This was an awakening for which he’d not been prepared. This was an ache he could not still with his own touch.
He wanted more.
Tokela stayed there, huddled into his knees, as silence once again broke beneath his hiding place. A rush of excited voices, all vying to prominence. It took Council almost as long to come to order as it took Tokela to bring his own senses into some veneer of stability.
When he could, he purposefully turned from Council—and Našobok—to face Madoc.
Only Madoc was gone.
10 - Indigo
A strange place to seek answers, this lair of chill shadows and heavy stillness. Beneath the upper shapings and wooden façades the caverns lay, burrowed by silted water or the molten electrum of past eruptions, winding wormholes leading from a geologic event horizon.
This cavern was small, almost unremarkable, save for what inhabited it.
The dark walls of the volcanic cistern merely emphasised the leached pallor of what once had been vital flesh. Clad in robes of polished ash, one with her stone couch, the statuesque, seated figure remained motionless… save for a minute spark in staring, filmed-over eyes. One tiny light, roiling with the minutiae of seismic shifts. One Sounding held deep to quell even the least of burgeoning catastrophes. Focus, utter and eternal, to bid a jungle kingdom quiescent.
“Ranlaia.” Sivan made slow approach, knelt and laid her head to chill, chalk-pale knees. “Mother. I…”
Wish you were here. With me. Even though I shouldn’t.
Her voice echoed, drifting against rock and equally stony consciousness.
“Why come here, Siv?”
Sivan started. But no such voice would ever come from the stone couch and its occupant. Nay, this was alive, beloved. Sivan turned from cold, androgynous Purpose to its antithesis. Mortal, unquestionably fem, Maloh glided amidst the shadows; one with them, born to them. Well-camouflaged, whilst Sivan stood apart as surely as the stone figure that had once been her mother, both of them pale as the blue-metal gleam of the marooned ships, cast into orbit kloms above these very caverns.
Ill-camouflaged. Easy target.
Alien.
Sivan and her brother Jorda had been born here nearly a century after the Stranding. Yet they didn’t quite belong here, perhaps never had.
And Sivan had never managed to not want the belonging.
“Is your mother even there, anymore?” Maloh continued softly. “Ah, Siv, why do you keep coming?”
“Why does Jorda ask you to follow me?” Sivan riposted.
“He’s your twin.”
“Who keeps sending my lover to find me instead of coming for himself.” Sivan shivered. It seemed the chill of what remained of she who’d borne them had crept into her soul.
“Perhaps he knows there are no answers here for either of you.” Maloh stepped slowly closer, laid a hand to Sivan’s cheek. Her fingers were so warm. “Perhaps,” Maloh continued, gentle, “Jorda is more accepting of this one’s soul-flight than you.”
“And you?”
“Mm.” Maloh looked up into Ranlaia’s blank visage. “I’d rather be dead than rendered into nothing more than a fault line detector.”
“She is Synced into the Matrices. She’s at peace.”
“Is she? Or is she just… not?”
“There is peace in that,” Sivan retorted. “Her work is sanctified.”
Maloh shrugged—no doubt she heard the desperation of it. “Keep telling yourself so. But come back upward, Siv, stay in the sunlight. There are no answers for you here.”
“She would have known what to do.”
Maloh nuzzled closer and kissed Sivan’s brow; more warmth, more fingerlings of heated reality. “Maybe. Maybe not. Ranlaia has abdicated any say over the mortal world, but you cannot. I know you; you will not.”
“I may have no choice.”
A frown.
“My father departed this morning.”
“I know.”
“He’s headed for HQ.”
“The Grotto?” The dismay in Maloh’s black eyes leapt forward, unfeigned.
Sivan felt it herself, to be sure. The Domina was… unpredictable.
“Why would he involve Her? Over a Sgr… a native boy?”
“A native boy whose genetic code has been altered by one of us.”
“But isn’t that a minor thing, easily dealt with? Why would Cavodu make a journey of seven sols through dangerous territory, just to bring this to Her attention?” Maloh never mentioned the Domina by name. Ever.
“He’s taking the fastest stream-slip and gliding up the coast.”
“With pirates lying in wait in every cove.”
“They won’t catch a stream-slip as long as the crew avoids the vortices.”
Maloh grumbled beneath her breath. “Why doesn’t he just… think it at her?”
Sivan laughed, bitter-tinged. “If he uses any of the matrices to communicate, it won’t stay secret for long.”
“If it’s so secret, then wouldn’t it be better to take care of it ourselves? I mean, after all, Jorda made him. Surely that counts for something.”
“I’d rather that. But it’s out of our hands.”
Maloh’s teeth gleamed in the murk, more snarl than any smile. Abruptly, she grasped Sivan’s hand. “Come away, then. Let’s go for a ride. Something.”
As they departed, Sivan glanced once more over her shoulder, seeking the figure upon its couch. It seemed that the stone-slick eyes glimmered, followed her for several split timeparts. Breath in her throat, Sivan hesitated.
The eyes flattened, filmed over. Sivan sighed, turned and followed Maloh back up into the light.
“YEKA!”
Palatan gave a grunt as several stone of excited ahlóssa smacked into his thighs, grabbed his woven belt and started to climb him not unlike a tree.
“You stayed in Council ever so long”—Kuli kept climbing—“and so did Aška, and… Uncle!!”
Palatan let out another grunt as Kuli launched from his hip to fly at Našobok, who snagged Kuli midair then promptly tucked him beneath one arm, baggage for the road.
Kuli’s yip of protest quickly collapsed into giggles. Somewhat truncated, true, since he was nearly folded in half over Našobok’s forearm.
Palatan smirked. “You have a way.”
“Crude but efficient, that’s me,” Našobok quipped back, and hefted the wriggling Kuli slightly higher. “I hope there’s food nearby; all that yap-yap-yap works up an appetite. And I mean real
