One thing was notable; the farther north they went, the greater the distance grew between communities, and the smaller the communities were. Now it was taking nearly a week's ride to pass from village to village.
Talia remained withdrawn and silent, responding only when spoken to, and never volunteering any opinion. She seemed to warm up a little when they were between villages. She'd talk to Kris then, on her own; she even could be persuaded to sing a little. But as soon as they came within a day's ride of a populated area, the shutters came down, and she locked everything and everyone outside. When she spoke, she had an odd, flat, indifferent quality to her tone. She reminded Kris of himself the first time he'd walked the two-rope bridge on the obstacle course; there was that kind of tautness underneath the mask, as if she expected to fall at any moment. Tantris could tell him nothing, but even Rolan seemed unusually on edge.
There was one other thing to observe about the countryside; these northernmost communities were not only smaller, but they kept themselves behind palisades of strong logs, with gates that were barred at night. There were wolves and other wild beasts prowling the winter nights— and some of those beasts were on two legs. The Forest of Sorrows didn't keep everything out of this Sector, and couldn't prevent outlaws from coming in from the three directions other than the forest 117
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Border. Talia and Kris rode with all senses alert and their weapons loose and to hand now, and they bolted the Waystation doors at night.
All of which might have accounted for Talia's nerves; except that she supposedly came from Border country herself, and should be used to keeping watch for raiders. Still, Kris reasoned, it had been a long time, and she had never been part of the defenders— she had been part of what was being protected.
But that wouldn't account for Rolan's nerves. The Companions were both combat-trained and combat-experienced; they were more than guard enough for themselves, their Chosen, and the chirras. Kris watched Talia— unobtrusively, he hoped— and worried, and wondered.
* * *
They progressed through several towns and villages; Talia was beginning to feel as if she were falling to pieces, bit by bit. Her shields were eroding to the point where she had very little control over them, and nearly everything was getting through; she knew she was not only reading, she was inadvertantly projecting, because Rolan was becoming as nervous as she was. Her only defense was to withdraw into herself as much as possible, and Kris seemed bound and determined to prevent that. She felt lost, and frightened, and utterly alone. There was no one she could turn to for help; Kris himself had said that he thought her Gift was unique. She was certain now that he couldn't give her any advice on how to handle it; his own Gift was very nearly the kind that could be weighed and measured. Hers wasn't even necessarily detectable. And now it was becoming utterly unpredictable. Her feeling of panic and entrapment grew. Finally they reached the town of Hevenbeck, very nearly on the Border itself. Tailia's unhappiness was a hard knot within her now; the petty problems of the townfolk seemed trivial at this point.
In the previous village they'd had some of their messages catch up with them; one of them had been a brief note to Talia from Elspeth. She'd said only that she was doing well, hoped Talia was the same, and that Talia wasn't to worry about her. And that added to Talia's troubles. She had no notion of what prompted the note, or what could be happening back at the 118
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capital at this moment. Elspeth was in her first year as a trainee; like Talia she was the only girl in her year-group. She was probably confused—most certainly overwhelmed— and just entering adolescence to top it all off. And she would be having to cope with all the rumors Talia already knew, and whatever had sprung up in her absence. It was quite likely she needed Talia more now than she ever had since she'd been the Brat.
Not to mention the effect of the rumors on the rest of the Heralds.
Would they, like Kris, be tempted to believe them? Or would they dismiss them out of hand and ignore the matter— leaving Elspeth to face them alone?
How was Selenay getting along without her? What if the Queen was turning to Orthallen for advice— Orthallen, whom Talia somehow could not bring herself to trust?
She was so engrossed in trying to hold control and deal with these other worries that had begun occurring to her that she was paying scant attention to the petitioners before her— a grim and straitlaced couple who reminded Talia unpleasantly of her own Holderkin relatives.
They were dressed in clothing of faded black and dusty brown; carefully mended and patched as if they were two of the town's poorest inhabitants, although Talia and Kris had been informed by the headman that they were actually one of the wealthiest couples Hevenbeck boasted. Their mouths were set in identical disapproving grimaces as they harked over their grievances in thin, whining voices.
Those voices irritated her no end; their petty spitefulness rasped at her through what was left of her shields, like having sandpaper rubbing over a sunburn. She was grateful when Kris interrupted them.
"You're quite certain this girl is responsible for the missing poultry?
There's no chance it could be foxes or other vermin?"
"Our coops are as tight as our house, Herald," the man whined. "More so!
She's done it; done it in spite of the good wages we've paid her and the comfortable job she's had with us. I don't doubt she's been selling them—"
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"But to whom? You said yourself no one in town will admit to buying fowl from her."
"Then she's been eating them!" the woman retorted. "Greedy she is, that I know for certain—"
Talia forced herself to turn her attention to the serving maid; her garb was even more threadbare than her employers, she was thin and pale, and looked ill-used. She certainly didn't look to Talia as if she'd been feasting on stolen chickens and geese!
The girl briefly raised her eyes— and a disquieting chill threaded Talia's backbone at the strange blank, gray gaze. Then she dropped her regard again, and Talia dismissed her misgiving as another manifestation of her lack of control over her Gift. She wanted away from them all; they made her skin crawl, and all she wanted was to have this nonsense over with so that she could retreat back into the relatively safe haven of the Station.
She spoke without thinking about anything except getting rid of them.
"I can't see where you have any proof of what you're claiming," she interrupted sharply, "and I can't see why you're bringing it before Heralds—"
"Talia, you haven't been listening," Kris said in a low, warning voice. "It isn't just the missing birds— though that's all they seem to be worrying about. There's other things— the runes on their doorstep in blood— the—"
"Kris, this is ridiculous! " she exploded. "All they want is an excuse to dismiss that poor child without her wages! Havens, Keldar used to pull that filthy trick once every year— hire some pathetic wench and dismiss her on some trumped-up excuse before her year's wage came due!"
"Talia," Kris said after a pause, his voice full of reluctance, "I hate to have to pull rank on you, but I'm going to have to insist— because you can work Second-stage Truth Spell and I can't. I want you to cast it on all three of them in turn."
"I can't believe you're wasting Truth Spell on something this petty!"
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"That's an order, Herald."
She bit her lip at the cold tone of his voice, and obeyed without another word. The First-stage Truth Spell only revealed whether or not the speaker was telling the truth. Second-stage forced him to tell it. Much to her surprise, when Kris questioned the couple at some length while she held the spell on them, their story was the same.
Then she transferred the spell to the timid-seeming servant-girl— and mouse became a rabid weasel.
The girl underwent a complete personality change when Talia's spell touched her mind. She stared at her employe
rs, eyes bright and feral, a fierce snarl twisting her lips. "Oh, yes," she hissed softly. " Oh yes, I've been taking their birds. It's little enough for all they've done to me—"
"What have they done to you?" Kris prompted.
"Beatings for the least little clumsiness— bread and barley-broth and moldy cheese, meal after meal. They own the biggest flock of hens in the town, and I haven't tasted an egg or a bit of chicken in half a year! My pledged clothing is her castoffs, and worn to nothing by the time I get them. When I'm not bruised, I'm hungry, when I'm not hungry, I'm cold!
But I'll have my revenge—"
The look of mad hatred she turned on the two made them shrink back away from her, frightened at the transformation in her. And Talia clenched her hands until her nails bit into her palms, endeavoring to hold control in the storm of the rage and hatred she was experiencing.
"— oh, yes, I'll have my revenge! That's what the birds were for, you know. I've not been eating them. I've been sacrificing them— giving them to the wolves. They come to me every night now. Soon now, soon they'll teach me how to change my skin for one of theirs, and when I learn—when I learn—"
The mad light in her eyes told clearly what she expected to do to her employers when she'd learned to shift her shape. Talia went cold all over, shaking from head to foot. The beat of the girl's emotions against her 121
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crumbling barriers was almost enough to send her fleeing in panic. Her breath froze in her throat, and she could feel herself coming perilously close to insanity herself.
"— and after them, the rest. And my gray brothers and sisters will help, oh, yes—" The maid began to raise her voice, and her words disintegrated into babbling; raving fragments of hatred and imagination.
It was too much for Talia to bear. The girl was shattering her barriers, and about to draw her down into madness. She reached out blindly, without thinking, using her Gift in instinctive self-defense, and touched the girl, putting her into a sudden sleep.
The plaintiff couple was speechless; for a long moment, so was Kris.
"I think," Kris said carefully, at last, "That we had better take her and put her into the care of a Healer. I don't know how much of what she said about the way you treated her was the truth, and how much she imagined, but I think perhaps you'd better agree to pay all the Healer's expenses. And if you take another servant— you'd best be careful about her working conditions."
* * *
Kris was ominously silent as they rode back to the Station in the gathering dusk. The disposition of the mad girl had occupied all the rest of the afternoon. It had taken the Healer nearly a candlemark to wake her from the deep sleep Talia had thrown over her. And Talia was profoundly shamed, as much for her panicked, unthinking reaction as for the self-centered, willful irresponsibility that had led her to neglect her duty. "Kris... I'm sorry," she said in a subdued, unhappy voice as soon as they were past the city gates. "I didn't mean— I—"
Kris said nothing, and Talia shrank back into herself, the last of her carefully-built self-confidence shattered.
He guesses— surely he guesses. I'm a failure; I can't even control myself enough to complete half a circuit. I can't do anything right.
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But he made no reply, not even to condemn; she could only sense that he was thinking, but not what he was thinking about. She rode silently at his side, waiting for the axe to fall, all the way back to the Station. And the fact that it did not fall only made things worse.
* * *
Kris rode in silence, only now beginning to realize that by not giving her a little comfort and encouragement that he had made a nearly fatal mistake. Her self-esteem was far more fragile than he had guessed. And her nerves were plainly gone. Now he thought he knew why she would venture no judgments at all, and gave him her opinions hesitantly, and only when directly asked for them. When he asked her, back at the Station, she avoided answering all questions about how she was feeling, answering only that she was "all right." He began to wonder if she'd ever recover from the incident... and he began to fear that he'd ruined her.
And then, deep in the darkness of the night, the disturbing thought occurred to him that she was slowly going mad, and perhaps taking him with her.
* * *
There was snow on the ground as they rode toward the tiny hamlet that bore the dubious distinction of being the settlement that was farthest north and nearest the Border, right up against the Forest of Sorrows itself. Talia, more used to having to exert herself to bolster what was left of her shields than to stretch out to sense the population centers, began wondering if her powers had finally failed her altogether. But, no— there was Kris, so clear to her raw mind that his proximity was almost painful. So it had to be something else. She finally got up her courage and confided what she had not sensed to Kris. "There's just too much... well, 'silence' is the only way I can put it. I can hardly feel anything, and the little I can pick up is as if everyone were sleeping, or unconscious."
"You're certain that the cold's not affecting you?" he asked.
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I only wish it would, she thought wistfully, then answered him. "No... I don't think so. It was no colder back at Greenhaven, and I could feel the people from a day away."
He considered. "All right then, we'd better pick up our pace to the fastest the chirras can maintain. If there's something wrong, the sooner we get there, the better."
The snow creaked underfoot, and the bridle-bells rang madly as they picked up the pace to a trot. The air was utterly still; the sky cloudless and an intense blue that almost hurt the eyes. Sun filtered through the bare branches of the trees, leaving shadows like blue lace on the snowbanks. It was a beautiful day, and the strange uneasiness Talia was feeling was entirely out of place in it.
The village itself was very quiet as they came within sight of it— too quiet by far. Sheltered between two hills, the cleared area in which it stood showed no tracks on the snow whatsoever, neither coming nor going. The gates stood open, and unattended. Kris' face showed his alarm so clearly that Talia knew without having his emotions battering her that he was as fearful as she. He ordered Talia to remain where she was, and descended the hill they were on to the village gates, taking his chirra inside with him.
He hadn't been inside long when she saw the gates slam shut, and heard the bar slide into its slots. Immediately following this, she saw an arrow arc over the palisade to land in the snow on her side of the wall.
She ran to where it had landed. It bore four rings; three were green, one was red. She checked the fletching pattern; it was Kris' without a doubt. It might have seemed silly for him to have patterned the arrow when she'd watched him enter the village with her own eyes, but this was truly the only way for her to be certain that when the gate slammed shut it had been because he had shut it, and not outlaws lairing within.
This could only mean one thing. The entire village had fallen victim to some kind of plague.
Lord and Lady— what do I do— she thought frantically, then staggered as Rolan pushed her impatiently with his nose. She felt his annoyance as 124
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plainly as if he'd spoken it. He'd had more than enough of her self-indulgent nerves; this required action, simple action. She knew very well what she had to do, and she'd damn well better get about doing it!
It was as if something within her that had been broken was being splinted together. She forced herself to regain calm, to plan. She wrote a note, telling Kris that she was leaving her chirra tethered to the gate, and that he should take it inside when he saw that she'd left. She took a plain white arrow of her own, tied the note to it, and sent it back across the wall. She went through her packs, removing a map, a skin of water, and a bag of meal for herself and Rolan to share.
Consulting the map, she saw that the nearest Healing Temple lay five days by horse to the east. That meant that she and Rolan
could make it in two.
She tethered the chirra, swung herself onto Rolan's back, and they were off.
This was where the ground-devouring pace of the Herald's Companion was worth more than gold or gems. A Companion could travel at the equivalent of an ordinary horse's gallop for hours without tiring. If need be, he could subsist for several days at this punishing pace with little more than water and a handful or two of meal. He would need several days of heavy feeding and rest when the ordeal was over, but a Companion never faltered, and seldom even strained muscles or tendons under the conditions that would kill a horse. Any place a hooved animal could go, a Companion could go, including scrambling over icy, hazardous rock-falls only goats would dare. The only thing his Herald need worry about was whether he was capable of staying on his back!
Talia and Rolan pushed their pace far into the night; she ate and drank in the saddle, even dozed a bit. Their road was clear, and relatively dry; the footing was good, so Rolan exerted himself to the uttermost. There was even a full moon, so they could see their way quite clearly. The noise of their passing disturbed whatever wildlife there was, so they rode in a silence broken only by the sound of Rolan's hooves pounding on the frozen ground. It was an eerie journey, like something out of a dream, a wild ride that never seemed to get anywhere. Rolan was relatively fresh, so they continued on until even after the moon had set. Finally, however, 125
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