No True Way (15 page)

“Oh, darling—” Deira gave her daughter a quick hug. “I never said—”

“Your face said,” Selaine replied, “but I
had
to—”

“And you saved us,” said a new voice. They looked up to see Herald Garaval, gaunt and muddied, but triumphant. “Without that rope, the net would have given way.” He turned to Deira. “Your daughter has a rare
talent, Mistress Deira. She should go to Haven, where she can be trained.”

“And be snapped up by the Heralds and lost to me?” the response was automatic, a fear born the first time she had seen Selaine call a fallen toy to her hand, but it lost force as she looked at the exhausted Herald standing there.

“We've burned the last of th' egg-sacs.” Headman Martom came bustling up before Garaval could reply. “We've got th' creature tied down proper t' wait 'til th' Hawkbrothers come,” he went on, “thanks t' you, Mistress Westerbridge, and your girl.”

“Westerbridge?” Garaval frowned.

“She came from a big town called Westerbridge,” the Headman boasted, “a widow with a little lass. She's th' best weaver from here t' Rethwellan!”

“Then
you're
the one Aldren met when he served on the border . . .” breathed the Herald. He looked from her to Selaine and back again. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “The girl has your hair, but his eyes. How proud he would be.”

“He's dead, then?” Deira whispered. “He told me that Heralds are not supposed to get involved with local girls, but I loved him, and when we were hiding from the Karsite raiders, I let him love me. And then he rode back to the battles, and there was no way to let him know I was with child.”

“He meant to come back,” said Garaval. “But he had to go where he was needed. By the time he returned to Westerbridge, the town had been destroyed.”

Deira nodded. “I was one of the few who escaped when the Karsites came again. I kept running. I thought we could live in peace here.”

“Why didn't you bring your child to Haven?” exclaimed Garaval. “The Heralds would have taken care of you!”

Deira shook her head. “At first I was crazed with fear. I thought Aldren would reject me, or the Heralds would not believe me, or they would punish him for having loved me. And then I saw that Selaine was Gifted, and I thought they would take her away. But there's no escape, is there?”

“You can't run from fear, only fight it,” Garaval said softly. “Haven't you found that out, these past days? Herald Aldren taught me that. He was my mentor. In a year and a half riding Circuit, he taught me the meaning of all my instructors' noble words. And later, when he lay dying . . .” he swallowed, “he asked me to keep looking for you.”

Deira could not pretend, this time, that the tears that left burning trails down her cheeks were rain.
He loved me
. . . she thought. But it was hard to give up the anger and the fear.

“And now,” she said, “I suppose you will take my child away . . .”

“Doesn't anyone care what
I
want?” They both looked over as Selaine pushed herself up in the bed, scowling. “If Valdemar needs my help, th' Companions know where t' find me. Right now, seems to me the place I'm needed most is here.”

Behind Selaine, the green and brown blanket with the white band running through it still hung on the loom.

All these years, I have been weaving
, thought Deira.
But even the most skillful weaver can only lay down one thread at a time. “With each choice, each action, we set a thread into the cloth,”
her mother had once said.
“It's the
sum total of all those threads, all those choices, that decide what the weaving will be . . .”

She reached up to grip her daughter's hand, then let it go.

“You will weave your own story, Selaine.”

Elisabeth Waters

“The vultures are unhappy,” Lena murmured, almost to herself.

“What vultures?” Herald Samira looked up at the sky.

“The ones ahead of us,” Lena said absently.

“Where?”

“We can't see them yet . . .” Lena's voice trailed off as she tried to pick up more detail. The utility of her gift depended on the ability of the animal to focus its thoughts, so what she received often varied a great deal.

They rounded the bend, and Herald Robin said faintly, “Oh.
Those
vultures.” He was turning a delicate shade of green, but Lena didn't hold it against him. He had just gone into Whites and was on his first Circuit, under Samira's supervision. Samira's task was first to train and then to supervise him, and she had years more experience—not to mention much more exposure to people with Animal Mindspeech and the strange changes in outlook caused by their gift.

Lena looked from the bodies on the ground to the vultures ranged about them. One body was a male human—five days dead, the vultures told her—but remarkably undecayed and untouched by the local predators.
The second body was that of a vulture who, judging by the mess around it, had eaten something that violently disagreed with it.

“That's odd,” Herald Samira remarked. “I didn't know there was a poison that could kill a vulture.”

“There isn't,” Lena replied grimly. “A vulture can digest anthrax, let alone anything more common and less deadly.” She started toward the bodies and stopped abruptly as the protests of the surviving vultures coalesced into a scream inside her head. She realized that she was mind-linked with
all
of them, and, in some peculiar fashion, the dead body was tied into the link as well. Her knees buckled, Samira stepped forward to support her, and vultures swooped down from the trees to make a physical wall between them and the bodies.

“What is it?” Samira asked, dragging Lena backward out of the apparent danger area.

“I don't know. I've never seen anything like this before.”

“What do the vultures say?” While all Heralds had at least some magic, Animal Mindspeech was not one of Samira's gifts. Lena, on the other hand, had it to a high degree. She was a novice at the Temple of Thenoth, Lord of the Beasts, in Haven.

“They say it's death,” Lena replied faintly, still feeling odd. She tried to break off the Mindspeech with the vultures so she could concentrate on talking to the humans. She couldn't; she and the vultures were still firmly linked.

“Well, of course it's dead,” Samira said. “It's a corpse.”

“No,” Lena corrected, “not dead. They said
death
.”

*   *   *

The King still had hopes of arranging a suitable marriage for Lena, who was both the last surviving member of her highborn family and the King's ward, so he required her
occasional attendance at Court, and when most highborn families retired to their country estates, he arranged for her to visit those who had been friends of her parents. This meant that all too often she was visiting people she didn't know well, if at all. She was currently on her way to stay with a friend of her late father's near the border Valdemar shared with Rethwellan.

Robin, with visible effort, looked at the body. “You know,” he said, “I think he's from Rethwellan.”

“Who is?”

“The body. I can tell by the clothes.” Robin had been part of a troupe of traveling Players before being Chosen, so he was probably right.

“How far are we from the border?” Lena asked.

“Less than two miles,” Robin replied promptly. “I've studied maps of this area until I felt as if I would go cross-eyed.”

“So he could have been dying, staggered across the border, and died on this side,” Samira said.

“Yes, he did,” Lena said promptly. “At least the vultures think he was already dying when he crossed the border, and they're probably pretty good judges of that.”

“But what killed him?” The two Heralds moved closer to study the body—or at least as close as the vultures would allow.

Lena stayed back with the Companions, thankful that finding out who the young man was and why he was dead was not her responsibility. Not that she wouldn't help as much as she could, but nobody was going to blame her for not knowing.

“It's odd, though,” she said.

“This whole situation is incredible, so what is it that strikes you as odd?” Samira asked.

“Why are we the first ones to find him—assuming we are? He's barely off the road, and the vultures are quite visible.”

“Possibly more to you than to most people, but that's a good point.” Samira turned to Robin. “You stay here and watch the body. Don't try to be clever; just make sure that nobody gets too close to it, especially you and your Companion. I'm going to escort Lena the rest of the way to the estate. Lord Tobias is the local magistrate. And given that we're almost on his property, he should know if anyone found the body before we came upon it.”

“Bodies,” Lena pointed out. “There's a vulture dead, too.”

“True, and I'm sorry for it, but I think most people are going to be more upset about the human.” Samira sighed. “And here I was thinking this couldn't be anywhere near as bad as your last visit to the country.”

“Well,” Lena said as she studied the body, “I'm pretty sure that he wasn't shot by the local magistrate in an idiotic hunting accident.”

“And he's not dressed like a deer,” Samira agreed. “Really, what sane person wears brown leather to go hunting?”

“The late Lord Kristion, unfortunately.” Lena sighed. “I really hope that this visit goes better.”

“If things get worse than they already are,” Samira pointed out, “we have serious trouble.”

*   *   *

At first, things didn't seem too bad. Lord Tobias, her host, went off with Samira to view the body. He was a widower, and his daughter, Agneta, who was only a few years older than Lena, ran the household. She showed Lena to a guest chamber and suggested that she rest
until dinner “to recover from the terrible shock.” Lena refrained from telling her that anyone who lived at the Temple of Thenoth, spent time at the royal court in Haven, and numbered several Heralds among her closest friends was not all that easily shocked. It was nice to be pampered occasionally.

She lay down and tried to rest but found that she couldn't do more than nap fitfully. Her mind was still connected to the vultures, and she was as twitchy as they were.

When she and Agneta went down for dinner, Lord Tobias and the Heralds had returned. Conversation at the table did not dwell on the dead body other than to say that nobody in the area recognized him. The vultures were not mentioned, but Lena was still linked to them, both the ones watching the body and the ones leaving the group to eat. And while she would not have called herself particularly squeamish, Lena did find that this was destroying her appetite. She shoved food around her plate, took small bites and swallowed them quickly, and sipped her wine.

After dinner, they went to the drawing room, and while Agneta poured tea, Samira took her cup, sat down next to Lena, and asked bluntly, “What's wrong? I've never seen you go off your food like that.”

“I don't know,” Lena sighed. “I can't seem to break the link with the vultures. I'm still connected to the entire wake.”

Samira choked on her tea. “A
wake
of vultures?” she asked when she got her breath back. “Is that really what they're called?”

Her voice was loud enough for everyone in the room
to hear, and Robin started laughing. “A wake of vultures! That's a good one—and, in this case, quite appropriate.”

Lena looked at her host, who looked bemused, and his daughter, who looked appalled. “He doesn't mean any disrespect to the dead,” she explained hastily. “It's a sort of game at the Temple: learning the names for groups of animals.”

“Like a murder of crows?” Lord Tobias asked.

“That's one name for them,” Lena said, “but we call ours a storytelling of crows, especially since they saved Samira's life. We also have a charm of finches and a leash of greyhounds.”

“Your Temple must be an interesting place,” Agneta said.

“It can be dull,” Samira said with a grin, “but it's been my experience that it doesn't happen often. There is, of course, the Peace of the God, but that's different.”

Lena didn't hear the rest of the conversation because her attention was suddenly completely captured by the vultures, who were watching a woman approach them—or rather the body they were protecting everyone from. They flew toward her to chase her away, but lightning sparked from her fingertips as she sought to drive them back. They swooped in dizzying circles, trying to avoid the attack while still keeping her away from the body, but a bolt grazed one of them: a searing pain across the top of its wing.

Lena cried out, clapping a hand to her bare arm and then screamed when she touched it. Her vision was doubled between the roadside where the birds were and the room where her body was, but she could dimly see a burn across her arm.

“What is it?” Samira said urgently.

“Help them!” Lena gasped. “She's trying to kill them!”

“The vultures?”

Lena managed to nod. She heard Robin and Samira run from the room and caught the edge of Samira's Mindcall to her Companion. Then she fainted.

*   *   *

When she came to, Lena was lying on the sofa, with a pillow beneath her head and a blanket covering most of her body. Her burned arm was outside the blanket, and Agneta was gently pressing a cold cloth against the injury. The cold felt good. The pressure didn't. The pain made her feel sick—and thankful she hadn't eaten much at dinner. And the shouting didn't help.

Apparently Samira, Robin, and their Companions had managed to subdue the stranger and had dragged her back to Lord Tobias to answer for the attack.

“—and what you did to the King's ward!” Lord Tobias finished angrily.

“All I did was try to deal with the vermin feasting on my son's body!” the stranger shouted back.

“Vultures are
not
vermin!” Lena might feel ill, but she wasn't taking
that
lying down. She pushed herself to a seated position, letting the cloth fall from her burned arm. “And they were not
feasting
on anyone!”

“My son's body is still lying by the side of the road, surrounded by those flesh eaters! Has nobody here the decency to pick up the dead and lay them out in a seemly fashion, someplace where they are
not
food for the vultures?”

“I don't know why your son died,” Lena said, “but I'm guessing you didn't see the dead vulture next to him—or notice how uncorrupt his body is. Anything that touched
him—or tried to eat something that touched him—died. The vultures guard the body so that nobody else dies; they chased us back when we first saw him. They were trying to save you from whatever killed him—and you tried to kill them in return.” She turned anxiously to Samira. “How many—”

“None dead,” Samira said reassuringly. “A few singed feathers, the one burned wing, and your matching arm.”

“Is that creature your familiar, then?” the woman asked.

“I don't know what a familiar is,” Lena said wearily. As her anger subsided, the pain was becoming more noticeable. “I have Animal Mindspeech, and I'm linked to all of them right now. They're not happy.”

“Neither am I,” the woman said grimly. She looked around nervously—as if, Lena thought, there were people in the room that none of them could see.

“I don't believe any of us is happy right now,” Lord Tobias said. “And I am sorry for your loss. Having seen your son's body, however, I must say that Lena is correct. The vultures have not touched it, and neither have the normal processes of decay.”

“You don't know how long he's been dead,” the woman pointed out.

“Lena?” Lord Tobias looked at her.

“Five days,” she replied. “That's what the vultures say.”

“He can't possibly have been dead that long!” the stranger protested.

“When did you last see him?” Samira asked.

“A week ago.”

“Then he could very well have been dead for that long,” Lena said. “You don't know. You were not there, and the vultures were. They saw him die.”

“You don't know that.”

“Yes, I do. It's my Gift.” Lena sagged wearily against the sofa.
Ladylike posture can go hang.

“Father,” Agneta said. “I really think she belongs in bed.”

“She does,” Lord Tobias agreed. “Didn't you send for a Healer?”

“Yes, but she doesn't need to be awake for that.”

“Lead the way, Lady Agneta,” Robin said, lifting Lena carefully into his arms. “I'll carry her upstairs.”

*   *   *

Lena's arm was fine when she woke in the morning, and she was hungry, so obviously a Healer had treated her while she slept. Unfortunately, while her arm was healed, except for an area of reddened skin, the Mindspeech with the vultures continued unabated. She was glad that some of them were asleep and the rest were on guard, which meant that none of them was eating. This enabled her to eat a large breakfast troubled by nothing other than doubled vision, which she could cope with as long as she was otherwise healthy.

Lena and Agneta were sipping tea and nibbling fruit-filled pastries when the rest of the household joined them. Samira and Robin had the stranger between them, and she was looking about wildly as if she were trying to see things the rest of them couldn't.

“Girls,” Lord Tobias said, “I don't believe you were properly introduced to our guest last night. This is Mage Photine, who lives just over the border in Rethwellan.”