The Devil's Heart - Carmen Carter [45]
A hoarse shouting reverberated across the plain, and the boy looked up to see figures moving in the distance. At first he assumed the people of his village had finally arrived to seek out their dead, but as the group drew nearer he caught the foreign lilt to their voices. They spoke with the harsh bark of warriors, not healers. Another clan, probably the Ghe’Hara, he guessed once he could see the cut of their armor. He counted eight men scouring the field, darting here and there and rummaging among the dead as if in search of something.
More fierce shouting ensued when one of the men gestured toward the red flag of Stef’s clan.
The troop began to run across the field, heedless of the dead underfoot, and in their haste one of the warriors nearly trampled over the boy where he sat silent and unmoving.
“Th’a!” cursed the man, jumping back as if a serpent had crawled out of the grass. He took a wild shot with a phaser, and the boy felt the breath of the beam’s passage a scant inch from his cheek. “Garamond, come see what I’ve found!”
One of the warriors veered aside to answer the call. He was tall and carried himself with a confident swagger. Where his companions wore the functional armor that would repel modern weapon fire, his suit was crafted along ancient design; and the decorative sword that swung from his belt was just as lethal as their phasers.
The sight of the boy, and what he possessed, brought a grunt of surprise to Garamond’s lips. “You have something that belongs to me.”
The boy looked up, but did not speak.
Garamond stepped back, instinctively brandishing his sword. A trick of the morning light had given the boy the face of an old man. One blink and the illusion was gone.
“Give it up to me, child.”
“My name is Surak,” said the boy quietly. “And I will not give you this stone. I will not give it to any living being.”
“Are you so eager to die, young one?” Garamond resheathed his weapon, more curious than kind in the face of this unexpected defiance.
“No, I don’t wish to die,” said Surak, “but I could not live with that deed on my conscience.”
“Then you propose to keep this bauble to yourself?”
The boisterous laughter that followed his question covered a growing uneasiness. Garamond’s grip on the sword handle tightened again. If the stone held Powers, then this boy could be as dangerous as his elders and must be killed after all.
“No, I have no need for it now that the sun has risen.” To Garamond’s relief, the young boy bent forward and placed the stone on the ground.
“You have given it to me after all,” the man crowed as his fist closed over the rough rock and hefted it high into the air.
Surak shook his head. “You have taken it of your own free will.”
“A fine distinction, my young philosopher,” said Garamond with a lifted brow. “But why do you disdain these Powers. It is rumored this dull gem you have tossed aside can fulfill all desires.
The Ko N’ya could even raise the dead of your clan.”
Surak surveyed the field of slaughter with a new dispassion. “They chose this fate, so restoring them to life would only prolong the battle.”
His hands clenched, then eased again. Laying his open palms down upon his knees, he continued.
“I don’t seek the fulfillment of desires.
I have chosen to end the desires themselves.”
I have chosen to end the desires themselves.
The words were spoken in Ancien t Vulcan, with the lilting cadence of a pre-Reform dialect.
Picard shifted in his bed, and the movement pulled him closer to consciousness.
The phrase whispered again, but this time he could not fathom any meaning in the guttural sounds.
He slipped back into another dream.
The bedchamber walls were hung with intricately woven tapestries of panoramic views that rivaled nature, but the fabrics were muted by dust and heavy shadows. Rugs covered the flagstone floor, but their colors and patterns had been worn away by the scuffle and tread of five