Choices (3 page)

She was going to make me start crying.
What a performance
. I was starting to feel better.

Mistake number one. Everybody turned to me,
having of course read my thoughts, scandalized by my disrespect,
all except Edwige, who was, as usual, amused. And now the lessons
began in earnest. “When you’re promoted out of this room,” Edwige
said, “it will be because you’re able to think thoughts like that
and keep them to yourself. Until then, we will practice the
shield.”

Edwige was right. I am a fast learner, and I
certainly wanted to learn this lesson. By lunchtime I had gotten
the hang of it. The hardest part is simply remembering to do it, to
set up the mental shield ahead of time, similar to lowering the
inner eyelids, our physical shields, by our own efforts instead of
relying on them to descend—or not—as a reflex. Both processes are
far more difficult to learn as an adult than as a child, like
belching or farting at will. To this day they are weak points with
me, but then I made an effort to be conscientious.

As we filed out for the midday meal, Drusilla
sent me an unshielded sentiment.
Terran impostor
, she
thought as she brushed by me on the stairs, a demure smile on her
face.

After our meal, called dinner, there was a
period of rest. The schedule in a seminary combines the remorseless
regime of a monastery with the Muslim idea of prayers at set
intervals—and we must rest when we can. The powers of
crypta
are activated and amplified by radiation, both
visible (“light”) and invisible, and the gifted make use of all the
different spectra. We rose before dawn, renewing and strengthening
our gifts in ceremonies at sunrise, high noon and sunset. While the
youngsters were allowed to sleep through, the adults divided our
night into segments, bedding down immediately after sunset, and
awakening again at moonrise. We all appreciated the daily siesta
that wandered with the sun.

During the daily solar eclipse, our powers
are at their height. The eclipse occurs in a backward cycle over
eight days, moving from dusk toward dawn, fitting in two on the
eighth day, called Crescent Day. At the start of every eclipse,
work was suspended as we gathered on the roof. Whatever the
weather, we lifted our faces to the source of our strength, opened
our eyes and allowed our inner eyelids to descend, absorbing the
mysterious power while shielding ourselves from the damaging rays.
It is a religious observance and also the ultimate lesson,
replenishing the energy we have expended in amplifying and
controlling our gift, while teaching us to know ourselves, our
abilities and their limits.

When regular classes resumed in the late
afternoon, I was in with the four young people again, but we had
Matilda for our teacher. As a sibyl in training, she would
introduce us to the rudiments of physical control. “Unsheathe your
prisms,” she said, “and establish a connection with the light.”

The others already had theirs out, holding
them in cupped palm; children’s tools, simple triangular glass
objects that could fit in a pocket. I had only the dagger with the
prism on the pommel that Edwige had given me during my test: the
two kinds of aristocratic Eclipsian weapons, blades and bent light,
combined in this one lethal object. I had not touched it or looked
at it since, although Edwige had insisted I keep it, going so far
as to give me a sheath with a belt for convenience. “You must have
your own prism,” she’d said, “and you’ll need one suitable for an
adult. As you work with it, you’ll establish a circuit with the
electric impulses of your brain.”

Everybody was waiting for me. I pulled the
dagger from the sheath and my whole body tensed, remembering the
nausea and repulsion I had experienced during my test. The handle
seemed to nestle into my grip, the right size for my small hand,
neither cold nor hot, but the same temperature as my skin. I
extended my arm to hold the prism a proper distance from my face
and bent a shaft of light from the window into my eyes.

Far from a shock, I felt a kind of low-level
infusion of power, how I imagined it would be if I could ingest my
food directly into my arteries. It is, of course, an illusion, like
the first effects of drugs or alcohol. The energy comes from us,
not from the prism, which merely boosts our own telepathic
electricity by drawing on the body’s reserves.
This is
good
, I decided.

Finally
, Drusilla thought to
Rosalie.

“All right,” Matilda said. “Watch me, but
don’t use your prisms until I tell you.” Much like Edwige during my
test in the ‘Graven Assembly, she performed simple physical
tasks—lifting small objects or controlling the fire that warmed the
drafty room—and guided us through the steps to copy her. This
aspect of my gift came easily to me. Although the other four in the
class had been at La Sapienza for weeks, I was almost as proficient
as any of them.

Matilda was impressed. “Try this,” she said
to me, shaping a beam of light from the fire and bouncing it off
the walls until she returned it to the hearth. The others watched
while I separated the heat and long-wave red light through the
prism and worked to shape them. Forming the beam wasn’t difficult,
but controlling it was. The light ricocheted from wall to wall,
gaining momentum until it hit a window, which shattered in a spray
of heavy glass shards, many of them blown back inside by the wind.
Everyone ducked for cover, laughing and cursing, as the fire
sputtered and smoked.

“If that had been a mirror, and not merely a
window,” Matilda said, “the reflections would have caused a real
explosion.”

I apologized for the damage, but Matilda
waved it off. “I wanted to find out what you could do,” she said,
“and you see it’s nothing that can’t be fixed.” It was as if she
had a magnet that worked on glass. Each individual shard and sliver
lifted itself from the floor and the desks, the windowsill, even
the ground, several stories below, floating in midair until Matilda
had them all assembled. When she gave the command, they flew up to
reform the pane, jostling each other like impatient customers when
a store opens its doors for a sale, fitting themselves into
place.

Matilda used the occasion to stress a by now
familiar lesson to the little class. “No matter what powers you may
possess,” she said, her face solemn, “until you learn control, they
produce nothing but tricks—worthless, dangerous tricks. And control
comes only with work. Practice and work.”

The first few days passed quickly. I was so
busy learning new things—interesting, useful things—that the enmity
of a couple of teenage girls faded into the background. Meals were
not segregated by age or grade, and I took Matilda up on her
invitation and ate with the adults, returning to “high school” only
for the lessons.

Besides Tomasz Liang, there was another young
man, Paolo di Battista. Paolo was slim and dark-haired, with a
sarcastic, sometimes intimidating manner. Like Dominic, he called
himself
vir
, but without even a slight sexual interest in
women, and he was not as immediately forthcoming as Tomasz. As time
went on he opened up, revealing a sharp mind with which he observed
us all, and a depth of feeling hidden beneath his cool exterior.
The third man, Julian Vazquez, was close to sixty, reserved and
aloof. He was a
seer
, the male equivalent to Edwige’s
position of
sibyl
, and was her second in command.

Of the women, Matilda and another young one,
Alicia Molyneux, were the friendliest. Alicia and Tomasz were
betrothed, and they were clearly in love, often sitting together
apart from the rest of us, whispering and laughing, or simply
communing in silence. The others, women my age and older, were
career academicians who had spent all their adult lives here or in
another seminary. They were not unfriendly, simply absorbed in
their chosen field, and they made few efforts at conversation
either with me or the other young scholars.

Matilda explained to me that, although women
tend to be stronger telepaths, their power is connected to their
bodies’ ability to bear children, declining with age and menopause.
A generation or two back it had been thought that a sibyl must be
celibate her entire life, to preserve all this psychosexual energy
for the work, but this had turned out to be a myth. When
controlling the amplified radiation in a group of telepaths, called
a
cell
, a sibyl must abstain from sexual activity. But
there was no reason she could not learn the job when young, take
time out to marry and have children, and return to the position
later. The early marriage and childbearing expected of Eclipsian
women made this option convenient.

Matilda was in line to succeed Edwige, which
was why she was still here, receiving advanced training, into her
early twenties. “But I’ll be married off soon,” she said gaily. Her
parents had arranged a wedding for her with the son of a suitable
family, Petrus Ormonde, Rosalie’s older brother. Incredibly,
Matilda was looking forward to this union, although she had met
Petrus only once, at a formal engagement. “He’s nice enough, and
when I tire of married life I have only to tell him I must go and
be sibyl at La Sapienza. He’ll have nothing to say to that.” This
was a different world, no doubt about it.

That night, whether from Matilda’s frank
speech, or because it was the first time I had enough strength left
over from the day’s lessons to lie awake, I was bothered by my one
lack. Dominic, Margrave Aranyi, my “lover,” the man who had, in a
way, set me on this strange path, had not been with me since I left
for La Sapienza. During my few weeks in Eclipsia City he had come
to me at least once a day, often at night—not in body, but in my
mind, through the gift we shared and our unusual love. Yet here at
La Sapienza, where our gift was the sole purpose of existence, I
was alone.

And suddenly, as I had this thought, I was no
longer alone.
Did you think I had forgotten you, cherie?
Dominic’s thought was in my mind. His voice was tender, amorous.
Although he was projecting over a long distance, I could hear his
words as if he were speaking in the deep, resonant voice that was
as attractive to me as his hawk-like profile and lean, muscular
body.

I was unsure how to answer his question. In a
way I was the one who had forgotten him, too tired and busy to use
my gift in one more strenuous task. Yet now that he had resumed
mental contact I felt as if a vital piece of me, cut out for days,
had been restored, allowing me to become whole again.
I missed
you
, I thought to him, not lying, merely expressing a
subconscious truth.
I missed you dreadfully
.

My love
, he thought, laughing a
little at my white lie.
I knew it would be hard for you at
first. I wanted you to have time to adjust
.

He had been right. He had waited for me to
think of him, guessing I would not have the energy to accept his
visit before. And now that he was here there was nothing much to
say, only the pleasure of being in his company, the enjoyment of
completeness. It was like the warmth I had felt on my first night
here, snuggling into my bed after the freezing ride. Basking in
Dominic’s presence I fell sound asleep, and when I awoke for the
moonrise ceremony he was gone. But the feeling stayed with me, into
the remainder of the night, so that I went through the new day’s
demanding lessons with greater confidence and cheerfulness.

The next night, as soon as my aide was gone
and I was alone in the room, Dominic was with me. This time I had,
not only the sensation of his thoughts and his voice, but his
touch. It was as if his arm were around me, as if he lay beside me
in the bed. Startled, I sat up and made the inner flame, flicking
my body’s heat into a soft light at the end of my thumb with a snap
of the fingers. Surely there would be an indentation on the bed,
the vague outline of a body. There was nothing.

What is it, beloved?
Dominic
asked.

I can feel you
, I said.
I can
sense your arm, your body
. I was delighted in a way, because
his touch was thrilling to me, but I was also frightened. It was
weird to have such definite physical sensations without a material
source, and I wondered if all this
crypta
work was
disordering my brain.

My love
, he said, amused but
contrite.
You are perfectly rational, and very talented. You
are perceiving what I am sending to you, my desires, what I would
do if we were together. We can share more than thoughts. We can
experience touch and other senses, as I think them to you
.

The possibilities intrigued me.
Can I
touch you?
I asked.
Show me how
.

Dominic laughed at my enthusiastic acceptance
of this strange new art.
Soon, my love. You have enough to
learn at present
. His arm around me tightened, and I felt the
brush of lips against my cheek.
Sleep now
, he whispered,
relaxing the arm as I dozed off.

Each night as I crawled into bed, Dominic
would visit. I would lean back against the strong arm that was
always there for me, confiding the day’s successes and failures,
accepting his congratulations or his sympathy as a matter of right.
He enjoyed my story of the broken window.
I blew out all the
windows of Netrebko Seminary when I was fourteen
, he said. I
knew he was smiling at the memory.
And all the lamps. We were
cold and in the dark for a whole day and night
. His mental
shield came up and he was silent.

I was glad that he had at last relaxed his
guard a little to share his memories with me. Although we occupied
each other’s mind, almost like one consciousness, there were areas
in which Dominic had erected impenetrable barriers. They were not
so much to keep me out, but as if he couldn’t bear to think about
some things himself and hoped the memories would disappear, be
forgotten, even by him, if he built his internal walls thick
enough.