Brightly Burning

that chair.

'Want us to strap him down, Tyron?' asked one of the two monsters holding his arms.

Tyron was playing with a willow cane, experimentally bending it and swishing it through the air. 'Not yet. Why don't you just play with him for a little until I'm ready.'

Lan didn't get much chance to wonder what that meant. The monsters dropped him; he stumbled, not quite falling, and before he could get his balance, the first one shoved him, hard.

He hit the wall with bruising force, knocking some of the breath out of his body, and another of the bullies grabbed his arm, wrenched him away from the wall, and shoved him at a third.

They passed him from one to the other, alternately catching him and knocking him into the walls. And as they did so, that sullen little spark of heat began to grow, driving everything before it, and filling him with a white- hot rage that burned away his thoughts and contended with the panic and fear for supremacy.

*

RAIN sheeted down, drenching everything in sight—which wasn't much, as the rain curtains obscured most objects farther away than ten horse-lengths. Pol pulled his hood a little closer around his face, and kept his eyes fixed on Satiran's neck.

Malken was no longer Pol's pupil; in fact, Malken was no longer anyone's pupil except Herald Evan's. The child's Fore-Sight was so very powerful that he'd been pulled out of all his classes to concentrate on getting it under control.

Poor Malken didn't just see the future, he saw many possible futures, and at the moment, he couldn't tell which was the more likely. That left the child confused and directionless, alternately afraid to act and afraid to hesitate, afraid to warn and afraid to keep silent. Evan had taken him right away from the Collegium altogether, and out of Haven, to one of the many Crown hunting lodges where there were few people, so that he and Malken could begin to sort things out far from the interference of other peoples' lives.

Pol was the only other person allowed to come near them, because Malken had begged Evan not to keep Pol away. So Pol arranged for a holiday, long enough to ride there, stay for a few days to reassure the little boy that he had no intention of taking part in any world-wide conflagrations, and ride back.

At the moment, a world-wide conflagration was the least of all possible fates for him! Drowning was more like it. It was just his luck that he had scheduled himself to ride straight out into the pouring rain. Not that it hadn't been raining, off and on, for the past several weeks, but he'd hoped that things might slack off a bit before he started out.

No such luck.

:It could be worse,: Satiran said, after four solid candlemarks of riding in such a steady downpour that he was beginning to have the feeling that the offending clouds were actually moving with them.

'I'd rather not think how,' Pol replied, peering forward between Satiran's ears, from under the dripping hood of his rain cape. Satiran's hooves made an unpleasant, squishy splash when he set them down, and an equally unpleasant sucking sound when he picked them up. The ground was completely saturated after all these days of rain. There was nowhere for the water to go, and some people were finding the ground floors of their homes unlivable as water seeped steadily up through the flooring. And there were floods, of course, though most people who lived in areas prone to flooding were encouraged to build houses on stilts, and most did.

:I can think of any number of ways. For instance, you could have a hole in your cape, right at the nape of your neck.: Satiran was in a teasing mood, and knew how suggestible his Chosen was; for a brief but unpleasant moment, Pol actually felt an icy trickle down his spine, until he convinced himself it was only his overactive imagination.

Both he and Satiran had waxed-canvas rain capes, though Pol also had his woolen winter cape beneath the rain cape, for the rain was one short step above the temperature of ice.

'I wonder what's going to happen with Malken when his Gift stabilizes?' he wondered aloud, hoping both to tease some information out of Satiran and to distract him from any more tricks. Of all the Gifts, Foresight was the least amenable to control. It tended to come when it felt like, and show you what it wanted to. Pol had the feeling that the Companions were taking a very close interest in Malken's progress.

:Actually, I think little Malken will be able to invoke it at will, but it's always going to show a multiplicity of futures, and there won't be much of a way to tell us how to get to any of them.: Satiran sounded thoughtful, as if he had been working on that very question for some time. :Still—the worst possibilities can always be guarded against, or planned for.:

'That's better than having no warning,' Pol agreed. 'I take it you and the others have been talking about this?'

:Off and on. Malken probably has the strongest single Gift in the entire Heraldic Circle, poor thing. That's a heavy burden to bear at any age, much less such a young one.: There was no doubt that Satiran felt very sorry for the youngster; well, if that was the case, so did Pol. The strong Gifts were sometimes as much of a curse as a blessing to the one saddled with them.

:And right now,: Satiran continued, :What he's Seeing is a confused jumble of the worst possible events that anyone could imagine. That's what Hayka and Jolene say, anyway. There's no way of telling even where in time those possibilities lie.:

'Not really useful,' Pol remarked.

:Not really, no,: Satiran, replied. :For instance, if he were able to ForeSee things like a tree falling on you—:

Afterward, Pol remembered those words with a sense of heavy irony; at the time, though, all he noticed was an odd, creaking sound off to his right—

Which was quickly followed by Satiran's startled neigh and shy to the left, the confused impression of something very large rushing at him—

And then, nothing at all.

*