Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

And now the truth of the matter came tumbling out—a litany of childish wrongdoing and temper fits (he’d done as much—and worse—at her age, but he hadn’t been looking toward an awful and glorious future as a Herald). And of course Aellele had the manners to try to keep her fretting to herself, and of course her Companion knew about it, and of course he (and everyone else who saw her worrying, and people would have seen it because the teachers and the older students and everyone whose business it was to care for the young Herald-trainees were neither fools nor brutes) would have told her not to worry, that there would be time later to worry, if worrying needed to be done. And she would have paid as little attention to all their well-meant advice as the weather paid to Mistress Laundress when she wanted to dry linens and it wanted to rain.

“—and a Herald has to be nice all the time—when they’re riding Circuit—and I can’t be—I know I can’t—not if I live to be a thousand years old—and oh! what will happen then? I don’t know!”

“Hm,” Kailyon said. He sat down on a bench—as talking was more work than thinking—and gestured for her to sit beside him. “Well. Here’s how I see it. And of course you needn’t pay any heed to me. I’m not one of your instructors. Not a Herald neither. Just an old man who polishes wood and mops floors. But I’ve seen a good few Heralds come and go.”

Aellele seated herself beside him and composed herself to listen, her face grave and solemn.

“Of course you mustn’t do something to shame the Crown or your Companion while you wear the Whites. Everyone will tell you that. They’ll be telling you that for some years yet. And some Heralds ride Circuit and some don’t, you know. Every Herald goes to work they’re best suited to. Still, you aren’t wrong. If you put on the Whites, there’ll come a time when you’re asked to give a judgment. I don’t brag to say I’ve known a Herald or two in my time, though, and not one of them has ever worried one tick about being nice, and every single one of them has worried about being right.”

Aellele regarded him with doubtful hope. “Everyone else seems to think that all we have to do is study everything in our books and—and—and—learn to ride and use a sword and a bow!”

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Kailyon said. “Maybe they’ve got as many doubts as you do. Maybe they do think it’s just that easy—now. Those as think they know everything already are always the hardest to teach. They’ve got the most to learn, and it’s hard as hard to make them let go of what they think they know. You, now, you already know you’ve got a hard road to ride. So you’ll work just as hard as you need to in order to get yourself to the end of it. I’m no farmer, but a friend once told me there wasn’t any point to planning the harvest at plowing time.”

To Kailyon’s pleasure, Aellele actually giggled, then stopped and regarded him solemnly. “A lot can happen between planting and harvest,” she agreed.

Kailyon nodded, as much to himself as to her. He thought she had the look of someone who might be ready to hear what everyone had been telling her now, instead of just listening to it. “And now, I’ve a bit more dust to make away with, and it’s more than time for you to be in your bed, young Aellele.”

Aellele stood, and regarded him hesitantly. “You ... You wouldn’t mind if—if I came back and talked to you again some time, would you?”

“Just as you please,” Kailyon said, pushing himself to his feet with a faint grunt of effort. “And now, off with you.”

He watched as the young Trainee gathered her pen-case and papers and lantern from his cart and went skipping off in the direction of her dorm. So very young! But he knew that to him it would seem like sennights instead of years before he saw her riding out in Herald’s Whites. “Better too much doubt than too much confidence,” Kailyon quoted to himself. It was a proverb Aellele would not hear from her instructors for some time yet, and by the time she did, Kailyon suspected she would already have learned the lesson herself.

Aellele scurried back toward her room. For the first time since she’d been certain that she had it, her Gift was actually more of a comfort than an annoyance (and a rebuke, shaming her because even knowing how people felt couldn’t make her be nice to them). Because she’d been able to tell that Kailyon hadn’t been saying all those things he’d said just to make her feel better, or because he had to, or even just to make her go away, but because he thought they were true and were worth saying.

She didn’t know what hour it was, though she suspected—from the emptiness of the corridors—that curfew bell had already rung, and if she were seen, she would round off a day of disaster with demerits for being out after curfew. And while yesterday the thought would have devastated her, today it did not. If it happened, well, it happened. “A lot can happen between planting and harvest.” Tomorrow she would try to do better.