The Master's Chair (The Chronicles of Terah) (69 page)

Chapter 52

A Brief Respite

By the time everyone who was not spending the night at the castle had gone, it was well after sunset. Kevin and Chris dragged themselves upstairs and collapsed on the couch in Kevin’s room, exhausted by the week as well as by the day.

A few minutes later, Laryn knocked on the open door and said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m worn out. Let’s take tomorrow off.”

“I’m all for that,” Kevin agreed, “and let’s give the staff the day off, too. We can set the leftover food out in the dining room and let everyone fend for themselves tomorrow.”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll go tell Miranda to let her staff know that they don’t have to report tomorrow. What about the pages?”

“They need a day off, too,” Kevin answered. “Housekeeping and grounds, too. The animals have to be cared for, but everything else can wait until Monday. Do you need any help letting everyone know?”

“No. I’ll tell Neiven and Cryslyn on my way to the kitchen. They’ll take care of letting their staffs know, and I’ll tell the pages myself,” Laryn said as she shut Kevin’s door and headed back downstairs.

“What happened when we got to the chapel today?” Chris asked once he and Kevin were alone again.

Kevin told Chris about the dream he’d had Wednesday night and the conversation he’d had with Freddy that morning. “After Freddy said that Rolan meant me harm, I felt like I needed to know what he looked like, so I asked Laryn to point him out. While we were walking up to the chapel door, she told me where he was standing, and as I turned towards you, I spotted him. Our eyes locked and it was like the breath was knocked right out of me. He’s the man I saw fighting that woman in my dream. I just wish I could talk to Yvonne and find out if what I had was a vision.”

“I knew a girl in New York who had visions. She said that most of the time she didn’t know the people involved. Sounds just like what happened to you. She thought they were just dreams, too, until she started paying attention to the newspaper.”

“Do you think I saw something that’s already happened or something from the future?”

 “I have no idea, but if I were you, I’d assume it’s from the future,” Chris said with a shrug. “How old did you say the woman looked?”

“Late twenties or so. Other than that, all I can say about her was that she had long red hair, but I’d recognize her if I saw her.”

Chris thought for a moment and then he asked, “Do you remember the girl Taelor told Karl about? Tsareth’s youngest daughter. Rolan’s sister. What was her name?”

“Landis,” Kevin said quietly.

“Didn’t he say that she would be twenty-five next year?”

Kevin nodded thoughtfully. After a couple of minutes he stood up, stretched, and said that he was going outside for a bit.

As soon as Kevin reached the gardens behind the castle he called Xantha mentally. Finally he heard Xantha’s voice in his head.
“Why don’t you come on up and meet me?”

“I need to talk to you about something and that’s easier on the ground.”

After a couple of minutes Xantha landed beside him.
“Where are my oats? Don’t tell me you called me all the way over here just to talk and didn’t even bother to set out some food!”

“Sorry. I didn’t think about it. Next time. Look, I’ve got a question. You told me that we have a mind link. Does that mean that you see everything I see?”

“No.”

“Well, if I have a picture of someone in my head, can you see it?”

“If you visualize it, I’ll get an image.”

“Okay. I want you to find someone for me. Taelor.”

“Taelor?”
Xantha asked.
“Who’s Taelor?”

“The guy who traveled with us for a couple of weeks last year. I’m sure I thought about him some, especially after he left in the middle of the night.”

“You might have, but I don’t remember every little thing that flows into my head from yours. Unless there’s some kind of major emotion attached to it, it’s in one ear and out the other, as you used to say.”

“Oh. Well, he was an escaped slave, from Rolan’s castle. I need to get a message to him.”

“All right. Where is he?”

“I have no idea.” 

Xantha looked at Kevin for a couple of minutes, and then he said,
“Now, let me see if I have this straight. You’re asking me to search for some guy that you knew a year ago, and all you know about him is that he’s an ex-slave named Taelor?”

“Well, I can show you what he looks like. Of course, he was half-starved at the time, and his hair was a bit scraggly, but it should help,”
Kevin said as he tried to bring up his memories of Taelor.

“You’re trying too hard. Relax. Let the memory surface on its own.”
A couple of minutes later, Xantha said,
“So now I know what this guy looked like ten months ago, when he was in pretty bad shape. And you have no idea where he was headed, what he’s doing, or anything else about him, right?”

“I think he was going to look for Tsareth’s youngest daughter, Landis. I don’t know for sure whether or not he’s found her, and to be honest, if he hasn’t found her, then none of this matters anyway, but I want you to tell him something for me – if you can find him and if he has Landis with him.”

“So I’m looking for the girl, too? And all you know about her is her name?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but Xantha, please! This is important.”

Xantha lifted his head and stared straight into Kevin’s eyes without saying a word.

After a minute Kevin said,
“Once you’ve found someone that you think might be Taelor, you can scan his mind. If it’s Taelor he’ll have memories of us, especially of Theresa.”

“You want me to search through the chaotic mess cluttering up his mind for some sign that he knew Theresa a year ago, and he only knew her for two weeks out of his whole life? Do you know how buried that memory will be?”

“You need to be sure you’ve got the right person, and that’s the only way I can think of to check.”

Xantha stared at Kevin.
“And you want this message delivered how soon?”

“Well, as soon as possible.”

Xantha snorted and tossed his head.
“What’s the message?”

“Tell him that I want to offer both of them whatever protection I can. Ask them to come here, to the castle. Please, Xantha. It really is important.”

Xantha nodded once, stood there for a minute, and then leapt into the sky and soared towards the moon.

~ ~ ~ ~

Sunday morning, Laryn woke up as soon as the sun’s rays penetrated her room. She decided to go down to the family gardens to see if the early spring flowers would lighten her mood. She’d been so busy since Badec’s death that she’d had no time to mourn, and this morning his absence weighed heavy on her heart.

She followed the gravel path to the inner court, the circle where Badec had first announced his intention to foster his son on Earth. She thought back to before that, to the days after Yvonne had agreed to marry her brother, when happiness had settled over the castle, and then she remembered the shroud of sorrow that followed her death.

Badec had been very slow to recover, and for years did not seem to care whether he lived or died. A dark cloud had hung over the castle, dampening the spirits of everyone inside, until about five years ago, when he had begun to look forward to the future, to his son’s return. His eyes had begun to sparkle with life again and there had been a new spring in his step.

To have his life cut down now, before he had a chance to get to know the son who had become his reason for living, was so unfair. Laryn sank to the ground beside the bench where her brother had always sat, folded her arms on the bench, laid her head on her arms, and let her grief engulf her. She cried until there were no more tears, and then she cried some more. Finally she was so exhausted that she fell into a light sleep.

Steve had taken his sketchpad down to the river around daybreak. After a couple of hours of walking and sketching, he headed back towards the castle. As he passed the gardens, he heard a light sigh, so he followed the path to the inner court, where he saw Laryn sitting on the ground with her legs curled under her and her head resting on her arms on a bench. She looked so vulnerable in her sleep. He wasn’t sure if he should stay with her or leave her to her grief. He knew the desolation she must be feeling now that the ceremony of death was over.

While he was trying to decide what to do, Laryn woke up. She was embarrassed to find that she was no longer alone and she knew her puffy red eyes would make it obvious that she’d been crying.

“Don’t get up,” Steve said. “You look too comfortable there. I’ll sit over here.” He sat down on the opposite bench and took out his pen and ink. “I was just going to sketch a few of these flowers. Do you mind?”

“No, not at all,” Laryn said as she stood up and stretched. “I used to do a little sketching myself, but it’s been so long I doubt if I could do it now.”

“Like a lot of others things in life, you never forget how; you just get rusty. Here, why don’t you give it a shot?” Steve handed Laryn the sketchpad and pen. “I’ve already been sketching out by the river for a couple of hours this morning. I was actually on my way to get something to drink when I noticed that some of the flowers in here were in bloom, so I made a slight detour. Why don’t I go get both of us something to drink? Would you like some scog? Or would you prefer something else?”

“Scog sounds nice,” Laryn agreed.

While Steve was gone, Laryn looked through some of his sketches. She was surprised to see how good they were. She picked up the pen and started sketching the small clearing where she was sitting. Before she realized what she was doing, she had sketched her brother and Yvonne sitting on the bench on the north side of the circle. She was so absorbed in her sketch that she didn’t hear Steve’s footsteps on the gravel.

He walked up behind her and looked over her shoulder. “You’re good,” he said as he handed her a mug of scog.

“Thanks, so are you. I took the liberty of looking at some of your sketches while you were gone. I hope you don’t mind. Have you ever tried painting?”

“Some. Not since Cathy died though.”

“Cathy?”

Steve told Laryn about his wife. “You never get over losing someone you love, but you do move on eventually. It just took me a long time, and a tornado.”

“A tornado?” Laryn asked with a light laugh. “What are you talking about?”

Steve told her about Paul and how he had managed to get all of the Tellurians on the same bus and then hit it with a tornado. As he told the story, Steve made the whole episode sound like a comedy of errors, including their first impression of Kalen as a mad hermit. Laryn was soon laughing over their first introduction to Terah.

“I’m surprised any of you stayed,” Laryn said between chuckles.

“According to Kalen, going back was not an option, but none of us had anything to go back to anyway, except Kevin. It’s ironic that he was the only one who was happy with his life on Earth, and he was also the only one who absolutely had to come to Terah. The rest of us were searching for a way out of the life we seemed to be trapped in,” Steve explained. “After Cathy died, all I did was exist. I got up in the morning with the goal of getting through the day, and then I went to bed each night so that I could wake up and try to get through another one. Nothing was fun; nothing was interesting. I was ready to join her, and I probably would have before too much longer at the rate things were going. I have to admit that I’ve had a good time here and I have absolutely no regrets about coming to Terah.”

 “Tell me about Myron. What kind of man is he? How did he react to Terah? Most of our time together has been spent with me telling him about the people he’s going to have to deal with. I don’t feel as though I know him at all.”

“I’m not sure where to begin,” Steve said slowly. “At the beginning, at Kalen’s, I think he was stunned. Finding out who he was, what was expected of him, was quite a jolt. But after the initial shock, I think he felt sort of betrayed, like he had been lied to all of his life, and then the guilt set in.”

“Guilt? I don’t understand.”

“Everything that Kalen told us about Terah made this place sound really dangerous, and none of us figured we had much chance of surviving. Kevin felt that it was all his fault that we were even here, his fault that we were in danger. He tried to force Kalen and Duane to send the rest of us back to Earth by refusing to go along with their plans, but that didn’t work because none of us wanted to go back. Once he realized that, he worked harder than anyone else. It really bothered him that he couldn’t fight as well as the rest of us. He tried so hard to learn how to fight that we were all afraid he’d end up hurting himself, but you don’t need to tell him that.”

“I won’t mention a word,” Laryn agreed. “Go on.”

“We decided to get a minstrel act together so that we would have a good excuse for traveling from town to town, and as it happened, we were pretty good, all except Kevin. He couldn’t play any of the instruments, and he really is tone deaf, so he volunteered to work as our stagehand. When we were in towns, everyone thought he was our servant, so no one looked at him twice. All in all, it worked out pretty well, until Rolan put a bounty on our heads, but that’s another story.

“Once we reached Rainbow Valley, Kevin worked on magic seven days a week. I don’t know enough about sorcery to say how good he is, but I doubt if anyone has ever worked any harder at it, and it wasn’t because he wanted to be the Master Sorcerer. He didn’t, and probably still doesn’t. He’s not interested in power, and he’s more than a little scared of the responsibility that goes along with it. No, I think he worked so hard to sort of hold up his end of the deal, like he owed it to us for some reason, or at least that’s the impression I got.”