You could have knocked me over with a feather. “I am?” I said, feeling stupid.
He nodded. “I felt you at work from half a day away, and let me tell you, my lad, we are going to be right glad to have you if you care to stay and learn to use what you’ve got properly. You’re a Mindhealer, son. That’s what you’ve been doing all your life—using your Gift.”
“I thought—” Things I’d never put together began tumbling into place. Things Millissa had told me. The things I’d been doing. How I’d worked with little Rose . . . “Huh.”
Well, it wasn’t as if I had anything better to do. And there was nothing saying I couldn’t keep, well . . .
The Healer raised an eyebrow at me. “Oh, yes. You’re still going to be very popular with the women.”
I found myself grinning. He grinned back and clapped me on the back.
“Come along then, Healer Trainee Don. We’re just in time for supper.”
Chapter 2 - Catch Fire, Draw Flame - Rosemary Edghill and Denise McCune
South of the Yvedan Hills, in the places where constant border clashes between Karse’s army and Valdemar’s defenders were merely worrisome news and not terrifying reality, the land softened, spreading itself into rolling hills and lush fields. North of the Jaysong Hills, the farmsteads were built more of wood than stone; the farmstead walls were built to stop wandering chickens and not armed raiders, and shutters were not barred with iron. Here no man or woman slept with a sword beneath the pillow to arm against danger that comes in the night.
North and east of the Jaysong Hills, near—but not too near—the Hardorn border, where the East Trade Road ran straight and smooth toward Haven, the tents of Summerfair sprouted each Midsummer. From full moon to full moon a city of tents and pavilions appeared in the cup of the Goldendale, a city to which all the north came to sell and to buy.
“Why are we here?” Elade grumbled.
Despite the fact that the Summerfair Peace hadn’t been broken within living memory—and despite the fact that her sword had been peacebound, as had every other weapon at the fair—her gaze roved over the fairgoers as though any might rise to menace them.
“Why is anyone anywhere?” Meran answered. His teeth flashed white as he smiled at her, and he hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. Seeing the fair in Elade’s company was a bit like taking a leopard for a walk. The other fairgoers gave them a wide berth, despite the knot of yellow ribbons that bound her sword to its sheath.
“You look like a—a—a—”
“Bard?” Meran asked, his eyes round with feigned innocence. “But I am a Bard, sweet Elade.”
Elade slanted a sideways look at Meran’s crimson tunic. “You don’t have to look like one,” she huffed.
It was true that no one would take Elade for anything but what she was. Short cloak, high boots, studded leather bracers, and chain mail tunic all proclaimed her identity as a mercenary soldier. Elade had no reason ever to conceal herself . . . unlike the rest of them. In the places they travelled—and with the work they did—it was far better he and the others not travel garbed in Bard’s scarlet or Healer’s green or . . . Not that we could ever get Gaurane into Whites without knocking him unconscious first, Meran thought.
“Why not?” he asked (it was fun to tease Elade). “It would be very wrong of me to do otherwise. Only think—I might enter all the competitions and carry off every prize.”
Elade snorted. “You’d have to be better than everyone else to do that, Meran,” she pointed out.
“Hey, Bard here,” he protested.
“Journeyman Bard,” Elade corrected, just as if she could tell the difference between the playing of a Journeyman and a Master. Elade insisted all music was nothing more than cat-squalling.
“Elade, it’s Summerfair.” Meran dropped the teasing and set out to convince her in earnest. “We have a whole fortnight where nobody’s trying to kill us. You should enjoy yourself. We’ll be back on the Border soon enough.”
“I like the Border,” Elade said. “You know who your friends are there. And your enemies.”
Only Elade, Meran thought, could say something like that and mean it, when our work is finding those whose minds had been warped by Karsite demons and working to save them, minds and lives alike. The Touched hid their damage from themselves, and the demons that overshadowed them were clever at concealing themselves. Often, the only clue was in the way people or animals nearby had died. It was a pattern they’d all become adept at following in the moonturns since Gaurane had gathered them together.
“We need supplies,” Meran said, changing the subject to one less likely to produce an unwinnable argument. “Bowstrings—harpstrings—medicines.” The soldiers who held the Border and the holders who farmed it were seldom willing to part with what stocks they had, not even for gold and silver. It would be different if Gaurane were willing to ask—all doors opened to a Herald—but Meran knew better than to raise the topic with him.
“Gaurane’s out of brandy, you mean,” Elade said, but the gibe was without real malice behind it.
“Do you really want to listen to him complain about his hangover?”
The question startled a laugh from Elade. “No. But it doesn’t take two full sennights to pick up a few supplies.”
“It does not,” Meran agreed. “But if you can think of a better way to get Hedion to rest, I’m sure we’d all like to hear it.”
“Ah, I see,” Elade said. “It’s a trick.”
“All the best things in life are,” Meran said. “But not on us, this time. So we might as well enjoy ourselves while we’re here.” He took Elade’s arm and tugged her gently toward the merchants’ street. “And that means you should come and look at the pretty things, instead of trying to terrify some poor horse trader into giving you an honest price on a new pack mule.”
“We wouldn’t need a new pack mule if the last one hadn’t been eviscerated,” Elade grumbled, but she came.
When Meran had been a child singing for coppers on the streets of Haven, he’d dreamed of being able to walk into the shops and purchase anything he chose. His Gift had gained him entrance to the Collegium, and there he’d dreamed of a rich patron,whose fortune he might share. Most Bards entered a noble household upon achieving Journeyman status, for it could be the work of years to produce the song or poem that elevated a Bard from Journeyman to Master. Meran had been as surprised as anyone when he found himself choosing—upon taking the Scarlet—to travel. True, a Bard could hope for a meal and a bed at any inn he stopped at, but it was hardly as certain as it would be for a Herald. Traveling Bards slept rough and cold in a hayrick or outbuilding more often than not, and they paid for their bread and beer like everyone else. Even as he chose that path, Meran castigated himself for a fool. And yet year followed year, and the store of songs he’d made grew, and still he did not turn his steps back toward Haven.
He’d never realized what he was looking for until the shaggy man in the tattered, threadbare clothes came to the inn where he was singing and told him there was a patient who needed his attention.
“Beg pardon, my good fellow,” Meran said. “But as you see, I am not the one you seek. I wear the Scarlet, not the Green.”
The shaggy man gave a sharp bark of laughter. “We already have a Healer,” he answered. “That’s why we need you.”
He’d been curious, so he followed. He played the Healer to sleep that night and the next, and he played to soothe the Healer’s patient on the third. And as the days passed, Meran had come to realize this was what he’d been seeking, all unknowing, all along. It was unheard of, of course. Bards sang of great deeds; they didn’t do them. And the street urchin he’d been would have mocked the idea that his heart’s desire was to serve anything but himself—or even his Gift, once it woke.