Hawk (Vlad) by Steven Brust Read Free Book Online

hard enough to make myself go through it once; I have no interest in living it again. I did the things you do when your life involves sitting around and waiting. That my prison term was self-imposed helped a little; I always knew I could walk out if I wanted to.
    The next day she came back with my clothing. I felt less helpless wearing clothes, although I know how stupid that is. While I dressed, I said, “Why can I still speak with my familiar, when I can’t send or receive psychic messages, or perform witchcraft?”
    “You think I’m an expert on Phoenix Stone?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Well, I’m not.”
    “So it was just a wild guess when you identified it so quickly.”
    She glowered for a moment. Then she said, “You are bonded with your familiar.”
    “Yes.”
    Her face twitched, and I realized she was trying to find words to describe something that words weren’t good for. “If you removed the amulet, I could show you,” she said.
    “I think I’ll pass.”
    She nodded. She frowned, then said, “When you communicate with your familiar, it is more like speaking with your own arm than it is like psychic communication.”
    “I don’t use words when I speak with my arm.”
    “I’m surprised you can use words at all.”
    Okay, I asked for that.
    She said, “Psychic messages for the elfs can come through their device—the Orb—to make it easier for them. Or directly, mind-to-mind the way we do. Either way, it is a question of attuning your mind to resonate with the mind of the other.”
    I was right, she knew something about this stuff. It would be amusing—on several levels—to hear a conversation between her and Daymar. Alas, I was denied that pleasure.
    “I think I’m with you,” I said.
    “The Phoenix Stone interferes with and changes how your mind emits the vibrations on the psychic levels, so none can hear you, and, at the same time, you cannot reach out.”
    “And when I communicate with Loiosh?”
    “He does not receive the vibrations of psychic energy. He is part of what emits them.”
    I spent some time trying to make sense of that. Then I said, “All right, so knowing someone well enough to reach him psychically means knowing how his mind works well enough to permit your mind to be in sync with it, whereas you’re bound to your familiar in such a way that he is almost thinking your thoughts with you.”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s why he can help with spells.”
    “Yes. For a witch, the training is the opposite.”
    “I don’t—”
    “Hush. When communicating with another, you must learn to alter your brain’s emissions enough to adjust to another. When communicating with your familiar, you must learn to separate your thought from his enough to hear and send words.”
    “I understand,” I said. “Well, I don’t, but I understand more than I did. Thank you.”
    She sniffed, nodded, and went back upstairs.
    She came back a few more times and we had a few more conversations. Some of them were interesting, but that is the only one that had any effect on the matters we’re discussing today, so I’m afraid you must go the rest of your life without learning what they are. If that bothers you, feel free to write a letter. Fill it with threats and obscenity and send it to Sethra Lavode, Dzur Mountain. Let me know how that works out for you.
    I sat, rested, recovered. I let things play out in my mind, things like how they’d found me, and what I might have to do to keep them from finding me again. I started to go through the list of enemies I’d made, but it was too long and just made me feel hopeless. And a stupid part of me—the part that had never grown older than six, I suppose—cried out that it wasn’t fair.
    Fairness matters to me. I’ve heard Eastern rebels speak of equality; I’ve heard Iorich advocates speak of justice. I’m not sure if I understand either of those concepts; they seem, I don’t know, too far from my experience to grasp, or else I just don’t have