"Oh, the gods forbid that I should waste anything so precious as pity!" she exclaimed wryly. "I have so little of it to spare!"
"And far too much breath," Tevar retorted. "Are you going to talk, or play?"
With a chuckle, Damina cut the cards, and they began their usual fierce combat until the Collegium bells warned that classes were due to begin.
At the end of the day, Pol decided against dinner with the Court and opted for a seat with the rest of the Collegium. A Collegium dinner was the best possible antidote to a gloomy day.
He went in early, while the Trainees were still washing up, taking his favorite seat at a table over near one of the fireplaces. Those tables were generally kept clear so that the adults could claim them, perhaps out of pity for their "old bones!" There were two or three other teachers there, and a group of Heralds entered right after he settled himself, Heralds who had just gotten back from their assignments and had not yet gotten new ones. He waved them over, although he didn't know any of them personally; they would have news of their sectors, and would be willing to share it. They were all fairly young, probably in their first decade of serving as full Heralds; all aggressively fit and lean. The three young men, two very dark, one less so, reached him first, followed by a blonde woman.
"Jonotan, Lake Evendim," said the first to sit down, shaking Pol's extended hand, giving his name and the circuit he'd been on, just as a fifth Herald, an older woman, entered, looked about, and headed for his table.
"Kiela, Staghorn Forest," the young blonde woman told him with a nod.
The broadly smiling dark man introduced himself next, as "Lerrys, the Fells," followed by a shorter, but equally dark fellow who was "Wernar, Torgate."
The last was another woman, middle-aged with gray streaking her mousy hair, that Pol knew very slightly. "Charis! Good to see you!" he welcomed her. "What sector this time?"
She settled into place with a weary sigh. "Karsite Border," she said, and got the immediate attention of the others.
"And?" Pol asked, assuming the duty of the questioner as host.
One of the Trainees came by about then with a platter of hot bread and a bowl of butter, and Charis made an unmistakable gesture toward him with her eyes. They waited in silence for the boy to get out of hearing distance, and in the meantime, the hall began to fill with chattering youngsters, making it easier for them to converse without being overheard.
"I'll give you the worst news first," Charis told them, as they unconsciously bent toward her, all of them with grave expressions. "There's going to be war. Maybe not this year, though I think it will come by Midwinter, but next summer at the latest. It's not bandits raiding the Borders anymore, and not Karsite outcasts desperately clawing out some sort of life, it's Karsite troopers, little squads of them. We finally caught some of them, and there were uniforms in their saddlebags." She shrugged. "The Sun-priests claim they were acting on their own, but we know better, obviously. Not even a Karsite is immune to a Truth Spell."
They all let out their held breath as one. Pol shook his head. "So they've started testing us, have they?"
"That's the general assessment," Charis agreed. "The current Son of the Sun is cautious. He isn't going to move until he's built up his troops there, built them up slowly so we supposedly won't notice, and that is going to take time. At least we're forewarned."
Another set of Trainees came along with platters and bowls, and the discussion ended for a moment while the Heralds helped themselves. When the servers moved on to other tables, Jonotan asked the next question.
"Is there any good news?" he said, mouth twisted in a wry attempt at a smile that was not succeeding very well.
"We've got warning, and we've got time," Charis pointed out. "I just finished reporting to the King and Council; everyone is going to know by tomorrow. We're going to have to build up our own troops, I suppose; maybe evacuate the villages nearest the Border."
"If you can," Kiela pointed out. "A lot of those people are Holderkin; they wouldn't move for any mortal, and I sometimes doubt if they'd even move for their gods."
Charis made a face, but didn't contradict her.
"While you were there," Pol put in hesitantly, "did you happen across a Healer named Ilea?"
To his surprise, Charis laughed out loud, her gloom broken. "Actually, I did, just before I left. There was an outbreak of little-pox in a Holderkin village, and the Elder had actually unbent enough to call in our Healers. When I last saw her, Ilea was politely, gently, and thoroughly telling off the menfolk for not helping the women with the sick. 'If they drop with exhaustion, they'll be sick next, and who will cook, clean, and tend to you when you fall ill?' she said. And by all that's holy, the Elder was bending his head like a little boy being scolded!"
Greatly relieved, Pol laughed as well; he could certainly picture Ilea doing just as described. That broke the tension, and the conversation moved on to the news the others brought with them; after all, there was nothing to be done about the Karsites at this exact moment, certainly nothing that half a dozen Heralds could do.
Pol took his leave of the others long before they finished their meal; younger appetites were heartier than his, and they hadn't eaten anything but their own cooking—or army cooking—for the last two years or so. Heralds traveling to and from their assignments stayed in inns along the way, but those on circuit camped, sheltered in waystations, and tended to their own needs. That was so that no one could play host to a Herald and then try to exert influence over him, so that no one could claim a Herald was playing favorites in judgments.
It was certainly a wise policy, even though it was a bit hard on Heralds riding circuit. However snug those waystations might be, they were still very spare of comforts, and the provisions stored in them made for simple and tediously similar meals. And if one wasn't a particularly good cook—Well, after two years, the meals at the Collegium would start to assume the character of gourmet feasts.
Pol returned to his quarters, to find one of his youngest students waiting for him, with a face so full of woe that he thought immediately that the youngster must have received bad news from home. Malken was barely nine years old, and very young to be Chosen, but he was by no means the youngest on record to have shown up at the Collegium with a Companion. Certainly the King's pages were as young or younger, and with his cherubic features and ingenuous brown eyes the Queen had threatened to steal him for her service more than once.
"Malken, what's the matter?" he exclaimed, as he closed the door to his rooms behind him, indicating that he was not to be disturbed.
Malken burst into tears and attached himself to Pol's legs like an animate burr. Pol held and comforted him; as he patted the child's back, he thought with a twinge of how often he had sat in this very fireside chair, comforting one of his own children for some childish woe....
But this was evidently much more than a quarrel with a friend, or one of the highborn children bullying him. Malken was positively hysterical; it wasn't a case of would not stop weeping, it was could not.
While Malken sobbed, he racked his brain for some idea of what could have the boy in such a state. If there had been a tragedy in the family, the Dean of the Collegium would have been notified first, so that someone Malken trusted could be with him when he heard the bad news. There hadn't been any sign of anything wrong when Malken had his Geography lesson with the first class this morning, and Malken wasn't the sort to have had a major falling-out with a friend that would leave him so brokenhearted.