“And Vanyel picked it up,” Andrel said sadly.
“Probably.” She took a bite, found it catch in her throat, and gave up trying to eat, shoving the plate away. “From what I can tell, he’s sensitive enough to pick up things you’veforgotten for years and do it right through your shielding. Ah, gods.”
She rested both elbows on the table, and covered her sore eyes with her hands. A moment later she felt one of Andrel’s hands stroking her hair, and dropped her own back on the table, giving him a good long look across the candleflames. His deeply green eyes were fixed on her face, reflecting a profound concern.
“And what about you?” he asked, barely above a whisper.
“I am tryingto reach out to him,” she said, feeling old and tired and about ready to give up. “I think I’ve convinced myself that none of this was any more his fault than it was anyone else’s. I bloody well hope so, or he’s going to be getting knives in the gut from me, too. And he doesn’t deserve that. The rest - gods, I don’t know what to do.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” he replied, taking his hand away from her hair, and reaching for her wrist. “I want to know how you’reweathering this. Need a shoulder?”
“Want the truth?” She tensed all over, trying to keep from bawling like a little child. “Yes, I need a shoulder, and no, I am nottaking this well. I want ‘Lendel back, Andy - he was my soul-son, and I loved him, and I want him back with me.”
Her voice cracked; she lost her veneer of calm, and just dissolved into tears. Andrel got up, gracefully, and without letting go of her wrist; he moved around the table, and pulled her to her feet, then led her over to the couch and gave her that shoulder she needed so badly.
The peaceful night rocked; Vanyel convulsed, wailing -
His cry sounded like something in its death agonies, and made Savil’s hair stand on end.
The room trembled; literally. The walls shook as Vanyel’s muscles spasmed.
His eyes were wide open, but saw nothing, and his pupils dilated with fear. He convulsed again, and the very foundation of the Palace rocked. The bed shook as if it were alive. His lute fell from the wall, landing with a sickening crack that surely meant it was broken past all repair; his armor-stand crashed over and scattered his equipment across the floor, and Savil was tossed from his bedside to the floor before she realized it.
She picked herself up off the floor beside his bed without thinking about safety or bruises, and flung herself at him again.
He thrashed beneath her, fighting her with a paranormal strength; he couldn’t know where he was or who she was. All she could read from him was terrible agony - and beneath the pain, confusion, panic, entrapment. She caught his wrists and tried to pinion them against the pillows; then tried to pin him down with the blankets. His chest arched against hers, he screamed, and the walls shook again.
Mardic lay in the corner behind her, quite unconscious; Donni had his head in her lap and she was trying to protect him from falling objects with her own body. Vanyel had thrown him against the wall when this nightmare - or whatever it was - had started, and Mardic had made the mistake of trying to touch his mind to wake him.
:Donni- : Savil used a moment of lull to Mindtouch her pupil, taking a tiny fragment of her attention from the attempt - attempt, for it wasn’t succeeding - to shield Vanyel, to get him under some kind of control. : - Donni, how’s Mardic?:
:He’s all right, just stunned,: came the reassuring reply. : - Ican spare you something. Catch this, quick-:
The girl “threw” her a mental line, and began sending additional, sorely-needed energy down it as soon as Savil “caught” it.
It helped to keep Savil from blacking out as Vanyel lashed out with hismind, but that was about all.
Jaysen was coming on the run; Savil could Feel him reaching out to find out what the hell was going on, and Felt the panic in hismind when he realized they had a powerful Gifted trapped in a pain-loop and hallucination. He all but broke down the door, trying to get in, and flung himself into the affray without a second thought.
“Shieldhim, dammit,” he shouted, throwing himself across Vanyel’s legs, as the walls (but, thank the gods, not the foundations again) shook.
“I’m trying, “she snapped back, giving up on the uneven struggle to pin Vanyel down, and settling for securing his arms. “He breaks them as fast as I get them up!”
Jaysen succeeded in getting Vanyel physically restrained where she, being lighter, had failed. He added his strength to Savil’s and Donni’s on the crumbling shields they were trying to get on the boy. But it wasn’t even stalemate; they were losing him to his own nightmares.
Andrel appeared. Savil didn’t even see or Sense him run in; he was just thereall in an instant. But instead of flinging himself into the melee, he grabbed their arms and pulled both of them offthe boy.
Then he reached down for something at his feet, and came up with a bucket of icy water. He doused the boy, bed and all, without a heartbeat of hesitation.
The convulsions stopped as Vanyel came abruptly awake.
He sat up - stared - then he suddenly went limp.
The room stopped shaking.
“Savil, get me a blanket,” Andrel ordered quietly. “Jays, help me get him out of that wet bed before he goes into shock, then get the bedding stripped before the mattress gets soaked.”
By the time Savil returned with the goosedown comforter from her bed, the two men had pulled the half-stunned boy from the tangled mess of water-soaked bedcoverings, and the bedding was piled on the floor. Andrel was carefully shaking the boy’s shoulders while Jaysen supported him.
Behind them, Mardic was groggily climbing to his knees, Donni steadying him, but the two of them waved Savil off when she made a half-step in their direction.
:.We’re all right,: Donni Mindspoke. ; I’ II get Mardic into bed myself, and then I’ll come make up the bed in here again.:
Savil turned her attention back to the boy, knowing she could trust Donni to deal with the situation if she had said she could.
“Come on, Vanyel,” Andrel was saying, coaxingly. “Come on, lad, come back to us. Wake up, come out of it.”
Vanyel blinked, blinked again, and sense came back into his eyes. He looked about him, momentarily confused, then the destruction about him seemed to register on him. He closed his eyes, a soft, hardly audible moan coming from the back of his throat.
And for one instant, Savil was nearly flattened beneath an overwhelming load of blackest despair, terrible guilt, and a grief so heavy she felt her knees start to give way beneath the weight of it.
Then it was gone; absolutely cut off, and so completely that for a moment even she doubted that she had felt it.
But one look at Andrel and Jaysen convinced her otherwise; the former was deeply shaken, and the latter white-lipped.
She expected tenderness and concern from Andrel - but strangely enough, it was Jaysen who carefully got the boy into a chair, wrapped in the comforter; and from the chair back into the bed when Donni had stripped it of the wet coverings and remade it. It was Jaysen who stayed beside him, leaving Savil free to see to it that Mardic was truly all right. Savil wasn’t in a mood to ask questions about his apparent change of heart.
Mardic was fine, and relatively cheerful. “I’ll have a godsawful headache,” he told her; “Poor Van thought I was going to kill him, took me for an enemy in his dream. When he realized it wasa dream, he pulled most of it - “