The Valdemar Companion

by John Helfers; Denise Little

  “Have you got your luncheon?” his mother called behind him as he reached for the wooden door-latch.

  “Right here,” he replied, turning to hold up the rag-wrapped bundle of cheese and yesterday’s bread for her to see.

  His mother smiled at him from where she was scouring the dishes with sand and hot water, next to the fireplace that served them for heating and cooking together.

  Tafri thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and not a one of the fine ladies that stayed at the inn where she worked as a maid could touch her. Her brown eyes were always merry, and she was never without a song on her lips from morning to night. Her employer, the local innkeeper, was a clever woman named Lilly, a stranger to the village who had arrived several years ago looking for a suitable site to build a new inn. This worthy woman thought that Shanda Tallyman was as much a treasure as her own family believed, and although Shanda might only be the inn’s maid and occasional server, she got an extraordinary number of benefits besides her wages. She’d been encouraged to bring her child along with her when Tafri was too small to go to school, a concession that was completely amazing. In addition, she had the right to as much leftover food as she could carry home in a basket every night, the right to any ordinary clothing left behind if it had not been reclaimed in a year, and the right to torn or worn linen from the inn’s beds. Lilly was a generous employer, and the Tallyman fami1y was well aware how lucky they were that she employed Shanda.

  “Mind the priest, and do what he tells you to do,” Shanda told her son, as she did every morning, raising her round chin a trifle and tucking a strand of gold-brown hair back into the scarf tied about her head.

  “Oh, mama!” Tafri replied; he was old enough now that the morning admonition was, well—unnecessary. He wasn’t a little boy to be told to mind every morning!

  “No sauce, now!” Shanda said, but with a smile, and a shooing motion of her strong, square hands. Gratefully, Tafri opened the door and escaped into the snow.

  Their cottage was at the heart of the village, although it was tiny—just one room with a loft over the kitchen area where Tafri slept. Larger and more expensive houses stood on either side; the slip of land the cottage stood on had once belonged to the farmhouse to the right, and had been parceled out for a hired-man’s cottage back in some long-ago time when the village hadn’t held more than a dozen homes altogether. To get to the street, a path had been made along the garden wall of this larger home, and that was the route Tafri took now, with piled-up snow on his left and the snow-topped brick wall on his right.

  This brought him to the single road that ran through the village of Delcare. There was no village square in Delcare; all gatherings and celebrations were held on the village green just on the other side of the road. The Haichers, prosperous merchants, lived in the big, half-timbered house on his right; they had a maid and a manservant to do their chores for them. This morning their man-of-all-work was out shoveling their path, and he waved to Tafri as the boy reached the road. Tafri waved back, but didn’t stop for a chat; shoveling had taken time and if he paused he’d be late for school.

  All children went to school in the Kingdom of Valdemar; the school term lasted from the end of harvest to spring planting. Some, in the tiniest of villages, were taught by old folk, widows mostly, who would hold school lessons and be paid a little for each child by the Crown. But most lessons were taught in the temples of whatever religion one belonged to, it being considered that priests and priestesses in general were better educated than old women who might be a bit hazy on their arithmetic in numbers higher than twenty, and rather vague as to spelling. A child who didn’t live on a farm, or who didn’t hire out for light chores during farming season, could get additional lessoning all during the spring, summer, and fall, if his family agreed and he was willing and apt to the task. And of course, any child whose parents could afford it could have tutors or share a highly educated teacher with others whose parents had the means, very occasionally, where there was one of the Houses of Healing where several Healers were stationed, a Bardic Retreat, or a Herald’s Resupply station, children might get their lessons from a Healer, a Bard, or even a Herald. That was rare, though; most relied on the homely resources of their own neighbors.

  Tafri envied those children; he would have given a great deal for access to such tremendous sources of learning.

  Once a child could read, write, and figure to the teacher’s satisfaction, his mandated education was over. Tafri had passed that point last season; now he kept up with his lessoning because he liked it and his parents were willing to forego the added pennies he might have brought in doing odd jobs. Once the priest was done with him for the day, however, he would present himself at the inn to help his mother, and perhaps, if he was lucky, earn a copper bit or two as well doing extra chores for guests or for Lilly.

  The temple of Kernos lay past the village green in its own little grove of trees; it didn’t look a great deal different from any of the larger houses in the village in size or general shape. The roof was made of native slate, the chimney and walls of stones, which came out of the fields every spring with exasperating regularity. There was a stone porch at the front of the building, and around at the side was a second cottage where the priest actually lived. Smoke arose from the chimney into the grey sky, and Tafri hurried up the path to that promise of warmth.

  Once he reached the porch, the first difference between this place and an ordinary house was evident. The door was big; taller and much wider than normal. It was also carved with the head of a great stag. He pulled the door open, and entered.

  Here is where the temple really differed from the other large buildings in the village; it was one huge room. Stone-floored as well as having stone walls, here inside the walls had been lathed and plastered, then painted with scenes from the Holy Books. The roof above, wood planks supporting the heavy weight of the slate roof tiles, had great beams that had been carved with vines, flowers, and stags’ heads. A wide hearth with a cheerful fire now burning on it had been set into the wall at the left; at the rear, decorated with evergreen boughs and expensive wax candles, was the altar. More candles, tallow this time, stood in wooden sconces mounted on the wall, but with all of the light coming in the real glass windows, reflecting off the snow outside, they weren’t needed this morning.

  This year Tafri was the oldest child being schooled here. Priest Dofren looked up and smiled to see his favorite pupil enter; he and all the pupils were seated at a wooden table and benches placed before the fire for warmth and light. But he didn’t pause for a moment as he coaxed Sera Hopewell through her stumbling recitation of the alphabet. He simply nodded at Tafri’s place at the end of the dark, well worn table, and the open book waiting there for him.

  It was history today, Tafri saw as he sat down in his place. The priest had marked where he was to begin and end with clean straws, and he read diligently while the younger children were drilled in reading, writing, and sums. There was a two-year gap between him and the next oldest, a ten-year-old. Of the eleven other children his own age that had begun their lessons with the Priest, all the rest were elsewhere this winter. Jem, Kaleb and Cortny were helping with farmwork; Jillian, Geoff and Dugal learning their parents’ crafts. Marak, Tovy, Kyle and Wyatt had all been apprenticed outside their parents’ crafts because they were second and third children. And lucky, lucky Sushanna had been sent away to a real board-school, where the girls lived while they studied, and only came home on holidays; some, so Sushanna had told them, were even highborn. She said that this school was going to teach her fine and fancy needlework, the special manners that important people seemed to require, and something called “deportment.” Why anyone thought such things were necessary, Tafri had no idea—unless it was to make her suited for a marriage with someone above her in rank, wealth, or state. But Sushanna’s parents were the richest in the village and she was their only child; nothing but the best was ever good enough for her. She wasn’t exactly spoil
ed, but Tafri didn’t regret that she was gone. She’d always held herself apart from the rest of them, as if she was made of some delicate material and was afraid to get smudged by their commonness.

  The book in front of him was not going to be one of his favorite texts; it was fairly dry and didn’t give him much of the sense of what the times it described felt like. Still, Tafri carefully committed the details of the chapter he was reading to memory; books were precious things, and many of them went the rounds among the various Temples in the region as various children were deemed ready for them, once he had finished this one, he might not ever see it again.

  When he finished the end of the passage, and had gone over it another two times to make certain that he had it all firmly in his mind, he signified that he was ready by closing the book and sitting quietly with his hands folded on top of it. The priest looked up, saw that he was ready and nodded. Within a few moments, while Tafri watched the flames dancing on the hearth and became ever more aware of the fact that it could not be far to lunchtime, Priest Dofren finished with the child he was working with and came over to Tafri.

  Taking the book from him, the priest opened it at the marked page and began asking questions about the chapter Tafri had finished. Tafri didn’t get them all right by any means, but those he answered incorrectly the priest corrected him on, and then went on. Priest Dofren was very good at this sort of teaching; Tafri had found that those things that he’d been corrected on tended to stay with him as well as the ones he got right.

  They were not quite finished when the noon bell rang at the baker’s shop, signifying that those who had left their luncheons there to be baked or heated along with the day’s bread, pasties, and cakes, had better collect them. The Priest put the book down on the table, and smiled at the children, who now looked at him as attentively as any circle of puppies who had heard the word “cookie.”

  “Right, off with you!” he said, and there was a flurry of arms and legs, then the children were gone, out the door, heading to their homes, their lessons over for the day. None of them had the kind of hunger for knowledge that Tafri had always shown, so (as Dofren wisely said) it was no use in trying them past their patience. Their afternoon would be spent in chores and play—more of the former than the latter. In a village like this one, children did some work at least from the time they could be trusted with tasks.

  While Tafri moved over to the hearth to eat his bread and cheese, the Priest dipped up a cup full of cold water from the pail for him, then went of to get his own luncheon, leaving him the only occupant of the Temple, which echoed with every pop and crackle of the fire, every time he shuffled his feet. Tafri didn’t mind eating alone; if he really wanted company, he could find one of his old schoolmates enjoying his or her own lunch where they now labored beside their parents or at their new apprenticeships.

  When he finished his meal, he got up and stretched, then decided to go outside for a little before settling into the afternoon lessons, which would probably be advanced ciphering. This would allow him to do a bit more than simple accounting; it wasn’t a favorite lesson, but he was good at it.

  The day was still gray, the air a little damp, with a hint that there might be more snow to come. That was all right; more snow would mean that the people stopping at the inn might have to stay overnight or longer, and that meant possible tips and even a bit of work for him. He wandered down the path, across the green, and down to the road, to see what there was to be seen.

  The snow creaked underfoot—another sign that there might be more of it forthcoming. At the luncheon hour it was unusually quiet; no clanging and hammering from the blacksmith, the carpenter, or the cooper, no wood-chopping. A few women were about, making purchases at the baker, the butcher, or the one shop in the village, but otherwise there wasn’t anyone to be seen.

  No one on the road, either, which was something of a disappointment.

  No, wait—

  Tafri saw distant movement, he thought, though it was hard to be certain against the white of the snow. Was there a rider coming?

  He peered down the road; noticing his intent gaze, the few villagers out on the street also peered in the same direction.

  And alter a few moments, it dawned on all of them that they were, indeed, seeing something coming toward the village, but it wasn’t a rider, Or, rather, the steed coming toward them wasn’t carrying a rider.

  And no wonder it had been hard to make out—white steed against white snow, saddled and bridled but not ridden—

  This was a Herald’s Companion, and if it wasn’t being ridden by a Herald, then it was on Search!

  Tafri had only seen a Herald, those dispensers and enforcers of the Queen’s Justice, a few times in his life; he had never seen a Companion out on Search before. He only knew that the Companions Chose their Heralds, and that the people Chosen went to the far off capitol city of Haven, to learn the things they needed to know to be Heralds.

  Heralds—so much in Valdemar depended on the Heralds! They could do all sorts of things, and virtually everything important in Valdemar involved them and depended on them. All Heralds had magic of some sort or other, but they didn’t all have the same sorts of magic—their Companions, although they might look like beautiful white horses, were nothing of the sort. They had magic of their own, so it was said…

  But now the Companion was close enough to see clearly, and lie—for it was a stallion—claimed every bit of Tafri’s attention. He had never seen anything so gorgeous in his life!

  The Companion stood a little taller than most of the village horses, but his head was bigger, his forehead broader, and his eyes were set a little further forward on his head than a horse’s, giving him a very intelligent look. His coat was as white as the untouched snow, his mane and tail like twin waterfalls of ice spun into the finest possible thread. He wore a saddle of blue leather with silver ornaments, a bitless bridle to match, and a saddlecloth of deeper blue trimmed with silver embroidery. His hooves were silver, too; he set them down as delicately and carefully as if he were dancing, and the nearer he came, the more Tafri stared. He drank in the sight; he wanted to remember this for the rest of his life, for he might never see a Companion on Search again—

  Companions came looking for “their” Heralds when the time was right; that was what being “on Search” was all about. Usuil1y the Chosen was a child, but not always, and no one really knew what it was that the Companions looked for—or waited for—or how it was that they Chose one particular person above all others. Until that moment they lived at Herald’s Collegium in Haven; after that they never left their Heralds until they died.

  Oh, to be Chosen as a Herald! Only in a few, wild dreams had Tafri ever indulged in such a thought; he was perfectly ordinary in every way, the common son of a common carter and a village-inn maid-of-all-work. Children like that were never Chosen; if anyone in this village would be Chosen, it would be someone like Sushanna. But he couldn’t help it now, as the Companion drew closer and closer, he was consumed with the longing that the stallion would stop in front of him, look deep into his eyes—aching with the wish that it would be him this time, that for once in his life, he would be touched, himself, by that special magic—

  The Companion stopped in front of him. As the nearby villagers gasped, the stallion bowed his head down to Tafri’s level, breath steaming from his nostrils, and Tafri looked deep into eyes that were bottomless, sapphire treasures holding warmth, and wisdom, and—

  —and he was falling into them; they filled his gaze, and he didn’t want to ever stop falling into them. With a shock to heart and soul, he felt an empty place he hadn’t known was inside him suddenly fill with warmth and joy.

  And he felt something inside himself rushing to fill a similar place inside Adelayan. For that, he knew without knowing how he knew, was his Companion’s name.

  His Companion.

  :Your Companion, Tafri. I Choose you. You will be my Herald.:

  Two

  On the Road


  Tafri pinched himself, for he could not believe that he, possibly the least important and certainly the poorest child in his village, had been Chosen. But here he was, sitting in Adelayan’s saddle, on the way to the Collegium in Haven. He, who had never ridden anything except the carter’s placid old horse at an ambling walk, now sped over the snow-covered roads as if he was flying.

  He had not been permitted to leave the village unacknowledged, however.

  He and Adelayan had been surrounded by an excited crowd who cooed over the Companion and thrilled to the fact that any of their number would become a Herald. Before the excited villagers had allowed him to leave, he’d been redressed from the skin outward. From one family had come new smallclothes, from another, a nearly new pair of moleskin breeches in good condition and just a little too big. Sushanna’s parents provided a knitted sweater of lambswool, too small now for their own daughter. The cobbler gave boots that had been intended for another boy with that lad’s father’s blessing, and his wife a pair of woolen socks she’d just finished. From his own neighbors came a wonderful tunic of soft buckskin meant to go hunting in, and from Lilly, the innkeeper, the Midwinter gift she’d been saving for him, a wonderful thick woolen cloak. She put it over his shoulders with tears in her eyes and a kiss on each cheek, “You have to show us all proud, young Tafri,” the village mayor had said, clapping him on the back. And then, with virtually everyone in the village putting in something, two bulging packs of provisions and more clothing had been added to the back of Adelayan’s saddle—including fresh socks, smallclothes and a change of sweaters and shirts. “You’ve a long way to go, and there might not be inns when you need to stop,” the priest told him, once he was newly-clad and sitting above everyone in Adelayan’s saddle. “Your Companion will take you to Waystations to sleep at night if there are no inns at the end of the day, if there are, you just present yourself at the door and tell them that you’ve just been Chosen. They’ll put you up for the night, and give you a little marker that will tell the Collegium that they helped you. You give those when you’re asked for them at the Collegium.”