Мерседес Лэки - Passages

Wil started to answer when the door opened and Amelie bounded through.

“Did you tell him?” she asked, excited.

“We were just getting to it,” Grier said.

“Wait, you told her before me—” Wil said.

“I’m all packed,” she said.

“You—what are—”

“You need me,” she said. “You’re really bad at falseface, Wil.”

Wil put his head in his hands.

“We want to go soon anyway, before Haven goes full riot,” Grier said. “The Heir just showed back up in Forst Reach out of thin air, no one knows how, and rumor has it there are gryphons flying around.”

Wil lifted his head again. “What?”

“That’s what the emergency Council was about.” Grier raised a brow. “Strange things are afoot, Herald. I have a feeling we need to find Madra now more than ever. We should go. Preferably tomorrow.”

Wil narrowed his eyes. “Before your wife’s party.”

“That’s just serendipity, that,” Grier said.

Out in Companion’s Field, Wil stood silently with one hand on Vehs’ shoulder and watched the sunset.

His Gifts wouldn’t be coming back. His daughter had started a long journey to Cortsberth. And tomorrow morning, he’d start in the opposite direction, toward the Pelagirs.

Cyril had been in touch with a Herald who had reported some odd goings-on in the parts of the Pelagirs where cauldroncap spoored. Dead livestock found half-eaten or bloodless, and something large moving about that fit the description of Lord Dark. It wasn’t ironclad because, well, the Pelagirs , but it was still better than anything else Wil had to go on.

:Congratulations on finding the botanist,: Vehs said.

:What’s left of her,: Wil replied.

:You still did better than any of her friends. No one thought to check the madwoman’s wine cellar.:

:Guess I’m still a Herald after all, even without—:

: Wil .: The thought hit him so fiercely it rolled him back on his heels. :Gifts don’t make you a Herald. Your heart does. The Choice makes the Chosen. Sight and Mindspeech do not.:

Wil bowed his head, too overwhelmed to reply.

Aubryn approached and came to flank him, so that he stood between the Companions. He reached out and touched her as well.

:Is Vehs giving you a hard time?: she said. She had the power to project into minds, and he could still hear her, too, if they touched.

:Not without just cause,: Vehs replied.

:Hmph. I should come along with you too, then,: she said. :Keep you in check, old man. Also, I have a feeling my new Chosen is where you’re headed. At least,: she added, slyly, :that’s what I’m telling Rolan.:

Vehs touched Wil’s forehead with his muzzle. :Wil. No matter what, you are my Chosen,: he said. :You will always be my Chosen.:

Wil nodded, silent, not sure why he needed to hear it but grateful for it anyway.

:Now let’s go save the realm,: Vehs said.

“Together,” Wil said.

:Together.:

Shasta sighed when she looked up from her reading chair across her small workroom at the calendar chalked on the slate on the wall over her desk and at the circle around tomorrow’s date. She knew that tomorrow, at breakfast, her tutor, Timiyon, would ask if she was prepared to take her Journeyman’s Trial that day, and she would just shake her head. She knew he would nod and offer her chalk and a cloth to change the date to when she felt comfortable. After all, that is what he did after the last time she put off her Trial, and the time before that and . . . She pictured counting the number of times on her fingers in her head, stopping when she ran out of fingers to count.

She just didn’t feel ready. She couldn’t quite understand the difference between an Apprentice Mage and a Journeyman, or what happened during a Journeyman Trial, only that she desperately wanted it, and needed it to help her understand how to use the magic that surrounded her. Timiyon was the smartest man she ever met, but he once told her that what little he knew about learning magic was drawn from his frequent interactions with military and Court Mages as a member of the General Staff of Lord Martial Daren, now Prince Consort. The two Mages who came to examine her didn’t even get beyond introducing themselves: one refused to work with her until she was “cured” of her deafness, and the other blasted her with incomprehensible chaos in her head that only gave her a raging headache. She loathed the idea of facing other Mages, and Timiyon agreed; fortunately, the general Royal offer that all Mages come to Haven for training was not yet a specific Royal command.

Her musing was interrupted when the door opened and Timiyon stepped into the room, followed by a familiar yet unfamiliar figure; Shasta stood and nodded politely to him. He wore the familiar dark blue uniform of the Guard, but she didn’t recognize him. Timiyon smiled and pointed at him, then commenced finger-talking to her. (Shasta, this is my friend Jayan. He just got promoted and assigned here.) Timiyon finger-spelled his name for Shasta, and she repeated it, watching herself to fix it in her memory. (He arrived yesterday and is already working: he wants my help with a problem in town.)

Of course he would: Timiyon wasn’t too forthcoming about his past, modestly claiming he was just a supply officer, but from what hints she gleaned from his stories, she was sure his job included solving problems.

(And by that, he means us.)

(Yes!) Shasta nodded fiercely. Of course she would help. Anything to avoid thinking of her Trial.

Shasta noted how Jayan glanced between Timiyon’s nimble fingers and Shasta’s energetic reply. As he did many times before, Timiyon then explained Shasta’s situation: how her mother had contracted spotted fever when she was pregnant, and with no Healers around to ensure the health of her and her yet-to-be-born daughter because of the Storms. How she learned the alphabet on her fingers so her family could talk with her. How he became her tutor when the Herald who examined her said she had the Mage Gift instead of the Fetching Gift as everyone believed after her Mother’s spools of thread began to fly around her when she was upset, and how he taught her to focus her Gift as best he could.

While Timiyon explained her situation to Jayan, she examined him as he shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. He had tousled brown hair that would never accept a comb, eyes that showed his every emotion, a mouth that seemed to like smiling except that it was frowning right now, and a neat uniform with an officer’s gold braid. She liked him.

Jayan mouthed some words, and Timiyon translated them. (Jayan says Thayler, the gold merchant, was found unconscious in his counting room just after dawn this morning. The Healer says she doesn’t know what happened to him but that it wasn’t natural. Jayan suspects magic.)

Shasta hid her smile behind a cough and her closed fist, remembering what Timiyon told her when he first started tutoring her: A Rethwellan Royal investigator once said that magic was always the answer when there was no seeming answer. Not that he was always right, but magic always made his job more difficult. Of course, only a nonMage would ever make such a statement: even she knew that magic was rarely the answer to anything.

Shasta’s family moved to Sunrise Crossings, the Valdemaran trade town next to the improved road across the Valdemaran and Karsite border, when it was first built less than a decade ago. It was a convenient place for merchants from Rethwellan and Hardorn to join Valdemaran and Karsite caravans traveling between Haven and Sunhame. Shasta appreciated that the town was on one side of the road and the stables and cartwrights and other businesses and buildings to support the caravans were downwind on the other.