There was no pain, only a slight tugging to indicate what it was doing, but the contact opened it to her empathic senses, and she knew its nature. Older by far than any creature she’d ever touched in that manner, it too was empathic. It fed on emotions until there was nothing left, then consumed the body of its victims—she could feel its anticipation.
The creature was too alien for Rialla to pick up any but the most basic of memories, but she could tell what its intentions were; finding an empath was an unexpected treat—something it hadn’t fed upon before.
Casually, giving her no warning, it projected a stray thought, and Rialla screamed in terror that she could feel the thing absorb—but the terror broke her trance. Frantically, with a dancer’s agility, she twisted out of the cord and ran. Grabbing a gilt-edged sword hanging from the nearby wall, Rialla ripped it from its mounting and held it in front of her with practiced ease. She could taste the blood where she had bitten her lip.
The sword was obviously made for decorative purposes—it was ill-balanced and unwieldy. It was also, unfortunately, dull. She thought wryly that she would more likely be able to bludgeon the thing to death with the sword than cut it.
Another black cord stretched tentatively toward her. When she struck out at it, it merely wrapped itself around the sword and tugged it gently away, dropping it carelessly on the floor out of Rialla’s reach.
Muttering a filthy word, Rialla grabbed a black cast-iron candle holder and knocked the candle off the sharpened spike at the end. The candle snuffed itself out on the floor.
The candle holder was almost as good a weapon as the sword. The point was sharp enough to skewer almost anything, but it was only two hand-spans long. Judging from the creature’s size, that was almost long enough to enrage it. The holder was also heavy; she could just manage to hold it if she rested the base on the floor. Unless the creature was as stupid as an enraged boar, her makeshift weapon wouldn’t do her any good. From what she could sense, the beast was smarter than she was. Though she had strengthened her mental protection as well as she could, she felt the creature laugh at her.
Rialla dropped the end of the useless candle holder and stepped back to avoid its bounce. Then, with deliberate calmness, she waited for the creature to touch her again. There was one weapon she hadn’t tried. Though she had never done anything like it before, she knew that it was possible to turn the creature’s attack against it. If she were strong enough.
A slender cord wrapped itself around her neck so gently it almost tickled. Sweat trickled down Rialla’s neck as she waited for its mind to touch hers. When it did, she welcomed it—luring it deeper and deeper. Then with a savage, desperate wrench she tore down the scarred barriers that kept the emotions of everyone around her out of her mind, and poured everything she could gather from the crowded ballroom into the creature’s mind. Theoretically, if she could rid herself of it fast enough, only a token of the full effect would touch her.
Momentarily, she caught something out of the crowd… a voice in her head, Lord Karsten’s… betrayal and surprise—hot pain that faded into the nothingness that she recognized as death. There were a jumble of emotions from people near Karsten’s body. Ignoring the import of Karsten’s murder, she fed his emotions and death into the mind of the creature that she battled.
The thing struck her with its tail, trying to break her concentration, laying open the large muscle in her thigh. She fed the burning pain back to it. The creature twitched and fought frantically, as if it faced a physical weapon, losing control of its thoughts as it tried to flee. She sensed the opportunity and thrust its own terror back into it.
When its heart burst under the adrenal surge, she frantically tried to close her mind. With an ear-shattering wail the creature fell heavily and lay silent and unmoving.
Rialla slowly became aware that she was on her hands and knees and that the floor was wet. The smell of half-rotten plants was thick in the air. As the minutes passed, she knew that she had to find the strength from somewhere to make sure that no one touched her. She could feel people moving closer as the stillness of the monster gave them courage.
If one of them decided to help her, they were likely to suffer the same fate as the creature that she’d killed. She didn’t have the control to shield her empathy against such an invasion.
There weren’t many people left in the ballroom, which made her condition slightly more bearable. Through her weak barriers she could sense Laeth and the tearing grief that he felt at his brother’s death. Rialla could feel Lord Jarroh’s rage and Marri’s surprise at the depth of sorrow that she felt.
The healer must indeed have accepted the lure that Karsten had offered him. Rialla heard his voice ring clearly through the abandoned room, calmness in the insane clamor of the ballroom. “Lord Karsten is dead. The knife punctured his heart and left lung; he died almost instantly. I am sorry, but there is nothing I can do.”
Someone was getting too close. Rialla managed to say hoarsely, “Stay away.” He wasn’t listening, so she added hoarsely, “It might not be dead.” That made him back away fast.
There were too many thoughts in her head. She needed to rest before she could block everyone out. The stone was cold against her cheek, cold and wet.
“No. Stay back. Lord Laeth. Unless you want to end like that thing over there. Give her some time.” The healer again. Tris. Someone who would keep the people away until she could pull up her barriers.
She relaxed and concentrated on retrieving her barriers, but she loosened her control too soon. She should have known how well Laeth followed directions; she felt his intention just an instant too late. When he touched her, she screamed, trying frantically to shield him from the confusion of emotions, his and hers. Mercifully, she passed out just after Laeth did.
4
Rialla awoke with a smile. During the short space of time before full awareness descended, she savored the unusually strong sense of well-being like a sliver of ice on a hot day. She opened her eyes with reluctance as her memory returned.
Instead of the gray stone walls she’d grown used to, the room she was in was dominated by wood. The floorboards were varnished and lovingly polished to a high gloss. The walls were flatboard interlocked and darkened with oil. Across the room was a large window, extravagantly made of clear glass that flooded the room with light from outside.
The room was minimally furnished with the bed, a small table in the far corner and a small woven rug. The total effect was spartan and spacious: the warm colors of the woods and the red and yellow bedclothes kept it from feeling unwelcoming. It seemed obvious that she wasn’t in Westhold, but she didn’t have the slightest idea where else she could be.
Rialla sat up and caught her breath at the sharp pain in her left thigh. She remembered being hit by the swamp creature’s tail, but at the time she’d been too caught up in the battle to assess the damage.
She sat up stiffly and tugged the unwieldy quilt off her leg, swinging both of her feet off the bed. A thick bandage of unbleached cotton covered her thigh from hip to knee. Underneath the wrappings, her leg throbbed painfully, though she hadn’t felt it at all when she woke up. Rubbing her head, which was also starting to ache, she tried to reconstruct what had happened in the ballroom, so she could figure out where she was and what she was doing here.
It was difficult to sort out the mixture of other people’s emotions and thoughts, but she could piece together a little of it. She knew that Lord Karsten was dead. She’d felt him die with a brief burning pain as a sharp knife slid between his ribs and into his heart.