Magic's Pawn

He thrashed beneath her, fighting her with a paranormal strength; he couldn't know where he was or who she was. All she could read from him was terrible agony - and beneath the pain, confusion, panic, entrapment. She caught his wrists and tried to pinion them against the pillows; then tried to pin him down with the blankets. His chest arched against hers, he screamed, and the walls shook again.

Mardic lay in the corner behind her, quite unconscious; Donni had his head in her lap and she was trying to protect him from falling objects with her own body. Vanyel had thrown him against the wall when this nightmare - or whatever it was - had started, and Mardic had made the mistake of trying to touch his mind to wake him.

:Donni - :Savil used a moment of lull to Mindtouch her pupil, taking a tiny fragment of her attention from the attempt - attempt, for it wasn't succeeding - to shield Vanyel, to get him under some kind of control : - Donni, how's Mardic?:

:He's all right, just stunned,: came the reassuring reply : - I can spare you something. Catch this, quick - :

The girl 'threw' her a mental line, and began sending additional, sorely-needed energy down it as soon as Savil 'caught' it.

It helped to keep Savil from blacking out as Vanyel lashed out with his mind, but that was about all.

Jaysen was coming on the run; Savil could Feel him reaching out to find out what the hell was going on, and Felt the panic in his mind when he realized they had a powerful Gifted trapped in a pain-loop and hallucination. He all but broke down the door, trying to get in, and flung himself into the affray without a second thought.

'Shield him, dammit,' he shouted, throwing himself across Vanyel's legs, as the walls (but, thank the gods, not the foundations again) shook.

'I'm trying, ' she snapped back, giving up on the uneven struggle to pin Vanyel down, and settling for securing his arms. 'He breaks them as fast as I get them up!'

Jaysen succeeded in getting Vanyel physically restrained where she, being lighter, had failed. He added his strength to Savil's and Donni's on the crumbling shields they were trying to get on the boy. But it wasn't even stalemate; they were losing him to his own nightmares.

Andrel appeared. Savil didn't even see or Sense him run in; he was just there all in an instant. But instead of flinging himself into the melee, he grabbed their arms and pulled both of them off the boy.

Then he reached down for something at his feet, and came up with a bucket of icy water. He doused the boy, bed and all, without a heartbeat of hesitation.

The convulsions stopped as Vanyel came abruptly awake.

He sat up - stared - then he suddenly went limp.

The room stopped shaking.

'Savil, get me a blanket,' Andrel ordered quietly. 'Jays, help me get him out of that wet bed before he goes into shock, then get the bedding stripped before the mattress gets soaked.'

By the time Savil returned with the goosedown comforter from her bed, the two men had pulled the half- stunned boy from the tangled mess of water-soaked bedcoverings, and the bedding was piled on the floor. Andrel was carefully shaking the boy's shoulders while Jaysen supported him.

Behind them, Mardic was groggily climbing to his knees, Donni steadying him, but the two of them waved Savil off when she made a half-step in their direction.

:.We're all right,: Donni Mindspoke. ;I'II get Mardic into bed myself, and then I'll come make up the bed in here again.:

Savil turned her attention back to the boy, knowing she could trust Donni to deal with the situation if she had said she could.

'Come on, Vanyel,' Andrel was saying, coaxingly. 'Come on, lad, come back to us. Wake up, come out of it.'

Vanyel blinked, blinked again, and sense came back into his eyes. He looked about him, momentarily confused, then the destruction about him seemed to register on him. He closed his eyes, a soft, hardly audible moan coming from the back of his throat.

And for one instant, Savil was nearly flattened beneath an overwhelming load of blackest despair, terrible guilt, and a grief so heavy she felt her knees start to give way beneath the weight of it.

Then it was gone; absolutely cut off, and so completely that for a moment even she doubted that she had felt it.

But one look at Andrel and Jaysen convinced her otherwise; the former was deeply shaken, and the latter white-lipped.

She expected tenderness and concern from Andrel - but strangely enough, it was Jaysen who carefully got the boy into a chair, wrapped in the comforter; and from the chair back into the bed when Donni had stripped it of the wet coverings and remade it. It was Jaysen who stayed beside him, leaving Savil free to see to it that Mardic was truly all right. Savil wasn't in a mood to ask questions about his apparent change of heart.

Mardic was fine, and relatively cheerful. 'I'll have a godsawful headache,' he told her; 'Poor Van thought I was going to kill him, took me for an enemy in his dream. When he realized it was a dream, he pulled most of it - '

'Most of it?' Savil choked. 'He flattened you, and he pulled most of it?'

'Near as I can tell.' Mardic put both hands to his temples and massaged a little. 'Well when he pulled the blow, the energy overflowed into those raw channels and hurt him, and he went over the edge; couldn't control anything. Then - I think - he lost his center and got lost in his own pain. Andrel had the right notion; physical shock is what gave him something to home in on.'

'But you are going to be all right?'

He gave her half a grin. 'If you'll let me get some sleep.'