Changes

by Mercedes Lackey

  “And we all know how well that works,” Sedric had said, dryly. “Always supposing that the goal is to get an innocent girl slaughtered and send her father and probably a good portion of the Heraldic Circle insane.”

  By the time the third day of Amily’s captivity dawned, every possible wild scheme had been floated, from sending an army of bloodhounds (which they didn’t have) to quarter Haven, to turning out and searching every single building within the boundary.

  Mags was nursing a cup of tea—which was just about all he could manage—when Bear finally turned up and sat down beside him.

  “Talk to me,” Bear demanded. “Seriously. Talk to me.”

  Mags shook his head; Bear grabbed him by the shoulder. “Look,” he said sharply. “I’m not asking you to talk to me because I want to go all softy oozy-woozy-oo on you and pat you on the shoulder and go ‘there there.’ I want you to talk to me because you haven’t offered up any ideas, but I know you, Mags, and I know there are ideas in there.”

  “Half-ideers, mebbe,” he muttered, staring down at the tea.

  “That’s the point. They’re half ideas because they’re still in there.” Bear tapped Mags’ forehead. “If you talk about them, you’ll move them outside into the light, you’ll be able to get a good look at them, and then you can turn them into whole ideas. But you can’t do that till you get them out.”

  “Right,” Mags replied, dispiritedly. “ ’Cause I’m so good at thet.”

  Bear smacked him in the shoulder. Hard. More than hard enough to make all those bruises shout in protest. “Stop it,” Bear said angrily. “Or I swear by every god there is, I will beat you senseless.”

  The mere idea of Bear even trying to beat him senseless, much less succeeding, finally roused Mags out of his lethargy. He sighed. “Aight. Look. Prollem is, we don’ know where they got ’er. We know they ain’t left Haven, ’cause a flea couldn’ leave Haven right now. The whole edge of city locked down when I yelled. So they gotter be in Haven, on’y nobody kin find ’er, an nobody kin find them. It’s them shields. I ain’t niver seen anythin’ like ’em. They—like—clamped down, like a river clam, when I got too near ’em, an’ thet’s made them Karsite bastards so’s nobody kin find ’em. It’s like they don’ exist.”

  Bear’s brow furrowed as he was joined by a dispirited Lena. “But they don’t have a shield on Amily, do they?”

  Mags shrugged. “I cain’t find ’er, an neither kin ’er pa. Iffen they drugged ’er th’ way they drugged you, there ain’t much there t’find anyroad.”

  Bear nodded earnestly. “Well . . . I don’t know . . . if you can’t find her and you can’t find them, can you find someone who’s thinking about her or them?” Then he shook his head. “No, forget I said that. Practically everyone is thinking about her. That won’t help.”

  If only there were a way to find those shields . . .

  A vague memory crossed his mind. Something to do with . . . he sat up straight.

  Bear looked at him with speculation, but he said nothing.

  ::Dallen. What’s thet stone?:: he demanded.

  He sensed Dallen wincing. ::It’s . . . easier to say what it isn’t. It’s not alive, and it’s not dead. It can’t think, but it stores memories. And the reason it’s all those things is because . . . .if all of the Heralds and Companions are like a giant spiderweb, the stone is the hub. In a sense, it’s all of us, all of us that are, and all of us that ever were.::

  ::So if anybody’d ever seen anythin’ like them shields, then how t’find ’em’d be i’ th’ stone?:: he demanded.

  ::Yes, but . . .:: Dallen’s tone grew desperate. ::It was never intended to be used that way. All of the connections and the memories, that’s an accident.::

  ::Am I gonna hurt it iffen I go pokin’ ‘ round i’ there?::

  ::No . . . but it can hurt you.::

  Mags took a long, deep breath. ::An’ iffen I don’t? How many people git hurt then?::

  There was a long, long silence.

  ::Go to the stone. Take Bear and Lena. Tell Bear to bring his emergency kit. I’m getting some people who will meet you there.::

  Waiting for them was Sedric, and Mags nearly backed out of the idea right then and there. Because . . . if using the stone to find out something could hurt him, that was acceptable. But hurting the Heir to the Throne?

  Sedric raised an eyebrow at the look on Mags’ face. “Did I grow a second head without noticing?”

  Mags clenched his teeth. “Puttin’ me i’ danger’s one thing. Puttin’ you i’—”

  “Stop right there. Nobody is putting me in danger. This is what we are going to do—” Sedric stopped and snorted. “We don’t need to stand here in the open corridor and blabber about this. First, we are going to go in there and sit down. Then I will tell you what we are going to do.”

  Reluctantly, Mags opened the door to the little room and bowed the Heir inside. He and Bear and Lena followed.

  They all took seats around the table, and Sedric closed the door. “Now, everyone get comfortable. Bear, you are here precisely because you are a Healer with no Gift, which means that no matter what happens, you won’t be affected. I have to tell you, son, your father has no clue how valuable that is; I’ve been running the Pelagir border, and a Healer you know isn’t going to get sucked into a bad situation because he has a powerful Gift is worth his weight in gold. Same on the Karsite Border; the Karsite demons go straight for the Gifted Healers, as if you were the ones with targets painted on you.”

  Bear looked at him in amazement. “They do?”

  Sedric nodded. “Now, since you aren’t Gifted, I don’t need to worry that if Mags gets sucked into the stone, you’ll follow. You’ll be making sure Mags doesn’t get into any trouble. If he starts to, it will be up to you to break him out of the state he’s in. I assume you know a number of ways to do that.”

  Bear nodded soberly; he pulled off the shoulder bag that contained his emergency remedies and put it on the table, open and ready.

  “Lena, you are here to help Bear extract Mags. As a Bard with projective powers, you can jar Mags loose by hitting him with emotion, even a projective vision if you can manage it. Meanwhile, I want you to look only at Bear, never at Mags, and doubly never at the stone.”

  Lena actually brightened at that; Mags got the feeling that she had not only been feeling guilty, she had been feeling useless.

  “I am here because I am a Mindspeaker, and I will actually be the one making notes on what Mags finds out. Mags, you do not have to remember anything. You only have to extract the information. I’ll be the one making sure it gets out of this wretched rock.” Sedric looked around the table, then pursed his lips. “We are waiting for one more Mindspeaker to join us. I don’t know you at all, and as you deduced, Father had a litter of kittens until I explained there would be someone who knows you well acting as a buffer between us.”

  Now who—before Mags could finish that thought, there was a tap at the door, and Gennie stepped shyly inside.

  Mags blinked, then heaved an enormous sigh of relief. If there was a single person in whose hands he trusted a mindlink, other than Dallen, it was Gennie. She smiled at him and took a seat beside Bear.

  Mags looked at the stone; it didn’t change at all. For a moment he doubted, not the wisdom but the logic of this. But then he rolled his shoulders, wincing a little at the aches, and began his relaxation exercises, all the while keeping his gaze fixed on the stone.

  His eyes unfocused a moment; when they focused again, they seemed to be looking deep into the stone, not the surface. He felt Gennie as a steady bulwark of a presence, trustworthy and reliable; felt Sedric as a watchful overseer, like a referee. He felt an held breath leave him as a long sigh . . . then felt as if he were sinking into sleep. But it wasn’t sleep. It was a sort of communion . . .

  Ah, it’s you again.

  Aye. Need to know something.

  How to find those irritations.

  That caught his attentio
n. Why would the stone think of them as irritations?

  Because they are. They are in the Web, not of the Web, and they cannot be dislodged.

  An image passed through his mind of a useless bit of flotsam in a spiderweb. Every time the wind blew, it vibrated the web, irritating the spider. But the spider could not get it out, it was too big for her strength, and she could not cut it free without destroying her creation.

  He passed the image to Gennie, who passed it in turn to Sedric.

  That’s interesting, but it doesn’t help me find them in the real world.

  What do you really want?

  I need to find them, he repeated after a moment.

  Need. Not want.

  Dammit. The thing was being all obtuse and mystical again. Need, want, weren’t they the same thing?

  No.

  He reined in his temper, as he felt his control and his ability to communicate with the thing eroding.

  Need and want are sometimes incompatible.

  Now he groaned inwardly, felt exasperation, felt despair, and again felt his connection with the stone slipping.

  He clawed his way back and felt it regarding him dispassionately.

  You are out of balance.

  I’m . . . those bastards have someone I—

  Trivial, in the long run.

  Now anger filled him, and the stone started to thrust him away, until he throttled it down.

  You are out of balance.

  He went through his relaxation exercises again, keeping the front of his mind calm while the back of his mind raced, trying to figure out how to pry want he needed out of this thing. Obviously you couldn’t force it. It would just kick you out if you tried. And you couldn’t trick it—it knew all the tricks. You had to ask the right question—exactly the right question.

  Every time he felt emotion, it tried to shake him out, too. What had it said?

  I am balance, it repeated, in answer to his question.

  All right, take that at face value. That this stone was a balance point. And Dallen had said that it was at the center of the Web of Heralds and Companions. So if he jiggled it with emotion—that jiggled the whole Web. The Web was supposed to stay stable, and being linked into it and feeling powerful emotion perturbed the whole thing. No wonder it kept trying to kick him out!

  Yes.

  Maybe that was why other people weren’t able to get as deep into it as he was. Because as long as he had a problem, he tended to think, rather than feel; he saved feeling for when he had the leisure to indulge in it.

  Yes.

  He needed to know how to find the Karsite agents. And that was for everyone, for all of Valdemar.

  Trivial. Valdemar will persist. It may weaken for a time, but it will return, so long as balance persists. And I am balance.

  Miserable—I won’t get mad. I won’t get mad. Stupid damn thing! Doesn’t it know if the Karsites get their way—

  If the Karsites get their way!

  This . . . thing . . . only knew what was and what had been. It couldn’t imagine, or plan, or do anything that required speculation. It wasn’t really alive, so all it could do was repeat what it already knew.

  If there aren’t any Heralds or Companions, there won’t be a Web. There won’t be a Valdemar.

  There was a long, long pause.

  Impossible.

  That’s what these irritations want. And they’ll get it, too. Now he drew on every unlikely, hysterical, ridiculous scenario that Amily had used to frighten herself with and exaggerated them a hundred times over. He flung the whole house of cards at the stone and showed it Nikolas going to pieces, the King himself falling apart, the Monarchy in ruins, the factions in the Court taking advantage of the situation and bringing out every petty quarrel they’d ever had—

  Then the Karsite army crossing the border with hordes of demons that sought out Heralds and Companions and killed them, until there weren’t enough to sustain the Web, and the Web itself collapsed.

  When he was done, he felt more exhausted than he ever had been in his life. If he’d had to crawl two paces to reach safety, he would never have been able to. He felt Gennie’s alarm and her immediate instinct to get him to come out or pull him out herself.

  ::Mags—::

  ::Not yet.:: he replied instantly.

  ::Bear says—::

  ::Not yet,:: he repeated.

  He waited. This thing might not feel emotion, and it might not exactly be alive, but it didn’t want to die, either.

  Suddenly he was engulfed in a flood of information.

  It overwhelmed him, rolled over him, then scooped him up and tossed him about like a cork on a raging river.

  Finally it tossed him out again, leaving him so drained he could barely breathe.

  What do you want?

  I want . . . to find Amily.

  He sagged back, not expecting an answer.

  Which one is Amily?

  It seemed to think she was a Herald. She ain’t in the Web.

  A long, long, long pause.

  Give me your mind.

  He was too weary to object. Too weary, and too desperate, to do anything but obey. He completely opened his mind to the thing, half expecting to be swallowed up in something immensely bigger than he was, maybe to never come out again.

  But that wasn’t what happened.

  Although he did lose all but a germ of his “self,” as he was stretched thin as gossamer on the wind, that germ was held tight and cradled safely. And finally, he sensed Amily, wisps and hints and glimpses of drug-induced nightmare.

  And that was when the thing that held him magnified everything around that tenuous presence in a way he could never have managed alone. There was someone with her.

  Not Ice or Stone, someone else.

  Like smacking the Kirball as hard as he could, he flung what he got at Gennie, who caught it and relayed it on.

  Such a fragile connection could not be held for long, not when he was as exhausted as he was. It faded. His hold on the stone faded.

  You have what you need. You have what you want. Hold the balance.

  Then he found himself lying on the table, gasping like a fish out of water.

  They’d been given a little room on the same lower-level hallway as the one with the stone in it, furnished with chairs, an ordinary table, and pens and paper. It was cool here—but not nearly as cool as the room with the stone. Bear read over Sedric’s notes on Amily a second time, and then a third. Sedric had taken the originals with him, but he’d left them a copy. Lena then divided up the pages, and each of them made four copies of the pages they had. Bear had the ones at the end, describing the impressions Mags had gotten of Amily’s captor, and the more he read, the deeper his frown grew.

  “This doesn’t make any sense!” he blurted.

  “I know,” Mags sighed. “ ’Tis all like babblin’. I thin’ mebbe I was so tired by then I was seein’ things all cockeyed.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean!” Bear exclaimed. “This doesn’t make any sense because it does make sense, to me at least!”

  “Now you’re the one not making sense, Bear,” Lena chided.

  “You mean you don’t see it?” He looked from face to face around the table; they all shook their heads. “Amily’s been drugged, like I was. And there’s a person with her all the time. And that person is a Healer! Look—here—” he pointed at a passage—“that’s something someone who is Gifted does with someone who is drugged to make sure they don’t burn through the drug too fast. But that doesn’t make any sense! Why would a Healer do this?”

  “Because he’s a Karsite religious fanatic?” Gennie suggested. “Fanatics can justify practically any atrocity to themselves. The more untenable their position becomes, the harder they hold to it, and the worse the things they are willing to do to support it.” She leaned over the table and put one hand seriously on top of Bear’s. “Bear . . . not every Healer thinks the way we do. The way you do. If they did, there wouldn’t be any Kars
ite Healers.”

  Mags was still trying to put the pieces together. Whoever was minding Amily was a Healer . . . “Would a Healer hurt some’un, or kill ’em, e’en iffen ’e was a Karsite religious fanatic?” he asked, slowly.

  “I . . . I don’t think so,” Bear replied, after a very long moment. “He might stand by and let her be hurt or killed, but I don’t think he’d be able to do it himself. I mean, he could, but he would have to be seriously crazy, right insane. You know, sort of an antiHealer, as seriously insane as that crazy person who kidnapped me, and there’s nothing in these hints that looks that crazy to me.” He paused, thoughtfully. “Actually, someone that crazy would be the wrong person to leave in charge of someone you wanted to keep in good shape. They just plain wouldn’t be able to do that. They kind of feed on other peoples’ pain; sometimes they feed on their own, too. If you left someone like that alone with Amily, he’d definitely hurt her.”

  Mags nodded. “Aight. Could it mebbe be some’un thet’s jest . . . greedy?”

  Bear looked at him oddly. “I suppose it’s possible.” He scratched his head. “I . . . never actually met a greedy Healer; even my father isn’t greedy, just . . .”

  “As bloody arrogant as Marchand,” Gennie said crisply.

  Bear flushed. “Aye. That. But I know they have to exist. There’re plenty of rich people that want a Healer all to themselves, or want one who . . . who won’t take just anyone. And I know there’re Healers that will do that.” He blinked and regarded Mags curiously from behind his thick lenses. “You think someone could be greedy enough to—to take the money of kidnappers to keep their captive healthy?”

  Mags shrugged. “I seen a lotta good people since I come t’Haven. But . . . there was plenty’a priests what came by th’ mine an took Cole Pieters love-gifts an’ looked t’other way at starvin’ kiddies. Iffen there’s priests what’ll do thet, why not Healers?”

  “Last possibility . . .” Gennie said slowly. “Someone who got in over his head.”