Free The Hero Strikes Back by Moira J. Moore Page B

we do? I had no idea.
    And he could tell. He smirked. Then he took pity on me. “I’ll just try to feel something. See if anything’s going on.”
    â€œGood start.”
    â€œReady?”
    â€œOf course.”
    The smirk faded into the slightest curl of the lip. “Of course,” he murmured.
    Little adjustments, like small pushes in the air, signalled the lowering of Karish’s internal shields, the natural walls with which he protected himself from the forces of the world. It was not a physical sensation. More mental, I supposed, though that wasn’t quite right either. Fortunately I was never asked to really explain it. Centuries’ worth of historians hadn’t been able to figure it out, or describe it. No reason why I should be able to.
    Sources never lowered their internal shields unless they felt a disaster brewing. They never thought to. Probably they didn’t think they could. And perhaps many of them couldn’t. Karish could, and possibly that was one of the things that made him so different from many other Sources.
    As his shields lowered, I erected my own around him, so only the forces he was inviting in actually came in. The others tried to rush in, too. It was my job to keep them off, keep them from crushing and killing him. At the same time I made sure the forces Karish was channeling didn’t drive his blood into such a huge rush that it burst his heart and his brain and killed him.
    It had been many months since we’d done this, Karish channeling and I shielding him. It suddenly felt like forever. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as when we were dealing with an actual disaster, but it still felt good. And wasn’t good such a weak word? Feeling Karish’s blood flow through his veins as I could never feel my own, being able to slow it down, it gave me a strange feeling of power.
    And through him, there were the forces, the rushing of the earth and sky. I couldn’t touch them myself, not directly. I could work them only through Karish. When he wasn’t channeling I was as blind to the forces as any regular. But when he channeled, a whole other world was revealed to me. A strange world of pressures and colors and impressions that were impossible to grab and define. And I didn’t know how Karish restrained himself from diving into it all the time. If I were a Source I would walk around with my shields down all the time and just feel everything.
    Of course, speaking as his partner, I was glad he didn’t. That would be a nightmare to shield.
    Hey, Dunleavy, try concentrating.
    So I did. And it struck me. “Something’s wrong,” I said.
    â€œEverything seems normal to me.”
    â€œNo, there’s a difference.” But I wasn’t sure where or what or how.
    He pulled his internal shields back up, and I lowered mine. It was a little difficult to channel and talk at the same time.
    â€œNeither of us know what High Scape feels like when things are normal, Lee. All the disasters we dealt with were caused by Creol. And now nothing’s been happening for months.”
    He had a point. Creol, the same Source who had had Karish abducted the previous year, had also been able to manipulate the forces in order to cause natural events. His plan had been to destroy High Scape with a natural event, and he had spent years practising to do it. So High Scape had experienced an unusually high frequency of natural events, and had acquired seven Pairs to keep it calm.
    No one had known what was going on. Karish and I had figured it out. And I had manipulated Creol’s shields while he was channeling, resulting in his death.
    I usually tried very hard not to think about that.
    Still, “There’s something off, and it’s not like when Creol was up to his stunts.”
    â€œWell, I didn’t feel anything.”
    There was a finality about his tone that I didn’t