By the Sword (18 page)

Once past the doorway, she turned to light the candle she'd left on a shelf by the door. And when she turned back with it in her hand, she thought she'd jumped into a nightmare.

Teeth, that was all she saw at first; huge white fangs, gleaming in the candlelight. And eyes the size of walnuts, shining with an evil, green glow all their own.

She shrieked, jumped back into the wall behind her, and dropped the candle, all at the same time.

The flame went out immediately, leaving her in the dark. She felt for the wall and edged along it toward the door, hoping to escape into the bathing chamber before whatever it was realized she was moving—and wondering what awful thing had happened that this
thing
had gotten past Tarma and her Grandmother.

:Children,:
snorted a voice from—somewhere. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. She froze.

:Child, I am not the Snow Demon. I don't eat babies. I just came here tonight to talk to you.:
She didn't move, and the voice took on a tone of exasperation. :
Will you please light that candle again and go sit down?:

“W-who are you?” she stammered.
“Where are
you?”

:Right here.:
Something cold and wet prodded her between her breasts, and she nearly screamed
again. :It's Warrl, you little ninny! You see me every day!:

“Warrl?” She reached out—cautiously—and encountered a furry head at about chest level. It certainly felt like Warrl.

It certainly
sounded
the way she'd imagined Warrl would talk.
If
Warrl could talk.

“How are you—” she began. He interrupted her.

:I'm Mindspeaking you,:
he said, impatiently.
:It's exactly what you could do if you wanted to, and the other person had the Gift of Mindhearing.:
She felt a brief movement of air and heard the faintest little ticking sound, a sound that might have been the clicking of claws on the floor.
:Do light that candle and come to bed, there's a good child.:

She went to her knees and groped about on the floor until her left hand encountered the candle. Once lit, she stood up with it in her hand, and discovered that Warrl had resumed the position he'd been in when she first entered the room. Sprawled on her bed, taking up fully half of it.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said sarcastically, more than a little nettled now that her heart had started beating again.

:Thank you, I have,:
he replied with equal irony.

She crossed the floor and put the candle into the sconce in the headboard, refusing to look at him the entire time. Only when she had climbed up into bed, and settled herself cross-legged on the blanket, did she finally meet his eyes.

“So if you could talk all this time, why haven't you?” she demanded.

:There wasn't any reason for you to know I could,:
he replied calmly.
:Now there is.:

“And what, pray tell me, is that reason?”

Her heart stopped again. She couldn't pretend not to understand him; she had the feeling that if she tried to lie mind-to-mind she'd get caught. And she knew very well what he was asking, her mother's books had called this ability to hear thoughts a “Gift.”

So she temporized, trying to buy time to think. “I haven't been hiding anything,” she countered. It was the truth; Kethry hadn't asked her if she could hear thoughts, or given her any tests to see if she could.

Meanwhile, her mind was running in little circles, like a mouse caught in the bottom of a jar.
If Grandmother finds out about this, she'll make me become a mage, and I don't
want
to become a mage, I want to be like Tarma
—

The
kyree
laid his ears back and winced
. :PLEASE!:
he “shouted” at her, making
her
wince, but bringing that frantic little circle of thoughts to a halt.

He sighed gustily. :
Much better. Thank you. Child, I have no intention of betraying your secret to Kethry, if that is really what you want—but what you just did is precisely the reason why I wanted to speak with you.:

“What did I do?” she whispered, head still ringing from his “shout.”

His ears came back
up. :Every time you feel safe and begin to concentrate on some complicated problem that involves your emotions, you do exactly what you just did. You think “out loud. ” Very loud, I might add, far louder than you know; I would imagine that one could hear you all the way to the next Keep if one was so minded.:

“I do?” She shook her head; it didn't seem possible.

:You do,:
he
insisted. :Almost as loudly as I just “shouted.” And unlike my “shout,” which was meant only for your mind, your thoughts are heard by anything receptive. You are fortunate that your grandmother is not Gifted with Mindspeaking, or your secret would be no such thing.:
He flattened his ears, and looked pained; his brow wrinkled in a way that would have been funny under any other circumstances.
:It is very discommoding. And uncomfortable. I won't dispute your right to keeping your abilities to yourself, since they don't involve magecraft, but I must insist that you get training. Quickly. Before you cause an unfortunate incident.:

Kero bit back her first reply, which was that she
had
gotten training. Obviously what she had learned on her own wasn't good enough.

“I can probably take care of it myself,” she said cautiously.

He lifted his lip just a trifle, and snapped at the air in annoyance. She shrank back instinctively. His fangs were as long as her thumb, and very sharp. :
Don't
you
realize I wouldn't be here if that were true? There is no way you
can
train yourself. And untrained—well, half-trained—
you
are
in terrible danger.
You
are just very lucky that the mage you killed
wasn't
strongly MindGifted. If he
had been—well, you'd probably be serving his every whim right now. It is ridiculously easy to take over the mind of someone who is Gifted, but untrained; your barriers are weak, and you have no secondary defenses. Right now you are more vulnerable than someone with no Gift at all. And you display that fact to the universe every time you become distressed!:

But that just led her right back to the same problem;
she didn't
want
Kethry to know about this. And who else was there that could train her?

She shook her head. “I can‘t—”

He growled, and sneezed, as if he had smelled something he didn't like. :Must you be so dense?
I'm
offering to train you myself. No one else will ever know, not even my
mind-mate.:

“You are?” She could hardly believe it. “But why?”

He put his head down on his paws, and sighed.
:Self-defense, child. Self-defense. I am increasingly weary of trying to shut you out, and you have at times awakened me out of my rest. Now, in the interest of peaceful sleep
i
ng, shall we work on that so-called shield of yours? You're going about it all wrong.:

 

And I thought I was overworked before,
Kero thought with a little groan, as she opened bleary eyes two weeks later on a morning that had arrived much too soon. She'd trained herself to wake as soon as the first light of sunrise came through her eastern window. It seemed to hit her closed eyelids candlemarks earlier every morning.

The worst part of it is, if Tarma knew Warrl was keeping me up half the night, she'd probably let me sleep later. But if I tell her-no, I can't. I don't know what
she'd
think about this, and
I
know she'd tell Grandmother.

Kero rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, and sat up slowly. By the look of the clear, pink-tinged sky, this was going to be another perfect day—which meant Tarma would be feeling pretty frisky. Kero was beginning to look forward to rainy days; even more to days of cold and damp, with a heavy morning fog. Both conditions made Tarma's joints ache—she would stay in bed until late morning, and confine Kero's workouts to sessions in the practice ring against the pells or other targets. It wasn't particularly nice to be pleased when her teacher wasn't feeling well—but Kero had found that guilt in this case was easily outweighed by the pleasure of sleeping in.

For the past week, she'd been freed from the chopping and wood-carrying; now she practiced against the pells and in sword-dances in the morning, had an hour or two of book-training directly after lunch, and practiced against Tarma in the afternoon. She no longer wondered what she was going to do with herself—she was going to become a mercenary, like Tarma, and like some of those women Kethry had hired to protect Lordan and the Keep. The only question in her mind now was—what kind of mercenary? The books that Tarma was teaching her from were studies in strategy and tactics—the ways to move and fight with whole armies. At this point, Kero couldn't see why she'd need anything of the sort.

But maybe Tarma had some kind of plan. Kero was perfectly content to learn whatever Tarma wished to teach her, and let the future take care of itself. Tarma was always saying that “no learning, no knowledge is ever wasted.” If nothing else, it probably wouldn't be a bad thing for an ordinary fighter to know how whole armies moved, so she could anticipate her orders.

She stretched and arched her back, then wormed her way back down under the warm blankets.
I'll just relax a little longer
, she thought, and reveled in the “silence” in her mind. She hadn't realized just how much she'd been “overhearing” until after Ward showed her the right way to protect herself; ground, center, and shield. For years there had been a kind of buzzing in back of all her thoughts, as if she was hearing a tourney crowd from several furlongs away. Now it was gone, and the relief was incredible.

She hadn't quite realized how useful this particular ability could be to a fighter, either, until Warrl showed her. He'd proved she could use it to get a tactical advantage in many situations; from doing as she had during the rescue and “reading” the area for enemy minds, to reading her opponent during a combat and countering his moves before he even made them.

But she wasn't entirely happy about using it that way.

She caught herself falling asleep again, and jerked herself back up into wakefulness. She threw back the covers and swung her legs out of bed before she succumbed a second time. A brief trip to the bathing chamber and a splash of cold water solved the problem; the water was cold enough to make her gasp, but she was certainly awake now.

I don't like the idea of reading someone's thoughts without them knowing,
she decided, while climbing into her breeches and tunic. It
doesn't seem fair. Maybe if the circumstances were really extraordinary, like going after Dierna alone, it would be all right. I mean, with odds like that, you have to use every advantage you've got. But if I was just one-on-one-no, it's not right.

She tightened the laces on her tunic, and reached for stockings and boots.
Besides, if I used it a lot, pretty soon I wouldn't be able to hide its existence. Then what? People would hate me, or they'd be afraid of me. It wouldn't be an advantage anymore, it'd be a handicap. No, I don't want that; I've had my fill of being different.

That led to the same problem that had been troubling her since she came here.

What's wrong with me?
she asked herself unhappily, as she laced her boots tight to her legs.
Why is it that I don't want what everyone else does? Every other girl seems to want a husband and a house full of babies. Even Grandmother and Tarma had families, and if Tarma hadn't been Swordsworn, she'd have raised her own children instead of helping with Grandmother
's. She shook her head, her earlier cheer gone.
I
don't like children,
and if anyone else knew that, they'd think I was some kind of monster. I hate being cooped up inside, and I don't
want to have to spend my life taking care of every
body except myself! But all the priests have to say about it is how women should rejoice that they can sacrifice themselves for their families. Blessed Trine, am I the one who's crazy, or is it everybody else?

But since there was no possible way to answer that question, she jerked the laces of her boots tight with a snarl of frustration, and went out to take out her ill-humor and uncertainty on the pells.

 

Tarma's private practice ring was indoors rather than outside; a second hollowed-out cave beside the stables, this one with the walls left rough and convoluted. She'd long ago tired of practicing in the cold and wet—and the mere thought of practicing in the snow was enough to make her shiver. Besides, back when she and Keth had held the Keep, she'd gotten used to having an indoor practice ground. This one was much smaller, but she didn't need room for twenty pupils anymore.

Kero was going through her paces; one of the Shin‘a'in sword-dances. And as Tarma watched her, the Swordsworn's heart sang with pride. Granted it was one of the simplest of the exercises, but Kerowyn performed it so flawlessly that it looked as effortless as breathing.

The girl's a natural, she thought with a kind of astonished pleasure. Years
and
years of training
younglings,
and never a natural in the
lot—and
now,
at
the end of my days,
I
not only get to teach one, but
she's
an
adop-
tee. My Clan.