Part 17 (2/2)

'Interesting,' he said, smiling. 'Fascinating. And now that my mind is open, could you take it over?'

'Never. You've let a single feeling out, but that doesn't mean I could march in and take control.'

'Try,' he said; and even though his tone was friendly and his face open, Fire was frightened.

'I don't want to.'

'It's only as an experiment.'

The word made her breathless with panic. 'No. I don't want to. Don't ask me to.'

And now he was leaning close against the stall door, and speaking low. 'Lady, forgive me. I've distressed you. I won't ask it again, I promise.'

'You don't understand. I would never.'

'I know. I know you wouldn't. Please, Lady - I wish it unsaid.' Fire found that she was gripping Small's mane harder than she meant to be. She released the poor horse's hair, and smoothed it, and fought against the tears pus.h.i.+ng their way to her surface. She rested her face against Small's neck and breathed his warm horsey smell.

And now she was laughing, a breathy laugh that sounded like a sob. 'I'd thought once, actually, of taking your mind, if you asked. I'd thought I could help you fall asleep at night.'

He opened his mouth to say something. Shut it again. His face closed for a moment, his unreadable mask falling into place. He spoke softly. 'But that wouldn't be fair; for after I slept you'd be left awake, with no one to help you sleep.'

Fire wasn't certain what they were talking about anymore. And she was desperately unhappy, for it was not a conversation to distract her from how she felt about this man.

Welkley walked in then with a summons for Brigan to go to the king. Fire was relieved to see him go.

ON HER WAY to her own rooms with her guard, that strange and familiar consciousness flitted again across her mind. The archer, the empty-headed archer.

Fire let out a frustrated breath of air. The archer was in the palace or on the grounds, or nearby in the city, or at least she'd thought so at times today; and he never stayed in her mind long enough for her to catch hold, or to know what to do. It was not normal, these prowling men and these minds as blank as if they were mesmerised by monsters. The sense of him here after all these months was not welcome.

Then in her rooms, she found the guards who were stationed there in a peculiar state. 'A man came to the door, Lady,' Musa said, 'but he made no sense. He said he was from the king and he'd come to examine the view from your windows, but I didn't recognise him as a king's man and I didn't trust what he wanted. I didn't let him in.'

Fire was rather astonished. 'The view from my windows? Why on earth?'

'He didn't feel right, Lady,' Neel said. 'There was something funny about him. Nothing he said made any sense.'

'He felt well enough to me,' another guard said gruffly. 'The king will not be pleased that we disobeyed.'

'No,' Musa said to her soldiers. 'Enough of this argument. Neel is right, the man had a bad feeling to him.'

'He made me dizzy,' Mila said.

'He was an honourable man,' another said, 'and I don't believe we have the authority to turn the king's men away.'

Fire stood in her doorway, her hand on the door frame to steady herself. She was certain as she listened to the disagreement between her guards - her guards, who never argued in front of their lady, and never talked back to their captain - that something was wrong. It wasn't just that they argued, or that this visitor sounded a suspicious fellow. Neel had said the man hadn't felt right; well, a number of her guards at this moment didn't feel right. They were much more open to her than usual, and a fog hovered in their minds. The most affected were the guards who argued now with Musa.

And she knew through some instinct, monster or human, that if they spoke of this man as honourable, they were reading him wrong. She knew with a certainty that she couldn't explain that Musa had been right to turn the man away.

'What did he look like, this fellow?'

A few of the guard scratched their heads and grumbled that they couldn't remember; and Fire could almost reach out and touch the fog of their minds. But Musa's mind was clear. 'He was tall, Lady, taller than the king, and thin, wasted. He had white hair and dark eyes and he was not well. His colour was off, he was grey-like, and he had marks on his skin. A rash.'

'A rash?'

'He wore plain clothing, and he had a positive armament of bows on his back - crossbow, short bow, a truly gorgeous longbow. He had a full quiver and a knife, but no sword.'

'The arrows in his quiver. What were they made of ?'

Musa pursed her lips. 'I didn't notice.'

'A white wood,' Neel said.

And so the foggy-headed archer had come to her rooms to see her views. And had left a number of her guards with puzzled expressions, and foggy heads.

Fire walked to the foggiest guard, the first who'd raised an argument, a fellow named Edler who was normally quite amiable. She put her hand to his forehead. 'Edler. Does your head hurt?'

It took Edler a moment to process his answer. 'It doesn't exactly hurt, Lady, but I don't feel quite like myself.'

Fire considered how to word this. 'May I have your permission to try to clear the discomfort?'

'Certainly, Lady, if you wish.'

Fire entered Edler's consciousness easily, as she had the poacher's. She played around with his fog, touched it and twisted it, trying to decide what exactly it was. It seemed like a balloon that was filling his mind with emptiness, pus.h.i.+ng his own intelligence to the edges.

Fire jabbed the balloon hard and it popped, and fizzled. Edler's own thoughts rushed forward and fell into place; and he rubbed his head with both hands. 'It does feel better, Lady. I can picture that man clearly. I don't think he was the king's man.'

'He wasn't the king's man,' Fire said. 'The king wouldn't send a sickly fellow armed with a longbow to my rooms to admire my views.'

Edler sighed. 'Rocks, but I'm tired.'

Fire moved on to her next foggy guard, and thought to herself that here was a thing more ominous than anything she'd uncovered yet in the questioning rooms.

On her bed later she found a letter from Archer. Once the summer harvest was through, he intended to visit. It was a happiness, but it did not lighten the state of things.

She had thought herself the only person in the Dells capable of altering minds.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

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