Chapter 15

Bonds of blood are sacred and immutable.

--King Venes of the Elsics

* * *

Catrin woke during the night and decided to relieve Benjin from his watch. She figured it would be best if he were the one rested for the next part of their journey. Pulling her coverlet around her shoulders, she wandered past the glowing coals of the fire. She found Chase in Benjin's stead. He smiled at her.

"Couldn't sleep?"

"I slept great, actually. I just woke up for some reason . . . not sure why. How long ago did you relieve Benjin?"

"Not long ago. I'm awake and alert. I'll take the rest of the watch. Get some more sleep; you'll probably need it," he said. Catrin was glad to take him up on this advice. Her sleeping spot had gone cold and she shivered, but soon she slept again.

Chase woke them during the false dawn. Catrin felt she had closed her eyes only moments before, and they were still clouded with sleep. Their routine well practiced, they broke camp in record time, and Catrin slowly recovered from her disorientation.

Wanting to cover as much ground as possible while the air was still cool, they set off without delay. Catrin set a moderate pace for Osbourne's sake since he was still experiencing headaches and shortness of breath. His condition troubled her, but they had to keep moving. Benjin did what he could to ease Osbourne's afflictions using the few medicinal herbs he still had left, and Catrin hoped it would be enough.

The broad valley morphed into rolling hills, and as they crested a steep rise, Catrin caught sight of what lay ahead. The rising sun cast a myriad of colors across the sky and the desert below. The horizon was a lush canvas of texture and color, pastels and blush highlighted with hues of violet. Waves of sand appeared almost fluid, lapping against a meandering shoreline. The relative flatness stretched into the distance, the horizon broken only by distant, shadowy mountains. The sheer size and deceptive beauty of the desert cast an intimidating pall on those who viewed it.

Catrin had never been away from the mountains before. Realizing the feeling of security they had always given her, she was glad they would follow the mountains for much of their journey.

"Do not let its beauty fool you," Benjin said. "The desert is deadly. We'll be skirting it for some time, and though the mountains will give us some cover and possible storm shelter, we won't be immune to its dangers. Keep watch on the horizons and be alert for storms or large clouds of dust."

At the mouth of the valley, they turned north, following the narrow band of lightly forested grasslands that huddled between stone and sand like an emerald river. The air above the desert shimmered in the heat of the morning sun, and they moved along in relative silence to conserve their energy. They drank sparingly from their flasks, knowing they could run out before they escaped this arid landscape.

Catrin let Benjin lead and found herself walking in a trance, part of her mind watching where she was going, but another part deep in thought. She tried the technique of clearing her mind that Benjin taught her, but she could not focus, and she wandered from thought to thought, seemingly at random. The deluge of thoughts flowed past her consciousness, and she let them skirt her awareness, creating an odd, transitional state of mind. She became aware of a curious hum, like background noise in her head, a buzzing that seemed to be just behind her ears. She tried to focus on it, but it stayed at the edge of her senses, elusive and indefinable.

Taking a different approach, she tried to specifically not think about it and concentrate on something else. No matter how hard she tried to ignore it, though, the humming crept along the edges of her senses, tickling her awareness. She tried to evoke powerful memories and the emotions they brought, hoping to overpower the distraction. She called up the vivid memory of her first kiss, and the buzzing pounded into her thoughts. Grasping it with her mind, she latched on to it with all the focus she could muster.

Her body thrummed in the powerful chorus, a lilting melody that ebbed to a mere whisper only to resound again insistently. Concentrating on hearing alone seemed insufficient to perceive the energy, and she split her focus to include the vibrations she felt. At this point, she began to experience it in a completely new way. The energy took shape and form, though its form continuously shifted like the surface of a lake. Fragrances overlaid her other senses, and even the taste of the air colored her mental imagery.

After tripping on a gnarled tree root, Catrin caught herself on the trunk. Her palms slammed into the bark, and she was overwhelmed by her impression of the tree: Vitality and strength flowed through the physical bond like a torrent of life. The tree exuded ancient wisdom and lack of cares. It existed simply and simply existed. It did no right or wrong, made no mistakes, had no opinions. It was beyond reproach and indifferent to criticism. Catrin was comforted by its energy and felt a gentle calm wash over her. Chase stumbled into her back, jarring her from her mental state.

"Sorry, Cat. I didn't realize you stopped."

"My fault. I wasn't watching where I was going," she explained, not wanting to discuss her experience until she understood it better.

After her shocking contact with the tree, Catrin had a better idea of what to expect and how to interpret what she felt, and she began to sort through her perceptions of the various energies around her. Everything she saw had its own pattern, its own unique energy: her companions, the trees, grass, mountains, and especially the desert. She was surprised to find so much life energy within the desolation of the desert. Her senses skated along the sands. She didn't know what all the energies were, but she knew they existed.

The auras surrounding her companions were storms of emotional energy, which gave her a strong sense of their moods. She had always been sensitive to people's feelings and tried always to ascertain people's mental states in order to understand them. Posture, stance, and movements were all indicators, but none had ever given her such clear insight as she had now. Oddly, her new sense felt completely natural, as if it had always been a part of her, latent, waiting to be recognized and used. But it was also a burden. It made the fear and anxiety surrounding her companions almost palpable and impossible to ignore. Devoid of any means to assuage their fears, she simply accepted them and let them be.

A vibrant burst of energy off to her right caught her attention. It burned with life. She used her eyes to identify the source and saw an emerald hummingbird visiting the flowers of a trumpet vine. As if sensing her scrutiny, it flew in front of her face and hovered there. After a brief moment, it chirped, backed up, and darted into the azure sky. Catrin's impression of the hummingbird--vibrant and alive--stayed with her, its bold curiosity refreshing.

The more she used her new life sense, the easier and more natural it became. She found that, after a while, she could sense it without focusing on it, though it was most intense when she concentrated, just as she could hear without consciously listening.

New sensations invigorated her, as if feeling a cool breeze on her face for the first time, and she was exuberant. Another small life force moved nearby, and she was surprised to see a honeybee. It did not seem angry or aggressive, as she had always perceived stinging insects; it was just going about the business of being a honeybee.

There was an abundance of life in the soil itself, including things too small to be seen. Catrin saw the ways death served to feed life. Deciduous trees shed leaves, which fell to the ground and decomposed. Organisms that used the decaying leaves as food aided the decomposition. Their waste and the decayed matter become soil, which, in turn, nourished the trees and plants. Catrin had never recognized the chain of life as a varying cycle of composition and decomposition before, and such realizations were rapidly changing her perception of the world around her.

Nature, in all its majesty and glory, was beginning to be revealed to Catrin through senses she had not been aware of before. For the first time, she saw the ecosystem as a unit and saw how each part of the system contributed to the whole; without any one component, life could fail. Predators could not exist without prey, and herbivores would die without plants, and plants would shrivel without materials provided by the death and defecation of animals. When she considered how many factors had to be in place for life to endure, she was amazed it existed at all, and yet it flourished, even in the harshest of environments--simply astounding.

Involved in her thoughts, Catrin was surprised when Benjin selected a place to camp. Most of the day's hike was a blur to her, and she had to reorient herself with the landscape. The mountains cast long shadows over the grassland as the sun set; the air cooled quickly, and it was almost chilly by twilight. The campsite Benjin selected backed up against the rock face. Although a few trees dotted the area, they were weathered and twisted. It was not much cover, but it was certainly better than the open desert.

"I've been thinking about what Osbourne said about an ambush," Benjin said as they ate. "If there's a trap, I think it would be best to spring it without Catrin with us," he continued. "There shouldn't be many places for the Zjhon to hide near the cove, and if I make it that far without seeing anyone--"

Catrin cut in. "So your plan is to go into an ambush . . . alone? Without me?"

"Now, Catrin, please understand, it's to protect you," he began, but Catrin silenced him with a look. He clamped his mouth shut, his eyes down, and waited silently. Catrin knew she was being unreasonable, but the thought of him walking into an ambush was horrifying. Some other option must exist, one without Benjin as bait. No one spoke until Benjin drew a breath, but Catrin cut him short again.

"You'll think of another plan," she said with a sharp nod. "Our only recourse cannot be a suicide mission for any of us. I will not accept that."

"Why, yes, of course. There must be a better way," Benjin replied without looking at her.

Catrin looked out into the night, terrified by the thought of being without Benjin. He made her feel safe. Without looking at the others, she went to her bedroll. She knew her anger was driven by fear, and that was the only way she could hide it.

* * *

"Now what do we do?" Chase asked once it appeared Catrin was truly asleep.

"For now we just have to keep moving toward the cove," Benjin said. "We have few other options."

"Maybe you and I should leave now and scout the way," Chase said.

"I don't like that idea at all," Strom said.

"There has to be something we can do," Chase insisted, his own desperation driven by fear. Survival almost seemed too much to hope for given the circumstances.

"When we get closer," Benjin said, "we can sneak away to spring the trap. We'll speak of it no more until then. Catrin won't like it, but it's what's best for her."

"And what then?" Strom asked, anger clear in his voice. "You go off and spring the trap and die, and what happens then? Catrin, Osbourne, and I go off and fight the world? Cat's right; you're both being idiots. Should we run through the desert to see if it's hot? No." He paused a moment to return the stares currently aimed at him. "When we get close, we watch and we wait. If we're clever enough, we'll see some sign of activity before they see us. I'm not sure what we do from there, but that's a far cry better than running in there and jumping around like a couple of idiots with torches and getting yourselves skewered."

There was a long moment of silence when Strom finished speaking. He crossed his arms and dared anyone to challenge him.

"Nobody said we were going to go running in there," Chase said, slightly downcast. Strom glared at him.

"Especially not jumping around with torches," Benjin added.