"I'm tired, too."
"We're all tired," he snapped, then softened. "Sorry. I told you I never wanted this job. But one thing I'm going to insist on is sending out a few scouts of my own to see what the surrounding area is like before we get too settled."
-VIII-
"Food..." she said in a plaintive voice, holding a small piece of meat before her. "Come, now. Say it: Food..."
The tery said nothing. Instead he merely stared back at Adriel. He liked looking at her. He liked her freckled nose and the red highlights in her blond hair.
The sun was half way to its zenith and Adriel had been coaching him since breakfast. She was nothing if not persistent. The girl seemed determined to teach her new pet to speak.
The tery debated the wisdom of giving in. Something deep within him ached to please her, to make her smile. He finally decided to gamble on a single word. Just for her. He pretended to follow her persistent example.
Feigning great effort, he rasped, "Fud."
Adriel froze in wide-eyed wonder.
"Fud," he repeated.
Komak was sitting nearby and turned his head at the unfamiliar voice. "Was that...?"
"Yes!" Adriel said breathlessly. "It was him! He spoke! Did you hear him? He spoke!"
She quickly gave the tery the piece of meat she had been holding and held up another. But the arrival of one of the point men Komak had sent out halted further demonstration of his newfound ability.
After a few moments of telepathic conversation, her father turned to her.
"Looks like we'll be needing you."
"Oh?" She seemed to have been half-expecting this.
"Seems there's a tiny village a little ways off to the east. Perhaps twenty or thirty inhabitants, and one or two may have the Talent. It's up to you to find them."
#
Twelve mud-walled domes sat in a circle around a wide area of bare earth. Adriel motioned the tery to stay back out of sight in the brush.
Tense, not knowing what to expect, she walked toward the circle of huts, holding tightly to her father's arm.
"Hello!" Komak called when they entered the circle. "Hello, inside. We come in peace. We wish to speak with you."
Slowly, one by one, the inhabitants of the miniscule village came out of their huts and stared at the newcomers, whispering and pointing, but saying nothing to them, and not straying far from their doorways.
Adriel left her father at the perimeter and proceeded alone to the center. He couldn't help her with this. Only she could find the Talent.
No one understood the Talent, least of all Adriel. Her mother, before she had sickened and died, had tried in vain to explain it to her. Half of the Talent was another voice, she had said, a separate voice that did not automatically accompany vocal speech. It had to be volitionally activated and projected. The other half was the receptive faculty that operated continually unless consciously blocked out. Most Talents learned of their ability first through the receptive facet.
Adriel understood none of it. She could neither send nor receive. The Talent was little more than a tingling in her mind, a vague sensation she could home in on and almost touch. To those who possessed the full Talent, reception was nondirectional. Images appeared behind their eyes, words sounded between their ears, concepts exploded within their minds. But from where?
Adriel knew where. And that was why she was here. To see if any of these villagers belonged with her group.
Adriel closed her eyes. The Talent was strong here. She could feel it.
She turned in a slow circle. Once. Twice. Then stopped and opened her eyes again. She faced a man, a woman, and what looked like a ten-year-old boy.
She recognized a faint, familiar sensation of the Talent off to her right –her father. But another sensation, a strong tingling in the forepart of her brain, emanated from the trio before her. She moved forward and with every step the sensation became stronger until she stood within arm’s reach.
The man was blank, but the woman and boy were definitely Talents. Strong ones. She placed one hand on the woman's shoulder and the other on the boy's head, then looked at her father.
The two Talents followed her gaze to Komak and that was when he contacted them. With a reassuring smile beaming through his red mane, he motioned them toward him.
"What do you want?" said the uncomprehending husband, glancing nervously between Adriel and her father.
"It's all right, I think" the woman whispered. "Let's go with her."
The trio followed Adriel to where her father waited.
"Now tell us what this is all about," the woman demanded when they were out of earshot of the village.
"We mean you no harm," Komak said.
"We'll see about that."
Her manner was suspicious and hostile. Her features were pinched and her jet hair was drawn back severely. Adriel decided she didn't like her much.
The woman added, "And use your tongues so my husband will understand."
"They're Talents?" her husband said.
"Yes. And I pray they haven't given us away."
"Then you know of the danger," Adriel said.
She nodded. She looked terribly frightened now and Adriel's feelings softened for her.
We're all afraid.
"We're traveling with a group of Talents," Komak said, "the only survivors after Kitru slaughtered all the rest of our kind in the keep. We want you to join us. We number fifty-three now and need every Talent we can find."
"Why?" the woman asked.
"For safety, of course. Overlord Mekk will be visiting the keep, and Kitru has been scouring the forests for teries and Talents in preparation for his arrival."
The man shook his head. "We'll stay right here."
"That could be dangerous," Komak told him. "What's to prevent some of Kitru's men from coming through your village with a Finder and ferreting out your wife and child as we did? He'll show no mercy."
"We're isolated out here," he said. "Almost lost. I've been to the keep two or three times in my life and nobody there even knew this village existed. And no one here knows that my wife and son possess the Talent except me. I think we can risk staying where we are."
Adriel was disappointed to hear that – for their sake, and her own. At least with the husband around, she'd have someone to talk to.
"Very well," Komak said after a pause. "We'll be camped toward the sunset for a while should you change your minds."
"Thank you," the man said. "But the forest nomad life is not for us. We'll take our chances here."
He put one arm around his wife and the other around his son as the trio walked back to their hut.
"Isn't it rare for a psi to marry a non-psi?" Adriel asked her father as they returned to the forest.
"Very rare. The rapport between two lovers with the Talent is far and away more intimate than anything a non-psi can experience. But the woman and her son were the only psis around so it's possible she never had a lover with the Talent. She doesn't know what she's missing." His eyes seemed to glaze as if he no longer saw the forest around them.
"I wish them well," she said at last in an attempt to bring her father back from his reverie. "It must take a lot of courage to stay put in that little village and risk extermination."
"Or a lot of foolishness. The dividing line isn't always clear."
-IX-
Four days after the ambush, Dennel returned. The tery had sensed his approach for some time before he appeared, but Adriel was the first of the humans to spy him. She ran up to him. The tery followed close behind.
"Dennel! You're back! How'd you find us?"
He did not meet her gaze. "I followed the mental chatter."
"Are you all right?"
"I think so." He seemed uncomfortable. "I...I have to find my tent. Excuse me."
"Poor fellow," Adriel said as she watched him walk away. "He's so ashamed."
The tery wondered if it might be something else, but he had little opportunity to find
out. Dennel kept to himself for the next few days.
Adriel and the tery were fast becoming inseparable and took little notice of Dennel or anyone else. He let her "teach" him more words and she devoted most of her day to him, resting her hand on his back and chattering her heart out as they wandered side by side through the leafy glades near the camp.
They stopped and sat on a grassy knoll and watched the brightly colored tree-things go about their daily routines.
"I know you can't understand me," she said, speaking to him as if he could, "but at least I know your ears are for me alone. I know you aren't secretly carrying on a mental conversation with someone else while I'm talking to you."
The tery gathered that was something that had happened more than once.
"You're lucky, you know. Nothing holds you down. You can come and go as you please and you're at home with us or away from us. But me...I'm stuck here with a bunch of people who feel insulted if they have to use their tongues."
She fell silent for a while, then laughed.
"I thought I was going to be a fine lady once – can you believe that? A nobleman's son took a fancy to me and I thought I'd someday be living in the upper levels of the keep. Then Mekk went and issued his new decree and now I’m living like a savage."
The tery had come to think of Adriel as a wonderful creature – yet he pitied her. She was fresh, young, ready to burst into womanhood at any moment with only a fanged, barrel-chested beast at her side to share the experience. She wanted to love and be loved, to stop running. She longed for the stability she would have had had she not been born a Finder.
He desperately wished there was a way he could help her.
As the days went on, the tery became a substitute for everything she desired. A thousand tiny kindnesses were showered upon him. She would put extra time and effort into preparing the meat for his dinner, and she carved and painted a bowl from which he could eat it. She learned the use of the loom so that he wouldn't have to sleep on the bare ground.
The two were driven closer and closer together by the void of silence that separated them from the rest of the tribe. Life became an idyll for the tery, a series of sun-soaked days of easy companionship...
Until the morning by the river when he discovered a dark and frightening hunger lurking within him.
Adriel was modest by nature. Every morning she would retrieve a jug of water from the stream that passed not too far from the camp and sponge herself off in the privacy of her tent. This particular morning was an exception, however, for she left the jug empty and led the tery along the bank of the stream until it widened and emptied into a river.
Pushing through the brush, she stepped down the bank and up to her ankles in the water. The far shore was further than the tery could throw a small stone, but floating leaves moved by at a leisurely pace, indicating a gentle current.
"There," Adriel said with a self-satisfied air, "I knew we'd find a river eventually. This looks deep enough."
She pulled off her blouse and the knee-length pants she had recently made after deciding that a skirt was impractical in the forest. She wore nothing else.
Without the slightest hesitation she made a shallow dive into the clear water, then bobbed to the surface and turned to face the tery.
"Ohhhhh, that feels good!" She dunked her head again and came up gasping. "I thought I was never going to feel clean again!" She motioned to the tery. "Come on – jump in! It's only water!"
But he stayed behind the bushes lining the bank. That much water made him uneasy. He had often waded to his knees while fishing with his father, but the thought of immersing himself to his neck was frightening.
But he had another reason...
The brief glimpse of Adriel's nude form had stirred something within him, something pleasurable and yet uncomfortable. He stayed where he was.
Adriel splashed the water in front of her.
"Oh, come on in! You'll like it! Really!" But her pet made no move to join her. "Looks like I'm going to have to drag you in," she muttered and kicked her way closer to shore.
When she reached the shallows again, she stood and waded toward the bank. Her skin was white and smooth and glistened wetly. Water ran from her hair over her rounded, budding, pink-tipped breasts, down across her abdomen to the red-gold fuzz that covered her pubes.
The same pleasurable something washed over the tery again as he watched her, a warm something that seemed to be centered in his groin. She was completely out of the water now and climbing the bank in his direction. The warmth in his groin increased and the erratic fleshy part of him that usually hung awkwardly between his legs became large and stiff. His breathing was rapid as he tried to look away, but he could not.
This was wrong. He wanted to leap upon her, paw her, press the hungry distended flesh into her...
Wrong!
Adriel leaned over the bushes and extended her hand to him.
"Come on," she said in a coaxing voice. The sunlight caught the myriad droplets of water that had formed on her bobbing breasts, and the cooling effect of a gentle breeze had caused her nipples to harden and stand erect. "I won't let you drown."
With an abrupt motion he wrenched himself around and tore headlong back into the trees. He kept running, concentrating all his physical effort on moving his four limbs as fast as his muscles would allow. Leaping over fallen branches and around earth-sunk boulders, he raced past Tlad's empty dwelling, across the field that bordered the shimmering fear, and didn't stop until he stood in the ruined clearing that had once been his home.
Exhausted, he slumped on the rubble-choked mouth of the cave that held his parents' remains and wished for them to rise and live and comfort him. Life had been so much simpler then. His mother had had all the answers. She would explain this blazing turmoil within him, explain why a tery should have such an unnatural desire for a human.
He waited, but his mother did not rise.
As his strength returned, so did memory of Adriel's glistening naked form, reaching for him. He felt the warmth return, felt himself grow erect again. Enclosing the stiff, enlarged member within both of his fists, he began moving them up and down until a spurting spasm brought a relief of sorts.
-X-
The tery returned to the psi-folk camp in the late afternoon. He did not approach Adriel's hut immediately as he would normally do, but wandered the perimeter, wondering if she knew what had happened down by the bank.
Guilt and fear gnawed at him. What if she guessed his feelings? She'd be shocked and repulsed. He couldn't bear the thought of losing her.
Near the center of camp he saw a cart loaded with pottery. Tlad’s. He searched for the man and found him squatting beside Komak in the shade, dickering.
"Then it's settled," Tlad was saying. "A hindquarter of ma for the load. And fresh – none of this dried stuff."
"Agreed," Komak nodded. "You drive a hard bargain, Tlad. You'd never get such a price if we hadn't broken so much pottery in that forced march from the old campsite." His eyes narrowed. "But what I want to know is how you found us? We've come a long way since we last saw you."
"I've lived in the forests longer than you. I have ways."
"I'm sure you do. But we waded down a stream most of the way. We left no trail."
Tlad shrugged. "I have ways."
Komak broke off further interrogation when he caught sight of the tery loping toward them.
"Looking for Adriel?" he said, rising and affectionately roughing up the fur at the back of the tery's neck. "She told me about you – afraid of the water, are you? Well, we're all afraid of something, I guess."
Afraid of the water. So that was how Adriel had seen it. Relief flooded him.
"Where is Adriel, anyway?" Tlad asked. "I want to ask her a few things about this pet of hers."
The tery looked around to find Tlad staring at him. The man's penetrating gaze made him uncomfortable. He looked away.
"Good question," said Komak, his lips tightening into a g
rimace of distaste. "Off walking somewhere with Dennel. Don't know what she sees in him."
"You don't think too much of him, I take it?"
"I like him not at all and trust him even less. But that is a problem between Adriel and myself. As for you – we have a couple of hunting parties out now. Should be back with a ma or two by sundown."
Tlad nodded. "I saw one of them setting up on my way here. Think they'd mind if I watched?"
"Just stay well back and quiet and out of sight," Komak warned and strolled away.
The tery was about to follow Komak in search of Adriel but was stopped by Tlad's voice.
"They tell me you're a hero around here now, eh? Coming up in the world. Komak says Adriel's even managed to teach you some words. Isn't that interesting?"
He squatted before the tery, putting their eyes on the same level. The tery held his gaze this time.
"Tell me, tery," he said. "Are you really a dumb animal? Or are you playing games with these folk?"
The questions made the tery uneasy. Tlad seemed to know more than he should. He felt his gaze wavering. He growled and turned away.
The man rose and mumbled a few unintelligible words, then walked off toward the trees. Looking over his shoulder as he moved, he slapped his thigh once and called to the tery.
"With me!"
The tery hesitated, unused to being commanded to do anything, and not liking it. But Tlad intrigued him. And since he lacked anything better to do at the time, he drew up alongside him and kept pace. He felt strangely drawn to the man. The fact that he had been instrumental in saving his life was an important factor, but he felt a kinship with Tlad, a certain undefined sharing of a common ground.
They moved side by side through the forest until Tlad suddenly stopped and motioned the tery to stay where he was. Alone, he moved cautiously and silently ahead, briefly disappearing into the undergrowth, then returning with a satisfied smile.
"Want to see how your friends the Talents hunt?"
The tery almost answered, but stopped himself just as the words reached his lips.