across a river.''
Savil ran a quick check over him, noted a channel-pulse and cleared it for him. 'What happened?' she asked urgently, keeping one hand on his elbow to steady him. 'It looks like a mage-war in here.'
'I believe I badly frightened the boy,' Starwind said, unhappily, checking his hands for damage. 'I intended to frighten him a little, but not so badly as I did. He was supposed to be calling lightning and he was balking. He plainly refused to use the power he had called. I grew impatient with him - and I cast the image of wyrsa at him. He panicked; and not only threw his own power, he pulled power from the valley-node. Then he realized what he had done and aborted it the only way he could at that point, pulling it back on himself.' Starwind gave her a reproachful glance. 'You told me he could sense the node, but you did not tell me he could pull from it.'
'I didn't know he could, myself. Great good gods - shayana, it was wyrsa that his shay 'kreth 'ashke called down on his enemies, didn't I tell you?' Savil's gut went cold; she bit her lip, and looked over her shoulder at Moondance and his patient. The Healer-Adept was kneeling beside the boy with both hands held just above his brow. 'Lord and Lady, no wonder he nearly blew the place apart!'
Starwind looked stricken to the heart, as Moondance took his hands away from the boy's forehead and put his arm under Vanyel's shoulder to pick him up and support him in a half-sitting position. 'You told me - but I had forgotten. Goddess of my mothers, what did I do to the poor child?'
'Ashke, what did you do?' Moondance called worriedly, one hand now on Vanyel's forehead, the other arm holding him. 'The child's mind is in shock.'
'Only the worst possible,' Starwind groaned. 'I threw at him an image of the things his love called for vengeance.'
'Shethka. Well, no help for it; what is done cannot be unmade. Ashke, I will put him to bed, and call his Companion, and we will deal with him. We will see what comes of this.' He picked the boy up, and strode through the pass-through without a backward glance.
'Ah, gods - this was going well, until this moment,' Starwind mourned. 'He was gaining true control. Gods, how could I have been so stupid?'
'It happens,' Savil sighed, 'And with Van more so than with anyone else, it seems. He almost seems to attract ill luck. Shayana, why did you throw anything at him, much less wyrsa?'
'He finally is willing enough to learn the controls, the defensive exercises, but not the offensive.' Starwind put his palms to his temples and massaged for a moment, a pain-crease between his eyebrows. 'And if he does not master the offensive - '
'The offensive magics will remain without control,' Savil said grimly, the smell of scorched rock still strong about her. 'Like Tylendel. I couldn't get past his trauma to get those magics fully under conscious lock. I should have brought him to you.'
'Wingsister, hindsight is ever perfect,' Starwind spared a moment to send a thread of wordless compassion her way, and she smiled wanly. 'The thing with this boy - I told you, he had the lightnings in his hand, I could see him holding them, but he would not cast them. I thought to frighten him into taking the offense.' He lowered his hands and looked helplessly at Savil. 'He is a puzzle to me; I cannot fathom why he will not fully utilize his powers.'
'Because he still doesn't understand why he should, I suppose,' Savil brooded, rocking back and forth on her heels. 'He can't see any reason to use those powers. He doesn't want to help anyone, all he wants now is to be left alone.'
Starwind looked aghast. 'But - so strong - how can he not - ''
'He hasn't got the hunger yet, shayana, or if he's got it, everything else he's feeling has so overwhelmed him that all he can register is his own pain.' Savil shook her head. 'That, mostly, would be my guess. Maybe it's that he hasn't ever seen a reason to care for anyone he doesn't personally know. Maybe it's that right now he has no energy to care for anyone but himself. Kellan tells me Yfandes would go through fire and flood for him, so there has to be something there. Maybe Moondance can get through to him.'
'Only if he survives what we do to him,' Starwind replied, motioning her to precede him into the pass- through, and sunk in gloom.
Vanyel woke with an ache in his heart and tears on his face; the image of the wyrsa had called up everything he wanted most to forget.
He could tell that he was lying on his bed, still clothed, but his hands and forearms felt like they'd been bandaged and the skin of his face hurt and felt hot and tight.
The full moon sent silver light down through the skylight above his head. He saw the white rondel of it clearly through the fronds of the ferns. His head hurt, and his burned hands, but not so much as the empty place inside him, or the guilt - the terrible guilt.
'Lendel, 'Lendel - my fault.
He heard someone breathing beside him; a Mindtouch confirmed that it was Moondance. He did not want to talk with anyone right now; he just wanted to be left aJone. He started to turn his face to the wall, when the soft, oddly young-sounding voice froze him in place.
'I would tell you of a thing - '
Vanyel wet his lips, and turned his head on the pillow to look at the argent-and-black figure seated beside him on one of the strange 'chairs' he favored.
Moondance might have been a statue; a silvered god sitting with one leg curled beneath him, resting his crossed arms on his upraised knee, face tilted up to the moon. Moonlight flowed over him in a flood of liquid silver.
'There was a boy,' Moondance said, quietly. 'His name was Tallo. His parents were farmers, simple people, good people in their way, really. Very tied to their ways, to their land, to the cycle of the seasons. This Tallo… was not. He felt things inside him that were at odds with the life they had. They did not understand their son, who wanted more than just the fields and the harvests. They did love him, though. They tried to understand. They got him learning, as best they could; they tried to interest the priest in him. They didn't know that what the boy felt inside himself was something other than a vocation. It was power, but power of another sort than the priest's. The boy learned at last from the books that the priest found for him that what he had was what was commonly called magic, and from those few books and the tales he heard, he tried to learn what to do with it. This made him - very
