“Little things? Like someone pulling memories to the front?”
“Yes. I’ve never felt it before,” I said.
She placed an arm around mine and pulled herself closer again. “I’m sorry to accuse you, I should have known better.”
I relaxed on one plane and tensed on another. The obvious conclusion was that if it was not Anna and me in each other’s minds—it must be someone else. That person was the Young Mage, without a doubt.
I pulled myself together and calmed my thinking to be rational instead of reacting and making a mistake. The Young Mage was searching our minds for information. More direct probing would alert us to his attempts. While we were sleeping, he could touch a memory here, bring up another over there, and eventually put together a composite of us that would allow him to know us better than we knew ourselves.
“Is this the first time?” I hissed.
“I don’t think so,” she answered slowly as if slightly confused. Then added, “Maybe last night was the first time. When we were in the boat, I woke confused and thinking about Emma. I know it’s strange, but I missed her. At least, in the middle of the night, I thought I did.”
“Never have the same sort of thoughts before that?”
She said, “I don’t think so.”
I thought about the night before also, and how I’d awoken tired and restless, also thinking about Emma, the Young Mage, and Kendra when she was a child. My explanation to myself, at the time, was that it was the worry for our friends in the boat and the things the Slave-Master had told us about what our past lives might be. It had seemed natural and I’d repressed it.
However, tonight when it was so cold, I couldn’t sleep, the mental intrusion was more noticeable. Without the cold and sleeplessness, I might never have identified what was happening, thinking it was only dreams. Worse, the Young Mage might be probing other minds now.
I rose to my knees and called, “Is everyone awake?”
Several assents came in the forms of groans and grunts. I said, “Listen, it’s too cold to sleep and we’re not generating any heat while remaining still. Better we move on and rest after the sun comes up.”
They stood reluctantly, but nobody objected. We gathered our few things and were almost ready to walk when I gathered them close to me with a few waves of my arms. “I have something to ask all of you. Think back to a while ago, and to last night. Did you have any strange dreams, off thoughts, or sense something was wrong? Before you answer, think about it for a moment.”
All of them either answered negatively or shook their heads.
Elizabeth said, “Why the question?”
“We’re not sure, but Anna and I felt a strange sensation.”
“Meaning?” she persisted.
“We think perhaps the Young Mage was trying to get inside our heads and find out what we know. I know how that sounds, but we both agree.”
There were confused glances passed between them, especially between Jess and Tang who knew almost nothing of what we were involved in, but Coffin motioned with his hand for them to be quiet. Wiley said, “I didn’t feel nothing.”
I shrugged as I wrapped my arms around myself for warmth. “Why don’t we walk and maybe all get a little warmer from the exercise?”
We went in a ragged line, all following Will. As we walked, my mind slowed and became almost numb, concentrating on only the next step until the faintest mental touch came again. Instead of fighting it, I allowed it to continue, as I followed the others without missing a step. Anything unusual would cause the intruder to flee. The mental touch formed and took shape. It was a dark outline against a stark blue sky. It moved. A dragon.
A memory of the dragon on the flat mountain top near Mercia flooded to mind. The dragon was arriving back to where it had been chained. I had been terrified.
It was not the dragon or memory that scared me now. It was the intrusion and the forced recollection because I had no doubt the Young Mage was inside my head telling me what to think, which memories to dredge up. I carefully followed the tendril of thought to the source, to the place in my mind where a slight tickle of oddness resided.
Like closing a door, I knew a mental push from me in that place would close off the contact. Instead, I fell to my knees and rested my butt on my heels as I closed my eyes and followed the tendril, like the last wisp of smoke from a dying fire. I didn’t force it.
The mental image was a soft mist and wound and twisted like a small river on a flat plain. At times, it almost turned back on itself. I pushed gently onward, following it. There was no resistance.
A glow occurred. Yellow and dim, it emanated from one place. Concentration carried me to the flame atop a candle in an otherwise darkened room. The walls were made of stone blocks, the ceiling wood. Carpets overlaid each other on the floor. Tapestries hung on the walls, and the candle sat upon a small table in front of my eyes.
The table was near me. I sat in a chair facing it. The flame allowed me to concentrate. It held my attention—all of it.
I looked at the candle through the eyes of the Young Mage.
The image abruptly closed as if a dark curtain was pulled. A wave or brilliant red swept past me, engulfing me in a brief wave of searing heat. My mind instinctively fought back, reflecting the red heat to the source as it simultaneously pulled away and fled back to me.
“Talk to me,” Kendra’s voice demanded.
I was on the ground, my head cradled in her lap. I said, “I’m all right.”
“Thank the ancestors,” she said. “Where were you?”
“Where?” I tried to sit but she held stubbornly to my head and refused to let me move.
“You fell to your knees. When we tried to talk to you, there was no answer. Then, you fell to your side and were still. We’ve been trying to find what’s wrong.” Kendra was in near panic mode.
Trying to lie to soothe her, wouldn’t work. I looked up into her eyes. “I touched the Young Mage’s mind. I saw where he is.”
Elizabeth was kneeling at my side. “Where he is?”
“Sitting at a table in a dark room with stone walls. There is one candle. He is trying to reach out to us. To steal information from our minds. I fought back.”
Anna said, “I haven’t felt him since we started walking. He must have been concentrating on you.”
“I think so.”
Elizabeth said, “Of course. He wants to know where we are, our destination, and what are our plans. What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I think this was his first time, or maybe his second. He went slow and was clumsy—and didn’t expect me to do the same to him. He is no better at it than me, and probably worse. He didn’t think I’d invade his head when he was inside mine.” I struggle free and stood. “But we can’t be sure and need to move. There is no way to understand what, if anything, he took from me. Even now, he might be redirecting his forces.”
When the sun finally came up, we were walking steadily and facing it. The warmth didn’t arrive until we’d walked a fair distance after that, but when it did, we warmed—then cooked.
The sun blasted us so hard we shielded our eyes with pieces of material. The shivering in the night was forgotten. We walked and sweat, thirsty and hungry. There wouldn’t be any food but there was plenty of water. I was getting used to using magic to materialize water and it seemed second-nature.
Too bad I only knew only a few magic tricks. There were a thousand things I wished I knew like Kendra had mentioned the night before. Could I have made warm rain? Could I have drawn heat from the rocks and soil, then combined it into a breath of warm air? And contained it over us? Is such a thing as fire without wood possible? Lightning said there is, but magic always costs, just like fire. If there is no wood to burn, something else must either supply heat or supply energy that can be changed to heat.