Crucible (7 page)

Cera had to smile at that. “He takes it wherever he goes.”

“Yes, I know.” Helgara rolled her eyes, but then grew serious. “I cannot promise that it will be easy,” she said. “All I can say to you is that the only way out, the only way to be free, is through. Through the pain, through the fear.”

Cera kept her head down and focused on the page.

After a long, uncomfortable silence, Helgara sighed, and rose. “They are serving the evening meal in the Great Hall. We had hoped you would join us, but Marga will bring you a tray if that is your wish.”

Cera nodded and didn't look up as Helgara left the room.

She couldn't go out there. Couldn't face them. Couldn't explain her shame, and thereby heap more guilt on her shoulders, for they were her people and they needed her. The Queen had trusted her with their welfare, but if she had known the truth, known that Cera was at fault, she'd have never allowed her to be Lady of Sandbriar.

The silence was broken only by the sounds of the crackling fire in the hearth. It sounded happy, as if it knew not of fear, or shame, or guilt.

The tips of her fingernails turned white as she clenched her quill. Her stomach churned, and she swallowed hard.

She wanted to hide, to stay safe, to not have to deal with any of this. She didn't want this, didn't want to face anyone or anything.

Ink dripped from the tip of her quill, the shaft ruined. Cera bit her lip and forced herself to set aside the ruined parchment with a sigh. The ink could be bleached from it but—

Sinmon's face, dark and distorted with rage, flashed before her eyes. “A waste we can ill afford,” he roared as he raised his hand to strike—

Cera jerked to her feet in terror, her heart racing, her skin suddenly covered in cold sweat.

But the room was silent and empty, and the fire still crackled with good cheer.

She sank back to her desk, covered her face, and wept. Sorrow and helplessness raged within her, along with her guilt. She'd done nothing to deserve this, nothing . . .

And that thought brought with it a tiny spark of anger.

No.

She would
not
give in to this. She didn't deserve this, but she'd have to work through, go through . . . if she ever wanted to be truly free. Not just for her people. For herself.

Cera's heart raced again, but this time with determination. She rose, and started toward the door, but the dark pit of fear and despair rose again in her stomach.

She faltered . . . glanced back at the false safety of her desk and the haven of quiet numbers . . .

But then, with a choked sob, she took another step.

Even through her guilt—

She took another step.

Even through her shame—

Another step.

Even through her fear, she would do this.

Her fingers touched the cold metal handle . . . and she pulled.

She
would
be free.

Something was wrong with Kade.

For no reason that either of them could see, his healing skills had faded. His ability to touch pain and make it better had dulled over the past months until it was now almost gone. Nwah hadn't said anything for fear of intruding, but if she was being honest, she had known of his loss for longer than a full circle of the moon.

Now Kade sat alone on the dry creekbed and picked apart a wilted reed. The stink of discontent clung to him like a fog.

She went to him.

Her paws rasped on the dry woodland undergrowth as she glided to his side. She nuzzled his neck in the way that had always made him laugh before, but this time he just leaned away and sighed.

:Are you all right?:
she said.

“I'm fine,” he replied, wiping his neck.

Nwah licked her chops, lingering over his briny flavor. She sat beside him. It was late afternoon. The woods felt hot and thick in that way it can get after the sun has beaten on the trees for a full day. Her tongue stuck to her mouth, and the peat was slippery under her paws.

She was hungry, and her hind leg ached where it had been broken a few years ago.

:Are we going to hunt today?:
she asked.

Kade peered up the dry creekbed and dropped the reed between his feet. He had grown taller and lankier in their two years together in wilds of the Pelagiris. His hair, already dark when they first met, was growing toward black. His face had lost the roundness of childhood but was not yet marked by experience.

:I suppose we should,:
he replied, his tone listless.

There should be a word for what she felt coming from him, but the human tongue had no substitute for the
kyree
tone in this case. Depression, maybe. But even that word wasn't right. Despair? Failure? She didn't know. But the emotion coming from him tasted like what she had felt the day they had first met, the day Kade had pulled her from the briars and saved her life.

That day, Nwah remembered, she had wanted to give up.

No one should ever have to feel that way.

She huffed, hating to be so powerless.

She considered casting a pleasant thought into his mind. She could do it. She knew she could. Nwah still didn't completely understand the magic that ran through her, but she could sense power nearby. She knew she could create something that would ease Kade's mind for a moment. But she also knew that doing so would only make him angry later.

:You will heal again,:
she said, twitching one whisker.
:You'll see. It will come back.:

:Don't talk about things you don't understand.:

:I understand that you're struggling with your Gift. But it will be all right. Gifts do not just leave.:

:Healing is not like your magic,:
Kade replied.
:So you can't just say it will be all right.:

:My mother always said—:

He raised his hand sharply.
:Please, just shut up about your mother. She wasn't a Healer, so her ideas have no use here.:

He stood abruptly and went to string his bow.

Nwah clamped her mouth shut and grunted from the back of her throat. If Kade were a
kyree
, he would understand the nuance of that sound without the aid of their mindlink, but he was not a
kyree.
Nor was he letting his link flow so freely now. His resistance made her angry. She wouldn't press herself on him, though. There was so much she still did not understand about humans.

She shook dry peat from her coat. She didn't like it when her fur was not clean. It made her feel prickly.

She watched as Kade worked on his bow.

He was growing more closed and distant each day, as her siblings had become when their time in the den was nearing its end. She thought of her mother. She wondered where they were.

Kade's increasing distance worried her.

It wasn't her fault that her own magic seemed to be growing while his stagnated. She wondered, in fact, if the mere matter of her power's growth was somehow stunting his. Was her growing prowess hurting him in some way? Was the fact of her Gift separating him from his?

:Are you leaving me?:
she asked before she could stop the words. Just giving voice to the question hurt.

Kade's glare leveled on her for an instant, and her heart jumped into her purr. Their travels had made him hard and wise beyond his years, and his stare burned like cold daggers. But then his shoulders drooped, and he stood there, suddenly looking like the fourteen-year-old boy he was.

:I'm sorry to be such a snot today, Nwah. I'll never leave you.:

:How can you truly say that?:
she said.
:How can you know?:

He smiled.

:How can you say you'll never leave me?:
he replied.

It was a good answer—the only answer that made sense. Though Nwah could not explain the depth of the
link she and Kade shared, she could say that it was even stronger than the one she had once shared with Rayn, the young woman she had first been paired with. Nwah would never forget the raw despair that had crushed her when the binding between her and Rayn had been torn. She remembered wanting to die, as if death were akin to breath. But she knew that if her connection with Kade were ripped from her now, she would not merely
want
to die but would actually roll up and expire on the spot. So while Nwah could not explain how she was so certain she could never leave Kade, she knew the truth of it better than she knew herself.

Still, despite their link, and despite having lived here with Kade for nearly two years, Nwah didn't know for
certain
that he felt things to the same depth she did.

Humans were not
kyree
, after all.

They were very hard to understand.

Kade laughed. The sound made Nwah snap her tail back and forth.

Shouldering his makeshift quiver, he gazed at the forest ceiling. The light fighting its way through the branches and leaves was fading into evening.
:Let's hunt,:
he said.
:There are only a few hours of daylight left.:

Nwah shook herself and flipped her tail once again. The scent of the woods grew sharp, and she felt that immediate closeness to Kade she had grown to love.

:Yes,:
she said.
:Let's hunt.:

• • •

They were stalking a turkey when the sensations of civilization came to her.

They were the unique tangs of human scent mixed with a touch of stew or other soup wafting on the slow-moving breeze. They were the distant sounds of bellows and the sharper rasp of blade on wood. She had been concentrating on her magic to create silence around them, but these sensations broke her pattern and, hence, broke the spell.

Kade stepped too heavily.

The undergrowth rustled.

And the turkey spooked before he could get a good shot. He lowered his bow and grimaced.

:What is it?:
he asked.

:People.:
Nwah replied.

:Hawkbrothers?:

:Not sure. They don't feel like brigands.:

This was good, but Nwah and Kade had learned the hard way that brigands were not the only creatures in the woods who might mean them harm.

They picked their way carefully through the woods and along a sloping hillside toward those sensations of humans, which soon became strong enough that Kade could follow them by himself. There was a power here, a sense of magic that tasted like an open field. It made Nwah's mouth water and sent an excited chill over her skin as she padded toward it. Her thoughts intermixed with that power, and she used it to create an even stronger silence over Kade's steps as well as her own.

She smelled wild hare and dried moss, but mostly she felt this power that seemed to buzz so low, and that made hairs on her shoulders tingle.

In the midst of this power, she felt more presences.

More people.

:It's a civilization of some kind,:
she said.

They came to a clearing.

It was a village built into rocky ledges of the hillside.

A thick fence of elm and birch grew around the clearing. Great masses of thicket and a few lines of briar also protected much of the perimeter. Inside the fringe of trees, Nwah made out huts and a few small but sturdy houses built in haphazard rows that made her think this was more of a trapper's waypoint than a true establishment. The ground at the center was worn to bare dirt, though, a patch that spoke to some degree of permanence. Around that patch sat a gathering of men and women,
maybe twenty-five strong, all on benches or stools made of rough-hewn lumber.

A voice rose.

A hooded man dressed in a green robe cinched tight around his waist with a frayed rope stood in the middle of the hard-packed patch. A fire blazed beside him, under a hanging cauldron that smelled of greens and stewed meat.

Nwah curled her nose. Why humans ruined good meat would always be beyond her ken.

A frail woman, wearing riding breeches and a light-toned shirt, lay before the man, propped on one elbow. She was older, her hair still dark but beginning to show gray. Her optimistic gaze was lifted toward the man in a way that made Nwah uncomfortable.

“Friends,” the man said to his subjects as he pulled his hood back. His face was thin, and his eye sockets were so deep that the fire cast shadows in them. His hair was as dark as the woman's but without the gray.

“You have each seen the extent to which this woman was injured. As I requested, I know that each of you has spent time at her side throughout this day. I know that each of you has applied your own potions and ointments. You have each attempted to remove her curse, each attempted to ward her illness. But, alas, none have succeeded.”

The audience nodded and mumbled concurrence.

He bent down, speaking poetic syllables in a language foreign to Nwah's experience, and he wrapped one hand around the woman's knee. Energy rucked at the fur across Nwah's chest. The man's gaze was challenging, and he raised his voice for one last stanza.

“Behold!” the man said as he placed his other hand over the woman's thigh. “By Agathan's structures,” he said as flames kicked up around the cauldron, “I give you true power.”

He then clapped his hands loudly over his head.

The audience gasped as the woman rose to one knee and brushed dirt off her breeches.

The man stood to tower over her once again, and as he rose, she too stood fully, testing her legs by kneeling and rising again, and again.

“It's better,” she said, leaning in to give the man a hug. “Thank you so much, Lord Pelten.”

The audience roared with applause.

“This is the power I am offering you,” the Healer said when the celebrations died down. “This is the power of the structures!”

He paced back and forth across the hardened ground. The woman stood still by the cauldron.

“You are each here because you are Healers,” he said. “Some came because I invited you, others came because rumors of the structures are spreading! But whatever your point of origin, you are
all
here because you are all frustrated. You are
all
here because, as we all know, while a Healer's touch is a wondrous thing, there are times when it has not been enough! We have all found ourselves in powerless moments when we cannot save the poor or the downtrodden. And what does the Collegium have to say in each of those cases? Nothing! In these cases, as a patient lies comatose and dying, writhing in pain, the Collegium provides nothing but condolences and the platitudes of old religions.”

Lord Pelten paused, and the hem of his robe swirled around his feet. He bent to peer at his audience.

“But I have this new approach. An approach that the Collegium does not want to hear! And do you know why they will not hear of it?”

He pointed at a young woman in the audience, who shook her head.

“It's because the Collegium fears people like us! It fears you and me because it does not own us! The dean himself banished me from the Collegium's august halls for merely speaking the truth that you have now seen
with your very own eyes! The Collegium fears the mere
idea
of Agathan structures, because these ideas are freely available for anyone who knows how to reach out and grab them!” He put his hand on the healed woman's shoulder. “They will not hear of this woman's new-found health because, and only because, the Collegium cares only to hold on to its traditions and wishes only to maintain its power!”

He paused again.

“So, who is with me?” Lord Pelten asked. “Who among you wants to learn the secret to the structures!”

There came a moment of silence.

Then.

“I do,” said a voice from the woods.

Nwah turned to see Kade step into the clearing. It had grown dark as nighttime had settled. Light from the fire made Kade's face appear gaunt.

:What are you doing?:
she said. A whisker of fear made her stomach tighten beyond her hunger. She did not like surprises. She did not like feeling out of control.

As Nwah spoke, Lord Pelten's head cocked inquisitively to the left, and his gaze fell directly upon her. “And who have we here?”

“I am called Kade.”

:Why didn't you tell me you were going to do this?:
Nwah said, standing taller now that she was exposed.

:Be calm,:
Kade replied.

But something in his voice angered her. He was acting without her. Dismissing her. It felt as though he was ignoring her, and it hurt.

“Welcome, then, young Kade,” Lord Pelten said without hesitation this time. “What a pleasant surprise to have a visitor from the wild. Please come forward.”

Kade motioned Nwah to join him and stepped fully into the healer's ring.

The audience fell silent, and Nwah noticed that now other residents emerged from the huts and lean-tos that
made up the rest of the village. They had not been prepared for an additional guest, and they looked at Kade and Nwah with an interest that made Nwah feel as if her underside were suddenly exposed.