Chapter Two
The lack of audible communication was confusing. Minya was pretty good about listening with all of her senses, but she just couldn’t hear the men and women that filled the caverns around her.
The sounds of movement and rustling faded as she walked down the long corridor. The warmth was enticing, and when she was walking in the dim light of lichen far above, that is when she heard the first notes of a song with no words.
Minya paused and looked back the way she came. There was nothing and no one, but the music persisted. She touched the wall, and that was when she realized that the song was playing in her own mind.
There was a flicker of recognition. She had heard about telepathic songs before, but the exact reasoning for it escaped her.
She kept walking, and the song didn’t get louder or softer with each step. The light ahead of her was a far different story. The glow above her gradually became unnecessary as the soft white light in the cavern ahead of her illuminated her down to her feet. Minya continued forward until she stopped in the room that was glowing through a ceiling of polished ice.
“It is like I was expected.” Her voice echoed quietly, but it dissipated down the halls that led off the chamber.
There was a table, two chairs, and dried food set out with ewers of what was water on close inspection.
A look around didn’t bring up anything other than four new tunnels and a privacy alcove. If she were going to sleep, it would have to be on the stone of the cavern.
“Not that I should be sleeping.” Speaking aloud in the echoing cavern was a comforting mechanism. If the locals wouldn’t get her to her people, she was going to have to find a way out. Making great strides wasn’t her normal behaviour.
A wave of tremors ran through her, and she rode the spasm out until she could walk to the table. The food was familiar even in its dry state. She wanted nothing more than to be able to summon food from home like everyone else did. With a deep sigh, she started to chew her way through a strip of dried fruit, and she followed it up with water.
She started yawning, and the music continued in her head as she slumped forward.
Grunting, she straightened and walked to the wall, settling up against it before sliding down into a low crouch. It was a comfortable position to be in normally, but she shifted a bit to get the sash out of the way before she was able to go into a light doze.
She was in a dark room with music swelling around her and a large heat source in the centre.
“Is someone here?”
“Yes. Are you for me?”
“Um, I don’t know. What are you waiting for?”
“A child of Gaia. Dremarai has promised me a place to wait until a daughter of Gaia arrives.”
“I am not quite what you are looking for. My mother is a daughter of Gaia.”
He snorted. “Close enough.”
“What are you?”
“A son of Drai.”
She paused. “Why are you here?”
“This world is full of power, but I wanted silence. Dremarai pulled the magic from this place and gave me what I needed.”
That explained the dead zone. “What about the djinn living here?”
“They came to me a thousand years ago and asked to live in my silence. I agreed, and when there are strangers who match my criteria, they bring them to me.”
“What do you do with them?”
“I look for my mate, and if I do not find her, they are returned to the snow and escorted to the nearest settlement.”
Mate hunt. That did explain the ritual and the greenery.
She thought about it and asked, “What is your name?”
“I am the Drai elemental, Yuul. What is your name?”
“Elite Master Healer Minya Bosun, child of Elite Master D’hai Bosun and Elite Healer Myka Michaels. You may address me as Minya.”
“You are of the Dremarai elite caste?”
“I am.”
“I thought that they were not allowing folk from off-world to rest on this world.”
“That regulation was suspended when the population began to dip. My mother volunteered to come here and to learn the ways of the Dremarai, but she and my father got along, so she was enticed to remain.” Also, her mother had locked into the energy system that allowed her to use the transformational magic of the world.
“You speak well for being silent.” His mental voice was amused.
“Thank you, I have practiced.”
There was a heavy pause between them, and she kept a focus on the energy pattern that her body could see. It shifted, and she waited.
“Where are you, Minya Bosun? Normally, the strangers have stumbled down one of the tunnels by now.”
“I am resting, waiting, letting my body recover from almost freezing.”
“When you are done resting, make your way down the tunnel. I will help you regain your equilibrium.”
“That is very generous of you.”
“I have enjoyed our short conversation, and I wish to continue it.”
She chuckled and slowly moved her consciousness into a spreading wave that inhabited her body fully once again.
Minya flexed and shifted her limbs before she stood up again. The rush of blood to her head and extremities kept her toasty warm as she looked around for the tunnel that housed her host.
The music still played in her head, and she moved past the tunnels, seeking the one that would lead to her host.
She took a step down one, and a sheet of ice blocked her path.
“Huh. Okay.”
The second ice sheet came down before she had even stepped toward the next tunnel. The fourth tunnel was blocked before she could take a step.
Minya put her hands on her hips and sighed. “I am guessing that this is going to be a hint.”
She had heard of the Drai, of course, she had. She knew that the sleepers had left their world before they could be locked in by the interdict, but he said he had left long before that. He had also stated that he was an elemental. She hadn’t heard of one of those before.
Minya straightened her crown and adjusted her sash; it was time to meet her true host face to face. This was worse than her mom letting her take over a delivery. Less could go wrong, but it could have a far worse impact on her if it did.
She set one foot in front of the other and kept a hand on the wall. The stone was cool but not as cold as the ice had been.
The light behind her faded, and she was dependent on the illumination ahead of her. She moved carefully when the end of the cavern finally came to light.
“I didn’t know what to expect, but this wasn’t it.” Minya murmured the words, and the huge creature ahead of her shifted.
She could make out a body, a wing, and a long tail, all covered with a fine, white fur.
He filled the cavern. Standing next to him, watching his sides rise and fall, she knew that the stone and ice had moved to surround him. Nothing else could have gotten him to fit in the space so precisely.
Minya looked up through the ice above, and her heart sank. Night had fallen, perhaps for the second time since she crashed. Her family would be frantic. The festival in the capital was going to happen in three days, and their family celebrations would normally be in full swing.
She heard the soft whisper in her mind again.
“You are not afraid?”
“I have met Drai and their descendants before. Not all can shift shape, but the feel of them is similar to you.”
“There are more of my kind nearby?”
She heard the hope in his voice. “I am sure my father could invite some. The Drai still don’t leave their world, and the vast percentage of them has lost the ability to shift into their greater forms, but there are members of the Citadel and Sector Guard who travel and do what they can to help people.”
“I do not care for travel.”
Minya smiled slightly. “As you have been curled up here for centuries, that much is evident.”
She was going to continue her observations, but another wave of tremors ran through her.
“What is going on?”
She gritted her teeth and waited it out. “I got too cold. There isn’t anything around here on fire that I can use to warm me, and it is just going to take a bit of time for me to recover.”
“Step under my wing.” A huge panel of fur expanded and blocked out the starlight.
She sighed and took a step forward with caution until she could feel the heat radiating from him. To say that she jumped in to nestle against him was a slight exaggeration, but her feet did lift off the floor together before she struck the furry side of her host.
“You are nearly frozen! How are you moving?”
She chuckled and burrowed against him while the wing slowly came down and wrapped her in a wall of warmth.
“I am moving because I have to. Quitting out here means death, and I want to live. My parents would kick my ass if I died, and then, they would burn down the dead zone.”
She dug her fingers into his fur and held on as waves of shivers burned through her. The song in her mind soothed her and took over as her body fought to keep itself alive and functioning. She leaned against him and let her body go limp. He was going to monitor her. It wasn’t even a remote possibility that he wouldn’t.
A soft whisper ran through her mind with the music. “I offer you the hospitality of my body.”
She was thinking about taking him up on that if his two-legged form was as warm as his four.