by Sharon Lee
He blinked, and took a hard breath.
“No,” he said aloud to the empty room. “Not quite.”
* * *
Shan put the box in the center of his desk and considered it for a moment. It was not a large box; one might easily slip it into a sample case or a leave bag. There was a thumb lock set into the top. The rest was of the particular color and grain that told those who had grown up sheltered by its branches, that the box had been made from the wood of Jelaza Kazone itself.
He had seen it before—three times, exactly.
The first time, it had merely seemed an oversight, though Er Thom yos’Galan had not been the sort of man to overlook such details. The box had been in the center of the desk, much as now, and the master trader intent on some work on his screen when Shan had arrived for a consultation.
“My notes,” he had said to Shan’s carefully unquestioning glance. “I should say, my flights. On the rare occasion anything beneficial actually comes out of an exercise, I bring it forward into the master trader’s files.”
He then put the box away in the bottom-most drawer of the desk, and brought them to the subject of their consultation.
The second time Shan had seen the box . . . had been after Mother had died. Er Thom, haggard, weakened by the death of his lifemate, had called Shan to him. There again was the box, in the center of the desk.
“It should know you,” his father had said, beckoning him closer. “Put your thumb against the plate.”
The third time he had seen the box had been immediately after his father’s death, when he had taken up the duties of the master trader attached to Dutiful Passage. It had been nestled in its drawer, and he had seen no need to disturb it then, nor even once in the years since he had stepped into the void left by his father’s death.
So, now: the fourth encounter.
Gently, he pressed his thumb to the lock.
A soft chime sounded, followed by an even softer click. Shan raised the lid of the box.
Inside, two rows of personal tablets were tidily filed by date, earliest at the top left, most recent at the bottom right.
“Well, then,” Shan murmured. “Where to start, I wonder?”
He closed his eyes, emptied his mind, and—breathed, witnessing the passage of each breath until, in response to what stimuli he could not have said, he opened his eyes—and saw that he was holding a tablet in his right hand.
He glanced at the box. He had drawn a book from the second row dated Standard Year 1374.
“Now, why this one?” he asked softly, but of course there was only one way to find out.
He reached to the screen and set his status to do not disturb for the next six hours.
That done, he settled more comfortably into his chair, and pressed the tablet’s access switch.
A pearly glow rose from the depths of the screen, washing out to the margins. There was a subtle flicker, and words arrived, line after line in a neat, no-nonsense script, black and firm against the glowing background.
Shan gasped, tears rising for the second time in an hour. He blinked, closed his eyes, and once again merely sat, breathing, until the grief thinned, leaving him in what might be called peace.
He sat for another few minutes, to be certain of himself.
Then he opened his eyes, and began to read.
I want to speak with my brother, his father had written on Zeldra Eighthday in the sixth year after Aelliana Caylon had been murdered; five years after her lifemate, Er Thom’s cha’leket, had left Liad, heart-reft and half-alive, to draw the enemies of Korval away from the clan.
It had been put about that Daav yos’Phelium had died soon after his departure from the homeworld, though Shan had never heard his father say so. Indeed, Father, then Korval-pernard’i, holding the Ring in trust for Val Con—had never written Daav out of the clan book, nor made any notation of a death beyond Aunt Aelli’s, until he had written the name of his own lifemate on that page.
He had, in the years after Daav’s departure, developed an interest in the scholarly works of one Jen Sar Kiladi, a professor of cultural genetics teaching at Delgado University. Such an interest might seem out of the way for a mere merchant, master of trade though he was. However, Er Thom’s interests had been wide-ranging, after his passion for trade.
It had taken Daav’s return to the care of his clan, scarcely a Standard gone by—years after his cha’leket’s death—to inspire Er Thom’s heir to reconsider that particular collection of books and monographs.
Well.
Shan returned his attention to the tablet he held, the words written just so, the strokes of the stylus clean and sharp. Almost, it seemed to him he could hear his father’s voice as he read.
In the old days, Daav and I would sit together over our wine and share our knottiest problems. Often, one saw what the other had not, and so a solution was made. Just as often, the telling was enough to see the difficulty melt away.
If only this matter would melt away. And perhaps it will, if only I tell the tale out.
So, my fancy is this: I say to my cha’leket, as we sit over our wine, just here and now, that I fear for the continued survival of the clan.
He will laugh, will Daav, and swear that he had known how it would be when he left Korval in my hands. Then he will invite me to show him those things that vex me.
These, then, Brother. These, I lay before you.
I hope—I confess it—that you will show me that I have brought you nothing more than fog and folly.
I truly wish that you may do so.
IV
Padi glared at the stylus, her chosen subject, as it reposed peacefully on the surface of her desk. She had cleared the other things that normally occupied the area—extra styli, note taker, keyboard—to one side, so that there should be no question regarding which object she was focused upon.
She had taken a deep breath, to center herself, and consciously formed the object Lina had shown her. When it was firmly in mind, she laboriously slipped it under the stylus.
Which had risen, in a slow and seemly manner—not at all like Lina’s poor stylus—and stopped when she ceased exerting pressure via the lifting tool.
There was one, entirely minor deviation in the expected result—the stylus was slowly turning on its axis, as if the lift had produced extra energy; or, as if the stylus were a bored child, shifting from one foot to another, flirting with an outright reprimand.
Still, Padi thought, with a small smile of satisfaction—already she had an improvement over her performance of this afternoon. Perhaps there was something to Lina’s admonitions to go slowly, to be careful, to think twice . . .
She took another breath, centering herself, and focused her will on the stylus.
The rotation ceased.
Excellent.
Now, for the second part of the assignment.
She lowered the lifting tool, slowly, mindfully, to the desk.
The stylus, however, did not follow the tool. It remained floating in its original position with nothing but its own stubbornness to support it.
Well, perhaps she had disassociated the lift from its object. Since she was not entirely certain how the tool and the object acted upon each other, that seemed the likeliest explanation.
She focused on the tool, extended her will—and swore as it disintegrated into an untidy spangle of sparks.
After a moment, almost as an afterthought, the stylus clattered to the desktop, rolled and stopped.
Padi glared at it. Nothing in particular happened.
She closed her eyes and recruited her patience. When she felt quite calm, she carefully rebuilt the tool, watching it form in her mind’s eye, and feeling a slow burn near the base of her spine, where Lina taught that her gift—the power that fueled her gift—was to be found.
Mindfully, carefully, she slipped the tool between the stylus and the desk, and using only the very slightest amount of energy, lifted.
The stylus remained on the desk, t
he tool passing through it as if it didn’t exist.
More energy, Padi thought, bringing the tool down again.
She exerted herself slightly more, raised the tool—
And the stylus remained firmly on the desk.
Padi exhaled. Loudly.
“Fine,” she muttered, “be coy, do.”
She turned her attention to the notepad resting innocently at the side of the desk, slid the tool beneath it—and watched it rise with calm exactitude to stop its ascent precisely fifteen centimeters from the surface of the desk.
Holding her breath, Padi reversed her thought, and the notepad descended gently, returning to the desktop with a slight bump.
Padi took a deep breath. She wasn’t supposed to hold her breath when she was using her talent; she knew that. Just, when she was working so slowly, it felt like she might spoil things if she breathed the wrong way. She never felt that way when—well, for instance, when she wasn’t paying complete attention and small items around her began to spontaneously lift away from the surfaces on which they had been resting . . .
When that did occur, she just said something along the lines of—all of you go back where you belong, now!
There was no sensation of heat, or of her thought taking on a particular shape. It was very much as if she were talking to—well, to one of the cats at home, who had been misbehaving.
Which didn’t help her with the stylus, she thought.
Or did it?
“You might try to be convenable,” she said to it, scolding just a little, as she were in fact speaking to a mischievous kitten. “My tutor specifically mentioned this exercise with regard to a stylus. I’d think you’d be pleased to be noticed.”
The stylus . . . quivered, and suddenly, with no more help from her than that, it rose smoothly to a height of precisely fifteen centimeters, and stopped, as still as if it were resting on the desk.
“There,” Padi said approvingly, “that’s more the thing. Except, you know, it’s my part in this to observe the quality of my gifts when the desired result is produced, and the only sensation I have is one of slight foolishness, because I’m talking to a pen.”
The stylus began to rotate.
“Stop that,” Padi snapped.
To her amazement, it obeyed.
Padi frowned at the stylus and thought.
What she practiced with Lina was akin to daibri’at, except instead of moving slowly and stretching every muscle, one engaged with one’s gift and did a series of slow, precise mental stretches.
The reason for those exercises was precisely the same as for physical exercise: to work with a certain set of muscles, with the view to making them supple and strong.
Lina also had her practice seeing with the Inner Eyes. This was, in Padi’s experience, far more difficult than even physical daibri’at, which did not come easily to her at all.
The Inner Eyes saw . . . auras. This was Lina’s strength. Not only could she see someone’s living aura, she was able to manipulate the personality, mending broken threads, reweaving sections which had been worn away by illness or trauma.
The only thing Padi saw when she tried to focus her Inner Eyes were smears of meaningless colors.
It was much the same with the Inner Ears.
Lina could hear what she described as whisperings. Not that she read minds; only, Lina had said lightly, emotions.
“Which is a great deal more useful, you know,” she told Padi during their first lesson. “I do not need to know why a particular person is angry at me. All I need to know is the fact of her anger, so that I might prudently remove myself from her vicinity.”
“But if you could hear her reasons . . . ” Padi ventured, and Lina laughed.
“One of my colleagues at the Hall where I was ’prenticed could read minds. He described it to me as a vile confusion of noise. We do not, he said, have one thought at a time, but an unending, interwoven riot of thoughts. To pick out one thread and follow its progression, while all the other thoughts of all the other people in your immediate vicinity are beating against your mind—is not possible.
“Worse, prolonged exposure to unfiltered thought is known to be fatal to those who are vulnerable. The masters at the Hall therefore concentrated on teaching him how to build impenetrable shields and, after they were in place, to maintain them at the least cost possible, so that he was not constantly assaulted by the racket of other people, thinking.
“He was fortunate that Healers were often born to his House. He might have died screaming within a day of having come into his gift, save there was a kinswoman in-House who was a Healer. She immediately understood what had occurred, shielded him heavily and bore him to the Hall.”
“Then he had a . . . useless gift?” asked Padi.
“Not in the least,” said Lina. “He was a very skilled physical Healer, which is not at all useless. Empathy was not a strength, possibly because the shields which blocked the thoughts of others also blocked their emotions. But there are more than enough empaths to meet necessity.”
She smiled.
“We really are quite common.”
That had been a sort of bait, Padi had been certain, and she’d made no answer. It only occurred to her to wonder now if one could be a dramliz of a certain sort without also being a Healer, or at least, a common empath.
The thought was . . . oddly disturbing. Surely, Padi thought. Surely one required some mechanism by which to judge the . . . best use of one’s gift?
Which brought one back ’round to the Inner Eyes.
Lina said that it was possible to See relationships—Father and Priscilla, for instance, were very clearly linked, if one had the eyes to See, and the wit to understand.
And Uncle Ren Zel, Padi thought, recalling something she had perhaps not been meant to hear—Uncle Ren Zel could—possibly—See the links that held worlds together. To her knowledge, she had never observed him doing so, but if such a thing were possible . . .
. . . could she be linked to her stylus?
It was, she thought, an interesting question.
She sat back in the desk chair, put her arms on the rests, and curled her fingers over the ends. It was best to be firmly anchored, as she tended to get dizzy when she opened her Inner Eyes. She focused as much as she was able on her gift, and on the place where her gift resided.
Then, she spoke to the stylus. “Come down to the desk, do,” she said calmly.
Nothing happened. No, not true. There was the very faintest flicker of warmth along nerve endings she had never noticed before her gift had become manifest . . .
. . . and the stylus descended gently to the desk.
Padi took a deep breath, closed her outer eyes, and reluctantly opened her Inner Eyes onto the usual messy smear of color; like looking at a flower garden through a rain-slicked window.
She . . . squinted, straining to make sense out of nonsense . . .
. . . and quite suddenly, her Sight cleared—there was the desk; there the notebook; screen, keyboard—and the stylus too; all looking precisely as they did when beheld with more mundane vision.
But, no, she thought in the next instant. That wasn’t exactly so. The difference was subtle, but it was there.
The stylus glowed faintly blueish, and the notebook, too. The desk seemed quite itself, as did the comm unit. Tentatively, keeping her Inner Eyes open, she extended her thought, and slipped it under the keyboard. Warmth built—just a little—and she applied a very small amount of pressure to the thought beneath the keyboard . . .
. . . which rose, smoothly and without fuss, and—kept rising.
Hurriedly, Padi extended another thought and placed it atop the keyboard. It stopped rising and sat in the air, held between the wedge of her will. The warmth at the base of her spine was steady now, noticeable, but not hot. Not dangerous.
She took a breath, and another, concentrating on her gift. In Inner Sight, the keyboard was held between two pale mauve paddles made out of . . . smoke perhaps. The q
uality of her will was . . . a little gritty, she thought, and smelled faintly of lavender.
The warmth in her chest increased. The keyboard began to waver slightly between its two poles. Padi took another breath, and let the top paddle grow heavier, and the bottom . . . less substantial, until the keyboard drifted gently back down to the desk, whereupon she withdrew her thought and glanced at the stylus.
“I’ll wager you’ve forgotten how to do that,” she said casually.
Once again, nothing . . . overtly . . . happened; there was no sense of extending, nor did she See or sense her will touching the stylus—which was now floating fifteen centimeters above the surface of the desk, apparently having performed an instantaneous translation from desktop to plain air.
“Show-off,” she said—and the stylus dropped straight down to the desktop.
Padi laughed, opening her eyes.
Her desk was orderly: stylus, notepad, and keyboard were precisely where she had seen them last. There were no embarrassing singe marks or dents to be seen.
Very good.
It was then she noticed that she was breathing deeply, as if she’d been exercising hard, and her hand, when she picked the stylus up, was shaking.
Shan finished reading the first journal. After, it had been necessary to sit quietly for a time, until the echoes of his father’s voice had faded from his mind and he had come to terms, again, after so many years, with the fact that Er Thom yos’Galan was dead, and his son Shan would never speak with him again.
Rather like Er Thom coming again, and at last, to the realization that the brother of his heart could give him neither advice nor comfort in his extremity. And that even love was insufficient to bring them together again.
Well, and so.
Once he felt himself sufficiently settled, Shan reached into the box for a second journal. When he had finished reading that, he extended a hand and took up a third.
Eventually, he reached again to the box—
“You might, without loss,” said a familiar voice, “lay down your cards for the night.”
Shan sighed, and put his hand flat on the journals remaining in the box.
