Brightly Burning (14 page)

Not that any Trainee had ever seriously tried. There was always a Trainee or two who had troubles, but with help, they always worked through those troubles and adjusted. No one was ever Chosen who could not adapt to the regimen of the Collegium and the responsibilities of the Herald. The Companions themselves saw to that.
They
were the final arbiters of who became a Herald and who was unworthy of the honor, and only once, in all of the history of Valdemar, had one ever made a mistake—and even then, it was not in whom she Chose, but that she did not help him when he needed her the most, repudiating him in her anger at what he had done.

Pol had that ever in his mind when he faced his classes of young Trainees. Every Herald did. Never again would there be another Tylendel.

But there was no sign of any trouble in the younglings he was teaching this year. Most of them were the offspring of farmers, craftsmen, and small traders. The two or three highborn had adapted cheerfully, and even eagerly, to their new duties. There were conflicts of personality, of course, and love affairs, broken hearts, and quarrels, mistakes, misunderstandings, and adolescent rebellion, but no tragedies abrewing.

The next class came in dripping, smelling of wet wool; before Pol's class this lot took archery practice, even in the pouring rain. They chattered among themselves much more cheerfully than he would have, given that they'd gone straight from breakfast into the cold rain.

Classes were small, no more than six pupils at a time, so that teachers could give each student individual attention. In Pol's case, he taught a total of five Geography classes over the course of the day, and sometimes filled in for a teacher in who was ill. There were two classes in the lowest level of difficulty, two in the second, and one in the third. After a Trainee finished third-level Geography, he or she went on to Orienteering, the skill of dead reckoning in completely unknown territory.

“Well, Derrian,” Pol asked the first one to sit down, “How did you manage this morning?”

Derrian grinned impishly. “We did all right,” he said, with a hint of a smirk on his freckled face. “M'pa would have skinned me alive if I'd been too stupid to learn to keep m'bowstring dry by now.”

“Derry showed us all what to do,” the smallest and youngest of the class piped up, with a worshipful glance at Derrian. “Weaponsmaster actually
smiled!
”

“Good for you, Derrian!” Pol applauded. “Good for all of you, and well done.” He turned and drew a map symbol on the slate board behind him with a chunk of chalk. “Now, since you've been so clever, Derrian, perhaps you remember what
this
symbol means?”

By the time the class was over, the Trainees had thoroughly dried out and the room no longer smelled of wool. The third class hadn't undertaken anything out in the wet, and after that class came the break for lunch.

Pol habitually met with three other teachers for a card game over lunch; today it was his turn to host, so he sent a page down to the kitchen for provisions and set up the chairs and the table at the back of the room for a game.

The players were a mixed bag, and he reflected as he arranged the cold meat, sliced breads, and the rest on his desk that they would never have met, much less become friends, if they hadn't been Heralds. Damina was the eldest of the group, a tough old woman with a perfectly unreadable face and a wicked sense of irony. Like Pol, she was a native of Haven. Tevar was highborn—the highest, in fact, since he was the King's youngest brother, but you would never have known it from the company he preferred to keep and the subjects that interested him. In point of fact, he was the specialist in wilderness survival and flora and fauna; he also taught Orienteering and took final-year Trainees out into the wilderness and trained them to survive with only the clothes on their backs and what they had in their pockets. The youngest of the group, Melly, taught History and Literature, and was one of the tutors for students having difficulties. She was assigned permanently to the Collegium, unlike the other three, because she was the best teacher that anyone had ever seen, with the talent—almost, one could say, the Gift—for getting younglings interested and excited about learning. That—and her size. She couldn't have been any taller than the average thirteen-year-old. Riding circuit required physical abilities that she didn't have, but that didn't matter. She could, and did, ride messenger service during any emergency. She could, and did, take her turn out “on circuit” within Haven itself. She had dodged Karsite arrows and bandits, had come into Haven reeling in the saddle with exhaustion. Melly might not take the most arduous of duties, but no one could say that she didn't take the most hazardous.

And she was a deadly card player.

Melly was the first to arrive, with the other two right behind her. “Pfui!” Tevar said, knitting black brows as the wind drove a gust of rain against the window glass. “I hate this time of year!” He pulled his chair back with a scrape, and dropped into it, pulling his tail of sable hair to the side so he wouldn't get it caught between his back and the back of the chair.

Melly cast a glance at the window herself, peering from beneath a thick brown fringe of bangs that made her look like a cheerful little pony. “I don't know; I rather like it, as long as the weather's out there and I'm in here.”

“Makes you feel sorry for the ones out there, though, doesn't it?” Damina asked, as she helped herself to food, then settled into her chair. “Then again, it isn't like this everywhere.”

“It's still fine down in the south, and in the north the rains are over by now,” Pol agreed. “For that matter, it isn't everywhere that gets these autumnal downpours, either, so you could be wasting your pity, Damina.”

“Oh, the gods forbid that I should waste anything so precious as
pity!
” she exclaimed wryly. “I have so little of it to spare!”

“And far too much breath,” Tevar retorted. “Are you going to talk, or play?”

With a chuckle, Damina cut the cards, and they began their usual fierce combat until the Collegium bells warned that classes were due to begin.

At the end of the day, Pol decided against dinner with the Court and opted for a seat with the rest of the Collegium. A Collegium dinner was the best possible antidote to a gloomy day.

He went in early, while the Trainees were still washing up, taking his favorite seat at a table over near one of the fireplaces. Those tables were generally kept clear so that the adults could claim them, perhaps out of pity for their “old bones!” There were two or three other teachers there, and a group of Heralds entered right after he settled himself, Heralds who had just gotten back from their assignments and had not yet gotten new ones. He waved them over, although he didn't know any of them personally; they would have news of their sectors, and would be willing to share it. They were all fairly young, probably in their first decade of serving as full Heralds; all aggressively fit and lean. The three young men, two very dark, one less so, reached him first, followed by a blonde woman.

“Jonotan, Lake Evendim,” said the first to sit down, shaking Pol's extended hand, giving his name and the circuit he'd been on, just as a fifth Herald, an older woman, entered, looked about, and headed for his table.

“Kiela, Staghorn Forest,” the young blonde woman told him with a nod.

The broadly smiling dark man introduced himself next, as “Lerrys, the Fells,” followed by a shorter, but equally dark fellow who was “Wernar, Torgate.”

The last was another woman, middle-aged with gray streaking her mousy hair, that Pol knew very slightly. “Charis! Good to see you!” he welcomed her. “What sector this time?”

She settled into place with a weary sigh. “Karsite Border,” she said, and got the immediate attention of the others.

“And?” Pol asked, assuming the duty of the questioner as host.

One of the Trainees came by about then with a platter of hot bread and a bowl of butter, and Charis made an unmistakable gesture toward him with her eyes. They waited in silence for the boy to get out of hearing distance, and in the meantime, the hall began to fill with chattering youngsters, making it easier for them to converse without being overheard.

“I'll give you the worst news first,” Charis told them, as they unconsciously bent toward her, all of them with grave expressions. “There's going to be war. Maybe not this year, though
I
think it will come by Midwinter, but next summer at the latest. It's not bandits raiding the Borders anymore, and not Karsite outcasts desperately clawing out some sort of life, it's Karsite troopers, little squads of them. We finally caught some of them, and there were uniforms in their saddlebags.” She shrugged. “The Sun-priests claim they were acting on their own, but we know better, obviously. Not even a Karsite is immune to a Truth Spell.”

They all let out their held breath as one. Pol shook his head. “So they've started testing us, have they?”

“That's the general assessment,” Charis agreed. “The current Son of the Sun is cautious. He isn't going to move until he's built up his troops there, built them up slowly so we supposedly won't notice, and that is going to take time. At least we're forewarned.”

Another set of Trainees came along with platters and bowls, and the discussion ended for a moment while the Heralds helped themselves. When the servers moved on to other tables, Jonotan asked the next question.

“Is there any
good
news?” he said, mouth twisted in a wry attempt at a smile that was not succeeding very well.

“We've got warning, and we've got time,” Charis pointed out. “I just finished reporting to the King and Council; everyone is going to know by tomorrow. We're going to have to build up our own troops, I suppose; maybe evacuate the villages nearest the Border.”

“If you can,” Kiela pointed out. “A lot of those people are Holderkin; they wouldn't move for any mortal, and I sometimes doubt if they'd even move for their gods.”

Charis made a face, but didn't contradict her.

“While you were there,” Pol put in hesitantly, “did you happen across a Healer named Ilea?”

To his surprise, Charis laughed out loud, her gloom broken. “Actually, I did, just before I left. There was an outbreak of little-pox in a Holderkin village, and the Elder had actually unbent enough to call in our Healers. When I last saw her, Ilea was politely, gently, and thoroughly telling off the menfolk for not helping the women with the sick. ‘If they drop with exhaustion,
they'll
be sick next, and who will cook, clean, and tend to you when
you
fall ill?' she said. And by all that's holy, the Elder was bending his head like a little boy being scolded!”

Greatly relieved, Pol laughed as well; he could certainly picture Ilea doing just as described. That broke the tension, and the conversation moved on to the news the others brought with them; after all, there was nothing to be done about the Karsites at this exact moment, certainly nothing that half a dozen Heralds could do.

Pol took his leave of the others long before they finished their meal; younger appetites were heartier than his, and they hadn't eaten anything but their own cooking—or army cooking—for the last two years or so. Heralds traveling to and from their assignments stayed in inns along the way, but those on circuit camped, sheltered in waystations, and tended to their own needs. That was so that no one could play host to a Herald and then try to exert influence over him, so that no one could claim a Herald was playing favorites in judgments.

It was certainly a wise policy, even though it was a bit hard on Heralds riding circuit. However snug those waystations might be, they were still very spare of comforts, and the provisions stored in them made for simple and tediously similar meals. And if one wasn't a particularly good cook—Well, after two years, the meals at the Collegium would start to assume the character of gourmet feasts.

Pol returned to his quarters, to find one of his youngest students waiting for him, with a face so full of woe that he thought immediately that the youngster must have received bad news from home. Malken was barely nine years old, and very young to be Chosen, but he was by no means the youngest on record to have shown up at the Collegium with a Companion. Certainly the King's pages were as young or younger, and with his cherubic features and ingenuous brown eyes the Queen had threatened to steal him for her service more than once.

“Malken, what's the matter?” he exclaimed, as he closed the door to his rooms behind him, indicating that he was not to be disturbed.

Malken burst into tears and attached himself to Pol's legs like an animate burr. Pol held and comforted him; as he patted the child's back, he thought with a twinge of how often he had sat in this very fireside chair, comforting one of his own children for some childish woe. . . .

But this was evidently much more than a quarrel with a friend, or one of the highborn children bullying him. Malken was positively hysterical; it wasn't a case of
would not
stop weeping, it was
could not.

While Malken sobbed, he racked his brain for some idea of what could have the boy in such a state. If there had been a tragedy in the family, the Dean of the Collegium would have been notified first, so that someone Malken trusted could be with him when he heard the bad news. There hadn't been any sign of anything wrong when Malken had his Geography lesson with the first class this morning, and Malken wasn't the sort to have had a major falling-out with a friend that would leave him so brokenhearted.

Whatever it was, it was serious; the child wasn't even listening to him. Finally, when nothing Pol could do would serve to comfort him and calm the little boy, he rang for a servant and sent him for a Healer.