Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar (37 page)

That damn
girl
.

:We might be heading back to circuit sooner than anticipated,:
he thought to Vehs.

Wil sighed deeply.
:She’s defiling Daryann’s memory.:

A cold knot crept up from Wil’s stomach to his throat. Memories welled up, unbidden. The acrid smell of herbs and wine—etched lines around dark eyes—the soft
shush
of hair sliding over crisp linens as her head turned toward him—the gaunt, pale face, whittled to a wax doll parody by pain—

He shoved the memory rudely aside.

:No,:
he replied.

He stretched out on his bed, abstaining the covers. He preferred an old, loose shirt and breeches to smothering layers of bedding. Bit by bit, he drifted toward the borders of dreaming, relaxing gently into sleep’s embrace.

It was strange, just
how
relaxed he was. And his feet—they were nice and warm and—

His eyes snapped open. Someone was rubbing his feet.

He yanked his legs back and sat up. Belatedly, he realized he’d forgotten to latch the door. There was just enough moon-and starlight coming through his windows that he could see an all-too-familiar fine-boned face at the end of his bed.

“That’s it!”
he roared at her, swinging out of bed and bearing down on her. “Get out! Leave me alone! Leave
her
alone!”

Lelia stared at him, her mouth wide open. “I—” she started to say.

She backed away from the murderous rage in his eyes, turned, and ran.

He heard a faint sob as she fled.

Wil slumped back onto his bed.

“Ah, Lord,” he mumbled, rubbing his forehead. “Ah, hellfires.”

 

Lelia bolted back to her quarters, half-sobbing the whole way. Wil’s anger had been startling—overwhelming—terrifying. The only thing she could think to do was run from it.

She opened the door to her room, reaching for the laces of the gray shirt—Her twin sat in the chair by her bed, his hands folded in his lap. Lelia froze in place, the heat of embarrassment creeping across her cheeks.

“Heyla,” Lyle said softly.

She shut the door, her hand falling to her side.

“That shirt doesn’t fit, you know,” he said, and then sighed. “What’s wrong, ’Lia?”

She shook her head, sitting down on the bed and not looking at him. “Nothing.”

“I’m worried about you,” he said. “So is Malesa. She and I . . . talked tonight.”

Lelia grimaced at the implications of that.

Lyle sat down next to her, putting his arm around her shoulder. “Thy heart is heavy, little songbird?”

The familiar, comforting sound of her childhood dialect crushed her pitiful attempts to shut him out.

“I think I did a bad thing,” she whispered.

“What could be that bad?”

Her words emerged as halting, half-incoherent sentences. She told him her fear of never finishing the song that would make her a full Bard, her days stalking Wil, and the disastrous consequences of intruding on the Herald in his bedchambers; the frightening display of anger that had sent her scurrying for her room.

When she finished, Lyle sat quietly, mulling over the tale.

“In his
bedchambers
?” he said at last.

She ducked her head. “I didn’t see anything—”

“You violated his privacy.”

She slumped.

“You should apologize to him,” he said.

“I should apologize to him,” she echoed listlessly.

“And maybe I’ll get him as a circuit mentor, and I can explain to him my crazy Bard-sib.”

The word “circuit” crashed down on her shoulders like a lead church bell. In a fit of recklessness, Lelia blurted the words she’d never dared given breath before,
“You’re going to die!”

“What?”
He knelt in front of her, taking her hands in his. She Felt his concern and love down the line of their bond so fiercely it startled her. “No, Lelia.”

“You’ll be leaving me, at the very least,” she said, half hysterical, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Gods, Lyle, do you know how many stories I know? Do you know how many times I hear about the Heralds who don’t return from circuit? Do you know what happens to a twin when the other one . . .”

She couldn’t finish it. The growing dread in her heart made her feel like she’d already said too much.

“I’m so selfish,” she said, shaking her head.

“Y . . . eah,” he agreed. When she gave him a startled look, he grinned. “ ’Lia, it’s not a bad thing. I see you as my balance. Given half a chance, I’d beat myself to death to help others. I need you to remind me that, sometimes, it’s okay to help myself.” He touched her shoulder. “I worry about you, too, you know. In a few months you’ll be wandering out there on your own . . . who knows what trouble you’ll run into without me around to balance you out?”

“Why couldn’t you have been a Healer?” she asked, not smiling. “Or a Bard? Why couldn’t you be like me? We’re supposed to be twins!”

He laughed, but there was a brittleness to it.

“Bright Lady. Bright Havens.” She crushed his hand in hers. “How I wish you didn’t have to go.”

They sat together in the darkness, holding hands just as they had during thunderstorms as littles. She couldn’t imagine a world without Lyle in it to give her comfort, to bear her through the storms. She just couldn’t.

 

Lelia got up early the next morning, dressed once again in rust-red. She’d lain in bed all night, struggling to come up with a plan for dealing with Wil and the damage she’d caused.

Before breakfast, she hiked down to Companion’s Field and went hunting.

It didn’t take her long. The Companion she searched for was wide awake; he even seemed to be waiting for her.

“Heyla,” she said, approaching him. “You’re Wil’s Companion, right?”

The stallion tossed his head.

“Well, I know very well you’re probably smarter than me,” she said. “I also know I owe some things to your Chosen.” She reached up and scratched his neck. “So I need to ask you a favor.” And she told him her plan.

Much to her surprise, he nodded in agreement.

 

Wil didn’t see Lelia all the next day. Or the next.

As the candlemarks passed, his discomfort outgrew his ability to ignore it. By dinnertime he was wrestling with the twin serpents of guilt and anger. Why should
he
feel guilty?
She
was the one intruding on his life!
She
was the one who refused to leave him alone!
She
. . .

“Damnit,” he muttered as he sat down to eat by himself in the common room.

It didn’t matter what
she
had done.
He
had lost his temper.
He
had raised his voice.
He
was better than that.

Or supposed to be.
He
was the one with a cart-sized otherworldly horse on his side.

Dinner ended quickly, but the self-flagellation remained. He wandered back to his room, lost in the emotional push and pull of anger and shame.

He stopped in front of his door.

A note was pinned to it with one of Lelia’s knives.

He gritted his teeth, took it down, and opened it up.

It read:

He stared for a moment, dumbstruck.

:Vehs,:
he thought,
:where are you?:

:Oh, Chosen!:
Vehs thought back.
:Please save me! The evil Bard-trainee has me and—:

:This is
not
funny.:

“This is ridiculous,” Wil mumbled.

“I’m going to kill you both,” he sighed.

Lelia wasn’t playing “My Lady’s Eyes” when Wil strolled up. She
was
sitting on a stump and playing, but the song she’d chosen was one from his own sector of Valdemar; a piece by the Bard Faber called “Seven White Horses.”

Vehs lingered nearby, a loose bit of rope around his neck. She’d tied him off to a dead sapling he could have snapped without breaking a sweat.

Her strings grew silent as Wil approached. She put the lute in its case, closed it with a snap, and walked over to Vehs, untying him and tucking the rope into her belt. She stood on tiptoe, whispered something in his ear, and then gave the Companion a kiss on one plump cheek.

Vehs looked away. To Wil, he seemed to be blushing.

Lelia approached Wil and looked up at him.

He steeled himself.

Be calm,
he thought.
Whatever you do, be calm. Be gentle. You’re a Herald, damnit. Act like one.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She patted him on the arm as she walked away.

Wil blinked stupidly, caught off guard. An ache started in his heart and throat, and grew the longer he stood there.

“Wait,” he said.

Her footsteps continued to fade away.

“
Wait,”
he said again, turning toward her.

She started to run.

 

Lelia didn’t want to know anymore.

She ran through the Grove like an arrow aimed at the Collegium. She’d write something—she had to—and it would be terrible—and unoriginal—and it would probably be about Sun and Shadow—and it would probably get her kicked out of the Bardic Collegium—and she would have to go back to juggling knives with her family—but she didn’t care—she didn’t care—she—

A white shape flashed to her right. Vehs leaped in front of her. She flailed to a stop, sliding in the grass and leaves, clutching her precious lutecase to her chest. She fell on her back and stared up at him.

Wil frowned down at her from Companion-back.

“Wait,” he said stubbornly.

She blinked, flinging tiny bits of tears from her lashes.

He dismounted and sat down next to her. “Just—wait.”

 

Crickets sang, nightingales warbled. Vehs’ white coat shone like moonlight, a silent challenge to the growing darkness.

“She didn’t die immediately,” Wil said at last. “It took a month. Her Companion—he carried her all the way to Haven, and then collapsed. He—died. She should have, too.

“But she didn’t. She held on. The Healers didn’t know why for the longest time. And then one day she woke long enough to Mindspeak something vital—some bit of intelligence she’d been holding on to. I was there. I saw her eyes when she slipped away—to the Havens.”

Somewhere, a frog gulped. Lelia said nothing and made no move except to breathe.

“The whole Heraldic Circle was in a fury,” Wil continued. “Everyone wanted the raiders who did it to her. It was a mess.”

He stared numbly into the darkness. To his surprise, he felt Lelia’s callused fingers close over his hand.

“She fought going,” he said, “because of duty. She had to fulfill it.”

“And to say good-bye.”

He looked at Lelia, startled. “What?”

“To you. To say good-bye.”

“To me? Why?”

She gave him a confused look. “Havens, Wil, she loved you. Why wouldn’t she want to say good-bye?”

Wil blinked stupidly, thunderstruck by the obviousness of her statement. In ten years, the thought so simply expressed to him now by a Bard-trainee had never once occurred to him.

His shoulders tightened and the aura of a headache threatened. He’d avoided it for so long—the memory of that moment when Daryann’s eyes had opened. The clamor of the Healers—the shouts for a Herald—Daryann’s head had turned toward him, like a north-needle gravitating toward its inexorable position—

He pushed past the pain of the loss, and allowed himself to finally, really remember that moment.

She had
seen
him.

“She winked,” he said slowly. “She winked at me.”

Something inside him broke free. He felt as if an old weight—one he’d forgotten was there—had been lifted away.

Lelia’s hand slid off of his. He heard the lutecase open and the hum of the disturbed strings as she pulled it out. Notes—bittersweet and haunting—rose from the belly of the instrument, hanging in the air.

Lelia sang.

 

“Bring them home,”
she began, directing the lyrics at Vehs.
“White guardian . . .”

And it just kept going from there. She knew, as it bubbled out of her, that it wasn’t a six-verse piece of genius. The lyrics weren’t terribly clever. The melody had none of the flash of “My Lady’s Eyes.” But it came straight from her heart, the truest expression of what she felt. It was exactly the song she could write at that moment, it was complete, it was hers, and it was enough.