Read I Dare for Free Online

locating Alys Tiazan, strategically placed between the med tech and the bed in which Miri wilted against an oppression of pillows, long red hair snarled across one shoulder, eyes closed in a face as white as salt.

    Ignoring the med tech's anger, Shan focused on Miri, catching the shine of mayhem along her pattern, and a fear bordering on terror.

    "Cousin Miri," Alys said. "Lord yos'Galan is here."

    The woman in the bed opened fierce gray eyes and gave him a ragged grin.

    "What took you so long?"

    "I had to shave."

    The grin widened, briefly, then one hand wavered more or less horizontal, index finger almost pointing at the taller of the two green persons.

    "Edger," she said, hoarsely. The finger moved perhaps the width of a thought. "Sheather." Her hand fell back to the coverlet. "This is Val Con's brother, Shan yos'Galan. He's a Healer. Tell him what you told me."

    "What they told you," the med tech snapped in a mode perilously close to superior to inferior, "is arrant nonsense! The machines are needful! Your heartbeat must be monitored! Your air must be filtered! Your blood pressure and body temperature must be monitored! Shut down the machines and risk doing yourself needless, preventable harm, Lady. To even think of removing your lifemate, damaged as he is, from the catastrophe unit . . . "

    "Quiet."

    One word, quavering on the broken edge of a whisper—terrifying from a woman who could make herself heard amidst the pandemonium of a battlefield.

    " . . . is to kill him outright!" the med tech continued unabated. "These—persons!—are not of Erob's house medical staff! They—"

    "Silence!" Shan snarled, in all the force of Command. The tech's anger flared and he countered it, barely heeding what he did; merely casting out a glamour of cooling, like a handful of snowflakes. The med tech fell silent, passion melting, bowed and went over to sit in a chair.

    "Very good." He transferred his attention to the turtles, who were yet standing patiently, watching him out of yellow cat eyes.

    "Shan yos'Galan," the turtle on the right—Edger, Shan remembered—boomed in what was recognizably the Liaden High Tongue, though exactly which mode was a bit difficult to determine at this volume. "It is a joy to speak with the brother of my brother."

    "It is an honor to meet one of whom one's kin has spoken, often and with affection," he responded in the ritual stiffness of the High Tongue, in the mode of meeting the kin of kin.

    "Allow me, also," said the turtle named Sheather, in Terran, "to express my joy at making your acquaintance, Shan yos'Galan."

    "I'm delighted to meet you, as well, Shan replied in the same tongue. He glanced over to the bed, saw Miri rigid against her pillows; once again caught the edge of her fear against his Healer sense.

    "Please forgive me if I force the topic too quickly," he said to the turtles, in blessedly quick, modeless Terran, "but I cannot help but see my sister's distress. The med tech seems to believe that you would have her—and my brother as well—separated from the healing units."

    "These devices are all in discord!" cried the turtle named Sheather. "They interfere with the truesong of my sister's self. We hear that our brother is more grievously damaged still. I fear—in my heart, I fear—that the machine which imprisons him, helpless and unable to communicate his own needs, may also slay him."

    Shan frowned. "And yet our sister has come successfully out of a similar machine, healed of her injuries and only needing to regain her strength. Many—" What had Val Con said the Clutch called the family of humankind—aha! "Many of the Clans of Men do exactly that, every Standard Year. It is how we heal ourselves of physical wounds."

    "Yet, as my younger brother will have it, we hear discord emanate from yon devices and know too well the damage that may be done. Our sister is surrounded by those things which leach her strength, and make her path to full vibrancy into a