Changes

recently. That shaded lamp was still burning over the center of the table. Was it ever allowed to go out? Maybe not. If Dallen was to be believed, and the crystal sphere could make your Gift work better, then you wouldn’t want to have to wait around for someone to come light the lamp for you when you needed it. How many people knew about this place? He’d bet, not many.

::It works best with specific Gifts,:: Dallen said. ::Mindspeakers don’t bother with it, much. For sending a message quickly to a Herald at a distance, it’s easier just to ask the Companions to do it.::

He entered and closed the door behind him, then sat down carefully on one of the padded seats. ::Now what?::

::I want you to understand that because you are going to be using your Gift in a very intense way, it is going to take a great deal out of you,:: Dallen cautioned. ::Your Gift is like any other thing you do; it takes energy to use it. This will be exactly like playing the most energetic game of Kirball you ever have in your life, followed by two more. And that’s if you’re lucky.::

::Nothin’ comes fer free, I got it,:: he replied, leaning over the table. ::What else?::

::You will not need to keep your shields up. The room will shield you in part—to be brief, it will shield you from everyone up on the Hill. For the rest, as you hunt, I will shield you, as I did before you learned to shield yourself. Save your strength for the hunt.::

::Aight.:: He relaxed and let the shields down, a little at a time, and—

Huh.

Dallen was right. The shields on this room were incredible. He wondered how that had been done, since most shields evaporated when the person who held them in place died.

::Now just let your eyes rest on the crystal. Remember what those Agents looked like when you saw them, either with your own eyes or Nikolas’. They were probably not bothering to disguise themselves at the time. Then remember how their minds looked to you, and when you are sure of what you are looking for, start hunting. It will be like sifting gravel to find a gemstone.::

He braced his elbows on the tabletop, cupped his chin in his hands, and stared at the crystal. After a moment, he realized that he couldn’t look away. Something was holding his gaze.

The crystal was holding his gaze.

He made no attempt to fight it. Instead, he did as Dallen had told him to do and concentrated on the two enemy Agents he had seen. Height... roughly the same as Nikolas, one shorter than the other. Build... powerful, but lean. Their faces though... there was something like a distant family resemblance there. Both had lightly tanned skin, dark hair, dark eyes—by candlelight he couldn’t vouch for the exact color. Thin lips, strong cheekbones, deep- set eyes. Expressions that were so neutral they were masklike. Eyes like shiny dark pebbles and just about as cold and lifeless.

Things started coming up in his memory, things he had not consciously noticed at the time. A scar at the corner of the shorter one’s left eye. That their hands were gloved, but the gloves had no fingers. That the fingertips looked oddly flat, the fingers had a cross-hatching of faint scars on the backs.

When he had them firmly in his mind’s eyes, he added the memory of how they had “felt” in his head. How dispassionate and cold those stray thoughts had been, as if everything were a factor in some calculation that only they knew the answer to. And how utterly indifferent they were to whether something or someone lived or died. They were nothing like the man who had somehow driven his dreams and feelings into Mags without realizing it. And yet... they were clearly cast from the same mold, fired in the same furnace. The one that Mags had called Temper had been flawed, though the flaws had never been on the surface, and those who had sent him had had no idea that what they had sent out would crack so easily under pressure. These two were the perfect specimens of... of... of whatever it was they were supposed to become.

Weapons. They were supposed to become weapons.

Mags felt something fall into place as he recognized what they were. And he had names for them now —“Ice”—that was the older, slightly taller one. He was colder than the other, and experiences and emotions simply slipped off him. “Stone” was the other—not as cold, but harder. Nothing got past his surface. The first froze his own feelings. The second never allowed them to escape.

And that shield, that shadow that enveloped them. No, not exactly a shadow... a fog? No, that wasn’t it, either. It was just as cold and dispassionate as they were, which probably made it easier to obscure their thoughts. Despite being a separate thing from them, and despite the fact that it definitely reacted to an intrusive presence, Mags didn’t think it was exactly alive. Not as he knew things were alive. And despite the appearance of intelligence, he didn’t believe it could actually think. Could it be it was like a clockwork toy that gave the illusion of life by doing several things in a lifelike manner?

Never mind. He knew what it felt like, too. He could hunt for it as well as for them.

::Ready to hunt?:: Dallen asked.

He answered with a wordless yes.

He felt his eyes closing, and yet, he could still see the sphere. Odd... but he didn’t have time for musing. Because—because at that moment, “he” wasn’t sitting at the table anymore. “He” was floating... somewhere. If he concentrated quite hard, he “saw” parts of Haven beneath him, but the buildings were like sketches of buildings, while the people in them varied from dim ghosts to perfectly normal looking people to creatures that burned like stars.

And without thinking about anything but the need to hunt, he began to move. It was something like flying dreams he’d had, and the dream-landscape below him took on a hint of familiarity.

Well, the only analogy he could make was that “he” became a hunting falcon, circling up over the Palace, searching, searching... Herald Jakyr, the Herald who had rescued him from his life at Cole Pieters’ mine, was an avid falconer and had taken him along on a few hunts on the rare occasions he was in Haven. And this was exactly like being one of those hawks, circling, soaring, keen eyes looking, looking everywhere. Walls were no barrier to those eyes, as he circled farther and farther outward. He “saw” the people beneath him and somehow saw them outwardly and inwardly too. He could have read their thoughts, but that wasn’t right, and besides, it was not why he was out here. He only needed to recognize what they were—see that they were not what he was hunting for—and move on.