:Absolutely. First, drop all those shields I showed you how to set in place.:

He had not done that in all the time he had been here. Dallen had warned him that he shouldn’t—had cautioned him that because he had been Chosen, his Gifts would be opening up at a tremendous rate.

Now he realized just how much that Gift had burgeoned. The moment he dropped those shields, it felt as if he was in the center of the Midwinter Market, only a thousand times more crowded, and everyone was talking at once. Worse, it was mostly fear, as people all over the complex, all over Haven, reacted to the storm. It felt like being in the storm all over again; all those minds, all those internal voices, none of them putting a watch on what they were saying—it all overwhelmed him, threatened to wash him away in the flood, and he felt as if he was drowning in it—

Then he sensed Dallen, strained to hear him, and got the sense of what Dallen wanted him to do. He began raising the shields again, but one at a time this time. First, all those people farthest away, down in Haven. He didn’t need to listen to them. He couldn’t help them now if he wanted to, anyway. And they, almost certainly, would not want him to know what they were thinking.

That cut the clamor down to a fraction of what it had been, and he let out a sigh of relief. The next shield was easier: to screen out those who were closest to him, in the same building. They wouldn’t want him to hear their thoughts either.

And that improved things a very great deal indeed.

Now he was able to actually pick out individual “voices.” One by one, he sorted through them, not really listening to what they were babbling, because most people just had a running internal babble going on, but looking for the nuances that told him they were safe and indoors. Their fears, while real, were not immediate. And their minds were . . . well, they weren’t numb, the way his mind had been when the cold was getting to him.

He found five that were not.

“Gardener—” he heard himself mutter. “Just at Palace kitchen door—ah—in. Guard—Guard needs help. In th’ rose garden, lost the rope. ’Bout—’bout a horse-length from it. Fell an’ slipped an’ lost it. Got sense to stay where he is—”