Ann Maxwell - Timeshadow Rider

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Timeshadow Rider
Ann Maxwell
1986
Spell-checked. Read 1-18, 21.
FORBIDDEN UNION
Sharia’s eyes opened, violet and silver in an equal and incredible mixture. She was not surprised to
find Kane holding her in his arms. She had dreamed this before, had experienced this instant as surely as
she knew her own heartbeat, her own rippling timeshadow. You feel like my dreams of you. Hot.
Powerful. Perfect. Do you taste like my dreams, too?
Her thought caressed Kane as surely as her translucent silver hair combing through his living
timeshadow and her hands threading deeply into his black hair. Slowly he lowered his head until his lips
could brush over hers. He meant it to be for only an instant, a glancing caress. But the instant passed and
he was still touching her. Timeshadows overlapped hesitantly, then with greater certainty, twining sweetly
as each color sought its complement. Reality expanded in a silent sentient explosion. Then she was tasting
him and he was tasting her, their mouths joined in a wild pleasure.
The knowledge of what they were doing battled against their mutual need. The torrential, tantalizing
rightness of each completing the other was a siren call that became more irresistible with each sweet
instant.
Also By This Author
Writing as Ann Maxwell
Shadow and Silk
The Ruby
The Secret Sisters
The Diamond Tiger
Fire Dancer
Dancer’s Luck
Dancer’s Illusion
Timeshadow Rider
The Jaws of Menx
Name of a Shadow
The Singer Enigma
Dead God Dancing
Change
Writing as Elizabeth Lowell
Winter Fire
Autumn Lover
Only Love
Only You
Only Mine
Only His
Untamed
Forbidden
Enchanted
A Woman Without Lies
Forget Me Not
Lover in the Rough
Tell Me No Lies
Desert Rain
EVERYBODY LOVES ANN MAXWELL!
WRITERS LOVE ANN MAXWELL!
“Ann Maxwell’s voice is one of the most powerful and compelling in the romance genre. She writers
intense stories, and her readers are equally intense in their response. She has contributed much to the
definition of the modern romance novel.”
—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz
“No one has a voice like Ann Maxwell. She is stellar!”
—Stella Cameron, author of Sheer Pleasures
“Ann Maxwell may be the most talented, evocative writer in the genre. I pick up her books for more
than pleasure. I pick them up to be inspired.”
—Suzanne Forster, author of Blush
CRITICS LOVE ANN MAXWELL!
“... Weaves together past and present, tosses in tidbits about archeology without impairing the story’s
non-stop action or putting a crimp in the romance. Maxwell’s control of her material and unabashed
willingness to entertain make this book a success.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Secret Sisters
“Only Ann Maxwell could have brought this story to such explosive life .... An unforgettable sensory
experience, this splendorous tale of adventure is everything a reader could wish and much, much more.”
—Rave Reviews on The Secret Sisters
YOU’LL LOVE ANN MAXWELL, TOO!
PRAISE FOR THIS AUTHOR’S PREVIOUS WORK—
“Great!”
—New York Times bestselling author Johanna Lindsey
“There is no finer guarantee of outstanding romance.”
—Romantic Times
“No one can stir the passion, no one can keep the tension at such a sizzling high, no one can give you
more memorable characters.”
—Rendezvous
“Romance at its quintessential best.”
—New York Times bestselling author Amanda Quick
“A stunning and mesmerizing storyteller who deftly weaves a beautiful and powerful love affair into a
plot that has the audience believing that the powers of sorcerers are real .... The grande dame of fantasy
romance.”
—Affaire de Coeur
Prologue
Throughout the history of the Fourth Evolution, azirs sometimes appeared to men and women. The
people so blessed usually go mad and die, for condensations of the other are inimical to lives rooted in
linear time as our lives are.
Yet there are legends of two people who did not die when azirs condensed to walk by their side.
Kane and Sharia were from the near-mythical planet Za’arain. They were of the race of Kiri, the clan of
Darien, and the family known only as “five.”
They were also lias’tri, all their lives and times bound together in a unique whole.
Legends, you say. Myths.
Perhaps. Yet azirs are condensing again, even as we breathe, and they are neither legend nor myth. If
you hear the azir’s unspeakably beautiful song shiver through your timeshadow, you will seek out those
legends and myths. You will gather them to you like a lover.
And you will dream.
If you awaken in another place, another aspect of time, you have dreamed the dream of Kiri, Darien
and five. If you don’t awaken ....
Ah, well, that is always the risk, isn’t it?
One
Za’arain was dying.
A million years of serenity and power. A million years of science and art. A million years of
intelligence and ambition, pragmatism and compassion. An achievement forged by billions of individual
lives, individual dreams. Disintegrating. It was in the very air. Za’arain’s silver skies were thick with
imminence, seething with despair.
Sharia ZaDarien/Kiri did not notice the people who shrank away from her as she hurried through the
glass-walled maze of the Kiriy compound. Her white robe and clearly displayed hands marked her as a
five, tabu. By all custom she should have been in her suite, dreaming deeply, waiting for the moment
when she would either live as Kiriy or die among all the cascading timeshadows of the then and the now.
But custom, too, was disintegrating. The dying Kiriy had spoken in Sharia’s mind, summoning her
with neither ritual nor courtesy. The Kiriy’s need had overwhelmed everything except the pain of the
disease consuming her body, the same disease that had struck the capital city without warning, the same
disease that was destroying Za’arain.
The Kiriy’s glass-walled audience room was empty of all but a handful of Sharia’s Darien cousins,
men and women almost as sick as the Kiriy herself. Sharia froze in the doorway, shocked by the change
in the ruler of Za’arain. It was something more than the wasted body or the mahogany skin bleached to
pale red. The Kiriy’s eyes were open—
Her eyes. Open. Silver. Human. For the first time in Sharia’s memory, the Kiriy’s eyes were not
covered by the Eyes of Za’ar. The large, twin crystals were on her forehead, their violet fire reduced to a
pale lavender reflection of former glory. The Kiriy’s emaciated five-fingered hand came up and pulled the
silver band holding the Eyes back over her own. Instantly the color of the Eyes deepened.
CHILD OF MY SISTER. COME TO ME.
The Kiriy’s body had been claimed by sickness, but her mind-speech was like freshly cut glass,
slicing through Sharia’s emotions to the core of Darien strength beneath. She walked forward carefully,
stepping around the Kiriy’s attendants. Sharia yearned to ride their living timeshadows, to comb the
spreading darkness of disease from their time/then and heal their time/now; but some of the attendants
were mature fives and so was she. They were forbidden to touch one another. The punishment for
transgression was Za’ar death, the last death, death in the then and the now and the always.
“All that I am is yours,” said Sharia clearly. “How may I serve the Kiriy of Za’arain?”
SHOW ME YOUR NECKLACE.
Sharia blinked, surprise clear in her translucent silver eyes. She reached inside her white robe and
pulled out a chain. A large jewel flashed and turned, suspended from the iridescent black links of a metal
that had been forged light-years and za’replacements from Za’arain. Though the jewel was black, it was
almost transparent. Marvelous colors scintillated in its depths, pure colors with no darkness, brilliant as
the Eyes had once been brilliant.
The Kiriy made a sound that could have been anger or despair or satisfaction as she watched the
pouring wealth of colors within the gem.
EVEN THE EYES OF ZA-AR COULD NOT SEPARATE YOU FROM HIM.
Sharia did not respond, because what the Kiriy was telling her made no sense.
I WAITED TOO LONG TO EXILE YOUR OTHER HALF. BUT I WEPT FOR YOU AS NO ONE HAD WEPT FOR
ME BEFORE I WAS KIRIY AND CURSED WITH THE EYES. ZA’ARAIN HAS SENT SO MANY INTO THE
DARKNESS IN ORDER THAT WE AND THEY MIGHT SURVIVE. ZADYNEEN ZADARIEN/KIRI, MY LOST-SOUL,
MY TABU SOUL. EVEN HIM I SENT AWAY, COMPELLED BY THE EYES. I WEEP FOR THE DUSTMAN WHO
WAS ONCE THE FORBIDDEN HALF OF THE KIRIY OF ZA’ARAIN.
WE HAVE FORBIDDEN TOO MUCH IN THE NAME OF STABILITY. IN THE MILLION YEARS SINCE THE
EYES PULLED US FROM THE MUCK OF ATAVISM, OUR GENES HAVE CHANGED, MORE FIVES BORN, MORE
AND MORE OFTEN, MORE AND MORE POWERFUL. BUT THE EYES ARE CHANGELESS. THE DUST IS NOT. I
HAVE SENT MY OTHER HALF INTO THE DARKNESS AND NOW IT IS COME TO ME AGAIN. CHANGED.
DISEASED.
AND IT IS DESTROYING ALL THAT WE HAVE WORKED FOR. THE EYES OF ZA’AR WILL CLOSE. THE
ATAVISM WILL BE UNLEASHED. BEWARE THE PSI-PACKS FORMING.
With a small sound Sharia went to her knees. The Eyes were all that stood between Za’arain and
unspeakable savagery: Kiri psipacks hunting human prey; Za’arain destroyed beneath an upwelling of
Kiri atavism that could only be described in nightmares.
YES. EXACTLY. A DUST RAIDER WILL COME AND TRY TO—
“Dust?” asked Sharia numbly. “I don’t—”
I KNOW YOU DON’T. HE WILL, THOUGH.
“He?” repeated Sharia, wondering if the Kiriy had succumbed to madness as well as disease.
KANAEN ZADARIEN/KIRI.
Sharia could not prevent her sudden rush of emotion at the sound of Kane’s name. Kane, who had
cherished her when every other being in the Kiri compound had shunned her. Kane, who had protected
her from her cruel four and six cousins. Kane, who had taught her to laugh and use her protean Darien
mind. Kane, whose warmth had pervaded her senses, eased her loneliness, shown her that she was alive.
Kane, who was Kiri, Darien and five. Kane, who had been exiled by the Kiriy to ensure that the
Great Tabu would not be broken. Mature five touching mature five. Catastrophe.
DO YOU WANT TO SEE HIM, CHILD OF MY SISTER?
Though Sharia’s voice was disciplined, the force of her answering “Yes” came from both her lips and
her mind.
The Kiriy flinched.
THEN TAKE THAT CURSED CRYSTAL. IN YOUR HANDS AND CALL TO HIM.
“But—”
NO. I DON’T HAVE THE STRENGTH FOR ARGUMENTS OR EXPLANATIONS. THE DUST RAIDER COMES,
THE EYES WILL CLOSE. KANE MUST COME—AND QUICKLY! YOU MUST FIND THE EYES, TAKE THEM UP
AND LIVE OR DIE. IF YOU DIE, KANE MUST TAKE UP THE EYES; FOR HE, LIKE YOU, HAS THE BEST CHANCE
OF SURVIVING THEIR TIME-WRACKED DEPTHS. HE, LIKE YOU, HAS THE BEST CHANCE OF DEFEATING THE
DUSTMAN WHO COULD HAVE BEEN KIRIY. IF KANE DIES TRYING TO WEAR THE EYES, THE DARIENS WILL
GATHER. IF ANY OTHER FIVES HAVE SURVIVED, THEY WILL BE THE FIRST TO TAKE UP THE EYES. IF THE
FIVES ARE DEAD, THE SIXES AND FOURS MUST TRY. A NEW KIRIY MUST BE FOUND. ONLY THEN WILL
CIVILIZATION LIVE AGAIN ON ZA’ARAIN AND IN THE JOINING, CHILD OF ZA’ARAIN S GREATNESS.
POOR, LOST CHILD. WITHOUT THE PLAGUE THE JOINING WOULD HAVE SURVIVED ZA’ARAIN’S
DEATH. BUT THE PLAGUE CAME, HIDDEN IN TIME AND A DUSTMAN’S BASTARD EYES.
Sharia did not understand the voice speaking so hugely in her mind. She felt it sinking into her,
spreading like shock waves through her, an irresistible shaping of her mind beneath the power of the
Eyes. Yet some small part of her writhed and tried to evade the imperative, for if Kane broke exile and
returned at her call he would die the final death. She could not bear that, knowing that he was not alive in
time/now or the now, that he would never live again, ever, in any time. Za’ar death was not a simple
resting between lives. Za’ar death was final.
KIRIYS NEVER WASTE WHAT CAN BE SAVED. WHY DO YOU THINK I EXILED RATHER THAN EXECUTED
KANE? IF THE EYES ARE CLOSED HE WILL NOT DIE THE LAST DEATH WHEN HE RETURNS TO ZA’ARAIN,
CALL TO HIM.
Head bowed, Sharia felt the Za’ar imperative sinking into her mind. She did not fight it. She could
not. At some level she had never stopped calling to Kane since he had been exiled ten years ago.
The Kiriy knew that and used it, for she was dying and had few choices left, none of them
comforting. She fought ruthlessly for her people’s survival with every bit of her rapidly waning power.
Even wearing the Eyes, dealing with her niece’s innocent, too-powerful mind was rapidly using up the
Kiriy’s small reserves of strength. The Kiriy’s frail body shook with the force of the demand pouring out
of her mind.
IF IT COMES TO DUST AND KANE, YOU MUST REMEMBER: HE IS FORBIDDEN TO YOU! GO WITH KANE,
FIND THE EYES, BUT NEVER TOUCH HIM. NEVER. WHEN TWO FIVES LIKE YOU TOUCH, THE BOUNDARIES OF
ZA’ ARE DISTURBED. THEN TIME AND LIFE FLOW TOGETHER, DESTROY-ING EVERYTHING. CATASTROPHE.
THAT IS THE TRUTH OF THE GREAT TABU. IT WILL BE TRUTH AFTER THE EYES CLOSE. IT WILL BE
TRUTH WHEN ZA’ARAIN IS DUST. IT WILL ALWAYS BE TRUTH.
NEVER TOUCH YOUR FORBIDDEN SOUL.
Abruptly the Kiriy’s body went slack. She lay back in the alabaster alcove, spent by disease and the
difficulty of trying to force her niece’s powerful mind to accept an unwanted command all the way down
to the level of reflex. She hoped that the Za’ar imperative had been stronger than Sharia’s deeply buried
need to touch Kane. Once there would have been no doubt that a Za’ar imperative would hold. But Kiris
had become Dariens over time, and Dariens had become fives. The power of Sharia’s mind was unique
in all of Za’arain’s history. Kane’s mind was also unique in its power, and capable of joining completely
with hers. Neither of them knew it. The Kiriy hoped that neither ever would. If they did, it would be the
last thing that they would learn before they died the final death ...
... And took with them into Za’ar death every psi who had ever lived or would live, the then and the
now and the always released from za’ until it all imploded, shredding timeshadows beyond any hope of
rebirth or renewal in this or any other dimension of time and za’.
Sharia watched the shallow movements of the Kiriy’s chest for a long time. When no more words
came to ring hugely in Sharia’s mind, she turned and fled to her suite. There she sat without moving,
cupping the odd gem in her palms. At first she felt helpless, knowing only the impossibility of reaching out
across space and linear time to Kane. Yet the Za’ar imperative and her own deepest desire kept driving
Sharia back to the gem’s torrential colors.
She did not count the minutes or the hours or the days of linear time piling up around her like winter
leaves. She ate when she was too weak to hold the stone steady, drank when she must, and poured
herself into the endless colors turning deep within the alien jewel. She called to Kane through all the levels
of her Darien mind that were accessible to her. There was no answer, no whisper or shout returning, no
shift of color into meaning, nothing to separate one anonymous minute from the next.
Finally there came a moment to mark the end of Za’arain’s history, wrenching Sharia from the depths
of her fiery gem. A terrible psychic cry shattered her concentration. The Kiriy’s timeshadow was thinning,
energy radiating out of time/now into times/other, those unnamed and unknown dimensions where life
gathered between births. The Kiriy’s rich timeshadow convulsed as it was torn from time/now and rooted
irrevocably in the then.
The Kiriy was dead.
Sharia lay dazed, exhausted by her long, fruitless search and its shattering end. Soon someone would
come to take her to the Eyes of Za’ar as custom and tabu decreed, a four or a six leading the chosen five
to death or greater life. Then she would take up the Eyes and would either live as the new Kiriy of
Za’arain or unravel among the endless, rippling timeshadows of the universe.
No one came, neither four nor six. All that reached Sharia was a distant sense of fear and
triumph—and then the massed Kiri minds writhed in agony and despair as they sheared away from each
other, unable to maintain civilized unity without the guiding Eyes. Kiri minds slid backward down the long
darkness of linear time while savage atavism glided upward to meet them on deadly clawed feet.
The Eyes of Za’ar closed.
The gem in Sharia’s cupped palms blazed fiercely, as though freed from a stifling veil. Blinded by
alien light and compelled by the dead Kiriy’s Za’ar imperative, Sharia called to Kane from every level of
her unique mind. She called while ordinary Za’arains became mobs that rose and flooded the streets in a
frightened, destructive tide, leaving only shards of civilization in their wake. She called while the city’s
psi-dependent machinery was first damaged, then destroyed. She called while Kiri atavisms burned into
sudden life, Kiris looking out at the world from savage violet eyes.
And as she called she felt fives die one by one, each death sending dark ripples through the colors of
her timeshadow until finally the last fives of Za’arain were dead. Save one. And still that one called out to
Kane.
Only Sharia’s own need to survive ended the channeling of herself into the call. The jewel finally
slipped from hands too weak to hold it. The crystal swung heavily on its chain, gorged with light and
colors and life. Slowly Sharia realized that with the death of the city’s machinery, both food and water
had stopped coming to her isolated rooms. If she were to continue calling Kane, she must care for
herself. She must put aside customs and tabus engrained into her almost as deeply as the need to drink.
But the Za’ar imperative the Kiriy had thrown like a spear into Sharia’s mind was deeper, more
urgent, than mere thirst.
She pried open the door and went out into corridors of the Kiriy compound that had been tabu to
her since the onset of her fertility ten years ago. She held her five-fingered hands before her, an
unequivocal proclamation of Za’ar tabu.
The six- and four-fingered Kiris flinched away from her, squeezing against the wall to allow her free
passage, no chance of touching. Part of their reaction was custom; while fives were not always expressly
tabu to fours or sixes, Kiris simply did not touch mature fives at all unless the Eyes declared one to be a
five-fingered Kiriy’s mate. If custom weren’t enough to hold back the Kiris in the compound’s rainbow
halls of glass, there was always primal fear. At the darkest levels of their minds, the Kiris knew that a five
unbridled by the Eyes was a thing of deadly power.
Water was just beyond Sharia’s room, which faced the Kiriy’s courtyard. Though the capital city of
Za’aral was disintegrating around her, the massive, artesian dance of the sacred fountain would not
waver. She would walk into those drenching crystal mists and fill herself with water.
But even as she went from Kiriy halls to the fountain’s sacred white courtyard, she found the water’s
silver beauty bleeding into horror. The dead and the dying were everywhere, timeshadows knotting and
writhing, silent screams shredding her control. She fought against the lure of riding the agonized
timeshadows down to the knotted beginnings of disease and unraveling that knot, bringing health in the
wake of her ride.
The farther she went into the fountain’s mists, the more strongly timeshadows called to her in all their
tangled colors. After a decade of isolation as a mature five, the timeshadows had an elemental allure to
her. She knew the feel of the disease’s energy, knew that she could cure its dark draining of life. Weeks
before the Kiriy had spoken hugely in Sharia’s mind, she had healed the onset of the disease in her own
body, riding her own timeshadow back to the moment of incubation and outbreak, and then she had
delicately smoothed out the tangles until life flowed unhindered and her timeshadow shimmered with
vitality once again.
A wave of wounded timeshadows broke over her. Suddenly she could no longer turn aside from
their desperate colors. A single thought freed her translucent hair from its discipline. Silver hair flowed
out, seeking and finding the troubled currents of life. The instant of contact was excruciating. Sharia
screamed but did not hear her own cry. She was riding a wild Darien timeshadow, combing its colors
until there was no darkness, unknotting tangled lines of energy. She released the vibrant timeshadow and
flowed into another, riding it down to the beginning of disease, combing, healing, releasing.
The cycle repeated itself endlessly as her own life-force ebbed; and even then she continued to heal.
Time did not exist. Za’arain did not exist. Only a Darien compulsion existed, draining Sharia of life as
surely as disease had drained the Kiriy.
Colors shattered around her, cutting her until she screamed. Pain tore her from the healing trance,
hurling her back into time/now. Blood ran down her back from a fresh wound. She opened her eyes and
she saw healed Kiris watching her. Some of them had violet eyes. Others blinked, and then their eyes,
too, were violet. The violet-eyed Kiris flowed soundlessly toward each other. And then they turned
toward her, a five, a powerful mind that the psi-pack must either kill or rule.
Instinct older than the Eyes of Za’ar rose in Sharia. As the pack closed in to claim or kill her, she
fought in a way and with a ferocity that took her Kiri cousins off guard. Her long hair swept out, hurting
instead of healing, disrupting rather than combing. Then she fled through the fountain’s mists, coming out
at an unfamiliar point in the huge, circular courtyard. She ran through the first open door she saw, seeking
the safety of her own room.
But she had been raised a five, in isolation, and soon she was lost in the ancient circular maze of
rooms surrounding the courtyard. She ran until she reached a dead end. There she turned at bay, her
back to a glass wall scaled by time. She looked at the sky through a ruined ceiling. Beyond the clamoring
of her own survival instincts she sensed death with every too-rapid beating of her heart, every silent slide
of blood from her fingertips onto surfaces smoothed by the passage of her Za’arain ancestors.
Sharia tried to still the frantic demands of her body for air, tried to hold her breath in order to catch
the sound of death coming toward her, tried to listen for the mindless growl of her Kiri cousins hunting
her. Pack hunters, prowling and snarling, dripping blood and death.
With a low sound Sharia looked at her hands and felt savagery in her own mind, a hot seeking for a
breach in the cage of her will. The blood she wore was her own. She had not killed. Yet. She could feel
it coming, though. She could feel the grief and the rage uncoiling in her, black flames burning toward a
feral freedom. The unique culmination of a million years of linear time was sliding through her fingers, a
brilliant culture was bleeding through cracks in the now as surely as blood sinking into pavement stones.
Yet she must survive to find her way out of this maze and take up the Eyes, giving Za’arain a chance
to live again. She was the last five alive on Za’arain. She knew that as surely as she knew the feel of her
own blood dripping from her five-fingered hands. She had heard Kiri whispers, Kiri revelations, mad Kiri
laughter in her mind as fives had died one by one in their private rooms across the face of the planet.
There had been no real reason to blame fives for the catastrophic plague that had brought down
Za’arain, no reason to kill them rather than fours or sixes. But the Kiri’s believed that something had to
be responsible, that a great culture did not fall without blame being assessed among the ruins. Next to the
Eyes of Za’ar, fives were the central mystery of Za’arain, forbidden to touch on pain of unknowable
catastrophe. Since catastrophe had come, it must have come from a breach of the Great Tabu. Therefore
all fives had to die.
A low, feral sound vibrated through the cool wall at Sharia’s back. Her cousins were coming, burning
their way through a million years of civilization seeking the Kiri passageways impregnated in the
compound like time itself. She could heal herself again as she already had. She could survive to hide for
yet a few more twists and turns, a few more hours. But why bother? Why not just slide softly, hotly into
the rage that was uncurling in her mind and testing the bars of her discipline? Why not turn and confront
her tormentors? Why not die rending their timeshadows, tearing a hole in time/now and letting their lives
leak through?
Sharia pulled on the fine black links that hung around her neck. Delicate, unbreakable, the jewel’s
chain emerged from the concealing folds of the once-white robe she wore. The crystal’s colors called to
her at a level deeper than atavism. Her silver eyes focused on the gem, reflecting the silent, sleeting hues
within the crystal, her eyes consuming the living colors with a hunger that had never been appeased since
the day she had awakened and found two necklaces beside her pillow. Both necklaces had been rare,
extraordinary, complementing each other. One light, one dark, each with a wealth of colors turning in its
still center. She had kept both crystals for a time, worn both. Then she had sent the light one out to the
stars.
She turned the clear, black crystal slowly, cherishing its endless colors, calling to Kane yet again,
wanting to sense his presence just once before she died. She wondered if somewhere far, far away Kane
held the transparent brilliance of a crystal in his palm and thought of the Darien cousin he had taught to
smile. She would never know, now. She did not even know if Kane had received the crystal that she had
sent, a condensation of all colors from a timeshadow rider, a silent thank-you for the laughter that he
alone had brought to a childhood all but strangled by tabu.
Kane. Come to me. Come to me!
The sounds of Sharia’s savage cousins drifted through translucent walls. Soon they would see her, a
shadow within the wall. Soon she could die. Or she could heal herself and live for a few more hours,
watch again the infinite fascination of colors turning within a crystal as black and transparent as space.
For an instant longer Sharia dreamed within the crystal, then she hid its blazing facets within bloody
folds of cloth. She tried to gather herself, but her mind still reached for Kane.
You can’t call him if you’re dead. Heal yourself. Fight. Live!
Sharia rode her own timeshadow with an ease that would have astonished her aunt, the dead Kiriy.
Throughout all of Za’arain’s long history, there had been very few Kiris who could ride even the wakes
of former timeshadows, much less ride the torrential living shadow itself. There had been no one to teach
Sharia how to use her mind. No one had dared. Except Kane. He, too, was Darien and five. He
understood the patterns of nonliving wakes as deeply as she understood the living time-shadows
themselves.
He had brought her plants and pets to heal, urged her to control the multi-edged gift of a timeshadow
rider’s mind. He had known that some day she would be given to the Eyes of Za’ar. He had hoped that
learning to control her own mind would increase her chances of surviving the instant when the Eyes
sucked her into an infinity of seething, overlapping timeshadows.
He had cared, and now she would never touch him again.
The thought shocked her. After all the years of tabu and isolation, she thought that she had accepted
Kane’s irrevocable absence in time/now. She had not. She had merely tolerated it. She hungered for
Kane in a way that transcended everything that she was—Kiri, Darien and five—and she knew she
would die without him.
She could not heal herself endlessly. Her strength was not that of the sacred fountain, rooted in
millions of years of linear time. She could, however, take down into darkness with her some of her
savage Kiri kin. Perhaps, just perhaps, the death of those cousins who had most easily embraced atavism
would ease Kane’s job when he returned and took up the Eyes in hope of dragging Za’arain back out of
the muck it had fallen into. She owed Kane that much and would have gladly given him more.
And she owed it to psi-hunters to teach them that timeshadow riders could kill as thoroughly as they
healed. Even a five. Especially a five.
The smile that Sharia wore was as much a warning as the hammered silver of her eyes. With every
heartbeat, years of civilization slipped away from her, years and then more years, an endless cultural
timeshadow reaching back down linear time into savagery ... freeing it.
Black flames licked upward through Sharia’s core, freezing flames which burned through inhibitions.
For the first time in her life her inner eyelid flickered down, transforming the landscape with atavistic light.
Violet eyes looked out on a world where living timeshadows burned like jeweled flames. Atavistic eyes.
Psi-hunter eyes.
She pushed away from the fractured glass wall and ran into the sacred courtyard again. Acres of
satin stone swept in all directions, stone as white as her robe once had been. The single huge artesian
fountain leaped. The sound was that of an immense river falling over the chasm between time/then and
time/now. The fountain had been both symbol and shrine of Kiriy and Za’arain. Here the present joined
invisibly with the past, the rain of a million million yesterdays slaking the thirst of today while today’s rains
ran down out of time/now to be reborn in a million million tomorrows as silver drops dancing beneath
Za’arain skies.
Sharia tore off her hooded robe, freeing her body and her hair in the same savage motion. She threw
the bloody garment aside. Wearing only the black necklace Kane had given her, she stood beneath the
chill waters of condensed time. Today’s blood was washed away, pink water sliding through the cracks
in the ancient, radiant pavement, water draining into the future. The grime of the recent past slid from her
body. There were no injuries beneath to mar her pale, luminous skin. She had healed herself for this, to
stand naked beneath the thundering water of the then and to consecrate herself to death in the everlasting
now.
“There! Near the fountain!”
The voice had once belonged to Kiri Dirneen, the woman who years ago had taught Sharia to
understand the elegant ideographs of Za’arain. The Dirneen of Sharia’s childhood was gone, though; the
Dirneen of today was half wild, wholly savage, gripped by fear and a greed for power that would not be
exorcised short of death.
Sharia stepped out of the veiling mists. Her hip-length hair shimmered and lifted with each movement
of her head, shedding the water from time/now and the now with the case that only a of living
timeshadows knew. Translucent, silver, as fluid as the water it so closely resembled, Sharia’s unbound
hair floated on currents that only she could sense. Living currents rippling through time. Tendrils of hair
fanned out, seeking other currents, other timeshadows, other lives ... other deaths.
She laughed and held out her arms to the shifting, amorphous mob of people who had tracked her
down.
“Come to me,” crooned Sharia. “Touch me. Touch death.”
Her Kiri cousins hesitated, but only for an instant. With a savage growl they began running toward
the only living five on Za’arain.
Two
The Wolfin lightship groaned like the quasi-living being it was. Kane felt the cocoon around him shift,
becoming a fluid restraint that protected his body from the backlash of forces seething around the ship.
The za’replacement symbol had glowed orange in the homing crystal, warning that the upcoming
transition would not be an easy one. He had ordered Jode to take it anyway, despite the fact that there
were lavender za’replacements scattered within six ship-hours of the orange site.
The ship closed with the difficult za’replacement point. Conflicting forces sleeted through Kane,
tearing at him, making every bit of his large body ache. For an instant Kane wanted to groan with the
Wolfin ship. Then the ship shuddered and reappeared in time/now, all forces balanced again. Quietly the
lightship sped away on its predetermined course.
The cocoon peeled from Kane and vanished into the couch, freeing him. He stood and stretched, his
knuckles brushing against the resilient, textured ceiling. Wolfins were among the biggest of the Fourth
Evolution peoples and built their ships accordingly. Even so, Kane found himself a bit cramped. He was
careful not to complain, though, any more than he complained about the crude, timeshadow-tangling
eccentricities that the Wolfins built into their sentient machines. The Wolfins were proud of their
technological accomplishments. A man who wanted to pass as the grandson of Wolfin colonists would be
the last person to complain about the Wolfins’ sometimes bizarre technology.
And for Kane to criticize the most sensitive, sophisticated machines that the Joining had to offer
would be to raise the question of where he had seen better ones. There was only one possible answer:
Za’arain. Kane did not want to connect himself with that forbidden planet. In the Joining, Za’arains were
considered to be deadly, inhuman combinations of gods and devils. No one in the Joining even knew the
galactic coordinates of Za’arain. Or if they did, they did not live after putting those coordinates to use.
Za’arain’s isolation was enforced by the most potent weapon in the known galaxy—the Eyes of Za’ar.
Kiriy weapon. Za’ar tabu.
Za’ar death.
“That was a tough one,” said Jode as the pilot’s cocoon retracted. He looked up at Kane who was
standing and stretching as though nothing had happened. “Even your Wolfin body must have noticed it.”
Kane rubbed the back of his neck and flexed his powerful shoulders. “I felt it.”
“Does that mean you’re going to be more reasonable about the next one?” asked Jode curtly.
Kane hesitated. He closed his eyes, searching his mind for the source of the uneasiness that had been
riding him with unsheathed claws for several weeks. In the last few days it had become intolerable. With
a muffled curse, Kane rummaged through his mind again, asking, demanding. Why? he thought. What in
all the billion suns is driving me across the face of the known galaxy? Why did I put ship and crew
through an orange za’replacement just to save a few hours when I don’t even know where in time I’m
going?
Jode looked up sharply. The Jhoramon psi-master’s austere face became even more grim as he
measured his captain’s flaring psychic unease. Jode did not attempt to initiate the more intimate
communication of mindspeech. Kane had never offered it in the four years they had been together. But
now, at this instant, the captain’s questions rang as clearly in Jode’s mind as they did in Kane’s.
There was no answer in either mind.
“I don’t know if I can be reasonable,” admitted Kane.
Jode’s black eyes narrowed as he studied his captain. “You’re acting like an azir’s chewing through
time to get to your soul. What’s wrong?”
“Azir,” muttered Kane. “Myth.”
“Don’t count on it, Captain. The Dust is full of them.”
Kane shrugged. His long, five-fingered hand raked through hair that was filled with hidden currents of
energy and vagrant gleams of light beneath the black dye he used to conceal his Za’arain heritage. “I
don’t know why or how or what, I simply know all the way down to the bottom of time that something is
wrong.”
“The bottom of time.” Jode closed his black eyes, then snapped them open again. “An odd phrase
for a Wolfin.”
Kane made a casual, dismissing movement with his hand, though the effort not to show his unease
was great. Some habits were nearly impossible to break. Patterns of speech were one. Patterns of
speech a Za’arain exile could not afford. Like the memories he could not afford—a child/woman’s
laughter following him through the galaxy, haunting him, a sound as beautiful and unattainable as the color
of time itself. But he would not think of Sharia. He could not. Forgetting was all that had kept him sane.
“Not all Wolfins ignore time as a dimension of reality,” he said to Jode in a casual voice. “Colonists,
in particular, are prone to heresy. In fact, both of my parents—”
Kane uttered a sharp sound of pain and grabbed for the crystal concealed beneath his tunic. The
jewel was suddenly alive, tormenting him. There was an endless instant of agony, worse than any orange
za’replacement, worse than anything Kane had ever known except the instant when Za’arain had
vanished from view as a lightship hurled him into endless exile.
The agony passed, freeing Kane. He straightened slowly and realized that Jode’s lean body was
levering him back onto the captain’s couch.
“You’re Wolfin in one thing, at least,” muttered Jode. “Stubborn to the living core of your bones.”
But there was fear and affection in the Jhoramon’s voice. “Lie down and stop fighting whatever your
mind is trying to tell you.”
“What do you mean?” said Kane, breathing quickly, feeling sweat cool across his skin. “That wasn’t
my mind.”
“Then what was it?” demanded Jode, fear racing through him in a cold explosion. “What’s riding
you?”
Kane’s body convulsed again as the hidden jewel resting against his chest stabbed deeply into his
timeshadow, twisting it. He forced his hand to go beneath the black tunic. With fingers that trembled he
dragged out the gem he had kept concealed from everyone, a treasure to warm the coldest nights of
exile. He yanked, but the silver chain did not give way even to his strength. Cloth ripped, though. The
pale, transparent crystal spilled out, blazing with colors—and riddled with terrible shards of darkness.
“Lias’tri!” hissed Jode. Relief glowed in his voice like sunrise until he saw the blackness laced through
the stone. “Oh my cruel gods—she’s dying.” Compassion transformed Jode’s harsh face, softening bleak
摘要：

TimeshadowRider AnnMaxwell1986 Spell-checked.Read1-18,21. FORBIDDENUNIONSharia’seyesopened,violetandsilverinanequalandincrediblemixture.ShewasnotsurprisedtofindKaneholdingherinhisarms.Shehaddreamedthisbefore,hadexperiencedthisinstantassurelyassheknewherownheartbeat,herownripplingtimeshadow.Youfeelli...

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