Battle of the Ring

docked, watching the procedure through the wide bank of windows just above the docking bracket. The crowd continued to grow as hours passed, hundreds and then thousands. Velmeran was appalled, but finally felt obliged to put in an appearance. Kelvessan were very polite and quiet admirers, but they were also very blunt with their affections. Since the crowd was constantly changing, he was required to make these appearances every four hours for the next three days. Someone observed this routine and actually posted a schedule.

Actually, the term hero was not a completely accurate definition of what Velmeran represented to the Kelvessan. He was a leader, a symbol of Kelvessan presence and unity, a representative for a race that was emerging into its full maturity and looking at itself with a new sense of awareness. He came to accept this role because he believed in that and because, in a curious way, it comforted him. He had come away from this last battle feeling very much like someone whose gifts lay only in destruction. He was pleased to discover that, in the judgment of his own people, he was a builder of dreams and worlds.

Curiously, the one who was most unhappy was Lenna Makayen. She was caught between three races, not entirely human, not really a Trader and certainly not a Kelvessa. She had been quietly depressed since learning of Consherra’s pregnancy. That reminded her only too sharply, for the first time in her life, that she was a sterile hybrid of two races and alien to both. She considered herself alone, a freak of nature. And yet her problem resolved itself very quickly; there was a perfect companion even for her.

Repairs began on the Methryn at a pace that kept even Valthyrra happy. In spite of her professed dread of refitting, Velmeran soon began to suspect that she actually liked the attention. She was certainly enchanted with the thought of acquiring a functional jump generator, allowing her to throw herself vast distances interdimensionally. Earlier tests of jump ships had not been successful, the carrier Valcyr having leaped out of time and space in the early days of the Starwolves, never to return. The problem with the system had finally been solved, and Velmeran confirmed the data before installation began. He was, after all, the resident expert on interdimensional jumps, having the ability to do it himself without the aid of machines.

After the first week Velmeran began to think that all the surprises were over. He was sitting alone in his cabin one evening, ship’s time, reviewing data on a new weapon he was trying to design to crack quartzite shielding. The door announced a visitor, for what seemed like the fiftieth time that day.

“Come in!” he called without looking up, and the door slid open.

“I am sorry to disturb you, but I have come very far,” a voice that was a rich, warm purr stated in Tresdyland, accented in a way that he had never heard. Velmeran glanced up.

The Aldessan were the true parent race of the Kelvessan, but there had been little contact between the two since. In Union space they were dismissed as creatures of legend, and Velmeran was naturally surprised to have a legend pay him a call in his own cabin. She was large, dwarfing him in comparison. A long, snakelike body was supported by a spider’s cluster of appendages, four triple-jointed legs in back with four arms in front, each one longer than he was tall. She was furred in a plush brown velvet, a shaggy mane running from the top of her head to the tip of a thick tail two meters in length. A meter-long neck supported a fox’s head with a long, tapered snout, vast cat-slit eyes, and tracking ears. Three pairs of breasts lining her belly identified her sex, although there was a curious delicacy to this oddly graceful lady.

She was also a Venn warrior-scholar, as he could tell by the body harness that was her only clothing. The harness supported two long swords and a clutch of throwing knives. As large and powerful as she was, she could not match a Kelvessa for strength and speed. Even so, she would be more than a match for twice as many Kalfethki.

“No, please come in,” Velmeran insisted, hurrying to greet his guest. She towered over him on her long spider’s legs, so tall that she risked bumping her head on the ceiling.

“I am Venn Keflyn,” she said simply. “I am very pleased to meet you, but in truth I must admit that I was sent.”

“To me?”

“To instruct you,” she explained. “Word has reached us of mutant Kelvessan, and of the things that Velmeran can do. But after reading the report of your last battle, I think that you should instruct me.”

“No, I need all the help I can get,” Velmeran insisted. “We have been bumbling along as best we can. If it is all the same to you, I would just as well start over again with someone who knows what is going on.”

Keflyn nodded. “In truth, with all matters concerning the psychic arts, we must all be our own teachers. We learn by example, and an example is only a model, a pattern that is not complete until you learn how to adapt it to your own use. I profess to be a teacher of such things, which is to say that I am experienced at setting good examples. But even I do not have your powers, some we had not even believed could be possible. You have caused quite a stir in the hallowed halls of the Venn Academy.”

“I am sorry… “

“No need to be concerned,” she assured him. “It is, I assure you, a most delighted agitation. Such things I may not know, but I still hope to be of some service to you. As we say, those who cannot lead may at least stand behind and push in the right direction.”

Velmeran was soon given to wonder if Aldessan were naturally given to understatement, or if Keflyn was simply too cautious to promise results. She knew exactly what was needed. He soon discovered that philosophy, not science or metaphysics, was the foundation for the study of the psychic arts. She never tried to explain how such powers worked. She was more interested in exploring the question of why.

“Many have talent but lack the self-awareness to make use of it,” she explained once as they sat on a ledge overlooking the removal of damaged plates from the Methryn’s battered nose. “Some stumble through life only half awake, not aware enough of either themselves or life around them to make use of what they possess. We are all limited by our beliefs, and that applies to more things than just the exercise of any gifts we might possess. Indeed, it might be that belief is the only limitation that is placed upon us.”

And so they spoke together, sometimes exchanging only a few words, sometimes conversing for hours on end. Sometimes they volleyed questions back and forth in gentle exchange. Sometimes they speculated together on the same question. She never gave him some repetitive psychic exercise to do or drilled him in use of his talents. But from time to time curiosity would lead him to try something new, or he would try something he had already done with greater ease and accuracy than ever before.

“I assume, then, that our talents do not strengthen and grow with use,” Velmeran said. He was becoming used to Keflyn’s company. With her meter-long neck, it was not unlike talking tol Valthyrra.

Keflyn curled the end of her tail forward and sat back, balancing a portion of her weight on its thicker, stronger upper half. “It seems that the only thing that strengthens and grows is our skill with the tool that is the individual talent, while the tool itself remains always the same. A psychic talent is not like a muscle that develops with use. Say, rather, that your talents are the eyes and ears — and in some cases the hands — of your soul.”

“And is there such a thing?”

“Oh, of course,” Keflyn insisted. “Anyone trained in his talents can feel the souls of those about him. Indeed, a person of your talent can manipulate a lesser spirit, although for obvious reasons we consider that the worst offense that anyone can commit by the use of talent. We may even transfer the essence of a person out of a broken body into a cloned replica. Even the body I wear is not the one I was born in.”

Velmeran looked at her in open amazement. “You?”

She smiled gently. “I am Venn. Like you, I fight whenever there is need. It happened that when I was still very young, some four centuries ago, I was not as cautious as I should have been, and not as lucky as I would have liked.”

Another time, weeks later, they were standing in the vast cavern created by the removal of one of the Methryn’s four main drives. The repairs were proceeding in three steps. First the damaged portions and the old engines were removed, then the new field generators and jump generator were installed during the general refitting and overhaul, and finally the new engines would be installed and new hull plates set into place.

“Did the Aldessan make us?” Velmeran asked quickly, the question that Kelvessan had pondered for hundreds of years. It took a certain amount of courage for him to ask that, and even so it was not the question that he wanted most to ask. The only question that he might not have the courage to ask, because he was so afraid of what the answer might be.

Keflyn regarded him closely but without expression. “What do you think?”

“I believe that you must have,” he replied. “But…”

“But why?” she asked when he faltered, asking the question for him. “Again I ask, what do you think?”