Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [96]
Osira’h could easily hate Designate Udru’h if she allowed her mother’s memories to overwhelm her. But the girl also remembered her mission, recognized Udru’h’s urgent need to save his race from the hydrogues, even at the cost of a few human breeders. She remembered how Udru’h had cared for her, shown as much love as he was capable of demonstrating.
Osira’h felt as if she might be ripped in two...
When her father summoned the girl to his private contemplation chamber, Osira’h stood uncertainly at the doorway. Jora’h came forward, smiling with a welcome that bore the distinct undertones of shyness—an odd reaction from the leader of the great Ildiran Empire.
“Come in, please.” Tentatively, Jora’h reached out to touch her narrow shoulders. “Let me just look at you.” Without answering, Osira’h watched shifting currents of emotion cross the Mage-Imperator’s face. “So much like your mother. I can see Nira in your eyes.”
Osira’h met his gaze and suddenly felt awkward and confused. Seeing Jora’h in the round chamber with its colored-crystal windows, her mother’s memories flooded her with other recollections. Though this man in front of her was her own father, her mind was full of other encounters in this room: warm and passionate lovemaking in the cushions, conversations and caresses that made the girl’s heart melt. So different from the breeding barracks on Dobro: love instead of mere impregnation, ecstasy rather than pain and horror.
But if Jora’h loved her, why hadn’t he saved Nira from Dobro? Why had he believed the lies without questioning, without wondering if Nira had been snatched away? If he truly cared for her, why had he let her go so easily?
“You’re very quiet,” Jora’h said, leading her into the chamber.
Osira’h shuddered instinctively, even though she knew he meant nothing sexual by his invitation. Here, he was her father, the castrated Mage-Imperator, not the friend and lover Nira had known. Even so, Osira’h could not help but see him from both perspectives. She would have to balance the two without revealing the depth of her knowledge. Jora’h and Udru’h, among others, would likely be horrified at all she had “witnessed” and could remember. How ironic that the very breeding and abilities that made her the hope of the Ildiran Empire had made her a freakish anomaly, an unpredictable singularity. No, she could not let her father, or anyone else, learn her secret.
Before she could answer him, Osira’h saw the potted treeling in a wall alcove. Her eyes wide and sparkling, she stepped forward. “May I touch it?” Her thoughts whirled, remembering what it had been like for Nira to drop into the telink network, connected with other green priests and all of the worldtrees. It had been a solace long denied to Nira. “My mother was a green priest.”
Jora’h smiled. “Of course.”
Osira’h held her small hand close to the delicate fronds. The golden lapped scales of bark on the thin trunk were like soft jewels. The fernlike fronds fanned out, and she stroked the leaves like a musician playing the strings of a delicate instrument.
She wasn’t sure what to expect. Her fingertips felt a tingle, then a jolt, and her heart swelled. An image flashed through her mind of Nira in desperation, grasping thorny shrubs on Dobro until her palms were bloody, screaming her thoughts into deaf plants that had no way of contacting the worldforest network.
Then, as if in response, a kinder recollection came to Osira’h. She relived the day that the worldtrees had accepted Nira as a new green priest, enfolding her in their verdant embrace, connecting with her cells, changing her body’s chemistry so that she could be a part of the vast and serene forest mind. Oh, the joy she had felt when that huge universe suddenly opened to her...
The girl released her touch. The potted treeling seemed to tremble, but she had not achieved a complete connection, not like a real green priest’s. Even so, she smiled in quiet wonder.
“I see that