Finding the Way and Other Tales of Valdemar Read online

  “I’m on my way.” It would have been nice if Yvendan could use the signal mirrors to let Stone Tower know he was coming, but no one was quite sure whether or not the Karsites had broken their signal codes. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  “I’ll—” Esclinet began.

  “You’ll stay here and rest,” Hedion said. His weariness gave his voice a rasp that sounded like anger. “Follow when you’ve recovered. I know the way.”

  Every step his horse took was agony. The aftermath of a Healing should be treated in the same way as woundshock: blankets and hot sweet tea and rest. The thought even of a cup of wine made Hedion’s stomach roil with nausea, and there was no time to rest. Stone Tower was three days away—and only if he didn’t have to detour to avoid Karsite raiding parties. At least the Nightstalkers—those elite Sunsguard regiments that traveled with red-robed Sunpriests and their demons—never crossed the border. Small mercies.

  He reached the bottom of the ridge and the eastward road that would lead him to Stone Tower. Hedion knew he presented a pitiful sight: hunched over, eyes squinted nearly shut, alternately gripping at his temples and clutching the pommel of the saddle. At least if he was set upon by bandits, he didn’t have anything of value worth stealing. Everything he valued had been taken from him long ago.

  The pain in his head pulsed implacably in time with the beating of his heart. He should stop soon and force himself to drink a little wine before going on. He had to go on. They needed him at Stone Tower.

  :Wake up. You need to wake up now. You can’t stay here.:

  “—can—” Hedion mumbled. The sound of his own voice propelled him further toward wakefulness. He rolled onto his back, and the sudden realization that he was supposed to be on his horse—that the last thing he remembered was being on his horse—jolted him the rest of the way awake. He sat up quickly, and the sudden jolt of pain and nausea caused him to curl forward, clutching at his head and groaning.

  :You can’t stay here.: someone repeated.

  Hedion forced his eyes open. The Companion stared back. It wore no harness—not the blue with silver bells that marked a Herald riding Circuit, nor the slightly more circumspect and bell-less harness the Companions wore when their Herald meant to cross over the Border into Karse. For one utterly horrified moment Hedion thought the Companion was here because he’d been Chosen, but it shook its head, much as a horse would, and radiated negation. He’d always been able to Hear the Companions, just as he could Hear human minds.

  :My name is Rhoses. I am here for you, Hedion, but not in that way.: Rhoses’ mental “voice” held both amusement and anxiety. :You fell from your horse. I found you. You can’t stay here. Come. Get up. You can hold on to me.:

  He didn’t think Rhoses would ask him to get up if it wasn’t important, and Hedion was pretty sure Rhoses wouldn’t go away until he did what he asked. Besides, he really couldn’t stay here. He was lying on the side of a hill, and it was getting on toward sunset.

  He forced himself to his feet—gasping with weakness and pain—and clutched at Rhoses’ mane as Rhoses wanted him to. He clenched his fingers tightly in the silky strands and let Rhoses drag him back up the hillside.

  “My horse . . . ?” he croaked, when they reached the top. Tallese was a good animal, and if he’d fallen from his back, as he obviously had, should have stayed nearby.

  :Come.: Rhoses repeated, and Hedion tightened his grip on the white mane and stumbled along beside the Companion.

  Hedion allowed himself to drift as he stumbled along beside Rhoses. In the last several years, he’d learned the art of sleeping anywhere at any time, and he knew he desperately needed rest. He opened his eyes to the smell of wood smoke. He’d expected Rhoses to lead him to Tallese, not to a camp.

  There was a man sitting beside a small fire. The sight of him surprised Hedion; he’d heard no one’s thoughts. The man was burly and unkempt, his skin lined and weathered in the way of one who has spent most of his life outdoors. His hair was streaked with gray, and had bits of twig in it. He looked up at Rhoses’ approach, and his face transformed into fury.

  “You! Go away!” He picked up a clod of earth and threw it, but his target wasn’t Hedion, Hedion realized as he reflexively ducked.

  It was Rhoses.

  “Go away, damn you!” the man shouted. “Why won’t you leave me alone?” Hedion covered his ears and moaned.

  More missiles followed the first: clods of earth, tufts of grass. Most of them struck their target. Rhoses bounded forward and took the front of the man’s ragged tunic in his teeth, shaking him until he dropped his handful of earth. :Stop it, Garaune! Stop it! Oh, I wish you could hear me, foolish headblind Herald! Hedion needs help! Garaune! Garaune!:

  Rhoses might as well have been shoving an icepick into Hedion’s temple by shouting in Mindspeech, and Gaurane’s roaring was like being kicked on the side of the head he wasn’t being stabbed on. Hedion felt a rush of hot bile in his throat, and the jarring impact of the earth against his knees . . .

  And then he felt nothing.

  It was a very long time before Hedion awoke again. He opened his eyes warily. His head always hurt these days; the only difference was between the bright shattering pain that immediately followed the use of his Gift and the bruised sort of tenderness he felt after he’d gotten a little rest. This pain was the bruised sort, and he realized he was staring up at a little shelter made of sticks and string and a blanket, constructed to shield his face from the sun.

  The sun.

  It was morning, and Hedion sat up so quickly he brought the entire fragile structure down. He flailed at it for a few seconds before Gaurane pulled it off.

  “Thought you were going to sleep forever,” Gaurane grunted.

  He moved away before Hedion could form a coherent reply, only to return a moment later to push a cup into Hedion’s hands.

  “Drink this. You look like a man whose head hurts.”

  “My head always hurts,” Hedion muttered. He sipped. Willowbark tea, its bitterness disguised by a stunning amount of honey and a generous splash of brandy.

  “You should see a Healer,” Gaurane said blandly. “I’m Gaurane. You?”

  “Hedion,” Hedion answered. “And I am a Healer.”

  Gaurane gave a bark of laughter. “If that’s true, the world’s in worse shape than I ever suspected.” He took Hedion’s cup and got to his feet. A moment later he was back. This time the cup smelled of meat and herbs, and Gaurane held a cup of his own. “Thanks for the wine, by the way,” he said unapologetically. “I was almost out of brandy.”

  “You went through my pack,” Hedion said slowly. He looked around. Tallese was there, unsaddled, his halter-rope tied to a log, and so was Rhoses. The Companion gazed at him worriedly. Hedion frowned, remembering how he’d come to the campsite, and what had happened here. Why hadn’t Rhoses told Gaurane who he was? Was Gaurane a new Chosen? It was possible . . .

  “Had to find out if you were a Karsite spy. Vicious bastards, Karsites,” Gaurane said without heat. He tipped back his mug, drinking deeply.

  :Tell him he has to come with me. Tell him we should go back to Haven: Rhoses said pleadingly.

  Hedion winced reflexively at the Mindspeech, but it didn’t seem to hurt as much as it had before. He glanced at Gaurane. He acted as if he hadn’t heard anything. Automatically Hedion reached out to listen, to see why Gaurane would ignore his Chosen—

  —and heard nothing.

  “I’m a Healer,” he heard himself say, desperation and fear in his voice. “A Mindhealer. I hear . . . ”

  “I don’t,” Gaurane said bluntly. “Not any more. Look, why don’t you have some wine? It helps.”

  “Rhoses says you should go back to Haven,” Hedion said.

  Gaurane froze in the act of getting to his feet again. “You can Hear him?”

  “I can Hear everyone,” Hedion said, setting the half-full cup aside to rub his aching eyes. He cringed inwardly at the misery in his voice, but it had been a
very long time since he’d thought of his Gifts as a blessing. “Everyone but you.”

  “Ah, well, you can thank Vikandis for that. And as for you, you can go back to Haven—without me—and find someone who actually gives a damn.”

  This last was obviously addressed to Rhoses. :You are my Chosen, Herald Gaurane. I will not leave you.: Rhoses looked at Hedion, obviously expecting him to convey the message.

  “He says no,” Hedion said.

  Gaurane made a grumbling sound and threw a stone at Rhoses. The Companion calmly took a step to the side, letting the stone fly by. “I’m not drunk enough. My aim’s off,” he said, getting to his feet.

  Hedion rubbed his temples. Time to get up. Time to go. They needed him in Stone Tower. He flung back the blankets—it was his own bedroll; he spent enough time in the hills and following the army that he couldn’t always be certain of finding an inn or a bed—and started to get to his feet.

  “Hold—hold—hold—” Gaurane said, rushing back and thrusting his full cup into Hedion’s hands even as he eased him back down to the blankets. “A man who’s lain like the dead these three days can’t just leap up and go running off.”

  “Three days?” Hedion said in horror. He should have been there already—he should be riding up to the keep right now, offering them encouragement and hope. He slitted his eyes against sun that had suddenly grown intolerably bright and clenched his fists. His palms were wet and his hands were shaking, and he could feel the chill trembling all through his body that was the forerunner of a spectacularly bad headache.

  “Drink this.” Gaurane took several deep swallows from his mug and then held it to Hedion’s lips.

  Hedion drank—his mouth felt dry and tasted metallic—and ran a hand through his hair. “I have to go. They need me at Stone Tower.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, of course they do. And I’m sure you’d get a good two miles down the road before you fell off your horse again.”

  “I have to go.” Something like panic tightened his chest. “I’m a Mindhealer—they—they’ll kill innocent men—it looks like demon-possession, but it isn’t—”

  “Couldn’t be, this side of the border.” Gaurane was calmly unimpressed. “And you won’t make it, and if you do, you’ll be in no shape to Heal anyone.”

  Hedion sank back to his bedroll with a moan. The ground seemed to be rocking beneath him, and he shuddered with chills. Healing took a toll. The Healer had to pay back to his own body what it spent to Heal others. He hadn’t done that for a long time. He’d thought he could go on stealing from himself for longer.

  “Please,” he whispered. “Please. They know I’m coming. Please. Send word. Tell them I’ll be there as soon as . . . Please.” Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. Hedion no longer knew whether they came from pain or weakness or the knowledge of his own failure.

  Gaurane patted his shoulder. “I’ll write them a letter and tie it all up with a pretty blue ribbon. That jumped-up circus pony has to be good for something—if he shows up with a message they’ll have to take it seriously.”

  :Do not fear.: Rhoses said. :I will carry your message to Stone Tower.:

  “Thank you,” Hedion mumbled.

  It was as if a hidden part of his mind, realizing it had found help and allies, surrendered utterly. Hedion slept. Each time he woke, Gaurane was there with a cup. Sometimes it held willowbark tea. Sometimes it held broth. Sometimes it held watered brandy.

  “You should sleep,” Hedion muttered.

  It was night, but he had no idea of what night. Normally that information would have been available to him from the thoughts of those around him, but though Gaurane was there, it was as if Hedion were utterly alone.

  “If you had my dreams, you wouldn’t say that,” Gaurane answered. “Go back to sleep.”

  “I think I might be finished sleeping, at least for a while,” Hedion said, surprising himself.

  “Well, if you can stand up without falling over, there’s a creek that way—” Gaurane jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the direction. “Go wash up, then come and sit. There’s some roast rabbit.”

  “Can’t expect the pony back for another two days, minimum,” Garaune said, when Hedion came back. “Unfortunately, he always comes back.” He took a long drink.

  Hedion wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Gaurane without a mug in his hand. “I’m going to run out of wine soon,” he said, just for something to say.

  “You did that yesterday,” Gaurane said. “Let’s hope you’re well enough to ride by the time I run out of brandy. I can get supplies at Stone Tower.”

  “I, uh, I never thanked you for saving my life,” Hedion said awkwardly.

  Gaurane fixed him with a piercing look. The firelight turned his brown eyes amber. “Don’t be insulting. I know the sort of man who’d spit in someone’s eye if they saved his life,” he said.

  “Are you one?” Hedion asked boldly. It was odd to only have surface things to judge someone by—face and voice and the movement of the hands. But he had been trained by those who had to rely upon only those things. Mindhealing was the rarest of the Healing Gifts, and the only other Mindhealer Hedion had ever met was of Journeyman rank, and would never go higher. There’d been no one who could truly explain him to himself.

  “If I meant to be dead, I could have cut my throat a hundred times over,” Gaurane said. “You know damned well what happens to the surviving half of a Bonding. No, I’ll just suffer,” he added, with a crooked smile.

  Hedion found himself smiling back. “I don’t understand. Rhoses called you ‘Herald Gaurane.’ He’s your Companion. But you can’t Hear him, can you? And I can’t Hear you.”

  “Eat your dinner,” Gaurane said.

  There was half a rabbit set out on a tin plate, along with several ash-roasted tubers and a mug of hard cider. Hedion discovered he was hungry and began to eat. He didn’t think he was going to get an answer to any of his questions, but after the silence had stretched for a while, Gaurane began to talk.

  “I keep hoping he’ll go off and find himself some bright-eyed young Herald, you know? They have to have some way to . . . to un-Choose someone. I’m not the Herald type. I knew—he knew—when he found me, Chose me, it was for one thing. And we did that. We did that,” Gaurane repeated, as if to himself. Then he fixed Hedion with that knowing gaze once more.

  “I was a drunk. I’m still a drunk, but, well, in those days I was living in the gutters of Haven. Happy to be there. Don’t know how I got there. Don’t know how I got to Valdemar, actually. I’m from the Hardorn side of the Kleimars. Good farming land. Good life.”

  The silence stretched, and Hedion knew better than to break it.

  “My brother, his wife, my wife. Our children. A little farm. One day a Karsite supply party came through. I don’t know what happened. I was mending a fence when I smelled the smoke.” Gaurane looked down at his hands. Strong and blunt-fingered. Farmer’s hands. “You studied at the Collegium. I guess they told you about how it is with Gifts. They show up when you’re a kid, just like you cutting your second teeth. Or you can go your whole life not knowing you have them. Unless something rips you open.”

  “You felt them die,” Hedion said softly.

  “I wish I had. I heard them die,” Gaurane corrected sharply. “Heard them hope, heard Liodain lie to the babies and say it would be all right. Heard them beg the Karsites for help. Heard them realize they were all going to die. Heard. Them. Die.”

  The fire crackled and popped. The silence was absolute.

  “The next thing I’m sure of, Rhoses was telling me Valdemar needed me.” Gaurane sighed. “What do you know about the priests of Vikandis Sunlord?”

  “Too much,” Hedion said, and Gaurane raised his cup in an ironic salute.

  “The black-robes just kill people and chant. The red-robes kill people, chant, and call demons. Lord Brondrin said we needed to find out what they were doing in their Temple. Queen Alliana agreed. They knew something big was coming
up. They knew they couldn’t get a spy in and out. Rhoses went to find me—or someone like me, I don’t know—he told me I had a thing called Mind-Hearing, and it was strong, strong enough to do what Queen Alliana needed. Of course I said yes.”

  “What happened?” Hedion said quietly.

  Gaurane shrugged. “I don’t know. I was there—and then I was on Rhoses’ back and he was running like hell. I kept shouting at him, but he never answered.” He reached for the keg beside him, and Hedion heard it gurgle, half-empty, as he filled his mug again. “They said in Haven I’d “completed my mission,” and that I might get better. They said I should stay and get proper Herald training. What good is a crazy old drunk to Valdemar? I walked out. Rhoses followed me. I never got better. He won’t leave.”

  “He’s your Companion,” Hedion said. He felt helpless, unsure of what to say.

  “Heralds have Companions,” Gaurane answered. “Me, I don’t even care who wins the war, not any more—no one man can take on the entire Karsite priesthood. You, on the other hand, care too damned much.”

  “It’s better than giving up!” Hedion said hotly. “No one else can do what I can. If I don’t care, people will die.”

  “What of it?” Gaurane said, shrugging. “Do you know how many people die each moonturn here on the Border because Karse has crossed to Valdemar or Valdemar has crossed to Karse?”

  “I don’t care,” Hedion said through gritted teeth. Abruptly he realized he’d been sitting here as if he had all the time in the world when he could be riding toward Stone Tower. He got to his feet. “Thank you for your hospitality, Herald Gaurane. But they need me at Stone Tower. Each time Valdemar crosses to Karse, it’s a chance for a Karsite demon to inflict a wound only a Mindhealer can Heal.” He turned away. His tack had to be around here somewhere—unless Gaurane had thrown it in the stream.