Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Rolan had given every evidence of understanding what the Guard had said to him. For that matter, he seemed to react to everything Talia said in the same way. He was the one who found the Waystations every night; he was the one who plainly guarded her. He was the one who knew the way back to the Collegium—the Guard had said as much.

  It followed that he’d really had a purpose in being where she had encountered him—-the Guard had said he’d been out a long time—and that purpose involved her. There was no getting around it. The question was—why?

  Was it—dared she think—he might have been looking for someone to be tested as a Herald-candidate?

  She had no notion of how Heralds actually became Heralds—except that they had to undergo strenuous training at the Collegium. Only Vanyel’s tale had mentioned early on that he nearly hadn’t had the courage to take up the task—the tale had made no mention of how he’d been picked. And all she knew of Heralds from Hold gossip was that they were supposedly monsters of moral depravity; wanton and loose, indulging in sensuous, luxurious, orgiastic behavior. She had suspected most of this was spite and sheer envy, especially since Heralds gave short shrift to Hold ideas of a woman’s inferiority and proper place in life, and they answered to no authority but that of the Monarch and each other. That there were women in the Guard had come as a surprise, but since her first book had been the quest of Sun and Shadow, Talia had long been aware that there were women as Heralds who held equal position with the men. That freedom was one of the reasons she’d longed to become one. Did she dare to dream that might happen now?

  Just when Talia thought she might be getting used to the surprises of her journey, she was taken unawares again. The guard at Kettlesmith was not only another woman, but was one bearing obvious battlescars, with a peg of wood replacing one leg from the knee down. She told Talia, quite offhandedly, that she’d lost the rest of the leg to a wound she’d taken in the last war. The idea of a woman being in battle was so foreign to Talia’s experience that she was in a half daze all through her meal and until she reached the outskirts of town afterward. It was only meeting with the Herald that shocked her out of it.

  The Road led down into a wooded valley, still and cool. The trees were mostly pines, and Rolan’s hooves crushed the needles that had collected on the Road’s surface so that they traveled in a cloud of crisp scent. They were well inside the wood itself and out of sight of habitation within a few moments. Finally, in the heart of the wood the Road they’d been on met with another—there was a crossroads there. Talia didn’t even notice that there was someone approaching on the other road under the shadows of the trees until an exclamation of startlement jarred her out of her trance.

  She looked up, starting out of her daze. Facing her she saw, not more than four or five paces away and his astonishment written plain on his face, a white-clad man on a cloud-white mare. It was a Herald, a real Herald, mounted on his Companion.

  Talia bit her lip, suddenly feeling a chill of fear. Even after all she’d been told, she still wasn’t entirely sure she was doing right. Now she was for it; there was no disguising that Rolan was a Companion and that she wasn’t any kind of a Herald. If she was to find herself in trouble, this encounter would bring it. She was conscious of an odd little disappointment, though, under all her apprehension; somehow it didn’t seem quite proper for a Herald to be so—homely.

  For the young man now approaching was just that. Carrying himself with all the authority of his office, poised, collected, yes. Obviously sure of himself, and every inch the Herald, but still—almost ugly. He certainly was nothing like the beautiful Vanyel or the angelic Sunsinger of the tales.

  His voice made up for it, though.

  “By the Hand of the Lady! Rolan, as sure as I stand here!” The words were melodious and unexpectedly deep. “By all the gods, you’ve finally Chosen!”

  “Th-they told me to take him back to the Collegium, m’lord,” Talia stuttered with nervousness, keeping her eyes down as was proper for a girl speaking to a man of rank, and waiting for the axe to fall. “I didn’t know what else to do, and they all seemed so sure—”

  “Whoa! You’re doing the right thing, exactly right,” he cut her torrent of explanation short. “You mean you don’t know? No, of course you don’t, or you wouldn’t be acting like I’d caught you with your hand in my beltpouch.”

  Talia looked up for a second, bewildered by his words. He didn’t speak anything like the Heralds in her tales, either. He had almost sounded like Andrean for a moment.

  She longed to see if his eyes looked like Andrean’s, too, but glanced hastily back down to the pommel when he tried to meet her gaze.

  He chuckled, and out of the corner of her eye she could see that his expression was of gentle good humor. “It’s quite all right. You’re doing exactly as you should. Keep straight on the road you’re on, and you’ll be at the capital before dinner; anyone there can direct you to the Collegium. Hellfire, Rolan knows the way better than anyone else—you won’t get lost. I wish I could tell you what’s going on, but it’s against the rules. You have to be told the whole of it at the Collegium—otherwise you’d be getting all kinds of stories about what all this means, and you’d be taking days to get straightened out afterward.”

  “But—” She was longing for someone, anyone, to explain this whole mess to her. It was like being caught in some kind of enormous game, only she was the only one that didn’t know the rules and was stumbling from square to square without knowing why or where she was going. If anyone knew the whole truth, it would obviously be a Herald. And the kindness in his eyes made her long to throw the whole tangle in his hands. How anyone so homely could put her in mind of Andrean, she had no idea—but he did, and she found herself drawn to him as she’d not been to any male since her brother’s death.

  “No buts! You’ll find out everything you need to know at the Collegium! Off with you!” With that, he rode close enough to reach out and smack Rolan’s rump heartily, surprising the Companion enough that he jumped and broke into a canter, leaving the Herald far behind. Talia was so busy regaining her balance that she didn’t notice the Herald and his own Companion galloping off into the trees, on a course that would eventually bring them back onto the road considerably ahead of Talia.

  By the time she’d gotten over her startlement, the road was becoming crowded with other wayfarers, both going in her direction and in the opposite; other riders, walkers, carts drawn by various beasts, pack animals. But although she craned her neck in every direction, there was no sign of other Heralds.

  The crowd on the road was not quite like any other crowd Talia had ever found herself among. For one thing, it was loud. Holderfolk kept their voices restrained at all times; even the Harvest Fair gatherings at the height of bidding excitement hardly generated more than a buzz. For another, all these people wore their emotions, their personalities, plain to be seen on their faces. The faces of well-schooled Holderfolk were closed, giving nothing away, and unlikely to display anything that would reveal their true feelings to one of their fellow creatures.

  The other travelers took little special notice of her for the most part. Rolan threaded his way among them with delicate precision, making far better time than most of their fellow wayfarers, although keeping a good pace didn’t really seem to be a prime consideration for most of them. Talia was so involved in people-watching that she forgot to watch for the city.

  Then they topped a rise, and there it was.

  It was so enormous that Talia froze in fright at the sight of it Once again it was just as well that it was Rolan who plainly had charge of their journeying, or Talia would have turned him back along the way they’d come, bolting back to the familiarity of the Hold.

  It sat in a river valley below them, and the view was excellent from the hilltop they’d just mounted. From here it could be seen that it had originally been a walled city, much as the Hold villages were but on a much bigger scale. With the passage of time and increased security,
however, the city had been allowed to spread beyond the walls, spilling over them like water from the basin of a fountain. And like water, the spillage had followed certain channels; in this case, the roads.

  Within the walls, houses crowded together so thickly that all Talia could see were roofs. Within the first wall there seemed to be a second wall, enclosing a few large buildings and a great deal of green, open space with trees in it. Outside the walls were more buildings, from single-storied huts to massive windowless places that could have held every structure at Sensholding within their walls. These clustered all around the first wall, then trailed out in long arms that followed the paths of the roads and the river. Talia’s eyes were drawn irresistibly back to that inner space of green and trees and a stone edifice that towered over all the rest. This—this surely was the Palace and the Collegium—but before Talia could be certain that this was indeed the case, Rolan’s steady pace had brought them down past the point where the view was so clear.

  As they came closer to the area where the city dwellings began, Talia found herself assaulted on all sides by sound and noise. Hawkers were everywhere, crying their wares; shopkeepers had people stationed by the doors, screaming at the tops of their lungs, extolling the virtues of the goods within the shops. Children played noisily in and around the crowd, often skirting perilously close to the hooves of the horses, donkeys, and oxen that crowded the street. Neighbors screeched gossip to each other over the noise of the crowd; from the vicinity of inns came voices loud in argument or song. Talia’s head reeled, her ears rang, and her fear grew.

  And the smells! She was assaulted by odor as she was by sound. Meat cooking, bread baking, smoke, dung, spices, sweat of man and beast, hot metal, spilled beer—her poor, country-bred nose was as overwhelmed as her ears.

  They came to the gate in the first wall; there were guards there, but they didn’t hinder her passage though they looked at her with expressions she couldn’t quite read; curiosity, and something else. The wall they passed under frightened her even more; it was as tall as the rooftop of the Temple back home. She felt terribly small and insignificant, and the weight of it crushed her spirit entirely.

  The noise and tumult, if anything, was worse inside. Here the houses were multi-storied, and crowded so closely together that their eaves touched. Everything began to blur into a confused muddle of sound, sight, and scent. Talia huddled in Rolan’s saddle, unaware that she was drawing pitying looks from the passersby, with her eyes so wide with fear in her pinched, white face. It was just as well that Rolan knew exactly where to go, for she was so frightened that she would never have been able to ask directions even of a child.

  It seemed an age before Rolan paused before a gate in the second, inner wall. The gate was small, only large enough to admit a single rider, and closed, and the guard here looked her over curiously. Unlike the lighter uniform of the others, this man was clad in midnight blue with silver trimmings. He opened the gate and came forward as soon as he saw them, and Rolan waited for his approach. He smiled encouragingly at Talia, then drew close enough to read the little marks on Rolan’s saddle, and gave an exclamation of glee.

  “Rolan!” he cried with delight, seeming to forget momentarily about Talia’s existence. “Finally! We were beginning to think you’d never find someone! There was even a bet on that you’d jumped the Border! The Collegium’s been in a fine pother since you left—”

  He finally seemed to see Talia, nerves strung bowstring-taut and white-faced.

  “Your ordeal is almost over, childing,” he said with real sympathy even as she shrank away from him. “Come down now, and I’ll see that you get to where you need to go.”

  He aided her down out of the saddle as if she’d been a princess; no sooner had she set her feet on the ground than another uniformed person came to lead Rolan away. Talia watched them vanish with an aching heart, wondering if she’d ever see him again. She wished with sudden violence that she’d followed her first impulse and ridden him far away. Whatever was to happen to her? How could she have dreamed that she’d be of any significance to folk who lived in a place like this?

  The guard led her into the gray stone, multi-storied building at the end of the path they walked. It was totally unlike any structure Talia was familiar with. Her heart was in her shoes as they entered a pair of massive, brass-inlaid wooden doors. Never had she seen anything to equal the work in those doors, and that was just the beginning of the wonders. She was feeling worse by the minute as she took in the grandness of her surroundings. The furnishings alone in just one of the many rooms they passed would have exceeded the combined wealth of the entire Holding. Not even the Temple High Sanctuary was this impressive. She would have bolted given a moment to herself, except that after the first few minutes she was well and truly lost. At last he brought her to a room much smaller than many of the ones they’d passed; about the size of a large pantry, though no less rich than the rest of the building.

  “Someone will be with you in just a few moments, youngling,” he said kindly, relieving her of her townchits, “You’re among friends here, never doubt it. We’ve been waiting for you, you know! You and Rolan were a welcome sight to these eyes.” When she didn’t respond, he patted her carefully on the head. “Don’t worry, no one is going to harm you—why, I have little ones nearly your age myself! Make yourself comfortable while I let the proper people know you’re here.”

  Make herself comfortable? How, in a room like this?

  She finally chose a leather-padded chair as the one she was least likely to damage and sat on it gingerly. In the silence of the unoccupied room, she began to lose her fear, but her discomfort grew as the fear faded. Surrounded by all this luxury, she was acutely aware of the fact that she was sticky, damp with nervousness, smelt faintly of horse, and was dressed in the kind of fabrics they probably made grain bags out of here. She was also painfully aware that she was only thirteen years old. When she’d been with Rolan, none of that had seemed to matter, but now—oh, now she was all too aware of her shortcomings. How had she ever dared to dream she might become a Herald? Never—never—only people born and bred to surroundings like these could aspire to such a position. The Guard had probably gone for some underservant to give her a bit of silver and send her on her way—if she was lucky, it would be someone she could talk into giving her a job.

  A miniature whirlwind burst into the room, interrupting her thought.

  “Oh!” said the girl, a little of about seven with chestnut hair, blue eyes, and a rather disagreeable expression on an otherwise pretty face, “What are you doing here?”

  For the first time since she’d seen the city, Talia felt back on secure ground. Littles were one thing she could handle!

  “I’m waiting, like I was told,” she replied.

  “Aren’t you going to kneel?” the child asked imperiously.

  Talia hid a smile. It was amazing how so simple a thing as having to deal with an obviously spoiled child made her feel so very much more confident.

  “Kneel?” she asked with mock-astonishment. “Why should I kneel?”

  The child was becoming red-faced with temper. “You’re in the Presence of the Heir to the Throne!” she replied haughtily, the capital letters audible, her nose in the air and her expression disdainful.

  “Really? Where?” Talia looked around her with an innocent face that covered inner mischief newly aroused by the child’s pretensions. This little was about to receive the treatment her bad manners deserved. If she was the Heir—well, someone was obviously not doing his job in training her. And if she wasn’t, she deserved it for lying. “I don’t see anyone like that.”

  “Me! Me!” the girl shouted, stamping her foot, frustrated and angry. “I’m the Heir!”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Talia said, thoroughly enjoying herself. “You’re nothing but a little having a temper tantrum; one that fibs a lot. I’ve read all about the Heirs. The Heir is always polite and gracious, and treats the lowest scullery maid like she
was the Queen’s own self. You act like you’d treat the Queen like the lowest scullery maid. You can’t possibly be the Heir. Maybe I should call a guard and tell him there’s an imposter in here.”

  The child’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly with frustration and rage.

  “Maybe you’re a fish,” Talia added ingenuously, “You certainly look like one.”

  The girl shrieked in anger, and drew back one balled-up fist.

  “I wouldn’t,” Talia said warningly, “I hit back.”

  The child’s eyes widened in surprise, then her face grew even redder with rage. “I—how—oh!”

  “You said that already.”

  At that the girl gave an ear-piercing squeal, pushed over a small table that stood nearby, and ran out of the room before it hit the ground. Talia had expected her to do something of the kind and had sprung to the table’s rescue, catching it before it was damaged and righting it with a sigh of exasperation.

  A dry chuckle came from behind Talia, who turned to see a curtain pushed aside, and a tall, handsome woman in Herald’s Whites step into the room. Though she wore a long skirt with the thigh-length tunic instead of breeches, and the materials were clearly fine velvet and silk, she was no different in appearance from other Heralds Talia had seen or heard about. Her face was triangular and strong rather than pretty; her hair was bound in a knot at the nape of her neck and was the same golden color as raival leaves in the fall. She had very penetrating, intelligent blue eyes the same intense sapphire blue as a Companion’s.

  Talia started to scramble to her feet, but the woman gestured that she should remain seated.

  “Stay where you are, youngling,” she said, as Talia resumed her place and continued to watch her shyly. “You’ve had a long and tiring ride—you deserve to sit on something that isn’t moving for a while!”