Prophecy (43 page)

“I think I have a small bit of good news,” Jovvi said as she leaned toward him from her own mount. “I can’t be certain with this many people around, but I just may have picked up Alsin’s trace near another section of our group. I certainly do hope it’s him.”

“After all he’s done for us, it would be a shame if he missed out on the end of this,” Lorand agreed with a nod. “It isn’t his fault that he couldn’t resist Tamrissa, it was just his bad luck. I looked for him after the fight, but he’d already left the house.”

“He waited just long enough to see which one of them Tamma would go to first,” Jovvi said with her own nod, keeping only half her attention on their rate of progress. “He knew that what she said to that one didn’t matter in the least, the important part was which of the combatants she went to. He was just about falling off his feet while Vallant had only a small cut on his cheek, and yet Vallant was the one she went to. That convinced him he really did have no chance at all to win her.”

“Maybe he was mistaken to believe that that was important,” Lorand ventured, feeling his frown. “Tamrissa and I had breakfast together this morning, and she flatly refused to hear anything I had to say about Vallant. He, for his part, began to run seriously short of patience with her last night, after she told him how much she hated him. Since nothing has changed between them, maybe he has more of a chance than he thinks.”

“Lorand, my dear, things
have
changed between them,” Jovvi told him gently with a smile. “Vallant was up and around before all of us this morning, and he must have done a lot of thinking. He also must have done some doing, because Tamma’s feelings toward him have taken a sudden shift. Couldn’t you see the way they kept glancing at each other while we were getting ready to leave the house?”

“I suppose I was too busy with my own thoughts,” Lorand said, his brows high with surprise. “I’m glad to hear it, of course, but I really do wish they would pick one way to feel and then stick with it. When you need a High in Spirit magic to tell you what’s going on with them at any particular moment, things are definitely out of hand.”

Jovvi’s laugh tinkled out, but it was clear she agreed with the sentiment. The back and forth between Tamrissa and Vallant could well drive all the rest of them crazy, and probably would have if not for what they still had ahead of them. At the moment they were gently forcing a way through the crowds just in front of the palace gates, and Nome Herstan, captain of the guard contingent they’d captured in Widdertown, had been perfectly right. There
were
no guardsmen protecting entry to the palace, not any longer.

Once they’d gotten through the gate, progress was a bit easier. Only some of the people had ventured onto the palace grounds themselves, and they now stood in a cluster to one side of the gate. If the rest of the crowd had followed they would probably have stormed the palace yelling and screaming, but with less than a dozen of them in number they didn’t quite have the nerve to attack the place where the Seated Five were waiting. They eyed the newcomers as Lorand and the others dismounted, hoping to find something that would send them forward with screams to loot and destroy, but that wasn’t going to happen.

“Captain Herstan, take some of your men and get those people back through the gate,” Lorand heard Vallant say. Vallant tended to miss very little, and actually did make an extremely good military leader. “Explain to them that we’ll be too busy to protect them if the Five decide to destroy them before attackin’
us
, but make sure your men are alert. If those fools try to resist, use whatever force is necessary to throw them out.”

Herstan took one section of his guardsmen and headed for the group of people, and Vallant turned his attention to his own group.

“We need to do a bit of reconnoiterin’ before we go in there,” he said as he glanced around. “The future centerin’ around this confrontation was still very unclear this mornin’ when we Blended, but maybe it’s cleared up a bit by now.”

“Are we wise to actually go
into
the palace?” Rion asked mildly with nothing but curiosity behind the question. “The closer we take our bodies, the more our entity will be handicapped by needing to protect them.”

“That all depends on how deep inside that place the Five are,” Vallant replied, gesturing toward the palace. “The farther our entity has to go, the more strength it will use up before we even get to any fightin’. Let’s see if we can locate them, and then we can decide.”

That seemed to be the most sensible way to do it, so Lorand and the others quickly agreed. Their link groups had already formed up around them, which meant that in another moment their entity was born again to float toward the palace.

The entity was, as ever, pleased to be cohesive and active again, but this time it felt somewhat perplexed. Most of the many shadows representing the future were still present, but some few had clarified to less than a handful of choices. The entity floated quickly into the heart of the palace, saw what it needed to, then floated out again. On the way it passed a flesh form which had been making its slow way out to the entity’s own flesh forms, a newcomer who was extremely frightened. As it carried a small, sealed envelope, the entity realized it would be foolish to stop and question the being. That chore could be safely left to its individual flesh forms…

“I wonder who that is who’s creeping toward the front entrance,” Lorand said once he was back to himself again. “The poor man seemed terrified, but he’s still coming toward us.”

“He’s certainly a servant,” Jovvi said, also looking toward the front entrance of the palace. “But there’s still a lot of hall and lawn between him and us, and at the rate he’s going he won’t get here until nightfall. I think I’ll hurry him a little.”

“Everyone be very careful when he gets here,” Naran warned, her voice trembling just a bit. “There’s the possibility of some sort of danger around the man, but not necessarily
from
him. It’s more involved than that—But why am I telling you this? You certainly saw it just as clearly as I did.”

“Not quite as clearly,” Lorand said to her, giving her a smile of reassurance. “The entity puts all of our various talents together, but it still takes practice in using those talents for someone to appreciate everything the entity sees and does. After the Blending is dissolved, I remember more about things connected with Earth magic. For things having to do with seeing into the future, we still need
your
expert interpretation.”

“Expert,” Naran echoed with a faint smile and a soft sound of scoffing, but it was clear the explanation had relaxed her. “Well, if I’m our expert in that area, let me repeat what I said: be careful with this man whoever he is, as there’s something about him that I don’t like the looks of.”

Lorand saw that even Vallant nodded his agreement to the caution, all of them apparently wise enough to know when not to dismiss a warning. Then they all gave their attention to the man who now approached at a trot, certainly through the courtesy of Jovvi’s talent. She’d clearly taken him over in order to hurry him, and a pair of moments later he stood puffing and trembling before them.

“I—I bear a message from Their Excellences,” the man stuttered, holding out the sealed envelope. “I’m really no danger to you, so please don’t hurt me!”

“Wait,” Lorand said as Vallant automatically reached for the envelope. “There’s something odd here… Jovvi, you usually soothe the people you touch. Didn’t you do that with
this
man?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Jovvi agreed with an immediate frown. “And it usually works a good deal better than this, as you obviously know. Let me see what the problem is… Of course, how could I have missed it? He’s been conditioned to continue being frightened. Tell us what your orders were, my friend.”

“I—I was s-simply told to deliver this envelope,” the man replied, his speech still disjointed and uneven, his arm still outstretched. “I d-don’t know
anything
else, I s-swear I don’t!”

“He’s telling the truth about
that
part of it,” Jovvi said, something Lorand already knew. “Whatever the rest is, no one saw the need to let him in on it. There seems to be a trap here, but what
sort
of trap?”

“It has to do with that envelope,” Tamrissa said at once, not the least doubt in her voice. “People tend to dismiss those who are frightened, automatically considering them of no threat in any possible way. That would extend to what the frightened offer, so we’resupposed to take that envelope without questioning it.”

“Which means the danger is in the envelope, not in the man carrying it,” Rion summed up, staring at the thing the way they all were. “Why don’t you open it for us, my friend, and then we can see what’s inside.”

“No—oh no—I
can’t
open it!” the servant responded, fear now clearly turning to panic. “I—I’m not supposed to do anything with it but bring it out to
you
, I’m not even supposed to
think
about opening it—!”

“All right, then I’ll do it for you,” Rion said amiably, and the envelope came free of the man’s grip—but didn’t fall to the ground. “Take yourself over there to those guardsmen and stay with them, and if we require your presence we’ll summon you to return.”

The man hesitated for a moment, clearly uncertain about what to do, but fright won over duty and he hurried over to where Captain Herstan and his men were chasing off the last of the people who had come through the gate. Lorand kept half an eye on the man until Herstan had him under guard, and then he was able to give the message itself his full attention.

Rion, obviously using his talent to handle the envelope, broke the seal and opened it. It was now possible to see the paper inside, and one look was all Lorand needed.

“Watch out for that faint, yellowish coating on the paper,” he warned sharply. “It’s a poison, and a rather nasty one. It works just as well if you breathe it in or get it on your skin, and the antidote for it isn’t easy to make.”

“Don’t worry, I have a bubble of air surrounding the whole thing,” Rion said in a distracted voice while the others made sounds of understanding or annoyance, depending on their individual personalities. “I’ve just discovered that I can work
through
the bubble, even though it’s hardened enough to keep whatever is on that paper from reaching us. Now let’s see what the note says —if anything.”

The paper slid out of the envelope with the same ease as the envelope had been opened, and then it unfolded itself. Inside there was indeed some writing, and Tamrissa stepped forward to read it aloud.

“‘To those who dare to challenge our properly earned positions,’” she recited, scorn in her voice. “Oh, right, properly earned. ‘We tell you now that you haven’t a chance of besting us any more than you did the first time we faced one another, especially as we’ve decided not to oppose you as a Blending. If you insist on continuing to break the law, you will have to do it as individuals. That won’t be quite as easy as hiding in a group, will it? Of course it won’t, which is why we refuse to meet you any other way. If you have the stomach to face the defeat which awaits you, come ahead and meet your fate. If not, just go back to the gutters you came from.’ And it’s signed, The Seated Five. As the old saying goes, they have more nerve than an aching tooth.”

“They’redeliberately baitin’ us, and I’d like to know why,” Vallant said, more thoughtful than angry. “If I had to guess I’d say they don’t
want
us to leave, otherwise they would have given us a more dignified way to withdraw. Leavin’ now would be ‘goin’ back to our gutters,’ and no one who got this far could be expected to do that.”

“I agree with that completely, but the reason behind it is perfectly clear,” Jovvi said, a small line of thought between her brows. “They don’t want the threat we represent hanging over their heads, so they’ve decided to vanquish us right now. There are certain to be more traps waiting for us inside the palace, but what
I
don’t understand is this part about us meeting them individually. Why would they insist on something like that, and why would they think we would believe them and do the same?”

“If they’redoing it, it’s because it gives them some sort of advantage over us,” Lorand said, offering the only possible—and logical—answer. “They know something—or believe they know something—we don’t, so they’reinsisting on individual combat. And as far as why we would do the same goes… If we know for certain that they won’t be Blending,
can
we Blend against them? It would hardly be fair, and even if the rest of the world believes we bested them fair and square, we’ll know better and hate ourselves.”

“So the main question now is,
will
they be Blendin’?” Vallant said, looking around to see that everyone agreed with Lorand as reluctantly as he clearly did. None of them liked the idea, but none of them was able to argue with it. “And if they
don’t
start out Blendin’, how can we be sure they won’t change tactics in the middle of those ‘individual combats’?”

“We couldn’t be sure, so we’d have to take precautions,” Jovvi said, obviously as reluctant as everyone else. “We would keep a light link between ourselves, while one of our secondary Blendings kept a careful watch on the proceedings. If our enemy tried to Blend and attack us without warning, the secondary could delay them while we ourselves Blended. That’s if we do decide to go through with this because we believe they’ll at least start out facing us individually.”

“Do we have a choice other than to take them at their word?” Rion asked, his expression wry. “I would sooner take the word of an animal in a barnyard, but I believe that our aim is to
prove
that their place rightfully belongs to us. How else are we to manage that, save by defeating them no matter
how
badly they cheat?”

“I wish I had an answer to that question,” Tamrissa said with a sigh. “I trust them even less than the rest of you, but there doesn’t seem to be another way out. Let’s admit defeat in the idea department, and get on with telling the other Blendings what we intend to do.”