Brightly Burning

his window told Pol that the damage had already begun, with leaves dropping as steadily as raindrops. This was the time of year when the leaves quickly faded to brown and dropped from the trees, leaving skeletal fingers silhouetted against a uniformly gray sky. Right now the Trainees in their own gray uniforms trudged about the Collegium grounds, hooded heads hunched against the rain, covered by the waxed cloth of their gray rain-capes. At the moment, they looked like bits of scudding rain clouds themselves.

Pol rarely had to leave the Collegium wing himself when he taught here; the classrooms where the Heraldic classes were held were all within the wing. He greatly appreciated the warm fires in every classroom, though every time an outside door opened, a cold, damp wind whipped through the halls. The classrooms were just a bit bigger than his bedroom, and had a friendly warmth to them.

His particular specialty was in geography; Herald-Trainees needed to learn first how to read maps, then needed to memorize those maps, for one day they might have to find their way without the benefit of a map. Many things could happen to a Herald on circuit; the loss of supplies should never mean becoming lost.

This lot evidently had clean-up duty at breakfast today; they came into the classroom heat-flushed and scrubbed, with cheerful faces and suppressed giggles. The Collegium Cook was a huge woman without an ounce of fat on her body, who looked as if she ought to be wielding a sword, not brandishing a ladle. She also had a bottomless fund of jokes and a finely-honed sense of humor that made kitchen duty prized above all other chores.

Trainees got the benefit of some servants, but for the most part, they had to pitch in to keep the Collegium running. It was good for all of them. Trainees from the farms and cottages discovered leisure and servants, and the highborn learned what it was like for those not fortunate enough to have been born with a title. Trainees took turns at all the chores, from working in the kitchen to waiting at table, from helping in the laundry to stocking the closets, from chopping wood to making certain every room had a filled wood carrier, from mending uniforms to making them. The only thing they didn't do was cleaning; they had to keep their own rooms clean and tidy, but the classrooms, bathing rooms, and hallways were cleaned by the Collegium servants.

The same discipline held in Healer's and Bard's Collegia; it made all students equal, as did the uniforms all Trainees wore. Everyone in the Collegia wore uniforms that identified their status as students. In the case of Healer-Trainees, the uniforms were of a pale green; the Bardic Trainees wore a rusty color. There were a few highborn students, pupils whose noble families wanted them to have an extended education, and a few commoners whose uncommon intelligence bought them entry to the same education, who were not affiliated with any of the three Collegia but shared the classes. They, too, wore uniforms, of a light blue. There were no privileges of rank within the Collegia, nor of wealth, though occasionally some students among the highborn tried to break that rule. The King himself usually dealt with such a situation; he was hardly an autocratic man, but there was one thing he wouldn't tolerate, and that was any interference in the running of the Collegia.

The three Collegia ran on much the same schedules, and often shared classes. But there was a fundamental difference in the discipline of the Herald's Collegium—if a highborn or wealthy Trainee in either Bardic or Healer's Collegium couldn't abide becoming one among equals, he or she could always leave. Those who abandoned their vocation would always have the shadow of failure hanging over them, and the unused Gift gnawing at them, but they could leave. Not so for a Heraldic Trainee. The bond of Herald and Companion was not a thing that could be abandoned.

Not that any Trainee had ever seriously tried. There was always a Trainee or two who had troubles, but with help, they always worked through those troubles and adjusted. No one was ever Chosen who could not adapt to the regimen of the Collegium and the responsibilities of the Herald. The Companions themselves saw to that. They were the final arbiters of who became a Herald and who was unworthy of the honor, and only once, in all of the history of Valdemar, had one ever made a mistake—and even then, it was not in whom she Chose, but that she did not help him when he needed her the most, repudiating him in her anger at what he had done.

Pol had that ever in his mind when he faced his classes of young Trainees. Every Herald did. Never again would there be another Tylendel.

But there was no sign of any trouble in the younglings he was teaching this year. Most of them were the offspring of farmers, craftsmen, and small traders. The two or three highborn had adapted cheerfully, and even eagerly, to their new duties. There were conflicts of personality, of course, and love affairs, broken hearts, and quarrels, mistakes, misunderstandings, and adolescent rebellion, but no tragedies abrewing.

The next class came in dripping, smelling of wet wool; before Pol's class this lot took archery practice, even in the pouring rain. They chattered among themselves much more cheerfully than he would have, given that they'd gone straight from breakfast into the cold rain.

Classes were small, no more than six pupils at a time, so that teachers could give each student individual attention. In Pol's case, he taught a total of five Geography classes over the course of the day, and sometimes filled in for a teacher in who was ill. There were two classes in the lowest level of difficulty, two in the second, and one in the third. After a Trainee finished third-level Geography, he or she went on to Orienteering, the skill of dead reckoning in completely unknown territory.

'Well, Derrian,' Pol asked the first one to sit down, 'How did you manage this morning?'

Derrian grinned impishly. 'We did all right,' he said, with a hint of a smirk on his freckled face. 'M'pa would have skinned me alive if I'd been too stupid to learn to keep m'bow-string dry by now.'

'Derry showed us all what to do,' the smallest and youngest of the class piped up, with a worshipful glance at Derrian. 'Weaponsmaster actually smiled!'

'Good for you, Derrian!' Pol applauded. 'Good for all of you, and well done.' He turned and drew a map symbol on the slate board behind him with a chunk of chalk. 'Now, since you've been so clever, Derrian, perhaps you remember what this symbol means?'

By the time the class was over, the Trainees had thoroughly dried out and the room no longer smelled of wool. The third class hadn't undertaken anything out in the wet, and after that class came the break for lunch.

Pol habitually met with three other teachers for a card game over lunch; today it was his turn to host, so he sent a page down to the kitchen for provisions and set up the chairs and the table at the back of the room for a game.

The players were a mixed bag, and he reflected as he arranged the cold meat, sliced breads, and the rest on his desk that they would never have met, much less become friends, if they hadn't been Heralds. Damina was the eldest of the group, a tough old woman with a perfectly unreadable face and a wicked sense of irony. Like Pol, she was a native of Haven. Tevar was highborn—the highest, in fact, since he was the King's youngest brother, but you would never have known it from the company he preferred to keep and the subjects that interested him. In point of fact, he was the specialist in wilderness survival and flora and fauna; he taught Orienteering and took final-year Trainees out into the wilderness and trained them to survive with only the clothes on their backs and what they had