“Not so dramatic, but yes, like Vanyel and Stefen. Well, I’d guess that either the blow to your head woke your Gift early, or overwhelming fear did. It happens sometimes. Now, if you weren’t Queen’s Own, we wouldn’t even think about training you to use it for another few years, but you’re by definition a special case. Do you want it trained?”
“Please—not another set of lessons—” Talia said pathetically.
Keren chuckled. “All right then, lovey, we’ll leave things as they are. Maybe when your head heals, it’ll go away; I’ve seen that happen before. But if it starts to get bothersome, you tell one of us, all right?” She paused, and eyed Talia speculatively. “It doesn’t disturb you—about Ylsa and me?”
“No,” Talia replied, a trifle surprised. “Should it? I mean—there’s lots of—um—” she blushed again “—‘special friends’ on the Holdings.”
“Are there?” Keren raised an eyebrow. “I never figured on that, old rocks that they are. Makes sense, I guess—all those Underwives, and damn few of ’em wed for affection.” She relaxed visibly. “I won’t deny that I’m glad to hear that from you. You’ve got an old head in a lot of ways, lovey; I’m beginning to think of you as much as my friend as my student, and I’d hate to see anything get in the way of that friendship.”
“Me? Your friend?” Talia was visibly startled.
“Surprised? Jadus thinks of you as a friend, too, and he hasn’t opened up to anyone in years. There’s something about you that I can’t pinpoint—you’re so much older than your years, sometimes. Maybe it comes of being Queen’s Own. Lady knows I’m not old enough to have known Talamir as a lad. You seem like someone I’ve known and trusted for years. Like a little sister. As close, maybe, as my twin—which is damned odd, considering that I’ve got a niece and nephew nearly your age. I’m not the only one to feel that way. There’s Jadus, like I said—and Sherrill, and Skif, and probably more.”
Talia digested this with wonder.
Keren shook her head. “Enough of this—how’s the skull feel?”
“Awful.”
She stood up and examined the lump with gentle, skillful fingers.
“Lovey, luck was all on your side in this. An inch or two lower, or on the temple instead, and you’d have been unconscious or paralyzed when you hit the water. You’d have gone under without a ripple, and we’d never have known what happened to you. Think you can stomach more of that vile green brew? It’ll take the ache out, anyway.”
Talia nodded slowly, and Keren brought her a mug of the concoction, then returned to her former perch on the chair; feet propped up and sword on her lap.
“How much of my classes have I missed?”
“Not a thing that can’t be made up quickly, ’specially since you’re excused from chores and Alberich’s tender mercies till you’re well again. If your eyes play tricks on you, we’ll read to you, and everybody in the Collegium wants to loan you their notes. Fair enough?”
Talia was about to answer when a deep, somber-toned bell—one she’d never heard before—began tolling somewhere nearby.
Keren stiffened as her head snapped up on the first peal. “Damn,” she said softly, but with venom, “Oh, damn.”
“What’s the matter?” Talia did not like the tense bitterness on Keren’s face. “What’s happened?”
“That’s the Death Bell.” Keren stared sightlessly out the window, tears trickling unheeded down her cheeks. “It rings when a Herald dies. It means that the bastards got another one of us. And one of the best. Ah, gods, why did it have to be poor Beltren?”
8
Minutes after the bell began its somber tolling, someone tapped on Talia’s door; before Keren could answer, Skif stuck his head inside. Keren lowered the blade she had aimed reflexively at the entrance.
“Keren—” Skif said hesitantly “—your brother sent me. He thought you might want to be with the others. I can watch Talia.”
Keren pulled herself together with an obvious effort. “You sure? I know you think you’re good, youngling—”
Talia didn’t even notice Skif’s hand moving, but suddenly there was a knife quivering in the wall not an inch from Keren’s nose. Both of them stared at it in surprise.
“Huh!” was all the reply Keren made.
“If there had been a fly on your beak, I could have nipped it off without touching you,” Skif said soberly, with none of his usual boastfulness. “I know I’ve got a long way to go in everything else, but not even Alberich can best me with these.”
He held up his right hand, with a dagger that matched the first in it. “Anybody who tries forcing their way in here is going to have to get around six inches of steel in his throat.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Keren rose and sheathed her sword. “You may regret this—because I’ll probably arrange for you to share Talia-watch from now on.”
“So? I volunteered, but Ylsa wouldn’t take me seriously.”
“Well, I will.” She passed him, waving him into the room. “And youngling? Thanks. You’ve got a good heart.”
Skif just shrugged and pulled his knife out of the wall.
“What’s going on?” Talia whispered hoarsely. “What’s the Death Bell?”
Skif perched himself cross-legged on the top of her desk; his expression was unwontedly serious. “What do you want answered first?”
“The Bell.”
“All right—since I don’t know what you know, I’ll take it from the beginning. There used to be a little temple in the Grove in Companion’s Field; King Valdemar had it put up. It had a bell-tower, but not until just before he died was there a bell in it. The bell was actually installed the day before he died, but the rope to ring it hadn’t been hung, and it didn’t have a clapper. So you can imagine that when a strange bell was heard tolling before dawn the next morning, people were pretty startled. When they went out to look, they saw what you’d see now if you were to go out to the Field—every Companion here gathered around the tower and staring at it. When they got back to the Palace they learned what the Heralds had already known—that Valdemar was dead. The temple’s long gone, but the tower is still there—and every time a Herald dies, the Death Bell tolls.”
“And Keren?”
“Every Herald knows when another one dies, and whether or not it was from natural causes. You sort of start to get the sensing of it around about your third year—sooner if your Gift is strong; I haven’t got it yet. It hurts, they tell me, like something of yourself has died—the ones with the strongest Gifts may know details of what happened. You always know who, if you’re a full Herald, and a little of how, as soon as the Bell begins to ring. Most of ’em find it easier to be together for a while, especially if it was someone you knew really well. That’s why Herald Teren sent me—Beltren was one of Keren’s year-mates.”
There wasn’t much Talia could say in reply. She and Skif stared gloomily out the windows for a long time, listening to the Bell; the tolling that sounded like the cold iron was sobbing.
Word on what had actually befallen Beltren did not reach the Collegium for several days. When news came, it was not good. Someone or something had ambushed him, and sent both Beltren and his Companion over the edge of a cliff. There were no clues as to who the murderer was—and if the Queen knew why it had happened, she kept her own council.
The atmosphere became more desolate and oppressive, with every passing day. Talia’s newly-awakened sensitivity left her painfully aware of it, and the weakness she was prey to as she recovered did not make bearing the brunt of this easy.
Skif (who, true to Keren’s threat, was now sharing guard-duty with the three adults) did his best to cheer her with Collegium gossip and more of his absurd stories, but even he could not completely counteract the effect of the mourning of all those around her.
Finally, the Queen gave orders—and the Heralds flew like the arrows they were named for to obey. Talia never did hear details, but the murderer was caught—though not even the news
that he had been found and condemned by Queen and Council did anything to ease the atmosphere of pain, for Beltren had been universally held in high regard by the members of the Circle.
The entirety of the Collegium as well as those of the Circle at Court assembled for the memorial service several weeks later. As was all too often the case, there was no body to bury, and the service was held at the single pillar that held the names of all those Heralds who had sacrificed themselves for Monarch and Kingdom.
* * *
Talia had only just been allowed to leave her bed, but something impelled her to beg the Healer, Devan, to permit her to attend the memorial. Impressed by the urgency she was obviously feeling, he overrode his own better judgment and agreed that she should be allowed to go. She had not confided how strongly she was being affected by the mourning about her to anyone yet; she had been hoping that Keren had been right and it would go away. And having been accused of having an overactive imagination more than once, she couldn’t be entirely sure how much of this she might be conjuring out of her own mind.
Nothing of the ceremony was any too clear in her mind; everything seemed to be washed away in a flood of sadness and loss. She stood through it in a fog of pain, sure only now that she was in no way inflicting any of this on herself. When those assembled had begun dispersing, a locus of agony sharpened and defined.
It was the Queen.
Talia had not been this close to Selenay since her first day at the Collegium; she would not have dared to disturb her except that the Queen’s emotional turmoil drew on her with an irresistible attraction. She approached shyly, as quietly as she could.
“Your Majesty?” she said hesitantly. “It’s Talia.”
“I sent him to his death,” Selenay replied as if in answer to some internal question. “I knew what I was sending him into, and I sent him anyway. I murdered him, just as surely as if it had been my hand that pushed him to his death.”
The pain and self-accusation of the Queen’s words triggered something within Talia, something that impelled her to reply. “Why are you trying to convince yourself that he didn’t know the kind of danger he was in?” she said, knowing that her own words were nothing less than the stark truth, but not knowing how she knew. “He was fully aware, and he went despite that knowledge. He wasn’t expecting to die, but he knew it was a possibility. Majesty, we all know it can happen, and at any time. You had no choice either—wasn’t it absolutely imperative that someone be sent?”
“Yes,” the word came reluctantly.
“And wasn’t he the best—perhaps the only—Herald for the task?”
“He was the only Herald with any hope of convincing the people of the area to part with the information I needed. He worked as my agent there for three years, and they knew and trusted him.”
“And did he not succeed in sending you that information? Was there any substitute for it?”
“What he sent to me will save us a war,” Selenay sighed. “Even among rulers blackmail sometimes works wonders, and I’ll blackmail Relnethar with a cheerful heart if it will keep him off our borders and within his own. Lady knows I’d tried every other way to get it—”
“Then you had no choice at all; you acted for the good of all our people. It’s the kind of decision that you and only you can make. Majesty, in Orientation class they told me in good plain terms that it is quite likely that a Herald will perish, perhaps horribly, before he ever has to think of retiring because of age. They tell everyone that—but it’s never stopped anyone from becoming a Herald. It’s something we have to do—just as making hard choices is something you have to do. And behind all of it, I think, is that we all have to choose to do what we know to be right; you as Queen, the rest of us as your Heralds. I know if Beltren could be standing here right at this moment, he’d tell you that the choice you made was the only one you could have made.”
The Queen stared at Talia, her eyes bright with unshed tears, but Talia could feel the agony within her easing. “Child,” she said slowly, “you very nearly perished yourself because of my actions—or lack of them. Can you stand there and tell me you would have been glad to die?”
“No,” Talia said frankly. “I was awfully afraid—I didn’t want to die, and I still don’t, but if it happens, it happens. I made the choice to become a Herald, and if I knew I was going to die tomorrow, I still wouldn’t choose otherwise.”
“Oh, Talia—child—” The Queen sat abruptly on the side of the memorial, and Talia hesitantly touched her, then sat beside her and put one arm around her shoulders, feeling odd and a little awkward, and yet impelled to do so nevertheless. It was apparently the correct action, as Selenay suddenly relaxed long enough to shed a few, bitter tears, allowing herself the brief luxury of leaning on a strength outside her own.
“How have you become so wise, so young?” she said at last, composing herself. “Not yet even a year at the Collegium—yet, truly Queen’s Own. Talamir would approve of you, I think…” She rose gracefully, her face once again a serene mask. Talia sensed that while she still mourned, the burden of guilt had been lifted from her shoulders. “But you are not yet well, little one—and I see your keepers looking for you. And I must face the Ambassador of Karse, and dance in diplomatic circles about him until he knows with absolute certainty that I have the proof of his lord’s double dealings. Thank you, Queen’s Own.”
She turned and walked swiftly back to the Palace, as Keren and Teren approached.
“When you didn’t come back with the rest, we began to worry,” Teren half-scolded. “Healer Devan wants you back in bed.”
“You look like someone forced you through a sieve, lovey,” Keren observed. “What’s wrong?”
“The Queen—she was so guilty-feeling, so unhappy. I could feel it and I had to do something about it—”
“So you went to talk to her.” Keren nodded with satisfaction at her twin. “All the right words just seemed to flow from you, right?”
“How did you guess?”
“Lovey, that’s what makes you Queen’s Own, and the rest of us ordinary Heralds. Grandfather used to claim he never knew what he was going to say to the King beforehand, yet it was always exactly the right thing. Trust those instincts.”
“Grandfather?” Talia asked in a daze.
“Talamir was our grandfather,” Teren explained. “I think he secretly hoped one of us would succeed him.”
“Well, I didn’t,” Keren replied firmly. “After seeing the kind of hell he went through, I wouldn’t have the job under any circumstances. I don’t envy you, Talia, not at all.”
“I agree,” Teren nodded. “Talia, you still look a bit wobbly. Will you be all right now?”
“I… think so,” she said slowly, beginning to feel a bit better now that the overwhelming burden of the sorrows of the rest of the Heralds was dissipating.
“Let’s get you back to your room then, and I’ll have a little talk with Dean Elcarth. If nothing else, we should show you how to shield yourself so you don’t take on more of other people’s feelings than you can handle. If your Gift hasn’t faded by now, it’s not going to,” Keren said as her twin nodded his agreement.
Keren stayed with her until Elcarth arrived, then left the two of them alone. Talia sat carefully on the edge of her chair, concentrating on what Elcarth had to say, afraid she might miss something vital. She was beginning to think she couldn’t bear much more of this business of carrying other people’s emotions and thoughts around inside of her. If there was a way to stop it from happening, she most devoutly wanted to learn it!
But this “shielding” was a simple trick to learn—for which Talia was very grateful.
“Think of a wall,” Elcarth told her. “A wall all around you and between you and everyone else. See it and feel it—and believe that nothing and no one can reach you through it.”
Talia concentrated with all her strength, and for the first time in days, she felt a blessed sense of relief from the pressure of minds around her. With
its lessening her own confidence in the “shield” grew—and the shield grew stronger in response. At last Elcarth was satisfied that nothing could penetrate what she had built, and left her to her own devices.
“Don’t ever hesitate to drop it, though,” the Dean urged her. “Especially if you suspect danger—your Gift may give you the best warning you’re likely to get.”
Talia made a thoughtful gesture of acquiescence, thinking how, if she’d been able to detect the maliciousness of her tormentors, she’d have been warned enough to have gotten help with them long before things had come to so nearly fatal a conclusion.
* * *
A few days later the Healer pronounced her fit, and she returned to her normal round of classes. Outwardly her life seemed little different—yet there were some profound changes.
The first thing that had changed was her bond with Rolan; it was so much stronger now than it had been before the river incident that there was no comparison.
She discovered this not long after she had learned how to shield out the emotions of others.
She was sitting in a quiet corner of the Library; she had just finished her book and had closed it with a feeling of satisfaction, as it was one of the histories that concluded on a positive note. There wasn’t enough time for her to start a new book before the next class, so she was simply sitting for a moment with her eyes closed, letting her mind wander where it would. Almost inevitably it wandered toward Rolan.
Suddenly she was seeing a corner of Companion’s Field, but her view was curiously flat and distorted. There seemed to be a blind spot straight ahead of her, her peripheral vision was doubled, and she seemed to be several inches higher than she actually stood. There was that feeling of slight disorientation that she had come to associate with seeing through the eyes and memories of others—
Heralds of Valdemar (A Valdemar Omnibus) Page 16
