Aur Child
Chapter 48

You are Tieri-Na.” The words, spoken as a statement, floated out from the darkness of a large cowl hiding the head of the speaker.

Tieri looked up from her sullen meditations. She occupied a shadowy corner of the mountain village inn. To be addressed was a surprise. The villagers had abandoned their attempts to speak with her long ago.

“You are mistaken,” Tieri replied. If she was to be interrupted, at least she could be difficult about it.

The heavy hood twitched over the startled head.

“That’s not possible,” the voice said. It was a woman. The dragging cloak suggested a small woman.

“Anything is possible in the endoworld,” Tieri said with acerbic carelessness, “including the freak villager who refuses to use the appellative ‘visitor’.”

Two hands raised up to push the thick cowl back upon her shoulders, revealing a petite woman of handsome face, sleek black eyebrows, and dark complexion.

“I am not a villager,” the woman said.

Indeed. All the villagers, many centuries’ yield of the wicked antechamber, were of the northlander variety. Tall, fair, sturdy. In the endoworld, they were forbidden to wear avatars. Before Tieri stood a creature of an altogether different heritage. Avatar, perhaps, but certainly not an ensnared villager.

“Then you are a Guest, or a pathetic steward.”

“You are right, I am a Guest.”

Tieri pushed out her lower lip. “I’ve never met one of those before,” she said, tilting her head. “Very odd. Should I be honored?”

The small woman smirked. She looked Tieri up and down. “Feisty for such a frame.”

Tieri frowned and dropped her hand to her thigh with a slap. “Is there a purpose you’ve come here other than in pursuit of some fresh entertainment? Because, if it’s that, you’ve wasted your time.”

The woman held her hands before her, pressed one palm to the other with fingers pointed upwards, and presented a mudra to Tieri. “I have come to meet you, and,” she hesitated for a moment, lowering a trembling chin to her chest, “to apologize.”

Tieri blinked hard. She held her position but looked more carefully at the woman. Amber eyes. Silken folds of black hair that sparkled like galaxies in a deep winter sky. Full lips accentuated by a narrow dark line where they met a chocolate-smooth face.

“The stewards say that Guests view my entrapment here as a gift of salvation. Why then do you apologize for holding me against my will?”

The woman shook her head and said, “It is not that. I have treated you very poorly. Or, rather, I have treated your body very poorly. It is for that I am sorry.”

Tieri sat up. Her jaw dropped. “You are Digambar,” she gasped.

“I am,” Digambar replied.

The two women stared at one another. Tieri imagined she should be angry, but her emotions did not comply. To meet this woman, who had cast off her body when it was no longer convenient, should provoke some internal contempt, some bitterness or resentment. But those negative reactions failed to appear. Nor did she recognize a tenderness or empathy for her that might come from a disciplined attempt to replace forgiveness for a transgression. She was, instead, detached.

“Calliope told me you were lost. She said the crew was terminal.”

“All the other crew were lost, yes. I stayed on board the ship because my body – I mean, your body, never accepted the exoport. It had gotten so bad that I would have been a danger to the mission.”

Tieri shook her head, “Then … how was my body lost?” she said, “Yet you’re here?”

“I removed myself. It was too painful.” Digambar looked up at Tieri. “It was selfish. I’m sorry,” she said.

Tieri gulped and stared past Digambar towards the bar with its chatting villagers.

“I don’t understand. Perhaps Calliope will explain better.”

“No,” Digambar said. “There is no Calliope.”

“What does that mean?”

“Freyja had her shut off. Terminated for malfeasance.”

Tieri gasped again. “Terminated?” she repeated, looking down at the hands that once caressed Calliope’s hair. “And her surrogate aboard the Oddyssey?”

“My Calliope, you mean?” Digambar shook her head. “If she returns, the same fate awaits.”

“But,” Tieri leaned forward in protest, “that Calliope is not complicit in anything this one has done.”

“To Freyja, they are one in the same.”

“What could she have done that was so terrible?”

Digambar kneeled and took Tieri’s hand. The action was awkwardly repulsive to Tieri, but before she could pull away, a sense of wonder from contact overcame her. To touch the hands of the person who ended her life.

“She prevented the capture of two more Tellurians,” Digambar said. “Freyja was furious. One of them was your sister, Sann-Na. Calliope saved her.”

Tieri now squeezed Digambar’s tiny hand.

“My sister? Is she safe?”

“She fled. Yet they chase her. A Guest exoported to a Tellurian man’s body they caught immediately afterwards. That man says he knows you. His name is Kjell-Tors.”

“Kjell-Tors!”

Tieri’s head whirled. Her murderer. Calliope terminated. Sann-Na chased. Kjell-Tors caught by these monsters. Monsters.

“Why do you tell me all this?” Tieri asked.

“You need to know what Freyja is up to.”

“What difference does it make? I am powerless against her.”

Digambar shook her head. “No,” she said, “you are not. She fears you.”

“Fears me?”

“Yes. She lays blame for so many of her failings with you. You’ve frustrated her plans whether you meant to or not. And,” Digambar said, “you have her trapped.”

Tieri scoffed at the last word. She might take this as a prank; that’s how implausible it seemed. “No, I’m trapped, Digambar. In this stupid village with fake versions of fake people. I have been tricked, betrayed, and abandoned. There is nothing I can do to harm Freyja. I …I want to help my sister, but I’m powerless here.”

“Tieri, you’re wrong. Freyja needs you. She’s desperate. Only you can provide her with the information she needs. Calliope can’t help her this time, and she knows she can’t ask you directly. But she’s learned that you and Kjell-Tors are from neighboring clans. He’s controlled by her. She plans to send him here, to bait you and extract the information she needs.”

Tieri let out a little chuckle. “Kjell-Tors would never put Sann-Na’s life at risk.”

Digambar pressed her lips together and breathed heavily in through her nose.

“He talks a lot. Nothing really useful, but he just doesn’t realize how dangerous it is to speak openly with her.”

Tieri fixed a stern expression. “What does she want?” she asked.

“What all those machines want: data. About your sister. Where she lives. Her likes. What makes her tick. The routes she travels. Anything that might help them wrest the Aur boule away from that man and recover the Odyssey.”

The ends of Tieri’s mouth pointed down. Her shoulders slouched. “I don’t know what any of those things are.”

“The Aur boule,” Digambar repeated. “That’s what this is all about. That’s the reason I was sent in your body with the others aboard our ship named the Odyssey. We were hunting Aur boules.”

“Look, Digambar, I don’t know what you expect me to do. And, even if I did, I don’t think we’re really on such good terms for me to trust anything you’re telling me. If you came here to tell me to keep quiet about my sister, you’ve wasted your time. I have no plans of saying anything that might put anyone else – any Tellurian – at risk, especially my sister. But as for whatever virtual vendetta you have with Freyja, I’m not interested. Look at me!” Tieri pressed her hands to her chest, her eyes turned glassy. “I’m entirely at her mercy. I must not do anything to frustrate her. The further I stay clear of her, the better.”

Digambar stepped closer to Tieri. “You misunderstand me, Tieri. I haven’t come here for myself or my own interests. I came here for yours.”

“Oh really?” Tieri said, nodding her head to one side, “And what is it that you intend to do for me?”

“I intend to set you free.”

Tieri laughed out loud. The bartender looked up and peeked towards the darkness of her booth. Tieri reached in closer to Digambar, nearly touching noses, and spoke in a forced whisper through clenched teeth.

“Well, that’s about it now. You of all people should know that, even if you managed to somehow get me out of this numbscape prison, I would be returned to Earth only to discover that I have no body.” She pushed herself back from the table, and then, “Thank you very much for that, by the way.”

Digmabar’s eyes brimmed with tears. She whimpered as she spoke. “You’re wrong, Tieri-Na. You still think like a Tellurian. You have much to learn about our ways. And, for us to be successful, I still have much to teach you. But to say there is no possibility to return to Earth is not true. There is a way.”