Storm Warning - Mercedes Lackey [12]
Firesong was teaching An’desha the Tayledras ways of magic, and every lesson made that fear more potent. It had been magic that brought Falconsbane back to life; could more magic not do the same?
But by the same token, An‘desha was as afraid of not learning how to control his powers as he was of learning their mysterious ways. Firesong was a Healing Adept; surely he should be the best person of all to help An’desha bind up his spiritual wounds and come to terms with all that had happened to him. Surely, if there were physical harm to his mind, Firesong could excise the problem. Surely An’desha would flower under Firesong’s nurturing light.
Surely. If only I were not so afraid....
Afraid to learn, afraid not to learn. There was an added complication as well, as if An’desha needed any more in his life. The first time he had voiced his temptation to let the magic lie fallow and untapped within him, Firesong had told him, coolly and dispassionately, that there was no choice. He must learn to master his magics. Falconsbane never possessed a descendant who was anything less than Adept potential. That potential did not go away; it probably could not even be forced into going dormant.
In other words, An‘desha was still possessed of all the scorching power-potential of Mornelithe Falconsbane, an Adept that even Firesong would not willingly face without the help of other mages. The power remained quiescent within the Shin’a’in, but if An’desha were ever faced with a crisis, he might react instinctively, with only such training as he vaguely recalled from rummaging through Falconsbane’s memories.
On the whole, that was not a good idea. Especially if the objective was to keep anything in the area alive.
To wield the greater magics successfully, the mage must be confident in himself and sure of his own abilities, else the magic could turn on him and eat him alive. Falconsbane had no lack of self-confidence; unfortunately, that was precisely the quality that An’desha lacked.
I cannot even bear to meet all the strangers here, and it is their land we dwell in! Stupid of course; they would not eat him, nor would they hold Falconsbane’s actions against him. But the very idea of leaving this sheltered place and walking the relatively short distance to the Palace, crowded with curious strangers, made him want to crawl under the waterfall and not come out again.
So he remained here, protected, but cowering within that protection.
He found it difficult to believe that no one here would hold against him the evil Falconsbane had done. He had such difficulty facing those stored memories that he could not imagine how people could look at him and not be reminded of the things “he” had done.
And I don’t even know the half of them ... the most I know are the things he did to Nyara. The truth was, he didn’t want to know what Falconsbane had done—never mind that Firesong kept insisting that he must face every scrap of memory eventually. Firesong told him, over and over again, that he needed to deal with every act, however vile, and mine it for its worth.
He decided that he had stewed enough in the hot water; any more, and he was going to look like cooked meat. There were no helpful little hertasi here in Valdemar to attend to one’s every need—a fact Firesong complained of bitterly—but An‘desha had grown up in an ordinary Shin’a’in Clan on the Plains. That was a place where if a person did not do things for himself—unless he was incapacitated and needed help—they did not get done. He had brought his own towels and robes to leave beside the pool, with extras for Firesong when he should reappear, and made use of those now.
This hot pool was the mirror image of a cold one on the other side of the garden. It had a smooth backrest of sculptured rock, taller than the user’s head; hot water welled up from a place in the center of the pool, and a waterfall showered cooler water down from above, from an opening at the top of the backrest. The whole was surrounded by screening “trees” and curtains of vines; Firesong did not particularly