Changes

to reach safety, he would never have been able to. He felt Gennie’s alarm and her immediate instinct to get him to come out or pull him out herself.

::Mags—::

::Not yet.:: he replied instantly.

::Bear says—::

::Not yet,:: he repeated.

He waited. This thing might not feel emotion, and it might not exactly be alive, but it didn’t want to die, either.

Suddenly he was engulfed in a flood of information.

It overwhelmed him, rolled over him, then scooped him up and tossed him about like a cork on a raging river.

Finally it tossed him out again, leaving him so drained he could barely breathe.

What do you want?

I want... to find Amily.

He sagged back, not expecting an answer.

Which one is Amily?

It seemed to think she was a Herald. She ain’t in the Web.

A long, long, long pause.

Give me your mind.

He was too weary to object. Too weary, and too desperate, to do anything but obey. He completely opened his mind to the thing, half expecting to be swallowed up in something immensely bigger than he was, maybe to never come out again.

But that wasn’t what happened.

Although he did lose all but a germ of his “self,” as he was stretched thin as gossamer on the wind, that germ was held tight and cradled safely. And finally, he sensed Amily, wisps and hints and glimpses of drug-induced nightmare.

And that was when the thing that held him magnified everything around that tenuous presence in a way he could never have managed alone. There was someone with her.

Not Ice or Stone, someone else.

Like smacking the Kirball as hard as he could, he flung what he got at Gennie, who caught it and relayed it on.

Such a fragile connection could not be held for long, not when he was as exhausted as he was. It faded. His hold on the stone faded.

You have what you need. You have what you want. Hold the balance.

Then he found himself lying on the table, gasping like a fish out of water.

They’d been given a little room on the same lower-level hallway as the one with the stone in it, furnished with chairs, an ordinary table, and pens and paper. It was cool here—but not nearly as cool as the room with the stone. Bear read over Sedric’s notes on Amily a second time, and then a third. Sedric had taken the originals with him, but he’d left them a copy. Lena then divided up the pages, and each of them made four copies of the pages they had. Bear had the ones at the end, describing the impressions Mags had gotten of Amily’s captor, and the more he read, the deeper his frown grew.

“This doesn’t make any sense!” he blurted.

“I know,” Mags sighed. “ ’Tis all like babblin’. I thin’ mebbe I was so tired by then I was seein’ things all cockeyed.”

“No, that’s not what I mean!” Bear exclaimed. “This doesn’t make any sense because it does make sense, to me at least!”

“Now you’re the one not making sense, Bear,” Lena chided.

“You mean you don’t see it?” He looked from face to face around the table; they all shook their heads. “Amily’s been drugged, like I was. And there’s a person with her all the time. And that person is a Healer! Look—here—” he pointed at a passage—“that’s something someone who is Gifted does with someone who is drugged to make sure they don’t burn through the drug too fast. But that doesn’t make any sense! Why would a Healer do this?”

“Because he’s a Karsite religious fanatic?” Gennie suggested. “Fanatics can justify practically any atrocity to themselves. The more untenable their position becomes, the harder they hold to it, and the worse the things they are willing to do to support it.” She leaned over the table and put one hand seriously on top of Bear’s. “Bear... not every Healer thinks the way we do. The way you do. If they did, there wouldn’t be any Karsite Healers.”

Mags was still trying to put the pieces together. Whoever was minding Amily was a Healer... “Would a Healer hurt some’un, or kill ’em, e’en iffen ’e was a Karsite religious fanatic?” he asked, slowly.

“I... I don’t think so,” Bear replied, after a very long moment. “He might stand by and let her be hurt or killed, but I don’t think he’d be able to do it himself. I mean, he could, but he would have to be seriously crazy, right insane. You know, sort of an antiHealer, as seriously insane as that crazy person who kidnapped me, and there’s nothing in these hints that looks that crazy to me.” He paused, thoughtfully. “Actually, someone that crazy would be the wrong person to leave in charge of someone you wanted to keep in good shape. They just plain wouldn’t be able to do that. They kind of feed on other peoples’ pain;