The green priest woman had already caused him a great many problems. Each time Udru’h thought he had found a solution for her situation, it led to another set of unintended consequences. If Nira hadn’t proved so maddeningly valuable to the breeding program, he’d have killed her years ago. But that would have been a useless gesture, a waste of the woman’s potential.
Even though the Mage-Imperator still insisted on coming to Dobro, at least now Jora’h believed she was dead. Through incredible mental effort, Udru’h had managed to keep the secret from his brother. From now on, though, it would be a delicate and dangerous game, until the Designate could decide what to do with Nira. . . .
In a grand procession from Ildira, a septa of Solar Navy warliners had recently begun delivering the Designates and their young apprentices to various Ildiran worlds. Only yesterday, Udru’h and Designate-in-waiting Daro’h had arrived on Dobro. After the others in his entourage had returned to their work at the crowded breeding camps, the Designate had taken Daro’h under his wing. Together, they confirmed with the medical kithmen and administrators that all the experiments continued as expected, that the human breeding specimens had caused no trouble. Then his young nephew earnestly began to study the basics of the colony he would eventually take over.
Now the Designate had his own emergency work to do. He’d been gone for too long. He steeled himself, sought guidance from the Lightsource, then departed in a fast craft for the other side of the world. Alone.
For an Ildiran, solitude and isolation elicited as much instinctive horror as did darkness, but Udru’h had to bear this. Secrecy was more important than his own comfort. He was strong enough. He dared take no one else with him, not even his most trusted medical kithmen.
No one else knew that Nira was alive.
Udru’h had trained much, practiced his mental ability, exercised his connection to the greater network of thism. He could endure this necessary torment, for a short while at least.
He pushed the craft’s engines to their limits, roaring south across the sky, over Dobro’s equator, and into the unsettled lower continent. Spotting the expansive waters of a great shallow lake, he knew he was close to his destination. Hours had already slipped away, hours alone, but he gripped the controls and continued flying.
It wasn’t so bad. Not yet. He was strong, yes, strong enough . . . certainly stronger than Jora’h.
After the sudden death of the former Mage-Imperator, while the thism was broken and all Ildirans were scattered, confused, disconnected, the Dobro Designate had seized his chance. He had been waiting for it.
Once he’d discovered that Nira still existed, then-Prime Designate Jora’h had been foolishly willing to scrap the work on Dobro, to wreck centuries of careful experimentation, to threaten the future of the Ildiran Empire—all for the love of one woman. And not even an Ildiran woman at that, but a human, whose telepathic potential and connection with the sentient worldforest offered unsurpassed opportunities.
For years, Udru’h had listened to his best lens kithmen and mental experts while they trained Osira’h and her siblings. He would smile and observe unobtrusively, but all the while he, too, had been exercising his skills, learning mental techniques, strengthening his own abilities. Maintaining a bland expression on his face, the Dobro Designate had learned to scour his mind, erect invisible barricades around certain thoughts, and isolate some of his secrets from his comrades.
It was a game at first, then a challenge—and finally a genuine ability that his fellow Ildirans would never guess, because they had never dreamed that anyone could wish to do such a thing. Udru’h had always feared what ill-advised measures his brother might take. And while he could never speak against the rightful Mage-Imperator, never disobey Jora’h’s instructions, Udru’h could plan for certain eventualities.
After the Dobro Designate had learned how to block certain clear thoughts from the thism, he worked with meditation and deep study until he discovered a way to divert his brother’s mental threads. Unless Jora’h pried particularly hard, he would never realize the Dobro Designate was lying.
In the dark days before Jora’h was able to ascend, Udru’h had used the chaos to whisk Nira from the breeding camp. Following instructions he had left behind, his guards had beaten the green priest woman unconscious—in fact, so much more violently than he had ever intended that they had nearly killed her. But at least they had known to keep her alive, holding Nira in a drugged stupor. Then, before the thism could be reconnected, Udru’h had set up a place to keep her, hide her.
Considering Jora’h’s obsession with this woman, the Designate knew she might prove useful as a bargaining chip, if his plans fell apart.
Udru’h trusted no one—absolutely no one—to keep the secret firmly walled inside. He could not place her where she would be tended, fed, cared for by other support personnel. No, Nira had to be entirely alone and absolutely self-sufficient. By himself, he had created a perfect cage, an expansive yet inescapable cell where a green priest could survive, and where no one would know where she was.
During the days of crisis before the new Mage-Imperator’s ascension, Udru’h had rushed from Ildira back to Dobro, taken the drugged and co-matose woman from where the guards kept her, and personally delivered her to the southern hemisphere, far from the breeding camp, in an entirely different climate zone. He’d found a small but lush island in the middle of a vast lake, and he had marooned her there before hastening off to Ildira for the ascension and funeral ceremonies. In the turmoil, Jora’h hadn’t even noticed his brother’s brief absence.
Now, weeks later, Udru’h was returning to the island to make sure Nira still survived. As he circled, he saw where the woman had built a shelter for herself out of dead wood. Her emerald skin would photosynthesize sunlight for nourishment. For an Ildiran, such isolation would have been the most appalling punishment. But Nira was strong. He had observed that much through her tribulations in the breeding camp.
Landing his ship in an area without dense trees, he climbed out of his craft and breathed the moist air, so different from the dry grassy hills to the north. The sun prickled his scalp as he narrowed his eyes and looked warily for her. He wondered if Nira had gone mad, if she would rush out at him holding a rock as a weapon.
Instead, she came forward, standing tall, naked except for a loincloth. She looked at him with anger on her face, but no fear. He saw as much contempt as resignation. “You are recovered from your injuries,” Udru’h said. “You appear healthy and strong, even in complete isolation.”
“I am not alone. I have the trees.” She seemed to draw strength from the strange knobbly growths with wide fanlike leaves. “And anyplace is better than your breeding camps.”
“Many of the Burton descendants would disagree.” He looked back and forth, feeling the growing anxiety of isolation under the vast openness of the broad lake, the empty sky. The company of the human gave him no comfort, for she was separate from the thism.
Nira approached him, so confident and strong that Udru’h took a half step backward. She knew that he hated to be alone, damn her! “I have weapons,” he said, and she smiled. He cursed himself for showing a glint of fear.
“You may think you have sent me into a terrible exile, but to me this is a small section of paradise, with plenty of water, trees, and sun. I have found edible fruits and roots to supplement my diet.” She raised her emerald arms. “This is not the terrible prison you intended. I can live here for years.”
Both of them knew she had no chance of escaping. The calm lake extended to the uninhabited horizon, with no other land in sight. Even if Nira managed to traverse the unmarked water to the nearest shore, where would she go from there? She was better off here, where Udru’h knew her location. Someday he might need to take her back to civilization. . . .
“I know what you’re doing,” Nira said. “Your life is a lie. Everything about Dobro is a lie, and you’re hiding me here just as you’re hiding all the descendants of the Burton.”
“Perhaps.” The Designate retreated another step closer to his ship, anxiety growing within him. He was eager to get back to the breeding colony, where he could be around other Ildirans and feel their comforting presence. “But bringing you here was necessary. Humans are easily fooled. My brother Jora’h is not quite so . . . gullible.”
“No,” she said with a smile. “He will find me.”