Betrayals (50 page)

That, of course, was a more-than-serious situation, therefore the entity strove to balance itself in the midst of the storm. Its help was needed by the former captives, but any attempt to interfere now would most likely destroy friend along with enemy. Balance and control… balance and control… the second was impossible without the first. In the midst of chaos the entity fought its own silent battle, and then … just a hint…

But a hint which showed the way to the answer. Once again it lay in those woven patterns its flesh forms had been taught, and now only the proper pattern was needed. The entity flashed blindingly fast from one pattern to another, until the proper one was discovered. A complex pattern to be sure, but one which returned both balance and control. The entity wove it about itself, then looked around—

Only to let forth a voiceless wail of horror! Most of the former captives were dead, and even as it watched, the remaining few link-groups were in the midst of being overwhelmed. The entity had come to help the captives, and instead had stood uselessly by and watched them being destroyed! Dispassionate the entity had always been, but suddenly it experienced the taste of rage….

And with that rage came action. The storm of power still lingered in the surrounding air like a thick flurry of leaves during a violent rainstorm. The entity captured that power and added it to what power it was able to draw for itself, then sent the combination sheeting over the military groups which had begun to shout in delighted victory. There was still almost a third of its original force left, but only until their shouts turned to screams. And then only echoes of those screams were left, as the living beings who had produced them disappeared completely….

The entity looked about itself with grim pleasure, weary but satisfied with what it had wrought….

And then it was me back to myself again as Jovvi dissolved the Blending. If I hadn’t already been sitting down I would certainly have staggered and then fallen, but not from exhaustion. If I hadn’t been in shock I would have been violently sick to my stomach, and Jovvi’s muffled sob said she felt exactly the same. Lorand and Rion looked pale with a like illness, and even Valiant was clearly shaken.

“What’s wrong?” Alsin Meerk asked as soon as he realized that we were no longer Blended. “Weren’t you able to get through to the captives? What took so long? Will we have to go into the stockade after all? What—”

“Stop!” Valiant ordered with one hand raised, not quite able to look at the man. “Stop askin’ all those questions. We got the captives free of the orders holdin’ them, but they refused to leave until they got some of their own back from the ones who had held them captive. We couldn’t stop them, and the battle turned into somethin’ … horrifyin’. Our entity got tossed around like a feather in a high wind, and by the time it was able to stabilize itself—All the captives are dead, and we accounted for all the link-groups they didn’t.”

Exclamations of shock and dismay came from the people around us, and even Alsin had gone pale.

“They’re all dead?” he asked in a whisper, his expression showing how difficult it was for him to accept that truth. “We came here and risked ourselves for nothing?”

“We came here and risked ourselves to give them freedom,” I corrected harshly, helpless to keep the words back. “What they chose to do with it was their decision, but—I hate what it did to us . Am I the only one who feels… twisted?”

“Hardly,” Rion responded first, the others adding their own agreement. “I considered the emotionlessness of our entity a disquieting thing—until it ceased to be that. The simple memory of its rage is almost more than I can bear.”

“It was a conglomeration and combination and magnification of our own natural anger and distress,” Jovvi said, sounding more weary than the rest of us. “Knowing what being angry feels like lets us control the emotion, but the entity is like a child in its level of experience. That terrible storm of power ripped through its protective shield of emotionlessness, and that caused it to lose control.”

“Only over its own feelings,” Lorand pointed out after taking a deep breath. “It was in complete control of everything else, proven by the fact that those military men just … disappeared. And this time it wasn’t in a blaze of fire.”

“I had the feelin’ it used everythin’ at once,” Valiant said, pushing both hands through his long, pale hair. “The last time it let one or another of our aspects dominate, but this time it blended them all. Or Blended them. Is it just learnin’ what it’s all about, or has it taken the wrong branch down a dark road?”

When we heard that question we all looked at Jovvi, but she gave each of us a glance and then made a sound of ridicule.

“Since I was right there along with the rest of you, how do you expect me to know when you don’t?” she asked, obviously struggling to sound reasonable. “Right now we probably know more about Blending entities than anyone else alive—with the possible exception of the so-called Seated Five—and we know almost nothing. Do we have any choice other than to simply go along, learning by doing? If we do I’d like to hear about it, but right now we have another question to answer: where do we go and what do we do next?”

“With this small a force, what can we do?” Alsin asked, more wounded than scornful. “And if things got this badly out of hand here, won’t it be worse if we come across an even larger installation?”

“I’m for goin’ to that ‘front,’ ” Valiant said, suddenly sitting straighter in his chair. “That’s where Pagin Holter and his people have to be, and maybe even your friend Hat, Lorand. Meerk is right in sayin’ we don’t have a large enough force to do anythin’ meaningful, and if we don’t get one we might as well wait here and let them kill us. This time there are two hundred guardsmen after us. Next time they’ll make it five hundred or more.”

“You should tell everyone what a front is,” Alsin said, looking around at us. “And then I’d like to hear what we’re supposed to do when we get there.”

Valiant made the explanations while I, at least, considered my decision, and by the time he was through I’d come to the only conclusion I could.

“So that means we have to go and try to free their ‘segments,’ ” I said while Alsin sat there looking thoughtful. “We can hope that it won’t be the same as it was here, since there isn’t likely to be all that pent-up rage inside the captives. Unless I’ve gotten the wrong impression, they’ll be spending their rage on those poor, helpless people in Astinda.”

“If they’re so poor and helpless, why do the commanders of our own forces need so many more segments?” Rion asked, looking disturbed. “That man told us that the war was suddenly going badly, which means our own people are being defeated. Is walking into the middle of that the wisest course of action?”

“It’s either that or try to reach the same organization going up against the people of Gracely,” Lorand answered for the rest of us. “They’ve only been at it for a year in Gracely, but these people have been at it for three and now they’re losing. Which group do you think will be more likely to notice our arrival, the ones still winning, or the ones losing?”

“Point taken,” Rion conceded, holding up one hand. “Going against an alert, well-organized force would be asinine, not to mention too time consuming. We could end up surrounded by pursuers in all directions before we came within twenty miles of the place.”

“I agree,” Jovvi said, also straightening in her chair. “We have only one place to go and one thing to do, so now we can ask who means to go with us. If the answer is everyone, we really should replenish our supplies from what they have stored in the stockade. They certainly don’t need them any longer.”

Our companions were quick to assure us that they meant to continue in our company, but I think that was only because they experienced nothing of what had happened in the stockade. They still felt safe with us, but I wasn’t absolutely sure that I did. We should have had complete control over our Blending entity, but now … Instead of acting the saviors, were we turning something horrible loose on the world?

I nearly refused to Blend again in order to transfer the supplies, but everything went smoothly. The entity found the stockade’s stores and used Air magic to lift and transfer what we wanted, drawing heavily on the power of our companions when our own began to be drained. After we separated we were tired but not exhausted, though Jovvi still looked troubled.

“I couldn’t help noticing that there were two people still left alive in the stockade,” she said when Lorand put an arm around her shoulders and asked what was bothering her. “One was that commandant man, and his Low talent wasn’t enough to shield him from all that raw power everyone used. He’s now a drooling idiot, but the second survivor isn’t the same. That man Sord is badly hurt, but his mind is still intact.”

“He’s hurt because they tortured him,” I said, knowing it for a fact. “I also noticed him, but there’s nothing we can do for him. He isn’t to be trusted even if we keep him under control, which is why the entity released control of both men. But didn’t we heal him just a little?”

“Yes, enough so that he won’t have any trouble surviving until those guardsmen get here,” Lorand confirmed. “Since it’s undeniably our fault that he was tortured to begin with, there was nothing else we could do. But you’re right about our not being able to take him with us, even if he is a really strong Middle talent.”

“Assumin’ we get to where we’re goin’ soon enough, we ought to have all the Middle and High talents we need,” Valiant said, standing up to stretch. “I’m hopin’ Lidris has a meal ready for us, and after I eat I’m gettin’ some sleep. We need to be out of here before sunup tomorrow, but until then there are real beds waitin’ to be used.”

There wasn’t anyone in the house foolish enough to argue with those suggestions, and we actually all ended up with our own rooms. Some of us doubled up deliberately, of course, but by using fast footwork I was able to keep Alsin from proposing that he share my quarters. I’d been careful to treat him with nothing more than pleasant friendliness, but the deliberate distance I’d evoked was being ignored by him. The man really was persistent….

I sighed as I looked around the room I’d chosen, seeing the small sitting area to one side of the sleeping chamber. I was tired but not yet ready to get into bed, so I went to the sitting area and took a chair near a small, beautifully carved desk. Since as a child I’d been forbidden to go near my father’s desk, that particular piece of furniture had always held a special appeal for me. Hidden treasures, forbidden delights, illicit marvels … I had to open the drawers, just to see what was inside.

The desk held nothing but a large, ledger-sized book bound in leather, filled completely with blank pages. There were also pens and many inkstones, as though someone had intended to do a lot of writing at some time. I began to put the ledger back into the desk, conceiving of no immediate use for it, then I changed my mind and took the inkstones and pens out as well. Having something to write in—or on, if we tore out a page or two—might well come in handy, and we also needed to search that house for clothes. My own outfit was threatening to become threadbare at any moment, and the others’ couldn’t be in much better condition.

Tomorrow, before we left, we could do the necessary searching, and once we brought the supply wagon up to the house, I’d make sure to include the ledger and ink and pens in what was loaded. Why, one of our people might even want to write an account of what had happened to us….

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Lorand rode slowly back to where the others were camped, trying to rid himself of the picture of devastation and ruin that he’d just encountered. It had taken them a bit more than four days to reach that part of Astinda, and they’d all been appalled at what they’d found. Destruction and ruin in all directions, including the pretty little town he remembered his father taking them to when he was still a boy. It had been a meeting of border farmers from both countries, and those attending had been encouraged to bring their families. The people of that town had fed and housed them and made them feel like welcome neighbors, and they’d all been sorry to leave.

And now nothing was left of that town, not buildings and certainly not people. Fire had touched everything there, and not particularly recently. What hadn’t been burned was ruined by being exposed to the elements, and the soil had an odd … taste/smell to it. Something like that heavy black semiliquid they’d made him use his talent to scatter around during the qualification tests. It had soaked into the soil and ruined the ground for crops, and only a lot of mind-breaking work with Earth magic at some future time would ever make that land viable again.

“And this was done by those who are supposed to be my people,” Lorand muttered, wavering between crying like a child and screaming out his rage as his talent sought enemies to destroy. “They wanted this land so they killed those who already occupied it, and why not? Haven’t they done the same to enough people in their own country?”

Lorand’s mount moved skittishly, unsettled by the lack of grazing and pasturage and general unfriendliness of the area they’d passed through. Going farther into Astinda would be hard on all the horses, especially since they no longer had the supply wagon. They’d left it behind in Quellin, after helping themselves to a number of the horses from the stockade. Once Meerk had settled down, he’d mentioned how much they would be slowed up by using the wagon. With pursuit less than a full day behind them—which it would be even if the guardsmen stopped for a while in Quellin—packhorses would be a much better idea.

So they’d used packhorses, and everyone had gotten used to being in a saddle all day. Well, maybe “gotten used to” was too positive a phrase, Lorand admitted privately. All those who were new to riding had been suffering to one degree or another, but none of them really complained aloud. And at least they all had a bit more to wear than previously. Outfits by the dozens had been left in that house they’d spent the night in, and if the clothing didn’t fit everyone, at least it was usable by most of the group.