Arrow’s Flight (9 page)

“Sir?” she said softly; and he turned to smile greeting at her.

Kyril was pleased to see that Talia was looking alert and ready for practically anything. In the past few weeks of working with her, he had come to truly believe all that her Collegium teachers had claimed for her. The Queen’s Own was always an outstanding person among Heralds, but Talia bid fair to be outstanding among the ranks of her own kind. He could not for a moment fathom why her reputation, even among her fellow Heralds, was one of being a sweet, but somewhat simple creature. He wasn’t altogether certain that he would have been able to manage the feat of memorizing all the Kingdom’s familial devices and tides in the three weeks she’d taken. Perhaps it was because she was so shy, even yet, and seldom spoke without first being spoken to. Perhaps it was because of her ability with children in general, and the Heir in particular—a strong maternal instinct was not necessarily coupled in anyone’s mind with a high intellectual level.

Then again, there weren’t too many even among the Heralds who had been her teachers who had seen the real Talia. She had not allowed very many of them to come within arm’s length, as it were. Kyril was just sorry he had had so little time for her; and he sometimes worried a little about that strange Gift of hers. Empathy that strong—and having seen her exert herself, he knew it was very strong—was far more the Gift of Healers. He had been relieved when she’d begun spending so much time with the Healers; they would know how to train her properly, if anybody would. If he had only had the time—if Ylsa hadn’t been killed—

But Talia seemed to have everything perfectly under control, and if even her own peers tended to underestimate her, that surely wasn’t going to harm her any.

Perhaps, though, that tendency to dismiss her lightly was not altogether a bad thing. Kyril had been dealing with Court and Council on a daily basis for something like twenty years, and being underestimated could be a potent and very useful weapon. People might not see past the guileless eyes, and tend to let their tongues run on longer leads in her presence. No, that reputation of hers might well be a very good thing for all of them. Certainly the disturbing rumors he’d heard lately about her would not survive much longer if people began comparing the tales of machinations with her reputation as a sweet and uncomplicated innocent.

“Sit, sit,” he waved at a chair, taking one himself. “You look none the worse for your late night. I remember my first Herald’s revel; I thought my hangover was going to last for the next week! I trust you enjoyed yourself.” He smiled again as she nodded shyly. “It’s the first chance I had to hear you sing. Jadus used to make us all curious, boasting about your abilities. He was certainly right about you! Last night—to tell the truth, I’ve heard Bards that didn’t give performances that moving. You’re as good as Jadus claimed, maybe better.” She blushed, and he chuckled. “Well, that’s neither here nor there. I am very sorry about all the hurry, but we don’t like to leave Border Sectors without a Herald for very long; in this case, it’s not that there’s potential for trouble, but that the people of the Sector feel isolated enough as it is, particularly in winter. They need to know that they’re as important to the life of this Kingdom as the capital Sector itself.” He regarded her steadily; her answer to his speech would tell him a great deal.

The eyes that met his squarely held faint surprise.

“I—I thought there was always potential for trouble in a Border Sector, sir,” Talia ventured. “There’re raiders, bandits—lots of problems even if the people themselves never cause them.”

“In the general run of things that’s true, but the Border in this Sector runs through the Forest of Sorrows, and that’s no small protection.”

“Then the tale of Vanyel’s Curse is true?” Talia was amazed. “Sorrows does protect the Kingdom? But . .. how?”

“I wish I knew,” Kyril replied, musing half to himself, “They knew things, those old ones, that we’ve forgotten or lost. They had magic then—real magic, and not our mind-magic; the Truth Spell is just about all we have left of that. Vanyel’s Curse is as strong in Sorrows as the day he cast it with his dying breath. Nothing that intends ill to this Kingdom or the people in it lives more than five minutes there; I’ve seen some of the results with my own eyes. I used to ride Northern myself, back in the days when I was still riding circuits, and not Seneschal’s Herald. I’ve seen bandits impaled on branches as if on thrown spears. I’ve seen outlaws who starved to death, buried to their waist in rock-hard earth, as if it opened beneath their feet, then closed on them like a trap. What’s more—and this is what was more frightening than the other things—I’ve seen barbarian raiders dead without a mark on them, but their faces twisted into an expression of complete and utter terror. I don’t know what it was that happened to them, but my guess is that they were truly frightened to death.”

Talia shook her head wonderingly, “It’s hard to believe. How can a curse know someone’s intent?”

“I can’t explain it, and neither can any of the old chronicles. It’s true nevertheless. You, or I, or any of the people of the Sector can walk that forest totally without fear. A baby could walk through there totally unharmed, because even the forest predators leave humans alone in Sorrows—well, that’s the only anomalous thing about the area. The religion is fairly ordinary, the people follow the Lady as Astera of the Stars, and the God as Kernos of the Northern Lights; there’s no anti-woman prejudice. In fact, because of Sorrows, we often have females riding circuit there alone. The Herald you’re replacing is a woman, in point of fact. You may know her, she was two year-groups ahead of you—Destria.”

“Destria? Havens—she isn’t badly hurt, is she? What happened?”

“The injury is fairly serious, but not life-threatening. She was trying to rescue half a dozen children during a flood—it’s a hard land, Talia, that’s the main problem with it—and broke both legs.”

“Thank the Goddess for Companions.”

“Amen to that; without hers she’d have lain in sleet-born water for hours, probably died of exposure. No, Destria’s Sofi managed to get not only her Herald but all the children to safety. All’s well there except for the injury. So, that’s the gist of the situation, and as I said, I apologize for the short notice. I hope you don’t mind too much.”

“Not at all sir,” Talia replied, “After all, I had even less notice when I was Chosen, didn’t I?”

“Good for you!” Kyril chuckled. “Well, now we come to the reason why I asked you to come here, instead of meeting you for lunch or asking you to meet with both Kris and myself to be told about this. I’m sure you realized a long time ago that there were things we wouldn’t teach you until you got your Whites. What I’m about to show you is the best-kept secret of the Heraldic Circle. Haven’t you ever wondered why all Heralds are required to become archers?”

“I never thought about it,” she confessed, looking puzzled. “It does seem a little odd, now that you mention it. We don’t fight with the royal Archers in battle; when we do fight, it’s mostly sword or hand-to-hand. We usually don’t have to hunt to feed ourselves riding circuit; we carry supplies or depend on the shelters. So why do we have to learn bow?”

“So that you have an excuse to carry arrows wherever you go,” Kyril replied. “Not everyone has the kind of mind-reach I have; Lady knows things would be much simpler if they did, because there are plenty of times when the ordinary means of passing information wouldn’t do at all. We have to have a foolproof, unambiguous method of passing simple messages, but it has to be impervious to tampering. That’s why the Arrow-Code was developed, and thus far no one has broken it. And it all starts with this— “

With skillful and practiced fingers, he carefully broke barbs from the Retchings of a plain white arrow he pulled from the quiver. Talia could see that he was being very precise about which barbs he broke from which fletchings, yet when he was through, it looked as if the arrow had simply been handled too roughly.

“So that’s why all our arrows are fletched with mud-gannet feathers!” Talia said, enlightened.

“Right. They’re nowhere near as suitable as goose, but the barbs are so thick, heavy, and regular it’s possible to have the fletching on every arrow we carry absolutely identical—and it’s possible to literally count barbs for the code. Now this is my pattern. It’s registered here, among the secret Records, and even there it’s in an encrypted form for added security. Outside of those Records, only four people know it—the Queen, the Seneschal, Elcarth, and Teren, who used to be my partner. Only the Queen, the Seneschal, and Elcarth know how to translate the ciphers we’ve written the patterns in besides myself. When your internship is over, you’ll be given the encryption key as part of what you need to know as Queen’s Own. Only two people know every pattern by heart; myself and Elcarth. Now you know why one of the primary prerequisites of both our jobs is a perfect memory!”

Talia smiled, and bit her lip to keep from chuckling.

“This pattern identifies the message carried by the color of the banding on the arrow as coming from me and no one else. Now—” He took a second arrow from the quiver, and broke the barbs in a second pattern. “—this is your pattern. When I’m satisfied that you can reproduce it in the dark and behind your back, I’ll give you a general idea of the rest of the code.”

She was slightly nonplussed to discover that Kyril meant that literally. It took several hours before she could perform that simple task without seeing the arrow she was working on, and without truly thinking about it, with a speed and accuracy that contented him. Meanwhile, the sun crept across Kyril’s desk, and her stomach began reminding her that it had been a long time since her last real meal.

Finally Kyril pronounced her competent, and allowed her to give her tired fingers a rest while he explained the remainder of the code to her.

“The rest of it,” he told her, “is a bit more complicated, although we’ve done our best to make the colors mnemonic to the message. Kris will drill you on the full code on your way to your sector, but in general, this is what the simple banding of one color means. White means there’s nothing wrong—’all is well, come ahead.’ It’s usually used just to identify that there’s another Herald about, and who it is. Green calls for a Healer to be sent, purple for a priest, gray for another Herald. Brown tells the receiver to watch for a message; there’s trouble, not serious, but something that requires elaboration, and something that may delay the Herald sending it in keeping his schedule. Blue means ‘treachery’. Yellow calls for military aid, the number of yellow bands on the arrows tells how many units—if you send every yellow-ringed arrow you’ve got, and we know exactly how many you have, we know to send the entire Army! Red means ‘great danger—come with all speed.’ Then there’s black.”

He paused, his eyes holding Talia’s. “I pray to Heaven that you never have to send a black arrow, Talia. Sending any black-ringed arrow means there’s been or will be death or catastrophe. And there’s a variant on the code for black you should also know now rather than later. The black arrow intact except for the fletching pattern means ‘total disaster, help or rescue needed.’ Break the arrow, send the pieces, and it reads ‘disaster, all hope gone. Do not attempt rescue.’ Remove the head, and it means that the one whose pattern is in the fletching is dead. The broken arrow, the headless arrow—those can actually be of any color so long as the fletching pattern’s there. Those are the two we’ll always understand—and the ones we never want to see.”

Talia felt a peculiar chill thread her backbone, and suddenly the hot, sunny day seemed unaccountably gray and chill. She shook off the feeling, and repeated Kyril’s words back to him, verbatim.

“That’s all there is,” he said, satisfied. “You’re as well prepared as any of us is for his first assignment— and you’re one of the best Heralds the Collegium has ever turned out. You ought to do just fine, even though this is going to be a tough assignment. Good luck to you, Talia; I look forward to seeing you in another year and a half.”

She took her leave of him and despite her hunger, decided it would be a good idea to hunt up Kris. The first place she looked for him, given the situation, was the tackshed. After all, he was only just in from fieldwork; his first move should be to see that needed repairs had already been made to his Companion’s gear. That was exactly where he was, in company with Dirk, checking over his harness and tack.

As alert as a wild thing to any hint of movement, Dirk was the first to notice her. “It’s our songbird!” he said genially, favoring her with one of those smiles that was almost an embrace. “I expect you have the word? And Kyril’s given you the code?”

She nodded, feeling oddly shy, then searched for Rolan’s never-used traveling equipment. It was similar to the tack he’d worn when he’d found her, except that the bridle bells were removable, and the saddle was a bit more complicated. Besides the usual girth, it had breast and rump bands like those on warriors’ saddles, a far larger number of the snaffles by which objects could be fastened to the skirting, and an arrangement of rings and straps that made it possible for a rider—ill, injured, or unconscious, perhaps—to be belted securely into his seat.

Talia rarely ever bothered with saddle or bridle around the Collegium, but she knew from experience, both her own and Rolan’s, that it would mean a great deal in the way of comfort on a ride of more than an hour (for both of them) for her to use the saddle. And as her near-fatal escapade in the river had shown, the otherwise useless reins on the bridle had other functions than guiding her Companion. Had Rolan been wearing his bridle, she could have twined her arms in the reins and let him tow her to shore, for instance.