The Horse In The Mirror

by Lisa Maxwell

  Chapter 14

  Is had thought she would sleep late after having been up half the night, but she woke early, strangely alert. She crawled out of her bag and stood still, testing the air for what had awakened her. There were many footprints in the dew, all going in the same direction. She followed them.

  On the top of a little rise, in an open field, she saw a group of people. They were all moving in unison lined up more or less in rows, with one man leading them. They did a fast spinning turn with arms outstretched. Stopped suddenly. Then turned back the other way. Again and again. The movement was beautiful. The sun was not yet above the mountains. Fog lay in streamers on the plains below the knoll where the people exercised. The people spun and stopped, spun and stopped. Except for the swish of clothing they were silent.

  Then they all knelt down. The man who had been leading the movement stood in front of them. A young man walked toward him, seeming to glide over the ground, fit and strong. He picked up a long stick, like a stave, from a pile at the outskirts of the exercise area and advanced menacingly on the leader, carrying the stick behind him. Abruptly he ran forward and swung with all his might.

  Is shuddered, expecting to see the leader slammed to the ground with a broken skull. Instead the stick whistled by him and the attacker flew through the air as though launched. She expected the young man to land hard and not get up. Instead he did a flip in the air, straightened his body out parallel to the ground and landed all in one piece. In an instant he was on his feet again, but the leader was now holding the stick. He held it out to the attacker who took it and without an instant's hesitation swung again and went flying through the air. This time Is knew what to expect. There was a beauty to their movements, timing and unity somewhat like the best dancers the night before.

  After a few more fast throws, the two men went through the attack in slow motion. Is observed exactly how the leader moved out of the way, how he used the attacker's momentum while twisting the stick for leverage. It made so much sense she wanted to cry out with understanding. A deep excitement took her. This was what John had used against Chest and the men in the town. Maybe they would teach it to her. There were as many women out there practicing as there were men. If she could learn this she would never have to be afraid of a man again.

  All the people who had been kneeling stood up. They paired off, one with a stick, one without and began to imitate the movements of the teacher. Some of them were very good, but some were not. From them Is got an idea of how hard the movement really was. Getting the timing right would take experience. Is was dying to try it. She thought her years of riding would surely help with the timing. But she noticed that the partners always switched roles after a few throws so that whoever had been throwing would now be the attacker and have to fly through the air. She wondered if she could learn to fall like that. In riding falling was bad, always to be avoided, and Is had never thought of it as something that could be beautiful, or fun.

  A young girl came walking across the field toward Is. The child smiled at her in a shy way and said good morning softly.

  "Good morning, Chandra," Is replied, amazed that she had remembered the girl's name after being introduced to so many people.

  The child went from shy to beaming. They watched the practice together. John was working out with a stout man who looked as if he could break the stick over John's head if he ever connected. John was having no trouble with him. He was grinning.

  "He's really good," Chandra said.

  "He looks good to me," Is admitted.

  "He is. Is it true he can't talk?"

  "He can talk, but only sometimes, and then his words don’t make any sense.”

  "Are you going to marry him?" the child asked. "I wish you would."

  Is felt as if someone had kicked her. She took a moment to seem nonchalant.

  "I thought he was already married."

  "No. He's been 'sposed to marry Alene. But I wish you'd marry him."

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Why not?”

  Is didn’t know the answer to that herself. She caught at the first thought that came. “He may not want to marry me.”

  “He does,” the girl asserted.

  Is decided she'd better discount everything the child said. She probably just had a good imagination. They watched awhile longer in silence. More children collected around them.

  "I have to go now," Chandra said. "It's almost our turn." She and the other children filed over to the knoll.

  The people had lined up again. They kneeled and bowed to the man who had taught. Then they began drifting away. They were laughing and talking together and they all seemed relaxed and happy after their workout. Is could almost see the energy sparkling in the air around them.

  But not everybody left. John and some of the other adults stayed to work with the children. Is watched John correcting the way one child was moving during the warm-up exercises. He did it all with mime. Is understood him perfectly. The child laughed at his rendition of the mistake he'd made. Others stopped to watch and laughed too. Is could see that the children loved John. She loved him too. All of a sudden it was easy to admit that. She wondered if Chandra was right about his not being married.

  The children's practice looked different from the adults’. They did a lot of tumbling. Is watched intently and tried to learn how the falls were done. Some of the children were fearless. They would dive over each other and roll to their feet. Others were more timid, but the adults who had stayed to help were patient. Although the children were having fun, there was an undertone of discipline, but it was different from the dry hateful strictness of the government schools. Loving strictness. She wondered how that balance was achieved.

  The children didn't work with the sticks. They practiced throwing someone who had grabbed them. Is was amazed at how even the small children could throw someone bigger. It seemed to be a trick of leverage and timing rather than strength. Again she was struck by the feeling that the moves made so much sense it was a wonder she had not thought of them herself. But she had never thought about defending herself at all. How could she? She would have had to fight everyone in the school. And how could she have defended herself from the teachers, like Riding Master Masley, who had so much power over her? And the berserkers? She felt certain that even the best of these people would not be able to handle a berserker.

  When the class ended, Is went over to the children, intending to walk with Chandra. But John saw her and came to her immediately. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes as he had last night. Is thought her heart would stop. Her whole body felt strange, hot and weak. After a moment he let her go and she walked with him back toward the camp. Other people surrounded them, talking. They asked her what she thought of what she had seen.

  "It was stunning," she said and they laughed

  Everyone seemed to radiate energy and good spirits and Is found herself feeling good just to be around these people. The children chattered and laughed and rough-played their way back to camp.

  The talk switched from practice to breakfast and the day's work. Breakfast was a communal affair featuring large pots of slowly bubbling cereal. Petre saw Is and came over to her. He had overslept, he said, which caused a number of people to start kidded him. He seemed to take the razzing good-naturedly.

  "Someone has to stay here and cook," he said. But no one believed him.

  "Cook!" they said. "Only if you've learned to do it in your sleep." And they wouldn't allow him to argue. Is watched the exchange carefully and could detect no malice - so unlike the government school.

  People sat in informal groups. Is sat with Ondre, Ellie and Petre. John seemed to be a guest of honor in a group nearby - if by teasing him they were honoring him. He had no way to defend himself. Watching him, Is saw how much he loved and was loved by his people. She was aware of how Ondre never t
ook his eyes off his brother and aware of how Ellie watched Ondre as closely. She would have to be blind to miss the love that connected those three.

  Surreptitiously she also watched Alene, John’s girlfriend, trying to see if that special connection extended to her. But Is could not tell and realized she was not an impartial judge.

  As people finished eating they wandered off in informal groups to get the day’s work done. Ellie and Ondre asked Is to come and talk with them some more.

  They rolled back the roof of the tent so it was basically a roofless wall encircling them. The mid-morning sun shone in. The sky was blue and birds sang, but Is felt sudden trepidation.

  Ellie prepared tea and Ondre opened by saying.

  "I hope you understood, the feast last night was to thank you for what you've done for John, as much as it was to celebrate his return."

  Is had not understood that, any more than Ondre's people had understood that a big public gathering was the absolute last thing she would have wanted. When she didn't say anything, Ondre sighed. She was not making whatever he wanted to say easy for him, but she was not doing it on purpose. Ellie stepped in.

  "Is, we love John. We thought he was dead. We're so glad he's back, and we thank you for helping him. Nothing would make us happier than for both of you to stay here forever. But that isn't what John's going to do. It is important that you understand your options. You could stay with us, or go with him. What he is going to try will be quite dangerous. We think that you might be a help to him but it is important that you understand as much as possible about the risk involved; and it is important we understand you." She looked directly into Is's eyes and Is felt dread sink into her stomach. She did not want more danger or more odd occurrences. But she made herself nod so Ellie would continue.

  Ellie backed off from the intensity of what she had been trying to express. She glanced at her husband and Ondre spoke.

  “The Mirror thing that was in John's letter . . . we don’t know what it really is or why the Alliance is so interested in it. That’s part of what John was trying to find out.

  "You must realize that, most of what your government has taught you about our side of the Boundary is simply not true. They don't send the berserkers against the Blueskins. They send them against the Mirror."

  They were both watching for her reaction. Is wished they would stop referring to it as "her" government. She was an outlaw too.

  Ondre took up the tale. “The Alliance has a certain vested interest in keeping its citizens on its side of the Boundary, and therefore a certain interest in keeping them ignorant and misinformed. The Alliance doesn't want people to know anything about the Mirror, or about us. And what you have been taught about the Blueskins is also false."

  Is could see Ondre was getting wound up into real anger.

  She didn't understand what he was trying to tell her and she was glad when Ellie interrupted him.

  “The Alliance has an 'arrangement' with the Blueskins. It doesn't send the berserkers to hunt them down because of the farmers they kill, or the goods they steal the way you have been taught. The Alliance wants the Blueskins to attack a certain percentage of farmers every year. That way the people believe there is a real threat and that the berserkers are necessary." Ellie stopped because she could see Is had gone pale.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Blueskins killed my mother and father and that was part of the . . . the arrangement!” Her voice shook. “That’s why the men came and took me away the very next day. They knew it was going to happen.”

  Ondre slapped his thigh with a loud report and turned angrily away. No one said anything for a few minutes.

  "I'm very sorry," Ellie said. Her voice was filled with such compassion that Is had trouble believing a woman who hardly knew her could care so much.

  "She still has to know," Ondre said to his wife. His voice was gentle and without anger now.

  Ellie didn't say anything but Is had the feeling she agreed with her husband. Is did not want to be treated like a child. She tried to think of something to say that would show her toughness and let them know she wanted the truth.

  "Why do they send the berserkers against the Mirror?" she asked.

  “The Alliance would have us believe it is their way of studying the Mirror," Ondre answered. "Only, they created the Mirror in the first place so we’re not sure what they’re doing. It kills everyone who approaches it. The berserkers are designed to be unafraid of death, to fight hard and not be killed too quickly. They are the government's eyes and ears. When they fight the Mirror, the government can see and hear what happens. It's transmitted to them, as when people 'fast' their talk." He was watching her acutely and Is felt he was trying to simplify down to her level what he was describing. It embarrassed her to be so ignorant.

  "If it kills everyone, then it will kill John," she said, sounding a lot more calm and impersonal than she felt.

  "He seems to think he has learned something that will make a difference," Ondre said. Is could tell Ondre didn't want his brother going anywhere near the thing.

  "We don’t actually know what the Mirror is. We gave it that name because it has some of the properties of a mirror. It reflects anything that approaches it. But it isn't just a surface projection. It seems to somehow reflect what's inside a person's mind. We know of no one who has lived through a direct encounter with the Mirror, but people sometimes live through encounters with the herd fogs, which can do similar things to a person's mind. We think the herd fogs are part of the Mirror. They may be like its hands, appendages with which it can reach out and manipulate things. People who have gone through experiences with the fogs are often very confused."

  He looked at her closely and Is could tell he was holding back something. But her years of training in the government school had led her to accept having information withheld from her. It never occurred to her that she could simply ask and he would tell her.

  "It's important to us to know about your experience in the fog so that we can learn to understand the herd fogs better," Ellie said.

  "I may have imagined it," Is said.

  Ondre and Ellie exchanged a look.

  "In a sense, all our experiences of the herd fog and the Dark Bodies and the Mirror are imagined," Ondre said. "None of them is exactly 'real' in the way that, say, a horse is ‘real.'”

  Dark Bodies, Is thought that was a perfect name for the shadowy apparitions that had surrounded John that night.

  "You may have caused the Dark Bodies to come in order to help you when you were stuck in the fog," Ellie tried to explain. "If we can find out how you did that, you may be able to call them or send them away at will."

  "Why would I want to do that?"

  "Because, if you go with John, you may be able to help him find the Mirror, and you may help him have the right dialogue with it." Ondre's voice was serious. "John seems to think he can get the Mirror to reflect something that won't kill him. He seems to think it can cure what the Alliance did to him."

  Ellie took Is's hands. "John desperately needs to talk again. You know he was posing as a scholar and spying on the Alliance for us. We try to keep a few spies in the government all the time so we will know if they are planning anything concerning us. For years they have just let us live here in peace, but we know there will be a time when that will change. So we keep our spies watching.

  "John had a special task. He was trying to learn about the Mirror and the berserkers. Our people have kept a record of the changes the Alliance has made in the berserkers and their horses over the years. It seemed the Alliance was trying to perfect something, using the Mirror like a mirror, to reflect their flaws. What we have never been able to understand is what they are trying to perfect. Years ago, we thought it was the physical perfection of the fighting team of horse and rider the Alliance was after. But they have taken man and beast as far as they can in that direction, and still they send them." Ellie paused,
and Ondre took up the story.

  "A whole network of industry has grown up around developing and supporting the berserkers and their horses. You were part of it. You saw all the levels of training, the different Barns, the Equestrienne schools, the elaborate apprentice program. Of course not all of it is aimed at producing berserkers - there are the Breeding Barns, the Troop Barns, the Training Barns - but the berserkers and their horses are the ultimate achievement. The whole thing is too complex for the explanations the Alliance offers its citizens especially since we know the berserkers do not fight the Blueskins.

  "John had worked his way up in the research branch of the Alliance dealing specifically with the berserkers. He must have learned something very important."

  "All we know is he is willing to risk facing the Mirror and the possibility of being killed for the chance to regain his speech," Ellie said bluntly.

  "He may have a better chance to succeed if you help him," Ondre added.

  Is looked away, giving herself a moment to think. She could see how much these two loved John. She wanted to help them, and she certainly wanted to help John. But she didn't know what they thought she could do, and she was afraid. Deep in her soul she didn't want to go anywhere near the Mirror, or the herd fogs or Dark Bodies again, ever.

  "There is another reason you might want to go," Ondre said. He sounded tentative. Is met his eyes feeling more scared than ever. "Have you thought about what you'll do when your stallion reaches maturity?" His voice was grave, his eyes compassionate.

  He could only mean when Lark was old enough for his berserker. But there would be no berserker for Lark. He would never feel the man coming. He would not change, the way the other horses had changed. Is had never believed it would be otherwise. But now Ondre was looking at her with such concern and sadness he could only mean she'd been wrong.

  "You didn't know?" Ellie asked compassionately.

  "But his berserker won't come," Is cried out. "Lark won't change."

  "He came from the Castle Stud, didn't he?" Ondre asked. "He had the brand on his forehead, didn't he?"

  Is could only nod. Lark had arrived at her place as a leggy yearling, his coat still fuzzy like a colt's, and his tail the short flag of a baby. He had been so friendly, making up to her immediately, as if she were some long lost friend. She had rubbed his forehead where the scar was and he had loved it because it was itchy with new healing.

  "He's about seven or eight now, isn't he?" Ondre asked.

  "Seven," Is confirmed.

  Ellie spoke to Ondre. "He's too old. We can’t remove the chip."

  "It gets too integrated into their brains," Ondre explained. "It controls the chemical output of the pituitary and other systems. Among other things it tells his body when to make the hormones of fear, or anger, or aggression. So far it has only regulated his hormones for maximum growth and development. He is as strong and fast and smart as his biochemical makeup and his breeding, and your training, can make him. But when the chip determines that he is fully developed, it will switch its message. It will make him as aggressive and as fearless as it is possible for a horse to be.

  "Each chip has a frequency all its own. It is set to resonate with the chip implanted in the berserker they prepare for that particular horse. That is why the horse and the berserker do not fight each other. Their brains recognize each other."

  "Even if his berserker doesn't come," Ellie continued, "Lark will become too aggressive to handle. His training and his love for you will not be able to override the hormones his system will be pumping out. I'm sorry."

  Is did not want to believe them, but she had seen too many of her beloved stallions change. There would be no way to control Lark when that happened to him. She grasped at the small hope they had mentioned earlier.

  "But if I go with John, that could make a difference?"

  Now Ondre came over and put his arm around his wife and took Is's other hand. "We don't know," he said honestly. "John seems to believe he has found a new way to approach the Mirror. He seems to think he can undo what the Alliance has done to him. But even if he can, it may be totally different from undoing what was done to Lark. There may be some sophisticated answers to a lot of things about the mind there, but I do not want to mislead you. We simply don’t know if any of it will help Lark."

  “If you decide to go with John,” Ellie said gently, “I think you should base that decision on reasons other than the hope of saving Lark.”

  “I still don’t see what you think I can do that will help John,” Is said.

  "We don’t know that for sure either," Ondre said. "But don't you realize? Some of the things you've experienced! Seeing the Dark Bodies. Hearing them! Not many people can hear them speak, even if you couldn’t understand their words then, you heard them and there is a place in your mind that remembers exactly what you heard. And then there was the way the Blueskins treated you! And the house, the house where you met the old man, Amil – it doesn't exist. But where you saw that house is the ruin of an old chimney. There used to be a house there. But now there is no such house, and no such person living there."

  "Stop, Ondre. You're scaring her," Ellie interrupted.

  Is felt the hair standing up on her arms. "But John saw it too," she objected. "He was there, and you have the note Amil wrote."

  "Yes, we have the note," Ondre said solemnly. "And we have sent scouts to see if they can find the house. Maybe someone moved in there and rebuilt. But it would have to have been very recently."

  "How can that be?" Is asked, trying to keep a feeling of mounting horror at bay. The cabin she had seen had been well worn, as lived in as an old shoe.

  "For the same reason the Blueskins have a legend about you. Well, about a girl who roams the mountains on a war horse the color of the earth. In fact they believe he is made out of the ground, and the girl's hair is the color of shadow, and her skin dark like the soil. That is how they disappear, those two. They go back into the ground and shadow from which they were made. But it is very strong medicine to see them, and even stronger medicine to capture them, although it is impossible to detain them for long."

  Is shook her head. She couldn't begin to find the words to refute Ondre. He saw her expression and smiled.

  "Hard to understand, huh? Hard to explain." His eyes met hers searchingly. "Have you ever looked into two mirrors at an angle to each other? Your reflection repeats itself into infinity. It is a property of mirrors."

  Ellie squeezed Is’s hand. "Enough," she told Ondre.

  "No, Ellie, she needs to know.”

  "But it's only your theory, Ondre."

  "Theory!" Ondre laughed and there was a little bit of his brother's hysterical quality to the sound. "It's not even that," he said. "It's a bunch of things that don't make sense, all lumped together. How could the Blueskins have a legend about you? How could an old man and his cabin be there when you go there, but we know it only as a ruin? The only thing I can think is that the Mirror is involved. Lark was intended to take his berserker to the Mirror but you’re riding him instead. Is he somehow connected to the Mirror’s weird ability to manipulate time but since you don’t want to go to the Mirror he’s taking you to all sorts of other places instead . . . places in the past? We know the Mirror makes hallucinations and we know that people who have any dealing with its herd fogs experience time differently. People who have been lost in a herd fog may think they have been gone only hours and yet they have been gone for days or longer. Could the Mirror be throwing reflections of you back in time?"

  "But I've never been near it!" Is cried out.

  Ondre and Ellie waited for her to grasp what she’d heard.

  "If I go with John," Is started hesitantly, "the Mirror is going to get my reflection . . . and . . . but it already has it, and I haven't gone there yet. Can it do things all backwards like that?"

  "Yes," Ondre answered. "That seems to be part of what drives a lot of peop
le crazy in the herd fogs. Things get out of order. Some people don't ever recover."

  "Lark was lost in the fog," Is said thoughtfully. "But then John was with him. And John spoke to me." She met Ondre's eyes. "Am I crazy? Did it drive me crazy?"

  "No." He met her eyes steadily until she looked away.

  "If the herd fog can do that, what will the Mirror be like?" Her voice sounded small and timid even to her own ears.

  "It will be even more confusing and frightening," Ondre answered.

  "Ond . . ." Ellie reproved him.

  "No," he said to her, "Is needs to know everything any one of us knows, or thinks, or guesses about the Mirror. She might be the one to tie all this together."

  "But Amil wasn't a reflection," Is objected. "We ate food he cooked, and the note he wrote is real. You saw it. You held it in your hand.'

  "Is," Ellie said in a calming voice. "We don't have the answers, we need them."

  Is could see that they were desperate for her help. It was not just that they wanted to help John, whom they loved. They needed something from him, and from her. She sat back stunned. She had never been needed like this before and it frightened her in a way she had never been frightened before.

  Ellie spoke to Ondre. "You should tell her about the troopers too. It's her right to know.”

  Is froze.

  "They came here twice," Ondre said. "The first time must have been just shortly after you disappeared with their stallion. They were just looking around, just wondering if we'd seen you. They only wanted to recover the horse. Seemed he was something special they wanted for their breeding program. No mention of killing him off with a berserker. Would we let them know if we saw you? They were friendly and polite, and ever so casual." He gave a crooked little grin. "This, you realize, after having not made contact with our people, in our homeland, for..." he glanced at Ellie for confirmation, "fifty years."

  "At least," Ellie agreed. "It was much too casual. We were suspicious. But we had not seen you then. We couldn't tell them anything but that. We didn't immediately notice that your description matched one of the Blueskins' legends. We wouldn't have bothered to mention it anyway. They can talk to the Blueskins for themselves."

  "They brought a whole troop when they came back in the spring," Ondre continued. "They weren't quite so polite. They seemed absolutely certain the horse was still alive. They were sure the only way you could have made it through the winter was if you'd come here. They demanded that we turn the stallion over to them. They demanded the right to search our herds, which of course they don't have, and we denied it to them on principle. They reminded us the horse was near maturity and would become unmanageable. They tried to make us believe they would know if we killed him, and they said they would be back with his berserker. Either he will call the horse out of our herds, or wreck our village. Or both.”

  Is felt as if Lark had landed a kick in her stomach. "You should have told me immediately. I'll leave right away." If she concentrated on the fear and the urgency, she wouldn't have to feel the pain and disappointment.

  "That's not necessary," Ellie said. "It will not matter what you do - go or stay. The Alliance believes what it will, and we will not let them search our herds whether you are here or not. That is a larger issue. The Blueskins also have their own reasoning and will act on it whether you approve or not. We believe they will not let the Alliance take you back if they can stop them. Each group is autonomous. You are not responsible for our actions. You are responsible only to yourself, and those you have included within that self."

  Is met Ellie's eyes to see if she really believed that. Ellie's gaze didn't waver.

  "If all people lived that way," Ondre said, "each one taking responsibility for his or her own self, and allowing all others to take responsibility for themselves, we would have true freedom."

  Is had never had the luxury to consider freedom in the sense that they meant it. She had been trying too hard not to get noticed, not to get hurt. Even when she'd been a trainer at the Border Station, although she had lived alone and made all her own decisions concerning the horses' training, she had not been free. She had trained those horses to be taken by the berserkers and killed. When she had run away, she had had no one to answer to, and yet she had not been free, not in the sense she thought Ellie and Ondre were talking about. Freedom to make real decisions, not decisions based on fear. Freedom from fear. Freedom from the coercion of a corrupt government. Responsible only to herself, and those she had included within her self.

  They would have her believe she could decide to run away, or go with John, or stay here. For a moment she could see that they were really extending that freedom to her. But she could not accept it. In her mind there was very little choice. She had never meant for anyone else to become involved in the consequences of her decision to steal the stallion. She could not just stay and see how many people got killed over her.

  But she would not run away, not this time. She would go with John. She did not believe she would be any help with the Mirror, but there was a small chance it would not kill him. What he had learned could be important to his people. There was the even smaller chance he would be able to help Lark. Is found she didn't believe that either, but it was the only chance Lark had. And John . . . John, who wanted to have a “dialogue” with the Mirror. John who couldn't speak. What if he tried and the Mirror cast his insane hysterical laughter back at him?

  She did not want to be a part of any of this. She wanted to train horses and deal with things that were "real" the way horses were "real." But she could not stay here now. There was one other option: She could go back to the Alliance. She rejected that idea almost before it was formed. Better to die.

  “I’ll go with John,” she told them. “But I don’t know how to help.”

  "Maybe you do," Ellie said. "You just don't know how to access that information."

  "It's like riding," Ondre tried to explain. "It is your body that knows how to ride. You can't possibly use your conscious mind to instruct your body to move with a horse, any more than you can consciously instruct your body to walk. The motor skills are too complex. You have to let your body-brain do the work, not your thought-brain. The kind of knowledge you need for this may be somewhat like that. It's too complex or too confusing for your thought-brain, your conscious mind. But the Dark Bodies may have given you some information that resides somewhere in you. You may be able to access it through your body-brain, or some other way we don't fully understand. But we have ways of bringing those experiences up to the conscious level, if you are willing to try."

  "What do I have to do?"

  "Just listen to my voice," Ondre said. "Do what I tell you. I want to get your conscious mind to relax so I can talk to another part of your mind."

  Is had her doubts, but agreed. Ondre had her sit in a comfortable position, then he began talking to her, telling her to relax her face, her neck, her arms.

  His voice was like a caress on her skin. Muscles she hadn't been aware of holding tight let go. Her whole body seemed to sigh and something inside her mind became calm. She was aware of Ondre's words manipulating her body. She could feel his voice as though it was touching her in long stroking motions, in a way no man had ever touched her with his hands. She could feel her body responding, releasing everything - tension, fear, desire. In some distant part of herself she was amazed. Ondre was the first man since her father who didn't threaten her.

  She was watching like that, from a great distance it seemed, when Ondre said, "You are back on the hillside with the fog. What do you see?"

  Instantly, Is was surrounded by the thickly shrouded trees. She was alone. Lark was gone. John and his mare were gone.

  The breeze was doing battle with the fog. She could see that so clearly it didn't occur to her to question it. She was trying to get to a clear place so the breeze would have an advantage. Her arm hurt and she could bare
ly turn her head. Walking was strangely difficult. John came riding out of the fog. He seemed relieved when he saw her. He opened his mouth and was going to speak, just as ordinarily as anyone ever spoke. But the voice Is heard was Ondre's.

  "What are you seeing inside the fog?" And instantly she was back inside the fog. John and Lark were gone. The voice became more insistent.

  "Tell us what you are seeing."

  Is wanted to answer that voice, but other voices were saying something else, very fast, on many tracks at once.

  "Can you hear me?" the voice outside the fog asked. "Tell me what you are hearing?"

  Is tried to repeat what she was hearing.

  The next thing she knew Ondre was gripping her shoulders. "Wake up. You are safe now. Wake up." She seemed to remember that he had been saying that for a long time.

  She stared about her frantically. The fog was gone. She was inside the tent wall. The sun shone through the open roof. Insects buzzed. She tried to move, but there was a weight on her legs. She looked down and saw Ellie's face red with exertion. Her hair was tousled and her pupils were big. She moved off Is's legs. Ondre was still gripping her arms so hard they hurt. She wanted to tell him to stop, but her throat was dry and sore.

  Ondre moved back from her. Ellie brought her some water. No one said anything. Is tried to remember what had happened. The other two looked as shaken as she felt.

  Ondre started to speak. His voice creaked, and he had to clear it. "I'm sorry. I didn't know ..."

  Ellie made a harsh noise to interrupt him.

  "Are you all right?" she asked Is.

  "Yes. What happened?"

  "I asked you to do something you weren't able to do, when you were in a state of mind in which you had to try," Ondre said.

  "Oh." Is felt better. If that's all that had happened . . . She was used to being in the position of having to try to do something that seemed impossible - training the young horses, dealing with the berserkers. "Did you learn what you wanted to learn?"

  Ondre shook his head. "No, but you might have."

  Is tried to remember what she was supposed to have learned - something that might help John survive his encounter with the Mirror. "I don't think so. We better try again."

  Ondre drew in his breath, surprised. Ellie's eyes got even bigger.

  "Not on your life," Ellie said heatedly.

  "You're very brave to want to try again," Ondre explained. "But you could be hurt. We won't do it."

  "Not brave," Is said. "It wasn't anything to me."

  Ondre shook his head. "If information was given to you, it was given in a way you cannot repeat."

  Is was swept with disappointment. She would be no help to John, or his people, or Lark.