No True Way Read online

  The mayor shook Hari’s hand. “I can open my larder for the guests too, Hari. Anything you need, just send Sparrow over, and we’ll get it for you.”

  Mayor Undor brushed his too-long forelock of hair out of his eyes and smiled. “Sparrow, you’re a goodhearted girl. If your Companion there says this boy is safe to stay, I’ll believe him. You go take care of him like you do.”

  A flood of warmth passed through Sparrow, a cascade of gratitude. “Thank you, sir,” she said. “I’ll take care of Cloudbrother at home. And that’s how it should be.”

  The mayor smiled, nodded, stepped back. But Sparrow could see he was still worried.

  * * *

  Hari helped her ease Cloudbrother off his mount and into the house. Together, they tucked him into the second featherbed, and covered him with old quilts, though he had no fever. “He looks like a leaf getting ready to blow away,” her father remarked, and he was right.

  In the bed, he looked profoundly peaceful, milky-pale, asleep. Who would want to return from floating in the clouds? Sparrow wondered, thinking ruefully of all the chores that waited for her every morning.

  But Abilard needed her to call him back. How would she reach him?

  She returned outside, where the Companion patiently waited. “You must be starved after such a run,” she said. “Can I bring you over to the mayor’s house to get a bite to eat? He’s got the nicest stables in the village by a long way.” She was too shy to admit that she and her father had no stable at all, only a goat pen where Hari daily milked the goats. Abilard was too royal a creature to set foot in such a place.

  Abilard whickered his consent, and they set off for the mayor’s place.

  :You do not need to Heal him,: the Companion assured her again. :Only call him back . . . :

  But wouldn’t that require healing far beyond any skill Sparrow possessed? She sighed instead of voicing her concerns, and together they walked. Suddenly the village looked too small and muddy and gray for a magnificent being like Abilard.

  The mayor himself received the Companion kindly, and Sparrow took the herb basket back to tend to both of her charges. Before she left, Abilard whickered at her once more, gentleness radiating from his beautiful sapphire eyes.

  He knows I am afraid, Sparrow thought in a quiet wonder. And yet he still believes in me . . .

  When she arrived at her cottage, her mother’s herb basket swinging from its handle over her bent elbow, Hari was waiting at the threshold.

  He looked at the basket, overflowing with healing trefoil, and sighed. “I know why you went to so much fuss,” he said, his scratchy voice breaking over the words. “It’s me, right? You always were quick to see trouble coming. Poor little mother. Always worrying about everybody else first.”

  By now, Sparrow saw the symptoms had passed from a foreboding shadow to physical effects her father could feel. His voice was thick with sickness now . . . if she could not heal him herself or get him help, he would not last two weeks.

  But winter had retreated, and spring had finally come. Sparrow had plenty of trefoil, and better yet, the trading paths had opened again. The mayor could send word to the Healers who rode Circuit in the area, and they would not be alone in their battle against sickness. It was still early enough for Hari to survive the snow fever.

  Sparrow memorized the sight of her father standing in the doorway, his shoulders rounded but still strong, a smile creasing his face. Even haunted with shadow, Sparrow still adored the sight of him.

  She had the sudden sense she would not see him again in their doorway, not for a very long time.

  “Look, Dad,” she said, her voice choked too, not with illness, but with emotion, “Mama’s herb basket is full to overflowing.”

  Hari tilted his head and took a step toward her. “It’s not Mama’s herb basket anymore, Sparrow girl. It’s yours.”

  * * *

  Sparrow didn’t know what to do with the storm of emotions whirling inside her . . . fear for her father warred with the wonder of Abilard and his ability to speak in her mind, and worry for Cloudbrother threatened to rob her of her memory of Brock, and her ability to see past his hurts to his true self.

  She knew better than to stay within that storm and stew. Instead, Sparrow got to work, and, as always, taking care of the business in front of her helped soothe the worry inside.

  Her father had already tended to the hearth fire, and Sparrow set a steep of the trefoil to boil. While the tea strengthened, Sparrow crushed a double handful of trefoil in her mortar and pestle to make a poultice and splashed it with some witch hazel to brighten it.

  She hurried to Cloudbrother’s side. He still slept, apparently exhausted from the long journey through the forest with Abilard. His hair, light and airy as a blown dandelion puff, rested on his forehead.

  Sparrow felt again for fever. Thank the great Mother, nothing. She gently lowered the quilt, watched the easy breathing of his chest, rising and falling without strain. Abilard was right . . . he suffered from no plague, not now.

  Still, the trefoil couldn’t hurt, and hopefully the increased stimulation of his system could help. Blushing, she scooped the poultice mash from the mortar with her bare fingers, and reaching inside his untied tunic, she spread the mixture over his half-bared chest. The poultice tingled under Sparrow’s fingers, strengthening her as well as Cloudbrother, and she took refuge in that warm tingle, took it in from her hands to strengthen her vitality in her core.

  A great lassitude took her at the same time, and Sparrow found herself kneeling by the side of his bed, her fingertips resting over Cloudbrother’s heart, her own heart slowing to beat in concert with his.

  She shook off her sleep long enough to look behind her, back to the hearth where Hari waited. He was watching her . . . and smiling.

  “I know how to serve tea, girl,” he said, stifling a cough with the back of a balled fist. “Go ahead, I’ll have a little rest here.” And quite deliberately, Hari turned his chair so he faced away from the back room where Cloudbrother rested.

  The tea’s gentle fragrance wafted over to Sparrow, relaxing and strengthening her still more. Gratefully, she returned her attention to her charge, still sleeping under her fingers.

  A small smile now curved the young man’s lips, and a rush of color had filled his cheeks. He no longer looked like a marble carving, but a living, breathing man.

  Tears prickled at Sparrow’s eyes, but she was too busy to give in to them, at least not yet. Instead she rested her forehead on the soft quilt and closed her eyes, took a deep breath.

  Immediately her consciousness swept into a swiftly moving current of thought, as if she had turned into a sparrow for true and shot into the sky like the bluebird. Far away, her body waited for her, and Sparrow sensed that though her mind insisted she should be frightened, nothing would hurt her in this new place.

  She soared into the whiteness, focused her sight, and saw that she flew through a great vastness of light, filtered through shifting carpets of white and gray.

  Clouds.

  “Brock,” she said in this place, and the air vibrated around her, sending ripples through the billowing white. “Please come.”

  Instantly he appeared. In this plane of being his eyes were open, sparkling with life and vitality, his shoulders broad. He wore the same tunic as back in Longfall, his legs stretched long and straight, the gorgeous plumage of his embroidered trews and tunic shining through the whiteness like a beacon.

  “No fear, Sparrow,” he said, his face shining with happiness. “I missed you! And here we are, together again. After the fever, I searched for you here, but never could find you.”

  Sparrow wanted to laugh with joy, fly through the endless white with Brock, and forget all that waited for them below. But she remembered why she had come here to seek Brock, the master of the clouds.

  “Abilard needs you,” she said.
“Is there any way you can come back with me? To speak with the people around you?”

  He shrugged, and while the smile never faded from his face, it grew a little sad. “I never left. My brothers just couldn’t find me up here. Even the Masters who came to find me . . . they sensed me, but I couldn’t speak to them! But you . . .”

  Brock’s sadness faded away. “You knew me before I became Cloudbrother, you know me to the root. And Sparrow, you always could fly . . . just you’d forget before you woke up again. We’d fly like this together, as children. I missed you. Plenty of folks here to talk to, but none of them knew Brock. And you do.”

  With a shock of recognition, Sparrow remembered. How they’d flown together at night as children, after going to sleep in their respective cottages. No need to swear a secret because they’d never spoken of it in the daytime.

  “Come closer,” she said. “If I stay with you, could you speak to your brothers on the ground?”

  He glided to her, took her dream-hands in his. “If you stay with me, I think we’ll find a new country to explore. I can go ahead, you can report back.”

  Sparrow half-laughed, half-sobbed, “But I can’t stay here forever, Brock! My dad needs me, and we’ll all starve to death if somebody doesn’t cook the eggs or milk the goats!”

  She could never leave Longfall, not for long. Sparrow had never considered the possibility, not even to leave her home in dreams.

  Brock’s expression grew solemn. “Sparrow, a lot of people can milk goats and comb wool and tend house. You have a gift for all that, too, and it’s a noble calling. But not a lot of folks can fly up to the clouds with somebody like me, then come back to earth and report back to folks like your dad. Or Abilard. Or the Heralds.”

  “But you’ve been Chosen, Brock. That always happens for a reason. I’m here to help you now, and that’s all that matters.”

  “Oh, it matters all right. It matters a lot. But not for the reasons you think it does. I’ve already been Chosen, it doesn’t matter what happens to me next. But, Sparrow . . . Longfall can mind its goats without you.”

  His words thundered through her mind and echoed there, endlessly. They weren’t talking about Cloudbrother and his being Chosen, and she knew it. They were talking about her. All her life, she’d forced herself to wake up before she could fully remember the visions, the adventures she and Brock would have in the white.

  She remembered now. And how she’d held herself back from her Gifts because she was afraid to leave the world she knew behind.

  “You think you are up here to find me,” Brock went on. “But you’re wrong about that, too. Abilard came for you as much as he came for me.”

  “But I’m not Chosen!” she blurted out, as if to insist the door stayed closed.

  “Not the way I am, by a Companion. But your Gifts are waiting for you to say yes. Say yes, Sparrow . . . I’ll make sure you come to no harm. Come to the Collegium with me. We’ll learn together.”

  “But—what about Dad?”

  “No fear,” Brock said again, and a bolt of pure peace and golden light shot through her air-heart, filling her with a quiet jubilation. “No fear. Your dad can head into the Vale . . . I’ll go call my brothers, and they will send a scout to take him. You won’t believe how beautiful the Vales are, Sparrow, but if you come with me you’ll see it for yourself someday. He’ll stay with my brothers until he’s healed. You can come visit him there, and when he feels strong enough, he can come back here if he wants. And you can visit him here too, just as your brother does.”

  One last time Sparrow hesitated. “But how will he get on?”

  “Fine. Just because you head forward into your Gifts doesn’t mean you leave love behind. Love is like this, Sparrow . . . it can follow you anywhere, across dream, mountain, or forest. Even death, Sparrow. I’ll come back down with you, near as I can anyway. But you’ll see what I mean, soon. I’ll show you everything.”

  The next thing she knew, Sparrow had woken up next to Cloudbrother’s bed, tears streaming down her face. He was right. Sparrow had to leave the memory of winter behind and head forward into the spring.

  She glanced at the table next to the bed. A small bouquet of Maiden’s Hope rested there, little white flowers blooming early in the season. A little note propped up there from her father. For You.

  Sparrow blinked, looked again. The villagers of Longfall often sent message-bouquets to their loved ones, messages of romantic love, mourning, grief. Or hope.

  Her dad must have picked them this morning, before she had returned home. Picked them in the hope that she would return out of the dark forest to find them by her bedside. Her father had hoped Sparrow would come home, to him and to herself. And her father’s hope, and Sparrow’s, had been rewarded.

  She sighed in pure relief, then whispered, in her ordinary old voice, “Can you hear me, Brock?”

  And far away, with a tiny whisper of a breath, Brock answered. “Almost.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Sparrow and Cloudbrother both walked down the winding, narrow path to the mayor’s house, holding hands. Her friend was still blind, but he was steady on his feet and walking straight, the way Sparrow had seen him in the clouds.

  Hari had given Sparrow his blessing, and he had agreed to go with the scouts to healing sanctuary in the K’Valdemar Vale once they came in answer to Cloudbrother’s call. “I’ll be here when you get back from the Collegium,” her father told her. “I promise. No snow fever for me . . . you’ve seen to that, Sparrow dear.”

  He didn’t call her Little Mother, and Sparrow noticed. She reached up to kiss his weathered, wrinkly cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  She tucked the little white bouquet of Maiden’s Hope into her red sash, the sweet fragrance of home surrounding her. And she left with Cloudbrother by her side.

  Sparrow was about to leave the only home she’d ever known. And yet, strangely enough, she knew her true homecoming was only about to begin. She was coming home to her Gifts, and offering those Gifts in service to a higher cause. And even her father and the village of Longfall would be the better for it.

  Abilard stood outside the mayor’s house waiting for them, as if he knew they’d already set off to meet him. He looked at them with those wise, luminous deep blue eyes.

  :Welcome, Chosen one, welcome back to this plane of life. And Sparrow, thank you for bringing my Chosen one to me. You have found your true Gift and your calling.:

  :Your adventure is about to begin . . . :

  Ex Libris

  Fiona Patton

  The first hint of spring came to Valdemar’s capital as the promise of warm rain on the breeze. On any other day, Sergeant Hektor Dann of the Haven City Watch would have breathed it in with pleasure as he followed his twelve-year-old brother, Padreic, through the streets. On any other day, he would have made some attempt to keep up with the stream of words—official messages, gossip, speculations on the messages and the gossip, greetings to passersby, mild curses at the condition of the cobblestones—issuing from the boy’s lips at high speed as he expertly navigated the market-day crowds. This day, however, Hektor had other things on his mind.

  . . . Ismy smilin’ up at him from across the saddler’s shop counter, from across the table in her small kitchen, from across his desk in his tiny office in the Iron Street Watch House. Ismy, the girl he’d loved at thirteen, lost and found again eight years later. Ismy, who would soon be dressed all in white, with flowers in her hair, smilin’ up at him from . . .

  “—all together in the garden.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  Paddy gave him a speculative grin, then apparently deciding that discretion was the better part of avoiding a smack to the back of the head, schooled his expression to one of neutral formality more in keeping with his rank of Watch House Runner.

  “All together in the garden?” he repeated
.

  “What?”

  “All over the house?”

  Hektor’s mystified expression remained, and his brother gave a dramatic sigh.

  “Daedrus says,” he began again, “that he thinks it’s been goin’ on for a couple of months now maybe. He wasn’t even sure that it was theft at first, because his library isn’t what you might call organized or anythin’, and by library he means his books, all of ’em, and not just the ones in the room he calls the library. They’re all over the house, see, because he’ll pick one up with the idea of puttin’ it back where it belongs, start readin’ it on the way, get thinkin’ about somethin’ else, put it down, pick up a different one, and end up readin’ a third book altogether in the garden.”

  “But he’s sure now, that some of them are missin’ and not just mislaid?”

  “Mostly certain. It’s actually kinda more complicated than that.”

  “Kinda?”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Paddy shrugged. “He’s old, isn’t he? Stuff gets muddled up.”

  * * *

  “My dear Sergeant, it’s been so long! Come in, come in!”

  Retired Artificer Daedrus beamed as he drew them into his long and cluttered front hallway. “Thank you, Padreic. That was very fast indeed,” he continued. “I hadn’t expected you back so soon. I was going to jot down my thoughts, but I seem to have misplaced my notebook, and now here you are. I imagine Padreic has already filled you in on my little dilemma, Sergeant?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Good, good. We’ll just have a cup of tea first, then. If I can find the kettle, that is. Come into the parlor!

  “Now, my children, sing peacefully, the way Kasiath taught you!” he called as Hektor braced himself for the usual cacophony of noise that greeted his visits. Instead, a single note from a single bird thrilled out, then as, one by one, the little yellow birds and finches residing in Daedrus’ dozen ornate bird cages added their voices to the first. The music swelled and lifted until it seemed as if the very air vibrated with song; then, one by one, they dropped out, until only the first bird continued to sing. When it too fell silent, Daedrus beamed at Hektor’s thirteen-year-old sister, standing in the window with three of the birds perched on her shoulder and one on her head. She wore the light blue tunic of an Unaffiliated student over her light blue and gray watch house messenger bird apprentice uniform, and Hektor noted that both were already dusted with yellow feathers.