Possessive anger engulfed him, even as he recognized that the bond between them now involved more than mindspeech—at least on his part. For the first time, it was Rialla's emotions that were clearest—a bleeding of her gifts into him. Carefully he damped the edges of his anger. He would get Rialla to Sianim; then perhaps he would provide Terran with an appreciation for the rage of a healer.
Rialla whimpered softly in her sleep. Tris exhaled. When he had the control that he needed, he eased himself back into Rialla's dream.
He caught her gently in his thoughts, luring her from Terran's bedroom to sweeter memories of a northern lake that shimmered silver and gold with the reflected glory of the setting sun.
Alone as usual, Rialla woke early, in the darkness that preceded the sun's rise in the sky. Standing up, she shook out her clothing, though most of the wrinkles and dirt resisted her efforts. She took a deep breath and wondered why she half expected to smell the crispness of snow in the air. Tris's return distracted her from her thoughts, and she bade him good morning.
They left the meadow as dawn's first light broke in the sky. By midmorning Rialla was starting to feel hungry, and when she saw a blackberry patch she stopped to pick some. Tris found several tuberous roots that he cleaned on his pant leg. They had no flavor to speak of, but they were more filling than the berries.
"These are much better roasted over a fire," he commented, taking a second bite of the root.
"If you say so," responded Rialla doubtfully, though she was eating hers with the enthusiasm of hunger. "Any taste would be an improvement, I suppose, even ashes from the fire."
Tris was about to reply when an eerie scream cut through the woods. After it was through, there was utter silence; not even a bird ventured to chirp.
"Do you know what that was?" asked Tris quietly.
"I'm not sure, but aren't we near the ae'Magi's castle?"
Tris hesitated, as if consulting an inner map. "There's a large castle of some sort a half day's walk to the south,'' he commented.
Rialla nodded. "That should be it. It must be a Uriah. I've never seen one myself, but there are supposed to be a few left near the Archmage's castle. When the previous ae'Magi died, there was an infestation of Uriah there that spread into the surrounding lands. Sianim mercenaries cleaned them out of the castle, but they couldn't find all the ones in the nearby woods. I've been told that magic doesn't affect them much; the only way to kill them is with fire or sword. I don't even have my knife."
Tris took Rialla's arm and began walking briskly. "Vicious things, or so I've heard. I saw one once, at a distance, and was lucky enough that it didn't see me. That one didn't sound too close, but I suspect that it might be a good idea if we covered some ground all the same."
They walked and then jogged, but the Uriah kept on a path just parallel to theirs, and they heard it call out from time to time.
"Do you think that it's following us?" Rialla glanced worriedly toward the source of the last noise, but the trees grew too close together to allow her to see anything.
A loud scream pierced the stillness, followed by a chorus of the weird noises. Rialla stopped walking, reaching with her talent to see what was causing the commotion. The trees that she'd been looking at rustled with the fury of a battle.
Tris wrapped one hand around her arm and pulled her into a reluctant run, loosing his grip only when she had stopped fighting him. Grimly, Rialla increased her pace, and Tris stayed beside her until the howls were muted enough that they could talk.
Rialla continued several steps before she realized that Tris had stopped completely. She turned to look at him and noticed the anger on his face.
"What were you doing back there?" he snapped.
"I was trying to find out what it had run into. If it was something big, the Uriah will be occupied with it and we won't have to worry about it," Rialla replied steadily, taking a small step back.
He looked at her with an unreadable expression, then took a quick step toward her. "It was a stupid thing to do. Uriah aren't like people; they aren't even like other animals. You could have been hurt, do you understand?"
She set her jaw and took a step forward herself, until she was knee to shin with him. "I understand that it was my choice to make!"
"You could have been caught up in the death throes of the animal it killed," he said, glaring down at her.
"Not likely. I have more control than that. I was far more entwined with the creature in the ballroom at Westhold." Her voice held more than a hint of frost.
Tris turned and took a step away in an obvious effort to control himself. Rialla had started to suspect that it wasn't anger that he was trying to hold in check when she noticed that his shoulders were shaking.
"You were baiting me." If she had had a weapon at hand, she didn't know if she would have had the control not to use it. "You sorry excuse for a snake, you were baiting me."
"Not entirely," denied Tris in a muffled voice. "That thing in the ballroom hurt you, Rialla. Uriah are not like other animals—they are driven by hunger and rage; everyone knows that. For an empath to contact one is beyond reckless and well into rashness; the situation didn't require such an act."
Rialla considered what he had said. "You have the right. I apologize for taking an unnecessary risk. You still haven't explained why you are laughing." Her voice didn't warm at all.
Tris turned back to meet her eyes. "I suppose that it was relief, primarily. I was apprehensive that after…" His eyes lost their laughter, and Rialla felt the dark rage that had never died down. "I was worried that the past few weeks would affect you more than they have. I remembered that little speech that you gave Laeth in my cottage—the one about once a slave always a slave— while you were yelling at me. It struck me as funny."
"Laugh at me when I'm mad again and I'll see that you don't do it a third time," said Rialla solemnly.
"I'll look forward to it," said Tris courteously.
He stepped toward her and offered his arm. After a brief hesitation, Rialla set her hand in the bend of his elbow. They continued down the path Tris had chosen.
"What do Uriah look like?" asked Rialla curiously. "I've never seen one."
They had long since left the Uriah in the distance. Lengthy shadows from the trees around them dappled the ground, and the eastern sky darkened with reds and golds.
Tris shrugged. "They look like a human that has been dead for a month, and then decided to grow fangs and get up and hunt. They smell like it too."
"Not something that I want to run into in the middle of the night," commented Rialla.
"I'd rather not run into them at all, day or night," responded Tris absently as he examined the nearby brush.
"What are you looking for?" asked Rialla.
"I smell thornberry around here somewhere. This time of year the blooms have a strong enough odor to keep the Uriah from catching our scent if they do pass this way." He narrowed his eyes and pointed to the left. "Over there, near that oak. Come on, we'll call it an early night and wait until the Uriah are somewhere else before we go."
Tris led the way to a dense thicket several lengths from a good-sized oak tree. The tops of the bushes were covered with thick yellow blossoms that reeked like the moat of an abandoned castle in the summer. Finger-sized, wickedly sharp thorns covered the bushes from soil to flower.
"If you slide in under the branches you can avoid the thorns," advised Tris, disregarding the incredulous look that Rialla aimed at him as she held her nose. "They all point up, so it's safe to go under them."
He dropped onto his back and slid cautiously under the brush until he disappeared from view. Rialla eyed the thorns dubiously, but followed him in.
To her surprise, the narrow tunnel that Tris had made widened into a sizable hollow big enough for two or three people to occupy. The brush formed a solid ceiling overhead, but there was room enough for them to sit up in it. The ground was soft with old leaves.
Tris grinned at her expression. "It
makes a nice enough home, once you get used to the smell. The cover overhead is so tight it lets in very little rain."
Tris opened his pack and began again to sort out the collection of plants. With a mournful expression he set aside several of the more mangled specimens.
Rialla watched, then took out the books that they'd stolen from Winterseine, shaking them to dislodge the leaves. As she set Winterseine's book aside, she noticed that several pages had slid halfway out of the book—in spite of the clasp that held the white leather cover tightly pressed against the inner pages.
"Tris," she said.
He looked up from the last of his plants. "Hmm?"
She held the book up for his inspection and the crumpled pages slid out further. Rialla quickly turned the book upside down to keep them from slipping all of the way out.
"Don't touch those," he advised, setting the plants aside. "There are any number of unhealthy effects a human mage could place in his spellbook."
He took -the book from her and tapped it on his leg, but the pages stubbornly refused to slide back where they had been. He tilted it gingerly, until a spot of daylight touched the creamy surface of the obstreperous sheets.
"Hmm." he said as he flattened his hand and made a brief pass over the book. "These pages were never part of this book—they're too old."
Rialla looked again at the neatly folded sheets. "They don't appear old."
"Magic," commented Tris. "There is more magic in those sheets of paper than any single mage could have collected, human or not. It would take a score or more of the strongest of my people to call that much magic—I imagine that it would take at least that many human mages."
"They're just blank sheets of parchment," said Rialla, surprised.
Tris raised his eyebrows at her and looked again at the parchment. "You can't see the symbols?" he asked.
She shook her head and leaned closer for a better look, closing her hand on Tris's shoulder for balance. As soon as she touched him, the exposed surfaces of the formerly vacant pages were littered with markings that were somehow out of focus.
Rialla blinked and swore softly, pulling her hand off Tris. As soon as the contact was broken, the pages were blank again. "Can you tell what the spell is for?" she asked, her voice a little ragged.
Tris shook his head. "I'm not a human magic-user—I don't use spells that could be written down this way."
Rialla smiled at his obvious contempt. "What should we do with them?"
"Take them to Sianim and let the human wizards worry about them," offered Tris, setting the book on the far side of his satchel, where the straying pages would be out of the way.
As Tris shifted to find a comfortable position, his hand fell on Terran's journal. He picked it up and glanced at the pages.
Do you mind if I look through this? he asked.
Rialla shrugged. I have difficulty with Darranian script when there is sufficient light. If you want to decipher it, be welcome. I think I will attempt to rest.
She felt him focus his attention on her, and notice… Your leg is bothering you. Do you want me to see what I can do for it?
She hesitated, but shook her head. She wasn't ready to relax under any man's hands just yet.
Fine, Tris said. The offer is open, if you decide otherwise.
Rialla was curled up in the old dry leaves with her eyes closed when it occurred to her that she hadn't noticed the difference between talking out loud and using mind-speech. She wondered when it had become so easy to speak mind to mind with Tris. The soft sounds of Tris turning the pages of the thin book blended into the rustling leaves, and she drifted into a restful slumber without further thought.
She didn't know what time it was when he woke her up, but the makeshift cave was shadowed.
"Rialla?"
"Hmm?" she answered sleepily.
"I think that you might be interested in this."
"Yes?" Rialla struggled to full awareness and sat up, brushing off bits of leaf and dirt.
It was dark enough that she couldn't see Tris's face clearly, but she didn't need to. His intensity was strong enough to alert her that he'd found something in Terran's journal.
"What is it?" she asked.
Tris tapped his finger lightly on the book and then set it down and pulled his knees up comfortably. "Let me tell you a story.
"There was once a boy, just on the point of manhood. His father was both a mage and an athlete. When it became obvious that the boy was neither, he felt himself a failure—an evaluation that his father shared.
"Like most children of his age, it was hard for the boy to see past the trials of adolescence to the man he might become. He was clumsy and self-conscious, with a tendency to stammer when he was nervous.
"In addition to being a magician, his father was also a trader in slaves. He traveled upon occasion to the mysterious lands east of the Great Swamp, because slaves from that region were valuable, if difficult to acquire. The boy's only talent was a certain facility for languages, but it was valuable enough that he traveled with his father.
"It happened that one day they were traveling through a small, war-torn country in the East. They stayed overnight in a house that had once, long ago, been a shrine to the god Altis. Though most of it was rebuilt or an outright addition to the original structure, its origin was a matter of some pride to the owner—a rich merchant in his own right.
"That night at dinner, the boy made a fool of himself once again. One of the daughters of their host spoke to him, and he became so nervous that he knocked over his drinking glass and spilled the wine over his lap. With the laughter of his father and their host ringing in his ears, he stormed out of the dining hall and ran to the room he and his father had been assigned.
"The room itself was unusual. Unlike the rest of the rooms that the boy had seen in the house, this one had a floor and walls made of stone rather than wood. The cot that he'd been assigned was crowded against one wall; his father occupied the luxurious, silk-sheeted bed. The long, low marble table that was built into the floor restricted the remaining furniture to smaller pieces.
"The table was very old… its surface pitted by generations of rough usage. An altar, the merchant had explained with a shrug. There were several of them in various rooms of the house.
"The boy, seeking the refuge of solitude, entered the room carrying an oil lamp that he'd taken from its place outside the dining chamber. Made clumsy by youth and embarrassment, he stumbled over a small rug and fell. His forehead grazed a corner of the table. Though the wound was minor, it bled copiously, as scalp wounds frequently do.
"Less frantic away from the sounds of the laughter, the boy collected himself. Somehow the lamp had escaped being completely overturned, though the oil splashed. He set the lamp carefully on the white marble, ignoring the mess that the oil and the blood from his head had made on the pristine surface.
"He knew that he was going to have to ask someone to bind the cut on his head, but he couldn't bring himself to suffer the scrutiny of a stranger, far less his father, who was certain to comment on his son's clumsiness.
"He was dizzy, and since he was kneeling in front of the table he rested his arms and then his head on the cold marble. Gradually he slipped into a light doze."
Tris paused, then said, "What happened next might depend on your point of view. I'll tell it to you from the boy's and you can make up your own mind in light of what we've seen.
"In his dream, he found himself walking down a white corridor with rooms on either side of him. Glancing into the first one, he saw a shrouded figure lying on a table similar to the one in his room. He couldn't tell if the figure was alive or dead, and something kept him from entering the room to look more closely. In large relief on the wall above the table was a design of two red dragons intertwined.
"Now, our hero was a learned boy—books were his retreat from his father's scorn—so he recognized what few would. The dragons were an ancient symbol for Temris, the god of war.
; "Believing that he was dreaming, the boy didn't fight the odd compulsion that drew him down the corridor. As he walked, he saw more rooms with shrouded bodies and the symbols of the old gods on the walls. Most of them he knew, but there were several he'd not seen before.
"The corridor went on and on, and still the boy walked. At last the compulsion pulled him into one of the rooms and he left the corridor.
"He noticed that a heavy layer of dust lay over everything, as if no one had been in the room for a very long time. On the wall was a symbol that he recognized not only from his own readings, but from its liberal use throughout the merchant's house: the cat of Altis.
"Cautiously, he approached the covered figure on the table. As he did, he noticed that the dust on the shrouds had been disturbed and that the cloths didn't lie as neatly as their counterparts had, as if the figure who slept beneath had been restless not long ago.
"With dream-born courage, the boy touched the fine blue silk with the intention of removing it. But touch it was all that he did, for it dissolved into nothingness under his fingers; the figure it covered disappeared with it, leaving only an empty table behind.
"As he looked down at the unoccupied table, he noticed first a drop of his blood on the table and then a drop of oil that had escaped the container he held in his shaking hand. The drops mingled as they wouldn't in the waking world. He couldn't look away, not even when a deep voice spoke behind him.
"Who disturbs the rest of the old ones, boy? Who meddles with forces beyond human ken? There is great magic worked on earth again that disturbs the sleepers, and a dragon rides the currents of the sky once more. This is no safe time to walk the halls of the gods and risk awakening them.'
"The boy felt the voice as much as heard it.
"He knew that he was shaking, though he felt no fear; the speaker seemed kindly, even fatherly. He answered slowly, 'I don't know about dragons or great magic, but I touched the shroud. I am Terran.'
"As he finished speaking, Terran awoke draped over the altar. Worried about what his father would say about the mess, he took off his tunic and wiped the marble surface as best he could.
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