Shades of Dark by Linnea Sinclair Page B

I paged up. I recognized only one of the authors’ names: a woman who’d lectured a few times at the Academy’s Non-Human Cultures classes before retiring from her post as a researcher with West Baris University’s Xenocultural Department. She’d been a bland, unassuming woman, her name linked with some minor scandal my brain refused to remember.
    What I found more interesting was that funding for her study had come partly from the Harmony-One Project, under direction of the Guthrie Foundation. Philip’s family.
     
    The domination of a Ragkiril over its non -Ragkiril subject is often solidified by the drugging of the subject’s mind through intense pleasure. As with addiction to any other artificial stimulant, the mind of the ky’sara— the bond-slave—craves more, and the Ragkiril is capable of expanding its energies to provide new and ever-increasing sensory diversification, thereby cementing the addictive experience. Sexual activity—especially involving the energies of the mystical state of the Kyi— is the usual method by which domination is enforced, though there are reports of other dependency transactions that, in the beginning stages of the relationship, can work equally as well.
    However, all inevitably end in the death of the bond-slave when the bond-slave can no longer provide the Ragkiril with the entertainment it seeks, or when the bond-slave dies of exhaustion.
     
    I knew all that. Philip had tried to scare me with that information, warning me that Sully would only use me until he became bored. Then he’d kill me.
    But Philip hadn’t known about the ky’sal bond—the bond Sully had with me. An equal bond, not the parasitic fatal relationship Philip and these purported scholars saw the ky’saran bond to be.
    I paged down the report, discounting it as so much biased, incomplete information. Then I saw the word ky’sal .
     
    There are several documented reports from Stolorth scholars of an equal exchange of energies with a Ragkiril. Known as the ky’sara–ky’sal function, it represents an exclusive mental and sexual relationship. This is believed to be a life-bond between two Ragkirils of equal or near-equal strength. Breaking the bond is purported to result in the death of one if not both parties, depending on the balance of power at the time, unless a third Ragkiril is brought in as a substitute mate. However, the newcomer must be of greater strength than the original bond pair—most likely an intensely powerful Kyi-Ragkiril— in order to effect the transfer. Stoloth legends from the Forty-First Century Ayirr Dynasty tell of a Kyi-Ragkiril guri (supreme mentor) who demanded the transfer of his students’ ky’sara to him as a gesture of submission and obedience. Contemporary Stolorth officials deny this practice still exists.
     
    I remembered being trapped in the shuttle bay on Marker 2 under fire from Burke’s followers, Philip at my side.
    “There are supposed to be ways to break a ky’saran link,” Philip had told me. “I’ll help you.”
    Is this what he’d known?
    A trilling sound jolted me out of my thoughts. Incoming transmit—incoming private transmit—via my deskscreen. I moved quickly to the other side of the desk, tapping at my screen as I swiveled my chair around.
    A message was waiting for me, tagged urgent. From Admiral Philip Guthrie.
    Oh, God. Thad.

Right after Sully and I had left the Loviti and returned to the Karn, I made sure Philip had both Sully’s and my secure, private transmit links. Philip was a source of information even Sully agreed we couldn’t afford to ignore. But Philip hadn’t tried to contact me until now.
    With Drogue’s comment that both Philip and my father had been in to see Thad fresh in my mind, I brought up the message file. It cycled through Sully’s security filters. Then Philip’s image appeared on my screen.
    He didn’t look as pale as I’d last seen him, but of course at that point he’d had med-broches plastered over