Destiny's Lovers

by

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013, 1990, by Flora Speer

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For my brother, Ralph De Groodt, my
“technical advisor”

on the art of sailing, with love and thanks
for the help

and advice.

The sun was still below the horizon when
Janina and Tamat approached the shore. Though the ceremonial road
from the village was smooth and level, it was a long walk for the
elderly priestess. Janina slowed her steps to ease the strain on
the woman who had been her great-grandmother’s older sister.

Tamat was in her ninety-eighth year. For more
than sixty years she had been known only by her family name and by
the designation of High Priestess and Co-Ruler of Ruthlen. Her
spine remained unbent by advanced age and she wore her elaborate
white-and-gold headdress with easy dignity, yet there was about
Tamat an air of fragility. Everyone in Ruthlen knew that Tamat was
near to the end of a life devoted to her people and their Chosen
Way. Only Tamat did not speak of her approaching death or of what
would happen after it.

Except to Janina.

“You are the only one left,” she had said
three days before this day, “the only descendant of our line. You
must succeed me, Janina. You must keep the line unbroken for a
little longer.”

“How can I?” Janina asked. “If I attempted to
take your place, I’d only shame you, and our ancestors. No matter
how hard I try, I’m not a telepath and never will be.”

“It is possible,” Tamat said, “that you do
not try hard enough. I have seen you looking at the young men on
festival days.”

“Do you think I’m reluctant because I’d have
to remain a virgin for the rest of my life?” Janina exclaimed with
a bitter laugh. “I’ll remain a virgin whether I’m a priestess or
not, because I lack the one quality necessary to an adequate
mating. I’m not a telepath. No man would want me. And the looking
you speak of has shown me that there is not a man in all of Ruthlen
that I would want.”

“Perhaps,” Tamat said, “there is something I
can do to help, if you are willing to take the risk. You have
completed all of the necessary theoretical training. You know how
to contain and control the Gift when it is released to you. It only
remains locked in your mind. We must open the door of your mind and
set it free. There are ways. Trust me, Janina, and I’ll see you
High Priestess Designate before I die, for I cannot believe that
anyone born of my grandmother’s blood is not a telepath. Your Gift
must be released! If it is not, then Sidra will be High Priestess
when I am gone, and though she is acceptable in every other way,
she fails the first test - she is not a Tamat.”

Here, for just a moment, an ancient hand
rested gently upon Janina’s.

“I am aware, dear child, that Sidra loves you
not. If she becomes High Priestess, your life will be an unhappy
one.”

“I trust you, Tamat.” Janina looked directly
into her great-great-aunt’s silver-blue eyes and wished with her
entire heart that she could make contact with all the knowledge
contained within Tamat’s mind. That was the way a High Priestess
was made, by a complete mind-linking with her predecessor. If Tamat
said there was a way for her to do that, there was a way, and
Janina would attempt it. “Tell me what to do.”

And so now Janina walked beside Tamat on the
ceremonial road to the sea, her body and mind relaxed by the potent
herbal mixture Tamat had prepared and made her drink just before
leaving the temple. Janina had fasted for the last three days, and
had slept not at all during the previous night. She felt neither
hunger nor weariness, but only a weightlessness in her body, as
though she was too light for her bare feet to touch the ground.

Behind the High Priestess and Janina walked
Sidra, Tamat’s assistant priestess for more than twenty years.
Beside Sidra was Osiyar, the High Priest and Co-Ruler of the
village, a blue-eyed, golden-haired man, handsome beyond all
belief, who lived deep within himself and loved neither man nor
woman. After them came the other priestesses and priests and most
of the villagers. Janina could feel the disapproval of the
villagers like the cold hand of an enemy against her back.

For as long as she could remember, the people
of Ruthlen had looked down upon Janina with disgust, scorning her
company and occasionally declaring that she ought to be banished
because she was different. She lacked the Gift all the others had,
the ability to meet mind with mind. During her childhood, she had
often been pelted with stones and spat upon by the other children.
In her teens, she had been laughed at and mocked by her
contemporaries. Never had her parents tried to stop this treatment,
for they felt shamed and humiliated by her lack of a quality
everyone else possessed.

Now that she was twenty and a woman grown,
the villagers ignored her most of the time. She had no friends and,
since the deaths of her parents, no other relatives except for
Tamat, who had loved her and accepted her as a scholar priestess
when no one else wanted her. But she had repaid Tamat with an
inability to do the one thing the kind-hearted woman had ever asked
of her. She would probably be unable to do it today, too. Once
again she would fail Tamat. Were it not for the euphoria induced by
the mixture she had drunk, Janina would have wept before the entire
company, disgracing herself and Tamat forever.

They had reached the shore. The procession of
villagers and temple folk fanned out into a ragged line two or
three deep at the place where the road ended. There they stayed,
among the dunes and rough grasses at the edge of the beach.

Janina, Tamat, Sidra, and Osiyar walked
across the beach. The steadily growing daylight revealed a wide
stretch of fine white sand bounded on both left and right by tall,
rocky headlands. The sand was perfectly clean, bearing no trace of
marine life or human activity.

Halfway across the beach Tamat stopped, the
others pausing with her. The sky was now an opalescent rose with a
faint tinge of gold along the horizon. On this day there was no
morning mist. Janina wondered if Tamat had commanded it away.

“It is time,” Tamat said.

Leaving Tamat standing between Osiyar and
Sidra, Janina walked forward to the water’s edge. She stood there a
moment, feeling the moist sand between her toes. A tiny wave foamed
cool salt water around her feet. When the breeze blew her sheer,
sleeveless white robe against her slender form and lifted a few
strands of silver-gold hair, Janina felt a chill along her upper
arms. Another wave swept across her feet, splashing her ankles and
the hem of her robe.

The tide had turned and was coming in. The
wind was from the sea, the twin moons had set, the sun was about to
rise. The moment of testing had arrived.

Janina took a deep breath and lifted her
arms. An instant later, the uppermost rim of the sun showed above
the edge of the world. Janina cupped her hands, holding them out
toward the rising sun, willing the Power to come to her, to fill
her hands with light, to unlock itself from the deep recesses of
her mind.

Tamat could do it. Janina had seen the aged
priestess standing in this same spot with her feet in the sea and
glistening light spilling out of her hands into the air around her
until Tamat was encased in sparkling silver.

Janina focused all her strength and all her
will upon the rising sun. Her eyes swam with tears from the glory
of it as the huge, orange-gold disk swelled until it rested exactly
upon the horizon.

Now. Janina opened her mind and lifted her
arms above her head.

A shadow skimmed across the face of the sun
and rested there. Janina ignored the sudden murmuring behind her,
for in the shadow she saw a face. As it became more distinct, she
realized that it was a man’s face, though it was like no man she
had ever seen before, dark and ugly, and yet - and yet, known and
beloved. Black hair, thick black brows, dark eyes.

“He comes ... to change everything.” Janina’s
voice was a high-pitched moan, foreign to her own ears. “New people
on this world. I can feel them. A man comes. Beloved…He will
change…change…”

Sudden blackness enveloped her. She collapsed
toward the sea now swirling about her knees and knew nothing
more.

Reid was lost. He had become separated from
the others as they fought their way through an unnaturally dense
forest. At first it had been pleasant to be out of the reach of
Herne’s sour remarks about their expedition and Alla’s constant
lectures to him on the plants and trees they were passing.

He raised one hand, drawing his fingers
through dark, curly hair, thinking how upset Alla would be if he
wasn’t there to order around and try to protect. Alla’s mother and
his had been sisters, Reid and Alla had grown up together, and
while she was only two years older than Reid, Alla had always
treated him as if she were his mother. She had even joined Tank’s
colony when she learned Reid had signed up for it. She was entirely
too protective of him. He loved her, but a man needed room to
breathe and make his own life.

He wished one of the other women from the
colony had come along on this trek instead of Alla, someone with
whom he could have bedded down at night for a little uncomplicated
entertainment before sleep. Herne wouldn’t have minded. Herne
didn’t care about anything but medicine and complaining.

Where in the star-blasted universe were his
companions? Looking about him, it was easy to see how they had
disappeared so quickly. There was something mysterious, even eerie,
about the thick, silent forest, the warm, humid air, the gently
drizzling rain. He couldn’t move without brushing against damp
leaves, and the foliage muffled sound most effectively.

Soon after the voices of the others had
faded, he tried to use his pocket communicator to contact them
again, only to discover it wasn’t working. That made him angry. He
was the communications officer on this expedition. If something was
wrong with his equipment, he should have known about it and made
the necessary repairs. But there had been nothing wrong with the
communicator until now. Nothing at all.

He pulled the cover off the offending
communicator for the third time and checked it once more, but could
find no reason for the malfunction. Slamming the cover back into
place, he shouted, but there was no answering call.

“Beloved…”

At first he thought it was the leaves
rustling, or the buzzing of insects. When he heard the sound again,
he peered through the trees, wondering if Alla or Herne might be
playing a trick on him, though it would be out of character for
either of them.

“Beloved…”

“Where are you?” he called, spinning around,
then around again, the action causing a miniature rainstorm as
moisture showered off every leaf he touched. He was surrounded by
green. He had never seen so many shades of one color. The moss at
his feet was a rich gold-green, the underbrush pale green which
turned paler still when some movement of his revealed the silvery
undersides of the leaves. Over his head, green vines looped back
and forth between the trees, and far above the vines, the tops of
the trees were the deepest green of all. He could not see the sky.
It was screened from view by thick layers of leaves.

Even the air was green, soft and moist and
scented by a hundred varieties of leaves and by the tiny purple
flowers that grew wherever the trees left them room enough.

“Come, beloved…”

Oddly, he was not afraid after hearing that
tantalizing whisper. Nothing about Dulan’s Planet frightened him.
He had felt at home on it as soon as his feet touched its soil.
That was why he had volunteered to join the exploration team. He
was going to spend the rest of his life on this world, so he wanted
to know all of it.

He had willingly joined the colonists who set
out to establish a secret listening post on Dulan’s Planet, to
observe any Cetan activity that might be construed as warlike and
report it directly to the Leader of the Jurisdiction. The Cetans
and the Jurisdiction had only recently signed a peace treaty after
centuries of war, and Leader Almaric was not completely certain the
Cetans could be trusted.