But when he called for his mother in the darkened room, she answered; she could not deprive herself of that one lie.
In the morning, grim, she rose. The child was sleeping, and his peace was fitful, but it was there. She dressed in the odd, gray uniform she’d been given, admiring the quality of its workmanship, if not the choice of its colors. Then she lifted him, waking him. He was disoriented, but only for a moment; she let him throw his arms around her neck until she could almost not breathe for the tightness of the grip. She loved that breathlessness.
“Daniel,” she told him gently, “I need you to talk with Darius. I need you to stay with him.”
The boy’s smile was shy, but it was genuine.
“I—I have work to do today. Darius is not really allowed inside.”
“But he’s not a horse!”
“No . . . he’s not a horse. He’s better than that, and I’m sure he’ll let you ride him if you want. Come. Let’s find him.”
The halls were bustling; there were more people in the Collegium than she had ever seen in the Hold, and she found their presence almost overwhelming. But she discovered two important things from the young—the very young—man who stopped to talk to her. The first, where breakfast was served—and when, that being important—and the second, where the Companions were stabled.
She knew breakfast was important, and stopped for just long enough to feed Daniel. Then she carried him to where she knew Darius was waiting.
He met her eyes, his own dark and unblinking.
Without preamble, Kayla set Daniel upon his back. He accepted the burden.
:You made a weapon out of him.:
:No, Kayla. He made a weapon out of himself. He thought that that was the best way of proving his worth to a distant father.:
:But his father—:
:His father loved him, yes. Loves him still.:
:If he was truly an Empath, he would have known that:
:The Kings,: Darius said sadly, :are taught to shield themselves. Against all intrusion, all influence. They must be strong.:
:And his youngest son was so insecure that he couldn’t infer that love.:
Darius was silent.
:My mother knew him.:
:Your mother . . . knew him, yes. Your mother could have reached him, had she lived; your mother was the one who discovered his Gift, the strength of his Gift. Your mother was the woman who insisted that he be moved from the court and taken to a place without the politics of power.:
:But she must have known—the dreams, the dreams I had—she must have had them:
:I . . . do not know. She could have reached him. The Heralds who have some hint of your Gift . . . could not. He made a weapon out of himself, and the forging was completed with the death of his Companion.:
She knew, then.
:He . . . he killed his Companion?:
:No! No. But the loss broke something in him. No other Companion can reach him now, and believe me, Kayla, we have tried. He is one of the Gifted; he can hear us all, if he so chooses.:
:But this must have happened years ago—:
:Yes, but few.:
:That’s not possible. I felt him years ago. In my dreams. I . . .: But the dreams had been different. She had felt loneliness, isolation, the desperate desire to be loved. Not madness.
:You are powerful, Kayla. What you felt then was true. It is far, far less than what you will feel now. Far less. Kayla, I must warn you—:
:I know.:
:Those who are affected, always, are those who have some hint of the Gift. When the Gift is strong, the effect is not sleep . . .:
:It’s death.:
:Yes.:
Gisel summoned her shortly after. Darius informed her of the summons, and she hastened back—with some difficulty, for the building really was a maze of passages compared to the simplicity of the Hold—to the rooms in which they had first met.
“I’m ready to meet him now,” she said, before Gisel could speak.
Gisel raised a brow. “There are things you should know about—”
“There is nothing I should know that you will tell me,” Kayla replied softly. “But I believe that this—this prince—has been hunting for me for much of my life, and it’s about time I stopped running.”
“Hunting for you?”
“In my dreams,” Kayla replied.
Gisel added nothing. “The Grays will do. Gregori is here, in the Collegium. We’ve sent all those who might be affected as far away as we can; distance seems to have some affect on his ability to—to reach people.”
“But not enough.”
“Not enough, no. Understand that we have not explained this to the world at large. It is treason to speak of it. I will have your oath, child, that you will comport yourself as a Herald—as a true servant of the King.”
Kayla nodded. And then, quietly, she knelt, her knees gracing the cold stone floor.
The two women traveled; Kayla let Gisel lead, and made no attempt to memorize their journey, to map the long halls, the odd doors, the hanging tapestries and the crystal lamps. She could see other things more clearly. Once or twice she reached out for Darius, and when he replied, she continued.
Until they reached a set of doors.
She froze outside of them, almost literally.
“Do you know why Darius waited?” she asked Gisel softly.
“Waited? To Choose you?”
Kayla nodded.
“No. He told us that he knew where you were to be found, but he refused to tell us how to find you until this spring.”
She nodded again. Touched the door. It was cold. Winter cold. Death cold. Within these walls, beyond these doors, the dragon lay coiled.
“Will you wait outside?” Kayla asked. It was not possible to give an order to this woman.
Gisel ignored the request; she pulled a ring of keys from her belt and slid one into the door’s single lock.
Whatever Kayla expected from the rooms of a prince had come from stories that Widow Davis told the children. She had long since passed the age where stories were necessary, but she wanted them anyway. She gazed, not at a room, but at a small graveyard, one blanketed as if by snow, hidden from sight unless one knew how to look for it.
She knew.
Her dead were here. Her dead . . . and the losses that death inflicted. She faced them now. Swallowed air, shaking.
“It’s hard,” Kayla whispered. “When they’re gone, it’s so damned hard.”
“What?” Gisel’s sharp tone had not softened in the slightest.
“To feel loved. To know that you are loved. I think—I think sometimes it’s the hardest thing in the world.” She entered the room unaware of the weight of the King’s Own’s stare.
A young man lay abed.
He was older than Kayla; he had to be older. She knew this because of her mother’s words, her mother’s memory. But had she not known it, she would not have guessed; he was slender with youth, and he lay curled on his side, shaking slightly, his eyes wide and unseeing. She felt his pain as if it were her own. As if it were exactly her own.
She did not know if she loved Darius.
That was truth. He was part of her in a way that she could not fathom, did not struggle to understand. But she did not know if she loved him.
She could say with certainty that she had loved her husband. Could say—no, could not say, but could feel—with certainty, that she had loved her children, the children that life in Riverend had taken from her one by one.
And she could say with certainty that this man-boy, this terrible dragon, this hunting horror, had loved his Companion. Or had felt loved by him.
The loss she felt was profound and terrible. It dwarfed all losses that she had ever suffered but one.
“Leave us,” she whispered.
Gisel hesitated for only a minute, but that minute stretched out into forever. And then she was gone.
“All right,” Kayla said quietly. “It’s time you and I had a talk.”
She touched his face; his skin was clammy.
His eyes, wide and unseeing, did not turn toward her, but something beneath them did.
Kayla looked into the red eyes of the dragon.
And trapped within them, she saw a child. Or a mirror.
She had never dreamed of flight, although the other village children often spoke of it. She had never dreamed of wings; the only time her feet left the ground in her dreams was when she rode a Companion who could cross the walls that darkness imposed upon her dreaming.
“Gregori,” she whispered.
He did not move.
But the beast did. It knew exactly where she was, and the waking world offered her no protection, no place to hide.
Gregori.
Dragon name. Prince name. Powerful name.
He turned. You!
Yes.
I know you.
Yes. I am Kayla.
Despair washed over her. Despair and more: death, images of death. The loss of her home. The loss of her village—of Riverend, the home she had promised her mother she would protect. But there was more. She felt the death of her husband as the mines collapsed, as oxygen fled, slowly enough that fear and hysteria had time to build. She felt her father’s death, the snap of his spine, saw—although not with her eyes—the pale whites of eyes rolled shut when no hands were there to gently drawn lids across them.
Her mother’s death followed.
And after that, the deaths of her life: her sons. One by one, in the absence of Healers, in the winter when no one could travel through the pass.
She was alone. Terribly, horribly alone. Everyone that had ever loved her, gone; she was like a ship without anchor.
All that existed was this darkness. She wandered within it, weeping now, her arms so empty she knew they would never be full again.
But she was not terrified. She felt no horror.
How could she? The things she had feared, the things that made fear so visceral, that made her feel truly vulnerable, had already come to pass.
She could not speak; her lips trembled, her jaw; her shoulders shook as if she were caught in the spasms that collapsed whole tunnels dug in rock.
And because these things were truth, she accepted them as she had managed—just barely—to accept them in the village of Riverend.
How? How had she done it? For a moment she could not remember, and then her mother’s voice returned, distant and tinny: Promise me that you will care for Riverend.
Duty. Just that, only that, hollow and cold.
Despair gave way to anger.
:Is that the worst you can do? she asked the dragon, she so small she was almost insignificant.
:I killed them!: The dragon roared.
She almost believed him, the emotion was so compelling. So much, so very much, like her own. But she said, as she had said to herself over and over again for the last year, :Life killed them. Winter killed them. Work killed them.:
:How dare you! Do you not know who I am?:
:Oh, yes, I know you. Despair. Terror. Fear. I have lived with nothing but you for the last several months of my life.:
:I killed them!:
:No.:
:I killed them.: She could no longer feel her feet. She threw her weight forward because she had some hope that she could land on the bed instead of the hardwood floor.
:No, you didn’t:
:I killed Rodri.:
:No.:
He laughed, and the laughter was terrible, the most terrible thing she had heard from him. In all of her nightmares, the dragon’s voice had been a roar of pain. But this, this mirthless sound, was worse.
It was true.
She could not see for darkness, but sensation returned to her hands, and beneath her hands she felt the clammy warmth of his body, the fever of it; she could count his ribs as her palms traveled the length of his slender chest, child’s chest. He was dying. He was dying; the fever-root had done nothing to drive the fires away, and he was burning from within. He—
No. No.
:Tell me,: she said softly, as her hands touched his chin. :Tell me.: His hair was a tangle, matted and thin, child’s hair. The sensation was almost more than she could bear, and only the fact that she knew he was too heavy for her to lift kept her from gathering his body to her.
She had carried her son.
She had carried him for three hours, in the cold, while her toddler wailed.
:Mother?:
She could not answer him; could not lie to him. Instead she continued to stroke his hair.
And after a moment, she sang, her voice a little too dry, a little too shaky. Song had been her gift. She had never found a person in Riverend who would not listen to her song, not be gentled by it.
:I wanted to help them. I wanted to help. I couldn’t wield a sword. I tried. I tried for so long. I cut my legs, my arms; I cut Rodri’s flank. I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t pull the bow. I could wind a crossbow. I—:
His hair.
She saw images of a child, thin and awkward, and she knew what that child represented. The Prince. Gregori. She saw the ghostly image of a mother, a specter composed of a child’s loss, a child’s longing; she saw the gray, distant ice of a father’s disappointment and contempt. She felt his isolation and his loneliness so clearly she could not separate it from her own.
Nor did she try.
:Rodri loved me.
:Rodri found me when I was lost. He called me, and I came.
:They gave me Whites. They tried to train me. We were happy here.:
She felt his terror building, and she knew the storm would return. But she had lived life in Riverend, and she had wintered there. There was no storm that she could not weather, not now.
:I could tell where the enemy was. I could tell them by what they were feeling. I—:
They had not made a weapon of the boy. She saw that; he had made a weapon of himself.
She saw her mother.
She saw an assassin. She knew, then, when her mother had killed, and why: to save this boy.
He had begged her to teach him this Gift, and her mother had fled, taking her love—yes, even her mother—with her to the farthest reaches of the Kingdom’s border.
That desertion had hurt him; she could feel the pain clearly. But she could also feel the determination that followed as he dismissed Magda Merton for a selfish, powermongering woman, like all the other women in court.
In silence, she let his story unfold. It was not neatly told; it was broken by storm and rage, by fear, by self-loathing.
He had taught himself. He had used his power, his full power, for the first time; it had been a surprise. A Gift. A thing to give his father, a way to prove to his friends that he, too, could help save the Kingdom from invasion. He had turned his Gift outward, reflecting emotion, magnifying it. It worked. It struck the enemy, scattering them, breaking their lines.
But the bond between Companion and Herald was strong; the creature most affected by the sudden outward blow was Rodri. Would have to be Rodri.
Gregori screamed. He screamed, not with his Gift, but with his voice. And she, seeing her own graveyard, and knowing what lay beneath the earth, screamed with him.
And then, soundless, he turned, dragon wings wide. He listened for the sound of singing, for the songs of joy or hope or love that he had heard for almost all of Kayla’s life. She knew: It was her song.
And what he found was her pain, her despair, her endless rage at fate and winter and people who still had children to love.
She continued to stroke his hair.
Darius woke her.
She rose at the sound of her name, and found that she could see the room clearly; the storm had passed for the moment. She turned to look at the man who lay in the bed; saw that his eyes were closed. His lashes were long, like boys’ lashes so often are; his skin was winter-pale.
On impulse, she bent and kissed his forehead.
“He isn’t doing it on purpose,” she
said quietly, her arm around Darius’ neck.
Darius said nothing.
“The King had little patience for him, and no affection.”
:He loves his children.:
“Gregori felt what the King felt, Darius. He wasn’t just guessing.”
:He felt part of it; some people remember best the things which wound them.:
She thought of her children. After a moment, she said, “He would have killed himself.”
:Why didn’t he?:
“I don’t know.” But she was beginning to. She said, instead, “You lied to me. He did kill Rodri.”
:He did not. The enemy shot Rodri.:
“Rodri was mad with terror and fear, and it was Gregori’s.”
Darius said nothing.
Kayla let her arm slide away from his shoulder. “I have to speak with Gisel,” she said softly. Just that.
Gisel was waiting for her, tense and pale. She looked old, Kayla thought, bent with Gregori’s weight. But she smiled a moment when she saw Kayla enter the room.
And looked surprised.
“He can’t stop,” Kayla told her.
“You don’t believe in idle chatter, do you?”
“I’m from the Holds,” Kayla replied tartly.
“But you survived him. You . . . touched him, and you survived.”
Kayla nodded. “I know why Darius waited,” she told the King’s Own. “And I know that what you thought he waited for can’t happen. Not here.”
“You can’t reach him?”
“I can. But—” She shook her head. Stared at her hands for a moment.
“But?”
“Not here.”
Gisel rose, mistaking her meaning.
“Not in the capital,” Kayla told her gently, almost as if she were speaking to a child.
“What do you mean?”
“Let me take him home.”
“This is his home.”
Kayla rose. Rose and walked to a window whose splendor she had never seen in Riverend. Light broke upon the river that ran through the city; the river was murky and slow. She thought it must be warm, as warm as the air in this almost endless spring. Without turning, she said, “I have to take him to Riverend.”
Valdemar Anthology - [Tales of Valdemar 02] - Sun in Glory and Other Tales of Valdemar Page 9
