Valdemar Anthology - [Tales of Valdemar 02] - Sun in Glory and Other Tales of Valdemar (13 page)

But the bond between Companion and Herald was strong; the creature most affected by the sudden outward blow was Rodri. Would have to be Rodri.

Gregori screamed. He screamed, not with his Gift, but with his voice. And she, seeing her own graveyard, and knowing what lay beneath the earth, screamed with him.

And then, soundless, he turned, dragon wings wide. He listened for the sound of singing, for the songs of joy or hope or love that he had heard for almost all of Kayla's life. She knew: It was her song.

And what he found was her pain, her despair, her endless rage at fate and winter and people who still had children to love.

She continued to stroke his hair.

 

Darius woke her.

She rose at the sound of her name, and found that she could see the room clearly; the storm had passed for the moment. She turned to look at the man who lay in the bed; saw that his eyes were closed. His lashes were long, like boys' lashes so often are; his skin was winter-pale.

On impulse, she bent and kissed his forehead.

 

“He isn't doing it on purpose,” she said quietly, her arm around Darius' neck.

Darius said nothing.

“The King had little patience for him, and no affection.”

“Gregori felt what the King felt, Darius. He wasn't just guessing.”

She thought of her children. After a moment, she said, “He would have killed himself.”

“I don't know.” But she was beginning to. She said, instead, “You lied to me. He did kill Rodri.”

“Rodri was mad with terror and fear, and it was Gregori's.”

Darius said nothing.

Kayla let her arm slide away from his shoulder. “I have to speak with Gisel,” she said softly. Just that.

 

Gisel was waiting for her, tense and pale. She looked old, Kayla thought, bent with Gregori's weight. But she smiled a moment when she saw Kayla enter the room.

And looked surprised.

“He can't stop,” Kayla told her.

“You don't believe in idle chatter, do you?”

“I'm from the Holds,” Kayla replied tartly.

“But you survived him. You . . . touched him, and you survived.”

Kayla nodded. “I know why Darius waited,” she told the King's Own. “And I know that what you thought he waited for can't happen. Not here.”

“You can't reach him?”

“I can. But—” She shook her head. Stared at her hands for a moment.

“But?”

“Not here.”

Gisel rose, mistaking her meaning.

“Not in the capital,” Kayla told her gently, almost as if she were speaking to a child.

“What do you mean?”

“Let me take him home.”

“This is his home.”

Kayla rose. Rose and walked to a window whose splendor she had never seen in Riverend. Light broke upon the river that ran through the city; the river was murky and slow. She thought it must be warm, as warm as the air in this almost endless spring. Without turning, she said, “I have to take him to Riverend.”

“You can't. Here, the Healers and the Empaths have worked to contain him.”

“And they're failing. One by one, they're failing. He speaks to sorrow and loss, and speaks so strongly that that's all that's left to those who can hear his voice.”

“You hear him.”

“Yes.”

“Magda—Margaret Merton—was the only Empath to equal Gregori in the Kingdom. You—and I mean no offense, child—are untested.”

“Yes. And I will remain untested. For now. I am safe in Riverend. Do you know why I can hear him, feel him, listen to him, and walk away?”

“No, child, although I am certain there are those within the Collegium who would love to know it.”

“Because I have felt everything he offers, and I have learned to . . . walk . . . away from it. Let me take him home.”

Gisel hesitated. And then, after a moment, she nodded. “I will need to speak with the King. Wait outside.”

 

But Kayla did not wait.

Instead, she went to her room, and found Daniel. He smiled when he saw her.

“Daniel,” she said quietly, “I have to leave the Collegium. I come from the North, near the mountains, and I have to return there.”

“Can I come with you?”

“Yes.” She held out her arms and he ran into them; she lifted him easily, catching most of his weight with her right hip. “But first, I want you to come with me.”

“Where?”

“To meet a Prince.”

 

The door was open slightly. No one, Kayla realized, had touched it since she'd walked away. She took a deep breath. “No matter what you feel or hear here, remember that I'm with you. That I will always be with you.”

Daniel nodded.

She nudged the door open with her foot and took a step inside. The Prince was sleeping.

“Is that a Prince? Really?”

‘Yes, Daniel.”

“He doesn't look like much of a Prince.”

“No, he doesn't.”

“Is he sick?”

“Yes.”

“Can you make him better?”

“Maybe.” She walked to the side of the bed and sat on it.

The eyes of the Prince opened. She felt Daniel's sudden terror, and she held him tightly, pressing her chin into the top of his head and rocking him. This sensation was as real as any sensation, an echo of another time. She'd been happy, then.

She remembered it.

Drew on it, calling her ghosts. This boy was her son. this boy was her child.

She loved her children, and for her children, she could sing. She remembered the sweet, gentle nature of her oldest, and the stubborn fury of her youngest, and for the first time since she had bid them farewell, she laughed in delight at their antics.

The man in the bed stirred.

She had survived their loss because of her vows, and she had found that sorrow, in the end, could not keep her from the other children in the Hold. They needed her. Their parents needed her. In the worst of winter, she could soothe temper, displace boredom, still fury; she could invoke the love her mother invoked.

Even after the deaths.

Even then.

“Gregori.”

The sound of his name drained the room of light. But Daniel was safe; she felt his fear struggle a moment with her love. And lose.

Such a small thing, that fear.

She reached out to touch Gregori's forehead; his eyes widened in terror and he backed away. But he had been abed many, many months; he was slow. And she, mountain girl, miner's daughter, was fast. She ran her fingers through his hair and let go of all thought.

What remained was feeling.

Love.

Loss.

Gently, gently now, she brushed his hair from his face. She felt the raging fury, the emptiness, the guilt, and the horror that he could not let go. Not on his own.

But surely, surely she had felt this before?

A child's emotions were always raw, always a totality. They existed in the
now,
as if the past and the future were severed neatly by the strength of what they felt in the present.

But she continued to touch his face, the fine line of his nose, the thin, thin stretch of his lips.

“You need my song,” she whispered, “and I had forgotten how to sing. I am sorry. I am sorry, Gregori.”

She did not question; did not think. To do either was death. Instead, she gave in to her Gift.

To her mother's Gift. What she felt, she
made
him feel, just as he had made his enemies feel.

She sat in the room with her younger child in her lap and her older child in his bed.
:Hush, hush.:

And when the older child began to weep, she held him.

 

Darius was a patient Companion. And a large one.

He did not complain at the weight of three passengers, and had he, Kayla would have kicked him. After all, she was no giant, Daniel was less than half her weight, and the Prince, tall and skeletal, probably weighed less than the saddlebags.

The King had agreed to let his son go, but with misgivings; it was therefore decided, by Royal Decree, that a Healer, and three attendants, would accompany them.

She was grateful for that; the spring in Riverend had already passed into summer, and in the winter, with a Healer, there might be
no
deaths. A winter without death.

“Kayla?” Gregori said, as the Hold came into view.

She felt his anxiety.

“Daniel's fallen asleep and my arm's gone numb. I don't want him to fall—”

“You won't let him fall,” she told the Prince gently. “And I won't let you fall.”

“Will it be all right? Will they accept me?”

“I was so lonely here,” she answered. “I was so lonely. I don't think they'll begrudge us each other.” She smiled, and the smile was genuine. “Do you think you've learned the dawnsong well enough to sing it with me?”

Dust motes swirled through the sunbeam glaring into the barn. By its light, Santar trapped the upturned right front hoof of the salt merchant's gelding between his muscular calves. “Hand me the pick.” Blindly, he held out his right hand.

Santar's younger brother, Hosfin, slapped the tool into the proffered palm. “Do you see something?” He crowded in for a closer look, his tunic tickling Santar's bare arm, his shadow falling over the hoof.

“Think so,” Santar grunted. “Got to get past all the crap first.” Flipping the pick in a well-practiced motion, he gingerly hooked out chunks of road grime and straw. The sharp odor of manure rose momentarily over the sweet musk of horse. “Here.” He touched the pick to a gray cobble shard lodged in the groove between forehoof and frog. He dug under the hard, sharp stone. The horse jerked its foot from his grasp, just as the pick lodged into position, and the movement sent the fragment flying. It struck the wooden wall with a ping, then tumbled to join the rest of the debris on the stable's earthen floor. Still clutching the pick, Santar scooped the hoof back upward to examine the damage. He discovered a light bruise but nothing that suggested serious swelling or infection. He stroked the injury with a gentle finger, and the horse calmed.

Hosfin's head obscured the hoof. “No wonder he was hopping and snorting.”

“Yeah.” Santar released the hoof and patted the horse's sticky flank. “Could have been a lot worse. Lucky beast.”

“Lucky
man,
” Hosfin corrected. He stepped back, skinny arms smeared with grime, sandy hair swept back and tied with a scrap of leather. “Don't think he could afford another horse by the look of him. Needs to learn to take better care of his valuables.”

Santar's brown hair hung in shaggy disarray, in need of a cut. Horse work had honed his muscles: lugging grain bags and hay bales, exercising his charges, cleaning and grooming. He also had an almost inexplicable way with afflicted creatures that made his father's stables an exceptionally logical place for any traveler to board. They might find stables nearer their lodgings or destination, ones larger or with more modern construction, ones with fancier names or décor. But Santar's father prided himself on service, mostly provided by his seven sons and one daughter. Travelers who cared as much for their animals' comfort as their own tended to seek them out, including the occasional Herald from Valdemar. Santar especially loved their huge white mounts with their impeccable coats and strange, soft blue eyes. They seemed so docile and intelligent, their conformations so perfect, their intensity of attachment to their riders so mythically intense. The Heralds tended them so vigilantly, Santar rarely had the opportunity to do anything for them but stare.

A sharp whinny from the yard sent Santar's head jerking up so suddenly he nearly brained his brother. “Who's that?”

Hosfin's thin shoulders lifted, and he slouched from the stall. As Santar watched him move, he marveled at how his brother had grown just in the last few months, gaining the gawky, spindly proportions of an adolescent. Santar wondered if their eldest brother had looked at him the same way when he had turned fourteen three yeas ago.

Santar caught up to his brother at the door of the stable. The younger man stood as if frozen, the door wedged against him. Alarmed, Santar pushed past Hosfin. “What is it?”

A handsome white stallion stood in the yard, coat shimmering silver in the late afternoon sunlight. Against his fine, pink hooves, the grass looked like crystalline emerald; and blue sky reflected from eyes full of wisdom. Santar shook his head to clear it, shocked to find the creature of his reverie come so abruptly to life. “It's . . . it's a Companion.”