Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar (Mercedes Lackey) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Moving Targets

An Unexpected Guest

The Power of Three

What Fire Is

Dreams of Mountain Clover

The Cheat

A Dream Deferred

The Sword Dancer

Broken Bones

Live On

Passage at Arms

Heart, Home, and Hearth

Haven’s Own

Widdershins

Raves for the Previous Valdemar Anthologies:

“Fans of Lackey’s epic Valdemar series will devour this superb anthology. Of the thirteen stories included, there is no weak link—an attribute exceedingly rare in collections of this sort. Highly recommended.”

—The Barnes and Noble Review

“This high-quality anthology mixes pieces by experienced authors and enthusiastic fans of editor Lackey’s Valdemar. Valdemar fandom, especially, will revel in this sterling example of what such a mixture of fans’ and pros’ work can be. Engrossing even for newcomers to Valdemar.”—Booklist

“Josepha Sherman, Tanya Huff, Mickey Zucker Reichert, and Michelle West have quite good stories, and there’s another by Lackey herself. Familiarity with the series helps but is not a prerequisite to enjoying this book.”—Science Fiction Chronicle

“Each tale adheres to the Lackey laws of the realm yet provides each author’s personal stamp on the story. Well written and fun, Valdemarites will especially appreciate the magic of this book.”

—The Midwest Book Review

NOVELS BY MERCEDES LACKEY available from DAW Books

THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR

ARROWS OF THE QUEEN

ARROW’S FLIGHT

ARROW’S FALL

THE LAST HERALD-MAGE

MAGIC’S PAWN

MAGIC’S PROMISE

MAGIC’S PRICE

THE MAGE WINDS

WINDS OF FATE

WINDS OF CHANGE

WINDS OF FURY

THE MAGE STORMS

STORM WARNING

STORM RISING

STORM BREAKING

VOWS AND HONOR

THE OATHBOUND

OATHBREAKERS

OATHBLOOD

THE COLLEGIUM CHRONICLES

FOUNDATION

BY THE SWORD

BRIGHTLY BURNING

TAKE A THIEF

EXILE’S HONOR

EXILE’S VALOR

VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES

SWORD OF ICE

SUN IN GLORY

CROSSROADS

MOVING TARGETS

Written with LARRY DIXON:

THE MAGE WARS

THE BLACK GRYPHON

THE WHITE GRYPHON

THE SILVER GRYPHON

DARIAN’S TALE

OWLFLIGHT

OWLSIGHT

OWLKNIGHT

OTHER NOVELS

THE BLACK SWAN

THE DRAGON JOUSTERS

JOUST

ALTA

SANCTUARY

AERIE

THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS

THE SERPENT’S SHADOW

THE GATES OF SLEEP

PHOENIX AND ASHES

THE WIZARD OF LONDON

RESERVED FOR THE CAT

And don’t miss:

THE VALDEMAR COMPANION

Edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

DAW Book Collectors No. 1457

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

eISBN : 978-1-101-49434-9

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

First Printing, December 2008

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

—MARCA REGISTRADA

HECHO EN U.S.A.

S.A.

http://us.penguingroup.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Moving Targets

by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon

Mercedes Lackey is a full-time writer and has published numerous novels, including the best-selling Heralds of Valdemar series. She is also a professional lyricist and a licensed wild bird rehabilitator.

Larry Dixon is the husband of Mercedes Lackey, and a successful artist as well as science fiction writer. He and Mercedes live in Oklahoma.

Herald Elyn refrained from tearing her hair out. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to these four. They’d been assigned to her in a bunch when they’d all first been Chosen. They’d gotten into trouble in and around Haven as a group, and now, four years later, it would have been reasonable to assume that this foursome was beyond being able to surprise her.

It would be reasonable to assume that. Reasonable, but, unfortunately, wrong.

Elyn stared at the wagon, hoping it was a hallucination. It wasn’t.

It was a traders-caravan built to the specifications of a rich man with vague notions of “the romance of the open road.” So it was big, big enough that it took two stout horses to pull it. Expensive leaf springs sandwiched between wishbone axles peeked from behind carved, bent-wood coachwork. It was luxuriously appointed within. And without.

It was yellow. Bright yellow. And there were flowers painted on it, scrolling around the windows and door. The roof was red.

Elyn groaned silently. Heralds were supposed to try to be inconspicuous. Hard enough when you were wearing a white uniform that screamed: “I’m the Herald! Shoot me first!” But with this? They’d look like a lot of traveling actors. Or clowns. Would people even believe they were Heralds and not just entertainers dressed up as Heralds?

“We could have it repainted,” said Trainee Laurel helpfully, gleefully gesturing at the wagon and then standing with one hand on her hip. “In fact, we probably should. White, with a blue roof. And with the crest of Valdemar on the side. The people would love that!”

Elyn had to admit that she was probably right about that last part. Laurel was a pretty thing with abundant red hair, kind hearted, with a formidable Gift that was from some place in the Empathy family. She could make anyone like her and want to do what she wanted. Fortunately, she had a strong code of ethics. Unfortunately, she tended to think the best of everyone . They’d quickly learned not to allow her any say in judgments after she pleaded in favor of a violent murderer, who had been caught literally red-handed, by saying that his mother didn’t think he’d do that kind of thing.

Repaint it white. As if that will make us less of a moving target? At least no enemy would ever take this wagon seriously. “We don’t have time,” Elyn said, truthfully. “It would have to be sanded down to the bare wood. Otherwise, everything else will bleed right through.”

“Blue. Dark blue. Solid dark blue, no decorations. I already have the paint, and I rounded up the workmen,” Trainee Alma said as she trotted up with two of the palace carpenters in tow, each of them carrying two buckets of dark blue paint. “I calculated it very carefully. One coat will do it. Night Blue cut one-to-three with Sky Blue has a drying index of six candlemarks, with a twelve-candlemark cure, and has an unprimed saturation well within limits. There will be plenty of time for it to dry before we leave tomorrow.” She waved a clipboard of papers and punctuated her statement with a firm nod that proclaimed that questioning her figures was inadvisable under pain of explanation. Boyish, bookish Alma had been an Artificer-in-training before she had been Chosen; she made up for Laurel’s lack of practicality and then some. Strong-willed, rock-steady, and blindingly intelligent, she was always searching for the most ordinary explanation for the extraordinary. She also had no discernable Gift. Elyn sometimes wondered if that was because Alma herself had not yet mathematically proven she had one.

“Aww. Do we have to paint it?” Trainee Arville asked plaintively. “I think it’s nice.” He was the tallest young man Elyn had ever seen, but you would never know it, because he was always slouching. He always looked a little unkempt. Not dirty, but untidy. Except when in his Whites, he could only be found in faded earth-tone field-laborer clothes, none of which seemed to be his size even if they were. Elyn knew he didn’t do it out of carelessness or because he was slovenly. It was as if everything he put on immediately had a mind of its own, and that mind was half-asleep.

His Gift was as powerful as Laurel’s and as odd. It was a rare Gift and extremely difficult to train for. Luck. He could trip and fall and come up not only unhurt, but clutching something useful, important, or occasionally even valuable. He was almost never hit during fighting practice, not because he was good but because his opponents always made inexplicable mistakes. Small children and animals adored him.

“Yes, Arville, we do,” Alma said firmly. “Otherwise no one will take us seriously.”

The fourth member of the quartet shrugged. “I doubt Father would care if we painted it pink,” Trainee Rod pointed out. Laurel opened her mouth to speak, but when Elyn shot Laurel a look that said don’t even think it, she decided against it. Rod continued. “I doubt he even knows what color it is now. He probably just threw money at a bunch of coach-makers and said, ‘Build me the best traveling van anyone has ever seen.’ What matters is that the horses he sent along are terrific.” Trainee Rod ... or rather, Rod’s father ... was wealthy enough that he could do things like that. Rod should have been spoiled rotten. He wasn’t. Rod’s father should have been livid that he was Chosen, but he wasn’t. Guildmaster Fred-rich of the Goldsmith Guild was so proud of his son that he nearly burst every time he looked at the young man. Then again, that handsome boy, blond and blue-eyed, certainly had a face and body that seemed created to wear a Herald’s Uniform.

And Rod certainly did not have the head to be a Goldsmith, much less a Master, and even less a Guildmaster. His younger brother had seemingly inherited all the real cunning in the family, as Rod had inherited the looks, so when the Big White Talking Horse showed up, it was actually a relief all around.

Not that he was stupid; he just wasn’t nearly intelligent enough to succeed in the business as his father had; he was certainly no match for his brother or Alma when it came to feats of outright logic, and he only had a casual consumer’s understanding of market forces. But he was clever about mechanical things. Most importantly for a Herald, he was absolutely determined to do the right thing and doggedly persistent about seeing that it got done.

As more than one senior Herald had remarked to Elyn, together the four made one perfect Herald. But then again, how many “perfect” Heralds were there?

Most of us just bumble along trying to do the best we can.

She knew perfectly well why the four of them had been assigned to her. Her patience was legendary, and these four needed legendary patience.

“All right Alma, that solution will probably work. Please go ahead and repaint the wagon, gentlemen,” she continued, addressing the workmen. Then she turned to the four ill-assorted soon-to-be-Heralds. “And you lot, get packed, get your new Whites, and get some sleep. We have a long way to go, and I doubt very much that any of you has ever had any experience in driving a wagon.”

They all shrugged sheepishly. She snorted. “Something Rod’s father did not think about. Fortunately, I have. And before this is over, each of you will be an expert in everything from harnessing to fixing a broken wheel singlehandedly in the pouring rain.”

From the shocked looks on their faces, she could tell that all they had considered was that they were going to have a nice, comfortable, warm place to sleep on this circuit, rather than having to camp in the open or find themselves crammed five into a Waystation made for two at most. It had never occurred to them that a wagon and its team were objects that required care and repair, which was one reason why Heralds seldom used them. Usually, when Heralds needed a wagon, they hired one on, driver and all.

The only reason she was even considering using this rolling house was because this circuit was all in farming country. Flat, level land for the most part, plenty of forage for the horses, and good roads. It was something of a choice circuit to get if you liked things to be mostly uneventful. She’d gotten it on this trip precisely because she had four, rather than one or two, to nursemaid through their first year in Whites.

And hopefully, by the time they got to the section of the circuit that bordered on the Pelagir Hills, it would be late enough in autumn that any trouble from there would be tucking itself up to hibernate for the winter.

And if it isn’t inclined to hibernate ... She squared her shoulders and headed for the suite of rooms she shared with them. Well, that is when we find out what these four are made of—and if I did my job.

Elyn pulled at her earlobe a little and stared at the wagon. For once, Alma had miscalculated, it seemed—or else the pigment in that paint wasn’t what she had thought. A single coat of blue paint had indeed been applied evenly and thoroughly over the entire wagon yesterday, with the end result being that the wagon now was blue ... more or less. Not so much a Heraldic blue as a shade resembling water, or a bird’s egg, or the sky under certain conditions. And the vines and flowers had bled through too. It was less garish than it had been, but the effect was still ...

“Oh how pretty!” Laurel enthused. “I was afraid it was going to be dull!”

Alma passed both of them with her bags; she rolled her eyes but said nothing as she stowed her things in the storage boxes built into the side.

Elyn had taught them well enough that they got their gear put away and were in the wagon before a single candlemark had passed. Not without some minor bickering, but there was always minor bickering any time adolescents did anything. Elyn was used to that. The question looming largest in her mind, however, was who to single out to learn how to drive first.

She pondered that as she guided the horses down the road reserved for trade, which was a good bit wider than the one Heralds usually took out of Haven. She was glad they had gotten underway so early. She really did not want anyone to see her driving this ... thing.

The Companions trotted alongside freely, with their stirrups hooked up onto the pommels of their saddles. No point in leaving them bare. The tack would take up too much space, and compared to the usual weight of a rider, the saddle was nothing. She saw to her amusement that Alma alone of all of them had done exactly what she had; Alma’s Companion, like Elyn’s, carried bulging saddlebags. After all, why not? Without the weight of a rider—

:You turn us into packmules.: Mayar sounded more amused than annoyed.

:If you have become a “mule,” my dear, you should ask to see the farrier about your little problem before your ladyfriends complain. There may be special treatments.:

:Do get your mind out of the gutter, will you? I have to read it.:

Elyn snorted and gathered up the reins for the two-horse hitch. A wagon like this did not strictly need two horses, but having two would enable them to move along at a reasonable pace.

Once they were clear of Haven itself, she knocked on the little door behind her with her elbow. Alma opened it.

“Rod!” she called through into the interior of the wagon, “Get out here. Time to learn how to drive.” The wagon and horses were his father’s gifts, after all, so he might as well be the first one to learn the job. Alma cleared out and Rod’s sunny expression replaced hers.

As he squeezed through the little door and maneuvered himself onto the little sheltered spring-dampered bench where the driver sat, Elyn reflected that whoever had bought these horses definitely did know his horseflesh. They weren’t matched, but they were both solid and compact little draft horses of the sort known as Zigans. The right side was a bay gelding with a white nose, the left a chestnut mare with a white blaze. Both had one white foot, with heavily feathered fetlocks. Both had stocky bodies, about a hand taller than the average riding horse, and both were about six years old. Their manes and tails were shaggy and long, and their coats were too rough to ever be glossy, but they were mild tempered and willing, and disinclined to be spooked by anything they’d seen so far.

“This is how you hold the reins,” Elyn said, putting them into Rod’s hands. “Don’t haul on them, but don’t let them go slack, either, or the horses will amble to nothing and stop.” She gave him a few more instructions, then sat back and watched him drive. He wasn’t bad and wasn’t nervous, so she said nothing, just let him give the beasts the minimal attention they needed for the relatively uncrowded road. Behind her, through the still open door, she could hear the others chattering away.

This might not be so bad, after all.

Just kill me now, Elyn groaned silently. Beside her, in the minimal shelter provided by the wagon’s canvas awning, five Companions endured a cold downpour with varying attitudes from acceptance to disgust, bracketed by the two steaming draft horses, coats so dark they looked black in the uncertain light. Elyn had finished putting on the last of their feedbags—doing the chore herself because her four charges were currently struggling to pitch a larger shelter for them. Their second-to-last stop on the Circuit yielded them a gift of grain from the locals. That pushed the wagon’s weight capacity to brimming, and now the six bunks inside bore six dozen feedsacks, leaving almost no room for people to sleep inside. Arville had cheerfully accepted the gift, saying it was important for people to accept gifts gracefully because it made the giver feel so good and encouraged them to be generous. Besides, they had tents! And the mattresses from the bunks! The rest readily agreed, including the Companions. Elyn endured. They couldn’t just unload the grain and sleep inside, because it would attract vermin. Or get soaked. Or both. Elyn insisted, though, that one bunk nearest the driver’s bench be kept clear in case of emergency. Being the senior Herald, she slept in it. And now, here they were.

The rain wasn’t why she was groaning. Oh, no. These sort of conditions were to be expected when traveling in the autumn. No, no, no. She was groaning because of why they were out here in the literal middle of nowhere.

Four moons into a planned circuit of twelve, they had been met by a series of increasingly frantic—and thus, increasingly incoherent—messages from a tiny hamlet on the edge of the Pelagir Hills about spirits “stalking” the place.

Now, in the first place, this little village—Bastion’s Stone, it was called—wasn’t even in Valdemar. So far as Elyn was concerned, they could go hire themselves a priestly exorcist or petition whoever (or whatever, there was no telling out there) they paid their taxes to—they had no claim on help from Heralds. In the second place, dispelling ghosts, assuming these were ghosts, assuming such things even existed, was not what Heralds did. In the third place, this was right off their circuit, and answering the call would take them away from people who actually had a right to expect Heralds and their help.

But the four youngsters were all over the idea, to the point that, when Elyn pointed all those things out and flatly vetoed the excursion, they sent back to Haven and the Heralds of the Council for permission to deviate from the circuit and to answer a call outside the Border.

And much to Elyn’s disgust and their elation, the answer that came back was, “Yes.”

Of course, this was ever so much more exciting than the endless round of petty disputes they had been called on to settle and the sad little band of pathetic “bandits” they’d chased down. Thus far, the circuit had been so entirely uneventful that the most they’d had to worry about had been the weather and the wild animals.

But that’s what it’s supposed to be like, Elyn thought resentfully. Most of the time, anyway. Property disputes, and ugly domestic quarrels, and minor criminals. And that’s important. We can be the impartial outside voice that settles things so that they stay settled. We are the ones who go away, so people don’t have to be angry with the neighbor that made the decision that they don’t like. We ride in on our pure white Companions, in our pure white uniforms, and people know that they can trust us to be impartial, because we haven’t taken a bribe, we aren’t friends with anyone, and we owe no one there anything. And if we didn’t do that, there would be no justice. That ought to be exciting enough for anyone. We can’t all be Herald Vanyels.

But of course, everyone wanted to be Herald Vanyel. Well, all but the part about dying horribly. Everyone wanted the happy noble bits, not the agony, or drudgework, or the dying. But the glorious heroic stuff? Sign them up!

“We’ve got the shelter done, Elyn!” Rod called from the other side of the wagon. “We had to sort of improvise, though!”

Kill me now, she thought again, steeling herself. Rod and his ‘’improvisations” were going to drive her not-so-quietly mad. Oh, they generally worked, but they looked so precarious she could never see how and never quite trust them.

Ducking her head against the rain, which was coming down harder now, she made her way around the end of the wagon to where the four were supposed to have pitched the canvas half-tent.

Well, it wasn’t a half-tent anymore, and it hadn’t been pitched. Instead, it was a sort of improvised slanted roof, tied up to various tree branches. To keep the branches from tossing in the wind, they had been anchored with the ropes and stakes that should have been used to pitch the tent. And instead of a straightforward flat or slanted surface, the canvas had been tied into a sort of sloping, flattish V-shape, so that all the rain that fell on it ran into a channel in the center and that in turn poured into the canvas water-trough they carried to serve the horses and Companions.

“We already filled our water barrel,” Rod said, beaming with pride. “Rigging it like this gives twice the rain shelter too! If it gets any colder, we can put a fire at this end and the slanting roof will carry the smoke away instead of trapping it.”

“Good work,” she said, torn between relief that he hadn’t tried anything more complicated and a kind of surprised pride that he’d come up with something so useful.

The Companions ambled up and tucked themselves in under the ample shelter with clear relief. Alma turned up in another moment, leading the draft horses, then hobbled them. They hadn’t bothered to actually tether the horses this entire trip. It wasn’t as if the Companions would let them wander off or get into trouble.

Laurel collected the now-empty feedbags and stowed them in the proper compartment. And now Elyn could go back under the awning to fire up the little cook-stove, since it was her turn to cook.

“Where’s Arville?” she asked, suddenly realizing the fourth member of the inseparables was missing—and she was about to cook, which up until this moment had meant he was going to be at her elbow, waiting, with a look on his face like a starving puppy.

“He said he heard something out in the—”

“Look what I found!” Arville cried happily, bounding up to them, arms and legs flapping with happiness like a demented scarecrow. “Look what I found out in the forest!”

The thing bounding at his side was like no animal that Elyn had ever seen before. The head was something like a wolf’s, but the body was lean and had a curved back like the pictures of hunting cats she’d seen. When the shaggy, soaked fur dried, it would probably be a dark gray.

And it came up to Arville’s waist. It was huge.

If it hadn’t been wearing exactly the same puppy-eager expression that Arville was, she’d have been terrified of it. It wagged its tail merrily.

And then it talked. Or tried to. Its voice, if it could be called that, was a mix of bark and howl limited by the chops and cut occasionally to form words. And it tried enthusiastically to be understood.

“Reyra!” it said. “Rye Ryu! Ryer Ryeree!”

It skidded to a halt on the wet grass and plopped its haunches down, staring up at her expectantly, its bushy tail pounding on the grass and sending up a spray of drops each time it thumped.

She blinked at it.

“He said his name’s Ryu, and he’s a kyree,” Arville supplied hopefully.

“Of course he is.” She looked at the thing carefully. Well, it talked. So it probably wasn’t going to unexpectedly turn savage and tear out their throats. And it wagged its tail, which was something that hadn’t been covered in her Fear-the-Monster classes. “And what does Ryu want?” she asked, hoping that the answer was not going to be “dinner.” They didn’t have enough meat to satisfy something that large.

“Rum ree ru!” Ryu said, his tail thumping soggily. That didn’t need any translation.

“He’s kind of—uh—Chosen me,” Arville said, looking guilty. “Pelas says it’s all right with him.”

Chosen him—some weird beastie out of the Pelagirs, and it’s Chosen him. She wanted to thump her head against the side of the wagon. Why couldn’t anything these four did be straightforward? She wanted to tell both of them that this was absolutely out of the question, that the big, soggy gray thing could just turn itself back around and lope into the forest where it had come from. But two sets of big brown begging eyes were boring holes in her soul, in exactly the clichéd way they were supposed to in silly stories. And Arville’s Companion was all right with this ...

“He’ll have to catch his own food!” she said sharply.

“Rall rye!”

“And he doesn’t sleep in the wagon! It’s cramped enough in there as it is, and he smells like wet dog. I don’t care if there’s a spare bunk when the grain is gone, he doesn’t get it. And he definitely doesn’t get my bunk.”

“Rall rye!” This didn’t seem to bother the thing at all. “Rye ree runner!”

“He’ll sleep under the wagon, he says,” Arville said happily. “When we get to the village, I’ll buy him a blanket to sleep on. Won’t I, boy?”

The tail thumped soggily. Elyn gave up.

The creature managed to not get too much in the way, dutifully went out and presumably hunted himself some dinner, and settled in under the wagon to sleep as if he had done so all his life. It was all Elyn could do to persuade Arville not to settle in next to him. And that gave her some pause when she climbed into her own bunk for the night. The bond that had sprung up between the young man and what looked like some kind of savage beast seemed harmless enough—but it also was disturbingly strong and clearly magical in nature.

So what if it wasn’t harmless?

:It’s harmless,: Mayar said instantly in her mind. :Really. The kyree are known to us. Yes, it’s a magical beast, like the Hawkbrother bondbirds. In fact, the Hawkbrothers know all about kyree.: She sensed something like a chuckle from Mayar. :Ryu is younger than he looks, a mere stripling. He’s been lonely. His sort are supposed to go out and find someone to attach themselves to. It’s a little like what we do, except that ... well, never mind. Think of him as a congenital helper, and he’s been looking for the right someone to help for almost a year now.:

Elyn could only shake her head. Well if Mayar saw no problems, and Arville’s own Companion had no objections, who was she to interfere?

She only hoped she would have no cause to regret the decision.

And then, just as she was drifting off, she felt the wagon ... vibrating.

At first she couldn’t imagine what it was. Thunder? Earthquake? Landslide? But if it was anything dangerous the Companions would be screaming their heads off.

The she realized what it was. It came from below.

Ryu was snoring.

Kill me now ...

Oh, what a surprise. The most impressive thing about Bastion’s Stone was a stone. A great big stone that the cluster of little houses huddled against, like baby chicks up against their mother. It was too small to have a market. It was too small to have an inn—one of the locals who was apparently the only one capable of brewing drinkable beer sold it out of his house, and you either drank it in the yard or took it home to drink with your neighbors. So far as Elyn could tell, the only reason for the village existing in the first place was so that all the villagers could share farming equipment and the team of oxen required to pull it. And, of course, because they had a really big stone.

:It’s like a Heartstone, without the heart,: Mayar commented.

Elyn sat down with the entire population of the village in the only structure big enough to hold them all, the communal threshing barn, and listened to what they had to tell her. Her four charges she told (a bit sternly) to stand and listen and not comment or ask questions themselves. She could tell that Alma was almost writhing with impatience at being muzzled, but that was too bad. At this point, these people didn’t need to have questions fired at them from five different people. One person had to be the voice of authority, and that person had better be her. Only when she was done would she give them leave to go question people on an individual basis, when it was clear that they were answering to her and not the other way around. Having multiple “authorities” only made for trouble.

As for the villagers, they all seemed to defer to the blacksmith, which was curious. Perhaps it was because he was the strongest, or just because, being in a trade that had “trade secrets,” he seemed the most important to them.

But when facing someone wearing a uniform and an air of unquestioned authority, he became almost comically deferential. Regrettably, with that deference came being tongue-tied.

“Just start at the beginning,” she coaxed, “when you all first noticed something wrong, no matter how trivial it seems.”

He mumbled something. It was a little hard to understand his accent; although what he spoke was similar to Valdemaran, the way the words were pronounced wasn’t always the same. She thought it sounded like, “I can’t remember.”

“Sure ye can, Benderk!” one of the others urged, studiously not looking at her. “Ye were the first t’say! ’Twere the Shadows.”

“Sounds like a wee laddie’s boggles,” Benderk mumbled. At least, that was what she thought he mumbled.

“Tell her, Benderk! Tell her ’bout them Shadows up at Stony Rill! How they was on’y there at twilight, lurkin’ like, but then they was them there rustlin’s and whisperin’s on’y no one was there, an that was by broad day! An’ then it weren’t jest whisperin’s but noises t’make the blood cawld, gibberin’s and gurglin’s an’ a mad laugh ’at made th’ dogs run away! Tell her!” The speaker was the fellow that sold the local ale; he had brought a barrel of it, and now he plied Benderk with a mug and a refill, and Benderk evidently found courage therein, for he finally raised his eyes to Elyn’s and pretty much repeated what the ale-seller had said.

“We mun know these parts, Lady,” he added. “We mun know every beast an’ bird in forest. Nothin’ never made no noise like that. Nor cast Shadows like the ones at night, neither. Nor man, nor beast we ever seen cast shadows like that. Half again as tall an’ broad as me, an’ I be no scrawny ’prentice. On’y hunched over, like.” He rounded his shoulders and tucked his head down between them by way of illustration. “An’ we never saw the Things, on’y Shadows, an’ fer all their bigness, left no tracks we could find. So we left Stony Rill alone, an’ that seemed t’satisfy it. Reckoned we leave them alone, they leaves us alone.” He shrugged, shamefaced. “We bain’t fighters, Lady, and this be edge of Pelagir Hills. Uncanny things come out of there, but bain’t mean no harm, so—”

She nodded. “A sensible way to deal with things,” she said soothingly. “I take it there was nothing much any of you needed up at this Stony Rill?”

He shook his head. “Kids liked t’play there i’ summer, but didn’ take but hearin’ that laugh once for ’em t’find ’nother spot of cool water t’paddle in. We’re not lackin’ i’ water.”

Well that was the truth. They must have crossed thirty streams of varying width, depth, and strength to get here.

“But obviously something else happened?” she prompted.

The man nodded, and the others shuddered. “They’re comin’ into village, of nights.”

“You’ve seen them with your own eyes?” Somehow Elyn doubted they had. And sure enough, one and all, they shook their heads emphatically.

“But we hear them!” The words came out in a whisper. “Between th’ houses, howlin’ and gibberin’, and in the mornin’, not a sign of ’em. Not a footprint, nor hoofprint or pawprint. Th’ dogs an’ cats, they all hide when they hears it. An’ afore we started lockin’ ’em up at night, we lost some beasts to ’em. Heard ’em cry out, and in mornin’, was gone, an’ no trace of what took ’em.”

There wasn’t much else that Elyn could get that was useful out of them. “You’ll hear ’em fer y’self” seemed to be the only answer.

Despite the fact that the youngsters were burning even more to question the villagers, Elyn let the villagers go back to their homes. For one thing, the closer it got to sunset, the more nervous the villagers became, and she didn’t want to have to cope with a load of hysterical people wanting only to get behind their locked and barricaded doors. For another, she was curious to see if “they,” whatever “they” were, actually did turn up tonight. Their absence might well tell as much or more than their presence. There was no reason why something supernatural would hesitate to manifest with the Heralds here. But if “they” were not supernatural, then whatever or whoever it was that was doing this might well be cautious about showing itself—or themselves—right now.

Once everyone was cleared away, Elyn set about making sure that the wagon, the horses, and the Companions were all set up for a stay of some duration. The villagers had kindly moved in bedding straw and fodder; horses were not exactly housebroken, so before they could all get themselves involved in a long discussion of what might be going on, Elyn got the Trainees to work arranging things inside the threshing barn. She put Rod to maneuvering the wagon against one wall and assigned Arville to making a stabling area for the horses against the opposite wall. Once the wagon was in place, Rod tied up the horses in their corner.

“We may be here a while,” Elyn pointed out. “And there’s enough room in here that anyone who would rather sleep outside the wagon certainly can. It might be a bit colder, but it won’t be as stuffy, and we can always set up the stove to keep a limited area warm at night.”

But Alma clearly wanted to talk about “haunting,” and she had already made up her mind about it; Elyn could see it in the set of her jaw and the furrowed brows. “We need to work out some way to trap these people,” she said.

“The villagers?” Elyn said, raising an eyebrow.

“No, of course not! Whoever is running this deception on them!” Alma said crossly.

“And you’re so certain it’s a deception?” Elyn countered. “I’m not convinced one way or another. If it’s a deception, what’s the motive? And if it’s not, then what are these things? Their behavior matches some of the descriptions of the creatures controlled by the Karsite priesthood.”

“The d-d-demons?” Arville stammered.

Ryu’s ears went straight up and his eyes widened. “R-r-remons?” he echoed.

“But only some of those descriptions, Herald Elyn,” Rod said deferentially. “Not all of them. And we are an awfully long way from the Karsite border. I can’t see any good reason for them being here, if that is what they are. And it could just be some new creature from the Pelagirs. Some things from there are friendly.”

Ryu thumped his tail, tongue lolling.

Elyn shrugged. “I am not convinced either way. What I am convinced of is that we need to proceed with great caution. The last thing we want to do is make things worse.”

Alma opened her mouth to protest, but she never got so far as uttering a word. As if something had been listening outside, there came one of the strangest and most hair-raising noises that Elyn had ever heard in her life.

Not loud enough to be called a howl but far too loud for a moan, it seemed to reach to some instinct deep inside Elyn and evoke a chill terror. It had a similar effect on the others, too. Arville yelped and dove under the wagon, joined there by Ryu; Laurel screamed. Rod and Alma both went white to match their uniforms, but they headed for the door of the barn with looks of determination on their faces.

“No! Leave the door alone!” Elyn ordered. Arville and the kyree hugged each other and shuddered. The noises multiplied, and Laurel looked around for a weapon, then clutched at her little dagger as if it were going to be adequate to defend herself with. Her sword and war gear were still in storage in the wagon, along with everyone else’s, and only Elyn wore a sword at the moment, since during the interview it’d been a sign of rank.

Alma and Rod had their hands on the door already and prepared to fling it open, only to find it had been shut tight, barred from the outside.

The noises were joined by maniacal laughter as Alma and Rod hammered on the door and tried to break it down, then tried the door opposite with the same results. There were no windows or hatches in the upper part of the building, or they probably would have tried to go out that way. The two draft horses were thoroughly unnerved by now, straining at their tethers, tossing their heads, and rolling their eyes. Arville finally climbed out from under the wagon, shaking, to go and try to calm them down. Elyn joined him; eventually they had to resort to pulling bags over their heads; the horses stopped trying to bolt, but they stood transfixed, shaking as hard as Arville.

The Companions were as unnerved as their Chosen.

:We can’t tell what it is,: Mayar said to Elyn, as the other four Companions arrayed themselves facing the two doors, preparing to fight anything that burst through. :We’ve never heard anything that sounded like that before.:

“Let’s break the door down!” Rod shouted over the noise. “Let’s make a ram!”

But it was Alma who stopped him before he could wrench the wagon-tongue off the front or try to pull down one of the interior supports. “I don’t think we can,” she said. “And it’s not our building to break down.”

“It’s just noises,” Elyn pointed out, fighting her own instincts to run, or fight, or both. “No one is calling for help, and nothing is trying to break in here. Alma’s correct, we haven’t the right to wreck this place just to confront what’s out there. Besides, breaking the door down will be noisy, and by the time we got out, whatever is making those sounds will probably be gone.”

“It’s j-j-just trying to scare us,” Laurel said, though her teeth were chattering.

“It’s doing a g-g-good job!” Arville replied.

And then, just as suddenly as the noise had begun, it stopped.

They waited a moment, and then another, before Rod and Alma rushed for the door.

It was still barred.

Alma kicked it in frustration, bruising her toe. She looked as if she would have liked to swear, but a glance at Elyn seemed to quell that idea.

They waited, but the noises didn’t resume, although the door remained barred from the outside. The moments crept by, then a candlemark; it felt like more, but they had a marked candle out and burning when the meeting started, and that was all it was. Finally Elyn spoke, making them all jump. “It’s entirely possible that the villagers locked us in themselves.”

Rod scratched his head. “We didn’t try the door after they left,” he admitted, “But why?”

“Remons!” said Ryu, impatiently, as if they were all feeble-minded. Arville nodded.

“But we’re supposed to be the ones getting rid of whatever it is!” Alma protested. “It makes no sense for them to lock us in!”

“It also makes no sense for a demon or a ghost or anything else like them to be stopped by mere walls,” Rod added.

“It may make no sense, but according to everything I’ve read, the Karsite demons clearly are stopped by walls.” Elyn could only shake her head at all the contradictory evidence. “Perhaps there is some magical boundary set about the buildings here.”

Her nerves were slowly settling; the horses were quiet again, enough so that she and Arville pulled the bags off their heads. But they were so soaked with sweat—as were the Companions—that they needed a thorough rubdown and blanketing, lest they get a chill. After that, failing anything else to do, since it seemed futile to keep trying the door, they went to lie on their bunks or bedrolls after blowing out the various lanterns and candles, leaving only the two night-lamps mounted on the front of the wagon burning with their wicks turned down. Elyn set the younger Heralds on short watches, and she was acutely aware of the stiff silence in the building, the sort of silence that meant everyone was staring up at the ceiling or the bottom of a bunk, listening with every fiber, waiting for a resumption of the horrible noises.

But nothing happened. And after what seemed like an eternity of staring into the darkness, she must have fallen asleep, because she woke with a start to hear the doors opening.

The doors!

She very nearly broke her neck scrambling out of her bunk and stumbling out the door at the rear of the wagon. The first thing she saw was Alma throwing open the doors on a gray dawn, frowning heavily. There was no one outside.

“I lay awake all night, listening, and finally I decided to get up and try the door,” the young Herald said, scowling. “There was no one there. And the door wasn’t barred anymore.”

Elyn turned her attention to the kyree, who, with his presumably keener senses, would have heard what Alma didn’t. “And did you hear anything?” she asked.

The kyree shook his head. Elyn chewed her lip thoughtfully. By this time the others were clambering out of the wagon, rubbing their eyes sleepily. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” she pointed out. “Someone intimately familiar with this place could easily slip up to the doors and unbar them.”

“Maybe they could slip up to the doors, but slide the bar out without a noise?” Laurel asked doubtfully.

“Let’s find out,” replied Rod, and Alma nodded. “Look here,” he continued, examining it. “If you slide it, yes, it makes a noise.” He demonstrated; the bar was one that slid into four cast-metal carriers, rather than dropping down into them. “But if you lift it a little—”

This time the bar made not a whisper of noise as he moved it.

“That doesn’t rule out ghosts or demons,” Laurel protested.

“Maybe not, but my money is on common men.” Rod’s chin was set stubbornly, which did not at all surprise Elyn. Rod hated supernatural explanations and usually managed to avoid them entirely.

“Nevertheless, logic dictates that we go about this assuming that either could be true.” Elyn turned to the four Companions. “You lot are better suited to look for the supernatural than we are, so I suggest you pursue that, while we investigate human interference. Now, let’s get some breakfast going and discuss where to start.”

Since it had begun, as far as they could all tell, up at the little stream called Stony Rill, that was where the five of them headed. This time Rod and Alma were determined not to be caught off-guard. Well, so was Elyn, but she wasn’t making it as obvious as they were. If they got any more square-jawed with determination, she would be able to split logs with their chins. There were times when that was tempting.

Arville and Ryu slunk along like a pair of reluctant cats, heads swiveling this way and that with every sound in the woods. Laurel was the only one that looked normal, though that was superficial; Elyn knew her well enough to know that she was walking on eggs, so to speak, and the least little thing would set her off.

Elyn frankly did not know what to expect. They reached the spot where the villagers had told her that the “Shadows” were to be seen, and saw exactly nothing. She and Alma searched the area around the little pool that the Rill formed before it spilled over and went on its way, looking for swampy areas, odd plants, vents in the ground, any sign of anything that could account for hallucinations, and found nothing.

Alma even pulled off her boots, rolled up her trews, and went wading in the pool, peering into the water. Elyn wasn’t sure what she was looking for, although she did spent quite a long time at it, and gathered up some rocks and a sack of sand. Finally, she clambered out, got dry, and pulled her boots back on. “I think we should go upstream,” she said. “Maybe there’s something there. Swamp gas or something that only drifts this way when the wind is right.”

Rod nodded. “That seems like a good idea to me.”

Elyn gave Alma a close look. She had a notion that while Alma wasn’t saying anything, the young Herald thought she might have discovered something intriguing. But Alma wasn’t one to say anything until she was sure of herself. Annoying, but the girl was stubborn, and until she was ready, there would be no prying it out of her.

With a stifled sigh, Elyn motioned onward, and the five of them, with their Companions and the kyree threading through the underbrush on either side of the stream, made their way along the banks of Stony Rill. A few times more, Alma paused as something seemed to catch her eye, stooped, and picked up what looked like some gravel from the streambed. But still she said nothing.

Meanwhile there still didn’t seem to be anything that could have been mistaken for these “Shadows,” and no wildlife making odd noises that could have been taken for maniacal laughter.

Elyn was busy trying to keep an eye out for plants and fungi she knew were poisonous and gave hallucinations, when Rod suddenly said, “Is that a boundary marker? No one said anything about anyone living up here—”

“That’d be because that worthless lot down at the Stone’d like to fergit I be still alive,” said a harsh voice.

It startled all of them. Ryu and Arville yelped in an almost identical pitch. The Companions all threw up their heads and snorted. Laurel squeaked, and Elyn jumped back just a little. Rod’s back stiffened, and Alma clutched the bag of rocks and sand she was holding as if she were prepared to use it as a weapon.

From between two trees, out of a shadow Elyn certainly had not suspected was holding a person, stepped a man. Balding, gray haired, but powerfully built and clearly still fit, he had a bow with an arrow nocked to it, and although he was not yet aiming it at them, it was very obvious that he had no compunction about shooting them.

“Did that pack of scum send ye up here?” he spat. “I got no use fer them. I don’ need their help, and I don’ want their company. Did they send ye here because I run off their brats? I got my rights! They was tramplin’ all over my property! Thievin’ brats, stealin’ fruit, honey, an’ ’shrooms, poachin’ my game, aye, I ran ’em off! I’ll do it again too, at th’ end of a pitchfork!”

“No one sent us here to disturb you, sir,” Elyn said soothingly. “We’re investigating some rather strange goings-on, and although the villagers did send for us, they don’t know we intended to come up here.”

“Ye want strange goings-on, ye look no futher than them brats o’ theirs!” he spat. “I don’ put no mischief past ’em!”

Rod and Elyn exchanged a look. :We didn’t consider that it might have been the children,: Mayar said thoughtfully. :That sort of thing is known among younglings first coming into a Gift.:

:Yes,: she thought back. :And in those with no Gift at all.: It would not be the first time that bored youngsters terrorized a community by manufacturing “supernatural” goings-on.

“Well, we won’t bother you any further sir,” Elyn said.

“An’ ye won’t be settin’ foot on my land neither!” he snapped. “Gerroff wi’ ye! An’ tell that lot down at th’ Stone that they kin keep their devilment t’thesselves!”

There didn’t seem to be anything much more to say, so Elyn turned around and began picking her way back down the stream. Ryu and Arville were only too happy to do the same, quickly overtaking and passing her. Laurel shivered as she glanced back at the old man, still standing guard at his boundary marker. Rod just shook his head.

But Alma looked very thoughtful.

“I don’t know why we didn’t consider the youngsters,” Rod said, as soon as they were out of earshot of the old man. “That should have been the first place we looked.”

“But don’t you think that if it was the younglings, that nasty old grump would have been the first target they went after?” Alma countered. “Instead, it was the youngsters themselves that were scared out of their favorite swimming place. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe it’s just one or two loners who were getting even for being left out of things,” Elyn suggested, as Alma stooped again, scooping something out of the stream bed.

“I dunno about you, but that stuff last night didn’t sound like a couple of kids!” Arville protested.

“Remons!” Ryu seconded. “Rosses!”

“Roses?” Rod exclaimed, looking askance.

“He means g-g-ghosts,” Arville stammered. “It s-s-sure sounded like that to me!”

Elyn pulled thoughtfully at her earlobe. “Still ... I think we should concentrate on the villagers next. Especially the youngsters. Getting the entire village in an uproar—we’ve studied and heard of that sort of thing before.”

Rod nodded, with a satisfied look on his face. “Even if we can’t find out something directly, I bet I can find a way to catch the troublemakers,” he said.

“I don’t think it was kids,” Arville retorted weakly, scratching his head. “How could kids be making those ... howls?”

“I wouldn’t be so sure it was youngsters either,” Alma said, with an enigmatic look. “I don’t think it was demons—but I don’t think it was youngsters.”

They argued about it all the way back to the village—where they finally shut up, belatedly realizing that whether Rod, Arville, or Alma was right, it wouldn’t be very productive for them to be talking about it in front of the very people they were going to be investigating.

Elyn meanwhile separated herself from the rest and, with Mayar, went in search of the likeliest person to know everybody’s business, the village midwife.

She spent a good couple of candlemarks with that worthy, using the incident the night before as the opening wedge for conversation. “Well,” Granny Merton said, judiciously, “I’d be lying if I didn’ tell ye that fair curdles me blood o’nights. An’ it’s been a nuisance too. The wimmin as is close t’their time, they’ve taken t’ demandin’ I bide w’ them every night. Cause if babe should decide t’come at night, ye ken, how’m I d’be fetched wi’ that howlin’ aroond th’ doors? ’Tis on’y been two, thus far, but a ’ooman my age likes th’ feel of her own bed benights!” She patted the thick stone walls of her tiny cottage complacently. “No demon be gettin’ through these walls, no, an’ I brung too many inter th’ world, and seen too many out of it too, to be afeared of ghosts.”

Gradually Elyn let the conversation drift, until it ended up as such conversations always did, with the Granny’s assessment of every soul in the village.

And that was where Elyn’s speculations and investigations ran aground. Because there were only five youngsters about the right age to be the one—or ones—behind the “haunting,” and none of them fit the pattern of the sort of child that did this sort of thing. Their personalities were all open; they were neither show-offs nor shy and withdrawn, they were not picked on or bullied, they were all five very close friends, and in general were happy youngsters. Or they had been until the “hauntings” began. Now they were just as terrified as the rest of the village.

And insofar as their ability to sneak out and perpetrate the hauntings as a group—that was impossible, because all five of them spent their nights huddled together in one or another of their respective houses, in the main room, with the rest of whichever family they were spending the night with. Out here, a house was just a place to sleep and eat between chores and no one thought much of private rooms or single beds. There were witnesses to every moment of their time when whatever it was howled outside the walls.

This was pretty much what all of the village youngsters were doing; the parents had discovered that if they could be with friends, they withstood it all better. So the children got rounded up after supper, divided up by age groups, and bedded down in a huddle.

Nevertheless, she asked Mayar to go snooping about and see if he could detect any incipient stirrings of a Gift. The Companions in general were much better at that sort of thing than she was.

“Who’s the old man that lives up above the pond at Stony Rill?” she asked, as if it were an afterthought. “Shouldn’t he be brought down here for safety?”

Granny snorted. “Old man Hardaker? He has no friends down here. Stingiest old rooster that was ever born. Squeezes every groat till it squeaks, goes into a fury if a crow steals so much as a grain of his, counts everything, living or dead, on his land as ’is own property. Fights the squirrels for the nuts, ’e does. They say ’e killed his wife with overwork, treated her like a slave; that I can’t speak for, it was afore my time. Sure he got no children on ’er, so I suppose he reckoned t’get work out of ’er instead. If I was a haunt, I’d stay clear of ’im. Give half a chance, he’d find a way t’bind a spirit and make it work for him, and count himself lucky that ’e wouldna have to feed and clothe it!”

Elyn smiled wryly. “He didn’t seem to be aware that there was anything amiss here in the village.”

Granny made a face. “Never believe it. ’E knows. ’E knows, and if ’e’s being haunted too, ’e’ll never let on. Gives nothin’ away, that one, not even a thought. But ’e can’t do wi’out us. We’re the only village near enough t’buy what ’e grows, an’ the only craftsmen near enough for him t’get what ’e needs. ‘E’d never leave his land t’take ’is goods t’ market, an’ never trust one of ’is ’ands t’ do it for ’im.” She cackled a little. “No doubt, that makes ’im even more sour, the ald sack!”

Well, so much for the old man. If he, too, was suffering from the haunts, he was probably blaming it on the village and would not give them the satisfaction of knowing he was afraid. Nor would he ever ask for help. And even if he did, it was unlikely anyone here would give it to him.

Elyn poked about the village a bit more and found that Granny’s opinion of the old man was universal. No one liked him. Everyone had a story about his penny-pinching and attempts to cheat them. Everyone also admitted that they did their level best to cheat him back. It was a point of honor among the young men to try to steal fruit from his orchard or poach his fish or game. There was no way of telling who had begun the acrimony, but at this point there was going to be no putting an end to it.

She managed to meet the suspect striplings and couldn’t make up her mind whether or not they would be capable of the sheer amount of work and ingenuity that the “haunting” would take. They weren’t stupid, but they also didn’t show the level of intelligence of, say, Rod, much less Alma—and that was what such a task would take, if it was a purely mischief-making endeavor and not the unconscious breaking out of some sort of Gift.

They also all seemed as genuinely terrified as their parents. Elyn was fairly good at telling when she was being lied to even without the use of the Truth Spell, and she didn’t get that impression now.

But when she met up with the rest back at the threshing barn, she discovered that Rod had already made up his mind about one thing.

“We can’t just huddle in here like a lot of scared children,” he said firmly. “And I don’t for a moment think that these are demons or ghosts. I think it’s people. In fact, I think it’s some of the villagers. Maybe some of the younger ones.”

“But, Rod!” Laurel exclaimed indignantly. “I told you that story they told me, and you still don’t think it’s disturbed spirits?”

“Wait, wait, what story?” Elyn demanded.

Laurel looked both excited and apprehensive as she turned toward their mentor. “Some of the older boys told me that around early apple harvest time, they went up to the old man’s orchard to steal fruit, like always. They heard the sound of someone digging! At night! And then they didn’t think anything more about it, except that the next day, Stony Rill was as red as blood! And it was that night that the hauntings began! They think the old man was looking for treasure and dug up a burial mound! And now the spirits are angry!”

“All the more reason to think it’s them,” Rod snorted, as Alma got an extremely thoughtful look on her face. “What a ridiculous story!”

“It’s not ridiculous!” Laurel stamped her foot and crossed her arms angrily over her chest. “You just don’t like it because they didn’t tell you!”

“I don’t like it because it’s not logical.” Rod’s chin looked even more granite-like than usual. “If it was spirits that were disturbed because the old man was digging their bodies up, why haunt the village? What did the villagers do to them? Why not haunt the old man?”

“Well, maybe they are! And they just spread out! Or maybe they are trying to get the villagers to do something about the old man!” Her eyes flashed with anger. “Just because you don’t believe in ghosts—”

Behind them, a couple of the Companions whickered as if laughing.

“Then they’ve got to be stupider in death than they are in life,” Rod countered. “Because you’d think it would be a lot easier to just appear in front of people and say politely, ‘That old man is robbing our graves, and we’d hate to have to make you miserable because of what he is doing, but if you don’t make him leave us alone, we’ll just have to make all of you as unhappy as we are.’ Instead, they’re getting nothing done except to make people terrified at night!”

Arville’s head swiveled back and forth between them, as if he were watching a game. Ryu just lay flat on the ground with his ears over his paws.

“Oh!” Laurel said, driven to speechlessness with anger. “Oh!”

“Anyway, you just stay here in the barn and tell Elyn what you think of me,” Rod said ungallantly. “I’ll be outside with Arville and Ryu and the Companions laying a trap. Because it’s not ghosts, it’s people, and I am going to catch them!”

“Wait, what?” Arville replied, looking panicked.

“If you don’t need me,” Alma said carefully. “I do have something I need to check in here.”

:Mayar?: Elyn thought.

:He asked us, and it’s a good plan. Certainly better than Laurel’s idea of holding a séance to find out what the spirits want. If it’s people, we will catch them. If it is demons, well, you will find us stampeding into the barn fast enough. And if it is spirits, we can try Laurel’s idea.: Mayar seemed quite satisfied with whatever it was that Rod had decided.

Well, she was supposed to be getting them to think and plan for themselves, wasn’t she? And they had certainly plunged into this, not only with enthusiasm, but with some forethought.

“Go ahead and set your trap, Rod,” she said firmly, cutting short any protests. “Alma, Laurel, we three will try to make enough sounds in here to make it seem as if all of us are in here.” She glanced out the open door. “If you’re going to get things set up, Rod, you’d better do so now, and then you’ll be in hiding well before sunset. I want all of you that are going to be setting up the trap to go in and out several times so that if anyone is watching us, they’ll likely lose count. Get water or wood, anything you think is a good excuse. Laurel, you and I will take care of the camp chores and make a lot of noise about it while Alma does her investigation.”

Laurel looked ready to burst with indignation, but she didn’t protest. Alma dove into the storage compartments and assembled a mortar and pestle, a couple of buckets of water, some dishes, and some other apparatus, and set to breaking up something in the mortar and pestle that made enough noise to cover just about anything.

Looking very unhappy, Arville and Ryu made several trips in and out of the doors carrying water and small amounts of wood, some odds and ends, before finally going out and not coming back again. The Companions made a more convincing job of it, bringing in quite a good deal of firewood before vanishing one by one. Elyn shut the door after them, lit all the lanterns, and, with Laurel’s sulky help, began making noisy supper preparations. At this point, Alma was doing something inscrutable with the dishes and the water; whatever it was, it was making some sound too, so Elyn left her to it.

She stretched out the preparations as long as she could; it wasn’t easy to tell in here whether the sun had set or not. Since it was a threshing building, it was as sealed against vermin as could be managed. The food was ready in what seemed to her to be far too short a time, but there was no point in wasting it. She and Laurel ate; Alma came and fetched herself a bowl of the thick soup Elyn had made, then went back to her buckets. Halfway through the meal, she had stopped messing about with the buckets and was pounding again, this time using the pestle as a hammer against a stone, pounding something she had wrapped in a bit of cloth.

She unfolded the cloth, peered at what was in there, and then did something with it. “Aha!” Elyn heard her say.

And that was when everything exploded outside.

The long, moaning howl began. Elyn heard Ryu yelp, Arville burst out with a terrified exclamation of “G-ghosts!” and Rod shout, “Got you!”

And that was the signal for what sounded like a battle royal.

She ran for the doors, but they were both bolted again. She and Alma and Laurel pounded on them fruitlessly for a while, while outside she could hear not only Rod shouting, but the sounds of fighting, of other men shouting, of Arville and Ryu howling, of angry whinnies and hoofbeats.

:Get back!: Mayar “shouted” in her mind.

She cleared Laurel and Alma away from the doors; there was a furious kick and a crash and the door burst open.

Through the now-open doors poured a tangled heap of people and nets, some free and fighting and some not, followed by all five Companions, relentlessly driving them all inside. Arville and Ryu were the most tangled up, but there were some strangers in there too, all of them masked and draped in tattered rags that smelled like mold and rotting wood.

Masked they might have been, but they were fighters; Elyn slashed Ryu and Arville free with her sword while Alma and Laurel joined in the fight. By now all the noise had brought the villagers out of their homes and up to the barn; several of the bravest grabbed pieces of firewood and waded into the affray while the Companions circled the outside of the mob and kept anyone from escaping—

—including one masked miscreant, who, alone among all of them, was not armed and not fighting. Mayar was the one who caught him by the scruff of the neck in his teeth as he tried to get away, and kept him dangling off the ground while the rest of the gang was subdued and trussed up.

With them was an assortment of noisemakers that had produced all the unearthly howls. There were bull-roarers, a set of several predator-calls strapped together so they could all be sounded at the same time, and a contraption with a rough piece of twine that could be pulled through something like a drum-head of rawhide, producing a truly uncanny moan.

“I told you it was just people!” Rod shouted in triumph, when the last of them—the fellow dangling from Mayar’s teeth—was firmly bound and set with the rest.

By now all of the village—most tellingly, all of the youngsters, including the ones that Rod had suspected—had crowded into the barn. “Well it might not have been spirits,” Laurel sniffed, examining first her improvised club, which she then cast aside, and then her nails. “But it wasn’t who you thought it was.”

And hanging in the air was the unspoken so there!

“Let’s find out who it is, then,” Elyn said evenly, before they could start fighting again. She pulled the mask off the one nearest her, revealing a fellow with a lot of bruises, a black eye, and a surly expression. She looked at the villagers. “Anyone you know?”

Baffled, they all shook their heads. She continued to pull off masks, to similar bafflement, until she came to the last. Then came the gasps.

“Old man Hardaker!” shouted someone. The old man snarled, but said nothing. “Why would you do this to us?”

“I think I know,” Alma said in a hard voice, and came forward with that bit of cloth. “Look.”

She opened it up, and a small piece of something yellow and shining glimmered in the lamplight.

They all stared. “Great Havens,” Elyn finally said. “Is that gold?”

The villagers gasped as Alma nodded. “You know how Herald Bevins always says ‘Find the motive and you find the criminal?’ I went looking for a motive. When we were up at Stony Rill I thought I saw a little bit of gold-sand, so I started gathering up what I thought were likely bits of sand and rock. I panned this out of what I crushed up.” She grinned in triumph. “When Rod told me the story the boys had told him, I was pretty sure I was right, anyway. The old man here was digging for treasure, all right, but it wasn’t in a burial mound. And when Stony Rill turned red, it was just because he’d been washing the gold-rock. Right, old man?”

Hardaker spat in her direction.

“I made sure it was real gold by pounding it into a flake and testing it against a touchstone. It’s real, all right.” Alma beamed at the villagers. “You folks have a nice little gold mine here. And before we leave, we’ll draw you up a charter so you can all share alike in the work and the profits.”

Oh, well done! Elyn thought with pride. Get them to agree to a charter now, so that there are no quarrels about it after we’re long gone. Good thinking, Alma!

“It’s on my land!” Hardaker spat. “Ye’ve got no rights! And it weren’t me! ’Twas them! ’Twas all their ideer!”

“Oh, really?” Rod drawled.

And that was when one of the strangers finally caved in. “You demmed old bastard!” he snarled. “Sell us out, ye think?” He struggled a bit with his bonds, then gave up. “We heerd about ye Heralds. Ye’re hard but fair. Lemme tell ye what this old coot had up ’is sleeve. ’E found the gold, aye, an’ mined out ‘nuff t’ pay us with, but wouldn’ tell us where it was. Just told us to scare these turnip-heads out. An’ if’n he couldn’t scare ’em out, we was t’get rid of ’em—however.” There was a flicker of uncertainty in the man’s face then. “We nivver really reckon’d on hurtin’ no one, we figgered these clodhoppers would scare out right easy. But ... well, he was gettin’ impatient, an’ talkin’ ’bout gettin’ some’un else in here t’get rougher ...”

Now Hardaker looked both furious and alarmed. “Was just talk! Meant t’give ye layabouts reason t’do what I paid ye fer!”

“That will be enough, old man,” Elyn said impassively. “What we’ve heard is enough for us.” She looked about at the villagers. “Do you consent to giving us the same rights of judgment as we would have in Valdemar?”

They looked at one another and then back at Elyn. “Put it in that there charter,” said Benderk, finally. “I’ fact ...” He scratched his head. “Reckon it’d be better all around if—c’n ye make us part of Valdemar?”

Elyn blinked. “Well,” she said cautiously, “yes. You folk aren’t actually part of any other kingdom. But the Crown would take a percentage from the gold from your mine—five percent, if I recall correctly—in exchange for things like a Guard detachment to keep it and you safe, and for twice yearly visits from Heralds, and—”

“And we mostly trade with Valdemar an’ the Crown’d take more than that fer trade taxes,” Benderk said shrewdly. “Aye, that’ll work.” He looked at Alma. “Draw up yer charter, missy. We’ll all sign it. What’s t’be done with this lot?”

He toed Hardaker.

“As subjects of Valdemar, I can declare his land and goods confiscated and turned over to you. He and these men will be taken to the nearest Guardpost—”

:I have already passed the news up the line. Guards will be on the way in the morning. We need only stay here long enough to keep this lot locked up until they arrive.:

“—and men are on the way,” she continued smoothly, thanking the Havens for the swift mental communication between Companions. “Meanwhile, we will see to everything, including guarding these men for you.” She looked sternly down at Hardaker. “You, I am afraid, are going to be subjected to the Truth Spell to find out exactly how far your intentions toward these people were going to go. And we will find out exactly how many wrongs were originally on both sides.”

Some of the villagers had the grace to look embarrassed and a little guilty. But not so much so that Elyn feared anything terribly ugly was going to come out of the investigation.

“Nevertheless, I do not think it excuses the intent to drive people out of their homes,” she concluded. “That was an entirely immoral plan. Clever but immoral.”

“And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling Heralds!” the old man spat.

Elyn could only shake her head. “Let’s find a good place to lock this lot up,” she only said. “I want him confined away from the rest for his own safety.” She nodded at Rod. “Take charge of that, will you?”

“Gladly.” Rod prodded them to their feet with a toe. “ Get going, you.”

“And well done, all of you.” She finally allowed herself to smile.

And then felt a nudging at her shoulder blade, and turned to look into Ryu’s big brown eyes.

“Ru-rer row?” the kyree asked plaintively.

“Supper!” Arville said, his expression identical to Ryu’s. “We’re starving!”

Oh, kill me now, Elyn sighed.

An Unexpected Guest

by Nancy Asire

Nancy Asire is the author of four novels:

Twilight’s Kingdoms, Tears of Time, To Fall Like Stars

, and

Wizard Spawn. Wizard Spawn

was edited by C.J. Cherryh and became part of the

Sword of Knowledge

series. She also has written short stories for the series anthologies

Heroes in Hell

and

Merovingen Nights

, a short story for Mercedes Lackey’s

Flights of Fantasy

, as well as tales for the Valdemar anthologies

Sun in Glory

and

Crossroads.

She has lived in Africa and traveled the world, but now resides in Missouri with her cats and two vintage Corvairs.

Sosha paused at the side of the road, drew the back of her hand across her brow to wipe away midday sweat. Her horse snorted and shook its head, tail swishing at flies. The summer day promised more heat and, from the closeness of the afternoon, hinted at an evening thunderstorm. She looked to her left at the fields that stretched off to the distance but could no longer see those her late husband had worked, which his family had possessed for generations. With Zaltos dead these five years, and only his aged parents living, it had fallen to her to keep the farm from being sold. The Goddess had refused—unreasonably, as far as Sosha was concerned—to grant Zaltos children to secure the future of his land. And so, with no one in the family but Mama Datasa, Papa Lorndo, and herself, they had made the difficult decision to rent the farmland to another family.

She grimaced, remembering the arguments that had followed her husband’s death from a terrible accident. From the very beginning, his parents had berated her ... as if she could become pregnant simply by wishing it. To their minds, their beloved son and only child could hardly have been at fault. Zaltos had time and again assured her he thought otherwise. Brimming with simple faith, he believed the Goddess would answer their prayers in her own time. Time, Sosha thought ... time that had not been granted to Zaltos. Or to her.

She squared her shoulders and lifted the reins, the village of Sweetwater not that far away. Her own parents had perished in a winter fever three years past and had left her with a modest house on the edge of the village. It was to this house she had brought Zaltos’s parents after it became glaringly apparent they would have to rent out their land or lose it. So now she lived in the village, her dead husband’s cantankerous parents her only company. She had a garden where she raised greens, an equally unimposing barn, and a small henhouse that sheltered a fair-sized flock of chickens. Today, she was returning from collecting rent that Ghanos paid her every month, money she would use to purchase bread, grain, meat, and milk for the household.

A low groan startled her out of her thoughts. She halted her horse and listened. There it was again. She caught her breath and looked around, seeing nothing but the high grass by the roadside. A shiver ran down her spine. She was all too familiar with that sound: it could only be made by a human ... a human in pain. Sosha reined her horse off the road, half afraid of what she would find. She could hardly continue on. The tenets of the Sun Lord forbade humankind to ignore anyone in need.

As she pushed into the tall grass, her horse suddenly shied, and she grabbed at the saddle to keep from falling. Nearly beneath her horse’s hooves she saw an injured man. God and Goddess! Dried blood covered the side of his head, and he lay sprawled on his stomach, one arm flung to his left side and the other reaching for—her eyes widened. Half hidden in the grass, a sword dully reflected the sunlight.

Sosha shivered again, only this time glancing around in near panic. A sword! No one in Sweetwater carried swords. Knives they had in plenty, but the only swords folk in these parts ever saw hung at the sides of men who guarded traders from bandits or weapons carried by the occasional noble who happened to be passing through this area of Karse.

She licked her lips, unsure for a moment what to do. Once again, she remembered the teachings she had received since childhood. She could not ignore this man’s plight. He was obviously in need of aid, more aid than she could provide. Somehow, she had to get him to the priest Beckor, who also served as village healer.

Whispering a brief prayer to Vkandis Sunlord, she slipped from her saddle and slowly approached the man. Her skin tingled in apprehension; she was poised to retreat at the slightest hint of danger. Danger? She snorted inwardly. This fellow didn’t look as if he could harm anyone in his present condition. She stood only a few steps away, her mind racing. How was she to carry him to the village? He was a large man, broad shouldered. She could hardly lift him atop her horse, and he might not be able to walk. Swallowing her fear, she stooped, reached out, and gently touched his shoulder.

He started at the touch, lurched to one elbow, his face turned in her direction. One very blue eye stared at her; the other was hidden by crusted blood. She jumped back at his sudden movement, gasping in surprise, but he made no move toward her, merely bowing his head and shaking it slowly as if to clear his thoughts.

“Be you hurt bad?” she asked, proud her voice only trembled slightly.

He shook his head again and then quickly reached out to where his sword lay. She backed away, now caught up in fear of what might happen next. His hand found the hilt of his sword, his fingers tracing down to the cross guards. Seemingly satisfied his weapon had not disappeared, he looked up at her again.

“Where?” His voice was not what she suspected. It was deep, calm, and only slightly edged with a thinness she attributed to pain. “Who are you?”

“Name’s Sosha. I’ll try to get you help, but we be a ways from the village. Can you stand? Got a horse here, if you can ride.”

He slowly rolled onto one side, drew up his knees, and tried to stand. She heard him cursing softly, obviously unsettled at his weakness.

“Lord of Light,” he murmured, “I can’t see out of my left eye.”

“Healer will take care of that,” Sosha observed, hoping she was right.

He grunted something under his breath.

“You lost a lot of blood,” she observed, still poised to run. The side of his green tunic was stained with it. She couldn’t tell if it was from his head wound, or whether he had another cut somewhere else. “You need a healer. Sooner the better.”

“You’re right about that,” he muttered, lifting a hand and gingerly touching the cut on his forehead. He stared down at his fingers, which had come away sticky with blood. Suddenly, he glanced around, as if looking for something or someone. “Have you seen any strangers recently?”

She thought back. “Only been on the road a short while myself. Seen no one. Farmer passed a while back on a wagon, but nothing else.”

“Two men,” he said, still unsteady on his feet. He felt his side, grimaced, and looked up and down the road. “Two very large and angry men.”

“Ain’t seen anyone like that. Now, you be in need of help. Sweetwater be a short ride from here. Think you can make it to my horse?”

“Sweetwater? That’s the name of your village?”

“That be it.” A sense of frustration filled her. “You coming or not? Going to keep bleeding here by the side of the road?”

He managed to look slightly embarrassed. “Sorry. You’re only trying to help. I think I can ride. But what about you?”

“You ain’t in a race,” she said. “I’ll walk beside.” He reached down and picked up his sword, tottering for a moment as if on the verge of falling. Sheathing the weapon with an unsteady hand, he once again touched his forehead, flinching in pain.

Trusting he had no thoughts of harming her, she turned to her horse and led the animal close. The man slowly followed, still a bit unstable on his feet. Her horse backed up, the scent of blood disturbing it, but she had the reins firmly in hand.

“Stirrups too short for your long legs,” Sosha said. “Want me to let them out?”

He shook his head, winced at the motion. “I’ll be all right.” He grasped the saddle and slowly pulled himself astride.

She shrugged, turned, and led the horse back to the road. The sun beat down on her head, and she could taste the salty sweat on her upper lip. After he seemed to be settled firmly in the saddle, they started toward the village at a slow walk.

He kept silent as they went, and she echoed his silence. Once, glancing over her shoulder to be certain he still sat upright, she caught him looking back at the road and then around, as if uncertain of his safety. She gnawed on her lower lip. Who was he? Where had he come from? And who were the two very large and angry men he had mentioned? She had seen no horse nearby and doubted he had walked this far out into the countryside from Vkandis only knew where.

One fact was certain: he did not hail from this area. He spoke in a cultured accent, and his clothing was far too fine to be owned by any of the villagers she knew. His boots were made of soft leather, the scabbard and his sword belt decorated in what might be silver. Even so, he did not seem to be of noble blood. Perhaps a retainer of some highborn house.

She sighed quietly. He held to his silence, and she was hesitant to pose any questions. Those could be raised by Beckor, for she had decided this man needed help that only the priest could provide.

Noon prayers to the Sunlord finished, Beckor stood next to his chapel at the center of Sweetwater. The village dozed now under the summer sun. The smithy was quiet; a low murmur of voices drifted out from the tavern. It was a peaceful time; the midday meal had passed, leaving a short period of rest before afternoon labor resumed. Not a soul stirred. He contemplated weeding his small garden but discarded the notion. Sunlight poured down out of a cloudless sky, the air beginning to thicken as if before a storm. Weeding could wait, at least until the day grew cooler.

Movement down the road that ran directly through the village caught his attention. Shading his eyes, he stared in surprise. What in the God’s green earth was Sosha doing with a stranger riding her horse? A sudden burst of light filled his vision, and he started at what he saw: Sosha, a man on her horse, and a large golden cat padding alongside. He blinked, and the cat disappeared as if it had never existed. Beckor hurried toward Sosha, trying without success to make out the man’s identity. Her face lit up, and she increased her pace.

“God’s greeting to you,” Beckor said, taking the reins from her. He looked up at the man, who now slumped forward in the saddle. The fellow stared down out of one eye, the other swollen and covered with dried blood. “Come with me. We need to get you out of this heat.”

“Oh, sun-ray,” Sosha said, her face flushed and beaded with sweat. “Found him by a field south of here. Can you help him?”

“I’ll try.” Beckor led the horse around to the side yard. He stopped by the door to his room at the back of the chapel. “Sunlord bless you,” he said to the man. “Are you able to walk?”

The man nodded and, moving deliberately, slowly dismounted. He caught himself, his knees threatening to buckle.

“God above,” Beckor breathed, reaching out to brush the black hair away from the man’s left eye. “Who did this to you?”

The man remained silent. Beckor put an arm around the fellow’s shoulder and led him to a shady spot beneath a tree. “Sosha, get some water. And there are clean rags and a jar of poultice in the top drawer of the chest in my room.”

She nodded and hurried off. Beckor helped the man sit, straightened, and glanced up at the sky. Who this man was, what he was doing so far from his usual haunts ... all those questions could be answered at a later time. Now, the most important task ahead was to treat his wound. Vkandis would provide guidance beyond that.

Sosha sat in the afternoon shade, staring at the stranger, who had finished a small meal she had provided from Beckor’s store. The blood cleaned from his face, medicine liberally applied, and a strip of clean cloth tied around his forehead, he looked in far better shape than when she had first seen him. The cut over his left eye proved not as deep as she had feared, but head wounds always bled heavily. His eye and the side of his face were swollen but, after careful inspection, Beckor had announced clear vision would return in a few days. The blood down his side had originated from his head wound, though deep purple bruises showed he had suffered more than one hard blow.

There was something about this man. She could hardly keep from gazing at him. He still kept silent, having said no more than ten words since arriving in Sweetwater. And yet, she felt oddly comfortable around him now, with Beckor close by.

The priest sat in the grass as the man drained the last of the water from his cup. Sosha waited patiently for Beckor to ask the questions that filled her mind.

“You have Sosha here to thank for bringing you to me,” the priest said. “Now, I think it’s time you tell us about yourself. Your name would be helpful.”

The man looked from Beckor to Sosha and back. “Torgon. My name’s Torgon. I’m from Sunhame. If I tell you more, I could be placing you at risk.”

Sunhame? Sosha straightened at that piece of information. Sunhame lay over four days’ walk from Sweetwater. What was he doing this far from home? And what risk did he pose?

“That tells me little,” Beckor said, “aside from your name. Why would you be placing us at risk? Who have you angered enough to ride you down this far away from Sunhame?”

Torgon’s mouth tightened.

“It’s ours to decide whether we’ll take a risk by helping you.” Beckor cocked his head and held his gaze steady. Sosha looked from the priest to the man named Torgon, her heart doing an absurd quick beat. Beckor reached out and touched the man’s knee. “Tell us. Perhaps we can help.”

Torgon barked a short laugh. “Against the two who ambushed me? Unless you have some bully boys or men-at-arms hidden in this village, you’ll find yourself in more trouble than you could guess.”

Insulted, Sosha drew her head back. “We be not defenseless here,” she said. “Lot of our menfolk be big and sometimes mighty mean.”

Beckor laughed quietly. “She’s right about that. Get a few of them in their cups, and you’ll behold a sight or two. Who are these men?”

Torgon spread his hands apart, as if giving in. “All right. The risk is yours. I am, or was, a retainer to Lord Jhasko. He’s a merchant with a heart cold as winter who bought his way to a title. I also served as his bodyguard and messenger.” He glanced around as if he feared other ears could hear. “I doubt there’s a shady deal made under the Sunlord’s eye he hasn’t taken to a level that only the lowest of men would contemplate. I was privy to his secrets, don’t you see. And the last secret I had knowledge of was the worst. Jhasko’s greed for gold had corrupted him past the point I could tolerate. And, trust me, I’d tolerated a good lot before. This time, he wanted me to murder his chief rival.”

Sosha lifted a hand and covered her mouth. Murder? Sunlord protect them all! There might be rare outbursts of violence in Sweetwater, but those usually resulted from too much ale or downright jealousy. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had ended up badly hurt. And, as far as she knew, no one in recent memory had ever contemplated cold-blooded murder.

“Rest assured,” Torgon said, “I may have cooperated in some less-than-honorable deeds at Jhasko’s orders in the past, but murder ...” His face hardened. “I refused. It wasn’t the response Jhasko expected. He ordered me a second time, and again I refused.”

Something cold unwrapped itself from Sosha’s heart. This man was no murderer. She bent her head, stared at her hands crossed in her lap, then looked up. “Be you serious? He asked you to kill someone just because they angered him?”

Torgon snorted. “Angered him? It was less and more than that. His chief rival threatened to take business away from Jhasko. And that could not be tolerated. Jhasko had tried different schemes to undermine this rival, but they hadn’t worked. As far as he could see, the only remedy was to remove the rival and bring down the competing house.”

“Ain’t right!” Sosha murmured. “Vkandis Sunlord don’t take kindly to murder.”

“And?” Beckor prompted.

“And he dismissed me from his service. Told me to be gone from Sunhame before dawn of the following day.” Torgon drew a deep breath. “I’d not only lost my livelihood but doomed myself. I knew too much. I’d participated in deeds that could have imprisoned me for years. My only thought was to gather what belongings I could take and leave Sunhame as quickly as possible. Of course,” he added, “Jhasko couldn’t let it go at that. He’d have me chased down and killed. He feared I’d tell those in power what he’d done in the past.”

Sosha glanced at Beckor and saw a change of expression cross his face. “Then those men you told of—”

“Assassins,” Torgon said, glancing her way. “Professional killers. They followed me out of Sunhame. I thought I had enough of a lead on them, that I’d disguised my trail well enough. Obviously, I was wrong. They caught up to me by a field and left me as you, Sosha, found me.” He grinned slightly. “However, one of them now goes with a sword stroke to his right leg, though unfortunately not enough to cripple him.”

Sosha looked up at the sky, darkening now with approaching clouds. “Where be these men now?”

“Vkandis only knows. With luck, they’ll believe they killed me. I think what saved my life was six or seven men coming down the road. They looked like farmers or hired hands. Even two assassins wouldn’t want to chance their luck against that many burly fellows armed with the God only knows what.”

A cold shiver ran down Sosha’s spine. “Be they still ’round here?”

Torgon shrugged. “Likely,” he admitted.

Sosha looked to Beckor, hoping he would relieve her fears with a few words of comfort.

“Now I see,” the priest said softly, dashing those hopes, “why you warned us of the risk we take in helping you.” He straightened, set his shoulders, and smiled briefly. “Well, what’s done is done. There are places we can hide you until the danger passes.”

“They’ll go looking for my body,” Torgon objected. “If they want to be hired by Jhasko again, they can’t return to Sunhame without some proof they killed me.”

Beckor nodded. “Then we’ll give them proof you died.”

“But that be lying!” Sosha exclaimed.

“There are worse things than lying in the Sunlord’s sight. Murder and attempted murder offend him far more than a lie spoken to protect another person from death.”

The following morning, Zaltos’s parents still asleep and her attendance at the rising sun celebration over, Sosha gathered up grain for her chickens. The sun rose in a sky rinsed clear by nighttime rain. She opened the door to the henhouse and slipped inside, greeted by happy clucking and rustling of feathers. Scattering the feed, she picked up her wooden pail, shut the door, and eased inside the barn. Her horse lifted its head and nickered softly from its stall.

“Torgon?” she called softly. “Be you awake?”

“I am,” came his voice from the shadows. He crawled out from a pile of straw, strands of it clinging to his hair. The swelling had gone down from his face and he moved less stiffly.

“Brought you some breakfast.” She pulled a large sausage and a piece of herb-bread wrapped in cloth from the bottom of the pail. “Hope you don’t mind a few kernels of grain. Had to feed the chickens.”

He unwrapped the bread and sausage. “That’s good,” he mumbled, his mouth full.

She watched him eat, her mind wandering to the night before. Beckor had hidden Torgon in his room, out of sight from anyone who might come looking. After sharing the evening meal with Zaltos’s parents, Sosha returned to the chapel to find Torgon clad in different clothes. Gone were his boots, his blood-stained tunic, as well as his breeches. Beckor was off somewhere, so she waited with Torgon for him to return. They said little to each other, she still somewhat shy in his presence and he wrapped in what must be his memories of violence.

When Beckor reappeared, he refused to say what he had done to give proof Torgon was dead. If she didn’t know, ignorance would provide protection from questioning. Then, under the cover of night, she led Torgon to her house and left him in the barn. Unsheathing his sword, he placed it close at hand and settled down half-hidden by the pile of straw.

Now, as she stood beside him, she felt a creeping unease. Last night, she had trusted Beckor and whatever it was he had planned, but that was then. Today was now, and she feared the two assassins might come to Sweetwater searching for their prey.

“Just ain’t right,” she said, looking up into Torgon’s face. “Nobody should kill nobody for no reason.”

“I certainly won’t argue with you,” he replied. He touched his forehead, wincing slightly. “Some things are even too dark for a lout like me.”

“Don’t think you be a lout,” she protested. “Now keep quiet in here. Sorry for such a boring place.”

“Boring’s good when the alternative is facing frustrated assassins.” His eyes met hers. “You need to take care. Go about your business as if it was a day like any other. And don’t hover around the barn. I’ll be all right. If anyone passes by, forget you ever saw me.”

The sun hung low on the western horizon when two men rode into Sweetwater, to all appearances travelers headed in the direction of Sunhame. Beckor watched them from the front door of the chapel. Big men both, clad in leather and fully armed. Oddly enough, they led a riderless horse. Then, from his vantage point, he could see one of them had his right thigh wrapped in a torn rag. Sunlord protect! he thought. It’s the assassins who tried to kill Torgon! Beckor studiously avoided looking in their direction. They halted by the tavern, dismounted, and went inside—simple wayfarers looking for a place to spend the night before continuing their journey.

Beckor murmured a prayer to Vkandis Sunlord. The game had begun, and he hoped he had prepared a proper ending to it. Something strange had been set in motion when Sosha had found Torgon wounded by the side of the road. And he couldn’t discount the dream that had come shortly before sunrise. He had seen Sosha standing next to Torgon, and between them, tail curled around front paws, sat a large golden cat. Golden? For a brief moment, the cat had grown in size, to be transformed into a Firecat! Words that were not words filled Beckor’s mind: Keep these two together.

Dusk approached, and he entered the chapel to prepare for the sunset service. He clad himself in his vestments, slipped the heavy gold chain of a sun-priest around his neck, and returned to the altar, waiting for the villagers to assemble. One by one, they filed through the open doors and took their accustomed places. He sought and found Sosha, met her eyes and nodded. But arriving last of all, the two assassins entered the chapel, quiet and respectful as any resident of Sweetwater would be.

Beckor tensed at the sight but turned toward the altar, the words of the sunset service coming easily to his lips. Inwardly, he voiced another prayer for the God to grant the villagers safety and to protect the man and woman his dream had revealed as being somehow of great importance.

Sosha arrived at the service later than she would have liked, as Zaltos’ father had taken to bed with a slight fever. After dosing him with willow-bark tea, she left him to the care of his wife and hurried toward the chapel. Torgon had eaten his fill earlier, not stirring from the barn all day. He seemed a different person, clad now in a homespun shirt, patched pants, and scuffed but serviceable boots. Only his eyes were the same, startling blue against the tan of his face. She had been unable to keep her mind from him all day. Through all her chores—gathering eggs, feeding and watering her horse, and pulling weeds from the garden—she kept thinking of him.

And now, from her vantage point at the rear of the chapel, she saw two burly men take their places among the villagers. Strangers happened by infrequently but were generally welcome to stay the night at the tavern. One of the two men shifted position, revealing his wrapped leg. Her heart gave a lurch. Oh, Sunlord! It be those men who tried to kill Torgon! She barely controlled the urge to dash out of the chapel to warn him. You silly thing! That be just what they would want! Be you stupid or what? Stay calm, girl ... don’t even look at them!

She fixed her eyes on Beckor’s back as he faced the altar, trusting in him and the Sunlord to make things right.

“Sun-ray, a few words with you?”

Beckor nodded, facing one of the two strangers who had lingered after the sunset service and the lighting of the Night Candle. Sosha had left immediately after the benediction, so he assumed she was out of harm’s way. And now, what happened lay firmly in the Sunlord’s hands.

“I see you’ve been injured,” he said, pitching his voice to obvious concern. His hands trembled slightly and he hoped the stranger did not notice. “Do you need my aid?”

“No,” the man responded. “Well, maybe. My friend and I ... we’re looking for someone. A fellow traveler. Ruffians in the fields beyond your village attacked us. We’re hoping you might have seen him or heard word of his whereabouts.”

Beckor met the fellow’s eyes, noting that they missed very little. “What does this man look like?”

“Tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed. He was armed with a sword and wore a green tunic.”

“Sunlord bless,” Beckor said, bowing his head. “Someone found a man fitting your description yesterday.” The man stiffened slightly, leaning a bit forward. “He’s dead.”

“Dead? You’re certain?”

Beckor nodded his head. “I should be. I’m the local healer as well as sun-priest. I buried him yesterday.”

The intensity of the stranger’s gaze sharpened. “Dead in the fields?”

Beckor’s stomach clenched. “No,” he said. “Dead not that long thereafter.”

“You buried him where?”

“In the field where all our people are buried. The Sunlord demands honor be paid to those who have joined him.”

“Ah. Perhaps we might go and pay our respects. He was a friend.”

Though the words spoken evidenced concern one traveler might have for another, a coldness lurked beneath. At that moment, Beckor felt the chill of death not far away. Sun-priest or not, what happened next could easily turn violent. He had no doubt these men were ruthless enough that nothing would stop them from finding Torgon, or at least discovering evidence they had completed their task.

Sosha slipped through the barn door, her heart racing. “Torgon? Be you here?”

A rustle from the straw. “I’m here.”

“Get you up into the rafters if you can,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Those men you told us about ... they be here!”

Torgon stood, muttering curses under his breath. He bent and picked up his sword.

“Vkandis protect! You be in no condition to fight. Hide in the hayloft, man! If they come here, it be dark enough they won’t see you.”

He wavered, caught between fight and flight. Finally, he sheathed his sword and eyed the ladder he would have to climb. “You’re right. For the God’s sake, Sosha, be careful! Those two will stop at very little—”

The sound of voices raised in anger silenced him. Sosha turned to the door. “Oh, Sunlord! Get up that ladder! Now!”

She slipped out of the barn, not waiting to see if Torgon complied. Standing by the henhouse, she could see Papa Lorndo at the back door to her house. Confronting him was one of the men she had seen in the chapel. Swallowing convulsively, she slowly walked across the yard.

“Nobody be here but me, my wife, and my dead son’s wife,” Papa Lorndo said, propping himself against the doorjamb. “Don’t know who you lookin’ for, but you won’t find nobody ’round here but us.”

“That’s not what the smithy said. Said he saw your daughter-in-law bring a man into town. That’s the man we’re looking for.”

For a moment, Sosha thought her legs would crumple. “I surely did,” she said in a small voice. The stranger whirled around and faced her. “Near dead when I found him.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “And where is he now?”

“Don’t know,” she replied, begging Vkandis’s forgiveness for the lie. “Took him to our priest.”

“Then that’s where we’re going,” he growled, grabbing her arm. “Get moving!”

“Take your hands off her!” Papa Lorndo sputtered. “You can’t—”

“Keep your mouth shut!” the man snapped. “Be glad I’m in a good mood!”

He propelled Sosha around the house and down the road toward the chapel. In the early twilight, she could see the harshness of his face, the glint of his eyes. Sunlord ... Sunlord! Protect me now!

His worst fears surfaced when Beckor saw the other stranger coming toward the chapel, one burly hand wrapped around Sosha’s upper arm. The poor woman looked both terrified and utterly determined. The moment was now. It all came down to the plan he had put in place the night before.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he exclaimed, putting all the outrage he could into his voice. “You don’t treat young women like that!”

The man released Sosha, who rubbed at her arm, her eyes pleading for Beckor’s help. “What did this priest tell you?” he asked his companion.

“That Torgon’s dead. Died yesterday. Says he buried him.”

“Huh. Smithy didn’t say whether he was dead or alive when she brought him into the village.” He glared at Beckor. “We need to know if he’s dead or not.”

“Why?” Beckor demanded. “Are you kin?”

“No. Friends. We’ll have to answer to his family. We need to see his body.”

Beckor shook his head. “Small honor you give to me and those who have died. You’d have me disturb his grave?”

The man with the wounded leg stepped closer to Beckor. “Take us there.”

The command dripped ice. Beckor shrugged, took Sosha’s hand. “Everything will be all right,” he said. Then, glancing at the two assassins: “Follow me, if you’re still determined to violate the dead.”

“Need a shovel,” the taller of the two said. “You got one, priest?”

“Around back. We have to go that way to the field where he’s buried.”

Sosha’s heart pounded so loudly she knew Beckor and the two men could hear it. How was Beckor going to prove an empty grave contained a man who was very much alive and, if he had listened to her, hiding in the hayloft of her barn? She voiced another silent prayer to Vkandis and followed Beckor as he led the way to the field of burial.

“There,” Beckor said, pointing to the edge of a cleared field. “That’s where I buried him.”

The taller of the two men stared at the newly turned earth. He rolled his shoulders and began to dig. Sosha watched, fascinated and terrorized, unable to turn away, even if she had wanted to. As the digging continued, time seemed to slow down. Finally, the shovel hit something and the man began to work around it.

“What did you find?” the other stranger asked.

“Damn ... think it’s a boot.”

“Let me see.” The wounded assassin pushed forward. “Looks like his.”

The taller man moved up toward the middle of the grave and began to dig again. Sosha glanced at Beckor, but the priest stood calmly, his face expressionless.

Once again, the assassin’s shovel found something. He scraped at what he had unearthed. “Green tunic. Got blood on it. Must be his.” He started to dig around what he’d discovered. “Gah!” he exclaimed, his eyes narrowed. “The stench!”

Both men drew back from the grave, their faces screwed up in disgust.

“What did you expect?” Beckor asked. “Bodies rot. Especially in this heat.”

The two strangers stared at the priest. Sosha couldn’t help but stare, too.

“Now,” Beckor said, “do you mind if we cover him again? The Sunlord will be none too pleased with this night’s outcome.”

The taller of the two men dropped the shovel. “We’ll leave that to you.”

Something moved behind the wounded man’s eyes. Sosha couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or relief. “We’ll tell his family,” the man said, sounding somewhat deflated. “Sorry to have caused trouble.”

“We heard there have been bandits in this area,” Beckor said, pointedly not accepting the apology. “That’s why we’re on guard when we work in the fields.”

The other assassin nodded, taking his cue from his companion, the bluster drained from his voice. “It was a large number of them. The three of us couldn’t fight them off. Thank you again. We’ll be leaving now.”

“Tonight?”

To Sosha, the priest sounded as concerned as someone would be at the prospect of travelers riding out in pitch darkness.

“We were supposed to be at Faroaks yesterday, but we kept hunting for our companion. It’s not that distant. Even bandits sleep. Now that we know Torgon’s dead, we can continue on.”

The wounded man nudged his companion. “And we have to make sure his family is notified. They’ll be grief stricken.”

“Oh ... that’s true. Don’t worry about us, sun-ray. And, girlie,” he said, glancing at Sosha, “sorry I scared you.”

She lifted her chin and stared back at him, struggling to keep her face expressionless. The two assassins nodded farewell, turned, and left the field. Only when she could no longer see them in the gathering darkness did she allow tears to roll down her cheeks.

“Now, now ... you’ll be all right.” Beckor put an arm around her shoulders. “They’ll be gone soon.” He lowered his voice. “Where’s Torgon?”

“Up in the hayloft,” she replied, matching his hushed words. “I warned him.” A shift in the evening breeze made her gag. “Lord of Light! What be in that grave?”

“Besides Torgon’s boots, tunic and breeches?” A small smile tugged at Beckor’s face. “Rotted vegetables, meat that’s gone bad ... anything vile I could find to fill them with. You see, Sosha, ofttimes we see what we expect to see, even when it’s something else.”

Relief descended like a flood. She wiped at her tears and, ignoring propriety, hugged the priest.

His smile broadened. “Let’s cover this up and then I’ll walk you home.”

After the two assassins had ridden out of Sweetwater, Beckor joined Sosha in her barn. Holding a shielded lamp in his hands, he watched Torgon slowly climb down the ladder, favoring his left side in his descent.

“For what you’ve done for me, sun-ray,” Torgon said, after Beckor had explained all that had happened, “I can’t thank you enough.” He turned to Sosha. “And you ... you were very brave. My undying thanks to you also.”

Beckor noticed how their eyes met and held. He remembered his dream. Keep these two together, the Firecat had said.

Somehow he knew his plan, played out to perfection this evening, was but one step in a journey Torgon and Sosha would make together. And in the darkness of the barn, he could have sworn he saw a large golden cat smiling.

Author’s note: Read “The Cat Who Came to Dinner” in the anthology Sun in Glory and Other Tales of Valdemar, edited by Mercedes Lackey, which tells the story of Torgon and Sosha’s son Reulan and his own experience with a much more talkative Firecat.

The Power of Three

by Brenda Cooper

Brenda Cooper’s novels include

The Silver Ship and the Sea, Reading The Wind

, and, with Larry Niven,

Building Harlequin’s Moon

. Brenda’s short fiction includes multiple fantasy stories set in the mythical High Hills, an alternate Laguna Beach, CA, and harder science fiction that has appeared in

Analog Science Fiction

Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

Strange Horizons

, and

Nature Magazine

. Brenda’s very honored to be included in these anthologies, as she’s whiled away many pleasant hours in Valdemar and shared the Valdemar books with countless others. What a treat!

Bard Breda focused on the fight in front of her. In the center of the outside practice rink attached to the salle, two young women wearing worn practice armor sparred with dented practice staffs. Two matching faces wore rivulets of sweat down their foreheads and cheeks, and more sweat glued matching fire-red hair to the slender napes of two necks. For every blow Rhiannon struck, Dionne parried and sent another, which Rhiannon parried. Neither had any advantage over the other, not in quickness, speed, or strength.

Morning sunshine illuminated the two fighters and the two watchers alike. The first of the season’s swallows labored around them, chattering over stray bits of straw for their nests. The twins’ staffs made loud thunks as they struck each other fairly and well, over and over.

Breda cleared her throat to gain attention from Gavin, her counterpart from the Healer’s Collegium. “Do you see why I brought you here? They’re mirrors of each other. Can’t stand to be apart for longer than a class period, and we’ve let them live that way. We even let them share a room when they first got here, and somehow no one thought to separate them. Other Bardic students don’t room with Healers.”

Gavin smiled. “Because you all make too much noise.” The Master Healer shook his head. “They seem healthy enough.”

“Here, where it’s safe. But just last week the Arms-master told me that together they can beat any other pair from their year-groups, even the healers, and yet neither of them can best another single fighter.”

Rhiannon and Dionne stopped together and, as if on cue, took great gulps of air.

“They even have the same cuts and bruises,” Breda pointed out. Both girls sported purpling bruises on their forearms from failing to block with their staffs, and each had matching scabbed-over bramble cuts on their calves.

Gavin grunted. “When they came to the Collegium, their mother said that if one of them fell, to just wait and call the Healer after they’d both fallen. That’s not unusual for twins. We’ve seen it before.”

“Both falling maybe. But sympathy bruises when only one of them falls?”

Gavin arched an eyebrow at her.

Breda fell silent, watching the girls spar. Surely it wasn’t healthy for each to be so dependent on the other? If one of them died, she was pretty sure the other one would die at almost the same time. When they left Haven to pursue their special Gifts, it would be rare good luck for them both to live to old age. At least in these times.

“Rhiannon sings well by herself,” Gavin said. “Her solos at student concerts make me cry or laugh. A merchant I bought herbs from last week talked about her and was happy when I said some of her herbs might be used by Rhiannon’s sister.”

Breda sighed. “You’ve only seen her when Dionne’s in the audience. You haven’t heard her stumble over chords in class.”

His face had a stubborn set. “There’s always been Bards who need someone to sing to.”

Breda nodded. “I know Dionne is one of your best Healers this year. But how is she when Rhiannon is off on a field trip?”

His silence was enough answer. In the salle, the two started bashing each other equally, so it looked like one girl fighting herself in a mirror. Breda continued, “Healers and Bards are more than their Gifts. It’s all right that they’re stronger together, but don’t you think it’s time they learned to live without each other, too?”

“What do you suggest?”

“Send them to separate places. Make them live on their own for a whole year. I’ve talked with the Bardic Council, and we don’t feel we can give Rhiannon her Scarlets until we know she can survive without Dionne.”

“Seems cruel. I’ve never seen two people so connected, even lifebonded couples.” Gavin watched the two girls move in unison, balance a mirror of each other, staffs up, staffs down. He waited a few long moments before speaking.

Did old men lose all their backbone? “And?”

“I guess it couldn’t hurt.” He blinked as if maybe he’d gotten something in his eye. “But she’ll hate it. I won’t want to tell her.”

Breda grunted. “Their safety’s more important than their happiness.”

“I know. But I still think there’s something here we aren’t seeing.”

What could that be? As Gavin walked away, Breda felt her own age in the slow, measured steps he took. Maybe she should have told him she’d lost sleep over this very conversation last night. A Healer should be able to spot a clearly unstable emotional situation. So was he just getting old? Or was she?

Dionne bit her tongue for distraction as Rhiannon clambered aboard an old roan mare assigned by the Bardic Collegium, her gittern in a leather case over her shoulder, a leather pack full of clothes and picks and paper for composing tied to the back of the saddle. A strong arm steadied her briefly. She mumbled, “Thank you,” but didn’t look at Mari, the journeyman Healer she’d be spending her year of living alone with. She didn’t want Mari to see her weak. Or more accurately, since Mari had Empathy, Dionne didn’t want to provide an opening to get probed through. Instead, she shouldered her own pack full of Healer’s herbs and apprentice Greens, turning back for one last sight of Rhiannon, only to find her well and truly gone.

Rhiannon was off to join Bard Lleryn to ride the southern border circuit near Rethwellan. They’d been tasked to help Bard Stefan with his quest to convince the still-healing kingdom that Heralds were as capable as Herald-Mages—now all gone—had once been. Rhiannon and Lleryn weren’t likely to actually see Stefan; a full quarter of the younger bards were part of the vast project.

Dionne and Mari would ride northeast, toward Iftel, but only about halfway to the border. Even as a child, she’d never been more than a few miles from her twin. Already they were that far apart, and the gulf felt like a hole in her very self. As soon as Mari laid a fire by their first night’s campsite, Dionne collapsed and cried. Mari sat beside her, rubbing her back in great big slow circles, whispering that it would be all right.

But it wouldn’t. Not until the whole year passed. And that might take forever.

The next morning, and the morning after that, and every morning for another three weeks, Dionne woke from dreams of Rhiannon. In the crack between night and day when the summer sun was just starting to warm her cheeks, she’d see her twin’s face behind her closed eyes, as clear as if Rhiannon were right beside her. She’d know how Rhiannon’s day had been. Dionne would know if Rhiannon had been rained on, if she was weary, if she’d practiced her scales enough or started a new song. She also knew that Rhiannon missed her.

Or maybe she was making it all up.

How was she supposed to tell?

The days were no better. Every step took her further from Rhiannon. She tried to be effective for the villagers who needed her. Sometimes she did all right, but nothing like what she knew her best work to be. Mari had needed to help her with every major Healing. Dionne could manage on her own if someone just needed to talk or to have a few herbs from her stores—the simpler things that village wisewomen knew. But the Gift that had earned her the second-highest ranking of her class had become almost inaccessible.

Gavin and Breda were both respected teachers. But what if they were wrong?

After a particularly hard day when Dionne had actually made an old woman’s headache worse, Mari built them a fire in a small grove of trees just between villages. The big raven-haired journeywoman twisted her large hands in her lap and looked at the fire for a while before saying simply, “I can’t stand it anymore. Your pain. Your power is all leaking down whatever thread you have with your sister, and I can feel it draining away from you. I’m going to take you back to Haven soon if you can’t figure this out.”

And Dionne would never get her Greens.

“I am trying. Really I am.”

“Try harder.”

Mari’s slightly condescending tone made Dionne’s fists clench, but she tried to keep her voice even. “I’m just as tired of failing as you are of me failing. What if Rhiannon and I are just meant to be together?”

“Don’t you want families of your own someday?”

Dionne shook her head. “We never have. It’s always been us, and that’s always been what we need.”

“I guess I don’t understand.”

“I know.” Mari was an Empath, and surely Dionne’s pain gave her pain. But knowing that just made Dionne hurt more. She threw a stick onto the fire, sending sparks scrambling for the sky.

Halfway across Valdemar, Rhiannon’s fingers ran scales in front of a different and slowly dying fire. They were camped in a small copse of trees very near the border and had kept the fire low to avoid unwanted attention. The scales kept her hands supple and warm in spite of the cool night and provided a steady beat to keep her wandering thoughts from going too far. Tomorrow, they were supposed to finally meet up with one of the border Heralds, a man named Deckert. Maybe that would jolt her out of her malaise.

So far on this trip, she’d barely sounded better than a local minstrel at any of the taverns or village squares they’d sung in, and for the last two nights she’d done no better than play a good backup to Lleryn’s soaring soprano.

But even if she couldn’t sing, surely she could interview a Herald and gather information. Even though she’d tried again and again, her will for singing and performing seemed to have stayed behind with her sister. But the ability to create music was her strongest gift, and surely it hadn’t deserted her, too.

At least Lleryn had already crawled into their shared tent, so she didn’t see the tears tracing down Rhiannon’s cheeks as she sang a new lament she’d penned for far-away Dionne. The night, and her voice, and even the delicate instrument in her lap felt heavy. As she finished the song, even the stars bore down more closely, adding to her melancholy.

“You’re very sad.” The male voice coming from behind her made her jump. She clutched her instrument to her chest and turned to face the intruder. She saw an old man in Whites, and behind him, a bit like a ghostly image in the darkness beyond the campfire, the outline of his Companion.

She flicked the tears from her face. “Herald Deckert?”

He smiled. “Deck.”

“We didn’t expect you until tomorrow.” She thrust a hand out. “I’m Rhiannon.” She stepped aside. “Care to sit by the fire? Shall I wake Lleryn?”

“Don’t bother anyone. But warming my old bones would be nice.”

“Of course.” This was one of the people she was supposed to be singing about, the saviors of Valdemar. She felt awkward. At least the fire had fallen low enough that the old man wouldn’t see her blush. “How has the border been?”

He added two dry branches to the fire, so it brightened merrily and warmed her. “The border has been ... busy. But not as sad as your song. Care to talk about it?”

She shook her head. She’d sound like a spoiled child saying she couldn’t bear to leave her sister.

“Well,” he said, “I hope whatever the hurt is doesn’t trouble a pretty Bard like you for long.”

He was old enough his words were simply sweet. As he sat with his hands out in front of him, warming them, the firelight illuminated a nasty scar crisscrossing his left cheek. A hero. He turned back to her. “Did you write that song? Does it have a name?”

She nodded. “I call it the Lament for Twins.”

“It is ... affecting.”

He looked sad. Hopefully it wasn’t her fault for singing the lament where he could hear it. “What about your Companion? Won’t he or she want to get warm, too?” she asked.

“You’re camped on the very border. Ashual will be happy enough to stand guard and keep us safe.”

The tent flap rustled, and Lleryn untied the strings holding it closed. The young Bard popped her head out. Lleryn was shorter than Rhiannon by a head, but broader, with whipcord muscles and slightly mussed dark hair and dark eyes. “I see we have a visitor.”

Deck blinked and said nothing. Rhiannon filled the silence. “This is Herald Deckert, come a night early.”

Lleryn nodded, squinting at the Herald. “Welcome.” She gestured to Rhiannon. “Can you give me a hand for a moment?”

“Sure.” What could she need more than to come say hello to the man they’d just ridden for days to find? She picked up her gittern rather than leave it where the heat of the newly fed fire might warp its sound, and handed it in to Lleryn.

Lleryn took the instrument and immediately extended a hand. As soon as Rhiannon ducked into the tent, Lleryn squeezed her arm and whispered, “Not Herald Deck,” while at the same time thrusting a knife hilt into Rhiannon’s other hand.

Rhiannon squelched the sharp breath she wanted to take.

Lleryn whispered, “Did you see his Companion?”

Had she? “I saw something white. He said his Companion’s name is Ashual.”

“That’s a name from an old song.”

“So what?”

“So if he’s a Herald, I’m the Queen of Valdemar. I’ve met Deckert, and this isn’t him. The scar’s on the wrong side of his face.”

Rhiannon found she was still resisting the idea. “He seems nice. Why would he pretend?”

Lleryn shook her head. “We’d better find out.” She opened the door with her right hand, her knife loose in her left hand behind her. She looked back and whispered, “Be careful.”

As soon as Lleryn stepped out, she was jerked sideways with a grunt. Lleryn’s knife hand came up quickly, only to be caught by the wrist, gripped by the Herald’s hand.

Not a Herald then. He couldn’t be. Rhiannon bit her lip, then plunged out to help her mentor, bringing her own knife hand up toward the older man’s chest. It impacted but slid away sideways. He grunted, feeling the force of her blow, but he didn’t release Lleryn. Rhiannon’s knife slipped off his chest. She side-stepped, swinging around to the back of him and trying to slash him behind the knees.

Once more the blade slid off.

She tried again, aiming lower, for the back of his heel. She missed entirely.

“Mage!” Lleryn hissed, and Rhiannon looked around for a second pursuer before realizing Lleryn must mean the false Deckert. Was he somehow shielded from a physical blow? Even without Dionne, she wasn’t this bad a fighter.

Lleryn leaned her whole body into him, her teeth flashing at his arm where he had her wrist pinned. Except she kept missing—her teeth gnashing open air instead of closing on soft flesh. Even Lleryn’s balance looked off, as if she might topple sideways any moment.

Was that it? Did she need to strike a little off?

Rhiannon slashed at him again, missing by more than she thought. Her vision seemed to be sliding a little left of where the mage and the Bard struggled. As if whenever she wanted to focus directly on him, something stopped her. She struck in a place that looked like empty air and felt her knife draw shallowly through his skin near the shoulder.

He grunted.

Rhiannon’s vision shifted and the ground came up and slapped her across the side. She coughed and hacked as the world spun around her. Lleryn and the mage were spinning as well, moving a full dizzying turn until Lleryn landed beside her with a grunt, her eyes wide and frightened.

Rough hands wove ropes around Rhiannon’s wrists and tied her right foot to Lleryn’s left foot. Her stomach stopped screaming dizzy and her head and vision cleared only after both of them were well and truly trussed.

A man Rhiannon would have sworn she’d never seen before stood over them. Tall and raven haired, with wild blue eyes and no scars at all, he might have been attractive if he hadn’t just tied her up. Sweat dripped down his temples, and his breath came hard.

“Are you—”

Lleryn interrupted. “It must have been a glamour.”

Rhiannon took a deep breath. Something was wrong with this picture. “I thought people couldn’t do magic inside Valdemar.”

He laughed bitterly. “The watchy things hurt. Which is why we’re going over the border right now.” He leaned over and offered his hand to Rhiannon. She stayed still, refusing to help him capture her. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to get them both up. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to stand being here for long. Maybe a real Herald would come along and help them.

“Take my hand.” His voice was deep and commanding, as though he was used to being listened to. “Now.”

She kicked at him, her foot going wide.

“Why do you want us?” Lleryn demanded.

“Take my hand!” He grabbed Rhiannon’s unwilling hand and squeezed hard. Really hard. Something popped inside her hand, and she prayed nothing was broken.

Maybe he’d hurt her so much she wouldn’t be able to play anymore. And Dionne. What would happen to Dionne if Rhiannon got killed? Miserably, she nodded. “If you stand back, we’ll try to stand up.” She glanced at Lleryn, who gave a short, pained nod.

The mage backed up. He looked drained, but she wasn’t willing to bet they could get away, especially tied.

At least they’d kept some semblance of control, made him listen to a little. Small satisfaction, but something. Getting up tied together was harder than she’d thought, and they fell all over each other twice. Lleryn growled at the mage once, and Rhiannon growled at him the second time, and he let them struggle through it. He still looked pretty uncomfortable, maybe because of the reported difficulty with using magic since Vanyel’s death. Not that she was a mage, but there were enough songs about it.

Rethwellan was close. No more than a few minutes’ walk. That was why they’d kept their fire low. She glared at her captor. “Why do you want us?”

“My keep could use a Bard or two.”

“You can’t imprison a Bard!” Lleryn exclaimed.

“I already did.”

Dionne’s head spun. Only this time she was sure it wasn’t just over another bad day. In fact, it hadn’t been that bad—two of the people in the village had needed herbs, and dispensing that kind of help was easy. Mari had stopped trying to sweet-talk, encourage, or force her cooperation. She sat placidly across from Dionne with the firelight brightening her cheeks as she measured herbs into handwoven net tea bags a mother had given her for calming a colicky baby.

They were in a pretty safe rest between two villages, with a pen the horses stamped quietly in, and two other sets of travelers near enough to see each other’s cookfires, if not near enough to hear each other.

All in all, it was a calm evening. But still, the fire spun around her, and she gasped and twitched, and suddenly her balance turned so awkward she leaned and then fell off the sturdy log she was sitting on.

Mari leapt up, looking around for an attacker, the herbs in her lap scattering to the ground. She cursed lightly under her breath on her way to kneel beside Dionne. “What hurt you?”

“I don’t know.” Dionne closed her eyes, searching inside. As a healer, she should know if she’d eaten something poisonous or taken ill. But it didn’t seem like that.

And then she knew.

“Rhiannon!” she murmured. “Rhiannon!” Her heart beat faster, fear pounding through her veins. Her stomach lurched so hard she nearly threw up her dinner. A bruise blossomed on her cheek.

“What’s happening?” Mari demanded.

“I have to go to her!” Now she was half-screaming and half-sobbing. Her vision still seemed wrong, slightly off, but she struggled to push herself up.

Mari extended a hand, helping Dionne to stand up. “Are you sure she’s really in trouble?”

Dionne nodded, gasping and struggling for balance. “I have to ... go.” She started toward their shared traveling gear, grabbing her pack and stuffing clothes in it hurriedly.

“Are you crazy?” Mari asked. “She must be all the way across Valdemar. You need someone to help you!”

“So help me.”

“How?” Mari asked.

“Let me go.”

Mari shook her head, biting her lip and stamping her feet. “I can feel how much you need to.”

Of course she could. She was an Empath. Dionne tried to strengthen her need even more, sharpen it. She reached forward and took Mari’s hands, something she’d been avoiding as much as possible. She searched Mari’s dark eyes. “I have to go.”

Mari grunted. “I’m responsible for you. Gavin told me not to let you come back before time.”

Dionne fought back a sob. “Gavin doesn’t know Rhiannon’s hurt.”

Mari blew out a long breath. “I’ll take you back to the Collegium, and they can decide from there.”

Good enough. Haven was almost on the way. “Can we go now?”

“In the dark?”

“The moon’s full.”

Rhiannon and Lleryn were both allowed to ride, their hands tied to the pommels of their saddles. The horses were tied together, the reins all ending up in the mage’s hands. His horse’s heavy gait and broad, ugly face would have shown him for mixed farm and warhorse immediately had Rhiannon seen him during the day, instead of just his white outline in the smoke from the fire.

Almost as soon as they passed the border, their captor began to look better, the moonlight illuminating penetrating eyes and a strangely smiling face that made Rhiannon shiver. His control over their mounts became more sure, the horses nearly sleepwalkers moving at his command. At one point, he turned to them and said, “I’m really sorry. I don’t mean you any harm, but you belong in my dream.” He looked directly at Rhiannon. “The sad beauty of your song infected me, and I needed to take you. Surely you understand that?”

No. He liked sadness? All while he was wearing that funny grin that disturbed her? Maybe he was a little crazy or a little hurt, but that didn’t mean he should be after innocent Bards. She didn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer, but instead she looked straight ahead and appeared as unconcerned as possible given the situation.

Just as the first morning sun began to paint the hills with light, they turned up into a narrow, wooded ravine. “I bet this is the way to his keep,” Lleryn said.

“Shhh ...” He silenced them, leading them up a winding trail. Birds began to greet the day, the sound grating on Rhiannon’s nerves. What did he really want? He hadn’t even taken her gittern or let them take much of their stuff. Although maybe that was to get over the border well before light. Hard to tell, except that he definitely hadn’t seemed comfortable in Valdemar.

The keep itself loomed up out of the rock—part carved into cliff, part tall wooden walls that seemed built for defense. In fact, it all looked amazingly well-built, and somewhat fresh and new. Either he’d had a small army to help him, or it was magic-built. But if it was magic-built, the amount of power made her shiver. She watched it grow bigger and bigger as they came closer, colder and more daunting. At one point, Rhiannon was close enough to lean over and speak quietly to Lleryn. “I don’t care about our mission. This is going to be tough without a Herald-Mage.”

Lleryn grunted, and while her face looked as disconsolate as Rhiannon felt, she said, “It will be all right. Maybe this’ll be a good song some day.”

Rhiannon blinked back tears and once more pictured Dionne’s worried face. She couldn’t die here. It was impossible to imagine leaving Dionne alone. “Maybe it will.”

Dionne had been through the story twice under the skeptical eyes of Gavin, Breda, and three other teachers when an older man in Whites interrupted and tossed a dented and worn gittern to Breda. “I found this.”

Even from a distance, Dionne knew it was Rhiannon’s. “How?” she demanded, not caring that she wasn’t supposed to speak unless spoken to.

No one reprimanded her.

“I was supposed to meet them. I waited an extra day where Lleryn told me to and then went looking. I found their gear, but not their horses. Bandits wouldn’t have left so much behind.” He was just beginning to bend with age, and a wide scar ran down his right cheek. His lips were pursed in worry. “I came here since we had some dispatches to send back anyway, and I wanted this reported. It’s not the first strange kidnapping along that border—quite a few local farmers have disappeared. I’d like to take some help, if Haven has any to give.”

“Thank you.” Dionne stood up and looked around. After the last few tough years, Valdemar was short of more than just Herald-Mages. While she’d also have to convince others, these teachers would be the first barrier to cross. “I want to go. I can help find Rhiannon, and that will find the rest of these people.”

No one moved or spoke for the space of three breaths. Then Gavin said, “Go on. You won’t be any use without her anyway.”

A day later, Deckert, Rhiannon, and a second Herald named Cienda, young enough that she still wore her first set of Whites, headed out of Haven. The small group had obtained permission to cross the border for a period of no more than one week and a distance no greater than a day’s ride, and specifically to find two missing Bards.

The Healer’s Collegium had broken a general rule and allowed Dionne to take one of her father’s horses, a three-year-old dun mare named Sugar, with long legs and a long black mane and tail. As beautiful as Sugar was, Dionne felt poorly mounted beside the Companions.

That night and the next she woke sweating from dreams of Rhiannon, frightened and bitterly unhappy. She could see and feel her sister deep inside, and a few specifics of her surroundings came through as well. Stone walls, and a view from a window of a vast forest. Each morning she told the Heralds every detail she could remember from her dreaming, and they shook their heads. “Sounds like anyplace along the Rethwellan Border,” Deckert said.

“At least it doesn’t seem like the Pelagirs,” Cienda pointed out. “The forest sounds healthy.”

“Yes.” Dionne closed her eyes. “It is. They’re at the end of a long draw between deep hills that are covered in trees.”

“Can’t be far from where the people have been disappearing,” Deckert said. “But we’ll have to be very careful since it’s on the wrong side of the border.”

Dionne swallowed hard, ignoring her own doubts. “I can find her. I know I can.”

Either the keep was smaller on the inside than it had looked on the outside, or the mage only allowed Rhiannon and Lleryn access to a small part of it. There was a minstrel, a Healer, and a handful of cooks and farmers and housekeepers. The girls seldom saw them and weren’t sure what kept them here. With the exception of the Healer, who wore very faded and patched Greens, it was impossible to tell if the people they saw were Valdemaran or Rethwellan. It was also impossible to tell if they were captive or free, or held in some sort of magical spell. Rhiannon was certain most of it was a spell, and Lleryn argued it could be some of all the above—slaves and workers, locals and people like them, who had been kidnapped.

They’d learned the mage called himself Lompaux of the Greylorn. He had told Rhiannon that the second day, when he’d brought her a new and very lovely gittern and demanded she play the Lament for Twins for him.

He had her sing it for him every night, and every night she grew sadder, and the song escaped her lips with more power. He seemed a willing listener, the kind of audience she had been taught came too easily to song and sometimes had to be brought from sorrow to happiness at the end of a set. At the end of about a week’s stay (she’d lost track of the actual number of days), she watched him walk out of the room after a session where he’d asked her to sing for him. It dawned on her that they were developing a bond. In fact, he didn’t seem entirely evil. It felt more like he was just trapped in a circle of sadness and a set of decisions he’d made long ago, probably before he was even grown.

Without Dionne, she didn’t know how to sing happy songs with the full power of her Gift. But could she touch him anyway? She knew sadness, now that she spent her days locked in the cold keep without her sister. Maybe she could strengthen her bond to him by creating songs to show him the traps he’d set for himself.

Excited, she stood up to go find Lleryn and see what she thought of the idea. The Bard was sitting in the corner of the next room, practicing air-scales over and over, her fingers tapping silently at the air in their rather large prison. After Rhiannon finished explaining, Lleryn chewed on her lip for a long time before saying, “Sure, try it. Just be careful not to let the bond become two-way.”

Rhiannon grinned. “It won’t. I’ll keep my image of Dionne between him and me.”

The next morning, they crossed the border, taking the widest trading road that Herald Deckert knew of. He stopped at the first fork in the road, putting up a hand to stop the group. “We have to be careful now,” he said. “Having permission from the Rethwellan ambassador won’t keep us from getting shot first and the questions asked later. Rethwellan is anti-mage at the moment, though, so if they don’t shoot us first, they may not mind our mission.” He looked down at his Companion, Kadey. “And the Companions prefer that we just aren’t seen. They’ll try to help us with that.”

Dionne nodded.

The whole group stood still for a bit, and just as she was wondering why they didn’t get started, Deckert’s gentle voice interrupted her thoughts. “You’re the one who’s got to find her.”

Of course. Dionne closed her eyes. “Stay on the main road. I’ll know where to turn.”

And she did, again and again, until she led the group all the way to their first view of the imposing keep. She pulled Sugar to a halt, and the two Companions stopped, and everyone just looked. Rhiannon was there—she could feel her from here. She didn’t think her twin knew she was close. They didn’t have Mindspeech, but they did have something like Empathy, something her mother had always called the oneness of twins. Dionne closed her eyes briefly, closing away the keep, and thought what she wanted Rhiannon to know. I’m out here. I’m going to get you out of there. It will be all right. Get ready!

Her eyes snapped open. She was pretty sure Rhiannon had gotten the message, or the sense of the message. But what could either of them actually do?

The Heralds had been staring for some time, and of course they’d undoubtedly been using true mindspeech between themselves and their Companions. She waited, impatient, and less and less hopeful as time went on. She’d done her part, but the next move was up to Deckert and Ciena. And the Companions, of course.

After what seemed like a very long time, Deckert looked over at her. “Most of what you see is an illusion. There is a true Keep there, and twenty or so people. But it’s older than what you see, and a quarter that size.”

“How do you know?”

He reached down to pat his Companion. “Kadey was able to show me.”

“Can he show me?” she asked.

Deckert fell silent for a moment. “It isn’t necessary.” He sighed and glanced at her. “You’re a Healer, and your sister is a Bard. Between the two of you, you know Companions generally only give the least aid possible—the amount we need to do our jobs.”

She nodded.

He seemed to shift his focus to Ciena more than Dionne. “And sometimes not even that. For some reason, they want the twins reunited enough to help me see the glamour. I’ve come to accept that Companions are—in their own way—magical beings. But they keep their own counsel, and Kadey has seldom solved my problems for me.”

Both Ciena and Dionne nodded. Ciena was at most a few years older than Dionne, but she seemed so much more poised and controlled that it surprised Dionne to see her given a lesson. Older Healers almost always looked after the younger ones. Of course it was the same with Heralds.

Dionne looked at the Keep, willing herself to see it smaller. It didn’t help. “What do we do now?”

For answer, Deckert and Kadey moved forward. Dionne followed, and Ciena, on her Companion Tani, brought up the rear. They were almost halfway to the keep when Dionne suddenly felt dizzy and grabbed the pommel of Sugar’s saddle with both hands. Luckily, the tall mare was well enough graced to stop when Ciena, behind them, called out, “Whoa.”

Deckert and Kadey stopped, too. Deckert turned in his saddle to look back. “Are you okay?”

Dionne closed her eyes and hung on, taking big, shuddering gulps of warm air. “I ... I think we should rest. Maybe it’s a message from Rhiannon, or maybe she’s sick. But anyway, I think ... think I need to stop.”

“Could it be the mage?” Ciena asked.

“I don’t know.” Deckert dismounted and helped Dionne climb down from Sugar. She leaned hard on the old Herald as he helped her sit on a warm stone by the path.

She felt grateful for his strong hand and dismayed by her dizziness. Still, now that she had stopped, she knew it was exactly the right thing. Her breathing slowed and evened, and her balance returned enough that sitting felt normal even though she wasn’t quite ready to stand.

The Heralds didn’t question her, but sat quietly. Watchful.

The glowing alto of Rhiannon’s voice came to her, wafting down through the forest. The local birdsong stopped.

She glanced at Deckert. “Hide, please, and watch.”

To her surprise, Deckert and Kadey faded one way and Ciena and Tani went another way, both so quiet it underscored yet again that the Companions weren’t horses.

Just hearing Rhiannon’s voice lifted Dionne’s hopes, although the song itself had her name in it, and Rhiannon’s, a call to her. The song sent waves of sadness through the woods with more power than she’d ever heard from her twin.

Rhiannon rode around the corner, appearing like a vision through the trees, followed by a young man with a confused look on his face and tears falling down his cheeks. He stopped when he saw Dionne, staring fixedly.

She stood.

The song drew to a close, and Rhiannon mouthed, “Heal him,” over the back of his head.

Dionne nodded so her sister knew she’d heard. Heal him of sorrow? She’d certainly failed the whole time she was with Mari, but now Rhiannon was here. Strength crept into her muscles, her heartbeat, her stance.

When she saw someone as a patient, she often noticed small things. He stood a little to the left, leaning. His dark eyes and pale skin gave him a sallow look. “Come here,” she said simply.

“She won’t need to sing the lament if you’re here,” he said.

An odd response. She licked her lips, watching him. Was he happy about that, or sad?

Rhiannon began the song again.

Dionne stepped toward him.

He backed away, one step for her two.

She held out her hand.

He stood for a long moment, his head cocked, listening as Rhiannon’s voice swelled all around them.

Dionne took another step toward him, surrounded by Rhiannon’s song, which held him in place. She took his hand. Power filled him, dark, but roiling and misty, as if his very own purpose fought against the man he had become. She touched his energy lightly, trying to understand him.

He flinched.

She looked at him, daring him to pull away.

He didn’t.

She glanced at Rhiannon, who winked. That was enough to let go, to trust the situation. They would live or they would not. At least they were together. She took a great, deep breath and closed her eyes, swaying. She grounded, pulling on the strength of the earth and the forest. She let the energy build up around her and in her, and then she sent him some.

He seemed starved. Energy drained from her faster than she expected, driving her dizzy. His pain overwhelmed her, filling her. Perhaps she had done the wrong thing, trusted too much. Maybe she would die here after all.

Rhiannon began a new song, one she had written for Dionne when they were both nine, the year before they started their training. It spoke of healing and joy and helping, and as Dionne poured her energy freely into him, he suddenly began to shake, finally dissolving into tears. He knelt on the ground in front of Dionne. “Now I know why that song called me so much.”

Deckert and Ciena had come up on either side of the threesome, and her sister’s captor withdrew his hand from Dionne’s and said, “I am sorry. I will go with you.”

Dionne blinked. Could they trust that?

Inside her head bloomed a single word. :Yes.:

So that was what a Companion sounded like. Beautiful.

The Heralds led the man who had surrendered to them away, Deckert speaking softly to him while Ciena bound him securely.

“How did that happen?” Dionne asked.

Again, the voice. :Your sister’s voice has worked on him for almost a week. Rhiannon taught him what he had become, and your Healing showed he needn’t stay that way.:

Dionne glanced at the keep, which now looked no more imposing than some of the Valdemar border keeps, a large, square building with a lookout turret on each corner, few windows, and a stout wooden doorway. There would be buildings and storage rooms inside, and whoever else the mage had kidnapped.

She started toward it, Rhiannon at her side. Along the way, Rhiannon continued the song of joy.

“What will happen to him?” Dionne asked.

Deck smiled. “We’ll let him go far away from you two. Valdemar is uncomfortable for mages now, and he is truly changed. Someone so young should have a second chance.”

Dionne smiled agreement, and Rhiannon said, “Yes, he should.”

Bard Breda and Master Healer Gavin both wore solemn faces as they listened to the twins’ story for the second time. They were in a small classroom they’d commandeered for the purpose, Rhiannon and Dionne sitting in student chairs while the two teachers sat at the front. At the end of their story, the girls sat with their hands folded in their laps. Breda was not particularly fooled; they were not as meek as they were pretending to be. In fact, she was pretty sure they’d get up and walk away from their callings if she told them they would have to finish out their years apart.

The girls twitched and fidgeted lightly, a foot here, a little finger there. Clearly, they thought it at least possible that Breda and Gavin would force them to separate again.

Breda had decided Gavin deserved to pronounce their judgment. He looked very solemn and serious as he said, “We guess you want to stay together?”

The twins nodded vigorously.

“You think your bond is something more than we thought, something worth nurturing and feeding.”

They nodded again.

“All right.”

The two girls screeched jubilantly and held each other, and then seemed to recall they were almost adults and settled back into their seats, still smiling.

Breda leaned over and whispered in Gavin’s ear. “I’m glad you were right. May we always learn from our students.”

He leaned over and whispered back. “If we hadn’t separated them, we would never have known how strong that bond is.”

It was Breda’s turn to speak. “You two sound like magpies. We’re not done, yet.”

Two faces surrounded by red hair looked back at her, pretending innocence.

She leaned down and pulled a box out from under her chair. She took out two new uniforms: one scarlet and one bright green.

The twins held their tongues and reached demurely for the symbols of their new status with reverent hands. Good. Maybe their adventure had helped them understand the new realities of a Valdemar without Herald-Mages. They would have to be part of the solution, as would all of the Bards and Healers and Heralds together.

Three classes of Valdemar, working together. The Power of Three. She could already hear the refrain of a song building in her head.

What Fire Is

by Janni Lee Simner

Janni Lee Simner has published nearly three dozen short stories, including appearances in

Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales

Realms of Fantasy

magazine, the first Valdemar anthology,

Sword of Ice

, and the third,

Crossroads

. Her latest novel,

Bones of Fairie

, will be published in early 2009. Visit her Web site at

www.simner.com

All my life, fire has danced through my dreams.

Orange and red, yellow and white—I hold flames in my hands. They caress my skin and melt on my tongue, sweet as sugar on festival days.

But only in dreams. I am a farmer’s son. I am no fool.

I know well enough what fire is like.

When I was small, I told my parents about my dreams. I thought they’d be pleased. We worshiped the Sun, after all, saying prayers morning and night to the round stone disk above our hearth. (The merchant’s daughter, Cara, said her family had a gold pendant, but I didn’t believe her; no one had that much gold.)

Yet as I spoke, my father’s face grew hard as the frozen winter fields. “Don’t talk of such things, Tamar. Try to dream happier dreams.”

It was a happy dream, I thought, but before I could say so, my mother looked at me, and the fear in her eyes turned the memory of bright flames to cold ash.

“Yes,” I told them both. “Yes, I will try.”

We cannot hold fire. We cannot taste it. But we can use it.

Fire cooks our food, heats our rooms, lights our homes. After a cold winter night, fire welcomes us to morning.

With fire the day—and the day’s work—begins.

When I was older, I called fire into the waking world.

One gray winter dawn the year I turned nine, I crouched in the loft where I slept, longing for the warmth I’d held in my dreams. My palms grew hot, and a tiny orange flame sprang to life in my cupped hands.

From below my father called me down to milk the goats. The flame disappeared in a wisp of smoke, leaving behind only a small red welt.

This time I told neither of my parents what I’d seen. I told myself they were afraid I’d burn myself. They didn’t understand that I was older now and knew how to be careful.

I didn’t call the flame back again that day. I longed to, though, even when the welt blistered, even when the blister broke and wept.

The day begins with fire. And fire begins with Vkandis, our God.

Every year the Sun’s bright rays light the wood our village priest, Conor, piles on the sacred altar. Every year we carry some of that holy fire home to light our own hearths.

As the flames burn in our hearths, they reach upward, yearning, always yearning, to return to the Sunlord once more.

Three days after I first called fire, Cara walked up to me in our village church. “Don’t be stupid,” she said.

I made sure no one was looking, then stuck my tongue out at her. It was a worship day, and we were supposed to be on our best behavior, but I knew well enough it was girls who were stupid.

“I mean it,” Cara said. She was nine, too, but she rarely spoke to me. My mother said that was because she was rich and we weren’t.

I didn’t care what the reason was. I stuck out my tongue again, then ran off to sit with my parents near the back of the church. Soon Conor entered the sanctuary in his brown homespun robes, and the service began.

Conor’s sermon that day was about witchpowers, and I fought not to yawn, because of course I’d heard it all before: how in faithless realms to the north demon-kin welcomed unholy witchpowers into their lives and rode ice-white demons sent from the coldest depths of Hell. Not here, though—here people with witchpowers were cleansed by holy fires that destroyed the powers, yet left the soul intact. As for demons, only trained priests called on them, and only as needed to protect our people.

As Conor went on and on, my gaze strayed from the altar fire to my own hands. I remembered the fire that had burned in them, and I wondered if I could call it back again.

I looked back to the altar. From her seat at the front of the sanctuary—because her family could afford to tithe more than mine—Cara glanced at me. I saw fear in her gaze—the same fear I’d seen in my mother’s eyes when I told my dreams. Cara turned swiftly away, but not before I wondered whether I really was stupid.

For until that moment I hadn’t realized that something as pure as flame—and hadn’t Conor just talked of cleansing fire?—might be a witchpower, too.

For a fortnight I wondered whether I should tell Conor. The priest said we must always report witchpowers, in others and in ourselves, for the sake of our immortal souls.

One spring evening I stood alone in the fields my family farmed. Winter’s ice had melted at last—soon it would be time to plant turnips and carrots and beans—but I barely noticed the mud coating my shoes. I watched as the setting sun turned the clouds to molten fire.

I cupped my hands together and imagined a tiny orange flame. My palms grew warm; the flame appeared, looking like a bright sliver of evening cloud. It danced over my palms, taking away the evening chill.

I blew softly, and the flame went out. Could such warmth truly come from an unholy power?

Conor would know. I should ask him.

“Don’t be stupid,” someone said, as if reading the thought.

I whirled to see Cara trudging through the fields. I’d been so focused on my flame—on my thoughts—that I hadn’t heard her coming. Her shoes and the hem of her embroidered dress were stained with mud, and sweat made her dark brown hair escape its braid to curl around her face. I’d never seen Cara dirty before.

“I’m not stupid,” I said, even as my heart began to pound. Had Cara seen that flame? Would she tell Conor?

“You need to be more careful,” Cara said. “It won’t save you in the end, but it’ll at least buy you a little more time.”

I scowled, even as I realized she had no intention of telling. What if Conor was right, and I was putting my soul in danger by keeping this power secret?

Cara kicked a stone, splattering mud on us both. “Don’t you dare tell. Promise you’ll be careful, Tamar.”

“You’re asking me—” I spoke slowly, even as I wondered why Cara had come here at all, “—to keep a secret from one of Vkandis’ priests.”

Cara nodded soberly. “Even a priest can be wrong.”

That was heresy, and we both knew it. If I repeated her words to Conor, Cara might be the one who burned, though my mother said there hadn’t been a burning in our village for a long time, not since before Conor had come here.

Either way, I knew well enough I wouldn’t repeat anything. Yet still I said, defiantly, “I’m not afraid of fire.”

“I am,” Cara said. “So promise. By Vkandis’ light.”

You couldn’t break an oath made by the God, or else you wouldn’t only burn in this world—you’d freeze in the next. “You have to promise you won’t tell either,” I said. What was the use in my keeping secrets if Cara only turned me over to Conor herself?

“I never tell,” Cara said. “How do you think I’ve lived this long?”

I had no idea what she was talking about. “Promise anyway,” I said.

Cara bowed her head, like in church. “I promise I won’t tell about your power or mine, not so long as I live.”

“What do you mean, your power?”

Cara laughed, a bitter sound. “Didn’t I just promise not to tell?”

I hadn’t meant not to tell me. I let that go. “And I promise I’ll be careful, all right?”

Cara nodded sharply. “By Vkandis’ light,” she said.

“By Vkandis’ light,” I agreed. Then, because Cara had just sworn an unbreakable oath, I carefully scanned the fields—no one else was anywhere in sight—cupped my hands in front of me, and called the small flame back again.

Cara looked into the light, and her expression turned incredibly sad. “Of course they’re not witchpowers,” she whispered. “Of course we’re not cursed. But they won’t know that, not for hundreds of years.”

By the fire’s light we tell stories. We pray. We dance. On a cool night, the flicker of flames is like laughter, welcome and warm.

Yet if we don’t add wood, if we forget to bank the coals, even the strongest fire burns out by morning.

We were careful, Cara and I. I didn’t call that small flame to my hands again, not even alone in the gray light of dawn, and Cara never, not once, spoke of what she saw. We hardly spoke to each other either, just like before.

Once a year, Conor gathered all the village children together. He looked at each of us in turn, searching for witchpowers. Yet his gaze was always kind, and it never lingered for long before he declared he saw nothing in any of us save for Vkandis’ own light. For three more years after Cara and I swore our oaths, no one was taken for the fires.

The fourth year was different. That year a red-robed priest visited our village. Conor called us together as always, but then the red robe himself began looking us over, one by one.

I told myself everything would be all right—only then I glanced at Cara. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and her face was icy pale. All at once I realized what Cara’s power was; I realized, too, just how much trouble we both were in.

The red robe’s eyes held no kindness, just a long searching gaze I was sure could see down into our very souls. When he touched Cara on the shoulder, she didn’t even look surprised. She just shut her eyes a moment, then followed Conor to the waiting carriage as the red robe continued examining us. He tapped my shoulder next, just as Cara must have known he would.

I felt a spark of anger. I could fight the priest. I could kick, scream, maybe even call flame—but Cara’s words echoed through my head. Promise you’ll be careful. I’d sworn a sacred oath, and attacking a red-robed priest wouldn’t be careful at all. It would be, as Cara said, stupid. Stupid enough that the priest might just burn me right there.

I forced my anger down, dousing it as surely as I’d once doused the flame I’d called into my hands. It’s not a witchpower, I thought defiantly, but I spoke not a word as Conor led me away. I caught a glimpse of my parents, both of them fighting not to cry. I heard Conor whisper, so low none but me could hear, “I’m sorry, Tamar.” Then I entered the carriage. Conor shut the door behind me, leaving me alone in the dark.

No, not alone. I heard Cara sobbing softly. As my eyes adjusted, she looked up at me, her eyes bright with tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m trying to be brave. Only—”

“Only you knew what was going to happen.” Her power was invisible, yet no less forbidden than mine. She could see the future.

Cara nodded, not denying it, but not speaking the nature of her power aloud, even now. “It’s not so bad. We still have some time, I know.” Yet the bleak look she gave me made the carriage seem suddenly cold.

I had nothing to say to that, so instead I drew her close, not caring that she was a girl. She let me, not caring that she was a merchant’s daughter and I was a farmer’s son.

“I wish we could have lived in some other time,” Cara said. “There will be miracles in other times. But not for us.”

Later I learned they often drug the children they take away, but Cara and I were so quiet, the priest saw no need. We didn’t say anything more as the carriage began to move, taking us away from our homes and all we knew. We just held each other in the dark, cut off as we were from the Sun’s bright rays.

The surest sign of last year’s fire is this year’s bright green field. If flames scour the land one season, new growth sprouts the next.

There are seeds that cannot grow without fire.

Twice during our journey the carriage stopped and another child joined us.

The first was a girl, drugged and bound, who thrashed and moaned as if from bad dreams. Yet once, for just a moment, she opened her eyes and looked up at us. My own eyes were used to the dark by then. I saw how still Cara grew as she returned the girl’s gaze.

“It’s not your fault,” Cara told her. “Truly it isn’t.”

I didn’t know what Cara meant, but the girl did. She sighed, closed her eyes, and slid into quieter sleep. The priest didn’t drug her again.

The second child was a boy, bound only, trembling from head to toe. “It’s all right,” Cara told him. “They won’t hurt you. You’ll be a priest one day. Only try not to speak up in geography class. Nothing good will come of it if you do.”

The boy nodded, and his trembling eased. Beside me, Cara sat up a little straighter, all sign of tears gone. As the carriage began to move once more, she whispered, “I know now, Tamar.”

“Know what?”

Cara’s smile was sad but real. “What I need to do.”

It was some time before I knew what Cara meant.

In the meantime we arrived in Sunhame—that great city, said to be designed by Vkandis himself, which I never dreamed I’d see—and were taken to the Children’s Cloister. There I realized one more thing Cara must have already known: that no one meant to burn us, not yet. They meant to train us—to be priests if our studies went well, or else to be servants to priests if those studies went poorly.

We still have some time. I remembered Cara’s words, yet still I felt a small spark of hope. Maybe we had more time than Cara thought.

To my surprise, I enjoyed my studies, even though I’d never been much of a student at the village school. I enjoyed improving my reading and writing. I enjoyed studying Vkandis’ writ. I enjoyed learning my own history and reading glorious accounts of times my people had turned invaders away, or else invaded and claimed some land of their own.

I learned, too, all the things that priests did. Red-robed priests might take children from their families and black-robed priests might light fires in which children burned, but priests of all colors also defended our borders, looked after the sick, and tended to families who lacked food or clothing. They brought Vkandis’ wisdom to the smallest villages, just as Conor had. And sometimes they spoke with the Sunlord directly, in order to gain wisdom and carry out His will.

Alone in my small room after evening prayers, I listened for Vkandis’ voice, too, but I never heard it. If I felt any anger at that, I forced it down, just as I’d forced my anger down when the red robe took me away. Instead, I prayed harder, and I kept listening.

I longed, during those lonely evenings, to call flame to my hands, but I forced that longing away as well. Only in dreams did I set my power free, where none but Vkandis could see.

No matter that the God never spoke to me; He also never betrayed me to the priests with whom He did speak. I took some hope from that, too.

Maybe, if I studied hard enough and prayed well enough, the Sunlord would decide to spare Cara and me after all.

We can put a fire out by smothering it or by mixing it with water.

Yet it only takes one missed coal to keep a fire alive. Fire will wait, invisible and silent, for tinder or anything else that can catch.

I didn’t see much of Cara at the Cloister. Girls were taught apart from boys, and there were fewer of them, just as there were fewer female priests. We shared the same dining room, though, and passed each other in the halls between classes.

Once in those halls I saw Cara lean close to a girl who walked beside her and whisper a few words. I thought nothing of it.

Then another time, I saw her nudge a girl’s foot beneath the dining room table, just as that girl was about to speak.

A third time I heard a soft knock on the door across the hall from mine, late at night. When I opened my own door, I saw Cara speaking to the boy who peered out of his room, though girls and boys were forbidden in one another’s quarters.

I don’t know what Cara told them. I don’t know who else she spoke to. I only know that for all of my first year at the Cloister, there were no burnings. The priests remarked on how unusual that was. They thanked Vkandis for blessing us so.

Yet I knew we weren’t only blessed by the Sunlord. We were also blessed by Cara, who had figured out indeed what she needed to do.

As the first year gave way to a second, though, I grew uneasy. Be careful, I thought, whenever I passed Cara in the halls.

But she hadn’t sworn an oath to be careful. Only I had done that.

Fire starts small. A spark, the scrape of flint on steel, a candle’s flame. Any of these can burn the world.

Any can be extinguished by a gust of wind or a human breath.

Halfway through our second year, the youngest children began whispering about a bright spirit who looked after them. When I heard that, I broke the rules myself to sneak up to Cara’s room.

She opened the door before I knocked and drew me inside. “I know what I’m doing,” she said. “I never tell them how I know what I know. I’ve broken no oaths.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. She’d already answered all I meant to say.

Cara brushed a strand of dark hair from her face. Her unbound hair fell past the shoulders of her gray nightgown, making her look like a spirit indeed. She was beautiful, I realized, and wondered why I’d never noticed before. I reached for her, then drew away. Visiting one another’s rooms wasn’t the only thing forbidden to male and female students.

Cara drew me close instead and brushed her lips gently against my hair. “I’ve always had so little time, Tamar. So I do what I can, while I can, in Vkandis’ name.”

Her words sent ice down to my bones. I drew back a little. “The priests don’t know it’s in Vkandis’ name. If they knew, they’d say demons guided you, not the Sunlord.”

“The priests are fools,” Cara said. “Or maybe they’re just afraid. Do you know I pray every night, just like we’re supposed to? I pray to the God my courage won’t fail me in the end.”

I didn’t want her to say that. I wanted her to say that of course Vkandis wouldn’t let us burn, that he would spare us both in the end. “If Vkandis gave us these powers, if we can use them to do his will—why would he let us burn for them?”

“I don’t know. But I think I’ll get to ask Him very soon.” The quiet acceptance in her voice made me shiver.

I wasn’t ready to accept anything. “You could run away,” I said. I knew better, though. Guards watched the Cloister by day, demons by night. “If you can see things, don’t just use that to protect everyone else. Protect yourself! I’ll help you, any way I can, I swear it by—”

Cara shook her head. “No more oaths. Not now.” I started to protest, but she sighed softly and took my hands. “You don’t understand. When I see things—I never see myself.”

“Then you don’t know what’s going to happen,” I said stubbornly.

Cara shut her eyes, as if my words pained her. “It’s not myself I see at the end, Tamar. It’s you. Only you.” She opened her eyes again. “The matron will be by soon. You should go to bed.”

I rested my face against her shoulder, just for a moment. The heat that rose in me had nothing to do with my power.

Yet I was good, by then, at dousing heat. I drew away once more, even as I thought about how, if not for the priests, things would have been different between us.

Then again, if not for the priests, perhaps Cara and I never would have spoken at all.

“I’ll be as careful as I can, for as long as I can,” Cara said. “I can promise you that.” But though I begged her, she would not make it an oath.

Protect her, I prayed to Vkandis as I returned to my room. Yet I was a student still. My God did not answer me.

Fire burns, but there’s no need to say that.

Everybody knows that.

Two weeks later, Cara was betrayed by one of the students she tried to help—a girl in love with one of the novices, whom Cara had warned not to speak her feelings aloud. The girl was so angry Cara knew those feelings at all that she ran right to the priests, though Cara warned against that, too.

When the black-robed priests came for her in the dining hall, I wanted to fight them. Only the oath I’d made in Vkandis’ name long ago stopped me.

I wanted Cara to fight them, but of course she didn’t; she just let the priests lead her away.

For three days she was locked away so that she could pray and prepare her soul for the fires. During those days, the priests said, she’d be allowed neither food nor water, in order to focus her prayers.

For three days I prayed, too—prayed to Vkandis for Cara’s life. The God was silent as always, but I told myself that didn’t mean He couldn’t hear. I prayed that He would hear. Vkandis was a God who answered prayers, after all. I’d learned that in every one of my classes, and from Conor back in my village, too.

Yet after three days I was led with the other students into a barren gray courtyard. A single stone pillar rose out of the ground at its center, and dry wood was piled high around it. Looking at that wood, I felt suddenly ill.

A red-robed priest led us in prayer. My lips moved to the ritual words, but I scarcely heard them. I heard only my own silent pleas. God of Light, please, spare her. She’s done so much in your name.

Too soon, a hush fell over the courtyard, and a black-robed priest led Cara out. Dressed in undyed white, she looked like a spirit indeed, though I knew white was meant to be the color of Hell’s worst demons. Her feet were bare, her hair bound above her head, her hands tied behind her back. Her lips moved in silent prayer.

Vkandis was a God of miracles. I’d learned that in my classes, too. Sunlord, please.

Cara uttered no sound as the priests tied her to the pillar, not even when another black robe crossed the courtyard, holding a burning torch. He brought the torch to the wood.

Vkandis, no!

The wood didn’t catch. I caught my breath. Yes, Sunlord. Thank you, Sunlord.

The priest’s hands moved, a subtle gesture. Wood roared into flame. The flames licked at Cara’s feet, and she screamed.

She kept screaming as she spasmed against her bonds. Her robe caught fire; gray smoke billowed around her. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

Heat rose in me, the heat I’d spent years learning to hide. Anger rode close behind. I could send that heat into the black robe’s torch, commanding the flames to consume him. What use was being careful now?

But killing the priest wouldn’t save Cara. Nothing would save her, not even Vkandis’ own power.

So I sent my power into the pyre instead, turning orange flames to a brilliant white fire.

That fire consumed Cara in an instant, putting an end to pain and leaving behind nothing but ashes and silence.

I am no God. It was all I could do for her.

I stopped praying to Vkandis. I spoke the required phrases at public services, but those were words, nothing more. My heart was cold as a dead hearth at midwinter, before it is relit from the sacred fires. I had nothing in me left with which to pray.

Cara’s cries haunted my dreams, the same dreams where flames had once danced. No God worth worshiping would allow this. Whatever the Sunlord cared for, it wasn’t us.

When a black-robed priest came for me a week later, I was only surprised it took him so long. Surely the priests had ways of knowing that it was me who made Cara’s pyre burn so bright. Couldn’t they see into our very souls?

Yet the priest didn’t lead me to a locked cell to prepare for the fires. He led me to his own rooms and made me take a seat there. His name was Andaran, I remembered—he was the priest who’d lit Cara’s pyre.

“Your performance at the burning was—impressive,” Andaran said. “There were no hand motions to give you away.”

I suddenly remembered that Andaran’s hand had moved, right before the wood had burst into flame. He’d made that wood catch, I realized with a sick feeling.

His next words made me feel sicker still. “You are ready for the next stage of your training as a priest. At the next burning you will stand beside me as my assistant. After that, I will teach you all the subtleties of calling Vkandis’ fire.”

It wasn’t Vkandis’s fire. It was ours. Only ours. Or maybe it was a witchpower after all, if it was granted to priests who used it to kill.

Maybe Cara and I had both been wrong all along.

We think we can control fire. We see it chained in our hearths, and we think we’ve bound it to our will.

But when a brushfire roars through the fields, we flee. Or else we dig firebreaks, but fire can jump any obstacle. A burst of wind, a flash of lightning, a season without rain—any one of these can wrest a fire out from our control.

No one ever knows for certain what fire will do.

The next burning was only a week later, and the accused was the same girl who’d reported Cara to the priests. She’d been tainted by Cara’s unholy words, they told us.

This girl didn’t go quietly. She kicked, she screamed, she cursed us all as they tied her to the stone. Yet she hadn’t been drugged. She wouldn’t be cleansed unless she felt the flames, the priests said.

I stood by Andaran’s side, wishing I could run. Yet even if I got past the priests and the guards, where would I go? To the north, where demons rode beneath the open sky and creatures worse than human priests called horrors out of the night? There was nowhere to run and no one to pray to. I waited for Andaran to light the fire.

Instead he turned and handed me the torch. I was so startled I took it.

Andaran’s lips curled into a thin smile, and I knew this was a test. “Light the pyre,” he said.

Sweat trickled down my face as I stared into the torch’s flames. Careful, a voice—Cara’s voice—whispered. Be careful, Tamar.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I told myself it was only the memory of her voice, but my hands trembled as they held the wood. There might be time, yet, to keep my oath—not to Vkandis, who had never listened to me, but to Cara, for whom the oath was made.

Be careful. But careful of what—my own life? Or of what I did with it? If Vkandis would not act, that left only me and my own human choices.

For a heartbeat I hesitated, because I was human and I was scared, because I remembered Cara’s screams. But then I stepped back from the pyre, drew the torch to my chest, and called upon its fire.

White-hot flames exploded around me—only me. No one could force me to make others burn. My clothes and skin and hair all caught, yet hot as the fire was, there was time enough for pain.

Through that pain, I saw a vision: a man made of white fire and crowned in white flame. He reached for me, and I knew that when I took his hand, the pain would end.

I didn’t take it. Instead I cried out to Vkandis, Lord of Sun, of Light, of Fire: “What took you so long?”

And my God spoke to me at last. “Have you not read your writ, Tamar? I cannot interfere with the free will of my people, not until the fate of the very world is at stake.”

Why should it take a whole world to move Him? Cara had died. Wasn’t that enough? “Aren’t our lives enough?” I knew that if Vkandis withdrew his hand, I would burn forever, but still I cried out, “What kind of God are you?”

“Indeed,” Vkandis said, and his smile was terribly sad. “So what are you going to do about it? What choice will you make now?”

It is hard to see clearly by a fire’s light. Shapes distort and blur; shadows reach out of the night. The sun lights the world much more clearly.

But it is not always day. And fire is the only means we have to see in the dark.

One day, Cara says, the entire world really will be at stake, and then the Sunlord will act. But that won’t be for hundreds of years.

I did not take Vkandis’s hand. Yet still he took the pain away, though not the fire. He respected my choice, if nothing else.

Not all priests are killers. Priests also heal the sick, and comfort the poor, and overlook signs of power in their village children to try to protect them. Sometimes these priests have visions that speak through a cloud of flame. When they do, sometimes I am the flame. I am the light by which true priests see.

Sometimes, too, I am the fire that is slow to catch, the moment’s hesitation that gives a priest the time to find his courage, to say, No, I will not do this, though it means my life.

But maybe you are not a priest. Maybe you only hear a whispered voice offering advice, or else urging you to do what you already know is right.

That would be Cara then, warning you to be careful with the choices you make.

I still do not understand why Vkandis waits. I still have not forgiven Him, although He is my God. Perhaps he does not need my forgiveness.

But I am no God. I am a farmer’s son. I will do what I can, when I can, until the very world is at stake.

Dreams of Mountain Clover

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

Mickey Zucker Reichert is a pediatrician, parent to multitudes (at least it seems like that many), bird wrangler, goat roper, dog trainer, cat herder, horse rider, and fish feeder who has learned (the hard way) not to let macaws remove contact lenses. Also the author of twenty-two novels (including the Renshai, Nightfall, Barakhai, and Bifrost series), one illustrated novella, and fifty-plus short stories. Mickey’s age is a mathematically guarded secret: the square root of 8649 minus the hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangle with a side length of 33.941126.

The stench of sickness hung over Herald Charlin’s otherwise immaculate room, despite Mola’s best attempts at cleaning. It emerged from each of the Herald’s struggling breaths, from her every clammy pore; and nothing the healers did seemed to make any difference. Mola hovered over her mistress, watching for any signs of awakening, keeping the room bright with light, fragrant with flowers, and replacing damp blankets and sheets.

No matter what Mola tried, the old Herald’s condition remained unchanged, an interminable sleep on the grim border between life and death. Aside from the rattling, uneven breathing, Charlin did not seem uncomfortable. She lay in a relatively peaceful slumber, eyes gently closed, limbs still, expression serene amid the deeply etched wrinkles. Mola kept her elder’s thin, gray hair neatly combed, and blankets covered the withering limbs.

Sietra, the youngest of the Healers, slipped into the room carrying a bowl of something steaming in one hand, a cup in the other. About fourteen, she moved with a practiced grace Mola wished she could emulate. Slender, but large-boned, Mola felt like a bumbling fool in the company of the Gifted. Her thin, stick-straight hair was a common mouse-brown. Her hazel eyes lacked the striking strength of the sharp blues, grays, and greens or the gentle soulfulness of Charlin’s brown ones. Freckles marred Mola’s round face, her nose pudgy and small, her eyes narrow and closely set. She seemed grossly out of place in a world of handsome courtiers and beautiful ladies, of talented Heralds and Healers.

The sight of the food raised new hope in Mola. “Did my lady ask for these?” Mola could not imagine such a thing. She rarely left the ancient Herald’s side, and nearly a week had passed since Charlin had spoken a word. “Is she able to eat and drink?”

Sietra smiled and placed cup and bowl on the end table. “No, Mola. These are for you. When’s the last time you’ve taken in anything?”

Mola felt her cheeks grow warm, and she smiled at the healer’s thoughtfulness. “It’s been a while,” she admitted. “I haven’t really worried—”

“—about yourself?” Sietra finished. “You should. It doesn’t do Herald Charlin any good to have her handmaiden starve to death.”

Handmaiden. It was as good a descriptor as any other, Mola supposed. Describing her relationship to the Herald did not come easy. Mola’s grandmother had served as Charlin’s nanny before Elborik, her Companion, had Chosen her. They had had an extremely close relationship, more like mother and child; and Charlin had kept Mola’s grandmother with her through her training and beyond. Mola’s mother had stepped into the position next, until her untimely death only a few weeks before Mola turned eleven. For Mola, Herald Charlin had seemed as much a mother as a mistress. They had become so close, so accustomed to one another, that Mola often imagined she could hear a whisper of the Mindspeech that flew between the Herald and Elborik. When Mola tended the Companions, in field or stable, she sometimes thought she could just make out a dull rumble of conversation.

Now, Charlin lay dying. She had survived so many missions, so many valiant tours, that Mola had come to think of her Herald as ageless and immortal. Always before, Charlin had bounced back from illnesses, shrugged off injuries; and Mola could not picture her life without the woman who had shaped and raised and loved her for the last eighteen years. Charlin could not truly be slipping away. Something, or someone, had to save her. It always did.

“Thank you,” Mola said. “It’s so very kind of you to think of me when you have important work to do.” The aroma of the stew filled the room, covering the stench of illness the way the flowers had not; and Mola suddenly realized she was famished. But, before she could eat, Mola needed to discuss with someone the dream that had plagued her last few nights. Sietra seemed a likely and benign place to start. “Could you spare me another moment, Sietra?”

The Healer perched daintily on the edge of a chair. “Of course, but I’d rather see you eat.”

Dutifully, Mola seized the spoon she had just noticed through the steam rising from the bowl and stuck it into her mouth. The flavor of vegetables and gravy spiraled through her, inciting a saliva riot that nearly drove her to devour the entire bowl in an instant. Instead, she forced herself to push it aside. She needed to talk.

“How is it?” Sietra asked.

“What?”

“The stew. What do you think of it?”

“Delicious,” Mola admitted, sucking back drool that nearly leaked from her mouth. “And I promise I’ll eat every bite. But, first, I want to tell you about something.”

Sietra nodded encouragingly, long blonde braids hopping with the motion.

“I’ve been having ... a recurring dream.” Mola studied Sietra for some kind of reaction but received nothing but quiet patience. “In it, I see a mountain just south of here, still in Velvar, not a particularly high or difficult one. On it grow some unusual clovers, and a voice in the dream tells me they can strengthen—” Mola made a short gesture toward Charlin, uncertain how much the Herald could still hear and understand.

Sietra continued to look askance at Mola, clearly expecting more.

“That’s about it,” Mola said. “But it seems so real, more real than any dream I’ve ever had before. And ... I’ve had it every night since ... my lady ... lapsed.”

As Sietra still said nothing, Mola asked directly, “What do you think?”

“I think,” Sietra said with obvious caution, “that you love and miss your lady.”

That being self-evident, Mola continued to press, “Do you think it’s possible there is such a ... a healing clover?”

Sietra went even more quiet, but she seemed to be giving the matter significant thought, so Mola waited. Finally, Sietra spoke her piece, “Mola, have you ever had prophetic dreams before?”

Mola lowered her head. “Of course not. I have no magic of any kind. I’m only ... what I am.”

“You mean a devoted, sweet, kind, and generous person? With courage and hope and intelligence? Because I’d hardly use the word ‘only’ when explaining that.”

The warmth in Mola’s cheeks increased to a bonfire. “That’s ... that’s so very nice of you to say. I’m not Gifted, though. Not in the sense of a Herald or a Healer or a Bard or anything. But this dream. It’s telling me—”

“—to do something.” Sietra shrugged. “Then, perhaps, you should do it.”

“Me?” Mola laughed, the sound odd to her ears. She could not recall the last time she had managed such a thing. “Slopping through swamps? Climbing mountains? That’s a job for Heralds, not hand-maidens.”

Sietra’s slender shoulders rose and fell. “You’ll have a hard time convincing a Herald to go on a fool’s mission on no better pretext than a servant’s recurring dream. Even if the servant is as wonderful as you.”

It was exactly what Mola had figured, the very reason she had not yet told her dream to anyone else. “I have to try.”

Sietra rose. “I understand. And I wish you the best of luck.” She headed for the door. “Please eat, Mola.”

“I will,” Mola promised, immediately turning her attention to the stew. She could not have resisted it if she had tried, and she fairly drank it, without bothering to chew.

Mola washed and curried Elborik until her coat shined, though the old Companion never bothered to open her eyes. She lay in the pasture, fetlocks grass-stained and ragged, chestnuts marring the perfect, snowy lines of her legs. Mola had rubbed and oiled her hooves until they gleamed like metallic silver. The mane and tail lay spread in beautiful waves, combed to silky perfection. Even so, brushing could not hide the moth-eaten patches of fur, the ashen eyelashes, and the slumping frame incapable of standing. The Companion was dying slowly, along with her Herald.

Spotting Corry playing with his own Companion, Rexla, in the field, Mola gathered her supplies and dumped them into her pack. She embraced Elborik’s neck and kissed her soft nose and furry muzzle. Then, tossing her tack bag over one shoulder, Mola walked toward Corry.

Sun rays turned the blades of grass into sparkling jewels, and the cloudless warmth made a negative mood nearly impossible. As she headed toward Corry and Rexla, Mola found herself smiling for the first time in many days. The all-consuming darkness lifted from her soul, as well as her eyes, as she watched the playful dance of man and animal. Heralds worked hard, and she did not begrudge them their moments of play, even with her own heart so heavily burdened.

Seeing her coming, Corry waved in greeting, and Rexla trotted to her, snuffling her pockets for the sugar and carrots she usually carried. The stallion’s blue eyes sparkled in the sunlight, mischievous and joyful, two states she had not experienced in what seemed like months.

Mola shoved the Companion’s face away, then found herself immediately drawing him back for a warm hug and a nose kiss.

“Hey,” Corry shouted, running toward them. “Save some of that affection for me.”

Mola studied her feet. Corry was thirty years old, a Collegium-trained Herald, and far above her station. Yet, he always treated her with great kindness. She found him nearly irresistibly attractive and wondered why he had never bonded with anyone other than his Companion. True, he had a generous, hawk-like nose that had been broken once or twice, and his sandy hair fell in greasy clumps, always into his eyes; but she saw those as endearing characteristics rather than flaws.