Prophecy (30 page)

“The only drawback I can see is that Naran won’t have link groups to back her up,” Lorand said with a nod of agreement. “But we really should try to see if Blending with her will work.”

Jovvi could tell easily that everyone was in agreement on that point, everyone but Naran. The poor girl was somewhat in shock over the idea of joining them completely, and her lack of self assurance was horribly clear. Her mind thrashed around trying to find the proper words of protest, but not because of reluctance. Jovvi knew exactly what the problem was, so she leaned forward a bit.

“Naran, my dear, you can’t think that way,” she said gently with the warmest smile she was able to produce. “I know you’ve felt the outsider for all of your life, but you can’t let that interfere with what we want to try. If it works then things will be much more interesting, and if it doesn’t then things will remain just the way they’ve been. You can’t possibly lose any standing with us, so why not relax and have some fun?”

Naran’s expression and thoughts lightened with that, and once she looked around to see that all the others agreed with what Jovvi had said, her smile was more than just tentative.

“Relax and have some fun,” she repeated, her smile widening. “You’reabsolutely right, Jovvi, it
could
be fun. All right, let’s try it.”

“Now, let’s not count too heavily on its working,” Jovvi warned the eagerness she could feel in everyone. “It may not decide to work until our second or third try, the way it sometimes goes with ordinary Blendings. This will be our least significant effort, so I want
everyone
to relax. Are you ready?”

The others all smiled and nodded, but no one actually relaxed. They pretended to for Naran’s sake, but Rion, especially, yearned for success in the experiment. It would make his beloved really and truly one of them, rather than just a member of their group because of him. Jovvi knew that as well as he did, which meant delaying the effort would simply cause more discomfort.

So Jovvi reached out to the others as she usually did, but this time she reached toward Naran as well. There was an odd … emptiness that wasn’t really an emptiness there, but it still remained one she couldn’t penetrate. Full Blending was being held off as the others reached toward Naran as well, all of them experiencing the same trouble. They were being stopped dead in their tracks—until Jovvi got a sudden idea.

Rather than trying to reach Naran directly, Jovvi …
slid
through Rion’s awareness of Naran and approached her at the same time and in the same way that he did. It was a mini-Blending of sorts, and at first it didn’t seem to make a difference. Then, slowly, the emptiness became filled with
something
, a something that was being held back by automatic fear. Jovvi reached out and touched the fear, soothing it away to a large extent, and then—

And then the entity had again come into being, an entity that sighed with the sensation of being complete. It wasn’t quite up to its full strength as yet, but that would come as its flesh forms matured and flowered to the point where they were supposed to be. And all of the bonds weren’t as close as they should be, but that, too, could be easily seen to. What mattered more at the moment was the Sight the entity had gained. Or regained, as it had been at one time in the distant past.

A clearer awareness of the future now lay before it, a future it already knew would be fraught with danger. Perhaps a better description would be to say that the
picture
was blurry with multiple possibilities, but the awareness of those possibilities was a good deal more clear. It was faintly possible that they would reach and enter Gan Garee without difficulty, just as it was faintly possible that they would not reach the city at all. The stronger possibilities were that they would get there with more or less fighting, and the same for entering the city. Beyond that was the near certainty that they—or some of them—would face the usurping Five, but the results of that confrontation simply weren’t visible. For some reason there were more possibilities of various outcomes involved there than in what went before, and making sense of them just wasn’t … possible.

The entity chuckled to itself, not in the least disturbed by the lack of clarity around the confrontation. Considering the number of variables which surrounded even the smallest happening, it wasn’t unexpected that the confrontation would be rife with this-or-that possibilities. The closer they came to the actual event, the clearer the picture would become. And there were other things to concern them before they reached the time of that event.

For instance, the rest of their flesh forms would arrive the next day, most likely shortly before noon. It suddenly became obvious that a group of guardsmen would attempt to ambush them as they rode into Colling Green, a group much like the one which had earlier attempted to take its own flesh forms unawares. That group was not yet in position for the ambush, nor would it be until shortly before the column was due. And it would be larger than the one attacking earlier, significantly larger.

The entity, no longer amused, paused to consider the matter. There had been difficulty before the previous attackers had been vanquished, and there had been danger to its flesh forms. It had managed to recall the manner of countering the enemy’s more complex kind of linking only just in time, but now that was clearly insufficient. Something more intensely efficient would be needed for tomorrow, as well as for those battles they would certainly have to face before finding it possible to enter Gan Garee. There
was
something which would serve, but at the moment the memory of the something escaped it. Perhaps, when it next came into being, it would find it possible to recall the method…

At that point Jovvi returned to herself, having dissolved the Blending as the entity seemed to want her to do. She put a hand to her head, the least bit shaken, and not simply from having seen a picture of the future. The entity had
never
acted that way before, and Jovvi couldn’t help finding it somewhat disturbing.

“Well, now we know it works,” Tamma said, also looking a bit on the shaky side. “Is that what you see all the time, Naran? How do you stand it?”

“It’s … never been quite like
that
before,” Naran replied, clearly breathless from the experience she had just gone through. “But now I understand why the five of you are so close. It isn’t possible to put that … blending and meshing into words for an outsider to follow. But I’m not an outsider any longer, am I?”

“No, you certainly are not,” Rion agreed with a laugh for her sudden, blooming delight. “You’recompletely one of us, and more, the entity told us that
it
knew about your talent. It thought about the way things
used
to be, which apparently indicates that its memories stretch all the way back almost to prehistory. No wonder it was having trouble remembering the best way to face tomorrow’s attack.”

“I hope it remembers by tomorrow,” Lorand said, sounding as worried as Vallant looked and was. “That was a really large force it …
saw
, and it will do our people a lot of damage if they’recaught unawares. If it comes down to it, we’ll have to send someone to warn them.”

“That probably won’t work,” Vallant said with a shake of his head. “They know enough about where we are to send a group to attack, so they’ve got to be watchin’ us. If they see any of our people headin’ out in the direction the rest will come from, they’ll know immediately what’s goin’ on and will stop him. We’ll have to think of somethin’ else.”

“We’ll Blend again early tomorrow morning,” Jovvi said, the decision easily made. “If the entity hasn’t remembered what it needs to, we’ll have to use it to sneak someone out past whatever sentries they have set up. In the meanwhile, is there anything else?”

“Of course there is,” Rion replied, his arm proudly about Naran’s shoulders. “I’m sure all of you recall the entity’s thoughts about the bonds to Naran not being as close as they should be, so that needs to be taken care of. Naran, love, you do recall what I told you about that, do you not?”

“Yes, certainly, love,” Naran answered with her usual sweet smile, the thrill of having Blended still strong in her mind. “The rest of you have already done it and it’s necessary, so I’m fully prepared to do the same. After all, Lorand and Vallant are part of
you
.”

“They certainly are,” Rion agreed with a happy smile, giving her a brief kiss before looking toward the other two men again. “So which of you is to be first to lie with her?”

Jovvi felt the mild shock and odd discomfort in both Lorand and Vallant, and felt amused herself by it. As well as they knew Rion, they still didn’t completely understand that his main thought patterns and habits had been developed among all of
them
. He loved Naran so much that he wanted to share her with his brothers, the brothers he loved almost as much. He would certainly kill any other man who might ever attempt the woman of his heart, but his brothers were another matter entirely.

“I’ll be first,” Lorand said after he’d exchanged glances with both Jovvi and Vallant. “And I’ll also be honored. Naran, are you certain you understand completely and don’t mind?”

“Of course I understand,” she replied, her mind finally serene. “And how can I mind when I now know you as well as Rion does? This is a family I
want
to be a part of, even more now than before we Blended. There can’t possibly be five finer people in the entire world.”

“Six finer people,” Tamma corrected with a gentle smile of her own. “We know
you
a bit better now too, and if we were fond of you before, the feelings are much stronger now. Right, Jovvi?”

“Absolutely,” Jovvi agreed, meaning exactly what she’d said. “But I have a suggestion I think we all need to consider. We’reall delighted with this brand new development we’ve accomplished, but I believe we ought to keep it to ourselves for the time being. Our … hosts haven’t been entirely convinced that we aren’t the Chosen, and hearing about this might clinch the matter for them. And besides, I’ve heard it isn’t wise to let people know about
everything
you have up your sleeve.”

“I agree with Jovvi,” Vallant said at once, but he needn’t have bothered. The others were all nodding their own agreement, not one of them uncertain. “This is a strong weapon in our arsenal, and if people don’t know about it, they can’t prepare against it or try to take it away from us. If nothin’ else, we have to think about Naran’s safety.”

That was the ultimate deciding factor, of course, and no more discussion was called for. Lorand rose from his chair, went to Naran, and bowed as he offered his hand. She took it with a grin and let him help her to her feet, then held to his arm as they began to leave the sitting area. Rion rose as well, his mind humming with happiness, and he went over to walk with Vallant, who was already standing. Tamma waited quietly near her own chair, pretending not to notice who it was who now left the area, but her reluctance to leave at the same time that Vallant did gave Jovvi a chance to speak to her.

“Tamma, please wait just a moment,” Jovvi said softly when Tamma was about to take her turn at leaving. “I really do need to talk to you about what happened earlier. I can see how agitated you still are, and—”

“No, it’s all right,” Tamma said wearily, turning to look at Jovvi. “I was in shock for a minute or two when it seemed as though all of you were against me, but then I understood what you were doing. You were all trying to make Vallant Ro respond, but things didn’t turn out quite the way you wanted them to, did they?”

“How can you say that?” Jovvi asked, honestly surprised as she got to her feet. “He told you exactly how he feels, which isn’t at all what you thought he did. He loves you, Tamma, so much that he’s afraid to do anything more about it.”

“Yes, you said he was frightened, and you were right about that part of it,” Tamma said ruefully, reaching one hand up to her hair. “At first I didn’t know how to feel, but now my mind seems to have … made up its mind, so to speak. I expended a good deal of effort to show that man how
I
feel, but he ignored all that because of the possibility that we might sometime have words again. I consider the idea completely ludicrous, but
he
was right about something as well: I do detest cowards. I’ll love him to the day I die, but if he finds it impossible to get over his fear, I’ll never have anything to do with him again. And now that I’ll be able to sleep, I’d like to go to bed.”

Jovvi stood with brows raised as Tamma left the area, and it finally came through to her that Tamma
was
relatively serene in her mind. Indecision no longer tormented her, and it was now up to Vallant to act to change the situation as it stood. Could Jovvi
force
Vallant into it? Could anyone? If not…

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Rion entered the sitting area after breakfast the next morning feeling very satisfied. He’d not only enjoyed the meal, he was also enjoying the way Naran now walked among the others as a complete equal. Her former hesitancy had vanished entirely, and in its place was a … wholeness, a fullness of spirit which had not been evident before even in his presence alone. Oh, they both considered themselves half of a single whole, but this was more than that very personal relationship. It was a complete sharing which he’d never been able to hope would ever come about.

But it
had
come about, and Rion still chuckled to himself over the discomfort his brothers had tried to hide the night before. They seemed to think that Naran was
his
, not in the mutual “ownership” he and Naran practiced but in an exclusive and all-encompassing way. It continued to be a bit beyond him how anyone could think they were entitled to rule the life and doings of another person, especially a person they loved. That sort of relationship was no relationship at all, and it pleased Rion that his brothers seemed to be getting over the outlook. But, of course, there had still been a problem of sorts the night before…