The way of Surak was the way of mastery. Mastery of one's words. Mastery of one's thoughts. Mastery of one's emotions. It was the rule of reason, of logic, of order. It was the foundation of true civilization. It was the possession of complete peace. And it was the only path to the full enlightenment of Gol. Without mastery, there was chaos. Without mastery, there was violence. Without mastery, there was destruction. The way of Surak was the way of mastery. And the way of mastery was the way of life.
Which is why he feared her more than he had feared anything in his entire ten years of existence.
The wind blew harder, abrading his fine skin painfully and threatening his eyes dangerously, but he dared not even risk a moment's unseeing by shifting position. Instead, he kept already bloody fingers clenched tightly around the sharp-edged rocks he gripped, and willed himself not to even blink. Then the wind was gone and he felt a stab of relief.
Until the full force of T'Kul's heat returned and his already painfully over-exposed arms and head began to burn menacingly again as the now stilled sands again began to grow hot with horrifying speed. He gritted his teeth against the pain of already blistered feet inside far too thin sandals and resisted the instinctual urge to shift them for some small easing.
He focused instead on keeping his breathing in control, on keeping it as light and silent as he could without risking becoming disoriented, and willing some shred of bio-control over the far too loud pounding of his heart.
Almost he wished a lematya was hunting him.
Over-taxed muscles trembled once, hard, with the unrelenting effort to remain ready and yet absolutely still, before he could even attempt to stop them.
It was the most minute of movements, gone in less than a moment, but suddenly, and fearfully, he understood the safety of the earlier tormenting wind. Without the protective distracting shifts of sand and brittle vegetation swirls to mask him protectively, his moment of movement caught her viciously sharp search and two terrible eyes focused instantly on him and narrowed.
She licked her heat split lips hungrily and bared her teeth in a nightmare hiss of pleasure.
And she began to creep through the broken rocks below toward him with unnatural speed.
Spock's ten years of studying the precepts of Vulcan gave him only one logistical option now.
Run.
He spun and bolted.
The wind returned, hard and dominating, but this time it assisted him. Catching in the billowing swirl of his robes, it pushed with wild power, and he found he seemed to fly as he ran. Desperately, he ran harder, lengthening his strides to avoid losing the speed of the wind and being knocked down. He broke free of the sand and spindly, thorny vegetation and all put leapt up a sweeping, wind blasted incline.
And found a horror beyond that almost felled him right there.
Scarred and mangled by ancient molten fires and maiming centuries of wind and grinding sand, the land before him was forbidden by Gol. The living incarnation of Vulcan's past that his mother, in a moment of human unease, had once called Hell, it was the last true horror on Vulcan. Chaotically violent with volcanic activity at times even now, it seethed deadly fumes and whirlwinds of fire. Treacherous caves, hidden scalding pits, sudden blasting vents, deadly crevasses and impassible cliffs were all merged together in a surreal landscape of death that no one willingly dared even now.
And he was ten. He was only ten.
But unbidden, the terrible hungry lick of lips filled his mind and again logic gave him only one choice.
He threw himself down into Hell.
"Find them!" snapped Kirk. "Use her implanted locator to triangulate her. We can find him if we find her—she wouldn't abandon him."
Sarek looked almost sick. "No, she would not. But that may not be the source of comfort it should be."
McCoy shook his head desperately. "Surely not even Q would have-"
Rrelthz swore shriekingly, hissing in terror. "The fool! She'll kill him!"
"Please let that be all," whispered Sarek. He turned burning eyes on Rrelthz.
And Rrelthz's great black eyes bulged in horror as understanding came. "No . . . ." She dove for the controls and began working them frantically with shaking taloned fingers. "This must not happen!"
Kirk rubbed his face brutally hard, trying desperately to think. "Where is she now?"
But Rrelthz had stopped and was now staring at the screen in outright disbelief. The Carreon at last managed a weak smile. "On a bright note . . . I think this improves Friend Spock's odds."
McCoy whipped around. "What? Where the hell are they?"
Kirk thrust Rrelthz out of the way and keyed the console himself. And went white. He met Sarek's eyes in sudden piercing fear. "They're in the Forge."
He managed to survive almost six hours before she caught him.
And, he knew in the still reasoning part of his mind, it only took her that long because of the Forge.
He had thought he lost her. Illogical, now that he reanalyzed it, but he had thought it none the less.
And now he was going to die.
Oddly enough, the thought of his death was not what disturbed him.
It was the thought of her feasting on his flesh.
The shadows shifted menacingly again and he forced himself back against the steam slick rock, his body shaking continually now with a weary combination of fear and utter exhaustion. His black hair was as plastered to his skin as his now ragged robes; his body badly bruised, frightfully blistered and brutally scraped from the landscape he had struggled through. His lungs burned as horribly as his tormented skin and he could barely stand with the agony in his battered feet. But he gripped one last rock determinedly and lifted his chin, pressing a bloody arm tighter against a deeper scored side.
She came out of the shadows like a thing straight out of a night terror; eyes unwaveringly intent like the predator she was. The wild tangle of hair almost covering her sharp hungry face and near filthy nakedness made him shudder reflexively. She crept forward, in a crouching creeping slide, the scalpel-sharp shard of volcanic glass glistening his emerald blood in the starlight. And, perhaps most unnerving, she made not a single sound as she came to kill him, like some wraith from his mother's stories.
The thought of his mother sent a deep pain through him and he lifted his chin even higher.
She would grieve him, he knew.
He found, suddenly, that he hoped she never found what would be left of his body.
She would weep.
And even his father would not be able to comfort her.
The sudden thought of his father made another sort of pain course through him. One far too bitter for his ten years.
The way of Surak was the way of mastery.
And he was going to die exactly in the way his father had warned him he would.
From the lack of mastery.
He wondered, illogically, if his father would believe it had not all been his own lack.
He forced himself not to calculate the odds.
It was illogical. He already knew the answer.
He lifted his chin anyway and met her eerie primal stare with all the last remnants of mastery as he could summon.
"My name is Spock."
He dropped his last rock and lifted his hand in the proper Vulcan salute and ignored the irony of it.
"Live long and prosper."
To his utter disbelief, she did not lunge and kill him with the easy opening. In fact, to his utter disbelief, she stiffened and tilted her head as if—
-as if she understood.
He stilled.
Was it possible?
Or had he merely done something outside of her animal existence?
He eyed her speculatively.
She growled dangerously.
But now she shifted back and forth, uncertainly.
And for the first time since he had fled into the burning sands, he knew hope. Because if she could understand, she could be reasoned with.
He finally had a chance to live.