Choices

by Mercedes Lackey

  The dissonant fury jarred Kaysa’s ears. Lara’s patience had never sounded so frayed, even amid the frustrating difficulties imposed by her blindness. Did no one else recognize something amiss? Chilled by fear, Kaysa hastened ahead, while the ongoing crisis spun out of hand.

  The taint of dark magecraft that afflicted the Heralds and their Companions transferred through objects charged by contact with Tarron’s spilled blood. What else had Lark brought to Haven that had been on him during the assault?

  Kaysa gasped as the puzzle piece clicked into place.

  Too slow to push through the turmoil, she cried, “Stop! Where’s the Mage?”

  Suppose Lark had stepped in pooled blood during Tarron’s demise? His shoes were pulled off when he had been turned out! Everything made sense if a residual influence had poisoned the scrap iron forged into nails.

  Lark’s instincts always had reacted, first, even when the ill effects stifled his Mindspeech. His restlessness matched this Companion, today, who refused to stand fast to be shod. Kaysa risked a bruising collision and ran. “Get the Mage in here, now!”

  Terrified, Kaysa crashed into the bystanders. Heedless, she elbowed packed bodies aside. Underneath the Companion’s furious snorts and the rattle of terrified hooves, through the chink of the fateful loose shoe, she could hear: the ugly, skin-crawling note that was wrong, underlying the quarreling voices!

  She waited for nothing. Guided by the chiming bells on the reins, she crashed into the Companion’s warm hide. Whuffed air from flared nostrils fanned over her skin. Kaysa grabbed hold. Frantic hands wrapped in the bridle, she pleaded through tears to the Heralds, “For your life’s sake, stand back! Fetch the Mage!” Consumed by the urgency of her message, she shrugged off all efforts to drag her away. “Listen up! If that nail’s been tainted by the same spell that hurt Lark, you Heralds could be endangered!”

  “Goddess of the Four Winds!” swore the farrier, stunned. “You think an active curse stems from one of Lark’s discarded shoes?”

  “Pulled yesterday,” the apprentice lad exclaimed. “Of course! We tossed the used iron into the scrap bin.”

  “Which explains why those Change-Beasts kept tracking us,” Lara reasoned through her rattled shock.

  “Yes!” Kaysa stroked the Companion’s neck to calm her trembling. Hindsight also connected last evening’s inexplicable fist fight.

  “Fetch gloves,” she suggested to the Shin’a’in smith. “That nail must be drawn and safely wrapped for the Mages to study.” This pass, the dread sorcery’s origin would not elude them. Unlike the volatile saddlecloth, spell-marked steel would not burn to blank cinders.

  * * *

  • • •

  The dean’s study in the Collegium wore the scents of books and ink, and the fragrance of flowers eddied in from the garden past the open window. Kaysa perched in a cushioned chair, folded hands gripped in her lap.

  “Valdemar owes you a tremendous debt,” acknowledged the woman seated behind the broad desk. In the resonant voice of a portly frame, she continued, “Your unique perception enabled our Mages to thwart a wicked plot to subvert our Heralds. While I know you aspired to becoming Chosen, you understand the Companions always know best. They are a mystery gifted to the realm, and their vision is unsurpassed. Surely you realize, had you been a Herald, the malign sorcery’s influence would have destroyed you?”

  Kaysa sighed. “The thought occurred to me, yes. Lark probably knew I’d serve the realm best as I am.”

  Wood creaked as the dean resettled her bulk. “You’ve earned a place here for life but, I think, doing more of importance than stable chores.”

  Kaysa drew a quick breath to protest. She loved nothing better than tending Companions! But the dean’s firm counsel interrupted.

  “Hear me out, Kaysa. The Herald Trainees seated with you at mealtimes claim you’ve absorbed their discussions enough to argue a few fine points of the law. Did they tell you they must draw that knowledge from memory?”

  Kaysa blushed. Obviously, the Heralds executed the realm’s justice far and wide, in small towns and villages beyond access to the Collegium’s library. Apparently her inability to read a book posed a groundless impediment.

  “I know from the Master of Horse, and from the record of the entrenched dispute you once settled between angry neighbors in Beckley that you’ve a knack for exposing falsehoods. Suppose you studied with the Herald Trainees for employment? Many cases need a skilled advocate gifted with the art of compromise.”

  Kaysa stirred to a thrill of excitement. “One day I might ride alongside the Heralds?”

  “Sometimes.” The dean chuckled. “For difficult hearings and for specialized diplomacy, yes. While in Haven, you’d also have time to help with the Companions.”

  Kaysa’s face heated. “How foolish of me to have fretted for nothing.” The interview she had ducked out to avoid in fact might have determined her avocation much sooner.

  But the dean leaned forward in warm sympathy and squeezed her clenched fingers. “Perhaps, Kaysa. But some people prefer to decide for themselves. If more folk followed their hearts, as you have, they might discover fulfillment on their own.”

  So it came to pass that Kaysa made her livelihood in the royal court. While life did not offer her the grand role, or bestow the Choosing she dearly coveted, Bards sang of her courage, and great honor accompanied her many accomplishments as an arbitrator.

  History recorded that after Leareth was destroyed, no Mage ever subverted a Herald of Valdemar. Yet, to this day, the granddams of Ropewynd say different, and their tale, that one tried, tells the truth.

  Moving On

  Diana L. Paxson

  It was the morning after Midsummer, and the group of Trainees whom Deira had unexpectedly aided with a spell to protect Haven from Karsite magic had gathered at the rooms where she lived and did her weaving, still babbling with relief from the stress of the last few days.

  “Our magic with the yarn and the gods-eyes certainly did something—” said her daughter Selaine, setting a steaming teapot on the laden table. “When I walked down from the Healers’ Hall, I saw more smiles.”

  As Deira gazed at the young people, she found her own lips curving. “Beyond some cheerful decoration and healthy exercise?” she asked, filling cups and passing them along.

  “And a grand subject for my next song!” said fourteen-year-old Donni with a grin.

  “It was certainly the last thing I expected to be doing when we came here from Evenleigh,” Deira replied.

  “I don’t think any of us could have imagined our lives here,” said Garvin, an apprentice Healer a little older than the others. “But choices are like that. You think you know what you are choosing, but then life happens, and you move on—” He shrugged.

  “Some of us are Chosen instead,” murmured Lisandra. Rumor had it she would be changing her Trainee Grays to Herald’s Whites very soon.

  “But you accepted,” said Garvin, “because of other choices you had made before.”

  “How far back do you go to find out where it all began?” asked Donni.

  Deira sighed. How far would she, with twice as many years to remember, have to go to understand the choices that had brought her here?

  “For my mother and me,” said Selaine, “it began when Master Arbolan the Healer came to Evenleigh.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Summer was ending, and the last of the season’s heat lay heavy across the southeastern lands of Valdemar. Deira dipped water from the bowl to moisten the flax she was drawing from the cloud of fibers on the distaff, sending a welcome spatter of drops across her lap. The regular reach and twist of the fingers as she fed the fibers onto the wheel and the rhythmic tap of the foot that kept it spinning required a minimum of effort, but she could feel perspiration soaking the thin cloth of her shift. She glanced through the window,
open to catch whatever breeze might waft up from the river, but last night’s rain had saturated the earth without cooling the air.

  Beyond the green pastures she could see the blur of gray marking the village of Evenleigh’s new stone wall. In this weather, even the creatures that sometimes attacked it were sheltering in the shady forests of the Pelagir Hills. The enemies they faced now—molds that rotted wood and leather and fevers that laid men low—cared nothing for walls.

  The rug that was her current project hung half-woven on the standing loom. Praise from Herald Garaval, who had helped the village destroy the spider-monster that had attacked them the year before, had brought her orders from nobles in Haven. The money was welcome, but today was too hot to even think about working with wool. Might as well have used my own sweat, she thought ruefully, to sleek the flax down.

  The opening of the front door set the loose fibers on the distaff fluttering. Deira looked up as her daughter Selaine came into the big central room and set the empty egg basket down. The girl turned first to the cage where the dove whose broken leg she had splinted was recovering, checked it, then sank into the wicker chair by the empty hearth. Her cheeks were flushed with the heat, her fair hair darkened to old gold where it clung to her brow.

  Deira lifted her foot from the pedal and the wheel stuttered to a stop. In front of the window hung a pot filled with mint tea, its coarse earthenware surface beaded with droplets. She poured some into a mug and offered it to the girl. “Drink—it will revive you.”

  Selaine nodded. “I felt like a roast in the oven, penned ’tween those new walls.” Their cottage, with the big central room that held the looms and the loft where they slept, stood on a rise a little way outside of town, surrounded by fields. The old oak tree in the dooryard provided some welcome shade.

  “Three more children lie sick,” she went on, “and no—I didna go near!” she added before her mother could respond.

  “Nor will you!” Deira said sharply, the image of the bright-faced girl before her replaced by pictures of Selaine raving with fever, then lying stark and still.

  For a moment the girl looked rebellious. Then she shrugged. “Perhaps there’ll be no need. We’ve had no word from the Healers’ Temple in Freetown, but a wandering Healer is come. His name is Master Abolon, trained in Haven, they say!”

  Deira tensed at the worshipful tone. When she first realized that her daughter had the Fetching Gift, she had feared a Companion might one day show up at their door. But it was the Healers’ Collegium, not the Heralds’, that was most likely to take Selaine away from her. After they had defeated the spider-monster, her daughter had chosen to stay in Evenleigh and had informally apprenticed herself to Mistress Hanna, a stout widow famed as the best herbalist for miles around. What the old woman did not grow in her garden by the river, she gathered wild, and the girl had become her shadow. Was Selaine tempted now to change her mind?

  “I wonder if they know about this illness at the Collegium?” Deira strove for a neutral tone. It was an odd sort of fever, brought by a little family fleeing westward from the wars that had made a waste of Valdemar’s borderlands, in which a cough that might be a summer cold turned to a high fever and delirium.

  “They must!” Selaine said enthusiastically. “Master Abolon will know what’s to do.”

  “Indeed, and we will leave such matters to those who are trained to deal with them,” her mother replied.

  * * *

  • • •

  When next Selaine delivered eggs, Deira went with her. She said it was because she needed some new needles, but they both knew she meant to buy enough supplies to wait out the plague safe at home.

  At first the village looked as usual. The main road led past half-timbered houses to the market square, bordered by shops on two sides and by the smithy and the inn on the others. But a second glance showed her signs of trouble—trash lying in the street, a white-washed wall that had been abandoned half-done.

  Mistress Bernalise, who sold everything from cookpots and brooms to the ribbons and laces brought by wandering peddlers from Haven and places more distant still, was only too happy to bring them up to date on the news.

  “Have ye heard? Two more have died—” she announced with a kind of lugubrious cheer. “Marol’s middle girl and his old gran’fer as well. An’ now I hear Headman Bartom’s cook is ill.”

  “Not just a child’s disease, then,” Deira sighed. “What does this Master Abolon say?” She could feel Selaine tense, listening. The girl had ceased to pester her to talk to the Healer about letting her help, but every motion proclaimed her interest.

  “Well, ye can ask him yourself, Mistress—” Bernalise gestured across the square, “for doesn’t the man himself come to the inn for his noon meal each and every day?”

  Selaine pressed closer, and Deira sighed, this time with resignation. She wondered if her daughter’s ability to focus came from her father, the Herald Aldren, whom she had loved so long ago. It was said that Heralds defied all obstacles to achieve their goals.

  Tucking the purchases into a hemp bag, they headed for the market square. The headman was standing on the raised platform at its center, his red face running with perspiration. As they neared, Deira caught his words.

  “—’tis an epidemic, and we must fight it together! But gods be thanked for the chance that has brought us Master Abolon, a Healer trained at the Collegium in Haven itself, to guide us through this perilous time.”

  “Not chance—” said the Healer as he joined the Headman on the platform. “Chance it would be if I lived soft in Haven and simply happened to come this way. But I left the capital of a purpose seven years ago to ride the back roads, to serve folk who have never seen those who have such training as I was privileged to receive.”

  He must once have been a very good-looking man. The years had weathered his face, but his voice, gentle and low, would have gained him a fortune as a Bard. It had certainly convinced Selaine, who was gazing at him wide-eyed. His clothing spoke of past prosperity. Despite the heat, over his frayed linen shirt he wore a loose-sleeved robe of fine green wool, gone shiny in places with long wear. Its borders had been damasked with a garland of healing herbs that still bore remnants of tarnished gold. The man himself looked to be on the down-side of middle age, graying hair colored an unlikely rust color, as if he was trying to defy time as well as poverty.

  “Speak to us, Master!” cried the Headman. “Tell us what we must do!”

  “First, we must isolate the sufferers,” Abolon replied. “Build a shelter for the sick here in the square so the illness cannot jump from them to those who are still healthy. In this warm weather they will do better in the fresh air. I will show those who volunteer to nurse them how to protect themselves.”

  That makes sense, thought Deira. It hardly mattered whether he had rejected an easy life in Haven to serve the people or had been forced to flee to the countryside by some scandal. If Abolon had no miracle cure for the sick of Evenleigh, at least he brought a soothing voice and another pair of hands to help the herbmistress nurse those who were ill.

  “Is there no cure?” came an anxious voice from the crowd.

  “I know of one herb that may help,” the Healer replied. “It grows only in the Forest of Sorrows. We call it All-heal. Added to a brew of common healing herbs, it gives them power over even the strongest diseases, if activated by the proper spell. I have a small bag, and if you will gather the other herbs to make up the medicine, we will brew the potion. In Haven there is only one apothecary who stocks it. It is hard to come by, and his price is high, so we will hope we can stop the plague with what I have.”

  “Bring the herbs to me at the Weaver’s cottage on the hill,” Deira spoke up. “I will scrub out the great cauldrons I use to dye wool, and my daughter and I can brew up as much as you need.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “You of
fered to boil the herbs to keep me away from town!”

  Deira sighed. Since the beginning of her daughter’s adolescence, she had become all too familiar with that accusing tone. The sun made a golden aureole of Selaine’s hair, but her face had darkened like a cloudy sky the closer they got to home. Now the thatched roof of their cottage showed above the apple trees at the top of the hill, and Deira braced herself for the storm.

  “You’ll keep me stirring the pot till everyone is cured or dead, and I’ll never get to find out how Master Abolon drives the disease demons away!”

  Deira opened her mouth, then shut it. Selaine had read her motives exactly. There was no point in trying to reply. The girl had clearly been working up to this since they left the village, and her mother could not have gotten a word in if she had tried.

  “When will ye stop trying to protect me! I’m a woman grown!” Selaine whirled, blocking the path, and Deira realized they stood eye-to-eye.

  “You are seventeen.” Deira said flatly.

  Lively as a young filly, with legs still a little long for her torso and breasts barely grown, Selaine promised to achieve her father’s height and lean build. Not like me, thought Deira, considering her generous bosom and equally generous hips. Weaving kept her upper body strong, but the days when she could walk all day and dance all night were long past. It might be wise, she thought as they started up the path to the cottage, to get some exercise that would improve my wind.

  “You were no older when you had t’ flee Westerbridge, pregnant with me!” retorted Selaine.

  “Aye, and I had to grow up too fast. I wanted something better for you.”

  “Heralds get Chosen younger still—”

  “And then spend five years training at the Collegium.”

  “Then let me train!” her daughter exclaimed. “Master Abolon is from Haven! When will I have such an opportunity again?”