Jay stood beside the bank, waiting for her with a look close to lust in his eyes. His poncho hung loosely about his shoulders and she could see the holster for his weapon on his hip.
“Is there anything I need to do?” he asked. His voice was carefully controlled. It betrayed no emotion.
Arla’s gaze swept across the stones. The air in the room was all but humming from the tension Jay radiated.
I wish I’d come alone. I wish I’d brought Eric. She rubbed her palm against her stones’ pouch, feeling the smooth, soft leather. Ancestress, you had the Servant with you. I have no idea what I’ve brought with me.
She looked hungrily at the stones that waited in front of her like an invitation.
I have to do this, and I have to have someone to stand by. The Vitae could send reinforcements at any time. The stones could overwhelm me like they did Broken Trail.
“Just keep watch,” she said to Jay. “If anything happens, pull me away from the stones.” Jay nodded, but the shining eagerness hadn’t left his eyes.
Will he do it? She bit her lip. Well, at least nothing’s going to sneak up behind me. The vision of the Vitae corpses came to her far too clearly.
The stones gleamed in their sockets, right where her hands would rest comfortably if she sat in the rotted chair in front of the bank. She reached out toward the closest sphere. Her mouth went dry in the same instant. She closed her eyes and tried to keep her mind open as she dropped her hand onto the smooth, cool curve.
A flood wave of sensations crashed down on her. Every sense screamed in instant pain as blazing colors, distorted sounds, a thousand overwhelming smells drove straight into her, pummeling every nerve. Underneath it all rose a hideous incomprehensible pleading. Someone, somewhere, begged to be heard.
But she couldn’t hear. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t sort out any of the burning, blazing, stench that poured through her.
As fast as it began, it was gone. She was back in her own body with nothing but her own senses and the world immediately outside them. Arms cradled her.
Eric? she thought with a kind of instinctual need. She peeled open her eyes. Jay’s face leaned over her, blocking out the ceiling.
“You fell.” He blurted the words out. “What happened?”
The abrupt question brought old, comfortable anger to her. “This despised one is fine, thank you for asking, my lord.” Arla gripped the edge of the bank and pulled herself out of his arms. The shock was fading rapidly. She actually felt surprisingly well, except for the raw sensation in her heart left from the strange, strong pleading that she’d felt, more than heard.
She picked herself up off the floor and eyed the arlas in their sockets.
“Perhaps,” she murmured, more to herself than to Jay, “the problem is that these are not my stones.”
Arla undid her pouch and drew out one of her namestones. She dropped it into an empty socket. It landed with a sharp click. She leaned her palm against it and closed her eyes.
For a long moment, she did nothing but stand there looking intently at the insides of her eyelids and feeling mildly foolish.
Then, something stirred. Her heart began to beat lightly, quickly. Something shifted. She could taste iron in her mouth and feel the air tingling in her lungs. The floor pushed heavily against the bottoms of her boots, just like the stone pushed against her palm. Her awareness stretched down to the floor and out to the stone. She met no resistance. She passed through the pressure and expanded, spreading herself out through the floor until she found the walls. She arched up to meet herself where she filled the control console. She wrapped herself solidly around the room as if she was embracing one of her children.
Arla opened her eyes. She saw her hand on the stone, but the awareness of it was superimposed over the sight of the rest of the room, all of it, seen from all angles. She looked up from the floor and down from the ceiling and out from all the walls. She felt the disturbances Jay’s breath made in the air and the heat from his body, and her own. She felt the gentle pressure where feet stood. She felt portions of the room stir, as she might feel her heart beat, or her lungs breathe.
Past all this lay another great space. She knew that, and she knew it was at the same time far beyond her and immediately within reach, and … Arla leaned toward it.
There was someone else out there. She could hear them crying in that distant vastness.
Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go!
Arla gathered herself together and willed herself to look toward the plea.
It was like looking out the view wall toward the stars. Arla felt the old vertigo rock her mind.
Over here, over here, over here! cried the other voice.
Arla knotted her resolve and looked harder. The stars here were connected with strands of scarlet light, into a vast web that was even bigger than her new, expanded perspective. Yet some part of her knew that if she reached, if she stretched, she could encompass all this as well, see it from every side as she saw the room. The vacuum was darkness without form. This darkness would have form, if she shaped it.