Heads rocked all throughout the band; people cried out, hurt and angry. Several hopped on one foot.
“He’s doing it!” Regan cried in disbelief “He’s causing us the pain he speaks of!”
The whole band drew back in awe and fear. “Now, Kerlew! The woods!” Gar snapped. The two men whirled and dashed into the trees.
Behind them, the band came alive with one massed shout and crashed into the underbrush behind them.
Alea wept, quietly but openly and without shame, as the room slowly emptied. When only Achalla was left with a younger woman by her side—her own daughter, Alea guessed—she let Moira lead her from the room.
“There now, you did all you could,” the seer assured her in a soothing tone. “More than most would have been able to do, I’m sure.”
“But not enough!”
“More than enough,” Moira said, “and I’m sure all her kin will think so, too.”
“Her kin!” Alea looked up, their predicament suddenly breaking in on her grief. Eyes still reddened and teary, she said, “They’ll be outraged with me now. I was supposed to heal her, and there she lies dead!”
“Now, they’ll do no such thing,” Moira said with an edge of sternness to her voice. “You told them you might not be able to heal her, after all.”
“That’s so, but they expected it nonetheless.” Alea saw Achalla coming out of her grandmother’s bedroom and rose, bracing herself for the worst. She had some ability at telekinesis, after all—she could make hot coals fly from the fireplace, let the rifles’ hammers fall, distract them in a dozen ways while she and Moira fled to the door, where her staff stood against the jamb, then out.
First, though, she had to confront Achalla. She blotted her eyes on her sleeve, then squared her shoulders and stood, braced, as the room quieted about them and Achalla advanced on her slowly.
Five feet from her, the new Grandmother of the Cumber clan stopped and inclined her head. “Great thanks we must give you, Lady Healer, and you, Lady Seer, for the consolation you have given our Grandmother in her last hour.”
Alea stood staring, dumbfounded.
“We are glad to have done what little we can,” Moira answered.
“Yes … yes, of course,” Alea said, then burst out, “but it was so little!”
“Not little at all.” Achalla answered with a melancholy smile. “She was in terror of death till you came. You gave her courage and a sweet passage, lady. And of no smaller moment, you gave her the tranquility to appoint her successor.” The new Grandmother shuddered. “Though I don’t know if I’m equal to the task.”
“Neither was she, when it came upon her,” Alea said without thinking.
Achalla frowned, wondering how Alea could know that, but she was distracted by voices on every side crying,
“Indeed you can, Achalla!”
“Of course you can, my dear!”
“Hail Grandmother Achalla Cumber!”
“Well, I’ve only the one grandchild yet,” Achalla answered with a tremulous smile, “but your confidence warms me.”
“We’re all your grandchildren now!” a young man said stoutly.
“So speaks my son-in-law,” Achalla said with quiet pride, then turned back to Alea again. “See how well you have wrought, lady! This clan shall continue and prosper now, for in her death, Grandmother has made us all one, thanks to the strength you gave her.”
“Not me, but the goddesses.” The words seemed to come automatically, even from outside Alea.
“Even as you say.” Achalla bent her head again. “I could almost believe in them again, after seeing the magic they wrought in Gram.”
“Believe in them indeed,” Moira said, her voice low but carrying, “when dark hours come and your world seems to break apart around you, for then the gods and goddesses of our ancestors will make it whole again.”
Achalla turned to her with a slight frown and a longing to believe, but all she said was, “So may it be.”
She turned back to Alea. “Ask of us what you will, lady, and if it is within our power, you shall have it.”
Alea managed a weak smile. “A night’s lodging, and breakfast in the morning, then the escort Alan Cumber pledged in all your names, for you have given me the hope that I may still heal the sick.”
“I shall go with her!” a young man cried. “And I!” a young woman said eagerly. “And II”
“And I!”
“And I!”
“I claim the right to lead this escort,” Alan said gravely, “for it was I who promised it.”
“And so you shall,” Achalla told him. “Now, though, pour mead and break soul-cakes together, and say each what you remember most fondly of Grandmother Emily Cumber!”
Then the wake began and lasted far into the night. At least, Alea thought it did, she went to bed exhausted before more than an hour or two had passed.
Gar and Kerlew crashed through the underbrush, then broke through onto a carpet of brown needles beneath towering evergreens.
“Zigzag!” Gar called. “Run straight and you’re easier to hit!”
“Known that since I was five!” Kerlew snapped, and ran. They twisted back and forth between the trunks, horribly exposed. Any sharpshooter could have sighted them and had a clear field of fire, if he could have known which way they would zag next—and if he’d been near. But Gar reached out with his mind, twisting senses of orientation, and behind them voices called out to one another, shouting contradictory directions. “North! I hear them crashing about!”
“East! See where the brush is broken!”
“Footsteps! I see them clearly! Run west!”
“South! I hear them calling to each other!”
“Calling?” Kerlew gasped. “We’ve been … silent!”
“Not now … you’re … not!” Gar panted. “Run!”
They ran, in and out among the trunks. Finally the evergreens gave out and they blundered in among oaks and elms. Still they ran, hopping over low growth and crashing through bushes until a stream cut across their path.
“Rest!” Kerlew fell to his knees, gasping. “Streams are … boundaries!”
They collapsed, gasping, listening for sounds of pursuit but hearing none—though Gar, opening his mind for thoughts, could hear loud arguments about which way the peddlers had gone. He threw in a few more false clues to keep them arguing. “How could they … fail to find us?” Kerlew wheezed. “These are … their woods!”
“They didn’t expect us to run,” Gar said airily. He caught another breath and said, “They probably spent … long enough screaming in shock… at your satire … that they couldn’t tell … where we’d gone.”
Kerlew frowned. “I’ve never seen satires really hurt people before. Not right away, anyway.”
“Not right away?” Gar gave him a keen glance. “When did they work?”
“Within a week—at least, it would start that quickly. Just bad luck, tripping over things, missing a shot, that sort of trouble.” Gar nodded. “The satire convinced them they’d have bad luck, so their minds made them have accidents. How often have you laid a satire before, Kerlew?”
“Only the once,” Kerlew said, “against Grandpa, when he cast me out of my clan, but I couldn’t stay to see what happened, of course. I didn’t think anything had.”
“Oh, really?” Gar asked with foreboding. “What punishment did you lay?”
“One that fit the crime. He’d a mind to cast me out for speaking for peace, so I said he’d never know peace of mind again.”
Gar thought of the old man constantly worried, constantly fearing something bad would happen, constantly tormented by memories of his past cruelties and fearing revenge, and shuddered. There was no question in his own mind—Kerlew was a powerful esper who didn’t know his own nature. He was a projective telepath who could make people think they saw things that weren’t real, could send their minds into turmoil, and probably make their subconscious minds cause them to trip over their own feet or—worse for these people—jerk the rifle a little whenever they pulled the trigger so they’d begin to miss every shot. He turned to Kerlew. “We’re away and safe. Maybe you could give the girls back their beauty.”