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  The cat, if he understood Franse correctly, was something like a Companion, but he’d never heard of mobs of cats accompanying the Sunpriests into battle against Valdemar, and something that odd would certainly be noticed.

  Vkandis had helped, had blessed, him, a Herald. He’d felt that himself. He’d felt a warm force, a great and powerful force, joining with him to drive off the chill poison of the demon’s claw marks. Something that odd had never happened before to his knowledge; he was certain if it ever had, the smallest child in Valdemar would be aware of it.

  There was something in this equation that he was missing, and he wished desperately for Mindspeech so he could ask directly.

  But at the moment it was looking as if he might as well wish for a gryphon to fly him home. He was just as likely to get the one as the other.

  12

  Franse did not bring up the subject of eye lenses again. Then again, Mags was in no shape to travel yet. His second morning in the priest’s home was much like the first, although he did exert himself to hunt squirrels outside the garden with Franse’s nodded permission. He had to lie down and sleep, or at least rest, right after the noon meal, which was convenient for Franse, since he did some sort of prayer or ceremony he was somewhat secretive about at that same time.

  A lot of the awkwardness of the previous night was gone. Franse was warming to him (and he to Franse!) a lot faster than he would have thought. He decided that some of the priest’s apparent misanthropy was nothing more than shyness. Some was acute embarrassment over his own clumsiness. The more time Mags spent with him, however, the more a latent hunger for company seemed to awaken in him.

  And that cat . . . was abetting that.

  The third day proved that.

  After a long staring session with the cat just after breakfast, Franse abruptly announced that he was going to show Mags where there were birds to hunt for meat, and the two of them had ended up at a secluded pond Mags would never have guessed was there. Not only did Mags manage to bag several ducks and a goose, but Franse was able to teach him how to fish, so they returned to the cave with not only dinner but provisions to smoke and dry for the winter.

  The cat highly approved of the bird guts and heads, and the guts, heads, and tails of the fish. Franse was happy with the feathers and promptly used all of the body feathers to restuff a flat pillow. Mags saved the flight feathers to redo the fletching on the arrows, grateful that this was a basic skill every Trainee learned early.

  This put the young priest in a very good mood, though mostly that consisted of smiling at Mags shyly, motioning at the duck in their stew, and saying “Is good!” a lot, with Mags nodding in agreement.

  He was beginning to think about trying to broach the idea of him leaving as soon as the larder was full of meat and fish. With two people fishing, that part would go pretty fast, and the small animals and waterfowl around here seemed to be utterly unaware that a human could actually kill them. Probably because with his bad eyesight, Franse would have to be within a horse length of them to hit them. The expedition to the pond had gone well, Mags’ wounds were sealed, and he was feeling more energetic—and he couldn’t put this off for too much longer. Trying to get through these mountains in winter would be a nightmare.

  He still wasn’t sure how he was going to avoid the demons . . . but maybe Franse had some sort of talisman or could make some object holy to Vkandis that would protect him.

  Or maybe—he could go back to his first idea. Franse could seal up the cave for a few days or a fortnight and come with him. That would make things both easier and faster, if he would.

  He caught the cat and Franse staring at each other again during dinner and sighed, knowing what they were doing. Mindspeaking. Things would be so much easier if he could Mindspeak again! They both turned to look at him. “What is?” Franse asked, looking concerned.

  “Oh . . . I used to be able to do that,” he said without thinking. At Franse’s puzzled look, he added, “Head-talk,” and pointed from Franse to Reaylis and back.

  “So?” Franse looked startled and went into another of those staring sessions with the cat. Then he looked back at Mags. “Reaylis saying is, you are—” he waved his hand in the air between them, miming a wall. “He tries head-talk, nothing.”

  Mags looked back at them, intensely frustrated. How could he explain that he had been kidnapped, drugged, and hauled into Karse against his will, and he didn’t know if it was a hit on the head, the drugs, or something else entirely that had stolen his Mindspeech?

  “I got hurt. Before demon,” he said, finally, and mimed someone hitting him on the back of the head. It was as good an explanation as any, and what was Franse going to be able to do about it, anyway? He was like Bear, he didn’t have a Healing Gift, and Mags had no idea if the drugs had been gone from him long enough that they shouldn’t be affecting his Mindspeech or not. If they weren’t, it wasn’t something Franse could fix, and if it was the drugs, without knowing what drugs they were in the first place, how could Franse counter them?

  Franse’s face in the candlelight grew very thoughtful, but he said nothing. They both finished the meal with a great deal of content, all things considered. They even had a sweet afterward: crab apples baked all day in a little honey on the hearth. It was wonderful to have something sweet, but he really missed breads. The closest thing that Franse could manage was acorn flour, which wasn’t really even close.

  “Do you ever help people on a farm or village around here?” he asked, as they both chased the last tiny bits of honey out of their bowls with their fingers. You didn’t waste food in Franse’s house, table manners be damned.

  He shook his head. “Was village near. Gone.” His face closed in. “Black-robes.”

  Those were the Karsite priests he had cursed before, and this was the second time he had demonstrated contempt, even hatred for those who should have been his brothers. There was something going on here that was very important for Nikolas to know; the problem was . . . how was he to get it out of Franse? Franse would probably tell him, but how could he ask the right questions?

  “Can you tell me about the black-robes?” he urged, but Franse only looked frustrated and spread his hands. “No—” and he mimed speaking with one hand.

  Mags sighed. “You don’t have the words.” Dammit. I think I really, really need to know everything about this. And he’d tell me if he could. But I can’t understand him.

  Franse only sighed. “Sleep,” he suggested.

  Mags nodded. Maybe sleep would improve things.

  Maybe when he woke up, his Mindspeech would be back.

  Maybe a gryphon would appear to carry him to Valdemar . . .

  As he climbed into his bed, another thought occurred to him. If Vkandis had helped him in the fight with the demon, maybe Vkandis approved of him finding out what was going on.

  So before he drank his mug of medicinal tea and pulled the fur blankets up over himself, he thought, very, very hard. Vkandis Sunlord, if ye want something heard, I’ll be yer messenger, but yer gonna haveta help me hear it m’self.

  * * *

  There was a heavy weight on his chest. A terribly heavy weight on his chest. It felt like a warm bag full of apples. Or bricks wrapped in fur. Or—

  He opened his eyes. It was dark, very dark, and Franse had long since put out the lanterns and the candles in the main chamber. He shouldn’t have been able to see. But he could. The heavy weight on his chest was the cat, and every hair on it was glowing, faintly. Its eyes were glowing too, a deep, luminous blue, just like a Companion’s eyes. Just like Dallen’s eyes.

  The cat stared hard into his face, pupils dilated to pinpricks. He stared back and found himself falling into those blue, blue eyes, just as he had fallen into Dallen’s eyes when he had first been Chosen . . .

  Bu
t this time was different. This time, it wasn’t as if he were joining something. This time it was as if he were being examined, rather as a Healer would examine him to find out what was wrong. He felt as if he were being prodded, poked, turned around about and even upside down and shaken a little, then put back on his feet. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was entirely disconcerting. Behind the entity doing the prodding and poking, he sensed something very much larger, warmer, interested in a detached fashion. He sensed a question from the first entity, a response from the second, though he couldn’t tell what the question and answer were.

  Then came the distinct feeling that the first creature was poised, like a hunter with a spear, about to make a single, decisive strike.

  And a moment later—it did.

  There was a moment of absolutely blinding sensation—not pain, though it was something like pain. Something absolutely overwhelming.

  :There, that should do the trick, I think. Can you hear me, Horse-Boy?:

  His eyes flew open again; he had not known they were closed. That had been a mind-voice!

  :Of course it was a mind-voice,: the cat said, sounding amused. :It was my mind-voice. I fixed you.:

  He stared at the cat, aghast, amazed, and very nearly delirious with joy. :You fixed me! Reaylis! You fixed me!:

  The cat purred. :Naturally. You called on the Sunlord and offered yourself as a go-between. In order for you to do that, I had to fix your Mindspeech. So I did.: The cat licked his whiskers. :Mind you, I’d have done it before if I’d known you were actually broken and not just headblind, with or without Vkandis telling me to.:

  He blinked. :Uh . . . why?:

  The cat purred again. :Because I’m a cat, silly. Cats do what cats will do, and neither man nor god can do anything about it. That’s why Vkandis made us His instruments. He has an interesting sense of humor, does the Sunlord. Now, I want you to sleep and let that heal. It’s raw right now. It won’t be good to use until morning, and even then we will have to go slowly and carefully, just as with your physical wounds. Tearing mental channels open is bad..:

  He wanted desperately to try to call Dallen. He also knew that if a cat told him not to do something, it was probably a good idea not to do it.

  :All ri—: he began.

  :There’s a good Horse-Boy.: And the next thing he knew, there was sunlight reflecting off the rock from the tunnel and the smell of hickory-and-acorn porridge cooking.

  The cat was nowhere in sight. He wanted to leap to his feet and run out into the main room, he wanted to try calling Dallen. He wanted to do a lot of things.

  But he’d been hurt and healed so many times by this point that he knew how stupid it would be to do any of them just yet. Calling Dallen would be dangerous. Leaping up and running into the next room would hurt him. So, one step at a time.

  He got up, put on his trews, and walked gingerly out into the main room. Franse looked up at his footstep.

  :Reaylis says—: Mags heard tentatively in his mind. Franse’s mind-voice was not unlike Franse himself: clean, strong, simple on the surface, complex beneath, shy.

  :Reaylis is right,: he replied with relief. :Now we can finally talk!:

  * * *

  The talking was slow, with pauses for Mags to rest when he began to get an odd ache just behind the point between his eyebrows. They ate while they talked, and as Dallen had often pointed out, this was not at all bad, being able to eat and have a conversation at the same time without being in the least impolite.

  :We begin with you, De—: Franse glanced at the cat, who had appeared as if summoned. :Pardon. Reaylis says I must call you Horse-Boy from now on. Or Mags. He prefers Horse-Boy.: The young priest grinned, shyly. :I think I prefer Mags. So, we begin with you. Why are you here, how do you come to Karse, and why is your Horse not with you?:

  Mags grinned back ruefully. :Don’t ask for much, do ye?: He had a long drink of tea and thought. :Shortest story I can. Yer leaders hired some sorta folks we never seen afore t’muck up things in Valdemar. From some place farther away than we ever heard of.:

  Franse considered this, then nodded. :I did not know of this until now, but it was not important to us, so there is no reason why I should have known. Reaylis knew of this, tells me it is true, and that he cannot penetrate the fog that is about them. So we can tell you nothing of them.:

  Mags sighed. Well, damn. :I got no idea how or why, but they seemta recognize me. They tried takin’ me a while back, an’ nothin’ came of it. They tried again, and this time they nobbled me. Whacked me up aside the head an’ drugged me. When I woke up, m’Mindspeech was gone, an’ I was in a wagon.: He described briefly how he had tricked them, how he had gotten away, and how his mind-voice still hadn’t come back. :Then that demon came after me, and you and Reaylis got rid of it.:

  Franse nodded slowly through all of this. :These Gifts—all but Healing—they are anathema here. Children who have them are put to the fires. Only Healing and magic are permitted. The only reason that I escaped was because of Old Harald and Reaylis. They stole me from my parents before the black-robes came to the village and made it appear that I had gone out through a window and a demon had taken me. The demons take many who are caught outside their walls after dark.: He glanced down at the cat. :Suncats are the holiest creatures of Vkandis, so it says in our Holy Writings. And yet I am sure if the black-robes caught sight of so much as a hair of Reaylis’ tail—:

  :I would be a pretty fur collar,: the cat put in, wrapping his tail around his feet, neatly. :They give lip service to the concept of the Suncats, but if they could catch any of us, we would be quite, quite dead.: The cat yawned. :It is a good thing that we are cats, and easier to hide than horses.:

  Mags had to chuckle at that.

  :So I am in hiding, and Reaylis is in hiding,: Franse continued. :There was a village near here that I did some healing for, and sometimes performed the offices of priest. I pretended that I was itinerant, a priest without a home temple; there are many such red-robes, for there are many more villages that are poor and cannot support a temple than there are priests to tend them, and so long as we don’t interfere in any way with what the black-robes want, they ignore us. But the village produced too many Gifted children. The black-robes declared it cursed. They took the people away, burned the village to the ground, and sowed the ground with salt.:

  Franse must have been watching on the day that happened; Mags got furtive glimpses of the scene through his mind’s eye. The terrified villagers, the children herded into barred carts, the adults tied together at the waist and tied to the back of the carts. The flames racing through the tightly clustered houses. The carts moving away, the people forced to follow, stumbling and weeping or numb with shock. The black-robes moving among the smoking ashes, literally spreading salt over the ground so nothing would grow there.

  Part of Mags wanted to yell at Franse, Why didn’t you do something? But really, what could he have done? He was one very young man and a cat. There had been at least five of those black-robe priests and a troop of armed men.

  And, possibly, demons. What could one man and a cat have done against all of that? Could he have stopped them? No.

  So he kept his thoughts tightly to himself.

  Besides, Franse had helped him, when he had no reason to. Franse had saved him from another demon, Franse had tended his wounds and fed him. He should be feeling grateful to Franse—and he was!—not sitting in judgment on him.

  But that made him think of something that caused him some alarm. :That demon you chased off—is it gonna go back to its master and—:

  :It wouldn’t dare,: said Reaylis, and switched his tail angrily. :We have driven such things off before, Franse and I. It knows the taste of the Sunlord’s lash, and it will not risk such again.:

  Well, Mags reckoned they knew their business better than h
e did. He took comfort in the fact that they’d driven demons off before. If no black-robes had come to complain about it until now, likely they wouldn’t turn up this time either.

  Suddenly he found himself yawning, his head feeling too heavy for his neck, and aching.

  “Bed, you,” Franse said aloud. “Maybe hunt, maybe not, sleep now.”

  Scarcely able to keep his eyes open, Mags could only nod, get up from the table, and stumble to the little chamber, where he was asleep as soon as he pulled a blanket over himself. For the first time since this ordeal had begun, he went to sleep without feeling that part of him was dead.

  He woke to the smell of frying fish; for a moment he was confused as to his surroundings. Franse had never fried anything before; his mostly vegetarian diet didn’t give him any fat to fry in.

  Then he remembered: the ducks and the geese. Franse was no fool, and he was quite a good cook. He must be harvesting the goose and duck fat as the birds hot-smoked in the little smokehouse he had made for the fish that he was able to catch. And Franse must have decided that the occasion warranted a little celebration in the way of using some of that precious fat.

  He knuckled the last of the sleep out of his eyes and came back into the main room. Reaylis was watching the proceedings avidly. Franse looked up briefly and waved him over.

  “Know you calling Horse wish. Is needing more—” Franse gestured.

  “Energy,” Mags supplied.

  “Aye. So—this—” He gestured at the fried fish. They looked wonderful, crisp and brown and delicious. “You, me, Reaylis. Reaylis and I help.”