"Why did you bring my father news of a wounded tery? Why convince him to bring it in?"
"He needed help and I couldn't manage him. I figured you'd like the job."
"Oh, you did, did you?"
She resented this relative stranger's presumption in assuming that he knew what she'd like.
"Yes. You both look like you could use a friend. You'll be good for each other."
Adriel stared into his unreadable face. The insight at the heart of his casual statement was so on-target that she was momentarily speechless. She looked at him closely. His light brown hair hung lankly against the darker brown of his beard. He was dirty and he smelled bad and she had never much liked him. He returned her stare.
"That was nice of you," she said, finally.
"Forget it. You and he are running from the same thing — I thought you might want to help him out a little. And he looked like he needed all the help he could get. Do a good job."
"I don't need you to tell me that," she said sharply, showing her annoyance at his remark. Of course she would take good care of the tortured beast.
He barked a short laugh and strolled to his wagon. With a single, smooth motion, he bent, grasped the two handles, and started off into the woods, trailing the wagon behind him. A few shards of broken pottery rattled in the back; the left wheel squeaked on its axle.
She watched until the thicket swallowed him, then returned to her work with a scowl. Tlad had risen in her estimation today by his show of compassion for the poor beast unconscious before her, but she still did not like him. She couldn't pin it down, but something about that man caused her to mistrust him.
Still, in a way she wished he had stayed longer. At least he was someone to talk to.
She went back into the hut to get some clean rags to bind the tery's deeper wounds, and when she returned, she saw her father approaching across the clearing.
"That thing still alive?" Komak said when he reached her side and stood surveying the bulk of the tery.
Her father was a man huge in height, girth, and spirit. He had clear, pale blue eyes and shaggy red hair and beard that encircled his head like a mane; his skin was the type that never seemed to tan, remaining ever red from the sun despite the fact that he spent all of his time outdoors these days. Adriel shared his coloring in hair, skin, and eyes, but was shorter and had a smaller frame.
"Of course he's still alive. And I'll keep him that way."
Didn't anyone have any confidence in her?
Komak lifted the unconscious creature's upper lip to expose its sharp teeth.
"So this is Tlad's tery. Ugly brute."
"He's not so bad. He's just all cut up and his fur's all matted with dried blood. He'll look a lot better when I've had a chance to clean him up."
"Now that we've got him, what're we going to do with him?"
"I want to keep him, father. And don't you ever call him ‘Tlad's tery' again," she said with mock severity. "He's mine now."
"I don't know about that. Look at the size of him — the muscles in those arms. If he should ever turn on you…"
"He won't," she said, and meant it. "He knows I'm his friend. I could see it in the way he looked at me when I started washing off his wounds."
"Well, we'll see."
"Father," she said after a pause while she tied a knot in the bandage, "are Kitru's men hunting and exterminating the forest teries, too?"
She remembered how all the teries in and around the town had been killed or driven off by the Overlord's decree. That had been awful, but at least the soldiers had not gone hunting through the forests for them. That had changed now, it seemed.
Komak squatted beside her. "Yes, I'm afraid they are. Overlord Mekk's new decree applies not only to us but to the forest teries and even to some of the more bizarre plants — at least that's what Rab told us."
"And where is this Rab fellow everybody talks about?"
"I don't know." He let his body slip back and rested on his buttocks. "But I wish he'd get here."
With a slow, almost painful motion, he lay back on the ground and closed his eyes. Adriel stopped her ministrations to the tery and watched her father with concern.
"Tired?"
"Exhausted. I'm not cut out for this. I didn't want to be leader of the group. When I agreed to the position, I thought it was only for a few days…only until Rab showed up. Now it's been months."
"Where could he be? Do you think he got caught?"
"Possibly. When he warned us, he said we didn't have much time to get away from the keep. Maybe he tarried too long trying to make sure everybody got out."
Adriel remembered the day. Vividly. Her father had hurried home from Kitru's court where he had long served as an advisor on matters of design and construction around the keep. He was in a state of great agitation. An unknown Talent who called himself Rab had whispered to his mind about secrets in old books and about a messenger on his way from Overlord Mekk with a new proclamation — an addition to the old Tery Extermination Decree. It ordered all the local lords to hunt down and slay all teries everywhere. But that was not what had so upset Rab and all the Talents — it was the second part, which included possessors of the Talent as offenders against God. Possessors of the Talent would thereafter be declared teries and summarily condemned to death without trial.
Word spread rapidly among those with the Talent — Rab, whoever he was, had contacted many of them — and the majority believed him. The Overlord had long been under the spell of a fanatical religious sect which worshipped the True Shape. All deviations from True Shape were considered unholy. Apparently the sect's dogma now included possessors of the Talent as deviants.
There had been doubters among the Talents, of course. Those who claimed that it went against all existing laws to order their deaths merely because they possessed the Talent. These few stayed behind while Komak, Adriel, and the others packed whatever they could and fled into the woods. If they were wrong in trusting Rab, Komak had told them, all it would cost them was a few days of inconvenience and perhaps a little embarrassment. If they were right…
The wisdom of their choice became horrifyingly evident on their third night in the woods when the anguish, pain, and terror of the other Talents left behind in the keep leaped through the darkness to wake them from their sleep. The agonized emotions winked out bit by bit as those trusting Talents were systematically captured in their homes and dragged to the burning pit outside town. Only Adriel had slept on, oblivious to it all.
"I still say it's not fair to call us teries," she said. "We're not! We're people!"
He smiled at her sadly. "My poor little Adriel. I indulged you and spoiled you, and now I've had to tear you away from all the luxuries I worked so hard to give you. I'd give anything to make things right for you again."
Adriel fought the tears. She missed her house, her clothes, her room, her bed, her friends, the shops, the marketplace in the square, people who talked.
Her father sighed and changed the subject. "I don't think Rab is coming."
"Maybe Rab is right here in this camp and we don't know it," she said, hoping to buoy his spirits.
Komak opened his eyes and raised himself up on one elbow. "Not possible. I don't know how to explain it to you but…but once you've communicated with someone via the Talent, you'll always recognize him again. Rab isn't here."
"Maybe he's Tlad, then. We don't know anything about him."
"But Tlad doesn't have the Talent. You said so yourself. And you should know — you're the Finder."
Yes, she was the Finder, all right. Sometimes she wished she weren't.
"Still, there's something about that man I don't like, don't trust."