Ondrea wrapped the shawl around her as she hurried to answer the timid knocking on her door. 

She knew who was there before she answered.

"Mathilde." She opened the portal and stood back to admit her cousin, and the seven self-declared Ladies of the Council of Valdemar. 

One by one the young women entered and although Mathilde sat, Kahlest remained standing. 

Ondrea sat beside her cousin, her feet pulled up beneath her. She waited for Kahlest to begin.

"I am Kahlest, Premiere Harpyiae of Valdemar."

"I know who you are, young woman. What do you want of me?" Ondrea decided not to allow this headstrong youngster to dominate, she knew nothing of the history of the Council or its purpose.

Kahlest refused to be intimidated. "We are here to formally organize the Aerie."

"If it's the Aerie you are concerned with, I have no experience of it. What do you truly seek?" 

Kahlest did manage to look slightly confused at Ondrea's terminology. "The Council of the Aerie..." 

"If you are referring to the Council of Ladies of Aquaria of which I am a part, I am afraid you don't understand the purpose of that Council any more than I understand your Aerie." Ondrea smiled as gently as she could for Mathilde's benefit. 

"My Aerie..." Kahlest repeated solemnly. "We Harpyiae, of which you find yourself in league, we have powers others don't have. We need to safeguard ourselves, and protect..."

"To avoid the exploitation of your gifts by the unscrupulous and power hungry? Yes, I do understand that. The Council of Aquaria was instigated for just such a purpose even before the first settlers arrived on the planet."

Kahlest looked astonished. "Before the first settlers came? Were there Harpyiae on our Mother planet?"

"The Council wasn't formed to protect the Harpyiae which are a mutation the planet has made to adapt life forms to its surface. The Council was formed to protect power. Your Harpyiae mutation—excuse me, our Harpyiae mutation is a gift. But I believe that if you look around you will see that the mutation is claiming not just a part of your women, but the majority. Soon, no females born to your people will be human. I can see that the partial transformation nature has given you is confusing to you, but I assure you, nature will have her way, and this civilization will die. No species has ever propagated without females."

"Ondrea! You have the power to stop the complete mutation!" Kahlest cried, her eyes pleading, but determined. She quit twisting her hands and pressed clenched fists into the floor.

"What makes you think I possess such a power?" she laughed. "Do you think because I sat on the Council in Aquaria I have some special power that will cure you, the planet, the hideous perversions of nature, the toxic air? I assure you, I have no such gift!"

Kahlest leaned forward. "Oh yes, you do, Ondrea, you have the sight."

Ondrea flung out her arm in mock surrender. "Sight? I have no such gift!" She looked to Mathilde for support and Mathilde nodded.

Kahlest looked aghast, her eyes wide. "I came here to attain the earth magic you and Mathilde have. I need to understand it."

"There is no earth magic!" 

"So, you believe that we're all going to die? That the expedition was a failure?" 

Mathilde glanced at Ondrea. "There might be a way." 

"A way to stay on this planet? Or a way to leave?" Kahlest gritted her teeth savagely.

Ondrea drew a deep shattering breath. "If we want to stay on the planet, we will have to stop fighting it, stop raping its indigenous species, and allow nature to work with us rather than against us. I believe I may have been given a way to help that happen."

"The Talisman that will heal the air?" Sibeal spat. "I don't believe in that legend. Isn't it just more earth magic, and you say there is no earth magic?"

Mathilde gave her a warning look and she glanced away. The anger coming from the seven girls was palpable. "Listen to what Ondrea is saying. We have to work with nature rather than against it. I believe as does Ondrea that the planet is willing to offer us safe haven if we will allow it."

"I have tapped in to a current that runs evenly through all life on the planet. I believe that the gift is available to all who are willing to put forth the effort to achieve it. It is called 'Zalez '. "

Silence. 

Ondrea continued. "I was taken from the safety of the undersea domes. I was kept alive because of a vial that came from earth that contained the ability to take magic from one person and trap it. All dark magic is false magic and therefore limited, its scope is perhaps the most dangerous because its illusion tricks the user into thinking they have solved a problem when they really haven't. While in the prison, I had time to explore the thoughts and precepts I'd been taught all my life and came to the conclusion that by tampering with magic at all, we had upset the balance of nature and we needed to return what we had stolen and make right what we had done wrong. I found that nature itself was willing to forgive us our unwitting endeavors, by giving us the Zalez."

"What does it do? What is it?"

"The people of the villages would say that Zalez is simply a form of telepathy, mind communication. But I have studied it; I believe it is much, much more. I believe through it, and not by using it to assimilate or meld or any other form of killing, we can alter our own genetics and become compatible with the planet."

"So what you're saying is that..." Kahlest was grasping at a way to understand. "Humans came and saw a problem and barged in, without stopping to see if the answer was available already. The planet has adapted to us, and if we are willing, we will adapt to the planet."

"There has been experimentation, on both sides. Undersea domes bought some time, assimilation and kai melding are an abomination and against nature."

"Wh-what about the Harpyiae?" 

Ondrea smiled. "Balance."

"What?" Even Mathilde looked up.

"For every indigenous creature that has been killed or otherwise assimilated, one of ours will be taken as well. Of course, nature took the best. The brightest, the most beautiful... you are all of that. Your sisters that have become bird.... "

There were collective gasps of surprise and fear. "How can we stop it?"

"By allowing nature to teach us how to change ourselves to become compatible."

"So who is in charge? Us or nature?" One girl burst out.

"Think of it as a compromise." Ondrea said.

"It will be a permanent way?"

"Yes. Unlike kai meld, or assimilation used by the exiles of Etrusia, this would be permanent, and irreversible."

"But isn't that exactly what the adaptees of Valdemar have already discovered?" Mathilde wondered aloud.

"Perhaps. They might have some idea, or they may have allowed part of the process to happen, but I believe that by allowing the whole process, one can feel the completeness as it happens." Ondrea smiled. "It has happened to me."

******

It wasn't a matter of flying. When Jerrika folded her wings around Korlon and closed her eyes imagining flight, she'd become weightless, enveloped in nothing. In flight, the other times she had become Harpyiae and flown, she'd been able to feel the wind in her face, the strength of her feathered extremities, the loose feeling of her insides compared to the very tight fabric of her outer body. And she could see!

Jerrika felt nothing.

Why couldn't she see? Had Quildor done something to her? Had Talisman?

"I am still here." Korlon allowed.

"Where are we?" 

"I am taking us to the Aerie."

Jerrika had no idea where the Aerie was or what it was. She felt the light bounce of touching down, felt her own body relax and the man she'd saved that she'd held with such force, was alive and still in her embrace. Even as her wings folded neatly into her shoulders and gently returned to their place, unseen and transformed, she found that she could see again.

The sounds of men moving, fighting, gambling, drinking, talking... these were sounds she instinctively recognized. He had taken them directly to the center of Quildor's army encampment.

Korlon grabbed her to him, crouched next to the wall and put a finger up to his lips to show her silence was needed, as if she didn't already know. Jerrika felt the blood from his cut on her skin, and tried to turn, but he held her back to his chest, not allowing any movement at all. "Why did you take us to the center of the army camp?" 

"I didn't know they were here. They weren't camped here a little while ago. I left Kara here."

Jerrika's eyes searched frantically for any sign of Kara. If Kara had been here when the army came she would have done well to get out. "I am sure she's gone to the tunnel, if she can. She will return to Galantyne."

Korlon reached and found the image of a cold steel wall. Why was Kara shutting him out? Had she awoken and felt abandoned? Would she go into the tunnel and find her way back to Galantyne? What if they had found her? These Minions. That would account for the steel wall image. The Minions were proficient in minor telepathy. It was possible that they had honed in on her frequency while she slept and healed and had taken her somewhere...

Jerrika felt these unguarded thoughts and managed to slip out of his suddenly slack grip. "That's terrible! You left her here unguarded? You left her here hurt and healing?"

"I didn't know the army would choose this hillside to camp on, Jerrika!" Korlon protested.

"But here! So close to the castle! Why would you bring her here at all?!

"It's as far as my strength allowed!" He yelled in her mind, now feeling the full weight of his failure and her censure. 

"Then you shouldn't have moved her at all! Where were you that you felt you had to move her here to this dangerous place?"

"She was being held prisoner by a Foeman, Jerrika, something you know nothing about, obviously, or you wouldn't be yelling at me for it! I saved her! There had been a fight and she'd been fatally injured, I saved her! Don't yell at me!"

"You're her guardian!"

"And you're her sister! But you can't hold her any better than I can!" He stood toe to toe with her, staring into her eyes, both of their expressions that of identical hostility. away.

Jerrika was the first to back down. She looked out the small stone window and shuddered at the close proximity of the Minions. "Korlon." She tried calmly. "How did you take us here?"

"You flew, and I moved us through space. It's a.... a peculiar gift." 

"Why didn't you just let me fly us away? I could have."

"I didn't know you could! How could I know that?" 

"Why use your gift at all right then? I had you!"

She was the most frustrating female besides Kara he'd ever encountered. "Instinct, Jerrika. If you recall, I am quite used to having to take care of the two of you, not the other way around."

Jerrika threw out an arm indicating the hillside covered in Quildor's army. "Is this how you take care of us?!" She scoffed angrily.

"Can you fly us over the Castle and Village? Perhaps we will spot Kara wherever she has gone."

Jerrika's tirade stopped immediately. "Yes." She said haughtily and stepped to him, tightening her slender arms around him from behind. 

*******