His eyes, wide and unseeing, did not turn toward her, but something beneath them did.
Kayla looked into the red eyes of the dragon.
And trapped within them, she saw a child. Or a mirror.
She had never dreamed of flight, although the other village children often spoke of it.
She had never dreamed of wings; the only time her feet left the ground in her dreams was when she rode a Companion who could cross the walls that darkness imposed upon her dreaming.
"Gregori," she whispered.
He did not move.
But the beast did. It knew exactly where she was, and the waking world offered her no protection, no place to hide.
* * *
Gregori.
Dragon name. Prince name. Powerful name. He turned. You!
Yes.
I know you.
Yes. I am Kayla.
Despair washed over her. Despair and more: death, images of death. The loss of her home. The loss of her village-of Riverend, the home she had promised her mother she would protect. But there was more. She felt the death of her husband as the mines colapsed, as oxygen fled, slowly enough that fear and hysteria had time to build. She felt her father's death, the snap of his spine, saw-although not with her eyes-the pale whites of eyes rolled shut when no hands were there to gently drawn lids across them.
Her mother's death followed.
And after that, the deaths of her life: her sons. One by one, in the absence of Healers, in the winter when no one could travel through the pass.
She was alone. Terribly, horribly alone. Everyone that had ever loved her, gone; she was like a ship without anchor.
All that existed was this darkness. She wandered within it, weeping now, her arms so empty she knew they would never be full again.
But she was not terrified. She felt no horror.
How could she? The things she had feared, the things that made fear so visceral, that made her feel truly vulnerable, had already come to pass.
She could not speak; her lips trembled, her jaw; her shoulders shook as if she were caught in the spasms that collapsed whole tunnels dug in rock.
And because these things were truth, she accepted them as she had managed just barely-to accept them in the village of Riverend.
How? How had she done it? For a moment she could not remember, and then her mother's voice returned, distant and tinny: Promise me that you will care for Riverend.
Duty. Just that, only that, hollow and cold. Despair gave way to anger.
:Is that the worst you can do?: she asked the dragon, she so small she was almost insignificant.
:I killed them!: The dragon roared.
She almost believed him, the emotion was so compelling. So much, so very much, like her own. But she said, as she had said to herself over and over again for the last year, :Life killed them. Winter killed them. Work killed them.:
:How dare you! Do you not know who I am?:
:Oh, yes, I know you. Despair. Terror. Fear. I have lived with nothing but you for the last several months of my life.:
:I killed them!:
:No.:
:I killed them.: She could no longer feel her feet. She threw her weight forward because she had some hope that she could land on the bed instead of the hardwood floor.
:No, you didn't::
"I killed Rodri.:
:No.:
He laughed, and the laughter was terrible, the most terrible thing she had heard from him. In all of her nightmares, the dragon's voice had been a roar of pain. But this, this mirthless sound, was worse.
It was true.
She could not see for darkness, but sensation returned to her hands, and beneath her hands she felt the clammy warmth of his body, the fever of it; she could count his ribs as her palms traveled the length of his slender chest, child's chest. He was dying. He was dying; the fever-root had done nothing to drive the fires away, and he was burning from within. He-No. No.
:Tell me,: she said softly, as her hands touched his chin. :Tell me.: His hair was a tangle, matted and thin, child's hair. The sensation was almost more than she could bear, and only the fact that she knew he was too heavy for her to lift kept her from gathering his body to her.
She had carried her son.
She had carried him for three hours, in the cold, while her toddler wailed.
:Mother?:
She could not answer him; could not lie to him. Instead she continued to stroke his hair.
And after a moment, she sang, her voice a little too dry, a little too shaky. Song had been her gift. She had never found a person in Riverend who would not listen to her song, not be gentled by it.
:I wanted to help them. I wanted to help. I couldn't wield a sword. I tried. I tried for so long. I cut my legs, my arms; I cut Rodri's flank. I couldn't do it. And I couldn't pull the bow.
I could wind a crossbow. I-:
His hair.
She saw images of a child, thin and awkward, and she knew what that child represented. The Prince. Gregori. She saw the ghostly image of a mother, a specter composed of a child's loss, a child's longing; she saw the gray, distant ice of a father's disappointment and contempt. She felt his isolation and his loneliness so clearly she could not separate it from her own.
Nor did she try.
:Rodri loved me.
:Rodri found me when I was lost. He called me, and I came.
:They gave me Whites. They tried to train me. We were happy here.: She felt his terror building, and she knew the storm would return. But she had lived life in Riverend, and she had wintered there. There was no storm that she could not weather, not now.
:I could tell where the enemy was. I could tell them by what they were feeling. I-: They had not made a weapon of the boy. She saw that; he had made a weapon of himself.
She saw her mother.
She saw an assassin. She knew, then, when her mother had killed, and why: to save this boy.
He had begged her to teach him this Gift, and her mother had fled, taking her love-yes, even her mother-with her to the farthest reaches of the Kingdom's border.
That desertion had hurt him; she could feel the pain clearly. But she could also feel the determination that followed as he dismissed Magda Merton for a selfish, powermongering woman, like all the other women in court.
In silence, she let his story unfold. It was not neatly told; it was broken by storm and rage, by fear, by self-loathing.
He had taught himself. He had used his power, his full power, for the first time; it had been a surprise. A Gift. A thing to give his father, a way to prove to his friends that he, too, could help save the Kingdom from invasion. He had turned his Gift outward, reflecting emotion, magnifying it. It worked. It struck the enemy, scattering them, breaking their lines.
But the bond between Companion and Herald was strong; the creature most affected by the sudden outward blow was Rodri. Would have to be Rodri.
Gregori screamed. He screamed, not with his Gift, but with his voice. And she, seeing her own graveyard, and knowing what lay beneath the earth, screamed with him.
And then, soundless, he turned, dragon wings wide. He listened for the sound of singing, for the songs of joy or hope or love that he had heard for almost all of Kayla's life.
She knew: It was her song.
And what he found was her pain, her despair, her endless rage at fate and winter and people who still had children to love.
She continued to stroke his hair.
* * *
Darius woke her.
She rose at the sound of her name, and found that she could see the room clearly; the storm had passed for the moment. She turned to look at the man who lay in the bed; saw that his eyes were closed. His lashes were long, like boys' lashes so often are; his skin was winter-pale.
On impulse, she bent and kissed his forehead.
* * *
"He isn't doing it on purpose," she said quietly, her arm around Darius' neck.
Darius said nothing.
>
"The King had little patience for him, and no affection."
:He loves his children.:
"Gregori felt what the King felt, Darius. He wasn't just guessing."
:He felt part of it; some people remember best the things which wound them.: She thought of her children. After a moment, she said, "He would have killed himself."
:Why didn't he?:
"I don't know." But she was beginning to. She said, instead, "You lied to me. He did kill Rodri."
:He did not. The enemy shot Rodri.:
"Rodri was mad with terror and fear, and it was Gregori's."
Darius said nothing.
Kayla let her arm slide away from his shoulder. "I have to speak with Gisel," she said softly. Just that.
* * *
Gisel was waiting for her, tense and pale. She looked old, Kayla thought, bent with Gregori's weight. But she smiled a moment when she saw Kayla enter the room.
And looked surprised.
"He can't stop," Kayla told her.
"You don't believe in idle chatter, do you?"
"I'm from the Holds," Kayla replied tartly.
"But you survived him. You...touched him, and you survived."
Kayla nodded. "I know why Darius waited," she told the King's Own. "And I know that what you thought he waited for can't happen. Not here."
"You can't reach him?"
"I can. But-" She shook her head. Stared at her hands for a moment.
"But?"
"Not here."
Gisel rose, mistaking her meaning.
"Not in the capital," Kayla told her gently, almost as if she were speaking to a child.
"What do you mean?"
"Let me take him home."
"This is his home."
Kayla rose. Rose and walked to a window whose splendor she had never seen in Riverend. Light broke upon the river that ran through the city; the river was murky and slow.
She thought it must be warm, as warm as the air in this almost endless spring. Without turning, she said, "I have to take him to Riverend."
"You can't. Here, the Healers and the Empaths have worked to contain him."
"And they're failing. One by one, they're failing. He speaks to sorrow and loss, and speaks so strongly that that's all that's left to those who can hear his voice."
"You hear him."
"Yes."
"Magda-Margaret Merton-was the only Empath to equal Gregori in the Kingdom.
You-and I mean no offense, child-are untested."
"Yes. And I will remain untested. For now. I am safe in Riverend. Do you know why I can hear him, feel him, listen to him, and walk away?"
"No, child, although I am certain there are those within the Collegium who would love to know it."
"Because I have felt everything he offers, and I have learned to...walk...away from it. Let me take him home."
Gisel hesitated. And then, after a moment, she nodded. "I will need to speak with the King. Wait outside."
* * *
But Kayla did not wait.
Instead, she went to her room, and found Daniel. He smiled when he saw her.
"Daniel," she said quietly, "I have to leave the Collegium. I come from the North, near the mountains, and I have to return there."
"Can I come with you?"
"Yes." She held out her arms and he ran into them; she lifted him easily, catching most of his weight with her right hip. "But first, I want you to come with me."
"Where?"
"To meet a Prince."
* * *
The door was open slightly. No one, Kayla realized, had touched it since she'd walked away. She took a deep breath. "No matter what you feel or hear here, remember that I'm with you. That I will always be with you."
Daniel nodded.
She nudged the door open with her foot and took a step inside. The Prince was sleeping.
"Is that a Prince? Really?"
"Yes, Daniel."
"He doesn't look like much of a Prince."
"No, he doesn't."
"Is he sick?"
"Yes."
"Can you make him better?"
"Maybe." She walked to the side of the bed and sat on it.
The eyes of the Prince opened. She felt Daniel's sudden terror, and she held him tightly, pressing her chin into the top of his head and rocking him. This sensation was as real as any sensation, an echo of another time. She'd been happy, then.
She remembered it.
Drew on it, calling her ghosts. This boy was her son. This boy was her child.
She loved her children, and for her children, she could sing. She remembered the sweet, gentle nature of her oldest, and the stubborn fury of her youngest, and for the first time since she had bid them farewell, she laughed in delight at their antics.
The man in the bed stirred.
She had survived their loss because of her vows, and she had found that sorrow, in the end, could not keep her from the other children in the Hold. They needed her. Their parents needed her. In the worst of winter, she could soothe temper, displace boredom, still fury; she could invoke the love her mother invoked.
Even after the deaths.
Even then.
"Gregori."
The sound of his name drained the room of light. But Daniel was safe; she felt his fear struggle a moment with her love. And lose.
Such a small thing, that fear.
She reached out to touch Gregori's forehead; his eyes widened in terror and he backed away. But he had been abed many, many months; he was slow. And she, mountain girl, miner's daughter, was fast. She ran her fingers through his hair and let go of all thought.
What remained was feeling.
Love.
Loss.
Gently, gently now, she brushed his hair from his face. She felt the raging fury, the emptiness, the guilt, and the horror that he could not let go. Not on his own.
But surely, surely she had felt this before?
A child's emotions were always raw, always a totality. They existed in the now, as if the past and the future were severed neatly by the strength of what they felt in the present.
:Don't touch me! Don't touch me! I'll kill you!:
But she continued to touch his face, the fine line of his nose, the thin, thin stretch of his lips.
"You need my song," she whispered, "and I had forgotten how to sing. I am sorry. I am sorry, Gregori."
She did not question; did not think. To do either was death. Instead, she gave in to her Gift.
To her mother's Gift. What she felt, she made him feel, just as he had made his enemies feel. :Don't-don't touch me
:Don't touch
:I'll kill you
:I'll kill you, too
:1 don't want to kill you, too
She sat in the room with her younger child in her lap and her older child in his bed.
:Hush, hush.:
And when the older child began to weep, she held him.
* * *
Darius was a patient Companion. And a large one.
He did not complain at the weight of three passengers, and had he, Kayla would have kicked him. After all, she was no giant, Daniel was less than half her weight, and the Prince, tall and skeletal, probably weighed less than the saddlebags.
The King had agreed to let his son go, but with misgivings; it was therefore decided, by Royal Decree, that a Healer, and three attendants, would accompany them.
She was grateful for that; the spring in Riverend had already passed into summer, and in the winter, with a Healer, there might be no deaths. A winter without death.
"Kayla?" Gregori said, as the Hold came into view. She felt his anxiety.
"Daniel's fallen asleep and my arm's gone numb. I don't want him to fall-"
"You won't let him fall," she told the Prince gently. "And I won't let you fall."
"Will it be all right? Will they accept me?"
"I was so lonely here," she answered. "I was so lonely. I don't think they'll begrudge us e
ach other." She smiled, and the smile was genuine. "Do you think you've learned the dawnsong well enough to sing it with me?"
A HERALD'S RESCUE
by Mickey Zucker Reichert
Mickey Zucker Reichert is a pediatrician whose science fiction and fantasy novels include The Legend of Nightfall, The Unknown Soldier, and several books and trilogies about the Renshai. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Battle Magic, Zodiac Fantastic, and Wizard Fantastic. Her claims to fame: she has performed brain surgery, and her parents really are rocket scientists.
Dust motes swirled through the sunbeam glaring into the barn. By its light, Santar trapped the upturned right front hoof of the salt merchant's gelding between his muscular calves. "Hand me the pick."
Blindly, he held out his right hand.
Santar's younger brother, Hosfin, slapped the tool into the proffered palm. "Do you see something?" He crowded in for a closer look, his tunic tickling Santar's bare arm, his shadow falling over the hoof.
"Think so," Santar grunted. "Got to get past all the crap first." Flipping the pick in a well-practiced motion, he gingerly hooked out chunks of road grime and straw. The sharp odor of manure rose momentarily over the sweet musk of horse. "Here." He touched the pick to a gray cobble shard lodged in the groove between forehoof and frog. He dug under the hard, sharp stone. The horse jerked its foot from his grasp, just as the pick lodged into position, and the movement sent the fragment flying. It struck the wooden wall with a ping, then tumbled to join the rest of the debris on the stable's earthen floor. Still clutching the pick, Santar scooped the hoof back upward to examine the damage. He discovered a light bruise but nothing that suggested serious swelling or infection. He stroked the injury with a gentle finger, and the horse calmed.
Hosfin's head obscured the hoof. "No wonder he was hopping and snorting."
"Yeah." Santar released the hoof and patted the horse's sticky flank. "Could have been a lot worse.
Lucky beast."
"Lucky man," Hosfin corrected. He stepped back, skinny arms smeared with grime, sandy hair swept back and tied with a scrap of leather. "Don't think he could afford another horse by the look of him. Needs to learn to take better care of his valuables."
Santar's brown hair hung in shaggy disarray, in need of a cut. Horse work had honed his muscles: lugging grain bags and hay bales, exercising his charges, cleaning and grooming. He also had an almost inexplicable way with afflicted creatures that made his father's stables an exceptionally logical place for any traveler to board. They might find stables nearer their lodgings or destination, ones larger or with more modern construction, ones with fancier names or decor. But Santar's father prided himself on service, mostly provided by his seven sons and one daughter. Travelers who cared as much for their animals' comfort as their own tended to seek them out, including the occasional Herald from Valdemar.
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