Yes, depending on her. And here she was, crouching behind the outhouse like a craven coward, doing nothing.
What could she do? Even if her power was at full strength, she couldn’t burst into the house and hurl fire at Isham and his friends. That was not a talent of hers, and it wasn’t one she’d want to have. She’d seen the trouble Veronica had caused and the difficulty Veronica had in controlling that particular talent.
Four men slammed out of the back door, Isham in the lead. “We’ll find that witch. She couldn’t be far away,” Isham shouted. “You hear that, witch? We’re coming after you.”
She hadn’t heard shouts like that since the early days when she and Marta first set out to restore magic to Arucadi. They were always chilling, but with Marta at her side she hadn’t felt the fear that made her flatten herself against the outhouse wall and will herself not to be seen.
Got to get hold of myself. My power is low, but not entirely gone. I can’t panic. I’m not helpless.
She hummed a low melody and sensed tendrils of power gathering around her. The men drew near. She heard them jerk open the outhouse door and walk inside. Good thing she hadn’t taken refuge in there. She stepped away from the outhouse and moved carefully, using the moonlight to guide her away from shrubs and fallen branches that would snap if she put weight on them. The invisibility spell she’d cast around her would keep the men from seeing her but not from hearing her. She’d learned, though, how to walk very quietly.
She made it to the back door and waited to open it until she was certain none of the men were looking in her direction. They had fanned out through the yard, and Isham had opened the back gate and stepped through it to check the street. She eased the door open and slipped inside. After making sure none of Isham’s friends had remained inside, she let the invisibility spell slip away. Quietly she went to the room where she’d left Abigail and found her friend stripping the bed where Mayzie’s body had lain.
“Oh, thank the Power-Giver, you’re safe,” Abigail said. “However did you avoid those men?”
“Never mind that now.” Kyla spoke more sharply than she’d intended. As the Community leader, she had to keep her emotions under control, but it was getting ever harder. The strain of losing first Marta and Ed and maybe Petros and now Veronica and Lore … No wonder her thoughts and emotions were in a tangle. “They’ve taken Mayzie’s body? They’re finished in here?”
“They brought a long winding cloth to wrap her body in, and they put her in that cart they brought before going out back looking for you,” Abigail told her. “They searched all through the house. I was afraid they’d cart Petros off when they saw him lying there helpless, but Marchion told them he was just fast asleep, and they let it go to could hunt for you. I understand Isham’s grief but not his unreasoning anger nor that of his friends.”
“Isham has them all stirred up.” Kyla rubbed her arms, feeling suddenly chilled. “It’s also very possible that Jerome is somehow fueling their anger. He has that ability.”
She took a deep breath. “I need to call the whole community back to the house so I can talk to them,” she told Abigail. “We have to work together. No more going off separately as Petros did and Veronica and Lore must have. We may all have different talents, but I hope we’re all working toward the same goal.”
Abigail rolled the sheets she’d taken off the bed into a large bundle. Holding it in her arms, she said, “I’ll go round up everyone, and I’ll drop these into the laundry basket on the way. Where do you want us all to gather?”
“In my room so Petros is included, even though he probably won’t be aware of it.”
Abigail nodded and left the room. After a few moments to gather her thoughts, Kyla went to the living room to look out the front window. The cart Isham and his friends had brought was gone. They must have taken Mayzie’s body to be buried. She checked to be certain none of Isham’s friends had remained behind. For now it seemed they’d abandoned their search for her, probably deciding they wouldn’t find her with night so near. They might return in the morning—one more thing she had to worry about and somehow cope with.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LIES AND TRUTHS
While Marchion listened to Kyla, he scanned the others, noting their auras and also the shimmering threads connecting some in the room. Kyla emphasized that they all needed to work in harmony, consulting the others before taking action. She also declared her intention to summon all members of the Community to gather here once more, and although no member would be forced or required to come, she trusted that no one would refuse.
Her deep red aura reflected decisiveness, the color of a leader, but flashes of muddy gold indicated weariness. Leah’s aura was a rich, nurturing pink. A shimmering green thread connected her to Abigail, revealing her as Abigail’s anchor, the reliever of the older woman’s fears. In Abigail’s aura Marchion read those fears and the tension that he’d noted before between her giftedness and her distrust of magic, her wish to reject her own powers. A strange woman, but one whose abilities would be needed in their struggle.
The girl Renni’s bright orange aura with flashes of red reflected her headstrong, excitable nature. The black thread that pulsed between Kyla and Renni was no surprise. He had observed the anger Renni often felt toward Kyla, and the lack of trust Kyla had in Renni was all too evident. That attitude on both their parts could endanger them all.
“We must get what rest we can tonight,” Kyla was saying. “Tomorrow I intend to find a way to transfer some or all of us to the place I believe to be Jerome’s stronghold. I think that’s where we will find Marta and Ed and Veronica and Lore. How we’ll get there, I don’t yet know. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard Ed’s description of it—both what it used to be like and the devastation that marks it now. We cannot just stay here and let Jerome move against us at will. We have to seize the initiative, confront him, and fight his power with our combined strength. I’m convinced there is no other way to win.”
As she talked her aura flared. A silver cord, visible to him alone, stretched from her to each of those crowded into the room, and the auras of everyone in the group revealed assent, though not without streaks of gray denoting fear. Marchion felt fear, too. They would face a powerful opponent on unknown territory, if they could even get there. Yet Kyla’s confidence infused them.
Marchion was confident he spoke for all when he said forcefully, “We’re with you, Lady Kyla.”
“Good,” she said, smiling at them. “We’ll gather the other members of the Community and get started early. So right now, go find a place to sleep. There aren’t enough beds for everyone, so some of you will have to make a bed of blankets on the floor.”
She might have added something more, but at that moment Lore sauntered into the room. “Ah, I wondered where everyone had gone to,” he said.
“Well! Where have you been?” Renni asked before anyone else could speak.
“Looking for Ed and Marta, since no one else was doing anything.” He met her angry gaze with an insouciant grin.
“Did you find them?” Renni asked.
At the same time Kyla asked, “Where’s Veronica? Wasn’t she with you?”
He frowned then and looked around the room. “Isn’t she back?”
“Back from where? Where did you go?” Kyla prodded.
“Why, to the place Ed calls ‘his’ world. That seemed the logical location to search.” His gaze went to the window and the blackness beyond it. “Say, do you know that time runs differently there? It was midday when I left, just a couple of minutes ago.”
“What about Veronica? Did she go with you or didn’t she?” Kyla was growing angry. Her aura had changed from a bright, clear red to a muddied darker shade.
“She did. We combined power to get to the place. It’s a barren desert. A sandstorm came up. Even if we could have kept our eyes open we wouldn’t have been able to see anything. We got separated while trying to find some kind of shelter. When the storm finall
y died, I looked everywhere for her and concluded she must have come back here.”
“Did you see any sign of Ed and Marta?” Renni asked.
“Not a trace. I don’t think they’re there.”
“You couldn’t have searched the whole land. From what Ed has described, it’s quite large,” Abigail commented.
Lore turned toward her. “It isn’t that large. Ed’s perception of it might not be wholly reliable.”
Renni snorted. “And yours is?”
“Please, Renni, stay out of this,” Kyla said, weariness and confusion clear in her tone and in her aura. “Did you see Jerome?” she asked Lore.
“No. I didn’t see anyone at all. The place is completely deserted.”
He was lying. Marchion studied his aura with care. Yes, definitely lying, and concealing something of great importance. The aura bathing his whole body was a muddy gray, bordering on black. What was he hiding?
“Ed once spoke of a ruined building there. Did you see it?”
“I saw what had been a building, Lady Kyla, but it’s more a pile of stones than anything else. You can see where the walls were and get a general idea of the way the building was laid out, but there’s no way to go in it. There is no ‘in,’ only rubble all over.”
“That’s not the way Ed described it,” Kyla said, frowning.
“Maybe it looked different when he saw it,” Lore said. “Time clearly progresses very differently there.”
“And maybe you’re not telling us the whole truth,” Renni snapped, her aura a muddy orange and vibrating.
Again Kyla rebuked her: “Renni, I told you not to interrupt.”
Marchion didn’t understand why Kyla was being so hostile to Renni. The girl was right to be skeptical. Kyla should see that. She had doubts of her own, obviously. Maybe she just wanted to keep the peace and give Lore a chance to explain more fully.
Perhaps if he told Lady Kyla what he read in Lore’s aura she would come down harder on Lore and be more tolerant of Renni. After all, Kyla couldn’t see the aura that made clear to him Lore’s untruthfulness. Why aura reading was not one of her talents, as gifted as she was, Marchion didn’t understand. To him it seemed a gift requiring little effort and little power.
He cleared his throat, hoping that Kyla would grasp that he wanted to enter the discussion. Accusing Lore of lying would not be easy, but if she would listen, Marchion resolved to do it as diplomatically as possible.
Kyla was explaining to Lore her plan to gather the Community together in the early morning and mount a group attack on Jerome. Should she even be telling Lore this? Marchion tried to get her attention, but she didn’t seem to notice him. He cleared his throat loudly, and said, “Ah, Lady Kyla, before you go further, there is something I’d like to say.”
“Not now, Marchion,” she said. “Wait until I’ve finished, please.”
A wave of unease swept over him. Lore looked his way, a sharp, calculating look. He hadn’t captured Kyla’s attention, but he’d attracted Lore’s. For an instant he found it hard to breathe. First a rush of heat swept over him and then a chill crept through his body.
Kyla finished explaining her plan and turned to Marchion. “Now, what was it you wanted to say?”
Confused, he scratched his head. He’d been going to tell her something. Something important. But what? It had gone from his mind. He must be more tired than he’d thought.
“Nothing,” he mumbled. “It wasn’t important.”
Triumph at his success soared through Lore’s blood. He fought to keep it from registering on his face. Jerome had told him the truth!
When Lore had told Jerome that his only abilities were to transfer from one place to another and to bring small items to him or send them to another person,” Jerome had said, “Oh, no. You have many undiscovered talents. I can’t see what all of them are, but one in particular is clear to me, and it’s one you may have need of when you return. You have the gift of suppressing thoughts.”
“Is that like making someone forget past events?” he’d asked, thinking of Renni’s gift.
“No, although it may be similar. You don’t remove memories. You remove a person’s thought before he can verbalize it.”
Puzzled, Lore had asked, “But how would I know that person had a certain thought? I can’t read minds. I wish I could, but—”
“But you are good at reading facial expressions, aren’t you?”
It didn’t occur to Lore until much later that he should have asked how Jerome knew that. He’d only said, “Why, yes, I am. I’ve learned to be. It’s helped me advance in my work.”
“You are ambitious. That’s good. I’ve always been ambitious, too. I was close to realizing my ambitions when I met Kyla and Marta and they ruined my life. And I wound up here.”
Not missing the bitterness that infused that statement, Lore gathered enough courage to ask, “But it was Ed, wasn’t it, who brought you here?”
“Yes, to what he calls ‘his’ world. The simpleton actually believed he could create a world just by imagining it.”
“So this isn’t really Ed’s world at all?”
“Don’t be foolish. Look around you.” Jerome waved his hand in a wide arc that took in the ruins that had been a building, the empty space between it and the modest shelter Jerome had built using stones from the ruins for walls and dead branches for a roof, and then the mountains in the distance. “This is a very old world. You can see that. Oh, Ed may have temporarily altered one small portion of it, but in no way did he create it. After he abandoned me here, the part of the world he’d altered gradually reverted to its former state.”
The story made sense to Lore, but a niggling feeling ate at him, an impression that there were other questions he should be asking. The questions, however, refused to come to mind.
He’d spent the night in Jerome’s small home, and tired as he was, sleep had come easily. But in the morning he awoke hungry and wanting breakfast, and when he discovered that the only fare Jerome could provide was insects and cactus leaves, he decided it was time to return to his own world.
“By all means, go,” Jerome had said when he expressed this desire. “I’m sure you’ll be welcomed back. But weren’t you going to search for Veronica this morning?”
Lore had forgotten. He was embarrassed to admit it.
Jerome reassured him. “I’ll do a thorough search and let you know if I find her. But I’d guess she has already returned. She has the power, you know, and she isn’t known for being patient. When she couldn’t find you, I doubt she’d stay here alone.”
He was probably right. He was certainly right about Veronica lacking patience. “How will you let me know?” he asked.
“If you’ll allow it, I can send you a mental message. You’ll hear my voice in your mind, but the channel will only be open so long as you want it. You can close it whenever you want. You can close it permanently if for some reason you so desire.”
That seemed fair, but Lore had another doubt. “I’ve never been able to project my thoughts into another person’s mind or receive anyone else’s thoughts.”
“We’ll test it,” Jerome said. “Now concentrate.” When you return, I want you to tell them about losing Veronica in the sandstorm and wandering around, not knowing where you were or what to do. You can tell them you searched thoroughly for her. I know, you didn’t, but I promise to do that and to let you know if I find her. She’ll probably be back and worrying about you. Do not tell them about meeting me. They think I’m guilty of terrible things, and they won’t believe you or trust you if you tell them all I’ve told you. Do you understand everything I’ve said? No, don’t speak aloud; just transmit the answer mentally.
Lore heard Jerome’s voice clearly. He hadn’t even known at first that Jerome hadn’t spoken aloud. He’d started to tell him so but at Jerome’s caution not to, he thought, Yes, your voice is clear. I’ll do just as you suggest.
Good, came Jerome’s response. Now let’s get you back to Kyl
a’s house. You’ll find that it is night there.
A brief but biting cold was the only sensation Lore felt before finding himself in Kyla’s living room. An oil lamp on a table provided enough light to let him see that the room was empty. A murmur of voices came from somewhere in the house. He’d followed that sound to Kyla’s bedroom, where he’d found a large group crowded into the small room.
The shock he’d expressed at not finding Veronica among them had not been entirely feigned. He had let himself hope she’d returned, but somehow he’d known she hadn’t, despite Jerome’s expressed belief that she’d have gone back on her own.
Jerome’s expressed belief, yes, but had he truly believed it?
Jerome, Veronica isn’t here. Have you found her there?
He formed the thought clearly but had it reached Jerome? He should have asked whether the thought speech worked between worlds. There were many things he should have asked Jerome.
No time to think of that now, when he was being bombarded with questions. He had to appear confident. And he had to go on trusting Jerome.
And when that fool Marchion glared at him, it proved as easy to read his expression as Jerome had said it would be. The man knew he’d lied. Probably read it in his aura. But it proved pathetically easy to create confusion in Marchion’s mind so that instead of accusing Lore, as he’d no doubt intended, he completely forgot what he was going to say.
What a great gift! Had he had it all along, or had Jerome passed it to him? It hardly mattered. He’d used it successfully, and visions of all he could do with it crowded out the small voice somewhere deep within that tried to remind him that it was wrong to suppress another’s thoughts. He had a new tool to add to his kit. Why shouldn’t he be proud? How many of those gathered in this room had talents as strong as his? Veronica did, but she was missing. Kyla was supposed to, but he’d seen little evidence of that. He saw no one here who could confidently claim to be his equal. A feeling of invincibility infused him as he saw all his life’s goals come within his reach.
A Mix of Magics (Arucadi: The Beginning Book 3) Page 11
