Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [168]
With a splitting sound, an opening appeared in the still-scarred trunk, a dark and mysterious passage. "Each verdani battleship requires a green priest to join the heartwood. The trees cannot fly alone. They need a partner."
Celli ran toward her brother. "You mean you're going inside that thing? For how long?" She ignored the other looming battleships, ignored Solimar, even her parents, who still hadn't realized the terrible truth.
Beneto turned to her. "Look at what I've accomplished, little sister. Now it's time for me to depart. I will fuse myself with this ship, in the same way that the first verdani battleships partnered with other living creatures."
"But can you come back when the war is over?" Celli forced optimism into her voice. She had always resented being treated as a child, as the youngest, but now she felt very small. "After the verdani battleships destroy the hydrogues, you'll return to Theroc, right?"
He shook his head. "Even if we win, Celli, I will forever be part of this ship."
"But . . . but you can't just leave. You're my brother, Beneto! I've already lost you once."
"Yes, I am your brother, Celli," the wooden simulacrum said gently. "I love you. I look like him and have his memories. But I am also much more than that. My purpose now is greater than when I was only human."
She wanted to drag him away from the dark and forbidding crack in the thick trunk, but Beneto stood firm, as if he had taken root. His next words stuck fresh fear into her heart. "We need a hundred new pilots."
Before Celli could blurt another question, a crowd of green priests walked out of the forest, summoned via telink. Beneto addressed them, his face content. "Thank you for coming. We have many more volunteers than we need."
Desperate, Celli whirled to Solimar for explanations. It was all happening too quickly. First the joy and awe, then hope, and now this terrible cost. Solimar squeezed her shoulder in an ineffective attempt to comfort her. "You need to let them go, Celli. Our fate rides on this."
She shook him off. The volunteers looked placidly determined, accepting their fates far more easily than she ever would. She realized that the green priests must already have decided everything via telink, talking in ways that no other Theron could hear. But what about their families, their friends?
On the other hand, what about the war and the survival of Theroc? She hated the necessity of this choice that was not really a choice. Nobody gave Celli any say in the matter. None at all.
She looked at the face of her brother, saw the longing expression carved there in the vibrant wood. He looked at her, and she felt a flood of all the times she had spent with Beneto, the real Beneto. And this one, too.
A spot appeared by one of his wood-grain eyes, moisture welling up like a bead of sap that spilled from the corner of a delicate eyelid, then began to flow down the hard, rounded cheek. Beneto stepped into the yawning crack in the verdani battleship, then the trunk sealed itself again, and Beneto was gone.
Solimar held Celli for a long moment in silence. She shuddered, feeling his strength, glad for his closeness. At least he was still here to treedance with her, be her friend and maybe eventually even her lover. They had many possibilities open to them. . . .
"I have to tell you one more thing, Celli," Solimar said, his voice dropping into the silence like a stone. "I have volunteered to fuse with one of the new ships as well."
99
NIRA
In contrast with the horrors of Dobro, the trip back to Ildira was full of joy and love, memories and relief. But her heart was not the same.
The Burton descendants would finally be allowed to establish a real home on the planet they had expected to settle centuries ago, before the betrayal. Hopes and dreams could be reborn from the smallest seeds, but what good would even those concessions do if the hydrogues came to eradicate them all?
Aboard the ship, Nira told Jora'h about her years of emptiness, voicing