Callie found the others waiting outside the dining room, in considerably better shape than when she’d last seen them. The women wore gowns like her own, the men loose, long-sleeved jackets belted over trousers in various colors. Brody, Dell, and Jesse all appeared completely on the mend, betraying evidence of their exposure to the healing gel in their freshly cut hair and the new, tidily clipped beard on Brody’s face. Unnoticed, Callie watched them from the periphery, marveling at what had been accomplished: that they had survived mutiny, disaster, and a climb over perilous mountain cliffs; that they had crossed two hundred miles of trackless wilderness and actually found the entrance to the promised Safehaven; that six had walked into a camp of hundreds and lived to reach that entrance, rescuing sixteen others in the process. It boggled her mind, and she knew they couldn’t have done it without Elhanu.
Elhanu. Mr. C. She still struggled to get her mind around the notion of their being the same person. It made sense in the big picture, for there’d been indications. But she had always imagined Elhanu as someone removed—a powerful, untouchable, incomprehensible being. Mr. C was more open and approachable than anyone she’d ever known. Images spun off the spindle of memory: his grin, his assurances atop the rappelling cliff, his conversations with Pierce and Tuck before the evening lectures, his unflagging support of Pierce’s leadership, the way he’d opened Callie’s eyes to the possibility of love. He was a friend, a confidant, a surrogate father. Now he was Elhanu, as well.
Whit finally spotted her and hurried over, John and LaTeisha trailing after him.
“He’s going to make it,” Callie said in answer to their unspoken question. “Has already been on his feet once today.”
“With a broken pelvis?” LaTeisha exclaimed.
Callie explained about the tank of super-healing gel, and Whit nodded. “Karl and Jess had the same treatment, and they’re well on the road to recovery, too. Must be pretty effective.” He wore midnight blue sparked with silver threads and a new eye patch. Clean, rested, and shaven, he was a new man, right down to the unexpected white hairs threading his mustache.
“What about Evvi?” Callie asked.
LaTeisha frowned. “Don’t know. Anna died before they got her to surgery, though.”
“I don’t get it,” John mused. “If we can be resuscitated and sent back to Earth, why not just put us back into the game and let us try again?”
No one knew, but the question reminded Callie of her talk with Jaalel. Whit must’ve seen a change in her expression because he cocked a questioning brow.
She looked around at them, wondering how to tell them. “I saw Mr. C last night,” she finally said.
“He made it?” John cried.
“Not exactly. He didn’t go through the Cauldron.”
John’s blond brows drew together.
“What are you saying?” Whit asked.
“That he’s Aggillon?” LaTeisha suggested, wryly.
“Elhanu himself.”
Shocked disbelief froze their faces.
After a long minute, LaTeisha shook her head. “Someone’s putting you on, girl.”
“Jaalel? I doubt it. Besides, it fits, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s hard to believe, and yet . . . it’s not.”
Silence followed as each of them pondered Callie’s revelation, their expressions turning blank and flat. No further protest followed, but they seemed as disoriented by the notion as Callie had been.
Then the dining room doors swung open and it was time to eat. Inside, a linen-covered sideboard held dishes of every color, temperature, and texture, from kiwi-exotic to mashed-potato-plain. Delicate radish roses, turnip irises, and cucumber fans garnished platters set among elegant flower arrangements and ice carvings of a dolphin and a swooping hawk. A table lined with high-backed chairs stood at room center. Twenty place settings of silver and crystal gleamed against white linen. Crisp-uniformed Aggillon stood ready to assist, pulling back chairs, pouring drinks, carrying away emptied plates, while one played quiet melodies on the baby grand piano in the corner.
“What a spread!” LaTeisha exclaimed as Callie settled beside her at the table. “And not a hair in the lot of it.”
“None of it burned, either,” Callie said dryly.
They laughed, then sobered as they realized their comrade could well be gone.
“As maddening as she was,” LaTeisha said, “she had her good points. I never knew anyone as unrelentingly optimistic.”
“Or as devoted to the manual,” Callie added, finding herself more concerned about Evvi’s recovery than she would have expected.
They talked and ate and marveled, and afterward lingered over truffles and coffee, ribbing the former Morgan-supporters for their poor judgment. Hope, it turned out, was no simple rest stop. A veritable resort, it boasted two Olympic-sized swimming pools, three spas, tennis and racquetball courts, Ping-Pong and pool tables, weight rooms, a movie theater, a well-stocked library, and a network of trails that wound through acres of gardens, ranging from tropical paradises to the stark beauty of wind-sculpted rock.
“The ultimate getaway!” LaTeisha pronounced.
“Rowena would die, wouldn’t she?” John said. He was slouched back in his chair across the table from Callie, arms folded across his chest. “To find Pierce proven right—and in spades! Ooh!”
“Why is she so down on Pierce?” Callie asked, stroking the handle of her coffee cup. “She’s not even rational about it anymore.”
“I figure they were lovers once,” said Tuck, popping a truffle into his mouth.
“Nah,” LaTeisha said. “Pierce is a regular Victorian. No sex outside of marriage. Not her type at all.”
“That was the problem,” John said. “He was the only man she went after and couldn’t get.”
“Get out!” LaTeisha scoffed. “She never went after Pierce.”
“She did, Teish. Big time. He turned her down.” John brushed at the crumbs on the tablecloth before him. “After she recovered, he became a sort of hero to her. To Garth, too. Remember when we first knew them? Pierce could do no wrong—he was the man everyone wanted to be with in a pinch. But after the Trogs had him, it was different. He wasn’t a hero anymore. He was just a man, and it was much too obvious.”
They fell silent, mulling over his words. Callie stirred cream and sugar into her freshened coffee and admitted to herself that John’s explanation made sense. She remembered her own disappointment on first seeing Pierce’s weakness, even though she’d understood better than most how debilitating—and humiliating—panic attacks could be.
“Well,” she said, “he’s sure back to hero status as far as I’m concerned.”
“Amen to that,” Whit murmured.
Beside her LaTeisha exhaled. “I wonder if any of them made it back.”
John raised a brow at her. “To the road, you mean?”
“It’d be a miracle if they did,” Gerry drawled.
Tuck waved another truffle dismissively. “They made their choices.”
“But they were our friends,” Callie murmured.
Tuck snorted. “Some friends. Did you know Rowena stole the map just before they ran out that night by the lake?” Everyone turned to stare at him.
“No,” Whit said softly. “How is it you do?”
Tuck popped the last truffle into his mouth and glanced down the table at Brody, sitting on the end.
Brody’s face reddened. “Hey, at the time I thought she was right.”
“You were going to leave us in the middle of nowhere without a map?” LaTeisha squeaked.
“We were desperate.”
“We would’ve made you a copy,” Callie said.
“There wasn’t time. And no one thought Pierce would go for it.”
“He would’ve called you fools,” Callie agreed, “but he wouldn’t have stopped you.”
She recalled how nervous Meg had been that last night. The desperate ring in her voice. Had she known Rowena was taking the map? She must have.
Movement at the edge of her vision distracted her from her bitter musings. Mr. C—Elhanu—stood in the doorway. He was still the same white-bearded, white-haired, medium-framed man, but now a tingle washed through her as she met his gaze. Slowly she stood, chair whispering across the carpet. Other chairs thumped and squeaked as Whit, LaTeisha, and John followed her lead. The rest of them watched in consternation, and then rose to their feet as well.
The Aggillon leader strode to the chair at the head of the table opposite Brody and gestured toward them. “Please, sit down.” And sat himself.
They settled back into their places, but no one spoke, the air suddenly thick with tension.
Finally Whit said, “It’s good to see you again, sir.”
Elhanu grinned—the old twinkly-eyed expression that was pure Mr. C. “And you’re wondering why in the world I played this little game, aren’t you?”
They glanced at one another uncertainly.
The Aggillon leader sobered. “It’s not a game. You need to trust me. This”—he gestured at himself—“seems to help.”
Again his words met silence. Then Whit shook his head. “But that isn’t really you, is it, sir? I mean, you look like somebody’s father, when you’re anything but.”
“Here, I am your father,” Elhanu said quietly. “In more ways than you know. And there is nothing false in this image I present to you.”
“Except that it isn’t real.”
Elhanu smiled. “It may not be all that I am, but it is very real. And certainly it is the most comfortable for you right now.”
“Will we ever see you as you really are, sir?” Callie asked.
“Eventually.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Brody erupted testily. “And what is all this ‘sir’ stuff?”
He wasn’t the only one who didn’t know the truth about Mr. C, but as Callie looked down the table at him, she realized he would have the most trouble accepting it. He’d never liked the older man, thought him a liability who never should’ve been allowed to leave Rimlight.
“Mr. C is Elhanu, Brody,” she explained, when no one else did.
Brody blinked. Jaws fell open around him, glazed eyes turning to the older man. No one spoke for a long, long moment. Then Brody drove to his feet. “You’re the one who did all this? Kidnapped me, ruined everything for your silly little game?” His fury blazed, bright and shocking.
Elhanu regarded him with utter calm. “If not for this, you would be dead, Brody Jamarillo. Remember? Your chute didn’t open.”
Brody’s flush drained to dead white. He stood trembling, then sagged into his chair. “I hit the ground,” he whispered, staring at the table. “I remember now. . . .” Slowly his gaze climbed back to Elhanu’s bearded face. “When I go back—”
“You will recover completely. They’ll call it a miracle.”
As Brody stared up at him, something changed in his swarthy face. It was as if a wall crumbled away and something like . . . awe? . . . took the place of his bitterness. Blushing, he dropped his gaze to his hands.
John broke the ensuing silence. “So, Mr.—er, Elhanu, sir. Do you really forbid the Tohvani to appear in their true form, as they say?”
Callie’s gaze flicked to him in surprise. She hadn’t told John about her encounter.
Elhanu’s lips quirked. “Actually the Tohvani are in their true form. It’s just their bodies you’re not seeing.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, come now, think about it. The real you is not this outward flesh; it’s the part that thinks and feels and remembers and decides. Your soul resides in your body as your body resides in your clothes— that is your true self. I have merely stipulated that the Tohvani must appear naked in your presence.”
“Why?” Callie asked.
Elhanu turned gentle eyes upon her. “You would find them mind-bogglingly beautiful. They’d have you bedazzled before you knew it. I thought it better you should see them for what they really are. It is not so great a handicap for them. They’ve found ways around it.”
Jaalel entered and spoke in Elhanu’s ear. Watching him, Callie appreciated anew how beautiful he was, how even with their deferent manner, he and his kind inspired feelings of worship. If the Tohvani looked like them . . .
Jaalel stepped back, and Elhanu addressed them. “My servants have prepared a ballad in honor of your arrival.”
His announcement elicited low exclamations of approval. Exquisitely executed, breathtakingly beautiful, and invariably illuminating, Aggillon performances were always a treat. Now three of them entered and stood before the empty sideboard. One carried a small, triangular stringed instrument, which seemed to float before him as his fingers played an intricate introduction.
The vocalists had sung only a few lines before the hairs on Callie’s neck stood up. They were singing about Pierce. And Morgan. And all the rest of it—the doubts, the desertion, the battle by the lake, the mountain trek, the freeing of the prisoners . . .
The music rose and fell in sympathy with the events, shifting from major to minor key and back. It covered the gamut of emotion—the melody often so stirring it made them sound like heroes. Callie wasn’t the only one to shift in restless embarrassment. Finally the singers moved into a tenderly peaceful passage only to break off mid-measure, leaving their listeners blinking in surprise. The lead singer, the dark-featured Nahmel, explained with a smile. “I’m afraid we don’t know the end of this one yet.”
They bowed and exited, leaving their bewildered audience to grapple with disappointment, and then understanding. A few of them even laughed, for they should have seen it coming.
“Is it true what they sang about the others?” LaTeisha asked. “Reaching the road, I mean?”
“Of course,” Elhanu replied.
“Can you tell us who?” Callie asked.
“Meg is still with us,” he assured her with a small smile. “And Rowena. And Morgan, as well, although”—his smile faded—“not for long.”
“Is there any way we can help?” Callie asked.
“They are more than a hundred miles away—even further in their souls. Whatever help you might offer, they would refuse.” He sighed, his regret palpable. “I have given them as much as they will accept. But I cannot—I will not—override their volition.”
He changed the subject then, asking about their accommodations— if they were satisfied, if there was anything they needed. Of course there wasn’t, so he advised them to enjoy themselves, then stood to take his leave. Pausing behind his chair, he looked down at them, a half smile curving his lips. “You’ve done very well, people. I know it’s been hard, but you’ve stuck with it. That has pleased me more than you know.” He met each person’s gaze, and when it was Callie’s turn she felt the link pulse, flooding her with affection and an approval so strong, so warm and tender, so incredibly intimate, it brought her to tears. Even after he left, the glow remained, metamorphosing into the most profoundly satisfying sense of accomplishment she had ever known.
No one spoke for some minutes after his departure. Then Whit expressed it for them all. “Wow!”
And John murmured, “Aggillon or not, I’d follow that man anywhere.”