“Oh, I think not.” Keren smiled. “The gods know you are the world’s worst judge when it comes to evaluating yourself. Dearling, you’ve become all I hoped you’d be. But—you didn’t have the easy time we thought you would, did you?”

“I—no, I didn’t.” Talia sighed. “I—Keren, my Gift went rogue on me. At full power.”

“Great good gods!” She examined Talia even more carefully, gray eyes boring into Talia’s. “How the hell did that happen? I thought we’d trained—”

“So did everyone.”

“Wait a moment; let me put this together for myself. You finished Ylsa’s class; now let me remember ...” Keren’s brow creased in thought. “It does seem to me that she mentioned something about wanting to send you to the Healers for some special training, that she didn’t feel altogether happy about handling an Empath when her own expertise was Thought-sensing.”

Keren turned away from Talia and began pacing, a habit the younger woman was long familiar with, for Keren claimed she couldn’t think unless she was moving.

“Now—I’d assumed she’d taken care of that because you spent so much time with the Healers. But she hadn’t, had she? And then she was murdered—”

“As far as Kris and I could figure, the Heralds assumed that the Healers were giving me Empath training, and the Healers assumed the Heralds had already done so because I seemed to be in full control. But I wasn’t; it was all instinct and guess. And when control went—”

“Gods!” Keren stopped pacing and put both of her hands on Talia’s shoulders. “Little one, are you sure you’re all right now?”

Talia remembered only too vividly the hours of practice Kris had put her through; the painful sessions with the two Companions literally attacking her mentally. “I’m sure. Kris is a Gift-teacher, after all. He took me all the way through the basics, and Rolan and Tantris helped.”

“Oh, really? Well, well—that’s an interesting twist!” Keren raised an eloquent eyebrow. “Companions don’t intervene that directly as a rule.”

“I don’t think they saw any other choice. The first month we were all snowed in at that Waystation—then we found out that those damned rumors had made it up to our Sector and we didn’t dare look for outside help. It would have just confirmed the rumors.”

“True—true. If I were on the Circle, I think I would be inclined to keep all this under the ivy bush. Letting the world know that we blundered that badly with you won’t do a smidgin of good, and would probably do a lot of harm. Selected people, yes; and this should certainly go down in the annals so that we don’t repeat the mistake with the next Empath—but—no, I don’t think this should be generally known.”