Disclaimer – Ahem! As much as I love Valdemar, I don't own it :) That all belongs to Mercedes Lackey. However! All those oh-so-interesting characters that have never made an appearance in any of her novels from my previous chapter and the new additions in Chapter 2: Mikel, Bremol, Kelsi, Piel… they belong to me ^_^ Of course, you're welcome to use my characters… provided you tell me ;) Since this is my first fanfic, any questions/comments can be sent to dazz1eu@yahoo.com and would be greatly appreciated ^_^ Just don't be too harsh, neh? ;)
~ Chapter 2 ~
Somebody was screaming.
She was in a field, sheep grazing and looking all for the world perfectly calm despite the screaming.
:: Home … ::
There was blood, and over to the side two girls: the older cradling the younger.
Someone was crying.
:: My…? ::
And the older looked up and pointed at her, accusingly.
Suddenly Lyrissa was falling, falling, falling…
~~ ^ ~~
It was chaos in the Healer area for patients.
A few were by the bedside of one girl, trying to keep her thrashings down to a minimum. Their faces were concentrated, covered with sweat and looking for all the world as if they were fighting a battle that required climbing a mountain.
Another cluster had formed farther from the bed and closer to the door. Some people were shouting at the top of their lungs while others tried the softer for firmer tone to get their point across.
It gave Herald Mikel a headache.
While this room was fairly large and meant to fit two patients, it was awfully hard to ignore the loud ruckus that had ensued. Trying to shake off the remnants of his abruptly-roused-from-sleep, he sat up and glanced over first at the cluster around his newly acquired roommate.
Even asleep, the girl's face seemed to be filled with terror. She was thrashing about, and constantly throwing off the hands that reached in to hold her down. :: Interesting that a Trainee could be giving them so much of a hard time. :: thought Mikel wryly. :: I wonder if she's had any weapons training. ::
The Healers surrounding her, though, seemed less concerned about her physical actions and seemed more to be sweating over something else that wasn't in their control.
Unable to see exactly what was going on, Mikel turned to look at the other cluster of Healers. There were four of them by the door, and if Mikel tried, he could listen in on their conversation.
"… not done!" exclaimed the one with dark hair.
"I realize it's not done, but that's exactly what she did," said the only female in the group, who was crossing her arms as if in disgust that her fellow Healer could be acting so stupidly.
"A rogue Gift?" hazarded Dark Hair.
"No," replied the tallest one in the group with an air of stubbornness. "She had been perfectly good with the animals before. They loved her, in fact, and I think she loved then despite that façade that refused to show any emotion."
"But she performed a Counter-Healing!" bit out Dark Hair, his arms gesturing wildly to point at the bed where their fellow Healers were still struggling with the Trainee.
"And I doubt she meant to," replied the till-now silent sandy brown haired man. "I walked in a bit after Lyrissa and Andil settled down." He nodded at the tall man, "She seemed perfectly fine until she saw the wound. I don't know what you know about this girl, but she's infamous for showing absolute no emotion whatsoever. I saw emotion this time – terror. Complete and utter terror."
Dark Hair didn't seem to be listening. "She's a risk to the Healers! We should throw her out – even better, close her gift!" He dissolved into a fanatic babbling that caused even Mikel to raise an eyebrow. Clearly this Healer had lost all of his calm.
"Healer Bremol!" shouted Sandy Brown, reaching over to grasp Dark Hair by the shoulders and shake him. "Listen to you, you're judging before you're understanding!"
"Oh, oh, I understand!" He pointed with a shaking finger at the thrashing bed. "That… that thing is a risk to us all!"
And without another word, Dark Hair stormed out of the room.
Sandy Brown, Tall One, and Female sighed together.
"I hope he doesn't do anything rash," said Tall One, ruffling a hand through his hair.
"Let's hope not," quipped Female, finally uncrossing her arms.
Mikel watched as all three crossed to where their fellow Healers were struggling.
"Any luck with her?" asked Female, peering over shoulders and flailing limbs.
One of the Healers shook his head, ducking an arm before grabbing hold of it again. "None, Kelsi," he said, frustration lacing his tone. "Somehow she's shielding very very strongly. Even though she's not exactly conscious at the moment, we can't get through to see what's wrong."
"Give her any sedative?" offered Sandy Brown, eyeing the girl with an expression that Mikel couldn't decipher.
"With all due respect, Jesin," the same Healer tried to catch Sandy Brown's gaze without losing his grip on the girl's arm, "but we can't even get a cup close to her mouth without her knocking us aside with the strength of a horse!"
Jesin was about to reply when, abruptly, the bed stilled. Everyone stared at the girl on the bed who had suddenly stopped moving.
Suddenly, Mikel was slammed with a curious non-feeling. It was as if all emotion had gone cold. Shaking his head, Mikel tried to fight the feeling that his world had lost all color and had reduced itself to black and white. Scratch that, mostly black.
The feeling ended as abruptly as it had started.
Evidently the Healers hadn't received the same treatment, for none of them carried the dazed, "What on earth just happened?" look that Mikel knew he had to be wearing at the moment. However, they must have noticed something else.
One of the Healers was cursing quite colorfully.
~~ ^ ~~
She was still falling… her tumbling felt like it would never end. Lyrissa tried to curl into a little ball, trying to find a way to at least end her feelings of dizziness as the blackness continued to claim her.
But she couldn't move, and she was falling…
Suddenly, her tumbling slowed. All around her, the air didn't seem quite so dark anymore. It seemed to be shimmering with energy, laced with blue and white and silver.
Soft as a feather, she landed in someone's arms.
She couldn't see his face. It was too bright, too much white after being in the dark for so long. But she knew it was a he – something about his presence felt so masculine and safe.
:: But… ::
Her Knight shook his head, bending down to brush away the dark brown hair that shadowed her face.
She felt comfort, safety, relief.
And she closed her eyes and slept.
~~ ^ ~~
Talia, gentle and usually very calm Talia, was feeling less than calm at the moment. She was feeling quite on edge after spending the past three weeks chasing down what seemed like a ghost.
Her mouth twitched. At least ghosts didn't send you sprinting for the nearest exit in an effort to find them.
The flares always began as a knot of incredible suffering, followed quickly by a cold… lack of emotion. Talia shivered. The brief times she had felt the "deadness," as she had started to call it, was enough to send Talia racing from whatever she had been doing to find the source. Once, she had even deserted Selenay in the middle of a Council session.
She had gotten a couple strange looks for that particular action.
But every single time, without fail, the feeling would end in just a few moments. It was never enough time for Talia to track down the source.
A helpless feeling descended her. Queen's Own, and yet unable to do a thing.
Despite her effort to keep her worries hidden away, her fretting was starting to show. Dirk, in particular, had started to become overly concerned, questioning her and asking if there was anything she needed off her shoulders.
Talia always shook her head, wishing for a split second that the bond between them wasn't so sensitive. He could feel she was hiding something, but she could tell he was reluctant to press her for anything she wouldn't volunteer on her own.
And while usually she didn't mind sharing everything with Dirk, Talia had a feeling that should she voice her concerns, it would spur a search on Dirk's part, leading to an almost inevitable chasing away of the elusive person she was searching for.
A brief whicker brought Talia back to reality and she looked up to stare into the deep sapphire eyes of a pure white horse. She had strolled over to the Companion's Field without even realizing her path.
"Rolan, I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle…" she reached over to gently stroke the Companion. "Where is this person that keeps flaring in my senses? I know he or she is close… otherwise it wouldn't be so strong."
A feeling of encouragement.
"Any idea who it is, where I can look?"
Waves of confidence came through her link.
"Don't know, but you think I can figure it out, huh? Ah well, it was worth a shot."
Concern.
"Oh no, that's ok. My gift's not going to go rogue or anything just because I can't track down one individual," she added wryly, wincing a little at her words. The memory of her Gift going rogue was hardly a pleasant one. It also caused her to remember the dedication of her fellow Herald and friend, Kris, no longer among the living. Talia did her best to fight off a wave of sorrow that threatened to shake her control.
Wait. Talia's mind jerked out of its current cycle of thought. Going rogue. It was her Empathy that had gone rogue. For the signal to be so strong… it had to be an Empath. And the only other Empaths were at…
"The Healer Collegium!"
Turning on her heel, Talia first walked, then ran towards the Healer Collegium. Perhaps it was time to catch up with her old mentor, Devan.
~~ ^ ~~
At the same time that Talia was breaking new records in sprinting, Lyrissa was walking back to her room, the usual expressionless mask fixed upon her face.
It had been five days since Lyrissa awoke to see a crowd of faces hovering over her bed.
During those five days, Lyrissa swore that if people didn't stop treating her as if she was some creature pulled from the Pelagirs, she was going to go insane inside her outside appearance of no emotion.
Healer Bremol treated her like a poisonous snake.
Healer Jesin watched her out of the corner of his eye, calling on her more often in his classes in an effort for her to say something where he used to leave her well enough alone.
Healer Andil tried to act normal, but she knew he was keeping a careful monitor of what she did when she got close to the animals.
Healer Kelsi, who she barely knew, could be felt at the corner of her senses, almost as if she was tailing her.
And several other Healers always paused in their conversation as she walked by, staring at her as if she had some sort of branded sign on her forehead that said, "I'm a freak, watch me go!"
When she had first arrived at the Collegium, Lyrissa had buried herself deeply within, wrapping all her emotions into a tiny little cocoon and allowing the world to come to whatever conclusions they felt was appropriate to explain her behavior.
They would only blame her too, if they knew.
Her hands never seemed clean. She scrubbed at them constantly, but to her eyes, they always seemed stained.
Five days ago, she had scrubbed them too hard. The cook had nearly flipped, rushing her off to the nearest teacher in the halls he could find to treat her. She had later needed to report to Healer Jesin since she had missed his class. After prodding her with a couple questions, he let her go to Healer Andil in the stables.
She didn't know what exactly had happened next, but whatever had occurred had given her a splitting headache. The last thing she remembered was seeing the poor lamb with the bite in its leg.
Lyrissa inwardly shuddered, though the outward mask was perfectly intact. She had recognized the bite of a ChangeBeast. Probably something that got mutated from a rabbit.
She knew that bite mark all too well.
Depression threatened to crash down upon her again. She was a failure. She knew –
"I just don't understand her!"
Lyrissa paused, a few steps away from entering her room. The voice that had interrupted her thoughts belonged to her roommate Alie, who had taken to avoiding her in every way possible.
Murmurs of sympathy drifted down the corridor.
"She's a freaking statue! She looks like death warmed over! She just sits and stares at everything with those blue eyes of hers and it's just creepy! I feel like she's looking into my mind and knows exactly everything I've done including the things I've forgotten from when I was a mere babe!"
More murmurs and one braver voice spoke up. "Have you ever tried to talk to her?"
"You look at her and see if you want to talk to her!" snipped Alie in response.
Another voice, a guy. Piel, it sounded like. Kind Piel, the one who talked to her even if she didn't respond. "Do you know what happened in the stables?" his voice was soft but eager, as if he bursting to tell a secret.
:: No… :: She didn't want to listen. Not to Piel. Lyrissa started to turn away.
More murmurs, this time of dissent. "Do tell," replied a girl, not Alie.
"I heard… she performed a Counter Healing!"
Whispers. Hushed shocked voices. Lyrissa froze.
"I'm serious. I heard a couple teachers talking about it. She was just looking at a lamb's leg and boom, she started blowing up the bacteria and spreading the infection that would've been harmless."
"I didn't even know that was possible," responded the girl that was not Alie, the fear obvious in her tone of voice.
She could hear shifting on the bed, as if Piel was a little bit uncertain, "I didn't know either. Maybe we get taught about it in a more advanced class or…" she could almost hear him shrug, "maybe she's just different."
Lyrissa felt cold.
:: The Healers…no wonder… ::
She looked at her hands, stained as they always were to her eyes. Now they were stained in Piel's eyes. In Alie's eyes. In her teacher's eyes. Her fault, again. This time to a poor animal. She had betrayed its trust. Like Jinny.
"… tainted …."
The word was whispered and could barely be heard, but it still snuck out from the room of Trainees and reached Lyrissa's ears. Her room, full of people who feared her and hated her and blamed her.
Tainted.
Pain surged within her to be quickly dismissed and replaced by nothingness. She embraced it. Nothingness meant she was safe…
~~ ^ ~~
Footsteps echoed outside, and then stopped. Alie glanced up towards the doorway and paused in the middle of her response, words frozen on her lips. The other Trainees that had gathered in her room also turned around to see who it was stood in the doorway.
Lyrissa's eyes were blank. They didn't show anger, or pain, or even sadness. They were simply blank, as in the blue was merely a coloring and there wasn't anything inside. She was looking at Piel, who was perched on the bed, his face ashen.
"L–Lyrissa! You're back early. I thought –"
The words died as blank eyes turned to rest on Alie. She cringed a little, and the eyes seemed to drop their blankness for a split second.
Eyes had once been called windows into a person's soul. If these were windows, Alie certainly liked it better when they were drawn shut. There was so much… pain, suffering, anguish, loneliness… millions of emotions swirling there, but all of them negative. As if her roommate had simply forgotten what it meant to be happy.
And then the moment was gone. The shades had gone back up, and there was simply nothing.
Nobody said a word, Alie still gaping like a fish and Piel having lost his previous eagerness to share tales. The other Trainees stayed silent, whether of guilt or uncertainty it wasn't clear. They watched as the girl named Lyrissa turned around and walked back down the way she had come, the sound of footfalls ominous in the silence left behind.
~ So what do you think? Good, bad? Talia's on the chase, Alie's finally come to realize that her roommate may have feelings, and the Healers are clueless about what to do with the girl that Counter-Healed. Stay tuned for Chapter 3, and leave a review! ~