And Riverend had so little.
"I'll be back," she whispered.
Widow Davis met her eyes, without blinking, and then to Kayla's astonishment, the old woman stepped forward and wrapped arms around her shoulders. "Come back, child," she said, although it had been years since she had called Kayla a child. "Come back whole."
Kayla flinched. She felt her eyes sting. "Widow Davis-"
"You've not come back to us with the spring. We missed your song in the winter. It may be that you need what it is he offers; it may be he'll help you to sing for us again."
Kayla buried her face in the old woman's shoulders.
* * *
Before lunch that day, she was on the road. Her neck was cramped; she'd done nothing but gaze backward, over her shoulder, until not even the hills that were home to Riverend could be seen in the distance. All of her life lay in that village, or beneath it; all of the things she valued.
Promise me, Kayla, that you'll stay. Promise me that you'll take care of Riverend when I'm gone.
I promise, Mother. But you won't be gone for a long time, will you?
Not if I have anything to say about it. Of course, she hadn't.
* * *
Riding was nothing like it had been in her dreams. It was hard work. And painful.
She could feel Darius' rueful smile. She could not see his face, of course.
"They need me, you know," she told him, the accusation soft.
:I am sorry, dear heart, but so do we.:
"Why?"
:That I cannot tell you yet. But you will understand, I fear, as we approach the city.:
"What city?"
:The King's city,: he told her quietly. :The capital. Or what's left of it.:
"What do you mean, Darius?"
Darius didn't answer.
"Are we at war?"
:We are always at war, Kayla. But the battlefields shift and change with time.:
* * *
He had to tell her what to do for him when they stopped by the Waystations left for Herald use. She did not know how to brush him, water him, blanket him; was not familiar with the food that he ate. Everything about the life beyond Riverend was strange and unexpected.
But sleep was bad. Every night she spent away from the hold, she spent beneath the great, unfurled wings of the shadow beast, the devourer. She knew that she would never have the white dreams again.
Darius would nudge her out of sleep, and she would cry out, reach for him, and then stop, letting her hands fall away.
"I don't see you in my dreams anymore." The words shook as much as her hands did.
:I know.:
"Will I ever?"
:Yes, Kayla. But . . . it was never easy to reach through your dreams to you. It takes gift. Talent.:
"But you-when I dreamed of you, I didn't dream of the-of the-other."
:I would claim that as my action, but there will be too much between us to endure a lie. If you found peace and haven from the-from your dreams, it was not a haven I could create. Not then. Not now.
:If I not been meant for you, if I had not known of you when you were a child, I would never have been able to breach the barriers set by-:I
He fell silent, and after an awkward pause she asked, "How did you know of me?"
:I heard you.:
"You traveled through Riverend?"
:No. But I heard you. I heard your fear and your terror. I heard your sorrow. I heard your song. Your song is powerful.:
"My mother used to tell me song was my Gift."
:Did she? Interesting. Song is the only way that I have seen you use your Gift. You sing, and others listen. You listen, and you hear the harmonies and disharmonies that are hidden in a speaker's voice. But that is not your gift, Kayla.:
"What is?"
His mane flew as he shook his head. :The dreams are worse, yes?: She knew that that was as much an answer that he would offer, and it made her uneasy. She said, simply, "My mother told me I was safe as long as I was in Riverend."
:You were safe there. But others are not.: He was silent while she gathered her things.
Only when she was safe upon the height of his back did he continue. :What you dream of...it is true in a fashion. We are closer to it. We will draw closer still. I am...sorry.:
* * *
On the fourth day, she woke from dreaming with Darius' muzzle in the side of her neck.
She was sweating, although it was cold, and he caught the edge of her rough woolen blankets in his perfect teeth and pulled them more tightly around her.
His eyes were dark, his gaze somber.
"Darius," she whispered, when she could speak past the rawness in the throat, "I heard bells."
He was silent.
"Not bells like yours, not bells like the ones you're decorated. with. But . . . bells. Loud and low."
:I know.:
"There are no bells here, are there?"
:No. Not on these roads; the next village is half a day's hard riding away.:
"What are they?"
:You know, Kayla.:
And she did, although she did not know how. Death bells. "Tell me?"
He shook his head. :It is forbidden for me to tell you what they are; you will know. We will reach the capital in the next two days.:
As he spoke, the hairs on the back of her neck rose. She thought of Riverend. Of Tessa and Evan, of Mitchell, of the Widow Davis. For no reason at all, she wanted to weep.
* * *
The first large town that Kayla entered seemed so vast she assumed it was the capital.
Darius laughed, but his laughter was gentle enough that it reminded her of her father's amusement at her younglings antics a lifetime ago.
"But it's so-so-big!"
:It is big, yes. But . . . it is not a city. The town is large. That building, there? That houses the mayor and his family. And that, that is as close to a cathedral as you will find.
But this is a tenth, a twentieth, of the size of the city you will enter when we-Kayla?: She sat frozen across his bare back, her legs locked so tightly her body was shuddering.
:Kayla!:
She could not even shake her head. Her mouth, when it opened, was too dry to form words. Darius...
:Kayla, what is wrong?:
The screaming. Can't you hear it? The screaming.
:Kayla! KAYLA!:
* * *
She was on her feet. Not his back, not his feet. She could not remember sliding from the complicated bits and pieces of baubles that announced his presence and his station so eloquently.
The cobbled streets passed beneath her; she noticed them only because they felt so strange to her feet, so unnatural beneath open sky. The screaming was so loud she could hear no other words, although she thought she could glimpse, from the corners of her eyes, the opened mouths and shocked faces of the strangers she hurtled past, pushed through.
She was through the doors and into the light before she realized that she had entered the cathedral; that she stood in the slanting rays of colors such as she had never seen captured in glass. A man, ghostly and regal, illuminated her and the ground upon which she stood.
She stopped only a moment because given a choice between beauty and terror, beauty could not hold her. She knew what she heard. She knew it.
The cathedral was an open, empty place of light and space, with benches and an altar at the end of the apse. She ran down it, boots pounding the ground, footsteps echoing in heights she would never have dreamed possible in Riverend. And she forgot to feel small, to feel humble; she knew she had to read the person whose screams were so terrible, and soon, or it would be too late.
And she never once stopped to wonder what too late meant.
She found him.
It wasn't easy; there were doors secreted in the vast stone walls, beautifully oiled and tended, that nonetheless seemed like prison doors, they opened into a room so small.
Curled against wall and floor, huddling in the corner, was a m
an. A stranger.
In Riverend, strangers were always eyed with suspicion, greeted with hearty hospitality and an implacable distance. She had shed both of those the moment she had heard his terrible cry.
And she heard it still, although she could see-with wide eyes-that his lips were still. But his eyes were wider than eyes should be, and they stared ahead, to her, sightless, as if he had gone blind.
:Kayla! Be careful!:
Darius' voice.
She realized then what was so wrong, so cutting, about this man's cry of terror: it reached her the same way that Darius' words did, in a silence that spoke of knowledge and intimacy. Without thought, she bent to the man huddled against the floor, and without thought, she tried to lift him.
Realized that lifting him would strain the muscles she had built in the hold, lifting even the largest of the children; he was not a small man.
And she was a small woman. But determination had always counted for something.
Always.
She caught him in her arms. Caught his face in her hands as his head sought the cradle of arms and breasts.
His screaming was terrible.
But hers was louder, longer, as insistent as his own.
Look at me!
He whimpered, but the sound was a real sound, a thing of throat and breath and lips.
His eyes, glassy, brown, deep, shifted and jerked, upward now, seeking her face.
"The darkness," he whispered. "The darkness. The emptiness. I've lost them. I've failed them all." For a large man, his voice was small, tiny. She should have been terrified, then.
But as he spoke, she felt what he felt, and she knew, knew, that she had passed through it herself.
* * *
Her own children were gone.
And she was young enough that the visiting merchants never realized that she had had a husband-gone, too-and a family; that she had had everything she had desired in her youth.
And what was the point of that desire, but pain? In the end, what was the point? Her children had not disappeared in the mining accidents that killed the men, when the men did die; they had not gone missing in the terrible snows that could strand a person feet away from the doors of the hold, and bury them there, as a taunt, a winter cruelty.
No. She had held them.
She had held them, just as she had held this man, in this dark, cramped room, in this empty place that had no words of comfort to offer her.
The cabin in which she had lived was hallowed by the terrible silence of their absence; she might walk from room to room-for there were only three-and listen furtively to catch their ghostly voices. This was the way she evoked memory, and memory, in this dark place, this gloom of log and burning wood and little light-for light let in cold-was unkind. It led her into darkness.
And that darkness might have devoured her, if her mother had not held her, held on to her, filled the emptiness with her words and the blessed sound of her voice. Mother's pain, always.
She spoke to this stranger.
She spoke to this man who understood, who was somehow-at this instant-a part of all the losses she had faced.
And as she did, she opened her eyes to a dream. Heard the voice of the devourer, all his voices, the cries of terror and emptiness.
Promise me, Kayla. Promise me you will stay and protect Riverend. Promise me.
I promise. I promise, Mother. I promise.
She forgot the cathedral, then. Forgot the lines of this stranger's face. She held him, as if a storm raged just beyond her bent shoulders, her bowed back. She found voice; she sang. She sang to him.
And the singing did what the words she had spoken-for she was aware that words had left her lips, aware that they were a failure before she had finished speaking them-could not.
Dark eyes turned to her; dark eyes saw her; the agony written and etched in terrible lines across a gray face shifted as eyes she would have sworn couldn't grow any wider, did.
He clung to her, his face made her breasts ache, her spine curved in until it was almost painful just to sit, but she sat. She sat.
And the priest came.
She heard his voice at a distance. She heard his words as if they were spoken from within her. He was praying. After a moment, she joined him, although she didn't know the words that he spoke. Hers were as heartfelt, and they were all she had to offer.
"Come home," she whispered, kissing the sweaty, damp strands of this stranger's hair, stroking his face as if it were the fevered face of her eldest. "Come home."
* * *
Darius was waiting for her. Companions, it seemed, were not considered beasts of burden in even the grandest of venues; he stood in the light of the windows as if he were a dream. He walked forward slowly as the priest helped the man to his feet.
:Kayla,: he said gravely. :What you did here was bravely done.:
"What did I do?" she whispered softly.
:What you were born to do.:
The priest was staring at her. She turned to him and bowed. "I-I'm sorry," she stammered. "But-I-I-"
He shook his head. "He came to this place seeking help. And you came to this place offering aid that we could not offer. Do not apologize, child. But-"
She shook her head. "I don't know. I don't know what-what I did."
"You saved him," the priest whispered. "I was so certain-" He closed his eyes a moment; she thought he might retreat into prayer again. But he shook himself free of the words, and when he stood, she saw that he was over six feet tall, his shoulders wide and broad. As her father's had once been, before the mines.
"There are others," he said after a moment. He turned and bowed to her Companion.
"She is your Chosen?"
The Companion nickered softly.
"But she wears no white, no gray. Child, can it be that you have not yet made your journey to the Collegium?"
"I-no. I think we're on the way there."
"Might I ask-if it's not too much-that you come to the infirmary?"
She looked at Darius. Darius was absolutely silent, as if he were adornment to the statues, the windows, the altar of this place.
Her decision, then. She nodded.
* * *
He led her through the cloisters; she realized later that this was a courtesy to Darius.
Darius was comfortable in the apse, but once the halls narrowed, movement would be restricted, and it was clear what the Companion-no, her Companion-thought of that.
She even smiled, felt a moment of almost gentle amusement, until she glanced at the older man's face. Care had worn lines from his eyes to his lips, and she thought that no matter what happened in future, they were there to stay.
They grew deeper as he left the cloister; deeper still as he walked down a hall and stopped in front of a door that was slightly ajar. "Here," he said quietly.
She nodded and opened the door.
And stopped there, beneath the lintel, staring.
There was more than one room; she could see that clearly in the streaming light of day.
And there were beds, bedrolls, makeshift cots, with only barely enough room between them to allow a man passage. Each of the beds was occupied.
Darius.
:Kayla.: The word was urgent, but real.
She was afraid.
"I can't-I can't go in there," she whispered. :Kayla.: But the door was no protection; it was open. She could hear weeping, whimpering, screaming. Her hand caught the frame of the door and her fingers grew white as she held it.
:Bright heart.: Darius said firmly, :see with your eyes. Hear with your ears; hear only with your ears.:
She drew a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. See, she thought, with your eyes.
She could do that. She could look.
Men lay abed. Women. There were children as well, although they were mercifully few.
They gazed up at the ceiling of the room, or at the walls, their eyes unblinking. They did not move; their lips were still. She shook her head to clea
r it of the sounds of despair, and as she did, the priest gently pushed his way past her.
"They have been this way," he said softly, "for weeks. They will eat what we feed them, and drink when we offer them water; we can clean them, wash them, bathe them. But they will not rise or move on their own; they do not speak. Some of them have families in this town, but-but most of their families can only bear to visit for the first few days." He walked over to one of the beds and set upon its edge, heavily.
"More and more of my people are brought here every day. And throughout the town there are others whose families can afford the cost of their care."
"They-they have no fever?"
"None. No rash, no bleeding, no outward sign of illness. But they are gone from us." He looked up; met her eyes.
"The man that you-you found, today, would have joined them by evening at the latest."
"How do you know?"
"I've seen it. I know the signs. All of us do."
"But-"
"We have no doctors who can aid us; no healers who can reach them." He closed his eyes. Opened them again. "What did you do, Herald?"
She shook her head. "N-nothing. And-and I'm not-not a Herald." She walked into the room, to shed the weight of the bleak hope in his eyes.
And as she did, she passed a small cot and stopped before it, frozen.
It held a young child, eyes wide, hair damp against his forehead. Were it not for the slack emptiness of his features, he would have been beautiful. She forgot Darius; forgot his words.
She listened with her heart.
And her heart shuddered, and nearly broke, from the weight of what it heard. She had once been near the mines when a shaft had collapsed. The roar of falling rock had deafened her; the shouts of fear, of terror, the commands for action, had done the same. And through it all, one guilty thought had kept her still: she should not have come here. Children were not allowed by the mines. But she had wanted to see her father.
Standing in this room, at the foot of this anonymous cot, she felt the same deafness and the same guilt. Some part of her urged her to turn, to run, but she ignored it because she had heard it for most of her adult life.
What loss could she suffer that she had not suffered?
She took a step, and then another, pushing her way forward as if through a gale, until she stood by the child's side. And then she reached for him.
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