This area of the ship was something of a showplace, one Acorna and Aari had worked hard to bring into being. They had draped drop cloths from the bulkhead above the space so that they resembled clouds and sky. The ship’s artificial lighting now shone down on them, filtered gently by the “sky.” All six Linyaari were squatted in grazing posture, in a circle, staring at each other through eyes shining with the reflection of the simulated moon. A little enclosed pond Acorna had created to make the area nicer as -well as to maintain the humidity needed for optimum plant growth sent rippling shadows across the billowing drop-cloth clouds.
“I heard you across the galaxies, Son. I heard your brother die and I heard your screams,” his mother said. “Why do you think we left Maati with Grandam and returned?”
“To join me in the Khieevi torture chamber?” he asked. Aari’s bitterness -was all too visible then. He could not choke it down, and Acorna knew that this was some of the buried pain she’d been unable to touch in him. “What a waste that would have been. You would have done better to have parented Maati, even if you hadn’t given up on Laarye and me.”
“Hear me,” his mother said. “I heard you. We came when we could.”
“She heard you,” his father said, his face solemn and his eyes deeply sad. “She screamed at night along with you. She lost all sleep and appetite as she endured with you what you endured. Did you. not hear her as our enemies killed not only your brother Laarye, but the twins she lost before she carried Maati?”
Acorna gazed at Miiri more closely. She was very thin, but then, Linyaari -were inclined toward slenderness as a rule. Her eyes were a beautiful copper color, but set deeply in her head. The color and texture of her skin -were not good. Not sickly-her lifemate would have healed her if it had been merely an illness that troubled her-but unhealthy nonetheless. Strain had etched deep lines from her nose to her mouth, and other lines formed a diamond with points at the base of her horn and the bridge of her nose.
“And you, Father?” Aari asked. “You felt nothing.”
“You know I have very little of the empathy that is your both your mother’s gift and her curse. I concentrated on sending. Sending you the directions to our new world, suggesting ways to escape, and praying to our ancient friends that somehow you would be saved, that Vhiliinyar itself might cast out the invaders and preserve my sons.”
Aari looked aghast. “But-I did know how to get to narhiiVhiliinyar. Were we not all programmed that way?”
Kaarlye shook his head, his mane flying and settling again, briefly silver in the lamplight, a slight whuffling snort emitting from his nostrils and lips. “Of course not. I am a strong sender.”
Aari looked abashed for a moment, then defiant. He inclined his head briefly in acknowledgment.
“But-you had me,” Maati said, almost wailing.
“Yes, youngling my own,” her mother said, stroking her cheek with the back of her fingers. “We had you. It was your birth that delayed us. Grandam would not permit me to move, she kept me sedated with good herbs and sang me soothing songs through the night and a circle of women laid horns on me for hours a day until you were safely into the world. But then, oh Maati, my love, we haS to go. With you there to carry on the clan name, safe with Grandam, we had to go find your brother. I heard him no longer, you see, once you were born. And yet I had not felt his death. As terrible as his torment had been, I knew what it meant “while it continued. It told me Aari lived and he felt and that I was in contact with him. But then he was lost and I did not know what to think. I could not feel him, I could not-”
“My horn,” Aari said, touching the slightly indented scar on his forehead. “They had taken my horn. It nearly killed me. No doubt the loss also … lessened … my ability to transmit to you, Mother.”