“Who’s not there?” he whispered.
“Lord Kern,” Gregory answered, “that Daddy like thee, in that Faerie Gramarye thou’st talk of.”
Rod stared at him.
Then he stepped closer to the boy. Magnus took a step toward Gregory, too, but Rod waved him away impatiently. He dropped to one knee, staring into the three-year-old’s eyes. “No… no, Lord Kern isn’t anywhere—except, maybe, in his own universe, that Faerie Gramarye. But why should you think he was?”
Gregory cocked his head to the other side. “But didst thou not, but now, reach out to touch his mind with thine own, to draw upon his powers?”
Rod just gazed at the boy, his face blank.
“Gregory!” Gwen cried in anguish, and she took a step toward him, then drew back for Rod still knelt staring at the child, his face blank.
Then he looked up at Gwen, with an irritated frown. “What am I—a bear? Or a wolf?” He raked the children with his glare. “Some kind of wild animal?”
They stared back at him, eyes huge, huddled together.
His face emptied again. “You think I am. You really think I am, don’t you?”
They stared back, wordlessly, eyes locked on him.
He held still, rigid.
Then he swung up to his feet, turning on his heel, and strode to the door.
Cordelia darted after him, but Gwen reached out and caught her arm.
Rod paced out into the bleakness of a day veiled by clouds. A chill wind struck at him, but he didn’t notice.
Rod finally came to a halt at the top of a hill, a mile from home. He stood, staring down at the broad plain below, not really seeing it. Finally, he sank down to sit on the dry grass. His thoughts had slowed in their turmoil as he walked; now, gradually, they sank away, leaving a blank in his mind. Into that, a niggling doubt crept. Softly, he asked, “What happened, Fess?”
The robot-horse answered, though he was a mile away in the stable. Rod heard him through the earphone embedded in his mastoid process, behind his ear. “You lost your temper, Rod.”
Rod’s mouth twitched with impatience. The robot’s horse body might be a distance away in the stable, but the old family retainer could see into him as well as if they were only a foot apart. “Yes, I do realize that much.” The microphone embedded in his maxillary, just above the teeth, picked up his words and transmitted them to Fess. “But it was more than simple anger, wasn’t it?”
“It was rage,” Fess agreed. “Full, thorough, open wrath, without any restraints or inhibitions.”
After a moment, Rod asked, “What would have happened if my family hadn’t been able to defend themselves so well?”
Fess was silent. Then he said, slowly, “I would hope that your inborn gentleness and sense of honor would have protected them adequately, Rod.”
“Yes,” Rod muttered. “I would hope so, too.”
And he sat, alone in his guilt and self-contempt, in silence. Even the wind passed him by.
Quite some while later, cloth rustled beside him. He gave no sign of having heard, but his body tensed. He waited, but only silence filled the spaces of the minutes.
Finally, Rod spoke. “I did it again.”
“Thou didst,” Gwen answered gently. Her voice didn’t blame—but it didn’t console, either.
Something stirred within Rod. It might have risen as anger, but that was burned out of him, now. “Been doing that a lot lately, haven’t I?”
Gwen was silent a moment. Then she said, “A score of times, mayhap, in the last twelvemonth.”
Rod nodded, “And a dozen times last year, and half-a-dozen the year before—and two of those were at the Abbott, when he tried his schism.”
“And a third with the monster which rose from the fens…”
Rod shrugged irritably. “Don’t make excuses for me. It still comes down to my losing my temper with you and the kids, more than with anyone else—and for the last three months, I’ve been blowing up about every two weeks, haven’t I?”
Gwen hesitated. Then she answered, “None so badly as this, my lord.”
“No, it never has been quite as bad as this, has it? But every time, it gets a little worse.”
Her answer was very low. “Thou hast offered hurt to us aforetime…”
“Yes, but I’ve never actually tried it have I?” Rod shuddered at the memory and buried his head in his hands. “First, I just threw things. Then I started throwing them without using my hands. Today, I would’ve thrown Magnus—if Gregory hadn’t interrupted in time.” He looked up at her, scowling. “Where in Heaven’s name did you get that boy, anyway?”
That brought a hint of smile. “I did think we had, mayhap, borne him back from Tir Chlis, my lord.”
“Ah, yes!” Rod stared out over the plain again. “Tir Chlis, that wonderful, magical land of faeries and sorcerers, and—Lord Kern.”
“Even so,” Gwen said softly.
“My other self,” Rod said bitterly, “my analog in an alternate universe—with magical powers unparalleled, and a temper to match.”
“Thou wert alike in many ways,” Gwen agreed, “but temper was not among them.”
“No, and witch powers weren’t either—but I learned how to ‘borrow’ his wizardry, and it unlocked my own powers, powers that I’d been hiding from myself.”
“When thou didst let his rage fill thee,” Gwen reminded gently.
“Which seems to have also unlocked my own capacity for wrath; it wiped out the inhibitions I’d built up against it.”
“Still—there were other inhibitions that thou didst learn to lay aside, also.” Gwen touched his hand, hesitantly.
Rod didn’t respond. “Was it worth it? Okay, so I had been psionically invisible; nobody could read my mind. Wasn’t that better than this rage?”
“I could almost say the sharing of our minds was worth the price of thy bouts of fury,” Gwen said slowly, “save that…”
Rod waited.
“Thy thoughts grow dim again, my lord.”
Rod only sat, head bowed.
Then he looked up. “I’m beginning to hide myself away from you again?”
“Hast thou not felt it?”
He stared into her eyes; then he nodded. “Is that any surprise? When I can’t trust myself not to explode into wrath? When I’m beginning to feel as though I’m some sort of subhuman beast? Sheer shame, woman!”
“Thou art worthy of me, my lord.” Her voice was soft, but firm, and so was her hand. “Thou art worthy of me, and of thy children. I’ truth, we are fortunate to have thee.” Her voice shook. “Oh, we are blessed!”
“Thanks.” He gave her hand a pat. “It’s good to hear… Now convince me.”
“Nay,” she murmured, “that I cannot do, an thou’lt not credit what I say.”
“Or even what you do.” Rod bowed his head, and his hand tightened on hers. “Be patient, dear. Be patient.”
And they sat alone in the wind, not looking at each other, two people very much in love but very much separated, clinging to a thin strand that still held them joined, poised over the drop that fell away to fallow lands below.
Magnus turned away from the window with a huge sigh of relief. “They come—and their hands are clasped.”
“Let me see, let me see!” The other three children shot to the window, heads jammed together, noses on the pane.
“They do not regard one another,” Cordelia said dubiously.
“Yet their hands are clasped,” Magnus reminded.
“And,” Cordelia added, troubled, “their thoughts are dark.”
“Yet their hands are elapsed. And if their thoughts are dark, they are also calm.”