Brightly Burning

The factions were equal and quite clearly demarcated along color lines; the Heralds in their white uniforms on his right, the others in their varicolored court clothing on the other. They all began talking at once, creating a babble that echoed up and down the hallway and rose in sound level as each tried to be heard over the rest. This was an impossible situation, and Pol put his foot down immediately.

'Shut up, all of you!' he roared, silencing them. Heads popped out of doors up and down the hall, and quickly retreated when the rank of those clustered at the entry had been noted. It was too late to hope that curiosity hadn't been aroused; he could only hope that the incident was quickly forgotten. 'Now, I suggest we take this to the Lesser Council Chamber before you frighten all the Trainees and set the Court to making up gossip for lack of concrete information.' He glared at all of them; he rarely invoked his ability to cow a group, but that made the skill all the more effective when he displayed it. Without waiting for an answer, he strode off down the corridor, leaving them to follow in his wake. The wood-paneled hall remained silent; no more heads popped from doors. Pol hoped that this altercation was of less interest than books and interrupted studies.

Once they were out of the Heralds' Wing and into the Palace proper he breathed a bit easier. Processions of officials going to and from various rooms at any and all hours were perfectly normal sights in the Palace. He nodded affably at pages and passing courtiers, and the others had the wit to do likewise. Through the maze of hallways and passages they went, occasionally interrupting a lovers' tryst or sending a group of truant pages to find some other hiding place, until they arrived at the substantial door of the Lesser Council Room, which served for meetings of segments of the Council and three Circles most of the hours of the day. At this hour the fire was out, but thanks to the warmth of the evening, the room had taken on no more than a faint chill. He took a taper from the shelf beside the door, lit it at a lamp in the hallway, then went around relighting the room's lamps himself as the others filed inside. Only when he had seated himself at the head of the rectangular oak table and the heavy ironwood door was firmly closed behind the last of the group did he wait for the others to seat themselves, clear his throat, and look around with an inquiring glance, inviting one of them to start. They all hesitated for a moment except the Captain.

'I don't know what kind of mind-magic you worked on me out there, Pol,' Captain Telamaine began heatedly. 'But as soon as I got back to my office, I came to my senses about that—that—menace in the guise of a boy! I've put guards on him, and I went straight to the Lord Marshal—'

'Which I had every intention of doing myself, although I don't think I would have dared interrupt him if he had already retired for the night,' Pol replied, keeping his own voice calm and reasoned. 'As for using mind-magic on you—first of all, I am appalled that you even considered that I would consider doing so, and second, the only 'magic' taking place during our interview with Lavan was the exercise of your own good sense, which you seem to have lost between Healer's and here.'

'Well said,' Jedin muttered, low enough that only Pol heard him.

'As for the guards,' Pol continued, raising an eyebrow with studied surprise. 'What, precisely, did you intend for them to do? The boy is hardly going to evoke his Firestarting Gift on purpose—you saw for yourself that he is terrified of what he can do—and even if he did it by accident, how do you propose to stop him with a guard? Have them shoot him dead? Assuming they can, of course. It is possible that the fires would protect their progenitor.' The carefully nuanced eyebrow rose again. 'And wouldn't killing a Trainee create a fine and confident climate among the rest of our Trainees? A good half of them are afraid of their own Gifts; how are they to take it if members of the Guard start executing people for using Gifts?'

Telamaine flushed, then blanched, then flushed again. 'I—' he began, and couldn't get any farther.

The Lord Marshal took pity on him. 'You responded as a Captain of the Guard to a situation outside your training, Telamaine,' the old man said gruffly, actually reaching out to pat the Captain's shoulder. He rubbed his bushy gray eyebrows with his hand, and then ran the same hand over thick, gray hair. 'Putting guards on the boy until you had further orders was in accordance with not knowing what to do about it.'

'And now we will make a reasoned and reasoning response to the situation and correct things before they become a problem,' Pol pointed out smoothly. 'We need thought, cool heads and tempers, and one thing made perfectly clear. The boy has been Chosen. The mare Kalira is no youngster. Furthermore, she made it known in no uncertain terms to my Companion Satiran—who happens to be her sire— and to me personally, that she can and will control his Gift.'

'Gift?' the Seneschal yelped, both eyebrows leaping up like a pair of startled caterpillars. 'You call that a Gift?'

'Cool and reasoned,' murmured Trevor, placing a cautioning hand on the Seneschal's arm. Pol couldn't blame the poor man; he was much younger than any of the others, having come to this position from his previous post as the Seneschal of Theran's country estate. When he wasn't confronted by impossible situations, he was quite a handsome young fellow, and very much the target of the mothers of unwedded maidens.

Seneschal Greeley ran a nervous hand through a thick thatch of brown hair that was growing grayer by the month. Trevor murmured something Pol couldn't hear, and he rolled his eyes, but didn't add any more little comments.

'Nevertheless,' Captain Telamaine persisted. 'That so-called boy caused the deaths of four of his own schoolmates. Just what are we supposed to say to their parents?'

'A damned good question!' Greeley seconded, nodding vigorously.

All four Heralds exchanged a glance. King's Own Jedin took over from Pol. He had more authority than any of the others, and Pol was perfectly glad to let him handle the discussion from this moment on.

'Tell them that there was a terrible accident that occurred while their offspring were bullying this boy,' Jedin said flatly. 'That we think there was—lamp oil stored there, one of them threw the boy Lavan into the stack of containers, they broke open and spilled into the fireplace. That was how and why the fire happened so quickly.'

For one long moment of absolute silence, the non-Heralds stared at Jedin in disbelief. Finally Captain Telamaine broke the silence with a gasp of protest.

'But that's not true!' he sputtered. 'Nothing like that happened!'

Herald Jedin gazed at him from beneath his heavy, black eyebrows. He was a great granite cliff of a man, with a craggy face, precisely barbered black hair, and a naturally forbidding expression that he used to great effect. 'I am well aware of that.'

'But—' Telamaine protested.

Jedin held up his hand, cutting off the protests before they began. 'But would any good be served by telling them the truth? Telling them the entire truth? Including the fact that their sons were essentially torturing other