Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series) (20 page)

“And yet you mourn,” Geode observed.

Si’dah sighed. Would she ever stop grieving this loss? “I cannot forget him.”

Geode looked down to the stone and back up into her eyes. “He has forgotten you,” he said coldly. Then he turned and moved away to take his own seat among the stones.

Across the grove, Si’dah spied the approaching figures of the final three members of the Astral council. One drifted inward in feathery movements, black as a moonless night in London’s world, and twice as cold. This was Shey, whose home lay not just across the distance of space and time, but many dimensions away. To her trained eyes, he appeared as an undulating smudge in the ether, faceless, featureless. To the untrained, he would not appear at all. If she didn’t know better, the sight of him would have elicited fear, but Si’dah knew Shey to be ancient and venerable, a welcome soul among the stones.

She bowed to him as he moved to the stone that marked his seat. “Sen, it has been too long.” She called him by the nickname she had given him so many ages ago when they first met. It meant
wing
in her own language.

From out of the black mass she heard him whisper, “Much has changed since, I see. Including you.”

She could only nod in agreement.

Another figure, small in stature with delicate limbs, moved with a nimble grace that no one else in the council could claim. Not even Avery. She arrived like an orb, a nimbus of quivering light that grew before Si’dah, stretching and opening until her old friend could emerge. When she did, she clasped her four diminutive hands around Si’dah’s own two, large ones.

“Serene,” Si’dah said smiling, warming to this new presence among them, grateful to be in the Circle again.

“Si’dah, you have grown!” her familiar voice chimed.

In fact, to Si’dah it was quite the opposite, but Serene had a very different perspective on things. Si’dah simply nodded and said, “I’m glad you think so.”

Serene moved toward her own seat and hovered above it effortlessly.

The third, and final, figure approached slowly, greeting Hantu outside the stones before moving into them. Si’dah eyed the statuesque woman with suspicion. Her own mentor, when she held Si’dah’s seat before her, never trusted Ell-Adalese fully. They had often butted heads. For reasons she couldn’t quite name, Si’dah now felt the same. She let the woman approach, her kind so like the humans of London’s world that they could hardly be told apart, though their worlds were far from each other. She gave her the customary bow of respect, though she did so a little more stiffly than she had earlier.

Ell-Adalese beamed at her and held out a hand, but there was something false in it. The charcoal color of her dusky skin warred against Si’dah’s reflexes, but she gripped the woman’s hand as expected. It was not a skin color that would be seen in London’s world. So much of London was a part of Si’dah now that she found Ell-Adalese’s tone unnatural and discomfiting. On anyone else it would not have mattered, but Ell-Adalese was so close to human that the casual reminders that she was not became glaring and out of place, disrupting her peace like an unreachable itch. Si’dah shuddered and dropped her hand.

“Aren’t you glad to see me?” Ell-Adalese questioned with flashing, chameleon eyes. In an instant they shifted from a brilliant blue to a queasy yellow. Now, a shade seemed to be falling over them as the yellow grew to a dark gold and then black.

Si’dah hated those eyes. They seemed to be a language all their own and indeed, among her kind, Ell-Adalese had little use for words. They communicated as much with the shifting colors of their eyes as with their tongues. “Of course, Adalese,” Si’dah lied.

“It has been so long,” the woman said, a flash of crimson in her eyes betraying her patronizing tone, “that you forget custom. I have not been merely Adalese for many ages. My title, Si’dah. I am Ell-Adalese now.”

But Si’dah had not forgotten. Nor could she say why she’d left off the presumptuous prefix,
Ell,
but she’d done so deliberately. It was the feminine version of the royal
El
, in Adalese’s world, given her upon her marriage. It was childish to insist upon it, but equally childish to ignore it for spite. Si’dah could only think that London was warping more than the landscape of her face and body, she was invading her heart and mind as well. And yet, in this case, she was not sorry. She was glad London was there inside of her, so ready to push back against anyone who pressured Si’dah.

“You’re right,” Si’dah bowed. “I simply forgot.”

Ell-Adalese turned away, still ruffled but satisfied, and took her seat. Her posture reeked of arrogance.

And something in Si’dah snapped, like a thread pulled too tight, and this time she felt London bubble up with the words in her throat before she spoke them. “Titles seem so hollow inside the ring of stones.”

Adalese glared at her but did not reply. Si’dah tried hard to hold back the smile playing at her own lips.

Si’dah’s mentor had always accused Adalese of being power hungry and Si’dah was beginning to suspect she was right. But there was no time for old quarrels now and no room for any more divisions. They needed every member of the Circle at their side if they were going to make a difference in Hantu’s world and save themselves, even Ell-Adalese.

“Well, you’ve called us from quite a distance, Hantu. I thought you’d chosen to cut us out of your plans altogether. Are you going to tell us what’s going on?” Ell-Adalese asked. The silken drape of her gown flowed over her seat like water.

“I am sorry to have done so,” Hantu began. “But it seemed necessary at the time.”

“And now?” Shey asked with a whisper.

“And now we need all the help we can get. We have elected two new members to the Circle, to take the seats of those who have abandoned our cause,” Si’dah said, wanting to relieve Hantu of carrying the weight of responsibility entirely.

Ell-Adelese went rigid and even Serene’s dazzling face reflected her fury.

“You elect and appoint without us? And then you call us here to announce it? What insurrection is this? It has never been the Circle’s way to act on behalf of the individual, but on behalf of the whole,” Serene said hotly.

“I know, I know,” Si’dah submitted. “Please, let me assure you this was for the good of all, not simply for our own benefit.”

“Then why not call us all to the election and vote as a full Circle, as is proper?” Ell-Adalese asked.

“We have not been a full Circle for some time…” Si’dah began but Geode cut her off.

“Hear us when we say, there was no time for anything else. We would have outvoted you anyhow. We were already a majority and our decision stands,” he said.

Ell-Adalese glared at him and her eyes washed blood red. “That is no cause for such insolence! Are we not also members of this council? Does not our seat sit as high as yours? And yet you dare to act apart from us?”

Now, Hantu broke back in. “Of course, you are every bit as important as we are among the stones,” he told her. “It was merely for efficiency that we made this decision without you. As you can see, we have brought you here to include you in it.”

Ell-Adalese scowled and her eyes went fiery orange. “You have brought us here to inform us of what is already done, not include us.”

Atel stamped his staff on the ground and said in his slow, creaking speech, “If it is already done, then why fight it?”

“You speak of defection and yet we know nothing of it. Now you speak of election, and again we are left out. From my seat, it is you who have defected from our ways,” Serene addressed Atel.

“I’m sorry,” Hantu said. “We have been long apart and the Sacrifice muddies all our minds. We forget that you are not privy to all we’ve witnessed.”

“It muddies your faces as well,” Ell-Adalese observed with a queer expression.

Hantu ignored her. “Two of our members who made the Sacrifice have been lost to us in my world. They have chosen to work against the Circle and our original intentions in making the Sacrifice.”

“You mean Roanyk?” Shey said with a quiver of dark energy.

“Yes,” Hantu nodded.

“And Eclipse?” added Serene.

It had been so long since Si’dah heard Avery referred to by her Otherborn name, that she’d completely forgotten it. But with that sound came a flood of early Astral memories. Images of Avery among them, her milky complexion under the dappled shade of the grove’s ring of trees, her glistening wings furling and unfurling behind her, the fear in her eyes when Hantu first told them of what would become of his world if they didn’t intervene. Once, as Eclipse, she had been horrified of Hantu’s descriptions of a world cut off from the Astral until it slowly starved itself. How had she changed so drastically?

“Yes,” Hantu confirmed. “She first…and then Roanyk followed her.”

Serene looked appalled but Ell-Adalese had a calculating expression that didn’t sit well with Si’dah.

“And we’re just supposed to take your word for it?” Ell-Adalese challenged. “Without confirming this for ourselves? Without querying the accused?”

Si’dah reeled at these words as though she had been slapped. “Did you not hear us? It is done! They have departed from our cause and course by their own will. Would you risk us all to contact them and convince yourself? You have six witnesses who can attest to it right here!”

Serene hummed as she spread out her four hands to quiet everyone. “Be still, old friend. I believe you. I doubted Eclipse’s dedication from the beginning. If you remember, I argued that she was not suited to the task. She is too like my own kind. It is why I myself didn’t make the Sacrifice.”

Shey’s form rippled and he said, “I too detect truth in your words.”

Only Ell-Adalese still looked defiant. “I am clearly outnumbered. But you owe some explanation of those whom you bring into our Circle of protection without our consent.”

Hantu bowed. “Yes, of course. We bring Tora, a Seer, a dreamwalker from my world. She sits in Eclipse’s place.”

Serene gasped. “But you said there were none among your people anymore.”

“She is an anomaly,” he explained. “Brought to us by the Astral to aid our mission.”

Serene nodded to Tora, who nodded back, and Shey said, “Welcome, daughter of the Astral.”

“And the man?” Ell-Adalese inquired as she crossed her arms.

“I am Elias,” the Beekeeper spoke for himself. “My home is no longer. I fled to the Astral to escape invading forces and wandered here for countless ages. In desperation, I took a new host among the people of Hantu’s world, never realizing its fate was not so different from that of my home. The Astral has brought us together. Perhaps it knew all along.”

“Elias can help us. He can teach us,” Si’dah added. “He knows things we don’t about the Astral. He can show us the planes we’ve been missing. There are many of them. I have seen one myself.”

Shey’s form swelled and shuddered. Serene placed all four hands over her tiny mouth. But Ell-Adalese only uncrossed her arms and studied Elias, her eyes glowing a toxic green before becoming a gentle, feminine lavender.

“Welcome then, teacher,” she said. “There is always room among us for greater wisdom.”

Elias smiled and Hantu sighed with relief. Geode turned to Atel and clapped him on the back. But Tora’s eyes met Si’dah’s with a funny look and she gave just the slightest shake of her head.

Si’dah glared across the Circle at her mentor’s old rival and wondered, what was Ell-Adalese really thinking? What were her chameleon eyes hiding from the rest of them?

LONDON SWATTED AT the nuisance that was shaking her shoulder, pulling her unwilling from a dead slumber. Barely awake, she knew only that she needed every second of sleep this night would afford her. Their meeting in the Astral had been over long. She was tired and in no mood. Surely, Zen realized that. Surely he was exhausted as well.

But the gentle shake came again, only not so gentle this time.

London’s arm swung out but made no contact. “Go away,” she moaned without opening her eyes.

“London, you have to get up.” The voice at her ear was familiar, too familiar, and yet too different to be here. It stabbed into her heart like an adrenaline needle.

London’s eyes flew open, adjusting quickly in the dark. She shot up like a bolt, supporting herself with both elbows, and looked straight into the face of Rye.

He placed a hand to her mouth and his touch was lighter than a feather, but his eyes pleaded with her to understand. The scream died in her throat.

“Don’t yell. Please, just listen. I don’t have much time. I can’t hold the projection for long.”

Only the urgency written across his expression, and the sheer shock of seeing him there, right in front of her in Elias’s home, held her tongue. That, and the fact that so many things wanted to come out at once—questions, accusations—that it would have taken her hours just to figure out where to begin. Instead she simply muttered, “Projection?”

Rye’s tight expression melted into a sideways smile. His eyes crinkled over the strong slash of his cheeks. Something in them seemed not just fuller now, but harder, thicker beneath his barely freckled skin. Without realizing what she was doing, London reached up with the fingers of her right hand to touch Rye’s face. But her fingers never met with the delicious heat of his skin. They simply slipped through where he should have been, grazing only air.

She jerked her hand back, perplexed and frightened. Was she still dreaming? Was this a warp of her heart?

“I don’t have time to explain,” he said, the smile he wore a second ago fading behind a mask of anxiety. “I’m not really here. I mean, I’m
here,
but I’m not really
there
…with you.”

London swallowed hard and pushed the hair back from her face. Rye. Was here. Talking to her. But he wasn’t. “
Projection
?” she repeated, her mind a fog, a swirl of thoughts and feelings and confusion.

Rye grinned again. “Right. Projection. Listen to me, you have to get up and get out of here. Okay?”

London looked beside her to where Zen’s massive shadow was rising and falling steadily with his breath. Rye followed her gaze and his expression pinched. “Wake them up and go, you understand? Right now. If—if they won’t get up then just take off on your own if you have to. But, get everyone you can and get out of here.”