Sun in Glory and Other Tales of Valdemar

of proving his worth to a distant father.:

:But his father-:

:His father loved him, yes. Loves him still.:

:If he was truly an Empath, he would have known that

:The Kings,: Darius said sadly, :are taught to shield themselves. Against all intrusion, all influence. They must be strong.:

:And his youngest son was so insecure that he couldn't infer that love.: Darius was silent.

:My mother knew him.:

:Your mother...knew him, yes. Your mother could have reached him, had she lived; your mother was the one who discovered his Gift, the strength of his Gift. Your mother was the woman who insisted that he be moved from the court and taken to a place without the politics of power.:

:But she must have known-the dreams, the dreams I had-she must have had them:

:I...do not know. She could have reached him. The Heralds who have some hint of your Gift...could not. He made a weapon out of himself and the forging was completed with the death of his Companion.:

She knew, then.

:He...he killed his Companion?:

:No! No. But the loss broke something in him. No other Companion can reach him now, and believe me, Kayla, we have tried. He is one of the Gifted; he can hear us all, if he so chooses.:

:But this must have happened years ago-:

:Yes, but few.:

:That's not possible. I felt him years ago. In my dreams. I...: But the dreams had been different. She had felt loneliness, isolation, the desperate desire to be loved. Not madness.

:You are powerful, Kayla. What you felt then was true. It is far, far less than what you will feel now. Far less. Kayla, I must warn you-:

:I know.:

:Those who are affected, always, are those who have some hint of the Gift. When the Gift is strong, the effect is not sleep...

:It's death.:

:Yes.:

Gisel summoned her shortly after. Darius informed her of the summons, and she hastened back-with some difficulty, for the building really was a maze of passages compared to the simplicity of the Hold-to the rooms in which they had first met.

'I'm ready to meet him now,' she said, before Gisel could speak.

Gisel raised a brow. 'There are things you should know about- '

'There is nothing I should know that you will tell me,' Kayla replied softly. 'But I believe that this-this prince- has been hunting for me for much of my life, and it's about time I stopped running.'

'Hunting for you?'

'In my dreams,' Kayla replied.

Gisel added nothing. 'The Grays will do. Gregori is here, in the Collegium. We've sent all those who might be affected as far away as we can; distance seems to have some affect on his ability to-to reach people.'

'But not enough.'

'Not enough, no. Understand that we have not explained this to the world at large. It is treason to speak of it. I will have your oath, child, that you will comport yourself as a Herald-as a true servant of the King.'

Kayla nodded. And then, quietly, she knelt, her knees gracing the cold stone floor.

* * *

The two women traveled; Kayla let Gisel lead, and made no attempt to memorize their journey, to map the long halls, the odd doors, the hanging tapestries and the crystal lamps.

She could see other things more clearly. Once or twice she reached out for Darius, and when he replied, she continued.

Until they reached a set of doors.

She froze outside of them, almost literally.

'Do you know why Darius waited?' she asked Gisel softly.

'Waited? To Choose you?'

Kayla nodded.

'No. He told us that he knew where you were to be found, but he refused to tell us how to find you until this spring.'

She nodded again. Touched the door. It was cold. Winter cold. Death cold. Within these walls, beyond these doors, the dragon lay coiled.

'Will you wait outside?' Kayla asked. It was not possible to give an order to this woman.

Gisel ignored the request; she pulled a ring of keys from her belt and slid one into the door's single lock.

Whatever Kayla expected from the rooms of a prince had come from stories that Widow Davis told the children. She had long since passed the age where stories were necessary, but she wanted them anyway. She gazed, not at a room, but at a small graveyard, one blanketed as if by snow, hidden from sight unless one knew how to look for it.

She knew.

Her dead were here. Her dead...and the losses that death inflicted. She faced them now. Swallowed air, shaking.

'It's hard,' Kayla whispered. 'When they're gone, it's so damned hard.'

'What?' Gisel's sharp tone had not softened in the slightest.

'To feel loved. To know that you are loved. I think-I think sometimes it's the hardest thing in the world.' She entered the room unaware of the weight of the King's Own's stare.

A young man lay abed.

He was older than Kayla; he had to be older. She knew this because of her mother's words, her mother's memory. But had she not known it, she would not have guessed; he was slender with youth, and he lay curled on his side, shaking slightly, his eyes wide and unseeing. She felt his pain as if it were her own. As if it were exactly her own.

She did not know if she loved Darius.

That was truth. He was part of her in a way that she could not fathom, did not struggle to understand. But she did not know if she loved him.

She could say with certainty that she had loved her husband. Could say-no, could not say, but could feel-with certainty, that she had loved her children, the children that life in Riverend had taken from her one by one.

And she could say with certainty that this man-boy, this terrible dragon, this hunting horror, had loved his Companion. Or had felt loved by him.

The loss she felt was profound and terrible. It dwarfed all losses that she had ever suffered but one. 'Leave us,' she whispered.

Gisel hesitated for only a minute, but that minute stretched out into forever. And then she was gone. 'All right,' Kayla said quietly. 'It's time you and I had a talk.'