He’d told her when she’d discovered her own gift of mindspeaking that it was a way all the gifted could communicate with one another, a universal gift. Yet that had not seemed to be the case for many members of the Community.
No time to worry about it. The Community would soon gather; she had to be ready. Those with whom she could mindspeak were already on their way.
Lore whistled as he pedaled his bicycle over the roads, avoiding carriages and hansoms to reach his first destination. Kyla couldn’t have given him a better assignment. And she’d agreed that he’d need to go by the shipping office and inform his boss that he wouldn’t be in today. He was entitled to a day’s leave. He rarely took a day off, and he hadn’t used much of his vacation time. This wasn’t a busy time of year, so he was certain there’d be no objection when he made his request. So far as he knew, no ships were due into port this four-day, and he was caught up on his work.
He’d get one stop out of the way before going on to Carnover Shipping Offices. Winter Salas lived in a flat near the art academy he attended, and that was right on Lore’s way as he headed for the shipping offices. Winter would hate the thought of having to feel everybody’s emotions, especially their doubts and fears, of which there were certain to be plenty. It would be fun to watch Winter squirm. He was such a weakling with his single insignificant gift that only made him miserable. He’d be no help at all with Kyla’s grandiose plan. A hindrance most probably, and that would work out all the better for Jerome’s plans.
He reached the apartment house where Winter lived, entered, found the door to his apartment, and knocked loudly. The disheveled young man who opened the door was not Winter. He glared at Lore and mumbled something that may have been, “Whadda you want?”
“I’m looking for Winter Salas. He does live here, doesn’t he?”
“He’s gone to class,” the man said, starting to close the door.
Lore quickly inserted his foot to block that attempt. “I need to reach him as soon as possible,” he said. “Can you tell me when he’ll return?”
“No idea,” the surly fellow said, tugging at the door while he shoved at Lore’s foot with his own.
Resisting the man’s effort, Lore said, “I need to leave him a message then.”
“I’m not a messenger boy.” He yanked the door from Lore’s hand to pull it shut, jamming it against Lore’s toes with a force he felt even through his leather shoe.
Lore exploded with a rage that sent a wave of power slamming into this boor, who clearly needed a lesson in manners. The nearly shut door absorbed most of the wave, buckling from its force. The fellow jumped back with a loud cry of pain. Lore withdrew his foot to let the now warped door close. Lore grinned to see that a gap remained between frame and door, preventing the door from shutting properly. It could no longer be locked.
Good. Served the guy right. But he still had to reach Winter.
He could mindspeak with Jerome. Maybe …
Winter! He put enough force behind it to make the call the equivalent of a loud shout. He received no answer, but that didn’t mean that his call hadn’t reached Winter. As a precaution he repeated the call, adding, You’re needed at Lady Kyla’s house. Go right away.
That was the best he could do. He pushed his two-wheeler to its limit, reached the tall building housing Carnover Shipping, left the bicycle by the front door and rushed inside and upstairs to his office.
After apologizing to his supervisor for his tardiness, he made his request to take the day off. The supervisor looked reluctant, probably because of his late arrival. Lore tried a small mental push. It succeeded. The supervisor shrugged, agreed that Lore was entitled to take a day of compensatory time, and signed the request form he had Lore fill out.
Lore left, reclaimed his two-wheeler, and headed for Trille’s home.
Winter arrived out of breath and clutching a large portfolio. As Kyla admitted him, he said, panting between words, “I got here as fast as I could, Lady Kyla. I left class early. The instructor called me back, but I ignored him. I’ll probably get in trouble. I didn’t know I could mindspeak, but your sending was so strong it gave me a headache. It’s getting better, though.”
He added the last apparently in reaction to her worried frown. The poor fellow must have run most of the distance from the Art Academy. She ushered him into the house, where several of the Community were gathered, some having already arrived in response to her mental sending. But none of those had complained about it being so loud, not even Professor Morence, who tended to complain about any perceived slight. And she had not directed her sending to Winter. She had not been aware that Winter could receive mindspeak, but that could be related to his being an empath. New as he was to the Community, she had not had an opportunity to test him for other gifts and had known only of his empathic ability.
He gazed around at the group looking rather like a startled rabbit. Winnie, holding Dreama, went to him and touched his shoulder, sharing her calming influence with him. Kyla suspected that his red face was due as much to nervousness and discomfort as to his rush to get here.
“Please, Winter, sit down and rest,” she said. “And what is that you have with you?”
It was definitely a blush that reddened his face as he sank into the chair being offered and laid the large black folder across his lap. “A portfolio with my art work and sketchpad,” he said. “I didn’t have any place to put it. I had to bring it with me.”
Under happier circumstances Kyla would have liked to see his art, but not now. She nodded and briefly explained to Winter why she had called the Community together.
“Veronica’s missing?” he asked when she finished. “And Renni too? Did they go somewhere together?”
Kyla shook her head. “Veronica vanished some time before Renni turned up missing. I’m hoping Renni just went home. I asked Lore to stop by her house while he’s summoning the other members.”
“They couldn’t hear your mindcall?” Winter asked, his brow furrowed.
Professor Morence spoke up before she could answer. “Obviously they don’t have that gift, or Lady Kyla would have summoned them the way she summoned all of us.”
Fortunately Winter was too worried about something—or someone—else to react to the professor’s disdainful tone.
But Winter was one of those Lore was to contact. Lore would have gone to his apartment, but Winter had been at the Academy. Could Lore have sent the mental call? Did he have that ability? If he did, it must be a talent he’d acquired recently, unless for some reason he’d been concealing it. But that would make no sense.
New arrivals interrupted her thoughts. She went to the door and ushered in Gorvy and Darnell Mack. Now they only lacked Trille and Lore. She hoped they’d come soon. The gathering of the Community was taking much longer than she’d expected, and every nerve in her body tingled, demanding action. If there had been enough space in the living room, she’d be pacing, but the room was too full of people, all looking to her for calm, confident leadership. She couldn’t let them see how tormented by fear and doubt she really was.
Winter must have sensed her fear. His face was no longer red. It had paled, and his hands shook as they grasped the edges of his portfolio.
Lore arrived at Trille’s residence, an imposing house behind a high fence with a locked gate. His ringing a bell mounted on the gatepost brought a male servant Trille must employ as a bodyguard, judging by his muscular build and stern gaze.
“I need to see Lady Trille,” Lore stated firmly. “I have an urgent message for her from Lady Kyla Cren.”
“You may give me the message,” the man stated with equal firmness. “I will deliver it to Lady Trille.”
“It’s an oral message. I prefer to deliver it in person.” He infused the statement with some degree of coercion.
The man did not open the gate. “I’ll convey that preference to Lady Trille. Please wait here.” He turned and headed into the house.
Lore had had no idea that Trille
kept a bodyguard nor that she maintained such tight security, but he guessed it was understandable, now that she was becoming so well known as a singer. She did have a beautiful voice, but he wasn’t particularly fond of the type of songs she sang. The traditional ballads and patriotic songs that were her specialty were too old-fashioned for his taste. Her fans adored her, though, and would-be suitors clamored for her attention. Given the irrational behavior of some of those fans, Lore figured she was wise to hire a guard and keep her gate locked.
The guard returned and spoke through the gate. “Lady Trille asks whether she is needed at Lady Kyla’s home.”
“Yes, she is,” Lore answered. “I’m to accompany her there.”
The guard frowned. “I see that you arrived by two-wheeler. How do you propose to accompany her?” Apparently he didn’t expect an answer because he continued, “Please return to Lady Kyla and tell her Lady Trille will come by carriage and will be there soon.” He turned away, leaving Lore fuming, his plans foiled. Trille had not even deigned to come outside and talk to him herself. She should have been curious as to what had been happening and why she’d been sent for. Lore had counted on that.
Apparently she felt herself too far above him to bother talking to him. But in the Community they were all supposedly equal. He’d show her he was as good as she was when it came to their special gifts. His were more useful than hers. What good would the ability to manipulate water do her when they confronted Jerome in a land so dry and barren? Jerome had told him how he trekked to the distant mountains to collect a bit of water from snowmelt. An onerous task, Jerome had said. He also extracted liquid from the leaves of cactus. Not an easy way to satisfy his thirst. In fact, Jerome had made it clear to Lore that staying alive in the harsh land to which he’d been consigned required all his time and strength. “So how,” he’d asked, “do they think I’d possibly be equipped to do the kind of harm they’re attributing to me?”
Lore had no answer except to agree that Jerome was being unfairly maligned. And Jerome had assured him that he welcomed the opportunity to clear his name and convince not just Kyla but the entire Community that he was as much an innocent victim of an evil Dire Lord as they were.
First, he needed Lore to help the Community members reach the desert land.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WATER
Veronica rose up out of the sand like a revenant rising from a grave. She shook herself again and again and then brushed off sand that still clung stubbornly to every bit of exposed flesh. Her skin itched and burned. Her eyes felt filled with grit. Sand had caught in her eyelashes; it lurked in her eyebrows; it rained from her hair when she ran her fingers through it. Her throat scratched and burned from thirst, the worst discomfort of all. She had to find water or find a way to get home.
Lore! Had he survived? She looked around, saw a sandy mound a short distance away, and moved toward it, her feet sinking into sand with each step, making progress difficult. She reached it and dug frantically into the mound, scattering sand about and plunging her hands and arms into the mound until she was as covered with sand as she had been when she first emerged.
Her efforts were futile. Her certainty that she’d find Lore, dead or alive, buried in this mound, kept her digging under the merciless heat of the sun until the entire mound was flattened to the level of the area surrounding it. Lore was not buried in it and likely never had been. The energy she’d expended had increased her thirst beyond what she would have thought possible. She had to find water. And shade.
But where was Lore? Had he returned home without her? She didn’t want to believe that of him, but if he had, surely it was to bring help. She should wait here until that help arrived.
Her thirst would not let her wait. She had to move, had to find some moisture, anything that would ease the dryness, the sensation that sand filled her mouth. She could not even produce saliva to moisten her dry and swollen tongue. Nor did her thirst permit concern that she might encounter Jerome. Her fear of him, her hope of finding Ed and Marta, even her desire to locate Lore all retreated to the dim recesses of her mind, driven into hiding by her all-consuming need for water.
So she walked, hunting for a trail, seeking desperately for some sign of water. She crossed a dry streambed, so filled with sand that she recognized it only by the broken and decaying trunks of trees that had once lined its banks. As she continued, walking became easier because the ground became firmer beneath her feet, less carpeted with layers of sand. She could walk faster. She reached another dry streambed, more easily recognizable than the first because it had not filled with sand. She stopped in the middle of it and dug her fingers into the caked soil around her feet. She felt a slight bit of moisture there, not enough to allow her to extract any water, merely an indication that water had once flowed here.
An impulse led her to change the course she’d set and follow the streambed in the hope that upstream a bit of water might still flow. She hadn’t walked far when she saw that the streambed led toward the distant mountains. Mountains wearing snowy mantles. Snowmelt must have formed this stream, but that water wasn’t reaching it now. Not enough snow? Or was something damming the stream? It was a long way to walk, and she doubted she had the strength to make it, but the hope of finding water at the end of the trek spurred her onward.
Soon she was stumbling, barely able to keep putting one foot in front of the other, weak from thirst and exhaustion, and the mountains looked no nearer. Her vision blurred. She fell to her knees, bruising them on the rocky streambed. With considerable effort she hauled herself to her feet and staggered forward, her gaze focused on a single point, a spot on the mountain just below the snow line. Her vision was restricted to a gray tunnel through which only that distant focal point remained visible, nothing else. Her mind, too, fixed on a single goal: find water. That tunnel vision and focused goal somehow kept her moving. She could no longer walk in the streambed, now filled with tumbled rocks.
Then the mountain loomed in front of her. She couldn’t have come that far. She had no memory of traversing the distance that had spread between her last conscious thought and the present time. How, weak as she was, could she climb the mountain to the snow line well above her? She could barely walk.
She fell to her knees and crawled upward, still keeping her gaze fixed on her goal. She had come so far—she could not give up. She moved forward slowly, painfully. Digging her fingers into the soil, she pulled herself onward.
A wall of stones blocked her path. She dragged herself around it. Looking up, she saw the snow line hopelessly far above, the climb impossibly steep. Defeated, she relaxed her fingers, collapsed, and let her arm dangle over the edge of … something … a ledge of rock …
Her fingers grew cold. And wet.
She gathered strength to rise up enough to peer over the rock ledge.
Water! Water—clear, cold—pooled behind a pile of rocks that formed a dam.
She cupped her hand, let the water fill it, and raised it to her mouth. The first mouthful she swished around and spat out to clean the sand from her mouth. At last she drank, water cool and clear and sweet. She savored every mouthful. When at last she’d slaked her thirst, she washed her face, hands, and arms, removing the sand that she’d been unable to brush completely off.
She felt revived. Her mind functioned again. The Power-Giver had surely led her to this place, had sustained her when her strength ran out. She breathed a silent Thank you, though that hardly expressed the depth of her gratitude. She should be dead. She would be if she had not received the Power-Giver’s help.
Her power was still weak, but it would return. She was hungry, but she could do nothing about that. She needed rest. In her confused state she hadn’t noted how low the sun was. Nightfall would soon be upon her. Gazing around, she spotted, a bit higher on the mountain, what looked like the mouth of a cave. If it was not the home of some wild beast, it might provide shelter for the night. And, she reflected, it was unlikely to house a wild beast. She’d s
een no trace of any animal life remaining in this barren land.
It was a short climb to the cave, and by the day’s last light she examined its interior. She could neither see nor smell any evidence of animal habitation. The cave was not deep, just a hollow, really, but exhausted as she was and as dark as it was growing, it offered the only refuge available. She bent and crept in, brushed an area free of loose stones and sand, lay down on the hard rock floor, and was soon fast asleep.
She awakened to see bright sunlight flooding the small cave, sat up and stretched, wincing as muscles aching from her long trek and her sleep on hard ground protested every movement. Despite the aches, she crawled from the cave, stood, and peered around. With her mind fully functioning again, her fear of Jerome reawakened. But she saw no sign of life anywhere.
That absence lessened her fear that Jerome might come for water and spot her hiding place. The pool she’d found had to be his water source, the dam of stones his construction to provide a reservoir for the precious liquid. It would be a long and difficult trek for him, but as she examined the site she saw that it was an ideal place to create a pool of water. The dam had been placed in the narrowest part of the channel that ran between two high, stony banks. He would have needed less work to dam the flow in this particular spot and would have been rewarded with a more sizable pool than he could get anywhere downstream. No doubt he had found or crafted some type of vessels in which to transport and store the water, so he would not have to come here often. Still, she would have to guard against the possibility of his coming to replenish his supply and finding her here.
The climb down from the cave proved more difficult than the ascent had been. Clambering from ledge to narrow ledge, she made her precarious way to the pool, where she again drank her fill and washed. Pangs of hunger assailed her. Her power, she sensed, had built up from the night’s rest. Maybe she could use it to return home. She had come here via Lore’s power, and whether she had the ability to transport herself she did not know. She would have to test it.
A Mix of Magics (Arucadi: The Beginning Book 3) Page 13
