Arrows of the Queen (7 page)

Talia nodded dumbly. This woman had all the brisk efficiency of Keldar with none of Keldar's coldness—she had taken charge of everything so quickly that Talia's head spun. And it seemed, at least, that she was concerned that Talia was all alone on the Road. Having someone concerned for her well-being was a strange sensation. Talia might almost have suspected an ulterior motive except that the Guard was so open and honest. If there was anything to be wary of in her manner, Talia couldn't read it.

“Good enough; off you get.” She gave Talia a gentle shove toward the edge of the court where Rolan was waiting, surrounded by children. They were all vying for the chance to pet him or feed him a choice tidbit, and he seemed to Talia's eyes to be wearing a very smug, self-satisfied expression.

The Guardswoman gave Talia a boost into the saddle, refastened the saddlebags to the cantle and the bags brought by the Innkeeper to the snaffles at the front skirting, and gave Rolan a genial smack on the rump to send them on their way.

It wasn't until they were far down the Road that Talia realized that she hadn't yet had a single one of her questions answered.

At least—not directly. Indirectly though—now that she thought about it, there had been some information there. The Guardswoman had mentioned “rules” about journeys like this; that implied that they were commonplace. And she'd spoken to Rolan as she would have to a person—that implied that Rolan
was
as remarkable as legends claimed, and that his actions involving Talia were planned and intentional.

So—that meant that there was something that the Companion intended for her to be doing. But
what?

To have only bits of information was as maddening as having only half a book! But some of that information was beginning to make a pattern.

All right; it was time to try putting more of this together. The three books Talia owned always (now that she thought about it) referred to Companions as having some kind of magical abilities; a mystical bond with their Heralds. There had been an implication, especially in Vanyel's tale, that Companions could communicate sensibly with their Heralds and vice versa. The Guard had spoken to Rolan as if he were a person—actually as if he had taken charge of Talia. That bore out the feeling that Talia had had ever since the first day—that it was Rolan who knew where they should be going and what they should be doing.

Rolan had given every evidence of understanding what the Guard had said to him. For that matter, he seemed to react to everything Talia said in the same way.
He
was the one who found the Waystations every night;
he
was the one who plainly guarded her. He was the one who knew the way back to the Collegium—the Guard had said as much.

It followed that he'd really had a purpose in being where she had encountered him—the Guard had said he'd been out a long time—and that purpose involved her. There was no getting around it. The question was—why?

Was it—dared she think—he might have been looking for someone to be tested as a Herald-candidate?

She had no notion of how Heralds actually
became
Heralds—except that they had to undergo strenuous training at the Collegium. Only Vanyel's tale had mentioned early on that he nearly hadn't had the courage to take up the task—the tale had made no mention of how he'd been picked. And all she knew of Heralds from Hold gossip was that they were supposedly monsters of moral depravity; wanton and loose, indulging in sensuous, luxurious, orgiastic behavior. She had suspected most of this was spite and sheer envy, especially since Heralds gave short shrift to Hold ideas of a woman's inferiority and proper place in life, and they answered to no authority but that of the Monarch and each other. That there were women in the Guard had come as a surprise, but since her first book had been the quest of Sun and Shadow, Talia had long been aware that there were women as Heralds who held equal position with the men. That freedom was one of the reasons she'd longed to become one.

Did she dare to dream that might happen now

 

Just when Talia thought she might be getting used to the surprises of her journey, she was taken unawares again. The guard at Kettlesmith was not only another woman, but was one bearing obvious battlescars, with a peg of wood replacing one leg from the knee down. She told Talia, quite offhandedly, that she'd lost the rest of the leg to a wound she'd taken in the last war. The idea of a woman being in battle was so foreign to Talia's experience that she was in a half daze all through her meal and until she reached the outskirts of town afterward. It was only meeting with the Herald that shocked her out of it.

The Road led down into a wooded valley, still and cool. The trees were mostly pines, and Rolan's hooves crushed the needles that had collected on the Road's surface so that they traveled in a cloud of crisp scent. They were well inside the wood itself and out of sight of habitation within a few moments. Finally, in the heart of the wood the Road they'd been on met with another—there was a crossroads there. Talia didn't even notice that there was someone approaching on the other road under the shadows of the trees until an exclamation of startlement jarred her out of her trance.

She looked up, starting out of her daze. Facing her she saw, not more than four or five paces away and his astonishment written plain on his face, a white-clad man on a cloud-white mare. It was a Herald, a real Herald, mounted on
his
Companion.

Talia bit her lip, suddenly feeling a chill of fear. Even after all she'd been told, she still wasn't entirely sure she was doing right.
Now
she was for it; there was no disguising that Rolan was a Companion and that she wasn't any kind of a Herald. If she was to find herself in trouble, this encounter would bring it. She was conscious of an odd little disappointment, though, under all her apprehension; somehow it didn't seem quite proper for a Herald to be so—homely.

For the young man now approaching was just that. Carrying himself with all the authority of his office, poised, collected, yes. Obviously sure of himself, and every inch the Herald, but still—almost ugly. He certainly was nothing like the beautiful Vanyel or the angelic Sunsinger of the tales.

His voice made up for it, though.

“By the Hand of the Lady! Rolan, as sure as I stand here!” The words were melodious and unexpectedly deep. “By all the gods, you've finally Chosen!”

“Th-they told me to take him back to the Collegium, m'lord,” Talia stuttered with nervousness, keeping her eyes down as was proper for a girl speaking to a man of rank, and waiting for the axe to fall. “I didn't know what else to do, and they all seemed so sure—”

“Whoa! You're doing the right thing, exactly right,” he cut her torrent of explanation short. “You mean you don't know? No, of course you don't, or you wouldn't be acting like I'd caught you with your hand in my beltpouch.”

Talia looked up for a second, bewildered by his words. He didn't speak anything like the Heralds in her tales, either. He had almost sounded like Andrean for a moment.

She longed to see if his eyes looked like Andrean's, too, but glanced hastily back down to the pommel when he tried to meet her gaze.

He chuckled, and out of the corner of her eye she could see that his expression was of gentle good humor. “It's quite all right. You're doing exactly as you should. Keep straight on the road you're on, and you'll be at the capital before dinner; anyone there can direct you to the Collegium. Hellfire, Rolan knows the way better than anyone else—you won't get lost. I wish I could tell you what's going on, but it's against the rules. You have to be told the whole of it at the Collegium—otherwise you'd be getting all kinds of stories about what all this means, and you'd be taking days to get straightened out afterward.”

“But—” She was longing for someone, anyone, to explain this whole mess to her. It was like being caught in some kind of enormous game, only she was the only one that didn't know the rules and was stumbling from square to square without knowing why or where she was going. If
anyone
knew the whole truth, it would obviously be a Herald. And the kindness in his eyes made her long to throw the whole tangle in his hands. How anyone so homely could put her in mind of Andrean, she had no idea—but he did, and she found herself drawn to him as she'd not been to any male since her brother's death.

“No buts! You'll find out everything you need to know at the Collegium! Off with you!” With that, he rode close enough to reach out and smack Rolan's rump heartily, surprising the Companion enough that he jumped and broke into a canter, leaving the Herald far behind. Talia was so busy regaining her balance that she didn't notice the Herald and his own Companion galloping off into the trees, on a course that would eventually bring them back onto the road considerably ahead of Talia.

By the time she'd gotten over her startlement, the road was becoming crowded with other wayfarers, both going in her direction and in the opposite; other riders, walkers, carts drawn by various beasts, pack animals. But although she craned her neck in every direction, there was no sign of other Heralds.

The crowd on the road was not quite like any other crowd Talia had ever found herself among. For one thing, it was loud. Holderfolk kept their voices restrained at all times; even the Harvest Fair gatherings at the height of bidding excitement hardly generated more than a buzz. For another, all these people wore their emotions, their personalities, plain to be seen on their faces. The faces of well-schooled Holderfolk were closed, giving nothing away, and unlikely to display anything that would reveal their true feelings to one of their fellow creatures.

The other travelers took little special notice of her for the most part. Rolan threaded his way among them with delicate precision, making far better time than most of their fellow wayfarers, although keeping a good pace didn't really seem. to be a prime consideration for most of them. Talia was so involved in people-watching that she forgot to watch for the city.

Then they topped a rise, and there it was.

It was so enormous that Talia froze in fright at the sight of it. Once again it was just as well that it was Rolan who plainly had charge of their journeying, or Talia would have turned him back along the way they'd come, bolting back to the familiarity of the Hold.

It sat in a river valley below them, and the view was excellent from the hilltop they'd just mounted. From here it could be seen that it had originally been a walled city, much as the Hold villages were but on a much bigger scale. With the passage of time and increased security, however, the city had been allowed to spread beyond the walls, spilling over them like water from the basin of a fountain. And like water, the spillage had followed certain channels; in this case, the roads.

Within the walls, houses crowded together so thickly that all Talia could see were roofs. Within the first wall there seemed to be a second wall, enclosing a few large buildings and a great deal of green, open space with trees in it. Outside the walls were more buildings, from single-storied huts to massive windowless places that could have held every structure at Sensholding within their walls. These clustered all around the first wall, then trailed out in long arms that followed the paths of the roads and the river. Talia's eyes were drawn irresistibly back to that inner space of green and trees and a stone edifice that towered over all the rest. This—this surely was the Palace and the Collegium—but before Talia could be certain that this was indeed the case, Rolan's steady pace had brought them down past the point where the view was so clear.

As they came closer to the area where the city dwellings began, Talia found herself assaulted on all sides by sound and noise. Hawkers were everywhere, crying their wares; shopkeepers had people stationed by the doors, screaming at the tops of their lungs, extolling the virtues of the goods within the shops. Children played noisily in and around the crowd, often skirting perilously close to the hooves of the horses, donkeys, and oxen that crowded the street. Neighbors screeched gossip to each other over the noise of the crowd; from the vicinity of inns came voices loud in argument or song. Talia's head reeled, her ears rang, and her fear grew.

And the smells! She was assaulted by odor as she was by sound. Meat cooking, bread baking, smoke, dung, spices, sweat of man and beast, hot metal, spilled beer—her poor, country-bred nose was as overwhelmed as her ears.

They came to the gate in the first wall; there were guards there, but they didn't hinder her passage though they looked at her with expressions she couldn't quite read; curiosity, and something else. The wall they passed under frightened her even more; it was as tall as the rooftop of the Temple back home. She felt terribly small and insignificant, and the weight of it crushed her spirit entirely.

The noise and tumult, if anything, was worse inside. Here the houses were multi-storied, and crowded so closely together that their eaves touched. Everything began to blur into a confused muddle of sound, sight, and scent. Talia huddled in Rolan's saddle, unaware that she was drawing pitying looks from the passersby, with her eyes so wide with fear in her pinched, white face. It was just as well that Rolan knew exactly where to go, for she was so frightened that she would never have been able to ask directions even of a child.

It seemed an age before Rolan paused before a gate in the second, inner wall. The gate was small, only large enough to admit a single rider, and closed, and the guard here looked her over curiously. Unlike the lighter uniform of the others, this man was clad in midnight blue with silver trimmings. He opened the gate and came forward as soon as he saw them, and Rolan waited for his approach. He smiled encouragingly at Talia, then drew close enough to read the little marks on Rolan's saddle, and gave an exclamation of glee.