“She’s my friend. We share a room, and I love her, but she’s different.” Gabrielle looked at the fire as if seeing something within the flames. “It’s easy to forget that each of us is different.”
Talon didn’t quite know where Gabrielle was taking the conversation, so he was content to remain silent.
After a long pause, Gabrielle said, “I have visions. Sometimes they are flashes, images that are with me for only a brief instant. At other times they are long, detailed things, as if I were in a room watching others, hearing them speak.
“I was abandoned as a child by my family. They were fearful of me because I had foretold the death of a nearby farmer, and the villagers named me a witch-child.” Her eyes grew dark. “I was four years old.’’
When Talon reached out to touch her, she pulled back and turned toward him with a pained smile. “I don’t like to be touched.’’
“Sorry,” he said, withdrawing his hand. “I only—‘’
“I know you meant well. Despite your own pain you have a generous spirit and an open heart. That’s why I see only pain for you.’’
“What do you mean?’’
“Alysandra.” Gabrielle rose. “I love her like a sister, but she’s dangerous, Talon. She will not come tonight. But you will find her, soon. And you will fall in love with her, and she will break your heart.’’
Before he could ask any more questions, she turned and walked off into the dark, leaving Talon staring after her bemusedly. He weighed her words and found himself feeling a mixture of confusion and anger. Hadn’t he had enough pain already in his life? He had lost everything dear to him, nearly been killed, been taken to strange places, and asked to learn things that were still alien and disturbing to him at times.
And now he was being told that he had no choice in how his heart was to be engaged? He stood up and turned his back on the revelers and slowly started to head back toward his quarters. His mind spun this way and that, and before he knew it he was in his quarters, lying upon his bed, staring at the ceiling. It seemed to him then that two faces hovered above him, changing places: Alysandra, whose brilliant smile seemed to make a lie of Gabrielle’s words—for how could someone so gentle and beautiful be dangerous? But then he’d recall the pain he saw in Gabrielle’s eyes and knew that she was not giving him false counsel. She had perceived danger, and Talon knew he must heed that warning.
He was dozing when Rondar and Demetrius returned from the gathering, both of them a little drunk. They were chattering. Or rather, thought Talon, Demetrius was chattering for both of them.
“You left,” said Rondar.
“Yes,” said Talon. “As you recall, I have a long day in the kitchen tomorrow, so do us all a favor and stop talking.’’
Demetrius looked at Talon, then at Rondar, and started to laugh. “That’s our Rondar, talk, talk, talk.’’
Rondar pulled off his boots, grunted, and fell upon the bed.
Talon turned his face to the wall and closed his eyes, but sleep was a long time in coming.
Weeks passed, and the events of the night in which Gabrielle shared her vision with him faded. Talon found much of the work that was given to him routine and predictable, but there were always enough new lessons to maintain his interest. As Magnus had predicted, Rondar turned Talon into a fine horseman, and over the next few months the Orosini emerged as the most able swordsman on the island. It felt, however, something of a hollow honor, as most of the students on Sorcerer’s Isle spent little or no time studying weapons and their uses.
The magic classes were strange. He barely understood half the things under discussion, and seemed to have no natural aptitude for the subject at all. Once or twice he would get an odd feeling just before a spell was executed, and when he told Magnus and Nakor about this, they spent over an hour asking him to describe that feeling in great detail.
The most amusing situation to arise during those weeks was Rondar’s infatuation with a newly arrived girl named Selena, a hot-tempered, slender Keshian girl who despised Ashunta horsemen on general principle, for she had seen them on the edge of her town many times as a child. Her outrage at their treatment of women seemed focused upon Rondar as if he were the sole architect of his culture’s values and beliefs. At first, Rondar had been silent in the face of her anger, ignoring the barbs and insults. Then he had returned the anger, speaking in rare, complete sentences, much to Talon’s and Demetrius’s amusement. Then against any reasonable expectation, he became enamored of her.