Hearts and Stones (Celta HeartMate) Read online

  Hearts And Stones

  Stories of Celta

  Robin D. Owens

  Follow Your Heart

  Copyright © 2020 Robin D. Owens

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

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  © Cover Art by Cora Graphics

  © DepositPhotos.com/Periodimages.com

  Passage Through Stone Glyph from the Sun Moon and Stars Font copyright Dani Foster Herring.

  ISBN-10: 978-1-951612-03-0 ebook

  ISBN-978-1-951612-04-7 print book

  Created with Vellum

  Hearts and Stones Cover Copy

  Before Celta … Passage Through Stone: In the UStates Colorado Area, Levona Martinez is determined to find a berth on the starship, Lugh’s Spear, and escape the psi mutant ghetto for a new life on a new planet. But she’s missed her chance and the ship is full. The leaders might not consider her worth taking, but what about Pizi, her prodigy cat?

  Celta, a place of magic, telepathic animal companions, and adventure! Five stories highlighting some fan favorite characters:

  Homing Stone: As his magic emerges through fever fugues, nobleman Holm Holly fights death duels in the Downwind slums … and catches the attention of blacksmith Rand Ash, who needs a noble to help him with his revenge on an equally noble family …

  Fractured Stone: Struggling with his disinheritance and the loss of his identity, Holm Apple strives to make a new life in a new city with his HeartMate and their Fams.

  Hidden Stone: Garrett Primrose didn't expect to be hired by a Cat, let alone two of them, and their idea of payment doesn't match his. When a GreatLord appeals for Garrett's help, he's reluctant to take the case, but finds that solving the mystery unexpectedly leads him to inner answers.

  HeartStones: Losing his sight and psychic power, treasure hunter Zane Aster wants to make one more score. He discovers a House on the cusp of sentience, but missteps might trigger their deaths.

  Stone in Zanth’s Paw: It’s time for the best FamCat on the world of Celta to return the irritating sea turtles to their mother in the ocean. Perhaps time to learn a big lesson, too.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Passage Through Stone

  Homing Stone

  Fractured Stone

  Hidden Stone

  HeartStones

  Stone In Zanth’s Paw

  Celta HeartMate Series in Reading Order

  Also by Robin D. Owens

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Like most books written during the Covid 19 Corona Virus pandemic, these words are dedicated to the front line people, especially our courageous health care workers, but also those who staffed the grocery stores and other businesses. Blessed be.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks for all my readers who hang on Facebook with me and can answer the odd question when I’m hurredly writing, and my critique buddies who see portions of almost everything…

  Passage Through Stone: Thanks to my dear friend and long-term critique buddy Alice Kober for doing a full edit under a quick deadline.

  Homing Stone: Many thanks to the readers who helped out with Holm’s death duel details as related in Heart Duel: Kelly Self, Kendal Ogles, Melanie Luther, Shawna Lanne and for my excellent and new beta reader and fellow writer: Karina Steffens.

  Fractured Stone: I’m grateful for everyone who read the Staying At Home story and enjoyed it daily and helped me keep on working. I must also mention Rebecca Ho for her suggestion in the scene with the young cats and rules in the fighting salon, and Shara Forrister who reminded me where the rules were originally laid out. (Heart Search).

  Passage Through Stone

  Colorado Area, UStates Middle Region, Earth, WorldStates Year 236, Spring

  A massive shadow in the sky angled over Levona, and noise enveloped her in a thunderstorm. She cowered in a mud-slush coated gully, frozen like choice prey of a predator.

  Booms sounded, and terror flashed through her. Then she glanced up and saw the white, angle-winged aircraft. Spaceship. Stunning sight, no starships around for more than a decade.

  The ship passed. Not a military plane, a government threat. No, a vehicle to escape the UStates and the Earth and sail to another planet.

  Months ago, word had spread through the underground mutant network that folks in the psi ghettos had pooled their money and bought three starships. They planned to escape Earth and establish a colony on another planet. She hadn’t believed it.

  Now she’d seen a starship just overhead and her terror transmuted into hope.

  Hope. Her whole body shuddered with the vigor of her breath.

  Since the Earth’s space colonization era had ended about fifteen years back, Levona thought this sighting indicated the rumors were true.

  She popped above the lip of the gulch and watched as the huge ship headed for the city of CentralConglom. She’d scrambled her way out of her hometown, home slum, a little over two years ago.

  “I have to go back,” she murmured as dread clogged her throat, but escape beckoned.

  I go where you go, the young cat, Pizi, said, in actual telepathic words pinging through Levona’s mind. These were the first words the small cat had sent mentally, rather than transmitting simple images trailing feelings, though Levona had felt a surge of hope from Pizi, too. She sent back love and felt it return.

  The small female squirmed in the side-pocket of Levona’s pack. She reached around and opened the flap and Pizi stuck her head out, rotated her ears, then angled her nose up to the sky. As if she’d be able to smell the spaceship.

  Maybe Pizi could. Levona had sensed the power in the small animal when she’d found the young cat two months ago. But neither of them knew the cat’s talents, and Pizi’s eyes were crusted over, a continuing malady.

  “Yeah, time to return to the city,” Levona said aloud. Carefully, she adjusted the pack, her mind busy with the maps unfurling in her brain, one of her psychic talents. Once she saw a map, she always recalled it. She made maps in her head when she traveled. Right now, she knew all the folds of Coal Creek Canyon, Colorado, the twists of the river down to the plains and the city of CentralConglom.

  I am tired of being carried! Pizi fussed, sending a barrage of emotions and images along wi
th her demand.

  “Okay,” Levona grumbled, drew out the cat and attached a rigged-up harness so she could walk on her own. Levona let her mind interface with the small dust-colored tabby, so Pizi could “see” where they were going. The cat would slow Levona down, but there’d be plenty to think about on her — their — way back to the city. Like how to get accepted for the journey on a starship to a new planet.

  Pizi lasted a full half-kilometer on her own before she wanted back in “her” pocket in the pack. That surprised Levona, and reassured her a bit that … if anything happened to her, the little cat could survive on her own. Or at least find another mutant human companion to bond with.

  The sun dipped below the western mountains as she and Pizi reached the bottom of the canyon. No more aircraft raced through the sky, but the road busied with traffic going toward CentralConglom. She figured the rare starship garnered a lot of attention from the gov types.

  Quick spy eyes glittered over the city, zooming around, hanging mostly over the psi-ghetto where the ship must have landed. One spy eye shot toward the canyon and Levona flattened against the low side of the creek wall.

  You do not SEE us! shrieked Pizi as the eye hovered near. The vibrations of the cat’s mind hurt Levona’s head. Then the spy sphere zipped up the canyon and back, all in the time it took for Levona to hold a long breath. She hoped she hadn’t been noted. Didn’t know if Pizi’s telepathic blast had affected the eye.

  They moved deeper into shadows and down a narrower ditch before Levona stopped and shared her standard meal of re-hydrated protein with Pizi. Closing her eyes, she visualized the snow run-off gullies winding to the scummy pond. Two years past, one rugged slope of the pond had held a hidden entrance to abandoned culverts and tunnels carrying lost streams.

  I don’t like those Images of Yours! Pizi stated. All dark, dark, dark, no sunlight on My eyelids to show warm. She sounded nervous and crawled into Levona’s lap to curl up.

  Levona took a large cap out of her backpack and stretched the knit thing gently over the small feline, making a warm and secure nest. Not weighing more than three kilograms, the fine-boned cat was easy to carry.

  Keeping her thoughts steady but with an underlying buzz of anticipation, Levona replied, The old republic made things to last, and the culverts did. Better than the corps and govs make now. It WILL be dark—

  And smelly! Pizi added.

  Probably smelly, Levona confirmed. But safe, the culverts will protect us. We will not be walking on the nanogrid and monitored. Won’t be seen or sensed until we get near the cross-roads with the newer city water system. We’ll have to watch out then.

  I know, Pizi said, though she didn’t. She’d been born in the canyon, abandoned by her mother and littermates, and barely survived before Levona found her.

  I’ve seen images from you, lots! Pizi stated. Especially when you dream, the old tall, tall buildings, your neighborhood. How you got to the canyon and lived and later found Me.

  “A lucky day for both of us, to find a person to be a family.”

  Yes, Pizi replied with a spurt of love that Levona felt and returned.

  Then her mind turned to the immediate future. We’ll have to be quiet, even in the tunnels. And keep our thoughts to-from each other on a private channel. There are some mutants who can overhear thoughts. Or so rumors said.

  Pizi sent an image of shadowy thoughts zooming back and forth between them, then something else, a silver bond connecting them heart to heart.

  What’s that? Levona asked, as she scanned their stopping place with her senses to make sure she wouldn’t be leaving any physical, and only minor mental, residue behind.

  Our friend bond, between our hearts! Pizi chirped.

  “Oh,” Levona said aloud, as her mind devolved into sentimental goosh. Yet, a chill flicked along her nerves. She had someone else to take care of, other than herself. What if she failed? Terrible.

  Pizi stretched to swipe Levona’s chin with a lick, then moved to the knapsack, found her side pocket and wiggled in. What will Our starship be like?

  One starship here and available, and somehow Levona had to convince strangers to take her and Pizi away. More, she and Pizi had to stay out of sight of the state police, and out of any trouble while Levona found the people in charge of the departure. Now Levona had a beloved companion with expectations of her, an additional burden.

  When will We leave in our starship? Soon? Excitement thrummed through Pizi, so much that Levona could feel her small body vibrate in the backpack.

  Anxiety splashed in Levona’s gut, but she kept her emotions free of it, laced anticipation through her telempathy with Pizi. Yes, probably as soon as possible! No one involved with the starship would want to hang around. The longer they stayed, the more likely the gov would try to stop them, or confiscate the ship, or stir mobs against them. And every mutant in the psi barrio already had a target on their forehead, marked ready for a laser to fry their brains.

  Pizi didn’t know this and Levona would strive to keep her companion innocent as long as possible.

  It will be FUN! Going to another place.

  “Yes,” Levona muttered.

  Where My eyes will stay clear. We have not had enough rain or snow lately.

  An eyewash of collected rainwater in the canyon had dissolved the gunk for hours and allowed Pizi to see. But creek water didn’t do the same. Levona didn’t know if city water, with all the additives, would work, either.

  They stopped at the pond’s culvert opening, dense in years-thick brittle grasses and weeds, enough to keep them warm.

  Before she went in, Levona added force rings to her fingers. Made of hard plastcal, they would hurt any attacker with each blow. If Levona grabbed on pressure points, she’d disable an attacker long enough for Pizi and her to escape. Her parents, both practitioners of martial arts, had taught her their skills, and how to use the rings, worked with her, until they died.

  The rings wouldn’t maim or kill. She hadn’t devolved to match feral humans living underground, common criminals, psi-hater mob people, or fanatics.

  Her energy stayed edgy as they trekked through the ancient waterways, the culverts and ditches and tunnels, kept her energy on edge. Pizi chattered a bit, then the darkness got to her. She curled tighter in her pocket and slept.

  Levona told herself she preferred it that way.

  Finally the night lightened to dawn, spearing sun through a series of broken street-drains, and Levona knew they neared the intersection with the newer city tunnels.

  She stared at the end of the culvert, a rockface, and the barely-person-sized hole halfway up the wall to her left that led to the CentralConglom systems. If she’d planned on staying here in her hometown, she’d have considered hiding that breach entrance.

  Careful climbing ahead, and she sure didn’t want to bang her pack or Pizi. So she opened Pizi’s pocket and woke her.

  Yay, I get out!

  “Mind your steps and your jumps and stay close, no exploring,” Levona muttered.

  I will!

  Levona placed the cat on the top stone of the hole, used their psychic link to string another sensory thread between them, watched as Pizi hopped down and began nosing around. Then Levona clambered through the opening.

  Treading softly in the two-person wide and poorly lit tunnel, avoiding the patchy nanogrid that would mark their passage and alert security, they made it several kilometers before a watery rush hit Levona’s ears. Pizi hopped around. Water! NEW water? That can help my eyes?

  As she scooped up the cat, Levona minded her step as she moved to pipes along a wall. A stingy, dim yellow century bulb protruded from the wall, surrounded by mesh to stop vermin.

  With a squint, and actually moving her lips, she read the gov symbols on the wall near two marked pipes leading into CentralConglom. Filtered Fresh, no doubt heading to the upperclass neighborhoods and downtown high level gov suites, and Water Intake, a much larger pipe for everyone else. Both had out-take spigots
with handles.

  Levona could maybe steal a trickle or two. Fill up a small bottle for Pizi. By the time the guards discovered the theft, it would be long done and believed minor. She reminded Pizi of the grid, but thought the cat’s weight wouldn’t be noticed. Near the pipes the grid became pressure-sensitive matting. Levona could reach the handle with the long-grip piece of the multi-tool she kept in her bag.

  She lowered her pack, took out the multi-tool and the bottle, lit the tool and extended thin rods on both of them. Holding her breath, she tried the Fresh Filtered handle. Stuck.

  Pizi mewed.

  If Levona had been alone, she’d’ve given up. But she didn’t steal for herself. For her cat and friend, Levona would do pretty much anything.

  Try again. Fail. Settle into her balance and ground herself, breathe correctly. One more attempt without using the additional step of lubricant that might set off an alarm.

  The handle turned. Levona filled the thin bottle the length of her hand, 225 milliliters of excellent water. No hesitation, no drips, no spillage. Good.

  Her fingers trembling, she shut off the flow and turned off the multi-tool’s light and put it away in her pack, burying it at the bottom of the main compartment.

  Sit, she ordered Pizi mentally.

  The little cat did, lifting her head trustfully.

  Levona dampened a clean rag with the water, gently wiped Pizi’s eyes until the crusting dissolved. With mountain precipitation, the glop would soften quickly and remain gone for about six hours. Levona didn’t know what this water would do, but since Pizi didn’t squeal like she had from creek water, Levona thought it might be safe.