Changes

It was anything but effortless. He felt exactly as if he were playing a hard game of Kirball, and he was hunting the ball. Energy drained out of him; Dallen had spoken nothing less than the truth. At least it wasn’t stinking hot . . .

This was like the search he’d done for Bear, only so much more precise! And there was none of that mental clamor he had to shut out all the time under ordinary circumstances, the clamor that had come so close to driving him insane the single time he’d been forced to rid himself of all shields. If he’d had to hold his own shields against that, this task would have been out of the question; he could never have done it.

Mags sensed his quarry in the distance before he “saw” them, sensed the chill of the thoughts that wisped away from them. That was what made them stand out in this vague and ever-changing landscape. There was nothing, and no one, as cold and emotionless as they were.

They were on the move. And the thing that shielded them made it impossible to say exactly where in the real Haven they were.

::Damn,:: he heard Dallen say, as he sped toward them. He wasn’t sure if that “damn” was because that sheltering thing obscured their location or because of what they were doing. For as he neared them, the real landscape of Haven solidified around them, as if by their very presence they were dragging it into this world of ghosts and shadows. A moving, irregularly shaped spheroid of reality surrounded them.

He could “see” it all quite clearly, and he watched in amazement and grudging admiration. He’d thought he was good going over rooftops. Now he was glad he’d never encountered these two up there. They moved like nothing human that he had ever seen: fast, agile, making insane leaps that not even a cat would try. The only way they could have gone faster over these rooftops would have been if they had grown wings.

Well, at least he knew they were in the city.

He didn’t need Dallen to tell him to stay with them for as long as he could. Those shield-things weren’t perfect. Thoughts—the most intense thoughts, at a guess—leaked out. He had to stay with them and concentrate on listening so he could catch those thoughts.

His focus narrowed again. He stopped being aware of anything except the two shields and the whispers that slipped out and evaporated away.

He was getting hints, but not in words. These two were concentrating on what they were doing to the exclusion even of coherent thoughts. But he was getting something. They had just left their allies on the Hill! But... who were these allies? He strained for a hint, since their escaping thoughts bore hints.

Scents, glimpses, traces of sound—

He was too far. The thoughts were too tenuous to catch from this far away, and he tried to get closer—

Suddenly, something bright and dark together exploded in his face.

He was flung halfway across the “sky.” He felt Dallen enclose him for just a moment, protecting him.

He was stunned; it felt as if he’d been hit in the head hard enough to crack his skull.

When he could “look” again, they were gone.

Dammit! I got too close! The shield-things had sensed him and—well, now he knew what they could, and would, do.

He hovered in an empty space, an empty “sky,” with the world beneath him, blank for the moment. Thanks to Dallen, he knew what had happened. Even through Dallen’s protection, they had shocked his system, and he had lost his mental image of the world.

Should he try to find them again?

Could he? What if those shield-things recognized him and went straight into an attack? Could Dallen protect him a second time?

Before he could make up his mind, another unshielded thought—not from Ice and Stone, but someone else entirely, echoed across the ghostly spaces where he floated.

An image. Amily. Amily, bound and gagged, terrified and alone.

::Mags!::

It wasn’t an image in the present—he knew immediately that Amily was safe in her own bed. This was something someone had seen... no, Foreseen.

::Mags!::

He ignored Dallen and focused on that thought, on that mind, fear and anger turning his will into a rapier with a tip of diamond, searching until he found the mind that held that vision.

He didn’t have to “follow” anything this time—he was there, right there, in a room here in the Palace, catapulted into the midst of a small group of people. Nikolas, the King, a Herald he didn’t recognize, three people in the robes of three different Temples, the Lord Marshal, a couple of Healers.

“. . . I thought perhaps we’d averted it when we canceled the procedure on Amily’s leg,” the strange Herald was saying. “But all four of us got the same vision within an hour of each other. These people are going to try again to take Herald Nikolas’ daughter and hold her to force him to do what they tell him to. Last time we got a vision, they were going to take her either just before or just after her leg was reset. We couldn’t tell which—”

“Probably because they didn’t know which; it was going to be a matter of opportunity,” the King said, face impassive. “But now?”

“As you must have expected, Your Highness, they are going to use the Kirball Festival, and the crowds and the confusion . . .”

Nikolas groaned. “There’s no hope for it. I can’t allow her to be used as a tool to manipulate me. We’ll have to find somewhere to send her—“