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over all, the hives of the intelligent Natives creeping eerily through the
night, pulsing with evil evil that had taken over the Oliat.
The Oliat has to be destroyed destroyed!
NO!
As Jindigar fought off the Holot's emanations Krinata's Dushau Outrider,
helpless before the wrath of a predator, could only yell at the Holot to stop.
This was why an Oliat never used Dushau Outriders when off Dushaun.
Where's Storm!
The platform was a churning, seething mass of scuffling, struggling bodies.
Jindigar climbed to his feet, searching. Past-time showed him the ephemeral
Outriders plunging down the stairs after the ominous intruders and making for
the platform. Their images smeared as they breasted the wave of violence
erupting in the wake of the intruders who were attacking the Oliat. The Holot
in the lead of the intruders yelled at Krinata repeatedly, then, in
frustration, grabbed her and shook her, his hopeless rage transmuting into a
catharsis of violence.
In present-time, the Outriders formed up and moved like riot police, working
their way to the Oliat. Too slow.
Jindigar ripped the control of the linkages from Zannesu's frozen clutch.
He choked down the linkage to Krinata even more tightly, knowing he chanced
throwing them all into shock by cutting her link. The remorseless flow of
Phanphihy's malevolence abated but, oddly, did not stop. At the same time
Eithlarin V primitive terror burgeoned through the inner silence, louder and
louder, commanding them.
Darllanyu slumped down and curled on her side, hands clamped over her head,
pleading through silent sobs, //Jindigar, stop it. Make her stop....//
That one plea drove him wild. Without thinking he opened his link to
Eithlarin, determined to stop her. //Eithlarin!//
But she was fleeing through the corridors of her own mind, chased by that
monstrous, hairy hand, detached from its arm and sailing through the air after
her while the beast pursued, gesturing with its arm that ended in a bloody
stump. Free of its huge, lumbering body the hand was faster than Eithlarin. It
gained on her rapidly.
Zannesu joined Jindigar's desperate call. //Eithlarin!//
She turned, and they thought she'd heard them, but all she saw was the filthy
animal hand looming at her. Without warning she surrendered to the nightmare
image, giving in to it totally, no longer fighting the threatened fate.
//No!// cried Zannesu, plunging after her into her private memory, into
Vistral and all that had come before it in her life for she was lost in her
own memory.
Jindigar had only witnessed that total surrender once before, but he
recognized it. //She's episodic.//
No one heard his pronouncement.
As one, Venlagar and Llistyien sagged to their knees, faces slack with the
same retreat that had claimed Eithlarin and Zannesu. As Venlagar failed, the
Oliat's anchor in the outside world slipped free. Venlagar fell away into a
memory he shared in common with Llistyien, romping through a bright meadow on
Dushaun where they happily trained flocks of colorful Patrol Birds to guard
the high-spirited youths of the city. Darllanyu, her strength gone, was about
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to retreat into her own past, surely to drag Jindigar with her. He had to save
them from Eithlarin's retreat. I have to do it.
But he knew he could never do such a cruel thing. No! Never again! To save
them all he had to just as he had once released Takora from her panicked
clutch on the Office of Center, consigning her to Incompletion-death. I can't!
He could still hear Takora's despairing cry of terror. He still felt his own
stark hopelessness when Krinata had displaced him to float out there
helplessly. How can I do that to Eithlarin?
But she was dragging his Oliat to an ugly death. Maybe I can hold her, he told
himself, and before he could think more about it, he throttled down the link
to his Protector to a thread, a line with no diameter but maybe strong enough
to hold her. Simultaneously he opened wide to all the others.
Eithlarin spun free, drifting into the void of her own memories into the chaos
of untime.
Jindigar called the others to their Offices. //Krinata, Zannesu, Darllanyu,
Llistyien, Venlagar!// Oh, steady Venlagar, please, be our strength now!
With Krinata came the full blast of the Holot's perception of Phanphihy.
Suddenly Eithlarin's hold on the hive-dome image above them shattered. The
dome cracked and fell toward them. The chunks of dome melted into an oily
ichor that coated them with putrescent goo.
Jindigar gagged. But he held on, refusing to sever the line to Eithlarin and
shatter his Oliat. //Venlagar! The dome was never material this isn't real!
Venlagar, we must not Receive Eithlarin or the Holot!//
Venlagar gave them one clear view of the bird training field, Llistyien
dressed in wisps of summer clothing, running with the ultimate feminine grace,
beguiling the fledgling birds with the glowing beauty of a pure spirit so that
battalions of them held the starving monsters of Vistral off at the horizon,
keeping the meadow safe. Neither Jindigar nor Zannesu could have turned from
such a scene where their mate was in danger. Venlagar wrapped it in fog.
Perception shifted. The platform shimmered into view around them, filled with
knots of battling forms and no birds.
Zannesu fought like a wild thing refusing reality, determined to go after
Eithlarin. //Inreach!// demanded Jindigar.
//No! Jindigar, no!// begged Zannesu. //Let me go!//
But Darllanyu and Llistyien began to recover. Dragging themselves to their
feet, they teamed to sort the images clogging the links, rejecting the Holot's
distorted view of Phanphihy and the remaining echoes of Eithlarin's nightmare.
They brought into focus the platform, the stinking water swirling around them,
coating them all with real filth, and Krinata's red-tinged vision of snarling
Holot. But under it all a thrumming distortion of reality beat through the
links.
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