No True Way (26 page)

And revision, by those in power. In the name of clarity. Or simple convenience.

“Rebellion against tyranny and corruption doesn't come from the top. It comes from the bottom. Or else it doesn't last,” Hettes continued, as if Solaris hadn't spoken. “You must remember that—when you are Son of the Sun.”

Solaris went utterly still, and her gaze sharpened even as her eyes widened.

“Who
are
you?” Solaris asked. In her voice Hettes could hear the woman she would become and fought the urge to kneel.

“You have known me since you were a babe, my darling,” Hettes said quietly. “You know I am nothing more than Virtulias' housekeeper.”

*   *   *

The Robing had been but the first of the ceremonies surrounding the elevation of a new Son of the Sun; today was the last of them, and it was a relief for Hettes to follow Virtulias back to their rooms when it was over, to send Solaris and Karchanek off under Father Aetius' care.

Sunhame was no place for innocence.

“Now—at last—we can return home,” Virtulias said, turning to her. Servants lifted the heavy, gold-trimmed robes from his shoulders as Hettes undid the elaborate fastenings down their front; beneath them, he wore the simple homespun priest's habit he usually wore at home. “We will leave tomorrow—the day after at the latest.” In the morning light, his face looked careworn and heavily lined.

“I'm sure the children will be glad to return to their studies,” she said, looking away. “And I for one will be grateful to sleep in my own bed again.”

Gently, so gently, he cupped her cheek in one of his big, gnarled hands. Startled, she looked up and met his eyes. The sadness she saw there made her want to look away again. “I know you did your best for me, my little Firecat,” Virtulias said softly. “But even your skill could not make me Son of the Sun.”

For a moment, all Hettes could think of was how grief-stricken he looked. He had come to Sunhame hoping to gain the power to do great good, and those hopes had been dashed. Even if he had known what Solaris had been born to be, he would still have wished to try.

But your task is a far harder one, my dear friend.
She thought of the years Vkandis' true daughter would need
to gather up the power that would let her survive what Virtulias could never have survived. The power she could gain in a Hierophant's household, living under his protection. The power to fulfill Virtulias' hopes and dreams and those of Vkandis' people.
And I do not know if you will live to know what you have done. I can only pray you will.

“Yes, Father,” she said around the lump in her throat, “I did my best. For you, and for Karse.”

Mercedes Lackey

The inn near the Pelagiris Forest was bustling this morning, with horses being saddled and loaded and people hustling out of the stable and inn doors, but Healer Vixen was getting priority help in starting on the next leg of her own journey. Already in the saddle, she was arranging things on her horse's back from in place; Brownie was an exceedingly tall horse, and it was much easier if someone was atop him to make sure everything was secure. A boy from the stable had been assigned to her alone, just to help her get her bay hunter saddled, bridled, and loaded up, and the innkeeper himself had just now brought a nice selection of pocket pies for her to eat on the road. Those were stowed in the saddlebags that hung over the bay's shoulders, in place and fastened shut, though the smell coming from the left-hand one was enough to try her willpower and tempt her into a second breakfast.

Then again, while everyone was glad to see Vixen arrive in a hamlet or village, they were also happy to see her leave as quickly as possible once her job was done, which was probably why the innkeeper was doing his level best to get her on the road. Her sharp tongue was
the stuff of legend, and no one wanted to be on the receiving end of it. She encouraged this, to be honest. She didn't much care for people. Healthy people, that is. She was generally able to muster
some
compassion for sick ones, but she much preferred her own company to that of anyone else. She not only did not suffer fools gladly, she didn't suffer them at all.

“Healer Vixen,” that was what they called her, since no one actually knew her real name anymore. She'd have gone by “Healer” and nothing more, but at one point someone who'd had the dubious benefit of the sharp edge of her tongue had dubbed her “that Healer-vixen,” and the name had stuck.

Some might have resented it, but Vixen was just as glad, actually, that she'd gotten a name that no one would ever have associated with her past. She didn't look anything like she had as a child, and the last thing she wanted was for anyone to connect her with
that girl.

Especially when she spotted someone who might have known
that girl
, as she had just now
.

She sat quietly in the saddle of her enormous horse—really, he was as big or bigger than the mounts fully armored knights used—and watched a fellow unload a wagon in the thin morning sunshine out of the corner of her eye. He was across the village square from her, and she couldn't tell exactly what his wagon carried. Sacks of something. Flour? Marrows? It could be anything. She knew him, though; he had been one of the boys who had tormented “Rosie” unmercifully, in another hamlet, long ago, a place much smaller than this village but within two day's ride of here.

So that's what's become of you, Digby.

He clearly didn't recognize her except as what she
was now, which was exactly as she wanted it. He'd gone past her six times now, and only once had he said anything, when he made her horse snort and back up a pace. “Beg pardon, Healer Vixen,” he'd said, and tugged at the rim of his hat apologetically. Her throat had tightened, and she'd felt a sickness in the pit of her stomach when she'd first spotted him, but as it became clear he didn't recognize her, the fear had turned to something else. Anger, a little. Some self-satisfaction, the sort you get when you see someone who deserves it in misfortune. There really should have been a word for that.

The inn's boy heaved the wicker panniers holding her Healing supplies over Brownie's rump, and while he fastened the belly strap, she tied them to the back of the saddle. She made sure that the lids were tied down tight, feeling both accomplishment and bitterness.

Well, there it was,
he
hadn't changed; he looked like the same bullying dullard who'd thought it was so funny to run after her, chanting, “Where's your Companion, Herald Rosie?” with the others. He looked shabby, work-worn, and duller than he had been as a boy. She wondered how he'd ended up here, right on the Border and within a shout of the Pelagiris Forest. He'd certainly thought he was the cock of the walk back in the day: blond, strong, wide-shouldered, and if he wasn't handsome, he also wasn't homely. He'd been sure he was destined for a fine and easy life. It looked as if he was a carter now, hauling loads between the villages, which was a hard way to earn a living.

Maybe his older brothers had run him off the farm but granted him a horse and a cart so he didn't starve. Well, if so, it served him right, since he and his friends had been part of why
she'd
scarpered off as soon as she was old enough to do so.

Her hunter snorted at the sight of the innkeeper's boy bringing the saddlebags holding her personal possessions. He knew that meant they were about to leave. She patted his neck and then turned in the saddle to help the boy fasten them properly behind the panniers.

Brownie flicked his ears back at her.
:Go soon?:
she heard in her mind.

:Soon,:
she promised. Unlike every other Healer she knew, besides the Healing Gift, she had Animal Mindspeech. Mostly it was a nuisance, though occasionally it was useful. It happened to be quite sensitive, and unless she kept her—well, they weren't
shields,
exactly, they were more like sieves, or cloth filters—up, she was subject to all sorts of background nonsense. It was a lot like being in an enormous crowd, where everyone was talking at once. Fortunately, the Animal Mindspeech Gift had not started out nearly that sensitive, so she'd had time to learn how to put up protections that kept the babble at bay and let in only the important things. She'd learned to welcome the winter woods, with so much of the wildlife gone or hibernating. Absolutely the worst were busy farms, with not only farm animals but also flocks of sparrows in the thatch, hordes of starlings in the trees, and armies of mice everywhere. By contrast, cities were almost restful, because she couldn't hear people, only animals.

She finished settling panniers, saddlebags, and all to Brownie's satisfaction, making sure he was happy with the load; after all, he was the one doing all the work on the road, and he deserved to be comfortable. It didn't take long; the two of them had been doing this routine for four years now, and gods willing, Brownie was good for another twenty at least. With a pat to his neck, she let
him set the pace out of the village and down the road toward the Pelagiris Forest. There were a lot of little villages and hamlets out here that had no resident Healer and would never see one if she hadn't taken this Circuit on. It was the same route the Herald assigned here took, but so far she'd managed to keep from running into him. That was by design, not accident, though she'd taken pains to keep
that
her own little secret.

For such a big horse, Brownie was very light-footed, and he preferred a brisk pace; his big hooves made solid
clops
on the dirt road as he set off on his ground-eating fast walk. Out of the village they paced, across the little stone bridge over the slender river that supplied the village's water, and then they were back on the main road, passing immediately under the first trees of the forest. There was no cultivated land this side of the river. The folk of the next hamlet on the route were hunters and gatherers rather than farmers. What they needed, they traded for.

But the sight of Digby had put her into a bad mood. And memories she didn't want bubbled up out of the past.

She was only four, and she had no idea why her parents were so excited. She only knew that she was getting to wear that pretty dress they almost never let her put on, and Ma had put a wreath of flowers on her head and they had all run out to the road. Everyone was craning their necks, and there was a sound like bells off in the distance. The sound got nearer and nearer, and then she saw what made it—the prettiest white horse she had ever seen, dancing its way toward them! Her parents got more and more excited the closer it came, and then it danced right past them all and off into the distance, and she wondered why her parents were suddenly so disappointed. They picked her up
and took her back to the cottage, and Ma made her take off the dress and put her everyday tunic back on. “She's young for it yet,” her pa said. “Next time, surely.”

She hadn't understood, that first time, what had happened—or rather, what
hadn't
happened. Nor the next, nor the next. She'd only known that her parents would get excited, drag her out of whatever it was she was doing, dress her up as if for a festival, and make her stand by the side of the road, waiting for another white horse to come. And then they would be disappointed when it just raced on by. And look at her as if she had somehow done something wrong.

But eventually . . . eventually she learned. Learned that the white horses were Companions, that they Chose their Heralds, that Heralds were Very Important People, and that her parents
expected
her to become one. Not just hoped, but
expected,
as if they had the power to control the future. And by all the gods, they were going to dress her up, drag her to the road, and shove her under the nose of every Companion on Search that came through until she
did
become one. And every time the Companion passed on without Choosing someone, they were disappointed—in her.

It quickly became an embarrassment as well as a misery. Impossible in such a small hamlet for people not to know that her parents had such inflated ideas about what their offspring should become. She got pitying looks or snickers behind sheltering hands. And there was a pack of little bullies who tormented her about it every chance they got, running after her, calling her “Herald Rosie” and asking where her Companion was. Digby wasn't the chief, but he certainly relished the “fun” and egged the others on when they lost interest.

And meanwhile, her parents piled things on her that they reckoned would “improve” her: lesson on lesson, hours spent in schooling, and lots of correction, from her speech to her posture. . . .

Some of those tormenting bullies got the bright idea to call false alarms, just to see her dragged into the house and dragged out again, dressed up in her finery, to stand between her parents, head hanging and miserable, waiting for Companions that didn't come.

Seeing Digby had brought all that up again, knotting her stomach with unhappiness until even those lovely pocket pies were more nauseating than tempting. She shoved the old memories away as best she could, but it wasn't easy. There wasn't much to distract her from her own thoughts. The winding, twisting road was completely empty, and by the state of the drifts of leaves on it, no one had been on it for a day or more. Bandits weren't much of a problem here; the forest itself was the danger. This was just on the edge of Hawkbrother territory, and strange things roamed under these trees.

That had never bothered Vixen. She could sense most of them long before they were close enough to be a danger, Brownie was big enough that most predators wouldn't even consider trying for her, and he was fast enough that so far he'd been able to outrun anything that did.

It would be winter soon. The trees were leafless, and the dead, fallen leaves themselves had all turned brown and lifeless, lying in drifts on the roadway and among the trees. Berries and nuts were gone, and anything that was going to hibernate had found a den or a cave or a hollow tree. The birds were far enough away that their mental chatter didn't bother her, so she allowed her protections
to thin. Brownie had a remarkably quiet mind; he enjoyed her company, he enjoyed his work, and he was enjoying this morning, and he managed to do all of that without internally babbling, although she didn't know many horses that babbled. Birds were the worst for that, and chickens were the worst of the birds.

So it's a good thing I don't ride a chicken, I suppose.

Brownie had already grown out his shaggy winter coat, so the cold breeze didn't trouble him at all. He was staying alert, however; she could tell by the way his ears were constantly moving. He knew this route, and he knew there could be dangers on this road. His nose and hearing were those of a prey animal; if by some chance
something
out there was both dangerous and able to hide itself from her Gift, Brownie would probably scent or hear it. And while he stayed watchful, she wrestled with her uncomfortable emotions until she had them all clamped down and under control again. She told herself, over and over, as the road wound on beneath the leafless trees and a clear, cold sky, that Rosie was gone, and only Vixen remained. And no one,
no one
, ever mocked Vixen.

She wondered about her parents, though. She'd sent them a single message, about six months after the Healers had taken her in.
I'm fine. Don't try to find me. I never want to see you again.
Harsh, perhaps, but . . . true then, and true now. What had they done with
their
lives once she was gone? Did they have another child, or children, and put those poor things through the same torture she'd gone through, or had they learned their lesson?

She allowed Brownie to pick the place to pause for their midday rest, right around noon. They had made good time, and he deserved a break to browse on what
he could find beside a small stream that cut across the road. He wore a bitless bridle, so he was free to wander along the stream, cropping the last of the green grass, taking occasional drinks of water. She stayed in the saddle and had a meat pie and an apple pie, finding ones that were miraculously still warm at the bottom of her saddlebag, and enjoying them with water from the inn's well. She reckoned that at the rate they were going, they would easily reach the next hamlet before sundown. The wind had stilled, and the sun actually warmed her a bit as she ate.

Finally she took up the reins and got Brownie back on the road again. Refreshed by the halt, he took up his ground-eating fast walk again, and she settled into keeping watch for trouble and trying to keep from brooding.
Matya will probably put me up, unless one of her boys returned to the nest and claimed the spare bed.
Matya was one of the few people she counted as a friend. The old woman never chattered, had a refreshingly sardonic sense of humor, was practical, and good company. And . . . she cooked divinely.
Her nut porridge ought to be outlawed, it's so good.