Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  “Well what could it be?” Talia cried in frustration.

  “Everything you’ve told me and what I’ve seen for myself points not to the mind, but the heart. Look, your own mind-call to Rolan was fear; the times with Selenay and other Heralds—sorrow, pain, loss. Even what you picked up from me was an emotion—love. Or maybe lust,” she winked at Talia, who coughed politely and blushed, “since I’m not sure exactly what you were getting from me that time, and it had been a long trip. Seriously, though—you can hear thoughts if you’re properly prepared or you’re in deep trance, but what you receive first and strongest is emotion. When there’s no emotion involved, and there hasn’t been in these training sessions, it’s that much harder for you to receive meaning. I didn’t think about that because the Gift for emotion-sensing—we call it ‘empathy’—is almost never seen alone, or in a Chosen. The only times I can ever remember seeing it is in company with the Gift of true Healing, and the Companions never Choose someone with the Healing Gifts, probably because they’re needed too much as Healers. What have I been telling you to do all this time?”

  “Relax and clear my mind of everything—” Talia said, beginning to grasp what Ylsa was saying, “—and especially to clear my mind of emotions, even the ones coming in from outside.”

  “So naturally you fail. Our Gifts are tricky things, you know; they depend very strongly on how much we believe in our own abilities. When you failed, you disbelieved a little and made it that much harder the next time. It’s time we abandoned this tack and tried something different.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’ll see—just keep your shields down. If all this isn’t moonshine, I don’t want you expecting anything in particular, and maybe having your imagination supply it for you,” Ylsa turned to Neave and whispered in his ear. He nodded and left the room, while Talia waited with half-perplexed anticipation for something to happen.

  Suddenly she was inundated by terror, and hard upon the terror came a picture—and then it was something more than a picture. It was a vision of a filthy, smoke-filled taproom—a vision that she was a part of, for the room around her and her fellows had vanished. All around her loomed the slack bodies of drunken, half-crazed people; mostly men, but with a few slatternly women sprawled among them. They were very much bigger than she; she seemed to have shrunk down to the size of a ten-year-old. She was trying to slip through them with as little stir as possible, serving their cheap wine, when one of them woke from his daze and seized her arm in a grip that hurt. “Come here, little boy, pretty boy,” he crooned, ignoring her struggles to free herself. “I only want to give you something ....”

  She wanted to scream, knowing very well what it was he wanted, but found her throat so choked with fear that she could barely squeak. It was like a nightmare from which there could be no awakening. She began losing herself completely in panic when something broke the spell she was in.

  “Talia!” Ylsa was shaking her, slapping her face lightly. “Talia, block it out!”

  “Goddess ....” Talia slumped in her seat and held her head in both hands. “What happened?”

  “1 told Neave to project the most emotional image he could think of at you,” Ylsa said, a bit grimly, “We succeeded better than I had guessed we would. You not only received it, you were trapped by it. Well, that answers that question—your Gift is empathy, beyond all doubt. And now that we know for certain what your Gift is, we can do more about training you properly.”

  “Lady of Light,” Talia said, burying her face in her hands. “Poor, poor Neave! If you’d seen what I saw ... how can such filth be allowed to exist?”

  “It’s not—not here,” Neave himself came through the door, looking quite ordinary; far calmer, far more natural than Talia would have believed possible for someone whose mind held such memories. “I’m from outKingdom, remember? Where I come from, an orphaned child of the poor is fair game for whatever anyone wants to do with him. So long as the priests and the Peacekeepers aren’t officially aware of what’s going on, and there’s no one to speak for the child, just about anything is tolerated. Are you all right? I could tell something was wrong, but not what. I stopped sending, but you’d already broken off contact. Talia, you had an awfully strong hold on me; I found myself reliving that whole filthy episode—”

  “Neave—I’m so sorry—” she strove to express her horror at what he’d gone through, and failed utterly.

  He touched her arm hesitantly, his eyes understanding. “Talia, it was long ago and far away. Thanks to people like Ylsa and the Dean, it doesn’t even hurt that much anymore. I know now it wasn’t anything I did that caused it.” He licked his lips, his calm shell cracking just a little. “Time does heal things, you know, time and love and help. I just wish that I could somehow make sure that nothing like that ever happens to another child.”

  “Someday, we hope, that’s exactly what the Heralds will accomplish,” the Dean said gravely. “Someday—when there isn’t a Kingdom on this world that doesn’t welcome us. But for now—well, Neave, we save the ones we can, and try not to think too hard about the others, the ones we couldn’t save. We can’t be everywhere ....”

  But Elcarth’s eyes told them how little it helped, at times, to know that, and how hard it was to forget the ones still trapped in their little hells.

  Eventually, Ylsa declared the class to be officially over, saying that there was nothing else she could actually teach them. Now their proficiency depended on their own limits and how well they honed their Gifts with practice.

  The end of the class meant that it was time to learn the only “real” magic that they were ever likely to see. It was time to learn the Truth Spell.

  “Legend says this was discovered by a contemporary of Herald Vanyel, just before the incursions of the Dark Servants,” she told them. “Since Vanyel himself was the last of what were called the ‘Heraldic Mages,’ this is the last real bit of magic ever created in Valdemar and is about all the “real magic’ we have left except for a few things the priests and Healers use. Most of the rest was lost to the Dark Servants, abandoned because of negative associations, or just plain forgotten. In some ways, it’s too bad—it would be nice to still be able to build a fortress like the Palace-Collegium complex and to pave roads the way the old ones did. At any rate, this spell starts with a cantrip; a little rhyme, just like some of the others you’ve learned—”

  With the rhyme came an image they were to hold in their minds, one that made very little sense to Talia, the image of a wisp of fog with blue eyes. While holding this image, they were to recite the rhyme mentally nine times; no more, no less. On the ninth repetition they were to imagine the fog enveloping the person they were casting the spell on.

  Ylsa demonstrated on Dean Elcarth; closing her own eyes briefly then staring fixedly at him for a few moments. Within a few heartbeats, Elcarth was surrounded by a faint but readily visible glowing blue nimbus of light.

  “I’ve just put the first stage on him,” Ylsa told them. “I’m not forcing the truth out of him, but just registering whether or not he’s telling it. Lie for me, Elcarth.”

  “I’m passionately in love with you, Ylsa.”

  The glow vanished, while Ylsa and her students laughed.

  “Now tell me the truth.”

  “I consider you to be one of the most valuable assets of the Circle, but I’m rather glad you’re not my lifemate. You’re altogether too difficult a woman and you have a nasty temper.”

  The glow reappeared, and Ylsa sighed dramatically. “Ah, Elcarth, and here all this time I’d been hoping you secretly cared.”

  “Elcarth, sir, can you see what we’re seeing?” Neave asked curiously.

  “Not so much as a glimmer,” he replied. “But anyone except the person bespelled sees the glow, whether or not they’ve got a Gift. Why don’t you invoke the second stage, Ylsa?”

  “If you’re ready for it.” Again she stared at him; Talia could see no perceptible change in the glow surroundin
g him.

  “How old are you, Elcarth? Try to tell me ‘twenty’”

  His face twisted with strain and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. “T-t-t,” he stuttered, “T-fifty-seven.” He sighed heavily. “I’d forgotten what it felt like to try and fight Truth Spell, Ylsa. Take it off, would you, before I get tricked into revealing something I shouldn’t?”

  “Now why would I do something like that to you?” she teased, then closed her eyes briefly again, and the glow was gone. “You banish the spell easily enough—-just picture the cloud lifting away from the person, close its eyes, and dissipate.”

  “You all have Gifts strong enough to bring both stages of the spell to bear,” she said a moment later, “So why don’t you start practicing? Neave and Talia, with me—the twins with Elcarth.”

  The feeling of having the second stage of the Truth Spell cast on her was decidedly eerie, Talia found. No matter what she had intended to say, she found her tongue would not obey her; only the exact truth came out. In cases where she didn’t know the answer to a question, she was even forced to say so rather than temporize.

  At last Ylsa declared them all proficient enough to close the class out.

  “You know the ‘spells’—though if we find out you’ve been using the Truth Spell as a prank, you’ll find yourself in very hot water, so don’t even consider it! Practice it if you wish, but do so only under the supervision of a full Herald. You know where your strengths and weaknesses lie,” she continued, “Just like sparring practice will make you a better fighter, practicing with your Gifts will develop them to their full extent. If you run into any problems that are related to your Gifts, there are three of us who are probably the experts; you can come to any of us, day or night if it’s an emergency. Myself, when I’m at the Collegium, the Dean, or Herald Kyril, the Seneschal’s Herald. There are books in the Library as well that may help; I recommend you go up there and follow your instincts. Certainly you’ll learn more about the abstract theory of our Gifts from them than you will from me, if that’s what you want. I never was one for theory. I leave that up to Kyril! He enjoys trying to ferret out the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of our Gifts. I’m content with just knowing the usages, and never mind how it works.”

  Theirs was the first of the three groups being taught to finish formal training. The other two were much smaller, the ‘communication’ Gifts being by far and away the most common, and contained, respectively, Griffon and a younger girl, Christa; and Davan with one of Christa’s year-mates, a boy called Wulf. Talia was extremely curious about these other Gifts and asked Ylsa about them as the last class broke up.

  “The other two general groups have to do with moving things with thought alone, and seeing at a distance.” Ylsa said. “We tend to lump them under the names of ‘Fetching’ and ‘Sight.’ Oddly enough, the two Heralds best at both those skills happen to work together as a team; Dirk and Kris. Well, maybe it’s not so odd. Gifts that are needed tend to appear just before they’re needed.”

  The second name woke a vague feeling of recollection; after a moment of thought, Talia remembered that she’d met Kris before, her first night at the Collegium. “Kris is the one that’s too good-looking to be true, isn’t he? she asked Ylsa with a half-smile.

  “That’s the one. The fact that Dirk and Kris are partners is one reason why we hold these classes—particularly the latter two—all at the same time and for more than one year-group; it makes more sense to wait for a time of several weeks when Dirk and Kris don’t have to be out somewhere,” Ylsa replied. “Why are you asking?”

  “Insatiable curiosity,” Talia confessed. “I—kind of wonder how their Gifts are related to my own.”

  “Seeing’s probably the closest; emotions are powerful attractants for the mind’s eye. In fact, you have more than a touch of that particular Gift yourself, as you’ve noticed. I’ve told you that no one ever has just one Gift with no hint of the others, haven’t I? You’ve got enough thought-sensing and Sight to possibly be useful in an emergency—maybe just a hint of Healing as well. Anyway, the difference between their Gifts and yours is that you will generally have to See things through the eyes of someone present unless there’s a lot of emotional residuum to hold you, and then it will be very vague. They can See things as if they were observing them directly, even if there’s nobody there. There isn’t much to watch in that class, though; just the three of them sitting around in trance-states. Quite boring if you’re not linked in with them. Dirk’s class is something else altogether—that’s something to see! I know he won’t mind; want to peek in on them?”

  “Could I?” Talia didn’t even try to conceal her eagerness,

  “I don’t see any reason why not. Queen’s Own should probably see some of the other Gifts in action—especially since it seems your year-mate Griffon has one of the rarer and potentially more dangerous of the ‘Fetching’ family.”

  “He does? What does he do?” Talia found it difficult to envision the good-natured Griffon as dangerous.

  “He’s a Firestarter.”

  Because of Griffon’s Gift, Dirk was holding his classes outside, away from any building, and near the well—just in case. Talia could see he had a bucket of water on the cobblestones beside him. He and his two pupils were sitting cross-legged on the bare paving, all three seeming to be too engrossed in what they were doing to notice any discomfort from the stone. He nodded agreeably to Ylsa and Talia as they approached, indicating with an eyebrow a safe place to stand and watch, and then turned his attention immediately back to his two pupils.

  Talia discovered to her surprise that she recognized Herald Dirk as the young Herald she’d encountered just outside the capital. She had been far too overcome with bashfulness and the fear that she’d been wrong-doing to take more than a cursory look at him then; she took the opportunity afforded by his deep involvement with his pupils to do so now.

  Her initial impression of homeliness was totally confirmed. His face looked like a clay model that had been constructed by someone with little or no talent at all. His nose was much too long for his face; his ears looked as if they’d just been stuck on by guess and then left there. His jaw was square and didn’t match his rather high cheekbones; his teeth looked like they’d be more at home in his Companion’s mouth than in his. His forehead didn’t match any of the rest of his face; it was much too broad, and his overly generous mouth was lopsided. His straw-colored hair looked more like the thatched roof of a cottage—provided that the thatcher hadn’t had the least notion of what he’d been about. The only thing that redeemed him from being repulsive was the good-natured smile that always hovered around the corners of his mouth, a smile that demanded that the onlooker smile in response.

  That, and his eyes—he had the most beautiful eyes Talia had ever seen; brimming with kindness and compassion. The only eyes she could compare them to were Rolan’s—and they were the same living sapphire blue as a Companion’s.

  If she hadn’t been so fascinated by what was transpiring, she might have paused to wonder at the strength of response she felt to the implied kindness of those eyes.

  As it was, though, Griffon was in the process of demonstrating his gift, and that drove any other thought from her head.

  He seemed to be working his way up through progressively less combustible materials; it was evident from some of the residue of this exercise that he’d already attained the control required to ignite normally volatile substances at will. In front of him were the remains of burned paper, shredded cloth, the tarry end of a bit of rope, and a charred piece of kindling-wood. Now Dirk placed in front of him an odd black rock.

  “This stuff will burn if you get it hot enough, I promise you,” he was saying to Griffon. “Smiths use it sometimes to get a really hot fire; they prefer it over charcoal. Give it a try.”

  Griffon stared at the bit of black stone, his face intent. After a tense moment, he sighed explosively.

  “It’s no use—” he began.

  “Y
ou’re trying too hard again,” Dirk admonished. “Relax. It’s no different than what you did with the wood; the stuff s just a bit more stubborn. Give it longer.”

  Once again Griffon stared at the lump. Then something extraordinary happened. His eyes suddenly unfocused, and Talia’s stomach flipped over; she became disoriented for a moment—the experience was something rather as if she’d been part of the mating of two dissimilar objects into a new whole.

  The black lump ignited with a preternatural and explosive fury.

  “Whoa!” Dirk shouted, dousing the fire with the handy bucket of water. It had burned with such heat that the stone beneath it sizzled and actually cracked when the water hit it. There was a smell of scorched rock and steam rising in a cloud from the place it had been.

  Griffon’s eyes refocused, and he stared at the blackened area, dumbfounded. “Did I do that?”

  “You certainly did. Congratulations,” Dirk said cheerfully. “Now you see why we have this class outside. More importantly, can you do it again, and with a little more control this time?”

  “I—think so—” Griffon’s eyes once again took on the abstracted appearance they’d had before—and the soaked remains of the black rock sizzled, then began merrily burning away, in sublime indifference to the puddle around them.

  “Now damp it,” Dirk commanded.

  The flames died completely. In seconds the rock was cool enough for Dirk to pick up.