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“I know.” Set’nef touches his brother’s shoulder. “You must save yourself. Tell them whatever lies you must about me. Just distance yourself from my name.”
He shakes his head. “Am I not Tal’nef the Swiftest? I will always be the brother to the Wanderer. And if you believe these people hold our future, then I will join you.”
“Tal’nef, no. You cannot give up everything.” Set’nef looks distraught. “My actions must not weigh upon you.”
“They do not. This is my choice.” Tal’nef pushes past his brother to come and stare at the two of us. “And they are not cursed? Even the strange pale one with the dead eyes?”
“I have not caught anything from them. I would have been affected already if I had.” Set’nef moves towards us. “I think they are a different people. The male is trying to tell me something about the female’s khui but I cannot understand his words.”
Tal’nef meets my gaze, then he watches R’slind. “A resonance pair,” he murmurs. “A strange bit of luck. The other female—the one the chief has locked away—will not resonate, no matter how many times he parades Rem’eb the Fist in front of her.”
He eyes the hyoo-man for so long that I deliberately get to my feet and step between them. R’slind is mine.
Tal’nef gets to his feet, crooking an amused smile in my direction before turning back to his brother. “Protective.”
“He can understand you,” Set’nef says, moving forward. “They understand our words even though theirs are gibberish.”
Tal’nef narrows his eyes at his brother. “Is that why you are taking them through these tunnels?”
He nods. “We go to see the oracle.”
“Oracle?” I repeat. “What is oracle?”
“A fortune-teller?” R’slind clarifies, a note of confusion in her voice. Her explanation makes no sense to me either.
The newcomer grunts approval. “If the oracle declares they are safe, even the chief will obey.”
“Exactly. Which is why we must get there before Kin’far the Tainted sets them all upon our tails.” Set’nef takes the water tube I hold out to him and caps it once more, then slings it back into his pack. “Come. We must keep going.”
Thirteen
ROSALIND
To think that I’ve been wishing for heat for the last few days. I wipe my sweaty brow against R’jaal’s long, damp hair, and my arms shake with fatigue from holding onto him. I’d felt a little under the weather when we left our jail cell, but the horrible, sweltering heat in the caves is sapping what little energy I have left. I don’t have the strength to do more than cling to R’jaal as the two four-armed strangers lead us deeper into the endless tunnels, their eyes glowing brighter than the moss-filled cracks in the rock.
I’ve read a fair amount of books about geology and volcanic eruptions—most of them so I could work on my epic-length Spock/Kirk/Uhura fic set in Pompeii—but it still surprises me when one of the large, strange tunnels opens up into a massive chamber that seems to blast us with heat, and a veritable river of lava flows at the far end. “Jesus Christ,” I whisper as the vivid, searing orange stream of it comes into view.
Fire River, indeed.
My sweaty hair plasters to my skin, and R’jaal is slippery to hold onto as we stick to the far wall of the cavern, following behind the two equally sweaty aliens. The lava flow itself seems to be more than a football field’s length away, yet I feel like an egg frying in a skillet.
We’re not in the same room for long, turning down another unnaturally smooth corridor, and I realize these are lava tubes. I cling to R’jaal a little tighter. “Are we safe here? This seems incredibly dangerous.”
“I will protect you,” he reassures me, as if saying so will simply will my safety into existence. “Do you need more water?”
“No, I’m okay.” I don’t want to stop for any longer near the lava than we have to. “Let’s just keep going.”
The journey seems to get worse for me, the heat oppressive, and I normally don’t think of myself as a huge wimp, but for some reason, I can’t handle this. I close my eyes, resting against R’jaal…and wake sometime later laying upon the rocks, with R’jaal carefully brushing his wet fingers over my brow.
“Better?” he asks. There’s a look of such intense tenderness on his face as he tends to me that it takes my breath away. Even though I nod, he pours another palmful of water out and drizzles it over my bare neck and shoulders, then rubs it into my skin. “It is growing cooler now. Set’nef says not much farther ahead and it will be bearable again.”
I sit up, grimacing. “I’m sorry I’m being such a weakling. I don’t know what’s come over me.”
“You are sick,” he says in a low voice, as if the others can somehow understand his words and he wants to keep that a secret from them. “There is a cure, but we need to get closer to the surface.”
