Crystal Enchantment Read online

  "Then you trust me to do that?"

  "Yes," she said as he turned back to her. "I do trust you. But I still don't understand why you would risk your career by lying to your superiors."

  He shrugged. "I'm not really risking my career. As long as we're both careful, there's no way they'll find out. Did you, uh, use your powers on those Daks who were shooting at us after our accident?"

  "Yes. I was afraid that they would kill you as soon as you came out of the woods."

  "So you 'ported up there and used the blue fire on them?"

  She nodded, not really wanting to talk about it but knowing that, for some reason, he did. "I was afraid that I might have killed them," she said. "It takes practice to wield the fire carefully."

  He said nothing, and began to walk through the field, parting the waves of purple and pale green. She started to follow him, then stopped, knowing instinctively that he wanted to be alone. Instead, she climbed onto the hood of the hovercraft and watched him in his dark blue uniform. The sun reflected off the heavy gold braid.

  What is love? The question formed in her mind, catching her by surprise and sending a frisson through her body that left in its wake a strange, melting warmth. Love is trust, she thought, and I trust him. How she'd gotten to this point, she didn't know. He was a Vantran and a Special Agent and it shouldn't have happened. Perhaps she'd been so busy denying that she could ever trust him that she simply hadn't noticed that she did.

  And love is taking risks. The sort of risk he was taking now, by not informing his superiors of her true identity. Despite what he'd said, she knew that his career did indeed hang in the balance. Because he was a Panera, he would probably be permitted to resign, rather than be discharged. Or perhaps he would be shunted off to some specially created but essentially meaningless position. But he would never be allowed to continue his present work if his dishonesty became known.

  And yet, he was willing to risk that to protect her, a Witch.

  Tears stung her eyes as she watched him stop in the field, stand there for a moment with his back to her and then turn around and make his way back.

  We love each other, she thought incredulously, wondering how such a thing could have happened. Had she failed to recognize it because she'd never felt it beforeand had never expected to find it? Was it the same for him?

  "You asked before why I'm doing this," he said, stopping about ten feet from her. "I'm doing it because I love you, Jalissa. I don't know if it's because you've cast a spell on me, but I know that if you did, it wasn't intentional."

  He paused, and his gaze drifted away from her. "There was a time long agothousands of years ago. . . ." His voice too drifted off into silence. Then abruptly, he focused his gaze on her again.

  "I studied the classics as a child. They were filled with the ancient glories of war, which of course appealed to me since I didn't have enough sense to know what war truly meant. But they were also filled with poetry and songs written by men about women they loved but could never have. I ignored them because they seemed so far removed from the world I lived in. I was wrong."

  His final words hung there in the air between them, and Jalissa found herself nodding. "I love you too, Miklos. And I understand."

  He took a few steps toward her. Her heart thudded wildly and she stopped breathing. But then he stopped, and for a long time, they stared at each other across a small space that had been transformed into a yawning abyss. In their silence, they both acknowledged that it could go no further.

  He was Vantran and a Special Agent. He could not marry an off-worlder, and certainly not a Whisperer. She was both a Whisperer and a Witch, balanced precariously between two worlds, never to be entirely free of either of them. Love would destroy both their careers, and if their present mission were to reveal her true identity, she would have no choice but to return to the Coven.

  Together, they might save the Federation and the Covenbut at a terrible cost.

  Chapter Ten

  ''What will we do now?" she asked as they climbed back into the hovercraft.

  He turned to her with a smile that acknowledged the double meaning behind her words. But he chose to focus on their mission.

  "You're right about the Gavonese hiding him, so there's no point to our staying here. Instead, we'll try to find the Coven. Can you . . . contact them?"

  "Yesor at least I think so," she replied, hiding the pain she felt when she heard that small hesitation in his voice. Even if they had no other problems, he would never be able to accept what she was.

  "They could choose to ignore me, but I'll try." As he took off, she settled back in her seat and tried to send herself into the necessary trance. But his presence was too disturbing and his declaration of love echoed through her mind. When she knew that she wouldn't succeed, she told him that she would try when they returned to the base.

  "Why can't you contact them now?" he asked with a mixture of curiosity and impatience.

  "Because you're here," she replied simply. "You . . . interfere."

  He smiled an apology, but said nothing, and they returned to the base in a silence that was oddly comforting. Jalissa had thought that their mutual declaration of love would make it impossible for them to enjoy each other's company, but that seemed not to be true. Instead, she basked in the warmth of that love, knowing it to be impossible, but cherishing it just the same. And when their eyes met, she saw that it was the same for him.

  Back at the base, he told the commander that she required a room in which to rest for a time, and she was shown to a comfortable guest room. Still, it took her some time to set Miklos from her mind.

  Her senses were over-filled with him. All that she'd felt and tried to ignore now poured forth, inundating her as she sank down onto the bed. The things she'd once disliked about him had been miraculously transformed into reasons to love him: his Vantran pride, which no longer seemed arrogant, but which had instead become a deep, powerful sense of integrity; and his careful check on his emotions, which now made even more precious those rare times when he let down his guard.

  Thinking about this, Jalissa laughed aloud. She'd harbored a deep resentment of Vantrans from the moment of her first encounter with them, and she'd regarded Special Agents as the worst of the lotsly, cruel enemies of Trans/Med and therefore her enemies as well.

  And now, incredibly, she'd fallen in love with one of them. And not just any one of them, but a member of the most powerful family on Vantra and the most feared of all Special Agents. If she'd unwittingly cast a spell on Miklos Panera, perhaps he had cast a spell of his own.

  She settled down and gradually drew into herself, shutting out everything else. And then she cast her mind free, sending it out across space to a place she didn't know but could somehow reach.

  She waited, patiently at first and then with a mounting impatience that threatened the mind-focus. Nothing happened. There was no soft brushing of her mind against another.

  She came out of her trance into an icy chill. The Coven had closed itself off from her. She fought the panic that welled up in her as she felt herself now cast adrift from that world. What would happen now if she and Miklos found the world of the Coven? Depite the priesthood's often austere manner, Jalissa had always regarded the Coven's leadership as being essentially benevolent. But now, for the first time, she saw the dark side of a race that lived in isolation and listened to no one but the voices of the old godsvoices that, unlike the others, she herself had never heard.

  She saw now that something in her had always resisted direct communication. She heard herself as a child, incessantly questioning how they could be sure that the gods were always right. She felt again the annoyance of the elders when she dared to voice those questions.

  I have never really believed in them, she thought. If I had, I would never have questioned. Something was wrong with me from the very beginning. Perhaps that's why my parents paid so little attention to me.

  And she began to wonder if somehow the priests had conspired
to give her the talent to work with the crystalsas a way of getting rid of her.

  Scenes from her childhood, long forgotten until now, tumbled through her mind. The one thing the memories all had in commonwhich she hadn't seen until nowwas her isolation, the distance she kept from the other children. Even when she had joined in their games, she hadn't been part of them. A deep coldness settled into her, chilling her to her very bones. She was a Witch. She possessed all the unnatural talents of her kind. But what did it say about her that she herself considered them to be unnatural?

  She got up and fled from the room, seeking Miklos, needing the warmth of his presence. Running headlong from her fears, she very nearly collided with him when she reached an intersecting hallway.

  He reached out to her, then let his arms fall back to his sides. She stumbled to a halt, raising her own hand to him, and then instead using it to brace herself against the wall. Anyone seeing them would have thought that they risked death if they had touched each otherand wouldn't have been far from the truth.

  "What's wrong?" he asked. "What did they say?"

  "Nothing. I couldn't contact them."

  "Has that happened before?"

  She shook her head, still fighting tears. "They're angry with me, Miklos. They told me to stay out of this and I ignored them. Now they've turned their backs on me."

  "Why did you ignore them?"

  "Because I don't want to see the Federation destroyed, and I don't want war." She paused, choking back a sob. "And I don't want the Coven to be destroyed either."

  He raised his arm again, and this time, his thumb glided softly over her cheeks, brushing away the tears that had spilled over. A kiss could not have had a more powerful effect upon her as her mind carried them both far beyond that small gesture.

  "We want the same things," he said in a low, husky voice. "I too don't want waror the destruction of the Coven. But above all else, I want the Federation to be preserved."

  She nodded, knowing what he meant. If it came to a choice between the destruction of the Coven and the preservation of the Federation, he would sacrifice the Coven. It was clear to himbut far less clear to her.

  "Will they attack us if we find them?" he asked.

  "I don't know. They might. If the gods tell them to kill us, they will."

  "But what about you? What if the gods order you to kill?"

  She knew what he was really asking. What if the gods ordered her to kill him?

  "I would never attempt to harm you, Miklos, regardless of what the gods said." Then, in a desperate attempt to lighten the moment, she laughed. "The gods have never spoken to me, in any eventprobably because I've doubted their existence. Even as a child, I doubted the existence of beings who refused to show themselves to me."

  He too smiled. "You were a renegade."

  "Yes. I didn't see that before, but now I think maybe the priests gave me the talent to work with the crystals as a way of getting rid of me."

  "You don't believe in the gods, but you do believe in your powers," he said musingly.

  "Of course. I can see themand feel them."

  "But how did you acquire them, Jalissaif not from the gods?"

  She stared at him in astonishment. "How could youof all peoplebe saying that the gods exist?"

  He looked decidedly uncomfortable, but affected a casual shrug. "Perhaps I too was a renegade. My people have never believed in anything beyond the science we created ourselves, but there have been times when I've wondered." He stopped, shrugging again. "How else can one explain the powers the Coven hasthat you have? If they're not gifts from the gods, then what are they?"

  She had no answer to that, so she turned instead to more practical matters and asked what he intended to do now. The thought that he might actually believe in the gods was too unsettling to contemplate.

  "The Warlock returned to his hovercraft, but he vanished again before they could even get out their stunners. By now, he's probably stolen another craft and is long gone. I've sent orders to all bases that if he's spotted he's not to be killed. If they can capture him using stunners, they will; otherwise, they'll let him go. "It would be a waste of our time to try to catch him, so we'll go on with the plan to search for the Coven itself. There are two uninhabited worlds about the right distance from Tevingi. They don't fit your description, but we'll go there first."

  And I will find out if the Coven stole my memories, she thought grimly.

  Jalissa was falling, floating down through a darkness, her body buffeted by silent winds. She could hear faint sounds: the chanting of the priests far off in the distance. The voices were indistinct, but she recognized the chant. It was the ritual chant with which they had always greeted the oncoming night, even in the depths of their underground city where night was distinguishable from day only because the lights were dimmed.

  Every child of the Coven learned this chant first: a call to the gods to ward off the demons of night. Jalissa had learned it and spoken it since she had first learned to talk. But she'd never once believed that the demons existed.

  It was the belief of her people that the gods had created their race when they withdrew from this world, and that those who belonged to the Coven had been given their powers not only to help their fellow humans, but also to prevent the demons from returning to claim their share of the world. Once in a while, someone claimed to have felt the cold touch of a demon's presencebut no one had ever actually seen one. She'd once questioned a playmate who'd claimed to have felt that unutterably cold presence, and had finally reduced him to tears with her sharp demands and her disbelief.

  She continued to float through the darkness, but now she began to feel a coldness rushing up at her, reaching out to her with icy fingers. Beyond her, or below her, the darkness began to thin toward a dim twilightand she saw the grotesque, inhuman figures waiting for her.

  "No!" she cried, then flinched as something touched her arm. She was already awake and staring into Miklos's concerned green eyes when she realized that the touch was warm and human, not cold and demonic.

  "You were moaning. Were you having a nightmare?" he asked gently, removing his arm. "It sounded like you were chanting something."

  Jalissa blinked in the soft light of the spacecraft's console. The cabin temperature was pleasantly warm, but a chill had settled into her that not even his brief touch could banish. She stared into the vast darkness of space beyond the viewscreen.

  "How long was I asleep?"

  "Perhaps five hours. I slept for a time myself. We should have Xyton in sight soon."

  She nodded. Xyton was the first of the two worlds he considered to be a likely home for the Coven.

  "Do you know the history of the Coven, how we believe we came into existence?"

  He nodded. "The Coven was created by the old gods when they decided to leave this universe. The old gods were the forces of good arrayed against the demons, the forces of evil. The Coven was created as guardians, in case the demons tried to return once the gods were gone."

  She was surprised, then told herself that she shouldn't be. He might even have looked up the story recently, after discovering that the Coven still existed. She told him how each approaching night was greeted with a chant designed to ward off the demons, who preferred darkness, and how some Witches and Warlocks claimed to have felt their touch from time to time.

  "But I never did, so I didn't believe in them either."

  He smiled. "There's a certain symmetry there. If you don't believe in the gods, you can't believe in demons either."

  She laughed, but to her own ears at least, her laughter sounded hollow. That knot of icy cold seemed to have taken up permanent residence in her stomach, spreading its tentacles all through her. She got up quickly, to forestall any further conversation, and made her way back to the tiny galley.

  The simple logic of Miklos's statement haunted her. If she didn't believe in the gods, then of course she couldn't believe in the demons who were their opposite. And yet, she felt certain that
her ''nightmare" had been more than thatthat it had been a premonition or a warning.

  She carried food back to the cockpit for the two of them, and as they ate, they talked, mostly about life on Vantra. Safe conversation, personal but impersonal. And they talked of galaxy politics, both of them smiling as they realized that despite working for two agencies that regarded each other as being enemies, they shared the same views. Only their methods were different.

  Can we come out of this as friends? Jalissa wondered. It was far less than they wanted, but it might be possible.

  Then, sadly, she knew it wasn't possible. They might not agree on anything else, but the Special Agency and Trans/Med would certainly be in agreement that their two "stars" could not be friends. They might see each other from time to time in the course of their work, but that would be all.

  When they reached Xyton, Jalissa stared down at the small, barren world and knew instantly that this was not the home of the Coven. She told Miklos that, but he was determined that they should land there in any event, reminding her that she couldn't trust her memories. She knew that her certainty came from something other than memory, but didn't argue the point. A small part of Miklos might have taken a few steps toward an acceptance of the illogical, but she knew that his actions would be based solely on rationality.

  The atmosphere on Xyton held less oxygen than they were accustomed to, and its gravity was lower as well. They landed on a flat, dun-colored, featureless desert, and Miklos brought out a tiny hovercraft that was stored in the spacecraft's hold. It was low-powered and barely big enough for the two of them, making the small spacecraft seem huge by comparison.

  Jalissa tried to concentrate on the land below them as they skimmed the surface of the planet, but it proved to be impossible with him so close that their shoulders nearly touched. At first, she thought that he seemed unfazed by this forced intimacy, but when he reached across her to activate some device, his hand brushed against her arm and withdrew with such rapidity that he might have been burned.