Free The Farris Channel by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

opening to funerals.
    Rimon grabbed the ambient nager to inject his own sick loss, anguish, shock, and ragged disbelief into the emotional atmosphere, working them toward the catharsis they’d been suppressing since the previous day.
    He had watched Clire Farris Kill Solamar’s Companion, Losa. His daughter, Aipensha, had been trampled to death trying to save Clire from her kidnappers. Neither would have been outside the shelter if it hadn’t been for his disregard for the oldest of Fort laws.
    Solamar stepped up beside him, and joined as they had when the two of them had stood upon the Fort wall and become a beacon of blazing Gen nager for the Raiders. Only now, they raised grief, shame, remorse, guilt and all that went with being unable to save a loved one.
    Kahleen joined Solamar, dressed in her best and flipping her unbound auburn hair behind her shoulders. Lexy slid against Del Rimon’s other side, her field work impeccable, blending her channel’s nager into theirs seamlessly. She took a moment to mutter, “The selyn audit is finished. Tanhara lost a lot of renSimes, so they’re arriving here Gen-high. We’ll have enough selyn to support the workers and get the new buildings done. The Companion situation looks good too with Aipensha....”
    She just plain blew the fields to pieces sending shards of flashing emotion slicing through the crowd. In that split second, Rimon was undone.
    He turned in front of Lexy, grabbed her tight to him, rolled so his back was to the crowd and tried to block all Lexy’s Farris nageric power from the crowd while he rocked against the hollow pain they shared.
    It’s not your fault, Father.
    It was a whisper on the wind, an icy twist to the ambient. He looked over Lexy’s bent head with eyes and Sime senses. At the edge of the graveyard, near the Farris plots, mist oozed from between the tall evergreens. Against that mist, made of that mist, shrouded in misty nageric clouds, stood Aipensha clinging to Zeth Farris, her grandfather.
    Behind her gathered rank after rank of the dead. Rimon recognized many from the names on the slates he held and others from his own distant childhood. The wraiths whispered as if singing to the music. “It was not your fault. You saved the Fort. Live now, grow stronger.”
    Aipensha’s voice led them, her accent, caroling her irrepressible joy in life. His father’s voice blended with hers. Behind Aipensha the chorus chanted her words, an echo that passed back to the farthest rank under the trees, in the depths of growing shadow. “Father,” she sang. “Del Rimon,” sang the others. “Rimon Farris!”
    A stiff breeze whirled through the valley, rattled the trees, dispersed the tendrils of mist as if they’d never been. The musicians fell silent.
    Kahleen and the other Companions on the boulder beside them had moved to contain the raw nageric outburst.
    Rimon, still sheltering Lexy, turned to the gathered mourners to see what they had made of the mist turning into people who spoke as if chanting to the music of grief. The audience looked up at him with no trace of awareness of what he’d seen. Seen not zlinned he realized. There had been nothing to zlin. There had been nothing there.
    Beside him, Solamar whispered, “Who was that?”
    Solamar saw that? I don’t believe he saw that. “Aipensha. My daughter. Zeth, my father. Others who died yesterday, or years ago. They’re together now.”
    Their eyes met, and he knew Solamar had seen.
    While he stared at Solamar, Lexy pulled herself together, hugged him one last time and stood away. The three channels once again orchestrated the tenor of the ambient nager in a more staid fashion.
    Nevertheless, they had shared their naked grief and guilt with everyone there, heaping it on top of what others felt. Rimon was ashamed.
    He began the ceremony. “We gather to bid farewell to eighty-four of the finest people who have ever lived and two of our children. They gave their lives so that we could go on