He opened his eyes. It was dark, very dark, and Franse had long since put out the lanterns and the candles in the main chamber. He shouldn’t have been able to see. But he could. The heavy weight on his chest was the cat, and every hair on it was glowing, faintly. Its eyes were glowing too, a deep, luminous blue, just like a Companion’s eyes. Just like Dallen’s eyes.
The cat stared hard into his face, pupils dilated to pinpricks. He stared back and found himself falling into those blue, blue eyes, just as he had fallen into Dallen’s eyes when he had first been Chosen . . .
But this time was different. This time, it wasn’t as if he were joining something. This time it was as if he were being examined, rather as a Healer would examine him to find out what was wrong. He felt as if he were being prodded, poked, turned around about and even upside down and shaken a little, then put back on his feet. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was entirely disconcerting. Behind the entity doing the prodding and poking, he sensed something very much larger, warmer, interested in a detached fashion. He sensed a question from the first entity, a response from the second, though he couldn’t tell what the question and answer were.
Then came the distinct feeling that the first creature was poised, like a hunter with a spear, about to make a single, decisive strike.
And a moment later—it did.
There was a moment of absolutely blinding sensation—not pain, though it was something like pain. Something absolutely overwhelming.
:There, that should do the trick, I think. Can you hear me, Horse-Boy?:
His eyes flew open again; he had not known they were closed. That had been a mind-voice!
:Of course it was a mind-voice,: the cat said, sounding amused. :It was my mind-voice. I fixed you.:
He stared at the cat, aghast, amazed, and very nearly delirious with joy. :You fixed me! Reaylis! You fixed me!:
The cat purred. :Naturally. You called on the Sunlord and offered yourself as a go-between. In order for you to do that, I had to fix your Mindspeech. So I did.: The cat licked his whiskers. :Mind you, I’d have done it before if I’d known you were actually broken and not just headblind, with or without Vkandis telling me to.:
He blinked. :Uh . . . why?:
The cat purred again. :Because I’m a cat, silly. Cats do what cats will do, and neither man nor god can do anything about it. That’s why Vkandis made us His instruments. He has an interesting sense of humor, does the Sunlord. Now, I want you to sleep and let that heal. It’s raw right now. It won’t be good to use until morning, and even then we will have to go slowly and carefully, just as with your physical wounds. Tearing mental channels open is bad..:
He wanted desperately to try to call Dallen. He also knew that if a cat told him not to do something, it was probably a good idea not to do it.
:All ri—: he began.
:There’s a good Horse-Boy.: And the next thing he knew, there was sunlight reflecting off the rock from the tunnel and the smell of hickory-and-acorn porridge cooking.
The cat was nowhere in sight. He wanted to leap to his feet and run out into the main room, he wanted to try calling Dallen. He wanted to do a lot of things.
But he’d been hurt and healed so many times by this point that he knew how stupid it would be to do any of them just yet. Calling Dallen would be dangerous. Leaping up and running into the next room would hurt him. So, one step at a time.
He got up, put on his trews, and walked gingerly out into the main room. Franse looked up at his footstep.
:Reaylis says—: Mags heard tentatively in his mind. Franse’s mind-voice was not unlike Franse himself: clean, strong, simple on the surface, complex beneath, shy.
:Reaylis is right,: he replied with relief. :Now we can finally talk!:
* * *
The talking was slow, with pauses for Mags to rest when he began to get an odd ache just behind the point between his eyebrows. They ate while they talked, and as Dallen had often pointed out, this was not at all bad, being able to eat and have a conversation at the same time without being in the least impolite.
:We begin with you, De—: Franse glanced at the cat, who had appeared as if summoned. :Pardon. Reaylis says I must call you Horse-Boy from now on. Or Mags. He prefers Horse-Boy.: The young priest grinned, shyly. :I think I prefer Mags. So, we begin with you. Why are you here, how do you come to Karse, and why is your Horse not with you?:
Mags grinned back ruefully. :Don’t ask for much, do ye?: He had a long drink of tea and thought. :Shortest story I can. Yer leaders hired some sorta folks we never seen afore t’muck up things in Valdemar. From some place farther away than we ever heard of.:
Franse considered this, then nodded. :I did not know of this until now, but it was not important to us, so there is no reason why I should have known. Reaylis knew of this, tells me it is true, and that he cannot penetrate the fog that is about them. So we can tell you nothing of them.:
Mags sighed. Well, damn. :I got no idea how or why, but they seemta recognize me. They tried takin’ me a while back, an’ nothin’ came of it. They tried again, and this time they nobbled me. Whacked me up aside the head an’ drugged me. When I woke up, m’Mindspeech was gone, an’ I was in a wagon.: He described briefly how he had tricked them, how he had gotten away, and how his mind-voice still hadn’t come back. :Then that demon came after me, and you and Reaylis got rid of it.:
Franse nodded slowly through all of this. :These Gifts—all but Healing—they are anathema here. Children who have them are put to the fires. Only Healing and magic are permitted. The only reason that I escaped was because of Old Harald and Reaylis. They stole me from my parents before the black-robes came to the village and made it appear that I had gone out through a window and a demon had taken me. The demons take many who are caught outside their walls after dark.: He glanced down at the cat. :Suncats are the holiest creatures of Vkandis, so it says in our Holy Writings. And yet I am sure if the black-robes caught sight of so much as a hair of Reaylis’ tail—:
:I would be a pretty fur collar,: the cat put in, wrapping his tail around his feet, neatly. :They give lip service to the concept of the Suncats, but if they could catch any of us, we would be quite, quite dead.: The cat yawned. :It is a good thing that we are cats, and easier to hide than horses.:
Mags had to chuckle at that.
:So I am in hiding, and Reaylis is in hiding,: Franse continued. :There was a village near here that I did some healing for, and sometimes performed the offices of priest. I pretended that I was itinerant, a priest without a home temple; there are many such red-robes, for there are many more villages that are poor and cannot support a temple than there are priests to tend them, and so long as we don’t interfere in any way with what the black-robes want, they ignore us. But the village produced too many Gifted children. The black-robes declared it cursed. They took the people away, burned the village to the ground, and sowed the ground with salt.:
Franse must have been watching on the day that happened; Mags got furtive glimpses of the scene through his mind’s eye. The terrified villagers, the children herded into barred carts, the adults tied together at the waist and tied to the back of the carts. The flames racing through the tightly clustered houses. The carts moving away, the people forced to follow, stumbling and weeping or numb with shock. The black-robes moving among the smoking ashes, literally spreading salt over the ground so nothing would grow there.
Part of Mags wanted to yell at Franse, Why didn’t you do something? But really, what could he have done? He was one very young man and a cat. There had been at least five of those black-robe priests and a troop of armed men.
And, possibly, demons. What could one man and a cat have done against all of that? Could he have stopped them? No.
So he kept his thoughts tightly to himself.
Besides, Franse had helped him, when he had no reason to. Franse had saved him from another demon, Franse had tended his wounds and fed him. He should be feeling grateful to Franse—and he was!—not sitting in
judgment on him.
But that made him think of something that caused him some alarm. :That demon you chased off—is it gonna go back to its master and—:
:It wouldn’t dare,: said Reaylis, and switched his tail angrily. :We have driven such things off before, Franse and I. It knows the taste of the Sunlord’s lash, and it will not risk such again.:
Well, Mags reckoned they knew their business better than he did. He took comfort in the fact that they’d driven demons off before. If no black-robes had come to complain about it until now, likely they wouldn’t turn up this time either.
Suddenly he found himself yawning, his head feeling too heavy for his neck, and aching.
“Bed, you,” Franse said aloud. “Maybe hunt, maybe not, sleep now.”
Scarcely able to keep his eyes open, Mags could only nod, get up from the table, and stumble to the little chamber, where he was asleep as soon as he pulled a blanket over himself. For the first time since this ordeal had begun, he went to sleep without feeling that part of him was dead.
He woke to the smell of frying fish; for a moment he was confused as to his surroundings. Franse had never fried anything before; his mostly vegetarian diet didn’t give him any fat to fry in.
Then he remembered: the ducks and the geese. Franse was no fool, and he was quite a good cook. He must be harvesting the goose and duck fat as the birds hot-smoked in the little smokehouse he had made for the fish that he was able to catch. And Franse must have decided that the occasion warranted a little celebration in the way of using some of that precious fat.
He knuckled the last of the sleep out of his eyes and came back into the main room. Reaylis was watching the proceedings avidly. Franse looked up briefly and waved him over.
“Know you calling Horse wish. Is needing more—” Franse gestured.
“Energy,” Mags supplied.
“Aye. So—this—” He gestured at the fried fish. They looked wonderful, crisp and brown and delicious. “You, me, Reaylis. Reaylis and I help.”
Franse was quite a good cook, and he did not waste a single morsel of that precious fat either; he tossed sliced vegetables in what was left until they were coated and lightly fried them, too, moving them constantly to keep them from sticking to the bottom of the pan. With a sprinkling of salt, everything was perfect, and Mags thought that this was a meal he would remember for a very long time.
When they were done—Reaylis shared the fish, eschewed the vegetables—and the cleanup was complete, Reaylis hopped up on the table between them. The cat looked deeply into Mags’ eyes, and for the first time since Mags had awakened for dinner, the cat’s mind touched his. :We can only do this once, at least for now,: the cat admonished, his blue eyes narrowing in concentration. :For one thing, we want to do it while there is still daylight so the demons don’t sense it. And if it starts to hurt you, we are going to stop. There will be other days, if you don’t hurt yourself, and you’ll get better and stronger every day. But if you hurt yourself, the damage might be irreparable.:
Mags thought about how he’d been feeling since he’d awakened without Mindspeech and shuddered. No matter how much he had told himself he was resigned to being ordinary . . . in his heart, he knew he hadn’t been, and he would never be. He needed this, and he was not going to risk losing it again. He took a very deep breath, and nodded.
:All right,: he agreed. :So, what do I do? I’ve worked with other people afore, but not like this.:
:You do the reaching. That is all you need do; Franse and I are used to working together, and when Old Harald was alive, we worked with him as well. It will be as if you are reaching for something that is too high for you, and Franse and I are lifting you. You’ll sense it, so don’t be startled.:
Mags looked to Franse, who nodded. “All right,” he said aloud, and he closed his eyes.
Somewhere out there was Dallen. Actually . . . once again, he could just barely sense Dallen, like a sound right on the edge of audibility. Dallen was definitely out there. Mags just couldn’t quite hear what he was “saying,” as if someone were calling far in the distance, but all you could make out was that it was a human voice, and not something else, making a sound.
He “reached,” straining. He felt, as Reaylis had told him he would, the other two, “lifting” him, somehow putting him a little closer to Dallen, making that voice a little clearer.
Now, with great excitement, he realized that he could get some of the sense of what Dallen was calling.
Dallen was weary and in despair. He was calling only because he was driven to, not in any expectation of an answer. It sounded like someone who had been shouting the same thing, over and over, into the wind for days. And the single thing he kept calling was Mags’ name.
:Dallen!: he “shouted,” or tried to. :Dallen! It’s me! I’m here! I’m in Karse!:
There was a startled, incredulous pause. Faint, faint and far, but he felt the emotions. :Mags!:
:Dallen!: he replied, joyfully. :I’m in Karse! Karse!:
But he felt the strain; felt the ache starting behind his eyes. Then it was worse than an ache, it was a burn, and Franse and Reaylis immediately pulled their support away, and the sense of Dallen receded until it wasn’t a voice anymore, it was just that vague presence, faintly, in the back of his mind. He felt a moment of despair himself, he wanted so badly to really talk to Dallen—but the pain in his head warned him not to try.
As did Reaylis’ teeth firmly set in his finger. There was warning there; he knew that if he tried again, Reaylis would put a very quick end to the attempt with a hard bite.
With an unhappy, strangled sob, he let go of the contact and let it fade into the barest, dimmest awareness that Dallen was out there, somewhere. Reaylis let go of his finger, evidently satisfied that he understood the warning.
He opened his eyes. Franse patted his shoulder awkwardly, gingerly. Reaylis still sat like a statue of a cat, eyes tightly closed. Then the cat shook himself all over like a dog and opened his eyes again.
:I was able to reach your Horse long enough to make a contact thread with him. He will follow it to me, and here. Now no more for you today,: the cat said sternly. :And maybe not tomorrow. Things were starting to rip in that thick skull of yours. That makes more dangers than one, you know. Injuries to the parts of your mind that are responsible for Mindspeech are like any other injury except that what they “bleed” is not blood. But it can still be sensed. And you do not want anything that can sense such things to be attracted, now, do you?:
Mags got a sudden, rather disconcerting and frightening flash of something he really did not want to see clearly following a sort of “blood trail.” No . . . no, he didn’t want that.
He started to stand and found himself swaying a little with fatigue, and the pain in his head blossomed into a throb that seemed to go right through his skull. It must have shown on his face; Franse hastened to support him and aided him to his bed, went off and came back with another one of those herbal concoctions of his. Mags was rather more grateful for the very dim light in his chamber right now; light seemed to be stabbing right from his eyes into his skull. He drank down the potion in three gulps and wound himself in the fur blankets, putting his head on the pillow and waiting for the pain to subside. Franse just patted him on the shoulder again and let him be.
But he wasn’t unhappy—far from it! He felt as if he would happily have endured ten times the pain without Franse’s drugs just for that faint contact. And to have that sensation of at last having Dallen back with him again—oh, that was worth anything!
Dallen was coming. The cat had implied as much. Dallen was coming for him, and he was sure of the Companion’s ability to cross the Border, elude demons, and find him. It couldn’t be long—a few days, maybe a fortnight, and it would all be over at last.
He was going home.
* * *
The next morning, his head still ached—it was rather like the way his body had ached after the first time he’d been riding, however, and Fra
nse and Reaylis both decided that he hadn’t done any permanent damage to himself. They examined him minutely over breakfast, although you would never have known what they were doing if you had only been watching what was going on. It would have looked like nothing more than two men stolidly working their way through bowls of acorn porridge in silence, while a cat washed himself on the hearth.
:You are fine. But no more reaching that far for now,: Franse said sternly. :At least a day before the next attempt, and probably two.:
His body ached too, and he felt a little feverish. Again, this was a bit like the way he’d felt the first time he’d been riding and all those muscles that had never been used before protested that they’d been stretched, torn, and fearfully abused. But when the cat accompanied him out into the garden to stand vigil over the vegetables while Franse went fishing, he ventured a question or two.
He took his usual place on the left-side bench. The cat leaped up beside him. Once again, Mags marveled at the size of him. Reaylis really was huge, and the reddish-brown mask, ears, paws, and tail were not only striking, the combination was remarkably handsome. :I think I still feel Dallen,: he said, hoping he wasn’t deluding himself.
The cat stretched and yawned, showing teeth and tongue. :You do. Stop prodding it and leave it alone. You’re like a child with a bitten cheek or a missing tooth, you can’t seem to stop sticking your tongue into the wound.:
He grimaced, because that was exactly what he was doing. And he knew it.
:Patience. Would I catch a mouse if I kept prodding at the hole? Of course not.: The end of Reaylis’ tail flicked. :He’s coming. I am sure that he is getting plenty of help; he would not try to do this alone. He has to work out how to get here, how to get across the Border, how to keep the demons from seeing him. He’ll know all this better than I will. I do not know what resources he has, nor do I know what powers he may have. I sense that your Horses are somewhat more limited than Suncats, but, then, there are a great many more of them than there are of us. But nothing will keep him from you now, any more than anything would keep me from Franse.: The cat turned his head a little, and he glanced at Mags out of the corner of his eye. :And you are completely missing that blasted rabbit over by the kale. You might have had your breakfast, but I have not.:
Redoubt: Book Four of the Collegium Chronicles (A Valdemar Novel) Page 26