The Cleansing (Book One: The Folara Chronicles)

043: Rion and Kara

Rion tied Kara to his waist as he slept, in the day he tied her to the tree. If she moved too fast, she drew stinging shards of crystal, and she quickly learned to hum and not move except fluidly, which required the use of muscles she hadn't known she had. At night she ached. The cord he used was not familiar to Kara and she could never work his knots loose. Her hair was growing as well, it was uncomfortable in her eyes.

She knew that Rion considered her different from the other Searchers in Galantyne's force. He definitely didn't like the idea that she was one. Sometimes she thought he pretended that she was one of his own people. He seemed to take a special interest in making sure she healed quickly and efficiently.

He was also systematically teaching her his ways. Why? Was he a fool? Could he not see what an advantage she would have once back inside the mountain?

Or did he not care? He never intended to let her go.

Every day they camped together he examined her and then pronounced her therapy for the day to get her in shape. He constantly told her that her training was archaic. He marveled that her people had survived so long in a world that was hostile to them.

She called him exile and usurper, she worked at his mind barriers at least the better part of the day realizing that it surprised him that she could. It surprised her too, frankly. No one else in her experience could sense the mind of a Foeman. And she knew that when she projected the image of a shield he hit right up against it. When she projected other images he would turn and look at her, sometimes questioningly, sometimes knowingly. He knew her game. It didn't seem to weaken him at all, but the frequent reminders of her ability gave him such a start all the time that she kept it up.

He showed her the secret of the smokeless fire. He made her practice it every morning and evening. He was teaching her to hunt, it having been something she was completely untrained in, and any snares she'd ever laid had been the devising of her own genius, not the experience of training.

He made her set traps and check them, and his devices were clever and she memorized them easily. He made her prepare the meals for him, and his all meat diet which he forced on her was making her fat. Every animal they caught, he made her skin it and prepare the hide. He never wasted anything. And every afternoon, he took her to a low field and he taught her to sense the crystals.

Then he fought her.

He gave her a lesson each day in combat. At first, she had refused to oblige him, but he was serious that she learn to fight rather than run. He thought her training to run away was cowardly.

He did not look at it as self-preservation.

Kara had come to realize that he wanted her alive for some reason, and so she had lost her fear of him. She began to fight with him hard, enjoying the mock battles, counting the days until they were real. He knew she fantasized this way and occasionally took her down a peg with a fast cut, or a stab when she wasn't prepared.

Kara hated him for that.

The times when she paid the most attention were in the evenings when he practiced his technique, as she called it, and Zalez as he called it.

"Stand, balance, lean, hold it in there!" He would stalk around her, his blue eyes critical, causing shivers of fear to course through her, which he found amusing. He would push her, to see if she could withstand. She had taken the offering of meditation as a time to plot to get away or kill him. But he was as alert during meditation as not.

Finding her thinking time useless, she would remember everything he had taught her all day, going over it all in her mind so often that her mental barrier was down, and Rion never told her how secretly pleased he was that she was paying attention. He'd thought she would, she wasn't the least bit stupid, but it was gratifying to know for sure. He loved going into her mind then, while it was completely occupied and the greater depths were unprotected. He would ease into her culture, her fears, her dreams.