Brightly Burning

by Mercedes Lackey

  And she was a deadly card player.

  Melly was the first to arrive, with the other two right behind her. “Pfui!” Tevar said, knitting black brows as the wind drove a gust of rain against the window glass. “I hate this time of year!” He pulled his chair back with a scrape, and dropped into it, pulling his tail of sable hair to the side so he wouldn’t get it caught between his back and the back of the chair.

  Melly cast a glance at the window herself, peering from beneath a thick brown fringe of bangs that made her look like a cheerful little pony. “I don’t know; I rather like it, as long as the weather’s out there and I’m in here.”

  “Makes you feel sorry for the ones out there, though, doesn’t it?” Damina asked, as she helped herself to food, then settled into her chair. “Then again, it isn’t like this everywhere.”

  “It’s still fine down in the south, and in the north the rains are over by now,” Pol agreed. “For that matter, it isn’t everywhere that gets these autumnal downpours, either, so you could be wasting your pity, Damina.”

  “Oh, the gods forbid that I should waste anything so precious as pity!” she exclaimed wryly. “I have so little of it to spare!”

  “And far too much breath,” Tevar retorted. “Are you going to talk, or play?”

  With a chuckle, Damina cut the cards, and they began their usual fierce combat until the Collegium bells warned that classes were due to begin.

  At the end of the day, Pol decided against dinner with the Court and opted for a seat with the rest of the Collegium. A Collegium dinner was the best possible antidote to a gloomy day.

  He went in early, while the Trainees were still washing up, taking his favorite seat at a table over near one of the fireplaces. Those tables were generally kept clear so that the adults could claim them, perhaps out of pity for their “old bones!” There were two or three other teachers there, and a group of Heralds entered right after he settled himself, Heralds who had just gotten back from their assignments and had not yet gotten new ones. He waved them over, although he didn’t know any of them personally; they would have news of their sectors, and would be willing to share it. They were all fairly young, probably in their first decade of serving as full Heralds; all aggressively fit and lean. The three young men, two very dark, one less so, reached him first, followed by a blonde woman.

  “Jonotan, Lake Evendim,” said the first to sit down, shaking Pol’s extended hand, giving his name and the circuit he’d been on, just as a fifth Herald, an older woman, entered, looked about, and headed for his table.

  “Kiela, Staghorn Forest,” the young blonde woman told him with a nod.

  The broadly smiling dark man introduced himself next, as “Lerrys, the Fells,” followed by a shorter, but equally dark fellow who was “Wernar, Torgate.”

  The last was another woman, middle-aged with gray streaking her mousy hair, that Pol knew very slightly. “Charis! Good to see you!” he welcomed her. “What sector this time?”

  She settled into place with a weary sigh. “Karsite Border,” she said, and got the immediate attention of the others.

  “And?” Pol asked, assuming the duty of the questioner as host.

  One of the Trainees came by about then with a platter of hot bread and a bowl of butter, and Charis made an unmistakable gesture toward him with her eyes. They waited in silence for the boy to get out of hearing distance, and in the meantime, the hall began to fill with chattering youngsters, making it easier for them to converse without being overheard.

  “I’ll give you the worst news first,” Charis told them, as they unconsciously bent toward her, all of them with grave expressions. “There’s going to be war. Maybe not this year, though I think it will come by Midwinter, but next summer at the latest. It’s not bandits raiding the Borders anymore, and not Karsite outcasts desperately clawing out some sort of life, it’s Karsite troopers, little squads of them. We finally caught some of them, and there were uniforms in their saddlebags.” She shrugged. “The Sun-priests claim they were acting on their own, but we know better, obviously. Not even a Karsite is immune to a Truth Spell.”

  They all let out their held breath as one. Pol shook his head. “So they’ve started testing us, have they?”

  “That’s the general assessment,” Charis agreed. “The current Son of the Sun is cautious. He isn’t going to move until he’s built up his troops there, built them up slowly so we supposedly won’t notice, and that is going to take time. At least we’re forewarned.”

  Another set of Trainees came along with platters and bowls, and the discussion ended for a moment while the Heralds helped themselves. When the servers moved on to other tables, Jonotan asked the next question.

  “Is there any good news?” he said, mouth twisted in a wry attempt at a smile that was not succeeding very well.

  “We’ve got warning, and we’ve got time,” Charis pointed out. “I just finished reporting to the King and Council; everyone is going to know by tomorrow. We’re going to have to build up our own troops, I suppose; maybe evacuate the villages nearest the Border.”

  “If you can,” Kiela pointed out. “A lot of those people are Holderkin; they wouldn’t move for any mortal, and I sometimes doubt if they’d even move for their gods.”

  Charis made a face, but didn’t contradict her.

  “While you were there,” Pol put in hesitantly, “did you happen across a Healer named Ilea?”

  To his surprise, Charis laughed out loud, her gloom broken. “Actually, I did, just before I left. There was an outbreak of little-pox in a Holderkin village, and the Elder had actually unbent enough to call in our Healers. When I last saw her, Ilea was politely, gently, and thoroughly telling off the menfolk for not helping the women with the sick. ‘If they drop with exhaustion, they’ll be sick next, and who will cook, clean, and tend to you when you fall ill?’ she said. And by all that’s holy, the Elder was bending his head like a little boy being scolded!”

  Greatly relieved, Pol laughed as well; he could certainly picture Ilea doing just as described. That broke the tension, and the conversation moved on to the news the others brought with them; after all, there was nothing to be done about the Karsites at this exact moment, certainly nothing that half a dozen Heralds could do.

  Pol took his leave of the others long before they finished their meal; younger appetites were heartier than his, and they hadn’t eaten anything but their own cooking—or army cooking—for the last two years or so. Heralds traveling to and from their assignments stayed in inns along the way, but those on circuit camped, sheltered in waystations, and tended to their own needs. That was so that no one could play host to a Herald and then try to exert influence over him, so that no one could claim a Herald was playing favorites in judgments.

  It was certainly a wise policy, even though it was a bit hard on Heralds riding circuit. However snug those waystations might be, they were still very spare of comforts, and the provisions stored in them made for simple and tediously similar meals. And if one wasn’t a particularly good cook—Well, after two years, the meals at the Collegium would start to assume the character of gourmet feasts.

  Pol returned to his quarters, to find one of his youngest students waiting for him, with a face so full of woe that he thought immediately that the youngster must have received bad news from home. Malken was barely nine years old, and very young to be Chosen, but he was by no means the youngest on record to have shown up at the Collegium with a Companion. Certainly the King’s pages were as young or younger, and with his cherubic features and ingenuous brown eyes the Queen had threatened to steal him for her service more than once.

  “Malken, what’s the matter?” he exclaimed, as he closed the door to his rooms behind him, indicating that he was not to be disturbed.

  Malken burst into tears and attached himself to Pol’s legs like an animate burr. Pol held and comforted him; as he patted the child’s back, he thought with a twinge of how often he had sat in this very fireside chair, comforting one
of his own children for some childish woe. . . .

  But this was evidently much more than a quarrel with a friend, or one of the highborn children bullying him. Malken was positively hysterical; it wasn’t a case of would not stop weeping, it was could not.

  While Malken sobbed, he racked his brain for some idea of what could have the boy in such a state. If there had been a tragedy in the family, the Dean of the Collegium would have been notified first, so that someone Malken trusted could be with him when he heard the bad news. There hadn’t been any sign of anything wrong when Malken had his Geography lesson with the first class this morning, and Malken wasn’t the sort to have had a major falling-out with a friend that would leave him so brokenhearted.

  Whatever it was, it was serious; the child wasn’t even listening to him. Finally, when nothing Pol could do would serve to comfort him and calm the little boy, he rang for a servant and sent him for a Healer.

  Not surprisingly, it was his own daughter Elenor who arrived at the door within a few moments, her pale-green cloak thrown hastily around her shoulders, little tendrils of her warm, brown hair escaping from the hood and dripping onto the floor.

  “Who is this?” she asked, as she knelt beside her father to take the child in her own arms. Her heart-shaped face was full of concern, her cheeks pink from the cold, raindrops sparkling on her eyelashes.

  “Malken. He’s about ten,” Pol said, as she bent over the sobbing child. He took advantage of her arrival to get a handkerchief to wipe the poor thing’s face and nose. Malken continued to howl, oblivious.

  “Malken,” she murmured in his ear, holding him close, “Malken, sweetling, it’s all right—”

  Malken clearly didn’t think it was all right, but Pol felt his own faint Gift of Empathy wake in answer to his daughter’s more powerful abilities, and recognized her soothing touch on the child’s mind.

  Slowly, carefully, she insinuated herself between Malken and his own hysteria; slowly the child’s sobs began to weaken, his howls to fade. It was a mercy that people were used to children in distress seeking Pol out, otherwise someone would surely have charged into the room by now, intent on beating whoever was frightening Malken into a bloody pulp.

  At last, at very long last, Malken hiccuped once, and lapsed into silence, collapsing with exhaustion into Elenor’s arms.

  Pol took the boy from her, picking him up to carry back to his room. Elenor stood up shakily, her face pale, pulling herself up with the aid of her father’s chair. Malken was clearly in no shape to be questioned about what had set him off.

  But maybe his Companion had picked out something from Malken’s mind that would explain all this.

  :Already noted, but you were a bit busy to talk to,: Satiran told him instantly, with none of his usual smugness at having anticipated something Pol wanted. :Hayka thinks his Gift decided to come on him all at once just after dinner. He says that Malken was reading, when something in the book triggered a vision of fire, of people burning to death by the thousands. Hayka is fairly shaken himself; all I can get out of him is that it seemed as if the entire world was going up in a storm of flame. And—:

  Satiran hesitated. When Satiran hesitated, Pol worried.

  :And?: he prodded. :Forewarned is forearmed; and what, Satiran?:

  :And somehow you were deeply in the middle of it. That was why he ran to you.:

  “Let’s get Malken to bed. Did you bring something to dose him with?” Pol asked his daughter, feeling more than a bit of concern for her as well. She was clearly troubled by the strength of Malken’s hysteria; had she gotten an inkling of Malken’s vision? He didn’t want her to worry. Eventually, he would have to tell Ilea, and that would be bad enough. “I think he ought to sleep through the night, after this.”

  “No, but I can put him to sleep and make him forget what set this off all by myself,” she told him, her pallor fading and her authority as a Healer reasserting itself. She gave him a look that told him she wouldn’t allow herself to be persuaded otherwise; the tendrils of curling, red-brown hair falling over one soft brown eye made her look absurdly like a stubborn little foal. “That’s much safer in a child this small.”

  She looked so much like Ilea in this mood that Pol couldn’t help but smile; he covered his smile lest she misinterpret it as condescension rather than pride, and led the way to the dormitory and the Trainees’ rooms.

  Down the long corridor and through a door at the end, then up a wooden staircase lit at intervals by lamps with the flames turned low, he led his daughter to the second floor and the beginning of the dormitory rooms for the Trainees. Each child had his own room; not large rooms, but each had his own to himself, with a door he could close and even lock on the rest of the world if he chose to. Malken’s room was on this floor; there were four more floors above this one, with the library at the top, and there were signs that the Collegium wing would have to be expanded again soon.

  That thought made Pol uneasy; it hadn’t occurred to him until now, but—

  But when we’re about to go to war, more Heralds are Chosen than usual.

  As if to be ready to replace the ones that would inevitably fall to the enemy. Especially when the enemy was Karse, whose Sun-priests hated Heralds and their Companions with a fury that defied rational explanation.

  He paused at Malken’s room, so denoted by the little plaque with his name on the door, and nodded at Elenor. His daughter opened the door for him, and followed him inside, lighting a candle at the fire, then turning down the bedcovers so her father could place the boy in his bed.

  Pol tucked him in, removing only his boots; he didn’t want to risk rousing him enough to start him on his hysterical weeping again. Elenor knelt beside the bed for a moment with one hand on Malken’s pale forehead. When she stood up again, the little boy sighed once, deeply, then curled over on his side, the very picture of natural slumber.

  They tiptoed out, closing the door behind them.

  Elenor waited until they were in the stairway to confront her father.

  “Satiran told you something, didn’t he?” she demanded from behind and above him on the stairway. “I saw your face—I know he did! What in Kernos’ name did he tell you? That child was terrified! What frightened him so?” In this temper, her changable eyes had gone to a stormy darker color, with flecks of green.

  “I’m not entirely certain,” he temporized. “He had a vision—”

  “A vision!” she replied, sounding more like her mother than he could have imagined. “I think that’s too mild a word for something that sends a child into screaming hysterics!”

  By this time they had reached the ground floor, and he turned to face her. She looked up at him with pursed lips; he looked down at her wearing his best card-playing face.

  Eventually she made a petulant little stamp of her foot. “I can see you’ve no intention of telling me anything more,” she said sullenly, sounding more now like herself, a fourteen-year-old who has been cheated of an adult confession.

  He smiled. “I’m glad you understand,” he replied mildly, as she glowered at him.

  “I don’t understand, and I don’t like it, but I also don’t have a choice, do I?” she grumbled, tucking her wayward hair back into the snood she wore to keep it out of the way.

  “No, you don’t,” he agreed, and reached out to take her stiff body in his arms for a good hug. As he’d expected, she thawed, and returned the embrace.

  “After all,” he murmured into her damply fragrant hair, “I am your father. I should be able to keep some secrets from you.”

  “Why?” she retorted, her good humor restored as she reluctantly pulled away from him to go back to her own quarters. “You’re only a mere man. Men can’t possibly keep secrets from women; we know what you’re going to do long before you do it.”

  “You are learning far too much from your mother,” he accused mockingly, then kissed her on the forehead. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Thank you for trusting me.” She gave him o
ne of her dazzling smiles, and turned to run silently down the corridor, pausing once to wave brightly before darting out the door into the rainy night.

  He returned to his room, dropping his cheerful facade, and sat down in his fireside chair, propping his head on one hand to stare into the flames.

  Flames. . . .

  What could such a vision mean?

  :I suppose it could have been a hallucination and not a vision after all,: Satiran offered tentatively.

  :But you don’t think so. And neither do I. A hallucination like that would have to have some physical cause, and if there’d been a physical cause, Elenor would have spotted it and Malken would be in the charge of a full Healer right now.:

  He felt Satiran’s reluctant sigh. :True. Which leaves—ForeSight. Hayka did say that the cause was his Gift coming on him all at once. Of all creatures, Hayka should be the one to really know what happened. Let me have a word with Jolene.: