Jindigar followed her lead, focusing the Oliat on the shaleiliu generated among the colonists, and his Protector gratefully seized upon it and used it to spread the dome image out over houses, barns and fields, and the Cassrians' pond, everywhere that men and women stood shoulder to shoulder to claim their homes.
In Trinarvil's hands Eithlarin's worn, aged, and spotted dome of uninspired gray blocks became a wondrous miracle whose beauty flashed directly to the soul's very core, like the Aliom lightning. To experience that immanent beauty directly, not filtered by life's accumulated emotional barriers, was more than the younger officers could bear.
//Protector!// called Jindigar, breathless with excruciating joy, //We're not ready—not ready for this!// Have to extend that dome over the ships!
But Trinarvil was lost in rapt contemplation of the glory of existence and the adoration of home life. Jindigar sensed that she was carried into it by a Renewal hormone surge set off when she finally touched Phanphihy and found it welcoming her. Knowing that her mature ability to find every faint hint of shaleiliu was what his Oliat had lacked, that Trinarvil could have been to his Oliat as Lelwatha had been to Kamminth's– Jindigar still had to stop it.
He had to fight the seductive lure of her vision—for that was what life should always be. Three times he tried to bring himself to act. Finally, knowing that he simply could not match Trinarvil's mature strength, he resorted to slamming the Pro-lector's link down to a narrow band.
Everyone protested the sudden loss of the ineffable.
//What?// asked Trinarvil, bewildered. Then, //Oh, sorry. I guess I'm out of practice.// The dome image solidified over the colony, a lovely thing, freshly scrubbed and sound enough to last a generation, but no longer divine, and not yet covering the ships.
Suddenly lightning flashes of human vision pounded into the Oliat consciousness like shards of broken mirror rammed through the choked-down Outreach link.
A lone Native warrior leapt high into the air before Dar. He snarled his battle cry. Two hands gripped the neck of Lelwatha’s whule. Two muscle-knotted arms held it cocked at full backswing. The heavy sounding chamber swung directly at Dar's head.
Dar's face froze in horror.
The whule hurtled toward her eyes. The Oliat watched it through Krinata's human eyes, the antique urwood glittering in the first rosy light of dawn. The linkages carried Dar's view of her own face reflected in the distorting roundness of the wood, looming larger, paralyzed with fright.
Jindigar saw that the impact would come before the warrior even touched ground again.
And there was no Outrider on station to guard his Formulator, his mate. On a wave of explosive primitive rage Jindigar leapt to deflect the blow.
The massive whule glanced off his open hands, sending paralyzing pain up his arms. The strings rang discordantly. Then the whule smacked into the side of Dar's head, sending flint shards of pain through the Oliat. She hit the ground in a third burst of shocking pain that propagated through the linkages.
Zannesu Received their pain. Llistyien Emulated pain. Venlagar, as Inreach, was unable to reset the linkages alone. He could only hold them wide so the pain bounced back and forth, redoubling with each circuit. //Jindigar!//
Jindigar felt his knees buckle but didn't feel the sharp gravel under his hands because of the smarting pain growing ever louder as it seared up his arms again and again, amplified and echoed by the Oliat. His head hit the ground in one last numbing shock, adding to the pain of the blow Darllanyu had taken. Wildly growing pulses of pain shot through his skull. Only Krinata remained on her feet.
Dimly Jindigar sensed Dushau struggling toward them across the stream of retreating warriors—Dushau Outriders. Another Dushau hurtled through the air, tackling the warrior who had stolen Lelwatha's whule. The Dushau landed asprawl in front of Jindigar, scrabbling desperately for the whule. Jindigar saw a dark turban worn with a deep purple shut and trousers. Threntisn!
The warrior rolled over supine and clubbed Threntisn with the whule. Then he used the instrument as a staff to climb to his feet. He gave a bloodcurdling yell and charged through the approaching wall of Dushau, sweeping the whule before him in vicious arcs. Two large piols that had joined the chasing around as if it were a mating dance got into the warrior's way.
He stumbled, jabbed at the animals with the whule, and elbowed a Dushau out of his way.
The last thing Jindigar saw before vision failed was Krinata taking off after the warrior at a dead run. Her voice rose in an ululating shriek of predatory fury that barely reached them through the constricted Outreach linkage.
Ever-increasing pain drowned Jindigar, and he knew it would not stop until the energy was grounded. With his last strength he reached for the link to Trinarvil.
//Protector!// he called.
//Center!// she gasped.
//Inreach!//
//Center,// replied Venlagar weakly.
Jindigar finished the roll call, announcing, //On my signal each of you must channel all the pain to me.//
The pain was transformed kinetic energy—the blows from the whule, and their falling to the ground. Trapped and amplified by the magnification function he had set into the linkages to enlarge the dome, the energy now made it impossible for
Jindigar to reset and damp it out. And it grew with no theoretical limit, for it drew now, not just on their physical bodies, but also on the shaleiliu hum.
This would not just Dissolve the Oliat, as when he drew on the hum deliberately, but it would soon topple the Oliat into an Inversion. They would be set to affect the environment, not just Observe it. The Inverted Oliat would remanifest the energy in kinetic form. But the energy had been so vastly amplified, it would explode out from the Oliat like a bomb and would kill hundreds as well as the Oliat, Threntisn, and the Archive.
Jindigar set himself to prevent that. He had seen this done only once, in a demonstration. He told himself it was possible, therefore he could do it. Theoretically any energy could be grounded into a planet core.
Without considering what a slight error might do to his nervous system, he summoned a visual memory of the inside of the Temple and the inlaid Oliat symbol, which was all that was left of the worldcircle.
Theoretically a skilled Priest should never need to step into a worldcircle to contact the life matrix of the planetary energies. Once ignited, a circle always existed, at least in potential. He sought for it, and the very instant when he thought he felt it, he called in the energies. //To Center!//
A flooding rush of unendurable agony cascaded through his nerves, and he was sure he couldn't do it. Despair weakened ' him, magnifying the pain. He had no choice. Feebly at first, then with increasing will, he grounded the raw energy into the very soil of the planet, into the mantle, and down into the molten core where it would be stored and used to produce life, not death. He sank in molten liquid, churned by magnetic energy. His soul shrank, compressed to a dimensionless point. But the pain was gone.
Outside his body, apart from all physical concerns, he melted into the heart of/ the planet, falling inward to a point that encompassed the universe, encompassed Dushaun. The vibration of home called to the elemental stuff of his soul, gathering the scattered wisps together into the colorful, complex identity that was a Jindigar.
Welcome. Bright, comfortable light. Beauty—constant beauty. And there–right there, beckoning, was The Jindigar—a few short steps and he'd be Complete, able to join The Jindigar. It was all his now—he had only—