Stars: The Anthology

by Janis Ian

  But when I topped that last hill and looked down into the river valley where Cheverford lay, I could feel my stomach knotting. And nothing that Keria said to me made it any different; this was the place where my life had begun and ended and begun again, and I still wasn't sure that the choices I'd made to end that first life were the right ones. Oh, certainly, I had Keria, I was a Herald now, and had all that went with it—but all of the might-have-beens broke the bonds I'd put on them and reared up like accusing ghosts to surround me.

  We trotted down the hill, Keria and I, trailing a cloud of invisible regrets and heartaches. Poor Keria; she didn't deserve to be saddled and bridled with my troubles.

  :Your troubles are mine,: she said smoothly, sounding serene, quite as if nothing ever troubled her. Well, I always was the emotional one in our partnership. Nothing much ever seemed to upset Keria—not that she wasn't sympathetic and deeply empathic, it's just that she never let emotions rule her they way they ruled me.

  Just as well, really; we wouldn't be an effective partnership if both of us were ruled by their emotions.

  It’s a funny sort of partnership to most people, though—at least, those who don’t know that a Companion is really another person and not just an unusually intelligent white horse. Horse! As if that word could even come close to defining a Companion! They Chose us for starters, usually when we’re between thirteen and seventeen (though I’d been a year later than that) and not the other way around. We Heralds might be the ones that people see, dispensing the Queen’s Justice, explaining the law, doing what needs to be done—but we couldn’t do all that without the Companions. Advisor, friend, assistant, closer than kin, they’re people, they just happen to be in a horse’s body, I suppose.

  The town had changed quite a bit since I'd left, and not just because I'd left in the spring, and now it was autumn. A dozen houses stood on the side of the river that had once been untenanted, there was a new wheel on the mill, which turned silently as we trotted over the arched stone bridge. The old wheel had been about to shake itself to pieces when I left, so it wasn't surprising that it had been replaced—the wonder was that stingy Old Man Mullien had been willing to replace it rather than trying to rebuild it one more time.

  But the biggest change was the reason why I was here—up the hill above the town on the farther side of the bridge—a huge, new building that could have passed for a wing of the Collegium, except that there was no sign of age about it. This building, modeled on the original of the Collegium, was something new for Valdemar—but never before had there been a need for such a place.

  But never before had there been so many children left parentless in Valdemar, either. A village could always absorb one or two orphans; it was unheard-of for there to be no relatives to which an orphaned child could be sent.

  But the Tedrel Wars had changed all that; the Tedrel Wars had changed everything. Now we had these places called "Orphanages"; now we had entire villages where the only creatures that had been left alive were the children. In that last, hideous flood of death, when the Tedrels had assumed that Valdemar had been weakened enough to conquer with one final push, they had laid waste to every settlement in their path. For some reason, they'd left children under the age of seven alive, but no one else.

  I'd heard speculation that the Tedrels had intended to round up the ones that survived, bring them in, and raise the younglings as their own. It was as good a theory as any, since the Tedrels had intended to take all of Valdemar for themselves, or at the very least, as much of it as they could gobble up, but they didn't have, or encourage, families of their own.

  Not surprisingly, the littles were traumatized and in need of someone who had enough Empathy to tell exactly what would help them the most. Furthermore, some of them were showing signs of Gifts, though it was very hard to tell which ones, sometimes. And that was where I came into the picture.

  Well, it was more accurate to say that Keria and I came into the picture. She was an Empath, and more to the point, just like an Empathic Mindhealer, of which, we had exactly none to spare; with any luck and my help in speaking to them, she would be able to help the children over the worst of their troubles. And I (like the legendary Herald Pol of Lavan Firestorm's time) had that special little Gift of being able to sense virtually all of the Gifts at work. I should be able to pick out who was doing what, when it came to things like plates being flung across the room, or everyone waking up with exactly the same nightmare. At that point, well, either Keria would be able to sort the child out so that he (or she) would stop doing things, or Keria would determine if the child ought to be Chosen, at which point it was out of our hands and presumably a Companion would arrive to carry the little one away. True enough, they were far too young to go into the Collegium, but that wasn't our problem; the Collegium would have to adapt, or some other provision would be made. We didn't make decisions, Keria and I; we just implemented them.

  So there it was. This would be the second such Orphanage we'd been sent to since they were set up. Each one held about thirty children, that being the number that was deemed manageable by a residential staff of four, two couples, with the cleaning and cooking being helped out by a couple of day-servants from the village, if needed.

  We were far from the Border of Karse, where all the troubles had been. My old village was nothing like the high, heavily wooded hills and mountain-forests that these children had grown up among. My country was gentle, long-settled, farms that had been in families for two and three hundred years, pastures supporting fat black-and-white milch-cattle and plump, slow white sheep, not rangy red hill-cattle and long-haired goats. We had rolling hills intersected by tame, chuckling streams, not slopes that plunged down to meet rivers that ran shallow one moment, and raging the next. There were woods, but they were populated with oak and ash and beech, not firs and pines that reached green-black fingers to point at the moon, nor birch and aspen that showed white skeletons when winter came and their leaves were gone.

  There was little here to remind these children of their lost homes, although if they wanted to go back when they were older, no on was going to stop them. There was no telling what they'd want later; for now, we were mostly concerned with keeping them cushioned by unfamiliarity, as if we were bandaging their wounded spirits.

  But as I said, that was none of my business. I was here to help them in a small, immediate way. I was actually grateful for that; there was so little anyone could do to help them, and the fact that I could do anything at all made me feel less helpless in the face of all of the monumental losses. There were plenty of Heralds, especially those who (like me) hadn't so much as gotten further south than Haven during the Wars that were going about with a sense of peculiar guilt because they hadn't done anything other than "ordinary" Herald's duties then, and weren't doing anything other than that now. I was lucky; I had a real feeling that I was contributing something.

  The only problem, of course, was that I had to come back here as part of doing that job.

  As usual, there were children—not the orphans, you could tell that by their clothing, just ordinary village children—who were playing in the river and along the bank, keeping an eye on the road for anything interesting that might happen by. Well, I was interesting enough to send them all splashing up out of the shallows and pelting barefoot and bare-legged up the dusty road, across the bridge and into the village, yelling shrilly that "Herald's comin'!" Keria's hooves chimed merrily on the stone of the bridge, and her bridle-bells rang along with them; warning enough to anyone with an ear, even if the children hadn't started up like hounds on a scent at the first sight of us. Now capped or bare heads poked out of windows and kitchen-doors, curious and eager, and I winced inside, seeing familiar faces, waiting to see the expressions of interest turn to recognition, then pity. Except that they didn't.

  :They don't know you, Chosen,: Keria said. :Most won't recognize you unless you remind them of who you were. Partly it's the uniform, partly it's the years, but mostly it's that
you have had experiences they only hear about in news and tales, while they have stayed at home and changed very little from the people you knew.:

  I couldn't argue with the evidence of my own eyes, but it seemed very strange. :Have I changed that much?:

  I felt her amusement. :Well, my dear, think! In the time since you left, you have lived through how many floods, how many fires, arbitrated how many feuds, not to mention all of the other disasters and near-disasters you've coped with? That is more experience in even five years than most of these folk will see in a lifetime.:

  I was feeling particularly mordant, I suppose. :So, now that I've turned into a care-ridden hag—:

  :Oh, Havens, if you're going to go on like that, there's no use talking to you!: she exclaimed, but in a teasing tone, so that I should know that nothing was meant by it. She had to cosset me like that sometimes; I could be as touchy now as I had been as an adolescent—

  Which was, of course, the time in my life I most particularly didn't want to think about.

  He wouldn't be there, of course. He couldn't be. He'd only stayed for as long as he had because of me.

  Because of me....

  And I knew he'd moved on once I was gone, once he knew that I wasn't coming back. I knew, because I had asked. Oh, yes, I had asked; it was easy enough to do after Keria came for me and took me to Herald's Collegium, with Bardic Collegium just over the way, and all the records of which Bard was wandering where easy to get at. Nobody even asked me why I wanted to know, though I fell all over myself with the explanation, "He was from my village, and he came back once he was in full Scarlets," I said, knowing that my face matched those Scarlets in intensity, if not hue. "I—I wondered if he moved on," I concluded, lamely enough, face so hot the Bardic Chronicler could have warmed her hands at it.

  But "Bard Jordie Ambersen, was it?" was all she said, all tact and diplomacy, and not a hint that there was anything out of the commonplace, like any Bard, really. Even Jordie was that way, or perhaps he had just been oblivious to the fact that he had been eating me alive with his love, and I had to run from him or lose myself and become nothing more than his shadow. And he was being eaten by staying, in our little village that thought him "clever" and "amusing" and had no notion of what sort of a treasure was sitting in the Black Swan, night after night, playing "one o'them old tunes, young Jordie, none o'that new-fangled nonsense." He wouldn't leave—for my sake, he'd have said; that a wandering life was no life for a woman, much less a young girl like me—that it was too hard, with no home of her own, and often as not, no place to lay her head, even. And if ever there was to be a child coming—well! Now, he said, we had to stay here where I would have a home when we married, and everything would be stable. Even though I didn't want "stability" and neither did he. Even though I didn't know who and what I was yet, and he was turning me into a picture of what he wanted. Even though his voice was being stifled "for my sake" and I was being sucked dry for his. Would he have believed it if I'd told him?

  "Ah. Up north he's gone. Last reported at Berrybay, dear." She smiled slightly. I fled. It was all I needed to know. The rabbit had run, and the bird had flown free of the cage that had been too small to contain it, if only it had known.

  I returned only once in all the time since, when a winter-fever carried off both my mother and father together. I came back in Trainee Greys, but not to bury them, for the village already had, but to say whatever goodbye I could. Poor things, they had been so proud I had been Chosen, but so bewildered when I wrote that no, I hadn't heard from Jordie, and no, I didn't expect to. Purest accident that on the road, fleeing from Jordie, I had met with Keria, but they were not to know that. My brothers couldn't come home, the ones that were still alive—they were on the front lines of the Wars. I did duty for the family, sold the house and land, and fled back to the Collegium to have the money sent to them. I didn't need it, and soldiers always need money.

  I went to the Black Swan, for there was no Waystation here, and at any rate, I was not on circuit to be making use of it. "Herald Enna," I said, and got no second looks, for Enna was a common enough name. "Here for the Orphanage."

  "And a mercy," said Maggy Chokan from behind the bar, as her husband nodded and presented me with the Herald's Book to sign. "Not that I grudge the poor wee mites their shelter nor blame 'em for their griefs," she added hastily, "But the way things keep flyin' about up there, and them storms that hev been springing up, they're not natural."

  I nodded, gravely. "That's what we're here to sort out," I replied, taking the room-key that her husband handed to me, quite as if I hadn't known them at all. Well enough to know that the few cases of "things flyin' about" had probably been multiplied a thousandfold in her mouth, and that there was nothing at all unnatural about the summer storms that were as familiar a memory to me as the old stone bridge.

  Well, why should they remember me if it came to it? Except as the unaccountable girl who everyone thought would marry Bard Jordie, but got Chosen instead? And my face had probably gotten blurred in their memories, confused with the round, vague, unformed faces of half the other adolescent girls in this place—all of us dreaming, most of us unwilling to make the sacrifices to force the dreams to come true. And one of us not willing to have a dream that meant becoming less than we were.

  No matter how much love came with it.

  I took my key—a cumbersome thing it was, too, and utterly unnecessary, even if I hadn't been a Herald, since no one had ever, in anyone's memory, stolen so much as a wooden spoon from a room in the Black Swan. But there—supposedly someone, back in Maggy's grandfather's time, had taken a purse from a room, so there must needs be keys now.

  :On the other hand, with all the strangers on the roads now, perhaps keys will be needed,: said Keria. :The Tedrel Wars left some strange flotsam floating about the Kingdom.:

  I unlocked the door to my room; it creaked. :True enough, and what are we to do? Demand a certificate of virtue from every stranger? Are you comfortable, my love?:

  :Tolerably,: she said, by which I knew that she was not, but she had her own ways of making sure that her comforts were supplied. I had no doubt that before too long, she would have the situation taken care of. :Going up to the Orphanage?:

  :I think so; I need to let them know we're here, and what we're going to do. I can have a look at the children now, perhaps while they're playing, and we can start the real work tomorrow when I know what Gifts we're dealing with. Or not,: I added, for there had been at least one case of a very clever little sleight-of-hand artist who had everyone convinced that there was a haunting going on in the first place.

  :Or not,: she agreed, and so, once I saw my packs safely brought up by the man-of-all-work, I locked the door, put that ponderous key in my belt-pouch, and began the walk up the hill to that raw, new building.

  Someone had been at work trying to make the place less stark, I saw as I neared it. There were flower beds and young trees, all of them recent plantings, all around it. There were swings of rope and leather, the kind that you ordinarily saw hanging from the limbs of old trees, set up in wooden frames since there were no trees big enough near the building. Someone had gone to extraordinary length to build a sand-pit, full of clean sand, with small sized pails and tiny shovels in it. Yet none of this looked played-with.

  I sighed. I wasn't at all surprised, since this was pretty much what I had come to expect at these Orphanages. The children seldom felt safe outside of four walls, for many of them had been outdoors when the Tedrels descended on their villages, and had been chased away from the security of their homes by armed and threatening men. That this had been so that those men could kill their parents and older siblings without them witnessing the fact was something that didn't get into the part of their minds where fear lived.

  It was early in the afternoon; the children should be at their lessons for the moment. It would be a good time to speak to their guardians.

  I went around back to the kitchen, where I was sure of finding
at least one of them.

  In fact, I found two, both of the women, plus a couple of young women from the village acting as kitchen maids, all hard at work on the preparation of food for thirty growing children. I watched them for a little, until I was satisfied that there was no skimping going on—not that I expected it, but it was good to be sure.

  But no, the rabbit being chopped up for the stew was as good as anything I'd get in the inn, the bread coming out of the oven was crusty and golden and there was plenty of it, and one of the two women was filling a berry pie with a lavish hand. I cleared my throat ostentatiously.

  A candlemark later, I was satisfied with the guardians as well as the physical surroundings, and in fact, it turned out I knew them, though they didn't recognize me. Not that they should have; they were older than I as well as more than a touch above my social station, and even in a village there is a line between "gentleman's daughter" and "market-farmer's girl" that is seldom crossed. Strange to see them being deferential to me now. It was a change in my status that I never even noticed until now, when I knew the two couples in question. But perhaps that had as much to do with the Wars as anything else. The Wars changed life in Valdemar for everyone, whether or not they were directly affected. Or perhaps I was being unfair, for here were Gemma and Lara, the Squire's girls, who I last saw "setting their caps" at Harl and Berd, Guildmaster and landed Knight's sons respectively, yet they were married to Lame Tam the miller's third boy and half-blind Hadal, a mere clerk (who wore a pair of thick glass lenses in a wire frame just so he could see), and both seemed happy enough.

  Perhaps Harl and Berd had gone to the Wars and not come back...I wasn't about to ask.

  Just as I was about to ask to see the children themselves, I heard something that made me freeze in my tracks—a lilting tenor voice lifted in song. A voice I knew only too well.