“Clyton can’t take them,” Maia said. “He was shot, too; didn’t you notice that he’s walking on only three legs?”
Samina buried her face in her hands and moaned.
“Does he have to be the one to take them?” Maia asked. “Or will they be enough of a message if they just get there?”
“They’ll be enough by themselves, but how else can we get them there? Can you take them?”
Maia shook her head. “I know a faster way. Clyton,” she asked, “exactly where is this temple?”
“You can hear my Companion?” Samina asked in astonishment.
“Yes,” Maia said. “He says I’ve got Mindspeech.” A view of a road and the temple at the end filled her vision. She passed it on to the nearest group of crows. “Do you know this place?” she asked them. “Can you find it?”
About a dozen crows spiraled down out of the trees to perch in front of her, assuring her that they knew exactly where to go. “Take the arrows then,” she told them, “and make certain that nobody on the ground sees them. I recognized my brother, but I don’t know who his friends are or where they live. Fly safely.”
One of the crows grabbed the arrows, and they took off clustered together. Even knowing that the arrows were there, Maia couldn’t see them.
Maia didn’t know how many days passed before the crows returned with a healer. Clyton’s leg was obviously hurting, and Samina, despite Maia’s—and Dexter’s—best efforts, became feverish and delirious. Maia collected several bruises trying to care for her. She wondered, when she had a moment to think, if she would have done a better job if she actually knew anything about healing. “Just keep her alive till the Healer gets here,” she told herself. “That’s what matters.”
Finally she heard the chatter of crows escorting the healer. A woman in green robes arrived in the clearing riding double with another person dressed in white and riding a white horse, presumably another Herald and Companion.
The crows were all talking at once, telling her all about their adventure, but Maia was too tired to care. As soon as she finished telling the Healer what little she knew and what little she had done and explaining to the new Herald what she knew about the attack, she fell asleep and didn’t wake for days. By then the military units had rounded up her brother and his fellow bandits and taken them away for trial. The Healer explained that Maia would not be needed for the trial as she had not been present during the attack.
“I guess I’d sound pretty silly telling a judge that I saw the attack hours later through the eyes of a horse,” Maia told Samina later. Samina was recovering, but the Healer didn’t want her to move yet, so she encouraged Maia to sit and talk to her. Clyton was doing better also, but he still wasn’t up to galloping at top speed while carrying a rider, so they were still camping in the safety of Sorrows. It was a much more comfortable camp now; someone had brought three mules and a load of actual camping supplies, so they were no longer making do with what Maia had been able to scrounge from the Waystation.
Samina looked sharply at her. “You can see through Clyton’s eyes?”
“Only when he wants to show me something,” Maia clarified, “but when he does, I can see what he saw.”
“And you can communicate with the raccoon . . .”
“His name is Dexter,” Maia said.
“ . . . and the crows. Anything else?”
Maia shrugged. “I can understand pretty much anything that wants to talk to me. Why?”
Samina smiled. “It’s one of the Gifts. We Heralds call it Mindspeech. It appears that you have a strong aptitude for it.” She paused, and then asked, “Could you hear your brother?”
Maia shook her head. “Just animals. And Clyton. I didn’t even know that my brother wasn’t supporting us by selling the arrows I made, the way he told me. He was using them to rob people.” She frowned in thought. “Does that mean that my arrows aren’t good enough to sell?”
“I though they were very effective,” Samina said dryly. “They certainly made an impression on me.” Her face was straight, but Maia could tell that she was joking.
“Several impressions,” Maia agreed, keeping her face straight and as innocent as possible. “But I didn’t put the barbs on them,” she added quickly. “Did Clyton tell you that?”
“He did,” Samina reassured her. “He also said that you saved my life.”
“It was the least I could do, after having made the arrows that nearly killed you.” Maia shrugged off the praise and returned to her original subject. “I notice that you carry arrows. If my arrows are good enough, can the Heralds use a fletcher?”
“I’m sure we can find a place for you.” Samina smiled. “Are you saying that you want to go back to Haven with us?”
“Can Dexter and any of the crows who want to come with me?”
“I don’t see why not,” Samina said. “I’ve brought back stranger things from my travels. Are you really certain that you want to leave your home?”
Maia nodded. “I wasn’t raised alone in the forest; that happened after my parents died and my brother antagonized all our neighbors. I didn’t know why everyone suddenly hated him—and me—but now that I do, I think it will be better for everyone if I leave here.”
“Then you can come with us as soon as Clyton and I can travel,” Samina said.
The Healer had done some work on Clyton, and he was walking normally now. It looked as though the flesh Maia had accidentally gouged out of his leg was going to heal completely without so much as a scar.
The crows were still telling stories of their trip to the temple; they had been ever since their return. They appeared to regard it as a great adventure.
Samina smiled as she watched Maia listen to them. “What are they saying?” she asked.
“They’re telling stories,” Maia said. “It’s hard to sort out and put into words.”
“Did you know that there are two name for a flock of crows?” Samina asked.
“No,” Maia admitted. “Most of the villagers called them a nuisance, but I never thought of them that way.”
“They’re often called a ‘murder of crows,’ but yours saved my life, so that’s not right for them.” Samina grinned. “These are obviously the other kind: a ‘story-telling of crows’.”
“I do talk with them a lot,” Maia admitted, “and they certainly talk back.”
“You know,” Samina said. “I think you’re wasted as a fletcher—not that you aren’t good at it,” she added hastily, “but there are more good fletchers than there are people with Animal Mindspeech.”
“So you think I should do something else?” Maia asked uncertainly. “What?”
Samina smiled and took Maia’s hand. “There’s a Temple in Haven that would kill to have you—if all its priests weren’t such gentle and peaceful souls.”
“There’s a temple that would want me?” Maia said in astonishment. “What kind of temple is that?”
“The Temple of Thenoth, the Lord of the Beasts.”
:It does sound like your kind of place.: Dexter’s mental voice was encouraging. Maia started laughing.
“Yes,” she agreed, “that does sound like a place I could fit in.”
Waiting To Belong
by Kristin Schwengel
Kristin Schwengel’s work has appeared in two of the previous Valdemar short story anthologies, among others. She and her husband live near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and recently adopted a gray- and-black tabby kitten named (what else?) Gandalf. Kristin divides her time between an administrative job, a growing career as a massage therapist, and writing and other pastimes.
When the Companion had come to Breyburn, folk had gathered in the square, though no one had raised any summoning cry. Nearly the whole of the town was there to see who would be Chosen when the dazzling white horse trotted into the square, gleaming harness-bells jingling and dancing in the late afternoon light.
Not that anyone truly doubted for whom the Companion had come on Search. No one was surp
rised to see Teo standing to the front of the crowd, framed by his family, staring at the Companion with a dumbstruck, delirious smile. His joy shone from every fiber of his being, so strong Shia could have sworn that she felt it too, rippling through her in waves.
Shia had turned her gaze away at the last moment before the Companion brushed its (no, her) soft nose against Teo’s, incandescent blue eyes meeting guileless brown even as their minds spoke. To Shia, it had seemed too intimate a moment to be observed—never mind that the rest of the town was staring avidly. She could not watch it.
Afterward, there had been an evening of well-wishing, of jokes and congratulations, and the occasional hearty “We always knew you’d make a Herald someday! Surprised they waited till you reached fifteen winters to send a Companion out for you, lad!”
And then they had gone, Teo and his Companion, off to Haven and his new life with the Heralds. Shia had held a baffling empty ache deep in her heart, taking small breaths to control it as she (and the rest of the town) watched them canter off the next morning. Teo’s face was flushed with the excitement, his unruly hair bouncing in time with his Companion’s long strides. She had watched only until he was far enough down the Old Quarry Road that she wouldn’t be thought rude, then had fled to the stillness and sanctuary of her herb room.
It was there that Calli Stadres found her, her head bent over the table while she stared unseeing at the plants and herb mixtures before her, one foot and ankle twined anxiously around the leg of her tall stool.
“He looked back.”
Shia’s head jerked upright, and she stared at her visitor through the wispy blonde strands of hair that fell over her forehead. Not many years older than Shia, Calli was wife to one of the town’s wealthiest merchants and already had a young daughter toddling beside her, clinging to her mother’s skirts.
“His parents waved, as though he had turned to look for them, but he didn’t wave back. I don’t think he even saw them.”
Shia reached out to a pile of dried seed-pods from the edge of the table, trying to still the unexplainable trembling in her hand. Calli watched the younger girl work, savoring the quiet coolness of the room and the crisp herbal scents around them.
“Why could you not say something to him? He is still Teo, after all.”
Shia glanced over at Calli, then returned her attention to the dried seeds as she carefully separated them from their husks for storage. The silence between them drifted a little longer, then she shrugged.
“A Herald’s place is in Haven. A Herald belongs to Valdemar, to the Crown, to the people.” She hunched one shoulder, as if hiding behind it. “After my mother’s death, the town allowed me to take her place as herbalist. I belong in Breyburn.”
Calli frowned. “There is no law that says otherwise, yet I think you are wrong. Thirteen was too young for you to be tied to such responsibilities, no matter how much you wanted to earn your keep. Surely there has to be more for you.”
“It does no good to dwell on it,” Shia responded at last. “It is as it is. Here, rub these together until they crack open for me.” She held out a handful of the dried pods to Calli, who looked at them for a moment, then giggled like a much younger girl.
“You’re just trying to make me useful, aren’t you?”
Shia only smiled, her hand still outstretched.
Of course, Teo came back to Breyburn, but only briefly, not even every Midwinter over the several years of his training. When he did, his time was taken up with his family, with the townsfolk at large, with the town council, and with the other Herald or Heralds he was usually in company with. And, of course, his Companion.
He was never there just as Teo, not anymore. He was Teo the Herald trainee, Teo the journeyman- Herald, soon to be Teo the Herald. He even looked like someone else in the gray clothing, especially when he suddenly grew several inches from one summer to the next Midwinter.
Unsure of how to approach this new person who looked so different and yet should be so familiar, Shia chose to retreat, keeping to herself in the solitude that had been hers since her mother’s death barely two years before Teo’s Choosing. If she was there at all when Teo came back to the town, she stayed to the rear of the crowd of townsfolk, ducking her head so her hair fell over eyes. She never noticed the concerned blue gaze of Teo’s Companion following her, nor did she see Teo’s eyes wandering restlessly over the faces when all were gathered together.
“Shia! Sheeeee-aaah!” Up on the mountainside, far from the town walls, where the winds sighed and roared by turns in the deep firs, there was no way that Shia should have heard a child’s thin cry. But hear it she did, in her head as much as her ears, and with that impossible sound came another impossible thing—a bone-deep knowledge that something was very wrong in Breyburn. She grabbed the last of her herb packs (how was it they were full already? what had she been gathering while her mind had been wandering who knows where?) and sprinted to where she had tethered her shaggy mare, stowing the pack and freeing the horse almost in the same motion. Without thinking, she reached up and broke off a small branch of one of the overhanging firs, tucking it and its three cones between the straps of the secured packs. She pulled herself up into the saddle and kneed the dun into the fastest trot she could safely take on the uneven mountain paths, letting the mare choose her steps as the early spring mountain- fog started to coalesce around them.
The knot in the pit of her stomach took on more solidity as she approached the town, although the urgency faded. She reined in the mare while she was still hidden beyond the treeline, looking down on the cleared lands of the townsfolk, and her guts churned. Smoke coiled upward from somewhere near the center of town, dark and thick, and the smell of it as it drifted towards her was wrong, wet and musty. She could see broken staves of wood near the main gate, and a few of the town guard nervously standing at attention beside the gate. Whatever it was had come and gone again, leaving the town in uneasy quiet as the day slipped towards evening. She kicked the mare to a canter, angling from the forest to ride onto the Old Quarry Road far enough down that the edgy guardsmen would recognize her well in advance as she approached—or would at least know Mirri’s stocky body and rough coloring.
The relief on Guardsman Fellan’s face as she rode up would have been amusing, were it not for the worry and fear that haunted the corners of his eyes.
“Bandits,” he said, before she even pulled up the mare. “Surprised, we were, and they seemed to know where to strike hardest. They knew who to hit, more’n what the usual raiders we’ve seen would know. Cap’n was first, then Sergeant. The merchants, too, they attacked and robbed, and then they were gone, quick as they came.”
“Dead or injured?”
“Four, five dead maybe, dozen or more injured. M’lady Stadres has got ’em all down to the chapel—they fired the inn.”
Shia swallowed, her heart quailing at the thought of that many injuries. Her mother had only known the basics of herbcraft and had often scolded her daughter for being an indifferent student. Apprehension of the severity of wounds she might face filled her, and despair clawed at her, tightening her stomach and freezing her blood in her veins. When the guardsman looked up at her, question in his eyes, she gave herself a mental shake. Healer she might not be, but she was the closest thing to one that the town had. She would have to do.
She nodded at the guards and angled Mirri down to the square, to the house across from the town’s one inn. As she neared it, she could see that the smoke was still drifting from the inn in slow coils, now held lower to the ground by the weight of the late afternoon fog that had started to roll down from the mountaintop. The building wouldn’t be lost, though, she thought. The rainy season was only just over, and the timbers hadn’t yet dried out, so they had been slow to catch and even then had smoldered rather than burned outright. It looked as though the townsmen had been quick enough to set up a water chain from the cisterns, and as she rode past, she could hear voices from the side of the building, assessing the
damage.
She slowed Mirri as they approached the Stadres household. It was the only house in town large and elaborate enough to boast a chapel dedicated to Kernos, and the Stadres family were certainly the only ones wealthy enough to build one. Calli Stadres stood at the front door, her young daughter clutching her hand.
“I told you she would hear me!” Pira cried in triumph before her mother hushed her. Calli’s eyes met Shia’s in question, and Shia gave the tiniest of nods before dismounting. The impossibility of Shia hearing Pira’s voice was something that they would think about later—but Shia suspected that it would not be more than a few winters before Breyburn would have another white visitor.
“How many? How bad?” Shia started unloading her herb packs, glad that Calli had always been sensible. She was sure that most merchant’s wives Calli’s age would have been in hysterics, instead of calmly gathering the wounded into their own homes for care.
“Captain Nolan and two others were dead before the bandits left, but I think Sergeant Dara will be well soon enough. Several of the guardsmen can only have their pain eased, I think, but most of the others have lesser wounds. Twelve injured guardsmen, including the worst.”
Shia sucked in her breath. With three deaths, that was more than half of the town guard unable to act. No wonder those who remained were bewildered and uncertain. She handed two packs to Calli and swung the others over her shoulder, absently tucking the fir branch she had brought into the lamp bracket beside the door before she realized that she had harvested a silver pine, the tree of Kernos’ protection. She whispered a brief petition for the god’s hands to hold all those whose wounds she was about to tend, then followed Calli inside the house.
“And the others? The men at the gates said some of the merchants were attacked.” She reached out her hand to touch Calli’s arm as they hurried down the hall to the chapel. “Your husband? Is he—”
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