Exile's Honor

He waited just long enough to enjoy the look of stunned shock and amazement on both their faces. Then he turned and made his way back to his bed—there to enjoy the first untroubled night of sleep he'd had since the Tedrel Wars began.

10

THE MindHealers, with one adventurous exception, were not happy about the plan, which was not really a surprise. Alberich did not give a toss whether they were happy about what he was doing. All he cared about was that they had agreed to the project.

The Heralds he had recruited for his agents were a diverse lot; four of them, which was all he would risk on this venture. He didn't know any of them well, which was another good reason for having chosen them. Three of them were too old for him to have trained, and the fourth had been so average that he was entirely unmemorable. One sun-weathered, dark-haired man who was a tinker, and thus had all the skills to pass successfully as a Karsite tinker. One, in his late middle-age years, was from a family of herdsman, and thus able to pass as another goatherd who had been displaced from his home in the hills by the war. In fact, he could probably make a fine case for having had his herds confiscated by the Tedrels, leaving him with nothing but the meager possessions he could carry on his own back. The third was a youngster, a lad who had just gotten his Whites—but he had three advantages. First, he was from a forester family just on the Border near Burning Pines. Second, he had been an orphan, forced to take responsibility for himself from an early age. As a consequence, he acted more like a young man in his late twenties than one just barely eighteen. And thirdly—thirdly, he was smart. He had a strongly developed sense for self-preservation; he thought before he said or did anything. He, of all of them, was the likeliest to be recruited by the Tedrels themselves and the most likely of anyone who had volunteered to be able to keep his head and stay plausible when within their ranks. There was something to be said for being the type that has been knocking about in the world before becoming a Herald, in this case.

The fourth was a woman as old as the old man; she would try to get taken on as a laundress or cook. Alberich didn't hold out much hope for that, but if she could, well, an old woman would hear a lot from the Tedrel camp followers. Even if the Tedrels themselves didn't speak to women, the recruits were of the type that wouldn't be able to keep their mouths shut.

None of them would have their Companions with them; all of them were confident that their Companions could stay out of sight, but within call, so if things began to look the least bit dangerous, they could get out of the camp and escape before suspicion mounted to certainty.

Alberich was quite certain of one thing, at least. When they were done with these sessions, they would be Karsite, or he would call a halt to the whole scheme. That was how he had sold his plan to the MindHealers; he had to wonder how much they really understood what he meant, but he had to take a chance somewhere.

No one knew how this was going to work, but the MindHealer who had agreed to mediate the experiment had some ideas of his own that he wasn't inclined to share with anyone, not even Alberich. He had only promised this much: if what he planned worked, the Heralds were not going to get Alberich's memories, per se, and Alberich was not going to be reliving his own memories. 'I won't say anything more,' he'd repeated stubbornly, no matter who asked him or how many times he was asked. 'I don't want anyone going into this with any preconceptions to muddle things up. If this works, it will work very well indeed.'

Though how they were supposed to enter into the situation 'without any preconceptions' was beyond him.

When the time came, Alberich appeared at Healers' Collegium at the appointed hour, with three of the four Heralds he had recruited trailing in after him, one by one. It probably would have been amusing if they all hadn't looked so serious, even apprehensive; he could have been a tutor or nanny trailed by his three of his four charges. They were sent to a quiet chamber that held two narrow beds and a chair between them, and stood, as Alberich thought to himself, 'like a gaggle of useless idlers,' none of them particularly wishing to take a seat either on the couches or the chair. The young man still hadn't arrived there when Healer Crathach, long and lean and sardonic, appeared in the room to which they had been sent.

'Ah, good. I only need one of you volunteers at a time,' he said, looking entirely too gleeful for Alberich's comfort. 'Hmm—you, I think, Orven. Take a couch. Alberich, you take the other. Try to relax, and close your eyes.'

The former herdsman made a bit of a face, and did as he was told, taking the farther of the two couches. In silence, Alberich did the same, taking the nearest. He closed his eyes, and heard a creak as the Healer sat down in the chair, felt a hand laid atop his forehead and suppressed the urge to knock it away, and—

And suddenly, he was in Karse.

But this was not exactly a memory. He had never lived in this cob-built hut—too small to be called a cottage—though he had seen plenty like it over the years. This was a typical mountain hut of the poorest sort, yet there was a poorer state than that in Karse, and that was to be the lowest of the kitchen or stable staff, who had not even a scrap of floor to call their own. Scullery maids, cook's boys—they slept on the kitchen floor and ate what they could scrape out of pots, never washed except what parts of them got immersed in water when they scrubbed things, never changed their clothing until it dropped from their body.

He and his mother had, thank Vkandis, never been that lowly.

However, in this incarnation, it appeared that the protagonists of this 'memory' were.