by David Weber
"What's your name?" she asked as the girl entered the cabin timidly. She gazed at the gown Andrin had discarded with something like awe, and stared at Finena in open amazement.
"Relatha, Your Grand Highness," she all but whispered, mesmerized by the white falcon. "Relatha Kindare."
Andrin's thoughts were slower than usual because of her headache, but she blinked as she suddenly realized that Finena was completely at ease with the girl. That surprised her. The falcon didn't like very many servants, and was particular about the nobility, as well. The bird detested a fair number of courtiers on sight?the Earl of Ilforth came to mind?but she liked Relatha. Liked the girl enough to preen and angle her head for a caress.
"Would you like to pet her?" Andrin asked.
"Oooh, I wouldn't dare!" Relatha protested, and Andrin stood and moved closer to the perch.
"She likes you. Here, give me your hand."
Relatha's fingers trembled in Andrin's grasp as she held the girl's hand gently in front of the bird for a moment, then guided her to stroke Finena's silver back. The bird arched against the touch, all but crooning with pleasure, and Relatha gasped. Then a smile of utter enchantment lit her face.
She petted the falcon for several delighted moments, then turned back to Andrin.
"She's just the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, Your Grand Highness! But here, now. Your head's still aching, and I'm standing here petting a bird, selfish as can be! Sit you down again, now, and let me take care of that headache."
The instant Relatha touched Andrin's head, the princess knew she was in the hands of a master Healer. An untrained one, perhaps, but powerfully Talented. The headache simply drained away to nothing under the gentle ministration of Relatha's fingertips, and Andrin leaned back, eyes closed, and let the magic in the girl's fingers soothe her frayed nerves. Her breathing steadied, slowed, and when Relatha finally let her hands drop away, Andrin breathed a deep sigh and opened her eyes.
She turned in her chair and peered curiously up at the girl.
"Why have you never taken formal training, Relatha? Your Talent for Healing is profound."
"Me? A Healer?" Relatha goggled. "I'm a servant girl!"
"And what's that got to do with anything?" Andrin frowned. "There are plenty of women Healers from all classes of society. Talent isn't confined by social bounds. Have you ever even been tested?"
Relatha shook her head, struck literally dumb.
"Well, would you like to be tested? To be trained as a Healer?"
The very notion appeared to overwhelm Relatha.
"I?I don't know… I never even thought such a thing would be possible?"
"Well, there's no need to decide this instant," Andrin told her. "But think about it. If you want to be tested at the Healers' Academy, I'll arrange it."
"But?why?" Relatha asked, obviously still shaken, and Andrin smiled.
"Why not?" she challenged in return.
"But I'm just?"
"Don't you dare say 'just a servant' again!" Andrin ordered tartly. "You just cured a savage headache with a simple touch. If you can do that, when you've never even been tested, far less trained, then you're wasted fetching and carrying anyone's dinner, even mine. Was your mother ever tested?"
Relatha shook her head.
"No, Your Grand Highness. She said servants are servants, and there's an end of it. Her task is to care for your grandmother, which is quite enough for anyone, she says."
"Hmph!" Andrin folded her arms. "Maybe in my grandmother's day that was so, but I'm not my grandmother, and I positively hate the idea of seeing someone with this kind of Talent wasted running errands between the kitchen and anyone's cabin. Or even fetching and carrying for the Privy Council. Think about it, Relatha. Do you want to spend your life fetching my dishes? Or would you rather try to earn a position as an Imperial Healer?"
The girl's mouth fell open.
"Me?" she squeaked. "Imperial Healer? Me?" But her eyes had begun to glow. "Do you really think??"
She broke off, staring at Andrin with those glowing eyes, and the princess shrugged ever so slightly.
"We'll never know if you're never tested," she pointed out reasonably, and Relatha swallowed hard.
"I'll … think on it, then," she whispered.
"Good! Now, about that supper you mentioned …"
Relatha grinned.
"It's in the passage, Your Grand Highness. I'll just fetch it in for you. Sit you down at the table."
Andrin wasn't sure why, but her own Talent hummed strangely in her ears as Relatha wheeled her supper into the room. She couldn't imagine why, but Caliraths learned early to pay attention to "feelings" when other people crossed the tracks of their lives.
She hoped Relatha would decide to be tested. It was more unusual than it ought to be for a girl from the serving classes to make that big a transition, into the upper reaches of the Talented professions, but it was scarcely unheard of, either. In fact, the whole reason the House of Talents existed in the Ternathian Parliament in the first place was to make sure girls like Relatha could improve their lives by making full use of their gods-given abilities. The fact that no one had even noticed the startling power of Relatha's Talent bothered Andrin, and she decided to find a quiet moment to speak with the Speaker of the House of Talents before they reached Tajvana.
That thought seemed to close some switch deep in Andrin's brain. She could almost physically feel it, and she was abruptly glad Relatha was aboard Windtreader.
Of course, it remained to be seen why her presence seemed so suddenly important.
Back | Next Framed – Chapter 32
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Chapter Thirty-Two
Shaylar sat crosslegged in Gadrial's cabin while the two of them?the only women aboard the warship?enjoyed what she thought of as a quiet "girls' day" together. She was bent over a project very dear to her. Using a borrowed needle and thread, some shears the ship's doctor had provided, and some cloth the captain had asked the purser to locate in storage, she was making a dress for herself.
It wouldn't be a fancy dress, not given the cloth she had to work with?military-issue gray cotton twill?but it would be a dress, and it would be hers. The only other clothing she had was what Gadrial had given her and some navy-issue pajamas she'd contrived to make into slacks and shirts which almost fitted her.
Gadrial was no seamstress, but she'd admitted to some skill in fancy needlework, so she was using the voyage time to decorate some of her own shirts and slacks. The style and patterns were lovely, unlike anything Shaylar had ever seen. While they worked, they talked. Not about anything important?just easy conversation that allowed Shaylar to practice her steadily growing command of Andaran.
Shaylar had come to realize that the speed with which she was mastering Andaran had aroused Gadrial and Jasak's suspicions. No Sharonian, accustomed to telepaths' "ear" for languages, would have been surprised, but she wasn't in Sharona any more. Unfortunately, by the time she realized Gadrial had never seen anyone from Arcana (which was what she and Jasak called their home universe) learn a completely foreign language so quickly, she'd already demonstrated her abilities. The best she'd been able to do was to appear to slow down, to stop and obviously fumble for a word more frequently and emphasize her 'foreign accent.' She had no idea whether or not it had done any good. For that matter, she wasn't even certain that trying to hide her language-learning ability was a good thing in the first place! It was so frustrating trying to envision what a civilization which apparently had never heard of the Talents would expect … or find frightening or threatening.
On the other hand, the speed with which she'd been able to acquire at least a usable command of Andaran worked both ways, she reflected, setting small neat stitches in the sunlight streaming through the bulkhead scuttles. It would allow Jasak's superiors to ask pointed questions much sooner, but by the same token, it had permitted Shaylar to probe for additional information about Arcana before she and Jathmar had to face tho
se pointed questions.
Much of what she'd learned had been frightening. Other bits and pieces, however, had seemed to offer at least some grounds for cautious hope.
For example, she'd learned that Jasak came from one of several Andaran kingdoms which dominated the landmass she and Jathmar had known as New Farnalia. Andara, it appeared, provided the bulk of the Arcanan army, and it was a culture with a long, deep, highly developed military tradition. However poorly Arcana might appear to have performed in its initial encounters with Sharona, what Shaylar had learned so far discouraged her from hoping things would stay that way.
On the other hand, what she'd learned about Ransar was more encouraging. As nearly as she could tell, Gadrial's home region of Arcana corresponded to the region of Sharona encompassed by the Kingdom of Eniath, the Kingdom of Dusith, and the northern portions of the Empire of Uromathia. Unlike the monarchies of the various Uromathian states, however, Ransar was a democracy. Shaylar wasn't particularly interested in politics, but she was trying to learn what she could, and it was quite obvious to her already that Ransaran notions were much less militaristic?more "humanistic," she was tempted to say?than those of Andara.
And then, of course, there were the people called "Mythalans," but for some reason, neither Gadrial nor Jasak seemed to want to talk about them.
Despite the situation in which she and Jathmar found themselves, Shaylar was fascinated by the bits and pieces about Arcana she'd so far been able to fit together. It was frustrating to have so incomplete a picture, however, and not just where politics was concerned. In fact, there was something else which continued to puzzle her even more, and she looked up from her sewing.
"Gadrial?"
"Hmm?"
"What moves this ship?"
Gadrial glanced up in obvious surprise. She gazed at Shaylar for a moment, then used a word with which Shaylar wasn't yet familiar.
"What does that word mean?" she asked, and Gadrial laid her needlework in her lap and folded her hands, her expression thoughtful as she clearly considered how best to answer.
"It's what powers our whole civilization." She spoke slowly, choosing her words. "Not everyone can use it," she added. "You must be born with a Gift for it."
A small thrill of astonishment ran through Shaylar. Whatever it was, it sounded a little like Talents, except that no Talent had ever powered a ship. Then Gadrial stood up and retrieved a small leather case from her luggage. She opened it and extracted a familiar crystal.
"This is my PC," Gadrial said. "My personal crystal. You've seen me use it in our language lessons, but I also use it to store my other work?my notes, my calculations. Anything I need to record. It's?" she used the unfamiliar word again "?that makes it possible."
"Gadrial, it's just a stone."
Even as Shaylar said it, she knew she sounded foolish. Certainly Gadrial had already given more than sufficient proof that that "just a stone" was capable of remarkable things. It was just that the very notion continued to offend Shaylar's concept of how the physical laws of the multiverse worked. In fact, she realized, the real reason she'd said it was that a part of her desperately wanted for it not to work after all.
"Don't be silly, Shaylar," Gadrial chided, as if she were the telepath and she'd read Shaylar's mind. "You've seen it work before. But it won't work for just anyone. It takes someone born with a Gift to build a PC or compile the spellware to make its applications work. But each crystal can hold immense amounts of data, if you know how to encode and retrieve it, and someone with a Gift can even program it so that non-Gifted people can use it. Here."
She began to murmur. Whatever she was saying, it wasn't in Andaran, and despite the number of times she'd already seen it, Shaylar's scalp prickled as the crystal began to glow. Squiggles of light appeared within it, recognizable as writing, although the words weren't in the same script as the signs aboard this ship.
"Here," Gadrial repeated, extending the crystal towards Shaylar. "This time I've powered it up for you."
Shaylar accepted it very gingerly. It was heavier than she'd expected. It still looked like nothing so much as absolutely clear quartz, yet it was clearly denser than quartz from the way it weighed in her hand. The squiggles glowing in its depth shifted slightly as the crystal settled into her palm. The unintelligible words moved, as if to present themselves to her for easier reading.
"What do you mean, powered it up for me?" she asked.
"I mean I've … turned it on for you. Activated its spellware in non-Gifted mode and released my password so that you can enter and retrieve data if you want to."
"But how?" Shaylar demanded in frustration. "This isn't a machine?it's just a lump of rock!"
"Of course it's a machine," Gadrial replied.
"No, it isn't. It's not?" Shaylar shook her head, searching for the Andaran word for "mechanical." Unfortunately, that wasn't one she'd learned yet. "There are no switches," she said instead. "Nothing to provide power."
It was Gadrial's turn to blink in apparent surprise. Then she shrugged.
"I provided the power," she said.
"But how?"
"By saying the proper words. Here, try this." Gadrial handed Shaylar a stylus or wand which appeared to be made out of the same transparent not-quartz as the crystal itself. "Write something on it," she encouraged.
Shaylar looked at her for a moment, then pressed the tip of the stylus hesitantly against the "PC." A spark of light?a bluish-green light, quite different from the color of the words already floating in the crystal?glowed to life at the point where stylus and crystal made contact. As she moved the stylus, the spark became a line, following the stylus tip as she slowly and carefully wrote her own name. She finished and lifted the stylus away, and her name floated instantly to the glassy center of the crystal, displacing the words which had been there before.
Shaylar stared at it, half-delighted and half-terrified by the implications, then shook her head.
"I don't understand!"
"That's because you don't have a Gift," Gadrial explained. "A non-Gifted person can use most of our machines if the spellware is set up that way and someone who is Gifted charges them first. But if you don't have a Gift yourself, you're completely dependent on someone else to write the spellware and power the system."
They were speaking the same language, but no communication was taking place, and Shaylar drew a deep breath.
"You can't run a machine by just talking to it," she said slowly and patiently, and Gadrial's brows drew together.
"Of course I can! I told you?I'm Gifted."
"But?" Shaylar wanted to tug at her hair. "You keep saying that, but what does Gifted mean? What is it you can do?that someone without a Gift can't?that makes hunks of rock light up this way?"
"I can tap the field," Gadrial said, exactly as if that actually explained something.
"What field?"
Gadrial used the same word that had started this conversation, and Shaylar let out an exasperated howl.
"Why are you upset, Shaylar?" Gadrial asked, starting to frown.
"Because your words make no sense!" Shaylar pointed to the ominously glowing rock in her own hand. "This piece of stone makes no sense. This ship makes no sense! Nothing about you people makes any sense!"
She realized she was breathing hard, teetering on the edge of a genuine panic attack. She was afraid?terribly afraid?and she didn't quite know why. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff, and if Gadrial kept talking, she would tip right over the edge and fall.
Gadrial reclaimed her "personal crystal" and set it carefully on the blanket to one side. She let her left hand rest lightly on it while she regarded Shaylar steadily, and then she shook her head slowly.
"Your people truly don't have anything like this, do they?" she finally said, her voice filled with wonder and what sounded like pity.
"No," Shaylar admitted, and Gadrial inhaled deeply.
"Magister Halathyn told me that," she said. A flicker of pain went
through her eyes as she mentioned Magister Halathyn's name, but those eyes never left Shaylar's face, and she continued steadily.
"I didn't really want to believe him," she admitted. "It suggested a universe so different from ours that I can't really wrap my mind around it. Not yet, anyway. But everything I've seen from you since has only confirmed it, and now this."
She shook her head again.
"No wonder you're so lost. Let me try to explain."
She sat back, once again obviously thinking, looking for the best way to explain something complicated using the still limited vocabulary they had in common.
"There is a force in the universe," she began finally. "People with a Gift can sense it, can touch it?use it to do certain things. Some Gifts are very weak. People born with them can do only little things, because they can touch only a little of that force. It's like … like a field of energy. Of sunlight. A sea of energy that lies between things."
Gadrial's frown of concentration was deeper, more intense. Shaylar had the feeling that the other woman was attempting to explain color to a blind person, and she didn't like it. She was a telepath, a Voice; communication was her speciality, what she'd been born to do, and she'd never felt blind before. Not until now.
"Other people," Gadrial continued, "have very strong Gifts. My Gift is a strong one, for instance. The only person I ever knew with a stronger one was Magister Halathyn. He taught?"
Her voice caught suddenly, raggedly, and her eyes filled with tears.
"I'm sorry," Shaylar said softly, touching Gadrial's hand. The other woman's emotions were a chaotic whirl of love, grief, and empty, aching loss.
"I know you are," Gadrial said, and her voice was a small sound in the silence of the cabin.
Shaylar could sense, as well, that Gadrial was struggling not to blame her and Jathmar for Halathyn's death. She wished she knew a way to comfort the other woman's grief, but she couldn't?not given the circumstances. And so she could only wait until Gadrial dashed the tears from her eyes and straightened once more.
