The Valdemar Companion Read online

  Tafri just nodded, completely overwhelmed by all this attention. His mother and Lilly stood together, both with tremulous smiles and tear-streaked faces; his father, summoned on the run by his employer, beaming.

  The priest stood back, and his mother rushed forward for another kiss, his father for another embrace. “They’ll let you come home, now and again,” his mother whispered, and he felt a rush of relief. At least he wasn’t going into exile! “Now, you be good, and show us proud!”

  “He will, lovey,” his father said, hugging them both.

  Adelayan’s skin shivered and he shifted his weight from foot to foot, clearly impatient to be off, and when Tafri’s mum and da stepped back he shook his head and neck so that the bells on his bridle rang.

  “Time for him to go.” Tafri’s father was the one who made the pronouncement, and no one contradicted him. Without pausing a moment for anyone to change their minds, Adelayan stepped out smartly. As Tafri turned in his saddle to wave good bye, Adelayan moved from a walk right into a canter, and the village and all its madly waving inhabitants receded behind him until a turn in the road hid them from his sight.

  He was torn between excitement and tears, and scrubbed some of the latter from his cheeks with mittened hands.

  :Ah, Chosen, you’ll be back for a visit before you know it,: Adelayan said in his mind, startling him and making him look wildly about for a moment before realizing that the words had not been spoken, precisely, and had come from his Companion.

  :Oh yes, Tafri,: there was a feeling of a chuckle in the words. :Companions can talk to their Chosen, mind to mind, It is called MindSpeech. Just think what you wish to tell me if you wish it to be private, but otherwise speak as you would to anyone.:

  MindSpeech! “Is this—magic?” he asked cautiously.

  :Mind-magic, yes. There is Mind-magic, and there is the magic of the Mages and Herald-Mages. I hope you will not be disappointed, Chosen, but you do not have it in you to become a Herald-Mage…: Adelayan’s ears swiveled back toward him.

  “Oh no!” Tafri exclaimed. He couldn’t imagine how anything could be better than this. Why would he want to fling magical fireworks about? He’d never fit in at Delcare again if people thought he was likely to go blasting things to bits in a lit of temper!

  :There is that,: Adelayan said, with a deep whicker that definitely sounded like a chuckle. :I must admit, that sort of reaction has happened in the past; most uncomfortable for the herald in question.:

  All this time, the Companion sped on, his pace so smooth that Tafri had no fear of falling off, though he’d never sat so high or gone so fast. Nor had he ever been so far from home; the few times he’d gone out with his father, they’d traveled no further than the nearby farms.

  The excitement kept him looking in every direction as they rode, and he couldn’t help notice how people kept looking at him. In farmyards, driving wagons, and through the tinier villages he passed, people saw him, smiled broadly, and waved. He always waved back.

  “Do they know—”

  :That I was on Search and Chose you? Of course. Until you earn your Whites, you will be in Trainee Grays—: A picture flashed into his mind of a boy his age, wearing a shirt, tunic, news, and boots all in matching gray. :—and you are far too young to be a Herald, anyway. So when people see a youngling who is not in Grays riding a Companion, they know he must have just been Chosen.:

  “No one like that ever came through our village,” Tafri said, shifting a little in the saddle. As comfortable as the Companion’s pace was, it was still the first time he’d ever done any amount of riding, and he was frankly getting tired, and sore.

  :Not within your memory, perhaps, but surely within the past ten years,: Adelayan told him. :Your village may not be on a main road, but at least it is on a road. There are many places that are barely linked by goat tracks, and Heralds have come from them.: Now Adelayan wasn’t just chuckling, he was laughing, but Tafri knew that the Companion wasn’t laughing at him.

  When they stopped—and to Tafri’s great relief it was in a village, and not at some empty Waystation—he was very sore indeed. But the Companion might well have known exactly what kind of folk ran this particular inn, for Tafri found himself whisked out of Adelayan’s saddle by a great, friendly bear of a man and bundled into the inn, where he soon found himself soaking in a tub full of hot water beside a fine fire in a little room all to himself. And both a pot of liniment and a hot meal waited for him when he got out. He was certainly in need of both, and went straight to bed, sleeping as soundly as he ever had in his life.

  The next several days were a repeat of the first, as he went farther and farther from his home, out of an area of flat farm land and into one of rolling hills and roads lined on either side with tall hedgerows. He was glad of the extra provisions, for he seemed to be hungry all the time, but when those were gone, Adelayan made sure he got more from the inns where he stayed overnight. He’d been hesitant, but Adelayan had insisted, and to his surprise, his hosts, after having fed him, housed him, and gone out of their way to take care of his aches, then went on to stuff his packs with additional food. Why, they didn’t even know him!

  It took him seven days to reach the great city of Haven; seven days during which he saw villages both small and large, towns that could have planted his village in their market square with room left over, and a city so big he thought it surely must be his goal until Adelayan told him otherwise. Adelayan talked to him the entire time, too, telling him what he could expect when he reached the Collegium, which kept him from being too homesick, And although he had at first dreaded the coming of night, thinking he would surely lie awake in his strange beds, missing his parents dreadfully, he was so tired at the end of every day’s ride that he went right to sleep, sometimes even falling asleep over his dinner.

  Then, one day, Adelayan didn’t stop before sunset—he kept right on going, as the sun dropped below the horizon, and the moon rose, reflecting off the snow-covered fields and providing a silvery and mysterious light. Here and there, warm yellow lights glowed in square or rectangular shapes from out of irregular dark hummocks—farm houses, off in their fields.

  :We’re nearly at Haven,: Adelayan explained. :Don’t worry, we’re expected. I can reach quite some distance with my Mind-speech, and I’ve warned the collegium that we’re coming.: He shook his head, and continued apologetically, :I’d have stopped tonight and brought you there in the morning, but there’s another pair of new Trainees coming in then, and having so many arrive at the same time sometimes makes for some confusion.:

  All that Tafri could say was, “Oh,” but he wished, as the air grew colder, that they were at their destination now.

  At least he was used to riding, now. And the road was very wide, quite wide enough for four carts abreast. It wasn’t as if they were likely to get lost.

  Then they topped a rise—and there it was. A sea of yellow lights, stretching out as far as he could see.

  :That is Haven,: Adelayan said, proudly, and they followed the road down into the great capitol city.

  And within moments, Tafri was overwhelmed.

  The streets had been swept clean of snow here, and Adelayan’s hooves rang on the cobblestones like bells. Even though it was well after dark, there was still plenty of traffic, both mounted and afoot, as well as a few carts or carriages. It was difficult to tell just what sorts of buildings they were passing; there were streetlamps, but they didn’t do a great deal to illuminate the building fronts, and anyway, by this point Tafri was getting very weary indeed. The people here didn’t pay a great deal of attention to them as they rode past, but then again, the people of Haven must surely be so used to seeing Heralds by now that they were as usual a sight as geese on the common in his home village.

  At one point they rode beneath a huge wall with armed men—Guardsmen, he thought—atop it and four more beside the tunnel going beneath it, but they simply waved the two of them through.

  Adelayan was rather preoccupied w
ith picking his way through the traffic, finding ways of getting around slower-moving objects and threading between carriages. They had gotten into a particularly congested, area where a great many people seemed to be trying to get into or out of a huge building with painted cloth banners flapping on either side of the door. The Companion, however, found places to eel through that Tafri didn’t think a donkey would fit into, and got them through it without much delay.

  There were still a great many people, though. It seemed as if they must have gotten themselves into a part of the city where there were a lot of inns. Doors opened and closed, spilling people out into the street, talking, singing, staggering, hanging over each other’s shoulders. When doors opened, besides the people spilling out, snatches of music and the aroma of a hundred different kinds of food spilled out as well. Adelayan now adroitly maneuvered his way around the people who wandered out into the street without really looking where they were going.

  He rounded a corner, and came into a quieter area, for which Tafri was very grateful. All those people made him nervous, and as for the scent of cooking food, well, his stomach kept growling.

  Back and forth they went, taking streets in no particular pattern that Tafri could make out. He was totally confused within moments.

  And he was really, truly, coming to the end of his endurance.

  :Cheer up, Chosen, we‘re almost there, I promise.:

  He didn’t notice just when the houses stopped being “houses” and started becoming eye-popplngly huge mansions, but he did manage to take note of the moment when the mansions vanished from the right side of the street and an enormous wall took its place, just as tall as the first one they’d met up with. And finally, Adelayan slowed his pace to a walk as they approached a small gate in the wall, with a single Guardsman outside of it.

  This time, the Companion stopped. The Guardsman had gotten a board with a piece of paper clipped to it and looked up at Tafri when his Companion paused beside him.

  “Adelayan and Chosen?” the Guardsman asked. Tafri nodded wearily. “Go on, youngling, they’re waiting for you,” the Guardsman said, with a sympathetic smile. He pushed open the gate and Adelayan trotted through. Tafri’s first sight of the Palace and the four Collegia was impressive—but truth to tell, he was far too tired to appreciate it. It was mostly just overwhelming. Huge, huge buildings, with hundreds of windows all alight, and grounds that glimmered under the moonlight, lit in some places with huge torches, dark in others.

  Adelayan stepped up into a trot again, and Tafri clung on for all he was worth, until they reached an enormous building, a stable the size of his entire village, with a loft over it, that was lit up as brightly as any human habitation.

  Adelayan stopped at last in front of a cluster of people; folks who helped him out of his saddle, asked for the bits of metal that the innkeepers had given him, and took him straight to a room in one of the huge buildings. There a couple of youngsters near his own age helped him out of his clothing and into a flannel bedgown two sizes too big, sat him down on the side of a bed, and pressed an enormous mug of thick ham-and-pea soup on him. He was achingly grateful for it, and even more grateful that it didn’t have to be cut up and chewed. He could hardly keep his eyes open by this time.

  “Drink this—” someone said, when he was relieved of the empty soup-mug, and a second cup was pressed into his hands. It was herb tea, thick with honey, and he drank it without a protest over what would otherwise have been too cloyingly sweet a liquid for him to swallow. Then, without prompting, he laid himself down, felt someone pull the blankets over him, and nothing more.

  Three

  Directions

  When Tafri awoke the next day, it was to the sound of a bell.

  That he woke in a strange bed and a strange room didn’t trouble him; he’d been doing that for days. But this was the first time that he’d been in a place where a huge bell sounded overhead to rouse him from slumber.

  When he opened his eyes, it was to darkness—except for the coals in a tiny fireplace opposite his bed, and a thin line of yellow light under a door just past the foot of his bed. He yawned and rubbed his eyes sleepily with one hand, then sat up in bed.

  His first thought of where am I? was answered almost immediately with memory. He was here, in Heralds’ Collegium, in the huge capitol city of Haven.

  He cautiously put a bare foot over the side of the bed; the floor was cold, and he shivered as the second foot joined the first and he opened his door.

  Outside was a hallway, brightly lit, and other doors were opening along it as other boys used the hail lanterns to give them the light they needed to find candles and kindle them at the coals of their fireplaces. Tafri did the same, once he saw what his neighbor across the hall was doing.

  The candle showed him a simple room, about the size of one of the private rooms in Lilly’s inn. Bed, desk, chair, bookcases and a wardrobe, with a tiny bedside table, all well worn, were the furnishings. Beside the fireplace was a basket of logs, and Tafri, shivering, quickly built up the fire while still in his too large bedgown.

  With light from candle and fireplace to guide his steps, he closed his door again. He felt suddenly shy, and certainly wasn’t used to undressing in front of strangers.

  His packs were beside the wardrobe, and although the clothing he’d been wearing last night had been taken away, his boots were still there, and so were the clothes packed in those bags. He changed quickly in front of the fire, and pulled on his boots, then wondered what he was to do next.

  He was answered by another bell. Outside in the hall came the sound of several pairs of running feet, and then a diffident tap on his door.

  He opened it quickly. Waiting outside was a boy—or young man—who looked about sixteen or seventeen, He was raw boned and gangly, brown-haired and brown-eyed, and Tafri sighed with relief because he looked just like the blacksmith’s eldest son and apprentice.

  “Hullo, Tafri!” said the boy, who was wearing an outfit of trews, tunic, knitted sweater and boots all in a uniform medium-gray color. “I’m Adan, and I’m your mentor. I’ll take you around and get you set up, and from now on if you need anything all you have to do is ask me.” He grinned, and Tafri grinned back; Adan’s generous mouth revealed a set of white teeth that would make any horse proud.

  Adan patted the door. “This is your room, from now until you leave the Collegium on your Internship Ride. I’m right next door to your right, and to your left is Lerek. He’s fifteen. Your two yearmates are due in this morning, and they’ll go just down the hall, but right now I need to start you off with breakfast!”

  “Oh yes, please!” Tafri said, suddenly aware that he was ravenous. Adan laughed, and gestured for Tafri to follow.

  Nothing loathe, Tafri closed his door and trod in the wake of his new friend. They headed down the hall toward a door in the end of it, but before they reached it, Adan unexpectedly turned aside.

  There was another door here, one that opened to let another gray-clad boy out, along with a cloud of sage-scented, humid warmth. “Wash up, first, Tafri,” Adan said catching the door and holding it open.

  Tafri remembered not to gape, but he had never seen anything like the room he entered. Several china washbasins were mounted on the left wall, and he wondered how they were supposed to be emptied until he realized there were pipes coming out of the bottom of each of them and leading down through the floor. There were three enormous copper bathtubs along the right wall, with more pipes running to them and a huge copper boiler next to them. And there was a swishing, watery sound as they entered and a boy emerged from one of four small doors along the back wall, heading for the basins; as the door closed behind him, Tafri got a glimpse of something and only then realized that it was one of the indoor privies—water closets, they were called—that only one house in his entire village had.

  There were piles of snowy white towels everywhere, and boxes of pale green, soft soap. Adan rolled up his sleeves, put a bung in the hole in a basin and fi
lled it with water from two little spigots of the sort that he was more used to seeing in the side of a beer-cask. Cautiously, Tafri imitated him, discovering that one spigot dispensed hot and the other cold water, and the bung kept the water from running down the pipe.

  With hands and faces scrubbed, Adan showed him the chute to drop the used towels down (to where?) and led him to the common room.

  It was just like the common room in the inn, only much bigger. There were two fireplaces, many tables and benches, and a hatch in one wall from which girls and boys, all in Trainee uniforms, were bringing steaming plates, leaving them on the tables so that those sitting there could help themselves.

  Adan brought Tafri to the only table without benches around it, and the two of them took clean spoons, forks, knives, plates and bowls from stacks in the center of the table, putting them on trays.

  They took their trays to the nearest table with empty p1ces at it, and following Adan’s example, Tafri helped himself. No bread-and-milk here, oh no! This was the sort of food that he imagined Sushanna ate every day for breakfast! Hot porridge with honey, dried fruit or preserves, toasted bread, scrambled and fried eggs, butter, bacon, sausage—more good things than he would ever have expected in his dreams! He stuffed himself unashamedly, while around him a babble of talk went on, none of which he understood.

  When he was finally replete, he followed Adan with his dirty dishes, leaving them beside the hatch where the food had come from. He noticed then that there were perhaps a dozen Heralds eating along with the Trainees. Adan followed his glance, and shouted over the din.