Having said that, Kaoren gently detached me and had me lie down so Ista Mezan could take better readings. Another technician, and Maze, Inisar and Zee were in the room, all of them grim and tense.
"It hasn’t ended," Inisar said, watching me narrowly. "What did you dream?"
My throat hurt – I really don’t recommend tubes – and I had to swallow a few times. Maze brought me into a channel (which had Isten Notra and the settlement commander and another bluesuit in it) and I spoke in there instead.
"I was somewhere I hadn’t seen before, a dark misty place, and I couldn’t move. I don’t think–" I struggled to understand the whole thing. "I don’t think I was dreaming. That was nothing like my dreams."
"I’m not finding physical damage, but energy output is significantly elevated," Ista Mezan said. "She’s actively using a talent."
"I’m trying not to go back. I feel like there’s a heavy weight pulling me," I said, wanting to clutch Kaoren some more. He slid his hand into mine, and I risked a glance at his face and saw that it was like stone, his eyes nearly shut.
"Recommendations?" Tsaile Staben asked, voice very clipped.
"It seems more likely to me that it is a response to the second exposure to a power stone, rather than some form of attack," Isten Notra said. "In either case, distance is the only obvious response. Get her as far from the power stones as possible."
Tsaile Staben told the other bluesuit to arrange a ship, while Isten Notra asked: "Caszandra, can you describe the place you saw in any more detail?"
"Not properly." I thought about it, then: "Can we go outside? I want to try and project where I was, and there’s not enough room here to see it."
"But–" Ista Mezan started, but stopped. What could he tell me, after all? That I needed to get some rest?
Maze was looking sick, and Zee’s mouth was a flat line, because they could see why I didn’t want to wait. Kaoren just picked me up. He knew I wouldn’t suggest something like that unless I thought it was important.
The nights are still cold at Pandora, and the sky was very clear. Maze brought along a drone and we followed the path down to the lake’s bank. I was struggling with feeling dizzy – moving about didn’t agree with me – but at least the dizziness made it easier to resist falling back asleep. The projection was unexpectedly easy to do, and not as distressing as I’d feared since Kaoren kept me snug against his chest the entire time – and this time it wasn’t me lying unable to move.
It was a big room, made of blackish stone and lit not only by the balls of light in the ceiling, but the mist which filled it, which I belatedly realised was aether. The stone walls were covered in carvings, reminding me vaguely of circuitry, and there was only one thing in the entire place – an altar or platform or bed – a waist-high carved rectangle of stone on top of which a black-draped humanoid figure – tiny, no bigger than Ys – lay beneath a scattering of round, green stones. Little malachite marbles.
"I think it’s her dream," I said, shaking from the effort of maintaining the projection and just…sheer horror. "It’s the ceiling I wanted to show you."
"Spread out so we capture as much as possible," Maze said, and he, Zee and Ista Mezan moved, looking upward through the aether. Inisar was staring at the shape of the girl under the dust-fragile black drapery, and Kaoren knew better than to shift about when I was projecting. They didn’t even make it to the far end of each room before I had to let the projection fade. Isten Notra ordered Ista Mezan to give me stimulants and we went back inside.
"Ship will be ready in ten joden," said the second bluesuit, as I was getting another quick examination and a couple of injections. I hesitated over the fortifier Ista Mezan handed me, since they always make me sleep, and Kaoren told me to drink just a little and to bring it with me.
"Let me wake the kids," I said, as Maze and Kaoren sent alerts to their squads, and Kaoren gently lifted us both back to our quarters. I could stand on my own, though it made my bones feel achy, and Kaoren watched me carefully a moment, then went and packed with his usual extreme efficiency.
Ys woke at the slightest touch, and I told her to wake Rye and then sat myself rather heavily on Sen’s bed and prodded her gently awake. I think Sen knew straight away – she climbed into my lap and hugged me madly and then was quietly mature in the way she gets when she’s being driven by her Sight.
"We’re going to Tare," I said, once they were all awake enough to take it in. "Mainly because my talents now acting weird, and best to get me away from Muina until better understand what’s going on. I need you three to get dressed and pack belongings – use your pillowcases to put them in – so that we’re all ready to get on ship. Can you do that?"
I hated to see Ys and Rye’s reaction, all sense of certainty stolen away in seconds, and then their expressions shutting down. But they nodded and hurried to do what they were told. I helped Sen get dressed, and sent her to the bathroom while I packed everything I could reach without having to move about too much. Kaoren was soon there with a proper tote bag to pack their crammed pillowcases in, and his calm and restrained approval swept them along. Mara and Ketzaren showed up and whisked them and our bags away so Kaoren could pick me up again. We flew inland to the flat acres of whitestone which was now Pandora’s barebones spaceport. First and Fourth, Inisar, Ista Mezan and a couple of his minions, all together in a hushed and grim group: Mori wide-eyed and dismayed, Lohn with his jaw set, no-one wanting to talk. I couldn’t pay a great deal of attention because I was all dizzy again and very nauseous.
The ship was the Diodel, and Kaoren took me straight to the small medical section. He let the technicians have me so I could try to explain why I was looking so green, and went to make sure the kids were settled, coming back just before takeoff and dryly saying: "She understands that," to stop one of the technicians fussing about how if just getting to the ship had made me dizzy, ship travel would be worse.
I could tell that they were treating this as super-urgent because the tedious pre-flight checks were cut short to critical systems checks only.
The medical station has two sick-pods, and a room to one side with more ordinary pods, but Kaoren and Ista Mezan ignored the everyone strap in for takeoff protocol and stood with me as the ship lifted, paused, then zoomed forward. And I went grey, green, then vomited extravagantly in the well-placed bucket Kaoren had snagged from the medical supplies. I don’t remember much of the journey to Muina’s rift, given that my brain seemed to be tumbling in free-fall the entire way and I spent all my energy dry-retching and shifting about because I kept having really weird muscles spasms. It did mean that it wasn’t difficult to stay awake, but by the time we reached the rift (it sounds like we went at record speed) all I wanted was to be knocked on the head. The whole time I could feel something pulling me down.
Kaoren wouldn’t let them close my pod when heading into the rift, and stayed standing with me despite a high chance of getting a dose of aether, which was fortunate because apparently I had a fit and passed out briefly – I don’t remember that, just this incredibly awful sensation like my insides were all staying on the far side of rift. By the time I was capable of noticing more than that, the technicians were talking in very relieved tones, and I no longer felt dragged down. Awful in many other ways, but whatever connection I’d established to the malachite marble or whatever the hell was going on with me had been broken.