Part 17 (1/2)

'Depressed skull fracture,' a voice mumbled in the distance.

Damia ignored it, wanting to bat it away with her hands but she was so weak, so weak from crawling.

'Will she be all right?' a tenor voice asked worriedly.

The lightkeeper! She heard his voice! She willed her lips to form a smile. See! I've found the light, see?

'Look!' It was another voice, one she felt she should know, a kind voice. 'She's smiling!' The voice approached, beams of kindliness washed over her. 'Oh, Damia, you're going to be all right!

Sweetheart, you'll be all right!' The mumbler coughed. 'We'd better let her rest. I'll have the nurse look in on her later' 'I'm staying here,' the lightkeeper responded sharply in tones that brooked no argument. A hand touched hers and she felt the warm yellow glow light its way up her arm, fill her body and knew that the lightkeeper had found her, had driven away the soul-eaters. And she remembered that the lightkeeper had a name. Afra?

I'm here, the lightkeeper whispered. Rest, Damia.

The hand let go and the darkness crept into the shadows of her sight. Afra!

The hand grabbed her again, light flared and banished the darkness. I'm here, love! Rest. I'm here, there's nothing to worry about.

A smile formed on her lips and she rolled over, small soft tanned paw still in Afra's warm rough green hand.

'Afra!' It was dark, Damia awoke with a start.

'Here.' Her hand was squeezed gently by his bigger one.

'Rest. It's night.' Damia went to sleep, secure in the soft mental touch of the yellow-eyed Talent.

The bright sun of morning woke her. Damia turned in her bed, scanned the room and was startled to find no-one there. She double-checked frantically. When the door opened she nearly jumped with fright.

It was Isthia. 'Ah, you're awake!' 'Where's Afra?' 'He went back.' Isthia caught her expression. 'He was burnt out, sweetie, and desperate to give your mom the good news.' Damia started at Isthia's choice of words: burnt out.

'We've all been worried,' Isthia went on, not noticing her granddaughter's reaction. She shook her head. 'Your father and mother were frantic. They've been here but Afra stayed. You seemed calmer when he was in the room.' 'He had the light,' Damia murmured, incredibly drowsy but she forced herself to get the words out. 'Can he come back? Would he come if you said I needed him? He hasn't visited Deneb but half a dozen times in all the years we've been here.' Isthia clucked at her. 'Afra's been very good to come as often as he has, Damia. He has other friends to visit than young girls who make impossible challenges.

'Was not impossible! Neither Larak nor I had been hit when Teval threw that stone!' 'He's not likely to throw another,' Isthia said, her expression grim.

'Why, what did you do to him?' Damia asked with a certain understandable vindictiveness in her voice.

Isthia shrugged. 'I did nothing. Didn't have to,' and she let a smile twitch at her lips. 'I wouldn't have thought a foam ball could be flung that hard.' 'Who?' 'Larak, of course.' 'You see, it wasn't an impossible challenge. It's so good to make Jeran eat crow.

'You eat your meal, young woman, or you'll find me an unpleasant challenge!' Isthia said and set down the tray she was carrying.

When Damia had finished the light meal, she lay back, wondering if she dared ask for Afra again.

Oh, she's all right, Damia heard her grandmother saying, projecting tremendous relief. And, fortunately, all she understands about that wretched game as that she and Larak won.

She hasn't an inkling of what that exhibition demonstrated of her potential.

How could she? and Damia recognized the weaker voice of her aunt Rakella. Not even Jeff could explain it and Angharad still doubts it.

Afra had a theory, and Damia heard her grandmother mulling it over in her mind before she projected her answer. He thinks that Damia is a catalyst: she steps up anyone else's ability. Afra says that's what she did when he rescued her from the capsule that time. THAT was why the power surged in the Tower: Damia tapped it. He didn't and neither did Angharad.

A Talent with an extra gear? Rakella asked.

Something like that.

Then both voices drifted out of her 'hearing' and she drifted off to sleep again.

A week after Damia was allowed back to school, she had an unexpected visitor. She was in her room wondering if she dared sneak out and visit Jupe when she heard Isthia's voice giving directions: 'Her room is the one at the end, on the left. I'll bring down some drinks later.' Whoever it was paused for a long while at her door.

'Well?' Damia called, her curiosity overwhelming her.

Teval's head slowly peered around the door. If the light wasn't deceiving her, his nose was thicker and there were discoloured patches and barely healed cuts on his face.

'Damia?' 'What do you want?' she demanded, suddenly deciding boredom was better than this guest.

Teval shook his head, entering the room. A heavy schoolbag swung from one hand, nearly dragging the carpet.

'I've been a.s.signed to teach you self-defence,' he said, looking miserable.

'I can learn that watching a tape!' 'You've also got to pa.s.s a practical so I got a.s.signed as your mat partner. aNother thing; you're supposed to be my teacher.' 'Your teacher?' 'Remedial language,' he mumbled, blus.h.i.+ng in his misery. 'I failed my exams.' He held out the text-tape.

That didn't surprise her but she decided it wasn't fair to kick someone when he was down. Damia upended the bag. 'Am I supposed to teach you all these, too?' 'Not exactly. I've got to bring you your homework a.s.signments and help you catch up on what you've 55 He looked sheepish. 'You're taking almost all the same stuff I am, except maths and language and you're way ahead of me there.' 'What if I don't want you?' 'You've no choice, Damia Gwyn-Raven!' Isthia called from beyond the door, entering the room with a tray of beverages and a light snack in her hands. She put the tray down and looked at her granddaughter critically.

'Actually, you do,' she corrected herself. 'If you don't take Teval Rieseman here as your tutor and you don't tutor him on those subjects a.s.signed, we will have no choice but to release him from the Special School.' Damia looked horrified. 'Expel him?' Isthia nodded.

'Fighting is against school rules,' she said sternly. 'He threw that rock without any provocation whatsoever. By rights he should already be expelled. But someone intervened on his behalf' Both Teval and Damia were surprised. 'Who?' they asked, almost in unison.

'Afra Lyon.' 'Afra?' Damia was confused, almost angry. How could Afra do that? Didn't he know that this was the boy who had tried to hurt her Larak? That he'd cracked her skull?

Then she knew that, of course, Afra had known the whole thing. So why?

'Why?' Teval beat her in asking the question. 'I thought he was her uncle.' 'He used to be my special friend!' Damia exclaimed heatedly, glaring fiercely at her grandmother to answer the question.

Isthia handed her a note. Damia opened it, turned it around, frowned, turned it over and finally looked up at Isthia.

'I can't read it.' She handed it back to Isthia. Isthia glanced at it. 'I can't read it either.

Perplexed, Teval leaned over and looked at the writing.

'That looks like the printing in some old books my grandfather used to have. He was Russian, I think.

'What's it say?' Teval lifted his shoulders with an indifference that didn't match the emotions which Damia suddenly felt roiling in his mind. 'I don't know! My family was killed by the Beetles. I only recognized the script, not the words.' Damia could feel the pain emanating from him and, while she had always thought Teval was a dark, in that unguarded instant she learned that she had misjudged him badly.

He'd had a little sister, just about the same age as Larak, when the Beetles came: he'd had a mother and father, and the Russian grandfather. Now he lived with an uncle who worked too hard to have much time for his nephew. It was like Afra to know more about Teval Rieseman than she, Damia Gwyn-Raven, had bothered to find out in the years they'd spent as cla.s.smates.

'Why don't we study Russian as your language?' she suggested gently. 'Then we'll find out what this message says.

It took them many months and they were good friends, but still not without their quarrels, when they finally translated the one-line message. It read: 'Friends don't fight with rocks.' 'Let's go hunt Beetle junk!' Damia suggested one day to Larak as Deneb VIII sweltered in an unusual heat wave.

'Uncle Rhodri said he'd found all the near stuff.' Larak, at eight, sometimes questioned his sister. But it was so hot, he didn't like the idea of hunting Beetle metal. It stank and, if you touched it, it went 'sting-pzzzt'. He hated the feel.

'I need new stirrup leathers and that takes cash. Uncle Rhodri pays good for Beetle metal. And I don't have enough money.