The Sword of the South - eARC (42 page)

“I’ll remember.”

“All right,” he said, rising and circling her small desk to stand behind her and rest his hands on her shoulders. “We’ll start with something simple, then, and use regular clairvoyance to look into the library, okay?”

“Sure.”

“All right,” Trayn said again, his voice dropping soothingly. “Watch the candle, just like before. Let your mind rest on the tip of the flame. That’s right…thaaat’s riiiiiightttt.…”

Gwynna’s blue eyes darkened as she dropped into the trance with his hands on her shoulders to strengthen their rapport. His watch lay on the table, its soft ticking like thunder in the quiet of their mingled breathing as she centered. By now, he knew to the second how long it would take her.

“Now, Gwynna,” he said after a moment. “Let’s distance read. Don’t push too hard. Just open like I taught you. Gently…gently! Not so hard, Love. Just watch the candle and listen to the watch. That’s good. Pretend the wall is Mistress Josilan, and now…we’ll…read…her.…”

His voice died away. It hadn’t really been necessary, for her mind had melded with his well before he stopped speaking. They were in deep rapport, but her inner core was barricaded still. Yet he hardly noticed the knot of light that forbade his entry, for he’d become accustomed to it. He merely marveled at the power and clarity of the young mind in his keeping. Her mental touch was cool, catlike, clear as a crystal stream and vibrant with life. Each mind had its own unique presence, and hers tasted of cinnamon and autumn leaves, he thought. It blew about him like a breeze whipping in fresh from the sea, and the strength within it almost overwhelmed him.

<
Now, Love
,> his mental voice said, and he looked through her senses at a stone wall, examining it minutely in step with her. <
We’re going to look through it, just like reading Mistress Josilan, but easier. Walls don’t have shields, do they? Just let your mind through.…
>

The master empath shared her delight as she slid past the wall as if its solid stone were smoke and she a breeze. The empty library was suddenly around them, and he shared her pleasure as her mind’s eye roamed the silent shelves. She trembled with delighted discovery, and he rejoiced with her.

He moved with her, offering only minimal guidance as she tasted her new ability. She reached out farther, circling the grounds like a windborne hawk. Shimmering privacy shields masked the dormitories, but Gwynna didn’t care. All she longed for was the freedom to roam, to stretch out—to test her limits. Her mind quested along the stone walls, touching and tasting grass, trees, even the moss on the stone and the insects in the moss.

She shuddered ecstatically as the world flooded her mind, and Trayn went with her, amazed by her power. Then he scolded himself. If anything could still surprise him, it shouldn’t be her strength.

He drew a deep breath and prepared to recall her roving mind for the next step. But before he could, he felt a sudden welling of concentration within her inner shields. He gasped at the sensation, and sudden alarm stabbed him.

What was she doing? She wasn’t ready for that sort of output!

He fought for her attention, but it was too late. Her astounding breadth of talent had confounded him once again, and even as he prepared to scatter her building strength, he stopped. Too much power had gathered. If he interrupted it, it might ricochet within her. It might kill her to dump it all within her shields, and without breaking those shields he couldn’t deflect it from her. All he could do was ride it out…and pray.

His flashing thoughts took only tiny fractions of a second. His decision had been made before she unleashed the power she’d gathered.

She pushed. That was the only word for it. It was as if her mind became a spring, wound tightly as possible, only to uncoil. It lashed out, carrying him upon its strength, and he had a sense of rushing wind and darkness as their joined minds whipped out across the face of the night.

They burst from the sheltered Academy, the “mage proof” barriers effective as so much straw against a hurricane. Before the barriers even registered, they’d vaulted into the night and gone streaming south at a speed that mocked the wind.

Trayn reeled. How could she be
doing
this? What
was
she doing? Blurred, darkness-bound land unreeled below, and mountains thrust brutal peaks at him. He flinched as their image threatened to impale his mind, and he and Gwynna screamed low above the summits, hurtling ever south while bitter snow devils danced on the peaks to envelop them.

Mighty walls loomed, sealing a steep-shouldered pass. A glitter of protective shields flicked Trayn like a lash, but Gwynna sliced through them like a meteor. He shuddered in anguish, but then they were past the fortress, circling back, and he gasped as huge, black wings and bone-white fangs flashed above them. The dragon bulked against the moon, vapor pluming from its jaws like steam, and Gwynna panicked. Joy vanished, exultation was quenched by the raw poison of fear—fear for someone
else
, Trayn knew, even then—and a harsh explosion of horror.

Her panic chilled Trayn to the bone, for her fine control vanished as it ripped through her. Precision vanished, balance fled, and in their place there was only the long, terrifying plunge to the mountaintops below them. Gwynna had soared like an eagle; now terror broke her wings and hurled her from the heavens.

Trayn reached deep inside himself, grasping the discipline which made him what he was. Exquisite pain ripped at him as he made himself move against the grip of their rapport. It was like opposing his flesh to iron, sweat pearled his cheeks as anguish tore his mind, and every instinct screamed for him to jerk out of their rapport and save himself.

But the mage academies had chosen Trayn Aldarfro for more than just the strength of his talent. They’d chosen him for the strength of his
heart
. They’d chosen a mage who’d fought all the forces of darkness, who’d driven himself to the brink of extinction, who’d
shared
the brutal torture of a sacrifice on the altar of Sharnā, throwing himself between that agony and the gates of hell themselves to preserve the soul of a young woman he’d never met from the demon come to claim it. They’d chosen a
man
, not just a mage—a man who would die where he stood to protect the brilliant, gifted young mind of the child he loved.

It was that man—that mage—whose thoughts flashed as he fought Gwynna’s headlong dissolution. Self-preservation beckoned him out of the collapsing ruin of her mind, but he forged a pocket within his half of their rapport and centered his awareness in a tiny island of control. He felt the tremors as her mind toppled, but he slammed panic aside, moving with the assurance of a master mage facing disaster. He gathered himself within his island of sanity as Gwynna’s mind thundered to destruction about him in raw terror and did the hardest thing of all…waited.

Trayn’s empath soul shuddered in anguish as her ruin crested. He rode a storm front of devastation across her public mind, waiting for the fleeting moment when he might save them both.

It came.

He anchored his identity in the refuge he’d built, and his thought lashed out. He wasn’t strong enough to breach her perfectly-meshed shields, and he knew it. They stood like a fortress, impenetrable and proud. Yet he also knew panic was destabilizing her control, and he had no choice but to try. He slammed a probe against them like a battering ram…and felt them yield.

He fought down a surge of hope and slammed them again. Again! Bell-like tones of conflict clangored through their rapport.
Again!!

Her shields shivered, and fresh terror ripsawed through her as she sensed the intrusion. Slivers of her panic lacerated him like flying knives, but he ground his teeth and endured. He hammered once more…and her shields shattered like crystal.

Vast images battered him as he plunged into the maelstrom, ignoring everything else to arrow towards the gleaming life at her center. His mental grasp locked on it ruthlessly, crushing her frantic resistance, and Gwynna writhed.

A flattened hand, its edge like iron, crashed into his ribs, and he gasped in anguish as one of them snapped. The heel of her other hand rammed upward under his chin, but he had just enough warning to ride the blow which should have snapped his neck. She twisted in his grip, her hands rising to his throat, and he fought to block them with his upper arms, for he dared not release her shoulders and break contact. But her strength was unbelievable, and he felt uncontrolled madness guttering through her.

She meant to kill him. In her confusion, she would protect her secrets the only way she could—by destroying the intruder. Her hands tightened about his throat, and he locked his will desperately upon her, slamming her sensory channels shut.

Gwynna went absolutely rigid, her mental voice a scream of terror as all sight, all sound—all perception—was slashed off. Her horror rose past insanity, battering him, but he controlled her at last. He rode the shockwave of her resistance, weaving his mental grip ever tighter.

She had time for only one last thrust, and a mental needle lashed at him—one fit to burn out any mind. He screamed as it ripped through him, but he refused to yield, and the attack shattered as he hurled her into unconsciousness.

She crumpled like a string-cut puppet, and Trayn went to the floor with her, too spent to stand. He hovered in his little island, hanging on the lip of burning out forever, and gathered the last fragments of his will. He reached out weakly for Lentos, thought he felt a faint response, and then there was only blackness.

* * *

Trayn’s eyelids fluttered unwillingly.

His head was an anvil, ringing with pain. His eyes watered to the fierce throbbing, and he moaned as his hand rose limply to the cold compress which covered them. He gasped as an arm slipped under him, raising him, and another hand caught his on the compress.

“Your eyes are too sensitive yet for that,” Lentos said gently.

“Semkirk!” Trayn whispered. “What happened?”

“You tell me,” Lentos said dryly. “I felt your message—barely—and got there to find Gwynna in shock and you little better. I thought we’d lost you both, and we almost had.”

“
Gwynna!
” Trayn stiffened. “Is she—“?

He reached for her mental presence and moaned as fresh pain roared up.

“Don’t try to use your mind yet, idiot!” Lentos sat beside him. “Gwynna’s all right, although I think it will be some time before she regains her confidence. Something trimmed her back—trimmed both of you, I should say—but she’ll recover. And probably be the stronger for whatever it was.”

“Thank the gods,” Trayn muttered weakly. “I thought I’d killed her.”

“Well, you didn’t. But you’d better tell me what you
did
do.”

“Well,” Trayn chuckled wanly, “I finally cracked her shields.”

“Trayn!” Lentos stiffened. “After everything we’ve discussed, you actually forced—?!”

“No, no!” Trayn cut off his horrified exclamation. “It wasn’t a confrontation, Lentos—or not that sort, anyway. We’d just begun distance reading when something happened in her mind.”

He shivered as he relived the moment and felt again the vast strength which had filled her.

“I don’t know what it was. No mind should be able to generate that much power, and it wasn’t normal distance reading, either. One minute we were right here—the next we were Semkirk knows where, and she was panicking. Something scared her to death, and she lost control. She was on the edge of total burnout, and the only way to stop it was to take control. So…”

“And that
really
scared her,” Lentos said as his voice died.

“Oh, it did. It did! But nothing could’ve scared her much worse than she already was. When I said burnout, I meant it, Lentos. We almost lost her.” Trayn pressed the compress with one hand and touched his ribs with the other. “If I’d had time, I would’ve been scared to death myself.”

“But you took control? Total control?”

“I had no choice. And you were right about her reactions—she was so busy trying to kill me I couldn’t risk just guiding her out. It was either lock her down or watch her self-destruct…and take me with her.”

“Did you…see…anything?” Lentos asked hesitantly.

“Not much, and what I did see is hers. Anyway, it was all too fast, and she was still screening even while she was dying. In fact, she was using strength she needed to stay alive to protect whatever she’s hiding.”

“I understand. But can you at least tell me what panicked her?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t make much sense. We were over a fortress—in the East Walls, I think—and we found a dragon. I couldn’t see the color against the moon, and I don’t know how we got there, but I think she knew exactly where she was, and maybe even what the dragon was doing there. That’s what terrified her in the first place.”

“A mountain fortress and a dragon…” Lentos murmured.

“Yes, an
imperial
fortress. I caught a flash off its shields. And that’s another thing—she went through those shields like they weren’t even there.”

“What?!”

“Oh, yes. And here’s another tidbit—it wasn’t an instant translocation, either.”

“Explain,” Lentos said, clearly still shocked by the last revelation.

“I’m not sure I can. Distance reading isn’t one of my primary talents, and it’s just enough of a secondary for me to teach someone else. But whatever she did, she wasn’t distance reading. We didn’t flash to that fortress—we went
over
everything between here and there.”

“Over? Like flying?”

“More like a short-range clairvoyant scan. I think if she’d wanted to, and if she’d known what she was doing, she could have scanned everything we passed over.
I
think she’s stumbled onto a totally new talent just enough like distance reading for that to key her into it. And her range! We were a hell of a long way out, but with perfect clarity. If not for that dragon, we might
still
be reaching out! I couldn’t stop her. It was like…like wrestling a whirlwind! All I could do was hang on and hope.”

“Catch her when she fell, you mean,” Lentos corrected warmly. “Thank Semkirk you were able to! And maybe it’s as well this happened. At least she may finally see why we warn her against driving too hard. She came close enough to understand, anyway! But back to this vision or whatever it was. Was the fortress in a valley?”