Prophecy's Daughter Read online

  Ever so slowly, she continued weakening her shielding until she was able to identify what she was experiencing. She caught a glimpse of a rock, the surface of the water just above her, a distant gurgling sound. She felt no emotion, only a watchfulness along with the slight sensation of hunger. The rock moved so that she saw it now from a different angle, disappearing as other rocks, sand, and weeds slipped below her.

  Carol strengthened the shield until the sensations disappeared entirely, passing around her once again. She brought the globe’s surface back to a clear hard shell that again completely blocked the little ripples from the small source just beyond its boundary. Having completed all the steps, she backed out of the kata in the same controlled fashion as she had begun it.

  As she thought back on the exercise she had completed a little over a week ago, she found that the warm feeling of accomplishment still lingered.

  As a result of that kata and subsequent ones in which she shifted awareness from one pinprick disturbance in the void to find another, blocking out the first and concentrating on the second and so on, Carol had become convinced that Arn was correct. No elementals were involved in what she was now doing. This new form of magic trained the psychic abilities she had long used to contact and control elementals to instead connect with animals and perhaps even the people around her. She had barely come to terms with the possibilities such power might present and how it might be used to augment her wielding of elemental magic.

  There was no question that over the last week, she had been picking up the sensations of nearby animals. Some of the more primitive ones, such as fish, gave off weak impressions. When she made contact with some of the larger animals, though, such as deer, strong emotions like watchful nervousness, fear, and hunger came through their link in addition to sensations associated with the five senses.

  More recently, her katas added another modification to her protective shield. She created an outer layer that briefly trapped any disturbance that hit it, giving her a chance to decide if she wanted to link to the new target. She thought the technique was what the author of the original tome had called filtering, thus greatly increasing her capabilities by giving her a safe way to search for a target of interest.

  Yesterday she had done her first kata in which she sent out thoughts or sensations or feelings on a link. The result had been most gratifying and odd. She had picked up a source and established a strong link. Then ever so gently, she had sent out a desire to come close to the overhanging ledge where she and Arn sat.

  Shortly thereafter, she found herself seeing images of Arn and herself seated quietly in the grass. He turned toward her, or rather, toward the animal with which she had linked, and startled it, a feeling she picked up very strongly. She increased the strength of her filter so that the intensity of the experience died away without breaking her meditation.

  Since then she had completed several more sessions of the same kata until Arn had finally had enough sitting and watching, telling her that he needed to get out and stretch his legs.

  “You know, there will be more to learn tomorrow,” he said.

  “Not if I learn it all today. But I see your point. I’ll be patient and relax.”

  “Actually, this will be great for hunting,” Arn said. “You do your kata thing, find a nice deer, and then have it wander up here. That way I can kill the white-tail real easy without having to sneak around.”

  “I’ll do no such thing!”

  “There wouldn’t really be much difference except that you would make my hunting a lot easier.”

  “I’ve heard enough on this topic. Go do whatever you were about to do. I’m going for a swim.”

  With that, she turned on her heel and headed toward the stream, briefly glimpsing the smile Arn tried to hide.

  The next morning Carol collected her transcribed version of the manuscript and began preparing for the next kata.

  This one interested her greatly. She would select the target for her initial link as usual, but then use it as her center to search for her next link, traveling in a leapfrog fashion designed to extend her range. She saw how this would enable her to search much farther away from her body without having to open herself wide, as was done in the first kata she had ever attempted, after Arn gave her the book.

  Arn arrived carrying a stringer with two fresh trout.

  “Let’s have some lunch, and then we’ll get down to business on the new kata,” Carol said. “I’ll brief you on the details while you cook.”

  He piled an armload of wood on their fireplace, a broad flat stone surface around which he had stacked stones, leaving one side open. Carol quickly lit the fire, and Arn busied himself frying the trout. By the time he had finished cooking the fish and they had settled down to eat, Arn understood what she would be attempting.

  “Just be careful not to leave yourself open to the kind of overload you experienced back in the vale,” he said between mouthfuls of fish.

  “I won’t try a third link if I have any problem shielding myself on the second one. Since I’ll only be doing one link at a time, it should just be a repetition of what I’ve already been doing.”

  “Be cautious.”

  “I will. And you’ll be here to wake me up if you think I’m in trouble,” she said. “But don’t interrupt me just because I’m spending time in the meditation. I want to explore this one.”

  “I’ll try to control my motherly instincts.”

  “Good.”

  They soon settled down under Carol’s favorite pine for the exercise, Arn with legs crossed, sitting far enough away to avoid being a distraction. She leaned back against a deformed section of the tree that had grown out at an angle almost parallel to the ground before turning up toward the sky.

  Arn began carving on a small block of wood, a habit he had started during the time she worked on her exercises. Carol was pleased with the hobby since he had already acquired considerable skill, producing a menagerie of carved animals that she placed around their ledge.

  As she centered, the void closed around her in all its inky blackness, her imagined body now clothed in robes of glowing white. She took the time to circle her form, zooming in and then out as she established a more detailed image. She could see the lace on the cuffs and neck of her silken attire. Stitching over her heart formed the monogram of a dove sitting on Arn’s shoulder.

  Satisfied that she had complete control of her meditation, she formed the blocking globe and then added the hazy layer that let her identify minds with which she could create a link. She examined the colored patterns that froze briefly where they touched the haze. Each impression was different from the next, but Carol recognized two of them—a turtle and a doe. A new target intrigued her, and she opened a portal in the shield to form the link.

  The ground of the hollow swept away below her, and Carol was thrilled to discover that she was receiving sensory impressions from a large bird, perhaps a falcon or an eagle. It flew from the hollow, giving her a clear view of the snow-covered landscape beyond. Great mountain peaks rose up into a blanket of clouds. Her vision darted here and there as the great bird looked for something to eat. Hunger drove her onward, gazing down over dunes of snow piled against rock ledges.

  She established a new shield around this moving center of consciousness and once again allowed the waves in the void to impact the new orb. She picked the first source she detected and again established a connection. This turned out to be a bear, deep in hibernation, the gentle nature of its deep sleep almost causing her to fall asleep herself.

  Establishing the globe once more, she spent some time strengthening it so that she felt satisfied that she was proceeding in a controlled, orderly fashion. Carol found another source and created the connection more quickly this time, receiving a variety of impressions from some other small creature in darkness. She began wasting little time between jumps, following the same detailed steps each time, the practice becoming as simple as preparing a familiar meal. Establish the connectio
n, adjust your center to the new host, set up the shielding, modify the shield to capture nearby disturbances in the void, select one, and repeat.

  As she continued with the exercise, she became more adept at the procedure, and as her skill improved, she increased the tempo of her leapfrogging. She experienced the area from numerous perspectives—from the air, from darkness belowground, scampering through the trees, swimming in a stream. Sometimes she felt the menace of a predator or the fear of its potential prey.

  She made another link, but this one yielded such violent desires that they rocked her shielding. She increased the strength of her filter, trying to come to grips with the new connection she had established. Burning hatred and a savage desire to torture and kill assaulted her. This being was hunting, and its prey was nearby.

  It was part of a group of creatures that Carol did not recognize. They were grotesque in appearance, looking something like a cross between a mountain lion and a man. The images and desires that came to her mind revolted her, but also raised great concern. There was a cabin set back in the woods, sheltered from much of the snow, and it was around this cabin that the graken—a word that came to her—were moving.

  The smells the stalking graken was picking up told her that a lone man was inside, a man who was bleeding. They had caught him in the deep snow, and although he was an opponent whom they would not normally have risked attacking, the conditions had enabled them to inflict grievous wounds before he could fight his way back to his cabin and bar the door. He had killed several of their kind in the fight, and the graken were going to extract their revenge. They just needed to let him bleed for a while.

  She strengthened her shielding around the rodent in which her consciousness was centered, but kept the link to the graken. She had to do something, and only one possibility came to mind. If Arn knew what she was about to try, he would pull her out of her deep state before she could complete her task.

  Despite her disgust with what she was feeling from the graken and her urgent desire to take action, Carol spent several long moments bolstering her shielding. Suddenly she knew she was out of time. A pack of the creature’s fellows had joined the graken, and they were pummeling the heavy wooden door of the cabin such that it strained at its hinges, great cracks spreading through the wood.

  Carol exploded through the link, centering on the graken, throwing up the weakest form of the shield and opening herself to the other disturbances that bubbled in the void nearby. Multiple links sprang into being, pummeling her with bloodlust. One distinct link was filled with a combination of bravery and impending doom. She opened herself to that fear, receiving it and amplifying it a hundredfold so that the feeling poured outward along her connection to the various graken, engulfing them in staggering waves of terror. She immediately strengthened the shield around the graken that formed the center for her consciousness, but felt herself engulfed in terror nonetheless.

  She found the link she had left open to the rodent and retreated back along it, centering on the form and throwing up a solid shield, severing all connections. The sphere around her new center glowed in cascading colors under the violent impact of emotions that bombarded it, but the shield held.

  Now that she had severed the external links, she could tell that the rodent was starting to calm down, a very good thing since she had been worried that its small heart was going to burst, so hard had it been beating in the panic of the mind storm.

  For a moment Carol considered trying to establish a new connection to check on the man she had tried to save, just to see if the graken had been panicked badly enough that they would not return. But she decided she had done all that she could reasonably do and had, in fact, done more than she probably should have attempted. Her feeling of success was not diminished.

  Carol prepared to depart, and suddenly a new worry came crashing in on her: Where was she, and how would she find her way back?

  The links she had used to get to her current location had been closed one at a time as she leapfrogged along. Because there was no sense of direction when she chose sources in the void, she didn’t know how to pick sources based upon a concept of direction in the physical world. Worse, even if she were able to choose her targets by direction, she had not done so on her way here and had no idea of the way back to Misty Hollow.

  That made her choices pretty clear. She could either try to identify birds that gave her a wide view or attempt a variation of the first kata she had ever tried. The kata would vastly expand her awareness to take in hundreds or thousands of sources, with the hope that she would be able to identify her own dim pattern among them. Unfortunately, her body was in a deep meditative state and would be difficult to detect from a distance. The thought was not comforting.

  She made her decision and began working her way through sources in rapid leapfrogging fashion until she found a bird in flight. The scenery was not familiar. Or maybe it was. As she studied new and different views, discouragement set in. The mountains to the north and south both looked the same. The mountains to her east rose to frosty peaks, and storm clouds were closing in from the west.

  Cut off from her body, Carol had no idea how to find her way home.

  39

  Misty Hollow

  YOR 414, Early Winter

  The sun was sinking toward the western horizon when Arn found that he could no longer contain his growing level of concern. Carol leaned against the tree, her face serene. She breathed deeply, and her posture remained unchanged. In fact, nothing about her appearance gave him any indication of trouble. He felt it nonetheless.

  The late-afternoon sun filtered through the branches of the pines in fits and starts as intermittent high clouds made their way across the sky from the west. Gusts of wind swirled the late-afternoon mists, dropping the temperature by several degrees. Arn moved over and gently placed a blanket around Carol’s shoulders.

  Time’s passage slowed so that it seemed that the fluttering of a leaf in the breeze took an hour. The amplification of Arn’s senses continued to increase, almost as if he was detecting a nearby predator. The fear that grew upon him, though, had nothing to do with physical danger. Moving close to Carol, he could hear the sound of her breathing. It seemed that he could almost hear her heartbeat.

  A strong gust of wind swirled her hair about her shoulders, bringing Arn to his feet. Having had enough of waiting and worrying, he knelt down beside Carol and placed a hand gently on her shoulder. When he received no response, he shook her gently. Her lack of response caused his heartbeat to jump. Sitting down, he took Carol in his arms, rubbing her hands and whispering in her ear.

  “Carol, wake up now. Come on, darling, wake up.” Arn continued talking, reaching up to squeeze her cheeks.

  It was as if he wasn’t there. No, he thought. She was the one who wasn’t present.

  “Where are you, baby? Come on back now.”

  The smack of his palm on her cheek sent an electric charge through his body, hurting him as if he had sliced his hand with a knife. Arn was mortified that he had hit her but was more dismayed by her lack of response to the blow.

  His mind whirled. Could it be that she had been sucked in by another of the ancient wielder’s traps? The uneasiness he had felt all day seemed to point to such a possibility. Why had he ignored his instinct and let her try the kata?

  Carol’s head lolled to one side, and he moved back in close so that it rested on his shoulder as his arms wrapped themselves around her.

  Where was she? Most likely she was out in that void she had described to him, maybe too distracted to even realize that he was trying to call her back to her body. A sudden thought burned into his brain. What if she were trying to find her way back and couldn’t? She might not have any recognizable beacon in the void to guide her back.

  Arn tore Slaken from its scabbard, whirling the blade in his hand and then flinging it to the ground beneath an adjacent tree. Stripped naked of his magical protection, he leaned his forehead against hers.

  The
foolhardiness of what he was now attempting flitted across his thoughts, but he shrugged the feeling off. The only way he could imagine reaching Carol was to attempt to achieve the same state of consciousness that she had entered, knowing full well that he would be like a child dog-paddling in the sea.

  “I’m here, baby. Come find me.”

  He closed his eyes, repeating the same thoughts, his head touching hers, doing his best to open himself. He tried to picture the void she had described with her there floating at its center and him standing beside her, holding on and calling out the same words into the darkness. Ever so gradually, the void formed around him.

  The night’s search for Rafel’s daughter, which had begun so typical in its fruitlessness, had suddenly attracted Kragan’s complete attention. He had tested her wards so many times these last few months and with such little success that any sane man would have given up looking for an opening. But he was neither sane nor a man, not anymore. She had recently set up a fresh set of wards. Like the others, Kragan could not get a fix on them, although it seemed to him that these new protections were in a different location.

  Then Kragan was suddenly handed a gift beyond his imagining. A fluctuation weakened the wards from within as a neophyte mind created an opening. It asked to be found, broadcasting the message as loudly as it could, with no corresponding understanding of any of the principles involved.

  As the sendings touched his consciousness, Kragan gasped. How could his fortune be this good? The one providing the opening through Carol’s wards was none other than Blade.

  Kragan passed the thought directly to the mind of the primordial.

  Exhilaration flooded through the elemental’s being as he swept in upon the open mind of the assassin.

  One moment Arn was a beacon, calling Carol from within the void, and the next he was spiked to a stone floor within a vast cavern, hands and feet spread eagle as agony blossomed in his head. Above him towered a bronzed, iridescent figure with sharp golden eyes and taloned hands, a being from tales parents told naughty children. When the entity sneered, Arn saw that he had inch-long fangs made for rending.