Sun in Glory and Other Tales of Valdemar

stopped you from doing it myself, but I will not always be here to stop it. She will grow, child. She will change. Let her. Instead of forcing others to respond to you, become something worthy of the response you desire.

Kayla was silent. In the present, with a child cradled against her, she lay open-eyed in the dark, hearing his heartbeat as if it were her own. Her mother's words continued, the past seeping into the present in a way that Kayla would never have foreseen.

Why do you think I came to Riverend?

Because of Father.

Yes. And no. Why do you think I tell you this, now, when I could keep it hidden?

I don't know.

Because I killed a man, Kayla.

She felt the harsh shock she had felt upon first hearing the words; felt the panic as she had attempted to deny the truth of them by finding the lie in her mother's mood. It wasn't there.

B-but why? How?

I forced him to feel my despair, my self-loathing, as if it were his own. He was not trained; not aware that what he felt came from outside of his core; he could not cope with what it was I placed there. I did not lift a hand, of course, but the end was the same as if 1

had.

And worse.

I look at my hands now, and I see a killer's hands. I look at my hands, and I see worse: I taught this Gift. I passed it on.

But-but what does that have to do with Riverend? Nothing. Everything.

The Holds are so dark and so isolated people can go mad in the winters. And do.

But...with my Gift, here, among these people, I can remind them, without words, of the spring and the summer; I can give them hope. They take hope, and they make of it what they will, and we survive until the passes open.

But is that so different? If you make them feel what they don't feel Is there a difference between watering a plant and drowning it? Here, in Riverend, there are few. The ore the mines produce is needed by the King. I have chosen to help these people, as I can, because I have grown to love them.

She had been silent, then.

Promise me, Kayla.

I promise, Mother.

* * *

In the end, she slept.

And the great beast was waiting for her, eyes red with fire, wings a maelstrom of emotion. He was despair, anger, loathing, but worse: He made mockery of the transience of the things Kayla valued: Love. Loyalty. Hope.

And who better to know of transience than she? She had buried a husband, a mother, a father. But worse, so much worse.

The dreams had always been her terror and her salvation.

When she lost her oldest child, Darius, unnamed and unnameable, had come to her in the untouched winter of a Riverend that was barren of life, and she clung to his back and wept, and wept, and wept.

Her youngest was old enough to walk, not old enough to speak, and he was also feverish, and she prayed to every god that might have conceivably lived, and in the end, weak and almost weightless, her second child's fever had broken.

But he never recovered, and although he seemed to take delight in the coming of spring, in the warmth and color of summer, the weight he had lost did not return. And she had wept then, at the start of winter, because she knew what it would mean. But at least, with her second, she had time. She told him stories. She sang him songs. She held him in the cradle of aching arms, and she comforted him, and herself, until she was at last alone.

But she was considered young enough in the village, if her heart was scarred; she was twenty-two. Her oldest son had survived six years, which was better than many, and the oldwives gathered to discuss her fate, and to ask her to marry again.

She had almost forgotten her mother's words, that day, and the promise she had made to her mother-for her mother was dead, and that death was so less painful than this terrible intrusion of the living.

She had had nothing, nothing at all. She had carried the blackness and the emptiness within her until it had almost hollowed her out completely. She felt it now; it was a visceral, terrible longing.

A desire for an end. An ending.

And she knew it for her own.

The dragon nodded, wordless; swept back huge wings, opened its terrible jaws. They were kin, she thought. He offered nothing but truth.

Two things saved her.

The first was the flash of white in the darkness: Darius, the Companion of winter in Riverend. And the second, more real, more painful, the small fingers that bruised her arms, the whimpering that reached her ears, that pierced the fabric of a dream she could not escape, tearing a hole in the wall between sleep and the waking world.

The child was weeping. She held him, and the ache in her arms subsided. This was what she was. This was what her mother had taught her to be: comfort. Hope. But when he called for his mother in the darkened room, she answered; she could not deprive herself of that one lie.

* * *

In the morning, grim, she rose. The child was sleeping, and his peace was fitful, but it was there. She dressed in the odd, gray uniform she'd been given, admiring the quality of its workmanship, if not the choice of its colors. Then she lifted him, waking him. He was disoriented, but only for a moment; she let him throw his arms around her neck until she could almost not breathe for the tightness of the grip. She loved that breathlessness.

'Daniel,' she told him gently, 'I need you to talk with Darius. I need you to stay with him.'

The boy's smile was shy, but it was genuine.

'I-I have work to do today. Darius is not really allowed inside.'

'But he's not a horse!'

'No...he's not a horse. He's better than that, and I'm sure he'll let you ride him if you want. Come. Let's find him.'

* * *

The halls were bustling; there were more people in the Collegium than she had ever seen in the Hold, and she found their presence almost overwhelming. But she discovered two important things from the young-the very young-man who stopped to talk to her. The first, where breakfast was served-and when, that being important-and the second, where the Companions were stabled.

She knew breakfast was important, and stopped for just long enough to feed Daniel.

Then she carried him to where she knew Darius was waiting.

He met her eyes, his own dark and unblinking.

Without preamble, Kayla set Daniel upon his back. He accepted the burden.

:You made a weapon out of him.:

:No, Kayla. He made a weapon out of himself He thought that that was the best way