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 to retreat into her own past, surely to drag Jindigar with her. He had to save them from Eithlarin's retreat. / 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. / 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.
Zannesu collapsed, keening out a wail of unresolvable pain. A Lehiroh saw him go down and aimed a vicious kick at him. His Outrider threw his own body over Zannesu's, taking the full force of the kick, ribs giving way. The two human Outrider trainees moved in on the Lehiroh attacker.
Cyrus and Storm teamed up and threw one last Lehiroh Imperial trooper into the pond, then leapt onto the back of the Holot who had Krinata. Krinata's Dushau Outrider seized the chance and wrenched her free. Wrapping himself around her, he rolled with her toward the middle of the platform, cradling her vulnerable head and neck in his hand.
The rest of the Oliat felt the pressure on their necks let up and, with Krinata, drew a long, delicious breath. The Holot's break-in ended. The reverberating horror died away.
As the ephemeral Outriders fought, most of those on the platform joined their defense of the Oliat against the few attackers. Quickly a space cleared around the Oliat.
Almost all the attackers, Jindigar noted, had once been of the Imperial force that had chased them to Phanphihy and attempted to annihilate them. They were the only ones who, had once succumbed to the Natives' psychic attack, the hive's ability to induce psychotic terrors in their enemies.
Had the Oliat's mistakes caused enough despair to trigger the psychotic cycle in them again? He noted that the attacking ex-Imperials were largely Cassrian and Holot, the two species most affected by the recent disasters, flow could I have missed anticipating this?
The ex-Imperials were outnumbered, but they were combat-trained and driven by desperation. The battle raged, friend against friend, ally against ally.
A Cassrian, arms and legs flailing, arced over Jindigar's head and splashed into the slimy water. All around the platform swimmers were thrashing about or trying to climb back into the fight. They stirred up such a stench that some people lay writhing in the throes of acute nausea. Jindigar saw one Holot in the water, fur matted with muck, towing an unconscious human toward the edge of the pond where others waited to haul them out.*