Brightly Burning

contemplating revenge, they won't dare try it, because with the entire city intent on your protection, nothing they tried would have a chance of succeeding. If they try and hire more thugs in Haven, the thugs themselves will turn them in. If they bring in outsiders, the outsiders will be of a certain type, and the local thugs will spot them, know why they are here, and turn them in.'

Lan put his head back, and stared up at the ceiling. Put a face on your enemy. 'What—what's the Karsite army going to be like?'

Pol sighed and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. 'Despite what you might think, they aren't all fanatics; in fact, most of them aren't much different than our people. Most of the line troops will be farmers, or herders, or crafters. Their regular army will be in the minority, the Sun-priests, a smaller minority than that. What they are, is terrified of us. They think that Heralds are demons, that the Companions are demons, and that if they are captured, they'll be sacrificed to our demon gods, slowly and painfully. That gives them a rather powerful incentive to fight.'

Lan brought his head down and saw that Pol was watching him wearing an expression full of irony.

'Of course, you realize that if you can do even a little of what we think you can, they are only going to be more convinced that Heralds are demons,' Pol continued, raising an eyebrow.

'I suppose....' Lan rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. Master Odo was right; somehow an army of farmers like Tuck's family wasn't nearly as terrifying as the faceless, mindless, implacable army he'd pictured in his mind. 'Pol, I don't know that I can kill anyone! I already have so many nightmares about the school—'

'So don't!' Pol replied. 'I haven't heard anyone suggesting that you should.'

So Kalira was right. 'Kalira said—maybe I should make fire walls, or burn up their supplies and tents, or something—'

'Very good ideas. What's more, you are the only one who can dictate what you will and won't do. No one really knows what you can do here at the Collegium, and they'll know still less on the front lines. You tell the Generals what you can do, or what you're willing to do, and they'll fit that into their plans.' Pol actually smiled at Lan's surprise. 'You didn't know that things worked like that?'

'No! I thought that—that people would just order me to do things—' he stammered.

Pol shook his head. 'You can't order someone with a Gift; how can you enforce orders on something that no one can weigh or measure? Our people have decades of knowing how to adapt battle tactics to include some new ability, but they also know how to adapt if the person with that ability is too tired to work, or doesn't have the strength that they thought, as well.'

If Pol had intended to bring his fears down to a more reasonable level, he was succeeding. Lan was still afraid, but he didn't feel like crawling into a ball somewhere dark and shaking anymore. In fact, now there was room for another bubble of guilt and anxiety to rise to the surface of his thoughts.

'Madame Jelnack—' he paused, as Pol cast a penetrating glance at him. 'If I asked the King—do you think he'd find a different place for her to go?' He shuddered, thinking of the situation that Theran had described. 'I mean, walled up in a cave for the rest of her life—that's horrid! She's not sane, but—'

To his surprise, Pol chuckled again. 'Don't feel too sorry for her,' he replied. 'I know something about that particular Cloistered Order. Not everyone who goes there is an ascetic; sometimes it's well-born women who are recluses by nature and want to be away from the distraction of the world to concentrate on religious scholasticism, meditation, and prayer. It's no cave that Jisette Jelnack is going to be walled into, it's a very comfortable little apartment, with its own little bathing room and all. She can have anything her family wants her to have in there. She'll just never get out, and it all becomes the property of the Order after she's gone.' He chuckled again. 'In fact, I have no doubt that the Order is going to charge her family a princely amount for her keep and comfort, given that she's a prisoner, and it serves them all right.'

'Are you sure?' Lan asked, his conscience considerably eased, now that his mental picture of a dank, barren, shadow-filled cell had been replaced by a very different vision.

'So sure that I'll take you there to see for yourself if you need to be convinced,' Pol told him. He stood up. 'Thank you, Lan.'

'Me?' Lan said, surprised. 'For what?'

'Talking to you helped me to put on a face on the enemy. Remember what Master Odo always tells us.' He touched his eyebrow with two fingers in a little salute. 'I think that we'll put off practice for today. I don't think that either of us want to be the center of a circle of gawkers just now.'

Lan nodded, and belatedly remembered his manners. He scooted off the bed, and went to open the door for his mentor. 'If I were you,' Pol finished, as he paused halfway out the door, 'I'd go out to Kalira. I think she needs you quite a bit right now.'

'I will,' Lan promised, and before Pol was more than halfway down the hall, he had gotten his cloak and was out the door, heading for the stables at a trot.

NINETEEN

THE departure of a mere ten Trainees should not have made that much difference in the way that the Collegium halls felt, but it did. Ten rooms empty, and the place had a hollower sound to it, the sense that something was missing, or amiss.

Pol told himself that he was being overly dramatic, but from the nervous way his pupils were acting, they felt the same. Laughter sounded forced or strained, voices were hushed, and jokes were far, far fewer.

Ten Trainees had been hustled into Whites months before they were due to graduate, and sent off to the south. They would finish their training the old-fashioned way, paired with a mentor with the same Gift, expected to act as his or her backup. It was the way that Heralds had been trained in Vanyel's time, revived in the current