Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
blue through the hole in the ceiling changed color and texture. Something else as
well, a buzz that sounded between his ears.
“They didn't waste any time,” Bolda said. Then looked at him, frowning.
“You don't feel it?” Rit asked. The other man shook his head. “Never mind,” he
added as he pulled one of the smaller warding beads from his hair. It took a
moment to think how to reach the simple crystal core and before he could begin
to think what setting to try, Bolda took the bead from his hand then gave it back.
The buzzing stopped.
“They might have been impressed after all,” Bolda said.
A reality with Alisim and Strom.
“Lord?” Kori whispered. Two of the crystals were in one hand, in the other, her
knife. Wanting orders. Needing them.
“Keep them for when we’ve run out of other options.
They had been waiting, Rit decided. On top of everything else, he was still
dazed by whatever they had done to him. Part of his mind felt gone with it. There
was a way to prepare for possibilities, an ordinary way. They must have planned
to board them from the start, escalating the scanning to feel out their capabilities.
Tiles were falling on wood as he managed to get to his feet with Bolda's help.
By the time he had taken the three steps past the web eye, the last of a mansized
hole was being punched out of the main part of the flitter. Glow globes
competed with the blue shielding showing through other breaches in the hull.
Garm and Alicia were at the far end; nobody else was in sight. Rit signed Alicia to
stay put when she started towards him. He kept the hand with the bead in it for
balance on the carved wooden arch, feeling hooked scales under the heel of his
hand. I should have gone swimming with Slicanin, he thought.
The first E'kalt through had a stick in his hand, a weapon from the way he
handled it. A light green male with white head and lower limbs. Green feathers?
The E'kalt Salin was in the same, dressed in her own feathers, not clothes.
Braided cords looped around her chest. Temple colors. No, not feathers, flexible
scales, he suddenly remembered from the Net. They looked like feathers. Hers
were a soft gray over her entire body and moved as though there was a wind
blowing through them.
She pulled Net with her, the limited domestic level offered without preamble.
“You are the Strom,” she said to him in recognizable Xintan, signing a neutral
greeting.
“Salin.”
A pause, then: “I am Salin Rilla a'Talla of Temple Assuralla at Reema Station.”
She turned her head to look at Garm next, and Alicia and back to him. Small eyes
surrounded by writhing scales, the eye entirely black except for pupils that
appeared to open to shining red depths.
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca