the renSime identified. “I’m Filo. Sure, go ahead as long as there’s no Raiders out there. How far can you zlin?”
Channels could zlin much farther than renSimes, but some channels were more sensitive than others.
“There’s nobody this side of that ridge.” Solamar indicated the low hill between the Fort and Shifron.
“Then it’s all right for you to be up here.”
“Good,” he told the guard. “I just wanted to breathe fresh air, move a little.” Outside the Fort walls, horses were tethered to a line, and a large herd of sheep was watched by four dogs and two renSimes. He’d heard people talking about the main herd of sheep being wintered in a nearby canyon at the edge of the valley. Some loose cows had snuggled up to the lea of the wall. Tanhara’s stray chickens roosted under the bushes around the Fort’s hen house.
“You just want to zlin the distance instead of the wall in front of your nose?”
“That’s the idea.” Solamar didn’t mention how easily he could zlin through the Fort’s walls.
“Guard duty has its good points!” agreed the man. “Just mind that ice where Jokim spilled his tea. Kick the snow down where you find a drift. Someone will be up to shovel it soon no doubt. Everyone’s sleeping in shifts because there’s no room, so plenty are working even now.”
“They’re talking about new buildings already.”
“Been building for months. Now with Tanhara added, we’re hauling river water from the irrigation canal for tonight and we won’t be able to do that all winter. They’re going to start a new line of privies tomorrow morning and another new well.”
“Tanhara is very grateful for your hospitality and sorry for the losses our arrival has cost.”
The guard gathered himself, nager shaded with grief. “We’ll get through this. Rimon will see us through it. I have to get on about this patrol. Just let us know if you zlin anything out there, then get down fast. We dare not lose any more channels.”
“I’ll do that.”
The guard headed off toward the woman patrolling the next section of wall, and Solamar turned in the other direction. He circled back, walking over the arch of the gate leading out to the cemetery
Just short of the privies, halfway to the next guard’s beat, he stopped and leaned against the outer rail to stare out into the night throwing his attention into the lonely silence out there.
The ambient behind him felt crowded. At least nobody was actively paying attention to him now that the guards had zlinned his presence.
A crack in the clouds let moonlight through, sparkling off the snowflakes drifting on a light breeze. He let himself go hyperconscious, shutting out awareness of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste and focusing on the selyn fields interacting to form the ambient nager. He scanned the wilderness seeking peace among the trees beyond the cemetery where he had seen the dead walking, summoned by Rimon Farris’s grief and guilt.
He had intended to meditate then grieve for Losa before considering that development. What have I done?
Clearly, Rimon had not experienced anything like that vision before. Solamar knew that the kind of deep nageric interaction they had shared twice that day might have sensitized Rimon to planes of existence beyond the scope of most people’s awareness, if Rimon had the talent.
Sudden expansion of a channel’s awareness could be deranging or even deadly for one as sensitive as Rimon.
Why did I ask him who they were? The words had just flown out of his mouth, in simple curiosity, not to validate Rimon’s perception. Still, it had been a dreadful error.
Behind him, a Farris channel nager slid out of the infirmary door, instantly spotted Solamar and headed for the stair next to the privy. Solamar greeted Rimon nagerically, but kept his attention on the landscape. Moments later, Rimon joined him at the high rail, breath puffing in clouds visible in a narrow shaft of moonlight.
They stood side by side, zlinning distant nothing, not thinking, just breathing quietly, letting awareness slide away. Solamar let the strong, steady Farris presence wrap him in quiet. It was almost as good as solitude.
Ever so slowly, they both surfaced to full awareness of their surroundings, with no shock of a new sudden emergency. Solamar thought Rimon would just let it stay that way, a restful interlude. But no.
“So,” Rimon said at last, “you saw them too.”
Solamar considered denying that, claiming ignorance, but a Farris would zlin right through any deception. “I thought I saw, well, they’d be ghosts, if they were your father and your daughter.”
A frisson of anguish flickered around Rimon at the word ghosts. “Did you hear them speak?”
“Maybe. Maybe I just have a vivid imagination.”
Rimon turned and inspected him visually as well as nagerically. “You do. You didn’t imagine hearing what I clearly heard, seeing what I saw but couldn’t zlin. Nobody else saw what you saw. Why?”
“I wish I knew. I don’t generally go around seeing ghosts.” Solamar shivered, and not from the cold.
“That’s what it was? Ghosts.”
“You said you recognized Aipensha. But she’s dead. So what you saw was her ghost.”
“You didn’t see Losa’s ghost, did you?”
“No.”
“But...?” prompted Rimon.
“I wasn’t feeling guilty about her death, just appalled, horrified, shocked, all the usual when someone you know and like, someone who’s a part of your life, dies.”
“I was feeling guilty.”
“I know. I could zlin that much.”
“You could?”
“Well, I don’t get much from you,” admitted Solamar, “your showfield zlins like solid stone most of the time, unless you’re projecting. I can’t zlin your primary fields. Still, when you were so upset, I picked up on some of it. I’m sorry. They were after all your ghosts, not mine.”
Rimon grinned into a gust of snowflakes.
“Now why would that make you happy?”
“I have a theory that the people from the other Forts who’ve ended up here don’t trust Lexy and me, don’t trust our judgment because they can’t zlin us clearly. Maybe you won’t distrust us just because we’re Farrises. Maybe they’ll listen to you. Maybe things will get better here.”
“Things weren’t good here before we arrived?”
Snow spackled them while Solamar listened intently to Rimon’s summary of events leading up to Clire’s Killing Losa. “That explains a lot. Clire was a Farris. Losa was a good Companion for me, but not up to what a pregnant Farris would need.”
“So you see, Solamar, we must hold new elections for a Fort Council to include Tanhara.”
“I hope Tanhara can help unify these groups.”
“We must become not seven Forts, but just Fort Rimon, one united community.”
“Rushing to hold elections won’t create that unity. We should hold elections when we’ve finished digging privies, wells, and post holes before the hard freeze. Right now, no one from Tanhara would know who to vote for, and the rest don’t know who from Tanhara to vote for.”
“That’s what I thought when there were just three Forts here. It didn’t work, and things have become worse.”
Solamar took a chance. “Seven is a better number for this than three, more idealistic.”
“A number can’t be idealistic!”