Shadowkill

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Savant 4 (speaking to notepad):

A rather amusing incident. The Capture Specialist playing his tricks on a common sakali. Appears the subject is suffering from boredom.

QUESTION: Except for samples of body fluids and brain tissue and drugs to suppress the fugue state, the Ciocan has been left undisturbed by orders of the Council. The failure of all attempts to control adult Dyslaerors cannot, of course, be counted a waste of time; negative results are often as valuable as positives. However, work with the remnant of the sample has reached the point where further experiments will not be worth the expense. The council must agree that it is time to start collecting infants and gravid females and dispose of this lot.

SUGGESTION: Ransom one or more of them to Voallts Korlatch, alive but Wiped. If ransom is refused, then dispatch them to Black House so we can recoup some of our expenses. They are too dangerous to keep.

Shadith (Kizra) In The Halflight 2

She sang.

Wordless sounds filled with joy, pain, desire, fear… In a half dream, deeply relaxed, she sang to her sisters, her six dead sisters, the Weavers of Shayalin…

They rose from the mirror tiles, slender and angular, black and silver similitudes of Naya, Zayalla, Annethi, Itsaya, Tallitt and Sullan, spinning threads from themselves to shape the images of Goyo dreams…

She sang the ancient croon that mated with that dance and filled the spaces this alien voice she’d claimed could not reach with the pure flowing tones of the harp…

Her sisters danced HER joy, celebrating her love with her, commiserating with her on its ephemeral nature, helping her to rejoice in what it was and refrain from unreal expectations…

She sang laughter as she saw Itsaya wink at her, saw Naya smile and clap her slender hands, saw Zaya shake her hips and grin over her shoulder, as she saw each of her dead sisters show their pleasure… She rode that surging wild wave, a hair away from disaster always, out of control… rode it with a mastery she’d never reached before and might not again…