Storm Warning (27 page)

There was nothing about this land that was quite the same as in Karse, not the food, the scents, the plants that grew in the gardens, or the furniture.
Everything
had some tinge of the foreign to it; he couldn’t even sleep without being reminded that he was not at home, for the herbs used to scent the linens were not the ones he knew, no bed he had ever slept in had been so thick that you were enveloped in it, and there were no familiar night-bird songs to thread through the darkness and lull you to sleep.

And there was no one he could confide in, either. Ulrich was too busy to be bothered with nonsense like this, and he would probably think him immature, unsuited for the duties he had been given. He was here to serve his master, not get in the way with his childish troubles.

Confiding in either Kerowyn or Alberich was absolutely out of the question. They would lose what little respect they had for him. They, too, would think that he was acting and reacting like a child. He was supposed to be a man, filling a man’s duty—and furthermore, if they knew he was this unhappy, they would tell their superiors. This homesickness could be used against the mission; any weakness was a danger.

I knew what I was getting into when Ulrich told me where we were going,
he told himself, as he stared out at the garden, wishing that he could make the bowers and winding pathways take on the mathematical radial precision of a Karsite garden.
I knew how alone I was going to be, and I knew that I was going where there were no signs of home.

But
had
he known, really? As miserable and lonely as his years in the Children’s Cloister had been, they were still years spent among people who spoke the same language as he did, who ate the same foods, swore by the same God. Here the only two people who even knew his tongue as native speakers were both men so many years his senior, and so high above him in social position, that there was no point in even thinking of confessing his unhappiness to them. Neither his master nor Alberich were appropriate confidants.

This was a marvelous place, full of fascinating things, a place where he had more freedom than he had ever enjoyed in his life—but it was not home.

It would never be home. And he despaired of ever finding anyone here he could simply
talk
to, without worrying if something that he might say could be misconstrued and turned into a diplomatic incident—or just used as a weapon of leverage against the mission.

If he couldn’t have home—he needed a friend. He’d never really had one, but he needed one now.

He continued to stare out the window, feeling lassitude overcome him more and more with every passing moment. He was too depressed, too lonely, even to think about rereading one of his books.

This is getting me nowhere. If I don’t do something soon, I might not be able to do anything before long.
He’d just sit there until someone came along and found him, and then he’d be in trouble. Ulrich would want to know what was wrong, people would think he was sick, and he’d just stir up a world of trouble.

There was a section of the gardens, a place where kitchen-herbs were grown in neatly sectioned-off beds, that reminded him marginally of the gardens at the Temple. It had no rosebeds, no great billows of romantic flowers, no secluded bowers, so it was not visited much by people his age. Perhaps if he got out into the sun, he would cheer up. Maybe all this gloom was only due to being cooped up indoors for too long.

And maybe fish would fly—but it was worth trying. Anything was better than sitting here, feeling ready to drown himself in his own despair.

He managed to get himself up out of his chair; that was the hard part. Once he had a destination, momentum got him there. The kitchen gardens were deserted, as he had thought—with the sole exception of one very old Priest of some group that wore yellow robes. The old man sat and dreamed in the sun, just like any of the old Red-robes in the Temple meditation gardens; his presence almost made the place seem homelike.

With a bit of searching, Karal found a sheltered spot, a stone bench partially hidden by baybushes and barberry-bushes. He moved into their shade, and slumped down on the cool stone.

The depression didn’t even fade, not the tiniest bit. Now that he was out here, the bright sunshine didn’t seem to make any real difference to how he felt.

He closed his eyes and a lump began to fill his throat; his chest tightened and ached, and so did his stomach. Why had he come here? Why didn’t he find a reason not to go? Why hadn’t he let someone older, more experienced, come with Ulrich? He could have found a new mentor, couldn’t he? And even if the new Priest wasn’t as kindhearted as Ulrich, wouldn’t dealing with a new mentor have been better than being this lonely? Did it matter that Ulrich was the only person who had ever been kind to him since he’d been taken away from his family? He had survived indifference and even unkindness before—and at least he would have been home! He would not have been stranded in a strange land, where everyone was a potential enemy.

He jumped, stifling an undignified squeak; he opened his eyes involuntarily. Who could be quoting from the Writ of Vkandis, and with such a
terrible
accent?

For a moment he did not recognize the woman who stood just in front of him, smiling slightly; she was dressed in a leather tunic and breeches like Kerowyn wore, though not so tight, and of white leather rather than brown.

A mature woman, rather than a girl, he guessed she was somewhere around thirty years old. She wasn’t very tall; in fact, she would probably come up to his chin at best; her abundant and curly chestnut hair had just a few strands of silver in it, and her eyes were somewhere between green and brown in color. She gave an oddly contradictory impression of both fragility and strength.

Then his mind cleared, and his memory returned; he had been fooled by her clothing. He had never seen this particular Herald in anything other than formal Court costume before. Talia—the Queen’s Own Herald.

Granted, she
was
a Sun-priest, but how had she learned the Writ? Why had she bothered? There was no real need for her to have done so; the office was only honorary.

“Thought I wouldn’t take my office as Priest of Vkandis seriously, did you?” she said, with a smile that was full of mischief. “Maybe Solaris only meant the title to be honorary, but it seemed to me I ought to give the honor its due respect, and learn something about the one I was supposed to be representing.”

“Oh,” he said, feeling very stupid and slow-witted. But then he realized that she was speaking in his tongue, and as bad as her accent was, the words soaked into him like rain into dry ground. He wanted to hear more; he needed to hear more.

“I thought that particular quote seemed awfully apt, given how you looked when I came up,” she continued. “Not at all happy, actually. Of course, it
could
just be indigestion—”

She cocked her head to the side, as if inviting his confidences. He hesitated. She seemed friendly enough, but how much difficulty could he get himself into by talking to her?

She waited a moment more, then her smile widened a trifle. She had wonderful, kind eyes. “Or perhaps it’s a peculiar kind of indigestion,” she suggested impishly. “You’ve swallowed a great huge lump of Valdemar, and it isn’t going down easily.”

He had to laugh at that, it was so unexpected, and so vivid an image. “I suppose that’s as appropriate an explanation as any,” he replied, relaxing marginally. He had longed for someone he could talk to—and here was someone offering herself, someone it might even be safe to unburden himself to. What
did
he know about this woman? She was some kind of special advisor to the Queen—Solaris had spent an awful lot of time in her company—but there was something more, something important.

Hansa trusted her.
That was it; he had the memory now. The Firecat had definitely trusted her; it was Hansa who had suggested she be made an honorary Priestess, if what Ulrich had told him was true.

She nodded at him in a friendly manner, and she did not seem inclined to move off despite his hesitation. Interestingly, she also made no attempt to intrude on him by sitting down on his bench uninvited. “I felt the same way when I first came here,” she told him, as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I was from a place so unlike this that it might as well have been on the other side of the world. You may find this difficult to believe, but my people kept their children very isolated from anything outside their farms. I had
no
idea what Heralds or Companions really were, other than the few things I’d been able to pick up from a bit of reading. I thought when Rolan Chose me that I had simply found a lost Companion. I thought I was supposed to bring him back to his owners, like returning a strayed horse!”

He had to laugh at that one with her; at least he knew a little more than she had! Rubrik had described the business of being “Chosen” by a Companion, that it was rather like being picked out for a Firecat’s particular attentions. Hard to believe that anyone in Valdemar could have been unaware of a Companion’s real nature.

On the other hand, it was easy enough to control a child, as she had pointed out. But being Chosen was supposed to be rather dramatic—he could well imagine someone trying to deny such a selection, for being Chosen would definitely put an end to any other plans one had for one’s life, but Talia must have been unique in her ignorance of what being Chosen meant.

“Seriously, though, I was as out-of-place here as you are feeling now; I think you must have gone through Holderkin lands to get here—well, that’s where I’m from.” She smiled as he nodded, very cautiously. “They swear they escaped from Karse, but I’d be more willing to believe that your people threw them out; there can’t be a more intransigent group of stoneheads in all the world. Personally, I think they’re more trouble to deal with than they’re worth.”

“I don’t know one way or the other,” he confessed. “I never studied them, so I couldn’t venture an opinion. But I can see how you would be feeling very—ah—foreign, when you arrived here. It was obviously very different here than among your own people. You probably
were
as foreign to Haven as I am.” There. That was diplomatic enough.

She studied her fingertips, then looked back up at him. “I’ve heard you haven’t been able to make any friends here, though, and that’s where our circumstances differ. Of course, you are laboring under a double handicap,” she pointed out. “You are with the envoy, which makes you dangerous to know, and you are from our former enemy, from a Priesthood known to be able to call up very powerful magic forces, which makes you
personally
rather dangerous to know. There’s a Shin’a’in saying, ‘It is wise to be remote in the presence of one who conjures demons.’ Hard to make friends when people you meet are afraid you’re going to turn them into broiled cutlets if you get annoyed with them.”

“Ah—interesting,” he replied, to buy himself time. It had not occurred to him that he might be frightening away would-be acquaintances; he never considered himself to be any threat to anyone. “I never thought of that.”

“Yes, well, our younglings can be a rather timid and conservative lot,” she said casually. “At least the children of the courtiers can. At the moment, I don’t know of anyone in the younger set who would deliberately be rude or hostile to you. On the other hand, they’ve had a rather unsettled time of it; that can make even the boldest youngling into a mouse. Most of the youngsters here have lost at least one family member to the conflicts with Ancar, and there are a few who went from being fifth- or sixth-born to being second or third heir to their parents’ holdings within the space of a few weeks. Many of them don’t even have parents anymore; they’re under the guardian-ship of older siblings. They don’t like to think of any of that; to escape from their memories they tend to concentrate on some fairly shallow interests. The trouble is, no one has put you into the set that’s actually doing something with their time—mostly because
they
are as busy as you.”

That shocked him out of his own depression entirely. How many of the Valdemar elite had died in this war? Had Karse suffered as much at the hands of Ancar? Surely not, at least, not at first. Perhaps once the alliance had been made public—

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said at last, hoping his tone conveyed the fact that he really
was
sorry. “I don’t believe we had nearly that much trouble with him.”

“No, you didn’t, not at first,” Talia agreed. She ran her hand through her hair in what looked to be a gesture of habit. “For one thing, he really didn’t want Karse all that badly, and for another, he was under the rather mistaken impression for some time that Solaris was male.” She shrugged, and spread her open hands. “Once he learned she was female, it was only a matter of time before he included her in his vendetta against women. We guessed that was why Solaris sent messengers to Alberich, looking for a truce.”

Then she smiled again. “But this gloomy talk is not why I stopped here! I saw you looking unhappy, and I hoped I could cheer you up. I don’t think war-talk is going to achieve that, do you?”