Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  “Either would have gotten you out; the one you wanted was the shorter, though. Ready for the second test?”

  “I think so. Rolan seems to be.”

  “All right then—off with you, despoiler of gardens!” Keren slapped Rolan lightly on the rump; he snorted at her, and trotted off. Skif followed beside him.

  Keren had a single die, which she threw for a set of twenty passes, as Talia carefully noted down the number of pips. Skif, with Rolan, had a set of six cards, one for each face of the die. Rolan was to indicate which face was up for each pass Keren made—for this time, he would be using Talia’s eyes. This didn’t take long; both of them were soon back, and Skif s and Talia’s lists compared.

  “Incredible—not even one wrong! We’re going to have to tell Kyril about this; I don’t doubt he’ll want to give you even more tests together,” Keren said with amazement.

  “He’s welcome if he wants to,” Talia replied. “I just wanted to be sure that I was right about the bond. Now that we’re done, I’ll tell you what else I was testing. I was shielded the entire time for both tests.”

  “You’re joking, surely!” Skif’s mouth fell open.

  “I was never more serious. You realize what this means, don’t you? Not only is our bond one of the strongest I know of, but if I can’t shield him out, nobody can block him away from me, either.”

  “That could be mighty useful, someday,” Keren put in. “It means that even if you were unconscious, you could be reached through Rolan. We’ll definitely have to tell Kyril about this now.”

  “Go right ahead. It’s hardly something that needs to be kept secret.”

  “Talia, do you think I’ll have a friend like Rolan someday?” Elspeth asked wistfully.

  Talia gathered the child to her and hugged her shoulders. “Catling,” she whispered, “Never doubt it for a minute. In fact, your Companion-friend may very well be even better than Rolan, and that’s a promise.”

  Rolan did not respond to this with his usual snort of human-like derision. Instead, he nuzzled the child gently, almost as if to confirm Talia’s promise.

  A few evenings later Talia decided to determine exactly what the physical limit of the range of her Gift was.

  She did not bother to light a candle in her room, but simply relaxed on her bed in the growing dusk, isolating and calming any disturbing influences in herself until she was no longer aware of her body except as a kind of anchor from which to move outward. She extended her sense of empathy slowly, reaching first beyond her room, then beyond the Collegium, then beyond the Palace and grounds. There were vague pockets in the Palace of ambition and unease, but nothing and no one strong enough to hold her there.

  She brushed lightly past them, venturing beyond, out into the city itself. Emotions appeared as vivid colors to her; they were like mists to move through for the most part, with none of the negative sort being strong enough to stay her passage. Once or twice she stopped long enough to intervene; in a tavern brawl, and in the nightmares of a young soldier. Then she passed on.

  She ranged out farther now, following the Northern road, moving from contact to contact with those dwelling or camped beside it as if she were following beacons along the wayside. They were like little lanterns along the darkened road, providing mostly guidepoints for her—or perhaps like stepping-stones across a brook since she needed them to move onward. The contacts here were fewer than in any other direction as the Northern road led through some of the most sparsely populated districts in the Kingdom. As Talia’s consciousness flowed along this route, she remembered that this was the route Ylsa had been sent out on earlier in the week.

  Suddenly, as if merely being reminded of Ylsa’s existence were impetus enough, she found herself being pulled Northward, caught by a force too strong and too urgent to resist.

  There was growing unease and apprehension as she was pulled along—and growing fear as well. She found herself unable to break the contact or to slow herself and became even more alarmed because of this. She was in a near panic when she was suddenly pulled into what had drawn her.

  She found herself there. Looking out of another’s eyes. Ylsa’s eyes.

  Ambushed!

  Too many—there were too many of them to fight off. Felara lashed out with wicked hooves and laid about her with her teeth, trying to make a path for escape, but their attackers were canny and managed to keep them surrounded. She clamped her legs tightly around Felara’s chest to stay with her, knowing she was as good as dead if she was thrown.

  She drew her longsword and cut at them, but for every one she laid low, two sprang up to replace him. The sword was not really meant for fighting a-horseback, and before she’d managed to strike more than half-a-dozen blows, it was carried out of her hands by a falling foe, and she was forced to draw her dagger instead. Then, in a well-coordinated move, they all drew back as a horn sounded.

  Terrible pain lanced through her shoulder and momentarily filmed her eyes. She looked down stupidly to see a feathered shaft sprouting from her upper chest.

  Felara screamed in agony as a second shaft pierced the Companion’s flank. Damn the moon!

  They were illuminated clearly by it—clearly enough to make good targets for the archers that must be hidden underneath the trees. Their attackers fell back a little more—and more shafts hummed out of the darkness—

  Felara cried once again, and collapsed, trapping her beneath her Companion’s bulk. And she couldn’t think or move, for the loss and the agony of Felara’s death were all too much a part of her.

  The archers’ work done, the swordsmen closed anew. She saw the blade catch the moonlight, and arc down, and knew it for the one that would kill her—

  :Kyril! Tell the Queen—in the shaft!:

  Dozens of images flashed and vanished. One stayed. Arrows—ringed with black. Five of them. Hollow black-ringed arrows—

  Then unbearable pain, followed by a terrifying silence and darkness, more terrible than the pain—she was trapped in the darkness, unable to escape. There was nothing to hold to, nothing to anchor to—then abruptly, there was something in the darkness with her.

  It was Rolan—

  And she took hold of him in panic fear and pulled—

  Talia shrieked with a mortal pain not her own—and found herself sitting bolt upright in her bed. For one moment she sat, blinking and confused, and not at al! sure that it all hadn’t been a far too realistic nightmare.

  Then the Death Bell tolled. “No—oh no, no, no—” She began to sob brokenly in reaction—when a thought stilled her own tears as surely as if they’d been shut off.

  Keren.

  Keren, who was bound to Ylsa as strongly as to her Companion or her brother—who depended on those bonds. Who, Talia knew, made a habit of communicating with her lover every night she was gone if Ylsa was within range. Who must have felt Ylsa’s death—if she hadn’t been mentally searching for her at the time of the ambush, she would know it by the Herald’s bond. And who, prostrated by grief and the shock of Ylsa’s death, which she had experienced no less than Talia, might very well lose her hold on responsibility and duty long enough to succeed in death-willing herself.

  Talia was still dressed except for boots. She ran for the Herald’s quarters without stopping to put them on. She’d never been in Keren’s rooms before, but there was no mistaking the fiery beacon of pain and loss that led her onward. She followed it unerringly.

  The door was already open when she arrived; Keren’s twin slumped next to her, his eyes dazed, his expression vacant. Keren was sitting frozen in her chair; she’d evidently been trying to reach Ylsa when Ylsa was struck down. She was totally locked away within herself. Her face was an expressionless mask, and only the wild eyes showed that she was alive. The look in those eyes was that of a creature wounded and near death, and not very human anymore.

  Talia touched Keren’s hand hesitantly; there was no response. With a tiny cry of dismay, she took both Keren’s cold hands in her own, and strove
to reach her with her mind.

  She was dragged into a whirling maelstrom of pain. There was nothing to hold on to. There was only unbearable loneliness and loss. Caught within that whirlpool was Keren’s twin—and now, Talia as well.

  Again she reached blindly in panic for a mental anchor—and again, there was Rolan, a steady pillar to hold to. She reached for him; was caught and held firm. Now, no longer frightened, no longer at the mercy of the pain-storm, she could think of the others.

  Keren could not be reached, but perhaps her brother could be freed. She reached for the “Teren-spark,” caught it, and held it long enough to try to pull both of them out.

  With a convulsive lurch, Talia broke contact.

  She found herself on the other side of the room, half-supported by Teren, half-supporting him herself.

  “What happened?” she gasped.

  “She cried out—I heard her, and found her like that. When I tried to get her to wake, when I touched her, she pulled me in with her—” Teren shook his head, trying to clear it. “Talia, I can’t reach her at all. We’ve got to do something! You can reach her, can’t you?”

  “I tried; I can’t come near. It’s—too strong, too closed in. I can’t catch hold of her, and she’s destroying herself with her own grief. Somehow—” Talia tried to shake off the effects of her contact with that mindless chaos and loss. “Somehow I’ve got to find something to make her turn it outward instead of in—”

  Talia’s chaotic thoughts steadied, found a focus, and held. With one of the intuitive leaps perhaps only she was capable of, she thought of Sherrill—

  Sherrill, daring to follow Keren into the river. Follow Keren, that was the key; and now Talia could remember how Sherrill had always seemed to hover at the edge of wherever it was that Keren or Ylsa or both were. And how there had always been a kind of smothered longing in her eyes. Remembered how Sherrill had always kept from intruding too closely on them, perhaps fearing that her own presence might spoil something—

  Sherrill, who came from the same people as Keren and Teren; from among folk who did not hold that love between those of the same sex was anathema, as was so often the case elsewhere.

  Sherrill, who had as many lovers as she wished, yet stayed with none.

  “Teren, think hard—is Sherrill back from her internship yet?” Talia asked him urgently.

  “I don’t—I think so—” He was still a little dazed.

  “Get her, then. Now! She’ll know who the Bell is for—tell her Keren needs her!”

  He did not pause to question her, impelled by the urgency in her voice. He scrambled to his feet and sprinted out the door; Talia returned to Keren’s side and strove to touch her without being pulled in a second time.

  Finally the sound she’d been hoping for reached her ears; the sound of two pairs of feet running up the corridor.

  Sherrill led Teren by a good margin, and she plainly had only one goal in her mind—Keren.

  Talia relinquished her place as Sherrill seized Keren’s hands in her own and knelt by her side; sobbing heartbrokenly, calling Keren’s name.

  The sound of her weeping penetrated Keren’s blankness as nothing Talia had tried had done. Her voice, or perhaps the unconcealed love in that voice, and the pain that equaled Keren’s own, broke the hold Keren’s grief had held over her.

  Keren’s face stirred, came to life again—her eyes went to the woman kneeling beside her.

  “Sherrill—?” Keren whispered hoarsely.

  Something else came forward from the back of her mind, and Talia remembered one thing more—Ylsa, saying “sometimes persistent inability can mask ability”—and Sherrill’s own disclaimer of any but the most rudimentary abilities at thought-reading.

  Before the wave of their combined grief, and her need to find and give comfort, Sherrill’s mental walls collapsed.

  Teren and Talia removed themselves and shut the door, giving them privacy to vent their sorrows. But not alone anymore, and not facing their grief unsupported.

  Talia leaned up against the corridor walls, wanting to dissolve helplessly into tears herself.

  Talia? Teren touched her elbow lightly.

  “Goddess—oh, Teren, I saw her die! I saw Ylsa die! It was horrible—” Tears were coursing down her face, and yet this wasn’t the kind of weeping that brought any relief. Other Heralds were beginning to gather around her; she hadn’t had any time to reshield and their raw emotions melded painfully with her own. It felt as if she were being smothered or torn into dozens of little pieces and scattered on the wind.

  Herald Kyril, a tall man considerably older than Teren, and accompanied by the Queen, pushed his way to Talia’s side and caught hold of one of her hands. With that contact, he managed to shield her mind from the others. It gave her some respite, though the relief was only partial. He could not shield her from her own memories.

  “Majesty!” he exclaimed. “This is the other presence I sensed!”

  Selenay exercised her royal prerogatives and ordered the corridor cleared.

  “Kyril—” she said when only Talia remained. “It is possible that she may have the answer—her Gift is empathy, to be as one with the person she touches.”

  Talia nodded to confirm what Selenay said, her face wet, her throat too choked to speak.

  “My lady—” the iron-haired Herald had something about him that commanded her instant attention, “—you may be the key to a terrible dilemma. I hear the thoughts of others, it is true, but only as words. Ylsa cast a message to me with her last breath, but it means nothing to me, nothing! But if you can recall her thoughts, you who shared her mind—you alone know the meaning behind those words on the wind. Can you tell us what she meant?”

  Those final images sprang all too readily to mind, invoking the rest of the experience. “The arrows—” she gasped, feeling Ylsa’s death-throes in every cell of her own body, “—the black-ringed arrows she carried are metal; hollow. What you want is inside them.”

  “ ‘In the shaft’—of course!” Selenay breathed. “She meant the arrow-shaft!”

  Talia closed her hands over her aching temples; she wished passionately that she could somehow hide in the darkness behind her eyes.

  “Kyril, are Kris and Dirk in residence?” Selenay demanded.

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  “Then we have a chance to snatch what Ylsa won for us before anyone has an opportunity to find it. Talia, I must ask still more of you. Come with me—Kyril, find Kris and Dirk and bring them with you.”

  Selenay half-ran down the hall; Talia was forced to ignore her pounding head and urge her trembling legs into a sprint to keep up with her. They left the Collegium area entirely, and entered the portion of the Palace reserved for the Royal Family—a portion of the area dating right back to Valdemar and the Founding.

  The Queen opened the door on a room scarcely larger than a closet; round, and with a round table in the center. It was lit by one lantern, heavily shaded, suspended from the ceiling above the exact center of the table. Beneath it, resting on a padded base, was a sphere of crystal. The table itself was surrounded by padded benches with backs to them. As the door closed behind them, the “dead” feeling to the room showed that it was so well-insulated against outside noise that a small riot could take place outside the door without the occupants of the room being aware of it. It was no longer possible to hear even the grim tolling of the Death Bell.

  Talia sank onto one of the benches, holding her furiously aching temples and closing her eyes against the light. Her respite was short-lived. The door opened again; Talia raised aching lids to see that Kyril had brought two more Heralds with him, both dressed in clothing that showed every evidence of being thrown on with extreme haste.

  With a pang, Talia recognized Dirk and had no difficulty in identifying the angelically-beautiful Kris. They took the bench to her left, Kris sitting closest to her. Kyril sat to her immediate right, and Selenay next to him.

  “Talia,” Kyril said, “I want you
to retrace where you sent your mind tonight. I think perhaps there will be enough emotional residue for you to find it again. This is not going to be easy for you; it will require every last bit of your strength, and I think I can predict that what you will find there may be even more distressing than what you already know. I’ll try and cushion the effects for you, but since your Gift is tied up with emotions and feelings, it’s bound to be painful. Kris will be following you with his sight. Put your hand in his, and don’t let go until we tell you to. Dirk will be linked with him, and the Queen will be shielding all four of us from the outside world and the thoughts of others and keeping distractions from us,” As he spoke, Kyril took Talia’s unresisting right hand into his own.

  She had no energy to spare to reply; she simply leaned back into the padded support of the bench back and put herself back into the interrupted trance. The pain of her head interfered with that. There was a whisper, and a hand rested for a brief moment on the one resting in Kris’—Selenay, her mind recognized absently—and the pain receded. She retraced her movements now with a kind of double inner vision, seeing the swirls of emotion she had followed, and Seeing the actual landmarks with Kris’ Gift as well. Darkness did not hamper his sight in the least, for everything seemed to be illuminated from within, living things the most. Time lost meaning. Then as she began to recognize things she had passed, she began to dread what she would find at the end of the journey.

  Finding the site of the ambush again was probably the worst experience she had ever had in her life.

  Ylsa’s body had been searched—with complete and callous thoroughness. She was only grateful that it was not Keren who was linked in with her, to see the bestial things they’d done to her lifemate. She wanted to retch; started to feel her grasp on the place slip, then felt someone else’s strength supporting her. She held to her task until she began to lose herself as her strength faded. She couldn’t feel her own body anymore, even remotely. A luminous mist began to obscure her inner vision. She knew she should have been frightened, for she had gone beyond the limits of her own abilities and energies and was in grave danger of being lost, but she could not even summon up enough force to be afraid.