by Sharon Green
Weaving two and three strands of earth from the containers provided in each cubicle turned out to be much easier than it had been yesterday, encouraging Lorand to go straight to four strands. He held his breath when it came time to take in more of the power, but it still seemed to be well under his control. That helped him to relax even more, which let him go through all three of the required patterns twice by the time lunch was announced.
Lorand had noticed in passing that Drowd had managed to reach three strands, and the man fought to braid them a second time when the lunch placard was brought through. Lorand expected the struggling academician to at least finish what he was doing, but instead Drowd dropped the earth and led the others out to the tables. Lorand could see that the man’s lips were tight with fury, as though it were all Lorand’s fault that Drowd had never learned to finish a job before indulging his own needs and wants.
Lunch was less of a help than Lorand had hoped it would be except for the fact that he was put in yet another cubicle when they all went back. Drowd still wasn’t moved, and when the academician demanded to know why, Toblis explained in that distant manner of his. Drowd certainly had reached the three strand level, but he hadn’t reached the point of completing the braiding easily. Only when that happened would he be ready to move up to four strands, and only when he moved up would he qualify for a more comfortable cubicle. And then, of course, he added the icing.
“You really ought to try applying yourself like Coll there,” Toblis drawled, gesturing toward Lorand without looking at him. “At this rate, you’ll be eating his – dust—for the rest of your life.”
Toblis turned then and walked away, chuckling at his little joke. Drowd wasn’t chuckling, though, since it’s difficult to laugh when you’re livid. This time he’d just about been told that all his troubles were Lorand’s fault, exactly as he’d suspected all along.
Lorand turned away from the man’s murderous glare, walked to his new, very comfortable chair, and sat. This new cubicle was very much of a lure to relaxation, a place where he’d be very comfortable while he pretended to try for control over five strands. That was what he had to do next, open to enough more of the power to control five strands of weaving, but the thought of that made Lorand sweat even more than he had before lunch. He was still ahead of Drowd, after all, so he had plenty of time before he would really need to move ahead…
It took quite a lot for Lorand to get out of that chair and sit down on the floor where he would be a good deal less comfortable. Fear let you use anything to distract yourself from doing what caused the fear, even if you didn’t have as much time as you wanted to believe. This was the last week anyone would be able to qualify, and there was nothing to say that the testing authority people actually would wait until week’s end before ridding themselves of those who clearly would never make it. If he really did intend to qualify, it had to be right now without any excuse or argument.
Taking a deep breath did nothing to loosen the knot of fear inside Lorand, but he refused to let that stop him. It was either qualify or die, so he really did have nothing to lose. He held tight to that statement and fought to believe it as he opened himself to more of the power, nearly missing the surge of strength that came with it. It was almost as if the greater amount of power brought the strength necessary for its control along with it, but that was absurd. Beyond a certain point the power killed, it didn’t help.
Nevertheless, Lorand should now be able to handle five strands of earth. He moved them out of the container one at a time, making sure he had complete control over one before adding the next. The power roared inside him, demanding that he do and accomplish faster and with more assurance, making him dizzy as he fought to control it. That control became easier once he had all five strands and began to weave with them, but he did have to concentrate more than ever before.
For a while Lorand seemed to move in a dream, aware of nothing but the three patterns he had to produce. Distantly he realized he was bathed in sweat, but only when Toblis appeared outside his cubicle to beckon with one finger did Lorand raise an arm to blot his face on his sleeve. It took some effort to release the power and stand, but by the time he reached the place near the door where Toblis waited he was on the way back to feeling normal again.
“Congratulations, Coll, on managing to qualify,” Toblis said, now sounding distantly amused. “I was certain you would, but didn’t think you’d go so far as to produce the patterns four times rather than twice. But I suppose it’s one way to be certain that you won’t be here tomorrow for your – friend—to glare at.”
“Where will I be tomorrow instead?” Lorand asked, turning to see that Drowd still struggled with braiding three strands. It would be nice to be away from the man tomorrow; too bad the same thing couldn’t be accomplished tonight.
“Tomorrow you’ll be introduced to what the competitions are all about,” Toblis answered, then waggled his fingers. “Run along back to your residence now, and get as much rest as you can. I promise you’ll need it.”
Toblis walked away from him then, so Lorand left the session room and headed for the front of the building. Only half of the afternoon was gone, but hopefully he’d be able to get the coach to take him back to the residence now rather than later. He needed badly to use the bath house, and then he would find Jovvi and get to that conversation he meant to have. Tomorrow would bring new situations and new problems, so he’d be smart to take care of the old ones before the new ones arrived.
Even if he was already dreading what he’d need all that rest for…
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
My stomach tried to do flip-flops when we walked into the session room, but I managed to quiet it with less effort than it usually took. Yesterday I’d been terribly afraid of coming back here to try again, afraid that I’d fail and lose everything. Now … now I seemed to have more assurance, borrowed in part from Jovvi and, surprisingly, Rion Mardimil.
Rion had been distracted during the drive this morning, which was only to be expected after what he’d gone through with his mother last night. Once we were out of the coach Beldara Lant took off without a backward glance, but apparently Rion heard Jovvi trying to assure me that I could do anything I cared to. He hesitated in the midst of walking away then turned back to come over and take my hand.
“Dearest lady, you mustn’t entertain a lie which detracts from your golden strength,” he said softly and gently, looking down into my eyes. “Anyone able to face Mother the way you did last night is clearly much stronger than I am, and I expect to have no trouble at all in qualifying. If you use the same protectiveness for your own benefit, your difficulties will be even less than mine. Please tell me you will.”
I couldn’t help blushing as I nodded with a smile, noticing for the first time how really handsome Rion was. Jovvi agreed with him enthusiastically, and the two of them walked me almost to the door of the session room. I knew they would be disappointed if I failed, so I had to succeed for their benefit as well as my own. I’d never had anyone care about me before, even in passing as their concern probably was, and I just couldn’t let them down.
So I followed Adept Forum to my cubicle with more determination than ever before. Beldara already sat in her original cubicle among the four men we’d been with yesterday, but this time I ignored her as thoroughly as she’d been ignoring me. I had things to do, the first of which was to run through the braiding exercise again. Starting with three strands warmed me up, so to speak, and then I was ready to try four.
It had been unexpectedly easy to work with three strands, and opening to more power let me do almost the same with four.
There were three separate exercises to go through that weren’t as difficult as they looked, and when I finished them the second time I opened myself to the power again to try five strands. I was well on the way to finishing the first five-strand exercise, when a double scream, the second following swiftly on the heels of the first, almost made me lose control of the fire in my talent’s
grasp. I quickly anchored the strands in place, then hurried to the door of my cubicle to see what had happened.
“All right, now, let’s settle down,” Adept Forum said as he came through, heading for the cubicles in back. “This does happen from time to time, tragedy though it is. It’s not likely to happen to the rest of you, or it would have done so already. Settle down, I say, and let the men do their job.”
The men he referred to were right behind him, six men who went past the point where he stopped. They entered the two cubicles involved, two men in one and four in the other. Those who had come out of their cubicles moved back to give the men room, but that number didn’t include Beldara Lant. She still sat in her chair with an expression of scorn and superiority on her face, unlike the two remaining male applicants left in the area. They both looked ill, and they returned to their chairs to sit slumped in dejection and fear.
“Yes, I know exactly what happened,” Adept Forum said to one of the men in my own area. who had obviously gone over to him to ask the question. “That fool sitting there staring at a world he’ll never come in contact with again is burned out, and he did it to himself. In all this time he hasn’t even been able to coil two strands, but he obviously decided to change that. I felt him open himself wide enough for a herd of horses to pass through, showing he had no sense of judgment at all. You do have to walk before you can run, but what he tried was to fly.”
Adept Forum and the other man had to step into an empty cubicle to let the two men leading the burned out one to go by, and I couldn’t stop staring until it was no longer possible to see the slack face above the stumbling body. A small shiver passed through me at the sight, but nothing I couldn’t cope with. The man was now beyond anyone’s ability to hurt him, a condition I considered quite comforting. The other one, though… The smell was definitely beginning to turn my stomach.
“As you can see, the first man’s scream caused that second fool to lose control,” Adept Forum went on once he and the other man were back in the hall. “The power was freed to do as it willed, and what it willed was to burn him to cinders. It will take hours to clear away the results, so just go back to whatever you were doing.”
The man he spoke to glanced at the horrible mess the four men were trying to clean up, then he took his pale face and trembling hands back to his own cubicle. The stench of burned flesh was trying hard to make me ill, but beyond that I felt strangely untouched. Both men were free of having to worry about what the world would do to them next, a luxury I didn’t share. The thought of failure brought me greater fear than the possibility of death, and that was what I still had to fight against.
After returning to my chair I finished the first pattern with five strands, then did the other two. Running through all three for the second time was easier yet, and then Adept Forum was gesturing to me through the cubicle’s clear resin wall. I rose and followed him out, not to the area near the door but through the door to the open floor of the building.
“Ah, that’s much better,” Adept Forum said once the door was closed behind us. “That smell was beginning to give me a headache. But now on to more pleasant matters. You’re due congratulations, my dear, both for qualifying and for surprising me. I surely expected you to be too deeply upset by the incidents to finish qualifying today. I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know that you needn’t return here tomorrow.”
“You’re right, I am,” I responded, really detesting the man and his manner. “Where do I go instead?”
“To the competitions, of course, something your driver will know,” he answered, interest flickering through his eyes as he examined me. “I expect you’ll enjoy yourself rather more than most, which pleases me. Perhaps we’ll meet again, my lovely.”
His bow was as sarcastic and condescending as the rest of his attitude, but I ignored it as I turned and walked away. It was almost lunchtime, and I had no intentions of taking the meal there. I wanted to be home, and I only had to find our coach to make it happen.
Stepping outside felt wonderful, as though I’d been released from some invisible shackle, and a pleasant surprise was waiting. Jovvi and Rion stood together to one side, and when they saw me they waved me over.
“Tamrissa, you did it!” Jovvi enthused once I was close enough, then her smile dissolved as she studied me. “I mean you did do it, didn’t you? You’re out of there early, but you look a bit on the pale side. Is everything all right?”
“For me it is, at least so far,” I responded, hurrying to reassure the both of them. “And I don’t doubt that I look pale. One of our people exercised very bad judgment, and managed to burn himself out. His scream distracted another man, making him lose control of the power. That one ended burned up instead of out, but I swear the Adept was glad it happened. That smell will eventually drive everyone out of the room, either by making them qualify or making them give up.”
“What about Beldara?” Jovvi asked, her hand to my arm and the words very quiet. Rion also looked disturbed, but no more than I felt. “She wasn’t the one who … exercised bad judgment, was she?”
“No, she just sneered, then went back to what she’d been practicing,” I replied with a headshake. “She seems to be finally getting the idea of what she’s been doing wrong, so she ought to qualify in another day or so herself. If she does, I doubt if any of the others will manage it along with her.”
“I know precisely what you mean,” Rion said with a nod. “None of those others in my session room will ever qualify, not if they try for the rest of their lives. They should be able to do it, but for one reason or another they don’t. I was told that those with true potential always qualify by the second day, at the very latest, by the third. That leads me to believe the sessions won’t go to week’s end, even if they claim it will.”
“I got the same impression,” Jovvi said, then waved a hand beyond the steps. “There’s our coach at last, so let’s not waste any time getting to it. We’re supposed to relax and enjoy ourselves today, and that’s what I mean to do. I get the impression that tomorrow will be harder than anything we’ve faced so far.”
“I’d consider that an understatement,” I said as I joined her and Rion in heading for the coach. “All those people who tested and passed and qualified before us have been practicing and competing for who knows how long, and they’re the ones we’ll be going up against. In order to get anywhere at all, our names would have to be written in the Prophecies. If we’re ever going to need a plan of action, this is the time.”
“I don’t care how good they are,” Rion said after helping Jovvi and me into the coach and then following. “I need the gold that winning a competition will bring, so I intend to win. Plan or no plan, I will succeed.”
“I wish I had your confidence,” I told him with a smile, speaking nothing but the truth. “It would be nice to believe that I’ll turn out to be the strongest one competing in my aspect, but that’s not very likely to be the case.”
“Why not?” Jovvi asked, turning in her seat to my right to look at me. “Someone has to be the strongest, so why can’t it be us? We’re not competing against each other, after all, so why can’t all of us be best? I think we can be, so that’s what I’m going to expect.”
“And I,” Rion agreed with a merry grin, just about the first I’d seen him show. “The idea is marvelous, and I agree with it completely. We’re all the best, and when we win positions as Highs, we’ll have parties and invite only each other.”
“That would make for very small parties,” Jovvi said with a laugh. “I think we ought to invite everyone who ever gave us trouble, and dare them to try it again. Then we could watch their feeble efforts and laugh.”
“Yes!” I agreed, finally letting myself share the enjoyment of the silliness. “And if they try to give too much trouble, I can singe their bottoms to make them jump. Then we’d have no need to hire dancers and acrobats.”
They both laughed aloud at that, then tried to find other things we would do to those we di
sliked once we became Highs. Daydreaming is supposed to be a useless waste of time, but those who say that are wrong. On the one hand, making the dreams come true justifies the time spent. If it doesn’t involve something that’s likely to come true, simply enjoying the faint possibility justifies it on the other. As long as you don’t try to live your life in those dreams, there’s a lot more good in them than bad.
Before we knew it we were back at my house, so we went inside intending to see about lunch. We actually made it about halfway across the hall before Warla appeared and stopped us.
“Excuse me, Tamrissa, but I’ve been waiting for you to return,” she said, looking faintly upset. “There are people here to see Dama Hafford, and I’ve put them in the sitting room. They arrived more than an hour ago…”
“And have been cooling their heels and fuming all this time,” Jovvi said with surprise when Warla let the words trail off. “I can’t imagine who it can be, so let’s go and find out.”
Our good mood still clung to us, so Rion and I agreed at once to go with her. Warla led the way to the sitting room, and that location showed her opinion of the visitors more than anything else. If she’d approved of them she would have put them in the larger and much more comfortable library. I wondered who they could be—until we followed Warla in to see a woman and two men. The woman was no longer young but still very beautiful, the men were the sort I would have been much happier not meeting, and all three together took the merry smile from Jovvi’s face.
“Why, Allestine, what a pleasant surprise,” Jovvi said at once, a neutral smile replacing her previous one. “And you’ve brought Ark and Bar with you. What brings you from Rincammon all the way to Gan Garee?”
“Business, child, rather important business,” the woman Allestine replied with a smile of her own that I didn’t like at all. She also remained seated in the room’s only comfortable chair, while the two men had risen to stand to either side of her. That she would play noble receiving lowly callers in my house annoyed me, almost as much as her slow examination of my face and body disturbed me.