Name: Whispers in the Mind
Story: Starfall
Colors: Warm Heart #13 (Shame); Colour of the Day - 23 Mar 2025 (surcease)
Supplies and Styles: Canvas
Word Count: 3860
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Sickness, Pain, Manipulation, Mental distress/confusion.
Notes: 1306, Portcallan; Leion Valerno, Atino Barra, Donn Chiulder, Tana Veldiner, Aima Beconil, Tessine Hyan. Continuing directly on from open the wild inside.
Summary: Leion remembers everything, and wishes he hadn't.

---

Leion wasn't sure if the attic was getting hotter or if he was growing feverish again. He wiped sweat away from his forehead with a handkerchief recovered from his jacket pocket, and then, legs pulled up against him, he laid his head on his knees.

The last couple of weeks he had felt as if he had entered an enchanted world, filled with starstone grottos, secret tunnels, and this house; its little tower room full of weird and wonderful artefacts relating to the Powers. And Atino Barra had been pleased with him.

He shifted his head with a brief wince. His memories were beginning to coalesce into something approaching a comprehensible shape, and he couldn't even ask himself how it was he'd fallen for something that seemed so plainly unwise in retrospect, because that was, obvious, too.

He had wanted to.

---

"You're all sworn to secrecy now," Atino told them at the hazy end of that first night. He'd surveyed his small group of acolytes. "I'll make some of you into more than you could ever have imagined." He turned towards Aima and stroked her curls. "Especially you."

Leion clenched his jaw. Atino meant because Aima had affinity, not anything else, but he didn't like it. He inadvertently caught Tana's eye as she leaned against a bookcase opposite. She wore a knowing look on her face that made Leion hastily turn away, back to Atino. He wasn't sure why Tana had bothered to come with them. She didn't really seem to care about any of Atino's ideas that much.

"Return here every night while the festival lasts," said Atino. "Let's see what we can do."


Atino walked back with Leion from the Old Quay area, towards the more central area of Portcallan. He put his arm through Leion's and guided him past the festival stragglers making their drunken way home as the sky started to lighten somewhere beyond the heights of Chamber Square.

It was an odd night. Leion pressed his hand against the wall as they went, as if to further steady himself. He felt as if he was still half drunk or high on something himself, and that wasn't possible by this time. Yet the world was off-kilter, wider and more magical than before. The streets didn't look the same and they twisted away from the main road at odd angles.

"Atino," he said, leaning in closer. "I don't have affinity. You don't really want me around. What use will I be?"

Atino turned his head. "Don't worry. You're a completely different kind of experiment—just as important. Besides, you're not completely lacking in affinity, so you never know what I might be able to do with you. Come back tomorrow, all right?"


The next night was even more intense, as they spent engaged in more serious endeavours to induce affinitive ability. This apparently involved a lot of concentrating and staring into different kinds of starstone—the sort of thing Leion usually had no patience for, but he had promised Atino he would try, and Chiulder was always around to whisper encouragement whenever he faltered.

Atino chiefly worked with Aima, while Leion scowled at a piece of lightstone that only rewarded him with a headache. If he was honest, having affinity sounded like a nuisance to him, but he'd have given every last jewel in Copperfort to have it, if that was what it took to make Atino spend more time with him.

The Sea Festival was Portcallan's biggest holiday of the year and lasted for several days, so they spent most of that week at the old house. Leion turned up at home at intervals to change his clothes, wash and grab whatever meal might be on offer, but he didn't hang around long enough to let his parents, or any of his sisters start asking awkward questions. He had somewhere better to be.

---

Leion must have fallen back into fever-dreams. The boards underneath him seemed to be rising and falling like a ship, taking him somewhere he didn't want to go. He rolled over, in a vague effort to get away, and blinked to find someone lifting up a trapdoor in front of him. He hadn't even realised it was there until that moment. He froze in alarm. What if it was Atino? Or worse, Chiulder?

It was Tana Veldiner who emerged into the attic, however. Once she had climbed in, she let the wooden cover fall back into place as softly as she could. She crawled forward. "Leion," she said, keeping her voice low.

He fought to shake off the fogginess of his mind and propped himself up on his elbows. "Yes," he managed, his voice too dry for it to come out above a croak.

"I brought you some water," she said calmly, and placed a small glass bottle on the boards beside him. Her tone was cool, calm—not pitying. "Can you manage?"

Leion nodded. He successfully manoeuvred himself into a sitting position, leaning back against the pile of empty crates. There was more air in the attic than there had been earlier. The light was beginning to fade softly and the intensity of the heat had lessened. He picked up the bottle and took a swig. Once he had, he lifted his head and said, attempting to sound more collected, "I've been trying to remember what happened, and I'm still—unclear."

"You panicked," she said. She put a cautious hand on his shoulder. "I fell for it too for a while—not so badly as you, but I had the same kind of reaction. Forcing yourself to try and untangle it all won't help."

Leion heard, but he couldn't take her advice. He had to get all the pieces straight in his mind; it was this failure to get make sense out of vague fragments of memory that scared him the most. "I remember Aima. Is she—is she all right?" He caught himself, and swallowed. "She is still alive, isn't she?"

"Alive, yes," said Tana. "But not all right."

Leion frowned at the wall opposite. Half of the plaster was so aged it had crumbled away, revealing yellowish bricks. "It was Chiulder, wasn't it? He says things and it gets into your head and—I don't know. Can that be possible?"

"Yes," said Tana. "Keep your voice down."

"Yes, but why -" Leion halted. He rubbed his head. "He says things—and they seem so reasonable—like they're the only way. But I don't understand why I feel so rotten now I can see that."

"I don't know either. He has an affinity that allows him to do it and Atino somehow managed to augment it. But once you see through it—that's it. It's over. He can't pull the same trick again."

Leion sagged back into the boxes. "It's not real," he said. He closed his eyes. "I'm having a fever—bad dreams -"

"No. It's real." said Tana. She reached into a bag that was slung over her shoulder and took out a round slice of brown, seeded bread and a peach, wrapped up in a cloth. "This was all I could take. Eat it, and try and pull yourself together. We have to get out as soon as we can."

Leion started. "We're not prisoners!"

"That trapdoor was bolted shut," said Tana. "Aima's locked up in one of the empty rooms. I don't know what Atino means to do about either of you, but at least they haven't worked out I'm not still a good little follower. I'll send word to the Guardians, but we had better get out before they come charging in, if we can."

Leion nearly choked on a piece of bread. He reached for the water, and when he'd taken a swig, he squinted at Tana in the dying tangerine light. "You can't think Atino would try to kill us! All he has to do is accuse us of something—breaking in, fighting, stealing—and have the others back him up. They would all right, and we'd look like liars. He doesn't need to kill anyone."

"True," said Tana. "But do you want to stake your life on that?"

Leion rubbed his aching forehead again. "I still can't remember half of it."

"Don't try too hard," Tana advised. "I have to go. If they find me up here we'll all be in trouble—but I'll come back. If anyone else turns up in the meantime, just pretend you're still out of it, and wait for me."

Leion started forward as she lifted the trap door and started climbing down the ladder below. "No! Don't go. I don't want to be stuck up here alone!"

She paused. "It won't be that long."

His face burned. "I—I know. Sorry. I'm not myself."

"It's the last night of the festival," she added in an attempt at reassurance. "Most of them will go out. Wait till it gets dark."

Leion nodded, eager to try and make up for his moment of panic. "Yes. Of course. I'll be fine. Thank you, Tana."

He crawled over and helped lower the trapdoor. Hearing her scrape the bolt back into place under it felt unreal. He wasn't really a prisoner. This was just some particularly wild game of Atino's. Nothing to worry about. Leion grimaced. The lie wasn't even convincing inside his head any more, no matter how improbable it all seemed. He settled back down and finished off the bread and fruit Tana had brought, and remembered that it had started getting serious days ago. It had been serious from the start.

---

The atmosphere in the house had been growing increasingly oppressive. Leion found himself less and less enthusiastic about squinting into starstone as the days crept by, and he seemed to have developed a permanent headache as a result. On the afternoon on the second full day of their meetings, he escaped down to the old stone quayside. Portcallan's main water traffic used the docks on the south side of the river, and had done so for longer than Leion could remember without checking his history books, but were still a number of small vessels moored alongside the quay—pleasure boats, small cargo carriers and river barges.

Leion walked the length of the quay and then on, down narrow, steep stairs to the small stretch of sand below, beside the river Calla as it widened out to meet the sea. He sat on the last step and breathed in salt air, bathing in bright afternoon sunlight.

"Valerno," said Atino from behind him.

Leion jumped, and then hastily stood to allow the other to pass. Once he had, they sat together on on the dirty sand, leaning back against the sea wall.

"I wanted to speak to you alone."

Leion's heart beat to a faster rhythm. He turned his head. "Oh?" he said, as casually as he could. "What about?"

"It's an awkward request," Atino said. "You might not like it. It's just—the Guardians don't understand what I'm doing here. If your stepfather happens to say anything to you about us—well, I'd like a head's up, that's all."

Leion choked down a laugh, putting his hand to his mouth to hide it. After a second or two, he raised his head. "You want me to spy for you."

"Only if he says something to you directly," said Atino. "No prying around or listening at doors, nothing like that. Look, come inside. I'll explain—Chiulder can explain everything."

Despite the summer warmth, Leion turned cold. "I bet he will," he muttered, even if he didn't yet understand his sudden unease. It was only the thought of betraying Tam, he told himself. Annoying his stepfather, proving him wrong—that was different—that was only a game. He didn't want to spy on anyone, but if he had to choose, no matter what he thought about Atino, no matter how much sense Chiulder made, he couldn't ever turn against Tam. His head gave a painful throb. He rose to his feet, brushing sand off light trousers.

"Come on," said Atino, and cast a careless arm around his shoulders, driving the lurking doubts out of Leion's head. "I've told you. You're an important part of my experiment too."

---

Leion cautiously got to his feet in the loft. The ceiling was too low for him to stand fully upright, but he walked back and forth as quietly as he could, stretching his legs. He was unsteady and stiff—he must have been lying up here for longer than he realised. It was definitely still the same day, though. It had been on the morning of the last day of the festival that everything had finally come to a head, and when Tana had been here she had told him everyone else was going to be heading out to celebrate that soon.

Leion leant against the wall and sloping ceiling. Now that his head was finally clearing, he knew where the last pieces fitted; what had happened before he'd wound up here. The picture that had first come into his mind when he woke up and found himself in here—of Aima screaming, and himself, falling, nauseous—felt, as he recalled it now, like mere minutes ago, but it had been hours. He'd been up here all day. A pulse throbbed painfully at his temple and he wiped sweat from his forehead. And when he turned around, pacing back the other way and finally facing that moment, it suddenly felt like days ago; that he had been lost in a dream forever, and maybe Tana was only mocking him by telling him otherwise.

"This morning," he said aloud to himself, as firmly as he could, and sat down on the boards. One of them creaked under his weight. He closed his eyes and breathed in. He would face it, and he would do it without any more panicking.

---

"You want to see the point of what we're doing here," Atino had said, first thing on the last day of the Sea Festival. "Fair enough, Valerno. I'll show you." He gave Leion his best smile and ruffled his hair, heedless of Leion's reaction. He started off, up the stairs towards the tower room. "Come on!"

Leion tore after him. Chiulder and Aima were inside the room that Atino had stuffed with shelves of books and artefacts and lumps of starstone—the only fully furnished room in the half-derelict old house, aside from Atino's personal chamber. Tess Hyan was there, too; curled up asleep in a large chair with faded upholstery. Chiulder was leaning against the shelves, watching Aima, sitting on a rug in the centre of the room.

"Aima has always had dreams and visions of odd secrets and buried artefacts. Absolutely useless to anyone—half of them she couldn't remember, those she could, she couldn't identify where the items were or what the images meant. Now, with my help, she can focus on them properly—see what they are, get some clue as to where they are. And, of course, I have the means to retrieve them. Now, isn't that worth something?"

Leion's gaze travelled to Aima. She was resting on a rug made of different shades of red rags, her legs curled in under her. She might have sharpened her affinity, but she looked exhausted—dark circles under her eyes, and her skin had lost its warm glow. She raised her face, but she wasn't seeing him, she was staring right through him.

"Have you located it?" asked Chiulder gently, from behind her. "Look closely, my dear. It's what we all want—it will change everything."

Atino clapped a hand on Leion's shoulder. Leion started, and for once, not from pleasure at the contact. "Marvellous, isn't it? I had no idea we'd hit on a piece of luck like this so soon. Doesn't it just show you what a lot of fools the Council are?"

"Yes," said Aima, unhearing. "It's blue, like a sapphire. It's safe, but it's very far away from here."

Atino threw a look at Chiulder. The older man coughed and leant forward. "Aima, where is it, more precisely? Do you see any identifying objects—any landmarks? Tell us, and you can rest."

"Oh, it's south of the temple, up in the hills. There's a stone marker where they buried it. They meant to come back, you know, even though they said it should never, ever be used." She screwed up her face. "Perhaps I shouldn't." She brushed a stray brown curl out of her face.

Atino abandoned Leion and crouched down in front of her. "Come on, starlet, you'll tell me, won't you?"

"Of course you must," said Chiulder, and that was when everything shifted inside Leion. He heard the echo of Chiulder's words in his own mind. He tried to pretend that wasn't a familiar sensation to him by now, because if it was, that meant—that meant things were terribly wrong. Leion shook the thought off, and stared at Aima.

Chiulder touched her arm and said, into her ear, in a way that made Leion raise a hand and rub his own ear, as if he felt the same breath on it, "It's important. Atino can make everything better—everything as it ought to be, if he only has that."

"There's a little wood—a gate," she began, but Leion didn't hear what she said next.

It was as if he had split into two people. One of the Leions wasn't in the room any more. He was standing on the Old Quayside, maybe in uniform, kicking the wall, bored. He didn't want to be here—he got all the dullest duties. He gazed longingly down at the boats moored below, watching Atino Barra clamber about on the deck of a small pleasure boat, laughing with a group of friends. It was no use Leion wishing he could join them. Even if he didn't have work to do, someone like Atino Barra would never see him as anything other than a supporting player—someone to order around. Jealousy and resentment clawed up inside his chest and choked him.

His heart gave a miserable lurch. For all he knew that, he always let Atino do it, never mind how wrong those orders were. But what could he do? Atino had stopped right in front of him, and grasped his arm for a moment, talking to him as if he was a person who mattered. Leion closed his eyes. Then that Chiulder had come along after Atino and explained everything so clearly.

It was the right thing to do, the best thing for everyone. Leion knew that.

The other half of Leion was still standing at the edge of the tower room with Atino, Chiulder, and Aima; their words not fully audible, passing over him. He caught his breath, finding a fine steel thread running between the two conflicting realities.

This was the right thing to do. And he knew that because Chiulder had told him so. Leion-in-the-room trembled. He closed his eyes and the quayside scene vanished. When he opened them again, Chiulder was still murmuring persuasive encouragement to Aima. Leion felt an echo of it in his mind, and shivered.

The boards, only now solidifying underfoot, span slightly. He blinked, and tried to steady himself, by reaching out a hand to the wall. He had to keep his head now. He could work out what in the wide empty world was going on later, once he had got out of here. But that was when Aima looked straight up at Leion, before turning back to Atino, and then Chiulder. Her eyes widened and she shuddered, as if she had shared Leion's realisation, mind to mind.

"No," Aima cried, putting her hands to her head, shaking wildly. "No, no. What did you do?" She flailed her arms, knocking over the cup of starstone-water, or whatever it was Atino had been giving her. (Don't you know? the part of Leion that was Tam and Iyana's son demanded. Didn't you bother to ask?)

Aima sobbed, crouched double on the floor. Atino stepped back, while Chiulder hesitated beside her, before getting up and dusting down his knees, as if giving her up for a lost cause.

"It hurts," Aima wailed. She then muttered something Leion couldn't catch, before rolling over on the rug and screaming, hands still clutched to her head.

Leion moved forward to help, but Chiulder interrupted him, addressing Aima with more directness than he had risked previously. The words vibrated in Leion's head again; an alien intrusion suddenly so obvious and repulsive that he clapped a hand to his mouth, sure that he was going to vomit.

Atino turned his head sharply. "Valerno?"

"You've been getting in our heads, haven't you?" Leion gasped. "Telling us what to think—what to do. I must be the biggest idiot that ever lived."

"Nonsense." Atino reached out a hand towards him. "Aima's overwrought—we must have misjudged the dose, but we'll see to it. Don't worry, Valerno. She'll be fine again soon."

Leion pulled away from Atino's grasp violently enough to knock into the set of shelves behind him. Books tumbled past his shoulder, followed by the harder sound of a piece of starstone falling after them. Pain shot through his head, blinding him. His thoughts circled, still wanting to settle into the easy, set lines of being told what to do, what to think, not to have to worry about any of it, but Leion had seen the truth now and he refused to let Chiulder have any further quarter.

He felt his way forward, looking for the door, but he was in such a state, he hit himself with it in pulling it open. He cursed, caught off-balance right at the end of his resources, and slid to his knees. The pain was mounting and beyond that nothing else existed. Aima might still have been screaming, but maybe that was only another echo, a random nowhere-scene. Leion's mind descended into chaos, and he threw up.

After that, he had no idea what happened.

---

Leion sat back down on one of the boxes. The attic was rapidly growing dark. "Stars," he said under his breath. "I am the greatest idiot who ever lived."

His expression hardened. Tana would come back soon, and once she did, he had better try and redeem himself with whatever he did next. And if she didn't come back, he would burning well find a way out of this place alone.

Even aside from the danger, still hard to take as seriously as he obviously should, Tana had said she had sent word to the Guardians of the Peace, and the last thing Leion wanted was Tam to turn up and find him as Atino's prisoner, and barely able to think in a straight line. This affair was terrible enough without finishing by giving Tam all the material he needed to lecture him forever.

Leion would eat his way through that trapdoor rather than let it come to that.