As he realized what Tanju was asking, Arvin’s breath caught. Zelia had already trampled through his mind and left her deadly seed. Did he really want another person crowding in there, too? “Is there any other way?” he asked.
“Without my guidance, what you’re about to attempt could take a tenday or more to master. It’s your choice.”
After a few moments, Arvin realized that’s just what he didn’t have: a choice. This might be his only chance to learn more about psionics before… Shrugging the thought aside, he concentrated and found the breathing pattern again. In through the nose, out through the mouth; in through the nose…”All right,” he sighed. “Do it. Join.”
Suddenly, Arvin’s skin felt wet. A thin, slippery coating of ectoplasm coated his body. Then it was gone.
Good, Tanju said, his words slipping into Arvin’s mind like a whisper. Now we can begin.
Tanju guided him, instructing Arvin to come up with a mental picture that represented his mind. Some object that Arvin could visualize-a network of roads, perhaps, or a system of streams and rivers down which his thoughts journeyed.
Arvin considered these examples and decided to visualize his thoughts like a flowing river. It proved to be a mistake. The river swiftly shifted into an image of snakes, slithering through his mind, trying to find each other so they could form a mating ball. Recognizing them as the tendrils of the mind seed, Arvin recoiled, his heart pounding.
What is it? Tanju asked.
The mind seed.
You fear it.
Yes. Arvin hesitated. Must I… overcome this fear… before you will train me?
Arvin felt rather than saw Tanju shake his head. This fear is too great, and it is justified. We will choose something else, instead. But first you need to picture your mind-your mind, rather than the portion the mind seed has already claimed. Choose another image, one that has a resonance for you alone.
Arvin, still struggling to keep his breathing even, considered. What could he picture his mind as that wouldn’t trigger a sharper image from the mind seed? Then it came to him. A net? he ventured. His mind indeed felt like that: a series of strands of thought, knotted together by memory.
A net that Zelia was trying to unravel.
Tanju gave a mental nod. A net. Good. Now explore that image. Send your mind ranging over the net and show me what you see.
Arvin did as instructed. The net he visualized was made up of strands of every fiber he had ever worked with, from coarse hemp twine to silken threads woven from individual magical hairs, from leather cord to rubbery trollgut. A handful of these strands were green and scaly and writhing with life-the strands of the mind seed, gradually snaking their way into the weave. But the center of the net was still intact, still Arvin’s own. The knots that held it together ranged from simple square knots to the most complicated knot he knew how to tie-the triple rose. The latter-a large, multilooped flowering of twine-was at the very center of his imaginary net, lurking like an ornate spider at the middle of its web.
That one, Tanju said, The largest knot, the memory you’ve tied the tightest. Ease it open, just a little, and look inside.
Arvin did as instructed, teasing one of the strands back… and saw his mother’s face. She was smiling at him, leaning forward to tie a leather thong around his neck-the one that held the bead he’d worn since that day. “Nine lives,” she said with a wink and tousled his hair.
With the memory came an emotion-one of overwhelming grief and loss. “Mother,” he moaned aloud. The strands of thought that led to this memory seemed thin, frayed, ready to snap and recoil.
Tanju gave Arvin’s hand a mental squeeze, steadying him. Go deeper, he urged, As deep as you can. Learn to look upon your mother’s death and not be afraid.
Arvin shuddered. Ican’t, he thought back. Not with you watching.
But I need to guide-
No!
Very well.
All at once, Arvin felt Tanju withdraw. Relieved, Arvin steadied his breathing and returned to his task. He could do this on his own. He could confront this fear and master it. He loosened the memory knot a little more, forcing himself to revisit the day he’d learned that his mother was dead. Arvin continued reluctantly, like a man probing with his tongue at an aching tooth.
He remembered the words his uncle had spoken when breaking the news of his mother’s death-how he’d callously answered Arvin’s tearful questions about whether her body would be brought back to the city for cremation. “Are you mad, boy?” his uncle had asked scornfully. “She died of plague. Her body will have to be left where it lies. Nobody would be stupid enough to touch it. Besides, you wouldn’t want to see it. She died of the Mussum plague. She’ll be covered in abscesses.”
Arvin hadn’t known what an abscess was. He’d imagined his mother’s skin erupting with maggots. That night, he’d had a nightmare-of his mother’s face, her eyes replaced with two fat, white, squirming things.
It had been more than a tenday before he was able to sleep without the lantern illuminated. Every time his uncle had stormed in and angrily blown it out, Arvin had lain awake in darkness, imagining “abscesses” wiggling under his own skin. He sent his mind deep into that memory, remembering how he had felt to be a small boy lying awake all night long, too terrified to touch his own skin. It was just a nightmare, he told himself. Mother didn’t actually look that way when she died.
No, she would have looked far worse. According to what Arvin had learned over the years since then, the Mussum plague turned the skin green and covered it in terrible boils.
He imagined her covered in pockmarks, like the Pox.
He immediately wrenched his mind away from the image. But after a moment, he forced himself to return to it. His mother was dead-she’d been dead twenty years. By now the marks of plague would be long gone. She’d be a skeleton…
A skeleton lying alone and forgotten, on the plains outside Mussum…
Once again, his mind recoiled. He forced it to return to the thought, to make himself acknowledge the fact that his mother was indeed a corpse. Or perhaps, not even that-her body would have been consumed by time and the elements long ago.
She is dust, he told himself.
The thought comforted him. In his mind, he held the dust that was his mother close to his heart then extended his hand and let it trickle through his fingers to be borne away by the wind. His mother was at peace.
And so, he realized with some surprise, was he.
Tanju must have heard the change in Arvin’s breathing. “Well done,” he said, a hint of awe in his voice. “Perhaps I will be able to teach you something, after all. Are you ready to continue?”
Arvin gave a satisfied smile. “Yes.”
“Good. Then, open your eyes.”
Tanju rose to his feet and gestured for Arvin to do the same. “It’s unlikely that you can learn a form in so short a space of time as a single morning, but I can introduce you to the concept of psionic combat,” Tanju began. “We will begin with the defenses,” he said. “There are five of them, each designed to counter a specific psionic attack but still useful, to a lesser extent, against the other attack forms. It is useful to picture each as a physical posture. This gives the mind something to visualize as it manifests the defense.
“The first form is Empty Mind,” Tanju continued. “It is most useful against a psychic crush. It can be visualized like this.” Raising his hands, Tanju held them on either side of his face, palms toward himself. For a moment he stood utterly still, eyes closed and face turned slightly up to the sunlight that shone down on him through gaps in the ceiling above. Then his hands began to move, sweeping through the air in front of his face as if he were washing it clean.