Her bony fingers closed around the coin. “Well, thank you kindly, sir.” She stepped nearer and studied Haemas. “If you don’t mind me saying so, you’d best take this one home to your mum straight away. She’s still at the age to need a fair amount of looking after, if you know what I mean.”
He smiled. “You’ve hit on just my plan, Mistress Kochigian. Good-by.” Keeping a tight grip on the girl, he opened the door and marched her out into the sun-filled street. The early spring air was still crisp, the grass sparkled with dew. The light had a crystalline edge to it that he rarely noticed up in the mountains. The ummit he’d paid far too much for that morning flicked a disinterested shaggy ear at them.
“You realize what they’ll do to me, don’t you, if you make me go back?” Haemas said as he stopped to check the ummit’s rigging.
“You mean the Council?” The ummit grunted as he kneed it in the belly so he could tighten the cinch. “I suppose they’ll want to know exactly what happened.”
She kneaded her shoulder with her left hand. “They’ll kill me!”
“I told you, your father’s not dead, or at least he wasn’t when I left.”
“He was dead!”
Catching a hint of the same dark panic she’d had earlier, he grimaced. “You’ll see for yourself when you get home.” He made a cup with his hands. “Now get on.”
For a moment he thought she would break and run, then she grasped the saddle with her good left hand and let him boost her up. He winced with her as she settled into the saddle, picking up the painful jolt in her shoulder.
That injury worried him almost as much as the delusion about her father. He wasn’t at all sure she could ride long enough to reach Lenhe’ayn. Bracing his foot in the dangling stirrup, he swung into place behind her.
She ignored him as they rode through the awakening streets and then passed the gate-keeper at the town wall. He found it necessary to shield her out; her torn muscles protested with every jolt in the ummit’s rough gait. What they really needed to find was a good healer.
Sitting back in the saddle, he let himself be lulled, eventually, by the easy road, the ummit’s plodding stride, and the warm sun on his face. He thought of Shael’donn and the work he had left behind. Two boys in the Upper Form were showing signs of becoming passable Searchers, and Master Ellirt was depending on him to help with Testing when he returned.
The first warning sign came when the ummit began prancing from side to side on the road and throwing its small head up and down. “Stop that!” he snapped at the girl as he gathered the reins.
She turned to look back at him with frightened eyes. “I’m not doing anything!”
He softened his shields and listened. She wasn’t interfering with the ummit’s slow-witted mind, although he could sense the jolt of pain she felt with each rough bounce. He extended his screens over the animal’s mind and it resumed its slow, plodding gait.
Haemas pointed down the dusty road at a pair of specks in the distance. Kevisson watched as two riders grew rapidly larger, rising and falling as they galloped over the rolling hills.
Suddenly Haemas writhed in front of him. “No! I . . . not . . . not again!”
“What in bloody Darkness is wrong?” Kevisson snagged her waist to keep her from falling off and tried to read what was wrong.
Jerking around in the saddle, she struggled with him, heedless of her injured shoulder. “Not you, too! No one—”
The sound of hoofbeats grew louder. Kevisson could make out their mounts now, a chestnut and a gray. What is it? Do you know these people? he asked her, but she didn’t hear him.
The girl struggled for breath. “. . . no one . . . is ever . . . !”
Haemas, listen to me! Kevisson insisted. Who are they?
She fought him like a wild beast until he managed to pin her arms while somehow hanging onto the reins. Then he picked up a mental assault coming from one of the riders, now just yards away now. “It’s all right,” he said to the struggling girl. “I can shield you.”
He tried to enclose her mind inside his shields, but she grew even wilder, twisting with a strength that belied her slender frame and almost breaking his grip. “Let me—go!”
He gripped the ummit’s barrel with his legs, dangerously close to losing his balance. “Stop fighting me!”
The two riders slowed to a walk, then halted their blown horses a few feet away. A chierra man on a gray mare hung back, his face blank and indifferent. The other rider, obviously Kashi by his bright-gold hair and light eyes, studied Kevisson and his struggling passenger with a sardonic smile. “Problems?” His hawk-nosed face was proud, obviously used to being obeyed. He leaned forward and smoothed his mount’s cream-colored mane with one hand.
Haemas went rigid at the sound of his voice. Kevisson felt dark panic flooding over her. He pressed his hand across her forehead. Sleep, he told her sternly. Sleep until I tell you to wake! He sensed her fear fading and relentlessly kept up his mental pressure until her body was dead weight and her mind was quiet enough that he could enclose it in the protection of his own shields.
“Very nice.” The stranger nodded his head and fingered a heavy gold chain around his neck. “Now hand her over and there’ll be no trouble.”
“I have a commission from the Council of Twelve to bring her back to her father’s House.” Kevisson shifted the girl’s weight across his saddle. “You tried to take her in the marketplace yesterday. Just who are you and what do you want?”
“I don’t think you need concern yourself with that, Searcher.” Painful pressure built up on the surface of Kevisson’s shields. “This is a matter involving only the Great Houses. You may consider your task finished now. Hand the skivit over and I’ll take care of this matter from here.”
The pressure increased. Kevisson drew upon his energy reserves to strengthen his shields, painfully aware he was not yet fully recovered from hitting his head the day before. The girl groaned and stirred in his arms.
“My obligation is to the Council and Lord Senn.” Kevisson considered a counterattack, then decided against it, unsure whether he even had enough energy to maintain his shield over the ummit and the girl, as well as himself.
“That’s very noble.” The stranger drew a sword from the richly tooled scabbard at his side and held the blade aloft. It gleamed in the bright sun, obviously forged of the finest steel, besting any weapon Kevisson had ever seen in his father’s house. “Of course, it won’t make much difference when you’re dead.”
Kevisson grimaced as the mental attack redoubled. Was he just tired or was this stranger really stronger than anyone he’d come across before? The cut along his scalp began to throb again. Behind the Kashi, he noticed the dark-haired man blink slowly and look around.
It was possible, Kevisson thought, that in intensifying his attack, the stranger had let his control over the man slip. He studied the chierra and realized it was one of the men Haemas had been traveling with before Dorbin. “She’s only a runaway,” he said, playing for time. “I don’t see why this particular youngster could warrant all this trouble.”
The man spurred the spent chestnut a few steps forward and stared into Kevisson’s face. “If I were you, outlander, I would leave this matter to my betters. When I take my seat on the Council, I will remember those who helped me, as well as those who stood in my way.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Kevisson saw the chierra man slide off the mare and stalk silently toward the Kashi stranger. He mentally prodded the ummit to move a few steps to the left, directing the stranger’s attention that way. “At least give me some idea of what this is all about,” he said, “and then perhaps I can turn her over to you with a clear conscience.”
The Kashi’s pale eyes glittered. “Don’t ask that unless you’re tired of living.” He raised the gleaming sword. “Now quit stalling and hand the little beast over!”
&nb
sp; The chierra reached up from behind and grabbed the stranger’s upraised arm, pulling him backward off the chestnut colt. The mental attack ceased suddenly as the Kashi’s head struck the road.
Kevisson gulped a deep breath, wiped the perspiration streaming down his face with his sleeve. The throbbing in his head receded. He looked at the chierra man standing over the stranger. “Thank you.”
The man smiled wearily. “Oh, you be more than welcome.” He plucked the bright sword out of the dust. “And now, if you would be so kind . . .” He advanced on the ummit, brandishing the sword in a businesslike manner. “Hand the lass over.”
Kevisson prodded the ummit’s dim-witted mind. It obediently backed away as the man approached. “You’re making a mistake.”
“No, my Lord.” The man leaped forward and grabbed the ummit’s reins, pressing the sword’s wickedly sharp tip to the hollow of Kevisson’s throat. “It’s you who will be making the mistake if you don’t hand that package down right now!”
“Well, if you insist.” Kevisson’s lips compressed; his Andiine vows proscribed the use of mental force unless to save his own life or another from harm, and he personally found such force distasteful. Still . . .
He exerted a tiny bit of pressure on several of the chierra’s motor nerves. The sword dropped suddenly from the man’s numb fingers and the ornate hilt struck his foot.
Kevisson reined the ummit about, trying not to listen to the other’s howls of pain. As the ummit plodded toward the forest, he sent a mental message to the gray mare and chestnut colt behind him. Seconds later, he heard hoofbeats pounding down the road and relaxed as the ummit plunged him and his passenger into the forest’s cool shade.
* * *
“Now open your mind, boy, and concentrate.” Ellirt rested his hand on the eight-year-old’s head and activated the six crystals in sequence, then threw his mind open to their vibrational signature. Within a few seconds he matched it in his own mind and then altered it slightly to take them to Tal’ayn.
He didn’t need the boy’s sharp intake of breath to know they’d transferred successfully. “I hope for both our sakes you were paying attention, Benl,” he said gruffly as he let the child guide him out of the portal, “because I intend it to be your turn on the way back.”
“Yes, Master.” The boy looped his arm through the old man’s. “Over here, I think.”
Ellirt could have found his way alone, but it never did any harm to let other people underestimate him. Few Kashi ever studied the mind disciplines sufficiently these days to understand the Inner-Sight that kept him functioning despite his blindness.
He heard the heavy door creak open, and then Benl directed him down a steep series of stone steps. Ellirt sensed Alyssa Senn, her thoughts angry and disordered, hastening to meet them at the landing just below.
He chuckled. All the better, if Dervlin Tal’s spoiled young wife thought him a “doddering, meddling old fool,” not even worth shielding against. He must be careful not to spoil that image.
A door opened at the bottom of the stairs. Warmer air flowed against his face. He caught a whiff of Alyssa’s heavy floral scent.
“Master Ellirt!” Alyssa’s young voice was light and airy.
“You should have told us to expect you.”
Ellirt hastily composed his face into benign interest. “I’ve come to see your Lord husband, my dear. Perhaps there’s something Shael’donn can do for him.”
“Oh, he’s much too weak for visitors.” She slipped her hand under his elbow and escorted him into the main house. “But it was kind of you to come all this way.”
“Is there somewhere Benl here can get a bite to eat, Lady Alyssa?” He patted the boy’s shoulder. “You know how young men are, always hungry.”
He caught a flash of thinly veiled irritation before she answered. “Of course, Master Ellirt, although, as Dervlin is still so ill, I didn’t really think you would be staying that long.”
“Oh, nobody is ever too ill to see me,” Ellirt replied cheerfully. “Let’s get Benl taken care of and then we’ll have a little talk.”
“Jayna, take this youngster down to the kitchen and have the cook give him some of her special callyt pastries.”
Ellirt heard the scrape of a foot as the servant dropped a curtsey, then the two walked out of hearing.
“Good.” He turned unerringly in the direction of the family wing. Let her figure out how a doddering blind wreck like himself managed that, he thought wryly. “Now, let’s check on Dervlin. There’s always the chance I might do him some good.”
Not if I can help it, Alyssa thought angrily. “Through here, Master.”
Ellirt felt the openness of a large room around him. “Is this his room, child?” he asked innocently, knowing full well it was not.
Her hand guided him to a chair. “Please sit down. I don’t want to disagree with you, but all the healers say Dervlin must have rest and quiet if he is to have any chance of improvement.” Her skirts swished as she settled in a chair next to him.
Ellirt feigned astonishment. “Really? That is most extraordinary! When I was speaking with Healer Sithnal just yesterday, he said—”
“Healer Lerik Sithnal from Rald’ayn?” Her voice was strained.
“Yes, my dear. I suppose I must have gotten it all wrong, but I could swear he said Dervlin was restless and quarrelsome from lack of company.” His chair creaked as he leaned back. “I suppose I have come all the way from Shael’donn for nothing, then.”
Even though he couldn’t see her, Ellirt’s mind perceived how the young woman knotted her fingers together and struggled for self-control. “Perhaps—I am the one who made the mistake,” she said finally. “Perhaps I didn’t understand Healer Sithnal.”
“Do you think so?” Ellirt smiled engagingly with his best “harmless old fool” expression. “I would be so pleased if I could have a few minutes with your Lord husband.”
“If you’ll wait here . . .” Her skirt whispered over the chair’s upholstery. “. . . I will check on Dervlin and see how he is today. Please excuse me.”
“Of course, my dear,” he murmured, listening to her footsteps recede. A sense of triumph washed through him, but he shook his head. Not yet, you old fool, he told himself, you’ve just gotten your hand on the lock. We’ve yet to see if there is a key.
Still, he thought, it was not a bad morning’s work for a “helpless” old man. He ran a quick mental check on young Benl down in the kitchen stuffing his mouth with sweets, then sighed. Oh, to be young and carefree like that again.
HAEMAS opened her eyes to a blazing wood fire and the pungence of brewing tea. A lightwing chittered somewhere above in the vine-draped trees. Blinking in the leaf-filtered late afternoon light, she had the vague feeling something was wrong, but she couldn’t remember what.
Kevisson Monmart slumped beside the fire, watching her with weary, dark-shadowed eyes. He ran a hand back through his bedraggled dark-gold hair. “Do you want some tea?”
Her head was pillowed on a hairy blanket thrown over the ummit’s saddle. She sat up and winced; in spite of having slept, every muscle in her body was tense and knotted. She felt wrung out. “What—happened?” she asked, then it all rushed back to her: Dorbin, the fire, the old man—and Jarid. She remembered her cousin’s mind hammering at her, the sense of helplessness and terror. Why in the name of Darkness had he come all the way down to the Lowlands after her? Jarid had never had any love for her father.
Kevisson glanced sharply at her. “Jarid?”
Her hands clenched with the angry shame of not being able to shield this stranger out of her mind.
“Look, as far as I’m concerned, you’re just another Lord’s spoiled brat.” He dashed the dregs of his mug into the fire. “It’s my job to see you get home and that’s it. I don’t care what you did to your father and it’s none of my business how the High
Lords run their Houses, but this Jarid tried to interfere with my duties. That makes it my business, whether you like it or not.”
He talked so lightly of taking her back, she thought, like it was nothing, just a slap on the wrist or an evening with no dinner, and everything would be forgotten. She huddled against the saddle and turned her head to the shifting flames, watching the oranges and yellows flow over each other. If only she could forget.
Kevisson jabbed a stick into the glowing red coals, spraying sparks into the air. “He said he’ll sit on the Council.”
She swallowed around a knot in her throat. No doubt Jarid would. He’d never made any secret of his desire to possess Tal’ayn.
An edge of stealthy hunger caught at the back of her consciousness . . . a faint angry need. She looked over her shoulder into the blue-green dimness back under the interlaced trees.
“Something else is going on here.” Kevisson shook his head. “There’s no reason for him to come after you.”
A sudden sense of satisfaction filled her mind. Sitting up, she glanced around again. It felt close, very close. The ummit, tethered somewhere out of sight, snuffled and stamped its feet.
Kevisson peered out into the undergrowth. “Did you hear something?”
Over there, she thought, orienting on the far side of the little clearing. She watched a huge form, black as Darkness itself, pad into camp, dragging a bloodied, limp ebari fawn between its powerful forelegs. Darting around the fire, she threw her arms around the silsha’s great neck and lay her cheek on its rumbling chest. She could feel the pleasure it was radiating all the way down to her toes. It butted its great head against her shoulder. Come into trees, it said. Come now.
No, I’m all right, she told it. Stay here with me.
“Haemas!” White-faced, Kevisson snatched a burning brand from the fire and edged toward the silsha. “Get away from that thing!”
The black beast flattened its tufted ears and snarled around the carcass in its mouth. She stroked the satiny black coat with both hands. “He won’t hurt me.”
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