Prophecy (29 page)

People were already beginning to take their places at tables in the dining room, and it wasn’t long before Jovvi, Lorand, Rion, and Naran joined me at ours. No one commented about what I’d said—or about what had happened earlier—and the food began to come rather quickly, but there were fewer people to serve it than there had been that afternoon. It seemed that part of the staff had been appropriated to help clean up the mess we’d made near the stables, and those servants who remained fell into two categories: some were happy and relieved, but most were very nervous and jumpy. They hadn’t known who they were supposed to give their best service to, but there was no doubt that they knew
now
.

After a short while Vallant Ro joined us as well, but no one said anything to him beyond a quiet question asking if he was all right, and his only response was an assurance that he was fine. We all paid attention to eating rather than talking, and in that way the meal was quickly over. I drained my last cup of tea and was getting ready to rise and leave, when Jovvi changed that intention.

“Tamma, wait just a minute,” she said quietly, looking directly at me. “We have to talk about one part of that attack, and we’d better do it now. We’ll go back to that private sitting area.”

Since I knew what she was referring to, I couldn’t very well argue the need. So I settled back in my chair until everyone was through eating—only a matter of another couple of minutes—and then we all went back to the private sitting room. Once again we all chose chairs, and when Jovvi had settled herself she looked around at us.

“Those link groups were in a tandem arrangement we haven’t seen before,” she said without preamble, knowing we would all understand what she meant. “Were any of you able to catch
how
they linked?”

“I didn’t,” Lorand replied, sounding just as worried as Jovvi had. “I was
almost
able to see it, but the details were just a bit beyond me.”

“What about you, Tamma?” Jovvi asked after Rion and Vallant Ro simply shook their heads. “I’m in the same position as Lorand, where I
almost
saw the arrangement. Did you get even a single hint we can use?”

“I saw the braided pattern clearly among the Fire magic users, and only slightly less clearly among the others,” I answered with more than a hint of surprise. “Since we were all Blended, why didn’t the rest of you see the same?”

“Probably because we haven’t been constantly touching the power as long as you have,” Jovvi replied seriously, obviously considering the matter. “And possibly also because your strength is greater than ours. Does anyone else remember ‘hearing’ our entity think that we were
almost
to our optimum condition? That could be at least part of what it meant.”

This time I joined the others in nodding, also remembering the thought Jovvi meant. With all the power our Blending had shown, there was still more our entity expected to be able to do…

“Tamma, can you describe the patterns you saw?” Jovvi asked next, and now everyone was paying very close attention to me. “A description may not help all that much, but it’s better than nothing.”

“I think I can
show
you the patterns,” I answered with a frown, trying to get them clear and separated in my mind. “Lorand, see if this makes any sense to you.”

I then drew in the air with fire the pattern I’d seen the Earth magic people use, which had been possible only because I’d been part of the Blending—I thought. There was, after all, no other way for me to see the doings of people of another aspect, but that still left the question of why
I’d
been able to see it but Lorand hadn’t.

“Yes, of course!” Lorand said with eagerness as soon as he saw what I’d drawn. “It makes perfect sense. But if
you
were able to perceive it, why couldn’t I?”

“The situation suggests that it’s individual strength which controls perceptions in the Blending,” Jovvi said slowly after I’d shrugged to indicate my ignorance. “Tamma used
your
senses to see the patterns, but her own strength to detail them. But now that we know she saw them accurately, we’d better get the rest of them from her.”

I nodded and produced the pattern for Spirit magic, then Air magic, and lastly for Water magic, all of it carefully drawn in the air with thin lines of fire. No one did more than nod with an “Ah!” of satisfaction, and when it was over Jovvi leaned forward again.

“Now I can’t wait until the others join us so we can show it to all the link groups,” she said, smiling at me. “That pattern is so obvious I should have seen it myself, but I’ve felt that about a lot of things which are currently beyond my reach. But this is only part of why I asked for this meeting, and the rest of it concerns someone who is one of us but not completely one of us. Naran? Do you agree that it’s time?”

“I wish I could say no, but I can’t,” Naran answered with a sigh while the rest of us—including Rion—exchanged glances of blankness. What could there possibly be about Naran…? She looked pale and nervous and very unhappy, but her decision was more … fatalistic than reluctant.

“Then you know that it definitely
is
time,” Jovvi said to her with a gentle, supportive smile. “Don’t worry. They’ll be surprised at first, but they won’t react the way you’reafraid they will. I’ll start it off by saying that I didn’t just happen to check on Vallant and thereby learned about the presence of the attackers. I was warned that something was wrong, warned by Naran when she came over and whispered to me. Why don’t you take it from there, Naran?”

“I—think I’d better start from the very beginning,” Naran answered obliquely as she watched her fingers twist about each other. She looked at none of us, not even Rion—or possibly I should say especially not at Rion. He sat very still and straight, his expression touched with a shadow of terror, obviously afraid of what he was about to hear. Naran made no effort to offer her hand to him or ask for his, and that must have been what frightened him so badly. They
always
held hands, especially when Naran was upset, and Rion must have been convinced it was about to be over between them…

“I—didn’t have the sort of childhood that other people do,” Naran said, and now her words were reluctant. “My mother loved me very much, and for that reason she and I kept moving around until I was eleven or twelve, when she died. After that I was alone, but by then I was able to look after myself—because of the reason we
had
to move around so much. You see … when I was five, I was classified as a null.”

A heavy chill touched me at that, the sort I always felt when I heard the term “null.” That’s what they’d said of one of our neighbor children when I was small, a pleasant, round-faced little boy I occasionally played with when my parents weren’t watching. He’d been very sweet and never rough when we played our pointless child-games, but after they said he was a null he disappeared and I never saw him again. His parents had seemed more embarrassed than upset that he was gone, but then they
had
been friends of my own parents…

“So that’s why you never commented about the strength of any of our group,” Rion said softly to her, his expression filled with pain. “I thought you were simply being circumspect… My poor love, carrying around the burden of that for all these years. Please—will you give me your hand so that I might know you’restill beside me? It almost feels as though you’ve left…”

It wasn’t possible to miss how horrible an idea Rion thought that was, that Naran had left and was no longer beside him. She looked up with the most pitiful relief I’ve ever seen, and then she quickly gave him her hand. He took it and folded it in both of his, and Jovvi chuckled.

“I told you that Rion would never react the way you were afraid he would,” Jovvi said to a glowingly radiant Naran. “As a matter of fact, no one here is reacting that way. Everyone is shocked and horrified, but only at what you must have been put through—and are still going through. Would you like to continue now, and explain that that first assessment of you was wrong?”

“My mother and I didn’t realize that for quite some time,” Naran went on, now holding tightly to Rion’s hand. “All she knew was that she wasn’t about to let a bunch of strangers take me away from her, so we left our house in the middle of the night, and didn’t stop running until we were quite a long way away from our town. My father was dead and so were my grandparents, and so my mother had nothing to keep her there. We eventually reached Gan Garee, where it was easier to hide among the crowds of people. I later found out that my mother had stolen a blank certification form before we ran away, and then she forged our Guild woman’s signature classifying me as a very weak Air magic user. Her own aspect was Air magic, and more than once she covered for my complete lack of talent in Air magic.”

“But Jovvi said they were mistaken,” Lorand put in with a frown, asking the question I was just about to. “What did your aspect actually turn out to be?”

“It’s … not what you’reexpecting,” Naran replied, once again looking uncomfortable. “I
don’t
have any of the usual five talents, but I do have
something
… For instance, I didn’t find out where Tamrissa was by having someone tell me. I …
knew
where she was, without any doubt, and also approximately when she would leave that house. And it isn’t the first—or last—thing I knew.”

“What do you mean, you
knew
it, love?” Rion asked, apparently as confused as I felt but in no way reluctant to continue touching Naran. “Or am I the only one who doesn’t understand?”

“No, Rion, you aren’t alone in not understanding,” Jovvi assured him, then she looked at Naran again. “You’ll have to explain it to them, my dear. Just say it straight out and then it will be behind you.”

“Yes, you’reright, of course,” Naran said with the most … reluctant agreement I’d ever seen. “I do have to say it aloud, don’t I…? Rion, my love, what I meant was … I knew it because I can often … see the future.”

And with
that
revelation, all my own problems somehow … faded into the background.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The room all around them was as silent as death, but Jovvi flinched at the uproar coming from everyone’s mind. Shock clanged and emotions echoed, and all of them seemed to want to speak without knowing what to say. The reactions were expected ones, and so was the comment Vallant was finally able to make.

“Surely you’rejokin’ with us, Naran,” he said, letting his expression fall into one of tentative amusement. “No one knows what the future holds, and if they did they would be owned by the nobility. You’reprobably just good at seein’ the most likely possibilities…”

“Sometimes I wish that’s all it was,” Naran replied, her expression—and thoughts—finally determined to have the entire truth come out. “But at other times I’m very glad I have this particular talent, because it helped my mother and me to survive, and then helped me alone when she was gone. When I was young I had to see a place before I knew whether it was safe or dangerous for us to stay there, but once I got older I … knew in advance that the place would be there. I also used the talent to find places to work, without wasting time going where I would be refused.”

Naran hesitated then, but the subject was purely personal. That was proven when she turned the hesitation toward Rion.

“My talent
told
me I would meet the man I would love forever if I went to a certain place,” she said, speaking as though the two of them were alone. “It turned out that the tavern was short one girl for their upstairs rooms, something I also knew would turn out to be. I was there deliberately to meet
you
, my love, and I left shortly after we parted. I also found you that second time on purpose, only pretending that our meeting was an accident. Can you ever forgive me for … lying, yes it was lying, but I’d do it again if I had to. Are you badly bothered by that?”

“Am I bothered by the fact that the one woman I’ll always love with every fiber of my being came to search me out?” Rion responded with a grin as he leaned closer to her. “Oh, yes, my love, I’m terribly wounded, but not mortally. I think I’ll get over it.”

Naran’s relief was clear to everyone as she laughed and did her part in leaning closer to Rion, so Lorand was the one who asked the question that Jovvi had been thinking about herself.

“Naran, if you
know
all these things, why have you been so uncertain about telling us about them, and most especially about how Rion would react? If you
know
things, you should know about these things as well.”

“The best I can tell, my own emotions get in the way at times,” Naran responded, looking away from Rion with a sigh. “When I’m afraid of what an answer will be to something, I seem to … block out that answer. And there’s also the fact that I don’t see
everything
. Every once in a while something will happen that I haven’t had the least idea about, and it will come as a complete surprise. Why that happens I don’t know, and I’ll probably never find out.”

“But all the rest of the time your talent is working to
our
benefit,” Tamma said, the words thoughtful. “You’ve already been absolutely invaluable, and I’m sure you will be again. It’s just too bad that you can’t Blend with us. It would make us—”

Tamma stopped speaking abruptly as she realized what she’d just said, but Jovvi—and the others—were already ahead of her. They exchanged startled glances with their brows raised, so Jovvi put the question in all their minds.

“Why
can’t
Naran Blend with us?” Jovvi demanded, looking around almost belligerently. “If she has a talent, and she most certainly does, it should be able to Blend with ours.”

“But that would make our number six rather than five,” Vallant protested, sounding more unsure and confused than disagreeing. “Isn’t that goin’ against what everyone knows the prime number to be?”

“As little as everyone ‘knows’ about Blending and the talents, how can we be sure?” Jovvi countered, feeling more strongly about the matter by the minute. “At one time people thought that the prime number was four, and then the first fivefold Blending came into being. If Naran’s talent is something new, and that seems likely since no one apparently knows about it, how can anyone consider a sixfold Blending? Anyone but us, that is.”