Brightly Burning

by Mercedes Lackey

  But it wasn’t the roof that answered.

  :Because someone had to keep you fit,: Satiran replied, then produced a whinny that was entirely like a snicker. Lifting his silver hooves precisely, even daintily, he backed out of the stall, then turned and trotted off to Companion’s Field where he dropped to the grass and rolled enthusiastically in the sun, just like any common horse.

  Pol laughed in spite of aching shoulders and calves, stretched again, and headed for his quarters in the opposite direction, boots ringing solidly on the wooden floor of the stables. He wasn’t going to be fit to encounter until after he’d had a bath and a change of clothing.

  This had been an ongoing source of teasing and amusement between himself and his stallion since he was Chosen. Pol was, by nature, rather indolent, and freely admitted it. He liked living at the Collegium, and although he didn’t dislike going on circuit, if he didn’t have to, he would much rather be here. He had been born and raised in Haven, and loved his city and everything in it.

  If only being a Herald didn’t require leaving Haven so often! There’s no city like this in the world, I think. Even now, although the fine, bright days of autumn were past and Haven had taken on the gray cloak of early winter, he still thought it lovely.

  He wouldn’t have minded being permanently assigned to the Collegium, although truth be told, he wasn’t an indispensable teacher. In fact, his main value to the Collegium lay in a rather peculiar fact. Unlike many other Heralds who taught here, aside from very strong Mindspeech, he didn’t have a second strong Gift. Instead, he had a very little of everything.

  There wasn’t another Herald like him; others might have had many, many minor Gifts, but they weren’t like Pol. For him, every single minor Gift, however weak, was active and usable.

  As a consequence, although his Gifts were not in and of themselves terribly useful, he could literally teach younglings with any possible Gift or combinations thereof, even the most rare and esoteric. He could fill in until specific teachers could be brought back from other duties to tutor them past the beginning levels. At the moment he was coaxing a youngster with Animal Mindspeech through the first, tentative uses of his ability. Pol had to be in physical contact with an animal to speak to it or understand it; this young Trainee was going to be able to look through the eyes of any creature within leagues when he was ready to go out on circuit.

  Before then, one of the two Heralds Gifted with strong Animal Mindspeech would have come back to spend a few moons at the Collegium and give him the benefit of an expert’s teaching, but until then, Pol would do. Whenever there was a new trainee with a rare Gift, it was often Pol who was summoned to return to the Collegium once the youngster had settled in and his Gift was identified.

  Pol was perfectly happy with any opportunity to help the young Trainees, however much Satiran might fret and long for “adventure.”

  “Adventure” is usually synonymous with discomfort, not to say pain, Pol thought to himself, as he reached the door of the Herald’s Wing and opened it. “Adventure” is never the exhilarating experience that the would-be adventurer thinks it is.

  :I heard that,: Satiran snapped.

  :You were meant to.: Pol chuckled at Satiran’s mental snort of contempt, and headed for his room to get a fresh set of Whites, the full Herald’s constant uniform that identified him as the proxy of the King himself—dispenser, discloser, and adjudicator of the law of Valdemar.

  Ah, yes, a fresh set of Whites—clean, mended, and ready for him whenever he needed them. That was another benefit of being here, and not on circuit. A packhorse could only carry so much, and he got very tired of wearing the same clothing for days on end.

  And that assumed he was on circuit and not pulling messenger duty, which meant riding for days on end, sleeping and eating in the saddle. He’d only had that duty a few times, but it was definitely not his favorite. Thank the gods there are other, much faster riders than I! he reflected, feeling every one of his years as he walked down the dim, quiet hallway toward the men’s bathing room.

  He hadn’t been the only one out on the obstacle course today; several of the other teachers had taken advantage of the empty course to take some much-needed exercise. The Heralds had to take the times when it wasn’t being used by the Trainees, who were, after all, the ones it had been built for. Pol was met at the door of the men’s bathing room by a cloud of steam and the greetings of his fellows.

  “Good run out there, Pol!” called Herald Isten, invisible in the steam hanging above his bathtub. “You ran that course like a man half your age!”

  “And I feel like one who is twice my age,” he replied, with a groan that was only half feigned, stripping off his filthy Whites and dropping them into a laundry hamper. “You haven’t used up all the hot water, I hope?”

  Isten laughed and fanned away the steam, so that his round, red face crowned with curling tendrils of dripping hair, darkened by the damp, appeared like a disembodied spirit in the mist. “I saved you enough, I promise.”

  “That’s good, because if my old bones can’t have a good soak, I’m going to have to thrash you.” Pol eyed his colleague sternly.

  Isten chuckled, knowing the bluff for what it was, and let the fog hide him again as Pol took a free tub and ran water into it from the copper boiler that served this bathing room. He checked the fire beneath the boiler, and added a stick or two of firewood while the tub filled. The boiler’s supply of water was topped off from a reservoir on the roof of their wing, the same reservoir that supplied cold water directly.

  Pol added some herbs and salts to his bathwater and climbed in with a sigh of utter content as the hot water soothed his aches.

  And that is another thing entirely missing on circuit. Give me a hot bath, and I am a happy man.

  :Deprive you of one, and you are intolerable.:

  :That’s because I care if I offend people with my odor,: Pol retorted. :You might not mind smelling like a horse, but I do!:

  He was rewarded by Satiran’s mental snicker.

  There was, after all, another and equally compelling reason for Pol to spend at least half his time here at the Collegium, and her name was Elenor.

  His youngest daughter Elenor.

  He smiled at the thought of her, as he always smiled, as anyone who ever encountered Elenor smiled. She was a child who seemed to have been created to bring happiness to everyone around her. She was neither pretty, nor plain, but her personality sparkled so that no one ever thought her anything but lovely. Her sunny disposition brightened the gloomiest day; no one bent on a quarrel could sustain anger in her presence. As a Mind-Healer she was fulfilling every expectation of her teachers at Healer’s Collegium. Her mother Ilea was every bit as proud of her as her father was.

  Her mother, however, was needed elsewhere at the moment. Like Heralds, Healers had duties that superseded their own personal preferences, and the need for Healers to tend the wounded on the Border with Karse was of prime importance at the moment. Although the conflict between Karse and Valdemar had not erupted into open warfare lately, there was constant skirmishing and a constant stream of wounded. All the Healers of the Collegium took that duty in turn; Ilea had been excused as long as her youngest child was below the age of thirteen, but once Elenor was well into puberty, the duty could be put off no longer.

  Neither Pol nor Ilea wanted to leave Elenor totally without a parent’s presence, so Pol had been very glad when he was called back to Haven.

  He wondered now and again, though, if she really needed him. Elenor at fourteen was as cool and level-headed a girl as many twice her age. She seemed to have another Gift, that of good sense, and never got into the tangles and trials that the Trainees of all three Collegia of Heralds, Healers, and Bards, often found themselves embroiled in. In fact, Elenor was often found in the midst of their trouble, patiently sorting it before any of the adults realized that there was a problem.

  My little girl is not so little anymore. Maybe when this last pupil was thorou
ghly grounded and it was time to hand him off, Pol ought to volunteer for field duty again. There were never enough Heralds for all the work, and eventually Ilea would be back again.

  Time never stood still; both of Elenor’s sisters had grown up and gone off on their own, after all. Kaika was somewhere north of Haven, a Bard making the same sort of rounds that a Herald did, but with the difference that she was the collector and disseminator of information and entertainment. Or rather, information disguised as entertainment. She’d gotten her Bardic Reds a good three years ago. Her sister Amaly had gotten her Greens three years before that, and a husband to boot. She and Ranolf were raising their own brood and tending to the hurts of a fairly sizable village in the southwest. Both of them had their own lives now, and in the not-too-distant future, so would Elenor. He couldn’t guide and protect her forever, no matter how much he wanted to.

  You’d think that after two of them growing up and flying away, I’d have gotten used to the idea that children never remain that way, he thought with a physical pang. He bit his lip to still the quiet ache in his heart. But, oh, how I wish they did. . . .

  :It’s never easy to see them go, Chosen,: came the soft words in the back of his mind. :We both have reason to know that.:

  Pol sighed and wordlessly agreed. Satiran had more reason to worry and grieve over his own offspring than Pol did; his eldest had come to a premature end, with his Herald, at the hands of the Karsites.

  He turned his mind out of that path before he started to worry about Ilea. The Karsites didn’t kill Healers, they weren’t that barbaric, but they made major efforts to capture them. And Pol knew Ilea; she had a heart like a warrior, and never let danger keep her from rushing to the aid of the injured. He only hoped that Elenor’s good sense was inherited from Ilea’s side of the family as well as his, and that Ilea would know she would cause more harm than good by going into danger.

  The water was cooling, and he thought briefly about running more hot water in—

  But that would be slothful, and he pried himself up out of the tub, feeling unaccountably much heavier than when he’d gone in, and got himself dried, clothed, and presentable. It was nearly time for dinner; he’d have just about enough time to dry his hair before he had to join the courtiers.

  And after dinner, provided his pupils left him in peace—he did have responsibility for more than just his little Animal Mindspeaker Kedd—he wanted to see if he could follow up some odd indications he’d felt over the past few weeks. It had felt like the first stirrings of a Gift, but if it was, it was a Gift unlike anything he had encountered before.

  Pol was the one Herald who was at all sensitive to the odder Gifts, thanks to his own abilities, but since his strength was minimal, he couldn’t reach much outside the walls of Haven, and about half the time, nothing much came of these vague sensations. Just because a Gift began to stir, it didn’t follow that it would actually wake to full flower. Children often lost the use of Mind-Gifts as they entered puberty. The owner might successfully repress it and wall it off. Life changes might send a Gift into limbo again, particularly tragedy.

  Still, Pol felt he had to follow up where he could, identify what the Gift he sensed was, if possible, and even find the owner. Usually, though, the Companions beat him to the last.

  Pol sat in the open window of his room and combed his hair dry in the waning sunlight; he had a fastidious dislike of going out in public with wet hair. It was a comfortable little room, neat and well-ordered, shared most of the time with Ilea. With so much of white and blue surrounding him, and so much of green surrounding Ilea, Pol’s personal tastes broke out in a certain peculiar rebellion in his furnishings. He preferred what Ilea called “earth colors,” which were warm browns, wheat golds, and smoldering oranges. Fortunately, so did she. Geometrically patterned weavings softened the white walls and served as curtains; heavier pieces carpeted the floor from wall to wall. His blankets, collected over the years from the most skillful craftspeople he encountered, were splendidly patterned and as soft as swansdown, made from the silky hair of chirras and the wool of lambs. An enormous coverlet, pieced together from the skins of brown, black, and white sheep, could have decked the bed of the King himself.

  In fact, one very like it did; Pol had brought it as a gift from his last foray into the field.

  Ilea’s touch was present in the fragrant wreaths of grapevine and dried herbs, the knitted wraps folded neatly atop one of the chests, waiting to be snuggled into on a chill evening, needlework pieces on the walls, the embroidery basket in the corner. And, hidden behind the doors of the wardrobe, her store of a Healer’s Green robes were keeping his Herald’s Whites company.

  He smiled a little at that. At least if they couldn’t be together, their uniforms could!

  When the sun faded into twilight, he moved to a stool in front of the fire. When his hair was finally dry, he bound it into a thick tail at the nape of his neck with a plain silver clasp, and went on to dinner.

  All Heralds present at the Collegium automatically had a place at the uppermost table of the Court, directly below the High Table itself; not all of them availed themselves of that privilege, though. Some preferred to dine with the Collegium, Trainees and teachers together; some preferred a solitary (or not so solitary) tray in their rooms. Pol enjoyed dining with the Court, however; his Gifts were not so sensitive that being with so many unGifted rubbed him raw, and he derived a certain amusement watching the little dramas that went on around him. The Court was full of drama, and although Pol had very little to do with the courtiers themselves, that very freedom gave him an impartiality that allowed him to find the jousting for place altogether hilarious. He had a knack for spotting a piece of trouble abrewing; sometimes all he could do was to alert others to potential difficulties, but at least they had that warning.

  He was in good time. People were just now filing into the Great Hall, and Pol joined the traffic with a nod to one or two of the courtiers he did know, and a smile for a couple of the other Heralds who were either highborn themselves or for their own reasons preferred to dine here.

  He took his place at the Herald’s table with the rest, settling into his chair with a glance at the High Table. King Theran and his young son Clevis were laughing at something that King’s Own Herald Jedin had just said; Queen Fyllis wasn’t in her chair, but that was hardly surprising since she was still suffering from the nausea that always plagued her in the first two months of a pregnancy.

  Poor Fyllis! Pol thought with sympathy; he knew the Queen quite well, better than most. The King and Queen both had been Chosen when Theran was still the Heir. At the time she (Herald-Trainee, the third daughter of the Duke of Brendan) met and fell in love with Theran, everyone had agreed that the marriage was the best possible match Theran could make; it created a strong bond of blood between the throne and a dukedom right on the far southeastern Border. She had been a pupil of Pol’s; her odd Gift was Empathy. It was a very useful Gift for a monarch, but unfortunately, when she was in the first throes of pregnancy, sometimes she inadvertently projected her nausea to those nearest her, to the discomfort of her friends and family and the utter ruin of one formal dinner reception for the heads of the Craft Guilds back when she’d first been with child. That had been years ago; after that single disaster, she wisely absented herself from meals when pregnant. She drank most of her meals during the touchy months, soothing, smooth concoctions of milk, vegetables, fruits, and nuts, with a Healer nearby to help repress the nausea and make sure she actually got a well-balanced diet. Fyllis claimed it was a small price to pay, considering that the rest of her pregnancy was always a joy to her; being with child made her positively bloom with health and happiness.

  The rest of her offspring weren’t fit for the High Table yet; one was in the “terrible twos” and the other was still a baby. Clevis was a mere five, but was a very well-behaved boy as long as his father’s eye was on him.

  When it wasn’t—well—bread rolls and pickles had been known to m
ysteriously acquire the power of flight, aimed unerringly at other children he’d been quarreling with earlier in the day.

  The young mischief maker was firmly sandwiched between his father and the King’s Own today, however, so it was unlikely there would be any food flights at this meal.

  Court meals were slow and deliberate affairs, with each course punctuated and announced by musicians or other entertainments. This was part of what made coming to Court such an exciting and much-anticipated event for the nobles and achievers of Valdemar; even the meals were grand affairs for those who didn’t often see professional entertainers. And as for major festivals—well, when those who spent a season or two at Court went home again, they generally talked about it for the rest of their lives.

  It was costly for those who came here, in expenses for the elaborate garments considered appropriate, in lodging, and in any meals not taken in the Great Hall. Some, but by no means all, of the highborn had their own houses outside the Palace grounds, and a very few rated lodging in the Palace itself, but for the rest, suitable houses had to be found and leased, servants hired, and furnishings supplied for the few months of attendance at Court. This was an expensive proposition, multiplied manyfold when there was more than one female in the family, for women seemed to require more in the way of elaborate clothing than men.

  For instance . . . to Pol’s right sat the many-daughtered Lord Vertalays, with all of his offspring lined up on their stools beside him, like one of those sets of dolls that fit one inside the other. It was a good thing that he had a ready source of income from his wool and mutton; he’d need it, dowering six daughters. Lady Vertalays, a wise and clever woman, made a virtue out of necessity; she saved money when they came to Court by doing so in winter when she could cut a fashionable figure in woolen garments, rather than of lighter fabrics that would have to be purchased. She had all their Court dress made from cloth woven of the wool of their own sheep, and dressed the entire family in the same colors, saving more money on dyes, carefully choosing colors that suited them all. When she could, she did without dying the cloth altogether; they had a set of garments in white, in a heathered gray, in brown, and in black. Instead of velvet, their heavier gear was made of wool plush—an equally lush fabric, but one that could also be home-woven. Instead of silk, they wore knitted lace, made of threadlike yarn of lambswool. All the embroidery was done by the clever hands of the Lady and her daughters, and together they made quite a fine showing. Pol might be the only person present who knew of her clever shifts, since he had once ridden a circuit that included their holdings. They came to Court for the purpose of getting the daughters acquainted with some of the young men they might be betrothed to one day. The Lady felt it was better to wed someone you at least liked rather than a total stranger.