by Dawn Cook
Alissa’s words finally penetrated, and Strell’s mouth shut with a snap. Even in her dreams Alissa wouldn’t call herself Useless, and she certainly wouldn’t sit calmly by as he shouted insults about her. And Talon was ready to tear her eyes out. Whoever that was, frowning at the tuft of red fur stuck in his old hat, it wasn’t Alissa.
Slowly he edged back, ignoring Talon’s violent efforts to fly at her mistress. He had always dismissed tales of possession as fantasy, but it seemed all wagers were off tonight. “Useless?” he whispered, and Alissa inclined her head, amusement dancing about her. It was a decidedly masculine greeting, and Strell swallowed hard. “Her eyes are gray in the sun,” he said. “Where’s Alissa?”
“Burn me to ash, I was afraid of that.” Useless sighed. “No matter. He won’t see them. She is to turn around and go home.”
“Where is Alissa?” Strell demanded, refusing to let his panic gain a foothold.
Useless reached for a stick and rearranged the fire, sending Alissa’s fingers perilously close to the flames. Giving a sharp gasp, he snatched Alissa’s hand back, looking betrayed. “I told you,” he mumbled around the fingers stuck in her mouth. “She’s occupied.”
“Occupied as in busy, or occupied as in taken over?” Strell said wildly.
“Right,” Useless said, eyeing the mild burn with an obvious disgust.
Talon was hissing like a teapot, pinching so hard, she almost drew blood. Wondering if he should just throw a blanket over the bird and be done with it, Strell shouted, “Well, which is it?”
Useless glanced at him through narrowed eyes. “Don’t be getting above yourself, my good minstrel. Or I’ll sear you as easily as I could that bird.”
Strell forced himself to unclench his fist. Talon’s screeching dropped to a skin-crawling growl, no doubt responding to Strell’s less aggressive posture.
“Oh, don’t be foolish,” Useless said, frowning at the hole in Alissa’s stocking. “I wouldn’t burn you. It’s a wonder I located you at all. You may rest assured, mender of misplayed melodies, that only when Alissa’s thoughts are in the past, may useless thoughts enter.”
Strell winced. “Is that useless as in inconsequential, or Useless as in your thoughts?”
“Right again.” Useless twitched Alissa’s face into a wry smile. “Alissa will wake come sunup. I was simply making sure she was secure as she tripped the lines. I’ll admit it pleases me she has found someone other than that ill-tempered sparrow to watch over her. I wouldn’t have spoken up, but your ancient song was ever one to charm the savage heart. Remember it well, it’s been long since it was played correctly.”
“Tripped the lines?” Strell said wildly, terrified the conversation might be ending, and terrified it might not be.
Gruff, but with an undertone of sympathy, Useless said, “The reasonings would take more time than we have tonight. Suffice to say that when she wakes, you will take Alissa to her home.”
“I’m not taking her home,” Strell said. “I won’t overwinter in the plains, and the passes will be closed if I have to backtrack.”
Useless fixed him with a withering gaze. “I—do—not— care. You will take her home.”
Strell’s brow furrowed. His panic ebbed, tempered by a grudging hatred of being dictated to. He carried a chartered name. He didn’t take orders from any but his father. And if this Useless didn’t like it, he could just scratch for sand fleas.
“Now isn’t—er—the best time for me to take on a student,” Useless was saying, color showing on Alissa’s cheeks. “I have sent her among the lines of time to relive the nightmare of her father’s death, to frighten her away. Frankly, I’m surprised she’s even coming. The pull should be too weak with only myself here.”
“Her father’s death?” Strell whispered, suddenly cold at the thought.
“I regret the necessity of such harsh wisdom,” Useless said, Alissa’s stiff posture slumping for the first time. “But it’s for her own benefit. She must not continue. The experience should be enough to send her scurrying home in time for supper.”
“Not a good time to take on a student. . . .” Strell frowned, then his eyes brightened in understanding. “You’re at the Hold.”
“She told you of the Hold!” Useless cried, then settled back. “Aye,” he said sourly. “I’m here, trapped by a seditious Keeper who deems himself more than he is.”
“Well, that’s where we’re going,” Strell said cautiously. Something about Useless’s words was giving him the feeling of a clammy noose slipping about his neck. “We can free you, maybe.”
“No.” Useless sighed, sending Alissa’s bangs to dance in her exhaled breath. “Freeing me is a grand thought, but the task is beyond both of you. Even my jailer cannot loose me—if he dared. Just take her home. She can come back when Bailic is no longer of importance. He’s getting old. There can’t be many years left in him.” Useless frowned, pinching Alissa’s face into a mask of pain. “I can’t allow myself to believe they’re all gone. Someone must be left. Someone who can free me. Perhaps they’re waiting him out, letting my imprisonment be my penance for allowing such a thing to happen.”
“Bailic?” Strell said, feeling the noose tighten. “Who’s Bailic?”
Alissa stiffened, and Strell drew back as a wave of fury and hatred washed over her, looking terrifyingly wrong. She shuddered violently, and Useless regained his calm control.
“Bailic?” he murmured. “He’s the one who deceived me.
He’s the one who sent my kin to their deaths in the name of search. He’s the one who systematically committed genocide upon all the Keepers and students. If he realizes who Alissa’s sire is, he will slaughter her, too. It will be done out of vengeance, if not for his fear of her potential Keeper status.” Useless shook Alissa’s head. “Something went wrong with that one. He’s afraid. Why is he so afraid?”
Strell’s breath came fast, and he began to shove things into his pack as if to leave right then. There it was, right in front of him, the rope he was going to hang himself with. “We can’t go there now. It would be a sure death!”
Useless chuckled. “That’s what I’ve been saying. Escort her home and you will be fine. Your only other choice is to destroy Bailic.”
An icy wash broke upon him as he mouthed the words, “Destroy Bailic?” He tried to speak, but nothing came out. “Hold it!” Strell exclaimed. “What do you mean, ‘destroy Bailic’? You said he’s killed people. You expect us to get rid of Bailic when you couldn’t?”
Useless gave Strell a dark look ripe with impatience and embarrassment. “No. I expect you to take her home. How many times do I have to say it.”
“But—but how?” Strell stammered. “I’m just a piper, and Alissa is just—well—Alissa. She’s a nice enough girl I suppose,” he babbled. “But she won’t harm anything. Hounds. She won’t even let me eat meat anymore!”
“Take her home!” Useless thundered, and Strell winced. Even Talon jumped, her hissing cutting off with a startled peep. In the silence, a lone cricket chirped. Strell heard Useless sigh, and he looked up, his breath catching at wrongness pouring from Alissa. “Just take her home,” Useless said quietly.
“What if she doesn’t want to go?”
A canny eye focused upon him, then slid away. Useless settled Alissa as if for sleep, bunching the blanket up about her chin as she lay down close to the fire. “Then I expect you will die a miserable, degrading death,” he said, and with a happy sigh, he shut Alissa’s eyes.
Strell swallowed hard, not trusting Useless was gone. Slowly the crickets began to court the night again. His mind was swirling as he loosened his grip on Talon’s feet. The ruffled bird dug in her claws until his eyes widened from the hurt. With a saucy flick of her tail, she leaped at Alissa.
“No!” Strell lunged to stop her attack, but tripped on a root and measured his length on the hard ground. “Oof!” he gasped as the wind was knocked out of him. Landing lightly, Talon looked back as if commenting on his lack of
grace. She ran her bill through Alissa’s still-damp hair, then, satisfied all was well, she hopped to her shoulder and hunched down for the night.
“Right,” Strell wheezed from the ground. “You take the first watch.”
There was a spat of chittering, and Talon went still.
Strell brushed the dirt from him and returned to his blankets. He stretched out on his bedroll with his eyes wide open, shifting his attention between the night and the lump that was Alissa. “Take her home, he says,” Strell muttered. “I’m not taking her home, and I’m not going to the Hold anymore. I’m going to the coast. There’s no reason for me to get involved in this. All I did was haul her out of a ditch. She can find her own way home.”
Talon shifted her feathers. The small sound drew Strell’s eyes and they settled upon Alissa. Her blanket had slipped, and she was clenched from the cold. Silently he rose and adjusted her cover. Neither the bird nor the girl stirred. For a long time he stood over her, watching the mist eddy to their fire like white shadows, only to dissolve from its warmth. “Oh, Alissa,” he whispered, “what have you gotten me into?”
12
“Oh-h,” Alissa groaned, pressing her fingers to her head and trying to shade her eyes from the sun. “Ah . . .” she whined, quieter, as her head felt like it had nearly split apart. She managed to roll over, cracking her nose on the ground. Slivers of fire snaked down her spine.
The pain from her nose helped clear her head, or perhaps it was the smell of the mangled bird a finger’s width from her nose, undoubtedly a gift from Talon. Whatever the reason, this time when she tried to move, all her muscles responded and she got into a sitting position.
It was a bad idea. The headache doubled its intensity and added a new dimension, nausea. With a desperate whimper, she buried her throbbing head between her knees.
“Alissa?” she heard faintly, followed by the sound of twigs snapping and rapid footsteps. “Alissa!” Strell shouted again, sliding to a halt just before crashing into her. “Are you all right?”
“Stop. . . . Oh, do stop!” she whispered, clenching her hands to her ears, and she nearly passed out from the throbbing waves of thick, muzzy agony that crashed over her.
“Alissa!” he shouted, shaking her. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
“Oh, just burn me now and get it over with,” she groaned, wondering who else he thought might be sitting in their camp. Hounds, it even hurt to breathe. If only he would be still. “Stop,” she croaked, trying to figure out why her head hadn’t rolled off her shoulders yet.
“What’s that?”
“Stop,” she moaned, curling up into a tight ball.
“Stop what?”
Her voice barely audible even to herself, she rasped, “Stop—talking.”
“Oh.”
Finally it was quiet. Alissa stoically waited for things to improve. They couldn’t possibly get any worse. As she wallowed in her private purgatory, she felt the oddest sensation, and almost so vague as to be imagined, a voice rumbled through her thoughts, “Burn me to ash, I forgot. Here, impatient one. Let the excess energy flow thus, otherwise it will block your synapses like the fog blocks the morning sun.”
As if this wasn’t surprising enough, Alissa caught a glimpse of a spiderweb-like structure glowing deep in her unconsciousness. Before she could form any conception beyond that, it seemed to wink out of existence taking her headache with it. The pain vanished, absolutely and completely vanished as if it had never existed. Not trusting it was really gone, Alissa blearily looked up to find Strell crouched on his side of the fire, warily watching her.
“Can I talk now?” he said, his eyes wide in worry.
“Uh-huh,” she groaned, completely wrung out.
“Are you all right?” he whispered. He hadn’t moved. It looked as if he was afraid to.
“I don’t know,” she said sourly as she uncurled her legs. They were terribly stiff. Her finger, she realized, had a blister. “My head hurt.”
“Do—do you want me to find you some snails?”
Alissa looked up. “Snails?”
“For your headache.”
Her eyes closed, and she tried not to shudder as she imagined what he intended to do with snails that might cure a headache. “No thanks. It’s gone.”
He gave her an incredulous grunt, and she nodded. “Yes. Just like that.”
Strell settled back. “Ah,” he said wisely, “it must be Useless.”
“Useless?” Alissa frowned, and with the word echoing in her thoughts, it came back in a sudden implosion of memory. She had relived her papa’s death!
Horror stricken, she looked to Strell, desperately wanting it to have only been a dream but knowing it wasn’t. Her face went cold and her stomach twisted. Strell scrambled to his feet. “You’re not going to do it again, are you!” he cried.
“Oh, Strell,” she wailed. “He died to keep me a secret!” and then, with her arms wrapped tightly about her knees, she began to cry, right in front of him, not caring if the ill-mannered flatlander watched or not. There was a soft, hesitant touch on her shoulder and a whispered something. Up to then she might have been able to stop, but his slight show of compassion buried any hope of that, and Alissa clutched at him, pulling him down and sobbing all the harder.
She felt Strell stiffen, then relax. “Who died?” he asked softly, a hesitant hand touching her shoulder.
“My papa!” she cried into his shirt. It was rough against her scraped nose, smelling of hot sand and open spaces. “He left when I was five on one of his mapping trips. We didn’t know what happened. He died,” Alissa wailed, “so Bailic wouldn’t know about me.” There was another upsurge of tears, and it was some time before she realized Strell had asked her something. “What?” Alissa snuffed blearily up at him. He was kneeling beside her, his arms about her shoulders, keeping her connected to the Now so she wouldn’t lose herself to the Then.
He smiled, running a thumb under her eye. “I said, ‘so who doesn’t find out about you?’”
“Bailic.” She turned away. “He used to be my papa’s friend.”
“Your father was a Keeper of the Hold,” Strell said quietly, almost to himself.
“Yes, he was.” Alissa looked up in surprise. “How did you guess?”
Strell glanced uneasily to the west. “So, what do you know about him. Bailic, I mean.”
Feeling the tightness of threatening tears, Alissa bit her lip and tried to make her voice even. “Bailic wanted the First Truth. My papa had it. Bailic tricked the Masters to their deaths for it, then systematically murdered the Keepers and students to discover who possessed it.”
“The First Truth? What’s that?”
“It’s a . . .” Alissa, began, then shivered, surprised at the warm upwelling of emotion that filled her at the thought of it, a strong stirring of desire, seeming to be out of place. “It’s a book,” she whispered, her eyes distant and unseeing. “It’s the pinnacle of the Masters’ knowledge, given to my papa for safekeeping. I think it was the book I found before he left . . .” Alissa frowned. He couldn’t have left because of that, could he? Putting the horrid thought out of her head, she turned to Strell. “So I figure it belongs to me until they ask for it back.”
“But you said all the Masters were dead!”
She felt the ghost of a grin on her face. “That’s right. All I have to do is find it. My papa said I could. We’ll go to the Hold, I’ll hunt it up, we leave, you show me the coast this winter, and I’ll be home by early summer. What could be easier?” Alissa beamed up at him, her smile freezing as she realized she was nearly in his lap. Strell cleared his throat and loosened his hold.
At that moment, Talon landed in a nearby pine, something furry in her grip. She twittered in a pleased fashion at her catch as she turned to them, seeming to do a double take. The rodent fell forgotten to the moldering needles in a sodden thump. Raising her feathers, she began to hiss.
“Uh, maybe I should . . .” Strell awkwardly stood up.
“Yes,” Alissa mumbled, red-faced, though they’d done nothing wrong. “I agree.”
Talon dropped to the ground. Yowling as if moonstruck, she stalked toward Strell, a dangerous look in her avian eyes. Strell and Alissa looked blankly at each other, completely dumbfounded. Strell took a wary step back, which only seemed to add to the bird’s rage.
“I’m—uh—going to take a walk,” he muttered, and he beat a tactful retreat into the morning fog, snatching the empty water bag in passing. Talon watched him go, looking as satisfied as a bird can. Alissa thought that would be the end of it, but as soon as he was out of sight, Talon turned and flew at her.
“Hey!” Alissa shouted, hunching into a quick duck. Her mouth fell open in shock as Talon started scolding her. The bird jumped up and down on her prey, flapping her wings and screaming like the proverbial banshee. First on the mouse, then the bird, then the mouse again. She didn’t eat them; she tore them to shreds. When they were scattered over the entire camp, she flew to the dwindling stack of firewood and appeared to deliberately turn her back on Alissa.
The camp went silent. Even the morning chatter of the birds had stilled, stunned by her tantrum. “Talon?” Alissa ventured, and the bird stiffened. “Fine!” Alissa said. “Be that way. He was only trying to help.”
Talon turned, cocking her head and glaring as if she understood.
“You relive your papa’s death and see if you handle it any better!” Alissa shouted. “I don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on, and when someone shows the smallest bit of sympathy, you turn into a suspicious nanny! Well, you can just stay on that stick. See if I care!” The tears pricked again, and she spun away to throw her bedroll together.
There was a familiar fluttering, and Talon landed on her wrist looking decidedly subdued. She had her mouse, or what was left of it, and tried to push it into Alissa’s clenched fist. Immediately Alissa’s anger softened. “That’s all right,” she said with a sigh, accepting the mangled thing. “You didn’t know.”