The medical bay door opened and Julian emerged, with blood on his scrubs and weariness in his eyes. "He's stable, or as stable as we can make him."
"Thank you. You saved his life."
"Don't thank me yet. I did my best, but it's up to the Fates now."
She nodded, fighting tears. "Can I see him?"
Julian hesitated. "He's sedated. He won't know you're there. You need to get dressed and get warm. Have something to drink and eat."
"I'll know," she whispered, "that I was with him."
"As you wish." Julian stepped aside, and she entered the cramped medical bay.
Navuh lay on the gurney, looking nothing like the powerful immortal who'd ruled for millennia through fear and the power of his compulsion. His face was still swollen, purple and black with bruising that would fade but hadn't yet. His chest rose and fell unsteadily, his natural healing ability stretched beyond its limits, struggling to keep him alive.
But would it repair his mind? Would he wake as himself or as something else?
She wouldn't even consider the possibility that he wouldn't wake up at all.
She touched the back of his hand, the only part of him that wasn't bandaged.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry you got hurt. It was never my intention. I only wanted to help Tula and her baby. I never wished to harm you. I hope you know that. I hope you know how much I love you."
He loved her too. He'd jumped off a cliff after her, but love and forgiveness were not one and the same, not for Navuh.
13
YAMANU
Yamanu stood near the cliff's edge, his thrall extending outward like an invisible net, keeping any curious guards or staff away from this section of the grounds. Given the circumstances, the switch from shrouding to thralling had been a good call and easier to maintain. Shrouding hid what was happening, but thralling repelled anyone from coming, because the minds of the humans he was manipulating were molded not to think about anything outside their immediate surroundings.
It was like the difference between camouflage and a fence. One required constant visual manipulation, the other simply planted a suggestion:nothing interesting here, better mind your own business and stay where you are.
"Tony should go first." Yamanu turned to Tula. "I'll need your help with the ladies."
Never mind that the bioinformatician's face paled in the moonlight, and that he looked like he might vomit, which wouldn't be ideal, but Okidu wouldn't make a fuss about being puked on.
Tony swallowed hard but nodded. "What do I need to do?"
"Absolutely nothing. That's the beauty of it. Leave everything to the professional climber. You are just a passenger." Okidu should be coming up any moment now. "You wear a harness, he straps you to his back, and down you go. It's just a piggyback ride. Nothing to fret about."
"Just close your eyes," Tula said. "And don't move if you can help it."
Tony swallowed. "I can do this."
After volunteering, he couldn't back down, and besides, this was the only way to get off the island, and it didn't really matter if he was first or last.
Come to think of it, there might be other ways off the island now that Navuh wasn't around, but it was much safer to get out of there before the chaos began. Who knew what the thousands of immortal soldiers would do with no one to restrain them?
As Yamanu thought of all the innocents that would fall victim to the hordes of cruel barbarians, profound sorrow draped over him. But he couldn't save all of them, just as he and his fellow Guardians couldn't save all the trafficking victims. There were just too many of them for a small group of Samaritans to even make a dent in it, and that was in the United States, where law and order were still supposed to function.
In the vast part of the world, law and order were selectively applied, and never in favor of the weak and the poor.
A few moments later, the Odu's head appeared over the cliff's edge. In the moonlight, Okidu looked remarkably unremarkable, a middle-aged man with a soft belly, slightlyreceding hairline, and the kind of face you'd expect to see behind a desk, not scaling a three-hundred-foot cliff. When he pulled himself over the edge with the effortlessness of an immortal, his round face split into a goofy, delighted smile.
Tula's reaction was pure joy. "Okidu!" She rushed forward and threw her arms around him in a fierce hug that should have at least made him stumble, but the Odu stood solid as stone, with only his goofy grin widening in what seemed like genuine pleasure.
He'd been at the bottom of the cliff when Tula had gotten there before, but she must have been too distraught to notice him.
