A Thousand Shades Of Black

Chapter 13 – Shirah's Song

“Riddick,” she replied and there was an undertone of the young woman he had talked to in his dreams. He guessed that whatever else Shirah was, she wasn’t human anymore or really alive in the way that other people were. But at the same time she was intense and real in a manner that made her seem almost more alive than those around her; more present in some strange way.

She was shorter in person, he noted with a small smile. Silver hair braided down her back, cloudy eyes that somehow seemed to miss nothing, delicate hands and feet and the great expressiveness of her face – she was like no one else, yet she seemed to be the very essence of Furya itself. She was both fierce and powerful, but with all her passion firmly mastered and controlled.

She reminded him a little of the Lord Marshall.

“Lady, you keep the gates warded so the Void Walker is wrong, correct?” Faille choked out past his bruised larynx.

“Incorrect,” Shirah retorted dryly and the glade rustled with the uneasy shifting of the assembled Furyans. “I set the wards but I long ago ceased to be able to tend to them. I trained the Void Walkers to that task but now only two exist in all the universe.”

“Only two?” Alia sounded horrified and Shirah turned those misty eyes on her with a grim expression.

“Yes. Yourself and a boy child on a distant world are all that are left. Well, until you breed of course.” Shirah tossed that last bit off idly but it made Riddick freeze solid. Oh fuck, he hadn’t considered that aspect of marriage. In the back of his mind he could hear Alia choking back her laughter. He shot her a sour look.

“Okay, so what do we do about it?” Kyra interrupted, hands on her hips and mouth twisted into a grimace.

“You do nothing. I will train Sturm and the warriors will fight off whatever comes through the gate.” Kyra looked ready to protest Shirah’s edict, but a sharp look from Alia silenced her, though Kyra’s face was settling into the stubborn lines Riddick knew so well. She was going to be trouble, Riddick knew.

“And now, perhaps your compatriot would care to show herself?” Shirah raised an eyebrow and Aereon materialized at Riddick’s elbow. He gave the Elemental a wry look and she returned it.

“So much for staying out of sight,” Aereon muttered and then turned to nod at Shirah. “I am Aereon.”

“An Air Elemental,” Shirah sniffed in condescension. Riddick was finding the face-off between the two old biddies, each of which liked to be the hand stirring the pot, to be damn funny. It was like watching two queens meeting and trying to determine precedence.

“How much time do we have?” Alia broke in between the two old women with a toss of her head.

“A few weeks at most,” Shirah admitted.

“Weeks?” Alia’s jaw had dropped and it was the most upset he’d ever seen her. The distress rippling through her mind was almost painful to him.

He stepped nearer to her and rested a hand on her shoulder.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have spent a lifetime mastering what little Void Walking skills I have, I can’t learn enough in a few weeks to properly ward the gates.” That flat voice was a mask behind which her genuine misery was beating at him.

“Nonsense, child,” Shirah waved airily at her. “With me to teach you, the skills will be mastered easily. It is true that you have not the power to be a proper gatekeeper, but you can certainly handle so minor a task.” The glade was filled with disbelieving Furyans who stared blankly at their spiritual leader.

“If you say so,” Alia said in a doubtful tone.

“I do.”

Alia groaned and slumped down to lean her back against a tree. If Riddick’s concern hadn’t been blazing in the back of her soul, she would have been tempted to bash her brains out with a rock. She was utterly torn between admiration for Shirah and loathing of her.

She had never known anyone with such a casual arrogance coupled with such extraordinary power, but she also had never known anyone so fiercely protective and deeply compassionate. How it all managed to abide in one person was a paradox that Alia was nowhere near to figuring out.

“Again! You aren’t trying!” Shirah clapped her hands and with a groan, Alia dragged herself upright once more. Not trying? The pendulum was definitely shifting back to loathing.

Alia gathered the threads of energy around her and once more tried to weave them into the complicated pattern that Shirah had shown her. It was like trying to knit eels. They slithered away from her with a will of their own even as she was trying to bind them up.

“You must learn to master them!” Shirah paced around her, watching Alia struggle, with those filmy eyes sharply following the patterns. For someone who was at the very least four hundred years old, she sure was spry.

“I am trying.” Alia kept her tone level by force of will but she’d had two days of instruction and she was still unable to master even the basics of warding. Her lack of training as a child, having never learned the meditations and exercises she should have, was hindering her greatly.

“This is hopeless,” Shirah frowned and continued her pacing while Alia released the tendrils in startlement.

“So, we’re doomed?” Alia felt a wash of despair rolling over her and then Shirah barked a sudden laugh and she was thrown into confusion.

“Of course not!” Shirah laughed again. “I have more than one trick up my sleeve, child.” Her white hair seemed almost to glow as she paused and studied Alia. “How close is your bond with Riddick?”

“Beg pardon?”

“You heard the question.” The irritable snap made Alia flinch slightly.

“I have nothing to compare it to.” Her own temper was flashing and she growled out the words.

“Hmm.” Shirah tilted her head and frowned. “True. You are one of the few love-pairings I have seen in a long while.” Her statement baffled Alia. Love-pairings? What did that mean?

“I am not certain I understand.”

“No doubt. Many things have been lost, despite my best efforts.” Shirah swirled away and the robes seemed to flutter longer and more elaborately than a moment before and then the strange after-image was gone. “I am going to have to go inside your head, girl. It will be uncomfortable and it will probably alarm your mate. Warn him, will you?”

Alia’s mouth gaped open but she snapped it shut hard. In all her years she had never known anyone who could disconcert her like Shirah, except maybe Riddick. She sent out a warning tendril to him and got his troubled response.

“It is done,” she informed Shirah who nodded.

“Your bond is tight if you could do that so swiftly. That will be an asset to you in the future.” Alia was getting really tired of cryptic pronouncements from strange old ladies. “Now, come here.”

Alia stepped up to the woman and there was a shift and the world seemed to drop out from under her.

It wasn’t like Void Walking, she felt as though she was lost and thrown out into nothingness without a sense of direction or control. Sheer unadulterated terror tried to unseat her mind and she controlled it with a sharp stubborn anger. She was Furyan and a Void Walker and she would not panic.

Music started up somewhere, a tune she remembered from her early childhood. Her mother had sung it to her in her rare sober moments, when the worms of incipient madness weren’t eating her. She grabbed hold of that music like a lifeline and was dropped into the luminous heart of a star. Alia felt her thoughts being unraveled by strong determined fingers and struggled frantically against a mind far stronger than her own.

Riddick jumped up from the campfire and felt the anguish in Alia’s mind consuming him. He sprinted out of the campsite heading like an arrow to its mark. He knew where she was but not what was happening. Damn it, what the hell was Shirah doing to her? The fearful warning that she had sent some moments before had alerted him to the possibility of discomfort but it hadn’t even hinted at the feeling of dissolution that was washing through him. It was like being torn apart.

“Li!” He came crashing through the underbrush and pushed past delicate saplings to where Alia lay sprawled on the forest floor, white as milk and still as death.

Shirah was standing over her with a puzzled expression.

“Riddick,” she acknowledged him calmly and the urge to attack her was one he had to fight. He knew she was an ally, he knew there was more going on than he understood, but the animal side wanted nothing more than to rend and tear. He dropped down beside Alia and pulled her against him.

“What happened?”

“She has suffered much damage through her life. I attempted to speed teach her and discovered that her inner fortifications were more powerful than I had expected.” There was a long pause and she turned those washed-out eyes on him. “She kept me out, Riddick. It nearly destroyed her, but she kept me out.” There was wonderment in the tone but all Riddick could think of was that Alia had been hurt.

“Will she be all right?”

“I have grown arrogant.” Shirah shook her head. “I never even considered the possibility.”

“Will she be all right?” he repeated angrily.

“Yes, of course. Eventually.” Shirah drifted away across the glade and then looked back at him. “She is very strong. Had she only been trained properly…” Shirah sounded sad. “It may be too late though, there is no way for me to get in and repair the deficiencies.”

“Li?” Riddick ignored Shirah and turned his heart and mind towards his mate. She was in there somewhere, battered and frightened. He dropped into her and never saw the glow that consumed them both or Shirah’s startled face.

She was five years old and hiding under the couch. Her mother had brought home the Man again and she huddled in fear as the terrible noises continued from the bedroom. Sometimes the men hit her but this one had tried to touch her like he did her mother, but she had kicked him and run away. Since then she had made it a habit to hide. Most men never even knew there was a child in the house anymore. Still, he was the worst of them, the one that frightened her the most. He would come into her bedroom looking for her, he…

“Li?” A man’s voice, but no one ever called her that except mother. She hunkered down further, trying to be as still and silent as a mouse. “Li, where are you?” There was something nagging in the back of her mind. Did she know that voice? A pair of silver eyes peered under the couch and she froze in terror. A hand reached out to her and she backed away still further. “Li, it’s okay, it’s over. You can come out now.” It was over? The noises were louder now, it would be worse soon, when the Man was done and mother was sleeping.

“He’s still here,” she whispered back to the silver-eyed stranger and he frowned. “I can’t come out until he goes away.”

“It’s okay, Li. I’m here. No one’s going to hurt you with me here.” There was a strength and assurance in his voice that calmed her down some. His hand was outstretched and she wanted to trust him.

“I can’t. He’ll touch me again,” she whimpered and the silver eyes went molten with a fury that frightened a squeak from her.

“I won’t let anyone touch you, Li.” His anger wasn’t directed at her, she realized, but at the Man. He seemed so sure that he could protect her and she wanted to be safe, to stop hiding. Tentatively she put out her own hand and let him draw her out from under the couch.

“Promise?” She hated the trembling of her voice as she looked up at him. He was really big, bigger than the Man and he looked strong and tough, even a little scary, but he nodded firmly.

“Promise.”

Riddick looked around the miserable apartment, at the filthy and debris-scattered floor with a shiver of revulsion. Beside him the tiny black-haired girl with her huge dark eyes was watching him with warring emotions. Fear chased hope across her face and he leaned down and picked her up. She was light as a feather, half-starved and almost feral. Looking in her eyes though, he could see the core of stubborn strength that would mark his mate in years to come.

He wasn’t sure why they were here in the past like this but it was obviously some moment of Alia’s childhood, some terrible fear she had been catapulted back to by Shirah’s attempt to speed up her training.

“Do I know you?” The small sweet voice drew his attention back to the little girl in his arms and he nodded. He wondered if their children would look like this. She was small and helpless and he wasn’t at all sure he was ready to take care of something so dependant. Yet there was something about the liquid trust in her eyes that tugged at him as well.

“I’m Richard,” he told her and she frowned then nodded back at him.

“I know you.” There was an echo in her words, as though several different Alia’s were speaking at once.

A man came into the room. He was half-naked and there was a predatory look on his face that made Riddick feel sick. Alia buried her head in his shoulder and Riddick glared at the stranger.

“Where’s my dessert?” The man’s singsong tones were far from sane and the track marks on his arms told their own story.

“You are never touching her again,” Riddick growled and the man laughed.

Alia was ten and the man was back, he was laughing at her and buckling his pants back up, but she saw something from the corner of her eye – something sharp and shiny. She grabbed it and lunged at him. She watched as his belly parted under the blade, saw gray loops of flesh falling from his open stomach and she screamed.

“I hate you! I hate you! You fucker!” Tears were blurring her vision and she just kept hacking at him until he stopped moving.
There was someone else in the room and she turned ready to defend herself.

“Li, it’s okay, it’s over now.” He stepped into the light and his silver eyes were solemn and sad. He was so big, dressed like a fighter, with knives of his own, but she sensed no threat from him, felt nothing but concern radiating off of him.

“He hurt me. I had to,” she whispered and the big man nodded.

“You did exactly right, Li,” he told her and she relaxed, the kitchen knife falling from her fingers.

Riddick watched as her eyes calmed and the terrible anger faded. Her childhood had been at least as fucked as his own had been, yet she had kept her ability to care. He wondered how that had happened.

There was a ripple and then Alia was there again. She was older, maybe sixteen now, and there was a baby strapped to her chest. She was kneeling in a hallway with a set of jackers, working a lock. The baby shifted and Alia started to hum softly.

“Almost there, Kavie,” Alia muttered and the lock popped open under her fingers. Riddick followed ghostlike behind her into the apartment she had broken into and watched her. Alia’s eyes roamed over the place and she began grabbing small valuable items and tucking them into the baby sling. A quick trip to the fridge provided the baby with milk and then Alia was moving quickly out of the apartment, her eyes roaming for any sign of danger.

He followed as she slipped onto the street and still wary, began to make her way through the city. He had never been to Kingdom Come but he knew its rep and Alia’s memories confirmed it all. It was a war zone, not a place to live and he saw disease, starvation and filth everywhere. Her aversion to the Merc ship’s condition made more sense to him now. If he’d grown up here, he’d shower every ten minutes.
The baby fussed and Alia readjusted the sling absently, sticking a finger into the child’s mouth.

“You still hungry?” A pause. “No? Maybe the diaper?” Another pause, as she checked. “No? Hmm.” A sudden concern lighting her eyes, compelled her forwards.

Riddick followed the long legs as they pounded along the pavement. The building she darted into was like all the others, the stairs creaking and groaning beneath her frantic feet and then into the cramped three-room hovel that he knew all too well from the last two memories.
In the middle of the floor lay a woman, still and broken. Her hair, midnight black and rippling with purples and blues, lay spread out on the floor and the gaping wound in her chest was still leaking sluggishly.

“Mother!” The hoarse scream tore at him and he watched the teenage girl fall to her knees in shock and horror. She began to cry, harsh racking sobs, a desperate sound that compelled him to wrap her up and hold her. She fell into his arms, the baby between them and cried.

“Li. I’m here,” he whispered and she clutched him hard.

She was twenty-eight and pinned to the floor by two of the Mercs, she was screaming and fighting them with every last ounce of strength and it was useless. Kava was on the floor sobbing as the other Merc drove into her slender shape with brutal cruelty. Alia was threatening them with every terrible fate imaginable and Kava’s tears were falling onto the wooden floorboards, staining them dark.

Her throat was raw, her body in agony, fighting the damned Merc’s hold on her and then she was forced to watch as the gun was pressed to Kava’s temple. One more wail of desperation and then her baby sister’s head exploding and the spatter of blood and brain.

“No, no, no, no,” she was chanting as they pulled her to her feet, still covered in her sister’s departed life. “Kavie,” she whispered as she was dragged away from the only person she had ever loved.

Riddick watched in revulsion and fury. He noted every face, noted them with cold hatred. The girl, her raven hair so like the mother’s, the huge eyes filled with fear, the gaze pinned on her sister expecting at any minute to be saved by the one who had always kept her safe, and that final moment of realization just before the trigger was pulled. It enraged him and he wanted vengeance on those bastards.

Alia was standing beside him now and staring at her hands, eyes avoiding the blood spattered floor.

“I wasn’t fast enough.” The deadness in her voice was hard to hear.

“You were alone and there were a lot of them,” he told her and she looked up at him in surprise.

“Riddick?” Not quite to the present he thought to himself.

“Hey.” He watched her face go through several expressions and then she simply sighed.

“I should never have left her alone, not even for a minute.” Alia clenched her fists in anger and he reached out to her.

“Let’s go home, Li,” he whispered and she turned and something shifted in her eyes. The woman he looked at now nodded, fully herself again, fully in the present.

“Yes please,” she answered him with one more look around the room.

Alia opened her eyes onto the teaching glade with a heavy sluggish feeling in her limbs. Riddick was holding her and his eyes were grim and serious. She had hazy memories of him being with her someplace terrible but the images were fading fast.

“You okay?” he asked her and Alia nodded slowly.

“I’ve been better,” she acknowledged with a grimace.

“Interesting.” Shirah’s voice drifted down to her and she tilted he head to look at the old woman. “He had no trouble passing through your barriers.”

“Someday you will learn to speak English,” Riddick growled and Alia rested her head on his chest, both amused and irritated by Shirah, as usual.

“You went into her mind with no difficulties,” Shirah explained patiently. “This may be the key to training her.”

“Care to explain that one?” Alia murmured and managed, by dint of Riddick’s hand on her spine, to sit up.

“If the two of you can join so deeply, it is possible that I can feed the information to him and he can filter it in to you,” Shirah dropped down cross-legged on the ground beside them.

“Right now?” Alia felt like ten miles of bad road.

“Yes, while your defenses are weakened,” Shirah was sounding slightly rueful and Riddick opened his mouth to protest.

“Very well,” Alia sighed and he shut his mouth.

“You sure?” he asked in a low voice.

“Might as well. I doubt this will get any easier over time,” she muttered back to her mate with a sour tone.

“Then let us begin again.”