budding power. "And the elf wizard's wound?" she prompted.
"By Elbereth's description, the spear had gone a foot or more into Tintagel's side," Danica replied. "So very much blood covered his clothing - I saw that much for myself - and Elbereth had not expected him to survive for more than a few moments longer. Yet when I saw him, just half an hour after he was wounded, he was nearly healed and casting spells at our enemies once more."
"You have seen spells of healing at the library," Pertelope said, trying to hide her excitement. "When the Oghman priest broke his arm in wrestling you, for example."
"Minor compared to the healing Cadderiy did on Tinta-gel," Danica assured her. "By Elbereth's word, he held the wizard's belly in while the skin mended around his fingers!"
Pertelope nodded again and remained quiet for a long while. There was no need to go over it all again. Danica's recounting had been consistent and, Pertelope knew instinctively, honest. Her hazel eyes stared into emptiness for a time before she focused again on Danica.
The young monk sat quietly and very still, lost in her own contemplations. To Pertelope's eyes, a shadow appeared on Danica's shoulder, a silhouette of a tiny female, trembling and glancing nervously about. Extraordinary heat emanated from the young monk's body, and her breathing, steady to the casual observer, reflected her anxieties to Pertelope's knowing and probing gaze.
Danica was mil of passion, yet full of fear, the headmistress knew. Merely thinking of Cadderly stirred a boiling turmoil within her.
Pertelope shook the insightful visions away, ended the distant song that played in the recesses of her mind, and put a comforting hand on Danica's shoulder. "Thank you for coming to sit with me," she said sincerely. "You have been a great help to me - and to Cadderly, do not doubt." A confused look came over Danica. Pertelope hated that she had to be cryptic with someone so obviously attached to Cadderly, but she knew Danica would not understand the powers at work on the young priest. Those same powers had been with Pertelope for nearly a score of years, and Pertelope wasn't certain that even she understood them.
The bed creaked as Danica stood. "I have to go now," she explained, looking back to the small room's door. "If you wish, I can come back . . ."
"No need," the headmistress answered, offering a warm smile. "Unless you feel you would like to talk," she quickly added. Pertelope intensified her gaze again and bade the song begin, searching for that insightful, supernatural, level of perception. The trembling shadow remained upon Danica's shoulder, but it seemed calmer now, and the young monk's breathing had steadied.
The heat was still there, though, the vital energy of anticipated passion for this young woman, no more a girl.
Even after Danica had departed, the door handle glowed softly from her touch.
Pertelope blew out a long sigh. She slipped one of her arm-length gloves off to scratch at the shark skin it hid and tried to recall her own trials when Deneir had selected her - had cursed her, she often believed.
Pertelope smiled at the dark thought. "No, not a curse," she said aloud, lifting her eyes toward the ceiling as though she were addressing a higher presence. She played the song more strongly in her mind, the universal harmony that she had heard a thousand times in the turning pages of the tome she had given to Cadderly. She fell into the song and followed its notes, gaining communion with her dearest god.
"So you have chosen Cadderly," she whispered.
She received no answer, and had expected none.
"He could not otherwise have accomplished all of those 'miracles' in the elven wood," Pertelope went on, speaking aloud her conclusions to bolster her suspicions. "I pity him, and yet I envy him, for he is young and strong, stronger than I ever was. How powerful will he become?"
Again, except for the continuing melody in Perteiope's head, there came no response.
That was why the headmistress often felt as though she had been cursed; there never were any answers granted. She had always had to discover them for herself.
And so, too, she knew, would Cadderly.
A Beggar Man, A Thief
adderly purposely avoided looking at the guardsman as he moved through the short tun-nel and under the raised portcullis leading out of the lakeside town. All along his route to the western gate the young scholar had observed people of every station and every demeanor, and the variety