“Hellsbane,” Kero called, catching the mare’s attention. “Kathal, dester’edre. “
Hellsbane relaxed, and permitted herself to be examined minutely. Eldan looked her over with all the care of a born horseman. Finally he left her to return to her doze and seated himself back by the fire. “Amazing,” he said in wonder. “Ugliest horse I’ve ever seen, but under that hide—if I were going to build a riding beast for warfare, starting from the bone out, that’s exactly what I’d build.”
“My weaponsmaster claims that’s what the Clans did do,” Kero said. “The gods alone know how they did it, or even if they did it, but that’s what she claims.”
“Amazing,” he repeated, shaking his head. Then he raised it. “So, tell me about this weaponsmaster of yours. And how in the Havens did you manage to get adopted into a Clan?”
She smiled. “It’s a long story. Are you comfortable?”
They were both a lot wearier than either of them thought. He told her to start at the beginning and she took him at his word. She told him about the “ride”—and to her embarrassment, discovered that the song had made it as far as Valdemar. Once past the decision to leave home and beg some kind of instructions from her grandmother, she caught him yawning.
“I’m not—oh—that boring, am I?” she asked, finding the yawns contagious.
“No,” he said, “It’s just that I can’t keep my eyes open.”
“Well, I don’t think any Karsites are going to creep up on us in the dark,” she admitted, “And it’s well after sundown. I never once noticed anyone moving around after dark except army patrols. And even they wouldn’t go off the roads.” She did not mention the strange and frightening instances when she’d felt as if she was being hunted; she had no proof, and anyway, nothing had ever come of it.
She got up and went to the tangled heap of blankets, intending to throw them over that invitingly thick bed of bracken he’d made. Eldan joined her in the task, still yawning.
“They seem to think that demons travel by night,” he said, shaking out his blanket. “It seems that people vanish out of their houses by night—whole families, sometimes—and are never seen again. And not surprisingly, the ones that vanish are the ones that are the least devout, or have asked uncomfortable questions, or have shown some other signs of rebellion.”
She thought about the army patrols she’d seen moving about at night, and was perfectly capable of putting the two together. “Hmm. Demons on horseback, do you suppose? In uniform, perhaps?”
“A good guess,” he acknowledged.
“Makes me very grateful I wasn’t born in Karse.”
Eldan spread the last of the blankets over the improvised bed, and tilted his head to one side. “Not all the ‘vanished’ end up dead, my lady,” he said. “Some of them end up in the priesthood.”
“Not a chance!” she exclaimed.
“I hadn’t finished. They retain their skills—but they’ve forgotten everything about their old life. Everything; it happened to someone I was watching as a possible contact. She had a Gift of Mindspeech, one that was just developing. When I next saw her, she didn’t recognize anyone she had known before. Her mind was a complete blank—and her devotion to the Sunlord was total.” He nodded as she felt the blood drain from her face.
“You mean—everybody with these ‘Gifts’ winds up in the priesthood—and someone in the priesthood strips their minds?” The idea was horrible, more horrifying than rape and torture, somehow. Rape and torture still left you with your own mind, your own thoughts.
“Someone in the priesthood wipes their minds clean. Everything that made them what they are is gone. I’ve been able to trigger old memories in someone suffering from forgetfulness after a head injury—” (She filed that away for future reference.) “—but I have never been able to do so in one of the priestesses.” He sighed. “Some would say that they are still better off that way than dead, but I don’t know.”
She shivered uncontrollably. “I’d rather be dead.”
He put his arms around her to still the shudders. “Now I’ve told you something that’s sure to make you have nightmares,” he said apologetically. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
She snuggled closer in a lightning change of mood, heat in her groin kindled by the warmth of his arms around her, and the feel of his strong body against hers. “You can do something to make me forget,” she pointed out, and nibbled delicately on his earlobe.
“So I can,” he laughed.
And proceeded to do just that.
* * *
Today there were hunters out there, though none were near the cave, and neither of them wanted to risk going out. Quite a few hunters were prowling the hills, in fact—and at least a half-dozen priests. The escaped Herald and his rescuer, it seemed, were very much sought after.
Ratha was the one who warned Eldan about the priests, fortunately before the Herald tried any Thoughtsensing. With that in mind, he pinpointed the enemy and identified the priests through the eyes of the animals about them. He would have liked very much to touch the minds of their horses, so that he could overhear what they were saying to each other, but both of them felt that particular idea was far too risky.
“Maybe if you’re ever in a trap you can’t break out of,” she said. “In fact, I’ll tell you what I’d have done if I’d been in your shoes with your Gift back when they had you. I’d have waited until they were sure I was helpless, and then I’d have spooked their horses. Run a couple of them through the fire to scatter it, and they wouldn’t have been able to see you getting away. Then I would have hidden real close to the camp until I saw a good chance to get the hell out of there. Like I told you, they don’t expect a prisoner to stick around.”
Eldan looked at her with considerable respect. “There are times I wish I could convince you to come back with me, and this is one of them. I’d love to put you in charge of a class at the Collegium.”
She shuddered. “Thank you, no. I’d rather face a siege.”
There were other, more disturbing, searchers. Twice, Kero “felt” those searching “eyes” she’d sensed before—this time they were angry, and she could feel the heat of their rage preceding and following them. The first time, she was watching at the entrance to the cave and didn’t get a chance to see if Eldan felt them, too. But the second time was just after dark, when they were both lounging beside the barest coal of a fire, not wanting to risk a light being seen, and she instinctively flattened herself against the stone floor of the cave, blood turning to ice-water in her veins.
She looked over at a whisper of sound, and saw that Eldan had done the same thing.
“What is that?” she hissed, as if speaking aloud would bring the thing back.
“You felt it, too?” He also seemed impelled to whisper his words. “I don’t know what it is. It isn’t any kind of Thoughtsensing I’ve ever run up against before. It doesn’t seem exactly like Thoughtsensing. It’s like—” he groped for a description “—like there’s actually some thing moving half in our world, and half in another, and the reason we can feel it is because it happens to be leaking its thoughts. Like it isn’t shielded.”
She considered that for a moment. “And demons walk at night,” she said.
He stared at her. “Demons are only in stories!” he exclaimed indignantly, as if he thought she was trying to make a fool out of him. Then he faltered, as she continued to watch him soberly. “Aren’t they?”
“Not in my grandmother’s experience,” she said, sitting up slowly, “Though I can’t vouch for having seen one myself. But consider how some of the people who vanish at night do so out of their own houses, with no one else in the family aware that they’re gone until the next day.”
He contemplated that for a moment, as he pushed himself off the floor, and she watched his face harden. “If that’s got even the barest possibility of being true, then it’s all the more important that I get back to report.” He did not, at that moment, look like a man she
wanted to cross.
“I’m doing the best that I can,” she pointed out without losing her temper. “After all, I have quite a bit riding on getting you back, myself!”
He stared at her for a moment, as if he wasn’t certain just what she was. She watched curiosity slowly replacing anger in his expression. Finally he asked, “If I hadn’t agreed to your price back there, would you have left me in their hands?”
It would serve you right if I said “yes,” she thought, but honesty compelled her to answer otherwise. “If I could have gotten you loose, without getting myself killed, I would have,” she said. “But instead of taking you to Valdemar, I’d have convinced you it was safer to go through Menmellith. And once across the border and with my Company, I’d have turned you over to the Mercenary Guild as a war prize. They would have ransomed you back to Valdemar. I’d have lost ten percent on the deal, but I still would have gotten paid.”
He stared at her, shocked and offended. “I don’t believe you!” he spluttered. “I can’t believe anyone could be so—so—”
“Mercenary?” she suggested mildly.
That shut him up, And after a few moments, his anger died, and was replaced by a sense of the humor of the situation. “All right, I was out of line. You have a right to make a living—”
“Thanks for your permission,” she replied sarcastically. I’m really getting just a little tired of his attitude....
He threw up his hands. “I give up! I can’t say anything right, can I? I’m sorry, I don’t understand you, and I don’t think I ever will. I fight for a cause and a country—”
“And I fight for a living.” She shrugged. “I’m just as much a whore as any other men or women that make a living with their bodies, and I don’t pretend I’m not.”
And maybe that’s the real difference between us. Mercs are the same as whores, people who devote themselves to causes are like one half of a lifebonded couple. We do exactly the same things, just I do it for money, and you do it for love. Which may be another form of payment, so—maybe he still should do something about that attitude. She shrugged, feeling somehow just a little hurt and oddly lonely. It appeared that being able to read people’s minds didn’t necessarily make for less misunderstandings.
Which is as good a reason as any to keep from using it so much I come to depend on it, she decided. If it can’t keep two people who like each other from making mistakes about each other, it isn’t going to keep me from making mistakes about other things.
“So,” she said, when they knew there probably weren’t going to be any repetitions of their visitation, and both of them had gotten a chance to cool down a little, “I don’t know about you, but I am not going to be able to get to sleep for a while. Not after having that cruise by overhead.”
Eldan sighed, and looked up from the repairs he was trying to make to his clothing, using a thorn for a needle and raveled threads from a seam. “I’m glad I’m not the only one feeling that way. I was afraid you might think I was being awfully cowardly, like a youngling afraid of the dark.”
“If stuff like that is out in the dark, I’d be afraid of it too!” She relaxed a little. He isn’t going to be difficult. Thank the gods. “I don’t know if being awake is going to make any difference to that, but I’d rather meet it awake than asleep. So let’s talk. You know everything that’s important about me—”
He started to protest, then saw the little grin on her face, grinned back and shrugged.
“All I know about you is that at some point in your life you decided to make a big fat target out of yourself.” She fixed him with a mock-stern glare. “So talk.”
Eldan put down his sewing, and moved over to her side of the fire, stretching himself out on their combined bedroll.
Also a good sign.
“To start with, I didn’t ‘decide’ to become a Herald; no one does. I was Chosen.”
The way he said the word made it pretty clear that he was talking about something other than having some senior Herald come up and pick him out as an apprentice. To Kero it had the sound of a priestly Vocation.
“Before that, I was just an ordinary enough youngling, one of the middle lot of about a dozen children. We had a holding, big enough that my father could call himself ‘lord,’ if he chose, but he made all of us learn what hard work was like. When we were under twelve, we all had chores, and over twelve we all took our turn in the fields with our tenants. One day I was out weeding the white-root patch, when I heard an animal behind me. I figured one of our colts or calves had gotten out—again—and I turned around to shoo him back to the pasture. Only it wasn’t a calf, it was Ratha.” Eldan sighed, and closed his eyes. As the firelight flickered over his peaceful expression, Kero guessed that memory must be one of the best of his life.
Silence for a moment. “So what’s Ratha got to do with it?” she asked, when he didn’t say anything more.
“What’s—oh. Sorry. The Companions Choose us. You can’t just march up to Haven and announce you want to be a Herald, and your father can’t buy you an apprenticeship. Only the Companions make the decision on who will or will not be a Herald.” Ratha whickered agreement, and Kero glanced over to see him nodding his head.
Well, if they’re like the leshya’e Kal’enedral, that makes sense. A spirit would be able to see into someone’s heart, to know if he’s the kind of person likely to forget how to balance morality and expediency. Ratha looked straight at her for a moment, and his blue eyes picked up the firelight in a most uncanny manner. And he nodded again. She blinked, more than a little taken aback.
“When they’re ready to go out after their Chosen, Companions will show up at the stable and basically demand to be saddled up. It’s kind of funny, especially to see the reaction of new stablehands.” He chuckled. “I was there one day when six of them descended on the stable, each one making it very clear he wanted to be taken care of right now, thank you. I had someone call in some of the trainees before the poor stableboy lost his mind. Anyway, I knew what Ratha’s standing in the middle of the vegetable patch meant, though to tell you the truth, I’d always fancied myself in a Guard uniform, not Herald’s Whites. I think my parents were rather relieved, all things considered; one less youngling to have to provide for. And we weren’t that far from Haven, they knew I’d be back for visits, probably even several times a week. Mama made a fuss about ‘her baby’ growing up, of course, but it’s always seemed to be more as if she did it because she thought she should.”
Both of them grinned at that. “Couple of my mates have had send-offs like that,” Kero offered. “And no doubt in anybody’s mind that they weren’t just as cared-for as anyone else in the family, just when the tribe’s that big, somebody has to go eventually.”
“And it’s a relief when it’s on their own. Aye.” Eldan nodded vigorously. “Other than that, things were no different for me than for any other youngling at Collegium. Average in my classes, only thing out of the ordinary was the animal Mindspeech. Had a turn for disguise. Got to know this little bit named Selenay pretty well, gave me a bit of a shock when I found out she was the Heir, though!”
Knows the Queen by given name, hmm? The thought was a little chilling; it pointed up the differences between them. To cover it, she teased, “If I’d known that, your price would have been higher.”
He opened his eyes to see if she was joking, and smiled when he saw that she was. “That’s it,” he concluded. “That’s all there is to know about me. No famous Rides, no bad scrapes until this one. Nothing out of the ordinary. “
Kero snorted. “As if Heralds could ever be ordinary. Right. Tell me another one.”
“I collect rocks,” he offered.
“Great pastime for someone who spends his life on horseback.”
“I didn’t say it was easy, “ he protested, laughingly.
Kero laughed with him. “I should confess, then. I make jewelry. Actually, I carve gemstones. Now that is a portable hobby.”
“I used to write bad
poetry.”
She glared at him.
“I stopped.”
She made a great show of cleaning her knife and examining the blade. “Wise man. If you’d told me you still did, I’d have been forced to kill and eat you. And the world would have been safer. There’s nothing more dangerous than a bad poet, unless it’s a bad minstrel.”
She said that with such a solemn face that he began laughing. “I think I can see your point,” he chortled, “I think in your position I’d start using my extra pay to put bounties on Bards!”
“I’ve thought about it,” she said wryly. “And not entirely in jest. Traditional Bardic immunity can lead to some misusing their power, and Bards have no one making sure they behave themselves the way the Healers and you Heralds do.”
“Only the Guild,” he acknowledged, soberly. “They’re pretty careful in Valdemar, but outside? I don’t know. I’ll bet Karse is using theirs.”
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