:So which are you, Alberich?: she asked, as he fought to stay awake, feeling the presence of the stallion (his Companion?) like a steady shoulder to lean against, deep inside his soul. :Brigand, or bad weather?:
:Neither... I hope....?: he replied, absently, clinging to consciousness as she'd asked.
:Good. I'd hate to think of a Companion Choosing a brigand to be a Herald,: she said, with her mouth twitching a little, as if she was holding back a grin, :And a thunderstorm in human guise would make uncomfortable company.:
:Choosing?: he asked. :What—what do you mean?:
:I mean that you're a Herald, my friend,: she told him. :Somehow your Companion managed to insinuate himself across the Border to get you, too. That's how Heralds of Valdemar are made; Companions Choose them—: She looked up and away from him, and relief and satisfaction spread over her face at whatever it was she saw. :—and the rest of it can wait. Aren's brought the Healer we sent him for, when Taver told us you were coming. Go ahead and let go, we'll take over from here. If a Healer can't save you with three Heralds to support him, then he's not worth the robe he wears.:
He took her at her word, and let the darkness take him. But her last words followed him down into the shadows, and instead of bringing the fear they should have given him, they brought him comfort, and a peace he never expected.
:It's a hell of a greeting, Herald Alberich, and a hell of a way to get here—but welcome to Valdemar, brother. Welcome....:
Part One
Exile's Choice
1
HE was not dead. That much, at least, he was certain of.
At times, between the long moments when he was unaware of anything, he hurt quite enough to be in Hell, but Hell was cold and dark, and he wasn't cold. And the few times he was able to open his eyes, the room he was in was bathed in sunlight.
He couldn't be in Heaven either; if he was in Heaven, he wouldn't hurt. That was one thing that everyone agreed on; in Heaven was an end to all pain and sorrow. Pain he had in plenty, and as for sorrow—well, he'd consider sorrow when the pain ended.
Therefore, he must be alive.
The rest of what was going on around him—well. It was a mix of what he thought was hallucination, and what surely must be madness. Now, that fit with Hell, except that there weren't any demons tormenting him, only his own flesh.
Around him, voices muttered in a tongue he did not understand, but inside his head, another voice murmured, imparting to him the sense of what he heard. And that was where the madness came in. That voice, low and strong and uncompromisingly masculine, informed him that he, Alberich, sworn to the service of Karse and Vkandis Sunlord, the One God—
—was now a Herald of Valdemar. And the voice belonged to his Companion, one Kantor.
Impossible.
Not at all, the voice insisted. It began to wear at his stubborn refusal; he could feel his objection thinning. It clearly was not impossible because it had happened. He might not like it, but it was not impossible.
He slept, woke hurting, was murmured over and moved, fed and cleaned, the pain ebbed, and he slept again. From time to time the bandages on his face were taken off and he could open his eyes for a little. He was in was a cheerful room that seemed to be tiled, and the bed he was on was soft and comfortable—which was good, because his face and arms were in agony, his lungs stabbed with every breath he took, and if he didn't have broken collarbones, they were at least cracked. When he could see, there were generally two or three green-clad people in the room with him, and he seemed to recall that outside of Karse, there were Healers who generally wore green. So apparently—if he wasn't delirious—he was being tended to, outside of Karse, by foreign Healers. So whatever had happened, he wasn't in Heaven, or Hell, or prison—which had been a third option, after all. Over and over he slept to wake in pain, was given something that stopped the pain, and slept again; there was no way to tell how much time had passed, and no way to sort what he knew had happened from what the voice was telling him.
Except that, bit by bit, the words being spoken over his head became more intelligible, as if the language was slowly seeping into his fever-ravaged brain. This tongue—this arcane language—was like nothing he could have imagined. The syntax was all wrong, for one thing; these people spoke—backward, sort of. Not that he was any kind of a linguist, but for a long time he was confused as much by the order of the words as the words themselves....
He must be in Valdemar. The language was as twisted about as the Demon-Riders and their Hellhorses, with the verbs coming in the middle instead of properly at the end. How could you tell what a sentence was truly about if you stuck the verb in the middle? The meaning could be entirely reversed by what came afterward!
How was he learning these things? What demonic magic was putting them inside his brain? Or was this all a fever dream, and was he lying in the embers of the chicken-shed, dying of his burns, conjuring all of this up? He had saved the village with his witch-power, he had been condemned to burn by a Voice, he had been imprisoned and his prison set afire. But after that?
Madness, illusion, hallucination, delirium.
Surely.
But the voice in his head told him otherwise, and as the moments of his lucidity came more and more often, it began to tell him things he could verify for himself—little things, but none of which he could have hallucinated for himself. That, for instance, the reason why he was not able to open his eyes very often was because they had been bandaged shut—at first, the skin of his face hurt so much he hadn't actually felt the bandages. And the skin of his hands was in such agony that he tried not to move them to touch anything, much less his face, which he wouldn't have wanted to touch anyway, given how much it hurt. The voice warned him when he was to be fed, and what they were going to give him—all soup, of course, and juices, and very, very often. The voice warned him when his bandages were to be changed—long before one of those Healer-people even got within hearing distance. And the voice told him about a great many other things.
:There is a large crow outside your window, Chosen,: it would say. :It is about to sound an alert, so do not be startled and jump, or you will hurt.: And sure enough, a crow would burst out with a raucous shout, but since he'd been warned, he was able to keep still. Or— :The Healers have come with a new potion for you, to soothe your burns. They think this will hurt so much that they intend to give you an especially strong dose of pain-medicine.: And indeed, he would then hear footsteps, feel himself tilted up, and he would drink what was put to his lips quickly, because the last time they had come up with a new potion for his burns, the pain had been excruciating.
He had always been a great believer in empirical evidence, and here it was. Slowly, and with great reluctance, he began to sort through his confused memories. With even greater reluctance, he had to accept that what he thought was madness and delirium was nothing of the sort.
So during one of his moments of relative lucidity, he steeled himself, and confronted the voice.
Relative was the operative term—he felt that he should be angry, embittered, but there were drugs interfering with those emotions, keeping him oddly detached. Perhaps that was just as well. He needed to think clearly, unemotionally, and this was as close to doing so as he was likely to manage. He coughed, hoping to clear his throat, but the voice in his head forestalled his attempt to speak aloud.
:Don't, Chosen. You don't need to actually say anything. Just think it.:
Think it. Well, he talked to himself in his mind all the time; this shouldn't be any different.
:It isn't, except that when you get an answer, you needn't be concerned that madness runs in your bloodline. Not that it's likely that it was true madness that struck your father, all things considered. If it were my case to judge, I would have looked very carefully at his wife's family, and considered all the reasons they might have had for saying he was mad....:
He'd have winced, if he hadn't known how much wincing would hurt. How had this voice—
:Kantor, Alberich. My name is Kantor.:
Kantor, then. How had this being known about his past?
:You've been quite generous in sharing your memories.: A hint of dry irony. :Actually, you've been shoving them down my throat. I know that your mother was not married, that your father was a prominent man in your village and she anything but. I know that he was her only lover and that at some point when you were very young, he was sent away with your priests, supposedly mad.: Alberich would have been flushing, had his face not been so painful. He was embarrassed—but embarrassed because he had been essentially blurting out every detail of his past life to a stranger, like the sort of drunk who would sit down next to you and begin telling you everything you didn't want to know. The very idea made him a little sick. :Not that I mind, truly,: the voice continued earnestly. :It's only that Herald and Companion usually grow to know each other in a more leisurely manner—and as yet, you know very little of me.:
Another suppressed wince. He didn't really want to know anything about this—Companion—did he? No. He didn't. This was a place full of witches—
—of which you might be one—
—and demons, and Vkandis only knew what other sorts of horrible creatures—wasn't it? Surely it was—
:Nonsense. You may be many things, Alberich, but a coward isn't one of them. I've asked the Healers to halve your pain-medicines, so that we can have this little discussion without the drugs interfering. There are several truths that you will have to face today, and the first of them is that virtually everything you think you know about Valdemar is wrong.:
Actually, the unsteady realization of that had been trickling down into his mind for the past—however long it had been. It had probably started when he'd fallen into the arms of those white-clad riders just over the Border. If they'd been half as evil as the Priests painted them, he'd have been roasting in chains right now, with demons nibbling at his soul.
:Excellent. That's another thing that you aren't—stupid. Those weren't just any Heralds, by the way. One was the King's Own Herald Talamir, and the other was the Lord Marshal's Herald, Joyeaus. We stumbled onto the end of a rather sensitive diplomatic mission, it seems.: There was a hint of a chuckle, and Alberich got the distinct impression that they hadn't merely "stumbled" into those particular Heralds—that Kantor had aimed himself quite deliberately in their direction. :Well, no harm done.:
He gathered his wits, and thought a question. :I do not suppose that the rank of our rescuers has anything to do with the speed with which I was taken to further help?:
The impression of a knowing smile. :Not entirely. All Heralds are considered highly important. Even the newly Chosen.:
He let that settle into his mind. :Even Karsites?:
:Well, since we've never had a Karsite Herald before, there's no basis for comparison.: There was a definite undertone there. Alberich decided that he was getting rapidly better at reading around what Kantor was actually telling him to what Kantor would rather just—imply. The undertone was that not everyone would have been as... open to the possibility of an ally out of Karse... as Heralds Talamir and Joyeaus.
:Excellent again. I do believe we are rather well-matched, Chosen. I would not go so far as to say that other Heralds would have run you through on sight—but we have been fighting a rather nasty undeclared war with you for some time, and there are some hard feelings on our side of the Border as well as yours, even among Heralds.: A sense of pondering followed that statement. :In truth, especially among Heralds, since your lot enjoys killing us so very much. Now no Herald would ever slaughter someone who had been Chosen out-of-hand—but there are many, many of them who are not going to welcome you as a long-lost sibling.:
Just his good fortune that he'd never led troops against anything other than bandits, then. At least no one would be holding a personal grudge against him.
He licked lips that were dry and cracked, and stared into the darkness behind his bandages. Inexorably, it was creeping up on him, acceptance that he could never go home again.
He was in the enemy's land, he was exiled inexorably from his own. He had witch-powers, and they were not the curse he'd been taught that they were. And one of the Hellhorses—which were not hellish at all, apparently—had selected him to become one of the Demon-Riders.
:Please, Alberich. Heralds, not Demon-Riders. And as for my being hellish—: a pregnant pause, :—well, although the people of Valdemar would say that we Companions are the sweetest, most marvelous of creatures, I suspect that the several of your men who got in my way would agree that I am "hellish." Assuming any of them survived the experience.:
Oh.
On the other hand, if one of them had been that Voice—
:He was,: came the reply, with a certain grim glee. :Though I am not certain that anyone like that Voice of yours—someone who goes about blithely burning people alive—has any right to make any judgments about who is "hellish " and who isn't.:
Ah....
:The fact that you have never personally fought against us will be useful towards having you accepted,: Kantor agreed. :And there is at least one thing I can promise you. We will never, ever, under any circumstances, ask or require you to do anything against your conscience with regard to your homeland. I shan't promise we won't ask you to act against those in power there—:
Just at the moment, he'd rather like to have the skinny or fat necks of some of those in power between his hands.
:Well put.: Kantor seemed satisfied with his answer. :Now, the Healers will have my tail for a banner if I don't let them drug you again, so I'll ask you to mull this discussion over while you drowse, and we'll have another little talk in a bit.:
He couldn't have objected if he'd wanted to, and he didn't want to, because the pain was getting unbearable and he heard the welcome footsteps of someone bringing him relief. After a quick, nasty-tasting draught, he was drifting again, cast loose from consciousness and what he'd always thought of as "The Truth"…. a state in which it was easier to contemplate a new set of truths—or at least, truisms—in place of the old.
«»
He dreamed.
He sat in the midst of a vast expanse of flowering meadow, flooded in a haze of light that made it difficult to see for any great distance. He was warm, comfortable, without pain of any kind, and—completely alone. He rose, and started to walk, wading knee-deep through wildflowers and herbs that gave off a hundred luscious scents as he brushed them aside. No matter how far he walked, however, the scene never changed, and he never found a path. The only living things were the plants; there were not even insects or birds. He felt no hunger, no thirst, no weariness; this fit every description of Paradise that he'd ever heard—except that there was no one in this Paradise but himself.
As beautiful and peaceful as this place was—he was trapped here. And he came to realize, as he walked on in the thick golden light, that the peace came at the price of being unable to escape, and completely alone. Not Paradise. Not even close.
That was the end of the dream. As abruptly as it had begun, it was over, and Alberich dropped out of the meadow and into the usual fever dreams that he had fought since being brought here.
From fever dream, he moved into welcome dreamlessness, and from then into the pain that always woke him when his medicines wore off. But it was not as bad as it had been, and he knew that the drugs being given him were not as strong as they'd been at first. Someone gave him a different-tasting drink, then, and he drowsed for a bit.
Sometime later, he woke to the sound of someone—no, two people—walking into his room.
"Is he awake?" asked a voice that was strange to him.
"He should be. I gave him a draught that should—well—sober him up completely," replied one that was more familiar—one of the Healers who spent a great deal of Alberich's waking time with him. There was a touch on his chest, where there were no bandages other than the ones holding his cracked ribs in place. "Sir, I am going to take off the bandages
on your eyes, and leave them off. The skin there is healed enough that you needn't have them on anymore."
"I understand," he said, stumbling over the foreign words. The Healer moved him as gently as could be, propped him up with cushions, and took off the bandages. Alberich blinked, and squinted in the sunlight, taking his first proper look at the room he'd been in for—well, he didn't know how long.
And now that he was thinking clearly, the very first thing he felt was a smoldering resentment.
A shaggy-haired man in stained and well-worn green robes was coiling up bandages at the foot of the bed, but Alberich had very little interest in him, or in the room itself at the moment. It was the other occupant of the room, the one sitting right beside him, that captured his attention.
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