The Talented (12 page)

“
Perhaps you can tell me
about the tales before lunch,” Adrienne said after she had
unsaddled Strider and rubbed him down. She loosely tied the
destrier to a tree branch near the stream, within easy reach of the
lush grass that grew there. He lipped over the grass contentedly,
too well-trained to move away from the spot his rider put him, even
had he not been tied to the branch.

Tam made a “hmm” sound in
his throat as though considering the idea. “I really don’t know if
it is appropriate to begin teaching you,” he said at last. “Most of
the students in Kessering don’t begin their training until they
reach the city and are introduced to the commission, you
understand.”

Adrienne didn’t
understand. It seemed pointless for her to wait if Tam knew enough
to get her started. “But it may be beneficial for me to begin my
training early, when my mind will be more focused,” she said. “What
if I have problems learning the material?” Since Adrienne had never
experienced much trouble learning before, she deemed it unlikely
that she would have trouble with this, but that argument for
beginning her training seemed like it would be most effective with
a scholar.

“
Yes, I suppose you may
have a point,” Tam said. “I will have to think on it some more
before making a decision.”

Adrienne thanked him,
wondering how such a reasonable answer could sound so unreasonable.
She usually valued someone who took the time to think before making
a decision, but for some reason Tam thinking this over seemed
foolish. Perhaps what seemed foolish was that he had made the
decision that she be the one trained, yet he still needed to think
over whether or not to begin that training.

Finally Tam went to pester
Ilso about lunch, and Adrienne decided to give Strider a more
thorough rubdown. “Well, boy, it seems this trip won’t be as easy
for me as it is for you,” she grumbled. “Tam seems content to let
me sit idle until we get to Kessering.”

Some of the soldiers in
Kyrog had enjoyed time off, time that was their own so that they
did not have to practice or engage in any taxing activities. Ricco
had always enjoyed a few days of lying around and doing nothing
after a big campaign. Adrienne had hated it, and even on the days
she did not have practice and drills to run she would always
partake in some activity, even if it was just her morning run. The
only time she was ever inactive for a stretch of time was when she
was injured, and even then she pushed as much as possible without
risking re-injury. Activity had been a constant in Adrienne’s life
since she was four, and she liked it that way.

She grimaced as she
checked Strider’s legs for swelling and hotspots, pleased to find
him sound. Destriers were too valuable to allow them to go lame
through negligence. “If King Burin is so eager to get the war over
with that he put together a commission for it, you would think he’d
want training accelerated, not delayed.” Satisfied that Strider had
suffered no injuries that morning, she patted his muscled shoulder.
“Maybe I can talk Tam around.” Strider nuzzled her, a response
which Adrienne decided to take as encouragement, before she headed
back to camp.

••••••

A man throwing balls of
fire stood beside a woman who had knives twirling in the air before
her. She didn’t touch them, yet they moved in the intricate
patterns of an expert juggler, and she was smiling as she watched
them spin and dance.

One of the balls of flame
tossed by the man set a tuft of dry grass on fire, and another man
ran over to it and, waving his hand above the smoldering grass,
sent a spout of water shooting from his fingers to quench the
flames. He shouted something at the man tossing fire, and the woman
with the knives sent one flying toward him to come to a playful
stop a few inches from his face.

In the background, another
woman was walking amongst bleeding and dying people, and where she
passed they rose unharmed, lively and laughing together as though
nothing had happened.

A man flew
overhead.

Adrienne started up from
her bedroll with a gasp. The dream had been incredibly vivid, and
her heart was hammering.

Tam had told her of the
tales that had sparked the commission’s research into other paths
that would end the conflict with Almet, and some of those tales had
been incredible. People who could control fire, or water, and
others who could control objects with their minds, or heal wounds
and illnesses.

Tam had never said
anything about people flying, but after that had been incorporated
into her dreams along with the other tales, she couldn’t help but
wonder if it was possible. In her dream, nothing that had happened
had surprised her, and she wondered if there were any limits to the
abilities Tam had told her about.

The tales he told had
seemed incredible, like the tales she had been told as a child.
Karse had told her stories and Adrienne had the vaguest memories of
her mother doing the same. But Tam had presented them as being
reality, and Adrienne wasn’t sure that she could believe
that.

People couldn’t control
the elements, or heal the sick with their minds, and yet—and yet
Tam had told her that there were recordings of such events in old
tomes found deep in the libraries of Kessering and other old
cities. Adrienne knew that there were fairy stories about such
things, just as there were fairy stories about King Death and his
ghostly court, and the Golden God and his seven sisters that were
immortalized in one of the brightest constellations in the sky. But
Tam’s stories were more along the lines of Amyria the Healer, and
he had told her that these books were not written as fairy tales;
they were written as fact.

Adrienne settled back down
in her blankets, deciding to put the tales out of her mind for the
night, but as she started to turn over she heard the sound of a
twig snapping underfoot.

Most of her life had been
spent in soldiering camps, but Adrienne had been on enough hunts,
both for food and other, more dangerous game, that she could
interpret the night sounds of the countryside. That sound had
undeniably been the sound of a human walking through the woods.
Deer would step on dry twigs, but even the proudest buck would not
produce the absolute hush that had fallen over the forest as the
night animals froze in response to one of the ultimate predators:
man.

She concentrated on
keeping her breathing even and quiet, straining to hear another
sound that was out of place in the night. When it came, it was in
the form of fabric brushing against leafy branches, snagging on one
and snapping it back into place as the fabric released the
branch.

Adrienne freed herself
from her blankets and rolled to her feet in one smooth motion. She
drew her sword and called to Ilso and Tam to wake before springing
toward the man in the trees.

The light was dim, and she
relied on instinct and senses other than sight to find the one who
had been creeping into their camp. Her sword proved superfluous, as
he was armed only with a knife, and she quickly disarmed him with a
chop of her hand to his arm. The knife skittered away into the dry
underbrush and the man let out a shout.

“
What’s this?” Tam asked,
bumbling through the forest until he found Adrienne pinning the man
to the ground. “Adrienne, what are you doing?”

“
This man was sneaking up
on our camp,” Adrienne told Tam. She relaxed her grip on the
stranger slightly, assured that he would not try to escape now that
she had defeated him so easily and taken his knife. “From his
looks, I hazard he planned to slit our throats and steal our
things.”

“
I didn’t,” the man
stammered, turning first to Tam and then to Ilso with bright appeal
in his eyes. “I wanted only to join your camp, perhaps share a meal
with you.”

Ilso cast Adrienne a
withering look, and Tam too looked disappointed in her assessment
of the man. “He has no bags,” the scholar pointed out. “He was
probably hungry, and perhaps cold as well. Company is not an
unusual want for a wanderer. It would be natural for him to seek us
out.”

Adrienne shook her head
fiercely. “Then why did he try to sneak into our camp like a thief
instead of calling out to us in welcome?” she asked.

“
I did not wish to wake
you,” the man said. “Truly.”

Adrienne stood up in
disgust. She knew the man to be lying, and that he was a danger to
them all, but Tam and Ilso would never allow her to deal with the
man in any forceful way. The best she could do would be to take him
away from their camp and hope that he did not double back and try
again to kill them. “Stand up,” Adrienne ordered.

The man smiled uncertainly
and did as he was told, brushing the dirt and dry grass off of his
clothes.

“
You will show me to your
camp,” Adrienne said. “You will gather your things, and I will see
you off in another direction before the hour is up.”

“
I have no things,” the man
said piteously, directing his words at Tam.

Adrienne had to give the
thief credit for picking his mark well. Tam obviously believed the
man wholly. “Adrienne, this man said that he was coming to our camp
to share our supplies,” Tam reminded her, moonlight glinting off
his bald head as he nodded vigorously. “We will let him stay here
with us. It is good to have company on a journey, and perhaps learn
some news. Where do you come from?”

The thief’s small, sly
smile made it obvious just how dangerous that would be, but Tam saw
no threat from a lone man, and listened attentively as the stranger
shared information that he had picked up in the last town. Adrienne
was disgusted. The man might be alone now, but she doubted even a
man who would murder three people in their sleep would wander the
countryside by himself.

“
No,” Adrienne said to Tam,
cutting off his conversation with the man. She met the scholar’s
eyes levelly. “You may come with me, and when this man shows us to
his camp, you will be satisfied that he is a liar and a thief, and
we will continue on to Kessering without him.”

Tam looked unhappy, Ilso
doubtful, but Adrienne stood firm. She knew the thief’s mind, knew
that he planned to lie and lead them nowhere, but was sure that she
could outsmart him.

She gripped his arm hard,
and whispered in his ear as Tam made ready to accompany them. “You
will not lie to me,” she hissed. “Do so, and I will gut you like a
boar,” she assured him. “I will not hesitate to take my knife and
open you belt to breast. Do not deceive yourself that you could
kill me first. Now show me to your camp.”

“
I have no camp,” the man
said, and Adrienne gripped tighter, tight enough to leave bruises
on his arm that went deep into the muscle and would pain him for
days to come.

Her face remained calm
despite the pain she was inflicting, and she saw a spark of fear
light in the man’s eyes. “You will show me to your camp,” she
repeated, her tone hard as steel.

“
I’ll show you,” he
promised, and led Adrienne and Tam to where he had stored his goods
before seeking to take theirs. When the would-be thief revealed
where he had stashed his bags, Adrienne sensed Tam’s confusion and
disappointment, though he said nothing.

“
Can you find your way back
to camp?” she asked Tam.

“
I should be able to.” He
looked back the way they had come, and Adrienne had a feeling of
trepidation. She had no interest in leading the thief away only to
spend the rest of the night searching the forest for
Tam.

“
Wait here for a moment,”
she told Tam before dragging the thief off a little ways into the
woods.

“
Where are your
friends?”

“
What friends?” Adrienne
drew her knife and held it against his stomach. “I could kill you
now and no one would be the wiser.”

“
Ah, those friends. There
was a signal I was supposed to give if things went well. When they
didn’t hear it they would have left.”

“
I assume you set up a
meeting point with them?”

The thief
nodded.

“
Go there and convince them
to leave. Now. If I see any signs of you come the morning it won’t
be only your belly I’m splitting.”

The man looked
pathetically grateful as he nodded before scampering
away.

She went back to gather
Tam so that they could return to camp. Ilso was there waiting with
their things, and Tam just shook his head at the other man before
returning to his sleeping roll.

Adrienne stayed up the
rest of the night listening for signs that the thief had not heeded
her warning, and didn’t breathe easy until the sun
dawned.

Tam handed Adrienne a
heavy book. “You’re fortunate that I brought this along,” he told
her. “There aren’t many copies, and most of them are in Kessering.
It is required reading for anyone being taught what you will
be.”

Adrienne examined the
book. The pages were yellow and curling with age, and when she
flipped through them she saw that the writing was small and
cramped. “Why?” she asked, wondering if the book contained more of
the tales he had told her before.