Arrows of the Queen (32 page)

“You all have Gifts strong enough to bring both stages of the spell to bear,” she said a moment later, “So why don't you start practicing? Neave and Talia, with me—the twins with Elcarth.”

The feeling of having the second stage of the Truth Spell cast on her was decidedly eerie, Talia found. No matter what she had
intended
to say, she found her tongue would not obey her; only the exact truth came out. In cases where she didn't know the answer to a question, she was even forced to say so rather than temporize.

At last Ylsa declared them all proficient enough to close the class out.

“You know the ‘spells'—though if we find out you've been using the Truth Spell as a prank, you'll find yourself in
very
hot water, so don't even consider it! Practice it if you wish, but do so only under the supervision of a full Herald. You know where your strengths and weaknesses lie,” she continued, “Just like sparring practice will make you a better fighter, practicing with your Gifts will develop them to their full extent. If you run into any problems that are related to your Gifts, there are three of us who are probably the experts; you can come to any of us, day or night if it's an emergency. Myself, when I'm at the Collegium, the Dean, or Herald Kyril, the Seneschal's Herald. There are books in the Library as well that may help; I recommend you go up there and follow your instincts. Certainly you'll learn more about the abstract theory of our Gifts from them than you will from me, if that's what you want. I never was one for theory. I leave that up to Kyril!
He
enjoys trying to ferret out the ‘whys' and ‘hows' of our Gifts. I'm content with just knowing the usages, and never mind how it works.”

Theirs was the first of the three groups being taught to finish formal training. The other two were much smaller, the ‘communication' Gifts being by far and away the most common, and contained, respectively, Griffon and a younger girl, Christa; and Davan with one of Christa's year-mates, a boy called Wulf. Talia was extremely curious about these other Gifts and asked Ylsa about them as the last class broke up.

“The other two general groups have to do with moving things with thought alone, and seeing at a distance.” Ylsa said. “We tend to lump them under the names of ‘Fetching' and ‘Sight.' Oddly enough, the two Heralds best at both those skills happen to work together as a team; Dirk and Kris. Well, maybe it's not so odd. Gifts that are needed tend to appear just before they're needed.”

The second name woke a vague feeling of recollection; after a moment of thought, Talia remembered that she'd met Kris before, her first night at the Collegium. “Kris is the one that's too good-looking to be true, isn't he? she asked Ylsa with a half-smile.

“That's the one. The fact that Dirk and Kris are partners is one reason why we hold these classes—particularly the latter two—all at the same time and for more than one year-group; it makes more sense to wait for a time of several weeks when Dirk and Kris don't have to be out somewhere,” Ylsa replied. “Why are you asking?”

‟Insatiable curiosity,” Talia confessed. “I—kind of wonder how their Gifts are related to my own.”

“Seeing's probably the closest; emotions are powerful attractants for the mind's eye. In fact, you have more than a touch of that particular Gift yourself, as you've noticed. I've told you that no one ever has
just
one Gift with no hint of the others, haven't I? You've got enough thought-sensing and Sight to possibly be useful in an emergency—maybe just a hint of Healing as well. Anyway, the difference between their Gifts and yours is that you will generally have to See things through the eyes of someone present unless there's a
lot
of emotional residuum to hold you, and then it will be very vague. They can See things as if they were observing them directly, even if there's nobody there. There isn't much to watch in that class, though; just the three of them sitting around in trance-states. Quite boring if you're not linked in with them. Dirk's class is something else altogether—
that's
something to see! I know he won't mind; want to peek in on them?”

“Could I?” Talia didn't even try to conceal her eagerness.

“I don't see any reason why not. Queen's Own should probably see some of the other Gifts in action—especially since it seems your year-mate Griffon has one of the rarer and potentially more dangerous of the ‘Fetching' family.”

“He does? What does he do?” Talia found it difficult to envision the good-natured Griffon as dangerous.

“He's a Firestarter.”

 

Because of Griffon's Gift, Dirk was holding his classes outside, away from any building, and near the well—just in case. Talia could see he had a bucket of water on the cobblestones beside him. He and his two pupils were sitting cross-legged on the bare paving, all three seeming to be too engrossed in what they were doing to notice any discomfort from the stone. He nodded agreeably to Ylsa and Talia as they approached, indicating with an eyebrow a safe place to stand and watch, and then turned his attention immediately back to his two pupils.

Talia discovered to her surprise that she recognized Herald Dirk as the young Herald she'd encountered just outside the capital. She had been far too overcome with bashfulness and the fear that she'd been wrong-doing to take more than a cursory look at him then; she took the opportunity afforded by his deep involvement with his pupils to do so now.

Her initial impression of homeliness was totally confirmed. His face looked like a clay model that had been constructed by someone with little or no talent at all. His nose was much too long for his face; his ears looked as if they'd just been stuck on by guess and then left there. His jaw was square and didn't match his rather high cheekbones; his teeth looked like they'd be more at home in his Companion's mouth than in his. His forehead didn't match any of the rest of his face; it was much too broad, and his overly generous mouth was lop-sided. His straw-colored hair looked more like the thatched roof of a cottage—provided that the thatcher hadn't had the least notion of what he'd been about. The only thing that redeemed him from being repulsive was the good-natured smile that always hovered around the corners of his mouth, a smile that demanded that the onlooker smile in response.

That, and his eyes—he had the most beautiful eyes Talia had ever seen; brimming with kindness and compassion. The only eyes she could compare them to were Rolan's—and they were the same living sapphire blue as a Companion's.

If she hadn't been so fascinated by what was transpiring, she might have paused to wonder at the strength of response she felt to the implied kindness of those eyes.

As it was, though, Griffon was in the process of demonstrating his gift, and that drove any other thought from her head.

He seemed to be working his way up through progressively less combustible materials; it was evident from some of the residue of this exercise that he'd already attained the control required to ignite normally volatile substances at will. In front of him were the remains of burned paper, shredded cloth, the tarry end of a bit of rope, and a charred piece of kindling-wood. Now Dirk placed in front of him an odd black rock.

“This stuff
will
burn if you get it hot enough, I promise you,” he was saying to Griffon. “Smiths use it sometimes to get a really hot fire; they prefer it over charcoal. Give it a try.”

Griffon stared at the bit of black stone, his face intent. After a tense moment, he sighed explosively.

“It's no use—” he began.

“You're trying too hard again,” Dirk admonished. “Relax. It's no different than what you did with the wood; the stuffs just a bit more stubborn. Give it longer.”

Once again Griffon stared at the lump. Then something extraordinary happened. His eyes suddenly unfocused, and Talia's stomach flipped over; she became disoriented for a moment—the experience was something rather as if she'd been part of the mating of two dissimilar objects into a new whole.

The black lump ignited with a preternatural and explosive fury.

‟Whoa!”
Dirk shouted, dousing the fire with the handy bucket of water. It had burned with such heat that the stone beneath it sizzled and actually cracked when the water hit it. There was a smell of scorched rock and steam rising in a cloud from the place it had been.

Griffon's eyes refocused, and he stared at the blackened area, dumbfounded. “Did
I
do that?”

“You certainly did. Congratulations,” Dirk said cheerfully. “Now you see why we have this class outside. More importantly, can you do it again, and with a little more control this time?”

“I—think so—” Griffon's eyes once again took on the abstracted appearance they'd had before—and the soaked remains of the black rock sizzled, then began merrily burning away, in sublime indifference to the puddle around them.

“Now damp it,” Dirk commanded.

The flames died completely. In seconds the rock was cool enough for Dirk to pick up.

“Well done, youngling!” Dirk applauded. “You've got the trick of it now! With practice you'll be able to call fire right out of the air if you want—but don't try yet. That's enough for today. Any more, and you'll have a headache.”

The headaches were something Ylsa had warned Talia's class about, the direct result of overextending a Gift. Sometimes this was unavoidable, but for the most part it was better not to court them. Drake had gotten one one day, showing off; his example had reinforced that prohibition. Ylsa had given them each a packet of herbs to make into a tea that deadened the worst of the pain should they miscalculate and develop one anyway, and had told them that Mero kept a further supply on hand in the kitchen when they ran out.

“Now, Christa—your turn.” Dirk moved his attention to the lanky, coltish girl to his left. “There's a message tube the mate to this one—” he laid a Herald's message container of the kind that Special Messengers usually carried on their belts in front of her, ‟—on the top of the first bookcase in the Library. It's lying along the top of
Spun of Shadow.
I know this is bigger than anything you've tried before, but the distance is a bit less than you've reached in the past. Think you can visualize it and bring it here?”

She nodded without speaking, and took the message tube in her hands. There was a growing feeling of tension once again, it was plainly perceptible to Talia. She felt as if she were in the middle of two people pulling on her mind—then came a kind of popping noise; now not one, but two message tubes lay in Christa's hands.

Dirk took the new one from her and opened it. He displayed the contents to her with a grin—a small slip of parchment with the words “Exercise one, and well begun” on it. Christa's grin of accomplishment echoed Dirk's.

“Not good poetry, but the sentiment's right. Well, you managed that one. Now let's see if you can get a little farther....”

Ylsa nudged Talia, who nodded reluctantly, and both moved quietly away.

“Gifts like Griffon's have been known to wreak absolute havoc if the owner fails to learn how to control them.” Ylsa said gravely once they were out of earshot. “There have been instances in the past when the trainee's teacher, unprepared perhaps for the kind of explosion we saw today, reacted with fear—fear that the pupil in turn reacted to. Sometimes that causes the pupil to block his Gift entirely, making it impossible for him to learn full control; and then, at some later date, during a moment of stress or crisis, it flares up again with a fury that has to be seen to be believed. We've been very fortunate in that this fury has always been turned against the enemies of the Kingdom in the past.”

“Lavan Firestorm—” Talia said in comprehension. “I remember now; he almost single-handedly drove back the Dark Servants at the Battle of White Foal Pass. But at Burning Pines his Companion was killed, and the last Firestorm he called up consumed him as well as the enemy.”

“There's nothing but bare rock at Burning Pines to this day. Those who were there were just lucky he retained enough hold on his sanity to warn them before he called down the Fires. And there's no guarantee that the Firestorm
couldn't
be turned against friends as well as enemies—rage can often be blind. That's why Dirk makes such a good teacher; he never shows the slightest sign of fear to his pupils. We're lucky to have him in the Circle,” Ylsa replied. “At any rate, you've got weapons drill to go to, and I have to report that I'm free for reassignment. I'll see you at dinner, kitten.”

 

Talia continued to practice every night, choosing times when the sometimes volatile emotions of the students of the Collegium were damped by the weariness of day's end. For several weeks she simply observed what she was drawn to—though a time or two she quickly chose some
other
subject to observe after her initial contact proved highly intimate and rather embarrassing. When she became more sure of herself, though, she was tempted by encountering the fear of one of the youngest student's nightmares to try intervening.

To her great delight, she was successful in turning the fear away. Without that stimulus, the dream quickly changed to something more innocuous.

Her success prompted her to try intervention in the emotions of others several times more—though always choosing only to try to redirect the more negative emotions of anger, fear—or once, in the case of a quarrel and a gross misunderstanding on the part of two of the court servants, hatred. Her successes, though not always complete, were enough to encourage her in the belief that such interventions were “right.”