Deryl took corridors at random until he found himself in an area he knew wasn’t being used, and ducked into a room. Once the door closed behind him, he strengthened his shields—physical and mental—and pushed them outward until they surrounded him like a large bubble. Next, he “tied” that bubble to a ley line. Sure he wouldn’t need to concentrate on keeping his thoughts away from others, he put his back against the wall, sank down, and gave in to his anguish.
“You didn’t follow through.” Why did she have to say that? Why those words? Could she be…?
A cold wave of panic swept over him and he fought to steady his trembling hands. Stop it! She’s not the Master. No one here is. I know that mind, and it’s not anyone here.
She’s not satisfied with defense, part of him argued. She’ll press you to kill. First with swords, then with your mind. Isn’t this how the Master worked?
It was Spring Break, he suddenly remembered. He was home from boarding school. Aunt Kate had just had a miscarriage and was in bed, with Uncle Douglas tending her. Deryl had wandered around the house, lost and alone, until he stepped into the den and found his grandfather drunk and brooding. His eyes bored into Deryl with tangible hate.
“Devil’s spawn!” He spat at him. “You’ve brought nothing but evil to this family since the day your father took my little girl. You think I don’t know—I saw her change, you still in her. Ruined my lovely daughter—then you killed her. But for you, she’d be alive, successful…And now, you’re the only progeny I get? Get away from me before I do what God should have done!”
Deryl had fled to his room and cried until he’d fallen into an exhausted sleep.
That was when the Master had come, offering to teach him to be strong, to take care of himself. He gave him a sword and taught him to use it. He spent hours talking to him, serious lessons he never heard in school. The strong must rule the weak; it is their right and their responsibility. Strength lies in the body and the mind. Aggression is a tool, tempered by skill and cunning. You are chosen to walk a narrow path. Trust your skills. Trust my tutelage. Do not trust others. Do not trust technology. Trust yourself and me, but no one else. The Master was a stern teacher, but Deryl hadn’t cared. He welcomed the distraction from his misery. In those dreamtime sessions, he was special. The Master gave him the attention he’d craved. As the Master became more demanding, Deryl became more determined to prove himself, to please him. Failure brought anger and shame, but success filled him with tangible joy.
Looking back now, Deryl could see how skillfully he had been manipulated. He hadn’t been aware of it at the time, but the Master’s dreamtime preaching had influenced his attitudes. At first, though, it had seemed to help: He went from broody and withdrawn to haughty, yet began to make friends. He threw himself into sports, quickly making up in skill and determination what he lacked in size. He developed a patronizing disdain for anyone who preached nonviolence. They were the weak; he’d take care of them.
He took fencing. His body retained the skills and reflexes that he had honed with the Master. His coach stepped him up to more aggressive freestyle lessons he normally reserved for seniors. He praised his competitiveness and even talked about the Olympics.
Deryl knew better now. The “competitiveness” He’d learned from the Master was predatory, a desire—a need—to draw blood. To wound. To kill.
Deryl ran his hands partway through his hair, clenched them into fists, and pulled. You didn’t know, he told himself. You couldn’t know. When it got out of control, you realized what had happened, and you stopped. Nonetheless, he couldn’t quite block the memory of his sparring partner with a long gash across his chest, blood staining his fencing tunic, nor of his own fierce joy at having done it. “Bloodlust” was a very accurate term.
You did stop yourself. You threw down your sword and never picked it up again.
Yet the Master did not leave him. Training had continued intermittently but with greater intensity. When his psychic powers started to manifest, the Master tried to train him to use them as another weapon. When he had refused, he’d been forced to fight monsters or take painful blows that resulted in real bruises he’d had to hide with long sleeves most of the year. The pleasure the Master had forced upon him as rewards became equally intense, until Deryl had promised his obedience if only he’d not reward him so. Nonetheless, the feelings of well being he pressed upon him instead had been equally addicting. The lectures, too, had continued until he couldn’t even look at a television without falling into a seizure. The school doctor had called it epilepsy and added it to Deryl’s growing list of mental problems.
Then, his fourth year at school, Deryl had lashed out at Perry, the senior who’d been tormenting him all year. When Perry gasped and collapsed, Deryl realized with horror that he had done more than wish him dead—he’d struck out with his Master-trained reflexes and stopped his heart. As the Master screamed at him to follow through, Deryl had started CPR—he hadn’t known how to wish Perry alive—and when adults took over from him, had run upstairs and tried to kill himself.
Deryl pulled his hands from his hair and looked at his arms. He’d managed to slice both wrists properly, but he’d forgotten to lock the bathroom door. Again, he had not followed through.
So instead of dead, you ended up institutionalized. Maybe that was a good thing, after all. There were demons in his soul, hidden insanities that he could never let out. Maybe he didn’t deserve freedom.
Deserved or not, you have it. So what are you going to do about it? A voice that sounded annoyingly like Joshua’s demanded.
He could never let Tasmae convince him to fight.
Defense, he thought. Teach them the shields for defense. She’s right; children can learn this. Save lives; don’t take them.
And stop this war. The thought came unbidden, but he filed it away to think on later.
The memories behind him for the moment, his mind began to still. He used a trick Joshua had taught him and channeled his negative feelings out of his body and into the ground. His quaking eased. He took a cleansing breath, disconnected his shields from the ley line and pulled them back into himself. He stood, took another breath, and went in search of Joshua.
He found him in the healers’ den, laughing as the healer they’d met before held his hands over his. “That is so cool!” Joshua exclaimed.
“What’s going on?” Deryl asked.
“Hey!” Joshua turned a big smile to him. “Come here! Terry—show him! This is way cool! Put your hands like this.” He held them palms up.
Deryl complied, and Terry hovered his hands over Deryl’s and concentrated.
“Feel that?”
Deryl shrugged. “Kind of a tingle.”
His friend snorted. “Please! That’s like comparing ‘Twinkle Little Star’ to Mozart!”
Terry laughed and backed away. “Psychic or not, Joshua has healing ability. I’m trying to teach him. Perhaps he has come to us to learn.”
Deryl blinked. Neither he nor Joshua had thought of that; of course, he didn’t really believe in ‘God-given purposes,’ anyway. Still. “About that. I’m sorry about earlier,” he told Joshua.
“What? Storming out on Tasmae? I was right behind you, dude. She was out of line.”
Terry motioned him to sit, and took a seat himself. “It could be the Remembrance. You aren’t supposed to come out of it until it releases you. Her healer is worried. Right now, she is…tainted by the memories. And even when released, few recover from their experience of this particular Remembrance.”
“No?” Joshua asked. “Why not?”
“Gardianju was…” Terry stopped to consider his words.
But Deryl knew. “Insane,” he whispered.
Terry nodded. “I feel that means something different to your people. For us, insanity is not just a personal mental state. It can pass through mental contact.”
“A contagion.” Deryl resisted the urge to wrap his arms around himself. He stared at his hands clasped in his lap. Silence stretched.
“So, if it’s a disease—an actual illness—to you, you can heal it, right?” Joshua asked.
Terry, too, looked at his hands, fingers moving as if over a wound. “It’s too dangerous. We isolate the person; they survive—or not—according to God’s will.”
I did this. Deryl hugged himself and closed his eyes. “And Tasmae? Will she?”
Terry shrugged. “It is different with Remembrances, but it is said no Miscria survives the encounter unchanged.”
Joshua set a hand on his shoulder. Deryl forced out a breath and unclenched his teeth.
“Slow down,” Joshua said. “What do you mean unchanged? They’re haunted by the memories but otherwise able to function? They end up gibbering in the corner? What?”
Terry watched Deryl with concern. “Ydrel, you do not know?”
Deryl shook his head.
Then he knew, knew as all Kanaan knew in a composite memory/warning. Barin, huge and heavy in the sky. The Miscria, unkempt and wild eyed, “screaming” At the planet while around her plants wilt, crops fail, people and animals falter and collapse around her. Leave us! Go Away! Move! The more she screams, the further the blight spreads—
Deryl tore himself away. “Why is Leinad making her do this?” Deryl exploded.
“It’s not his choice.”
“What?” Joshua demanded.
“She goes insane and takes out half the planet.” Deryl gasped and tried to catch his breath. I caused this. I caused this.
“What?”
“People, animals—even the grass! Then, then she…” He couldn’t say it. He placed his hands over his nose and mouth and breathed slowly, trying to halt his hyperventilating.
Terry took up the tale, his voice soothing, as if to a scared child. “She dies, but afterwards, there is recovery and a long period of peace. For many years, Barin keeps itself aloof. Then, the cycle starts anew, the Miscria are chosen, and eventually one must sacrifice herself.”
“Not this time!” Deryl stood up and looked at his friend, the psychiatric intern. “I know your purpose.”