There was a tightness at the back of my throat as I left the tent, and I wondered for a moment at the depth of emotion Janos’s healing and Terlys’s words had aroused in me… It was as though all my inner feelings had been thrust outward and were now lying just beneath my skin. Why? I had always been one trained to strong control, the masking of my thoughts and feelings—part of the lessoning I had received in preparation for running a Keep, before the war had ended that future for me.
Suddenly the answer to my new sensitivity came to me, and I smiled to think how purblind I had been. Many of my patients had described this feeling of being “thin-skinned” to all and sundry while they were carrying—did I think that I, because I was a healer, would be immune?
“You smile, Lady.” The cold words came from behind me. Whirling, I saw Nidu step out from the side of the nearest tent. As usual, the Shaman went robed in her hooded gown of coarse linen dyed dark brown, almost black. A small drum swung from her belt, and her fingers caressed the head of it, producing a faint thrumming. “Why do you smile? Do you have some secret happiness? Or could it be you were thinking of how you made me look foolish just now?”
I found that the drum’s barely discernible rhythm made it hard to concentrate, but I managed to summon words. “Of course not, Cera Nidu. I am just glad Janos is better.”
“Thanks to you, of course…” She moved closer, her fingers moving more quickly. “It seems you have a certain magic of your own, which, though it is no match for mine, still must be reckoned with. That is…” The thrumming of her nails on the hide top of her drum grew louder, and she swayed to its beat. “If you have any wish to stay here. Do you. Lady?”
“I… do not know.” To my horror I found my pulse In-ginning to quicken, even as these drumbeats did. • “I must stay here until my lord returns from the scout. Then, I know not what we will do. I wish no trouble. I came when Terlys called, because she has been my friend here.
Her eyes were jet, black and stony in her thin face. “You speak truth, I see. Still, there are times when those who wish no trouble nevertheless find it. Your summoning have disturbed the Dream Spirits who answer the drumming for me. My pipe visions are clouded. You must leave, and now.”
“I cannot. My lord—”
“Your lord, Joisan, has troubles enough of his own. He meddles, Lady, even as you do, and he has not your treble lessoning. Look.” Raising her hand palm outward, she brought it before my eyes, so I could see clearly the lines thereon. The muttered beat of the drumming in-creased still further. I attempted to step back, away from that threatening hand, but could not move. I looked at her palm, unable to look away, and even as I did so, I could see a swirling there… a clouding… a picture, growing…
Kerovan stood in the middle of an endless plain, sword out, the wristband he wore glowing, flaming, the runes along it pulsing brilliant red and gold. Beyond him was what appeared to be a well—but it was hard to see the exact shape, the miasma of the Shadow rose so dark about it. My breath caught as I realized the Dark was drawing, calling to my lord, and that he was answering that challenge. Legs braced apart, head up, he faced the thing, so real in the farseeing I felt that I must reach out, grab his arm, drag him backward from that noisome menace striving to entrap him.
“Kerovan!” I strove to force words, then a mindsharing, but his attention did not waver from what he faced. Was this an illusion Nidu created? But he was so real—he stood close enough that I could see the faint shadow of beard on his cheek, see the wind whip his unhelmed hair, longer now than when he’d ridden away. Why could he not hear me? Kerovan!
Slowly he moved toward the thing, one step… another—
“Kerovan!” My cry startled me as well as several of the passing Kioga. I blinked, shivering, my heart thrumming, although the drum was now silent. Nidu still fronted me, smiling, but that twist of lip held nothing about it of friendship or human goodwill. Slowly she lowered her hand. “See, Lady? Your lord may well not return from the scout. You had best ride on without him, and be grateful to leave safely.”
Anger swelled in me, hot and bursting, like a wound poisoned within. I longed to draw the dagger at my belt or, better still, seek out my sword, lying paces away in my tent. But anger leashed and controlled in the face of another’s heat is ofttimes a more potent weapon. I willed my voice to calmness.
“You know I will not do so, Nidu. I await my lord’s safe return. He has faced the Shadow before, and triumphed.”
“Think you so? Would you like to see what is even now happening to him?”
I dared not accept her offer to call up another farseeing for me—I could well imagine that to do so would open the door to whatever illusion this woman wished me to view. Kerovan’s death—or worse. Also, to accept a gift of magic knowingly from one who means you ill can tie the receiver to the giver—with dire price.
“No.” I made my answer firm and without further speech stepped aside, walking without haste to my tent.
Once safely inside, out of sight of both friendly and unfriendly gaze, I collapsed on my sleeping pallet. Shudders shook my body, sobs wrenched my throat. That evil tiling—and my lord walking toward it! Did he still live? I had voiced brave words for Nidu’s ears, but my mind kept returning to Kerovan’s steadfast determination to avoid all knowledge of powers beyond those of humankind. Yet in lacing such a foe, ordinary steel, even if swung in the most expert swordsman’s grasp, would avail little. If Kerovan tried to fight such a menace so… I closed my eyes, willing any trace of mindsharing, so that I might know . but nothing awoke in response to my efforts. For the next several days I tried many times to contact him, although with little hope. Our mindsharing had always been a tenuous thing at best, occurring mostly when we were within speaking distance, or in physical contact. To hope for such at what must be many days’ journey away. Yet still, at intervals, I found myself questing, calling—only to touch nothing.
Each night I fell on my pallet, exhausted, for the forming of a child during the first three moons is taxing for a woman’s body. This I had heard many times and found it true, though thankfully I was never plagued by any sickness.
Except for my unaccustomed fatigue, I felt well—barring the constant worry about Kerovan’s well-being.
Another concern pricked at me during those days, something I tried unsuccessfully to attribute to my pregnancy—the dreams began.
Each night, as I dreamed, I became another person, a young woman, but one not altogether of humankind. I never saw myself mirrored in any surface, but my hands bore elongated curving fingers, with a faint pearly look about them, as though they might be covered with the tiniest of scales. On my arms (for the short tunic I wore left them bare) fluffed a noticeable white down, also bearing an opalescent sheen.
At first I would wake at once when the dream-awareness that I was this Other came to me, but as each night followed, I found myself enclosed within that Other’s body for longer and longer periods, seeing through her eyes. As this Other I lived within a Keep, stone-walled and old, old beyond measuring, aged far beyond even the most tumbled ruin we knew in High Hallack. Gazing out my window across the heights (for this Keep surmounted a mountaintop), I knew this place had stood for aeons.
Yet I was not old—rather, I was young, perhaps even younger than my dreaming self. Those rocky heights held no fear for me; I knew each path, each cliff, each crag. Nearly every day I climbed down the mountainside to the valley with its river, its grassland, and the forests it sheltered.
I loved the bare crags of the mountaintop, but even more I felt myself truly at home in the valley. The birds, animals—even the trees and grasses held a special affinity for me, and my world contained no greater joy than that I found sitting beside a woodland stream or running free across the meadow.