He jumped, stifling an undignified squeak; he opened his eyes involuntarily. Who could be quoting from the Writ of Vkandis, and with such a terrible accent?
For a moment he did not recognize the woman who stood just in front of him, smiling slightly; she was dressed in a leather tunic and breeches like Kerowyn wore, though not so tight, and of white leather rather than brown.
A mature woman, rather than a girl, he guessed she was somewhere around thirty years old. She wasn't very tall; in fact, she would probably come up to his chin at best; her abundant and curly chestnut hair had just a few strands of silver in it, and her eyes were somewhere between green and brown in color. She gave an oddly contradictory impression of both fragility and strength.
Then his mind cleared, and his memory returned; he had been fooled by her clothing. He had never seen this particular Herald in anything other than formal Court costume before. Talia—the Queen's Own Herald.
Granted, she was a Sun-priest, but how had she learned the Writ? Why had she bothered? There was no real need for her to have done so; the office was only honorary.
"Thought I wouldn't take my office as Priest of Vkandis seriously, did you?" she said, with a smile that was full of mischief. "Maybe Solaris only meant the title to be honorary, but it seemed to me I ought to give the honor its due respect, and learn something about the one I was supposed to be representing. "
"Oh," he said, feeling very stupid and slow-witted. But then he realized that she was speaking in his tongue, and as bad as her accent was, the words soaked into him like rain into dry ground. He wanted to hear more; he needed to hear more.
"I thought that particular quote seemed awfully apt, given how you looked when I came up," she continued. "Not at all happy, actually. Of course, it could just be indigestion—"
She cocked her head to the side, as if inviting his confidences. He hesitated. She seemed friendly enough, but how much difficulty could he get himself into by talking to her?
On the other hand, she's not only a Herald, she's one of the Kin of Vkandis. If she did hurt one of the Kin, wouldn't the Sunlord do something about that?
She waited a moment more, then her smile widened a trifle. She had wonderful, kind eyes. "Or perhaps it's a peculiar kind of indigestion," she suggested impishly. "You've swallowed a great huge lump of Valdemar, and it isn't going down easily."
He had to laugh at that, it was so unexpected, and so vivid an image. "I suppose that's as appropriate an explanation as any," he replied, relaxing marginally. He had longed for someone he could talk to—and here was someone offering herself, someone it might even be safe to unburden himself to. What did he know about this woman? She was some kind of special advisor to the Queen—Solaris had spent an awful lot of time in her company—but there was something more, something important.
Hansa trusted her. That was it; he had the memory now. The Firecat had definitely trusted her; it was Hansa who had suggested she be made an honorary Priestess, if what Ulrich had told him was true.
She nodded at him in a friendly manner, and she did not seem inclined to move off despite his hesitation. Interestingly, she also made no attempt to intrude on him by sitting down on his bench uninvited. "I felt the same way when I first came here," she told him, as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "I was from a place so unlike this that it might as well have been on the other side of the world. You may find this difficult to believe, but my people kept their children very isolated from anything outside their farms. I had no idea what Heralds or Companions really were, other than the few things I'd been able to pick up from a bit of reading. I thought when Rolan Chose me that I had simply found a lost Companion. I thought I was supposed to bring him back to his owners, like returning a strayed horse!"
He had to laugh at that one with her—at least he knew a little more than she had! Rubrik had described the business of being "Chosen" by a Companion, that it was rather like being picked out for a Firecat's particular attentions. Hard to believe that anyone in Valdemar could have been unaware of a Companion's real nature.
On the other hand, it was easy enough to control a child, as she had pointed out. But being Chosen was supposed to be rather dramatic—he could well imagine someone trying to deny such a selection, for being Chosen would definitely put an end to any other plans one had for one's life, but Talia must have been unique in her ignorance of what being Chosen meant.
"Seriously, though, I was as out-of-place here as you are feeling now; I think you must have gone through Holderkin lands to get here—well, that's where I'm from." She smiled as he nodded, very cautiously. "They swear they escaped from Karse, but I'd be more willing to believe that your people threw them out; there can't be a more intransigent group of stoneheads in all the world. Personally, I think they're more trouble to deal with than they're worth."
"I don't know one way or the other," he confessed. "I never studied them, so I couldn't venture an opinion. But I can see how you would be feeling very—ah—foreign, when you arrived here. It was obviously very different here than among your own people. You probably were as foreign to Haven as I am." There. That was diplomatic enough.
She studied her fingertips, then looked back up at him. "I've heard you haven't been able to make any friends here, though, and that's where our circumstances differ. Of course, you are laboring under a double handicap," she pointed out. "You are with the envoy, which makes you dangerous to know, and you are from our former enemy, from a Priesthood known to be able to call up very powerful magic forces, which makes you personally rather dangerous to know. There's a Shin'a'in saying, 'It is wise to be remote in the presence of one who conjures demons.' Hard to make friends when people you meet are afraid you're going to turn them into broiled cutlets if you get annoyed with them."
"Ah—interesting," he replied, to buy himself time. It had not occurred to him that he might be frightening away would-be acquaintances—he never considered himself to be any threat to anyone. "I never thought of that."
"Yes, well, our younglings can be a rather timid and conservative lot," she said casually. "At least the children of the courtiers can. At the moment, I don't know of anyone in the younger set who would deliberately be rude or hostile to you. On the other hand, they've had a rather unsettled time of it; that can make even the boldest youngling into a mouse. Most of the youngsters here have lost at least one family member to the conflicts with Ancar, and there are a few who went from being fifth—or sixth-born to being second or third heir to their parents' holdings within the space of a few weeks. Many of them don't even have parents anymore; they're under the guardianship of older siblings. They don't like to think of any of that; to escape from their memories they tend to concentrate on some fairly shallow interests. The trouble is, no one has put you into the set that's actually doing something with their time—mostly because they are as busy as you."
That shocked him out of his own depression entirely. How many of the Valdemar elite had died in this war? Had Karse suffered as much at the hands of Ancar? Surely not, at least, not at first. Perhaps once the alliance had been made public—
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said at last, hoping his tone conveyed the fact that he really was sorry. "I don't believe we had nearly that much trouble with him."
"No, you didn't, not at first," Talia agreed. She ran her hand through her hair in what looked to be a gesture of habit. "For one thing, he really didn't want Karse all that badly, and for another, he was under the rather mistaken impression for some time that Solaris was male." She shrugged, and spread her open hands. "Once he learned she was female, it was only a matter of time before he included her in his vendetta against women. We guessed that was why Solaris sent messengers to Alberich, looking for a truce."
Then she smiled again. "But this gloomy talk is not why I stopped here! I saw you looking unhappy, and I hoped I could cheer you up. I don't think war-talk is going to achieve that, do you?"
"Probably not," he agreed.
"I d
id want you to know that once people realize that you aren't going to call up demons to avenge imaginary slights, they'll probably be more friendly," she continued. "I think I can count on at least a few of them being curious enough to start asking you questions. You certainly are not the most exotic creature gracing our Court, or even the most formidable—they'll get over their nerves soon enough."
He thought of the gryphons and found himself chuckling. "At least I walk on two legs," he offered. "And I am afraid that my ability at magic is very overrated. Not only can I not conjure a demon—even if Solaris hadn't forbidden the practice—but I can't even light a fire. Candles, yes; fires, no. My master Ulrich is a mage, but he didn't choose me for my magical abilities, he chose me for my scholastic bent. Your people are safe around me."
He meant it as a joke, but she took the joke a step further. "I wouldn't go so far as to say that," she replied, and if he thought he'd imagined a sly twinkle in her eye, he knew now it wasn't imagination. "You'd be a very handsome young man if you just didn't look as if you were about to deliver a sermon on Moral Life at any moment. If you smiled more often, I wouldn't wager on any of our young women being safe around you!"
Belatedly he remembered that if she knew enough to quote the Writ correctly, she also knew that Priests of Vkandis took no vows of celibacy and only a modified vow of chastity. Which meant she knew that he was as free to pay court to young women as anyone here. He guessed she was encouraging him to do just that, and blushed.
Still, he found her very easy to talk to, and more so with every moment. She invited confidences and made it easy to give them to her—a lot like his own mother, in fact. Mother used to adopt every stray that happened by the inn, from motherless horseboys to kittens. Talia must be like my mother—that's why she stopped when she thought I looked unhappy.
She chuckled at his flush and his slow smile. "I hope you don't mind my teasing," she said, then added wryly, "we aren't as far apart in age as you might think. It wasn't all that long ago that I was your age, and if I wasn't happily wedded and very much in love with Dirk—" She laughed and wrinkled her nose at him. "Well, consider my reaction representative of what the young women of the Court are probably thinking about you."
His cheeks heated, and he blinked. Her reaction? She considered him attractive? No female, girl or woman, had ever told him that!
She shook her head. "Listen to me—'if I was your age'—I sound like I think I'm an old crone! My, motherhood certainly has taken the ginger out of me!"
He had to laugh at that. "My mother says the same thing," he told her. "She swears that we each added five years to her age with every prank we pulled!"
"Some days I would agree with her," Talia replied, and sighed. "I don't remember littles being this much trouble to my parents! You have brothers and sisters?"
"One brother and several sisters," he told her, then found himself talking about his family while she simply stood there and listened to him with no evidence of boredom. She even asked him questions that proved she had really been listening, and not just pretending to pay attention.
He progressed from telling her about his family, to finally confessing his own depression and loneliness. It seemed natural, after the way she listened to him about everything else. After all, if Hansa trusted her, why shouldn't he?
"I don't even know where they took Trenor," he sighed, after talking for what seemed to be the better part of a mark. "He's Karsite, too, after all... and horses have always been as much my friends as people. I'd love to go riding, but I don't know where I would be allowed to go, even if I could find him, and I don't know what people would think if I asked for the stables." He shrugged. "They might think I was some kind of spy, looking for a way off the grounds to pass messages on, when all I want to do is ride my horse."
She brightened at that. "Havens, at least that is one thing I can help you with," she told him. "I certainly know where the stables are, and there are riding paths all through Companion's Field; there's no reason why you can't ride your gelding in there. Plenty of people ride their Companions on the paths. I can't imagine why anyone would forbid you riding Trenor in there. Would you like me to show you where the stables are right now, and get you acquainted with the stable-master? Once he knows who you are, he can have Trenor set up for a daily ride for you, if you'd like."
He stared at her for a moment; this was the last thing he had expected, and the one thing that would help! He had a little trouble replying, until he got his wits back about him. "Thank you!" he exclaimed. "Oh, that is exactly what I do want! Thank you so much!"
But she waved away his thanks. "Not to worry, Karal. I'm glad that there is at least one remedy I can give you for your homesickness that will work right now. Time, I fear, is the only other remedy." She laughed at his grimace. "I know, I know, the one thing a young man hates to hear is that the only cure for anything is time! It can't be helped, though; it's a cliche precisely because it's so often true. When problems are big, it's usually because they're swallowing up everything else you would be thinking about. When you have some time, new things come up, and make the old problems seem smaller when you look back at them. So let some time pass, do a few things you really enjoy, and let your mind rest."
He stood up quickly as she gestured for him to follow her, and she led him off at a brisk pace, pointing out exactly where they were and what places they were passing. "Here's the rose garden, the maze is just through there; if you look through the rose trees you can just see the end of the Courtier's Wing of the Palace. That's where your suite is, though most Courtiers don't live here, they have their own manors outside the walls—" That helped him orient himself, and he began to suspect that Alberich had led him in circles that first day, when he had taken Karal to the library. Perhaps it had not been deliberate; perhaps it was simply in the man's cautious nature to attempt to confuse. Perhaps there had been work going on that required they make some elaborate detours. But from the outside, at least, the Palace and the buildings around it were laid out in a logical fashion. He knew that the library was on the first floor of the wing that contained most of the other rooms used for "official" purposes, and that wing lay directly across from his, according to Talia.
But she was pointing out other buildings now, buildings that were separate from the Palace. "That's Healer's Collegium, and that's Bardic—look, there are the stables, you can see them from here, just on the other side of those trees."
But it was not the stables that caught his attention, but the huge wooded field to their right. It seemed to be full of horses.
Then he realized why his mind had phrased it that way, for the "horses" were all white. There wasn't another color of four-legged beast to be seen. Which meant, surely—
Talia saw where he was looking; she squinted against the sun in that direction. "That's Companion's Field. Do you want to go look over the fence for a moment?"
As well ask him if he wanted to fly! Of course he did—and at the same time, the idea terrified him. Companions! The beautiful creatures that Rubrik had so eloquently praised, and the Hellhorses of Karsite stories. His head knew that they were not the monsters from his childhood, but his stomach lurched at the idea of so many of them concentrated here. Still, he nodded numbly.
She must have guessed something of his thoughts from his expression, or lack of it. "You do realize that they aren't demons, don't you?" she asked, a little nervously. "Your escort surely explained what Heralds and Companions really are—didn't he?"
I must look as tense as a cocked crossbow. "Yes," he told her, "Our escort and my mentor had a number of conversations about the Companions. I think Ulrich plans to come out here one day when he isn't busy chasing diplomatic rabbits down holes." He moved closer to the fence, until at last he was leaning right up against it, staring at the beautiful creatures in their Field.
Not demons, he reminded himself; orthodox theology held that demons could be as beautiful as they pleased, but he still did not have to remind himself too f
orcefully. Now that he was here, watching them, his stomach settled again, deciding that maybe his head was right after all. There was something about the Companions that was so completely innocent that the idea of their being demons was absurd.
Not horses, either. He could see how they would excite lust in the heart of any horsebreeder, though. If only one could achieve lines like that with horses! They were easily the most elegant creatures he had ever seen; Rubrik's Companion was no isolated case. Well, rumor said that the Shin'a'in had bred horses to equal Companions, but who knew? Rumor also had it that the Shin'a'in rode naked and painted themselves blue, and he rather doubted either was true.
For one thing, riding naked is damned uncomfortable. You can get yourself such a set of blisters if you have a saddle, and such a rash if you don't....
"Well," he said at last, shaking himself out of the reverie the field full of Companions induced in him. "Your time is precious, even if I'm at leisure at the moment. And I am selfishly devouring it. So, if you can spare me a few moments more to take me to the stables—"
"I can spare you as much time as you need," Talia said firmly. "Come on, and I'll introduce you to the stablemaster."
Talia was no out-of-shape courtier; she set out again at a stiff walk, and he was glad he'd been working out with Kerowyn. The stable was huge, which was only to be expected; their luck was in, though, for Trenor was in the third stall from the door, and whickered as soon as he caught Karal's scent.
Karal let himself into the gelding's stall, while Talia went looking for the stablemaster. Trenor was overjoyed to see him and whuffled his hair and chest with such enthusiasm that he left damps spots all over Karal's clothing. When Karal looked him over carefully, he saw no signs of neglect, much less any of ill-use. That eased most of his worries; these Valdemarans were taking very good care of his "baby."
The stablemaster arrived while Karal was examining Trenor's feet and hocks. He was clearly pleased by the way Karal carefully examined his gelding, rather than being offended at the implication that the stable staff had been neglecting the horse.
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