Sought Read online

  Now she was sitting in a lovely little meadow with flowering bushes all around and a golden stream tinkling musically to one side and she felt much calmer. She didn’t know where Deep and Lock had gone—she just hoped they stayed away for a good long while.

  “Very ill, you were. Nearly dead, mm-hmm.” The old woman nodded wisely and Kat nodded back. The convo-pillar seemed to be working much better today, though it did kind of make Mother L’rin sound like Yoda.

  “Deep and Lock say you saved my life,” she said. “I wanted to thank you for that.”

  “Healing my profession is. Necessary thanks are not.”

  “Uh, okay.” Kat nodded uncertainly. “They also say you told them to form a soul bond with me—whatever that is.”

  “Half of a true bond, a soul bond is—the joining of three spirits as one.”

  “And the other half is the physical bond? When you…?” Kat trailed off, blushing.

  “Have sex that is bonding,” Mother L’rin finished for her, eyeing her sharply. “But this you have not done.”

  “No, of course not,” Kat blurted. “Look, I never meant to get involved with Lock and Deep in the first place and now everything is all messed up and my whole life feels out of control! I can feel their emotions filling me up until I think I’m drowning. Can you help me block them? Lock said you might be able to.”

  Mother L’rin shook her head. “Only with a full bond is mind privacy possible.”

  Kat’s heart sank. “So you’re saying in order to have any kind of peace I’d have to tie myself to them for life?”

  The wise woman nodded solemnly. “Bonded to them you must be.”

  “But I can’t be. I don’t want to be,” Kat protested.

  “Until you are, weak you will be.” Mother L’rin poked a finger at her. “The pain…return it will.”

  “It will?” Kat felt sick. Come to think of it, she hadn’t felt anything like the symptoms she’d had while she was aboard the Mother ship since she woke up. But just the thought of enduring that splitting headache again was hideous.

  “You must touch them—one at least. Both is better.” Mother L’rin nodded sagely. “As greater your weakness grows, the more deeply must you touch.”

  “You mean like a…” Kat cleared her throat. “Like a sexual touch?”

  “Yes, yes.” Mother L’rin nodded vigorously. “The bond it strengthens. Your pain will ease.”

  “But I don’t want to be bonded to them,” Kat said, feeling like a broken record. “I mean, Lock is really sweet and I like him a lot but Deep is so angry all the time—”

  “Much loss has Deep suffered,” Mother L’rin interrupted her. “Took your pain he did.”

  “What?” Kat stared at her, confused. “You mean the headaches and dizziness I was having?”

  “Yes,” Mother L’rin said simply.

  Kat was still confused. “How could Deep take my headaches away?” The sharp, stabbing ache behind her eyes had been intensely painful but she couldn’t imagine how it could have been transferred to another person.

  “Show you, I will.” Mother L’rin raised her voice. “Doby! The whip.”

  There was a rustling in the nearby bushes and a giant with pink mottled skin appeared. He was taller than a professional basketball player and about three times as broad. His loincloth was made of large, flat leaves and he carried a green wooden box carefully in his huge hands. For some reason he looked familiar to Kat. That’s silly. How can a nine foot tall giant in a leaf loincloth look familiar? But she couldn’t shake the feeling and the sight of him made her vaguely uneasy.

  “Here I have it, Mother,” he said in a high, almost feminine voice.

  “Good. Accompany us to the Stone Throat you will.” Turning, Mother L’rin marched off through the long green and pink grass at a surprisingly fast pace. Kat had to scramble up and almost run to keep up with her.

  The lovely wilderness of the Healing Gardens was a blur around her as they walked quickly through the grass and flowering bushes. Kat was feeling more and more uncomfortable though she couldn’t put her finger exactly on why. But when they came to the mouth of a cave made of brownish-pink stone, the feeling grew even stronger.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, when Mother L’rin started into the low stone entrance. “Where is this place? I have the strangest feeling of deja-vu but I know I’ve never been here before.”

  The old woman only gestured toward the cave. “Inside we must go.” She went in and the pink giant followed her, leaving Kat no choice but to join them.

  They walked down an echoing stone hallway with Kat feeling worse all the time. By the time they came to the green wooden door with the tarnished handle in its center she was shivering and it wasn’t from cold. But it wasn’t until Doby swung the door open, revealing a vast, round chamber with a red-streaked white obelisk at its center, that Kat nearly lost it.

  “Oh my God! This room!” She walked into the echoing chamber on unsteady legs. “I dreamed this. I saw…” She whirled to Mother L’rin. “I saw him.” She stabbed a finger at Doby’s mottled pink hide. “He took Deep in here. And he…he…” She couldn’t go on. Mutely she went to the white obelisk, pointing like an accusing finger toward the narrow stone chimney above. The red streaks were there, just as they had been in her dream. But now she knew what they were. “Dried blood,” she whispered. “My God, he whipped Deep. Whipped him until he bled.” She turned back to Mother L’rin. “I saw it all in my dream. What does that mean?”

  “Dream sharing you were,” the old woman said quietly. “Saw everything you did.”

  “You mean what I saw was true?” She had a sudden mental image of the night before—Deep’s broad back, covered in a twisted pattern of white scars. “Oh my God—it was true!” Suddenly she felt so faint and dizzy she couldn’t stand up anymore. She started to fall and Doby put out a huge hand to catch her. “Get away from me.” Kat pushed away from the giant, feeling sick to her stomach. “You’re the one who did it to him.”

  “No, you are.” Mother L’rin pointed a crooked finger at her. “Your pain he took.”

  “But I don’t understand. How could he—?”

  “The whip.” Mother L’rin nodded at Doby who opened the green lacquered wooden box he carried. Inside was a plain black handle which Kat found sickeningly familiar.

  “I…I’ve seen that before,” she said weakly. Only last time it had long silvery tongues attached to it. With spikes on their ends.

  “Transfers pain, the whip does,” the old woman explained. “Someone had your pain to take.”

  “And Deep volunteered?” For some reason Kat found tears in her eyes. “Why?”

  Mother L’rin put a hand on Kat’s arm and looked into her eyes. “Why do you think, child?” she said gently.

  “I d-don’t know.” Kat sniffed and blotted her eyes against the long sleeve of her toga-dress. “I honestly don’t. He hates me. Or at least he doesn’t like me very much.”

  “Himself he hates,” Mother L’rin said, releasing her arm. “Cleansed of his hate he must be before you bond.”

  “But I can’t bond with him and Lock. Don’t you see? It would never work out.” Kat thought of her parents—the constant shouting, the cold silences, the ugly accusations and names. Her father calling her mother “a fat, lazy whore” and her mother telling him, “Every time I see you, I hate you more. I wish you were dead.” And all that was before the beatings started.

  Up until they’d finally gotten divorced and her grandmother had taken her in, the only peace she had was when she went to Liv and Sophie’s house. Their parents had loved each other and it showed in the little acts of affection, the kindness and consideration they showed each other. But Kat’s home had been a war zone. And though neither parent had ever physically laid a hand on her, only each other, she still carried the scars of their many battles.

  “You don’t understand,” she told Mother L’rin, aware that she was crying again but unable to help herself. “I can’t