Free His Majesty's Elephant by Judith Tarr Page B

had to, that was all.
    She looked at Kerrec. He stared back, mute for once. “You can’t touch the Talisman. He was right in that much—it will burn. But maybe I can. It was made for my father, wasn’t it? And I’m his seed. If anyone gets it back, it has to be me.”
    â€œAnd I called you a coward,” said Kerrec, as if to himself.
    â€œOh, I am,” Rowan said. “I’m dead stark terrified of what that man will do if he keeps the Talisman long enough to use it.”
    â€œBut we couldn’t get it away from him when he was caught off guard. How can we get it now that he knows we know?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Rowan, “but I’ll think of something.”
    Kerrec did not have a very high opinion of her resourcefulness, from the look on his face. Neither did she. But it was the best that anyone could do. It would have to be enough.

Eight
    Rowan tried to sleep.
    Bertrada, as usual, was snoring. Rowan never minded it much, but tonight, the longer it went on, the more she wanted to scream.
    She had kept herself admirably in hand, she thought, through all of that interminable day. She had even been able to eat dinner not a spearlength from the sorcerer, as outwardly calm as he was, or so she hoped, although she paid for it now: her stomach felt as hard and cold as a stone.
    Rowan could not sleep, but she could not get up, either. Where could she go? The chapel was full of her mother’s memory. The baths were terrible with the remembrance of magic. The gallery still echoed with Kerrec’s presence.
    Her back ached with trying not to move. Carefully she turned onto her side. Her shoulder started to ache. She lay on her stomach. She never had been comfortable sleeping that way. She tried lying on her back again.
    None of it did any good. She got up, pulled on her shift and then her gown.
    Bertrada’s snoring changed tempo. She muttered, flailed, and sprawled across the whole of the bed.
    Even with no moon to vex Rowan’s magic, the dark had a power of its own. But fear or no fear, memories or no memories, she had to get out.
    She was not at all surprised to find Kerrec sitting on the rim of the fountain in the women’s court. There was just enough starlight to see the fall of the fountain, and the shape in shadow that was Kerrec.
    â€œHe’s using the Talisman,” Kerrec said without greeting, as if no time had passed since the morning.
    â€œYou see him?” Rowan asked. Her voice was shaky.
    â€œI don’t need to. I feel it. Don’t you? Or did you just come out here to bay at the moon?”
    â€œThere isn’t any moon,” said Rowan, sharp with mingled anger and fear.
    â€œNo moon,” he agreed, impervious to her temper, “but magic enough.”
    Rowan did not need him to tell her that. Her skin was all aprickle with it. “So? And what do you intend to do about it?”
    â€œNothing,” he said. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do.”
    â€œNothing?” she echoed, incredulous. “Nothing at all? You can say—”
    She broke off and peered hard at him. He was a shape of dark on dark, not even light enough to see the pale smudge of his face. No, she had not imagined it, or misheard. He had sounded quenched, all his sharp edges gone blunt with despair.
    â€œWhat did you try to do?” she demanded. “Did you try to get the Talisman again? He laid a spell on you, didn’t he?”
    Kerrec did not say anything. Maybe he shrugged. Rowan seized his shoulders. They were thin, brittle-boned like a bird’s. “He did. Didn’t he?”
    â€œI didn’t... do anything.” Kerrec had trouble getting it out, maybe because Rowan was shaking him so hard. “I just... watched by his door. And let him see me do it.”
    Rowan’s breath hissed between her teeth. “That was unbelievably stupid.”
    â€œNot any more stupid than you telling him