Under the Vale and Other Tales of Valdemar Page 14

  After a while she noticed that Rhiannon had started singing again. Both women were moving around camp. Shay should help. She stood up, but Dionne said, “Sit down a bit longer. I’ve got something for you to do there.” Sure enough, she showed up with two metal sticks, each with a sausage on the end. “Hold these over the fire. They’re cooked, so they just need to be warmed.”

  Shay kept one stick in each hand, turning them slowly, her belly waking up at the rich fat dripping onto the coals.

  They stopped feeding the fire while they ate, and then the women were careful that it was all the way out. Shay approved. They might not be slow and careful, but it was the careful part that mattered. She liked these women a lot even if they didn’t need her to help them.

  Snow fell off and on all the next day, although thankfully no winter wind came with it. Shay couldn’t sleep in the saddle behind Rhiannon--the horse was too tall and swayed too much. But she had wanted to ride for all her life, and she might not ever ride again. So by the time they made camp, she fell exhausted and cold and pleased onto the ground. Dionne took one look at her and covered her up with the damp cloak. It was still dry inside even if was heavy and smelled of wet horse.

  Shay drifted, listening to the murmur of the women’s voices and the sounds of wood being gathered, thwacked together to knock off snow, and piled. She should be up helping them since gathering wood was something she did well, but her body didn’t want to move. So she lay still, warm enough under the blanket to think, and thought about how to be helpful. If only she could prove that she could be a good helper, maybe Dionne and Rhiannon would want her.

  A candlemark later there was more warm tea to drink and some dried meat and slightly stale bread to share out. Dionne mentioned that they’d be out of the snow the next day and would be close to a town, High Meadow. Shay had never been so far from home, but she said, “Sometimes people come from there to buy our sheep.”

  “Do you know how to herd sheep?” Rhiannon asked.

  “No.” She didn’t want to tell them about the kids throwing rocks at her.

  Dionne frowned. “What did you do?”

  “I helped my mom pick the plants she used and helped her dry them.”

  Dionne stood up and rummaged in her packs, which had been hung on a nearby tree. She drew out three bags of dried plants and handed one to Shay. “Do you know what this is?”

  She opened the bag and smelled it. Then she touched the dried plants. “Sweet rose.”

  “What did your mom use sweet rose for?”

  “She made tea when people had headaches and used it in one of the salves that makes cuts stop hurting.”

  Dionne nodded and handed her the second bag. “Don’t touch this one with your bare hands.”

  “Nettle. She made soup with it, but she never let me touch it until it cooked. She also mixed it with other plants to make things for swelling.”

  After Shay identified the third bag as fleawort, Dionne sat back on her haunches and looked at Rhiannon instead of at Shay. “It might work.”

  Rhiannon was still for a moment, and then she looked at Shay and smiled. “Let’s try it.”

  Shay was so busy thinking about her mom and plants, she didn’t think about what they meant for a long time. Besides, they hadn’t been talking to her. She would be patient.

  They stopped in High Meadow and stayed at an inn, all three of them sharing one room. Rhiannon sang for the people in the inn while Shay and Dionne sat on a nearby bench and ate a thin stew that tasted like heaven even if it was only root vegetables and spices and water.

  When she fell asleep that night, Shay told herself not to want anything, that what Dionne and Rhiannon had done so far was enough. Surely they would leave her here, and she could find something to do or someone to take her in. She should find a way to thank them in the morning.

  After breakfast and some bargaining with the innkeeper (a woman here, fat and round and a little grumpy) Shay helped them gather up the tack and their bags from the room and stood out of the way while they got the horses ready.

  The stable boy brought around a sturdy little red pony with a saddle and bridle already on it, and Dionne and Rhiannon grinned widely when he helped Shay up onto it. She had never been so surprised by anything good in her life. “His name is Apple,” the boy said.

  “Is that because he’s red?” Shay asked.

  The boy laughed. “He’s not that red, but he loves apples, and he’ll come all the way across the pasture for a little bit of one. Sometimes it’s the only way to catch him.”

  Shay was afraid to ask if the pony was hers, but they rode away from town with Shay on its back and a long lead line between her and Rhiannon to keep them together. Maybe the women were going to let her stay with them after all.

  The roads were clear now, and the going was still cold but dry. Apple’s hooves made a pleasant sound on the frozen trail, and Shay focused on that and talked to him, trying to ignore the way her legs and butt hurt from riding.

  By the time they had been riding three more days, her legs didn’t hurt anymore, and she’d fallen in love with the pony and wanted her life to stay like this forever. She couldn’t bring herself to ask, so she did everything she could to help and was very careful not to do anything wrong.

  They started going through bigger towns with places that made metal and fields of horses instead of sheep and guildhalls for people who built houses.

  The roads became busier. And then they came up to the biggest place Shay had ever seen, one with wide cobbled streets and walls.

  Haven.

  It felt like seeing a story come alive. She gaped when she saw two Heralds ride out on Companions, and she understood for the first time what her mother had meant when she said Companions were nothing like horses. They were not; they were so beautiful she thought she might die of happiness for just seeing them.

  As they wound farther into the city, Shay felt the good feelings shrinking inside her. A sadness filled her, completely against her will. She had nothing to offer here. If she couldn’t wash dishes in Little’s Town, what could she possibly do in Haven?

  She patted Apple on the side of his neck, focusing on the mixed brown and white and red of his coat that looked simply reddish-brown from a distance. Focusing didn’t help, because she couldn’t possibly keep Apple. No one had ever said he was hers, and it made sense that they procured the pony so she didn’t tire out the other horses.

  They pulled up outside a great big building that looked like the school from Little’s Town only bigger and grander and grown up. Students in gray and pale green streamed in and out of the building, everyone moving fast and looking smart and neat. Rhiannon still used a long lead attached to Apple’s bridle, and she came up and held Apple by the head, whispering sweet nothings to him. Dionne came around to help Shay dismount. She managed to get off without any more than the steady form of Dionne nearby, staying slow and careful in her movements so she wouldn’t embarrass the women by falling here, or herself by needing help with simple things.

  Shay noticed that she was wearing the same clothes she’d started out in, and while they’d been washed once, that had been two days ago. Her pants had tears in the knees where she’d fallen. Her shirt had been mended in three places and smelled like horse and cold and the road, not right for Haven at all.

  “This is the Healer’s Collegium.” Dionne took Shay’s chin in one hand and guided Shay’s face so that she looked Dionne in the eyes. “Are you all right?” she asked. “You look scared. There’s nothing to be afraid of here.”

  Shay nodded, not willing to try to talk in case it made her lose control and loosed the tears she felt in the corners of her eye.

  “We want you to come with us to meet someone.”

  “Okay.” Her own voice sounded small, so she straightened her back and said it again. “I will.”

  Dionne took Shay’s hand, and they followed Rhiannon down a twisty cobbled path worn smooth by many feet. They turned onto a thinner pat
h and went through a wooden gate into a garden. Stone benches sat in each corner of a lovely little garden full of raised beds. Only a few were full now, since it was winter even in Haven. The bare beds lay fallow and ready for the spring, neatly raked and cleaned out. Shay’s mom had kept a few pots to grow herbs she couldn’t gather, but this was richness beyond imagining. Shay let go of Dionne’s hand and started walking through the beds that still had plants, smelling each one. Half were familiar.

  When she turned around, Dionne had gone. Rhiannon stood by one the benches, looking like she was waiting for something or someone. Shay went and sat by her, and Rhiannon put a hand on her shoulder. Then she started singing one of the tunes she’d sung for Shay almost every night, the lullaby her mother had known. It calmed Shay and reminded her to stop her racing thoughts and fears and take things slowly. They waited a long time, but the longer they waited, the more Rhiannon’s song calmed her and chased away her worries about what people here would think of her. So she felt easy when Dionne brought out an older woman with a thin, sharp face and bright eyes. “This is the herb mistress for Healers. She likes to be called Janelle.”

  Shay held her hand out. “I’m Shay.”

  The woman’s handshake was warm, and neither soft nor too hard. “Dionne told me quite a lot about you. I’m sorry about your mother.”

  “Me too.” The easiest shortest response she could make.

  “Can you tell me what the plants out here are?”

  Shay licked her lips, suddenly afraid she’d forget all the names. But she took is slow and easy, and managed to remember the names and how her mother used and cared for all of the plants she had seen before.

  Janelle nodded at Dionne, then looked at Shay. “Would you like to stay and help me the rest of the winter?” She paused. “I could use a hand soon, getting the spring plants started.”

  Shay didn’t react. Slow and steady.

  Janelle gestured toward Dionne and Rhiannon. “They need to go on.”

  Dionne spoke up. “But we’ll check on you next time we’re in Haven. Then if you want to go back home, I’ll take you.”

  Shay shook her head. “I don’t have a home.”

  The herb woman whispered, “Maybe you do now.”

  Shay looked at Janelle and thought, and then she said, “Thank you.”

  They went to get her pack, which had been tied behind Apple’s saddle. Shay hugged the pony tight. When she let go, she was crying. They were going to go without her. She had a place, but she didn’t want to leave the twins. “Can I ride somewhere else with you sometime?”

  Rhiannon smiled. “Maybe. If Janelle gives us good reports. And you can ride yourself if you have someone to go with you.”

  Shay blinked, confused.

  “We’re going to put Apple in the common herd and give you rights to draw him out if you want and to visit him and bring him apples.”

  She couldn’t believe that her mom dying was luck, but coming here was good. She was in Haven, and someone wanted her help. She’d have Janelle and Apple, and her new friends would visit. “The only thing better would be if I could go with you all the time,” she said, leaning over and giving Rhiannon a hug.

  “I’m sorry,” Rhiannon said.

  “Don’t be sorry. Mom always told me to take things slow and steady.”

  Dionne had come up behind them. “Maybe Rhiannon could learn that from you.”

  Rhiannon swatted at her, but it was playful, and the mingled laughter of the women made Haven look beautiful again.

  Sight and Sound

  Stephanie D. Shaver

  “Wil?”

  :Chosen?:

  The Herald snapped out of his reverie, sitting up with a snort on the hard wooden chair. “Sorry,” he said to Kyril. “Must’ve been woolgathering. You were saying?”

  “I was asking,” Kyril said, “about the circumstances that led to Herald Elene’s death.” His pen tip gleamed with ink, poised over the parchment.

  “Right.” Wil rubbed his eyes. The burden of being awake put a strain on his ability to be tactful and thorough. She died, he wanted to say. I’m sorry. She went into a river and drowned and died.

  But Kyril would pick every bone of the story until he got his damn details. No easy way out of this one.

  “She went into the river at Callcreek to save a boy who’d been caught in a flash flood,” Wil said. “Bad situation, all around.”

  “The boy—did she . . . ?”

  “Yes,” Wil said softly. “She Fetched him to shore.”

  Kyril nodded. “She is . . .was . . .terribly Gifted. Continue.”

  “They started to pull her back in, and apparently a log—”

  Blue flash of Foresight—

  —in the water out of nowhere so dark and cold and ah gods mother so sorry Elene so sorry Alrek no Alrek—

  It wasn’t a Foresight Vision—just the memory of one. It hit like an aftershock: not as bad as the original, but with enough intensity to stall his narrative.

  Wil envied Heralds who only knew who had died when the Death Bell rang. He always knew who and where. Sometimes, for people like Elene, his Foresight showed him firsthand details leading up to the death. People he’d been close to—internees, instructors, year-mates . . .

  Not that there are many of those left . . .dammit, focus! He grabbed hold of the disparate threads of his thoughts and forced himself to rattle off details, devoid of the panicked terror that his Foresight made him privy to.

  According to the shore crew that had been on the other end of Herald Elene’s lead rope, a log had tangled in her lifeline and dragged her under. Some of the men swore the rope snapped, others suspected someone panicked and cut it. Elene’s Companion, Alrek, had ber-serked, run in mad circles, and then galloped off, the frayed bit of filthy rope trailing behind him.

  “Did you question the locals about who might have cut the rope?” Kyril asked.

  “I did, sir. Under Truth Spell,” Wil said. “No guilty parties. It sounds like the whole situation was a big, confused mess.”

  “And Alrek?”

  Wil shook his head. “Hasn’t been seen since the incident.”

  Kyril nodded and picked up a clean page. “We’ll find his body. Sometimes they just show up in Companion’s Field. Was Elene recovered?”

  “Yes, but . . . she’d been in the water awhile.” The villagers had done their best, given what time and the muddy waters had done to Elene. She’d been carefully wrapped in sackcloth and transported on a bed of sweet grasses and flowers.

  “Her grave is by the Temple of Astera near Callcreek,” Wil finished.

  Kyril made a note. “Anything else?”

  Wil mulled the question. The Vision had been useful in caulking the gaps, giving him questions to ask the denizens of Callcreek. Wil felt that he’d gleaned all he could from it for Kyril’s report.

  And yet . . .

  “Sir, something is nagging at me,” he said at last.

  “Oh?”

  “But I can’t tell you.”

  Kyril raised a brow.

  “I mean I can’t tell you,” Wil clarified. “It’s my Gift, sir. My gut says there’s something, but not what.”

  “Ah. The famously unreliable Foresight.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Quite all right. I know better than to try to pry it from you. Just be sure to tell me when it surfaces.”

  Wil nodded.

  “Excellent. One last thing, then.” For the first time since they’d begun their dialogue, Kyril set his pen down, then sat straight up and folded his hands onto the desk.

  “Elene had a family,” he said.

  Wil felt his stomach twist.

  “We have an obligation to them,” Kyril continued. “When possible we prefer to deliver the news in person. I understand you knew her personally.”

  Wil nodded.

  “What I’m about to ask of you isn’t for everyone,” Kyril said. “Honestly, it’s not for anyone. It’s a hard task, telling a m
other her daughter is never coming home. Can you do this, Herald?”

  :Wil, you’re exhausted,: Vehs said.:If you don’t want—:

  “Yes,” Wil said. “I can.”

  :Or you could ignore me completely.:

  Kyril gave a small sigh. “The Queen and the Circle thank you. Come back tomorrow—we’ll talk about protocol for notifying the family.” He cocked his head. “Meanwhile, you look like you need sleep.”

  “In buckets,” Wil admitted, laughing a little. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Thank you, Herald,” Kyril replied.

  Wil departed the Records Room to the rhythmic scratching of Kyril’s pen.

  : . . . nightmares are getting worse. You need a Healer. Are you even listening?:

  :No,: Wil replied honestly.

  As usual, unseen someones had prepared his apartment for his return to Haven. There was fresh water in the ewers and seasoned firewood by the hearth.

  He’d been focused on building the fire, not Vehs. Wil’s hands were callused and leathery from years on Circuit. He didn’t bother with gloves or pokers anymore, just shoved the lit wood around until the configuration pleased him, ignoring the sparks and splinters.

  :Healers—: Vehs started.

  :The Healers want me to drink sleep tinctures,: Wil shot back. :And not the cute stuff made with hops and shamile. The mean stuff you give to a bull when you need to geld him.:

  :No one is gelding you, Chosen.:

  Wil snorted.

  But Vehs wouldn’t let it die. :If it’s what you need to sleep . . .:

  What Vehs was nattering on about was that the Vision didn’t just intrude on his waking thoughts. It had become a recurring nightmare, one he couldn’t seem to shake. Wil hadn’t slept—really slept—in a week.

  His sleep-debt had been growing even before Elene’s death, thanks to nights on the Karse Border. Now that debt was coming due, with interest. Hallucinations, jittery nerves, the acute, fleeting sense that he was being watched (when he wasn’t).

  It was nothing he hadn’t dealt with before. The Vision would fade eventually. He’d endure until then.

  :I’d rather deal with the nightmare.: Wil rolled his right shoulder, wincing. Spring had been damp and chilly, and his joints protested the chill. He shucked off his Whites, the cold air making his skin and scars prickle. Under the bedcovers it felt even colder.