A sound broke through her half-dream. She opened her eyes. One of those on the pallets had sat up, shrugged aside a covering of skins. The fire flickered to show a face—
Lusta, the dreamer!
Lethe’s keen sight was not deadened by the gloom. The girl’s eyes were closed. Nor did she open them as her head swung around as if in answer to some summons. On hands and knees, eyes still shut, she crawled away from the hearth into inner darkness, and then got to her feet. Lethe allowed her a small start and followed after.
Down the hall into the great presence chamber. The globe light was gone, it was totally dark here, yet Lusta went with the confidence of one who saw perfectly. Lethe followed. To break the girl’s trance—no—that was a dangerous folly. She must know what drove Lusta into the night.
They came forth from the hall into the open of the courtyard. Up the stairs Lusta went without a stumble. A moon shone warily between moving clouds, and to Lethe this was light enough. Lusta had sought out the very perch where Hurten had earlier made his sentry post.
She turned slowly, facing outward, and then her hand went out to the parapet and her fingers tapped along it. Sparks flew as if she used a wand of iron instead of her own flesh.
Lethe’s head went back. Her nostrils flared as if to catch some faint scent. She was already up the stairs; now she moved forward, and, standing behind Lusta, put out her own two hands, touching fingers lightly to both the girl’s temples.
The woman’s lips flattened into something closer than a snarl. This—but she had not thought that the new invaders were so knowledgeable. Or were they only symptoms of an older and fouler plague?
She applied pressure, flesh to flesh, and forced will upon dream. Lusta’s own hands paused in their tapping. Then she cried out sharply and crumpled as if all life had been withdrawn in a matter of a breath or two.
Lethe did not kneel at once beside her; rather she now turned all attention to the danger at hand. Where Lusta had wrought a breaking spell, she relaid the guard, this time reinforcing it with will enough to leave her feeling nearly as drained as the unconscious girl at her feet.
It was not well—what she had done would alert that other power that had already made this first move. Yet Lusta taken over, with a gift she had not been trained to protect, was a key which must not be used.
Lethe crouched down to gather the girl into her arms, pulling her cloak about the both of them. Lusta’s face was as chill as if she had been brought out of a snowbank, but both of her hands, which Lethe took into one of hers, were warm, near fire-hot. That which the girl had not finished projecting into the break spell was turned back upon her, eating in. She moaned and twisted in the woman’s hold.
“Lusta!” There came a call from below, then the scrape of boots on stone.
Tyffan came in a scrambling run. “Lusta!” He went down on his knees beside the two of them. “What—”
“She is safe—for now.” Under Lethe’s touch the fire had cooled from the girl’s hands. “Tyffan, you say she dreamed you here?”
“What is wrong with her?” He paid no attention to that question.
“She has been possessed.” Lethe gave him the truth. “Perhaps even her dreaming you here was by another’s purpose. This night that which held her in bond used her to attack the guards.”
Tyffan stared at the woman. “But Lusta would not—”
“No!” Lethe assured him quickly. “She would not have brought harm to you willingly. But she was not taught to guard her gift, and that laid her open to—”
“The demons!” But how—”
“We do not know by whom or why she was sent to do this,” Lethe said quickly. “But she has overused her strength, and we must get her into warmth now.”
Hurten and Orffa met them at the door of the presence chamber, and Tyffan gave them a confused answer as to what had happened as Lethe hurried the girl, who was on her feet but barely so, into the warmth of the kitchen place.
She oversaw the brewing up of an herbal potion and stood over Lusta until the girl drank it to the dregs. Lusta seemed but half awake, dazed, mumbling, and unaware of where she was or what had happened. Lethe saw her back to the pallet and then faced the others.
“You asked me earlier what I wanted of you,” she said directly. “That I do not yet fully know. But it may also be that another power brought you here and is prepared to make use of you.” And she explained what Lusta had been led to do.
“Lusta is not a demon!” Tyffan near shouted.
It was Marsila who answered him. “She is Wise. That is a power. Lusta would never use it for any but good. In truth”—now she spoke to Lethe—“she never used it by her will; the dreams came to her without her seeking or bidding.”
“We speak of power as a gift,” Lethe said. “It may also be a burden, even a curse, if it is not used with control. I do not think that Lusta was given any aid in learning what she could do—”
Tyffan stirred. “She—she didn’t know as how it meant anything.” He looked toward where the girl lay. “Her mam, she died when Lusta was just a mite. M’ mam, she was closest kin an’ took her. But we had no Wise for a long time. T’wasn’t ’til after th’ demons came that she dreamed—or at least told her dreams. But she’s no demon—ask Hurten—ask Truas and Tristy. She dreamed us together!”
“The demons,” Lethe returned. “Have you heard that they have some form of the Wisdom among them?”
The children looked to one another and then Marsila shook her head.
“They came like—like storm clouds—and there was no standing against them. There were so many and they seemed to appear without any warning. But my father said we fared so badly in the field against them because the lords and War Ladies had been cut adrift from any one leader. Each fought for their own holds, and one by one those Holds fell. There was no High Queen. It was almost as if we were all blinded—”
Hurten nodded. “My lord—he tried to send for help to the Hold of Iskar, and the lord there told him no because he feared those of Eldan more than the demons. He told the messenger that the rumors of demons were put about to frighten timid Hold-keepers. That was before Iskar was taken in two days and left but bloodied stone. There, it is true”—he spoke thoughtfully now, almost as if he were examining memory and seeing a new pattern in it—“that the Holders did not come together. And what they gave as reasons were mainly wariness of their own neighbors. Was that—could that have been some power of the demons?”
His hand had gone once more to the hilt of his dagger and he stared at Lethe as if he would have the truth even at a point of steel.
“It could be so.”
It was Alana who came a step or so closer and looked up into Lethe’s face.
“Lady, why would the demons want us who are here in this place—unless to kill us as”—she hesitated a second and the old fear came flooding back into her firelit eyes—“they did all the others? Lusta dreamed us here—but there were no demons waiting.”
“This was waiting, and perhaps your entrance here would open doors for them or something else.” Lethe was searching—her senses weighing first the children and then the very walls about them. No, there had been no tampering save that she had caught this night. There was no taint of dark in this company.
“What lies here then?” flared Hurten. “The demons came upon us from the north; they are not of our kind. Perhaps”—his eyes narrowed—“they are of yours—Lady.” And there was little goodwill in the title he gave her.