Free The Alton Gift by Marion Z. Bradley Page A

only a deep shaking in the marrow of his bones. With Domenic's help, he eased the girl back into the chair.
    A tap on the door announced the arrival of more food. Alanna stirred at the entrance of the servants, and she devoured three fruit-laced spiral buns as if she hadn't eaten in a tenday.
    "Zandru's Seven Frozen Hells, Alanna, what was that?" Domenic asked, his expression one of astonishment.
    "You saw it, too?" Alanna whimpered.
    "I think we both did, you were sending telepathic images so strongly," Domenic said.
    Alanna looked as if she were about to burst into tears. "What is wrong with me? Am I going mad?"
    "Hardly that," Danilo said, trying to interject a note of rational calm
    into the conversation, "although it can seem so if you don't understand what's happening to you. How long you have had these visions?"
    Alanna sniffed and rubbed her nose with one delicate hand. "Visions? They seem more like streams in a river. Each one takes me to a slightly different time or place. They started around the time of Grandmother Javanne's funeral."
    She turned tear-wet eyes toward Domenic. "What is happening to me?"
    The boy took her into his arms in a way no man but her promised husband should do. "It's all right, my darling."
    "No," Alanna wailed, stomping one foot. "It's not all right! It's horrible and I want it to stop!"
    "It's most certainly laran" Danilo said, although he had never heard of such a Gift. The Aldarans were said to possess precognition, but as far as he knew, Alanna had no Aldaran blood. Moreover, the girl was well past the age at which psychic talents usually manifested themselves.
    "Auntie Liriel tested me when I turned twelve and said I had plenty of laran potential," Alanna said, frowning. "For a time, I could move small objects and start fires. Then Auntie Marguerida made me go to Arilinn. I hated it there, hated it ! Nothing but rules and regulations and voices echoing in my head! After Dom Regis died, I refused to go back. If they'd made me, I would have run away rather than spend my life shut up in that stuffy old Tower, with everyone nagging me to control myself."
    "I spent almost three years in a Tower, and it's not so bad," Domenic said.
    Alanna shook her head, sending ripples through her tangled coppery curls. "I don't want to talk about it! All I want is to make this thing in my head stop!"
    Leaping to her feet, Alanna snatched up the mug, still half-full of jaco , and drew back her arm to hurl it at the opposite wall.
    Danilo caught her arm, deftly removed the mug from her grasp, and set it down again. "I think your energies would be far better served, damisela , by learning to master your visions. For one thing, it would be far easier on the crockery."
    "If you're going to send me back to Arilinn, you can forget it!" Alanna snapped.
    "That's precisely what I do advise," Danilo said firmly. "An untrained telepath is a danger to herself and everyone around her."
    "I won't go!" Alanna shrieked. "I won't, won't, won't!" Her voice grew in loudness with each repetition. Her face turned red and tears wet her cheeks. Her delicate hands curled into fists.
    Gently, Domenic took her in his arms and, surprisingly, she calmed almost immediately. He stroked her hair, murmuring, "It's all right, no one is going to force you."
    "What are we going to do?" she asked, clinging to him.
    "We'll have to find someone else to teach you," Domenic said.
    " You could do it." Sniffing, she raised tear-bright eyes to his in an adoring expression.
    "No, he cannot." Danilo said. A girl this willful, with laran this strong, needed a teacher who could not be intimidated or manipulated. He wished Lady Linnea were still in Thendara so that he might ask her advice. Perhaps in a less formal setting than a Tower, she might give Alanna the guidance the girl so desperately needed.
    Alanna lifted her chin and smoothed her rumpled skirts. "Then I shall simply treat this as any other annoyance beneath the notice of a Comynara. It's like