Free Exile (The Oneness Cycle) by Rachel Starr Thomson Page B

doing so.
    And when they came home, flushed with victory and aching from the fight, it was only to be denounced. The Oneness declared she had been wrong. She had wasted the life of one of their own for no reason but selfish ambition. They condemned her together, as One.
    The ties had cut. Exile. The Spirit gone, with everyone who was part of it, like she’d experienced a hundred million deaths of all she held dear, consciously and unconsciously, all in a single moment.
    She wasn’t sure when her legs had given way, when she had ended up kneeling on the side of the highway with gravel digging into her knees and sobs wracking her body and soul. The thought came. You are never going to be picked up like this.
    And just as it did, she heard tires on the blacktop and saw lights and then a car pulled over. An old man was driving, white-haired and concerned.
    “Are you all right?” he asked. “Come, get in.”
    I’m not all right,her heart answered back. I will never be all right again.But all she said was, “Thank you.”
    She pulled her broken self off the shoulder and into the car and closed the door behind her.
     
    * * *
     
    At the top of the cliffs looking down over the bay and the village, a man stood.
    His face was bloodied and swollen. His leather jacket and jeans were torn and likewise streaked with blood—his own, mostly. He held a sword in his hand.
    Here? he asked.
    No, a voice answered. She’s gone. She left.
    Then why am I here?
    Because she needs to know the truth.
    I still don’t understand …
    There is a mouth here that will give it to her. You need to find that one and give him the words to say.
    The man nodded. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, powerful. Blond hair was tied back in a ponytail. His eyes scanned the village, looking for the others. They were there—a man, on his knees, rending the heavens with his prayers.
    That one?
    No.
    But that one would be a worthy ally nonetheless. He kept looking. He saw the small woman who had headed the cell here for many years. She looked grieved and weary. And he saw more. Two others. Neither where he expected them to be, or doing what he expected them to be doing.
    As he looked down the path, a form took shape. A dark-haired woman with olive skin and a beautiful face.
    “Greetings, brother,” she said.
    He bowed in respect. This woman was no small saint.
    “My lady,” he said.
    She smiled. “You have grown courtly in your passage. Does anyone in your time use a greeting like that?”
    “We pick things up here and there,” he said. “Books, television.”
    “Do you understand what you have to do?”
    “I think I do. But it doesn’t make sense to me.”
    “Why should today be any different? The plans never make sense to us. That is why they require faith. Surely you should know that.”
    “If I may ask, my lady, why are you here?”
    “I have a mission of my own,” Teresa told him. “But I wished to encourage you in yours.”
    He marvelled as he looked down at the village again. “Such a small place,” he said. “A tiny cell. Who would have dreamt so much consequence would be attached to it?”
    “We do not know what we are,” Teresa said. “Nor of how much consequence. The view is different from this side, but even we in the cloud do not see the whole. As you know now.”
    She laid a hand on his shoulder, not put off by the blood and the dirt and his battle-weary aspect.
    “Go, friend,” she said, and spoke the benediction of Oneness for ages past: “You are not alone.”

Chapter 7
    At first, Tyler thought he was imagining the man who stood in his path. It was dark, for one thing, an hour yet before dawn, and he could see the man too clearly, almost as though he exuded some kind of light. His search for Reese had taken him up into the cliffs again. Chris was searching on a lower path, a hundred feet down. This stretch of path was narrow and rocky and beset before and behind with prickly scrub; it was not exactly an auspicious place