Abendau's Heir (The Inheritance Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

“What’
s wrong?” Kare sat up, ignoring the headache that flared. Everything in him screamed that something wasn’t right, something hard to read even with his Empath skills.

“I’ll show you how to go in and out of a vision with a bit more control.” Dad’
s words were too slow, confused.

“You’re not supposed to have visions.” His dad dined out on stories about how he’d Seered so much, finding the way to escape the palace, that he could never Seer again. “You
said
.”

“It’ll be okay if it’s just once, just to show you.”

“Daddy, don’t…” His dad sat on the bed, and his breathing became slow and relaxed. His eyes glazed over. Kare put a hand on his arm; it was raised in goosebumps all along.

“Daddy?” His dad shivered and pulled his arm away. “Dad?” Kare’s voice quavered. Something was wrong, something he didn't understand. Fear gripped him, made him shiver. His dad moaned, and rocked back and forth. “Daddy! Come back.”

There was a crash as his dad fell to the floor, back arched. He screamed, a long scream that echoed through the cabin.

“Daddy!”

The door banged open and Karia burst in. “What’s happening?”

“He went into a vision." Kare dropped to his knees.

Karia knelt on the other side and put her hand on their dad’s arm. She looked as shocked as he felt. “He’s freezing.” She smoothed his hair back. “Dad? Can you talk to me?”

Their father’s eyes rolled back. His shoulders heaved with gasped breaths. “It hurts!” Even his voice didn’t sound right: blurred and mumbled. “They’re coming back. I have to get out.”

He was right; they needed to bring him back to the cabin. Now. It was too frightening to see this.

“Dad!” shouted Kare. There was no response. Maybe he’d come back for his name. “Ealyn Varnon, come back!”

His dad’s eyes opened, staring at the ceiling. It had worked; everything was going to be okay. Kare started to shake in relief.

Their dad jerked once, twice, and then screamed, a long, pure scream of pain.

“Daddy!” shrieked Karia. She grabbed Kare’s arm. “What do we do?”

He had no idea. Another scream ripped the air. “I don’t know!”

Her face caught the prism’s light, and the cabin wavered in front of Kare, the living pod from earlier overlaying it. He got to his feet, pushing the threatened vision away. “The prism. We need to take it down.”

He tried to reach, but fell well short. His father screamed, worse this time, like it was being ripped from his soul. Karia started to cry, pleading with Dad to come back. Kare felt like doing the same, but there was no time; he had to get the prism. He jumped, missed. It was too high. He focused on the chain, letting the power flow from him in a steady line, until it snapped and the prism fell to the floor with a thunk.

The lights stopped flashing. His dad’s screams faded. The silence left was louder than his shrieks, Kare was sure of it.

“Daddy?” asked Karia, her voice trembling. “We’re here, can you come back?”

Slowly, their father’s eyes opened and he sat up, shaking.

“What happened?” asked Kare. He sank to the floor, his legs too weak to hold him, so the three of them were in a line.

“I was…” Their father went pale. He looked between them, and shook his head.

“It was just a bad vision; they happen sometimes.” He pushed himself up to the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. “Go and play. I need a few minutes to myself.”

Karia exchanged a glance with Kare. “We’ll stay until you feel better,” she said.

“Leave me!”

Kare jumped; his father never shouted at them like that.
Never
.

“Now!”

Kare grabbed Karia’s hand and the two of them fled. The world had changed somehow, moved from the place they’d known, where their dad stood between them and danger, a constant presence who reassured. He needed it to change back; he didn’t know what to do if it didn’t.

Screams echoed through the ship. Kare sat in the co-pilot’s seat, his eyes burning with tiredness. He felt like someone had twisted him from the inside, so everything was in the wrong place. Beside him, in their father’s seat, Karia scanned the panel in front of her. The screams were joined by the vector alarm, and Karia looked over at him. “What do we do?”

He didn’t know. Two days ago, waiting until their father got better had seemed like a good idea. Now, the control room was littered with recon packets, and two blankets, dragged from their beds, lay on the floor for the times when the screams had stopped long enough for them to sleep. They had to come up with something better than this. “Move the ship again?”

Karia nodded and inputted new co-ordinates. The vector alarm died away. The screaming didn’t.

“Did you try to get the prism off him?” Karia asked.

“Yeah. He wouldn’t give me it.” His father's hands, clutching it to his chest, the frantic fear in his eyes, fear not of something on the ship, or even a memory but a vision replaying in his mind, over and over. It was all he could do not to give in to his terror and nestle in the seat, shaking. Only knowing that Karia was scared, and needed him to be as brave as he needed her to be, stopped him.

“Did he say anything more?”

Kare shook his head. He couldn’t tell her; it was bad enough that he knew.

She glared at him, sensing the lie. “Tell me.”

“It was nothing. Just more of the same,” he said, but she still glared at him. He’d have to tell her sometime; they could never keep secrets. “He told me he was sorry, that if he’d known our future, he’d never have taken us…”

His words hung in the air. Karia stared at him. “
Our
future?”

Their future. Those screams, the list of injuries, the flinched response when either of them touched him. The shock of the realisation still hadn’t sunk in, even though he’d thought of nothing else since. Slowly he nodded. “Yes.”

He picked up one of the blankets and climbed into the pilot’s seat, so they were curled up together. It felt better, like they were a little safer. He watched out the window, trying to think of any solution. He was supposed to be smart, but he wasn't. He was just like any kid, helpless, needing his parent.

The last volley of screams died away, and it felt like he could think properly for the first time in hours. They had to get help.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Near Ferran." She touched the control panel, bringing up the details. "About four AU out."

The Ferran system was the closest to Holbec. He sat up. "The Banned. Their base....?"

“We could go back to the base,” said Karia at the same time. “We can’t stay out here.”

He nodded; as ever, they were in tandem, their thoughts mirroring each other. And they were right, there was nothing else for it.

“Can you fly the ship?” he asked. So far, she had, but they were in deep space–
even he could manage the plot changes needed. It might be different when there was something to hit. “Through a system, I mean?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t sound sure. No wonder; seven-year-olds shouldn’t fly ships. He bet even Roamer kids didn’t. He put his arm around her and pulled her against him. Maybe other kids just weren’t desperate enough.

“I could try.” He knew what the controls did, after all. In theory, anyway. But the star drive was beyond him - Dad had never let either of them use it, not yet confident of their plotting skills. Without it, the base would be impossibly far away, across the gulf of space between the two systems.

Tears threatened, from tiredness and frustration, from being no use and not being able to think of a way out of this, but he blinked them away. He couldn’t just sit in a panic. A moment later he sat up. “The beacon.”

“What?”

“The beacon. Darwin made Dad take it, remember, in case the base ever moved?”

Her eyes widened. “Do you know where it is?”

He looked around the control room. Where would his father have stowed it? He pushed back the blanket and got onto his knees, and started to pull open the storage hatches on the floor. Some tools, no beacon. He tried the next, and it was empty. Another, and still nothing. He jerked up the fourth and sitting in it was a plain black box, just about big enough to fill his hand.

“Got it!”

It was heavier than he’d expected, but he managed to get it out and over to the control panel. Now what? He looked at Karia, but she shook her head; this was his department, how things worked.

“Gotta link to the nav-computer,” he muttered. He crawled under the panel, looking at the various ports, and finally found one that linked to the external nav-console. He hooked the beacon up, his heart pounding. If he got this wrong, they could end up with no nav-computer and no beacon. Then they’d really be in trouble. He got up, looking at the control panel; the nav-screen was dead.

“You’re sure you’ve done it right?” asked Karia.

No, of course he wasn’t. He was still studying basic ship-design, not the details of control rooms. He nodded. “Yup.” A red light started to blink and he couldn’t hide the smile of relief. “See?”

The ship turned, very slightly. He glanced at Karia. “Was that you?”

“No.”

The light stopped blinking and became solid. It had found the signal. A familiar whine started, from the rear of the ship, where the star drive was.

"It's working!" He swung round and hugged Karia, almost lifting her off her feet, ignoring the nausea, ignoring anything except that they’d found a way out of the mess. He was taller than her, he realised for the first time, like he was the big brother. He wasn’t sure how that made him feel– they’d always been the same, him and Karia; to be different felt strange. He put her down and smiled; he’d think about that another day, when fear wasn’t circling and making it hard to know who he was.

“We’re going to be all right,” he said, and, looking at the red light, he actually believed it. “We’ll get back to the Banned and Darwin will sort things out. It’ll be all right.”

The thought of Darwin, reliable and solid, almost made him come apart. He wanted to hand the problem over to an adult they could trust. Then it would be over and his dad would get better.

He sat back in the pilot’s seat, Karia beside him, and they curled together. The silence from the ship behind seemed worse than the screams.

“Kare?” Karia’s voice was low. “Promise me something.”

“What?”

“Don’t Seer.” She looked at him, her eyes earnest and direct. “Please, don’t ever Seer.”

“I can’t promise you that. If I have the power, I have to use it.” He kept his voice steady, but the idea of him becoming like his father, trapped in some sort of hellish future, was bigger than he could face. Not here on the ship where his father’s screams were all too real. “You know that.”

“You could find a way. I know you, you’re so smart, you’d find another way of using it. Really, Kare, think about Dad. What if that happened to you?”

A tear tracked down her cheek. He reached out to wipe it away, but she took his hand and held it and they sat like that for a moment. Not use the power? It would get out somehow, it always did, like the way it trickled into his dreams. He looked at her, saw more tears, and nodded.

“Okay, I’ll find a way. I promise.”

She leaned against him. Her eyes drooped and he waited until he was sure she was asleep and only then allowed himself to think back to his vision and the holo shelf that showed only himself, and he shivered.

The beacon flashed insistently, demanding a response. Kare looked between it and Karia’s pinched face.

“Well?” He wished he was the Controller and could take the decision, not force Karia to. She was as tired as he was, shattered and stunned by the flight back to the Banned: five days of hellish yells, of forcing some– any– food and water into their father in his increasingly rare lucid moments, of fear growing as more details of the visions emerged. The moment the beacon had taken them out of star drive with no warning, sending both of them crashing. His arm was still throbbing from where he'd hit it off the hard metal doorjamb– at best, he'd be bruised in the morning, at worst in the infirmary getting it set when they reached the base.
If
they reached the base.

“We land.” She sounded certain, and that was good, because he wasn’t. “Docking in space isn’t something I’ve ever seen Dad do.”

“Okay.” He silenced the beacon and brought the comms unit online instead, but tensed as a shriek from his father carried through the ship to them. He should be used to it by now, but he wasn’t. He never would be.

“Close the door over,” suggested Karia.

Guilt leapt in him. All week, they’d put up with the screams, almost as if not sharing it was a betrayal. But now they needed to concentrate. He got up and slid the control room door to, struggling with it. They’d never had to close it since they’d been on the ship; they’d shared everything, the three of them. But when his dad’s next scream was muffled, barely audible, the guilt vanished, leaving only relief. He sat in the co-pilot’s seat, his shoulders looser, more relaxed. He reached for the comms unit. “Ready?”

“Go.” Karia wriggled forwards in the pilot’s chair, getting closer to the control panel.

“Banned base, this is Hawk one.” He winced at the call signal, remembering the day they’d chosen it, how they’d looked at pictures of birds until they’d found one cool enough for their then-novelty ship-home. “Do you hear us?”

A blast of static split the air, and then a crackled voice. The base had made contact. They would have checked the ship’s read-outs, he knew, and confirmed whose ship it was. He requested permission to land and it was given, with no questions as to who was on the comms unit, or why it wasn’t his father. Perhaps over the static they couldn’t tell. Either that or he sounded more confident than he felt.

A HUD display flashed up on the viewing window, and docking bay five was allocated. Karia paled a little and Kare understood: five was the newest dock, approached awkwardly from the south, over the base. If she came in wrong, she’d endanger everyone on the ground.