Three

Talia didn’t usually sleep long or heaviiy. Perhaps the cause was that she’d drunk more wine than usual, or perhaps it was just the incredibly late hour at which she’d sought her bed. At any rate, it took having the sun shine directly into her eyes to wake her the next morning.

Since the window of her bedroom faced the east, she’d positioned her bed with the headboard right under the windowsill. That way she always had the fresh air, and her face should remain out of the sunlight until well after the time she normally rose. No matter how cold the winter, she’d never been able to bear the slight claustrophobia that closed shutters induced in her, so the glazed windows themselves and the thin fabric curtaining them were all that stood between her eyes and the sun’s rays, and the windows themselves were open, with the curtains moving slightly in the breeze.

As she squinted groggily through the glare, she realized that it must be nearly noon, and as if to confirm this, the noon warning bell at the Collegium sounded clearly through her open window.

Well, the wine she’d indulged in last night had given her a slight headache. She muttered something to herself about fools and lack of judgment and pulled her pillow over her head, tempted to go right back to sleep again. But a nagging sense of duty, (and, more urgently, a need to use the privy) denied her further sloth.

She’d been so tired last night—this morning?—that all she’d been able to do was peel off her clothing, leave it in a heap on the floor, and fall into bed. Now that she felt a little more awake, her skin crawled with the need for a bath. Her hair itched. Her mouth didn’t bear thinking about. She groaned. It was definitely time to get up.

She sighed, levered herself out of bed, and set about getting herself back into working condition.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she rubbed her eyes until they cooperated by focusing properly, then reached for the robe hanging on one of the posts at the foot of her bed. She wrapped it about herself, then collected the clothing on the floor. The soiled clothing went into a hamper; the servant who tended to the Heralds in this section of the wing collected it and sent it to the laundry as part of her duties—and that was a luxury that was going to take some getting used to! She’d been lowborn and at the bottom of her Holderkin family’s pecking order as a child, and once at the Collegium had fallen naturally in with the tradition that trainees tended to their own needs and shared the common chores. She had become habituated to doing the serving, and not to being waited on herself!

The warmth of the smooth wood beneath her feet was very comforting, and she decided then that she would not have any floor coverings in her new quarters. She liked the way the sunwarmed boards felt to bare feet, and she liked the way the wood glowed when the sun touched it.

She rummaged in her wardrobe, and draped a new, clean uniform over one arm, then bundled her bathing things into the other arm and headed for the door.

The bathing-room shared by the other tower occupants was on the bottom floor; that was another disadvantage of having selected a tower room. It was a long walk, and seemed longer for the thinking about it. Talia was the only current occupant though. The other rooms were either unclaimed or their owners were out on circuit. So at least there wasn’t going to be any competition for the facilities.

Talia saw a note waiting for her on her door as soon as she opened it. Rubbing her temple in response to the ache behind her eyes, she wondered who could be the early riser after the revelry of the previous night. She took it down and began to skim through it as she headed down the stairs. What she read caused her to stop dead and reread it thoroughly.

It was from Kyril.

I realize this is notice so short as to be nonexistent, he wrote, but we’ve had an emergency since last night. The Herald currently riding one of the Northern Border Sectors has had an accident, and we have no one free who knows anything about the area to cover it. Dirk can’t—he’s already assigned to another Border Sector that needs a Border-bred Herald too badly to reassign him elsewhere. The closest we can come is this—since Dirk is a native of that area, Kris has visited up there fairly often; and you’re of Borderer upbringing. Since you haven’t been assigned a circuit yet, it seemed to me that assigning it to you as your internship with Kris would solve our problems very neatly. However, this means that you two will have to start as soon as we can get you on the road north; tomorrow, I hope. Please report to me right after the noon meal—or as soon as you read this note!—-for a briefing and some final information.

Her first thought was an irreverent and irrelevant one. She knew Kyril hadn’t left the revel before her— how could he have been awake and ready to handle crises so blasted early in the morning after? Her next was more to the point. Tomorrow! She hadn’t expected assignment with so little warning. There wasn’t any time to waste; she ran downstairs to the bathing-room. The last thing she wanted to do was give Kyril an impression of carelessness or incompetence.

A good hot bath did a great deal to revitalize her; a dose of willowbark tea took care of the ache in her head. She couldn’t do much for the half-cloudy feeling of her mind, but she hoped that being aware that she wasn’t quite at her best would compensate for that. Rather than take the time for a full meal she begged cheese, bread, and fruit from Mero. She was far too keyed up to eat much, anyway. This would be the first time that she would meet with Kyril as an equal; up until now, even though she had her Whites, it had still been very much a teacher-student relationship.

She took a few moments of precious time to consult with Rolan before seeking Kyril. It was frustrating not to be able to speak with him in words—but simply Mindtouching with him gave her an added measure of calmness. He reassured her that Kyril would never have expected her to report any earlier than this, and prevented her from changing at the last minute into one of her formal uniforms. And beneath it all was the solidity of knowing that he stood ready to help her if she truly found herself out of her depth on this assignment. Feeling a good bit more confident, she skipped down the tower steps and entered the Palace proper.

A few moments later she had made her way to the administrative area. She paused outside the door of the Records Room—which served as Kyril’s office— for a moment to order her mind and calm herself. She pulled the doeskin tunic straight, smoothed her hair; took a deep breath, knocked once and entered.

The Records Room was as neat as Dean Elcarth’s office was cluttered. Sun streamed in through the two windows that looked out into the gardens on the west side of the building. Both of them were wide open, and flower-scent wafted in through them. The room was crammed as full of bookshelves as it was possible to be. Kyril’s desk stood just under one of the two windows, to take full advantage of the light. Kyril himself was leaning in the window frame, absently watching courtiers stroll in the gardens, and obviously waiting for her. She noticed something anomalous on his desk as he turned from the window to greet her; a quiverful of white arrows.

“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.

“Everything in good order?” Kris asked. She nodded an affirmative, feeling awkward and tongue-tied now that she was less than twenty-four hours away from a long journey spent mostly in his company.

“Kris and I haven’t taken care of requistioning your supplies yet,” Dirk said, giving her an encouraging, lopsided grin, as if he sensed how she was feeling, “We were waiting for you to catch up with us.”

“We?” Kris lifted an eyebrow at his partner. “What’s this ‘we’ all about? She happens to be my trainee, you know.”

“And who’s the one who can’t ever remember how many furlongs it is to his Sector, and whether or not you need high-energy rations, or even where he’s going, half the time?”

“Your guess is as good as mine—I don’t know of anybody answering that description,” Kris grinned.

Dirk heaved a heavy sigh. “No gratitude, that’s what it is. All right, sieve-head, let’s you and your trainee get over to the Quartermaster and show her how it’s done.”

They arranged themselves with Talia walking between them, and strolled out of the Collegium area of the Palace to the area reserved for the Guard. That is, they strolled—Talia had to stretch her legs no small amount to keep up with them. All the time she was constantly aware of the little, warm, sidelong glances Dirk kept throwing at her when he thought she wasn’t watching. She wasn’t used to being under such intense scrutiny, and it made her a little—not uneasy, precisely—unsettled was perhaps the better word.

Like the Heralds, the Guard had their own area of the Palace, although they had nothing that was quite like the Collegium. They did have a training center, and a communal barracks, as well as officer’s quarters, and they maintained a number of small rooms as offices. Since the needs of the Heralds and the Guard were quite similar in some areas of supply, the Quartermaster of the Guard also dispensed initial supplies to outbound Heralds. Any other supplies were taken care of at special Resupply Stations in the field.

The Offices of the Guard were entered by a door directly under the shadow of the wall that encircled the entire PalaceICollegium complex. There were a dozen or more officers seated at desks literally crammed together in the relatively small room, all busy with piles of paperwork, but Kris and Dirk seemed to know exactly where they were going. Talia followed as they threaded their way through the maze, while the officers whose work they inadvertently disturbed gave them either glares or friendly winks. Their goal was a desk at the very rear, whose occupant, a grizzled old veteran, looked rather out of place among the younger, obviously townbred officers. He seemed to be hard at his paperwork, but looked up and grinned broadly at the sight of them.

“Wot, ye tired of our faces alriddy?” he jeered. “Or is’t ye’ve got somebody’s daddy ‘twould like t’ see if Heralds bleed red?”

“Neither, you old pirate,” Kris replied. “We’ve got a gap to fill up North, and Kyril, in his infinite wisdom, has decreed that we’re best suited to fill it.”

The man’s face grew serious. “Ah didna hear the’ Bell—”

“Relax, Levris, it wasn’t fatal,” Dirk assured him. “A pair of broken legs, or so I’m told. Talia, this is Levris, he’s the Quartermaster of the Guard, and as such, those of us on circuit see a lot of him.”

The wizened man stood, took her hand like a courtier, and bowed gracefully over it. “ Tis a pleasure,” he said gravely, while Talia blushed. “An’ a privilege. Ye be Queen’s Own, I’m thinkin’—”

“Absolutely right,” Kris said, corners of his mouth twitching. “She’s my internee.”

“Oh, so?” Levris let go of Talia’s hand, rested both hands on his hips, and gave him a stern look. “Ye’ll not be tryin’ any of yer seducin’ tricks on her, m’lad, or if Ah come t’ hear of it...”

Now it was Kris’ turn to blush, and Dirk’s to hide a grin.

Talia decided to come to his rescue. “Herald Kyril surely wouldn’t have assigned us together if he thought there was any harm in the pairing,” she pointed out. “And this is duty, not a pleasure-jaunt.”

“Well, an’ that’s true,” he admitted reluctantly, seating himself again. “So—what Sector?”

“North Border, Sorrows Two,” Kris told him, “And since we won’t be meeting the outgoing Herald, we’ll need the whole kit.”

“By t’morrow, Ah s’ppose? And ye’ll be wantin’ the special rations. Ye might give a man some warnin’, next time!” he grumbled, but there was a twinkle in his eye.

“Sure, Levris. We’ll make certain to schedule our broken legs from now on—and make certain it’s convenient for you.”

“See that ye do, then,” he chuckled; then pulled out a half-dozen forms, and had Kris and Talia sign them all. That done, he shooed them out the way they had come.

“That’s all there is to it,” Kris said as they returned to the Collegium side. “He’ll have everything we’ll need ready for us in the morning.”

“Provided Herald Sluggard can be persuaded to rise that early,” Dirk grinned.

“Now that you’ve checked over your harness, all you need to do is pack your personal things,” Kris continued, ignoring him. “Keep in mind that where we’re going it gets cold sooner than here, stays that way for longer, and the cold is more intense. The leaves are already falling up there, though they’ve just started to turn here. We’ll plan on staying mostly in Waystations near the villages; we won’t want to get too far from other people if we can help it.”

“Nevertheless,” Dirk warned both of them, “You’d better also plan on having to spend several nights alone in the wilderness. I lived in that area; you didn’t. The villages are far apart, and winter storms can spring up out of nowhere. You may get caught without a Waystation near, so pack the emergency supplies; if you don’t use them, there’s no harm done, but if you need them, you’ll be glad you have them. Plan for the worst possible snow you’ve ever seen—then overplan.”

“Yes, O graybeard,” Kris made a face at him. “Holy Stars, Dirk, I visited with your family up there often enough! The way you’re fussing, you’d think both of us were green as grass and totally untrained! Talia’s no highborn fragile flower, she’s a Borderer, too, even if she’s from farther south than you.”

“Well, better I should remind you needlessly .. .”

“Stow it and rope it down, granther! We’ll be fine! Anyone would think you were my keeper, not my partner.” Now Kris cast a sly, sidelong glance at Talia, who was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. “Or is it someone else you’re worrying about?”

From the surprise on Kris’ face, even he hadn’t expected the blush that reddened Dirk’s ears.

“Look,” Dirk said hastily, “I just don’t want you two to get into any trouble. You owe me for too many lost bets, and I’d rather not have to try to collect from your lord father! Is there anything else you’d like advice for, Talia?”

“N-no,” she stammered. “I don’t think so, anyway. I thank you both. I’d better get back to my quarters and pack.”

“Don’t forget—take nothing but Whites!” Dirk called after her. “You’re on duty every minute in the field. And nothing fancy! It’ll only get ruined.”

He needn’t have said that, about “nothing fancy,” she thought a little resentfully. After all, I’m not some silly townbred chit. And then she wondered for a fleeting instant why his good opinion of her should seem so important.

Dismissing the thought from her mind, she ran back up the tower stairs and ransacked her wardrobe, laying everything white she could find on the bed. That way she wouldn’t overlook a tunic or other article that she might find herself in need of out in the field.

She packed nothing but the doeskin, with the summer and winter changes both—but she packed every stitch of those she had.

Though from the way Dirk talks, she thought wryly, you’d think it never got warm up there.

She added a repair kit for leather and one for harness, and then for good measure added a sealed pot of glue, just in case. There’d been times enough back on the Holding when she was on sheep-watch that she’d needed a pot of glue, and not had one to hand. She packed her sewing kit, and a brick of hard, concentrated soap—the special kind that you needed for use on Whites to keep them pristine— just in case it ever became necessary to do her own repairs and cleaning of her clothing. Certainly the village laundrypeople normally tended those jobs, but you never knew. She added a small metal traveling lamp, and extra wicks, because she’d never seen a lamp in the Waystations, and if they stayed more than one night, lamplight was easier on the eyes than firelight. Then her personal gear, her weapons, a precious book or two, some writing supplies. Her bedroll was next, and all the extra blankets she could find; with them, two extra towels besides the others she carried, and a pair of thick sheepskin slippers. Rolan’s gear was all with his tack, but just the same she packed a vial of ferris-oil. He liked it; it was good for his hooves and coat and kept the insects away.

Even when she’d packed everything as compactly as she could, it still bulked distressingly large. She stared at the clumsy packs in near-despair, trying to think of something she dared leave behind. Kris would surely think she was an idiot for wanting to bring all this stuff!

“Good packing job,” Keren said from the open door behind her, “I intended to come up here and help you cut down on the flotsam, but it looks like I’m not needed.”

“Is that meant ironically or seriously?’ Talia asked, turning to greet the more experienced Herald with relief.

“Oh, seriously. My counselor made me repack three times for my interning trip, and I never did get my packs down that small — I kept thinking of things I was sure I’d miss. Know what? I ended up sending most of them back here.”

“But how is Rolan ever going to carry all this, the supply pack and me, too?”

“Easy, he won’t have to. You’ll each have a packbeast, probably a mule. Well, maybe not; you’re going north, they may give you chirras. Didn’t anybody tell you that? You’re riding circuit, not carrying messages, so you don’t need speed. You can easily hold your speed down to match your packbeasts’ without sacrificing anything.”

Talia heaved a sigh of relief. “Nobody told me. Kris either assumed that I knew, or left it out deliberately to keep me from overpacking.”

“Well don’t go crazy now that you know,” Keren warned.

“I won’t. In fact, other than begging a couple more blankets and a pillow from Supply, packing all three pairs of my boots, and adding a bit more in the way of towels and soap and the like, there’s only one thing more I want to add.” Talia tucked her third pair of boots into a pack, tied it shut, and turned to the hearthcorner. There, where she’d left her last night still in her carrying case, was My Lady. She opened the case, detuned the strings for safety in traveling, and added her to the pile.

“Good notion,” Keren said. “You may be snowbound at any time, and that’ll keep you from tearing out each other’s throats from boredom. Not only that, folks up there seldom see a Bard except in summer. You’ll be like gifts from the Gods.”

“Keren — I’ll — “ Talia suddenly had a lump in her throat. Now it came home to her; she was leaving, leaving the only place that had ever felt like home, and the only friends she’d ever had. “ — I’ll miss…”

Keren reached out and hugged her shoulders.

“Don’t you worry. You’ll be fine, I know you will. Kris is a good lad, if a bit too conscious of his own good looks. Little centaur—I’ll miss you, too. But don’t you dare cry—” she warned, caught between a chuckle and a tear, “—or I’ll start! Come on, we’ve just enough time to catch the end of supper, and you must be ready to chew harness.”

Supper was rather subdued; nearly everyone had long since eaten and gone, and of those that were left Talia really knew only Keren well. Talia kept glancing around her, realizing how much she was going to miss this place, that had been her first real home.

She had expected that Keren would leave her afterward, but to her surprise, the older woman insisted that she come with her to Keren’s rooms. She was even more surprised when Keren insisted Talia precede her through the door.

Then she saw who was waiting for them there; almost more people than would fit into the room: Elcarth, Sherri, Jeri, Skif, Teren—even Alberich. Devan made a brilliant patch of green among the Whites in his Healer’s robes; the students were well represented by Elspeth. Keren pushed her into the room from behind as she hesitated on the threshold.

“You really didn’t think we’d let you go without a proper good-bye, did you?” Skif teased as Talia stared in dumb amazement. “Besides, I know you—you were all set to mope away your last night here alone. Goose! Well, we’re not having any of that!”

Since that was exactly what she’d expected to be doing, Talia blushed rose-pink, then stuck her tongue out at him.

Skif, knowing very well how prone Talia was to isolating herself just when she needed others the most, had accosted Keren as soon as the news of Talia’s assignment had gotten to him. The two of them had put their heads together and quickly put together this little “fare-thee-well” party, designed to keep her from falling into a last-minute melancholy. When Skif saw the expression on Talia’s face as she’d realized what they’d done, he felt more than repaid for his effort.

He did his level best the whole evening to project how much his “little sister” meant to him, knowing she’d pick it up. The warmth in her eyes made him feel that he’d at least begun to give her an honest return for the help she’d given him last night. In some ways he was just as glad now that they’d never become lovers, for there was nothing that could have been more satisfying, in the long run, than the open, loving relationship they had instead. He had more than a suspicion that she felt the same. “So, songbird, how about a tune or three?” While it wasn’t precisely as festive as the celebration the night before had been, everything had been geared to setting her mind at rest and making her feel confident about the morrow. Each of them, with the exception of Devan and Elspeth, had faced the same moment—and each knew some way to make the prospect a positive one. There was a great deal of laughter, plenty of absurd stories, and a palpable aura of caring. They sent her off to bed in good time to get a full night’s sleep, and she left with a smile on her face.

Kris answered the tap on his door late that evening, expecting to see Dirk; in fact, he’d already gotten out a bottle of wine and two glasses, figuring that his partner wouldn’t let the evening pass without coming by for a farewell drink and chat. He got a fair shock to find his uncle, the Councilor Lord Orthallen, standing in the dim hallway instead.

He managed to stammer out a surprised greeting, which Orthallen took as an invitation to enter. The silver-haired, velvet-robed noble wore a grave expression on his still-handsome, square-jawed face, so Kris had more than a faint suspicion that his visit was not just to bid farewell to his nephew.

He directed his uncle to the most comfortable chair in the room and supplied him with the glass of wine intended for Dirk before taking the chair opposite him.

“Well, uncle?” he said, deciding he was too tired to dance diplomatically around the subject. “What brings you here? I know it wasn’t just to bid me a fond farewell.”

Orthallen raised one eyebrow at his bluntness. “I understand you have the new Queen’s Own as your internee.”

Kris shrugged. “It’s no secret.”

“How well do you know her?”

“Not at all,” he admitted. “I’ve seen her twice, worked with her once. She seems nice enough—quite well balanced, all told. Her Gift is an odd one, but—”

“That is exactly what is worrying me.” Orthallen all but pounced on the opening. “Her Gift. From all anyone has been able to tell me, it is a very unusual one for a Herald, much less the Queen’s Own. It seems to be one that the Heralds themselves know very little about, and I’m not entirely happy that an inexperienced child should be in her position with a power so ... out-of-the-ordinary.”

“Rolan Chose her,” Kris replied warily. “That should be proof enough that she’s capable of handling it.”

“Yes, but—emotions—it’s such a volatile area. No black-and-white there, only gray. There are rumors in the Court. . .”

“Such as?”

“That she has fostered an unnatural dependence in the Heir. After all, the child is vulnerable to that sort of thing. It was her unnatural dependence on that foreign nurse, Hulda, that led to her nearly being disallowed in the first place. And there are other rumors.”

Kris bit back an angry retort; best hear his uncle out. “Go on.”

“That Talia has used her power to influence the Council; you can imagine for yourself how easy that would be. If a Councilor were wavering ... it would be very easy to nudge his emotions, make him feel happier about one side or the other. Or not even that.. . simply sense that he is wavering, and use that knowledge to persuade him in a more ordinary fashion. By knowing how Councilors stood, it would make it quite simple for her to manipulate them just by tone of voice. .. .”

“That’s absurd! No Herald would ever use her Gift in any such fashion!”

“So I have maintained,” Orthallen replied smoothly, “But—the only others Gifted with Empathy are the Healers; Healers put it to very specific and humanitarian use. There is no corresponding protocol of use among Heralds. And, nephew—what if she truly were not aware she was using her abilities? These powers are not material properties one can weigh or measure or hold in one’s hand. What if she were doing this sort of thing without even realizing it?”

Kris felt as if he had been hit with a pail of cold water. “I—I suppose it’s just barely possible. I don’t think it’s at all likely, but I can’t dismiss the notion out of hand.”

Orthallen rose, a satisfied smile creasing his lips. “That is what I hoped you would tell me, I’m counting on you, nephew, to lay these phantoms of doubt to rest. You’ll be with her night and day for the next eighteen months, and I’m sure you will be able to tell me on your return that all these rumors are no more than smoke.”

“I’m sure I will, uncle,” Kris replied, letting him out—but not at all sure in his own mind.

It was just false dawn when Talia woke, and she dressed as quickly as she could, discovering that someone had left a breakfast tray for her outside her door. She had only just finished it when a Guardsman tapped discreetly on the doorframe, explaining that he was there to help her carry her packs down. With his aid she managed to get everything down to the tackshed in one trip.

Bright tight from oil lamps along the wall dazzled her eyes as she entered. Waiting in the very center was Rolan; his harness was piled beside him. Next to him was a second Companion stallion, and Talia could see Kris’ legs behind him as she and the Guard approached. Tethered beside the strange Companion were two most unusual pack animals.

Talia had never seen chirras before except in pictures, for their heavy coats made summer at the Collegium far too uncomfortable for them. Rather than keep them there, the Circle had a northern farm where they were bred and stabled, and only brought them down on rare occasions like this. Had this been within the normal order of things they would have taken mules from the Collegium stables for the first part of the journey. Then they would have met the Herald they were replacing at the edge of her Sector and exchanged their mules for her chirras.

Talia discovered that pictures and descriptions were inadequate to convey the charm of the northern beasts. The chirras were as tall at the shoulder as a horse, but a much longer neck put their heads on a level with the head of a human on horseback. Instead of hooves they had doglike, clawed feet, except that the feet were almost round and far bigger than Talia would have expected from the overall size of the animal. Both chirras were creamy white with black markings; one had a little cap-like spot on the top of its head, and a matching saddle-marking on its back, the other had a collar of black fur that ran around its throat and down its chest. Their ears were large, resembling rabbit ears, but rounder, with tips that flopped over. Their ears were set on the tops of their skulls and faced forward. Their faces were vaguely rabbit-like. Their brown eyes were very large, gentle, and intelligent. When Talia approached them with her hand held out to them, they scrutinized her closely, then politely took turns whuffling her palm.

Kris was already halfway through his inspection of the beasts and their gear.

“Kind of cute, aren’t they? Anybody ever tell you how they manage to live through those blizzards? They’ve got three layers of fur,” he said, bent over and adjusting the girth of the pack-harness, half-hidden by the chirra’s bulk. “The outermost is long and coarse, and pretty much waterproof—even frost won’t form on it. The middle layer is shorter, and not quite so coarse. The inner layer is what they shed every year; it’s dense, very soft and fine, and is what does most of the work of keeping them warm. We’ll have to groom them very carefully every night to keep all that fur from getting matted, or they’ll lose the warming and waterproofing effect.”

“Why are their feet so big?”

“To hold them up on the snow; they’ll be able to walk on snow crusts that the Companions will break right through.” He moved to the front of his and picked up its forefoot while it whiffled his hair. “Look here—see all the hair between the toes? If you think their feet look big now, wait till they spread them out on snow. You’d think that hair wouldn’t make any difference, but it does, like the webbing on snow-shoes. I much prefer chirras over mules in any kind of climate that they can tolerate. They’ve got sweet tempers, and they’re really quite intelligent. If a mule balks, you can’t tell half the time if he’s being stubborn, or if there’s really something wrong. A chirra never balks unless there’s something wrong.”

The chirra next to Talia stretched out his neck and nudged her hand, obviously wanting to be petted. “How much can they carry?” she asked, complying by scratching behind the chirra’s ears. It sighed happily and closed its eyes in content.

“Almost half their own weight—as good or better than a mule. Well, look at the packs they’re bringing now, and you can see.”

Talia was astonished at the size of the pack the stablehands were loading on the chirra she was scratching. It didn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable.

Kris looked it over, then eyed the packs Talia had brought down from her room. “They’ve left enough leeway for you to load those on him as well, Talia. Don’t worry, he’s smart. If it’s going to be more than he can carry, he’ll just lie down until we lighten the load.”

To her relief, the chirra showed no sign of wanting to lie down after her packs had been strapped on top of the supplies. Kris saw to the distribution of the rest of the supplies and his own belongings, while Talia made sure the chirra’s harness was firm, but comfortable, with nothing twisted or binding.

She harnessed Rolan herself, then double-checked her work, and asked him in an undertone, “You don’t mind traveling with these beasties, do you?”

He seemed pleased that she had asked the question but conveyed the impression that he was quite pleased with the packbeasts. Without words, Talia got the distinct impression that the chirras, sporting those thick, warm coats, would be more than welcome company on cold winter nights.

She fastened the lead rope of the chirra to the back of Rolan’s saddle, and mounted. Kris mounted a fraction of a second later. “Ready?” he asked.

“As ready as any internee, I guess.”

“Then let’s go.”

Four

Kris took the lead; they had to go single file in the city. Talia and Rolan followed his chirra out of the gates of the courtyard, past the Collegium and Palace buildings, gray and silent in the early morning light, then down the cobblestoned road to the iron gates leading to city streets themselves, the road she’d ridden up five and a half years previously. She looked back over her shoulder for a last glimpse of the dear, familiar stone buildings, and wondered what she’d be like when she saw them again.

The guard at the gate let them out; it was scarcely an hour until dawn and the streets were not yet crowded. They followed the long spiral outward, passing first through the residential areas that were nearest the Palace—huge buildings belonging to the highest ranked of the nobly-born, some nearly rivaling the size of Bardic or Healer’s Collegium, though not that of the Palace itself. Then, crowded far more closely together, the homes of the rich—merchants and craftsmen and Guild officials. Unlike the Palace and the edifices of the nobles, which were the same gray granite as the city walls, these buildings were wooden. Since land within the walls was at a premium, they crowded so closely the eaves touched— and when there was a need to expand, the only direction to take was up, which sometimes produced some very strange results. Most of these houses had been constructed of ironoak, a wood nearly as tough and indestructible as steel, but that was where any similarity among them ended. They had been built to some highly individual styles, and often had been added to in years and styles varying wildly from the original. Had the spiraling main street not been wide enough for three carriages, it would never have gotten any sun; as it was, riding through this district so early in the morning was rather like riding down a canyon with sides carved in the most fantastic of shapes. Talia had to fight to keep from giggling as she passed some of these houses, for Skif—to “keep his hand in,” or so he claimed—had often paid uninvited visits to the upper stories of some of these places. He’d usually left unsigned notes to be found later, chiding the owners for their lack of security. That was one prank the Provost-Marshal would never have forgiven him if it had been discovered.

After the street took a sharp right-angle turn, the purely residential district came to an end. Now the lower stories of the buildings were devoted to shops and the work-places of fine craftsmen, or offices, with an occasional expensive hostelry. The upper floors were comprised of apartments or lodgings. At this point they began encountering what little traffic there was this early in the morning. Nearly the only people about were the farmers who had brought their produce in to market, for the only cityfolk moving were those who were buying fresh supplies for their inns. Talia and Kris were able to move at a brisk pace, not having to stop for traffic more than once or twice. The streets were so quiet at this hour that they were the chief sources of sound; the ringing of the Companions’ hooves, the chime of their bridle-bells, and the click of the chirras’ claws on the cobblestones.

It took them nearly an hour to reach the Northern gate; the farther from the center of the city they went, the less wealth was displayed. There were no slums within the Old City; those were outside the city gates, huddling against the walls as if in hopes that those sturdy stone structures might shelter them from the elements. It was in one such district that Skif had grown up, the rather odd section along Exile’s Road that led into the West. Talia had never been there; she had seldom been out of the Old City, much less into the New. The one time she’d asked to be taken there, Skif had turned white, and refused. She’d never asked again.

Nor would she go anywhere near that section this time, for Kris1 chosen route led past the warehouses and the shipwrights, after crossing over the River just inside the Old City walls and exiting through the North Point Gate. Here there was no activity at all; workers had not yet arrived, and deliveries to the warehouses had yet to be made. So once again, they rode in silence after a sleepy Guardswoman waved them on their way.

Beyond the gate the road widened and changed from stone to that odd substance that wasn’t stone and wasn’t clay. Talia hadn’t thought about it in years, but it occurred to her now to wonder just what it was that paved some of the roadways of this Kingdom.

“Kris?” she called, and he motioned to her to ride up alongside him, now that they were out of the city.

“What is this stuff?” she asked, pointing to the surface of the road.

He shrugged. “Another lost secret. Some of the roads leading to the capital are paved with it, a few all the way to the Border; but any roads made later than Elspeth the Peacemaker’s time are just packed gravel at best.” He saw she was looking about her with unconcealed curiosity. “Haven’t you ever been out of the city before?”

“Not very often since I was Chosen,” she replied, “And never in this direction.”

“Didn’t you even go back home for holidays?” he asked, astonished.

“My parents weren’t exactly pleased with me, even—or perhaps especially—when they learned I was Chosen,” she replied dryly. “Not to put too fine a point upon it, they disowned me. In Hold terms, that means they denied the very fact of my existence. I spent all my holidays here, with Jadus while he was still alive, then with Keren and Visa, or with Gaytha Housekeeper and Mero the Collegium cook.”

“You’ve been rather sheltered, then.”

“At the Collegium, yes, except for the first year. Not at the Hold, though. Know anything about Holderkin?”

“Not much,” Kris admitted. “They seemed so dull, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten most of what I learned about them as a student.”

“Whether or not it’s dull depends on whether you were born male or female. Holderkin are originally from outKingdom—Karse, if you’re curious. They fled from religious persecution; their religion is based on a dominating, ruling God and a passive, submissive Goddess, and the Karsites are monotheistic. That was …oh, two generations ago. They are very secretive, and very intent on maintaining their ways intact. Men have some choice in their lives; women are given exactly two choices—serve the Goddess as a cloistered, isolated votary under a vow of silence, or marry. You make that choice at the mature age of thirteen, or thereabouts.”

“Thirteen!” Kris looked aghast.

“Hellfire, Kris, life is hard on the Border! You ought to know that, with your partner being a Borderer. There were raiders every winter I can remember. The land is stony and hard to farm. Holderkin don’t believe in going to Healers, so a lot of simple injuries and illnesses end in death. If you’re not wedded by fifteen, you may not leave any offspring—and they need every working hand they can get.”

“You sound like you enjoyed that kind of life—like you approve of it!” Kris was plainly astonished by her attitude.

“I hated it,” she said flatly. “I hated every minute that I didn’t spend reading or daydreaming. Rolan’s Choosing me was the only thing that saved me from a forced marriage with some stranger picked out by my father. I think that the way they confine themselves, their children, and most especially their minds is something approaching a crime. But most of the Holderfolk I knew seemed content, even happy, and I have no right to judge for them.”

“Fine; you don’t judge for them, but what about others who are unhappy as you were, with no Rolan to rescue them?”

“A good point—and fortunately for those would-be rebels, one Elcarth and Selenay thought of after hearing my story. The Holderfolk got their landgrants on condition that they obey the Queen and the laws of this Kingdom. Shortly after I arrived at the Collegium, Selenay had a law passed through the Council that Heralds must be allowed free access to children at ail times, in order that they can be certain that the children of this Kingdom are properly educated in our laws, history, and traditions. Heralds whose Gift is Thought-sensing go right into the Holdings now. Anyone willing to sacrifice family ties and standing as I did is free to leave with them, and they make sure the unhappy ones know this. The amazing thing to me is that there was very little objection to the practice after the initial outrage died down. I suppose the Hold Elders are only too pleased that their potential troublemakers are leaving on their own.”

Kris seemed a bit bemused. “I can’t imagine why anyone would not want to leave conditions like that.”

Talia shook her head sadly, remembering. It wasn’t quite true that she hadn’t gone back to the Hold— she had, once, last year. She’d gone back in the hopes of rescuing her sister Vrisa—to discover Vris had changed, changed past all recognition. Vris was a Firstwife now, with status, and three Underwives to rule. She’d regarded Talia as if she were a demon— when she thought Talia wasn’t looking, she’d made holy signs against her. In point of fact, she looked and acted enough like Keldar, the Firstwife who’d done her best to break Talia’s rebellious spirit, to have been Keldar’s younger self. She not only didn’t want rescue, she’d been horrified by the idea.

“Kris, it’s not my choice to make,” she answered wearily, “it’s theirs. All that I care about is that the ones like me now have the option I didn’t have before I was Chosen—to escape.”

Kris looked at her with curiosity. “Just when I think I have you neatly categorized, you say or do something that turns it all upside down again. I’d have bet that you’d have been willing to lead an army into the Holds to free the women, given the chance.”

“Maybe when I didn’t know as much about people as I do now,” she sighed.

They rode on in silence. The sun rose on their right, turning the sky pink, rose and blue, casting long shadows across their path from the buildings. Before long they had passed beyond the edge of the New City, and there was nothing before them but the occasional farmhouse. Cows were gathering outside barns, lowing to be milked. Now they saw people working; and a light breeze carried to them the smell of cut grain and drying hay, and the sounds of birds and farmbeasts.

“Tell me about yourself,” Kris said, finally. “When you’re tired of talking, I’ll tell you about me. Start with what it was like on the Hold, before you were Chosen.”

“It’s boring,” she cautioned him.

“Maybe—but it’s part of you. As your counselor, I need to know about you.”

He did his best to keep his opinions to himself while she talked, but he frequently looked surprised by some of what she told him, and actually horrified once or twice. He had, she thought, a hard time conceiving of a culture so alien to his own, so confining and repressive. Talia herself spoke in a kind of detached tone. She felt very distant from the Holderkin and all they meant now. She could think of them without much animosity; as something foreign.

It was noon when she finally grew tired of explaining Hold customs to Kris. She paused for a long drink from her waterskin, suddenly aware that her mouth was very dry, and said firmly, “I think I’ve talked enough.”

“More than that; it’s time to break for lunch,” he replied. “While we keep to this pace the chirras can go on indefinitely, so whether or not we break depends on whether or not we want to take a rest from riding. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’d like to get off for a while,” she admitted, “It’s been a long, long time since I spent this many hours riding.”

“I’m glad you said that.” His answering smile was completely ingenuous and quite charming. “I’m not all that fond of eating in the saddle unless there’s no choice. As soon as I spot a place where we can water the chirras and our Companions, we’ll take a rest.”

They found a Waystation within the half-hour. This one was watered by a well rather than a stream; they took turns hauling up enough water to satisfy the four-footed members of the party, then tethered the chirras so that both Companions and chirras could graze for a bit while they ate their own lunch.

They ate in silence, and Kris seemed to be in no great hurry to move on afterward. He lay back in the soft grass instead, thoughts evidently elsewhere, though he glanced over at Talia once or twice.

Kris was worried, though he was taking pains not to show it. His uncle’s words kept coming back to him, and he could not, in all conscience, dismiss them. He’d made a number of assumptions about his trainee, most of them based on her apparent youth and inexperience—and now what she’d told him seemed to indicate that she was anything but inexperienced, and certainly was not the simple creature he’d pictured to himself. This child—no, woman; he began to wonder now if she’d ever had anything like a “childhood” as he knew the meaning of the term— had been functionally the Queen’s Own long before she ever attained her Whites. But she was so tiny, and so guileless, and so very innocent-seeming, that you forgot all about that, and tended to think of her as much younger than she really was.

He didn’t think any of that surface was a deliberate act—but he also couldn’t tell what lay below the surface, either.

Was she capable of the kind of deliberate misuse of her Gift that Orthallen had described?

“I’ve got to ask you a question,” he said at last. “And please, I don’t mean this as any kind of insult. There are some rather unpleasant rumors circulating the Court, and I’d like to know the truth. Have— have you ever used your Gift to influence Elspeth?” Her reaction was far more violent than he would have expected. “No!” she shouted, sitting bolt upright, and actually startling Companions and chirras into shying. “How can you even think such a thing?” Her eyes were hot with anger; her face as white as her uniform.

He met that angry gaze as best he could, acutely aware of how still it was, of the grass under his hands, of the sun on his head. “It’s a rumor, I told you; I have to know.”

“I have never—I would never—do anything like that to anyone. It’s—the whole idea is perverted,” she choked. “Dammit, I knew there had to be some odd things being said about me. I mean, I could tell, people were acting very strangely when they thought I wasn’t looking. But this! It’s—it’s disgusting. Does Elspeth know about this?”

“Not so far as I know—” He broke off at the sudden, pained look she gave him.

She rose to her feet, abruptly. “I’ve—I’ve got to go back; I can’t leave her to face that alone.”

“That’s just what you can’t do,” he said, jumping up and catching hold of both her arms. “Don’t you see? If you did that, you’d just be confirming the idea in people’s heads. Besides, you’ve been given an assignment, and a set of orders. It’s not up to you to decide whether or not you’re going to obey them.”

She buried her face in her hands for a moment; when she took her hands away he could see her fighting to exert control over herself. “All right,” she said, sinking back to the ground, “You’re right. You said that there were other rumors. What are they?”

“That you’ve been using your Gift to influence other people—specifically Councilors on crucial votes. The kindest version of that rumor says that you’re not doing it consciously, that you don’t realize you’re doing it.”

“Good God. How am I supposed to answer that one?”

Kris didn’t have an adequate reply, so he continued. “Another rumor is that you’re using your Gift just to read people, then using the knowledge of their emotional state to manipulate them into doing what you want.”

“Goddess. That’s almost close to the truth . ..”

“Again, the kindest version is that you don’t realize that you’re doing it. People are frightened; your Gift isn’t one they’ve seen outside of a Healer; Mindspeakers have an ethical code they understand, but this?”

“So far as I know, there is no ethical code,” she said, and looked up at him. Her eyes were full of a pain he didn’t understand, and a confusion he wished he could resolve. “Is that al!?”

“Isn’t it enough? They say you’re young, you’re inexperienced—some say too young to be in the position of power that you are, and to be wielding such a strange mindGift.”

“As if,” she replied bitterly, “I have any choice in the matter.”

And she did not speak to him again until long after they had mounted up and gotten back on the North Road.

Kris bore with her lack of communication up to a point, but finally decided to try and break the deadlock himself. He Mindtouched Tantris, asking him to move in closer to Rolan, until he and Talia were almost knee to knee.

“Just exactly how does your Gift work?” he asked, unwilling to bear the tense silence.

“I feel emotions the way Farspeakers hear words,” she replied, after turning in her saddle to give him a sober look, one that seemed to be weighing him for some quality. “If the emotions are connected with something strongly enough, I See that. If they’re twisted or wrong, or very negative, sometimes I can fix them, like a Healer with a wound. Visa said it’s a pretty rare Gift to see crop up alone, that it’s usually tied up with the Healing Gifts. As you know.”

“Interesting,” he replied as casually as he could. “So that’s how you were able to lead me to where Ylsa died. Most Heralds are Mindspeakers, you know, and most of the rest are Farseers, like me. Only a few of us have odd Gifts like yours and Dirk’s. And Griffon’s— birr!—-that’s one I wouldn’t want.” The sun lost some of its warmth for him as he thought of the demonstration Griffon and Dirk had given him. “Firestarting is a terrible burden, and it’s so easy for the power to get out of control .. . and when it does, well, you end up with barrens like at Burning Pines. And it isn’t really useful at all except as a weapon. I hope his being born with it now doesn’t mean something; Heralds with the really odd Gifts tend to appear when there’s going to be a need for them. The last Firestarter was Lavan Firestorm, and you know what his era was like—” He flushed, beginning to realize that he was pontificating—but, damn—he wanted to get her mind off the rumors so she’d act normally again. “Sorry. I tend to get carried away when I start discussing Gifts. It’s a hobby of mine, one I share with Kyril. It’s fascinating to see what kinds of Gifts we have, and to try and see if there are patterns.”

“Really?” She perked up a little, a bit more color coming into her cheeks. “Has anybody else ever had my kind of Gift before?”

“Not that I’m aware of among the Heralds, but I must admit that I’ve only looked into the Gifts of living Heralds, or the really spectacular ones of the past. I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of that ability to Heal the mind, except in a true Healer, but it wouldn’t surprise me much to discover that this one’s the Gift that distinguishes the Queen’s Own from the rest of us. And you seem to have it mostly by itself, and maybe much stronger even than in Healers. Probably the others have had it, but not so strongly that anyone noticed it. Nobody seems to have made a study of the Monarch’s Own—not like they have with the more ordinary Gifts. And now that I think about it, your primary job is to ensure the mental stability of the Monarch—an ability like the one you have could come in very useful if something really went wrong.” He was doing his best to imply that he believed her—that he was certain the rumors weren’t true. He only wished that he really could be that certain.

“I can see that.” She was silent, and seemed to be thinking hard. Late afternoon sun was gilding everything, and the early breeze had died. The chirras’ eyes were half-closed in the drowsy warmth, and the few sounds to either side of them were those of farmworkers cutting hay and grain, and insects droning in the grass. “So you See, and Dirk Fetches?”

“Right. That’s why we work together, and generally don’t ride Sectors except when we’re shorthanded, the way we have been lately. To put it bluntly, we’re Selenay’s thieves.” He laughed a little. “If I know what I’m looking for, I can generally find where it is from several miles away—more, if I get a ‘ride,’ like I got from you. Once I know exactly where it is and can fix the location in my mind, Dirk can read the location to Fetch whatever it is to where we happen to be. That’s how he retrieved Visa’s arrows.”

“That seems to be a lot harder than it sounds …rather wearing, too, from the little I’ve seen.”

“Gods, that’s an understatement. In a lot of ways, it would be less tiring to run on foot to where it is, get it, and run back. And the heavier the object, the more difficult it is to Fetch. We haven’t tried anything much larger than a building brick—and that gave him a reaction-headache that lasted for a week. I was pretty surprised when he had enough energy left to carry you to your room after retrieving those arrows.”

“Aha!” She seemed please that it had been Dirk who had cared for her. “A mystery solved! I’ve wondered about that for the last two years. So he was the one!”

“He was like a hen with one chick—wouldn’t let me do more than trail along, and I was in better shape than he. Said that with all those girls in his family, he knew better than I did what to do with a sick one.”

“Can he work with anyone but you?”

“We don’t know; he’s never tried, since he gets such a good ‘fix’ from me. Probably, though. One Farseer’s a lot like another.”

“How long have you two been working together?” she asked curiously.

“Since we both got our Whites. That was another year they were shorthanded, and sent us both out to intern with the same counselor—Gerick. Well, you know Gerick, he’s absentminded; he left a small, but valuable ring at one of the Waystations—it was the Queen’s gift to one of the Guildmasters. Rather than spend two hours going back for it, Dirk offered to try Fetching it. I Looked for it, found it had rolled under the bed while we were packing, and gave Dirk the location. That was when we discovered that I gave him the clearest ‘fix’ he’d ever had to work from. He Fetched the ring, no problem; we started working as a team, and we’ve been doing things that way ever since.”

“It’s just that you seem so unlike each other, I find it hard to imagine you two staying together.”

Kris laughed, pleased to have gotten onto a safe subject. “You might be surprised. Underneath that jester mask he wears, Dirk’s a very serious gentleman. And we have pretty much the same taste in music, reading, even food. . . .”

“In women?” she teased.

“Well ... that, too,” he admitted with a reluctant smile. “And it’s really pretty unfair. Poor Dirk—it doesn’t matter if he finds the lady first. Once she’s seen me she usually goes all ‘sisterly’ on him. He’s mostly pretty good-natured about it, but if I were in his shoes, I’d be damned annoyed!”

“Well, he knows you can’t help it. You were born looking like an angel, and he ... well, he wasn’t, and that’s all there is to say.”

“It’s still not fair. You’d think that at least one woman would figure out that Dirk the man is worth ten faces like mine.”

“I expect someday someone will,” Talia replied noncommittally, avoiding his eyes. “Where is he from?”

Her reply was just a bit too casual; her attempt at nonchalance immediately set off mental alerts in Kris’s mind, especially following all those questions about his partner. Part of him followed up on the puzzle while he answered her question. He had a very faint suspicion, too tenuous to be even a guess. It was rather like trying to remember a name he’d forgotten. It would probably take a while before he had enough information to make a surmise . . . but now he’d be subconsciously watching for clues.

“The Sector right next to ours, Sorrows One. He’s got a huge family up there. He used to haul me home with him for holidays—still does when we’re free. Three of his married sisters and their families live with their parents and help run the farm. It’s like a madhouse; people everywhere, babies and cats constantly underfoot. It’s marvelous madness though. They’re wonderful people, and there’s never a lonely or dull moment.”

He smiled half to himself as he recalled some of those visits, his earlier thoughts gone on the breeze. Dirk’s family—they should have been gypsies! All of them crazy, and all of them delightful. He’d been looking forward to another Midwinter Festival with them, but it obviously wasn’t going to be this year. Well, there was always another time.

Talia’s next question broke the strange, apprehensive chill he felt at that thought.

“What about you?”

“Well, let me think. My father is Lord Peregrine; I’m the second son, but my brother is ten years older than I am, and I have nephews and nieces that aren’t much younger than you. My parents are both very wrapped up in matters of state, so I was left pretty much in the hands of my tutors, back on the family estate.”

“I think I know your father; he’s one of the Seneschal’s chief assistants. And your mother?”

“She organizes the resupply of the Waystations. I think she would have liked to have been a Herald, but since she wasn’t Chosen, this is the closest she can get.”

“Weren’t there any children your own age on the estate?”

“Not many; their parents seemed to think mine would be angry if their offspring were allowed to ‘contaminate’ me. I spent a great deal of my time reading.”

“Like me—only you didn’t have to hide to do it!” she laughed.

“You’re wrong there! My tutors seemed to think that my every waking moment should be spent learning something serious, dull, and practical. I had a hiding place up in the oldest tree in the garden. I fixed it up until it was quite impossible to see me from the ground. I smuggled my tales and poetry up there, and escaped at every opportunity.” A breeze that stirred the leaves of the trees lining the road to either side of them seemed to chuckle at Kris’ childish escapes. “Then, when I was twelve, my parents took me to Court. I don’t think it ever entered their heads that the Collegium stood on the same grounds.” He smiled. “Even if they’d forgotten, though, I hadn’t. I hoped—but when no Companion met me at the Palace gate, I gave the dream up. I was supposed to be presented at Vernal Equinox Festival, and I can remember everything, right down to the fact that one of my boot-lacings didn’t quite match the other. I was standing next to my father, outside, in the gardens, you know—when there was an unexpected visitor to the Festivities.”

Tantris shook his head, making the bells on his bridle sing. Kris chuckled, and reached forward to scratch behind his ears. “I knew what the appearance of a Companion meant, and I kept looking around to see who he had come to Choose. I nearly went out of my mind with happiness, when I finally stopped craning my head around and found he was standing right in front of me! Then, when I looked into his eyes....” His voice trailed off.

“It’s not like anything else, is it?” Talia prompted softly. “and it isn’t something you ever lose the wonder of.”

“That it’s not,” he agreed, speaking half to himself, “and I knew then that I’d never be lonely again....” He shook off the spell, and became matter-of-fact. “Well, my parents were both very proud. They had me installed at the Collegium before I had a chance to turn around. Oddly enough, it’s easier to deal with them now that I’m an adult. My father can relate to me as an equal, and I think that my mother forgets half the time that I’m one of her offspring. I really don’t think they ever knew what to do with a child.”

“They probably didn’t, especially with so much time between you and your brother.”

“Dirk has no notion how much I envy him his family,” he sighed.

“You think not?” Talia smiled. “Then why does he keep bringing you home with him?”

“I never thought about that.”

They rode silently for a mile or so.

“Talia, do you ever miss your family?”

“Not after I found other people who really cared about me. I was the scarlet jay among the crows with them; I was more of an outsider among my own family than I ever was at the Collegium. One of those pretty brothers of mine used to steal my books, and call me ‘Herald Talia’ to make me cry. I’d like to have seen his face when I was Chosen.”

“Do you ever think about going back?”

“You know, that used to be a daydream of mine, that I’d somehow magically become a Herald—remember, I didn’t know about being Chosen—and I’d come back dressed in my Whites and covered in glory. Then they’d all be envious, and sorry that they were mean to me.”

“And now?”

“Well, I went back long enough to try and ‘rescue’ the sister I’d been closest to only to find she had turned into a stranger. I didn’t go any farther into the Holdings, just turned around and came back home. I didn’t want to see any of them again. Why bother? My parents pretended I was an outsider, my sibs were either afraid or contemptuous; Heralds are very immoral, you know. What is it Mero’s Book says? About how the people you grow up with react to your fame?”

“ ‘No one honors a saint on his hearthstone.’” “It’s true, too. I’m resigned to letting things rest as they are, knowing that my example shows misfits that there is an escape.”

He didn’t seem inclined to further conversation, so she turned her attention back to those unsettling rumors.

Poisonous, that’s what they were. Ugly, and poisonous.

And true? said a niggling little doubt.

She wanted to deny any truth to it at all—vehemently. But could she? In all conscience, could she?

The business about Elspeth—no, she could not believe she’d been fostering dependence in the child, not even unconsciously. Once Elspeth had begun acting like a human being again, she’d been pushing her toward independence, driving her to make her own decisions and take responsibility for the results.

But the rest—oh, insidious. For a Mindspeaker, it was obvious when he was projecting; it sounded to the recipient a great deal like the Mindspeaker’s normal voice, but as if the words were coming from deep inside his own ear. But when she projected— would anyone be able to tell she was doing so?

She could tell; sending emotion cost her effort and energy.

But if she were excited or agitated—would she notice the energy expense?

Did she even need to be doing it while she was awake? What about when she was asleep? How could she possibly be sure what her irrational sleeping mind was doing?

And what about simply reading people’s emotional states? Was she transgressing by doing so, and acting on the knowledge?

How could she avoid doing it? It was like seeing color; it was just there unless someone was deliberately shielding.

Doubt followed doubt in an insidious circle, each feeding on the one preceding it, until Kris broke the silence.

“This is our first stop—this close to the capital they won’t be hungry for news, and it’s very unlikely they’d need us to work in any official capacity. Still, it’s only good manners to repay them in some way for their hospitality. Small villages don’t see trained Bards oftener than once a month, so they’re very receptive to even amateur music. Would you be willing to sing if I played?”

“Of course,” she replied, grateful for the interruption. “It’s only fair that I share the work. Did you notice that I brought My Lady?”

“No!” he exclaimed with delight. “You’ll let me play her? I have a smaller traveling harp with me, but it hasn’t half the range or the tone of My Lady.”

“I let you have her the other night, didn’t I? You’ll have to retune her. I detuned the strings so they wouldn’t snap if the weather changed suddenly.” She smiled shyly. “I have good instrument etiquette. Jadus taught me quite well, I assure you.”

“He couldn’t do otherwise when it came to music. He’s the one who taught me in the first place.”

“Really? I wonder why he didn’t leave her to you?”

“That’s easy enough to answer. I didn’t take the time, to keep him company the way you did,” Kris rplied with a slightly shamed expression. “He may have given me a little of his skill, but he gave his harp where he’d given his heart—to a lonely little girl, because she’d given him her own.”

The village came into view before a surprised Talia had time to form a reply. Children swarmed upon them, chattering and calling questions that both Heralds fielded with chuckles and smiles. Older children ran ahead to alert their elders that there were two Heralds taking the road north, who were clearly planning on spending the night.

Long before they reached the inn at the center of the village square, a crowd had gathered to meet them. The village itself was a large one, with cobble-stoned streets and white-plastered buildings of two and even three stories high. Rather than thatched, the roofs were tiled—something Talia had read was more common the farther north one went. With all the shutters thrown open, soft yellow light gleamed through the windows of the houses, as the sun set and candles and lamps were lit.

As Kris had indicated, this village was close enough to the capital that Heralds stopped with fair regularity. Heralds traveling to their Sectors were housed in inns rather than the Waystations, unless they were caught without other shelter, and inns got back a percentage of their taxes for every Herald they entertained. It was possible for an inn on a busy road to be rebated all of its tax if enough Heralds stayed there—and that made Heralds welcomed and sought-after guests.

Under all those strange eyes, Talia regained an outward control, at least; putting on her “public” face and pushing her self-doubts into the back of her mind. It would not do for these people to see her disturbed.

The Innmaster himself welcomed them at his front step and escorted them to the stables. Stablehands tended to the chirras, but the Heralds themselves cared for their Companions. Kris chuckled once or twice—apparently at something that Tantris “said” to him—and Talia felt a tiny twinge of jealousy at their ability to Mindspeak one another.

Once back inside, the Innmaster escorted them personally to their quarters, and gave Talia and Kris small rooms on the second floor—rooms scrupulously, almost painfully clean. Their rooms adjoined one another and each boasted a window, a small table, and a narrow bed that looked surprisingly comfortable.

They were courteously given the use of the bathhouse without anyone pestering them. But once they joined the rest of the guests in the common room for supper, the questions began. The dark-paneled common room overflowed to near-bursting with villagers; tallow-dips in sconces on the walls cast a dim but clear light, so it was easy to see and be seen, The air was seasoned with a pleasant aroma of bread and roasting meat and wood smoke. Though the furnishings were only rough wooden tables and benches, they, and the floor, were sanded smooth and scrubbed clean. The Heralds took their places at a table near the fire, and the rest of the guests gathered around them.

Kris took it upon himself to try and answer them, but when it seemed as if he’d never get more than a mouthful of dinner before it got cold, Talia took her own turn. As Kris had told her, the common people were very well informed this close to the capital: what they wanted most was detail. Much of what they wanted to know centered on the new Heir, a subject Talia knew very well indeed. She satisfied them enough that eventually she and Kris were able to finish their dinners in peace.

Talia had brought My Lady down with her; while Kris tuned her, she took the time to answer questions from a different source—the children. They seemed to sense that this Herald would not brush them off, ignore them, or give them light answers. They had a thousand questions concerning Heralds and what it took to be one.

Some of the questions gave her pause for thought.

“Why don’t Heralds ever stay in one place?” one young boy asked. “We always have the same priest— why don’t we keep the same Herald?”

“For one thing, there just aren’t enough of us to send one to each village, or even one to each group of villages,” Talia told him. “For another—tell me, what will happen when your priest grows old and retires, or perhaps dies?”

“They’ll send us a new one, of course.”

“And hell be a stranger to all of you. Do you think he’ll fit in and be accepted right away?”

“No.” The lad grinned impudently. “A lot of the grannies won’t really trust him until he’s been here for years—if then.”

“But a Herald has to have your trust right away, don’t you see? If you come to trust the person more than the office, the way you do with your priest, there would be trouble for every new Herald in a Sector.”

The boy looked thoughtful at this. “So you move all the time, to make sure it’s the job that stays important, not the person doing it. I bet if you stayed in one place too long, you’d get too bound up with the people to judge right, too.”

A little startled by this observation, so very accurate, she sent a fleeting thought toward the stable. Since she wasn’t in trance, Rolan couldn’t give her more than a vague feeling—but the impression was that he had already noted this boy, and it was very probable that the child was going to receive a hooved visitor in the next year or two.

Armed with this knowledge, she answered the rest of this boy’s questions with special care and watched him afterward. She noted that he seemed to be the mentor and protector of some of the little children, urging them forward to talk to her when he knew that they were too shy to go alone. He wasn’t above his share of pranking about, she noticed with relief, but his tricks were never those that could hurt anyone.

Kris soon had the harp in tune; Talia let him take center stage alone for a while, knowing how much the approving attention would please him. The guests and villagers were loud in their appreciation, and only when Kris was glowing from their applause did Talia add her voice to the harpsong.

The host of the inn eventually decreed they’d tired the Heralds out long enough, and mock-ordered both of them to their beds. Talia was just as pleased; she was feeling the effects of a long day in the saddle, and she thought of her pillow and warm bed with longing.

When they mounted the next morning, just as the sun arose, Talia winced a little as she climbed into her saddle.

“Sore?” Kris asked with a slight smile.

She groaned faintly. “Before this trip is over I’ll probably be in agony. I didn’t realize I was this badly out of riding trim. I may never be able to get my legs closed again.”

“That would make some people happy,” he teased, and ducked as she threw an apple core left from her breakfast at him,

“Just for that, maybe I won’t give you this.” He held up a pouch that jingled faintly.

“Why? What is it?” she asked, curiosity aroused.

“When I picked up our expense money, I thought perhaps you might have forgotten your stipend,” he replied, tossing the pouch over to her. ‘“You had, so I drew it for you. You’re a full Herald now, remember? You earn a stipend.”

“Bright Havens!” Her hand flew to her head in embarrassment. “I did forget.”

“Don’t feel badly. After five years of no pocket money, most of us forget. I did. But it comes in very handy, especially when you happen to be at a fair, and see something you just know So-and-so would love. Or, for that matter, that you can’t live without.”

“It’s a good thing I’ve got you for a counselor,” she replied ruefully. “I’d probably have left my own head back at the Collegium.”

Kris just chuckled as he led the way out the gates of the inn onto the road.

As they traveled northward, the road changed from the strange, gray material to packed gravel, to clay, to finally a simple raised and cleared strip between the trees, all the grass worn down by travelers and their mounts and carts.

As the roadway changed, so did the landscape to either side. Farms covered more area—and there were greater stretches of uncultivated land between them, from wide meadows to nearly virgin forest.

The weather changed, growing slowly, but steadily, worse. It rained almost every day, in a steady, penetrating shower. And soon the rains lasted all day, never becoming less than a drippy drizzle, so that the chill water soaked through even their oiled-wool cloaks. The chirras whined in protest at being made to travel at all, and they rode enveloped in miasmas of soggy leaves and wet wool. By the time they reached their chosen resting place each night, they were aching with cold, sodden clear through, ; and longing for hot wine, hot food, and hotter baths.

Talia’s mood was at one with the weather. Her mind kept running in circles on the same subject.

Was she misusing her Gift? How could she tell? What were the ethics of Empathic sensing, anyway?

From time to time, long skeins of waterbirds called from overhead, flying south, high and fast, their cries coming down on the wind like the calls of lonely spirits. The lost calls echoed in Talia’s mind long after they’d passed; sad callings for the answers to questions that could not be answered.

And when, at dismal day’s end, they saw the lights of the next village and heard the cheerful noise of the inn, those were welcome sights and sounds indeed.

And yet for Talia, the sight of the inn became a prospect she almost dreaded. She found herself scanning the faces of those around her, seeking almost obsessively for some sign that she was influencing their moods.

The only interruption to her rounds of intense self-scrutiny came when Kris drilled her in the intricacies of the Arrow Code, or coaxed her into some kind of conversation while they rode.

The farther north they came, the farther apart the villages were. Finally there was little choice as to which village they would rest in overnight; often there would be only one within striking distance. The cultivated areas began to be fewer, the woods and forests thicker and showing less evidence of the hand of man. At long last the weather cleared a bit; the rain stopped, although most days were overcast. At the beginning of the trip, the workers they saw in the fields had hailed them cheerfully, then gotten on with what they were doing. Now almost invariably the farmfolk called them to the roadside and offered them a drink of sweet cider or cold spring water in exchange for a bit of news. This evidence alone made it plain that they were on the very edge of the Kingdom, for at this time of year, there wasn’t much time left to get the last of the crops in; and it took a great deal to pull a farmer’s attention away from that goal, even for the little time it took drink a glass and pass a trifle of information.

Talia was just as glad that they met with so few people. Her circling self-doubts were beginning to have an effect on her; her shields were wearing thin and she could feel the press of Kris’ emotional state just beyond them—though he was trained to mind-block without thinking about it. With ordinary folk it was far worse.

It didn’t help her doubts at all that to sense that he was still uneasy about her,

Kris had done his best to shove his uncle’s words into the back of his mind, but he wasn’t overly successful. He wanted to bring up the subject with Talia again, but hadn’t dared. She seemed edgy and preoccupied in general—and nervous whenever they were around large groups of people, although he doubted that anyone but another Herald would have noticed the nerves behind her “public” face. So he tried to keep the conversation going on other topics.

But behind it all were the unanswered questions. Was she misusing her Gift? Was she doing so without realizing it?

And—much more sobering—was she using it to manipulate him?

It was distressing, because he was coming to like her—like her a great deal, more so even than the usual hail-fellow good comradeship that was the norm among Heralds. They were very much alike in many ways. It was horrible to have to suspect a friend of something so insidious.

Because she was becoming that—a friend of the same order as Dirk.

“You know .. .” he said one day, out of the blue, “you’re like the sister I never had.”

“You’re like the brother I wish I had .. .” she replied without seeming to think about it. “That I might have had if Andrean hadn’t died in that raid. He was the only one of my sibs who was kind to me, excepting Vrisa. If I’d had you instead of Justus and Keltev, things might have been easier.”

“They also might have turned out a lot differently. Would you have been willing to run away if life had been more pleasant?”

“A good point,” she conceded. “Probably not. And then where would I be?”

He grinned, while Tantris shook his head mirthfully and made his bridle bells ring. “If what you’ve told me is true, six years married, and the mother of as many children.”

She grimaced, and shifted in the saddle with a creak of leather. “Thank you, no. Hectic as it is, I like the life I’m leading now. Speaking of which, don’t we cross into our new Sector today?”

He pulled the map they’d been given out of a pocket on the front of his saddle, consulted it, and peered around under the lowering sky, looking for landmarks. Finally he spotted one, a cluster of three flat-topped hills off to the west of the road. “We’ll cross the border before nightfall, and we’ll be staying tonight at our first Waystation.”

“Because—” she put on a somber mien. “—Heralds do not stay at inns in the Sector they serve, unless weather prevents them from reaching a Station; this insures that they keep a proper distance and maintain impartiality with the people of their Sector.’ I remember.”

“You certainly do!” he laughed, cheered by her apparent return to good humor. “That’s old Werda to the life!”

“And that’s also the reason we either buy the supplies we run out of outright, or wait until we reach a Resupply Station; assuming they’re not in the Waystation. Right?”

“High marks; completely correct.” He looked about him at the falling leaves, at trees whose branches were almost bare. “I’m sorry that this isn’t going to an easy beginning for you. This is a bad time of ytar to start riding this Sector. There’s going to be snow in the next couple of weeks. Trainees usually aren’t faced with conditions this hard at the beginning of their internships.”

“I’m Borderbred, remember? This is a lot more like the kind of life I was bred to than my life at the Collegium. I’ll manage.”

“You know,” he said soberly, “I know you’ll do your best. I know you’ll try your hardest. That’s all anyone can ask. I trust you. Talia.”

At least, he thought to himself, I think I do.

Five

The boughs of the nearly-leafless trees arched above them, skeletal hands reaching for the gray sky. The road continued before them, a leaf-carpeted tunnel through the bleak, gray-brown forest. The sodden leaves had been flattened by so many rains that the Companions didn’t even kick them up; the dense mat only served to muffle the sounds of their hooves. There were no birds, only the occasional sound of a branch cracking somewhere off in the shadows of the underbrush.

Talia and Kris rode well past sunset and on into the dark to reach the Waystation Kris intended to use as their first stop in their new Sector. With the last rays of the sun went the last hint of warmth; as the last dim, red light filtered through the branches, a cold wind began to sigh among them. Kris took the lead, but it was Tantris, with the superior night-sight of Companions, who was really picking out their way, through cold and dark that was enough to drive just about any other consideration from human minds. Talia was strongly considering unpacking her heavy cloak and was definitely glad that all Waystations, however small or primitive, had fireplaces. The wind had a sharp bit to it, and carried a hint of snow along with the cold.

This Station, as it loomed up out of the shadows in front of them, did not appear to be all that small. Hopefully, it was not primitive either.

One thing was always the first order of business, no matter how late the hour, nor how foul the weather, when Heralds opened a Waystation. Talia dismounted, felt along Rolan’s saddle, and took out her firestarter and tinderbox. After no little fumbling and cursing, she managed to get a tiny flame going in the tinder. Protecting it carefully from the wind, she removed a small, fibrous bundle from one of the packs; it had a waxed wick sticking out of it, which she lit at the tiny flame. While Kris pulled off the packs and saddlebags, she tossed it inside and shut the door. He left the packs at her feet, and took Companions and chirras around to the side of the building. While she waited, she shivered in the cold wind, and started a little when an owl cried in the distance. The little, homely sounds Kris was making in the lean-to stable were very welcome against all that dark, with the wind sighing in the boughs of the trees.

She nursed the tiny fire she had going; if it went out, the whole rigamarole was to do over again. When she had counted to one hundred, slowly, she opened the door again. The Station was full of a pungent, oily smoke that was now being swiftly drawn up the chimney with the help of the draft from the open door. And any vermin that had been within the Station were either dead or fled.

Talia hauled the packs and bedrolls inside, then began to get them set up while Kris ducked inside long enough to get grain for the Companions and the chirras who were now in the stabling at the side of the building. She took a rushlight from her saddlebag by feel, and lit it from her bit of tinder. To her immense relief, the place seemed to be quite sturdy, and well maintained and supplied. She threw the bedrolls into the twin bedboxes, then proceeded (wistfully wishing for just a touch of Griffon’s Gift) to get a fire going. It took several false starts, but eventually she managed to get a respectable blaze on the cold hearth. Once the flames were high enough to provide illumination as well as warmth, she extinguished the light she’d lit; no sense in wasting what wasn’t really necessary, and the rushlights took up so much space in the packs that they didn’t carry many of them. She unpacked some of their food supplies and unsealed the vermin-proof cendal-wood bins the Station staples were kept in to put together a reasonable meal, then took two of the larger pots outside to the well to get water for washing and cooking.

Kris seemed to be taking overly long with bedding down the chirras and Companions; she’d managed to heat enough water for both of them to wash, had fixed a meal, and had cleaned herself up and changed into a worn shift and old breeches she kept for sleeping in before he finally appeared. She was about to chide him for being so slow, when she realized that he’d dawdled on purpose.

“Kris, you don’t have to be so thrice-blessed chivalrous, you know,” she said instead, feeling his reticence sharply, and being irrationally irritated by it. “All the children on the Holdings sleep in the same room until they’re thirteen, and you know very well I’ve shared Waystations and tents with my whole year-group while we were in training. I can’t possibly have something you’ve never seen before—and the same goes for you.”

“I’m . .. just not used to having a woman as a partner,” he said.

“Then stop thinking of me as a woman,” she yawned, bundling herself into her bedroll and blinking at him sleepily through the firelight. Her irritation was gone as quickly as it had come, once she’d reinforced her shielding—although the fact that she’d had to do the latter bothered her; she shouldn’t have needed to.

“That’s easy for you to say!” he retorted.

“Then pretend I’m Keren, with no interest in men whatsoever. Because if you don’t, one of these evenings I’m going to find an ice statue waiting outside the door—and it’ll be you!”

He chuckled, and admitted that she just might be right.

Her heart pounded a little the next day as they approached their first village of their Sector. There was no telling what reception awaited them—or what requests. This far from the capital, a village often didn’t even boast its own priest, but shared one with several other villages; and the only representatives of Kingdom law were the Heralds.

Her shields were so very thin; she’d discovered that last night. She couldn’t fathom why; shielding had always been second-nature, nearly instinctive— and now they seemed to be eroding, slowly, inexorably. She was frightened by the loss of control and was afraid to tell Kris, afraid her confession would simply reinforce his own doubts about her, and create more stress than she already had.

As they rode in, it appeared as though the entire population of the area had asssembled to meet them. Talia thought they must have had lookouts posted, perhaps for the last week or so, waiting for the Heralds they knew were replacing the injured one. The emotional atmosphere—which she felt in spite of her best efforts to shield—was tense, with no hint of why. The village was a small one, single-storied houses of gray wood and darker gray stone, topped with tile roofs, all clustered about a central square. There were no bright-painted shutters here; the wind-driven ice of winter storms would have etched the paint off in a single season. The inn was so small it obviously had no guest-rooms; those overnighting would have to sleep in the common room on the benches when the inn closed for the night. There was no sign of damage to any of the buildings, no hint of disorder; whatever had these folk anxious had nothing to do with their material life. The village folk, though—they were dressed in gaudy colors, as if for a festival. So why the feeling of apprehension so thick she could almost smell it?

“Thanks be to the Lady, you’ve finally come!”

A plump woman who reminded Talia for all the world of a hen bustled forward, pushing before her a young couple of about sixteen or so until they stood less than a foot from Kris’ stirrup. Both were dressed in heavily embroidered finery, and the girl was roundly pregnant. They clutched each other’s hands as if they were afraid, and neither of them would look at the Heralds. Talia was puzzled beyond her own worries. What was it that could be wrong— that she hadn’t sensed?

“The priest took sick and hasn’t been able to make his rounds since eight weeks ago,” continued the plump woman, tucking a stray strand of hair behind the girl’s ear, “and in any case, he hasn’t been here since before Midsummer. There hasn’t been anyone to marry these two in all that time!”

“Were they properly year-and-day handfasted?” Talia asked, knowing the Border custom, meant to ensure fertility before a permanent bond was made.

“Bright Stars, yes—the priest did it himself last Midwinter!” the woman exclaimed impatiently, while the other villagers nodded in agreement.

Enlightenment dawned on Talia, though Kris was obviously still perplexed about the reason for their obvious apprehension.

“You’re both still willing?” he asked. Both gave a very shy assent, but one obviously unforced.

“They’re just victims of very bad timing,” Talia whispered to him. “And they’re afraid we’ll disapprove—maybe even refuse to wed them—because they left the formal ceremony so long. They should have wedded as soon as they knew she was with child, but I’ll bet a pretty they were so busy with planting that they put it off until after Midsummer, assuming the priest would get here in plenty of time— Except that they hadn’t counted on him falling ill. Poor babies! They’re terribly in awe of us, and they’re afraid we’ll make difficulties for them because they didn’t take care of it right away. We’d be within our right to do so ... by the letter of the law.”

“But not by the spirit,” Kris whispered back, relieved that it was so simple. “Well, since everyone’s agreed,” he said loudly enough for everyone to hear, smiling broadly, “what’s holding up the celebration?”

There was a general sigh of tension vanishing, and trestle tables and food began appearing as if conjured by a spell. Before very long the square had been transformed and a proper wedding celebration was in full swing. To save them any further embarrassment, Kris took the young couple off to one side and witnessed their vows, signing their wedding contract as officiating Herald in lieu of a priest.

The young couple returned to enjoy their feast, their shyness nearly gone. They were obviously comforted on two counts: that the Heralds had made no difficulty over the lateness of their vows, and that now their Firstborn would have no taint of illegitimacy about it.

The remainder of that day they spent in relative idleness, since there was no use whatsoever in trying to get any official business conducted. The press of people was putting a considerable strain on Talia, but she thought she was succeeding in keeping the strain from showing, even to Kris. She sat mostly on the edge of things, speaking pleasantly when spoken to, but letting Kris take the lion’s share of the attention.

And she was even more worried than when they’d first entered this village; her shields hadn’t been this fragile since before she’d learned the full use of her Gift. Virtually anything would bring them down, and she had to expend ridiculous amounts of energy to put them back up again.

If only she’d never heard those filthy rumors. .. .

The thought of the rumors brought her back full circle to her self-doubt and fear, and the press of emotions became almost painful, until she finally resorted to an old expedient; drinking enough wine to blur the edges of her sensing, and make it all bearable. It was rather too bad that it left her sober enough to negotiate the dark path back to the Waystation with no trouble at all—for that meant she was still sober enough to think.

They returned the next day, ready for business. The people of the village had no grievances that needed settling, but they were eager to hear the news from the capital and the other towns of the Sector. The common room of the inn, dark and smokey as it was, was the only “public” room in the whole village, so that was where they conducted their business. The village storyteller—who doubled as the clerk—sat drinking in every word they spoke, and making copious notes, for it would be his duty to repeat all that the Heralds related for those who were absent from the village, or for those small holders who seldom came to town.

They gave the morning to the decisions of the Queen and Council, how and why those decisions had been reached, and what, if any, laws had been passed to uphold and enforce those decisions; and the afternoon they spent relating the news of the Court and events of major importance to the entire Kingdom—all of which took them until darkness fell, and they returned to the Station again.

This day had lain easier on Talia’s wire-taunt nerves, for there was nothing to excite anyone’s emotions in the dry news they recited, and even if there had been, the storytellerIclerk was too intent on mem-orizing every word to allow his feelings to intrude.

Two of them returned to the Waystation, made herself a cup of double-strength shamile tea, a strong soporific. She was determined to get to sleep, and to sleep deeply, thinking perhaps weariness was part of the cause of her troubles.

But her dreams were uneasy, and she woke feeling more drained than she had been when she’d gone to sleep.

They spent the third day on the reports of the headman and clerk, and taking the verbal news of the village to be passed on up the line. Kris would carry the headman’s written reports until they came to a center of population large enough to boast a messsenger, or until they arrived at a Resupply Station, at which point he could send what he had collected south to the capital, together with his own observations on the probable truth or falsehood of the information contained in them.

That was Kris’ job. Talia remained in the background the entire time, hoping to be noticed as little as possible, for it seemed that the strain was worst when she was interacting with someone.

But that evening at the Waystation, Kris insisted on hearing Talia’s opinion on the reports they’d been given, and the reliability of the headman and clerk who had given them.

“They seemed honest to me,” she told him, hoping he had no notion of how much she had sensed, against her will. “I didn’t have any feeling they were trying to mislead us, hide anything, or hold anything back. As far as I can judge, the only mistakes in their records are honest errors. They were quick enough to correct them, in any event, when you pointed them out.”

“Good,” Kris said with satisfaction. “That tallies with what I saw. I’m just as glad; I hate calling people out—even when it’s blatantly obvious that they’re lying to me,” He noted both their observations on the cover page of the reports, and sealed them in a waterproof wrapper.

To Talia’s relief, he had not seemed to note how much strain she was under.

“I didn’t realize we took tax records, too,” she said, attempting to distract herself—and him—with questions about routine.

“Always, in Border Sectors; almost never in the interior. We take a duplicate of what they’re supposed to give the taxmen when they come next spring. This way, if some disaster should destroy their records, they have at least a partial reckoning on file. It’s to their advantage, since if there’s a disaster of that magnitude, the village may have lost quite a bit more than the records, and the Queen will be able to judge what aid to give them based on what would have been taxed.”

She did not make the same mistake with the tea this night, but instead lay in the darkness of the Station, staring up at the blackness above her head, listening to Kris’ quiet breathing and going back to her earliest lessons in shield-discipline. She thought, when she finally was weary enough to sleep, that she might have reinforced her shields enough to carry her through the final day.

The fourth day they went over the clerk-storyteller’s accounts of what they’d told him, making corrections or elaborations as required. When the fifth day dawned (much to Talia’s relief), they were back on the road again; headed through the village on their way out, but not to do more than pick up their laundry and visit the village bathhouse.

By the time they were well past the village and out into the wilds, it was growing noticeably colder, and both of them were wearing their heavier winter cloaks. The trees were now totally barren of leaves, and the warm, friendly scents of autumn were gone from the wind. Although it seldom rained anymore, the skies continued to be overcast—a featureless slate-gray. They crunched their way through a carpet of dead, brown leaves that had collected on the roadway. Most of the birds and beasts were gone, hibernating, or in hiding now; the loss of foliage and cover made them cautious and quiet, those that were left. The Heralds seldom saw more than the occasional rabbit or squirrel, and never heard much besides the wind in the naked boughs of the trees and the scream of a crow or two. The Companions’ bridle bells made a lonely chime against the silence of the sleeping forest.

So far as Talia was concerned, that was all to the good; at least she wasn’t having to be continually on guard against her shields failing. But her nerves continued to fray; and as they traveled onward through the bleak woods, she wasn’t sure which was worse, being alone in this gloom-ridden wilderness, where the gray and empty forest only fed her depression, or being surrounded by people, with shields slowly going to pieces.

Kris wasn’t much happier; he kept wondering if— and how much—of his general feelings of approval toward Talia were manufactured. Was she consciously or unconsciously augmenting them? He was beginning to examine every nuance of feeling, trying to detect if she had had a hand in it.

He liked her—Bright Havens, he wanted to like her, she was so much like him in so many ways. She was a good partner, taking on tasks without complaining, without needing to be prompted, striving to be a full equal and pull her own weight ...and yet, and yet...

Yet there were those rumors, and his own feelings that he could well have been tampered with without his ever noticing it. “No smoke without fire?” Perhaps. It was so damned hard to tell . .. and the way she was withdrawing wasn’t helping.

The next stop was two days distant, which meant an overnight stay in a Waystation midway between the two villages. Kris was no longer even thinking of his partner in terms of being female; now the strain on his nerves was because of his suspicions. They repeated their routine of the first night; Talia readying the shelter while Kris took care of the four-footed members of the party. His night-vision was much better than hers; it only seemed logical. And it gave him a chance to consult with Tantris without her around.

Tantris was puzzled, and worried. :I haven’t felt anything, little brother, but . . .:

“But?” Kris asked aloud.

:I am not certain that I would. Rolan is disturbed, and refuses to discuss it.:

“Great.”

:He is senior to me, as you are senior to Talia. If he does not wish to discuss the private affairs of his Chosen, that is his business, and his right.:

“I know, I know. Look, at least tell me if you pick up anything, all right?”

:You have my word.: his Companion replied, :but I think perhaps…:

“Perhaps what?”

:You need more expert aid,: came the reluctant reply.

“Tell me from where, and I’ll get it! There isn’t anybody in the Circle with a Gift like hers—and I rather doubt that Healer’s Empathy is identical.”

:True,: came the sigh in his mind, and after that, he could coax nothing more out of Tantris on the subject.

It troubled him deeply. If a Companion didn’t feel up to the problem…

And they did not even have time to reach the gate of the next village before they were met on the road by two different parties demanding justice.

They saw it coming easily enough. “Steady,” Kris said as they rode into a press of farmers in heavy brown homespun, who crowded up against the sides of the Companions with their petitions. Talia went pale and strained, and sat Rolan’s back absolutely motionless and with lips tightly compressed. Kris did his best to sort out the arguments, then finally lost patience and sharply ordered them all to hold their tongues.

When the clamor died down, he finally managed to ascertain that there were two aggrieved parties, both as alike to his eyes as a pair of crows—brown hair, thick brown beards, nearly identical clothing of brown homespun. After listening to both sides, and putting up with each one interrupting the other until he was ready to take a stick to both of them, he decreed that the argument was moot until third parries could be questioned.

The dispute was a trivial one by his lights, over a cow and her calf. The facts were that a bull had somehow made its way into a field containing a cow in season; not surprisingly, the calf resulted. The calf was quite plainly the offspring of the bull in question, nor did the cow’s owner deny this. What was under dispute was how the bull had gotten at the cow in the first place.

The cow’s owner claimed angrily that the owner of the bull had allowed it to stray, and that it had found its own way there, and thus he had incurred no stud fee. He pointed to the damage done to his hedges, and inquired with self-righteous wrath if anyone thought he’d ruin his own enclosure to save himself the fee.

The bull’s owner claimed just as vociferously that the owner of the cow had enticed the bull into the pasture with the express purpose of saving himself the stud fee.

Kris felt absolutely helpless; this was not an area in which he had any expertise at all. He glanced entreatingiy at his internee, who was farmbred, after all, and should have some notion of how to sort it out. Talia was looking a bit white around the lips and eyes, but otherwise seemed in control. He nudged Tantris up beside her, and whispered, “All right, trainee—you know more about this sort of thing than I do. Got any ideas?”

She started just a litde; possibly only someone watching for reactions would have noticed it. “I ... I think so,” she said, slowly. “It’s like a dispute we had once back at Sensholding.”

“Then take over. I’m out of my depth.”

She asked a few questions of the disputants, then went among the rest of the villagers, making inquiries into the habits of each of the parties in question. It was generally agreed that, while the owner of the cow was parsimonious, he was far too stingy to have ruined his own fences just to save a stud fee. And the bull’s owner had a habit of allowing it to stray, being too lazy to fix breaks in his own enclosures until after the beast had escaped yet another time.

But then she surprised Kris by asking a source he never would have considered—some of the children gathered at the edge of the crowd. After sidelong glances to be certain that no one was likely to tell them to hold their tongues, they told Talia that this particular cow was never kept in the field where the bull had supposedly found her. She was quite valuable, and her owner always kept her where he could keep an eye on her.

Talia returned to the disputants.

“This is my first judgment;” she said, slowly, and with an oddly expressionless tone. “There is no doubt that your bull did stray, and since it is quite probable that it did the damage claimed to the fences, you owe this man for the repairs he had to make.”

The owner of the bull looked extremely disgrunted; the cow’s owner gloated. Talia did not allow him to gloat for long.

“You, on the other hand,” she told him—not quite looking at him, “have never kept your cow in that particular field. You must have seen that the bull broken in, and decided that since the damage already done, you might as well save yourself the stud fee. So you moved your cow to the field where the bull was. Because of this, my second judgment is that you owe him half the stud fee he would normally have charged you.”

Now both of them looked chagrined.

“All things considered, I should think that you are probably even.”

They grudgingly agreed that this was the case.

“Don’t you leave yet!” she said, turning to the owner of the bull, and showing a little more animation. “You have been letting a potentially dangerous animal roam loose. My third judgment is that anyone who finds your bull roaming and confines it in a safe place for you to take home is entitled to have his cows serviced for nothing to pay him for his trouble. That should induce you to take better care of your stock in the future.”

The grins creasing the faces of the rest of the villagers made it clear that they considered Talia’s rulings to have been equitable and appropriate—and they were certainly popular. Kris smiled and gave her a little nod of approval; she smiled back, tentatively, some of the strain gone from around her eyes.

With children ranging along before and behind them, they continued down to the village itself, which was a slightly larger version of the first village they had served, and actually boasted a “town hall” of sorts. It was there that they set up shop in the single large room that served as a meeting hall, behind an ancient and battered marble-topped table that might well be the oldest object in the village. It was an improvement on the common room of the inn in that it wasn’t as smoky or cramped; but the fireplace too little to heat it, and Kris found himself hoping that they would be able to deal with their business and be on their way before he got frostbitten feet and fingers.

But another dispute for arbitration landed on them almost immediately; a problem of the location of the boundary between two neighboring farms. The farmers themselves were not overly concerned about the matter, as they were old freinds and had settled the problem over the years by sharing equally both the work and the fruits of the Fields in question. They confided to Kris, however, that they feared this could not continue for very much longer; both had more than one son to be provided for, and they feared that tempers were already growing heated on the subject among their offspring. Kris, after a glance at Talia showed him she had no opinion in this matter, agreed that the matter should be settled now, before it developed into a full-blown feud. He promised that they would attend to it as soon as they had discharged their other duties.

The disputants were obliged to be content with that. Kris called for the village records, and while each of them took a turn at relaying the news and the laws, the other searched the records provided by the village clerk for clues to the ownership of the properties in question.

Regrettably, the clues were few, and contradictory. It seemed that both claims were equally valid.

Talia was increasingly reluctant to take any part in the affairs at hand. Her shielding was disintegrating, slowly, but steadily; she was positive of that now. What was worse, she was no longer certain that she was able to keep her own feelings from intruding and influencing those around her, for her instinct-level control over projection was going, too. Kris was trying to put her at ease, but she could sense his own doubts as clearly as if he were shouting them aloud.

And when, the night before they were due, they discussed the problem of the disputed fields at length in the privacy of the Waystation, she was keeping herself under such tight control that she knew she was going to have a reaction-headache from the strain.

“The problem is that the stream they used as the original dividing line has changed its bed so many times that I can’t see any way of reconstructing what it was originally,” Kris sighed. “And you can’t cast a Truth Spell on a stream!”

She hesitated a long moment, drawing invisible patterns on the hearthstone of the Station with a twig. “Do you suppose they’d settle for dividing it equally? You’ve talked with them more than I have.”

“Not a chance,” Kris replied flatly, firelight casting ever-changing shadows across his face. “I’ve talked with the eldest sons, and they’re just about ready to come to blows over it. The fathers would be perfectly willing, but the children would never stand for it, and it’s the children who will make trouble if they’re not satisfied.”

“I can’t see making this an all-or-nothing proposition,” she sighed, after a long pause.

“Neither can I,” Kris stared into the flames, thinking. “Among the highborn the way to settle this would be to marry two of the younger children, then deed the land in question to them.”

“There’s not enough land there to support even one person, much less a family,” Talia felt impelled to point out, “even if we could find two of the children willing to marry.”

Kris played absently with one of the arrows from his quiver—then looked down at it suddenly, and smiled in inspiration. “What about the hand of Fate?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Suppose we each took a stand on the opposite sides of the area and shot arrows straight up—then drew a line between where they landed for the new border. If there’s no wind tomorrow, where they fall is going to be pretty much at the whim of the Lady. Do you think that would satisfy everyone?”

“That .. . that’s no bad notion,” she said, thinking hard. “Especially if we have the priest bless the arrows, pray over the fields, that sort of thing. It wouldn’t be human decision anymore; it would be in the hands of the gods—and who’s going to dispute the will of the gods? I think both families will be willing to abide by it. Kris, that’s a wonderful idea!” She sighed, rather sadly. “I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

“You did fine yourself, earlier,” he said, more forcefully than he had intended. “I was totally out of my depth.”

“Well, I don’t like the idea of anyone allowing livestock to roam at will. Out here on the Border if cattle or hogs get into the forested areas, they’re likely to go feral, and then you’ve got a real problem on your hands.”

“Hmn. I knew dogs gone wild could be a problem, but I never knew livestock could.” Kris filed that piece of information away for future reference.

“It’s a fairly serious problem,” she replied absently. “When domestic animals go feral, they have no fear of man the way wild animals do, and what’s more, they’re familiar with how people act. There was more than one person among Holderkin killed or maimed by feral stock.”

“Well, I repeat, you did fine. You shouldn’t be afraid to put your say in. That’s what this internship is all about.”

“I—” she started, then shrank back into herself.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she replied, moving back into the shadows where he couldn’t read her expression. “I’m just tired, that’s all. We should get some rest.”

That withdrawal troubled him badly ... but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

On their way out of town the next day, they stopped to acquire the clerk and the priest; when they presented their solution to the two families in question, both sides were heartily in favor of it. The farmers themselves were willing to agree to any solution to the problem that would defuse the potentially explosive situation between their children. The children of both families were equally certain that the gods would be with them when the arrows flew.

For something that had been under dispute for so long, the end came almost as an anticlimax. The priest blessed arrows, bows, Heralds, fields, families— anything that could possibly pertain to or be interested in the problem. (“If it moves, I’m blessing it,” he told the Heralds with a twinkle in his eyes. “And if it doesn’t move, I’m praying over it!”) Talia and Kris each took a stand on the exact midpoint of the northern and southern boundaries of the disputed dot and launched their arrows; the priest marked the landing point of one, the clerk of the other. The landing places were permanently designated with stone cairns and newly-planted trees, the new border was made and drawn on the maps and deeds. Both sides professed themselves satisfied. The Heralds went on their way.

But by now Talia was so withdrawn that Kris could not read her at all; she might as well have been a statue of a Herald. She seemed to have wrapped herself in a cocoon of self-imposed isolation, and nothing he could do or say seemed to be able to break her out of it.

And as for himself, he found himself wondering if both those disputes hadn’t been solved a little too easily. It would have been child’s play for her to have nudged the disputants ever so slightly into a more friendly—or at least less antagonistic—attitude toward one another. And once she was gone, if that was indeed what she had done, the quarrels would break out all over again.

Had he been overly impressed with the way she had handled the first case? Had she been adjusting his attitude?

There was simply no way of being sure ... no way at all.

Talia was coming to realize that all her control had been on a purely instinctive level; that she really didn’t understand how her own Gift worked. The training Visa had given her was the sort given to Mindspeakers, and in the face of this disintegration of control, very little of Visa’s teaching seemed directly applicable to her current problem. The Healers she’d worked with had never said anything to her... perhaps because they’d seen the control and assumed it was conscious rather than instinctive.

For that matter, her Gift might not be much like theirs except in effect. They certainly didn’t use their Empathy as primary Gift; it was used mostly as an adjunct to Healing.

They certainly weren’t confronted with the ethical considerations she found herself facing. When they weren’t Healing, they simply shielded. And they didn’t work with law and politics.

She longed to tell Kris—and feared to. It would only make things worse, and what could he do, after ail? His Gift wasn’t even of the same type as hers, and what training he had been given could hardly apply to her.

So she said nothing, endured in miserable self-doubt, and did her best to reverse a situation that was moving increasingly out of control.