Ambition and Alavidha

AMBITION AND
ALAVIDHA

Candy Rae

* * * * *

SMASHWORDS
EDITION

* * * * *

Ambition and
Alavidha

Copyright ©
2011 Candy Rae

All characters
in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead; is purely coincidental.

All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of the author.

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respecting the hard work of this author.

* * * * *

Ambition and
Alavidha
is dedicated to Nancy, my mother and my friend.

* * * * *

Artwork
Copyright © 2011 Jennifer Johnson

* * * * *

AMBITION AND
ALAVIDHA

* * * * *

PROLOGUE

It lay on the
shelf.

It was
dusty.

It was
inanimate.

It was
inert.

It didn’t know
how dangerous it was. It had been manufactured, not to hurt, but
for the good of all.

It could never
realise that its very existence would cause such concern and would
lead to a crisis; caused by its existence and the ambition of one
man.

Few ever knew
of this crisis, few ever will, because the crisis emerged at a time
of great change on Planet Wolf, during a time when the planet
changed again and forever.

* * * * *

-1-

AL 648

THE OUTSKIRTS
OF TALASTOWN – DAGAN - THE WESTERN NORTHERN CONTINENT

Hans and his
Lind Davanya were on a visit to see Hans’s stepfather; that was
what Hans called Niaill but that wasn’t, of course, entirely
accurate. Niaill was his adoptive father, the man who had when
serving in the mountains of Argyll, saved him from a band of
bandits. Hans had been thirteen at the time.

Niaill and
Taraya had later served in the capacity of 21C Vada. They were
retired now and had been for a number of years.

Hans and
Davanya were still serving vadeln in the Vada, having attained the
rank of Ryzcka of the Eighteenth Ryzck some years before this
visit.

“Good to see
you Hans,” rasped Niaill, his voice cracking with effort, “such a
long way.”

“No distance is
too far to see
you
Father,” answered Hans in a voice meant
to cheer but the distress on his face belying his words.
Thank
the Lai I got here in time
.

: Yes :
Davanya, Hans’s Lind ‘said’ in his mind
: Taraya too, she is
very weak :

Hans wondered
which of the two would pass on to the Blue Pastures first, it would
be, he rather thought, instantaneous. Neither Taraya nor Niaill had
hearts strong enough to bear the shock of their life-partner’s
departure.

: Does it
matter? :
asked Davanya in a ‘voice’ both gentle and sad
:
one does not wish to live beyond the other anyway. We vadeln all
know this. It is a part of the bond we share :

Hans knew it
too. He sat down on the bed beside his father’s wasted body and
took hold of the knurled and skeletal hand; it was so thin he could
see the veins.

“We got here as
soon as we could. Haru sent word.”

Niaill smiled.
His Lind, Taraya might be his mind-mate, his life-mate, his friend
but Haru the Lai ran her a close second. Hans noted that Niaill’s
face was stark white, bloodless, the only colour two reddish spots
heightening his cheeks.

He wants to
go.

Niaill’s other
hand was lying over the bedside, towards Taraya who was sleeping on
the walda mattress divan set close to his bed.

Her breathing,
like Niaill’s, was laboured as she fought to stay alive long enough
to stay with her Niaill during his last bells of life,
their
last bells together.

“Father,” added
Hans, “I love you. You’ve always been there for me, ever since that
day you and Taraya rescued me and took me back with you to Vada.
Remember?”

“Best thing I
ever did,” Niaill whispered, looked at Hans out of rheumy eyes.
They lingered for a moment then his head turned once more towards
Taraya.

Hans rambled
on, talking about his first tendays, then months at Vada, of how he
had met and vadeln-paired with Davanya, that same day as the Ryzcks
had run out to meet the fearsome Dglai in battle. Of the day when
Niaill and Taraya had returned, when so many had not, the day when
Niaill’s parenting proper had begun, the beginning of the years of
guidance and mentoring, of fathering. It had continued until Niaill
and Taraya, retiring from Vada service, had left for the continent
of Dagan, to spend what years remained to them with their friend
Haru the Lai.

And contact had
never really been severed. The Lind were telepathic and never a
tenday had passed without some sort of contact between them, at
least until recent months, when Taraya had become too weak to form
the telepathic link.

Now at last the
time of final severance was apaw. Niaill and Taraya were dying.
There was and never had been a cure for old age.

Hans stopped
talking and sat by the bed, holding Niaill’s hand and listening to
his breathing.

Niaill began
whispering to himself and Hans leant closer to listen. It was one
word, repeated over and over again.

Core?

Hans was
mystified.

Core of
what?

“What is it
Father? What is it you are trying to say?”

“Shouldn’t have
moved it,” Niaill fretted.

He didn’t speak
again, lapsing into an unconscious stupor.

* * * * *

Taraya died
first. One moment Hans could hear her laboured breathing, almost
exactly synchronised with Niaill’s, the next, nothing.

Niaill took a
breath in and out, then another. There was no third. Hans leant
over to close his eyes.

He glanced at
Davanya.

: That’s it
then, we’re on our own now. We’ll be retiring from the Vada too,
one day soon. I’d always thought we might join them here in Dagan,
thought we’d have a few more years :

: We can still
come here. You know this. Haru is growing old too. He might like
the son of his friend to keep him company :

“We might at
that,” answered Hans aloud, warming to the idea. “I wonder what
it’s like living for hundreds of years? He must have said farewells
to many friends during that time. Niaill used to say that Haru
actually knew
the
Tara and Kolyei.”

“He did. Niaill
and Taraya will lie sleeping in fine company. Tara and Kolyei’s
bones lie within a small copse of trees not far from Haru’s daga.
We will ask if Niaill and Taraya may join them.”

* * * * *

AL 654

ON THE
OUTSKIRTS OF TALASTOWN – DAGAN - THE WESTERN NORTHERN CONTINENT

Six years had
passed since the day when Niaill and Taraya had been interred close
to where Tara and Kolyei, the first human and Lind to life-bond and
mind-bond lay at rest. Hans and Davanya were living in the daga
which had belonged to Niaill and Taraya. They had retired from the
Vada, the previous summer, at the end of the season of rhedhrehl,
the word being Lindish for summer.

Now Hans was
bored, bored and more than bored. From an active, often dangerous
life serving with Davanya in the Vada, patrolling the coastlines
(against sea-pirate attacks), patrolling in the northern mountains
(where the gtran and the wral lived and who thought that anything
walking on two legs or four was legitimate prey), or simply honing
his weapons skill-set, he had become, as he complained at least a
half dozen times every day, little more than a couch-potato.

: And what
exactly is a couch-potato? :
Davanya asked with an exasperated
amount of asperity in her telepathic ‘voice’ tone. She wasn’t
finding retirement boring. She was enjoying her days, running and
hunting in the nearby woods, or lian and meeting those Lind and
Larg domiciled on the continent. Sometimes she spent her day just
relaxing in the sunshine, enjoying the scenery, so different from
what she knew from the rtathlians of her birth-pack, watching
sunsets and sunrises cater-pulling up and down over the mountains
and listening to stories of times past.

: Never mind
:
snapped Hans, as usual these days, in no good humour.

Davanya ignored
his show of temper.

: You need
something to keep you occupied :
she decided.

: And what
may I ask do you have in mind? :
he queried, with a consummate
lack of manners.

: Write
:
was her simple suggestion
: write about what has happened
during our lives, about what is to be as one with me :

Now, why hadn’t
he thought of that? Probably because; if he was honest with
himself; because of the two of them it was Davanya who had the more
imagination; who was the more introspective.

“No-one will
ever read it,” he said aloud.

“Does that
really matter? But it is important that what has happened be
recorded lest it be forgotten. Please Hans, do it, do it for
me.”

And what could
Hans say after that? There was little he would consciously refuse
to do for Davanya.

He sighed and
reached out for pen, ink and paper.

“Where do I
start?”

“At the
beginning of course. Now hurry up and get some of these squiggles
you call words down on that paper and later we can go see Haru,
tell him what we have been doing.”

: I would
like that :
he dipped the pen into the ink
: perhaps Haru
might even tell me some stories I could include :

Although not
yet excited about the task Davanya had set him, he was finding
himself pleasantly interested.

He began to
write.

Davanya laid
her wise old head down on to her paws and closed her eyes. She was
having difficulty stopping her face from breaking into a grin which
would be a dead giveaway. Sometimes Hans had to be manipulated into
coming to the correct decisions.
Another to me
, she thought
as she drifted into sleep, lulled by the scratching of nib on
paper.

However, Hans
hadn’t been as preoccupied as she had thought.

: Are we
keeping score? :
she ‘heard’ his amused comment as sleep took
hold.

* * * * *

As time went
on, Hans stopped feeling bored with life. He was far too busy.

Hans wrote then
wrote some more, filling page after page with a mix of his and
Davanya’s life-stories, explaining in his own words, the events
which had occurred during their life-times and some of their
thoughts and dreams for the future. He wrote many paragraphs about
Niaill and Taraya and about the Dglai War and the aftermath.

Davanya
sometimes wished she had thought of another pastime to keep him
busy, so preoccupied had her vadeln become with getting the words
(Davanya still called them squiggles) down, but not often. There
were still plenty of bells in the day for them to do things
together. All she had ever wanted was for him to be happy.

* * * * *

AL 665

TALASTOWN -
DAGAN AND BEYOND

Twelve years
later, when Hans and Davanya passed on to the Blue Pastures in
their turn, his diaries lay untouched for some time; in the corner
of their empty daga, a well built log cabin a mile or two south of
Talastown.

One day, in AL
674, a human family moved into the cabin, cleared out what they
found there and sold the pile to a passing merchant for eleven
pennies. Hidden among the bundle were the diaries.

They weren’t
valuable in themselves, those tattered books filled with the spiky
handwriting of Hans and the merchant wondered if there was any
point in keeping them at all. However, there was ample space in his
wagon so he tossed them inside. He took ship for what he called
‘the mainland’, the usual description for the larger northern
continent on which sat the countries of Argyll, Vadath and the
Rtathlians of the Lind.