“Yes, you did.” Redal-Stan’s voice was cautiously congenial. He sat on the edge of his desk and crossed his arms before him. He frowned at Connen-Neute over Alissa’s shoulder.
“When I came here, I used a septhama point,” Alissa said. Her breath quickened.
“Correct.” Redal-Stan stood in a rustle of brown fabric, all pretense of disinterest gone.
“Septhama points only work backward,” she whispered, going cold.
“Alissa,” the old Master warned as he took a step forward.
“No! Listen to me,” she exclaimed, and Connen-Neute turned. His face was creased in pity, and she panicked. “I used a septhama point to get here,” she said, her voice cracking. “There’s no one here who has a memory farther forward than mine, which I can borrow. I can’t send my thoughts to a time I haven’t experienced, and I can’t experience it until I have gone—back.” Her last words were a haunted whisper.
Only now understanding, she reached out a blind hand and felt Redal-Stan steady her. “I can’t go back,” she said.
“Easy, Alissa,” Redal-Stan said gently. “Come sit down.”
“I can’t.” Dazed, she could do nothing but blink. “I—I have to go,” she mumbled, and pulled away. “I have to find Strell.”
“Alissa. It’ll be all right. Come sit down.”
She felt a ward of calming resonate in her thoughts. “No!” she cried, smashing the passive ward with a blistering thought. She had to get out. To get back to Strell! Her heart pounded, and she stiffened, taking in the shut door and Redal-Stan’s tight grip on her elbow. She tore from him, spinning to the balcony.
“Connen-Neute!” Redal-Stan shouted. “Get away from the window! She doesn’t know a window ward. Get out of the way!”
The window! Alissa made a slight moan of despair as she felt his ward go up.
“Alissa.”
She turned to see Redal-Stan with his hands raised, confident he had her trapped. “You’re fine,” he said. “You’re going to be fine. Strell is gone, but you will be fine.”
“No!” Breath fast, she turned to the sky. “I have to find Strell!” she cried. Before her heart finished its beat, she set her tracings to break the window ward. Panicked, she cast her ward from her without giving it a field to contain it. Made strong by her anguish, it spread from her in a silent wave, visible as a faint shimmer.
Her will to flee tore through everything it encountered. A thunderous boom shook the Hold as hundreds of doors flung open. The ward to clear the window had transcended itself, acting upon anything closed.
“Wolves!” Redal-Stan cursed and flung himself to the floor. A protection ward was tight about him. He didn’t know what her ward contained.
Connen-Neute stood by the window, rocking slightly from the mental force. He hadn’t put even the barest protection over himself. Alissa caught a sad look as she jumped from the balcony, shifting even as her feet left the railing. Then the Hold was gone and she was free, streaking to the east.
23
The stones Redal-Stan had pressed himself against shiv-ered as Alissa’s will hit the roots of the mountain and reverberated back. “Wolves,” he whispered as he looked up. “She said she didn’t know window wards. I think she opened every ash-ridden door in the Hold!”
“She said she couldn’t make them, but would you chance your student smashing into a ward as she tried to land on a balcony?”
“No.” Feeling old and foolish, Redal-Stan used a chair to get to his feet in stages. Upright, he glanced at his open door and back to Connen-Neute. Seeing him unafraid, Redal-Stan grunted in surprise. Eight quick steps, and he was next to him, eyeing the empty skies. “I’ll be back,” Redal-Stan said tersely. He put a foot up on the thick railing, finding himself held back by a long hand. “I have to catch her,” Redal-Stan snapped, tugging his sleeve free. “She is likely to go feral over this, if she hasn’t already.”
“She won’t,” came a quiet thought into his.
Redal-Stan paused, his drive to follow postponed by Connen-Neute’s strong conviction. “Even so, I will be hard-pressed to find her.”
“I know where she is,” was the young Master’s soft reply.
“How!” he barked, then shot a glance at the hall. The sounds of excited Keepers and students were coming closer.
“I could find Alissa were the great plain between us,” Connen-Neute breathed, his gaze on the horizon. “You didn’t know that, did you, about pickabacking?” He turned, his eyes filled with an almost wild look, and Redal-Stan stifled a shudder. “I can recognize her thought signature now as if it was my own. But I know already where she went.” Connen-Neute jumped to the railing, halting his momentum with a practiced ease.
“Tell me where she is. I’ll get her,” Redal-Stan demanded.
“She doesn’t trust you. She would fly away, and I don’t think you could catch her.” And with that, Connen-Neute leapt from the balcony and shifted.
There was a snap of wind against wing canvas, and he was gone. Redal-Stan stood alone, wondering at the confidence Connen-Neute had found in the mere days that Alissa had influenced him. The raku’s golden form was lost in the hazy sunshine as he headed east over the mountains. “Perhaps,” he worried aloud, “the wind has been kept from his wings too long.”
Redal-Stan turned at the growing tumult in the hall. A large group of students came to an uneasy halt outside his door. Kally pushed her way to the front, ignoring her lower rank. She stared at him with wide, wondering eyes. “The lids popped off the flour tins,” she said, “and I can’t close the door to the garden. Would you please come down and help me?” Behind her, more of the Hold’s inhabitants came to a silent, questioning halt.
No one asked what happened, and he refused to volunteer anything as he made his brooding, methodical way through the passages and halls. He stopped at every chamber, removing the ward that had fixed the doors so that the Keepers couldn’t shift them by muscle or ward. By the time he reached the floor of the great hall to find the outer doors of the Hold immovable slabs of wood, he was more than a little concerned. Just whom, or what, had Connen-Neute gone after?
24
Knees drawn to her chin, Alissa sat on a large flat rock amongst the damp scents of gathering dusk on the other side of the mountains. The wind spilling from the nearby peak was chilly, and she shivered in the last remnants of the sun. A pile of stream-smooth pebbles was beside her. One by one, she flicked them into the meadow. She was aiming for the crickets.
Another stone hissed through the yellowing grass to find the earth, and the field went silent. Her breath caught. As she wondered if she had hit one, a familiar touch brushed her thoughts. She relaxed, realizing why the crickets had silenced themselves. The graceful shape of a raku executed a sharp turn and landed a wing length from her. “Hello,” she muttered, her gaze returning to her pile of stones.
Settling himself in a comfortable crouch between her and the setting sun, Connen-Neute propped his head upon his forearms and curled his tail about himself. “May I join you?” he asked, his eyes closing in a sleepy blink.
“You’re bigger than me,” she said as she sniffed. “It’s not as if I could stop you.”
His golden eyes opened. “I’ll leave if you ask.”
“Sorry.” Feeling as pleasant as pond scum, she managed a sour smile. His eyes closed, and she added in warning, “I’m not going back to the Hold. You can’t make me.”
Connen-Neute rippled his hide, giving the impression of a shrug. He disappeared in a swirl of pearly white, solidifying in his human form to sit in an elongated oval of flattened grass.
“You know something?” she said. “Talking to you is worse than talking to Talon.”
He grinned.
The crickets began to reassert themselves, and so Alissa resumed her game. “I’m surprised,” she said as a rock went swishing among the dry stems. “I would have thought Redal-Stan would have been the one to follow me and try to drag me back.”
“I d
idn’t follow you,” he said aloud in his gray voice. “I knew where you were going.”
Alissa squinted into the setting sun, holding a hand above her eyes to see him better.
“You’re lost,” he said in explanation. “You went home.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Alissa gazed over the open field. “Over there by that rockslide is where the sheep’s winter shelter will be. The house,” she looked upwind, “will be where those hemlocks are now. The well will be behind it, right about where that stream is.” Alissa paused. The stream wasn’t in her memories of home, but her papa had dug the well exactly where it was flowing. Frowning, Alissa turned to Connen-Neute. “We’re in the kitchen garden, and this rock,” she patted it, “is where the snakes will sunbathe.”
Thoroughly depressed, Alissa slumped. The Navigator’s Wolves should hunt her. It was more dismal than the time Useless had accompanied her back to her parents’ farm to tell her mother she was all right. The farm had been abandoned: the sheep were gone, the fields sat fallow, and the house was empty. The chickens, though, were still there. The note Alissa found said her mother had returned to the plains, then went on with other motherly sentiments that sent Alissa into tears. Useless had placated her with promises to help her find her mother, once she was skilled enough to pluck her mother’s thought signature out of the untold thousands of plainsmen. To Alissa, that meant never. Now, she didn’t even have that.
In a rustle of gray and black silk, Connen-Neute joined her on the rock. “I was raised in the high reaches,” he said as he sat down beside her, his eyes on the nearby peaks. “It seemed I was always cold, but it was a great deal safer. A raku child must be sheltered from most neural-net resonances lest a ward be picked up prematurely.” She looked at him blankly, and he added, “Would you give a toddler a ward of ignition?”
She shook her head, finally understanding why her papa had never let on he had been a Keeper. “All but parental contact is minimized,” Connen-Neute continued, “until the level of self-control is adequate to handle temptation.”
“Sounds lonely,” she said, thinking of her own childhood spent with imaginary friends.
Connen-Neute shrugged. “It was, especially later, but it was my adolescence, and I wouldn’t change anything. Once it was determined I had developed mastery of my impulses, I was introduced into society. I was about thirty then.”
“That’s awful,” she sympathized, wondering how old he was. He didn’t look thirty.
Turning his unreadable gaze to hers, he said, “It was safer, though. I was the only child of my kith to make it past my first thirty years.” Alissa stared, trying not to look appalled, and he added, “All my siblings were lost. Some to flight accidents. A young raku isn’t very coordinated, and is small, about the size of a pony, until about fifteen. When growth starts, it’s explosive, making it difficult to keep up with the changing shifts in mass and momentum. But a few,” he sighed, “were lost when they found their neural nets and began to play. Those were the worst,” he finished somberly.
Alissa could say nothing. The trials of her childhood were nothing compared to that.
Connen-Neute stirred, adjusting his collar with his long fingers. “That’s where I found my self-control. Watching their fatal mistakes. Where did you learn yours? It’s considerable, seeing as you were raised by a commoner.”
Alissa shook herself. “Uh—my mother at first,” she said, and he smiled knowingly. “But it took a burn across my tracings I should have died from before I began to see the benefits of holding one’s temper,” she admitted, shielding her eyes from the sun and squinting at him.
There was a tug on her awareness, and a bright orange paper hat winked into existence. Connen-Neute silently placed it upon her head to shade her eyes. “Hounds, thanks,” she said as she took it off to look at it. “That’s right. You mastered crafting paper from your thoughts. Very nice.” She turned it over, examining it thoroughly. “I’d wager you’re great fun at parties,” she finished dryly as she placed the wide-brimmed, eye-hurting monstrosity back on her head.
Connen-Neute straightened in pleasure. “You know I mastered crafting paper?” he said, slipping back into his more familiar thought-speech.
She gave him a friendly shove on his shoulder. “Everyone knows Connen-Neute crafts the highest-grade paper. You can tell by the smell.”
“Almonds,” he breathed. “You have free rein in crafting matter. What do you excel in?”
Alissa aimlessly threw a stone. “I excel in making trouble.” Then, seeing his disappointment, she relented. “Clothes. That’s it. Nothing interesting like cups or paper hats.”
“Clothes are invariably the first,” he said. “But what do you plan on specializing in?”
The eagerness in his voice pulled Alissa’s attention from the darkening field. Suddenly she realized he saw her as a contemporary, something he probably never had before. Her next flippant answer died, and she smiled, pleased. “I don’t know,” she said as she took a handful of pebbles. “I had hoped pottery, but I seem to be lacking something.”
Thoughts of Strell surged through her. Eyes closing in heartache, she slumped. “Ashes,” she whispered. “I have to get back home, Connen-Neute. There must be a way.”
He took a pebble from the remainder of her stack. “Redal-Stan thinks it’s not possible,” he said hesitantly, and he threw it.
Frustrated, she reached out a thought and caught his tossed stone in a field. The pebble hit the edge of her field and rolled to the bottom, hanging in an unreal display of control. “Redal-Stan would have said I couldn’t get here, either,” she said hotly, allowing the rock to fall.
Nodding, he whipped a second stone almost straight up. It arched up into the black, barely visible against the purpling skies. “Still,” he said mildly, “I’ve known him to be correct in most situations.” He paused as the stone reached its highest point. “Now,” he whispered, and he and Alissa fought for control of it.
“That’s a very safe answer,” she scorned as she mastered the rock, then let it fall.
“But it’s true.” Connen-Neute sent another rock after the first. This one, he caught.
“Well, he’s wrong this time,” she said defensively. “I’ll get back. I—” Her breath caught at the thought she might not. “I will,” she said, as her pulse pounded in her temple, seducing a headache into existence as she refused to cry.
“No.” His voice was as gentle and persistent as rain. “You need a memory of your time that doesn’t include you. And even if you had that, you don’t know how the patterns crossed.”
“I’m going to get back,” she said flatly. She couldn’t feel herself swallow or breathe, but her arms clasped about her shins were trembling, so she knew she still lived.
“You can’t.” His words were so soft, she wasn’t sure if he had said them aloud. “Strell is gone,” he said mercilessly, despite the tears spilling hotly down her cheeks. “He’s gone!” he said, giving her a shake as she tried to hide her face. “And what are you going to do about it?”
His question remained unanswered as she watched the peaks blur and dissolve from her tears. Her misery, the aching emptiness, seemed worse here than surrounded by people. Taking a breath, she held it until she had to breathe again. For a long time, only the crickets and her intermittent, tattered gulps for air shifted the night. The sun had set, replacing the glare with a soothing gray. There was a tweak on her thoughts, and a soft sheet of paper was pushed into her hands. “Thanks,” she said raggedly.
“It’s mostly cloth,” he offered, seemingly eager to have something to say. “I wanted to see how soft I could make paper. Don’t show Redal-Stan. He’ll make me craft a cart-load of it.”
Alissa bobbed her head and used it to blow her nose. “I can see other uses for this,” she mumbled, glad for the distraction.
Then he sighed, and Alissa knew he wasn’t finished with her yet. “Accept it, Alissa,” he said regretfully. “Strell is out of your reach. You could f
ly away and hide for four hundred years to rejoin him when you catch up, but even then, he’s gone. You’ll be a stranger to him.” He threw a pebble at the field. “Four centuries leaves an indelible mark.”
“Yes, I can see that,” she said, too raw and sick at heart to be angry.
“Love, like the wind, can come from many sources. If you accept he is lost to you, perhaps you might consider—”
“Connen-Neute!” she protested, embarrassed.
“—someone else,” he finished innocently. He flicked a stone into the field, and there was a startled squeak as it found a mouse. Then he turned red and coughed, carefully placing his last pebble back on the stack. “Just don’t start making eyes at me,” he added, realizing where her thoughts had gone. “I don’t like Beast. She’s too—Ashes, she scares me.” He shivered, and then, trying to make it look as if it were from the chill in the air rather than the chill in his soul, he turned a concerned eye to her. “Would you like a fire?”
“No,” she said, her thoughts returning to what he had said concerning his upbringing. It was more than Useless ever explained to her. “Connen-Neute?” she asked, wondering how much she could pry from him. “Why don’t you speak more? You have a wonderfully dark voice.”
His teeth gleamed in the faint light as he smiled. “I spent my first fifty years almost entirely in the shape I was born in. Talking is a hard habit to form.”
“Fifty years?” Alissa’s mouth fell open. He looked her age. “How old are you?”
“One hundred sixteen seasons this winter, but Redal-Stan seems to think I’m sixty.”
“But your schooling is so far behind mine!” she stammered.
Connen-Neute gave her a slow, sideways grin before casually tearing off a handful of grass and beginning to work it into a chain. “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, not exactly?” she asked, not liking his smug attitude.