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.No one should be able to get inside your mind that closely.It makes you vulnerable, she thought, with a shiver of real fear.What happens when you open yourself that much to anyone? Gods and demons, the power that gives them over you… even if they never use that power, it’s a point of weakness that someone else can exploit.And will.There’s never yet been a breached wall that someone doesn’t use to invade.Then there was that fanatical devotion to duty of his.He’d make it back to Valdemar if it killed him, just to get information back there personally.It isn’t sane, she thought grimly.It just is not sane.There are a dozen ways he could get that news back, and if he took all of them, that would virtually guarantee it would get there.Maybe not as quickly, but it would get there.But it has to be by his own personal hands….He frightened her; as much as she loved him, she feared him, and feared for him.She was torn between that love and that fear, and when you added in her reluctance to place herself in a position where she would be dependent on him, there was only one conclusion she could come to.It’s impossible.Oh, gods, it’s impossible.And I still love him….She clutched the trunk of the tree in anguish, bark digging into her palm, the pain keeping tears out of her eyes.She fought to keep control, finally attaining it just as Eldan himself appeared under the tree, waving at her to come down.She took a couple of deep breaths to make sure the lump wasn’t going to return, and to steady her nerves.Then she waved back, grinning down at him, as if nothing was wrong.The faint frown left his brow and he grinned in return.We’ve more important things to worry about, she told herself as she slipped down the tree as carefully as she had climbed it.Right up at the top is staying alive to reach the Border in the first place.A rock was digging a hole in Kero’s stomach, but just now she didn’t want to move to dislodge it.“Where are they all coming from?” Eldan whispered, as they watched yet another of the Sunlord’s priestesses pause just below the entrance to their current hiding place.She pulled back the cowl of her robe, and stared up at the face of the cliff above her.It looked blank from that angle; the ledge they were lying on obscured the entrance, and Kero had seen it only because she had been up in a sturdy oak spying out the land when she’d spotted it.And it couldn’t be reached from the floor of the valley; they’d had to backtrack and come up over the ridge to get down to it.Hopefully that meant no one would look for it.Except the priestess, like all the others, seemed to have sensed something.From up here, they couldn’t make out her features; they could just barely distinguish her face from her blonde hair.The scarlet robe she wore was a sure sign of high rank, thoughthe only rank above scarlet wore gold, and there were never women in gold robes.Against the green meadow below them, she looked like some kind of exotic flower.“I have no idea where they’re all coming from,” Kero whispered back.That was at least half a lie; at this point she was fairly sure they were tracking Need somehow.It would make sense, since neither she nor Eldan ever used unshielded Mindspeech.Since magic was forbidden, it followed that the priesthood had some way of detecting its use.And Need was created with magic; even when she wasn’t actually doing something, she must be “visible” to someone capable of detecting magic.And no doubt she could hide herself, but she had to know she was endangering her bearer, and her bearer wouldn’t know that until a priestess actually was in sight.Kero held her breath, waiting.Surely this time the camouflage would break; they’d be spotted.This red-robe was the highest ranking priestess they’d seen yet; all the rest had been white-, blue-, or black-rank.Surely this time would mark the end.The woman pulled her hood back up over her head, and rode off across the meadow.Kero let out the breath she’d been holding.Eldan put his arm across her shoulders and hugged her wordlessly.She snuggled into his shoulder for a moment, content just to enjoy it, and his warm presence.But her mind wouldn’t stop operating.That’s the third priestess today.We see two and three search parties every day.It’s getting harder and harder to find a place to hide by dawn.Some of that was to be expected; they were right on the Border now, and there were regular Border patrols all the time.Eldan had mentioned that, and mentioned, too, how he’d avoided them in the past.But he had not mentioned ever seeing the clergy out on these hunts before, an omission Kero found interesting.But although he was trying to pretend that this kind of activity was entirely normal, it was fairly obvious that he was worried.Quite worried.Which meant that a good number of these patrols were new, and probably called out to find them.He knew the priestesses were able to pick up something about them, but he didn’t know what, and so far Kero had been able to keep Need’s abilities from him.So far he hadn’t asked any awkward questions, and so far he didn’t seem to have made the connection that only the female clergy were detecting whatever it was.It helped that he seemed utterly incurious at moments when she’d have expected a barrage of questions.That was odd, but no odder than the fact that she was literally unable to talk about anything involving real magic to him.Absolutely, physically, unable.She’d tried, and in the end, couldn’t get the words out of her mouth.She suspected Need had a hand in both those conditions, though she had no idea what it was doing, or why.But she was getting used to that.She didn’t like it, but she was getting used to it.And it was doubtless the fact that Need was attuned to women’s problems that was the reason for the priestesses detecting her, and not the priests.That maddeningly logical part of her kept right on reasoning as she tried to enjoy the moment with his arm around her.We’ve had three narrow escapes, it said, scoldingly.Each one got narrower than the one before it.There’s no doubt about it: Need is bringing in the priestesses.We’re never going to make it across the Border together.He’d given his word to send her his ransom, and she had every reason to believe his word was good.She had no logical reason why she should stay with him.In fact, if she wanted to ensure his survival, she should leave him.With the target traveling westward, this little section of the Border should be empty long enough for him to get across.She inched back into the cave, grating along the sandstone, with a hollow feeling in the bottom of her stomach.She’d known all along she was going to have to face this moment, but that didn’t make it any easier now that it was here.She stood up and dusted herself off once inside.It would be stolen rations tonight, Karsite rations.One of those narrow escapes had been just this morning, and had ended in the death of the scout who’d discovered them making their way across the ridge.His body was in a tiny hollow just below the trail, stuffed into a cavelet barely big enough to conceal him.His horse had been run off in a state of sheer animal panic, thanks to Eldan.His rations now resided in their saddlebags
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