Storm Warning

That took him aback; it was something that had never even entered his mind. He had to nod cautiously. Falconsbane had certainly never cared for anyone—only valued them as prizes.

She smiled grimly. 'As for your own reaction and how strong and irrational it was—perfectly ordinary people have moments of jealousy as terrible as anything you just experienced. It happens all the time.' Her smile turned into a grimace of pain. 'Unfortunately, Heralds see the aftermath of that kind of jealousy all the time, too.'

'I'm not ordinary,' he began.

'No,' she agreed readily. 'You aren't. Ordinary people do not have the ability to rend people limb from limb with little more than a thought. But ordinary people do have the ability to rend other people limb from limb, period, if they are angry enough. It just takes a little more effort on their part, and as I said, Heralds see the aftermath of those episodes of jealousy and rage all the time. The gods know that in this city alone there are plenty of beatings and knifings and other kinds of mayhem inflicted every day to prove that perfectly ordinary people can be driven to kill over jealousy. The only difference between them and you is that they will use perfectly ordinary physical means against the object of their rage.' She coughed and rubbed her nose. 'It's horrible, it's tragic, but there it is.'

'But my point—' he tried to interject.

'What makes you different from those stupid, ordinary people,' she continued inexorably, 'is that you stopped yourself from acting. You controlled yourself. You were horrified by the very idea you could have hurt Darkwind, even though you were already hurt by him.'

'But I might not have!' he cried, panicking again.

'But you did,' she replied with emphasis. 'You did, even when you didn't know it was a game and meant nothing. You did control yourself, when you thought you had every reason to strike back. Now you know what the silly teasing-game looks like between two very good friends, and you won't make that mistake again. You know how much we value you, and that we would never knowingly hurt you, and I hope that you will ask one of us before you jump to any conclusions.'

'I—'

He stopped and never completed the sentence, because he frankly did not know what to say. She had an answer for every one of his fears and his arguments. She could even be right. He had no way of knowing.

She waited patiently for him to say something, then shrugged. 'Right now I think we ought to do something to salvage this situation. I don't think you want anyone else to know that you came running up here, hurt. If I were you, I wouldn't.'

Well, he had to agree completely with that, anyway. He felt enough like a fool; the last thing he wanted was for everyone else in the gathering to know he was a fool.

'In that case, we need to think of some logical reason for both of us to have come up here.' She nibbled a fingernail for a moment, deep in thought. 'Food, maybe? Or something to drink? Do you two keep those things here?'

'Yes,' he replied, nearly speechless with gratitude at her quick thinking. 'And surely everyone is thirsty by now.'

'Good. Let's go get some drink and bring it down to them, maybe something in the way of a snack as well.' She rose to her feet and gave him her hand. He took it and she helped him to his. She was a lot stronger than she looked.

Her brief tunic had dried, and so had her hair; it curled around her face in a wispy silver-streaked cloud. He wondered how it was that she could be so earthy and so unearthly, all at the same time.

'Lead the way, ke'chara. I'm not a lot of good as cook, but I can carry a tray with the best of them.' She winked at him, and he found himself smiling back at her as he led the way to the tiny kitchen where he prepared meals from time to time.

They assembled enough food and drink to have accounted for their absence, and she used a damp, cold cloth to erase any lingering traces of his hysteria. He allowed her to persuade him to rejoin them all by promising that she would make certain he was not left out of things from now on.

But he did not go back down those stairs without an invisible load of misgivings along with his other burdens. She was very likely right when it came to her assertions about Darkwind and Firesong—but when it came to himself, he was not so sure.

And despite Elspeth's kind words, Falconsbane had left traces inside him, in the form of knowledge and memories. Even if he was able to control his emotions forevermore, there were things he could never have faith in again. There were too many things he could not blindly believe in now, after hosting a madman in his body. No, when it came to the future, he could not seem to muster Elspeth's level of hope. There was no blind optimism left in him, no confidence that he'd control his rage next time, and he was very much afraid of that uncertainty. There was more than one way for a madman to be born.