Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

there.

“I didn’t think anyone would be in here,” she said after a little while, and Kailyon grunted. “Place doesn’t clean itself, you know.”

“No, I ... I guess I never thought about it,” the girl said, sounding surprised and just a little put out. “We keep our rooms clean, and we do some of the clean-up in the Refectory and the Salle, and I never thought about the classrooms. My name is Aellele. My family has a farm near Sweetgrass Creek—oh, I know you won’t ever have heard of it ...”

“But you’re a long way from home, and you’ve been away from home for a long time, and you’re wondering if you’ll ever get to go back home again,” Kailyon said. Aellele looked at him in surprise, and he smiled. “The Sweetgrass Valley is north of here, isn’t it?”

She began to tell him about the farm—he’d heard many such tales over the years, from many homesick young Trainees—and broke off in the middle of her tale to offer to help him in his chores. Kailyon saw no reason to object—it stood to reason that a farm girl knew a little something about dusting and cleaning—and soon Aellele had her own dust rag and was working along beside him.

Kailyon had never been one to chatter, but he had the knack of listening without making it seem to the one who spoke that it was any great burden for him to do so. And in truth it was not, for Kailyon had not only spent his entire life in Haven but had spent most of it within the grounds of the Collegium itself. If the wider world was to come to him at all, it must come through the stories and voices of those who spoke with him. And so he listened willingly to Aellele as she told of the life that she’d left and the life that she’d found, and if what she had to say was almost entirely composed of things he had heard many times before, well, it was new to her, and he gave her the respect of offering her words his full attention. Besides, there was one thing here that he did not yet know, and that was the reason she had chosen to transgress the Collegium’s rules to the extent of placing herself where he had found her, for if the majority of the Trainees were anonymous to the servants, the scapegraces and troublemakers were not, and Kailyon knew already that Aellele was not one of these.

When they finished that classroom, they went on to the next, and went on working side by side. Aellele’s flow of words slowed, then stopped. “Master Kailyon, you have been here a very long time,” she said, after a long silence. “Do you know ... what happens to someone—if they’re Chosen and just can’t learn to be a proper Herald?”

The last words came out in a rush, and it was such an utterly foolish question that if long years hadn’t granted him wisdom (or at least prudence), Kailyon would have laughed out loud. If the child had given the question half a minute’s thought, she would realize that what she was asking wasn’t a question about Herald-trainees, but about Companions. Who chose those who wore Trainee Grey in the first place but the Companions? And how could anyone imagine that the Companions could ever Choose someone who couldn’t learn to become a proper Herald of Valdemar? (Although—Kailyon did grant—it might take years and tears to do the job up right, it was also true that the Companions never chose someone who couldn’t be turned out as a Herald ... eventually.)

But Aellele was far too young (and much too worried) to think things out logically, and to the young, their small sins often loomed as large and black as any villainy out of myth.

“Well,” he said, affecting to consider, “I suppose that would depend on why it was they couldn’t be a Herald.”

And now the truth of the matter came tumbling out—a litany of childish wrongdoing and temper fits (he’d done as much—and worse—at her age, but he hadn’t been looking toward an awful and glorious future as a Herald). And of course Aellele had the manners to try to keep her fretting to herself, and of course her Companion knew about it, and of course he (and everyone else who saw her worrying, and people would have seen it because the teachers and the older students and everyone whose business it was to care for the young Herald-trainees were neither fools nor brutes) would have told her not to worry, that there would be time later to worry, if worrying needed to be done. And she would have paid as little attention to all their well-meant advice as the weather paid to Mistress Laundress when she wanted to dry linens and it wanted to rain.

“—and a Herald has to be nice all the time—when they’re riding Circuit—and I can’t be—I know I can’t—not if I live to be a thousand years old—and oh! what will happen then? I don’t know!”

“Hm,” Kailyon said. He sat down on a bench—as talking was more work than thinking—and gestured for her to sit beside him. “Well. Here’s how I see it. And of course you needn’t pay any heed to me. I’m not one of your instructors. Not a Herald neither. Just an old man who polishes wood and mops floors. But I’ve seen a good few Heralds come and go.”

Aellele seated herself beside him and composed herself to listen, her face grave and solemn.

“Of course you mustn’t do something to shame the Crown or your Companion while you wear the Whites. Everyone will tell you that. They’ll be telling you that for some years yet. And some Heralds ride Circuit and some don’t, you know. Every Herald goes to work they’re best suited to. Still, you aren’t wrong. If you put on the Whites, there’ll come a time when you’re asked to give a judgment. I don’t brag to say I’ve known a Herald or two in my time, though, and not one of them has ever worried one tick about being nice, and every single one of them has worried about being right.”

Aellele regarded him with doubtful hope. “Everyone else seems to think that all we have to do is study everything in our books and—and—and—learn to ride and use a sword and a bow!”

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Kailyon said. “Maybe they’ve got as many doubts as you do. Maybe they do think it’s just that easy—now. Those as think they know everything already are always the hardest to teach. They’ve got the most to learn, and it’s hard as hard to make them let go of what they think they know. You, now, you already know you’ve got a hard road to ride. So you’ll work just as hard as you need to in order to get yourself to the end of it. I’m no farmer, but a friend once told me there wasn’t any point to planning the harvest at plowing time.”

To Kailyon’s pleasure, Aellele actually giggled, then stopped and regarded him solemnly. “A lot can happen between planting and harvest,” she agreed.

Kailyon nodded, as much to himself as to her. He thought she had the look of someone who might be ready to hear what everyone had been telling her now, instead of just listening to it. “And now, I’ve a bit more dust to make away with, and it’s more than time for you to be in your bed, young Aellele.”

Aellele stood, and regarded him hesitantly. “You ... You wouldn’t mind if—if I came back and talked to you again some time, would you?”

“Just as you please,” Kailyon said, pushing himself to his feet with a faint grunt of effort. “And now, off with you.”

He watched as the young Trainee gathered her pen-case and papers and lantern from his cart and went skipping off in the direction of her dorm. So very young! But he knew that to him it would seem like sennights instead of years before he saw her riding out in Herald’s Whites. “Better too much doubt than too much confidence,” Kailyon quoted to himself. It was a proverb Aellele would not hear from her instructors for some time yet, and by the time she did, Kailyon suspected she would already have learned the lesson herself.

Aellele scurried back toward her room. For the first time since she’d been certain that she had it, her Gift was actually more of a comfort than an annoyance (and a rebuke, shaming her because even knowing how people felt couldn’t make her be nice to them). Because she’d been able to tell that Kailyon hadn’t been saying all those things he’d said just to make her feel better, or because he had to, or even just to make her go away, but because he thought they were true and were worth saying.

She didn’t know what hour it was, though she suspected—from the emptiness of the corridors—that curfew bell had already rung, and if she were seen, she would round off a day of disaster with demerits for being out after curfew. And while yesterday the thought would have devastated her, today it did not. If it happened, well, it happened. “A lot can happen between planting and harvest.” Tomorrow she would try to do better.

Tomorrow, and every day after that.

Heart, Home, and Hearth

by Sarah A. Hoyt and Kate Paulk

Sarah A. Hoyt was born in Portugal, a mishap she hastened to correct as soon as she came of age. She lives in Colorado with her husband, her two sons and a varying horde of cats. She has published a Shakespearean fantasy