I sat down. The table was large, made out of some hard dark wood. There were runes along the edge of it, and I had to work hard to resist running my fingers along them. Still they spoke to me, whispering words in languages that only my blood knew, that just escaped my hearing, blending into a murmur that hinted at power and knowledge. My fingers itched and prickled with desire to touch them.
I distracted myself by looking across the room. It was much larger than my study back in the castle. I tried to remember what it had felt like, being locked in that room. It came back easily. I had spent years studying in that small room, locked up with spell books, geography and history tomes. I closed my eyes. I remembered the room, smelled the spicy incense, tasted the tea in my mouth...
I opened my eyes and I was staring into my study.
The door had been blasted open, and everything was turned upside down, broken, burned. I could smell the acrid smell of burnt wood, burnt rock and burnt books.
There was no incense burning here. Just old scorch marks. No one.
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, the vision was gone.
Perhaps this was not what I needed to be thinking about. I needed to see my parents, after all, not my old study that had seemed like a prison cell much of the time.
So I concentrated on our salon: where my parents had sat and read and talked to their friends, where they had sometimes even let me sit on a chair in the corner and study, while they entertained guests and pointed at their pimply son, reading in his corner.
I closed my eyes and breathed in, then let the air out. I could see the image in my mind’s eye. The room was full of people, laughing, eating pastries from large silver trays and drinking coffee out of china cups. I opened my eyes.
I was looking into the room, but it was not full of people.
It was empty.
I almost closed my eyes again, but something made me stop and look. Something was wrong with the room. The furniture looked twisted, melted, burnt. There were scorch marks along the floors, along the walls. A burnt smell reached my nose. Several chairs were toppled over. I leaned in to look more closely at something on the floor. There was a stain there. A dark black stain in the carpet. And I didn’t need to reach forward to touch it, to know what it was, but I did, anyhow, feeling the gateway pull at me as I reached my hand through.
I leaned back and closed my eyes, and opened them again, and found myself back totally in the room where Woltan had left me. He was walking in the door with a tray of tea and biscuits. My hand was wet and I stared at it. A dark brown stain was on the tips of my fingers. I could smell it even before I brought it to my face. The iron stink of it. L
ike rust, but it wasn’t rust. It was drying blood.
Woltan put the tray down, and stared at my hand.
“What is it? What happened?”
I looked up at Woltan. “I don’t know. There was blood, and all the furniture was broken, and there was no one there, at all.”
“Where?”
“In my parent’s living room. There was no one in my study room either.”
“I thought you were going to wait until I got back.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t really do it on purpose. I was just imagining those places with my eyes closed and then I opened my eyes, and there was no one…”
Woltan frowned as he sat down in a chair to the side of the room, and sighed. “You should have waited until I got back with the tea, Anders. Had anything happened to you, Kara would have had my head. I won’t leave you again. Drink your tea, and then try concentrating on people, instead of places. That may give you better luck.”
I wasn’t so sure. I felt drained already, even though the two gateways had only been open for a few short moments. I drank some more tea and took a bite of a biscuit. The food radiated warmth out from my stomach, and my head felt a little clearer.
“In that case, I’ll picture my father. He’ll tell me what’s going on.”
He wouldn’t keep secrets from me now, after all that had happened. Or would he?
I took another bite, another sip, and then closed my eyes. I tried to remember my father, his smell, the smell of his sweat, his hair, when he had hugged me, which was not often. I remembered my father hugging me right before they hired my tutor and pulled me out of school. I held onto that memory, and opened my eyes.
Nothing. I was staring across the room. I took another biscuit, chewed mechanically. Think. I needed to find something more powerful, a stronger, clearer memory.
I tried to remember my mother instead.
It came to me suddenly, like a slap in the face. Well, it was a slap in the face. I had been in a conference with my tutor and my mother. I admitted it now, I had been fresh. Sick of Herr Hansson, who taught me nothing, I had been rude, laughing at something he had said. Herr Hanson told my mother how rudeness could not be tolerated, how the young needed to learn from their elders, how he couldn’t be my tutor if I didn’t show respect. My mother asked me to apologize: seated right next to me, in an armchair, she’d said: “Apologize to Herr Hansson, Anders, and let us put this behind us.”
Now I realized that she must have been as tired of the whole thing as I was. She’d probably realized why I was frustrated, why I was rude. But at the time I didn’t understand her at all. She just seemed one more person putting me in my place. And that place was boring.