The oddest thing is, he'd never make the same assumption if my friend was female, and it would be far more likely that I'd—ah—get involved with a female than with another man.
"Any more of those premonitions of doom?" Firesong asked, a little teasingly. "They might be useful, actually; it seems that the mages in the Empire—"
Premonitions of doom—
An'desha gasped, as the ground seemed to drop out from underneath him, and Firesong's voice faded into a roar that filled his ears. He clutched at the rock he was sitting on, but his fingers didn't work. Darkness assaulted him—then blinding light. Then darkness again, filled with the twisting snakes of red An'desha always saw after a bright light. He tried to scream and couldn't. He couldn't even feel his jaws opening.
Then light, striking him in concentric circles. It was almost as if something had picked him up and was shaking him, waving him as a maiden might wave a scarf in the Rain-bird Dance. And everywhere, everywhere, was terrible fear, filling him with icy paralysis. Then the darkness again, and then less light than before, then darkness.
Then it was over, as swiftly and without warning as it had begun. He found himself falling backward, still on his stone, Firesong clutching his shoulders and staring into his eyes, while his hands held to the rock underneath him, spasmed into rigidity.
"What—?" he choked out.
"You were in a trance," Firesong said, testing An'desha's forehead with the back of his hand for fever. "You cried out once, and grabbed for the stone—I saw how your eyes looked, and sensed power about you, and knew you were in a trance. You looked terrified."
"I was. Am." An'desha gulped. "It was terrible, horrible, yet there was nothing that I can describe. Light and dark in waves, disorientation."
Firesong looked into his eyes, and frowned. "It happened when I asked if you were still troubled by premonitions. This seems too well-timed a response to be simple coincidence."
Numbly, An'desha nodded. If anything, his sense of dread, his tension, had increased now.
"Listen, and I will tell you what was related at the Council," Firesong said at last. "Mornelithe Falconsbane was not given to prescience—but you are not he, and there is no reason why you should not have that Gift. For that matter, She might well have granted it to you—as we were reminded at the Council, there are more hands than the merely human working in this stewpot now."
I wouldn't be too sure that I am not Falconsbane, An'desha thought bleakly, but he listened quietly while Firesong recited what had transpired at the meeting.
"Did anything I spoke of wake a resonance with you?" he asked, when he was done. An'desha had to shake his head.
"Nothing," he said sadly. "You might as well have been telling me facts concerning cattle or sheep. It meant nothing."
Firesong tugged at a lock of silver hair, frowning. "I am at a loss," he said finally. "It would seem to me that our great enemy is at hand—that the Empire and all the Empire's mages should be the source of your fears, and yet—"
"It is not the Empire, peacock!" An'desha retorted, losing his temper. "I have been trying to tell you that! It is something else, something we have not even dreamed of! And I think—" he gulped and felt his skin turn cold and clammy as he voiced what he feared he must do, "—I think there is some key to it among the memories that the Great Beast left with me."
Firesong winced, but a moment later placed one hand comfortingly over An'desha's clenched fist. "Then we must examine those memories," he replied, with more gentleness than An'desha would ever have credited him with. "You and I. I have been remiss in forcing you to walk those paths alone, An'desha. I had been so certain that I knew what the answer to your fears was." An'desha stared at him, startled at this new and unwonted humility. "I do not know. Captain Kerowyn made it very clear to me in ways I could not ignore after the Council meeting that these Imperial mages were so very different from anything I have ever experienced that it was wildly unlikely I would be able to counter anything they brought to bear on us effectively." Then a ghost of his old self came back for a moment. "Or at least, it would be unlikely the first time they unleashed something upon us. I daresay once I had seen it, I could deal with it."
Then even that bit of arrogance faded. "Still, they need only keep changing their weaponry—and the Captain pointed out that what I cannot anticipate, I cannot personally guard against, either." His own face grew paler as he looked solemnly into An'desha's eyes. "For the first time in my life, I cannot be sure that I can guard myself from harm. That is—very unsettling. Even when wrestling the power of a renegade Heartstone I did not have such a sense of mortality as I do now. It makes me unsure."
Oh, most lovely. Now what?
"But if that is true, then it is also true that things I had assumed—things regarding you—might also be incorrect." He sighed. "So, now, at long last, I am listening to you. And I am asking you; what do you think we, together, should do?"
Run away! his cowardly inner self said. But he swallowed, took a steadying breath, and said, a bit shakily, "You must help me with those memories of lives that Falconsbane had before he took my body. We must go farther than I have dared to."
If only the Avatars would come again, he thought, stifling fear, as Firesong nodded his agreement. They knew what it is I am floundering about in search of—
Or did they? In all their warnings, they had seemed to bear a sense of frustration that they could not explain themselves clearly. Perhaps even they did not know. They were very near to the flesh-and-blood bodies they had once worn, after all, and in fact, Tre'valen and Dawnfire were not technically "dead" at all as they had explained it to him. That was why they had been able to help him, so far from the Plains and the Hills, and out of the range of the Star-Eyed's influence.
They are likely back where they might do some good, doing—whatever it is that Avatars do. Perhaps they are aiding the Kal'enedral, the Swordsworn. I do not think they have the power to aid me now.
But Firesong did. As frightening and as perilous as it might be to invoke anything connected with the creature that had once possessed his body, An'desha could not in conscience see any other choice.
"Perhaps we should begin tonight?" he suggested timidly.
Firesong nodded gravely. "I think it would be best, ke'chara. Before we both lose our nerve."
Ah, but mine is already lost, An'desha thought, yet he did not protest as Firesong helped him to his feet, and led him to their heavily-shielded circle in the garden where all An'desha's rumblings at magic took place. But perhaps—perhaps now I can find new bravery....
Eleven
"So—there was nothing left of the False One?" An'desha had listened, completely enthralled, to Karal's tale of how the Son of the Sun came to power. There was something oddly comforting in the notion that there were other peoples whose deities tended to express themselves as directly as the Star-Eyed did. More directly, in fact, although An'desha could not even begin to envision how a false prophet could ever set himself up as sole authority to the Shin'a'in, much less how an entire succession of them could have. The Star-Eyed would have been much more likely to have arranged for the first fool to be eaten by something large and predatory before he ever became a problem.