Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  "I hope so," he sighed. "I really hope so."

  Unexpectedly, Rolan took a pace forward, and briefly touched Lan's leg with his nose. :It is hard, having to prove yourself over and over, I know,: the Companion said sympathetically. :Please remember, when this happens so often you are sick of it—you will never have to prove yourself to us. Come to the Grove or the stables, and you will be surrounded by no one but friends.:

  Lan looked down into Rolan's eyes, a much deeper sapphire than Kalira's sky-blue, and was moved for a moment almost to tears by the Companion's extraordinary promise. "Thank you," he said softly aloud, "I will."

  He hadn't noticed another person had entered the Grove until a severe-looking, raven-haired man actually walked up and placed his hand on Rolan's shoulder. "Let's hope Rolan never has to make good on that promise," the Herald said, his lips slowly curving into a smile. "If I have my way about it, he never will." He held out his hand to Lan, who accepted it; the Herald's grip was firm without being intimidating. "I'm Jedin, and I'm pleased to meet you in person, Lavan."

  It broke on Lan at that moment that the man who was shaking his hand was the King's Own Herald—the third most important person in the entire Kingdom! No wonder he looked as if that severe expression was habitual. "I—the—the honor is mine, sir," he stammered out.

  Jedin's smile widened. "Not that much of an honor, I assure you. Plenty of people will tell you that they'd much prefer to see rather less of me than more. Did you realize that along with one rare Gift, you have a second?"

  Lan shook his head, unable to think of anything that would pass for a Gift.

  "You have the ability to inspire Companions to not only trust you, but to leap to your defense without ever actually meeting you themselves." Jedin raised one eyebrow. "I wish I knew why, but there you have it."

  Kalira looked innocent; Rolan enigmatic. Lan could only shrug helplessly. "I don't know, sir," he said, as honestly as he could. "It doesn't make any sense to me."

  "Hmm." There was a look in Jedin's eyes that made Lan want to squirm, a look that suggested that even though Lan didn't know any reason why the Companions should offer their friendship and defense, Jedin could think of one or two.

  "Well, you'll have some learning to do before we find out, anyway," Jedin said after a pause. "And we two have some exercising to do, if we aren't to get fat and ugly." He slapped Rolan on the shoulder, and the Companion neighed laughter.

  :Too late,: Rolan taunted, as Jedin put both hands on Rolan's back and vaulted into place without having to use anything to help him. :You're already ugly.:

  Without waiting to hear Jedin's reply, the Companion cantered off under the trees.

  "Were we supposed to hear that?" Lan asked aloud, a little aghast.

  :We aren't horses, but we aren't some sort of heavenly creatures either, my love,: Kalira told him, moving out of the Grove in a slightly different direction. :We're a lot like our Heralds.:

  It seemed that every passing candlemark brought another surprise or revelation; a breaking of one assumption, the bending of another. He wondered if he'd ever get used to it. Or would things settle down as he began to learn what life as a Herald would really be like, past the tales and the blaze of silver-and-white uniforms, the dazzle of Companions?

  :You aren't the only case of bad timing right now,: Kalira went on as they came out of the trees and within sight of the stables. :Just the more serious of the two. Lada is in foal, and had to go after her Chosen with less than two moons to go. Poor things! Lada is probably going to drop tonight, and Wrenlet hasn't been here more than a fortnight! They're both going to have a bad night, I think. The stable has fireplaces, but it's drafty, and Lada's a bit on the small side. They'll be up all night at the least.:

  "Is Lada's Chosen going to wait out the night with her?" he asked, all sympathy, for he had once taken foal-watch on one of his ponies.

  :Oh, yes; how could she not?:

  "That's a good point." He remembered how he'd felt about it, nervous, anxious, excited, and afraid—and that had just been a pony! He couldn't imagine how wrought up he'd be if it was Kalira who was going to drop a foal! He'd be worse than any anxious father in a joke!

  :Well, you won't have to worry about that with me; I never saw a stallion worth going through that for,: Kalira said lightly, easing the sudden surge of anxiety the thought provoked. :Now if you were a stallion, I might consider it, but not for anyone else in the herd.:

  He blushed, pleased and embarrassed, but not sure why. "Not even Rolan?" he ventured.

  :Not even Rolan,: she replied firmly. He felt absurdly pleased by that, though he had no idea why he should be, and he held that feeling close inside to keep him warm as he walked through the chilling wind back to the Collegium.

  TWELVE

  LAN passed an old account book back to his teacher, who waved it at the class and addressed them all. "Now, presented with this set of accounts and the story I've told you, what sort of judgment would you make? All of the clues you need are there."

  This was Herald Artero's class, one called "Field Investigations." Other than the ability to read and write, this class had no special requirements, but it was one that every Trainee had to take. Here the students were presented with stories and sometimes evidence connected with cases that other Heralds had dealt with while on their circuits, and asked for their own conclusions. As often as not, a Herald on circuit would spend a great deal of his or her time being investigator, jury, and judge; even if a local judge had already made a decision, any case could be appealed to a Herald. The easy cases were those whose intricacies could be solved by application of the famous Truth Spell to one or more of the plaintiffs or defendants. This class did not concern those.

  This class was about cases where evidence had to speak for itself because either some of the witnesses were dead or fled, or it was something where there were no witnesses at all. Mostly the cases were trivial enough, a dispute over a boundary, or ownership of land or property. Sometimes, though, a life could hang in the balance. And sometimes it wasn't life, but honor—which some would hold more precious than their lives.

  This time the question concerned a curious case. A merchant had died, and his grown son had accused his stepmother of appropriating money that, according to the accounts, should have been there in his cash boxes. The Truth Spell had revealed that the stepmother was not guilty of helping herself to the money stowed in the cash boxes, but where had the money gone? Suspicion was rife in the village by the time the Herald arrived. Although people had refrained from making actual accusations, all the tension had poisoned relationships throughout the area.

  The Trainees knew all of this, and that a solution to the puzzle had been found. Their teacher had given them a great deal of background, and the last bit of physical evidence: the account books.

  The account books were passed from hand to hand, and each of the four students had a chance to examine them carefully. Lan had noted something awry, and he wondered if any of the others had.

  "I checked the addition, and he hadn't made any mistakes there," said Tuck, scratching his head. "That was the first thing that I thought of, that'd he'd just been bad at arithmetic."

  "Anyone else?" Artero was physically very like an older version of Tyron, which had rather put Lan off at first, but his personality could not possibly have been more different. Artero never sneered, never was anything other than intense and earnest. When he was excited about what he was teaching, his eyes positively glowed. "Lavan, you took a long time over those pages. Did you see anything in them to give you a clue?"

  Lan hesitated a moment, then reminded himself that the case was long over, and presumably had been solved correctly. Nothing he said would make any trouble for anyone now. "The addition was right—it was the numbers that were wrong," he said at last. "No one dealing in small items like spices ever makes a bargain that ends in round numbers like that. And I think that some of those debits might have been too low, but I don't know enough about
foodstuffs to tell for sure." The merchant in question had trafficked in spices and dried or preserved fruits; not exactly Lan's area of expertise. But he did recall vividly going with his mother to the market as a small child, and her spirited bargaining over every clipped copper coin.

  "Were the numbers altered in any way?" ventured another Trainee, a girl named Mona. "Could someone besides the widow have taken money? Or did someone alter the books to make trouble for the widow?"

  "No, to all three questions—and I have a set of altered books to show you some of the common ways in which documents can be changed, and how you can tell, but we'll get to that in a moment." Artero smiled at Lan encouragingly. "Now I'll draw on our newest student's experiences with merchants and traders, and ask Lavan if he can think of a possible scenerio that would suit the evidence."

  Lan thought very hard, and something else popped up in his memory. The widow, who had been as sharp as she was pretty, was a merchant herself, crafting jewelry in silver and gems, and as such, had been meticulous in making certain that she was not wedding into a failing business. It had taken her elderly suitor a long time to persuade her that her own earnings would not be used to support his trade. In fact, the match was as much a business transaction as a marriage, as was often the case among tradesmen and merchants. Surely she would have checked the books before signing the marriage contract!

  On the other hand—much to the son's anger—the spice merchant had been totally besotted with his much younger bride. He had been courting her for three years, and had brought her to the marriage after many gifts, assidious attention, and many sincere love letters. They hadn't been married more than a couple of months when the old man died. The son had even accused the widow of murdering his father for the inheritance, until it transpired that the old man's will made him the heir to the lion's share of the ready cash, and his wife the heir to the house and goods. Neither house nor goods would have been of any use at all to the son.

  "The dead man probably had two sets of books, this one on paper and one either hidden, or in his head," Lan said at last. "The books we looked at were created to make his business look a lot more prosperous than it really was, so the girl he was courting would marry him. So the money wasn't missing, it was never there in the first place."

  The other Trainees looked at him with surprise and some skepticism, but Artero slowly nodded, his smile broadening. "And why didn't our widow notice this in the first place?" he asked.

  "Because she's a jeweler; they always deal in round numbers, and the finished piece is always worth a whole lot more than the components." Now that he knew he was right, Lan was a great deal more certain of his answers. "It's like a piece of tapestry. The colored thread is worth next to nothing compared to the finished piece. What you're paying for is the talent and ability of the artist who made it." A speculation occurred to him, and he went ahead and voiced it. "She worked by herself, so her income was pretty irregular, I bet—nothing until she finished a commission, then a lump sum. She would have been wanting a husband with a steady income, and she wouldn't have known what to look out for in his books, because they were nothing like hers. I bet all she did was check out the addition to make sure he wasn't a shoddy accountant."

  Artero slowly stood up and bowed to Lan, who flushed with momentary pride. "Very, very good, Lavan. That is exactly what happened; it took the Herald in question a lot more time to ferret the answers out, but that is what finally came to light when he backtracked the suppliers and compared their accounts with the old man's. So the widow was exonerated, and the son had to go home disappointed in his inheritance, but at least certain that he was not cheated out of it. There was even a relatively happy ending; the village settled down, and everyone made up their differences." He turned to the other members of the class. "Now you see why I say it is as important to know about the lives of those who come to us for a judgment as it is to know the bare facts of the case."

  He pulled a ledger out of his bookcase and laid it open in front of them with a smile. "Now, here is an artificial set of account pages that have been altered. We've got a sample of every sort of alteration we've ever seen in here. I'll show you where and how they were altered."

  Lan leaned over the pages with as much eagerness as the rest; he had always known that figures and handwriting could be changed or forged, but he had never seen any examples. And some were truly ingenious; Artero made it clear that they would be spending a great deal of time on these examples, and Lan was not at all averse to that. There was enough there to occupy him for the next couple of moons, not just the fortnight that Artero promised.

  For the first time, classes were teaching him something interesting, not all his classes, of course, and he wasn't doing any better than average in most of them, but at least they weren't an ordeal anymore. When he had problems, if the Herald in charge of the class didn't help him, one of the other Trainees would, often volunteering to help him before he asked for it. He hadn't understood that until Tuck explained it to him; they weren't in competition for the best place and the teacher's accolades, they were supposed to cooperate. They got better marks for cooperating. In fact, in some classes, no one moved up until they could all move up together.

  "We've got to work together; there just aren't enough of us to take care of all the problems," Tuck had said earnestly. "You can't hold back something that another Herald needs to know just to make yourself look good—that only makes all the Heralds look bad. People have to know that one Herald is going to be able to do just as good a job as another, or they won't trust us."

  This was one of those classes in which all the participants moved up as a group, and Lan loved it. He learned such fascinating things in it, not only from Herald Artero, but from the other Trainees.

  When the class was over, Tuck intercepted him on the way to the kitchen; he was one of the servers at lunch, and servers got to eat early. "Are you spending Midwinter with your family?" Tuck asked. "Or were you going to be here?"

  Lan already knew the answer to that question, and he had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, he really hadn't been looking forward to spending the holiday with his family; the times that they had come to visit had been very awkward and uncomfortable. None of them had known how to treat him; it almost seemed as if they were afraid of him at times. On the other hand, when the message had come that they were going to be hosting so many relatives that they wanted him only to come for Midwinter Feast, so they could put his granny up in his old room, he'd been rather unhappy about it. He didn't much relish the idea of languishing around the empty Collegium for a fortnight with nothing to do and no company.

  "Mother said that they've got a mob of relations coming, and so I said I'd stay here, and just go into town for the Feast," he said, but could not manage to stifle a little sigh.

  But Tuck's reaction was a surprise. "Fantastic!" he enthused. "You can come home with me! My folks asked if you would; they have a farm outside the City; you can stay with us and Kalira can take you in for the family feast in style, fancy tack, bridle bells, and all!" He faltered for a moment at the blank look on Lan's face. "If you want—that is—"

  "That would be terrific!" Lan replied, shaking off his surprise and gratifying his friend with his own enthusiasm for the plan. Tuck's parents had come in to see their son twice as often as his own, and he'd been invited along for a dinner at one of the taverns a time or two. He liked them, and apparently, they liked him as well.

  "It's a done deal, then!" Tuck slapped Lan on the back and sent him on his way. "I'll send a note to tell them you're coming!"

  The Midwinter holiday was only a few days away, and now that he had something to look forward to, Lan was a good deal happier about that than he had been. He hurried off to the kitchen with a smile on his face. He was smiling a lot more these days than he had since he had arrived in Haven!

  The Trainees took many of the chores of the Collegium in turn, depending on the abilities of the Trainee in question. All of them had to le
arn things like camp cooking, mending, and leatherwork; out on circuit they might be away from a Resupply Station for weeks, and they weren't permitted to take hospitality from anyone on their circuit except the occasional Healer's House or Temple. But there was also no point in forcing their fellow Trainees to live with poorly-sewn uniforms, or indifferent food either. Those who were no good at mending or cooking therefore got the cleaning chores and other things, like waiting on tables.

  Lan was actually rather good at waiting on tables; unlike some, he'd gotten his full growth already, so he wasn't suffering from adolescent clumsiness. He erred on the side of caution, preferring to make more trips with less food, rather than load himself down and risk disaster. As a consequence, he generally got the chore two meals out of every three, and the only one that was a burden was breakfast. Having to get up, get ready, get his room tidied and get down to the kitchen a full hour before everyone else was pretty horrid.

  On the other hand, since servers did eat first, he and the others did get their pick of the piping-hot bread, the occasional pastries, and other breakfast dishes on offer that morning. So that part wasn't at all horrid.

  The luncheon fare at the Merchant's School had never varied; rather stringy beef cooked until it fell apart in an attempt to tenderize it, bread and butter, mashed turnips, gravy, peas, and small ale. No two luncheons were the same here at the Collegium, and Lan sniffed experimentally as he neared the kitchen.

  Fried fish! Lan loved the way the Collegium cook made it; battered, and fried in a cauldron of hot oil. "Lake Evendim style," they called it, and there were usually other things fried up in the same oil to go with it. Squares of dough fried until they puffed up like pillows that were sugared or eaten with honey, balls of a different sort of batter, spiced and savory, strips of vegetables battered like the fish. He'd never had any of those things before he arrived here, and he was already addicted. It was a good thing that Cook didn't have a "fry-day" often, or he would have wound up as fat as one of those dough pillows in no time.