Lies and Prophecy

by Marie Brennan

  A crimson drop welled up immediately. Health Services had certified all eight of us clean, and so Michele pricked her finger in return and touched it to mine. An electric jolt ran down my arm to my heart. Only a touch of blood, and only the lightest of bindings through it. But the element that made all this possible was there, invisible: the sidhe blood in our veins. A tiny genetic legacy, yet one which shaped all of our lives.

  It took a few more stabs with the athame to get enough blood for the six remaining members. I was fleetingly glad the circle wasn’t even bigger. Drop by drop, I felt the connection grow, until a fragile web hummed between us all, a channel through which we could share power more easily.

  Or I so I imagined. If it was there, and I thought I felt it, was that any different from feeling it in truth? Yes, because what I expected to feel might not be accurate. Study could fix that, though. I should have asked Liesel—or better yet, Robert—to break down the specifics of the binding for me. I liked knowledge. It made a good shield against uncertainty.

  Knowledge, and friends. Liesel touched me with reassurance, and I smiled back at her. It would be rude to whisper telepathically to her in the middle of the ritual, but afterwards, I’d be sure to thank her. Whether this turned out to be the magic wand for my problems or not, I was glad she had suggested it.

  ~

  When I got to Hurst the next day for lunch neither of the guys was there. I stood for a moment, puzzled. Julian was often a bit late, but Robert was usually early. Shrugging, I dropped my bag at our window table to reserve it and got food.

  By the time Julian came, even later than usual, Robert still wasn’t there. “Where’s your roommate?” I asked as he put his things on an empty chair.

  “Having lunch with Dr. Lo. He won’t be here.”

  “Ah, he’s sucking up.” I grinned at Julian, but he returned it only briefly before getting his own tray.

  When he came back, I tried to examine him without being obvious about it. He looked a little more worn, a little more drained. In a way, it was a relief: Julian was human after all, whatever his Krauss rating might be. Still, I worried about him. People like Grayson could handle that kind of load; strength and endurance grew over time, and with practice. Most college students would have been flattened in the first week, though.

  Robert’s absence gave me a good opportunity to pry. “Grayson’s beating shielding into us now,” I said by way of an opening. My soup bowl I shoved aside; the watery excuse for bisque they were giving us today was just inedible. “She explained some of how it works, and it’s fascinating.” Much more so than when my Yan teacher went over it. Even if I was having the usual trouble with the execution.

  Julian just nodded. Come on, I thought, give me more than that. Shielding was one of Julian’s favorite subjects; he’d returned to it again and again since coming to Welton. Come to think of it, the shielding course he was taking this quarter was one of Grayson’s, too. I asked, “So how does the combat version work, anyway? I know they’re different, but not how.”

  He gave up on the bisque, too, but answered me. “Daily shields are just a precaution against ill-mannered people, and ritual shields prevent contamination by outside energy. Neither are built on the idea that someone’s deliberately and repeatedly trying to penetrate them.”

  I could have figured that much out for myself. I had him talking, though, and that was a start. “So you need a mechanism for doing something with the energy thrown at them. If you just let it hit, the disruption in the energy flow makes weak spots, and pretty soon the shield comes apart.” There had to be some way to steer this around to him, instead of magical theory. Peeling an orange as if I might find a clue inside, I asked, “So what sorts of tricks do combat shields use?”

  “Various things.” Julian said. “If you’re good enough, you can absorb the energy into your own shield. But it’s tricky—if you take the power in directly, the negative energy eats away at the shield instead. So you have to transform it as you absorb it.”

  “While in the middle of a fight.” The mind boggled. “What else?”

  Julian gave me a slantwise look I couldn’t interpret. “You can spin your shields, to lessen the force of the attack and deflect it to one side. Or sink it into something that can take the hit, like the earth. Or make your shield reflective, and bounce the attack off. Though that’s not one you want to try when innocents are around.”

  I shuddered. “I would think not.”

  “Or even plants, for that matter. Most of them just die, but Grayson showed us one that was mutated by a reflected attack. It looks like a Venus flytrap gone wrong. It tries to bite her when she waters it.”

  It sounded like the kind of story Robert would make up, but Julian was serious. “Why am I not surprised she keeps souvenirs like that?”

  “She’s got an unseelie streak in her,” he admitted.

  “So what do you think—is Combat Shielding worth taking?”

  His expression shut down again. Did he think I was considering it for myself? I couldn’t even cast a proper circle yet, not that I’d admitted it to Julian. “Yes and no,” he said, his tone carefully flat. “It’s a good class, and Grayson’s brilliant, but there’s no way it’s worth the drain if you don’t have a compelling reason.”

  Now I let him see me evaluating him, judging his condition. “I kind of gathered that from the way you look.”

  Julian grimaced. “I wouldn’t give it up for anything, but no, it’s not easy. She drills us on the basic principles until we have them down cold, but it isn’t just a theory class. Once we’ve practiced a method, Grayson tests us by flinging levinbolts at our shields.”

  My appetite went away with a bang. “So if you haven’t built it well enough, you get hurt? That’s barbaric!”

  “It’s not that bad. She puts her own shields on us, under the ones we’ve built. But she deliberately leaves them weak, so we know when we’ve let something slip through. In real life, failure will have consequences, and we need to understand that.”

  He sounded entirely undisturbed. Was this how wilders got trained? “I’m surprised the university lets her get away with it.”

  “Think, Kim.” The hard edge in his voice startled me. “Everyone in the class is planning to be a Guardian or a bodyguard or something else dangerous. Grayson can’t let us go unprepared. Coddling us could have fatal consequences.”

  “But you’re a student,” I said. “You’re not about to become a Guardian, or you wouldn’t be at college. So what’s your ‘compelling reason’ for putting yourself through this?”

  I couldn’t even tell why I was so upset. Maybe just simple fear, the consequence of imagining myself in his place. But my hands were clenched into fists atop the table, and all thought of food was gone. Julian, for his own part, was staring out the window, as if trying to decide how to phrase “it’s none of your business.”

  When he finally spoke, though, his answer was gentler than I expected. Only his shoulders communicated the tension he kept from his words. “It’s something I need to do, Kim. I may become a Guardian, once I’m done here; I don’t know yet. But in the meantime, this is what I have to do—and I’ll be all right.”

  And what the hell did that mean? I didn’t know, but I knew I’d pushed more than enough for one day. “Just be careful,” I said, defeated. “I don’t want you burning out.”

  Julian seemed amused, but he nodded. “I promise.”

  ~

  The odds of him keeping that promise seemed higher the following Sunday, when he and Robert showed up at Wolfstone with the news that Julian had finally built up a reservoir of power large enough and stable enough for him to draw on it for shielding.

  “It’s about time,” was Julian’s only comment before he sank into the deep armchair and closed his eyes.

  Liesel gave him a bottle of juice. From my perch on the edge of my desk, I surveyed his condition both with sight and psychic senses. He was bone-weary. A few of his shields were down for once, an
d from what I saw, I could only be glad the reservoir finally worked. Even he could only take so much strain.

  “So now, my ladies,” Robert continued—he’d been the one to announce the news— “it is up to us three to make sure this fool gets some rest.”

  They stayed there for a while, chatting—or rather Robert chatted, and Julian drank down bottle after bottle of fruit juice. Before long he pulled himself together and sat up, but I couldn’t tell if he was really feeling better or if he’d just resumed his pretense of energy.

  I didn’t have much chance to judge, because Robert decided to grill me on how Grayson’s class was going. I hadn’t failed any of the practicals yet—though I’d come close, on our recent shielding test—but I didn’t want to admit I was scraping through only by sheer logic and determination. Instead I focused on the theoretical side, where I had much more success. “Impressive,” Robert acknowledged with a nod of his head. “She force-feeds it so quickly, most students find themselves choking within a month.”

  “Yeah, well, I knew a lot of it from before,” I said—and then cursed my slip.

  Robert’s eyebrows shot up. “I thought you hadn’t taken a CM class before.”

  “Not at Welton,” I said uncomfortably. “Earlier.”

  I could sense Liesel about to steer us away from the rocks, but Robert spoke before she could. “You were not on your high school’s team, of that I’m sure … oh, my lady, tell me you weren’t subjected to that Yan nonsense.”

  Even Liesel couldn’t save me from this now. Making the best of the situation, I said, “It isn’t nonsense. The Yan Path gives you a head start. Hell, I just said it’s the reason I’m keeping up in Grayson’s class.”

  “Yes—but you also waste your time going through the motions of exercises that can have no possible result, because you have no gifts to power them!”

  “Sometimes that’s a good thing.” It took all of us a moment to realize the words came from Julian; we’d pretty much forgotten he was there. He swiped one hand across his eyes and set the latest bottle down empty. “It’s how wilders are trained. We learn the theory and practice the form before we attempt it with power.”

  I nodded. “Yan got his idea from that, I think. I don’t really know the details, but he figured that if early training was good for wilders, why not for ordinary bloods?”

  “Because it teaches you failure,” Robert said. “Go through the motions of calling up energy or what have you, but of course nothing happens, and so by the time your gifts come you expect nothing to happen. It might work for wilders, where non-response of the gift is hardly a problem, but for the rest of us?” He shook his head in disgust.

  Startled, I looked to Liesel. Her expression might have been drawn by a cartoon artist: an appalled wince, the kind someone has right after a clumsy oaf knocks down their house of cards.

  Was Robert right? Was my problem that I’d trained myself to fail?

  Liesel had recovered by the time anyone else looked at her, and diverted Robert into an argument over the specialty schools in Germany. It gave me time to think. He couldn’t be right, not all the time. Plenty of people took Yan lessons and went on to perfectly successful careers in ceremonial magic. The system worked.

  But nothing was perfect. Maybe I was one of the duds—not me, not something innate to my gifts, but the way the training had affected me. All those exercises, all those empty motions, building up a pattern in my head.

  And Liesel knew it. I could translate her wince; no doubt she’d figured this out a while ago, and had been trying to lead me gently down the path to overcoming that block. If she’d said to my face, “Your problem is that you expect to fail”—as Robert had just more or less done—it would have put me precisely where I was now: even more tangled up in my own head. Any doubts I had now would feed on themselves in a vicious circle.

  My roommate’s tactics were good. Since they’d just been blown out of the water by one enthusiastic Irishman, though, I had to fall back on the one thing I knew I was good at: sheer damned stubbornness. This was something I could fix, and I would.

  Fortified by that thought, I glanced over at Julian—and he looked me in the eye.

  The effect was appalling. He rarely met anyone’s gaze, because he knew what it did to them. The strangeness of him, the inhuman presence that set him apart from me and everyone else, grew stronger by a hundredfold. Every hair on my body rose at once. His shields were fully up, and his grey eyes held no expression whatsoever. And I could not look away.

  A hand landed on my shoulder. I jumped. “Kim, tell Robert he’s being unreasonable,” Liesel said. When had she moved behind me? The faint squeeze of her fingers said she’d noticed me caught, and had come to rescue me. In gratitude—and because it was a safe bet—I parroted her words obediently.

  By the time I glanced back, Julian had begun to gather up the empty bottles, gaze carefully averted again.

  He’d known. At least, I thought so. All my determination not to let him see, but Julian was hardly an idiot; maybe he’d even spotted the Yan book in my hand at the library. Why hadn’t he said anything, though? Not as bluntly as Robert, necessarily, but something?

  Maybe out of respect for my privacy. Maybe just to spare my pride a bruising.

  Well, I’d take bruised pride over continued failure any day. Especially when it meant that maybe—if I re-trained my brain—I could do CM after all.

  And maybe become a Guardian.

  My delight at the thought was tempered by a single, small chill. I have to be prepared. Ever since that reading, my gift had been whispering those words in my ear, reminding me that something was coming. I hadn’t forgotten the Moon, and I doubted it had forgotten me.

  ~

  Robert started half out of his chair when the door crashed into the wall. He didn’t relax at the sight of me in the entrance to his dorm room, and I couldn’t blame him.

  He eyed me warily from his half-crouched stance as though debating whether to bolt for cover. “Are you angry at me, my absent roommate, or some poor ill-starred third party?”

  My only response was to show him the tarot deck in my hand. He nodded, lowering himself back into his chair as I shuffled three times, cut, and threw down the top card.

  It skidded across his desk and landed at a skewed angle. Lurid flames leapt forth from cracks in the walls of a crumbling spire. Pieces of masonry fell to earth like burning comets. People fell alongside them, hands outstretched as though that would save them. “The Tower,” Robert said. Sorcerer he might be, but he could recognize the Major Arcana.

  I rammed it back into the middle of the deck, shuffled, cut, and dealt.

  The Tower.

  Shuffle, cut, and deal.

  The Tower.

  And again.

  Robert leaned back in his chair and quirked one eyebrow at me. He seemed more amused than anything else. “Las Vegas would have great use for you.”

  “It’s not me.”

  The harsh words froze his easy grin. Slowly, cautiously, he shifted forward again, not looking away. “I believe you.” He paused. “Do it again.”

  “I was doing class work for Historical Tarot,” I said as I shuffled and cut. The motions were soothingly familiar and kept my hands from shaking. “Trying to, anyway. But every single time, no matter what the question is, the first card up is the Tower.” And once more it held true.

  Robert spun his chair and plunged one hand into a chaotic drawer. He fished around blindly for a moment before coming up with a nearly-new deck. Dropping the cards into his hand, he shuffled more times than he needed to, cut, and dealt.

  Six of cups, reversed.

  He repeated his test. The nine of wands landed on his desk.

  Grabbing a scrap of paper, Robert began to write furiously in his illegible scrawl. “How many times?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember. “Five here. One other time with this deck, making six. Four times with an eighteenth-century deck, once with an original Ride
r-Waite, once with a Manifestation-era Urban Tarot, twice with my Piacenza. And every time it was the Tower.”

  Still writing, Robert extended his free hand. “Do you mind?” I handed him the deck without hesitation; the cards were a library loan anyway. Twice he shuffled, cut, and dealt. The first try turned up the two of swords. The other produced Temperance.

  Robert handed the deck back and shrugged. “It seems to be you.”

  Repeating the test with his cards, I got the Tower again. I sighed and sank into his roommate’s empty chair. “I kind of hoped Julian would be here—no offense.”

  “None taken. He seems the natural audience for such strangeness.”

  I hadn’t seen Julian since he came by my room; he’d missed lunch on Monday and Wednesday. I’d never told him about my own reading, and the Moon. There hadn’t seemed much point: a vague warning in response to a personal question, and nothing indicating Julian except maybe the Knight of Swords. But now this.

  Robert leaned back and looked pensive. “The Tower. A card of destruction, as I recall, or sudden and severe change. Have you tried other tools? What do they turn up?”

  His mind was a gem. “Do you have runes?”

  “Somewhere.” He gave the drawer a vague look. Then his hand dove in again and came out holding a bag. “They’re wretchedly cheap.”

  “I don’t care.” I stuck my hand in and grabbed the first piece my fingers encountered.

  “Well?” Robert asked impatiently. “What is it?”

  I laid the square of plastic down on his desk. He glanced at the figure painted on it—an H-shaped character, with the cross-bar tilted at an angle—and shrugged. “I confess ignorance. Three years I’ve owned these, and never used them.”

  “Hagalaz,” I said slowly. “Sudden change, again, and destruction. It can also mean a bridge between worlds, but its primary significance is like the Tower’s.” I tossed it back in, shook the bag up, and drew. Neither of us was surprised to see Hagalaz again.

  Robert glanced around the room. “I have no other divination tools, and I’m damned if I’ll touch Julian’s things to find any. You might want to experiment further, to see if this continues. Your class meets tomorrow, yes?” I nodded. “Ask then, I suppose. Perhaps others have encountered this phenomenon.”