Truth - Hidden Truth Part 23

"He's mine," Bailic threatened. "Don't try anything, my dear, or he will suffer for it. Everyone who underestimates me is dead. No need for you to join them yet."

She thought back to Bailic's rapt expression when he had incinerated Strell's finger, and her knees nearly buckled. Bailic was insane. He would kill Strell with no compunction.

"Yes." Bailic pulled her closer, his pale eyes narrow and tight. "You finally understand. And look closer. See that connection between your piper and me, formed by my field and ward?"

Silently she nodded.

"What do you suppose that is?" he asked lightly, his face twisting.

She licked her lips. "I-I don't know."

"You don't know." He smiled indulgently. "Let's just say, if I die, he dies, too. So don't try any tricks Talo-Toecan may have taught you."

"Useless!" she called silently in her thoughts, only now recalling him.

"Come on," Bailic said, and she gasped as he yanked her arm so hard her hat fell off. "There's something you need to do."

"Useless!" she thought again as she stumbled into motion. If he was too far away, he might not hear.

Bailic didn't seem to notice, for which she was thankful, but neither did Useless.

From the tangled brush came the soft call of a songbird. It was answered by its mate, and for a moment the two carried on a gentle duet, standing in dark contrast to her own desperate situation.

Alissa's pulse grew fast. She had to get away. He was going to force her to open the book. It was hers!

Bailic couldn't have it! Twisting suddenly, she struggled to break free.

"Stop it!" Bailic hissed, pulling her tightly into him.

Terrified, she gave a violent lunge, stomping on his foot. He let go in surprise. Alissa scrabbled across the sodden earth on all fours, only to find her feet pulled out from under her as she tried to rise. Her face went into the mud, and she bit back a m.u.f.fled cry as her chin cracked into the ground. Tears welled up from the pain.

"I said, stop," Bailic whispered coldly, his knee on the small of her back. "I'm not going to warn you again. The next time, the piper suffers."

"You wouldn't dare," she countered boldly into the ground. "You have an agreement!"

"My agreement?" He snorted. "That old raku finally made a mistake." Bailic bent so close his breath shifted her hair, and she stiffened. "The arrangement ends the moment the book is opened. I'll be free to do whatever I want with you. Talo-Toecan has no way of knowing when the book is opened. You," he smiled as he pulled her back to her feet, "were never as secure as you thought, and now your piper is dreaming his last dreams."She stared at him, fear knotting her stomach.

"His life hangs upon your cooperation. If you fail me," he said, beginning to drag her to the kitchen door, "I'll kill your piper as you watch. I a.s.sure you, it will take some time and be very degrading. It's been a while since I've tortured anyone, but it's not the sort of thing one forgets how to do."

With a savage kick, Bailic pushed the door to the kitchen into the wall with a resounding crash. They entered the silent, empty room in a clatter of muddy shoes and stumbling feet.

"I'd wager you all had a good laugh over it, didn't you? Poor old Bailic," he raved as they crossed the dining hall. "Can't see the first thing before him, all this time blinded by the distractions of a commoner!"

She was helpless to do more than stumble behind Bailic as he hauled her up the stairs. Her thoughts wove frantically between her need to escape and her need to protect Strell. Bailic held her more tightly in his poisonous grip than he might realize-or maybe he did.

"Talo-Toecan thinks I'm a fool," Bailic spat, his face twisting as they reached the fourth-floor landing.

"He has been tutoring you all winter! Right under my nose!" Jaw clenched, he reached out a pale hand and tore her white banner from its moorings. She watched it writhe down to make a gentle contrast on the enormous rug she and Strell had wrestled into place yesterday. Her and Bailic's muddy tracks showed strongly upon its soft, muted colors. "I haven't taught that man a thing," Bailic raged. "You've been doing everything! Everything!" he shouted, applying a savage pressure to her arm and twisting it far beyond its usual span of movement.

"Ow, ow! Stop it. Bailic!" she cried as she half knelt under the pain.

"Useless!" she screamed into her thoughts. "He's taking me to the book!"

Enraged, Bailic spun her onto the floor. As she sat there, clutching her bruised arm, she silently heard Useless's frantic answer, and she nearly cried out in relief.

"I'm coming," she heard. "Don't open it, Alissa, whatever it costs. We aren't prepared."

"You're a lying, half-breed, slattern," Bailic growled, and he lunged. Panicked, she skittered backwards, managing to avoid him for all of two heartbeats. But for all his frail looks, he was stronger, and he caught her as easily as Talon catches a gra.s.shopper.

"Filth from filth. No better than your mother," he muttered as his fingers dug into her shoulder and he dragged her to her feet. "All this time it was you. Your piper was very clever. He had convinced me, but-he-fell- asleep!" Beginning to laugh hysterically, he halted, trembling. "You were betrayed by the one who tried to protect you!"

No, she thought as Bailic pulled her up the stairs. It was her fault, losing herself in spring as if she were safe at home. And with that, her situation became irrefutable.

She was at home.

Her parents' small farm in the foothills was her birthplace, and for her first years, it had been her home and school. Now the Hold was her home, and she would die here, very shortly.

"Useless. Please!" she cried silently in despair. "Bailic linked himself to Strell. I can't use an impervious field, or Strell dies, too. Please! We 're almost there."

"I'm coming," came Useless's firm thought. "Don't open that book. You won't be able to contain it. I'll lose you to the beast."

Stumbling, her shin hit the stair, the pain going all but unnoticed in her fright. She reached out a hand to stop her fall, and Bailic yanked her up, impatient at their faltering progress. "I don't understand," she sent wordlessly."I'm sorry," Useless whispered into her mind. "I thought we would have more time. I was going to explain. ... I tried to begin."

Bailic halted suddenly, a mere flight from his room. Gazing at Alissa with a mix of hate and avarice, he grew frighteningly still. Alissa's breath caught, and she stiffened in terror. "I would wager," he speculated mildly, "that you have a source. You must have one." He leaned close, and she tried to back up, hitting the stairway's wall. "That explosion last winter had to have been supplemented. 'Tell me," he crooned, "did Talo-Toecan let you bind it, my dear, or is it still-vulnerable?"

"It's beyond your reach, Bailic," she whispered, half crazed with the fear he might know a way to tear it from her.

Snarling, he jerked her up the last few steps.

"Useless!" she shrieked in her thoughts as she saw his open door.

"Just use the accursed field, Alissa!"

"I can't," she sobbed, and Bailic shoved her across the threshold. The tingle of Useless's own ward, perverted to Bailic's use, heralded her arrival. She was trapped. Catching herself against a table, she took a shaky breath, leaning heavily on it. He took a step towards her, and she shifted to put the table between them. Her wide eyes never left his as she felt her way around it. Behind her, a chair hit the back of her legs.

"I actually asked you to help me," he said and shoved the table into her. Knocked off balance, she sat down in the chair as he had planned. Her heart pounded as she looked frantically for a way to escape.

Now in his room, Bailic seemed to slow, taking the time to rub the dirt from his knuckles with a cloth.

Alissa's eyes dropped to her hands. They were clenched in a white-knuckled fervor, and she forced them apart. "Useless, please hurry," she begged. "He will kill Strell."

There was no response, and Alissa began to think she was alone. Then, almost she could believe closer, was his thought, "Soon."

"Don't feel too bad, my dear," Bailic said as he dropped his rag. "Your father couldn't outfox me, either." He leaned closer, his elegant features softening in a mock sadness. "He was a two-faced, back-stabbing, foothills devil, and I killed him, too."

She swallowed hard. "I know," she said with a quavering voice, stalling for time. "Talo-Toecan made me relive it, to try to scare me away."

"What!" The word was sharp, and she jumped, hating herself for the small gasp that slipped from her.

"Talo-Toecan allowed you to relive a memory? Of your father's? I waited for years to be shown that skill. He never-"

Horrified, Alissa watched his eyes go black as his pupils grew large, and his hands, stiff at his sides, clutched spasmodically. He looked to the ceiling and tensed. She shrank back, trying to put more distance between them, even if it was only a finger's width.

"No," he groaned, closing his eyes. "It will wait," and with a wracking shudder, he turned away. Now his manner shifted to the other extreme, and his shoulders drooped. Slowly he spun on a heel. A small sound slipped from Alissa at the smile he had taken. "Relax, my dear," he all but sighed, moving to a shelf. "Let me find a little light reading for you. You do read, don't you?" He chuckled. "If not, well, the piper has lived an exciting life, if not a long one."

"Useless," she whispered, feeling the beginning of the inevitable end grip her.

"Perhaps this will help you decide?" Bailic said as he brought forth her book and placed it softly before her. Alissa's heart seemed to stop. Reeling from the shock of having it so close, she nearly pa.s.sedout. A feeling of separation overtook her, and she stared hungrily at it, her breath coming fast and shallow.

"I have claimed you," the book whispered in her thoughts alone. "You have claimed me."

"Useless," she moaned. Her fingers twitched and reached, and she felt her will to resist begin to slip gradually away.

Bailic grinned, sure of his victory. "Yes, it's useless to resist, so why try? Open it."

"Alissa, no!" Useless pleaded in her thoughts, almost unheard.

"We have waited long enough," the book crooned into her thoughts alone.

"You're mine," she breathed, and she ran a finger over the latch. With a small sound, the metal clasp parted. A warm tingling began at her fingers. Her vision blurred. Her breathing became shallow.

"I am what will make you unbroken," the book nearly sang through her mind.

Bailic bent low. "Open it," he whispered urgently, his breath a warm touch on her cheek.

"Alissa!" Useless called frantically. "I won't be able to bring you back!"

"Now," the book commanded.

"Now," Bailic breathed as her fingers ran below the heavy leather binding.

"Now," she agreed, and uncaring of the consequences, she opened the First Truth.

Chapter 28.

Bailic reached for her book with a triumphant cry. "Don't," she said sharply, and he stopped, frozen where he stood over her. She had used no ward; his surprise halted him. A silver glow had flickered into existence about the book, and as Alissa sent her fingers to brush over the fine tracings of print, the light played about her fingertips like ripples in a still pool. Dabbling them in the silky sensation, she identified the glow as a thought or memory given substance. The words on the page only served to contain the memory, much as a field gave a ward a place in which to act. She smiled with a quiet satisfaction as she realized she didn't need to read the book. She could live it.

Bailic's frustrated presence hovered over her shoulder, rightly afraid to touch what she had claimed.

Her book wouldn't stoop to speak to him. He had to be content with the printed word. Besides, she thought smugly, he couldn't begin to understand.

And with that sentiment, Alissa abandoned herself to the book's memories, allowing them to freely enter her own. A wave of warmth rose to become her world, bringing a gentle la.s.situde. It was the first lesson, and she absorbed it as a dark rock absorbs the summer sun.

"It's nonsense," she heard Bailic's distant whisper.

"No," she sighed, unable to stop herself. "It's heat." And she sank deeper into the drowsy, alert state, the scent of broken rock thick in her senses. "It's hot sand, b.u.t.terfly wings over dry, summer gra.s.ses, sun baked cliffs, clouds of moisture, and the rain that falls from them."

"Alissa," came Useless's unwelcome voice echoing in her mind. "Stop. Be content with the first lesson.""A candle flame on a moonlit night," she continued, ignoring him, "the wind over the water, and the spinning of the earth and stars."

"It's energy," the book explained needlessly, "in its most humble of forms. No matter what state it takes, it's the same. At rest. In motion. It's always the same."

"Yes," she whispered, familiar with the concept. It had been a common thread binding her lessons at home. "I see what it is."

"I don't understand," Bailic muttered, and at the sound of his voice, her heightened awareness dimmed until she remembered where she was. Opening her eyes, she ran her finger past the unseen but not unrealized pages, skipping to the next lesson. Alissa felt the memories her fingers touched turn gray, and the shimmering glow surrounding the book shifted to a pearly translucence. It did nothing to obscure the single word upon the page before her.

"Substance?" Bailic said. "What kind of wisdom is that?"

The last remembrance of heat slipped away, and Alissa shivered. It was replaced by a sensation of presence, not a person or even a thing, just a lack of nothing. "Substance," she repeated as it enfolded her in its vast strength and her eyelids drooped of their own accord. "What a small word for so large a concept."

"Explain it," he demanded, his voice thick with irritation.

"I'm almost there, Alissa," came Useless's thought, grating upon her.

Uncaring of her imminent rescue, Alissa let the pearly gray thoughts slip freely through hers. "It's the air," she explained to Bailic, safe in the knowledge he would never grasp the significance. "It's the earth.

It's you and me. It's what makes up the trees that flower and bear fruit, but not the light that gives them life. We're all made up of the same material, just put together differently, and it can be changed." This, too, was an idea that had run through her earliest schooling, so fundamental and basic, it hardly seemed worth repeating, but the book made it so clear, she knew it would forever change the way she perceived even the simplest thing.

"Yes," the book agreed. "Go. You're almost there."

Dazed, Alissa turned to the last page. It was blank. The book's thoughts turned from gray to black.

Her fingers resting on the page appeared to be lost in a night so dark as to be impossible.

"What does it mean?" Bailic demanded.

Bewildered, she stared at the obsidian page, smelling the cold of old snow. "I-I don't know."

"Thank the Master of us all," came Useless's intruding sigh.

"Come," the book whispered seductively. "You know enough. I will show you the rest."

Useless's cry of anguish was almost unnoticed as Alissa met her book's invitation with a resounding, "Yes!" As soon as her answer was uttered, she was overtaken by a feeling of perfect disconnection.

There was nothing to see, or feel, or even comprehend. As if blowing out a candle, her world vanished. It was almost Death, but having seen the dark maiden once, Alissa knew it wasn't. Even so, it was only Alissa's will that kept her from crossing to join her. "What is it?" she asked her guide, unable to even speculate.

"This? This is time," came its unshakable answer. "All that has been, all that might be, can be seen from the now. You simply have to know- how far back to look.

"All three are related," the book a.s.serted. "Can you see this, energy, ma.s.s, and time?"

"Yes," she answered, knowing exactly how they were related. It was so simple once shown."And one is in essence the same as the other?" it continued.

"Yes."