Dallen lost his footing; started to go over, fought for it, hurtling sideways on the sluice that was the street, as Mags clung desperately to the saddle, breath completely rammed out of him.
They both knew at the same moment when Dallen was not going to be able to keep his feet.
Mags flung up his arms to shield his head; Dallen fell with as much control as he could muster. The pavement slammed into both of them, and everything went black.
“Mags! Mags!”
Mags hurtled up out of unconsciousness like a panicked starling shooting into the sky. His eyes flew open; his body registered rain, his mind recognized Heralds, and his memory shouted Amily! He tried to lurch to his feet.
Someone held him down.
He flailed at them. “Lemme go! Lemme go! They got Amily! They’re gittin’ away! Lemme go!”
A stranger in Herald’s Whites grabbed his head in both hands and forced him to stop struggling. “Mags. It’s too late. They’re long gone. We got here to find you and Dallen lying in the street and no sign of them.”
He stared at the man without comprehension for a long, long moment. “No—” he croaked. “No—they cain’t—”
“Yes,” said the man, with compassion, but without any attempt to soften the blow. “They can, and they did.”
A million things raced through his mind. He wanted to burst into tears. He wanted to shove this fellow off him and go running down the street. He wanted to scream, or pull lightning down out of the sky himself, or—
He did none of these things, for none of them would get Amily back. Instead, he looked up into the stranger’s face. “What—what do I do?” he asked. “What do we do?”
The stranger gave him a long, searching look, then nodded. “They won’t kill her; they won’t even hurt her for now,” he said. “If they’d wanted to do that, they wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble. So for now, we go back where we have resources, and you tell us everything you can. Think you can stand?” He took his hand off Mags and his knee off Mags’ chest.
Mags lurched to his feet, stumbled in the rain, and looked around. To his great relief, he saw Dallen also on his feet, even if the Companion’s head was hanging so low his nose touched the street.
::Dallen?::
::I’m all right. Bruised. Nothing broken. And furious.:: The Companion raised his head and looked into Mags’ face. Pure rage blazed at Mags from the blue eyes.
“Anything broken?” asked the stranger.
“Dallen says no—”
“I meant you,” the stranger interrupted.
Mags took a deep breath—or tried to. Every muscle in his chest suddenly constricted painfully. But there weren’t any stabbing sensations, and he answered, “Don’ thin’ so.”
“Blessed Cernos, I have no idea how that happened. Do you see that?” The stranger pointed to a rectangular shape lying off to the side of the road. Mags guessed it was about at long as he was tall. “That was a seat in the carriage. At a guess there was one of them driving and one on the floor, making sure the girl didn’t bounce out or come to and jump out. He ripped out that seat and flung it at you when you came alongside. It probably weighs about as much as you do.”
“Oh.” Well, that explained what had hurtled into them.
“You can thank all that game practice for keeping you both from breaking your necks.” The stranger, who had an oddly familiar look to him, raised his head, rain streaming over him as he closed his eyes for a moment. “There. Everyone knows you’re all intact. Friends are bringing Nikolas up from Haven.”
He whistled shrilly, and a moment later, an extremely tall Companion came trotting in through the rain curtains.
“Any sign?” the stranger asked his Companion.
The Companion blew out a disgusted snort and shook his head vigorously.
“Well, it was worth trying. If anything could track them in this muck, it would be you.” The stranger sighed and turned back to Mags. “All right, let’s get you into the saddle. I’d rather you didn’t walk too far until a Healer has a chance to look at you.”
Obediently, Mags turned toward Dallen, but the stranger’s Companion shouldered in between them. The blue eyes bored into his. ::Not Dallen, he’s in no better shape than you are,:: said a crisp, clear Mindvoice with the sound of bells in it. ::My saddle.::
“Uh... oh... aight,” he replied, blinking, and with every muscle in his body screaming in protest, he reached up to the saddle horn.
He managed that, but he couldn’t get his foot high enough to go into the stirrup—
Before he could think, he felt the stranger boost him, so he did manage to scramble into place. The strange Herald started trudging up the street, plowing with determination through the downpour. His Companion followed, and Dallen moved painfully alongside.
::Who is that?:: he asked Dallen, half of his mind trying to figure out why the stranger looked so familiar, the other half trying to think of some way, any way, he could find Amily and get her back.
::Sedric,:: Dallen replied, shortly.
That name was... familiar.
“You’re lucky I was close, and I’m a strong Mindspeaker,” said Sedric. “I have literally just gotten back from my first circuit. I was waiting out the rain at Master Soren’s when I heard you shouting.”
“You know Master Soren?” Mags asked, still thinking furiously, but fruitlessly.
“I should, I just proposed to Lydia.” There was a sort of grim amusement in his voice. “It’s a damn good thing she doesn’t believe in evil portents, I suppose.”
“Evil... Lydia?” With his mind racing in a hundred directions, he tried to make sense of that. “You—you’re going to marry Lydia?”
“She seems to think so. I’m glad she knows what she’s getting into, or this would likely have sent her screaming away from me.” Sedric waited for a moment for the two Companions to catch up with him, and he put a steadying hand on Dallen’s shoulder when he stumbled a little.
“If you’re—why didn’t I know about this?” Mags asked, staring down at the young man.
“Because, my dear naive Trainee, it’s generally not a good idea for the Heir to the Throne to broadcast his choice of wife when he’s about to be away from the Palace for two years,” Sedric said dryly. “Father tentatively approved when I left, provided Lydia felt the same when I got back. Reasonable—well, my head knew it was reasonable, even though my heart was sobbing worse than a mooncalf lover in one of Marchand’s treacly ballads, and we will not mention in polite company how other parts of me took the edict.”
Finally, the words penetrated the fog of anger and grief and guilt that swirled around inside him. Sedric. Prince Sedric. Herald Prince Sedric. The son of King Kiril’s first marriage—made when the King himself was still a very young Prince—a marriage of state, in which the poor bride, very, very much older than the Prince, had not survived the birth of her son.
A son who had been raised by the very young second wife, the love match, a situation that in ballads, at least, was not inclined to end well.
“Mother was incensed on my behalf,” he said fondly, then sighed. “Dammitall, these bastards have a wretched sense of timing. She’d be beside herself with joy except that right now she’s beside herself with worry over Amily.”
“It’s—it’s all my—” Mags began, the grief starting to overpower everything else.
“You can just stop that foolishness right now, Trainee,” Sedric said fiercely, looking up at him through the rain, his eyes blazing as Dallen’s had. “I know that you are thinking that if you had been with her, she wouldn’t be in their hands now. It is not your fault. It cannot possibly be your fault. Did you call this damned storm?”
His relentless logic startled Mags. “Uh... no . . .”
“There you are. Now listen to someone who knows. From experience. If you wallow in guilt, you are wasting time you could be using to help figure out a way to get her back. You have only so much time and so much thinking power, so conc
entrate it all on her.” When Mags nodded slowly, he appeared satisfied and hunched his head down against the rain again. “Now. All I know is what I’ve been getting from Father’s letters and in bits and pieces from everyone mind-shouting right now. Begin at the beginning. What in hell has been going on while I was gone?”
Chapter 19
For all of Sedric’s grim determination, no solutions presented themselves, and Mags felt himself teetering on the very brink of utter despair. Nikolas had already plunged headlong into that state, and for once it was the King and Queen who were trying to comfort the King’s Own, not the other way around.
Lena blamed herself. She was the one, after all, who had persuaded Mags and Amily to leave the safety of the Palace to go to Marchand’s concert. Mags, of course, knew that this was his fault—he should have said no. He could have asked to get off from that last class and gone with her. He had done neither, and this was the result.
Marchand, who had made all the arrangements, babbled about them to anyone who would listen and had not thought anything amiss when a strange carriage and driver appeared instead of the one he had hired. He blamed everyone but himself.
The Karsite agents had made no contact nor any demands, but that was only a matter of time.
. . . or Amily’s lifeless body would turn up.
That was something no one wanted to think about, but it hovered in the back of everyone’s thoughts like a specter. If the Karsite agents wanted to destroy the King’s Own now, it would be heartbreakingly simple to do so. They had to know that.
If that happened... .
Well, Mags would find them and kill them, or die trying.
If Amily’s kidnapping had affected only those who loved her, it would have been hideous, but the situation was being made even worse by the fact that it was getting political, with one faction demanding that Nikolas resign his position (as if he could!), another faction spinning hysterical suppositions about what demands the kidnappers were going to make, and a third faction quite ready, willing, and able to declare war on Karse and take the Army across the Border.
“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 should
er 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.”
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