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  “Here in Eddarta,” I reminded her, “the Lords have been doing what amounts to keeping the breed lines pure, to encourage the presence of mindgifts among the Lord families. Logic would support the existence of a stronger, not a weaker, mindgift.

  “Uh—and speaking of breed lines, isn’t there a rule that says the High Lord has to marry a member of one of the Lord families?”

  Tarani walked over to the refreshment area and poured the barut she had wanted earlier. “Is that the ‘personal’ thing you have been thinking about?” she asked.

  “One of them,” I hedged. “Is there a rule, or not?”

  “You know very well that such a rule exists,” she said. She turned around, leaned on the stone wall into which the refreshment shelf was cut, and sipped her drink. “It will be changed—if it becomes necessary.”

  “If?” I sputtered. “If it becomes necessary?”

  “Rikardon, my love,” she said, in a deadly calm voice. “Think carefully. Have you ever spoken to me of marriage?”

  I gaped at her, my heart racing with confusion and apprehension.

  “Have I ever led you to believe,” I finally said, “that I wanted anything more than for us to continue to be together?”

  “Once, and recently,” she said. “At Relenor, we discussed the need for separation—you to take this”—she tossed the blue stone lightly—“back to Raithskar, I to fill the role I have chosen here in Eddarta.”

  “We discussed the possibility!” I whirled away from her and paced around the room, trying to calm myself. When I felt more in control, I faced Tarani again. “The possibilities are vastly changed,” I said, “if this stone is not the true Ra’ira.”

  An odd thing happens when you talk out loud about something you fear. It becomes more real, more frightening, and yet it seems easier to deal with it, once it has been expressed.

  Tarani straightened up and set her empty glass on the shelf. “If this is not the real stone, where is it?”

  “Now that is mostly what I’ve been thinking about all day. I’ve gone over my memory of every second we were in contact with Gharlas, every time we have seen any version of the Ra’ira. Every way I look at it, I see the same thing: Gharlas believed he had the real thing. He would not have let it out of his sight. The jewel we took from his body was the same one he had brought all the way from Raithskar.”

  “Can we be sure that this is that same stone?” she asked.

  “I’d bet on it,” I said. “Gharlas said that Volitar made only two realistic copies of the Ra’ira.”

  “Are you saying,” she demanded, “that this is the second copy? Gharlas also said that it was lost—”

  “In Raithskar,” I interrupted. “Where someone who had the real Ra’ira could easily send a vineh to pick it up and deliver it somewhere. He switched the duplicate for the real stone during his duty shift, then held his own private duty shift to convince the next custodian that the jewel in the vault was the real thing.”

  Tarani took a couple of steps away from me, came back, paced away again. “If we suppose that the situation you described is true, then the real thief is a Supervisor who used Gharlas to draw attention away from himself.” She threw up her hands. “For what possible reason? I have no doubt that Gharlas was cleverly guided, but he obviously believed in everything he said to us. He was entirely mad, of course, but he did seem to have a reason for wanting the Ra’ira. The thief you propose would have had the gem in his possession a good part of the time. Why steal it?”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t a clue,” I said. “The way I’ve worked it out, it could have been any one of the Supervisors—though my preference is to rule out Thanasset as a possibility. One, I don’t believe he would do such a thing. Two, the thing was stolen during his duty shift, and he’s certainly smarter than that. I’ve listed the Supervisors a dozen times in my head, trying to figure out why. I know that two of them are having financial problems right now. Another just lost his wife in childbirth, and seemed to go a little crazy for a while. But there’s nothing certain, nothing I can pin down.”

  “Let us leave it, then,” Tarani suggested, “and address a different question. If this is one of Volitar’s duplicates, and not the true Ra’ira, what then? What are the possibilities which you see as vastly changed?”

  “I—uh—well—ah—”

  She crossed her arms and waited, not giving me any help at all. I cleared my throat and started again. “Um—well, the way I see it, you’ll need to come back to Raithskar with me.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “Do you?” I asked her. I moved closer, and took her upper arms in my hands. The muscles were taut and strong. “We made a commitment to make the Ra’ira safe from abuse again. How often have we talked about that being our ‘destiny’?”

  I drew my hand along her arm to her hand, and took the blue gem stone to hold it up between us.

  “If this is real, then—yes, sending me back to Raithskar alone would satisfy the commitment, and you could get on with your life as the High Lord.” I was surprised by a surge of bitterness—jealousy?—that showed in my voice so clearly that Tarani flinched away and strode across the room.

  “If this is not real, then—we’re not finished yet, Tarani, not until the Ra’ira has been taken back to the Council of Supervisors, first to protect Raithskar from the vineh, and then to be destroyed, or isolated, or handled in whatever way is necessary to keep it from ever being used again.”

  When Tarani spoke, her words seemed unrelated to the topic. “You were not born among the Sharith,” she said. “Not even Markasset was born in Thagorn. Yet you lead them. You have told me how you resisted becoming Captain. You have also told me that you have few regrets for it now, and you have come to believe that the event has some significance to our task.”

  She half-turned toward me. She was near the lamp, and shadows flickered across her face with the wavering, reflected candleglow. “Six months ago, the idea of serving as High Lord of Eddarta would have appalled me. Three moons ago, I had accepted the idea, but was very frightened. Today—” She turned to face me. Her hands were at her sides, balled into fists. “Today, Rikardon, I found a part of my destiny. I know it. I think if you will let yourself see, you know it too.”

  It was hard to watch the torment in her face, her eyes.

  “You are asking me to abandon the responsibility I know is mine,” she said.

  “I’m not forcing you to choose between Eddarta and Raithskar, Tarani. All I want—what I believe is right—is for you to delay your work in Eddarta until the matter of the Ra’ira is settled for certain.”

  “I have begun here with a pledge to work for change and betterment, for both Lord and landservant,” Tarani said. “To leave now would mean breaking that pledge and destroying the faith and goodwill I can already feel building among the Lords.”

  I forced back the panic I was feeling, and kept my voice soft as I asked: “Are you saying that you won’t go?”

  “I am saying that I am not convinced of the need for me to go,” she answered, “and I am unwilling to risk the damage to my cause in Eddarta on the chance that we do not have the true Ra’ira in our safekeeping.

  “Rikardon, please try to understand. I am still committed to our original task, but we have no real and recent experience with the Ra’ira, and no reliable way to judge whether this”—she pointed—“is or is not the powerstone.

  “Conjecture is not enough, my love.”

  “If it were real,” I said, “it would be easy to prove it. You, Indomel—Zefra, probably—could use it. But proving a negative is nearly impossible, Tarani. You tell me—is there anything that would convince you that this is not the Ra’ira?”

  She snatched it from my hand and threw it at the floor with a lot of strength.

  It bounced.

  She kicked it against the wall, knocking a puff of dust from her glith-hide boots.

  It ricocheted toward the window and hit the stone sill, narrowly missing a
diamond-shaped pane of glass.

  I picked it up from where it landed and examined it beside the lamp. It seemed to be undamaged. I handed it back to Tarani.

  “Good try,” I said. “The fact that it didn’t shatter like the duplicate Indomel broke means that it’s either the real Ra’ira or a better duplicate.”

  She tossed the stone lightly, thinking.

  “I see your point about negative proof,” she said. “Let us leave it at this: one more item of evidence that the stone is powerless will convince me.” She tossed the blue gemstone to me. “Until then, I shall continue to work at being High Lord.”

  “I’m not sure that’s fair,” I said. I waited long enough for her to tense up, then I smiled. “But I accept it.”

  I put the Ra’ira—or not—into the small, decorative box and tucked the box under my arm.

  “I have only one more question,” I said. “Where do I sleep?”

  She laughed, and offered me her hand.

  17

  We were up early the next morning. After we had bathed and dressed (the Ra’ira went with me to the bathhouse), Tarani asked that our breakfast be served in the High Lord’s suite.

  Indomel and his predecessors had lived very well, and their personal living quarters were roomy and luxurious. Delicate tapestries adorned the walls, and all the furniture was made with fine materials and studied craftsmanship.

  “The family’s doing fine,” I reported, after the servers had left our food on the table in the small dining room. “Keeshah says there is plenty of game, and the cubs are pretty nearly pulling their own weight in the hunting department these days.”

  “Yayshah seems content, as well,” Tarani said. She was tearing a piece of bread into little pieces. I grabbed her hands.

  “Ricardo had a relative—his grandmother—who used to tell him: ‘Suppose you talk about what’s worrying you, boy, instead of taking it out on my good food.’”

  Tarani smiled, and turned one hand upward to grab hold of mine and squeeze. She had long, tapered fingers that were, like the rest of her body, stronger than they looked.

  “I was thinking that if we had no question as to the authenticity of this Ra’ira, you would be leaving soon. When you mentioned the sha’um, I wondered about the cubs. I have been assuming they would remain here, with Yayshah. But their mindlink with you creates as strong a bond as the parental bond to Yayshah.”

  “If we have to separate,” I said, “it will be because I need to take the stone back to Raithskar as quickly as possible. Keeshah can travel faster without the cubs.” I squeezed her hand. “And I could be back sooner.”

  “There must be a decision point,” she said. “Do you not feel the urgency?”

  “I feel it very strongly. If we have the Ra’ira, it is needed in Raithskar. If we don’t have it, then we are needed in Raithskar. I understand what you’re trying to say, Tarani. You’ve given me the opportunity to convince you, but the time frame can’t be open-ended. You said that a ceremony is planned to install you as High Lord?”

  “Day after tomorrow,” she said, nodding.

  “I wouldn’t ask you to leave before that. Shall we agree to start for Raithskar the morning after the Celebration Dance? Whoever is going back?”

  She looked relieved.

  “Agreed,” she said.

  “I don’t think we’ll have to wait all that time before the issue is settled, however,” I said, taking a sip of water. “I remembered something while I was bathing this morning that may constitute the evidence we need, if we can find it. If you can spare me today to help me look for it, then not finding it will convince me that—that I’ll need to ride out of Eddarta alone.”

  “Can you doubt I would help?” she asked. “What is this piece of evidence?”

  “When Gharlas first told us about the Ra’ira’s power—we were in Dyskornis—he mentioned finding a book, a diary written by one of the Kings. That’s how he learned about the stone’s usefulness. I should think that diary would contain a description of the stone and, perhaps, a description of what it feels like to use it.

  “If we can find it, and if it does describe a subjective experience of using the stone, and if that description says that it’s one, easy, and two, imparts a kind of power feedback so that one would know the stone’s power was active—will that convince you that what we have here is Volitar’s second replica?”

  “It would not speak to the possibility of the mindgift changing across the years,” she said, “but yes, I would consider that enough evidence to make my returning to Raithskar to find the truth worth the risk of leaving Eddarta now.” She frowned. “You told Indomel of the book, and he searched for it in vain, both in the vault and in Gharlas’s home. How do you expect to find it?”

  I finished eating, and cleaned my hands on the linen napkin.

  “That’s where you come in,” I said. “Gharlas used the old passage called Troman’s Way to get into the vault unseen, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Troman built that passage so he could visit his paramours in secret. If he had that kind of a mind, why might he not build a secret hiding place inside the house, as well?”

  “If he did,” Tarani said, “would it not be hidden in the same way as the entrance to Troman’s Way, and open only when weight was applied to the floor tiles in a specific pattern?”

  “Very likely,” I said. “If Gharlas knew one entry code—why would he not know the other?”

  She dropped a piece of fruit on her plate and stared at me, growing pale. “You are not proposing that I—that we—enter the All-Mind and search Gharlas’s memory?”

  Her reaction made me hesitate. “Well, yes,” I said, “that’s what I was thinking.”

  She shook her head almost violently. “No. Even if I could bear the thought of touching that mad mind,” she said, shuddering, “Recorder training forbids contact with the recently dead.” She held up her hand. “I do not know why. I do know that such rules are not given without reason. I cannot do it.”

  “Troman, then,” I pressed her. “Someone who knew whether the hiding place is there, and how to open it.”

  “Troman,” she repeated, calming down. “Yes, that is possible.” She dropped her napkin on the table. “The food we have eaten will keep our bodies strong while we seek,” she said. “I will instruct the household staff that we are not to be disturbed.”

  A few minutes later, we were lying side by side on the double-thickness pallet that served as a bed. We held hands, and I stared at the ceiling while Tarani breathed deeply, preparing.

  I had my own preparation to make, minimizing the Ricardo aspect of my mind to allow this purely Gandalaran force to take hold of me. It occurred to me to wonder if Antonia’s memories might interfere with Tarani’s action as a Recorder—Tarani had been able to act as Recorder in Kä only because Antonia actively kept out of the way.

  I was relieved when Tarani began the formal ritual.

  “Will you seek?”

  “I will seek, Recorder,” I said.

  “What do you seek?”

  I had to think about that a moment; Somil had taught me that the seeker’s goal must be phrased very specifically.

  “I want to know whether there is a second secret door in Gharlas’s house, and how to open it.”

  “Then make your mind one with mine, as I have made mine one with the All-Mind… .”

  The sensation of separateness from my body was familiar now, but still disquieting. And my vision of the All-Mind as a huge and roughly spherical, congested network of interconnected rods was no less beautiful than on the other two occasions. Each rod was a cylinder of light, shining and translucent.

  … We begin, said Tarani’s mindvoice.

  I was only a place, a presence. Seeking with Tarani was a little different from seeking with Somil. I might have noticed the contrast in Kä, except that urgency had driven us to hurry.

  Somil’s presence had enclosed mine. Tarani’s presence touched mine
closely, but did not surround it. A physical analogy might be that Somil had carried me, but Tarani and I walked hand in hand. Still, there was no doubt that Tarani was controlling our movement.

  Each of the shining bars represented the lifememory of a person, birth to death—not their personalities, but only their memories. A study of Gandalaran history would begin at the center of the sphere and work toward the amorphous glow that marked its outermost edge. Tarani skimmed quickly along the network just inside the boundary of light.

  I am searching for Gharlas, she said.

  I thought you couldn’t share memory with him.

  No. But I will know him, and begin our search first with his family.

  She pulled us along at a dizzying speed, hovering so that it was her presence, and not mine, that came into contact with the cylinders of light. The sideways rush stopped abruptly. We were “resting” on a cylinder that extended all the way to the edge of the sphere, its far end merging with the glow. Tarani pulled us in the direction of the distant center of the sphere, moving slowly.

  She had not gone far when she stopped us and said: This man was uncle to Gharlas, and lived in the house before him. I touched him only lightly, yet I know he had the secret to Troman’s Way.

  He’s probably the one who gave it to Gharlas, I said.

  Will you share memory with this one, or do you wish only Troman?

  Do we have time for both, if we don’t find the answer here? I asked.

  Yes.

  Then I will try this man, I agreed.

  I was a young boy, sitting on the patterned floor of the midhall and playing with a set of the dice-like mondeana. One piece skittered away, and I rose on one knee to reach for it.

  The tile underneath my knee moved slightly, and I lost interest in the mondeana. I shifted my weight, feeling the tile move. I tested the tiles around that one triangular piece, and found them to be solidly mounted. I tried all the nearby tiles that were the same color of blue, and found three that moved.