And that shield, that shadow that enveloped them. No, not exactly a shadow... a fog? No, that wasn’t it, either. It was just as cold and dispassionate as they were, which probably made it easier to obscure their thoughts. Despite being a separate thing from them, and despite the fact that it definitely reacted to an intrusive presence, Mags didn’t think it was exactly alive. Not as he knew things were alive. And despite the appearance of intelligence, he didn’t believe it could actually think. Could it be it was like a clockwork toy that gave the illusion of life by doing several things in a lifelike manner?
Never mind. He knew what it felt like, too. He could hunt for it as well as for them.
::Ready to hunt?:: Dallen asked.
He answered with a wordless yes.
He felt his eyes closing, and yet, he could still see the sphere. Odd... but he didn’t have time for musing. Because—because at that moment, “he” wasn’t sitting at the table anymore. “He” was floating... somewhere. If he concentrated quite hard, he “saw” parts of Haven beneath him, but the buildings were like sketches of buildings, while the people in them varied from dim ghosts to perfectly normal looking people to creatures that burned like stars.
And without thinking about anything but the need to hunt, he began to move. It was something like flying dreams he’d had, and the dream-landscape below him took on a hint of familiarity.
Well, the only analogy he could make was that “he” became a hunting falcon, circling up over the Palace, searching, searching... Herald Jakyr, the Herald who had rescued him from his life at Cole Pieters’ mine, was an avid falconer and had taken him along on a few hunts on the rare occasions he was in Haven. And this was exactly like being one of those hawks, circling, soaring, keen eyes looking, looking everywhere. Walls were no barrier to those eyes, as he circled farther and farther outward. He “saw” the people beneath him and somehow saw them outwardly and inwardly too. He could have read their thoughts, but that wasn’t right, and besides, it was not why he was out here. He only needed to recognize what they were—see that they were not what he was hunting for—and move on.
It was anything but effortless. He felt exactly as if he were playing a hard game of Kirball, and he was hunting the ball. Energy drained out of him; Dallen had spoken nothing less than the truth. At least it wasn’t stinking hot . . .
This was like the search he’d done for Bear, only so much more precise! And there was none of that mental clamor he had to shut out all the time under ordinary circumstances, the clamor that had come so close to driving him insane the single time he’d been forced to rid himself of all shields. If he’d had to hold his own shields against that, this task would have been out of the question; he could never have done it.
Mags sensed his quarry in the distance before he “saw” them, sensed the chill of the thoughts that wisped away from them. That was what made them stand out in this vague and ever-changing landscape. There was nothing, and no one, as cold and emotionless as they were.
They were on the move. And the thing that shielded them made it impossible to say exactly where in the real Haven they were.
::Damn,:: he heard Dallen say, as he sped toward them. He wasn’t sure if that “damn” was because that sheltering thing obscured their location or because of what they were doing. For as he neared them, the real landscape of Haven solidified around them, as if by their very presence they were dragging it into this world of ghosts and shadows. A moving, irregularly shaped spheroid of reality surrounded them.
He could “see” it all quite clearly, and he watched in amazement and grudging admiration. He’d thought he was good going over rooftops. Now he was glad he’d never encountered these two up there. They moved like nothing human that he had ever seen: fast, agile, making insane leaps that not even a cat would try. The only way they could have gone faster over these rooftops would have been if they had grown wings.
Well, at least he knew they were in the city.
He didn’t need Dallen to tell him to stay with them for as long as he could. Those shield-things weren’t perfect. Thoughts—the most intense thoughts, at a guess—leaked out. He had to stay with them and concentrate on listening so he could catch those thoughts.
His focus narrowed again. He stopped being aware of anything except the two shields and the whispers that slipped out and evaporated away.
He was getting hints, but not in words. These two were concentrating on what they were doing to the exclusion even of coherent thoughts. But he was getting something. They had just left their allies on the Hill! But... who were these allies? He strained for a hint, since their escaping thoughts bore hints.
Scents, glimpses, traces of sound—
He was too far. The thoughts were too tenuous to catch from this far away, and he tried to get closer—
Suddenly, something bright and dark together exploded in his face.
He was flung halfway across the “sky.” He felt Dallen enclose him for just a moment, protecting him.
He was stunned; it felt as if he’d been hit in the head hard enough to crack his skull.
When he could “look” again, they were gone.
Dammit! I got too close! The shield-things had sensed him and—well, now he knew what they could, and would, do.
He hovered in an empty space, an empty “sky,” with the world beneath him, blank for the moment. Thanks to Dallen, he knew what had happened. Even through Dallen’s protection, they had shocked his system, and he had lost his mental image of the world.
Should he try to find them again?
Could he? What if those shield-things recognized him and went straight into an attack? Could Dallen protect him a second time?
Before he could make up his mind, another unshielded thought—not from Ice and Stone, but someone else entirely, echoed across the ghostly spaces where he floated.
An image. Amily. Amily, bound and gagged, terrified and alone.
::Mags!::
It wasn’t an image in the present—he knew immediately that Amily was safe in her own bed. This was something someone had seen... no, Foreseen.
::Mags!::
He ignored Dallen and focused on that thought, on that mind, fear and anger turning his will into a rapier with a tip of diamond, searching until he found the mind that held that vision.
He didn’t have to “follow” anything this time—he was there, right there, in a room here in the Palace, catapulted into the midst of a small group of people. Nikolas, the King, a Herald he didn’t recognize, three people in the robes of three different Temples, the Lord Marshal, a couple of Healers.
“. . . I thought perhaps we’d averted it when we canceled the procedure on Amily’s leg,” the strange Herald was saying. “But all four of us got the same vision within an hour of each other. These people are going to try again to take Herald Nikolas’ daughter and hold her to force him to do what they tell him to. Last time we got a vision, they were going to take her either just before or just after her leg was reset. We couldn’t tell which—”