As always, there was wisdom in Kireva’s words. It was likely the chanu zayul would not help Sarah. It was also likely that he would resent them for failing to help her. They could sense his thoughts and emotions, and would probably feel his anger. Such anger could corrupt their connection to him, and affect their maturation and adult form.
Yet, at the moment, they remained silent within him. They had to suspect he would make such a request. Why had they not immediately accepted or rejected it, even before he spoke it aloud?
Ultimately, it didn’t matter. One glance down at Sarah’s diminished form, dying in a slow and agonizing way, her body ravaged by the anger and abandonment of her hon-gree, was all it took to convince him to beg the chanu zayul if he had to.
He knelt beside her bed, gently taking hold of her shoulders. She barely stirred at the feeling of his cool hands against her burning body. Her temperature was so hot that he wondered if the Ajda had not given the nixirs some of their inferno. There were rumors that the Ajda had mixed their blood with the yan-kanat’s enemies from time to time for their own amusement, but there had never been any confirmed cases of nixirs hybridized with the divine blood.
“Do not do this, Jotaha!” Kireva clapped a hand on his shoulder again, squeezing firmly enough to catch just the briefest moment of attention from Jotaha. “You will regret this path, even if the chanu zayul agree to your plan. You have no idea what their effect on the nixir body will be!” Kireva was not deterred when Jotaha shoved his hand off his shoulder. “You trained for many passings to accept the chanu zayul into your body. Your drahi has not had any training—”
“She has hosted the hon-gree, and they are creatures of violence and hostility. If she could keep them within her without her mind and body being destroyed, then the chanu zayul will be like a balm to her both physically and mentally.” It didn’t surprise him that the hon-gree were drawn to a nixir body. The nixirs’ ferocious natures seemed suited to host such creatures.
He could not imagine what it had been like to subdue the angry hon-gree for so long inside her. The creatures were so hostile that they had to be trapped within a stone jar to keep them from escaping to bite at the feet of the elders.
He gently turned her onto her stomach. The fact that this jostling did not make her stir again and her skin seemed to scorch his palms only increased his determination to convince the chanu zayul to aid her. Pushing aside her matted head fibers, he exposed the skin at the base of her skull, then took a deep breath.
He felt Kireva watching from behind him now. Perhaps he was even halfway to the door of Sarah’s sick room, ready to call the guards to stop Jotaha, but it would be too late. Either the chanu zayul would reject his request, or some of them would migrate to Sarah’s body to save her by the time the guards arrived in enough force to pull a Jotaha away from his drahi.
He rested his head on the fabric pillow beside her, feeling the softness of the feathers beneath his cheek as he bumped his neck against her head. His thoughts were clear, and the chanu zayul could not help but pick up his intent.
There was no movement inside him, and his heart began to break, knowing that Kireva had been correct. The chanu zayul had no reason to save Sarah.
Just as he was about to lift his head in defeat, he felt the tickle of movement in his spine.
Kireva did call the guards, but the three chanu zayul who had chosen to leave through the almost completely healed bite in the back of his neck were already crawling over Sarah’s matted head fibers to the base of her skull by the time a squad of guards rushed into the room.
It was too late. The elders and guards wouldn’t dare to intervene now. The decision was no longer theirs to make.
Gratitude towards the chanu zayul filled him as he watched the first one to reach the base of her skull eject its pincers and tear into her soft flesh, cutting a path to the base of her skull. Insertion would take a little time, but soon enough, the chanu zayul would spread their tendrils through her spine and brain, and they would release chemicals that would soothe the hon-gree still in her stomach and begin to heal her.
Sarah would be saved, and she would also be honored by the chanu zayul. He knew that would not go over well with people like Kevos, but that was a concern for another time. For now, he was simply grateful that she would live.
25
Sarah heard voices speaking nearby, though they were slightly muffled, as if they came from behind a door.
“I could not wait any longer, my beloved. The elders refused to let me see you. They said our separation was for the best.”
She didn’t recognize the high-pitched, feminine voice that was speaking, but the responding voice she did recognize, though it shocked her that he spoke English quite clearly.
“Farona, I tried to come to you after visiting Seta Zul’s priest to get the seal, but my first duty had to be to the urvaka.” Jotaha’s tone sounded sad, regretful, and Sarah felt the bite of her own sadness.
The female voice had called Jotaha her beloved, which meant that he was already taken.
Unless this was all a dream. There was certainly a strange dreamlike quality to the whole experience, and she still struggled to open her eyes. Her lids felt so heavy, as did her limbs, like she wanted to melt into the soft mattress beneath her.
“I missed you,” the female said. “Your duty has kept you away from me for so long, and I had hoped that it would be over soon. I watched the lifts endlessly, praying to the Ajda that I would see you alighting from one of them as each cycle passed. I always fear that you will not return from the dark paths, especially when the elder spirits have sensed danger.”
Had Jotaha been lying to her the whole time? Had he understood every word she’d said, and only pretended not to be able to communicate. Her sadness morphed into outrage at being fooled for some alien purpose. Maybe so he could laugh later with his woman about the stupid human doing charades. The burst of anger seemed to fill her with energy, pumping into her leaden limbs and sagging eyelids, so that her eyes shot open and she lurched unsteadily into a sitting position, then swung her legs off the bed.
There was a door nearby, and the voices were coming from behind it. She was in a room that should have been dark because there was no light source in front of her, but one seemed to glow from some light source at her back. Oddly, when she turned her head to see where that blue glow came from, the light source followed her, always ending up at her back.
The strangeness of this only added to the surreal quality of her surroundings. As she rose to her feet, she felt energized, like she’d just taken a double shot of pure caffeine. She strode towards the door, only vaguely aware of the shifting of a soft tunic that covered her nudity down to her mid-thigh.
The voices had fallen in volume to a low hiss, making it difficult for her to hear them, but she was moving so fast to the door that they wouldn’t have been able to say much before she jerked it open.
A slender, feminine lizard person clung to Jotaha like a leech, her arms hanging off his neck as her stunning, delicately sculpted face stared up into his adoringly. If she wasn’t covered in scales, she would look like a super model, blessed with high, shapely cheekbones, a sharp jawline, and wide, beautiful eyes that turned towards Sarah in shock when the door flung open on their embrace. The female’s lips were thin, like Jotaha’s and the other lizard people Sarah had seen, but other than that, her features screamed cover girl for some fashion magazine, including her tall, slender body that still had her standing at least a foot shorter than Jotaha.