Текст книги "Magic's Pawn"

Автор книги: Mercedes Lackey

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:It wasn’t his fault, Jaysen: she answered, heartsick, and near to weeping, but unable to be anything other than honest. :He didn’t do anything worse than go along with what ‘Lendel wanted without telling me. What happened was as much due to my negligence as anything he did.:

Jaysen gave a curt nod, but a skeptical one. :In that case, we need to get that Gate closed down as soon as possible, or the boy will sicken – or worse.:

No need to ask what that “worse” was; Vanyel was already looking drawn, almost transparent, as the Gate pulled more and more of his life-force from him. How Tylendel, half-trained, and Vanyel, unGifted, had managed that, Savil had no notion – but they dared not break the link until they didn’t need the Gate anymore.

:Fine, but what are we going to do about allthat mess?: Savil asked, nodding her head at the milling crowd, the mangled corpse of the single victim the wyrsahad killed, and the pathetic body of the Companion. : Somebody had better take them in hand, or no telling what they’ll get up to. Go in for a wholesale slaughtering-party on Tylendel’s people, make up some kind of tale about Heralds being in on this– : Even a hair away from breaking down into tears, she was still thinking;she couldn’t help it.

:l’ll stay here,: Lancir volunteered. :Elspeth can do without me for a moon or so. I’ll take care of the Leshara and see to– : his thought faltered. : – Gala.:

:And you’ll get home how?: Jaysen asked, concerned. : We’re going to shut the Gate from the other side as soon as we’re through, and you aren’t up to Gating by yourself these days.:

:Like ordinary mortals,: he replied, with a deathly seriousness. :On our feet.:

:What– what are we going to do about– : Savil’s eyes flicked to Tylendel and back; the boy was still staring vacantly into space, his face pale and blank, his eyes so full of inward-turned torment that she could scarcely bear to look into them for fear she wouldbreak down and cry.

. I don’t know,: Lancir replied bleakly. . I just don’t know. There’s no precedent. Get the boy home; worry about it when you’ve got time to think about it. Ask your Companions; it was one of their number that died. That’s all I can think of. But you’d better get on with it if you expect to leave the other boy with a mind.:

“Jays, take Tylendel, will you?” Savil said aloud, reaching for Vanyel’s arm and pulling him to his feet. “Lance-”

“Gods with you, heart-sibs,” said the Queen’s Own, pity and compassion momentarily transforming his homely face into something close to saintly, like that of a beautiful carved statue. “You’ll need their help. Taver?”

His Companion sidled up to him and held rock-still for Jaysen to help him to mount; like the Queen, like Savil, Lancir was feeling his age these autumn days, and needed the boost into place that Jaysen gave him. But once in the saddle, he resumed the strength and dignity of a much younger Queen’s Own – the man he had been twenty years ago. Taver tossed his head, and walked with calm and quiet steps toward the shocked, confused mob of Leshara at the other end of the garden.

Jaysen tugged on Tylendel’s arm; the boy rose, but with the automatic movements of someone spellbound, his attention still turned within himself. The Seneschal’s Herald led the way to the Gate, followed closely by his Companion, and guiding the boy with a hand at his shoulder.

He cast a look back at Savil. “I don’t fancy the notion of the ride we have ahead of us – too many things to go wrong on the way. You know more about this spell than I do – do you think you can reset this Gate to bring us out at the Palace?”

She wrenched her attention away from the unanswerable problem of what to do about the boys, and contemplated the structure of the Gate. The portal at thisend was an ornamental gazebo in the center of the blasted garden. Through the arch of the entrance lay the dark of the ruinous cottage yard.

“I don’t see any problem,” she replied, after study. “I can bring us out in the Grove Temple, if that’s all right.”

“That should do,” Jaysen said, eyeing the sky on the other side of the portal, which was flickering with lightnings. “Good gods – why did thatblow in? There wasn’t a storm due.”

“Don’t look so surprised, Jays,” she growled, needed to lash out at somethingand using his absentmindedness to make him the target. “I’ve told you a dozen times that Gating plays merry cob with the weather. That’s why I don’t like to use Gates. It’s going to get worse when I reset it, and all hell will break out when I collapse it.”

He pursed his lips and frowned, but didn’t reply, just waved at her with his free hand. She let go of Vanyel, who sagged back to his knees, too weakened to stay standing without her support. She raised both her hands high above her head, and made an intricately weaving little gesture. Filaments of dull red light floated from the Gate toward her, and were caught up on her fingers by that complex weaving. When she had them fast, she clenched her hands on them and sent her will coursing down them in a surge of pure, commanding power, the filaments turning from red to white as herwill flowed back along them.

When the wave of white reached the Gate, the portal misted over, then flared incandescently. When the light died, the scene framed in the gazebo arch was that of Companion’s Field, seen by the fitful flashes of lightning, as viewed from the porch of the Grove Temple.

Savil reached down and caught the fabric of Vanyel’s tunic, pulling him to his feet again. She dragged him with her as she followed closely on Jaysen’s heels. He hurried across the Gate threshold, pushing Tylendel before him; she half-ran a step behind him, dragging Vanyel with her by main force.

The Gate-crossing hit her with its all-too-familiar, sickening sensation of falling. Then – hard, smooth marble was beneath her feet, and they were home.

Lighting struck a nearby tree, and thunder deafened her for a moment. She cleared out of the path of the Gate and Kellan and Felar darted across, ears laid back, as soon as she and Vanyel were out of the way.

She let go of Vanyel, who stumbled the two steps to one of the pillars and clung to it. She turned to face the Gate even as another bolt struck nearby. The Gate was going unstable, wavering from red to white and back again, the instability in the energy fields mirrored in the increasing fury of the lightning storm overhead. She raised her hands and began the dismissal – and encountered unexpected resistance.

She tried again, wincing at the crack of thunder directly above her. There was something wrong, something very wrong. The Gate was fighting her.

“Jays – “ she shouted over the growl of thunder and the whine of the wind. “ – I need a hand, here.”

Jaysen let go of Tylendel to add his strength to hers – their united wills worked at the spell-knot, forcing it to unravel faster than it could knit itself back up again.

With a surge of wild power that brought a half-dozen lightning strikes down on the Belltower of the Temple itself, the Gate collapsed -

Then again the unexpected; the Gate-energy, instead of dissipating back into the air and ground, flared up, and surged back down the one conduit left to it. The force-line that had tied it into Vanyel. Savil Saw it – but not in time to stop it.

Vanyel screamed in agony, convulsing, clutching the pillar as the released power arced back into him – and from him, a second, weaker arc leapt to Tylendel.

Tylendel jerked into sudden alertness – and uttered the most painful cry of despair Savil had ever heard; it was a cry that would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life.

She pivoted and grabbed for him as quickly as she could as Vanyel collapsed in a moaning heap at the foot of the pillar.

But it was too late. No longer held in deceptive docility by his shock, he dodged her outstretched hand. She saw his face in another of the lightning flashes; his eyes were all pupil, his face a twisted mask of nothing but pain. He looked frantically about him with those terrible eyes that held no sanity at all, dodged her again, and then dashed past her into the tangled trees of the Grove.

Jaysen gave chase; Savil limped after both of them. Lightning was striking so often overhead now that the sky was almost as bright as day. She tried to use the line of their shared magic to get at Tylendel’s mind as she ran, hoping to bring him back to her, but stumbled in shock andfell when she touched his thoughts. There was nothing to get a hold on – the boy was a chaotic, aching void of grief and loneliness. It was so empty, so unhuman, that for a moment she could only crouch in the cold, dry grass and listen to her overworked heart beat in panic. It took every ounce of discipline she had to get her own mind back under control after touching that terrible, all-consuming sorrow.

Belatedly she thought of Vanyel. If anyone could reach Tylendel, surely hecould.

She lurched painfully to her feet and stumbled back toward the Temple. In the lightning flashes she could make out the younger boy staggering blindly out of the Temple, clutching himself as if he were freezing – saw him stumble and fall on his shoulder, without trying to save himself.

Then she saw Tylendel dart out of the tree-shadows to her right and race past her, past his fallen lover, and back into the Temple itself.

And her heart went cold with a sudden premonition of disaster.

She forced her exhausted legs into a stumbling parody of a run, but she wasn’t fast enough.

Just as she reached the place where Vanyel lay, panting and moaning in pain, she saw his head snap up as if in response to a call only he could hear. He seemed to be looking up at the Tower that held the Death Bell. She heard him cry out something unintelligible, and followed his horror-stricken glance -

– and saw Tylendel poised against the lighting-filled sky, arms spread as if to fly -

– and saw him leap -

He seemed to hang in the air for a moment, as if he hadsomehow mastered flight.

But only a moment; in the next heartbeat he was falling, falling – she couldn’t tell if the scream she heard was hers, or Vanyel’s or both. It wasn’t Tylendels; his eyes were closed, and his mouth twisted and jaw clenched in a rictus of pure grief.

She felt the impact of his body with the unforgiving ground as if it had been her own body that had fallen -

– and the scream ended.

Jaysen stopped dead beside her, frozen in mid-step.

She whimpered in the back of her throat, and Jaysen walked slowly to the crumpled thing lying on the ground, not twenty paces from where she now stood. He went to his knees beside it, then looked up, and she saw him shake his head slowly, confirming what she already knew.

And at that moment, the Death Bell began solemnly tolling.

She stumbled to Jaysen’s side, each step costing her more in pain than she had felt in a lifetime of sacrifice to Queen and Circle. She went heavily to her knees, and gathered up the limp, pitiable body to her breast.

She held him, cradling him against her shoulder, gently rocking a little as if she held a small child. Tears coursed silently down her face to mingle with the rain that was pouring from the sky; it seemed that the whole world echoed her grief. Jaysen knelt beside her, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking with sobs, as the Companions gathered about them and the Death Bell tolled above them.

It was only when the rest of the Heralds arrived to take their burden from them that they thought of Vanyel, and sent someone to look for him.

But the boy was gone.

Nine

Vanyel stumbled through the pouring, frigid rain. He was half-blinded with grief, with no hope of finding comfort anywhere in this world. There was nothing left for him – nothing.

He’s dead-oh, gods, he’s dead, and it’s all my fault-

His whole body seemed to be on fire, a slow, smoldering pain that was burning away at him from the inside the way the ice of his dream had chilled him.

There was no reason to fight ice orfire anymore. Let either or both eat him, he couldn’t care.

Rain pounded him, hail struck like slung stones. His head reeled and pounded with his pulse. He hurt, but he welcomed the pain.

It’s all I deserve. It was all my fault -

He couldn’t see where he was going, and he didn’t give a damn. He tripped and fell any number of times, but bruises and cuts didn’t matter; he just picked himself back up and kept running in whatever direction he happened to be facing.

His whole universe had collapsed the moment Tylendel had thrown himself off that tower. Somewhere down in the depths of his soul was the dim thought that if he ran far enough, ran fast enough, he might run off the edge of the world and into an oblivion where there would be no more feeling, and no more pain.

He didn’t run off the edge of the world, quite. He ran off the bank into the river.

The ground just disappeared under his feet, and he flailed his arms wildly as he half-fell, half-tumbled down the bank and somersaulted at the bottom into the icy water. It closed over his head, and the cold shocked him into an instant of forgetfulness; he lost the desire for oblivion as instinct took over, and he fought back to the surface.

He gulped air, shook water out of his eyes, and in a flash of lightning saw an oncoming tree limb too late to dodge it. He managed to turn away from it, but it hit him across the back of the head and knocked him under again. The second time his head broke the surface, he was dazed and unthinking; in another glare of lighting he saw the branches of a bush beside him and grabbed at them -

They were too far away, far out of his frantic reach -

Then the hush shook violently, and seemed to stretch toward him. He snatched at the ends of the branches. He caught them, somehow; they cut into his hand, but he managed to pull himself into the shallows.

He had just enough strength left to crawl halfway up into the rain-slick bank, and just enough mind left to wonder why he’d bothered to save himself.

He lay facedown in the sodden, dead grass on the bank; chilled and numb, and growing colder, and wracked with anguished guilt and mourning.

‘ Lendel, ‘Lendel, it was all my fault– oh, gods, it was all my fault– I should have told Savil. I should have tried to stop you.

He sobbed into the rough grass, the damp-smelling earth, longing inarticulately for the power of a god to reverse time, to unmake all that had happened.

I’m sorry– oh, please, someone, take it all back! If you have to have someone, take me instead! Make it a dream, oh, gods– please-

But it wasn’t a dream; no more than the rain that was diluting his tears, or the icy water that tugged at his legs. And no god intervened to unmake the past. The wintry cold was closing in on him, chilling the fire along his veins; he was too weak to move, and too tired, and far too grief stricken to care. It occurred to him then that he might die here, as alone as Tylendel had died.

It was no less than his deserts, and he changed his prayers. Please -he asked, desperately, of powers that were not answering. Please– let me die.

He thought of every mistake he had made, every wrong turning, and moaned. I deserve to die, he thought in anguish, closing his eyes. I want to die.

:No.: The mind-voice was bright, bright as a flame, and sharp as steel, piercing his dark hope for death. :No, you must not. You must live, Chosen.:

He raised his head a little, but couldn’t get his eyes open, and really didn’t want to. :You don’t know,: he thought bleakly back at the intruder. :Let me alone. No one wants me, nobody should want me; I kill everything I care for.:

But someone grabbed him by the back of the collar and half-dragged him up the bank. He tried to twist away, but his body wouldn’t work right anymore, and all he did was thrash feebly. Heartbeats later the rain was no longer pounding his back, and the green-smelling, soft moss under his weakly moving hands was dry; he’d been pulled into some kind of shelter. Whatever had him let go of his collar, after lowering him gently down onto the moss; he managed to get his eyes open, but with the lightning fading off in the distance, he could see nothing but darkness.

Something warm and large lay down beside him with a sigh. A soft nose nuzzled his cheek -

– like Gala had -

The sensation brought up memories that cut him into little shreds. He brought his knees up under his chest and curled up on himself, sobbing uncontrollably, driven to the edge of sanity by grief and loneliness.

:-but I am here– :

He brought his head up a little, and looked for the speaker with vision blurred by tears – and in a last glare of the lightning met a pair of glowing sapphire eyes-eyes so full of compassion and love that he knew their owner would forgive him anything. That love reached out for him, and flowed over into him. It couldn’t erase his loss, but it could share the pain – and it didn’t blame him for what had happened.

He uncurled, and groped for the smooth white neck and shoulder the way he had seized on the branches of the bush to keep from drowning.

He sobbed himself into exhaustion on that shoulder, wept until he hadn’t the strength to shed another tear, and into a kind of fevered half-sleep. And all the while, that bright voice murmured, like a litany, over and over, into his mind -

:I am here, my Chosen. I love you. I will never leave you.:

“Savil, we found him.” Mardic burst into the room that had been Vanyel’s and Tylendel’s, dripping from head to toe, and shivering in the draft from the door behind him.

As he turned to close the door, Savil dredged up energy she hadn’t dreamed she still possessed, and started to rise. Jaysen and Healer Andrel simultaneously seized her shoulders and pushed her back down into her chair.

“Where?” she demanded, in a voice hoarsened by weeping. “Who found him? Is he all right?”

“I dunno, the Companions found him; Yfandes did, anyway,” Mardic replied vaguely, swaying with weariness, looking colorless with exhaustion in the yellow candlelight. “She found him on the garden side of the river and dragged him into a grotto. Tantras thinks he’s sick, something like backlash, but he can’t tell for sure. He’s trying to persuade her to let him bring Van back here so Andrel can take care of him.”

Savil shook her head, trying to make sense of his words. “Mardic, what are you trying to tell me? What has Yfandes got to do with anything?’’

“She won’t let anyone lay a finger on him, Savil,” Mardic replied, blinking, and still shivering despite the warmth of the room. “She’s adamant about it; damned near took Tantras’ hand off when he tried to get at Van. She told my Fortin that she doesn’t trust us to protect him and keep him under shield properly – that we won’t understand what we’ve got – that he’s hurt, all torn up inside his mind, and we can’t begin to help him – “

“Mardic,” Jaysen said, slowly, “are you saying that Yfandes ChoseVanyel? The only full-grown Companion in the Field that hasn’t Chosen – the Companion that hasn’t Chosen for over ten years – and nowshe’s Chosen Vanyel?”

“She didn’t come out and say so, but I guess she did,” Mardic said, fatigue slurring his words as he slumped against the doorframe. “I dunno why in hell she’d be curled up around him like he was her foal otherwise, and not letting us near him. We think he’s unconscious; he isn’t moving, and he isn’t responding when we talk to him, but Yfandes won’t let anyone close enough to get a good look at him.”

Savil exchanged startled looks with the Seneschal’s Herald, but it was Healer Andrel who put their thoughts into words.

“By the Lady Bright,” he murmured, green eyes gone round with consternation, “what in the Havens is thisgoing to mean?”

Vanyel swam up out of a feverish, fitful nightmare, prodded by an insistent voice in his head. He moaned, and opened dry, hot eyes that ached and burned. His head still pounded, and moving it even a little made his vision blur. He felt as if his whole body was a hot, tight, painfully constrictive garment; it felt like it didn’t belong to him.

Sunlight gleamed weakly in through a rocky opening; he could see the river gurgling by just a few paces beyond it. It looked as if he were in a cave, but there were pink marble benches beside the entrance. Caves didn’t have pink marble benches. They didn’t have cultivated, moss-covered floors, either.

Then he recognized the place for what it was – one of the garden grottoes set into the riverbank. They were popular with courting couples or people seeking a moment of solitude from the Court. Tylendel had often wistfully expressed the wish that they dared to use one -

Tylendel. Grief closed around his throat and stopped his breath.

:No, Vanyel, Chosen. Not now. Mourn later; now get up.:

Without knowing quite how he had gotten there, Vanyel found himself on his feet, leaning heavily on the silky shoulder of a Companion.

HisCompanion. Yfandes.

He tried to make sense of that, but his head spun too much and he couldn’t get a good grip on any of the thoughts that half-formed and then blew away.

:You are ill,: said the worried voice inside his mind. . Icannot care for you. I did not wish to let you away from my protection, but I cannot help you. You have fever, you need a Healer. Move your foot. One step. Another– :

He discovered that he was shaking, and clung a little tighter to the Companion’s back. Obedient to that voice in his head, he put one hesitant foot in front of the other, learning quickly that he had to rest most of his weight on the arm clinging to Yfandes’ shoulder. He had to close his eyes after the first couple of steps and trust to her to guide him; he was so dizzyand nauseated he couldn’t make any sense out of what he was seeing.

They emerged into sunlight that was far too much for his eyes; he opened them once, and shut them again, quickly. The Companion suddenly stepped away from him, and he literally fell into the arms of a strange Herald; and once out of contact with Yfandes there were dozensof voices in his head, all of them clamorous, all of them confusing. He whimpered, tried to pull away, and hid his head in his arms. They hurt, they hurt, and he couldn’t make out which were his own thoughts and which belonged to someone else.

:Tell your fool Chosen to shield him, Delian!:

Thatvoice he recognized, although Yfandes had never spoken that sharply to him. The stranger bit off a curse and touched Vanyel’s forehead, and the voices cut off. Vanyel opened his eyes again, and wished he hadn’t; the world was spinning around with him as the center of the chaos. He shut them immediately, vowing not to reopen them.

“Let me, Tantras.” The soft voice was that of yet another stranger.

Two cool hands rested lightly on his head, and brought with them the promise of comfort and the peace of sleep.

He took what they offered, falling into oblivion gratefully. With any luck, he’d never wake up.

The bed looked far too big for the boy; never tall, he seemed to have collapsed in on himself. He was as pale as the sheets and – it might have been his dark hair and naturally fair complexion, but it seemed to her that he looked worse than Tylendel had after his fit. That was something Savil had not thought possible until now.

Tylendel. Oh, my ‘Lendel, my poor, poor, ‘Lendel.

Unshed tears made a hard knot in her throat and misted her eyes. So she missed the moment that Andrel took his hand away from the boy’s forehead and sagged back into his chair with a sigh of weariness, his graying red hair damp with sweat, his freckles twice as evident with his skin so washed out and pale.

It was that sigh that brought her back to the urgent present.

“Andrel?” she said softly. “Can you tell me anything?”

“I did what I could for him – and more, I’ve got a line established,” the Green-robed Healer to the Heralds replied, without looking up. “I want you to follow it – or if you feel you can’t, find me a Herald-Mage your equal. I don’t believe what I Saw, to be frank, and I want a confirmation.”

Savil tightened her jaw, and told herself again that none of this had been Vanyel’s fault. Besides, she was the only Herald-Mage at the Palace who was likely to have anyfeelings of charity toward the boy.

“I’ll follow it. Have you got more to say, or – “

“I want you in there first. What I have to say is going to depend on whether you think I’ve gone over the edge or not.”

Savil raised one eyebrow in surprise, but moved in to stand beside the Healer. She reached out for Andrel’s soothing Presence as easily as she could have reached for his hand; they’d been lovers, once, and had worked together often, both before and since.

They meshed auras exactly as hand would close on hand, and Savil followed the “line” the Healer had established down past the churning chaos of Vanyel’s sleeping surface mind to the dark, grief-stricken core of him. The measure of that grief would have reconciled her to him even had she felt him blameworthy; she’d known the depth of Tylendel’s feelings, but it seemed as if Vanyel’s had run at least as deep. Certainly his grief and loss were as profound as her own. More -

Oh, gods– it’s just what I warned ‘Lendel against. He’s lost, he’s utterly lost without ‘Lendel-

But that was not what rocked her back onto her heels with real shock.

Savil had spent most of the past twenty years of her life as the one Herald-Mage most intimately involved in training young Herald-Mages, and the one most often set to identify youngsters with active Gifts and the potential of being Chosen. She had seen children with one, two, or (most commonly) no Gifts. Tylendel had been unusual in having Mindspeech, Fetching, Empathy and the Mage-Gift, all at near-equal strength. Most Heralds or Herald-Mages ftad one or two strong Gifts – and few had as many as three.

Vanyel had them all. Each channel she tested – with the sole exception of Healing – was open; most of them had been forced open to their widest extent. The boy had Mindspeech, Fetching, FarSight, Foresight, as much Empathy as Tylendel had shown, even enough Fire-starting to ensure he’d never need to use a tinderbox again, and the all-important Mage-Gift. His Mindspeech was even of both types, Thought-sensing and Projecting.

And – irony of ironies – as if the gods were taking with one hand and offering a pittance as compensation – the Bardic Gift.

This boy had more Gifts than any five full Heralds – and all of them had come into full activity in less than a day.

To her horror she could See that all the channels were as raw and sensitive as so many open wounds. The channels had not been “opened,” they’d been blastedopen. It was a wonder the boy wasn’t mad with the pain alone.

Savil came up out of Vanyel’s mind with a rush like a startled fish jumping out of a stream, and looked from the boy to the Healer and back in a state of surprise that closely resembled shock.

“Great good gods,”she said, “What the hell happened to do that?”

Andrel shook his head. “Your guess would be better than mine. I never cared much where our powers came from, I was just concerned with learning to use them effectively. But do you see what I’m up against with this boy?”

“I think so,” Savil replied, groping for the bedpost and sitting down carefully on the foot of the bed. “Let me add this up. You’ve got backlash trauma from when the Gate-energy got pulled from him, and more trauma from when we sent it back intohim; you’ve got the problems inherent when you wake Gifts late or early. You’ve got the problems with them being at full power from the moment they woke. Worst of all, you’ve got channels that were burnedopen or tornopen instead of opening of themselves.”

“That, and more mundane emotional trauma and physical shock. I hope to the Havens that he doesn’t come down with pneumonia on top of it all. I already fought off one fever, one his own body produced when it couldn’t handle the energy-overload.” Andrel touched the back of his hand to the boy’s waxen cheek, checking his temperature. “So far, so good, but it’s a real possibility. And I’m fighting off the effects of exposure, too. Savil, the child is a mess.”

“Lover, you have a talent for understatement.” Savil contemplated Vanyel’s pinched, grief-twisted face.

Even in sleep he doesn’t lose his pain.

“Now I see why Yfandes was so reluctant to let him out of her care. Until she gets him firmly bonded to her, he’s going to have to be in physical contact with her for her to protect him. But what can we do? I can’t fit her in here, I can’t put him in the stables, not with the weather being what it is.”

“Try, and I’ll call you up on charges,” Andrel replied, and Savil could tell that he was not joking. “Do that in this chill, and you’ll kill him. It’s going to be touchy enough with him tucked up in a warm bed.”

“Well, how in hell do I protect him from his own powers?”

“Put your own shields on him, and hope nothing gets through.”

“I can’t keep them up forever,” Savil reminded him acidly. “I’m fairly well fagged out myself. A couple of hours is about all I can manage at this point.’’

“Then go order-two graves, dammit!”the Healer snarled in sudden frustration. “Because you’re going to lose thisone, too, if you don’t do everythingright with him!”

Savil pulled back, taken very much aback by the sudden explosion of temper. “I,” she faltered, then as his words penetrated, and she thought of what was lying in the Grove Temple at this moment, lost her own precarious hold on calm.

She got up, stumbling a little; turned away from him and leaned against the doorframe, her shoulders shaking with her’silent weeping.

“Savil – “

Strong but trembling hands on her shoulders turned her back to face the room, and pulled her into an embrace against a bony chest covered in soft, green wool. “Savil, I’m sorry,” Andrel murmured into her hair. “I shouldn’t have said that. You’re exhausted, I’m exhausted, and neither of us are up to facing the problem this boy represents. Is there anyoneyou can turn him over to, for a day, at least? Long enough for you to get some rest and a chance to think?’’

A white square of linen appeared just when she needed it. She mopped at her eyes with the handkerchief he offered, and blew her nose. “Under any other circumstances I’d just let anyof the others spell me – but I don’t know, Andy. A lot of them still think he’s responsible for all this. Even if they shield – with Gifts like his, what’s he going to pick up? Youof all people should know how leaky we all are to a new, raw Gift, even when we aren’t stressed.”