Storm Warning - Mercedes Lackey [111]
“It is making sense,” he replied dazedly. In fact, like the other explanation, it was making a little too much sense. He’d had a sense of being divided internally for some time now, but he had thought it was a sign of Falconsbane’s continued presence. Now he had another explanation for the feeling, and it was one that did not cater to his fears and left him no excuse for inaction—
Which makes it more likely to be the right one.
“It is what the shaman called ‘The Warrior Within.’ The voice inside us that tells us what we must know.” An’desha said slowly. “The source of all honor, faith, and prosperity under the Goddess is that voice, if we listen with wisdom, they say.”
Ulrich studied his face as he sat there with all those powerful thoughts passing through his mind; at last the priest nodded, as if he was satisfied with what he read there. He raised an eyebrow at Karal.
“I have laid the foundation,” he said to his protégé. “I think you can complete the work. Simply keep your mind as open as it has become, and I do not think you will misstep.”
He turned back to An’desha. “The bulk of your solutions lie within you, I do think,” Ulrich told him. “Karal will help you, but on the whole, you will be doing the real work to find them. I will do what I can, but there is nothing that I see in you now that requires my further help.”
Which meant—what? That he had needed Ulrich’s help until this moment?
“I would be the last person to assert that things cannot change, however,” Ulrich continued. “If they do, I would be distressed if you did not come to me. Meanwhile, you may trust Karal. He is sensible, he has learned good judgment, he is not afraid of the strange or the powerful, and he has, most of all, a good heart.”
Then, while Karal was still blushing a brilliant sunset-crimson, Ulrich got up and left the two of them alone again.
With Ulrich’s encouragement, Karal spent as much of his free time as possible with An‘desha. As the days passed, Karal became more and more convinced that Ulrich was right; the key to everything An’desha feared lay in those buried memories. Not only was there something in those recollections that was triggering An‘desha’s prescient episodes and his nightmares, but there were also things about An’desha himself that needed to be dealt with.
So Karal continued to work on the “foundation” that Ulrich had established; building An’desha’s confidence, convincing him that he had passions and would make purely human mistakes, but that as long as he remembered to keep his powers under a tight rein, the mistakes he made would teach him how not to make other mistakes.
“Compassion and honor,” he said, over and over again. “Those are what is important. So long as you have both, and act with both, you cannot make any mistake that will bring lasting harm.”
“No?” An’desha replied with skepticism—a healthy sign, that he should respond with anything other than blind agreement. That meant he was thinking for himself. “But—”
“But good intentions count for something, else I’d have been condemned to Vkandis’ coldest Hell long ago!” He grinned and hugged An’desha’s shoulders. “If you have compassion and honor, and you made a mistake that harmed someone, must you not, out of compassion and honor, see that the mistake is being made and try to stop it?”
“Well, yes, I suppose,” An’desha replied slowly.
“And having seen the effects of such a mistake, must you not also try to reverse them?” he continued, with purest logic. “Don’t you see? Compassion and honor require that you not make excuses, nor allow yourself to say, ‘nothing can be done.’ So even if you make a mistake, you must fix it. You’ll want to.”
Perhaps because Karal had no great powers of his