Sianna stormed down the path that led to the shale quarry yet again. She had lost track of the number of injuries that damned quarry was responsible for, and still it remained abandoned and unsafe no matter how she pleaded or demanded that that be changed. Lost in angry thoughts, she stomped onward a few steps before she became aware that the sounds she was following had abruptly, frighteningly, stopped when she was only a few steps from coming into sight of the quarry. She reached the edge and paused. Cautiously, she shuffled a pace to her left; from behind a large slab of shale, the quarry’s latest victim parallaxed into view: a small human, no older than fifteen, his leg was pinned under the slab that had initially hidden him from her view. He was face down and lying still, and apparently had not heard her arrive; Sianna quickly shoved aside the thought that he might be dead in favor of the suspicion that he was merely unconscious. Even that was dispelled when his body shook with a rasping cough, and twisted with the pain it caused. Sianna looked about for a way down — and found none. Instead she spotted the small, ragged bite in the far edge of the quarry, making it immediately obvious that he’d fallen in. She didn’t want to risk letting that happen to herself, and there was simply no safe way down the sheer sides of the quarry pit.
Sianna sighed. She had no choice. Technically she was in a dilemma: rescue the boy, and risk exposing herself to all the townspeople’s fear and hatred of psions — or stay safely concealed, and let the boy die? Morally, there was no question. She braced her feet, narrowed her eyes, and focused intently on the shale slab crushing the boy’s leg. She carefully coiled a tendril of her mind around it, and pulled. The slab slowly swung to vertical and fell over backward. Sianna then levitated the boy’s clothes straight up, carrying him with them, and with a puff of air guided him to the side of the pit. She set him gently down a safe distance from the edge and trotted around to him. Amazingly, the boy was already trying to sit up, although his obsidian hair was damp with sweat, his breathing was raggedly irregular, and his pupils were so wide open they left barely a thread of gray around them. He was covered in shale dust, except for his right leg which was covered in blood. Sianna winced at the glimpse of bone.
She knelt next to the boy to look him over. His fingers skated uncertainly over his broken leg, his eyes glazed and unfocused as if he were still trying to decide how best to react to all this. Sianna for her part was surprised at how well he was holding up; she was sure many others would already have started screaming or simply passed out altogether by this time. She laid a gentle hand on his back and, as if he had only just now noticed her presence, the boy looked up, with his expression still focused on the middle distance. An odd sensation swept through Sianna when she saw this look, and then worried that he might be falling into shock after all. But the gray-edged eyes found her face; his brow furrowed, his head tilted slightly, and his pale lips formed a “U” — but no sound came out. The unsaid question was unmistakable, though, and Sianna felt compelled to answer, “My name is Sianna.”
The boy jerkily nodded once, breathed in, and shaped his mouth again, but all that came out was the thin whistle of “Thhhhh…” He seemed to cough. Sianna had to grab his shoulders, and then decided that as long as she was at it she should take him back to the town. He looked heavy, and she wasn’t sure she could carry him all the way back, but nobody was going to say she didn’t try.
While Sianna debated the best way to carry him by herself, the boy licked his lips and tried again. “Dah, Dameon,” he blurted. Then: “Please… it hurts…”
“I know. Hold on to me,” she instructed. There was a tremor threatening to shake her voice, but she didn’t let it. “There. Ready, hup.” She hooked one arm behind his and the other under his thighs. Fortunately, so to speak, it was his lower leg that was broken, or she would have had a much tougher time of it trying to carry him without further injuring him. As quickly as she could, she started to make her way around the quarry pit and back towards the town of Norsa.
The first thing Dameon noticed when he woke up the next day was the absence of pain. That made him happy. The next thing he noticed was that he was lying on his back and tried to turn over, which sent a sharp but mercifully short bolt of agony flashing through the right side of his body. Then he woke up thoroughly and remembered he was in the temple with a broken right leg. That made him not so happy. With a snort of resignation, he looked around. There were other people in beds similar to his, all sleeping quietly although the bright light of near noonday was pouring in through the skylight. He yawned anyway, and winced. He was going to have to get used to wincing after doing most things for a while.
One of the doors at the end of the room opened to let a priestess in. She carried a long tray with legs which she, smiling, set across Dameon’s bed.
“Good morning, young man. How are you feeling?” she asked pleasantly.
Dameon shrugged. And winced. “Fine, I suppose, thank you, ma’am. Hungry,” he added, seeing the contents of the tray.
“Fine, fine. Eat up. You have a visitor.”
“Who?” Dameon queried through a mouthful of biscuit.
“She didn’t give her name.” The priestess strode towards the door, leaving Dameon to wonder who ‘she’ was
At the priestess’s beckon, a woman slipped into the room. Dameon recognized her immediately.
“Hello,” said Sianna before stopping next to the bed.
Dameon swallowed. “Hello,” he answered. “I, I never got a chance to thank you, ma’am.”
“Oh, well. You were unconscious enough at the time,” she pointed out cheerfully.
A smile flashed across Dameon’s angular features. Then, with eyes downcast, he said, “I still feel I… owe you something, ma’am. I was very lucky.”
“Nonsense. Just get better quick, that’ll be enough.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You remember my name, don’t you?”
“Sianna, ma’am.”
“Good. Call me that. Don’t ‘ma’am’ me anymore, it makes me feel old,” she told him in mock reproach, and was rewarded with a genuine smile. This one stayed.
It was a week before Dameon found Sianna again. They met at the market, next to the glazier’s shop. Sianna invited Dameon to her house, a short distance away, and Dameon accepted. He declined her offer of a mug of ale, but he did express his surprise at finding out she drank it.
Sianna laughed. “That isn’t my only skeleton in the closet, you know.”
“I know,” Dameon asserted.
There was something in his tone of voice that she could easily have pretended to miss, but she curiously asked, “What do you mean by that?”
Dameon suddenly had trouble finding words. “I, um. I … I remember what you did. At the quarry pit. And uh, I wanted to ask you, if … maybe, you could teach me?” he finished.
Sianna dropped her mug. She hadn’t filled it yet. “You are joking,” she said flatly.
“No ma’am. I have thought about it very much. I know there are people afraid of … afraid of it. But I’m not. And I want to learn.”
Sianna strode over to him. Her hands squeezed his shoulders, and she looked straight into his eyes. “Dameon,” she began.
“I’ve made up my mind. If you won’t teach me I will find someone else.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No.”
Sianna closed her eyes. “Dameon. Hear me out,” she said quickly, seeing that he was about to speak again. “I don’t want to teach you simply because people are afraid. I don’t want to teach you because if anyone finds out you have this power — and it is entirely possible that you do not — people will do… unthinkable things, and I don’t want to see you suffer for it.” Not to mention her own conscience, she admitted to herself. “And to be frank, I don’t know that if I did, I could do it right.”
“How did you learn?” Dameon asked with a slight edge in his voice.
Sianna really felt bad now. Dameon was more or less in the same position as she when she had started to learn to use her power. Her ’teacher’ had been a traveler, though, a passerby who was burdened with no responsibility for her fate. And she had pleaded the same way, still and always aware that, unlike everyone else, she was fascinated instead of repulsed by him. It was unfair to deny this boy what had been granted her, only because she was afraid. But I have a reason to be afraid, damnit, she tried to rationalize. I live here. I, unlike Kawaru, have people to answer to besides myself. I am safe, and happy.
And hidden, and alone, another part of her said. Always alone, always afraid of being found out. That is no way to live, happy but in fear. What complete and utter balderdash. This is the first person you’ve found who accepts what you are, and you would push him away? What a fool you are!
Whispering, Sianna answered, “Someone taught me. The same way I am going to teach you.”
Dameon blinked. “Oh, thank you. Thank you.” Sianna didn’t expect the fierce embrace.
But she knew she’d made the right choice.
There was still the question of whether her choice would actually come to fruition. After all, she had warned Dameon that he might not have any psionic powers at all, and furthermore, not just anyone could be trained in the use of psionics. But the boy seemed so eager, so determined, that Sianna decided simply to play along. And hope that neither of them would be shown up as fools.
Everything happened in the secrecy of her home, away from prying eyes, in the attic. Slowly, uncertainly, Sianna began to teach Dameon to harness the power of his mind. Sianna was no master herself, but she remembered how her own teacher Kawaru had drawn out her ability, and called on that experience to do the same. She put him through a series of exercises, simple at first, to control and discipline the random veerings of his thoughts. The exercises gradually became more and more difficult as he mastered each one. He did so easily, pleasing Sianna not with the speed with which he grasped the concepts, but rather with the thoroughness. It gave her hope, for the first time giving her reason to think that her efforts had not been for naught. She rarely needed to remind him of a technique once she had taught it to him, instead watching him work through the exercises in determined concentration. His memory retained it all, and he even added his own creative element to her lessons, often surprising her by the unexpected ways he used to finish an exercise. Sianna was, justifiably, proud of Dameon.
After a few months of grueling practice, Sianna began to try teaching him new techniques, ones which ultimately led to telekinetic control of objects. She would put him through his paces to the point of exhaustion — hers. Dameon never tired of practicing. Day after day, Dameon and Sianna would sit together at an empty table with a small crystal in the middle, and Sianna would gently guide him through the methods by which he could reach out with his mind and move it.
“Concentrate,” Sianna would say softly, “don’t force. Simply think of what you want to happen and imagine it happening. There is energy moving through everything. Think of that energy, give it a name, a shape, a color … feel the energy. It’s part of you. You can feel it just like you can feel your hand. Use that energy to lift …” She kept having to remind him of how far he had yet to go when, after another unsuccessful session, Dameon grew frustrated and puzzled. But he always returned to it with renewed fervor.
It took so long that even Sianna was beginning to have doubts, but she kept them to herself and continued talking Dameon through the exercise. It was when they were repeating it for the umpteenth time, Sianna’s quiet voice in the background of Dameon’s concentration, that he finally felt a feeble touch of the energy he had been looking for. He found that forcing it didn’t work, changed his tactic, and let it in instead. Gradually a sensation different from any he had ever known before grew in him, and he turned his attention back to the crystal. Dameon directed the energy at it —
The crystal slid a finger’s width across the wood surface and rolled over one facet.
Both of them stared, astonished, at the little amethyst. Then Dameon leaped out of his chair, whooping and laughing. Sianna joined him, equally ecstatic, and they celebrated until, breathlessly, Dameon faced Sianna and asked, “You didn’t do that, did you?”
“Heavens no!” Sianna cried. “It was all you!” Which set Dameon off all over again.
In the day that followed, Sianna concluded that not only did Dameon have the power, nor was he merely a wild talent — he had all the makings of a master. It meant his training could begin in earnest.
She taught him as best as she could, which she thought was not very well, and she taught him everything she knew, which she admitted was not very much. Still, little by little, she began to forget her fear. Dameon progressed slowly but steadily, refining his mastery of telekinesis. Sianna saw with delight that Dameon never lost the zeal he had shown from the beginning; be it a new challenge or a well-established routine, he tackled it with the same ebullient energy.
This lasted for close to two years. Two wonderful years before their world came crashing down on itself, exactly the way Sianna did not want it to.
It was most decidedly a blessing that Sianna was not around to see it begin because it began with a murder.
Or an attempted murder, anyway. For a very good reason of their own, two men started to fight in the middle of the street. One of them had a dagger. The other did not. This unfortunate person would have found himself with six inches of steel occupying a certain section of his heart, namely the middle, if Dameon had not seen the whole thing from the beginning and tried to stop it. Knowing it was foolish to intervene himself, he mentally grabbed the dagger and yanked sideways as the man lunged for the other’s chest. Dameon pulled hard — but the man was faster. The blade sank deep into the man’s chest, leaving his heart intact but piercing his lung deeply. The attacker, suddenly repentant, snapped the dagger out and unthinkingly hurled it away, then ran. The crowd that had gathered didn’t try to stop him, but Dameon did: he snatched the dagger out of the air, slinging it back at the running man’s upper leg, point first. It shot towards him, just missing one or two bystanders, and sank into the muscle all the way to the hilt. The man screamed and tumbled to the ground, writhing in agony.
Someone screamed in Dameon’s ear. Startled, he looked around and found an old woman staring at him, a horrified expression on her wrinkled face.
Uh-oh. Dameon was suddenly surrounded by scores of staring eyes and five feet of empty space. He tried to back up but discovered he hadn’t moved from the center of the empty circle; and now there was a very angry-looking man pushing his way through the terror-stricken crowd.
He popped into Dameon’s circle. “You are under arrest,” he barked.
“For what?” Dameon demanded, bewildered. He had expected no notice at all, thinking that everyone would be too busy looking at the flying dagger!
“Disruption of the peace.” The lieutenant — Dameon could see his rank insignia now — roughly grabbed Dameon by the arm.
“What! But he was the one — ” Dameon jumped.
“The prisoner will keep silent,” a guard behind him growled, having poked him in the back with his saber.
Dameon shut up. He was in enough trouble already. The soldiers bound and gagged him, then, leaving the two bleeding men to the care of other guards, led him away.
He was stuck in a small windowless cell for most of a month. The food was inadequate and he slept badly. Every time someone came to bring him ’food’ they acted as if they’d been sent to their execution, which bothered Dameon even though he knew he couldn’t do anything about it. At least he could be a good little prisoner and, as the guards sharply reminded him countless times, “not try anything funny.”
One time he asked a guard, “Define ‘funny’,” and got a beating for it.
So he still couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t doing something, as they said, ‘funny’. But he figured that as long as he kept doing what he had already been doing — practically nothing — he should be all right.
So to speak.
The trial, if such it could be called, was held well after sundown for dramatic effect. There were few people in attendance. Not that anyone cared, especially not Dameon. He was occupied with trying to remain upright as the guards poked and shoved him along the streets in the direction of the Councilhouse. He was weak and beginning to feel woozy. Probably the food, he thought laconically. I wouldn’t put it past them to poison me. What a way to go. Nevertheless, he made it all the way there, and on into the Great Hall where he was pushed sprawling onto the floor so hard he skidded. The hushed buzzing that had greeted him upon entering ceased, the people present watching him laboriously lift himself to his feet. Dameon looked about and saw his parents. His mother looked like she was about to cry. His father merely looked furious. He also saw Sianna, her expression stony, and that broke his heart, because he had broken his promise.
“Promise me you will never let anyone find out.”
“I promise.”
Sianna refused to meet his eyes.
Hurting, he turned back to see a red-faced man ascending the three steps to the podium and glared down at him. In the ensuing silence, Dameon tried to meet his gaze as best as he could, but his eyes refused to focus. Dimly, he heard the man begin to speak, and he had to concentrate his attention on catching the words:
“Dameon Sabiandrini, you are charged with the following crimes. Disruption of the peace. Armed assault. Disregard for the law. And attempted murder. Do you deny any of these charges?”
Trick question. Denials always fell on deaf ears. He said “Yes,” anyway. His voice felt too thick to fit through his throat. “I deny murder.”
“On what grounds?” the judge challenged.
“I tried to save a man’s life, not take it.” Dameon had to cut the end short to give way to a coughing fit.
When he was finished the judge asked, “Do you have any evidence of this?”
Dameon really wanted to scoff, After a month?! Tell me you’re kidding! Then he got an idea and said, “Only that the man’s not dead.”
“He died of internal hemorrage.”
Dameon went cold and suddenly his wrists were made of lead. If the man was dead there was nothing to prove his innocence…
“There were several dozen witnesses,” the judge stated. “What have you to say to them?”
After a shaky breath, Dameon rasped, “I have nothing to say to a judge already determined to condemn me,” and shut his eyes.
The judge exploded in righteous indignation. “How dare you speak that way to me!” He was shouting loudly enough to drown out Dameon’s coughing. He said something else but Dameon wasn’t listening. There was something heavy and sharp ricocheting inside his head, and the fire in his gut was spreading. The last words he heard before the world spun entirely away were “sentenced to death”.
Then nothing.
The judge strode down from the podium feeling pleased with himself. The town was rid of a very dangerous mindbender … and it was his doing. He only wanted to know one thing.
“Captain. Why did he take so long? He nearly put me on the spot.”
“I don’t know, sir. Possibly he had a high resistance to poison. I know I gave him the correct type.”
“Well, excellent work, in any case. I will put in a good word with your commander.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now, take the mindbender as far as you can. Leave him to the wolves.”
“Yes, sir.” The captain bowed slightly and hurried back into the Great Hall, where the spectator were filing out. Two of his soldiers were bundling up the boy’s body with a sheet of canvas.
“Our orders are to take him to the forest and leave him. Be sure he does not follow you back,” he instructed the two men.
“Yes, captain.”
It took them two hours to carry the body far enough to lose Norsa from sight. They stopped at a random spot and put the sheet down, then started making their way back. Neither of them, or the judge for that matter, knew very much about the behavior of wild animals, obviously. Any predator needs to have a very good memory not just in order to catch food, but to remember which food they really shouldn’t catch. These memories are stored mainly in olfactory areas, so they would know prey by smell. They also know dangerous enemies by smell, and since humans fall, by experience, into this latter category, it turned out that only once in the time Dameon lay in delirium was he even approached by wolves. But since they knew the smell, and they could also smell the undertones of poison, and he wasn’t dead yet, they left him alone. So did bears, who generally don’t attack unless provoked. So did the rest of the ferocious, savage predators which the judge and his co-conspirators imagined were maiming and devouring the corpse. But what was really tormenting Dameon the worst was the poison that pinned him to the ground, destroyed all thought, and stretched time out into a painful infinity.
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