All of the chaos had disappeared from the scene, and the path and forest became silent and still.
The owl glided in, landing on a branch at the edge of the clearing, watching with the same quiet that had settled on the rest of the forest.
The Hawkbrother looked directly at Anya, paused, and then simply said, "Well met. I'm Nightsinger."
"Thank you." she replied, then offered, "I'm Anya, and that is Tim."
He grinned. "I know who Tim is. You must be his student."
How could the man grin at a time like this? Nightsinger helped her turn the crumpled and staved wagon over. It was Justine under the wagon, legs twisted sideways, both arms splayed wide as if she had tried to break her fall. Blond hair spilled out from the blanket, dark with blood. Nightsinger ran toward Tim, gesturing that she should stay and tend to the girl.
"Justine!" Anya called out, kneeling by the still form, placing one hand on Justine's chest. She had a heartbeat, but her skin was chalky, her scalp bleeding. As Anya felt along the top of her head, one part felt mushy, as if the business end of a horse's hoof or a board had knocked into her. Anya looked around frantically for Tim.
He was still thirty feet away, and Nightsinger had rolled him onto his back. The new wound on the back of his thigh was bleeding extremely fast, staining the earth around it. She had to go to him! She leaped up and ran to his side. Pain swirled like a live thing in his bright, wet eyes, and he clenched the knife tightly.
"Let me..." She began.
"Justine." Tim croaked. "Justine first."
"But...but you might die!"
"I'm tougher than I want to be-this won't finish me." Tim's teeth ground into his lip, sweat stood out on his forehead, and Anya could hear noises dying in his throat as he refused to cry out. How could he survive this?
Defiantly, she placed her hands on his thigh near the worst of his wounds.
He raised the knife, made as if to slash at her with it. "Justine first."
Anya felt like she was being severed in two. The little girl clearly needed her, but Tim was the real Healer, not her. Not yet. If she helped Tim, he could help Justine...but Justine could die without immediate attention. It was beyond her to save one, and they both needed her. What if Tim died? She felt anchored in place-the way she had been when she was watching the fight, unable to choose a direction because all of the choices needed doing. But Nightsinger was with Tim, and Justine was a child.
Turning away from Tim was like spiraling through a physical wall. Her legs shook as she walked away from him.
Anya forced herself to look only at Justine, to hear and taste and sense only things surrounding the little girl.
Justine's head wound was threatening by itself; enough to explain why the girl was out stone cold.
Her legs were bound together, badly chafed, the skin deeply raw around the ropes. Anya thought they could be broken. Her arms and torso looked unmarked, except her left hand was gashed and bleeding.
Anya cut the ropes around Justine's legs and straightened them.
Now, how could she ground herself? She had always worked in homes or in the main room at Tim's-and always with Tim coaching her. Here, there was no comfortable place to stand rooted to.
Justine was in an awkward spot, and Anya didn't think it safe to move her. She chose a kneeling pose and probed for Earth energy, the way Tim had taught her.
It was there, a breath, a stream, and available. She pulled it up into her, setting shielding to keep her focus, to close out the woods and the path and the wounded Healer behind her. Her body gained life, her mind focus, and she began to see things more clearly as she prepared to transfer the energy filling her to the wounded girl.
She needed Tim. It felt like so much, like more than she had ever felt. Tim should do this-she wasn't up to it.
The energy poured away, lost like water over a cliff, and she put her head down and hid her face in her hands. She shivered; cold and frustrated.
A croak rose from far behind her. Tim's voice. "I can see you do this. Start over." A softening of his tone. "Surrender, Anya. Let go."
She looked back. Nightsinger sat quietly next to Tim. The Hawkbrother nodded at her. "Can you help Tim?" she pleaded.
"Only a little. You must help him by doing your work."
Tears stung the corner of her eyes. She touched the earth, tapping the stream of energy again. It was weak and she reached, and reached, and barely gathered a warm trickle. It wasn't enough. She was going to fail.
She let go, started over, ignoring her first touch of darkness. Whether real or not, she heard Tim's voice in her head, saying, "Surrender. Surrender." She touched and reached, and this time the line of power felt focused, less diffuse. She filled herself with each breath, establishing the stream into her as a river, seeing it as light she could channel through her palms. It was more than she could take, and still less than Justine needed. She wanted to scream. Necessity pushed at her until something inside crumpled away, something thin but important. Loss swept into trust, and Anya realized how afraid she had been to...trust...herself. Power, earth energy, filled the places where fear had been. Now, she was part of it, and it was part of her, and the outcome no longer mattered, just the work.
She placed her hands on Justine's head, directing the energy into the prone form. It was warmth flowing down her arms and through the center of her palms into Justine, overwhelming the cold of her wounds, acting on them like sun on ice, melting pain. Slowly. Ever so slowly. Anya could feel it, almost see it, and it was exquisite, like spring colors and stored sunshine flowing into Justine from the earth. It used Anya, like a vessel and a map, seeking direction and amplification in her focus.
Warmth spread through Anya into the girl's head, burning away pain and harm, healing her broken skull. Warmth began to flow down Justine's shoulders, and Anya felt almost as if the two of them were one being. Then suddenly it was too much, her back was freezing. Anya shuddered, the connection lost.
Now it was only her own empty hands on Justine's head. Every muscle in her arms quivered and shook.
Anya's body demanded rest, sleep. She fought for strength to see to Justine. The girl was breathing better, more regularly. Her skin wasn't quite the right color, but it was somehow less white. Anya probed Justine's head gently, and it felt normal. Justine's legs were bleeding where the bonds had been, and still swollen and bruised. So she hadn't finished. But it would be enough. Justine's youth would heal the rest quickly. Anya sighed, and then in a tiny flash of energy, she remembered Tim.
Nightsinger sat immobile by Tim, hands on her teacher's thigh wound. Tim's head was turned away from her, but Nightsinger looked directly at her and said, "You did well, little one. Let go." She wanted to go to Tim, but blackness caught her, and she barely felt the ground slap the side of her head as she surrendered to it.
* * *
Anya woke to the sounds of many people. She was bundled in a blanket by the side of the path.
Her mouth was fiercely dry. She licked her lips and tried to sit up, but her head was so dizzy and painful she simply fell back again.
She heard the rustle of clothes, and a cup of water appeared in front of her eyes. An arm propped her up, and another held the cup to her lips. She sipped greedily. When the cup was empty, Nightsinger rocked back on his heels and let her sit on her own. Surprisingly, she found she had the strength, if barely. She watched him refill the cup from a water bag he slung over his shoulder, all of her focus on the precious water, on quenching the desert inside of her.
Nightsinger grinned at her as she got partway through a third cup of water, and finally looked up at him. His long hair was down, a signal to her that they were safe. "Now, take it easy, little one. You'll be sick. Let the water in slowly. You used a lot of energy."
Memories flooded back over her. "Justine?"
"Is fine. I had to splint her legs until one of our Healers got here, and sew her up in a place or two.
Nothing I don't know how to do. But you saved h
er life. I'm Healer-trained, but have no Gift like yours. I could not have done what you did. She even woke up this morning and asked for you."
"This morning? How long have I been asleep? How's Tim?"
"You've slept almost two days."
"And Tim?"
"Ahhh, Tim. He's gone back to the vale-to our home-for a while. A brother of mine came to get him. Tim lived with us once before, that's where he learned his healing skill-the things he taught you."
"I've heard stories. He never would talk about his past. At least until...until the day we found you.
But how is he?"
"He'll be all right." Nightsinger laughed. "Sorry, I should tell you more. Years ago, when he was my age, when we found him, he was-broken. Learning Healing gave him enough purpose to stay alive. And now, well, he swore never to fight again, but you and I just saw how well he does that. This time it was to save people he loves. Maybe, the next time he leaves us, he will be able to both fight and heal."
"Can I see him?"
"He's already gone. He said you should move to the cave. He'll visit." Nightsinger held his hand out for the empty water cup.
"But I...I need to learn more," she protested, handing over the cup. "Tell him he has to come back as soon as he's healed."
"He said he'd visit."
Anya frowned.
"Maybe I'll visit, too-I've never seen this fabled hertasi-built house of his-no, yours-before."
"I'd like that," she said.
Nightsinger was smiling companionably. She tried to match his expression and asked, "Hey, is there food?"
ICEBREAKER
Rosemary Edgehill
Rosemary Edghill is the author of Speak Daggers to Her, The Book of Moons, and Fleeting Fancy. Her short fiction has appeared in Return to Avalon, Chicks in Chainmail, and Tarot Fantastic. She is a full-time author who lives in Poughkeepsie, New York.
It was Midwinter Festival in Talastyre, and the younger children were gathered in the square to watch the traditional Midwinter play before heading home to spiced cider and oranges and the family feast. Elidor stood at the edge of the crowd, unwilling to admit, at fifteen, that he still liked to watch the play, but this was a day of rare liberty for him. Elidor was one of a dozen copyist-apprentices at the great Library of Talastyre-when other libraries around Valdemar needed a copy of one of their books, it was copyists like Elidor who would write out the text in a fair hand. When he was fully trained, he might seek work at any library, or in a lord's household, or even at the Collegium in Haven itself.
He had been brought to Talastyre at the age of six, on a winter's day even colder than this one. He remembered crying, and clinging to his uncle's coat, begging and pleading not to be left here among strangers, to be let to go home to his parents, to his brothers and sisters.
He remembered the fire, of course. He had gone into the attic to play at Heralds and Companions-the carved wooden toys had been his Midwinter gift, and when he'd told his brothers that someday a Companion would come to choose him for a Herald, they'd laughed at him, and teased him so badly that he'd decided to find a place to play undisturbed. The attic was cold, but he'd taken his cloak with him, and later it had gotten so warm that he'd taken it off.
He remembered how his eldest sister Marane had come running in. She smelled of smoke, and her face was streaked with tears. He'd started crying, too, because she frightened him, even more when she told him he mustn't cry, he must be brave. He was still clutching the white painted Companion when she pushed him out the tiny attic window, too small for an adult to get through.
He screamed as he fell-such a long way-but the snow was deep that year, and he wasn't badly hurt. He crawled away, through the melting snow, clutching the carved white horse, shouting for his mother, for Marane.
He understood later that the house had burned, and the townsfolk had come to try to put out the fire and see if any of the house's inhabitants might be saved, and found him, the only survivor. At the time, all Elidor knew was that strangers took him away, and would not tell him where his family had gone.
When his uncle finally came, Elidor hoped he would be taken home again. His uncle was a silent distant man, who rarely came to visit his brother's family, but he was Elidor's closest kin. He had no experience of children, and spoke to Elidor as if he were an equal.
"Simon left his affairs in order, I'll give him that. And I can get a good price for the land, even though there's nothing left of the house. It will all come to you, boy, never fear-no man can say that Jonas Bridewell would cheat his brother's kin. It comes to a tidy sum. I've taken steps to secure your future, and an enviable one it is, too. You need have no fear of toiling in a shop or a mill for the rest of your days. Folk will look up to you, young Elidor."
There was little about this speech that made sense to Elidor, beyond the knowledge that he was not to go home again. His uncle hired a coach, and after a long and tiring journey, they reached Talastyre.
There he discovered he was to be abandoned.
It had been the Master of Boys who dried his tears, who gently explained to him what his uncle had assumed he understood: that his parents were dead, and that Talastyre was to be his home now. In the dark days that followed, Elidor clung to only one hope: that a Companion would come for him, to take him from this terrible place. Every chance he got, he slipped away from his duties and hurried to the woods at the edge of Town, watching for the flash of shining white through the trees that would mean a Companion was near.
He told no one of his dream. In his thoughts, the fire and his last Midwinter gift were tangled up together in a way he couldn't explain. At first slept with his painted horse beneath his pillow, but he got into such terrible fights with the other boys when they tried to take it away from him that at last the Master of Boys said he would keep the toy safe for Elidor in his own office, where Elidor could visit it whenever he wished.
The weeks passed, then the months, then the years, and no Companion came, and slowly, rebelliously, Elidor settled into the routine of the Library and its school. First he worked as a runner, delivering messages between the offices of the great library, then as a page, reshelving books and bringing volumes when they were asked for. Along with the other children sent to Talastyre to learn-to Elidor's astonishment, most of them had families (his uncle had been telling the truth when he said he had secured for Elidor an enviable position)-Elidor was taught to read and write: his first lessons were in the Common Tongue and to scribe a simple fair hand, but they would be followed by courses in other, older languages and the clear difficult copyist's hand. That training would be the work of years, for it took decades to make a fully-trained Scribe. Not everyone completed it. Some lacked the aptitude. Others were there only to learn the basic lessons before returning to their families, or passing on to other training.
Elidor hated and envied them, while clinging to his secret hope: that he would be Chosen, that he would be more special, more loved than all of them, in the end. He made no friends, and wanted none, and the work he could not avoid, he did grudgingly, and only if watched.
Literacy was Elidor's salvation.
"Here is something that might interest you," the Master of Boys said. He sat down beside Elidor-who was being detained, as punishment, while the other boys were sent out to play in the spring sunshine-and set a book upon the desk. It was large, bound in blue leather, stamped in silver.
Elidor hated everything about books-the way they looked, the way they smelled, their weight, their pages filled with incomprehensible symbols. He turned his head away. But the Master of Boys didn't seem to notice. He simply opened the book.
A flash of color drew Elidor's attention, and he looked. There, painted on the page, was a brightly-colored painting of a Companion and its Herald. Every detail was clear, and in the spring sunlight, the silver bells on the Companions harness shone like stars.
Elidor grabbed for it, but the Master of Boys drew it back.
"Are your hands clean?" he asked
gently.
Elidor inspected his palms. They were gray with the slate of the pencils the boys had been using to practice their letters.
"Go and wash them, then."
Elidor hurried to the back of the room and rinsed his hands quickly in the basin there, leaving most of the dirt on the towel. But his hands were clean when he returned. He held them out for inspection.
The Master of Boys passed him the book.
Quickly-and carefully, as he had been taught-Elidor turned the pages. But there were not many pictures, though many of the pages had a large bright initial letter, each one in Herald blue, some with a tiny picture of a Companion twined around it.
"It is a great pity you cannot read this," the Master of Boys said thoughtfully, "for it contains many tales of the Companions and their brave Heralds." He gently drew the book away from Elidor and closed it. "There are other such books in our Library. Perhaps someday you will be able to read them, if you apply yourself to your lessons."
From that day Elidor worked hard at his lessons, and harder at any task that brought him among the books. Soon he could read as well as many of the older boys, and when two more years had passed, the Master of Boys made good on his promise, and Elidor was given a pass that allowed him free access to any book on the open shelves of the library.
At first he was only interested in works about the Heralds and the Companions, their history and their deeds, but as the years passed and he had run through all of those, his interests broadened until a book's subject hardly mattered. All of Elidor's adventures were lived through books, and most of the time he was resigned to the fact that this was how it would always be. His friends were the books of the Great Library, and his teachers spoke approvingly of his abilities. Elidor, they said, will be a Master Copyist someday, and a great credit to our training.
But deep inside, the unacknowledged spark of resentment at how Life had cheated him still burned dully, and the hope remained, grown faint and dim with the passing of years, that a Companion would come to make his life magical.
* * *
Sun in Glory and Other Tales of Valdemar v(-100 Page 23