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 attention. 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 Karsite 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.”
“Eh?” It was Mags’ turn to stare curiously.
“Someone who... oh, I don’t know, was like Marchand, didn’t see any harm in blabbing everything he knew to someone who offered plenty of money—and, yes, by the way, under threat of Truth Spell, Marchand finally admitted that was what he’s been doing. I thought Master Bard Lita was going to die of a brainstorm right then and there.” Gennie smirked, then sobered. “But, what about someone who was taking bribes without thinking twice about it because he thought what was being asked seemed harmless enough. Then when the Karsites grabbed Amily, they needed a Healer, so they lured him to a meeting and grabbed him as well. Now he knows what’s going on, he knows he’s in over his head, and all he can do is try to keep Amily safe and pray we manage to figure out where they have her. Honestly? I think that’s the most likely.”
They all looked at each other. “In that case, Marchand is our Bardic informant, and this Healer is the other plant they said they had,” Bear said. “We’ve filled in all the blank spaces. So... if that’s true, then who’s missing from the Hill, Healer-side?”
“I’ll go interrupt the King and his emergency council,” Gennie said, standing up. “You lot see if you can figure out a way to find where Amily is, if they haven’t already.”
Mags nodded, and they set aside the notes about Amily and her captor and picked up the ones about “the irritations.”
Mags closed his eyes for a moment as the letters began to swim in front of them. Webs and vibrations and... it was all so complicated... .he wanted to sleep, but no, he couldn’t, he needed to . . .
The images that the stone had put in his mind swirled there again. Vibrations. Irritations. Vibrations. Interference. Irrita—
His eyes flew open just before he nodded off. ::What if thet stone was bein’ literal again?::
::That’s more likely than not,:: Dallen said after a moment.
::Then—all that fightin’ and squabblin’—thet wasn’t jest ’cause of th’ heat. It was ’cause them shields really are irritations!::
He turned his mind to Gennie and gently “poked” her.
::Still talking. What?::
::Marchand there?::
He sensed her bitter amusement. ::Being grilled like a fish. Why?::
::I need t’ know iffen them rats he was talkin’ to was meetin’ him real close t’ Palace.:: He remembered now something that the stone had said—or that he thought it had said—when he had fallen asleep in its room. That Ice and Stone were “irritations” because they were “near.”
He waited impatiently for the answer, but he didn’t push things. It was one thing to be impatient, quite another to impose that impatience on someone else who was doing you a favor.
::He says he met with them almost every day. Lord Lascal and his family close up their manor in the summer and move to their estate. There’s only a skeleton staff and everyone around here knows their gardens are pretty free to roam in. That’s where they met.:: There was a pause. ::He says he thinks they were actually living in a guest-house on the grounds. Why?::
Well... that figgers.
Quickly, he explained what the stone had told him and his idea that whatever the stone did worked against the shields that the Karsite agents wore to act as an irritant to everyone’s temper.
::So we look for places where the worst fights are happening, and that’s probably where they are?:: she said. ::Right, I’ll pass that on. Good job, Mags. They just sent out pages to find out if there are any Healers missing from up here.::
Ah, now there was another reason to be impatient. He got up to pace. “Iffen they thin’ we got a chance at findin’ Amily... might could be they kill this Healer an’ ’er t’gether,” he muttered, choking down his anguish at the mere thought. “So we gotta find ’em. Then we gotta get ’em away from ’er afore they figger out we ac’tually know they’re there. There’s gotta be somethin’ that’ll lure ’em out . . .”
“Hell,” said Bear, looking extremely disgruntled. “There goes my plan. Well, it wasn’t a very good plan . . .”
Mags looked over at him. “So? Mebbe we kin use part’f it.”
::Mags. Tell Bear that there is a Healer missing. Cuburn.::
::Oh thet’ll sit well.:: But after Bear got mad, this bit of information would probably give him some satisfaction. He told his friends what Gennie had said.
Bear blistered the air with oaths for a good long time. When he finally calmed down, Mags gave him a level look.
“Ye done?” he asked. “Cause iffen ye ain’t—”
“I’m done,” Bear told him in utter disgust. “I should have guessed it would be him. There never was a more venal—”
“Aye,” Mags interrupted. “Ye said thet. A couple’a times. What I wanter know is, what was yer plan?”
Bear blinked at him, as the question took him by surprise, then shrugged.
“Oh... it’s stupid. And if we did
it, there’d be more carnage . . .” Bear sighed. “You know, how when a little one goes missing, you go around to all the neighbors and ask if they’ve seen her and could they help look? I was thinking if we sent out some of the Guard and all the Trainees with drawings of these bastards, or of Amily, or both, maybe somebody might have seen . . .”
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