Mercedes Lackey - Changes

If only there were a way to find those shields . . .

A vague memory crossed his mind. Something to do with... he sat up straight.

Bear looked at him with speculation, but he said nothing.

::Dallen. What’s thet stone?:: he demanded.

He sensed Dallen wincing. ::It’s... easier to say what it isn’t. It’s not alive, and it’s not dead. It can’t think, but it stores memories. And the reason it’s all those things is because... .if all of the Heralds and Companions are like a giant spiderweb, the stone is the hub. In a sense, it’s all of us, all of us that are, and all of us that ever were.::

::So if anybody’d ever seen anythin’ like them shields, then how t’find ’em’d be i’ th’ stone?:: he demanded.

::Yes, but . . .:: Dallen’s tone grew desperate. ::It was never intended to be used that way. All of the connections and the memories, that’s an accident.::

::Am I gonna hurt it iffen I go pokin’ ‘ round i’ there?::

::No... but it can hurt you.::

Mags took a long, deep breath. ::An’ iffen I don’t? How many people git hurt then?::

There was a long, long silence.

::Go to the stone. Take Bear and Lena. Tell Bear to bring his emergency kit. I’m getting some people who will meet you there.::

Waiting for them was Sedric, and Mags nearly backed out of the idea right then and there. Because... if using the stone to find out something could hurt him, that was acceptable. But hurting the Heir to the Throne?

Sedric raised an eyebrow at the look on Mags’ face. “Did I grow a second head without noticing?”

Mags clenched his teeth. “Puttin’ me i’ danger’s one thing. Puttin’ you i’—”

“Stop right there. Nobody is putting me in danger. This is what we are going to do—” Sedric stopped and snorted. “We don’t need to stand here in the open corridor and blabber about this. First, we are going to go in there and sit down. Then I will tell you what we are going to do.”

Reluctantly, Mags opened the door to the little room and bowed the Heir inside. He and Bear and Lena followed.

They all took seats around the table, and Sedric closed the door. “Now, everyone get comfortable. Bear, you are here precisely because you are a Healer with no Gift, which means that no matter what happens, you won’t be affected. I have to tell you, son, your father has no clue how valuable that is; I’ve been running the Pelagir border, and a Healer you know isn’t going to get sucked into a bad situation because he has a powerful Gift is worth his weight in gold. Same on the Karsite Border; the Karsite demons go straight for the Gifted Healers, as if you were the ones with targets painted on you.”

Bear looked at him in amazement. “They do?”

Sedric nodded. “Now, since you aren’t Gifted, I don’t need to worry that if Mags gets sucked into the stone, you’ll follow. You’ll be making sure Mags doesn’t get into any trouble. If he starts to, it will be up to you to break him out of the state he’s in. I assume you know a number of ways to do that.”

Bear nodded soberly; he pulled off the shoulder bag that contained his emergency remedies and put it on the table, open and ready.

“Lena, you are here to help Bear extract Mags. As a Bard with projective powers, you can jar Mags loose by hitting him with emotion, even a projective vision if you can manage it. Meanwhile, I want you to look only at Bear, never at Mags, and doubly never at the stone.”

Lena actually brightened at that; Mags got the feeling that she had not only been feeling guilty, she had been feeling useless.

“I am here because I am a Mindspeaker, and I will actually be the one making notes on what Mags finds out. Mags, you do not have to remember anything. You only have to extract the information. I’ll be the one making sure it gets out of this wretched rock.” Sedric looked around the table, then pursed his lips. “We are waiting for one more Mindspeaker to join us. I don’t know you at all, and as you deduced, Father had a litter of kittens until I explained there would be someone who knows you well acting as a buffer between us.”

Now who— before Mags could finish that thought, there was a tap at the door, and Gennie stepped shyly inside.

Mags blinked, then heaved an enormous sigh of relief. If there was a single person in whose hands he trusted a mindlink, other than Dallen, it was Gennie. She smiled at him and took a seat beside Bear.

Mags looked at the stone; it didn’t change at all. For a moment he doubted, not the wisdom but the logic of this. But then he rolled his shoulders, wincing a little at the aches, and began his relaxation exercises, all the while keeping his gaze fixed on the stone.

His eyes unfocused a moment; when they focused again, they seemed to be looking deep into the stone, not the surface. He felt Gennie as a steady bulwark of a presence, trustworthy and reliable; felt Sedric as a watchful overseer, like a referee. He felt an held breath leave him as a long sigh... then felt as if he were sinking into sleep. But it wasn’t sleep. It was a sort of communion . . .

Ah, it’s you again.

Aye. Need to know something.

How to find those irritations.

That caught his attention. Why would the stone think of them as irritations?

Because they are. They are in the Web, not of the Web, and they cannot be dislodged.

An image passed through his mind of a useless bit of flotsam in a spiderweb. Every time the wind blew, it vibrated the web, irritating the spider. But the spider could not get it out, it was too big for her strength, and she could not cut it free without destroying her creation.

He passed the image to Gennie, who passed it in turn to Sedric.

That’s interesting, but it doesn’t help me find them in the real world.

What do you really want?

I need to find them, he repeated after a moment.

Need. Not want.

Dammit. The thing was being all obtuse and mystical again. Need, want, weren’t they the same thing?

No.

He reined in his temper, as he felt his control and his ability to communicate with the thing eroding.

Need and want are sometimes incompatible.

Now he groaned inwardly, felt exasperation, felt despair, and again felt his connection with the stone slipping.

He clawed his way back and felt it regarding him dispassionately.

You are out of balance.

I’m... those bastards have someone I—

Trivial, in the long run.

Now anger filled him, and the stone started to thrust him away, until he throttled it down.

You are out of balance.

He went through his relaxation exercises again, keeping the front of his mind calm while the back of his mind raced, trying to figure out how to pry want he needed out of this thing. Obviously you couldn’t force it. It would just kick you out if you tried. And you couldn’t trick it—it knew all the tricks. You had to ask the right question—exactly the right question.

Every time he felt emotion, it tried to shake him out, too. What had it said?

I am balance, it repeated, in answer to his question.

All right, take that at face value. That this stone was a balance point. And Dallen had said that it was at the center of the Web of Heralds and Companions. So if he jiggled it with emotion—that jiggled the whole Web. The Web was supposed to stay stable, and being linked into it and feeling powerful emotion perturbed the whole thing. No wonder it kept trying to kick him out!

Yes.

Maybe that was why other people weren’t able to get as deep into it as he was. Because as long as he had a problem, he tended to think, rather than feel; he saved feeling for when he had the leisure to indulge in it.