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A Hole In Her Mind

  Episode 3 of Van Raighan's Last Stand

  A Story of the Second Realm

  By R.J. Davnall

  Copyright 2012 R. J. Davnall

  This ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, and the reader is not charged to access it.

  The Second Realm

  1-1: I Can See Clearly Now

  1-2: You Can't Go Home Again

  https://itsthefuturestupid.blogspot.com/

  Contents

  A Hole In Her Mind

  About the Author

  Van Raighan’s Last Stand

  3. A Hole In Her Mind

  Somehow, the fabric of Taslin's close-fitting dress picked up the firelight in just such a way as to mesmerise Rel. The Gift-Giver sat at Dora's back, stroking her hair smooth and glossy using some power of the Second Realm Rel had never seen. Next to Taslin's graceful curves, no amount of hair-care could save Dora from looking scrawny and boyish. It wasn't fair, Rel reflected, to be travelling with such a beautiful lady who might also be a deadly enemy - certainly was deadly dangerous - while the only human woman around was so plain.

  Wind whispered over the stones of the old croft-house's wall above them. The building was ancient, an abandoned ruin even before the Realmcrash, its roof long since gone. If it rained in the night, they'd all get wet, but it had been a dry day, the cloud lifting as the sun set, and a cold night promised. Wet blankets would be unpleasant, but the wind had a raw edge that spoke in long sibilance of exposure and hypothermia.

  The shelter of the ruined croft meant a fire that wouldn't blow out, even if its plume of smoke vanished into the purple of the late-sunset horizon at an alarming angle. If the floor was hard, it was far from the worst they'd slept on in four days' travel. Rel stretched his legs, working sore feet in his boots and wishing it wasn't too cold to sleep barefoot.

  To Taslin, Dora was saying, "Not the sort of use you expected to put your training to, I suppose?" She smiled, broadly and simply, a smile that would have been unthinkable even a week ago; being away from Federas, or perhaps no longer having the responsibilities of a Four Knot, had changed Dora. Unless this was just another strange effect of her second Gift.

  "I was taught that power is useless unless used, and dangerous if reserved only for special uses." Taslin's speech had only the faintest hint of the awkwardness Wildren normally showed when speaking in First-Realm language, just the odd out-of-place pause. Somehow, it made her more disconcerting than her kin. The effect nagged at Rel every time she opened her mouth.

  It didn't seem to bother Dora, who gave a short, light laugh. "Sounds very philosophical. Your mentor must have been very wise."

  "We are not trained as you are, by a single teacher." Taslin paused, glanced into the flames. "Different specialists each teach their particular subject. During training I would usually study with a different teacher each day, in a rotation."

  "Doesn't that mean an awful lot of teachers? If each trainee needs so many, I mean?" Dora's frown was puzzled, abstracted, with none of the ferocity Rel was used to.

  "We learn in groups, sometimes as many as fifteen with one teacher."

  Dora turned sharply, then hissed as the Wilder held onto her hair, pulling it. "Isn't that distracting, with everyone asking questions all the time?"

  "Fewer questions are asked." Rel almost thought Taslin was frowning. Clipped though her speech was, for a moment she almost seemed human. He cursed himself under his breath. If Dora wasn't going to be appropriately wary, he couldn't afford to relax even in such a seemingly innocent moment.

  "Oh. But what if the trainees don't get on? I always got on well with Tawny when I was training, but I-" Dora caught herself, but Rel knew what she'd been going to say. She made a vague gesture and finished, "I know some people... there can be friction with a teacher."

  Rel tossed another branch on the fire, harder than was necessary, and the cascade of sparks gave him emphasis. "Like me, you mean?"

  "Sorry, Rel, I didn't mean..." Dora looked at him, brows lowered and pinched in a way that didn't really match her apologetic tone.

  He grunted. Better to close the conversation there than have a row. "I'll take second watch." He pulled his blanket out of his pack and started trying to make himself comfortable. "Good night."

  For all the world, he thought he saw Dora and Taslin exchange the kind of patronising look Dora used to share with his mother when they thought he'd thrown a strop. He wriggled a bit closer to the fire, closing his eyes and trying not to grind his teeth. The soft hiss and crackle of the flames muted the women's conversation to a strangely pleasant, melodic burbling.

  "Relvin! Clearseer!"

  Fire dazzled Rel as he awoke, dragged out of sleep by the hard edge on Taslin's whisper. His first thought was that he was still at home, the house burning. Something of his dream lingered, the sense of squeezing against a wall to escape the flames.

  Taslin crouched beside him. Had she been squeezing him? No, shaking him, shaking him awake. He shook his head, as if that would clear his eyes, but his attempt to roll away from the fire only pressed his face up against the Gift-Giver's leg. The fabric of her skirt was luxuriously soft, the flesh beneath firm, curved and warm.

  Rel's brain caught up and he jerked back, stammering. Taslin grabbed his head, roughly covered his mouth. "Quiet!"

  Her hands were strong, too strong for the humanity they pretended. He struggled, grunting, tangling in his blanket. This wasn't an attack, though. Even muzzy-headed, Rel knew that if Taslin wanted him dead she wouldn't need to wake him. And she'd already had plenty of chances since leaving Nursim.

  So, it was something else. Conscious of his breath condensing hot and damp against her hand, he settled, met her eyes. They glittered against the firelight like quartz. Somewhere out in the darkness beyond the croft wall, a sheep screamed, high and oddly human.

  Taslin said, "Keep a very tight rein on your fear. I think I detected an Axtli nearby."

  A chill ran down Rel's spine. What was an Axtli? Taslin's rock-hard eyes were wide; her breath was tight and shallow, barely clouding the cold air. Wilder she might be, but she'd learned to perform her human emotions better than any he'd ever known.

  "How's your logic burnout?" Taslin lifted her hand away from his mouth, just an inch or so. Her other, at the back of his head, stayed where it was, gripping firmly but not painfully. Ready to quiet him again if he made outcry, he was sure.

  "Better. Maybe not all the way."

  She pointed past the fire, let him turn his head to follow, though all he could make out was the broken wall, and beyond that night. Cold crept into his face, flowing round his eyeballs like a glacier, as he surrendered to Clearsight and studied the darkness.

  Dancing flame became something less of a metaphor as he saw through to the complex, beautiful patterns of air movement that shaped the glowing gasses. Mixed and mottled cloud above covered the worst of the Realmlessness, sparkling with waiting dew; the night became a dithering haze of purples edged in silver, framed and shaped by the echoes of centuries lingering in the stone. Taslin, being a Gift-Giver, vanished, though Rel could still hear her breathing, and every so often the air would eddy at the edge of her shape and so reveal some part of it.

  There was something out there, where she pointed. He didn't see it directly, and it wasn't the dreaded still patch that marked out a Negation, but the patterns were all wrong for the First Realm. There was a sense of motion, but it seemed to follow his gaze, so that each time he moved, he saw the same vague shape.

  Ice seeped through the centre of his face, and for a moment the flickering shadow in a crack in the stonework was a maw, spreading black toothless jaws to eng
ulf the nearest stone. Greater clarity, and the thing outside the walls resolved just a little; a cloud of needles, glossy and black, the firelight spraying tiny glimmers across their million facets. Every needle pointed straight at him, straight at his face, but each bore a shadow trained on Taslin.

  Thought of the Wilder pressed up all too close against his neck made his concentration flicker, and there was a sudden sharp pain stabbing through the cold of his eyes, as if something had reached in and pinched his pupils. Panic threatened, and reflex pulled him ahead in time, following with horror as the Axtli's spines shot out and slid into his eyeballs. For just a moment, he had the sense of being sucked out of his own skull, and then control returned. Rel pulled his vision back to the present, fighting to keep his breath steady.

  Keep a very tight rein on your fear. Well, he could do nothing about the chills in his spine, the claws squeezed tight around his heart, the slow groan of his swallow, but Wildren had no equivalents to such things. And a whisper would stay well below the fire and the wind. "What is it?"

  "It must be an Axtli." The last word came with the awkward distortions of a Wilder trying to translate her own unintelligible communications into human language. "But they were supposed to have become extinct in the Realmcrash."

  "It's a predator?" Could it have survived in the