Keren nodded. "Ylsa and I knew when we met midway through our third year— until then we'd never done more than wave at each other across the room since we had had very different schedules. We did wait, though, until we were both sure that it was something solid and not ephemeral, and until we'd completed our internships, before commiting to each other."
"And I didn't want to intrude on what was obviously a lifebond."
"You would have been welcome. To tell you the truth, we'd wondered a little—"
"But I didn't know that at the time, did I?" Sherrill had laughed. "Truly, though, Talia, anyone I've ever talked to that has seen a lifebond has said the same thing; that was the way it was for Selenay's parents, for instance.
It either happens the first time you meet, or never."
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"And if it's not a lifebond, there's nothing you can do to make it one— to make it more than a temporary relationship, no matter how much you want it to be something more," Keren had continued. "My twin found that out."
Talia must have looked intensely curious, although she hadn't actually asked anything, because Keren continued after a moment.
"Remember I've told you once or twice that I've got a niece and nephew almost your age? Well, they're Teren's. Not only were we not Chosen at the same time, but it took seven years for his Companion to come for him.
By then I was a field Herald— and he was married and working the sponge-boat. Then it happened. He was Chosen. And the wife he had thought he was contented with turned out to mean less to him than he'd ever dreamed. He wanted to love her, he really did. He tried to make himself love her— it didn't work. He went through an incredible amount of soul-searching and guilt before concluding that the emotion wasn't there and wasn't going to be, and that his real life was with the Circle and his Companion. And to tell the truth, his wife— now ex-wife— didn't really seem to care. His children were adopted into our family and she turned around and married into another with no sign of regret that I could see. So you see," she had concluded, "if you're a Herald, you either have a lifebond and recognize it at once, or you live your life without one."
* * *
Talia sighed. If she were going to be honest with herself, she had to admit that this seemed to be exactly what had happened to her with regard to Dirk.
Seemed to be— that was the key. How did she know that this wasn't some fantasy she was building in her own mind?
It didn't feel much like a fantasy, though. It was more like a toothache; or perhaps the way Jadus had felt about his missing leg. He'd said it had often seemed as if it were still there, and aching.
Well, there was something in Talia that ached, too.
Fine. What about Kris?
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What she felt for Kris... just wasn't that deep. Yes, she needed him— his support, his expertise, his encouragement. But "need" was just not the same as "love." Or rather, the emotion she felt for him was a different kind of love; a comradeship— actually closer to what she felt for Rolan or Skif or even Keren than anything else.
But if Kris had become infatuated with her— Gods, it almost didn't bear thinking about.
Granted, he certainly wasn't acting very lover-like. And earlier— he almost seemed to be throwing Dirk at her. Outside of bed he was treating her more like Alberich treated a trainee who had gotten some bad early lessoning and needed to have it beaten out of him. Except in the digging out, when he treated her as an absolute equal; neither cosseting her nor allowing her to take more than her share of the work.
Provided her mind hadn't been tricking both of them— which was a very real possibility.
"Oh, hellfire," she sighed.
At least she'd managed to clarify some of her feelings. And there wasn't anything she could do about it anyway— not until she had her Gift under full control, and could sort out what was "real" and what wasn't. She drank the last of the stone-cold tea, and put up the harness, then slipped back into bed. Right now the only thing to do was to enforce the sleep she knew she needed badly. It was best to just try and take things a day at a time.
Because at this point, she had more pressing problems to deal with. If she couldn't get her Gift back under control, this would all be very moot...
For she was quite well aware of how close she'd come to driving both Kris and herself over the edge. It could happen again, especially if he did something to badly frighten her— and if it did—
If it did, it could end, only too easily, in his death, hers, or both.
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Ten
Well, there was one way, Talia knew, to keep herself under control— and that was to work herself into a state of total exhaustion. So in the morning she rose early, almost before the sun, and she began pressing herself to her limits— making each day blur into the next in a haze of fatigue. It became impossible to tell what day it was, or even how long they'd been there.
Talia usually woke first, at dawn, and would prod Kris into wakefulness.
One or the other of them would prepare not only breakfast, but unleavened cakes with some form of soup or stew: something that could remain untended most of the day without scorching, simply because they both knew that by the time they came in, they would have barely enough energy to eat and perform a sketchy sort of wash before collapsing into bed.
After a hearty breakfast of fruit and porridge, she would wrap the Companions' legs against the sharp edges of the ice-crust while Kris haltered the chirras, and all six occupants of the Station would troop out into the cold to begin the day's work.
Rolan and Tantris would move up first, and break the crust of ice and the hard snow beneath by rearing to their full heights and crashing down on it with their forelegs, or backing up to it and kicking as hard as they could.
They would move back, and Talia and Kris would then take their places; picking up the chunks that had broken off and heaving them to either side of the trail they were cutting. The chirras would use their powerful foreclaws on what remained until they were halted by snow too packed for them to dig or crust too slippery to get a grip on. Then the Heralds would move the chunks they'd dislodged, scoop up the loose snow, and let the Companions take over again.
They would work without a break until the sun reached its zenith, then take begrudged time for a hasty lunch. On their return, they would work until darkness. Each day the trips to and from the Station got longer; sometimes it was only that which kept Talia working. There were times, too many times, when their progress was limited to a few feet for a whole day of back-breaking labor; and she knew the Station itself was furlongs 206
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from the road. It was when their measured progress amounted to little more than a dozen paces that the temptation to give up was the strongest.
When darkness fell, Kris would tend the Companions while Talia groomed the chirras, checking them thoroughly for any sign of injury or muscle strain during the process of grooming them. Rolan and Tantris, of course, could be relied upon to tell their Chosen if they'd been hurt, but the chirras were another story. And if one of the chirras had to drop out of the work, their progress would be halved.
Finally Kris or Talia— usually Talia— would ensure that everyone was well supplied with food and water and blanketed against the night chill before they wolfed down their own dinners and sought their bed.
It was the hardest physical labor either of them had ever performed. The constant cold seeped into their very bones, and their muscles never stopped aching. It wore them down, a little more each day. They had strictly rationed their own supplies, and the food they were taking in was not equaling the energy they were expending. They were getting thinner, both of them, and tougher, physically. It was a change Talia hardly noticed, because it was so gradual, but once in a while she would think vaguely that her friends would have been surprised to the point of shock by the way she looked.
Kris continued to hammer at her through the first week of digging out, until centering and grounding had become reflexive. After that, he left her in peace, only offering an occasional bit of weary advice. Talia's control over Empathic projection came and went, at unpredictable intervals. although Kris evidently never noticed her projecting involuntarily. If he had, he would have pounced on her, of that she was certain. Her shielding was returning now that she had something to form a firm base for it, but it was the thinnest of veils, hardly even enough to know that it was there.
She worked at control with nearly the same single-minded obsession she was giving the physical labor of digging out.
The only pauses in their routine were the two occasions when they again ran out of clean clothing. Those two days were given over to a repeat of 207
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their washday, and to brave attempts to revive one another's faltering spirits. As tired as Talia was, it was easy to become depressed. Kris wasn't quite so much the pawn of his emotions, but there were times Talia found herself having to pull him out of despair. The endless cold did not help matters any, nor did the fact that they had, indeed, needed to cut green wood to use in their fire. The green wood, even when mixed with seasoned, gave off much less heat. Talia felt as if she'd never be warm again.
But one afternoon, nearly a month from the time they'd first reached the Station, she looked up from their task in sudden bewilderment to realize that they'd finally reached the road.
And the road was as drift-covered as the path out had been.
"Now what?" Talia asked dully.
* * *
"Oh, Gods." Kris sat down on a chunk of snow with none of his usual grace. This was a scenario he'd never contemplated; he'd always assumed that once they broke out, the main road would be cleared as well. He stared at the icy wilderness in front of them and tried to think. "The storm— it must have spread farther than I thought," he said at last.
"The road crews should have been within sensing distance by now, otherwise."
He felt utterly bewildered and profoundly shaken— for once at a total loss for a course of action. He just gazed numbly at the unbroken expanse of snow covering the road, unable to even think clearly.
* * *
Talia tried to clear her mind— to stay calm— but the uncanny silence echoed in her ears. And that feeling of someone watching was back. She glanced apprehensively at Kris, wondering if he was sensing the same thing she was— and in the next breath, certain it was all originating in her mind.
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The feeling of being watched was, if anything, more intense than it had been before. And ever-so-slightly ominous. It was very much akin to the uneasy queasiness she used to have whenever Keldar would stand over her at some chore, waiting and watching for her to make the tiniest mistake.
Something out there was unsure of her— mistrusted her— and was waiting for her to slip, somehow. And when she did— Panic rose in her, and choked off the words she had intended to say.
* * *
Kris stared at the unbroken ice crust as if entranced, unable to muster enough energy to say anything more. Gradually, though, he became aware of a feeling of uneasiness— exactly as if someone were watching him from under cover of the brush beneath the snow-laden trees. He tried to dismiss the feeling, but it continued to grow, until it was only by sheer force of will that he was able to keep from whipping around to see who was staring at the back of his neck— It wasn't entirely an unfriendly regard... but it was a wary one. As if whatever it was that was watching him wasn't quite sure of him.
He tried to shield, to clear his mind of the strange sensations, only to have them intensify when he invoked shielding.
And now he was seeing and hearing things as well— slight forms that could only be caught out of the corner of his eye, and slipped into invisibility when he tried to look at them directly. And there seemed to be sibilant whisperings just on the edges of his hearing—
All of which could well be from a single source. Talia had told him once already that she thought she was hallucinating; she could well be drawing him into an irrational little nightmare-world of her making.
"Talia!" he snapped angrily, more than a little frightened. "Lock it down!"
And he whipped around to glare at her, enraged, and just about ready to strike out at her for her lack of control.
* * *
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Talia forgot the strange watcher; forgot everything except Kris' angry—and untrue— accusation. She flushed, then paled— then reacted.
"It's not me!" she snapped. Then, when he continued to stare at her with utter disbelief, she lost the control she had been holding to with her psychic teeth and toenails.
This time, at least, the Companions were prepared, and shielded themselves quickly. Kris, however, got the full brunt of her fear of the situation and her anger at him. He rose involuntarily to his feet and staggered back five or six paces, to trip and fall backward into the hard snow, his face as white as hers, and unable to do more than raise his arms in front of his face in a futile gesture of warding.
And the watcher stirred—
Talia froze; the feeling that some power was uncoiling and contemplating striking her down was so powerful that she was unable even to breathe.
Somehow she cut off the emotion-storm— and simultaneous with her resumption of control, Rolan paced forward slowly, to stand beside her.
He faced, not her, but the watching forest, his whole posture a silent challenge.
There was a feeling of vague surprise— and the sensation of being watched vanished.
Talia felt released from her paralysis and wanted to die of shame for what she'd nearly done to Kris. As he blinked in surprise, she turned blindly away from him, leaned against a tree-trunk and wept, her face buried in her arms.
* * *
Kris stumbled to his feet, and put both arms around her. "Talia, little bird, please don't—" he begged. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean— I lost my temper. It'll be all right. It's got to be all right— I'm sorry. I'm sorry—"
But dreary days of grinding labor and nights of too little rest had taken their toll of his spirit as well. It was only when the tears started to freeze 210
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on both their faces that they were able to stop sobbing in dejection and despair.
"It— that thing watching—"
She shook with more than cold. "I— don't want to talk about it," she said, looking uneasily over her shoulder. "Not here— not now."
"It wasn't you—"
"No. I swear on my life."
He believed her. "All right, let's handle what we've got; the storm was worse than we thought," he said, getting control of himself again. "This is the very northernmost end of the road. They can't be more than a few days away, and we aren't running short of food yet. We'll be all right—especially if we start rationing ourselves."
"We won't need as much food if we rest," Talia said, drying her eyes on the gauze she'd used to protect them from sunglare.
"And we can plant a signal so that they know we're here. I can get the crust to hold me a good distance, and you're lighter than I am; about an hour's scramble will do. Wait here."
* * *
He mounted Tantris and the two of them headed back to the Station, vanishing from sight down the narrow little valley they'd cut. Talia waited for their return, occasionally looking warily over her shoulder. Whatever had been watching her had been within a hair of striking her; why she was certain of this, she had no idea, but she could not rid herself of the thought. She had no idea what had deterred it, but she did not want it to catch her unaware. She clung to Rolan's neck, and waited, exerting every bit of control she had. For it seemed to her that the watcher had only acted when it appeared that she was attacking Kris. If that was the case, she had no intention of inadvertently invoking it agin.
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It was at least a candlemark— and far too long for her peace of mind—before she saw Kris and Tantris trotting back. He carried four white arrows, two long branches, and some bright blue rags.
"These will show up at a distance. Here, pattern these, will you?" He dismounted and handed her two of the arrows, and began working on his two. "We tie the arrows to the stick, and plant the stick out in the middle of where the road is. When the crews find them, they'll know we're here, and still alive. They'll even know for certain it's us if they happen to have a Herald with them— surely anyone with them will have been given our patterns."
"Why are we doing this?"
"If we don't, they might not clear the road this far. This is just the northernmost loop; it isn't strictly needed to get between Waymeet and Berrybay. It takes longer to go around than to cut through Sorrows, but nobody travels much in the winter except Heralds. And nobody knows where we've been 'lost.'"
He handed her one of his arrows in exchange for hers. Both of them tied the arrows to one of the branches, and made them as conspicuous as possible with fluttering rags.
"You go toward Waymeet, I'll go toward Berrybay," he said, preparing to climb up on the snow crust. "Plant yours at the first crossroads you come to. I'll do the same. Hopefully the road crews will find one of them before they give up."
"Kris— what if it snows again?"
"Talia, for the love of the Goddess, don't even think that. Walk as far as you can, but be back here by dusk."
* * *
Talia had never felt so lonely. There was scarcely a sound from the white woods on either side. She could hear the creaking sounds of Kris carefully making his way across the snow crust behind her, sliding his feet so as not to break it. Even so, she heard the crunch that meant he'd fallen through at 212
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