James Axler – Starfall

Krysty didn’t know that she agreed with the woman. Gaia was one source of power, but she had seen a number of other belief systems that seemed as strong as her own during her travels with Ryan.

Sacrilege! Gaia is more than a belief system!

Krysty felt properly chastised.

Gaia, give me strength that I have only you to lean on, Krysty Wroth.

“How do you know my name?”

There are many things I know about you now.

Anger flooded Krysty. She knew the woman had some­how ransacked her private thoughts.

You are of the Chosen, whether you admit it or not.

“How can you be so sure?”

Because the Chosen can always recognize each other. It is only one of our ways. If there were more time, perhaps I could explain to you what you have missed.

“I don’t know you or the Chosen.”

No.

“Do you know about my mother?”

Sonja?

Krysty’s heart leaped. Though Mother Sonja had disap­peared from Harmony years earlier, even left rumors of her death in her wake, there was no proof that she was dead. “Yes.”

Only what I have discerned in your mind.

“She was not one of the Chosen, then.”

Perhaps she had another name. I can’t see her clearly in your mind.

That was because Krysty had only her earliest memories of her mother. Even those were tainted by wishes and sto­ries she had heard from relatives. “If she had been one of the Chosen, she would have returned there.”

She bore you, child. Your mother would not have been allowed back among the Chosen. Now hush. There is much I must do, and I have precious little time to do it.

Another pistol report echoed through the terrain, drawn out long and hollow, giving Krysty fresh indication of how much her sense of time had been distorted by the invasive mind. She struggled to free herself from the hypnotic qual­ity of the woman’s thoughts mixing with hers.

For a moment, she believed she was winning, pushing the woman from her mind. Then Phlorin’s voice thundered inside her skull, filling her brain with white-hot pain.

Forgive me what I do, Phlorin said. It is necessary.

Struggling to hang on to consciousness, Krysty made herself think of Ryan out there without her covering his back. It didn’t matter. A lightning bolt burst inside her brain and shut her down, taking her away.

“COMPANY’S COMING, JOHN.”

J. B. Dix glanced up from his position on the second floor of the building they’d chosen to wait in and looked into Mildred Wyeth’s face. He followed her line of gaze as she stared through the binoculars.

To the east, a broken line of dust scattered across the darkening sky.

“Dear lady,” Doc Tanner said, “that dust means only that a few riders travel hither. And there can be any number of explanations for that. They could be venturing here for shelter from the approaching tempest.”

“Could be.” Mildred nodded reluctantly. Her ebony face remained emotionless, but the dust graying her cheeks and forehead gave silent witness to the wear and tear they had all experienced these past few days. “I suppose the horse­men of the apocalypse wouldn’t draw much attention, ei­ther. Until their horses were breathing flame up your ass.”

Of medium height, Mildred carried a few extra pounds on her stocky frame that even hard living in Deathlands hadn’t been able to strip from her. Multicolored beads hung in her hair, holding the locks in braided plaits. Her fatigue-style shirt and pants held ground-in patches of dirt, but the action on her ZKR Czech-made .38 pistol remained clean.

“How many riders, Dean?” J.B didn’t bother to study the approaching riders much. Built short and wiry, he didn’t look like a man to fear, but he’d been weapons master for the Trader on War Wag One. The steel-rimmed glasses and worn fedora almost gave him the look of a stern school­teacher instead of a trained killer. He returned his gaze to the area where Ryan and Jak had headed, waiting to see if anything else had happened. So far, he hadn’t heard the crack of Ryan’s SIG-Sauer or the Steyr, so he knew what­ever shooting had been done hadn’t involved his friend.