In his youth (decades gone now) Kailyon had fetched and carried heavy loads, rebuilt toppled walls, and dealt with every matter that a strong back and a strong arm could serve. If those feats were beyond his grasp now, he was not quite useless (as he had told Master Seneschal not two years past), nor was he ready for his pipe and his pension and his mug of beer in one of the rest houses that the Collegium kept for those of its servants who had no families to go to. Not yet. Dust fell as surely as rain, and boots left scuff marks, and woodwork needed polishing, and that was work a man could do and be proud of the doing. If it was not so fine and grand as serving as a groom in the Companion’s stables, nor a thing where the absence of his labor would be noted instantly (as it would did he toil in kitchen or the pantry), it was still honest, necessary work, and Kailyon had lived and worked among Heralds long enough to know that there was no need to be noticed or praised or thanked for doing what needed to be done.
It wasn’t arduous work by any means. A wing of classrooms to keep clean, and the Library as well, and while the Library was a full night’s task that couldn’t fairly be started until after the students were out of it, old bones kept late hours, and Kailyon did not mind laboring through the long, quiet hours when others were abed. Truth be told, he liked the solitude, the time to spend with his own thoughts. Each new Trainee who came to the Heralds’ Collegium was both a puzzle for the present and a promise to the future. Some of them were children barely older than Kailyon had been when he had come, some of them were verging on adulthood. All uncertain, in one way or another, about what the future might hold and what their place in it would be. Over the years, he’d seen so many of them—from skittish, wide-eyed arrivals to equally skittish, young Heralds departing on their first Circuits—and they all had one thing in common: the fierce determination to be worthy of the trust being placed in them.
As soon as he opened the door to the next room on his cleaning schedule this night, he saw the glow of the lantern at the back of the room (heard the faint mortified squeak and the rustle of papers, too) and knew he wasn’t alone. No point to asking, “Who’s there?” as if he were a panicky grandmam hearing imaginary housebreakers in the night. If nothing else, the Companions would stop someone who shouldn’t be here before they even got onto the grounds, and though these days, the younger servants entertained themselves by scaring themselves sick with tales about what the Mages might do if one had a mind to, what Kailyon was pretty sure of was that what the Mages did do was make the Collegium safer. So he merely took his large lantern off the cart and hung it up on the hook by the door and opened its doors.
If it were merely a regular lantern, holding a candle or burning oil, it would hardly be enough to light his work. But it held, instead, a spell of Mage-light, and so when it was opened, it cast a glow bright enough for him to work by. Certainly it cast enough light for him to see who was here that oughtn’t be.
It was just as he’d figured. Sharp-boned and big-eyed, and here long enough to have Grays that had been made for her, but not long enough to have gotten herself to the point where she wouldn’t stare round-eyed at a lantern full of Mage-light.
There was silence for the space of several heartbeats while the child stared at him as if he were seventy Karsite demons in one skin. She knew full well she oughtn’t be here, and up to no more mischief than seeking out a quiet place to study, if that inkwell and pile of papers was any indication.
“It will be a nice change to have company,” Kailyon said mildly, and set to his work as if she weren’t there.
“I didn’t think anyone would be in here,” she said after a little while, and Kailyon grunted. “Place doesn’t clean itself, you know.”
“No, I ... I guess I never thought about it,” the girl said, sounding surprised and just a little put out. “We keep our rooms clean, and we do some of the clean-up in the Refectory and the Salle, and I never thought about the classrooms. My name is Aellele. My family has a farm near Sweetgrass Creek—oh, I know you won’t ever have heard of it ...”
“But you’re a long way from home, and you’ve been away from home for a long time, and you’re wondering if you’ll ever get to go back home again,” Kailyon said. Aellele looked at him in surprise, and he smiled. “The Sweetgrass Valley is north of here, isn’t it?”
She began to tell him about the farm—he’d heard many such tales over the years, from many homesick young Trainees—and broke off in the middle of her tale to offer to help him in his chores. Kailyon saw no reason to object—it stood to reason that a farm girl knew a little something about dusting and cleaning—and soon Aellele had her own dust rag and was working along beside him.
Kailyon had never been one to chatter, but he had the knack of listening without making it seem to the one who spoke that it was any great burden for him to do so. And in truth it was not, for Kailyon had not only spent his entire life in Haven but had spent most of it within the grounds of the Collegium itself. If the wider world was to come to him at all, it must come through the stories and voices of those who spoke with him. And so he listened willingly to Aellele as she told of the life that she’d left and the life that she’d found, and if what she had to say was almost entirely composed of things he had heard many times before, well, it was new to her, and he gave her the respect of offering her words his full attention. Besides, there was one thing here that he did not yet know, and that was the reason she had chosen to transgress the Collegium’s rules to the extent of placing herself where he had found her, for if the majority of the Trainees were anonymous to the servants, the scapegraces and troublemakers were not, and Kailyon knew already that Aellele was not one of these.
When they finished that classroom, they went on to the next, and went on working side by side. Aellele’s flow of words slowed, then stopped. “Master Kailyon, you have been here a very long time,” she said, after a long silence. “Do you know ... what happens to someone—if they’re Chosen and just can’t learn to be a proper Herald?”
The last words came out in a rush, and it was such an utterly foolish question that if long years hadn’t granted him wisdom (or at least prudence), Kailyon would have laughed out loud. If the child had given the question half a minute’s thought, she would realize that what she was asking wasn’t a question about Herald-trainees, but about Companions. Who chose those who wore Trainee Grey in the first place but the Companions? And how could anyone imagine that the Companions could ever Choose someone who couldn’t learn to become a proper Herald of Valdemar? (Although—Kailyon did grant—it might take years and tears to do the job up right, it was also true that the Companions never chose someone who couldn’t be turned out as a Herald ... eventually.)
But Aellele was far too young (and much too worried) to think things out logically, and to the young, their small sins often loomed as large and black as any villainy out of myth.
“Well,” he said, affecting to consider, “I suppose that would depend on why it was they couldn’t be a Herald.”
And now the truth of the matter came tumbling out—a litany of childish wrongdoing and temper fits (he’d done as much—and worse—at her age, but he hadn’t been looking toward an awful and glorious future as a Herald). And of course Aellele had the manners to try to keep her fretting to herself, and of course her Companion knew about it, and of course he (and everyone else who saw her worrying, and people would have seen it because the teachers and the older students and everyone whose business it was to care for the young Herald-trainees were neither fools nor brutes) would have told her not to worry, that there would be time later to worry, if worrying needed to be done. And she would have paid as little attention to all their well-meant advice as the weather paid to Mistress Laundress when she wanted to dry linens and it wanted to rain.
“—and a Herald has to be nice all the time—when they’re riding Circuit—and I can’t be—I know I can’t—not if I live to be a thousand years old—and oh! what will happen then? I don’t know!”
“Hm,�
�� Kailyon said. He sat down on a bench—as talking was more work than thinking—and gestured for her to sit beside him. “Well. Here’s how I see it. And of course you needn’t pay any heed to me. I’m not one of your instructors. Not a Herald neither. Just an old man who polishes wood and mops floors. But I’ve seen a good few Heralds come and go.”
Aellele seated herself beside him and composed herself to listen, her face grave and solemn.
“Of course you mustn’t do something to shame the Crown or your Companion while you wear the Whites. Everyone will tell you that. They’ll be telling you that for some years yet. And some Heralds ride Circuit and some don’t, you know. Every Herald goes to work they’re best suited to. Still, you aren’t wrong. If you put on the Whites, there’ll come a time when you’re asked to give a judgment. I don’t brag to say I’ve known a Herald or two in my time, though, and not one of them has ever worried one tick about being nice, and every single one of them has worried about being right.”
Aellele regarded him with doubtful hope. “Everyone else seems to think that all we have to do is study everything in our books and—and—and—learn to ride and use a sword and a bow!”
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Kailyon said. “Maybe they’ve got as many doubts as you do. Maybe they do think it’s just that easy—now. Those as think they know everything already are always the hardest to teach. They’ve got the most to learn, and it’s hard as hard to make them let go of what they think they know. You, now, you already know you’ve got a hard road to ride. So you’ll work just as hard as you need to in order to get yourself to the end of it. I’m no farmer, but a friend once told me there wasn’t any point to planning the harvest at plowing time.”
To Kailyon’s pleasure, Aellele actually giggled, then stopped and regarded him solemnly. “A lot can happen between planting and harvest,” she agreed.
Kailyon nodded, as much to himself as to her. He thought she had the look of someone who might be ready to hear what everyone had been telling her now, instead of just listening to it. “And now, I’ve a bit more dust to make away with, and it’s more than time for you to be in your bed, young Aellele.”
Aellele stood, and regarded him hesitantly. “You ... You wouldn’t mind if—if I came back and talked to you again some time, would you?”
“Just as you please,” Kailyon said, pushing himself to his feet with a faint grunt of effort. “And now, off with you.”
He watched as the young Trainee gathered her pen-case and papers and lantern from his cart and went skipping off in the direction of her dorm. So very young! But he knew that to him it would seem like sennights instead of years before he saw her riding out in Herald’s Whites. “Better too much doubt than too much confidence,” Kailyon quoted to himself. It was a proverb Aellele would not hear from her instructors for some time yet, and by the time she did, Kailyon suspected she would already have learned the lesson herself.
Aellele scurried back toward her room. For the first time since she’d been certain that she had it, her Gift was actually more of a comfort than an annoyance (and a rebuke, shaming her because even knowing how people felt couldn’t make her be nice to them). Because she’d been able to tell that Kailyon hadn’t been saying all those things he’d said just to make her feel better, or because he had to, or even just to make her go away, but because he thought they were true and were worth saying.
She didn’t know what hour it was, though she suspected—from the emptiness of the corridors—that curfew bell had already rung, and if she were seen, she would round off a day of disaster with demerits for being out after curfew. And while yesterday the thought would have devastated her, today it did not. If it happened, well, it happened. “A lot can happen between planting and harvest.” Tomorrow she would try to do better.
Tomorrow, and every day after that.
Heart, Home, and Hearth
by Sarah A. Hoyt and Kate Paulk
Sarah A. Hoyt was born in Portugal, a mishap she hastened to correct as soon as she came of age. She lives in Colorado with her husband, her two sons and a varying horde of cats. She has published a Shakespearean fantasy trilogy with Berkley/Ace, Three Musketeers mystery novels, as well as any number of short stories in magazines ranging from
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
to
Dreams of Decadence
. Forthcoming novels include
Darkship Thieves
and more Three Musketeers mystery novels.
Kate Paulk pretends to be a mild-mannered software quality analyst by day and allows her true evil author nature through for the short time between finishing with the day job and falling over. She lives in semi-rural Pennsylvania with her husband, two bossy cats, and her imagination. The last is the hardest to live with. Her latest short story sale, “Night Shifted,” is in DAW’s anthology
Better Off Undead
.
The air had a sharp bite, and Ree could smell snow even deep in the narrow earthen burrow, under the roots of a great oak tree, where he and Jem had taken refuge.
Winter is coming, Ree thought. There’s no escaping it. He felt Jem shake with coughing in his sleep and snuggled closer, trying to keep the younger boy warm. Summer had been all right for living wild and putting more and more ground between themselves and Jacona—and the Emperor’s soldiers.
Even though Jem was all human and didn’t have the sharper senses of the rat and cat that had merged with Ree during the Change-circle last winter, he’d got wicked good with a slingshot. With Ree’s animal instincts to lead the hunt, they’d rarely missed a meal. But the last few weeks, it had gotten so cold, and it seemed like all animals were either hibernating or had gone south for the winter. He could see Jem’s bones through his skin. Hells, he could see them through the rags that passed for his clothes. Jem was cold all the time, and the last three days he’d been coughing all the time and wheezing when they walked too fast.
Ree remembered being cold, back before the Change-circle, when he’d acquired thick brown fur, now growing a winter undercoat. He remembered how everything hurt until you couldn’t think, and you thought you’d never be warm. Jem had never been as sturdy as Ree had been, even as a human. Smaller and thinner, not eating enough, he couldn’t fight off this illness.
Ree sighed and wished he knew what to do. They’d kept to the forest-covered highlands and avoided the valleys where villages and farms clustered. Avoiding humans, like Jem. Because Ree wasn’t a human like Jem. He was a hobgoblin, part animal, to be killed on sight. He extended his hand in front of his eyes, in the almost total darkness of the burrow, and looked dispassionately at fur and claws.
If not for that, they could go to a farm and get food and clothes. And if Jem were a hobgoblin, like him, they could live here in the highlands and do okay. There were other hobgoblins here, and they seemed to survive well enough. Of course, most of them were older and looked meaner than Ree. And most of them would probably eat a sick human. Ree wouldn’t.
He put his arm over Jem and felt him stir. Jem’s human, pink hand, covered his. He coughed and asked, “Is it time to get up?”
Ree sighed. If they went on like this, he didn’t think Jem would survive the winter. Ree would, but ... he wouldn’t be him. He’d end up strung up on the walls of some city, a bad hobgoblin who’d killed people and maybe eaten them. Someone who no longer remembered he’d started out human. “We’re going to have to go to a farm,” he said. “We’ve got to steal you some clothes and decent boots. And food, too.”
“What?” Jem said, and half turned around, his blue eyes wide in shock. “Why? They’ll kill you.” His voice sounded like he was on the verge of tears, and Ree thought it showed how sick he was, how low his defenses were to cry so easily.
“Nah,” he said, trying to make his voice sound casual and hiding his fear. “We haven’t seen any soldiers for weeks. I bet we’re so far from anywhere that now that the magic’s gone, no one even comes here. They’ve probably never heard of h
obgoblins.” Ree didn’t think that was likely. “The wild ones never go near towns. People might notice clothes and stuff disappearing, but they’ll just think it’s thieves. And no one’s going to brave the forest to find thieves.”
“Why do we have to?” Jem coughed, but he tried to make it silent, so Ree could only tell he was coughing from the shaking of his body and the sound like distant, muffled explosions. “We’re doing okay, Ree, really. We hunt and ... and stuff. We don’t need to go near people. Everyone knows hobgoblins. Everyone has edicts. They’ll kill you.”
“Hush now,” Ree said, enveloping him in his arms and rocking him slightly. “Hush now. They won’t. I can hear better than them. I’ll keep clear.”
Jem shook against his shoulder, and Ree knew he must go, and he must be successful. If he died it wouldn’t matter—Jem would be able to go back to the world of men. But Ree couldn’t go on without Jem. They had escaped Jacona together, and Jem had saved Ree’s life, killing the giant snake thing that would have devoured him. More important than that, Jem, by caring what happened to Ree, by needing him and treating him as if he were fully human, had saved Ree’s human heart.
Ree’s body might survive, but not his heart.
Jem said, “Something’s wrong.” He was almost impossible to understand, he was shaking so hard. They stood atop a hillock sparsely grown with thin pines.
Ree turned to look where Jem pointed. A narrow valley cut deep into the forest. Fences had fallen, and Ree could hear animals making what sounded to him like distressed noises. He could see three cows, one of them with horns, a horse, and possibly a goat. Squawking sounds like chickens suggested the farm had some, somewhere he couldn’t see.
“Maybe it’s been abandoned?” Ree didn’t really believe his own suggestion, but it was an excuse to try raiding the place. Jem had resisted it all the way here, and even now his lips were set in that straight line that was often the only indication of his steely resolve under his compliant exterior. Jem shook his head and didn’t try to speak.
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