But there was a barrier to that. What if they decide I'm responsible for the fire?
And another. What if he really was?
No, that was ridiculous. How could he have started the fire? Impossible. And this was a Herald. Surely, if anyone would know the truth when he heard it, this man would.
"It depends on who you were talking to," Lan said, unable to keep sullenness out of his voice, but relaxing a little. His heart stopped pounding, and he stopped shivering as much, but he still held to the bench with a death grip.
"Not the young devils in the—what-you-call—Sixth Form," the Guard Captain rumbled unexpectedly. Paper whispered as he took a list out of his pocket. "Young lad called Owyn Kittlekine in your group was the most talkative."
Lan felt tension spool up again. "What did he tell you?" he asked.
"Largely that the leaders of the Sixth Form were using the sloth and negligence of Master Keileth and your teachers to bully and abuse the younger students," the Guard Captain said in disgust. "We've had words with their parents, and that school isn't going to open again until matters are set right."
"But we want to know—exactly—what happened in that room, Lan," the Herald interrupted, "I know you don't want to think about it, but when there is even one death, much less four, we have to know why. People are asking a lot of awkward questions, and we must have answers for them."
Oh, gods. They do think I'm responsible!
This time, Lan wasn't shivering with cold, he was trembling with fear, and something angry and ominously familiar roused deep inside him. He began to flush as he spoke, feeling anger uncoil in his belly.
"They—Tyron—said I was eroding discipline because I wasn't letting them catch me to beat me up," he began slowly. "And because I wouldn't steal velvet from my father for him. He wanted scarlet for a Midwinter tunic, and he told me to get him some. When I told him I didn't get pocket money, he told me to get the velvet however I had to, and that he'd flog me for disobedience if I didn't." Just the memory made him angry, and he felt a headache beginning. Once again, the Herald and the Guard Captain exchanged a look. "He said he was going to punish me for that, and because some of the others were staying up in the classrooms over lunch like I was doing instead of going down to the Hall where Tyron and his bunch could get at them. And he said he was going to punish me for lying about being sick, and for lying about staying behind after classes to study and coming in early to study. He was going to flog me for all of that, and that was why they took me to the storeroom, where nobody could hear me."
"Hmm." The Guard Captain made a note, but said nothing. Once again, it was the Herald that asked the questions.
"And did he tell you just how severe your punishment was going to be?" he asked.
Lan squinted through his headache. "Eighty stripes—I think—" I can't think... why won't they leave me alone? I didn't do anything!
The Herald interrupted. "All right, you say that the older boys found you in the classroom and took you downstairs to the storage room to flog you."
He hadn't said that, he hadn't said where they'd found him, but it was right, so he snapped his mouth shut and tried to think through a pounding headache that misted his vision with red. He just nodded, and the Herald continued.
"Then what happened?"
"Tyron—told me what I told you—and then he told the others to 'play with me' and they started to shove me around." He could hardly speak now, torn between anger at his tormentors, and a terror as great as they had given him, but why was he so horribly afraid? What was it that the Herald's questions were pushing him toward? Why did the questions make him want to run away, howling?
Please! Leave me alone!
"So they tossed you about and slammed you into the walls. Then?"
"Then—that was when Tyron said—and they took me to the chair—and they tied—" The red rage and fear rose together, and the Herald wouldn't let him alone!
"Then what, Lan?" the Herald persisted. "Then what happened? We have to know!"
He reached out and seized Lan's shoulder in an insistent grip, and the rage and the fear spiraled upward, out of control, and melded into a terrible whole.
"No!" he screamed, flinging himself away, dimly understanding that the unthinking rage and the animal fear would strike at whatever was nearest, whether the target deserved it or not.
He stumbled and fell to his hands and knees at the foot of one of the great torches as the maelstrom of emotion became the monster of flame—but this time, he did not touch anything living.
He sprawled at the base of the ornamental torch, and as his eyes glazed over with crimson, the oil above his head erupted in flame with a sound like the dull impact of a giant fist on flesh, or of something soft and heavy falling to earth. A wave of heat washed over him, and his trailing sleeves caught fire.
By this point, he was helpless; the fire held him in thrall. All he could do was let it rage around him, and hope nothing came within its grasp.
Forlorn hope.
Another torch went up, and another, and the nearest bush started to crisp and crackle with flames. The fire spread, and he could do nothing! He heard, as from a far country, the cries of alarm, and even someone calling his name, but he was no longer himself, he was the fire, and the flames were more intoxicating than wine, more implacable than a thunderstorm, all-consuming and all-enveloping, and in a moment or two he would be gone and there would be nothing left but the flames.
The little of himself that was left was nothing more than a dry leaf in the firestorm; tempest-tossed, not yet consumed, but doomed, surely doomed—
:Never!:
The word, clear and bright as a trumpet call in a still night, sounded above the chaos enveloping him.
There was a moment of total stillness. Lan, teetering just above the fiery abyss and about to fall into it forever, felt—something—reach for him, take him, and pluck him away.
The rage and fear ran out of him like molten metal poured from a cracked crucible. The ragged lightning piercing his brain with unbearable pain vanished. The crimson haze cleared from his sight, and he looked up, saw that the fire around him had died away, all but the flames rising from the torches; saw that he was not alone.
But it was no human that stood beside him, valiantly shielding him with her own body from the Herald and the spears of the two Guards and the Captain.
It was a Companion.
Oh— he thought vaguely, and looked into her eyes.
Once again he fell, but not to his doom.
He fell into a cool, blue world of light; he fell forever and never reached the bottom. But something reached out for him.
Something enfolded him, wrapped and cradled him in an emotion he almost didn't recognize. And when he realized what it was, he wept, and as he wept, he returned it with all his heart, and wrapped the giver in the gift, until it was no longer possible for either of them to have told where one began and the other ended.