“Well done, youngling!” Dirk applauded. “You’ve got the trick of it now! With practice you’ll be able to call fire right out of the air if you want—but don’t try yet. That’s enough for today. Any more, and you’ll have a headache.”
The headaches were something Ylsa had warned Talia’s class about, the direct result of overextending a Gift. Sometimes this was unavoidable, but for the most part it was better not to court them. Drake had gotten one one day, showing off; his example had reinforced that prohibition. Ylsa had given them each a packet of herbs to make into a tea that deadened the worst of the pain should they miscalculate and develop one anyway, and had told them that Mero kept a further supply on hand in the kitchen when they ran out.
“Now, Christa—your turn.” Dirk moved his attention to the lanky, coltish girl to his left. “There’s a message tube the mate to this one—” he laid a Herald’s message container of the kind that Special Messengers usually carried on their belts in front of her, “—on the top of the first bookcase in the Library. It’s lying along the top of Spun of Shadow. I know this is bigger than anything you’ve tried before, but the distance is a bit less than you’ve reached in the past. Think you can visualize it and bring it here?”
She nodded without speaking, and took the message tube in her hands. There was a growing feeling of tension once again, it was plainly perceptible to Talia. She felt as if she were in the middle of two people pulling on her mind—then came a kind of popping noise; now not one, but two message tubes lay in Christa’s hands.
Dirk took the new one from her and opened it. He displayed the contents to her with a grin—a small slip of parchment with the words “Exercise one, and well begun” on it. Christa’s grin of accomplishment echoed Dirk’s.
“Not good poetry, but the sentiment’s right. Well, you managed that one. Now let’s see if you can get a little farther ....”
Ylsa nudged Talia, who nodded reluctantly, and both moved quietly away.
“Gifts like Griffon’s have been known to wreak absolute havoc if the owner fails to learn how to control them.” Ylsa said gravely once they were out of earshot. “There have been instances in the past when the trainee’s teacher, unprepared perhaps for the kind of explosion we saw today, reacted with fear—fear that the pupil in turn reacted to. Sometimes that causes the pupil to block his Gift entirely, making it impossible for him to learn full control; and then, at some later date, during a moment of stress or crisis, it flares up again with a fury that has to be seen to be believed. We’ve been very fortunate in that this fury has always been turned against the enemies of the Kingdom in the past.”
“Lavan Firestorm—” Talia said in comprehension. “I remember now; he almost single-handedly drove back the Dark Servants at the Battle of White Foal Pass. But at Burning Pines his Companion was killed, and the last Firestorm he called up consumed him as well as the enemy.”
“There’s nothing but bare rock at Burning Pines to this day. Those who were there were just lucky he retained enough hold on his sanity to warn them before he called down the Fires. And there’s no guarantee that the Firestorm couldn’t be turned against friends as well as enemies—rage can often be blind. That’s why Dirk makes such a good teacher; he never shows the slightest sign of fear to his pupils. We’re lucky to have him in the Circle,” Ylsa replied. “At any rate, you’ve got weapons drill to go to, and I have to report that I’m free for reassignment. I’ll see you at dinner, kitten.”
Talia continued to practice every night, choosing times when the sometimes volatile emotions of the students of the Collegium were damped by the weariness of day’s end. For several weeks she simply observed what she was drawn to—though a time or two she quickly chose some other subject to observe after her initial contact proved highly intimate and rather embarrassing. When she became more sure of herself, though, she was tempted by encountering the fear of one of the youngest student’s nightmares to try intervening.
To her great delight, she was successful in turning the fear away. Without that stimulus, the dream quickly changed to something more innocuous.
Her success prompted her to try intervention in the emotions of others several times more—though always choosing only to try to redirect the more negative emotions of anger, fear—or once, in the case of a quarrel and a gross misunderstanding on the part of two of the court servants, hatred. Her successes, though not always complete, were enough to encourage her in the belief that such interventions were “right.”
There was a side effect to the complete awakening and training of her Gift, and it had to do with Rolan. He was, after all, a stallion—and the premier stallion of the Companion herd. And Companions, like their human partners, were always “in season.” Rolan’s company was much sought after of a night.
And now that Talia’s Gift was at full strength, it was impossible to shield him out of her mind.
The enforced sharing of Rolan’s amorous encounters vastly increased her education in certain areas—even if it wasn’t something she’d have chosen of her own accord.
It was both curiosity and her growing sensitivity that led her to the House of Healing and the Healer’s Collegium. Most of the patients there were Heralds, badly injured in the field. Once their conditions had been stabilized they were always sent here, where the combined efforts and knowledge of the Kingdom’s best in the Healer’s craft could be brought to their aid. There was not the crying need for her in the House of Healing that there had been at other times and places—but the distress was there all the same, and it drew her as a moth is drawn to flame. She was at a loss as to how to gain entrance there until impulse caused her to seek out the one teacher she knew among the Healers—the one who had treated her in her illness; Devan.
Her choice couldn’t have been better. Devan had been briefed by Ylsa on the nature of Talia’s Gift, and as an empath himself, he thoroughly understood the irresistible drawing power that the place had for her. He welcomed her presence on his rounds of his patients, guessing that she might well be able to accomplish something to aid in their recoveries.
It wasn’t easy, but as she had told Selenay, when something needed to be done, she made the time for it. She began getting up an hour or so earlier, breakfasting in the kitchen, and making Devan’s early-morning rounds with him, then returning during the time in the afternoon that Elspeth spent riding with her mother.
Talia learned a great deal, and not just about the Healing Gifts. With so many Healers and Healers-in-training available, it was not necessary for her to participate in Devan’s treatments, but her observations gave her a profound respect for his abilities. His specialty—all Healers had one form of Healing that they studied more intensively than the others—was the kind of hurts caused by wounding, and what he referred to as “trauma”; injuries acquired suddenly and violently, and often accompanied by shock.
Talia had never quite realized down deep until she began visiting the House of Healing just how hazardous the life of a Herald could be. Until now, she’d only been aware of the deaths; accompanying Devan she saw what usually happened to Heralds who ran afoul of ill luck on duty.
“It’s the Border sectors that are usually the worst, you know,” Devan told her when she remarked that no less than three of his patients seemed to be from Sectors in and around her old home. “Take your home Sector for instance; the normal tour of duty for a Herald is a year and a half. Guess how long it is for the ones that ride the Holderkin Sector?”
“A year?” Talia hazarded.
“Nine or ten months. They’re fine until the winter raids coming over from Karse. Sooner or later they catch more than an arrow or an axe, and then it’s back here to recover. That’s one of the worst, though some of the Sectors up on the North Border are just as bad, what with the barbarians coming down every time the food supply runs short. That’s why we have Alberich teaching you combat and strategy, youngling. Get assigned to a Sector like the Holderkin one, and you’re often as much soldier as Herald
. The Herald in charge may well be the only trained fighter around until an Army detachment arrives.”
Later, she asked him why it was that there wasn’t anyone from the Lake Evendim area, when she knew from what Keren and Sherrill had told her that they, too, had their share of freebooters.
“Along Lake Evendim it isn’t raiders and barbarians. It’s pirates and bands of outlaws because it’s easy to hide in the shore-caves. Not too many injured end up here because that type of opponent isn’t really out to fight, just to thieve and run. Your compatriots usually wind up getting patched up at one of the Healing Temples, and then they’re on their way again. We don’t have anyone here from Southern Sectors, either.”
“Why?”
“Southern’s abutted by Menmelith, and they’re friendly—but the weather’s strange and unpredictable, especially in the summer. Lots of broken bones from accidents—but there, again, they’re usually cared for locally unless it’s something really bad, like a broken neck or back.”
“But there’s two from the Northwest corner—and one of them is poor Vostel—” Talia shuddered a little. Vostel was burned over most of his body, and in constant agony when not sustained by drugs. Talia had taken to spending a lot of time with him because the constant pain was a drain on his emotions. He felt free to let down his frail bulwark of courage with her; to weep from the hurt, to curse the gods, to confess his fear that he would never be well again. She did her best to comfort, reassure, and give back some of the emotional energy that his injuries drained from him.
“Northwest is uncanny,” Devan replied. “And I say it, who come from there and should be used to it. Very odd things come out of that wilderness, and don’t think I’m exaggerating because I’ve seen some of them. Just as an example, ninety-nine people out of a hundred will tell you that griffins don’t exist outside of a Bard’s fevered imagination—the hundredth has been up there and seen them in the sky, and knows them for the deadly reality that they are. I’ve seen them—I’ve hunted them, once; they’re hard to kill and impossible to catch, and dangerous, just like every weird thing that lives in that wilderness. They say there were wars once somewhere out there fought with magic—magic like in the Bardic tales, not our Gifts—and the things living out there are what’s left of the weapons and armies that fought them.”
“What do you think?” Talia asked.
“It’s as good a way to explain it as any, I suppose,” Devan shrugged. “All I know is that most people don’t believe the half of my tales. Except the Heralds of course; they know better, especially after a griffin’s taken a mouthful out of some of them, or a firebird’s scorched them for coming too close to her nest—like Vostel. That’s probably why I stay here; it’s the only place I’ll be believed!”
Talia shook her head at him; “You stay because you have to. You’re needed too badly here—you couldn’t do anything else, and you know it.”
“Too wise, youngling,” he replied, “You’re too wise by half. Maybe I should be glad; you’re certainly making it easier to get my patients on their feet again. If I haven’t said so before, I appreciate your efforts. We don’t have enough mind-Healers to care for the minor traumas; the two we’ve got have to be saved for the dangerously unbalanced. Now don’t look innocent, I know exactly what you’ve been doing! As far as I’m concerned, you can go right on doing it.”
For here among the injured she found yet another, and more subtle application of her own Gift. There wasn’t the kind of self-destructive sorrow to deal with that came upon those left behind with a Herald’s death, but there were other, more insidiously negative emotions to be transmuted.
Self-doubt, so familiar to her, was one of those emotions. There wasn’t a Herald in the wards that wasn’t prey to it. Often they blamed themselves for their own injuries or the deaths or injuries of those they had been trying to help. And when they were alone so much of the time, with only pain and memory as companions, that self-doubt tended to grow.
It was hardly surprising that some of them developed phobias either, especially not if they’d been trapped or lying alone for long periods before rescue.
And there was a complex muddle of guilt and hatred to be sorted out and worked through for most of them. They hated those who had caused their hurts, either directly or indirectly, and they felt terrible guilt because a Herald was simply not supposed to hate anyone. A Herald was supposed to understand. A Herald was supposed to be the kind of person who cured hatreds, not the kind who was prey to them himself. That a Herald was also not supposed to be some kind of superhuman demigod didn’t occur to them. That a little honest hatred might be healthy didn’t occur to them either.
But the most insidious emotion, and the hardest to do anything about was despair; and despair was more than understandable when a body was plainly too badly hurt to be fully Healed again. It sometimes happened that an injury had been left too long untended to be truly Healed, especially if it had become infected. That was why Jadus had lost his leg in the wars with Karse fought by the Tedrel mercenaries. Healers could realign even the tiniest fragments of bone to allow a crushed limb to be restored—but only if that bone had not yet begun to set. And nerve-damage left too long could never be restored. How did you ease the pain of one who could look at his maimed and broken flesh and know he would never be the same again?
And there was the steady toll on heart and courage inflicted by what seemed to be endless pain—pain such as the burned Vostel was enduring.
All these things called to her with a voice too strong to be denied, begging her to set them aright. So as she became more deft in the usage of her Gift, she began administering to these injured as well as the bereft, and doing it so subtly that few realized that she’d helped them until after she’d gone. It was hard: hard to find the time, hard to witness the kinds of mental torment that could not be set aright with one simple touch or an outpouring of grief—but once she began, it was impossible to stop; the needs in the House of Healing drew her as implacably as the anguish left in the wake of death did. She didn’t realize—though by now Kyril and one or two others did—that she was only following in the footsteps of many another Monarch’s Own. Like Talia, those who had possessed the strongest Gifts in that capacity wound up ministering not only to the Monarch, but the entire Circle as well. The mounting evidence for these few was that when Talia earned her Whites, she was likely to prove to be one of the Heralds tales are written about. Unfortunately for their peace of mind, the Heralds tales are written about seldom had long or peaceful lives.
Twelve
“Make sure you get the blindfold good and tight,” Elspeth told Skif. “Otherwise the test isn’t any good.”
Skif forbore to comment that he already knew that, and simply asked, “Is Keren done yet?”
“I’ll go see,” Elspeth ran off.
“Positive you can’t see anything? Too tight? Too loose?” he asked Talia, making a few final adjustments to her blindfold.
“Black as a mousehole at midnight,” she assured him, “And it’s fine—it isn’t going to slip any, I don’t think, and it isn’t uncomfortable.”
“Keren says she’s ready when you are,” Elspeth called from beyond the screen of trees in Companion’s Field where Keren stood.
“You ready?”
“Any time.”
Skif led Talia carefully around the trees to where Keren stood, hands on her hips and a half-smile curving her lips.
“I took you at your word, little centaur; it’s good and complicated,” she said as they approached her. “Nobody’s ever tried this sort of thing before to my knowledge; it should be interesting.”
“Nobody seems to have this kind of Companion-bond either except me,” Talia replied, “And I want to see how much of it is really there and how much is imagination.”
“Well, this should do the trick. If you’re really seeing through Rolan’s eyes, you won’t take a single misstep. If you’re only imagining it, there’s no way you’ll be able to negot
iate this maze.”
The red and gold leaves had been carefully cleaned from the ground for at least a hundred feet in all directions in front of where Keren was standing, and laid out on the grass was a carefully plotted maze, the boundaries of its corridors marked by a line of paint on the grass. The corridors were only about two feet wide at the most, and it would take careful watching to avoid stepping on the paint. The maze itself was, as Keren had indicated, very complicated, and since the corridors were not demarcated by anything but the paint on the grass, there would be no way the blindfolded Talia would be able to tell where they were by feel.
Rolan stood beside Keren, on a little rise of ground that gave him a good view of the entire maze. According to Talia’s plan, he would be her eyes for this task. If the bond between them were as deep and strong as she thought, she would be able to traverse the maze with relative ease.
While Keren, Skif, and Elspeth watched in fascination, she set out to make the attempt.
Halfway through, she hesitated for a long moment.
“She’s going to end up in a dead end,” Skif whispered to Keren.
“No, she’s not—wait and see. There’s more than one way you can get through this, and I think she just chose the shorter route.”
Finally Talia stopped and turned blindly back to her audience.
“Well?” she asked.
“Take the blindfold off and see for yourself.”
She had threaded the maze so successfully that there wasn’t even a smear of paint on her boots. “It worked—” she said, a little awed, “it really worked!”
“I must admit that this is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen,” Keren said, picking her way across the grass followed by Rolan and the other two. “I thought Dantris and I were tight-bonded, but I don’t think we could have managed this. Why did you stop halfway through?”
“Rolan was arguing with me—I wanted to go the way I finally did, and he wanted me to take the right path.”
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