4. Ivan's Lesson

Ivan's three companions watched the scene with awed interest. Could all of that Psynergy belong to Ivan?!

Ivan sat crouched calmly in front of Aden, who, after grabbing onto Ivan's arms, had done nothing more interesting than stare at him for several minutes. If they had based their conclusions on physical appearance alone, Isaac, Garet and Mia might have believed the two boys had fallen asleep while looking at each other. But as Adepts, they were aware of things that others were not. They stared with astonishment at the massive storm of electrical Psynergy that surrounded the two like a caul. If all that power belonged to Ivan, it was obvious he had carried his quest for knowledge much too far.

"Should we . . . separate them?" asked Mia tentatively, watching with concern the way Ivan clutched weakly at Aden's arms. All the while, the Psynergy swirled about them with such concentration that it almost seemed solid, a cocoon of power.

"No," Isaac decided. "It looks like they're in some sort of trance. It might hurt them if we suddenly pulled them apart."

"Huh . . ." said Garet thoughtfully as he looked back to the hypnotized pair.

Suddenly, most of the Psynergy vanished, although traces of it lingered about the heads of both boys, especially the eyes. Both dropped their grips on each other, and allowed their hands to fall limply to their sides.

Aden blinked. "That was interesting," he said without conviction.

Without a word, Ivan made his way robotically to his feet and walked toward his friends.

"Ivan!" Garet whispered, noticing how exhausted his companion looked. "What happened?"

"Later," said Ivan flatly, and left the house.

His three friends gazed curiously after him.

"Should we follow him?" Mia asked.

"No," Isaac answered softly. "He said he'd explain later. Right now, I've got a few questions for this guy."

Aden smiled faintly, but the expression seemed rather forced, piled crudely on top of his pale skin and empty, exhausted blue eyes.

For the people of Toreau, seeing an outsider was pretty uncommon. Seeing one who had apparently lost his mind was a rare treat indeed. Yet this was what appeared to be the case with the youngest of the Great Devon's guests, a light-haired boy of about fifteen. The boy had seemed normal enough in the early part of the day, as he asked questions with his friends--a little too touchy-feely for the tastes of the Toreau residents, but no apparently fatal flaws. But his later behavior was enough to fill all who beheld him with a conviction that first impressions were not always accurate.

Many of the villagers watched as the boy emerged from Aden's house, and that was the first sign of oddness--why Aden?! Aden was crazy; few doubted that. As a matter of fact, the question of Aden's sanity was one of the few subjects on which anyone disagreed with the Great Devon. Aden was a social outcast, a tiny individual in a town where even the women were prone to have preternaturally bulging muscles. Still, most believed that his isolation was voluntary. The boy was antisocial, irritable, pale and sickly. No one in the village dared to visit him, for fear that his oddness would pass to them like a violently contagious disease.

The actions of the light-haired outsider seemed only to confirm their suspicions.

As some of the villagers would testify later, the only sign of life in the light-haired stranger was offered by the fact that he was moving. His face, which had been kind and genuine as he asked questions earlier in the day, was now slack, lacking all emotion. Any light that existed behind his violet eyes had gone out. Even the way he walked--as if he were wading through some thick, gelatinous fluid--looked strange, but he clearly wasn't conscious of his appearance. That much was certain.

Coming to a stop in the center of Toreau's plaza, the boy stood still for a second, eyes focused on nothing as he gazed into the distance.

Then he looked at the fountain. Large but simple, the stone fountain seemed to attract the youth's attention like nothing else. It was then that he attempted to smile. The grin stretched weakly across his face, nothing but an involuntary twitch of face muscles, as if he were genuinely amused but his body would not cooperate.

Then he walked slowly toward the bookstore.

The Toreau village book store was a sad business indeed. The fact was, most people in the village were far more interested in fighting than reading, and the business would have failed long ago if the Great Devon had not supplemented it with generous endorsements. That was why the large old man behind the counter was so shocked when the first customer in three weeks walked through the door.

The first thing he noticed was that the boy was one of the outsiders.

The second thing he noticed was that the boy was absolutely flipping insane.

"May I help you?" the old man asked tentatively, eager to sell a book in spite of his suspicions of the boy.

The customer didn't answer.

Instead, the boy walked across the store to one of the bookshelves, withdrew a book, and prepared to leave.

The old man was frightened badly by the boy--his blank violet eyes, staring into empty space as if seeing some great secret there, his stiff way of walking, as if he were not a boy at all, but a wooden puppet expertly carved into human shape--but he wasn't about to give up his first profit in weeks because his customer was a little creepy. "Boy!" he called. "You gotta pay for that!"

The light-haired boy froze half-out the doorway, and for one crazy instant, the old man hoped he would just continue walking, leaving his life forever and sparing him whatever horrors he was about to see.

Robotically, the boy walked to the counter, reached into his pocket, and plopped a handful of foreign coins in front of the old man. Then, he froze, staring absently into a random corner of the store. If those eyes, with their strangely dilated pupils, had been capable of reflecting human emotion, the owner would have believed the boy was contemplating some great mystery.

Finally, the boy turned and left the bookstore, his feet dragging.

The money on the counter was not enough. Still, the old man refused to even consider calling the boy back in. There was something downright disturbing about him, and it wasn't just the zombie-like way he walked, or the blank look in his eyes. The boy, he belatedly realized, had gone directly from the door to one of the shelves, taken a single book, and left. It was as if he had known the layout of the store by heart. But that was impossible. The only people who came in the store often enough to know it that well were the Great Devon . . . and that crazy boy, Aden.

Outside the store, the boy began staring with rapt fascination at the fountain. Again wearing that demented, wooden grin that was nothing more than a facial mold, his book tucked under one arm, he started toward the fountain.

"HellOOoo!" Garet called, placing his fingers inches from Aden's face and snapping them. "Anybody home?"

"Yes," Aden responded at great length, not even bothering to raise his murky eyes from the floor. It was as if his neck had lost all power, growing so weak it was impossible to even support his head. The sardonic response Garet had expected didn't come, and that one word, that "Yes," lacked all conviction.

What had Ivan done to him?!

Ever since Ivan had left, Aden had fallen to staring at the floor. He talked sparingly, choosing to respond only when Isaac and company asked a question that could be answered in two or fewer words.

Much as they disliked the boy, all three felt a reluctant concern. Garet showed his by getting in Aden's face, trying to "wake him up." Isaac watched thoughtfully, as if wondering where he had seen such weariness before. Mia even attempted using her Ply Psynergy to heal him, but to no avail. Ply was used mostly to heal wounds, not to restore strength, much less strength of spirit.

"Don't you feel a little tired?" Isaac had asked once, as if to a child attempting, without success, to stay up all night.

"Yes," Aden answered colorlessly.

"Why don't you lie down for awhile?"

"No."

"You look pretty tired. Are you sure?"

"Yes."

No elaboration. It was pointless to ask him about the Great Devon or anything else when he was in this state, unless they wished to limit themselves to questions such as "Do you like Devon?" "Does he like you?" "Does he drink tea?"

"Do you think Ivan went too far?" Mia asked after everyone had grown bored of questioning Aden.

"No, answered Isaac in a thoughtful tone. "Ivan wouldn't hurt anyone on purpose--unless they were our enemy."

Garet looked worried. "I don't know, Isaac. If you'd heard the way he was talking, last night. . . . It was like he was desperate to read Devon's mind. If he felt that same urge with Aden. . . ."

"So," Mia suggested, "you think he just got started reading Aden's mind, and, after awhile, he just couldn't stop himself?"

"Yeah. Maybe."

"I don't think so," Isaac decided. "His Mind Read has never worked that way before. He said Aden was an Adept, and if all that Psynergy was Ivan's, then he's much more powerful than any of us thought."

Mia looked worried. "So you think Aden used Psynergy? Tried to defend himself in some way, and maybe the interaction hurt him?"

Isaac nodded. "The night of the storm in Vale, I saw people who looked like Aden does now. They were the ones that totally overexerted themselves trying to use Psynergy. It took some of them weeks to recover."

"But if he's hurt, then what about Ivan?"

Wearily, Garet walked over to Aden. "Do you like Ivan?" he asked, as if to amuse himself.

But the simple "no" he had expected didn't come. Instead, Aden raised his head to reveal the terrible expression on his face.

His eyes had turned almost entirely black, as if his pupils had widened to a point where they covered the iris completely. There was no emotion visible in those eyes, and Garet doubted their blackness was the full reason. But it was the smile that really gave him the chills. Wide, hideous, the expression of mirth had been transformed into something far more sinister. At the same time, it seemed oddly ingenuine, as if it were sculpted out of clay, as if Aden had barely managed to pull his face muscles into a suitable position.

One way or another, Garet had received an answer.

When Ivan awoke, the first--the only--thing he was immediately aware of was that he was wet. Very wet. His purple tunic and green cape stuck to his body, weighted down with the tremendous amount of water they had absorbed. He sat, his knees propped up, up to his waist in water, with more pouring over him at every second. One large source ran directly through his hair and over his face, and his dripping locks hung soggily over his eyes.

He coughed, and the sudden jerk of his body nearly caused the object balanced precariously on his knees to sink into the water. Wretchedly, he leaned forward, clearing his face, to see what had happened.

He was seated in the fountain in the middle of Toreau's central plaza. Standing around him, keeping their distance, was what appeared to be the entire population of Toreau. They were staring at him. The average man, huge, muscular, tanned, was looking at him stupidly, eyes widened. Such men might have been thinking, THERE'S something you don't see every day! Those were the sober ones. A group of five large men, drunk, were laughing and coming closer, as if they were about to join him. The older women looked offended. The girls smiled, enjoying the show, and one about his age even waved at him provocatively, mockingly. The boys grinned as if they'd considered taking a dive into the fountain themselves--when they were younger, of course. A child of about three, leaning from her mother's arms, pointed at him and giggled.

Ivan supposed he had been rash to assume the whole town's population was here. There were only about sixty of them. . . .

Growing hot in spite of the cool water of the fountain, Ivan considered leaning back, letting the jet of water veil his vision, hide him from all those fascinated eyes--drown him. Instead, he dropped his eyes wretchedly to the book that rested on his knees, totally dry and balanced precariously above the rippling water.

He recognized it instantly. It seemed the more common stories were shared among the continents of Angara, Gondowan, and even these obscure islands off the coast.

The story was about a man with strange mind reading powers. He had fallen desperately in love with one woman, and they had made plans to marry. But eventually, the man began to worry about his fiancee's faithfulness. Constantly, he sought to restrain himself from using his power on his intended, but eventually, he gave in to the urge. He read her mind, and discovered that she was completely faithful, devoted entirely to him alone. Unfortunately, (and the book, propped open on Ivan's knees, rested on this page), the girl had felt the intrusion through a sixth sense common only to lovers. In the end, she had been driven insane, slaying first her lover, then herself.

As the townspeople stared at him, Ivan gaped at the book. Aden. Aden had done this to him. Somehow, Aden had controlled him using Psynergy. Shivering as the water poured over him, Ivan thought about the things Aden could have done to him. He had humiliated Ivan, punished him for the intrusion into his mind, but he could have done so much more. He could have forced Ivan to drown himself in the fountain. He could have forced him to jump off a cliff. He could have even forced him to kill someone. The possibilities were limitless.

Chilled from the cold of the water and his thoughts, Ivan was suddenly sure Aden was unlike any Adept he'd ever seen.