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Magnus turned anxiously to Alea. "If there is the slightest need…"
"I will call you on the instant," Alea promised. "Remember, I have learned medicine in three different cultures. Trust me, Gar."
"I will." He pressed her hand.
She almost pulled away, for he seemed to speak of trust beyond caring for an invalid—but she held firm and even managed to smile into his eyes. Then his father took him by the arm and led him away. She watched them go, marveling that this dotard could have fathered a son whose head rose a foot and a half higher than his. Of course, he had probably been a few inches taller once himself, and Gar did tower over his brothers.
"Gar?" the old woman asked.
Alea turned back to her, feeling guilty that she had let herself be distracted. "He calls himself that when we land on a planet—Gar Pike. He began it to confuse spies from his former employers."
"SCENT, yes." Gwen's smile seemed to enfold her again. "I am glad he left his father's organization, though I could wish he had stayed at home. Still, he would not have met you, then, so it is well that he left."
"I am not so special as that," Alea protested, but she sat on the chair Gar had vacated anyway.
'To him you are," Gwen told her. 'Tell me, how is his heart?"
Alea stared, frozen by the question—and its implications. She was only a friend! What should she know of Magnus's heart?
She could not say that to a dying mother, though. Instead, Alea chose her words carefully. "I can only guess, milady, for he is scarcely one to wear his heart on his sleeve."
"He was till he left here," Gwen said sadly, "but even in those few hours before he left for the stars, he had become … very private."
Alea leaned forward, frowning. "What had happened to him, milady?"
"You must hear that from him," his mother sighed, "for I shall not violate his confidence."
"I think I know some of it," Alea said, "and that it has to do with that witch downstairs."
Gwen smiled with gentle amusement; it seemed to require great effort. "All women in this house are witches, Alea, at least in local custom."
"Is that what your people call espers?" Alea nodded. "Gar has told me something of that—scarcely surprising, for people who know not how folk fly on broomsticks or read others' minds. Still, it is Allouette of whom I speak."
"Do not blame her for her beauty," Gwen said, still with the gentle, labored smile. "She is not now whom she was then—a murderess named Finister. I learned much of the mind in a few days, then labored mightily to show her how her life had been twisted by lies."
"I shall try to forgive her," Alea said, tight-lipped, "as Gar has—though I think not in his heart."
"He ca
Alea caught the meaning the old woman did not say— that she would not be here to do it. Still, the charge alarmed her. "I ca
"No, but you can finish your own." Gwen's hand stirred on the coverlet, reaching for Alea's. Almost against her will, Alea took it. There was some quality about this dying woman, some gentle authority that compelled obedience— almost like her own mother…
Alea purged the thought and said, "I can finish my own work, lady, but not yours."
" Tis work that only you can do," Gwen contradicted, then added, "I ask only that you finish what you have begun."
Alea frowned. "What have I begun?"
'To do for him what he has done for you," Gwen said simply.
Alea fought down unreasoning alarm to answer. "He has given me much of healing, aye, but he has done it by treating me as an equal, by teaching me what he knows."
"Only that?" Gwen asked, her voice a bare whisper.
Alea knew what the old woman was asking but refused to say it. "He has been a friend, a stalwart friend, and has given me some feeling of worth again, by …" She bit the words off.
"By treating you as though you are precious to him?" Gwen's head stirred in a faint nod. "Have you given him to know the same?"
"Surely he must…"
But the old woman's head stirred again, from side to side. "Men have to be told, damsel, or they will deny what they see and hear."
Well, Alea had to admit the truth of that. "A friend," she argued, "a precious friend, and nothing more."
"Go where your heart tells you," the old woman whispered, "or you shall never know the fullness of happiness."
"My heart tells me nothing," Alea snapped.
"Only because you will not hearken to it." The old eyes closed; Gwen sighed faintly. "You must learn to listen."
Alea felt anger and defiance at the order, but could not bear to speak it to a dying woman. Gwen knew her thoughts, though; a faint smile touched her lips, and her eyelids flickered in a knowing look, then closed again.
"Who tells me I must?" Alea challenged.
"Destiny," Gwen breathed, then relaxed so completely as to say without words, Forgive me, but I am very tired and must rest now.
How had Alea known that?
Perhaps Magnus's lessons in telepathy had worked better than she knew—or perhaps this old esper's mere presence increased the strength of Alea's talents. Either way, she knew the time for silence when she saw it—but she wasn't about to leave this new-found friend, either. She sat by the bed, the old woman's hand in her own, clinging to her for strength and warmth in the few hours left before Gwen should be taken from her.
AS MAGNUS CLOSED the door, he whispered to his father, "Why is she not in the most modern hospital on Terra?"
"Because her poor body won't take the acceleration of liftoff," Rod said sadly. "That's the opinion of the two best physicians in Gramarye."
Magnus frowned, puzzled for a moment, then asked with a touch of mockery, "You mean Cordelia and Gregory?"
"Yes, but Brother Aesculapius came from the monastery and confirmed the diagnosis," Rod said. "So did the Mother Superior of the Order of Cassettes."
"I thought Sister Paterna Testa refused that title."
"She did, but the convent's official now, so she has to be, too." Rod shook his head. "Under the circumstances, I'll trust her diagnosis more than his."
"What? A woman who specializes in psychiatric disorders?" Magnus's frown turned dangerous. "You don't mean…" Then he caught the implications of his own words and lifted his head, eyes widening in horror. "It's her nervous system!"
"That's part of it," Rod agreed, "but it's really her whole body. She's just wearing out, son."
"How can that be!"
"Because she's a quarter elven," Rod answered, and waited.
Magnus's mind spun furiously through the chain of facts, trying to catch up with what his father had spent months absorbing. Yes, he knew his grandfather (who would never admit to the relationship but had been the darling of his childhood anyway) was half-elven, so his daughter was a quarter of the Old Blood—which in Gramarye, meant one-fourth witch moss, the strange local substance that could be molded by the thoughts of a projective telepath. Some unwitting telekinetic long ago had told tales of the Wee Folk, and blobs of fungus in the nearby forest had pulled together, shaped themselves into a form that could stand and walk, then turned more and more into an elf, one who could beget its own kind, one who had …
"Genes!" Magnus stared at his father. "The elves can reproduce, so their fashioning must have worked on so deep a level that the telesensitive fungus even formed chains of DNA!"
"Yes," Rod said softly, "and when that re-creation interacted with real human genes, it only modified them so that they became extremely long-lived…"
"But the elves live forever! Then should not mother…" Magnus's voice trailed off as a terrible suspicion occurred to him.