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  "Is anyone else sensing what I am?" Rion suddenly asked in a very soft voice. "Please answer quickly."

  For an instant Lorand had no idea what Rion was talking about, but then an awareness pushed its way through the chaos in Lorand's mind. There was a Blending entity not far away, but it was too tenuous and … stealthy, for want of a better word, for it to be one of their associates. It looked like they were being scouted in the same way they had scouted the enemy earlier.

  "We've got to take care of this," Jovvi said, visibly pulling herself together. "Are all of you ready?"

  "What about Tamrissa?" Vallant protested, then he shook his head. "No, never mind. I can see that she already knows about our visitor, and she's ready and waitin'. That means there's nothin' keepin' us from doin' it."

  Nothing but me, Lorand thought very briefly before the rest of his thoughts were submerged into the entity.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Rion entity looked around as soon as he was formed. There was an intruder in their midst, something his flesh forms had become aware of in a very satisfying manner. The Rion entity was pleased, knowing that his maturation was proceeding in a proper manner.

  But maturation was hardly the most important consideration at the moment. More to the point was the intruder, which had thinned itself to so diffuse a point that the Rion entity's associate entities had no idea that it was present.

  I think we ought to attack it, to teach it not to do this again, the Rion entity's Tamrissa part said at once. Making it cautious can only help us.

  The probabilities council against such an action, the Naran part put in as a response. The results of such a doing narrow our options far too much.

  Yes, you're quite right, the Rion entity agreed as he, too, studied the probabilities. It seems that an attempt to communicate would be the least restrictive action.

  I agree, the Jovvi part of the Rion entity put forth. We may even get some useful information.

  Before the rain begins, the Vallant part added. Once the rain does begin, all flesh forms involved will be less flexible.

  Less willing to listen to reason, the Rion entity clarified for his own sake. Very well, let us attempt communication.

  It was very difficult to perceive the intruder entity in its present state, but knowing of its presence let the Rion entity float forward almost a foot of distance before he directed a thought at the intruder.

  -For what reason have you and your flesh forms invaded this place?- the Rion entity sent. -We are fully aware of your presence, therefore you need not remain silent.-

  -You surprise this entity,- the intruder responded, a superior amusement to be felt behind the communication. -Those others have no idea that this entity is present, which should be the case for you as well. You will be useful to this entity once you have been properly subdued.-

  -We will never be yours to command,- the Tamrissa part of the Rion entity responded at once, disdain clear in the thought. -Even an incomplete entity such as yourself should find that truth clear.-

  -You are aware of the fact that this entity is incomplete?- the intruder put just as quickly. -As that is so, you must inform this entity at once as to what it lacks and how it may obtain that thing.-

  -You have not responded to our own query,- the Jovvi part of the Rion entity put before the Tamrissa part might comment again. -With that in view, it would be illogical to expect a response from us.-

  -How young and foolish you are,- the intruder entity responded, distant and superior amusement clear. -This entity has come to make this new land completely ours, just as the old lands are. Your entity is so new that you still perceive yourselves as individuals rather than as a whole, a fact which should clearly indicate how much greater this entity is than you. You will therefore respond at once to the question which has been put to you.-

  -As you have requested a response, you shall have it,- the Rion entity put, feeling the agreement of his diverse parts. -Take your flesh forms and depart this land never to return, or we will destroy you.-

  -You refuse to do as this entity commands?- the intruder entity demanded after a long moment of silence, most likely a silence the intruder had expected to be filled with the information it sought. -How can you not know that refusal is not permitted? Possibly you have not yet learned how truly helpless you are before this entity. Should that be so, then a lesson is clearly in order.-

  By then most of the Rion entity's associate Blendings had put forth entities to join his, and yet the intruder entity seemed to dismiss their presence entirely. A … roiling began inside the intruder entity, and then the Rion entity was struck so hard that he nearly lost all sense of center and balance. The Rion entity's defenses were just able to withstand the assault, but it wasn't possible to respond in any way.

  At the first sign of the intruder's attack, the Rion entity's associate Blending entities attacked in return. The Rion entity was able to perceive those counterattacks, yet was, unfortunately, also able to perceive the fact that the intruder entity remained mostly unharmed. That the intruder entity suddenly flashed away beyond all perception seemed to be more a matter of choice than of necessity, but once it was clear that the intruder was gone it was suddenly Rion alone again.

  "That hurt," Tamrissa's voice came while Rion tried to stop the dizziness twisting him about. "I've never felt anything like that before even though it seemed familiar in some way, and it was all I could do to protect us. What in the name of chaos did that thing use?"

  "Whatever it was, respondin' just wasn't possible," Vallant put in, his voice sounding as strained as Tamrissa's had. "If the others hadn't attacked and distracted the intruder, we might not be sittin' here complainin' right now."

  "I think I could have taken one more blow like that first one," Tamrissa said, and Rion opened his eyes to see that she sat among them. Something seemed odd about that fact, but Rion's head hurt too much for him to want to think about anything that wasn't absolutely essential.

  "One more blow, but not two," Jovvi put in, stating rather than asking. "I had that same impression, which gives us another bit of information to add to the others. The fact that the intruder is stronger than we are isn't something I really wanted to have confirmed, and now that we know for certain…"

  "Now that we know for certain, we'll have to do something about it," Lorand finished for Jovvi firmly, apparently surprising the others as much as he did Rion. "Yes, I know why you're all looking at me like that, but you don't have to. When the intruder hit us like that, I think the blow jarred loose some of the rock that has been lining the inside of my head."

  "What do you mean, Lorand?" Jovvi asked at once, her gaze fixed anxiously on his face. "Are you saying that you were able to merge with the rest of us inside the entity?"

  "No, I still couldn't hear anyone's thoughts but my own," Lorand replied, bleakness flitting briefly through his own gaze. "But that was before the attack, so it's possible that I might … merge the next time. You see, it finally came through to me that right and wrong don't matter when it comes to all of you. For an instant I thought you might all be killed, and I simply couldn't live with that idea. I couldn't bear the thought of any of you dying or even of you being hurt, and my own survival or ending was an insignificant and unimportant point that wasn't any part of the situation. You're all more important to me than my own individual existence, something I thought I understood before this. Now I know what you all mean to me, and I'll never let anything make me forget again."

  "Talk is cheap," Tamrissa put in, but not as brashly as she usually spoke. Rion's sister of Fire magic still looked more than a bit pale, suggesting that the pain she'd mentioned still hadn't left her.

  "Talk is cheap, so let's just wait until the next time we Blend before we congratulate Lorand on having grown up," Tamrissa said, the words a bit breathy. "Until then, I think I need to lie down for a while."

  "What you need, you beautiful but obstinate mule, is to borrow some strength from your link groups," Lor
and replied rather dryly. "Your strength was drained too badly by that attack, and the pain you feel won't go away until you have most of the strength back again. And when you find out that I meant what I said, I'll expect an apology from you."

  "Just keep on expecting it," Tamrissa muttered, but then she closed her eyes for a long moment. During that time she actually began to sit straighter, and when she opened her eyes again the shadow of pain was gone from them.

  "All right, now I'm more in the mood for a discussion than a nap," she said as she looked around, pointedly not thanking Lorand for his suggestion. "The first thing I'd like to discuss is how the intruder could not know why it was incomplete. Didn't it pay any attention at all to the composition of our entity?"

  "That question just raises another," Jovvi said with a small shake of her head. "It's possible for us to know when a Blending entity doesn't have Sight magic as part of it, but is it possible in any way to separate out one of the six talents for a Blending that doesn't possess all six? That, I think, is the first question we need answered."

  "Askin' our associate Blendin's won't do any good, so let's ask the new Gracelian Blendin's," Vallant suggested. "We've never gone into what the rest of us look like to them."

  "That's a good idea," Rion said, feeling considerably better after he had also borrowed some strength from his link groups. "The Gracelians don't seem to be Blended any longer, so let's call them over and ask."

  No one spoke up with an objection, so Rion stood and walked over to where the new Gracelian Blending members had arranged themselves in groups. Most of them remained sitting, but some few members had risen to their feet to pace back and forth. They gave Rion their immediate attention, and then all rose to follow him back to where his Blendingmates still sat.

  "You people are really incredible," Rangis Hoad, the Spirit magic member of one of the Blendings, said as he and the others arranged themselves on the ground around Rion's Blending after Rion resumed his own place. "When the enemy struck at you we could almost feel it, and if we'd been struck directly the blow would have flattened us for good. How did you develop the ability to withstand the use of so much power?"

  Rion began to explain that greater strength developed the longer a Blending practiced together, but an exclamation from Tamrissa cut him short.

  "Yes, that's what it was!" Tamrissa said excitedly after having straightened where she sat. "I knew there was something familiar about what was done, and that has to be it. They didn't strike at us with talent, they used power."

  "You didn't know?" Rangis Hoad asked, looking around at all of them. "We all noticed that you don't use power the way we do, but we thought it was choice on your part. You can't mean you don't know how to use power instead of talent?"

  "Using power wasn't part of our initial training," Tamrissa explained briefly, looking distracted. "But I accidentally stumbled across the way to do it, using one of the patterns we taught you. Do you find it easier using power without using the pattern?"

  "No, not in any way at all," Hoad answered while exchanging glances with some of his countrymen. "Using the pattern gives us the kind of control we've never really had before, but it takes practice to work with the pattern instead of without it. Even so, we still can't match the kind of strength you show."

  "The longer you touch the power continuously and work as a Blending, the stronger you'll get," Tamrissa said in a reassuring way. "Right now I'm just wondering how much practice we'll need before we'll be able to use all that extra strength as easily as we now use talent."

  "I'm afraid I don't quite see the benefit in using power in the place of talent," Rion said, suddenly deciding to voice his doubts. "Power may provide raw strength, but talent gives us finer control of our individual strengths."

  "But that seems to be the whole point, Rion," Tamrissa objected before anyone else could speak. "When I used power, it manifested as my own talent but greatly magnified. We know we can't take in any more power, but there doesn't seem to be anything keeping us from using power instead of taking it in. Do you see anything to disagree with that idea, Naran?"

  "Truthfully, I'm having trouble understanding the difference," Naran replied, looking almost as confused as Rion felt. "I have the definite impression that this is something we really do need, but that doesn't help me to understand what it is."

  "Okay, let's see if we can start from the beginning, so to speak," Tamrissa said, her brow creased with concentration. "In order to make our talents work, we have to first touch the power. Once we do that we can use our talents to the extent of individual ability, and there are patterns that let us use our ability in a definite, concentrated way instead of just throwing it out at large. Does everyone follow that?"

  "The patterns help direct whatever ability we have," Naran said with a nod. "I understand that and have even learned to use the patterns, but what I don't see is how we can use power instead of our ability. Isn't that like eating food to give us strength to throw rocks, and then trying to throw the food instead?"

  "No, because we aren't really throwing the food," Tamrissa said after joining everyone else in chuckling. "The pattern I'm talking about is like a stove, and it turns raw food into cooked, which is much easier for our bodies to handle. Here, look at the pattern I used, and see if it makes the idea easier to grasp."

  Suddenly a flaming pattern hung in the air in the middle of their circle, one that could be applied to Air magic with just a few minor changes. Rion vaguely remembered having seen the pattern before, but now it made a lot more sense to him. If he adapted it to Air magic and used it instead of the patterns he now used…

  "Oh, I see now," Naran exclaimed after a moment, apparently reacting just as Rion had. "The pattern has to be changed for me to use it, but once I make the changes it ought to increase my ability. The other patterns let me eat the food, so to speak, but this one lets me absorb the food directly."

  "I think I've gained some weight from all this talk about food and eating," Jovvi commented with a smile as a chuckle ran through everyone again. "I remember seeing this pattern once before, and also remember seeing how it can be changed to work for me. What isn't clear right now is why we never tried to do anything with this pattern before now. Why did we just see it and then forget about it?"

  "Possibly we forgot about it because we didn't need it," Vallant suggested, but the hint of a frown showed on his face. "Usin' a mountain to crush an ant doesn't make much sense even if you can move the mountain if you have to. Simply steppin' on the ant is so much easier."

  "And the stepping makes more sense if you're in the middle of chaos," Lorand put in, also looking faintly disturbed. "That explanation sounds so reasonable, I'm wondering why I feel as if I shouldn't believe it."

  "Possibly because you have the ability to tell truth from lie, just as I do," Jovvi said, gazing at Lorand in a speculative way. "There isn't any real, outright lie here, but there's some kind of evasion involved that I don't understand at all. We're not involved in the evasion, but that doesn't seem to matter. It's still here."

  "You seem to be saying that there is someone standing in the shadows, causing all these things that are happening to us," Tamrissa stated, and Rion saw the hint of flames in her eyes that he hadn't seen in quite some time. When Tamrissa grew really angry, her Fire talent seemed to grow almost beyond her control… "If someone is using us as handy puppets, I don't think they're going to like my reaction when I find out who they are."

  "If there is someone like that out there, I'd venture to guess that they aren't controlling everything," Rion put slowly as he thought the matter through. "To believe that someone would encourage - or allow - the deaths of hundreds or thousands of innocent people in this invasion merely to put us in the middle of it is quite insane. We may have been rather important to the people of our own country, but we simply aren't important enough for something like that."

  "I have to agree with Rion," Vallant said as Lorand added a sigh and a nod. "We've been feelin' as if the w
orld revolves around us, but it just isn't so. Every now and again we might be important to those around us, but no one in the world is important enough for somethin' like what's happenin' now to be done on purpose."

  "But it doesn't necessarily have to be something that's being done on purpose," Jovvi said, looking more thoughtful as doubt began to quiet the flames in Tamrissa's eyes. "Do you remember the way Ristor Ardanis, the leader of those with Sight magic, kept testing us before he came forward to tell us about his people? Somehow this feels very much like another test situation."

  "Who would be mad enough to test us when there are so many lives at stake?" Lorand asked as he showed the same confusion Rion had begun to feel. "And to add to the question list I just started, what would be their purpose in testing us? Not to mention asking how they can stand apart and do the testing in the midst of all this insanity."

  "Is it possible that we're imagining things?" Tamrissa asked, her doubt clearly having grown. "I know I tend to be arrogant most of the time, and arrogance does encourage a feeling of self-importance. Is it possible that my arrogance has rubbed off on the rest of you, and that's why we all feel that someone is doing something?"

  Rion joined most of the others in conceding that Tamrissa's suggestion might be true, but Naran simply shook her head.

  "No, I don't think that that's possible," she said, her gaze on the distance rather than on anything around her. "This new pattern lets me cut through quite a lot of the fog that's been keeping me almost blind, and I'm getting a hint of a larger picture that's been kept from me before this. There's more involved here than just a simple invasion, and there's the suggestion of other forces on the fringes of what I can See. We seem to be walking a tightrope among the probabilities, and if we fall off we won't have another chance to survive."

  "Somehow I get the feelin' that more than our own survival is at stake," Vallant said, a frown creasing his face again. "I don't know why I'm feelin' that, but there's no doubt surroundin' the notion."