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  I’m sorry this took so long to get out, but I had it written, then I really didn’t like, so I went back and changed it, so I’ve got most of the next chapter written as well...  Please forgive me the long wait!!  As usual, none of the characters other then Tarin, Windance, her friends, Fenda, and Rentha belong to me, as well as Jerra.  The rest, as well as Valdemar, and all the ideas/concepts, belong to the great and wonderful Mercedes Lackey.  All hail the Great Misty!!!  This is supposed to lead up to what happens in the next chapter, but I don’t think I did a very good job of it.  Let me know what you think, please!

 

 

 

  Windance glanced around her, relying mostly on her physical senses, as well as her undeveloped magical ones she used by instinct.  There was no one around, she finally assured herself.  She led Tarin, saddled and ready to go, through the door to the stables for the Companions, and strode towards the closest gate, knowing that the guard was changing and that for one brief moment there would be enough confusion that she would be able to slip by unnoticed.  She had chosen the early morning hours of a brilliant summer morning for her escape, and she reveled in the crisp air.  Though, she amended, it would never replace a proper forest.

  :Let’s go!: she cried to Tarin, already feeling freedom that she hadn’t felt in the ten months she had been at the Collegium.

  :Yes, Chosen.: Tarin’s mind-voice was subdued, and Windance guessed it was because he still didn’t agree with her plan to leave the Collegium.

  :Tarin, I will do this no matter what you or anyone else thinks, so please at least be gracious about it.:  Windance was finally starting to lose her considerably mild temper with her mind-mate.  She knew that he didn’t approve, but she knew that she would start to feel as Jerra did if she waited any longer to see her home.  The two of them had reached the outer gates by this time, and they left the people full city for the calmer countryside.

  :Chosen, I know I do not have to like, and I don’t.  But if this is you’re wish, then I will not let you go alone.  It’s just a feeling of restlessness, and I don’t think—:  he stopped, cut off as it felt as if the ground shook beneath both of them, as if they were writhing in magical energy.  The pain of the shake rattled Windance’s senses, and she hung onto consciousness by a thin thread.  It was a losing battle, and the last thing she thought before giving in was a faint plea to get to safety.

 

 

  She opened her eyes to see a sea of blurry images before her, and she closed them again, willing her head to stop throbbing so she could make sense of what she saw.  When she opened them again she saw that being knocked unconscious like she had messed up her vision so that she now saw, without trying, with Mage-sight overlaid with normal sight, and that was what had blurred what she saw when she had just woken up. Or at least she assumed it was Mage-sight, but something was not right...

  She quickly closed her eyes again, when she heard silently, :Chosen?: Tarin’s panicked mind-voice called to her.

  :I’m fine, love.  What about you?  Are you alright, and do you know what happened back there?: she asked him, opening her eyes, finally feeling as if she could see without feeling faint, or dizzy, or seeing odd Mage-Sights.

  :I am alright.  I think something either attacked you, or contacted you.  I really can’t tell which one it is, though, Chosen.:

  Windance noticed the Healer fussing over her, after she had focused on something other then her Companion.  There were also two Heralds in the room, and she winced when she realized who they were.  She saw Jerra, who was now a Herald, and who must have just returned from his internship, and she also saw Fenda, the Herald currently teaching the trainees in the Mage-gift, when Elspeth was unavailable.

  “You shouldn’t even be awake yet, youngling,” the Healer admonished her gently.  He stood up from where he had been kneeling at her side, obviously Healing her wounds she had received, though she didn’t remember getting hurt.

  “I can’t exactly help it, you know,” she said.  “How did I get hurt?” she asked, staring at the Heralds, hoping one of them at least would know what had happened to her.

  “We were hoping you could tell us, Windance.  You arrived here on Tarin’s back, even though you hadn’t yet been missed, and he nearly collapsed too.”  Windance ducked her head at the faint tone of condensation in the Herald-Mage’s voice.

  :Tarin, are you sure you are alright?  You had better not be lying so that I don’t worry!: Windance asked her Companion, slightly angry at the implication that she didn’t take care of her Companion.

  :I am fine, love.  Fenda is just worried.  Most of the Herald-Mages already knew you had extreme potential Mage-Gift, but black-outs are never good signs in un-trained.:

  “Oh,” she said, out loud, thinking.  She hadn’t known her personal things were broadcast through out the Collegium, and she was not sure she liked it.  “So falling unconscious on your Companion’s back isn’t a good thing?” she asked wryly, receiving a exasperated chuckle from Jerra, who had probably been half expecting humour from her.

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone you were going to leave, Windance?” Fenda asked her angrily, continuing on her tirade that Windance had inadvertently stopped by her conversation with Tarin.  “You could’ve left at any of the holidays, yet you chose, coincidentally, the time when you were to begin your training!”

  Windance sat up at that, her own anger coming to the fore.  “Oh yes, I’ll make a point of running away again at precisely the time when I’ll inconvenience you the most, is that so?  If someone had bothered to tell me that I was starting training, perhaps that would have helped!”  Windance paused, staring the Mage in the eyes, before continuing in her language, unconsciously choosing the language she was most comfortable in.  “I may have been Chosen, but I still don’t know if I like the idea of being a Herald.  And don’t give me that ‘No one’s ever not wanted to be a Herald’ line.  I. Don’t. Care.  I am not Valdemaren, and you don’t have any say over me.  So what if I choose to go wander the Plains, or Pelagiris forest with my Companion?  What’s it to you, inzari?”  Windance’s contempt was clear, even though Fenda hadn’t understood the last part of her own tirade.

  “Windance!” Jerra said sharply.  “That was uncalled for!”  He was referring to her last insult, calling Fenda an inzari, or hated enemy.

  “Shut up!” she replied in Tayledras.  She was currently on the receiving end of some very disturbing visions, ones the she recognized as the same ones that had made her black out before, only now Tarin could filter them so she could understand.  She wasn’t feeling particularly gracious, and it showed.  Her previous joking mood had, by now, completely disappeared.  “I don’t like being ordered around, and there’s something happening at home, I know it!  Don’t you get it, Jerra? Or have you forgotten so much already?  I finally understand why I blacked out.  There’s something happening at home.”  She finished with a sigh, her odd and unreliable Foresight also telling her that she was not the one who would invariably aid her people out of the danger.  “And I can’t do anything!” she added, and sobbed onto Jerra’s Whites as he rushed forward to comfort her.

  Windance continued to speak, her words, now in Valdemaren, muffled by Jerra’s Whites.  “Treesong’s gone, I’m not sure where, but she is beyond my capabilities to reach her.  Which means either that she is gone, dead,” Windance paused, shuddering at the feeling of dread that possibility arose in her, “or she is blocked.  Which could mean any number of things.  But one is for sure.  Now that all of the younger members of k’Ren’fa are gone, the clan is declining.  Our homes are failing, and our people are dying off.  There have been no new births since you left, did you know that, Jerra?  Treesong and I were the youngest, after you were Chosen.  And we weren’t even born to the clan!  The Eldest is losing his battle, and the clan will die with him.  His predictions are no longer accurate, and he can no longer guide the clan, with the others that had Gifts gone.  Oh, Jerra, what do we do?”  The broken up information finally settled into place in Jerra’s mind, and he saw what she was trying to tell him through the haze of the visions.  He held on tighter, acting as if he was an older brother comforting a younger sister.  And that was exactly what he considered himself to be.

  “Hush, al’sh’aen.  Someone will deal with this, Windance.  Our clan will not die.”  He smoothed her hair softly, conveying comforting thoughts gently.

  Fenda watched all this with a surprised gaze.  She knew for a fact that Jerra had no Gifts other then Mage-Gift, except for just enough Mindspeech to speak with his Companion, but the rapport between the two of them looked suspiciously like one between two Empathy or Thought-sensing Heralds.  The information of their clan she filed away carefully, so she would be able to report to the Heraldic Council later.  Contrary to Windance’s thoughts, only very few Heralds knew much at all about the two k’Ren’fa Heralds/Trainees, and what they did know was only what either Jerra or Windance had shared with them.  She had been about to leave, so that they could be alone when Windance, not even bothering to lift her head, said to her, “What Jerra and I have, all of out clan have with each other.  Perhaps it is our history that even we do not know, but our clan has always been able to converse and share like this.  Perhaps it is magic, perhaps not, but this is how, until now, we have survived un-detected.  Go now, report to who you must.  I will be fine.  Make sure,” and now she did lift her head from Jera’s shoulder, “that whoever you send to the Pelagiris has very good intentions, and is capable of living with disappointment.  My people do not tolerate strangers.  And I now know that my black-out is the cause of Foresight, not Mage-Gift.  That information is courtesy of the ever-so-helpful Companion’s.  Zhai’helleva.”

  Fenda met the sliver-haired girl’s now-pale eyes, and nodded.  The fact that this child was still able to get through any and all shields still unnerved anyone she did it to.  Fenda left quietly, knowing that as soon as she reported to the Queen and the Heraldic council she would have to start Windance’s training.  Someone who Far-saw as vividly as she did, and had as little control over her other Gifts as the golden-skinned girl needed to start as soon as possible.  The potential for disaster scared her witless.  Thank the gods for Companion’s, she thought, and received a smug smile from her own.  She left quietly, closing the door, and setting a small spell outside so that they would not be disturbed, except in an emergency.

  Now I get to go explain this to the council.  What fun...

 

 

  Surprisingly, the meeting with the Heraldic Council didn’t go as bad as Fenda though it would.  The high-ranked Heralds merely asked her to ensure that all was being done for the girl that was needed, and had sent her off.  With barely a thought on the matter.

  That’s it?  And to think I couldn’t have thought of that myself, of course not.  She smirked to herself.  As much as she loved her job, there were times when she doubted the true meaning behind a lot of old traditions.  Like having to go through the Council for silly thing like this.  Oh, well, I’ll just start her training, and see where she goes from there.

 

  “That’s it!”  Rentha cried enthusiastically, as her pupil managed to rein in her previously uncontrollable Gift.  She Saw the girl focus the incoming images, and watched mentally as she sorted through what she saw.  She was happy that the girl had finally managed to gain control, as she had had the hardest time of anyone Rentha had previously taught in the training of Foresight.

  The two of them were outside, in the crisp autumn air, over two years since the first incident with Windance’s Gift.

  Windance dropped out of her trance, gasping with exertion.  She hadn’t worked that hard since she had first begun to walk the tree-roads in k’Ren’fa.  She, too, was happy that she could now control what she Saw, and she hoped it would bring down the disturbing images she Saw...

  “Good, good. That was a perfect Foresight viewing.  It is odd how, after being unable to do it for so long, that you could do it perfectly all at once, but I suppose it is merely making up for lost time.  Now, I know you will be tired, so go and rest, and I can let you go now.  You’ve learned what is needed, so there’s not much else I can teach you.”  The Foresight Herald-teacher shooed her young charge off to her room, adding the odd, sudden ability to control her Gift to the long list of oddities surrounding the girl, a list that included more and more blackouts that none had been able to rationalize, aside from some sort of Gift manifestation.  “You’ve finished you Mage-Gift training, then?” she asked.  The girl had the two Gifts, Mage and Foresight, and Windance had finished her training in the former almost six months previous.

  Windance unfolded her legs from the cramped position they had been in for her trance, and picked her self off of the ground.  She gave a brief nod to her teacher, and headed off to her room with Tarin in tow.

  :Are you sure you did not over-extend yourself, Chosen?: he asked her, deeply concerned.  His Chosen was known to be strong, and was also known to often forget her few limitations.  He supported her, allowing her to lean on him as they wandered from the gardens that she had been studying in.

  :I’m fine, alshoa’kreth.  Maybe now, the—: she stopped, as if she didn’t want to finished her thought.  She ignored his mental promptings, merely drawing on his strength silently, which frustrated him to no end.  How could he help his Chosen, be her Companion, if she refused to share her problems with him?

  It was with a frustrated mind that Tarin left his Chosen that night, feeling oddly expectant, as if he was awaiting some huge disaster to befall them.

 

 

 

To be continued... 

         3/5/o2 – 8:56 pm