Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [84]
She sat abruptly in the chair behind her desk, blinking back her confusion and frustration. “All right, you need to explain more than that. What are these…wentals?”
“Incredible water-based entities, potentially as strong as the hydrogues. And they’re inside my body now. Wentals and drogues were mortal enemies in a great conflict that occurred ten thousand years ago—and I’ve got to help resurrect them, so they can fight with us in this war.”
“But what does that have to do with the two of us?”
Jess looked down at his hand and watched the water droplets trickling along his skin, moving as if alive. At long last, he told her what had happened. “My body contains great power, but it’s not completely in my control. I don’t dare touch anyone else because I’m sure to harm them. I’m…different now, and I have a responsibility. There’s too much at stake here to think just of ourselves.”
Cesca nodded, keeping her sadness locked within. There was always too much at stake. And she always made the necessary sacrifices. That had been her lot, and she had accepted it when she became Speaker for all the clans. “It’s an impossible situation, Jess.”
“Give me time, Cesca. The wentals are amazing and powerful. I’ll find a way for us to do this together, to be together…somehow. You know my love for you is unchanged.”
“I know that, Jess. But it doesn’t make this any easier.”
He lowered his voice. “I didn’t ask for this power, but I have it, and it came with a price. For now, saving the wentals and defeating the hydrogues are my highest priorities.”
“Then let me help. In any way. Just ask.”
“I need to enlist the help of the clans. I can’t do this alone.” She noticed now that he was not breathing, that he took breaths only so that he could speak words aloud.
She remained behind her desk, trying to pretend this was just a business discussion. “I’ll arrange for you to speak to the Roamers. They’ll all want to hear your story, especially if you’re offering us a chance to beat the drogues.”
“Thank you.”
Later, as he and Cesca walked to the meeting chamber, Jess seemed terrified that he might accidentally touch her. His wavy brown hair hung lank and wet, and a play of luminosity beneath his moist skin hinted at the energy waiting to boil out of him, if he wasn’t careful.
She met his eyes, which brimmed with a glowing sheen, though not of tears, but as if an ocean of stars now filled his gaze. Simmering power and the scent of ozone poured from him, as if someone had connected his life force to a set of generators and cranked the levels up far beyond the maximum.
She stepped perilously close to him, wishing she could take his hand. “Let’s go in together, Jess.”
Inside the hollowed-out grotto, the conversation was already an excited buzz as Jess and Cesca approached the podium. Several of Jess’s former friends called out encouragement; even from the highest tiers they could sense that something had altered within him. They all knew by now that he had arrived in a remarkable water-and-pearl spaceship.
Cesca raised her voice to silence the tumult. For the meeting, she wore a cape Jhy Okiah had given her, intricate embroidery on a dark blue fabric—the symbols of all the Roamer clans like constellations around the Peroni symbol, celebrating their heritage and familial connections. “We are Roamers! We thrive on the challenge of unusual tasks.” She lowered her voice, trying for a good-humored tone. “But never in our history can I recall anything quite as exotic as what Jess Tamblyn is about to describe to you.”
When he spoke to them, Jess did not need the voice amplification. She didn’t even see him take a breath, but his words carried like thunderclaps through the chamber. The audience sat in utter silence as he described how his nebula skimmer had collected interstellar gases and distilled the shattered body of a powerful entity, the last survivor of a race that was the mortal enemy of the hydrogues.
He continued smoothly and passionately, never hesitating, never searching for words. “Now I have