Rhyaz nodded. “Take him up to the infirmary,” he ordered. “I want him sedated until we’ve decided what’s to be done about him. Vriuzu, this must be kept quiet. Organize a cleanup detail.” He waved his hand in the direction of the tapestry. “Do what you can to repair it and get it rehung as quickly as possible.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Lijou,” said Rhyaz, “but we can’t have this happening again! He needs help that I don’t think we can provide. He can’t be allowed to go around cursing Vartra and telling everyone the truth of what happened to him. It’s going to seriously jeopardize our new status, perhaps even give Esken the ammunition he needs to try and block your elevation to a guild at the next meeting.”
“What are you suggesting, then?” asked Lijou quietly. “Remember, we’re dealing with someone who’s been tried by our Guild and our God beyond anything that’s normal.”
“Dammit, Lijou! I don’t like this any more than you do! I was one of those who wanted him reinstated in the Brotherhood so he could be elected to the position I now hold! I’m sorry, but he’ll have to be hospitalized. You’ll know better than I whether or not he’s got a rogue talent, but he’s sure as hell not stable now! He went kzu-shu!”
“He didn’t hurt anyone or do any irreparable damage.”
“We were lucky this time,” said Rhyaz.
Lijou’s comm began to sound. He looked up at Kha’Qwa, indicating with a flick of his ear that she should answer the call.
“When—if—he’s cured, then he can return,” continued the Brotherhood’s Warrior Master.
“Lijou,” Kha’Qwa interrupted, setting the comm to privacy mode. “It’s the infirmary. Noni’s demanding to see Kaid, and they don’t know what to do.”
“Why weren’t we informed she’d arrived?” demanded Rhyaz. “She not one of us. She’s no right to even be on the premises without permission!”
“Who’s going to stop her?” asked Kha’Qwa. “Be realistic, Master Rhyaz. You know most of our people prefer going to her than to the infirmary.”
“Maybe she should open a surgery inside Stronghold,” muttered the beleaguered warrior master.
“Don’t be so pompous, Rhyaz,” said Lijou, getting up. “Remember that not too long ago, you were one of those Brothers yourself. I’ll answer the call, Kha’Qwa. Rhyaz, it might be wise if we requested a different physician and considered legitimizing Noni’s treatment of our people. Obviously our infirmary and its staff are lacking something essential that she can provide. I’d had it in mind to do that for some time, had it not been for Ghezu.”
He took his mate’s place in front of the comm. “Let Noni see him,” he said. “Does she know what’s happened?”
“Of course I know,” came the tart rejoinder from just out of screen range. “Who d’you think fetched me here? I’ll need to see you, Master Lijou. Can’t get all I need from Tallinu when he’s under your damned drugs!”
“Let me know when you want me to join you, Noni,” he said, trying not to smile. He didn’t know what it was about her, but her presence made him feel that the problem wasn’t so insurmountable after all.
“Now would be good,” she said tartly.
“On my way.” He closed the connection and looked at his co-guild master. “You were saying, Rhyaz?”
Rhyaz muttered under his breath as he got to his feet. “We’ll see what Noni has to say before making a decision, but I’m having his room guarded. If he so much as stirs from his bed …”
“Thank you,” said Lijou. “Half a dozen of my priests are down in the temple helping clear up, by the way. They send that they should be finished within the hour. The longest job will be securing the tapestry back to the pole. They suggest a temporary fix until the twenty-second hour, then we could close the temple for the night and effect a permanent repair.”
Rhyaz nodded and turned to leave. He stopped at the door. “Lijou,” he began, turning back.
“We’re entering into a new era for the Brotherhood, Rhyaz,” Lijou said, gently interrupting him. “It’s never going to be the same again. Who knows what its final form will be? I don’t, but until then, you and I will cope between us. I don’t have the expertise you possess as a warrior, but I have organized important aspects of Stronghold for many years. A team, Rhyaz, that’s what matters, with neither one more important than the other. I know we can achieve that. I’m looking forward to working with you, and I hope we’ll become more than colleagues. I hope we’ll become friends.”
The slightly anxious look on Rhyaz’s face went. “I would like that also, Master Lijou,” he said, inclining his head. The gesture was marred only by his slightly sardonic smile.
Lijou laughed. “I’ll let you know when I’ve news of Kaid.”
“And I’ll contact the medical guild for a replacement physician plus another medic. On the subject of Noni, d’you think she’d discuss with me the possibility of working in an official capacity as a healer at Stronghold?”
“Ask her and see,” said Lijou.
Rhyaz smiled wryly. “She’ll probably only see the youth who kept going to her for tinctures for cuts and bruises got in illegal fights.”
“She did remind Garras of his wild days,” said Lijou. “Thank goodness I didn’t spend my adolescence here! I’ll see you later.”
Noni was waiting for him in the empty room next to Kaid’s.
“So that’s why he ran amok,” Noni nodded as Lijou finished projecting what he remembered of Kaid’s experience. “I’m not surprised! Perhaps I’ve been partly responsible for this,” she admitted, looking down at the walking stick she held between her hands.
“How?”
“Tallinu was always one to keep himself to himself. He let nobody touch him till that time with Khemu, and I know now how badly that went for him. Then Carrie came along. I didn’t want to see it happening to him again, so I pushed.” She looked up at him from beneath lowered eye ridges. “You have to remember I know things, Lijou. I see ’em as clear as if they were happening now. I saw the life he could have, if he would, and tried to push him toward it.” She sighed. “How was I to know what that damned Vartra had done! I told him there’d be cubs, his cubs. That’s why he reacted so badly when he found out about the one this Jaisa female had.”
“You weren’t to know,” said Lijou. “Their attitude is—was—so different! Almost alien to ours.”
“That’s as may be. Now we got to find out what else is wrong. T’Chebbi tells me he keeps having memories and visions without warning. What d’you know about this?”
“Very little. We were monitoring him because Kusac was afraid he was going to have a mental breakdown. When he has an episode, we pick it up, but they’re so short we can’t tell what they’re about. He hasn’t mentioned them to me at all. We’ve been looking for an excuse to confront him about it.”
“When did these episodes begin? After he was taken back by Vartra, or before?”
“After, if what Kusac says is right. He became more distant to both of them from the day of the Validation. It happened the night before.”
“The folk from the past, they made him forget this had happened, didn’t they? That might be where the problem lies,” she said thoughtfully. “For all I dislike your Guild, Lijou, they can at least erase and hide memories with reasonable skill.”
She looked up at him again. “They still don’t see the student for the class, though. These past folk didn’t know as much, I’ll be bound. If they made a mess of hiding this incident from his conscious mind, which is more than likely, and he was having memories from his past returning at the same time, then no wonder he thought he was going mad! Like a pot on the boil with the lid jammed down tight, that’s what he’s been! A pack of amateurs all, they are. It takes skill to hide a memory, even more to erase it without causing trauma to the patient.”
Leaning heavily on her stick, she pushed herself up onto her feet. “Now we go and talk to Tallinu,” she said.
The physician leaned fo
rward to remove the small electrical device attached to Kaid’s forehead. “Neat little gadget,” he said, switching it off. “Chernarian origin. We’re getting to test it. Uses brain waves or some such thing to keep the patient sedated. Much better for this kind of situation than drugs. He’ll start coming to any moment now.” He turned and walked to the door. “Press the buzzer if you need me. I’m only just down the corridor.”
Kaid stirred, opening his eyes. He looked round, catching sight of T’Chebbi standing by the door beyond Lijou and Noni.
“Bad shot, T’Chebbi. I thought you at least would have finished it. Where’d you get me?” His voice was a lazy drawl.
“Left shoulder.” Her reply was barely audible.
He nodded, winced, and slowly raised his other hand to his head, feeling the dressing there.
“The pole hit you,” she added.
He turned his head to look at Noni. “It’s all a sham, Noni. He played god with us, changed us because he thought he could. He betrayed and used me.” He was tired of it all.
“Forget about that for now,” said Noni, brushing the matter aside as if it were of no importance. “I need to know about these memories that keep coming without warning. Why didn’t you tell me what was happening?”
“I’m telling you now, but you’re not listening.”
“The other ones. What were they, Tallinu?” she insisted. “Were they from the past?”
He started to frown but stopped as it pulled at the staples in his forehead. His head hurt abominably. “I had to remove the memory of meeting myself and the others before I could send myself—the cub—forward,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. There was no time—the temple was exploding.”
Noni grunted. “How did Vartra and his lot make you forget?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I’ll have to go look for it,” she said. “I’d have thought you’d have learned by now how to stay out of trouble, boy. But no, you keep on getting into scrape after scrape,” she grumbled. “I got better things to do than fix you up every few months, let me tell you!”
“Leave me be, Noni,” he said, turning his head away from her. “I’ve had enough. You know damned well I never went looking for any of this. I told you, he’s taken everything I had from me now. There’s nothing left, not even my sanity. I can never be sure he won’t do it again!”
Before anyone could even blink, Noni’s hand shot out and grasped Kaid round the throat. Her talons extended and began to press into the flesh over his larynx.
“Tired of it, Tallinu? Really tired, or just fancy words?” she asked, her voice a low, menacing hiss.
His eyes flew open in shock, his hands reaching for her, but she increased the pressure and he let them fall back to the bed.
“I’ll end it for you now, if you ask me. They won’t,” she said, jerking her ears backward at Lijou and T’Chebbi. “But I will. Just tighten my grip, that’s all, till my claws meet in your throat.” As she spoke, he could feel her hand doing just that. “Or should I start and wait for you to tell me to stop if you change your mind, eh? What’s it to be, boy?” she asked as her clawtips began to press harder and his breath began to falter.
He tried to shift his hands again, to grasp hers, pull it away, but he couldn’t move. She was suffocating him, and he couldn’t stop her. Her face seemed to fade until he could see only her piercing brown eyes.
So this is how you die, Tallinu. Beaten by memories! A fine epitaph for a Brother—he died rather than face his fears!
Her mocking laugh echoed inside his head till finally he could stand it no more, and he broke free of her spell. “Enough!” he gasped, his hand hitting hers aside, then returning to massage his throat.
Noni turned to look at Lijou. “You get back to that new life-mate of yours, Master Lijou. She wants to make plans with you for that nursery you’ll need in a few months. As for you,” she said, fixing her eyes on T’Chebbi. “Go fetch us some c’shar, my girl. A person could die of thirst in this rambling bird’s nest of a place! I’ll see to Tallinu.”
Lijou got to his feet, his confusion evident in the set of his ears. “I’m not going to even think about how you knew,” he said. “I’ll be in my office on the first floor. There’s a guard outside …”
“Guard?” she interrupted. “Why would I be needing a guard, pray tell me, Master Lijou? You stop fretting, we’ll be fine.”
She waited till they’d gone before turning on Kaid. “I’ve never met a greater fool than you, Tallinu! By the Gods, I don’t know who gifted you their brains when you were conceived, but I have my doubts that they had any themselves! Have you any idea just how lucky you are?” she demanded. “You lie here moaning and whining about what Vartra’s taken from you, yet you possess some of the greatest gifts He could bestow and you don’t even realize it!”
“Gifts? What gifts?” he demanded, pushing himself up against the pillows so he could see her more easily. “When he knew I came from their time, he used me, Noni! He cared nothing for me as a person! He had one of the females—Jaisa—conceive a cub without asking me! I have a daughter I’ll never know living in the past!”
Noni snorted in disgust. “Listen to yourself, will you? A daughter living in the past? You have nothing living in the past! They’re dead, not even dust now, Tallinu! Long gone. He did what I’d have done in His place. Used the tools at hand, namely you. You had what none of them possessed, boy. You’d been touched by the Humans, and you were of their people, a Sholan from their time, not modern like Kusac. So Vartra got you to sire a daughter. With her they could breed any number of the new strain of telepaths. You were the father to her, she became their mother. Your Triad, not Vartra, is responsible for the mixed Leskas! Stop whining for one cub when you’ll have more than enough to delight you!”
“I’ve told you I don’t want cubs, Noni,” he snarled.
“Then why such a fuss over this one?” she retorted. “If she means nothing to you, let her go.”
“You’re doing it again, tying me up in your own brand of logic,” he growled angrily.
“You wanted to know His other gifts,” she continued, ignoring him. “Because of Him, you live here and now. Had you stayed in their world, you’d have been in constant danger from those trying to kill the telepaths for causing the Cataclysm. Instead you got a fresh start. You have Dzaka, as fine a son as anyone could wish, now he’s gotten over his stupidity with Ghezu. You’re part of a family that cares deeply for you; you have not only as a lover, but as a third, the female you wanted so much it robbed you of common sense! In fact, by registering the Triad at the temple, you’re as legitimately her husband as Kusac is under the old laws. Then there’s Kashini. If not for you, she could never have existed. And what has all this cost you? A few nightmares and a lost cub! If that’s a ruined life, then the Gods take pity on you, Tallinu, because I, for one, won’t!”
“It’s not that simple, and you know it! What he’s done has cost me my faith! I can’t believe in him any more!”
Noni sighed, reaching out to touch his hand where it lay on the covers. “You’re confusing the person with the God, Tallinu. Vartra the person made you his carrier, he told the female to conceive that night, not Vartra the God. When you have time, think it through carefully. Look at what Vartra the God has said to you, not Vartra the person.”
He didn’t want to listen to her, didn’t want excuses for Vartra’s behavior to be found—but some of what she was saying made sense. The hand holding his tightened slightly in a gesture of affection.
“Good. Just look at the differences, that’s all I’m saying. Then come to me with your questions. He speaks to me, too,” she said with a small grin. “Now comes the hard part. I need you to let me into your mind.”
He would have pulled away from her in shock, but her hand held his in a grip of steel.
“No,” she said firmly. “I think I know what’s happening. When will you learn to bring your problems to me? You make them worse by waitin
g. I could have solved all this weeks ago had you only told me.”
“You can’t do anything, Noni. My Talent’s unstable, I know it is. That’s why I came here, because I was afraid that I’d cause harm to Carrie or the cub.”
“You’re not unstable, boy,” she retorted sharply, “you’re unhinged! I never heard such rubbish in my life! Did it ever occur to you that your very existence as a member of the Brotherhood is a testament to the strength and stability of your mind and Talent? You’re the only telepath on Shola without a Human Leska that’s capable of fighting. You survived childhood with that damned M’Zushi family, survived the pack wars in Ranz, and were finally picked up by a recruitment team from Stronghold. How the hell did you do that with an unstable Talent, eh?”
He remembered Kusac asking him the same question and now, as then, he had no answer.
“Trust me, Tallinu. I need to know what Vartra’s people did to you to lock the memory of your return to the Margins away until now. That’s what damaged your mind. I’ll look nowhere else, believe me.”
He studied her face, feeling her sending him the truth of what she was saying.
“Sometime, Tallinu, you’ve got to start trusting people,” she said softly.
Slowly he nodded his head.
“That’s my lad,” she said, her voice dropping till it was almost a whisper. “Always had time for you, though never knew why, but you’ve repaid me over and over lately as you’ve traveled the path I knew you had to take. You’ve done well, Tallinu, better than many predicted you would.”
He could barely hear her voice now, and once more her eyes dominated him. Tiredness swept through him and gratefully, he shut his eyes and let go.
When T’Chebbi returned, Noni had finished and Kaid was still sleeping.
“It’s done, child,” she said in response to her mute appeal. She took the mug from her, taking a sip to taste it. “It’ll do,” she said. “Not fresh c’shar, but then I didn’t expect it from the kitchens here. Tallinu won’t be wanting his for a while yet. You might as well have it.”
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