From a-angelk@microsoft.com Tue Mar 28 15:43:55 1995 Return-Path: Received: from netmail.microsoft.com by netcom11.netcom.com (8.6.11/Netcom) id PAA17421; Tue, 28 Mar 1995 15:43:53 -0800 Received: by netmail.microsoft.com (5.65/25-eef) id AA06855; Tue, 28 Mar 95 15:46:21 -0800 Message-Id: <9503282346.AA06855@netmail.microsoft.com> Received: by netmail using fxenixd 1.0 Tue, 28 Mar 95 15:46:19 PST X-Msmail-Message-Id: FF0396BB X-Msmail-Conversation-Id: FF0396BB From: "Angela 'Anna' Korra'ti (EDP)" To: lhansen@cts.com Date: Tue, 28 Mar 95 15:00:41 PST Subject: Prose: Kevlan is Captured, and Rescued Cc: dewshine@netcom.com Status: O He should have seen it coming. Heard the particular footsteps that echoed his passage through the streets of the city... caught the scent of the particular shadows that seemed to have attached themselves to him wherever he went. With his enhanced senses, he should have had some warning. As it happens, all he has now is a blurred memory of being seized... a sharp, piercing jab in his shoulder, followed by a wrenching wave of dizziness. And voices, rough, urgent. "Hold him down! Hells, what's this snip of a boy *oof* doing so strong?" "Dose him harder, we can't let him know -" "I used it all, curse it! Gave him enough to topple a horse!" "Well, if the drug won't knock him out, _hit_ him!" Something does: a blow like a strike of lightning across the back of his neck. For an instant he panics. Claimjumper? He tries to bring up a cutter that isn't in his hands - and his hands are grabbed, jerked behind him, bound. What's happening? Where's Tamber? Wh.... Darkness. Hunger wakes him. The Passover hunger growls in his belly, his symbiont demanding even more sustenance than usual as it strives to burn the dizziness and nausea out of him. Something resembling clarity returns - but there are faces above him, faces he doesn't know, and he remembers enough to know that he is in trouble. With a frenzied strength he hadn't known he could put forth despite his years so far on Ballybran, he lashes out with his feet, for he can't move his hands. There's a yelp, a curse, and alarmed words. "What the _freg_ is he doing awake?" Another jab to his shoulder, and he tumbles back down into oblivion. Time swims out of focus. What little fare he is given isn't enough to assuage the cramping snarl in his stomach, and eventually, inevitably, the symbiont starts its sleep - adding to rather than fighting the cobwebs in his head. But he _can't_ sleep! Something's wrong, he knows it, somebody's tied his hands and his feet, and he feels so sick and... A single taunting voice. "_This_ is one of the great Crystal Singers? This lamb-eyed lollipop is a member of the mighty Heptite Guild? He looks barely worth _their_ time, much less ours...!" The tones sound much like others he's heard before. 'And Galahad calls himself a Singer?' 'Ye gods, how does he survive the Ranges?' 'He's got barely more spine than his symbiont, if you ask me!' Embarrassment floods him, but he also remembers Tamber's solemn instructions; Kevlan _must_ not let the Guild down. He is a black Crystal Singer, and he must act worthy of that station. He can stand being insulted - but not the fright that he might fail his Guild, his Guildmaster, and his friend. It sears away some of his daze, letting him realize he's untied, for once, and he lunges towards the source of that jeering voice. But a foot slams into his ribs, making him double over, gasping. He feels his hair yanked, and the same voice whispering harshly, too loud to his abused hearing: "Got a little spunk then, do you, lamb-eyes? That's too bad, because I" - punch - "don't" - kick - "_like_" - backhand! - "spunk!" As he collapses, the voice adds mockingly, "Tsk. And such a pretty face, too." No. He _can't_ fail Tamber like this....! "Bind him. Keep him bound - and drugged. He will _not_ attack me again!" No... Darkness. And now, growing fear. He can no longer resist his body's desperate need to sleep, but it's a sleep filled with disturbing dreams. The taunting voice comes back - but in the dreams, it now belongs to Bernadette. "I can't marry you - you're a disgrace to your profession!" No. Berni honey, please don't... Her mouth curls in refined distate. With that taunting voice emerging from her, she is the very picture of a cool - and contemptuous - Singer. She stands over him, eyebrows elegantly arched as she adds, "I want a man who can think for and defend himself, not a frightened child in a man's body!" He can take being insulted... from anyone except her. Her words leave him reeling, shaken, though some back corner of his mind contains a more ghostly yet somehow more real Bernadette. Her voice, her real voice, is barely more than a wisp of remembered sound in his thoughts. "I have to leave you, Kevlan - you'll die if I stay with you!" _I'll die if you go!_ No. He promised to wait for her...! But he can't move. He is sick enough and weak enough that the very thought of moving is enough to make his stomach churn. He chases after her, though, stumbling frantically through dream-visions of the most unfriendly places in the Ranges. Like sun on a crystal face, she tugs at his consciousness; he can't help but follow. But she vanishes at last... as he trips headlong through a crystal-walled cave. But even the crystal seems oddly distant. Craving its solace, he crawls to the rock face, touches it longingly... and hears himself cry out in startlement and pain as the contact seems to rip the skin off his fingertips. As if his hands were a normal's. _No... _ He pulls in a breath, lets it free on a quavering note. The crystal is silent, rejecting him just as Bernadette has done, rejecting the fluffheaded fool who thinks he has enough steel in him to call himself a Crystal Singer. _No!_ The note dies, despite his attempts to keep it ringing, as if the very darkness around him absorbs and destroys his ability to bring forth song. Not knowing whether he wakes or dreams, he curls up, sobbing, breathing childhood prayers in a despondent appeal to the Star-Lady... but even She seems to have turned Her face away.... Darkness. Sudden sounds and a blur of light and color, an assault on weakened senses. "They're going to have our hide for this." The taunting voice. "His condition is their own fault, for not giving us what we required when we asked it." "But he _is_ a Singer... " Laughter. "Even the mighty Heptite Guild can do nothing if it can't find us. We have what we want, now." More dizzying images, discordant jangles of sound. And at last, a sudden clear face as he is thrown roughly down to the cobbled street: a pale, green-eyed face, weary, frantic, framed by disheveled red hair. And Tamber's voice, made rough with relief: "Kevlan, dear gods, what have they... " "T... Tam?" Tears in those green eyes. "It is none other, dear boy." The awful aloneness that threatens to choke him recedes, just a fraction, and he huddles desperately in his friend's supportive arms. Other voices begin to reach him, but as he is lifted, carried off, he is aware of nothing save Tamber's voice, low and gentle to him, sharp and uncomprising when directed elsewhere. "I do not _care_ how long your next shuttle has to wait, I am getting my friend and our crystal off this benighted, forsaken world this instant!" Darkness.