Priscilla took off her shirt and laid it neatly on the bed, then stretched with casual sensuality and bent to remove her boots. The soft belt with its cleverly worked silver buckle was next, followed by the dark blue trousers.
Unencumbered, she stretched again and crossed the first mate's quarters to the wide, cloth-covered chair. She curled into it like a cat, which reminded her of Dablin, so that she smiled for a moment before closing her eyes and beginning the discipline that erased all expression from her face.
The discipline progressed: breathing deepened; heartbeat slowed until it was a distant boom coming at long intervals, like an ocean beyond the hills; body temperature dropped four degrees. When she was satisfied that those functions had stabilized and would remain steady until the body itself failed of hunger or trauma, Priscilla withdrew her attention to her place of safety, admitted the prayer that would keep her whole on such a chancy venture, opened the door between her Self and that which was not her Self—and went forth.
Sounds, dazzling patterns, seductive perfumes: the Passage and all within it suddenly experienced with only the inner senses. There: Shan on the bridge. There: Lina in the common room. There: Gordy in the trader's room; Rusty at the comm; Ken Rik, Calypso, BillyJo, Vilt . . .Priscilla touched each, acknowledged all—and let them go.
The Passage, with its din of familiarity and love, dropped away, and she was alone in the noisy outside. She disallowed the clamor of strangers, brought up the template of the aura she sought, and focused on it, stretching awareness until her Self was barely more than a webbing of moth antennae, listening, quivering, straining far and farther . . .
It was at the point that Self was strained to the thinnest, when the thread that anchored her to the Passage, to the body, was at the limit of its elasticity, that she heard/sensed/saw it.
A glimmer, no more. A hint of familiarity; a bare taste of acerbic sweetness . . .
Awareness contracted as Self rushed toward the hint, unsubtle in desire; everything focused on the pattern growing in her senses, intent on contact, so that it was not until the last instant that she recognized the subpattern of one protected within deep meditation.
Aboard the Passage the body cried out, awareness and Self expanding toward dissolution as she struggled to absorb the psychic impact, scrambling even then for the shredding lifeline, clawing her way back, awareness a shivering knot of pain within the fire-shot network of Self—and plummeting into the body at last, heavy as a stone.
She cried out again as the pain ate along nerve and sinew, heartbeat stuttering, respiration a gasping mess, body soaked in sweat, and it was hot, hot, too hot—
Cool.
"Shan!" That cry was no less desperate, for all he was Healer and strong in his skill. "Shan, no!"
Cool enveloped her, leaching the heat and stifling the agony. She collapsed into it as if into his arms, and opened herself utterly, allowing him to cool even the memory of the pain, letting it vanish out of knowledge as heart rhythm steadied and breathing smoothed . . .She sighed and drifted, thinking of nothing.
"Priscilla."
It was with no common effort that she opened her eyes and looked into his face, vaguely surprised to find that she was indeed lying in his arms.
"No more, Priscilla." Face and voice were stern; exhausted witch-sense brought her the echo of his terror. She thought about smiling, and perhaps she even did.
"I saw Val Con."
His pattern changed too subtly for her to read. "Where?"
She moved her head. "It doesn't work that way, love. There aren't any directions when you go—spirit-walking. He's alive . . .strong . . .Meditating—playing, perhaps. I should have remembered how the music rings around him when he plays . . .That's what got me in trouble. Rushing in before I looked close. Wooly-headed as Anthora."
"I don't recall that Anthora has ever put herself in quite so much danger in her checks on my brother—or on any of the rest of us. Understand me—no more. You will not endanger yourself searching for my renegade of a brother, who is, incidentally, quite capable of taking care of himself." His arms tightened fractionally, and she had no trouble reading the shift in his pattern that time. "I can't afford to lose you, Priscilla; have some sense."
There was no talking to him, not with the fright he had just had—she saw that clearly, exhausted as she was. She smiled once more and lifted a hand to his stark cheek. "Of course, dear," she murmured. And slept.