Shield's Lady

I found you the night you slipped out of the Avylyn villa? And how do you think I found you yesterday at the fair?” He watched her deal with that for a moment. “And how do you think you got what you wanted from me last night?” he concluded softly. “Whatever you were before I met you, you’re more than empathic now that you’ve been linked to me through prisma. And you’re very strong. You can project and you can receive not only emotions felt during passion or danger, but you seem to be able to project and receive actual images.”
    “No, I don’t think I do. It’s just that I have a vivid imagination,” she protested weakly.
    He grinned in spite of himself. “That’s a load of dragon-pony manure. Or maybe a vivid imagination is part of the whole thing. I don’t know. All I know was that I was on the receiving end of what you were projecting last night and it wasn’t my imagination that was going wild.”
    She got to her feet and walked down to the water’s edge, not looking at him. “This is all very complicated.”
    “I know.”
    “How did your ancestors save The Serendipity? How did they even happen to be on Windarra when the starships arrived?”
    “The original Shields cleaned up Talis and the planet was colonized. In the battle to survive on Talis, much of our technology was lost, including the secrets for producing more Shields and the secrets of interstellar travel. But a few Shields found mates and to everyone’s shock, had sons. Fortunately, as it turned out. We never did rediscover the secret of creating more Shields. But when we got back into space we found out we still needed Shield talent. We were dependent on the ones who were descended from the original Shields.”
    “You did get back into space.”
    “Yes. We got back into space and when we did the Shields were needed once again to mop up the remaining planets of our solar system. And then faster, more sophisticated ships were designed. A decision was made to use the new technology to send exploration teams of Shields out beyond our star system to try to locate the source of the crystal ships. As long as they existed, they were a danger. My people decided they had to learn who or what had built them and where they came from. No trace of any living being has ever been found with the ships.”
    Sariana picked up a few pebbles and tossed them out over the water. Gryph could see that the arc was all wrong but he decided this wasn’t the time to correct her pitching. The pebbles hit the water and sank without a single skip. She turned around to face him.
    “Your ancestors, the ones who saved The Serendipity, formed one of the exploration teams, right?”
    He nodded. “Right. They were tracking prisma to this planet when they picked up signals from The Serendipity and The Rendezvous. They didn’t know the people inside the ships were human. Not at first. There was the distinct possibility that the beings in the new starships were the ones who had created the prisma weapons. So my ancestors stalked yours and wound up in orbit around Windarra. When the first lightstorms hit The Serendipity and The Rendezvous, someone realized you weren’t the bad guys.”
    “So the Shields came to the rescue.”
    Gryph shrugged. “It was what Shields were created to do. But there was only one Shield ship. It couldn’t protect both of the incoming colony ships. The Shield team chose the one that seemed damaged the most by the initial assault and rode the storm down with it.” Gryph paused and then added soberly, “It was the worst lightstorm that had ever been encountered. Many Shields were killed and the ship was virtually destroyed. When it was all over, my ancestors were in the same shape as yours. Marooned on Windarra. No one on the home planet of Talis had any way of knowing where or how we had disappeared. As far as they were concerned we were missing in action. No one came looking for us.”
    “It seems to me,” Sariana said softly, “that there was a major difference between the situation your ancestors faced and the one the colonists faced. The colonists, at least, had arrived at their intended destination. They had come here prepared to create a home world for themselves. Your people had no such intention. They were truly shipwrecked.”
    Gryph saw the understanding in her eyes and a rush of relief went through him. Her natural empathy was going to be his salvation. “Initially my ancestors assumed there would be no second