: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?”
:I want to know why you have been concealing your Gift.:
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 mage-craft, 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.
Not if someone like Warrl can hear me all the way to the Lythands’.
“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.:
