Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar

Shia’s head jerked upright, and she stared at her visitor through the wispy blonde strands of hair that fell over her forehead. Not many years older than Shia, Calli was wife to one of the town’s wealthiest merchants and already had a young daughter toddling beside her, clinging to her mother’s skirts.

“His parents waved, as though he had turned to look for them, but he didn’t wave back. I don’t think he even saw them.”

Shia reached out to a pile of dried seed-pods from the edge of the table, trying to still the unexplainable trembling in her hand. Calli watched the younger girl work, savoring the quiet coolness of the room and the crisp herbal scents around them.

“Why could you not say something to him? He is still Teo, after all.”

Shia glanced over at Calli, then returned her attention to the dried seeds as she carefully separated them from their husks for storage. The silence between them drifted a little longer, then she shrugged.

“A Herald’s place is in Haven. A Herald belongs to Valdemar, to the Crown, to the people.” She hunched one shoulder, as if hiding behind it. “After my mother’s death, the town allowed me to take her place as herbalist. I belong in Breyburn.”

Calli frowned. “There is no law that says otherwise, yet I think you are wrong. Thirteen was too young for you to be tied to such responsibilities, no matter how much you wanted to earn your keep. Surely there has to be more for you.”

“It does no good to dwell on it,” Shia responded at last. “It is as it is. Here, rub these together until they crack open for me.” She held out a handful of the dried pods to Calli, who looked at them for a moment, then giggled like a much younger girl.

“You’re just trying to make me useful, aren’t you?”

Shia only smiled, her hand still outstretched.

Of course, Teo came back to Breyburn, but only briefly, not even every Midwinter over the several years of his training. When he did, his time was taken up with his family, with the townsfolk at large, with the town council, and with the other Herald or Heralds he was usually in company with. And, of course, his Companion.

He was never there just as Teo, not anymore. He was Teo the Herald trainee, Teo the journeyman- Herald, soon to be Teo the Herald. He even looked like someone else in the gray clothing, especially when he suddenly grew several inches from one summer to the next Midwinter.

Unsure of how to approach this new person who looked so different and yet should be so familiar, Shia chose to retreat, keeping to herself in the solitude that had been hers since her mother’s death barely two years before Teo’s Choosing. If she was there at all when Teo came back to the town, she stayed to the rear of the crowd of townsfolk, ducking her head so her hair fell over eyes. She never noticed the concerned blue gaze of Teo’s Companion following her, nor did she see Teo’s eyes wandering restlessly over the faces when all were gathered together.

“Shia! Sheeeee-aaah!” Up on the mountainside, far from the town walls, where the winds sighed and roared by turns in the deep firs, there was no way that Shia should have heard a child’s thin cry. But hear it she did, in her head as much as her ears, and with that impossible sound came another impossible thing—a bone-deep knowledge that something was very wrong in Breyburn. She grabbed the last of her herb packs (how was it they were full already? what had she been gathering while her mind had been wandering who knows where?) and sprinted to where she had tethered her shaggy mare, stowing the pack and freeing the horse almost in the same motion. Without thinking, she reached up and broke off a small branch of one of the overhanging firs, tucking it and its three cones between the straps of the secured packs. She pulled herself up into the saddle and kneed the dun into the fastest trot she could safely take on the uneven mountain paths, letting the mare choose her steps as the early spring mountain- fog started to coalesce around them.

The knot in the pit of her stomach took on more solidity as she approached the town, although the urgency faded. She reined in the mare while she was still hidden beyond the treeline, looking down on the cleared lands of the townsfolk, and her guts churned. Smoke coiled upward from somewhere near the center of town, dark and thick, and the smell of it as it drifted towards her was wrong, wet and musty. She could see broken staves of wood near the main gate, and a few of the town guard nervously standing at attention beside the gate. Whatever it was had come and gone again, leaving the town in uneasy quiet as the day slipped towards evening. She kicked the mare to a canter, angling from the forest to ride onto the Old Quarry Road far enough down that the edgy guardsmen would recognize her well in advance as she approached—or would at least know Mirri’s stocky body and rough coloring.