The same discipline held in Healer's and Bard's Collegia; it made all students equal, as did the uniforms all Trainees wore. Everyone in the Collegia wore uniforms that identified their status as students. In the case of Healer-Trainees, the uniforms were of a pale green; the Bardic Trainees wore a rusty color. There were a few highborn students, pupils whose noble families wanted them to have an extended education, and a few commoners whose uncommon intelligence bought them entry to the same education, who were not affiliated with any of the three Collegia but shared the classes. They, too, wore uniforms, of a light blue. There were no privileges of rank within the Collegia, nor of wealth, though occasionally some students among the highborn tried to break that rule. The King himself usually dealt with such a situation; he was hardly an autocratic man, but there was one thing he wouldn't tolerate, and that was any interference in the running of the Collegia.
The three Collegia ran on much the same schedules, and often shared classes. But there was a fundamental difference in the discipline of the Herald's Collegium—if a highborn or wealthy Trainee in either Bardic or Healer's Collegium couldn't abide becoming one among equals, he or she could always leave. Those who abandoned their vocation would always have the shadow of failure hanging over them, and the unused Gift gnawing at them, but they could leave. Not so for a Heraldic Trainee. The bond of Herald and Companion was not a thing that could be abandoned.
Not that any Trainee had ever seriously tried. There was always a Trainee or two who had troubles, but with help, they always worked through those troubles and adjusted. No one was ever Chosen who could not adapt to the regimen of the Collegium and the responsibilities of the Herald. The Companions themselves saw to that. They were the final arbiters of who became a Herald and who was unworthy of the honor, and only once, in all of the history of Valdemar, had one ever made a mistake—and even then, it was not in whom she Chose, but that she did not help him when he needed her the most, repudiating him in her anger at what he had done.
Pol had that ever in his mind when he faced his classes of young Trainees. Every Herald did. Never again would there be another Tylendel.
But there was no sign of any trouble in the younglings he was teaching this year. Most of them were the offspring of farmers, craftsmen, and small traders. The two or three highborn had adapted cheerfully, and even eagerly, to their new duties. There were conflicts of personality, of course, and love affairs, broken hearts, and quarrels, mistakes, misunderstandings, and adolescent rebellion, but no tragedies abrewing.
The next class came in dripping, smelling of wet wool; before Pol's class this lot took archery practice, even in the pouring rain. They chattered among themselves much more cheerfully than he would have, given that they'd gone straight from breakfast into the cold rain.
Classes were small, no more than six pupils at a time, so that teachers could give each student individual attention. In Pol's case, he taught a total of five Geography classes over the course of the day, and sometimes filled in for a teacher in who was ill. There were two classes in the lowest level of difficulty, two in the second, and one in the third. After a Trainee finished third-level Geography, he or she went on to Orienteering, the skill of dead reckoning in completely unknown territory.
"Well, Derrian," Pol asked the first one to sit down, "How did you manage this morning?"
Derrian grinned impishly. "We did all right," he said, with a hint of a smirk on his freckled face. "M'pa would have skinned me alive if I'd been too stupid to learn to keep m'bow-string dry by now."
"Derry showed us all what to do," the smallest and youngest of the class piped up, with a worshipful glance at Derrian. "Weaponsmaster actually smiled!"
"Good for you, Derrian!" Pol applauded. "Good for all of you, and well done." He turned and drew a map symbol on the slate board behind him with a chunk of chalk. "Now, since you've been so clever, Derrian, perhaps you remember what this symbol means?"
By the time the class was over, the Trainees had thoroughly dried out and the room no longer smelled of wool. The third class hadn't undertaken anything out in the wet, and after that class came the break for lunch.
Pol habitually met with three other teachers for a card game over lunch; today it was his turn to host, so he sent a page down to the kitchen for provisions and set up the chairs and the table at the back of the room for a game.
The players were a mixed bag, and he reflected as he arranged the cold meat, sliced breads, and the rest on his desk that they would never have met, much less become friends, if they hadn't been Heralds. Damina was the eldest of the group, a tough old woman with a perfectly unreadable face and a wicked sense of irony. Like Pol, she was a native of Haven. Tevar was highborn—the highest, in fact, since he was the King's youngest brother, but you would never have known it from the company he preferred to keep and the subjects that interested him. In point of fact, he was the specialist in wilderness survival and flora and fauna; he taught Orienteering and took final-year Trainees out into the wilderness and trained them to survive with only the clothes on their backs and what they had in their pockets. The youngest of the group, Melly, taught History and Literature, and was one of the tutors for students having difficulties. She was assigned permanently to the Collegium, unlike the other three, because she was the best teacher that anyone had ever seen, with the talent—almost, one could say, the Gift—for getting younglings interested and excited about learning. That—and her size. She couldn't have been any taller than the average thirteen-year-old. Riding circuit required physical abilities that she didn't have, but that didn't matter. She could, and did, ride messenger service during any emergency. She could, and did, take her turn out "on circuit" within Haven itself. She had dodged Karsite arrows and bandits, had come into Haven reeling in the saddle with exhaustion. Melly might not take the most arduous of duties, but no one could say that she didn't take the most hazardous.
And she was a deadly card player.
Melly was the first to arrive, with the other two right behind her. "Pfui!" Tevar said, knitting black brows as the wind drove a gust of rain against the window glass. "I hate this time of year!" He pulled his chair back with a scrape, and dropped into it, pulling his tail of sable hair to the side so he wouldn't get it caught between his back and the back of the chair.
Melly cast a glance at the window herself, peering from beneath a thick brown fringe of bangs that made her look like a cheerful little pony. "I don't know; I rather like it, as long as the weather's out there and I'm in here."
"Makes you feel sorry for the ones out there, though, doesn't it?" Damina asked, as she helped herself to food, then settled into her chair. "Then again, it isn't like this everywhere."
"It's still fine down in the south, and in the north the rains are over by now," Pol agreed. "For that matter, it isn't everywhere that gets these autumnal downpours, either, so you could be wasting your pity, Damina."