Brightly Burning

by Mercedes Lackey

  Lan turned and faced his parents—and the rest of the family—who were all, from the oldest to the youngest, staring as open-mouthed as the first to recognize him.

  “Lavan!” his father blurted, “Your horse—”

  “Companion, Father,” he said gently. “It wouldn’t be proper nor polite for her to stand about in the yard with no shelter and no comforts. We’ve no place for her here, so she’ll be back for me later.”

  His father stared at him as if he’d spoken Hardornen; his mother looked at him as if he was a stranger. He had never seen them look at him that way before—

  Or had he? Hadn’t they been odd with him when they’d come to visit him at the House of Healing?

  And was that fear he saw, faintly, before they forced smiles of welcome onto their faces?

  They didn’t give him a chance to examine them any closer. “Well, let’s not all stand about in the cold any longer!” his father said, clapping him on the back. “Come along inside, everyone, and let’s get back to our Festival!”

  Lan was carried away on a tide of relations, in through the front door where he was relieved of his cloak, revealing the true splendor of his Formal Grays, and on to the sitting room, where his younger cousins, terribly impressed, made him sit down and plied him with plates of food they carried off from the sideboards just to present to him. He couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to; he had no idea where the rest of those his age were at the moment, though he shrewdly suspected they were at the park. The adults had commanded the parlor, and at this point they were probably bombarding his parents with questions of their own. He wondered what they were telling everyone, given that his father hadn’t even thought that there was a difference between a horse and a Companion.

  It was the children who saved him from further awkwardness. They were dying to hear about what being a Heraldic Trainee was like, and inundated him with questions. Was his Companion really smart enough to come get him? Did she talk like a human? How could she speak in thoughts? Where did he live? Was the Collegium really in the same place as the Palace? Had he met anyone important? He’d met the King’s Own? Had he ever seen the King?

  The answer to each question only gave birth to a dozen more, which prevented him from having to make conversation with the adults. That was just as well, for they kept drifting over from the parlor in little clumps to listen as he spoke to the children; he could feel their eyes on him all the time. If the children treated him as one of their own who had returned from a far country with incredible tales, the adults watched him as if he had changed into some new and strange creature utterly unlike a human.

  He had become, unwittingly, the main source of entertainment for the afternoon. Although the adults didn’t stoop to asking him any questions themselves, they certainly didn’t hesitate to listen while he answered the children.

  He tried to concentrate on them rather than anything else. They were certainly excited and happy to see him and pelt him with their questions, and after all, it certainly was the first time that any of them had gotten close enough to a Trainee (much less a Herald) to ask all the questions that they wanted to.

  It was only after darkness had fallen and a servant had gone around discreetly lighting the candles that his mother appeared in the parlor, clapping her hands to get their attention. Nelda was not dressed in her absolute finest, which she reserved for important meetings, festivals, and parties involving Guild functionaries. Instead, she wore something much more casual, a simple-cut gown of soft brown wool, bound around with a hanging girdle embroidered, not by her own hands, but by Macy—it had been last year’s Midwinter present. Her hair was done in a single loose braid down her back, and Lan thought she looked much better and softer than when she wore her best.

  “Enough questions for now, little ones!” she called, just a shade too heartily. “It is time for the Feast!”

  Since Lan would certainly be around after the Feast to continue to question, the children abandoned him for the pleasures of the table.

  The children ate apart from the adults in the kitchen, the parlor, or anywhere else that small tables could be set up for them. The adults had the dining room to themselves. And Lan could tell at a glance that there had been some last-minute reshuffling of the seating arrangements. He was escorted to the seat of honor that Sam usually took, at his father’s right. Two of the cousins who hadn’t spoken to each other for years had somehow gotten placed side by side, and his brother Sam had been positioned between two very pretty but (matrimonially speaking) completely unsuitable country relatives. Neither of these seating accidents would ever have happened if his mother had been paying attention, so evidently his arrival had flustered her.

  Or—not his arrival, but his appearance. She had probably expected that he would appear on foot, in his rather forgettable Trainee uniform. Clearly his parents had not bothered to tell anyone of his new status. As usual, the adults would have dismissed him from their minds as entirely unimportant. His theatrical arrival had completely thrown all of her expectations into the dust.

  That wasn’t entirely unsatisfactory, although he would much rather have been where Sam was. It would have been rather nice to have both his pretty cousins making calf eyes at him over their cups.

  As it was, he was between his grandmother, who had displaced him from his own room, and his father. Well, at least he wouldn’t be required to make conversation. Grandmother was as deaf as a rock, and his father clearly was reluctant to make conversation with him.

  Grandmother evidently considered his new clothing to be some sort of clever invention of his mother’s; she looked him up and down, then announced loudly, “I’m glad you managed to get the boy into something presentable, Nelda! He finally looks like a Chitward, and not like a ragpicker’s son.” Then she applied herself to her food, blissfully unaware of the nervous giggles from the foot of the table or Nelda’s embarrassed blush.

  The chief ornament of the Feast was a remarkable dish composed of a brace of deboned quail stuffed into a deboned pheasant, stuffed into a deboned capon, stuffed into a deboned duck, stuffed into a deboned goose. It must have been cooking all day, but at least it ensured that there was plenty of bird to go around without burdening the table with five different platters. The rest of the table groaned beneath the huge variety of dishes thought necessary to the Midwinter Feast; mashed, roasted, or candied root vegetables, bowls of five different bean concoctions, mashed peas, stewed greens, four kinds of bread, two kinds of rolls, plain butter and butter creamed with honey, gravies, jellies, stewed fruit, pickles, pitchers of cream, small ale, wine, cider. . . .

  Lan knew that they wouldn’t eat it all, but at least what wasn’t eaten would be carried with great ceremony to the nearest Temple of Kernos to be distributed to the hungry before it even had a chance to cool. Grandmother would lead the procession, pushed in her canopied, wheeled chair, just as she had back in Alderscroft, with Nelda on her right and Macy on her left. Those female relatives who cared to would accompany them. The priest would pronounce a solemn blessing on the creators of the dishes who were so generous as to share them, paying special attention to the matriarch of the clan. Grandmother loved every moment of it; it was her opportunity to be the queen of the family.

  At least everyone got a Midwinter Feast that way, for the poor were waiting right there in the temple to be fed.

  “So, Lavan,” one of the unsuitable cousins piped up from farther down the table, fluttering her eyes at him. “Are there many pretty girls being trained as Heralds?”

  Lan was torn between saying the expected, “None as pretty as you,” and the indifferent, “I hadn’t noticed.”

  He compromised on, “Most of the time we’re all being worked so hard that we’re too tired to tell the girls from the boys, and the rest of the time we’re trying to catch up on sleep.”

  “Oh, come now,” a particularly obnoxious uncle said, in a patronizing tone of voice. “There can’t be that much to learn! What does a Herald do, anyway
, but ride about and look important, maybe settle an occasional feud between farmers?”

  Lan took a very deep breath before answering to remind himself to keep his temper, ignoring the frantic look on his mother’s face. “Well, as it happens, I get up about a candlemark before dawn, unless I happen to be one of the people who has morning chores to do and in that case, I get up two candlemarks before dawn. There’s breakfast, then I put my room ready for inspection. Then I have classes in History, Geography, and Field Investigation, then hard riding exercises, then maybe afternoon chores, then lunch, then more afternoon chores or study, then Weaponswork, then Mathematics and Accounting, then a class in court etiquette and how to handle situations involving the nobles, then a special class—right now I’m doing a short class on how to take care of injuries or illness in an emergency until a Healer can get there. Then perhaps evening chores. After that is dinner, then archery practice or a free candlemark, then study until bed.” He got some satisfaction in seeing his uncle’s eyes bulge a little more with every class he added. “Later I’ll be getting lessons in how to use my Gift, how to invoke Truth Spell, another short class about Bards. I’ll learn how to survive in the wilderness with no supplies and no tools, I’ll learn how to rescue people from drowning, handle a rowboat and a sailboat, how to organize fighting a forest fire or a house fire, how to organize local people into a militia and train them to defend themselves, and how to be a judge. That’s just what I know about; I’m sure there are a lot more classes I don’t know about yet.”

  “Oh,” his uncle said weakly. Well, what else could he say? Lan took great satisfaction in having managed to put the man in the wrong without ever being in the least impolite. It was the first time in his memory that anyone had ever been able to shut the man up.

  No one else seemed to be able to think of anything to say to him, which was just as well. There were a few awkward moments of silence, then another cousin asked the discomfited uncle about a matter of trade in a slightly shrill and nervous voice. The uncle loudly proclaimed his opinion, and conversation resumed, flowing around Lan without touching him.

  He ate his meal in silence, wishing that he’d stayed with the Chesters instead. Maybe there wouldn’t have been any quail-stuffed-inside-pheasant-stuffed-et cetera, but he would have been a lot more comfortable.

  Finally, the interminable meal came to an end with the requisite toasts. When it was Lan’s turn, he decided to actually make one instead of passing, as he usually did on the rare occasions when the opportunity arose.

  After all, I’m in the place of honor. Why shouldn’t I?

  His father was just beginning to stand, when Lan pushed his chair decisively back and rose to his feet, glass held high. His father sat back down hurriedly, and a silence descended on the table with a thud.

  Lan stared at the wine the color of old embers glowing in the heart of his glass. “I would like to toast my family,” he said, taking an absolutely malicious pleasure in choosing words heavily weighted with irony and loaded with a definite double meaning. “For without your actions, I would not be where I am and what I am at this moment.”

  Macy looked puzzled. Sam went pale, as did his father. His mother flushed. But what could they do or say? For all they knew, he was being entirely sincere, although surely they knew he meant what he had said in every possible interpretation. The rest of his relatives looked askance at each other for a moment, as if wondering just how they should react to this.

  It was his grandmother who broke the impasse; he’d spoken loudly enough for her to make out what he’d said. “Properly done, boy!” she declared, “here, here!” and drank her own glass down. That broke the spell holding the rest, and they followed the old woman’s example. With a faint smile, Lan took a sip from his glass and sat down, feeling that he’d gotten ample revenge for the uncomfortable meal he’d just endured.

  The Feast ended just after that, and the women descended on the kitchen to each take possession of a dish for the procession to the Temple. The children enveloped Lan and rushed him back to the sitting room, and the men retired to the parlor for wine and discussions of their own. Lan had no doubt that he would be the main topic of conversation, though more likely for his borderline insolence to his uncle than for the toast, which his father and brother were likely to avoid discussing.

  This time, the youngsters Lan’s age and older joined the children, although they would not normally have done so. In past years, the older ones, if they did not escape to some other venue such as moonlight skating, sledding, or sleigh riding, generally would gather in two groups, the boys to discuss girls, and the girls to discuss boys. Once again, he was going to provide the entertainment for the entire lot of them; he didn’t much mind, since Kalira would arrive for him in a candlemark or two. There wasn’t that much more of this for him to endure.

  It turned out not to be an ordeal after all; the relatives of his own age were just as curious and full of admiration as the little ones. It was an entirely new experience for Lan to be admired by anyone in his family; he relaxed and answered questions cheerfully and frankly. The world of the Heraldic Trainee was entirely new to everyone here—well, it had been unknown to him as well, until he was Chosen—and for the most part, the members of the Chitward family had never had anything to do with Heralds. Why should they? Any disputes were settled within the Guild Courts, no one broke any laws, so they never had occasion to more than note a Herald passing at a distance, read about them in a tale, or hear about them in a ballad. If any of them had ever daydreamed about being Chosen, they had probably dismissed the idea with the typical practicality of a merchant family.

  I wonder if any of them will start to dream about it now, he thought as he answered another question and watched how the eyes of even the oldest children were shining.

  The ladies returned from the Temple, with Grandmother loudly proclaiming her pleasure in the ceremony. That signaled a round of activity, putting the youngest children to bed, collecting all the scattered members of the families of those who lived nearby, farewells and polite thanks from the ones who were going home tonight.

  As Lan stood back out of the way, he heard Kalira with relief. :I’m nearly there. Ready to go?:

  :Your timing is perfection,: he told her. :Let me go say good-bye to Mother and Father, and I’ll meet you outside.:

  He waited while another of the Chitward cousins, burdened with a baby and a toddler, paid their respects to his parents before going out the door. He edged past them as they pushed their toddler toward the door, and approached his parents with his cloak in his arms.

  “It’s time for me to leave, too,” he told them as they turned toward him. “It’s been quite an exceptional Feast this year.” That, he thought, was diplomatic enough. “I suspect everyone is going to be talking about this one for a long time.”

  “We thought we’d save you as a sort of surprise,” his mother said, in a tone that told him that she hadn’t thought any such thing; she hadn’t thought about him at all, as he had suspected. Or if she had, she had dismissed his presence as required, but negligible. But her expression softened a little as she looked at him; her hazel eyes took on a glint of pride—in him.

  “I certainly was that.” He smiled, very slightly. “From the way the youngsters acted, I was better entertainment than the puppet show Uncle Lerris had three years ago.”

  “Well, the puppet show was only there for a candlemark,” his father pointed out, with, at last, a hint of humor, and a faint smile. “They had you captive for the entire afternoon and evening. I hope you weren’t too bored with them.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t mind; it’s a good thing for them to find out what we are, what we’re like. Maybe it destroys some of the mystery, but it also removes ignorance.” He didn’t say anything about the obnoxious relative; he didn’t have to. “But now, I really do have to go.”

  His parents embraced him; his father heartily, his mother awkwardly. At that moment, he made up his mind that next year
he would decline the invitation, even if he had to make up a reason why he couldn’t come, even if the Chesters didn’t invite him back. Maybe when he was finally a Herald, he’d start coming for the family gatherings occasionally, but not right now.

  He drew back from them and nodded formally. “You’d better get back to your guests,” he said. “I’ll show myself out.”

  Without waiting for their response, he turned and headed for the door. But just before he reached it, his sister Macy squeezed between two of the adults crowding a doorway and rushed up to him. “Here,” she said, pressing a small, thin package into his hand. “I made this for you.”

  As she waited expectantly, he unwrapped it. Her gift was one of the most beautiful pieces of embroidery he had ever seen her create. It was very much a miniature tapestry; a perfect copy of the crest of Valdemar, with every star in the background picked out in silver, every link in the Windrider’s broken chains delineated completely.

  “Good gods—I should think you’d go blind doing work like this!” he exclaimed, much to Macy’s satisfaction; she dimpled with pleasure as he kissed her cheek. “Macy, it’s gorgeous. As soon as I get my hands on a needle and thread, I’ll put it right on the shoulder of my cloak where everyone will see it! Thank you so much!”

  “If it’s all right, I’d like some hair from your Companion’s mane and tail eventually,” she said, “I want to make some woven jewelry.”

  :Have her come out and pull some right now,: Kalira interrupted. :As much as she likes, as long as she doesn’t snatch me bald.:

  “Kalira’s outside, and she says to come and get some,” he told her, and was rewarded with her wide eyes and enchanted smile. She didn’t even stop to get a cloak; she followed him right outside, and gasped in delight to see Kalira standing at the door, shining in the lamplight.