* * *
When they transported into the Manor dining room Aaron found that it held crying children and a half naked woman. Miss Hurbage glared, hastily pulled her blouse shut, and fastened it.
"You could warn a person," she scolded while Autumn cried in protest at the interruption of her meal. "Really, Mistress Turner, if you are going to sneak around the place with your Mister you should let me know so I can maintain some dignity."
After opening her shirt to bare her breasts, Kit grabbed Autumn for nursing. As always Autumn reacted greedily. Of all Kit's children, she was the most demanding. "Sorry, Miss Hurbage. It won't happen again. Mister Turner wanted to see his children, and we were not sure if they were awake."
Aaron glanced questioningly at Kit before he lifted Bret and Chet and cradled them in his arms. "They've grown bigger."
Looking down, he saw babies, but they were not his children. They were not Ernest. He had seen Ernest every day. Ernest had smiled at him moments before he threw up over Aaron's hand the first time Aaron had tried to rock him. Ernest's eyes had lit up at the sight of Aaron. These two had eyes only for their mother. Aaron supposed he had loved them at one time. Probably, some part of him loved them still in some distant and abstract way. Another part of him hoped that when this was over his gentler emotions might come back into play. It would be nice to feel warm and emotional once more.
The babies started crying.
"Give me another one," Kit said. "Mama is so full she hurts." Aaron handed her Chet, or maybe he was Bret. One of them. The baby quit crying as soon as Kit set him to her free breast. The one Aaron held screamed protest at being left out. Frowning, Miss Hurbage leaped to her feet and grabbed him from Aaron.
"Ridiculous!" She stalked out of the room, a monarch defending her charge. "I'll feed this one in private."
An infant cradled gently in each arm, Kit settled into the vacated chair.
"How does it feel?"
Aaron considered. "Settled. I know it's there, but I only know it in the way I know Jorrin is working. Sometimes I can hear him, but I don't really notice that I do until the hammering stops. I think this Talent Stone could be that way."
He held up the silver tipped red horseshoe magnet and looked at it wonderingly. "I think it worked different when it tuned to me than it did for you. The pathways it used were already burned into me by the magnetism in the transmitter."
"Maybe," Kit said. "Probably."
Aaron turned the magnet in his hands, studying it. "Do you remember when we went to Jefferson? I had a magnet on me then, too. It was a little magnet that was supposed to go on the side of an ice chest. I think that magnet is why I was able to transfer so much more weight than I had ever carried before. It was stronger than the magnetism in the transmitter." He thought of Eric and the Gargoyle and the deaths they had caused. "Maybe it would have been best if I had never had it on me."
"We've been over that one before," Kit said.
"Yes, we have." Those deaths still weighed on him. They weighed heavy.
His hands stilled, and he frowned at the magnet they held. The sensations it had given him had been strange. Intense. He had experienced nothing like it from the refrigerator magnet, but he had started carrying that magnet on the Jefferson side. Had that made a difference? Were the physical laws between the two worlds that dissimilar?
Still cradling the children, Kit's eyes momentarily unfocused. Looking up from his brown study, Aaron waited expectantly, anxious and scared and hopeful. She turned her head and nodded toward the west. "About two hundred miles that way."
So they knew in what direction Beech lay, but Aaron was not ready to go after him yet. He still had healing to do.
Seven days passed slowly. Each day he asked Kit the question, and each day Kit reached into the wells of her Talent and drew forth an answer. Beech had moved further away. By the end of the week Kit guessed he was between three hundred and sixty to four hundred twenty miles from them. Then again, she admitted to Aaron, she had never been good at gauging distances.
One week later the doctor pulled the stitches and told Aaron to take care. Since Aaron refused to lie to the man he only smiled, said he would take care of something, and transferred back to the Manor. Kit waited.
"Now?"
Aaron nodded. "I'm going alone right now. I'll take you when I get closer."
"Agreed," Kit said, "but not yet. You might not return, and you made me a promise. I still want that baby to remember Sarah by."
Aaron did his mechanical duty. His finish was not too soon for either of them. Spent, he lay on top of her, looked into her dead eyes, and knew they reflected what was in his own. This would never happen again. They were husband and wife, but without Sarah, they were nothing.
Rising from the bed, Aaron dressed and went into the front room. Once there, he picked up an eight inch steel knife from a side table, shoved it into a sheath, and slid the sheath beneath his belt. He grabbed his shooter's vest from the back of a chair and put it on before grabbing loaded shells from two bowls that were also on the side table. In one pocket of the vest he put thirty of his homemade steel shot shells. In the other pocket he put two dozen ounce and an eighth, number eight shells. A sling allowed him to carry his Winchester Model 12 shotgun over his shoulder.
Fully dressed in her riding gear, Kit entered the room and smiled fearfully when she saw him. "Just remember, Beech is a Talent Master with dozens of Talents, and all of them are strong. You only have two abilities so he is more powerful than you will ever be."
Aaron scowled because he did not want to hear this. He did not want to think. He only wanted to do. He wanted to rip and tear and fill the aching hollow inside him with the fulfillment of his duty and the reality of his revenge.
"Aaron," Kit demanded. "Listen to me."
Flicker
After tranporting as far west as he could remember ever being, Aaron found himself standing far from the start of the pass. Behind was the outline of Last Chance, his home. A bitter home. A home of awful memories and betrayed love. A home of heartache and pain and a reminder of the things he had brought into this world.
He was responsible. He had helped create Haarod Beech, had helped equipped him. Because of Aaron, Beech was able to use Sarah's sword to pull men and women to his cause. With it Beech had murdered far more people than Eric and the Gargoyle had ever dreamed of killing.
Aaron looked back to the town he had loved and then betrayed because of love. He then looked ahead to the pass, several miles distant, and saw the flat top of a rock outcropping.
Flicker
* * *
The trail stretched half a mile before him. Far down the dirt track, just before it followed a rise, was a bent tree hanging ominously over the trail. He chose that tree for his marker.
Flicker