Crucible

by Mercedes Lackey

  “It’s not your fault,” Syrriah assured him, and motioned him to sit in the straight chair Andrel had vacated.

  “Yes, it was,” he said. “You see, I . . . I’m not very good in crowds. I prefer to be alone; too many people around makes me feel . . .” He waved a hand. “Makes me feel jittery, like I’m filled with bees.”

  “I think I understand,” Syrriah said. “You remind me of my daughter Riann. Of all my children, she had the hardest time here. She said her training Circuit was a relief because it was just her and her senior Herald, and he did all the talking.”

  That coaxed a quick smile from him. “I think it is worse for me,” he said. “After the race, I felt panicked when everyone surrounded me. Andrel thinks you picked up on that—that that’s what triggered your Gift.”

  “I see,” she said. “Well, that’s still not your fault.” She rested a hand on his where it sat on his knee. “Aliant, have you told anyone else about this? How you panic around crowds, and how too many people make you feel so uncomfortable?”

  “I have two friends who feel the same way,” he said. “We all prefer to be alone most of the time, but we’ve become close. At home, it was just my mother and father and me. I’m fine with just a few people. Too many people tire me out, but I can be around groups if I have some time to be alone afterward, to recover.”

  “But nobody else here knows?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, thank you for sharing it with me,” she said.

  A moment later, Andrel returned and said Syrriah needed to rest. In truth, she didn’t feel tired at all.

  Her mind whirled, not with voices—she knew better than to attempt to hear them—but with thoughts, ideas.

  If Aliant had two friends who felt the same way, there were probably more. Perhaps not all as affected as Aliant, but like Riann.

  Most Heralds were gregarious, outgoing. But in truth, there were many types of people, and some might need guidance and help to learn to handle unfamiliar or uncomfortable situations. Being thrown in the deep end at Collegium was overwhelming enough—it had been even for her.

  Something needed to be put in place: some way to identify the new trainees who felt the way Aliant and his friends did, and some way to help them.

  She’d speak to someone in charge, she decided, and volunteer to handle the project.

  It was strange, she mused, sitting back against the pillows and sipping more water. So many people felt alone and wanted more contact, whereas Aliant, Riann, and others preferred to be alone—except, of course, for their Companions.

  “Never alone,” she murmured to Cefylla, her heart swelling with love.

  :Never alone.:

  Down the Line

  Brigid Collins

  The quarrel between Kweilin’s grandfather and her nephew came to a head when they intruded on her afternoon practice session by entering her dimly lit study.

  “I don’t care whether you like the girl or not, you will marry her,” her grandfather ordered, his voice rattling the candlesticks on the table, even without the benefit of volume. Kweilin’s grandfather, the patriarch of their village, was not used to contradiction.

  Warm sympathy ran through Kweilin’s chest at the misery on Torec’s face. The dim light of the guttering candles and small hearth fire deepened the shadows of his youthful anguish, and the muted sweetness of the fresh herbs she’d been using sent a melancholy undertone throughout the room. Still, her grandfather remained unmoved.

  “I don’t want to marry. It wouldn’t be fair to Miss Hettya. Aunt Kweilin?” Torec said, glancing at her. He’d already confided in her how loath he was to have romantic involvement with women.

  With a sigh, Kweilin shoved her chair away from her worktable and her pitiful practice spells and rubbed her swollen belly.

  Let the villagers mutter that she’d waited too long to carry a child, that her drastically weakened Mage Gift was a sign she was too old to be a mother now. At six months along, and somehow already more in love with her unborn daughter than she was with her husband, she couldn’t bring herself to change the situation. The exhaustion and diminished Mage Gift would just have to be dealt with.

  Her knees popped when she stood, and she winced. “Maybe Torec is a little young to marry, Grandfather.”

  “You have a skewed sense of proper marriage age, my pet. Most women your age already have daughters married,” he replied, his stony face softening.

  Kweilin relaxed. Though far into his later years, Gareht still remained vigorous, his face lined with only his cares, his dark hair brushed with silver tips. The villagers claimed he was blessed with long youth, but in return suffered losses of family.

  Kweilin took after him with her own dark hair and tall frame, looking more like Gareht than her father, his own son, had. Her father’s lighter hair and grayer eyes, and his easier smiles and clearer laughter, had passed on to her brother, and from him on down the line to Torec. Her nephew even let his hair fall into his eyes the way her brother used to. Her heart twisted at the sight of him glaring sullenly through the sandy fringe at her grandfather now.

  “Torec, listen to me,” Gareht said. “I know you don’t care much for the girl now, but you have to do your duty to this family and to the village. If your father had lived, he would surely have produced more male heirs who could continue the line in your stead, but you are all that is left. Your father married young, too, you know.”

  Kweilin closed her eyes against the burn that thinking of her brother’s death always brought on. Images from that day, a mere week after little Torec’s birth, flashed through her mind.

  She remembered the men bringing Mareth from where they’d found him by the river; his body pale and mangled, his chest torn away, his eyes dull and missing the spark they’d always held in life.

  Her grandfather’s stiff commands to bury the body.

  Her sister-in-law’s tear-choked wails.

  Herself, wishing for the first time ever that her brother had inherited the Mage Gift instead of she.

  “But Father loved Mother when he married her,” Torec said. “I don’t love Miss Hettya. Marrying her would only hurt her. I won’t do it.”

  Grandfather’s face turned harsh again. “Do not disobey me, Torec.”

  But the boy shook his misery away and replaced it with a fierce scowl. “I won’t do it!”

  And with a dramatic flair befitting his fifteen years, the young man lurched out of Kweilin’s study, pounding downstairs and slamming doors behind him.

  Kweilin chewed her lip and rubbed her belly.

  Gareht ran a hand down his face and dropped into the cloth-covered chair by the hearth. Its squeak of protest underscored the entire encounter.

  Kweilin pulled her own chair closer to his and lowered herself onto its cushioned seat.

  “What am I going to do with that boy?” he asked the fire.

  “It might be wisest to wait for a bit,” Kweilin said. “He is young. If we give him time, he may settle down some, come to understand the needs of the village.”

  She cringed inside as she said it. She’d raised Torec as if he were her own son after his mother followed Mareth into the Havens, and she knew time would not change his mind. She writhed with guilt every time she kept her nephew’s preference for men from the man who’d taught her everything she knew about magic since her seventh birthday, the man she had looked up to as a father since the day her own parents had perished, but she kept Torec’s secret anyway. The knowledge of his great-grandson’s “affliction” would only infuriate and hurt her grandfather more.

  She’d thought long on the problem, turning it over and over in her mind until she felt sick, but had come no closer to finding a solution that would make both her beloved relatives happy.

  “What does he want to do instead of marry?” he asked.

  “He wants to s
tudy magic,” she said. “He pesters me about it now and then. And he wants to help people.”

  Gareht snorted. “He can’t study magic without a Mage Gift.”

  “I know,” Kweilin agreed. She felt the same empty numbness around Torec as she’d always sensed around her brother. Prod as she might with her own spells, her nephew held no Mage Gift that responded to them. But he had an innate understanding of the theory behind the spells he’d watch her cast, and she couldn’t deny the desire to teach him everything she knew, despite his lack of a Gift.

  Her grandfather dropped his hand from cradling his face and looked at her. The dance of firelight and shadow added age to a face that had stood up so well against the ravages of time.

  “I understand the desires of youth, trust me. I wish more than anyone that Torec could live his life the way he chooses and love when he will. But I’m getting older, despite how it looks, and the village needs his vitality. He must produce a male heir . . .”

  He stared at the fire again, appearing lost in his thoughts. Then he glanced at Kweilin with the small smile he wore whenever she mastered a spell he’d been teaching her. “I haven’t told you how happy I am that you’re finally with child, my dear. You waited so long to get married, I feared you might never know the joy and life your own children can bring.”

  His smile grew wider, and warmth spread through Kweilin. She, too, had feared that for a time.

  He sat back in his chair again with a sigh. “Yes, children can bring us such brightness and energy, even if they also bring heartache and headache. If we could just get that boy to see reason, I’d have a lot of weight off my shoulders.”

  Kweilin placed a hand on his arm. The chill coming off him alarmed her, and worry wriggled down into her belly. “Maybe I can talk to him a little.”

  “Would you, dear?” The weariness of his voice tugged at her heart.

  She would do anything for her grandfather, but how could she let her nephew down?

  “I will, Grandfather. Don’t worry.”

  • • •

  Torec would have run to the Farrier’s Inn in the middle of the village, if only to enjoy the evening meal surrounded by his friends. Kweilin dreaded a confrontation in such a place so soon after the argument with her grandfather, but she headed to the establishment anyway, hoping to get there before full dark.

  Winter had well and truly set in, and a swirl of white snow and the face-slapping sting of the dry air made her suck in a breath as the door closed behind her. All her scarves and cloaks, and even the extra warmth she carried at this stage of pregnancy, didn’t blunt the biting wind.

  She brought her magic up in a reflexive warming spell, but a twinge from her belly made her stop. The spell fizzled away, leaving a disappointing trace of soot in the air.

  Her thoughts and agreements bounced between her grandfather and her nephew while she crossed the village as quickly as the icy paths and her gravid body would let her. The argument, together with the bone-chilling weather, made her yearn for the fires of the Farrier’s Inn.

  As she neared the building, a commotion in the stable yard drew her attention.

  A crowd had gathered and were working together in a chaotic attempt to get a pure white horse into the stables. The horse shook its head free of its nearest captor, and its sapphire gaze fell on her.

  Kweilin sucked in a shocked breath that had nothing to do with the cold. A Companion! A Companion out of Valdemar. What was it doing here?

  “Lady Kweilin!” called one of the stable hands. “You wouldna happen t’ know where this beaut coulda come from, would ya?”

  “Aye, she jus’ turned up in th’ yard, Lady. Won’t cooperate with us none, tha’s fer sure.”

  Kweilin stepped forward, her authority as the patriarch’s granddaughter encouraging the gathered people to step away and calm down. She opened her mouth to chastise her people for their treatment of such a grand visitor.

  :Don’t tell them what I am! Something is terribly wrong, and I need your help.:

  Carefully, Kweilin controlled her surprise. She’d heard of the telepathic abilities of the Companions, but didn’t they usually speak to only their Chosen? Surely this one didn’t mean to Choose her!

  :Not you. Torec. I know it is him! But I cannot Mindtouch him in any way. A barrier lies between us, around his Gifts. I cannot Choose him if I cannot reach him, but I cannot leave without Choosing him!:

  A look of desperate anguish crossed the Companion’s face, and she stretched her head up as though she were straining to grasp something just out of reach.

  Kweilin’s jaw fell open. Torec, Gifted? Whenever she’d probed him, he felt just as numb as his father, her brother.

  Could the Companion be correct? Was something locked away behind the numbness?

  The Companion dropped her head, her flanks heaving as if she’d just galloped a hundred miles, and a wave of hopelessness crashed over Kweilin. It was so strong she wobbled on her feet.

  Gasping, she reached to comfort the beautiful creature, but before her gloved fingertips could brush the white coat, the Companion’s head snapped up with renewed determination.

  :I will not despair! An answer to this puzzle exists, I simply have to discover it. Will you help me?:

  If Torec really was Gifted, if he was Chosen, his future would crack wide open. Even her grandfather couldn’t be too upset. The Heralds of Valdemar were an honorable lot, even if becoming one meant Torec couldn’t act as her grandfather’s heir.

  Kweilin couldn’t help smiling at the image of her nephew in Whites. The picture was so natural, she knew it was the right path for him.

  :So far as I can, yes. My magic is not what it used to be, though.: She curled an arm around her stomach.

  “Milady?” someone asked.

  Kweilin snapped out of rapport with the Companion. She became aware of her surroundings again, of the whistling wind and the brush of snowflakes against her cheeks. Her ears throbbed from the cold. The scent of fresh stew and warm bread from the inn made her stomach growl. A snatch of unpolished song wove out from the common room, and someone fumbled through fingering a gittern.

  “Listen,” Kweilin said to the head stable hand. “This horse most likely belongs to someone of great importance. We must treat her gently and well, so her owner will have no complaints when he comes to reclaim her. I will keep her in my grandfather’s stables. Will you keep an eye on her while I step into the Farrier’s to collect my nephew? You’ve such a way with horses, I’m sure she’ll understand your intentions.”

  “Aye, milady,” the stable hand said, glowing with pride. He put a gentle hand on the Companion’s fine bridle, making soothing clicking noises. “I’ll jus’ hold ’er in th’ best stall ‘ere til yer ready to head back home.”

  :Don’t take too long,: the Companion said as she followed his lead.

  :I’ll do my best,: Kweilin replied. The least she could do was take a deeper look at that barrier.

  With a violent shiver of relief, she pushed her shoulder against the inn door and drank in the wash of warmth and savory smells.

  As she stood removing her excess winter clothing, a sobering thought struck her: if Torec was truly Gifted, Mareth most likely had been also. If she had examined the numbness around her brother, rather than merely ignoring it, might he have lived? Was her brother dead today because of her own negligence?

  • • •

  As she’d suspected, Torec sat in the middle of his table, surrounded by loud, energetic friends and enjoying the food and music. As she sat across the common room from him, she caught him making eyes at the innkeeper’s son. The other boy, busy with serving the rest of the night’s guests, didn’t seem to pick up on the attention he was receiving.

  Kweilin chose not to approach him straight away. She wanted to study the barrier without the inevitable curiosity he would display if she ma
de him aware of the situation. She found a distracted subject much easier to work with, and his friends provided that quite expertly.

  She settled in a darker corner, away from the fireplace—though near enough to enjoy its warmth—and ordered a bowl of stew when the innkeeper’s son trotted by. The moment he dashed off again, she turned her attention to the numbness around Torec.

  She probed it with a tendril of her awareness. Tingles of flatness and nothingness zinged back to her, just the same as every prior time she’d tested him. Those times, however, she’d been aiming to reach Torec, to bypass the morass that blocked her and communicate with him. This time, she ignored him and concentrated on the numbness.

  Now that she was focusing on the structure itself, it was so obviously a construct, something so unnatural that it made her want to recoil in disgust.

  Something was deliberately blocking Torec’s Gifts. Who would do that to a person?

  Fighting her revulsion, she pressed forward once more. The innkeeper’s son slid her bowl of stew onto the table before her, but she barely grunted an acknowledgement. She scraped her awareness against the barrier again, searching for any hint of an origin.

  There! A tendril snagged on some tiny piece. Excitement coursed through her at the discovery. She pulled another tendril out to investigate further.

  She pried at the piece, revealing the structure below it. Something familiar wound through the barrier, a red lattice-work spell that appeared to be tearing the barrier apart slowly, the way vines would break apart stone. An aura radiated off it, a presence she knew.

  As she looked at the twining spell, an image of her grandfather standing over her seven-year-old self as he taught her a spell came to her.

  Her belly twinged with pain.

  As if her tendrils had been cut, Kweilin snapped back into herself. She ran her hands over her abdomen, trembling, as she assessed her pain and the potential damage to her daughter.

  The pain faded, and she sighed in relief. Everything felt normal, her daughter safe.