FORBIDDEN TALENTS

by Frankie Robertson

  “CPR?” Che’veyo asked.

  “Cardio—” Celia caught herself and grimaced. Latinate terms didn’t translate here. “Chest compressions and rescue breathing.”

  “Lady Celia!”

  Celia turned at the sound of her name. So did Tiva’ti, Che’veyo, and Fender. Thora was hurrying toward them.

  “My pardon, Lady, for the interruption, but I wanted you to know I couldn’t do as you asked.”

  Celia tried to keep a neutral expression, but she felt a chill run through her. “No?” Thora hadn’t been able to deliver the message to Gert. Had the maid been taken already, along with Saeun? Ragni and Dahleven hadn’t been specific, but they’d implied that if Saeun were arrested it wouldn’t be long until Wirmund would have the whole story from her about Dahleven’s use of unsanctioned magic. “It’s not important. Thank you for trying, Thora.” She hoped her words didn’t sound as stiff as they felt.

  Thora dropped a minimal curtsey and bustled off.

  “Is something amiss?” Che’veyo was peering into her face, evaluating her.

  “No, not at all.” Celia looked away, feeling as though the shaman’s dark eyes saw more than she wanted him to.

  “Lady Celia!”

  Celia’s heart stopped. It was Wirmund, with Ragni close beside him. She forced a smile and hoped it looked more convincing than it felt. “Father Wirmund. Welcome!” She glanced at Ragni. His face was calm and cool. It would be, though. He never gives anything away. But it probably meant that Dahleven wasn’t under suspicion—yet.

  Wirmund looked at her more closely. “Are you well, Lady Celia? You’re quite pale.”

  Celia seized the opening. “No, actually, I’m not. It might be best if I lay down for a while. Perhaps Ragni could escort me back to my rooms?” Then she could tell him of her failure to warn Saeun.

  “I have need of Father Ragnar at the moment,” Wirmund said.

  “Lady Celia?” Fender asked in a low voice. “I can escort you.”

  “No, we both shouldn’t abandon our guests. I’ll be fine.”

  Wirmund looked behind Celia. “You there!” He called to a passing guard. “Escort Lady Celia to her rooms and summon a healer. She’s not well.”

  The guard bowed deeply. “At once, Father Wirmund.” He looked at Celia with a peculiar expression of alertness and alarm, as though afraid she might collapse while in his care. “My lady?”

  There was nothing she could do. Celia dredged up a smile that probably looked appropriately sick and took his arm. “Thank you, uh, Besavaer, isn’t it?”

  *

  Ragni watched Celia take her leave of the Tewas and walk away, her hand lightly resting on Besavaer’s arm. She was pale. Could she be breeding? But no, she was more afraid than sick. She’d felt frustrated too, when Wirmund had kept him from going with her. What did she want to tell me?

  Wirmund was feeling …nothing. Still nothing. For some reason the Overprest had chosen to wear an amulet to block Talents like Ragni’s. Ragni didn’t often use his Talent on Wirmund anymore. He’d worked with the man for years, so he could pretty well read him without recourse to his Empathy. So why did he chose today to shield himself from me? Had Wirmund learned of his early morning ritual? Was the Overprest trying to hide that from him? And if so, why?

  What a waste of magic and effort the creation of the Dream-doors had been. Saeun had escaped without his help—and without any way for him to contact her. Where is she? Snow had begun falling last night, blown fiercely by the winds ripping down from the peaks. Is she out in that? Or had she escaped through the tunnels? He almost hoped not. She didn’t know the tunnels beneath Quartzholm. She’d been raised in a distant holding and hadn’t grown up playing in them as he and Dahleven had. They were dangerous and confusing to anyone unfamiliar with them.

  And Wirmund already had Trackers down there looking for her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  DAHLEVEN KNOCKED ON Angrim’s door, wishing he could avoid this duty. He’d felt that way every time he visited her in the last five months, but he did it anyway. He could no longer see what had attracted him to her over a year ago, but she was his sworn vassal, his dependent, and her blindness increased his responsibility to her even if she had once betrayed him.

  Angrim turned toward the door as her maid announced him, her gaze slightly off true. Her expression slid into her old enticing smile.

  She hasn’t tried that on me for a while. Why now?

  The maid let herself out. That, too, was different.

  “Dahl! How good of you to visit, especially with the Tewakwe requiring your attention.” Her voice held no reproach or wheedling. She sounded genuinely pleased. He imagined she would be happy for any visitor; her life was vastly more limited now than before her blindness—and his confinement of her. He felt no regret for that; she and Eirik had chosen their friends badly in the past. Only Neven’s desire for the rule of law and their personal oaths had kept Dahleven from executing them out of hand as they had deserved.

  She patted the window seat next to her. “Come, sit down and take your ease.”

  Dahleven lifted a narrow chair one-handed from the corner and set it down backward in front of her. He straddled it and rested his arms along the back. “You look well, Angrim. Are your needs met?” She looked much the same as always: small, plump, blond, and pretty.

  She didn’t let her disappointment at his distance show, if she felt any. “My needs?” She smiled, a hint of suggestion coloring her voice. “Not entirely. But you’ve been generous with the necessities, Dahl. I’m grateful.”

  Dahleven nodded, satisfied, then remembered she couldn’t see it. “Good.” As long as she remained grateful, her self-interest would help her keep her oath—and the secret of him being Fey-marked.

  Angrim’s eyes flickered toward him then vaguely past his shoulder. For an instant he thought her stare had been shrewd, trying to read the meanings in his comment, but her blue gaze had probably just been redirected by the sound of his voice.

  “It’s my gratitude, and what we once had together, that makes me speak now.” She hesitated.

  They’d had very little together beyond his lust and her ambition, but he let that pass. “Oh?”

  “I’m worried for you, Dahl. You’re allowing your needs and the needs of your position to go unmet.”

  “What needs are those, Angrim?”

  “You’re a man in your prime, a man with responsibilities to family and position.”

  “Go on.”

  “Celia is a lovely woman, Dahl. But she refuses the duties of her position …her duty to you.”

  So that’s what this is about. “Not refuses. Defers.” It wasn’t unheard of for a woman to wait until she’d said her final vows before she bore a child. Not that it should concern Angrim. But he let her continue.

  “Keep Celia. But choose another as your elskerinne. Someone who will willingly, happily, do her duty to you and your family.”

  “And you would be that other?”

  “You know I care for you. And I can help you fulfill your responsibilities. Let me repay you for your generosity.”

  Is she serious? Did she think he’d so easily forget her treachery? Somehow he managed a calm tone. “Thank you for your concern Angrim, but I am foresworn. I’ve promised Celia not to take an elskerinne.”

  “Then break the betrothal. Pay her troth-geld. She has no family to take offense, and even if she did they couldn’t fault you. She’s failing you, Dahl. Why are you waiting? If she truly loved you, you’d be married now with your seed planted and growing in her belly.”

  “Enough!” Dahleven clenched his teeth. He’d listened to his mother make the same argument too many times, but it was beyond tolerance that Angrim, of all people, should throw this in his face. It didn’t help that he’d thought the same thing himself once or twice. But he knew how Celia had been wounded before, and he’d promised her time. He wanted her trust, not merely her obedience. “You need not worry any further for me. I wil
l manage my own responsibilities.”

  Angrim smiled and shook her head, denying his words. “You’re a strong and capable man, but there are some things that even a strong man cannot manage alone. My interests are yours, Dahl. I can give you what you need—and protect your interests as I would my own.” Her voice held layers of meaning.

  He hoped he didn’t understand her. “What protection do I need, Angrim?”

  She smiled her old alluring smile. Once it had tempted him with its promise, but he’d gotten past that even before the Elves had given him eyes to see through illusion and through her Talent for sexual glamour. Now he saw her just as a young woman of average good looks who was trying too hard.

  “I was there, Dahl. I know what happened. Of course I’d never tell. I said I wouldn’t.”

  “You swore fealty, in fact.”

  Was that guilt that flitted briefly across her face?

  “Yes, I did. I’m yours, Dahl. Heart and mind. And body.”

  *

  “How did you get her out?” Kaidlin asked Ragni. His younger sister’s voice was eager but subdued, despite their being alone in her rooms.

  Ragni winced at her question. “I didn’t.” He sagged in the upholstered chair in his sister’s sitting room. He felt like an overcooked dumpling. How he’d made it through the day after the Working had sucked him dry last night he’d never know. And all for nothing. Saeun was gone, and he had no way to reach her.

  “But you said she’d escaped!” Kaidlin glanced at the closed door and lowered her voice again. “Are you hiding her? I know you and Dahl know all the bolt-holes by heart, but a Tracker Talent or a Finder will ferret her out for Wirmund in no time. You’ve got to get her out, Ragni.”

  “I was too late. She left on her own.” His voice sounded dull and flat.

  “Oh.” Then she glanced out her window at the still blowing snow. “Oh, no! Oh, Ragni!” She stood in the middle of the room, her hands clasped tightly together at her waist, then stepped close to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s smart. She’ll have found shelter, I’m sure.”

  Ragni closed his eyes. Despite her words, Kaidlin’s expression was anxious, and too much to bear even without feeling her fear with his Empathy.

  Once, he would have been glad that an apostate had perished in the storm, and sorry that she couldn’t be made an example of. Was that only a day ago? Before Saeun was the apostate in question. Were his values really so flexible? Or had he merely been ignorant of what they truly were? He’d turned a blind eye to Thora’s use of the rune-stones after all. His lips curled in a sour smile. Did Wirmund know who he had chosen for his second? What a surprise for the old man if he ever found out.

  “Ragni?”

  Ragni opened his eyes. “Is the right thing always clear for you, Kady?”

  She looked at him, confused by the question.

  “Never mind.” He heaved himself out of the chair. “Don’t change, little sister.” He grasped her shoulders and kissed her on the forehead, then let himself out, ignoring her puzzlement.

  *

  “Home at last! Well, nearly.”

  Saeun couldn’t see what home Joori referred to. In fact, it looked as though her rescuers were leading her toward a thick growth of tangled evergreens and deadfall. Snow still fell, but softly now, without the fierce winds driving it sideways. Vague patterns she couldn’t identify marred the snow beneath her feet, softened and obscured by the continuing snowfall. A sudden whump sounded to Saeun’s right. She startled and immediately felt foolish. A branch had merely released its load of snow.

  Why am I so skittish? Besides having barely escaped arrest and abduction by an Elf, what could possibly have set her nerves on edge? Perhaps it was the fact that her rescuers had barely spoken to her once she’d agreed to join them. They’d rested only when she’d lagged behind. Whatever Empathy Valender had, he’d stopped using it. They seemed unaffected by the heavy going through the snow-covered mountains, and she felt embarrassed to be the cause of repeated delays, so she’d saved her breath and stopped trying to engage them in conversation.

  A little closer, the tangle of deadfall resolved itself into a gate. She could have passed within five paces of it without seeing it for what it was. Carefully crafted of branches and vines, the gate was set into a wall of living trees that grew so closely Saeun couldn’t see between them. At the base their trunks fused into a solid whole and their branches wove together in a sheltering canopy.

  Treskin stroked the gate. The latch rippled like light on flowing water as it opened.

  Fear flooded her, washing away fatigue. What had she just seen? What sort of Talent was that? What was this place? She took a step backward. Who but Elves could make such a gate and open it thus? Fey-marked! She would be Fey-marked, if she stayed. Mindless and drooling. She’d seen one such, a man in his prime who’d stared into nothing until he wasted away and died. The horror of it crashed through her. Saeun turned to flee—and bumped into Valender’s chest.

  His long-fingered hands grasped her shoulders firmly. “Steady.” He nodded toward Treskin, still holding the bizarre gate open. “Our way is there.”

  How could she escape? Was it even possible? What could she say or do to persuade an Elf to let her go?

  Wait—her Talent! Saeun scanned Valender for a silver or gold ornament to turn to iron, but found nothing.

  “We offer you no harm,” Valender said.

  No harm. Saeun hesitated. Was it true? They had saved her from the other Elf and healed her. But to what purpose? “If you mean me no harm, why lie to me? You pretended to be human.”

  Valender dropped his hands from her shoulders. “Was it not to your comfort? Were you not at greater ease among us, thinking us of your kind?”

  His truth sounded twisted somehow. Was that the first sign of Fey-marking, to not know truth from illusion? “Will you let me go?”

  Valender swept his arm outward in invitation, back down the path they’d traveled.

  “Wait!” Joori stepped forward from Treskin’s side. “This is only a lull in the storm. She’s not like us. She’s fragile. The cold will kill her. You can’t let her go!”

  “The youngling is right,” Treskin said. “Bring her.”

  Valender shrugged and put his hand on her arm. Her chance was slipping away. “No!” She pulled apart from him. “I won’t let you take my mind. You said I could go!”

  Valender raised his eyebrows on his otherwise impassive face. “What would we want with your mind?”

  A gust of wind shook more snow from the branches above. Treskin sighed. “Time passes and the winds blow cold, even for us. Freeze on the doorstep if you so desire.”

  “Where would you go?” Joori asked softly.

  Saeun stared at him. His pale eyes were wide and warm. He looked so much like the young lads she’d known all her life that she couldn’t hold it in her mind that he wasn’t what he seemed.

  Where would she go?

  “Won’t you share the warmth of our fire?” Joori held out his hand. “Just until the storm passes. Then, if you must, go.”

  The sky grew darker as the clouds thickened. The wind sharpened. Death by freezing, or Fey-marking. Her choices were not improving.

  *

  Dahleven entered the small conference chamber and greeted his father as the mid-afternoon shadows lengthened. Loloma, Nai’awika, and Che’veyo would arrive soon. Neven had promised the Tewakwe an answer today.

  “What have you decided?”

  Neven stroked his braided beard and opened his mouth, but Ragni’s arrival interrupted his answer. Dahleven raised his eyebrows at his younger brother’s appearance. He was impeccably dressed in his priestly grays as usual, but the shadows were deep around his eyes. If possible, he looked even worse than he had that morning.

  He sounded lively enough, though. “Greetings, Father. What answer will you be giving the Tewakwe?”

  Neven looked piercingly at his younger son, but forbore to comment on his appeara
nce or question him. “No.”

  Dahleven hid his relief.

  “No?” Ragni prompted, frowning.

  “The runestones spoke clearly enough. This is not the time for such a quest. I’ll not put Quartzholm at risk to allay the Butterfly Clan’s fear of their neighbors.”

  “Their fear is for us as well, Father. They came a long way, in winter no less, to warn us,” Ragni said.

  “We’ve discussed this already.” Neven lifted his hand in a cutting gesture. “The decision is made. We all of us have enough to concern ourselves with here in Quartzholm without haring off through winter storms.” Neven looked meaningfully at Ragni, then turned to Dahleven. “One such concern is two of your vassals, Dahl.”

  “Yes?” Could Father have learned of Angrim’s veiled blackmail already?

  “Eirik and Angrim seem to be regaining their sight.”

  Ragni shot him a sharp look, but Dahleven concealed his surprise. He hadn’t visited Eirik for several weeks, but he’d seen no indication of it in Angrim. Or had he? He tried to remember the nuances of Angrim’s flickering gaze. Returning sight would certainly help explain her boldness.

  Dahleven nodded slowly. “So I’ve noted.”

  “That could make them more dangerous,” Neven continued.

  Dahleven understood his father’s meaning. Neither Eirik nor Angrim had shown any great reserves of honor in the past. They had sworn fealty to him, but if they were less dependent on their liege lord’s good will, their oaths would be under greater stress. Their knowledge of the Hall of Crystals, where the Great Talents lay hidden, could prove a great burden to them and their loyalty. Not to mention their knowledge that he and Celia were Fey-marked. If their honor failed, they could easily threaten the stability of Nuvinland.

  Yet they had sworn fealty. They had bought their lives with it, and Dahleven had accepted their oaths. “I’ve already increased their guards.” Oathbound or not, he was no fool. Angrim’s words had spurred caution.