.... Auslan covered his face with his hands and took a few deep breaths, knowing D'Shea was watching every flinch and quiver.

Could she be right?

*What will I do...?* He clutched at his forehead harder with his fingers, pressing until it hurt.

Then in a moment like a flaring bolt of white light, Auslan realized that D'Shea had given him his answer to a different problem altogether: a way to talk about his dreams, not to have to hide them from her or evade her questions, without saying the real reason for them, if he was careful. Psionics and some connection in reverie. Not divine visions at all.

The dreams could be merely a side-effect of Sirana's healing ritual; nothing more. And he might gain the Elder's help in exploring some of them, the specific ones pertaining to Sirana and Shyntre, without having his secret be discovered. D'Shea had even mentioned before possibly reaching Sirana, discovering what for sure whether she was alive, what she was doing, where she was...and D'Shea thought of this because of a psionic connection this whole time?

Again, she could even be right. But that would not curtail the possibility of sharing his visions under the same pretense.

"My dreams..." he began hesitantly, his voice still quavering. "I...they tell me she is still alive, standing in exotic lands, surrounded by danger."

D'Shea uncrossed her leg to sit up, although her smile was sardonic. "Just knowing she made it to the Surface explains that, Auslan. Be more specific."

"It is not that simple, Elder," he protested. "Have you ever known any of your dreams in reverie to be plain and straightforward?"

She shrugged. "Nonetheless, I think you can do better."

"You said there might be a way to reach her before, but that it would take a lot of effort," he returned. "What did you mean?"

"That is still under consideration," she said flatly, staring unblinking at him. "I like that you feel her to be alive. What else? Prove to me something you could not otherwise know except to have seen it in reverie."

"How would I even know if it meant anything to you, Elder?"

"You wouldn't. Give me something specific."

Auslan pursed his lips and rubbed his face again, trying to bring back some of the most recent barrage of imagery. "A ring."

"Lots of those around," D'Shea commented dryly.

He ignored that. "Shaped like a bird made of fire, broad flames for wings outstretched."

Her brows rose slowly. "Do you even know what a bird is, Auslan?"

"Does it matter? It flies like a bat. It is from the Surface."

"Very well, continue."

He took a breath, staring down at the clean, white sheets, smoothing another crease. "Someone...someone powerful was forcing that ring onto Sirana's finger...she did not want it because she would not be able to take it off. She would belong to him, and he could track her wherever she went."

D'Shea frowned now. "Who was that 'someone'? You said 'he.' You are sure it's a male figure?"

Auslan nodded an affirmative. "But not Drow."

"What did he look like?"

A shake of the head. "I only saw a muscular form, taller than her. Chest and arms. No face."

"Then describe the chest and arms."

The former Consort shook his head with a helpless shrug. "Off-white shirt. Leather bracers."

D'Shea's face set like flint. "Try harder, Consort."

He swallowed his frustration, blinking back tears as he tried to remember. "Uh...brown skin on his hands. Rough, not smooth, some small silver hairs on the back above the knuckles."

She nodded. "Better."

The Elder considered this for a few moments, and Auslan would have said that the details indeed did not mean anything specific to her; she was just sorting them away for later.

"Anything else? Any words?"

"I cannot...remember, Elder," he mumbled, looking down. "Yes, there were words, but I only recall now the feeling of a low voice like Kerse but not so...hissing. Not bestial or demonic, but matching the big chest, like sound has a deeper echo in a larger cave."

"Was it a threat?"

"No...more a statement of power. There is a small difference."

D'Shea smiled a bit. "Indeed, there is. I'm glad that you can tell. What next, Auslan? Everything until the dream ends, please."

He swallowed. "She escaped, ran, but the place was dark, I could not see anything around her. It...shifted, as dreams do, and I remember a kiss, and...ah!" He rubbed a place at his temple where he felt a stabbing pain briefly. He took a breath. "Something about her needing to return to get the ring to come off. She still wants to return. I remember feeling the desire, very strongly. But that was the end of the dream."

"Hm." D'Shea rubbed her chin. "Do you know if she still carries her child?"

That thought caused an odd feeling, like a bolt of energy straight through his lower abdomen... He nodded confidently. "She does."

"This is all assuming your dreams are of a psionic link to her, in its nature."

Again, Auslan nodded firmly. "True, Elder. And even then, it could be entirely shadows taking a shape familiar to her or to me, but not what actually occurred for her."

D'Shea nodded thoughtfully. "On that thought, do you think the faceless male is the necromancer she has been sent to kill?"

Auslan hesitated. "The ring makes little sense, as a dream symbol. But I do not know either way."

D'Shea allowed him to read the fact that she had other thoughts on that. He dared to ask her what they were, and she actually granted them. Or some of them.

"Rausery's notes on the necromancer would indicate that he is at the end of a natural human life span, frail with age, with very pale skin, and he was not very tall even when younger. Certainly not as you describe: towering, muscular, brown-skinned. I don't think it's him. So Sirana perhaps has met others besides her target, and there is danger. You are getting this message, perhaps anxiety from her through this odd bond, even as there is little we can do for her."

Auslan smoothed out the bit of sheet he had unconsciously crumpled in his hand before looking up again. "Sounds...reasonable, Elder."

She made a face at him. "Oh, I'm quite open to changing my theories on this, Auslan, I know very little but probably more than you just from my personal experience with her limited psionic imprint. On this one subject, I want you to speak up if something I say isn't what you sensed from a dream—do not fear challenging me or proving a theory wrong, or we will not figure out how best to use this connection of yours."

The younger male stared at her, almost disbelieving, but soon nodded. "As you wish, Elder."

"Then give me something else. Anything."

Auslan thought about it, stunned that he would find himself so abruptly in a position to actually say this to another Drow, for the first time in over a century. It was so tempting. Shyntre wouldn't be happy, but Auslan had the perfect ruse for this, and a powerful sorceress possibly able to give him more than helpless dreams and feelings to relive over and over again in absolute solitude...

"There is a place that keeps being shown to me, the exotic place where Sirana is always standing. Powerful Sunlight, red sand, no water, blue Sky like her eyes. Poisonous creatures that sting with fang and tail...and that firebird from the ring in my last dream."

D'Shea frowned deeply. "That is not what Rausery's notes say is above us. Not even close. Sirana can't actually be there, she can't have traveled that far on foot from the Surface portal."

"She is not there, I am certain," he assured her. "It is...there is a symbolism I am missing. But it is what I see much of the time, Elder. Not a real place, only a real place in reverie."

D'Shea nodded slowly as if she might understand, then she looked over to the candlemark on her desk and cursed softly. "I am late. And you are likely hungry. Save your appetite a little longer, I'll bring back something more interesting than travel rations."

He tilted his head innocently. "Why? What is the occasion, Elder?"

"We will share a meal with my son."

Auslan made to look shocked, and felt that same clash of desire and fear as when she'd first offered such a meeting, but thought it safer to say nothing at all.

D'Shea just smiled.

*****

Shyntre rubbed his eyes that had become tired in the candlelight, but he still pictured the vivid colors and mountainous scenery beneath the open Stars... so clear that he could think he stood there again for a moment or two. He flexed a stiff hand holding a fiberstalk quill, but he truly wanted to taste the snowmelt water again in daylight as well, directly from the clear, rushing stream.

He'd never quite realized before that pure water could be clear enough to see every stone it covered, and every bit of green that clung to those stones just beneath the rippling surface. And when those green, growing plants began to change to red and yellow and orange, and the air grew sharp and brisk in a way that did not exist belowground...

His stomach growled, and Rausery chuckled, snapping her gloved fingers in front of his eyes to make him blink.

"Come back, wizard," she drawled.

He pursed his lips and shrugged, finishing up the last copy on Rausery's first night out with the novices, by the mountain pool that one had found before the others. "So Jael was irritated with Sirana enough to cross blades? Over what?"

"You'd have to know Jael better. She was playing and Sirana knew it. It wasn't like with Thena and you. Besides, you're male and not a warrior, Shyntre. You made them look bad."

"They were being stupid," he grumbled.

"I agree," Rausery said casually. "But you were the one who had the brilliant notion to say so to Thena's face."

Shyntre set down the quill before he might be tempted to grip it and snap it in his hand. "I...."

The Elder sat relaxed in her chair, sipping a cup of water, watching him. She didn't seem in any particular hurry to be anywhere or get anything done.

"I never thanked you for... stopping her," he said, feeling his throat tighten around the words.

Rausery nodded once. "Couldn't have you too injured so as not to make it back to the City, Shyntre. There was that understanding even back then."

"The Valsharess?" he asked hesitantly.

Rausery nodded. "In hindsight, yes. Word came from the Prime, though."

"Why send me at all?"

"Wasn't their idea, it was mine. You had the guts and curiosity, and it was a good way to convince Wilsira to let you go once and for all. It suited a number of others of interest. So I made it happen."

"No one wanted anything more specific than that?"

The corners of his Elder's dark red eyes crinkled just a little bit as she smiled. "I did."

Shyntre stared at her for as long as he dared, until it felt too heavy to do so, and he looked back at his neat, careful script. "You won't say more?"

"Too early, wizard. Relax, you have a lot of time yet. Things change."

"But if I knew better what you wanted—"

"So would others. Relax. You aren't forgotten in the Palace, just like Sirana isn't forgotten on the Surface."

Her intense, dark red eyes glanced down to the words he was writing. There was an odd pressure behind his eyes that coincided with an uptick in his heartbeat; he felt his cheeks flush a bit and he blinked rapidly a few times as more moisture built up. He nodded.

"Enough for now," she said, and Shyntre began to carefully clean up the desk. "D'Shea should be coming for you soon."

He nodded, but said, "Qivni told me that...Sirana and Jael both didn't like Thena much, either."

His Elder paused, seemed to recall something specific, then laughed out loud. "Oh, yes...that. You know I'm still kicking the stone about the loss there? Two Red Sisters each under a different Elder but defending each other in the cloister? Doesn't happen often, Shyntre. You may have found Jael abrasive, but she had the potential to be downright frightening as a fighter and with a fierce loyalty to match Qivni to the lucky Drow that snared it."

She shook her head. "Don't see how she could possibly finish her task and come back, though. Something about her that the queen didn't like, and that was that. The Valsharess actually gave Sirana a fair shot by comparison."

The wizard nodded. "The...notes about Manalar."

"And a potential war brewing. Yeah. Like trying to scale a glossy column in dancing slippers with rabid scavengers waiting underneath."

He thought that over some, feeling some of his dislike of the young Drow fading into unimportance. What was the point when a novice had to face something like that?

Then he remembered why he had brought up Jael and Thena in the first place. "Qivni also told me...it was Thena who led the attack on the Consort in solitary."

"Ah," Rausery shifted in her seat, leaning more on one elbow with her head resting on that hand. "Vengeance? The most she knows about you and the Consort, Shyntre, is that you each kept to a cell for three cycles when you weren't teaching the novices. If it had to do with anything, it was Sirana and Jael humiliating her during Jael's initiation, linked by the fact that Auslan healed Sirana and was brought here by D'Shea, who favors her."

"But I recommended to Jaunda that he could do the healing," he said. "I brought him into it."

Rausery shook her head. "Stop it. Maybe so, but again, Thena didn't know that. It could have been because there was opportunity. He's beautiful and he was unguarded."

"Why was that?" he asked with some urgency. "Why not guard him?"

Rausery shrugged. "Ask your mother. Things were hectic and we had more work cut out for us even without my leaving with three of our Sisters in the middle of it all. An oversight, perhaps, or lack of spare hands."

Oversight. No one available. If Sirana could have stayed, that wouldn't have happened...

Shyntre gripped the arms of his chair and unwillingly recalled that gripping, horrifying feeling that had overcome him just that one time at the Palace. He had thought it had been a waking flashback of his own memory...and yet, the timing as he understood it now would have been about right. And it had felt...different, at the time. He was afraid that he had actually felt part of Auslan's attack.

"How has it been since?" he asked quietly.

Rausery let out a breath as she considered. "I only saw him one time after I got back, and I intentionally scared him. He seemed about as I'd expect out of a Consort—quiet and obedient when spoken to—but he hung in strong, too. I know he was sore and cramped being bound for part of the time, but he didn't make a peep or a whine. He isn't broken or babbling, Shyntre, he just got a taste of what it's like outside of the perfumed and pillowed Noble gardens. I also think he's fully aware of it and not expecting it to get better, or to go back how it was. D'Shea's been jealously guarding him herself ever since."

A mistake in judgment, perhaps, that his mother was trying to amend? Would she even admit to such a thing? Again, he wanted to talk to Auslan, but in private. He didn't even know if that would be possible here.

Shyntre drew breath to say something else when he recognized Rausery pondering something related. He waited.

"You know," she said. "There was one thing he did that seemed really out of line for what he is. Qivni was intimidating him, shouting in his face, and he responded by taunting her like a slut and kissing her without permission."

The wizard did a double-take as his mouth fell open a bit. "What? But he...knows better...he would never—"

Rausery looked amused as his reaction, and it encouraged her to give him more. "I should note that it reminded me very strongly of Sirana and Qivni facing off. I've seen it before, like he was mimicking her. Would he do that?"

Shyntre shook his head. "No. Or...I don't see why he would. That's not his way."

"Interesting. He has a 'way'?"

The wizard lifted his chin stubbornly. "He does have a real personality, Elder, believe it or not."

"With you as a bad influence in the Sanctuary, I wouldn't be surprised." Rausery grinned at him, making his face warm again. "So...thoughts? I'm open."

Shyntre shrugged. "I might ask him."

"Do that. I'd like to know what the fuck he was thinking. He's too afraid of me not to run anything he might tell me through six filters. Unlike you."

"Shall I take that as a compliment, Elder?"

"Not every time. Your tongue could stop out-pacing your common sense once in a while. But I do enjoy watching and wondering which parts of you are D'Shea and which are Phaelous when they were your age."

Shyntre made a face. "I only look like my sire, I don't think I'm anything like him. He studies and spies on others and he punishes the students when they step out of bounds. That's about it."

Rausery chuckled. "Oh, I disagree. He's gotten quieter over the years, but don't underestimate him. The Valsharess broke him of quite a powerful temper, I heard, but there was something else that D'Shea really liked about him. They started out hating each other, too. Rather like you and Sirana."

Shyntre had been ready to reply but closed his mouth at that last, deft comment, and gave it more thought. He couldn't imagine Phaelous with a temper, but then, the old Drow had been a consort to the queen. And Shyntre was well aware of what She was doing to him now...

"I see," he said quietly instead.

His Elder was still smirking at him. "So. The Valsharess clearly wants you to breed. Say Sirana comes back. Think you would do the Sisterhood another task?"

Shyntre buried the thought that Sirana would have to deal with the first pregnancy one way or another before he could... but then he nodded.

"Yes?" Rausery tilted her head. "So readily?"

He had trouble fighting a smile. "Yes. Any time, Elder. Just make it happen."

Rausery's eyes narrowed and she smiled without showing teeth. "Hm." She glanced at her candlemark and then at the door, shifting her weight before looking back at him. "I'm hungry myself and tired of waiting on your mother. Shall we?"