Keren lowered the blade she had aimed reflexively at the entrance.

“Keren—” Skif said hesitantly “—your brother sent me. He thought you might want to be with the others. I can watch Talia.”

Keren pulled herself together with an obvious effort. “You sure? I know you think you’re good, youngling—”

Talia didn’t even notice Skif’s hand moving, but suddenly there was a knife quivering in the wall not an inch from Keren’s nose. Both of them stared at it in surprise.

“Huh!” was all the reply Keren made.

“If there had been a fly on your beak, I could have nipped it off without touching you,” Skif said soberly, with none of his usual boastfulness. “I know I’ve got a long way to go in everything else, but not even Alberich can best me with these.”

He held up his right hand, with a dagger that matched the first in it. “Anybody who tries forcing their way in here is going to have to get around six inches of steel in his throat.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Keren rose and sheathed her sword. “You may regret this—because I’ll probably arrange for you to share Talia-watch from now on.”

“So? I volunteered, but Ylsa wouldn’t take me seriously.”

“Well, I will.” She passed him, waving him into the room. “And youngling? Thanks. You’ve got a good heart.”

Skif just shrugged and pulled his knife out of the wall.

“What’s going on?” Talia whispered hoarsely. “What’s the Death Bell?”

Skif perched himself cross-legged on the top of her desk; his expression was unwontedly serious. “What do you want answered first?”

“The Bell.”

“All right—since I don’t know what you know, I’ll take it from the beginning. There used to be a little temple in the Grove in Companion’s Field; King Valdemar had it put up. It had a bell-tower, but not until just before he died was there a bell in it. The bell was actually installed the day before he died, but the rope to ring it hadn’t been hung, and it didn’t have a clapper. So you can imagine that when a strange bell was heard tolling before dawn the next morning, people were pretty startled. When they went out to look, they saw what you’d see now if you were to go out to the Field—every Companion here gathered around the tower and staring at it. When they got back to the Palace they learned what the Heralds had already known—that Valdemar was dead. The temple’s long gone, but the tower is still there—and every time a Herald dies, the Death Bell tolls.”

“And Keren?”

“Every Herald knows when another one dies, and whether or not it was from natural causes. You sort of start to get the sensing of it around about your third year—sooner if your Gift is strong; I haven’t got it yet. It hurts, they tell me, like something of yourself has died—the ones with the strongest Gifts may know details of what happened. You always know who, if you’re a full Herald, and a little of how, as soon as the Bell begins to ring. Most of ’em find it easier to be together for a while, especially if it was someone you knew really well. That’s why Herald Teren sent me—Beltren was one of Keren’s year-mates.”

There wasn’t much Talia could say in reply. She and Skif stared gloomily out the windows for a long time, listening to the Bell; the tolling that sounded like the cold iron was sobbing.

Word on what had actually befallen Beltren did not reach the Collegium for several days. When news came, it was not good. Someone or something had ambushed him, and sent both Beltren and his Companion over the edge of a cliff. There were no clues as to who the murderer was—and if the Queen knew why it had happened, she kept her own council.

The atmosphere became more desolate and oppressive, with every passing day. Talia’s newly-awakened sensitivity left her painfully aware of it, and the weakness she was prey to as she recovered did not make bearing the brunt of this easy.

Skif (who, true to Keren’s threat, was now sharing guard-duty with the three adults) did his best to cheer her with Collegium gossip and more of his absurd stories, but even he could not completely counteract the effect of the mourning of all those around her.

Finally the Queen gave orders—and the Heralds flew like the arrows they were named for to obey. Talia never did hear details, but the murderer was caught—though not even the news that he had been found and condemned by Queen and Council did anything to ease the atmosphere of pain, for Beltren had been universally held in high regard by the members of the Circle.

The entirety of the Collegium as well as those of the Circle at Court assembled for the memorial service several weeks later. As was all too often the case, there was no body to bury, and the service was held at the single pillar that held the names of all those Heralds who had sacrificed themselves for Monarch and Kingdom.

Talia had only just been allowed to leave her bed, but something impelled her to beg the Healer, Devan, to permit her to attend the memorial. Impressed by the urgency she was obviously feeling, he overrode his own better judgment and agreed that she should be allowed to go. She had not confided how strongly she was being affected by the mourning about her to anyone yet; she had been hoping that Keren had been right and it would go away. And having been accused of having an overactive imagination more than once, she couldn’t be entirely sure how much of this she might be conjuring out of her own mind.

Nothing of the ceremony was any too clear in her mind; everything seemed to be washed away in a flood of sadness and loss. She stood through it in a fog of pain, sure only now that she was in no way inflicting any of this on herself. When those assembled had begun dispersing, a locus of agony sharpened and defined.

It was the Queen.

Talia had not been this close to Selenay since her first day at the Collegium; she would not have dared to disturb her except that the Queen’s emotional turmoil drew on her with an irresistible attraction. She approached shyly, as quietly as she could.

“Your Majesty?” she said hesitantly. “It’s Talia.”

“I sent him to his death,” Selenay replied as if in answer to some internal question. “I knew what I was sending him into, and I sent him anyway. I murdered him, just as surely as if it had been my hand that pushed him to his death.”

The pain and self-accusation of the Queen’s words triggered something within Talia, something that impelled her to reply. “Why are you trying to convince yourself that he didn’t know the kind of danger he was in?” she said, knowing that her own words were nothing less than the stark truth, but not knowing how she knew. “He was fully aware, and he went despite that knowledge. He wasn’t expecting to die, but he knew it was a possibility. Majesty, we all know it can happen, and at any time. You had no choice either—wasn’t it absolutely imperative that someone be sent?”

“Yes,” the word came reluctantly.

“And wasn’t he the best—perhaps the only—Herald for the task?”

“He was the only Herald with any hope of convincing the people of the area to part with the information I needed. He worked as my agent there for three years, and they knew and trusted him.”

“And did he not succeed in sending you that information? Was there any substitute for it?”

“What he sent to me will save us a war,” Selenay sighed. “Even among rulers blackmail sometimes works wonders, and I’ll blackmail Relnethar with a cheerful heart if it will keep him off our borders and within his own. Lady knows I’d tried every other way to get it—”

“Then you had no choice at all; you acted for the good of all our people. It’s the kind of decision that you and only you can make. Majesty, in Orientation class they told me in good plain terms that it is quite likely that a Herald will perish, perhaps horribly, before he ever has to think of retiring because of age. They tell everyone that—but it’s never stopped anyone from becoming a Herald. It’s something we have to do—just as making hard choices is something you have to do. And behind all of it, I think, is that we all have to choose to do what we know to be right; you as Queen, the rest of us as your Heralds. I know if Beltren could be standing here right at this moment, he’d tell you that the choice you made was the only one you could have made.”

The Queen stared at Talia, her eyes bright with unshed tears, but Talia could feel the agony within her easing. “Child,” she said slowly, “you very nearly perished yourself because of my actions—or lack of them. Can you stand there and tell me you would have been glad to die?”

“No,” Talia said frankly. “I was awfully afraid—I didn’t want to die, and I still don’t, but if it happens, it happens. I made the choice to become a Herald, and if I knew I was going to die tomorrow, I still wouldn’t choose otherwise.”

“Oh, Talia—child—” the Queen sat abruptly on the side of the memorial, and Talia hesitantly touched her, then sat beside her and put one arm around her shoulders, feeling odd and a little awkward, and yet impelled to do so nevertheless. It was apparently the correct action, as Selenay suddenly relaxed long enough to shed a few, bitter tears, allowing herself the brief luxury of leaning on a strength outside her own.

“How have you become so wise, so young?” she said at last, composing herself. “Not yet even a year at the Collegium—yet, truly Queen’s Own. Talamir would approve of you, I think....” She rose gracefully, her face once again a serene mask. Talia sensed that while she still mourned, the burden of guilt had been lifted from her shoulders. “But you are not yet well, little one—and I see your keepers looking for you. And I must face the Ambassador of Karse, and dance in diplomatic circles about him until he knows with absolute certainty that I have the proof of his lord’s double dealings. Thank you, Queen’s Own.”

She turned and walked swiftly back to the Palace, as Keren and Teren approached.

“When you didn’t come back with the rest, we began to worry,” Teren half-scolded. “Healer Devan wants you back in bed.”

“You look like someone forced you through a sieve, lovey,” Keren observed. “What’s wrong?”

“The Queen—she was so guilty-feeling, so unhappy. I could feel it and I had to do something about it—”

“So you went to talk to her,” Keren nodded with satisfaction at her twin. “All the right words just seemed to flow from you, right?”

“How did you guess?”

“Lovey, that’s what makes you Queen’s Own, and the rest of us ordinary Heralds. Grandfather used to claim he never knew what he was going to say to the King beforehand, yet it was always exactly the right thing. Trust those instincts.”

“Grandfather?” Talia asked in a daze.

“Talamir was our grandfather,” Teren explained. “I think he secretly hoped one of us would succeed him.”

“Well I didn’t,” Keren replied firmly. “After seeing the kind of hell he went through, I wouldn’t have the job under any circumstances. I don’t envy you, Talia, not at all.”

“I agree,” Teren nodded. “Talia, you still look a bit wobbly. Will you be all right now?”

“I ... think so,” she said slowly, beginning to feel a bit better now that the overwhelming burden of the sorrows of the rest of the Heralds was dissipating.

“Let’s get you back to your room then, and I’ll have a little talk with Dean Elcarth. If nothing else, we should show you how to shield yourself so you don’t take on more of other people’s feelings than you can handle. If your Gift hasn’t faded by now, it’s not going to,” Keren said as her twin nodded his agreement.

Keren stayed with her until Elcarth arrived, then left the two of them alone. Talia sat carefully on the edge of her chair, concentrating on what Elcarth had to say, afraid she might miss something vital. She was beginning to think she couldn’t bear much more of this business of carrying other people’s emotions and thoughts around inside of her. If there was a way to stop it from happening, she most devoutly wanted to learn it!

But this “shielding” was a simple trick to learn—for which Talia was very grateful.

“Think of a wall,” Elcarth told her. “A wall all around you and between you and everyone else. See it and feel it—and believe that nothing and no one can reach you through it.”

Talia concentrated with all her strength, and for the first time in days, she felt a blessed sense of relief from the pressure of minds around her. With its lessening her own confidence in the “shield” grew—and the shield grew stronger in response. At last Elcarth was satisfied that nothing could penetrate what she had built, and left her to her own devices.

“Don’t ever hesitate to drop it, though,” the Dean urged her. “Especially if you suspect danger—your Gift may give you the best warning you’re likely to get.”

Talia made a thoughtful gesture of acquiescence, thinking how, if she’d been able to detect the maliciousness of her tormentors, she’d have been warned enough to have gotten help with them long before things had come to so nearly fatal a conclusion.

A few days later the Healer pronounced her fit, and she returned to her normal round of classes. Outwardly her life seemed little different—yet there were some profound changes.

The first thing that had changed was her bond with Rolan; it was so much stronger now than it had been before the river incident that there was no comparison.

She discovered this not long after she had learned how to shield out the emotions of others.

She was sitting in a quiet corner of the Library; she had just finished her book and had closed it with a feeling of satisfaction, as it was one of the histories that concluded on a positive note. There wasn’t enough time for her to start a new book before the next class, so she was simply sitting for a moment with her eyes closed, letting her mind wander where it would. Almost inevitably it wandered toward Rolan.

Suddenly she was seeing a corner of Companion’s Field, but her view was curiously flat and distorted. There seemed to be a blind spot straight ahead of her, her peripheral vision was doubled, and she seemed to be several inches higher than she actually stood. There was that feeling of slight disorientation that she had come to associate with seeing through the eyes and memories of others—

Then a start of surprise, followed by an out-pouring of love and welcome. It was then that she realized that she was sharing Rolan’s thoughts.

From that moment on she had only to think briefly of him to know exactly where he was and what he was doing, and if she closed her eyes she could even see what he was seeing. Thoughts and images—though never words—flowed between them constantly. An emotion so profound it transcended every meaning Talia had ever heard attached to the word “love” tied them together now, and she understood how it was that Heralds and their Companions so seldom survived one another when death broke that bond that held them together.

It was shortly after this that her relationship with the Queen underwent a similarly abrupt change.

Selenay had sought the sanctuary of the barren gardens—a place where, with the last of winter still upon them, it was unlikely that she would be disturbed. Talia had found herself pulled inexorably to those same gardens; on seeing the Queen pacing the paths, she understood why.

“Majesty?” she called out softly. Selenay shaded her eyes against the weak afternoon sunlight and smiled when she saw who it was that had called her.

“Another lover of desolation? I thought I was the only person who found dead gardens attractive.”

“But the potential is here for more. You only have to look ahead to what will be in the spring,” Talia pointed out, falling into step beside the Queen. “It’s not so much desolate and dead here as it is dormant. It’s just a matter of seeing the possibilities.”

“Seeing the possibilities—long-term instead of immediacy,” Selenay became very thoughtful, then began to brighten visibly. “Yes! That’s it exactly! Little one, you’ve done it again—and I have to get back to the Council. Thank you—”

She strode rapidly away, leaving Talia to wonder just what it was that she’d done.

But as time passed, such incidents became more and more commonplace. And as winter became spring, it was less often the case that Talia sought the Queen’s company as it was the other way around. Selenay actively hunted her out at irregular intervals; they would talk together, sometimes for hours, sometimes only for a moment or two. Talia would find the words to express the things she knew, somehow, that the Queen needed to hear, and Selenay would take her leave, comforted or energized. Talia often thought of herself, with no little bewilderment, as two people; one, the ordiniary, everyday Talia, no more wise than the next half-grown adolescent, the other, some incredibly knowledgeable and ancient being who only manifested herself in Selenay’s presence.

With this assumption of her duty as Queen’s Own, Talia was reminded of yet another. The apparent reason that Rolan had Chosen her, after all, was because she was supposedly the one person who could civilize the Brat—yet in all this time she had seen Elspeth only once and that when she had first arrived. It was true that until now she had been too busy adjusting herself to the Collegium to have any time or emotional energy to spare for dealing with the child. Still, that wasn’t the case anymore. It was definitely time to do something about the Heir-presumptive.

“Glory! What a long face!” Skif exclaimed, plopping himself down in the chair next to Talia in the Library, and earning himself a black look or two for disturbing the silence from the trainees sitting nearby. “What’s the matter, or should I not ask?” he continued with less volume.

“It’s the Brat. I’m supposed to be doing something about her, but I can’t get anywhere near her!” Talia replied with gloom and self-disgust.

“Oh, so? And what’s keeping you away?”

“Her nurse—I think.The foreigner, Hulda—I haven’t once seen the old one. I can’t prove anything, though. She seems very conscientious; the very model of respect and cooperation, yet somehow whenever I try to get anywhere near the child, she’s there, too, with something Elspeth absolutely has to be doing right that very moment. And it’s all very logical, all quite correct. It’s just that it’s happened too many times now.”

“ ‘Once is chance, twice is coincidence,’ ” Skif quoted. “ ‘But three times is conspiracy.’ Has it gotten to the conspiracy stage yet?”

“It got to that point a long time ago. But I can’t see how I can prove it, or where everything fits in—”

He bounded to his feet and tapped her nose with an outstretched finger. “You just leave the proving it to good old Sneaky Skif. And as for figuring out how everything fits together, I should think Herald Jadus would be the best source for information. He’s been stuck here at the Collegium since the Tedrel Wars were over; the servants tell him everything, and he’s got the thought-sensing Gift to boot. If anyone would know the pieces of the puzzle that go back forever, he would. So ask him—you see him every night.”

“I never thought of Jadus,” Talia replied, beginning to smile. “But Skif—is this likely to get you into trouble?”

“Only if I get caught—in which case I’ll have a good story ready. And you’d better be ready to back me up!”

“But—”

“Never you mind, but! Life’s been too quiet around here. Nothing to get my blood stirred up. Besides, I don’t intend to do this for nothing, you know. You owe me, lady-o.”

“Skif,” she replied unthinkingly, “If you can help me prove what I suspect, you can name your reward!”

“Thank you,” he grinned, waggling his bushy eyebrows in what he obviously thought was a lascivious fashion, but which fell a lot closer to absurdity. “I’ll do just that!”

Talia succeeded in sparing his feelings by smothering her laughter as he bounced jauntily out.

“Elspeth’s nurse?” Jadus was so startled by Talia’s question that he actually set My Lady down. “Talia, why in the name of the Nine would old Melidy want to keep you away from Elspeth?”

“It’s not Melidy that’s doing it, it’s the other one,” Talia replied, “Hulda. Melidy really doesn’t seem to do very much, actually; she mostly just knits and nods. Hulda seems to be the one giving all the orders.”

“That puts another complexion on things entirely,” Jadus mused. “Youngling, how much do you know about the current situation—the background, I should say?”

“Not one thing—well, almost nothing. Selenay told me that her marriage with Elspeth’s father wasn’t a good one, and that she felt that a lot of Elspeth’s Bratliness is due to her own neglect. And since nobody mentions him, I supposed her husband was either dead or vanished—or banished. That’s about all.”

“Hm. In that case, I’d better tell you starting from the Tedrel War. That was when Selenay’s father was killed.”

“That was at least fifteen years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Just about. All right; Karse intended to overrun us without actually declaring war. They hired the entire nation of Tedrel Mercenaries to do their dirty work for them. The King was killed just as the last battle was won—and if I’d just been a little more agile he’d still be alive—” he sighed, and guilt washed briefly over his features. “Well, I wasn’t. Selenay had only just completed her internship when the war broke out; she was duly crowned, completed the work of mopping up the last of the Tedrel, and settled down to rule. As was to be expected, anyone of rank with a younger son to dispose of sent him to the Court. One of those visiting sons was Prince Karathanelan.”

“With a name like that, he could only have been from Rethwellan.”

Jadus smiled, “They are rather fond of mouth-filling nominatives, aren’t they? He was, indeed. He was also almost impossibly handsome, cultured, intelligent—Selenay was instantly infatuated, and there was nothing anyone could say that would make her change her mind about him. They were wedded less than a month after he’d first arrived. The trouble began soon after that.”

“Why should there have been trouble?”

“Because he wanted something Selenay could never, by law, give him—the throne. Had he been Chosen, he could have reigned as equal consort, but no Companion would have anything to do with him. Selenay’s Caryo even kicked him once, as I recall. He had brought a number of landless, titled friends with him, and the Lord knows we have unclaimed territory enough, so Selenay had granted them estates. He didn’t see why she couldn’t just as easily give him rank at least equal with hers.”

“But why didn’t he understand? I mean, everyone knows the law is the law for everybody.”

“Except that outKingdom the monarch’s word frequently is the law; he wouldn’t or couldn’t accept that such is not the case here. When he couldn’t get what he wanted by gift, he began scheming to take it by force, under the mistaken assumption that it was his right to do so.”

Talia shook her head in disbelief.

“At any rate, he and his friends, and even some of our own people, began plotting a way to remove Selenay and set him in her place. And to allay any suspicions, he reconciled with Selenay and had his own nurse travel here to help Melidy with Elspeth. I don’t think that his intention was to kill Selenay—I really do believe he only intended to hold her until she agreed to abdicate in his favor or Elspeth’s with him as Regent. I do know for a fact that his friends were far more ruthless. Their intention was assassination, and they planned it for when Selenay was alone, exercising Caryo. It might have worked, too—except for Alberich’s Gift.”

“Alberich has a Gift? I never guessed....”

Jadus nodded; “It’s hard to think of Alberich as a Herald, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Talia confessed. “He doesn’t wear Whites. I scarcely ever see Kantor, with or without him. And that accent and the way he acts; he’s so strange—where is he from, anyway? Nobody ever told me.”

“Karse,” Jadus said to her surprise, “Which is why you’ll never hear a Herald use that old saying ‘The only things that come out of Karse are bad weather and brigands.’ He was a captain in their army—the youngest ever to hold that rank, or so I’m told. Unfortunately for him—though not for us—his Gift, when it works, is very powerful. It caused him to slip a time or two too often, to seem to know far more than he should have, especially about the future. His own people—his own company of the army—were hunting him as a witch because of that. They had him cornered in a burning barn when Kantor galloped through the flames to save him. Well, that’s another story and you should ask him to tell it to you some time; the pertinent thing to this story is that Alberich’s Gift is Foresight. Without telling Selenay why, he insisted on accompanying her, along with a dozen of his best pupils. Every one of the ambushers was killed; among them was the Prince. The official story is that he was killed in a hunting accident along with his friends.”

“I suppose that’s marginally true. They were hunting Selenay.”

Jadus grimaced. “Child, you have a macabre sense of humor.”

“But didn’t his own people have anything to say about such a flimsy tale?”

“They might have, except that circumstances had changed. As it happened, their King had since died and the Prince’s brother was reigning, and there had been no love lost between the two of them. The new King knew what his power-hungry sibling was like and was just as pleased that the scandal was shoved beneath the rug so neatly. Well, after that Selenay was kept very busy in attempting to ferret out those conspirators who hadn’t actually been among the ambushers—and to tell you the truth, I still don’t think she’s found all of them. I’ll tell you now what I’ve suspected for some time—Talamir was murdered because he was about to propose to the Council that Elspeth be fostered out to some of his remote relations. They were isolated folk of very minor noble rank. They weren’t going to put up with any nonsense from a child, and they were isolated enough that there was no chance Elspeth would be able to run away. But they are stubborn folk and Talamir was the only one likely to be able to persuade them to take the Brat on, and when he died, the plan was given up. But that all came later—after Selenay had been so busy that she had very little time to spare for Elspeth. Up until two years ago none of us had any inkling of trouble—we just turned around one day, and the sweet, tractable child had become the Royal Brat.”

“What’s all this got to do with Hulda?”

“That is something I can’t tell you; I’d been under the impression that it was Melidy who was in charge of the nursery, but from what you’ve observed that doesn’t seem to be the case. That’s exceedingly disturbing since I would have bet any amount of money that Melidy was the equal of anyone, up to and including Alberich! I can’t picture her just handing everything over to a foreigner.”

“Something’s changed drastically, then,” Talia mused. “And it looks like it’s up to me to find out what.”

“I fear so, youngling,” Jadus sighed, seeing the determination in her eyes. “I fear so.”

Another change in Talia’s life was in the way the other students treated her. Hitherto they had assumed Talia’s reticence was due to a wish for privacy and had honored that wish. Now that they knew it was simply due to shyness, they went out of their way to include her in their gossip and pranks.

Sessions in the sewing room were no longer a time for Talia to hide behind a mound of mending. The change was signaled one afternoon when there were no boys sharing the task.

Nerrissa was the current target of teasing about her most recent amorous conquest. She was being quite good-humored about it, but the jibes were getting a little tiresome. She looked around for a possible victim to switch the attention to, and her eye lighted on Talia.

“Ridiculous! And old news as well,” she replied to the most recent sally. “Besides, there’s somebody here who’s managed to captivate a lad who’s a lot harder to catch than Baern is.”

A chorus of “Who?” greeted the revelation.

“What?” Nerrissa’s eyes glinted with mischief. “You mean none of you noticed anything? Bright Havens, you must be denser than I thought. I would have figured that someone else would have seen that our Skif’s attentions to Talia are a great deal warmer than brotherly of late.”

“Oh, really?” Sheri turned to look at Talia, who was blushing hotly. “I thought you were my friend, Talia! You might have told me!”

Talia blushed even redder and stammered out a disclaimer.

“Oh, my—” Sheri teased. “So vehement! Sounds to me a little too vehement.”

After a while, Talia managed to stop blushing and to give as good as she got. From then on, her relationships with her fellow students were a great deal easier.

Meals were another time when she could forget the problems with getting closer to Elspeth. There had always been a certain amount of pranking about in the kitchen; Mero saw to it that their hands were always too full for them to get into mischief, but he put no such rein on their mouths. Mero himself was a favored target, and Talia, with her innocent face, was now the one generally picked to try and fool him.

“Haven’t you forgotten something, Mero?”

“I? I? Talia, you are surely mistaken.”

“I don’t know, Mero,” one of the others chimed in. “It seems to me that the salt cellar is missing—”

“By the Book! It is! What could I have done with the cursed thing?” He searched for it with feigned panic, watching out of the corner of his eye while they passed it from hand to hand, grinning hugely. At last Talia got it back again and placed it prominently on the table while his back was turned.

“Ha!” he shouted, pouncing on it. “Now I know I looked there before—” he stared directly at Talia, who shrugged guilessly.

“Kobolds,” he muttered, while they smothered giggles. “There must be kobolds in my kitchen. What’s this place coming to?”

Five minutes later he got his revenge.

“Would you say, young Talia, that you are a fairly good hand in the kitchen?” he asked, as the hoist went up with the precious salt-cellar on it.

“I—guess so.”

“And would you say that you know how to prepare just about any common dish of your Hold people?” he persisted.

“Definitely,” she replied injudiciously.

“Ah, good! Then certainly you can show me what to do with this.” He dropped an enormous gnarled and knobbly root in front of her.

Talia, who had never seen anything like it in her life, coughed and tried to temporize, while Mero’s grin got wider and the rest of the kitchen helpers giggled.

Finally (since it was evident that he wasn’t going to feed them unless she admitted her ignorance or told him how to prepare it) she confessed to being defeated.

Mero chuckled hugely and took the thing away, replacing it with their lunch. “What is it, anyway?” Griffon asked.

“A briar burl,” Mero laughed. “I doubt Talia could have done anything with it that would please a human palate—but she might have managed a gourmet meal for a termite-ant!”

Meals themselves were high points of the day. She had a permanent seat now at the second table, sandwiched between Sherrill and Jeri, across from Skif, Griffon, and Keren. To the eternal amusement of the girls and their teacher, both Griffon and Skif insisted on cosseting her, Griffon with the air of a big brother, Skif’s intentions obviously otherwise although he attempted to counterfeit Griffon’s. Griffon wasn’t fooled by Skif in the least.

“Watch yourself, you—” he growled under his breath. “You treat my Talia right, or I’ll feed you to the river with your best clothes on!”

Sherrill and the others overheard this “subtle” threat, and their faces puckered with the effort not to laugh.

Skif retaliated by picking Griffon’s pockets bare even of lint without the larger boy even being aware of the fact.

“More greens, brother?” he asked innocently, passing Griffon a plate containing his possessions.

Talia had to be saved from choking to death as she attempted to keep from giggling at the dumbfounded look on Griffon’s face.

That night Talia was on the receiving end of unmerciful teasing when they all got their baths at the end of the day.

“Oh, Talia—” Jeri piled her hair on the top of her head and simpered at her in imitation of Skif. “Would you like a—mushroom? Take two! Take a hundred!”

“Oh, thank you, no, dear, dear Skif—” Sherrill batted her eyelashes coyly at “Skif.” “I’d much rather have a—pickle.”

“I’ll just bet you would, wouldn’t you?” “Skif” replied, with a leer.

About this time the real Talia was torn between hilarity and outraged embarrassment. “I don’t know where you get your filthy minds—” she said, attacking both of them with a bar of soap and a sponge, “But they plainly need a good scrubbing!”

The episode degenerated at that point into a ducking and splashing match that soaked every towel in the room and brought down the wrath of the Housekeeper on all three of them.

“Hist!” someone hissed at Talia from behind the bushes next to the entrance to the gardens. She jumped, remembering all too well the misery of the months previous—then relaxed as she realized the whisperer was Skif.

“What on earth are you doing in there?” she asked, getting down on hands and knees, and seeing him in a kind of tunnel between two planted rows of hedges.

“What I told you I’d do—spying on the Brat. There’s something I want to show you. Squeeze on in here and follow me!”

She looked at him a bit doubtfully, then saw that he was completely serious, and did as he asked. They crawled through the prickly tunnel for some time before Skif stopped and Talia all but bumped into him. He signed at her to be quiet, and parted the twigs on one side, just enough for both of them to peer through.

Elspeth and her two nurses, Hulda and Melidy, were no more than a few feet away. They had no problem listening in on their conversation.

“Oh, no, dear,” Hulda was saying gently. “It’s quite out of the question. Your rank is much too high for you to be associating with Lord Delphor’s children. You are the Heir to the Throne, after all.”

Talia bit her lip angrily as Elspeth’s face fell. Old Melidy seemed to wake up a little from her half-doze. Her wrinkled face was creased with a faint frown as she seemed to be struggling to remember something.

“Hulda, that . . .” she began slowly, “ . . . that just doesn’t seem right somehow....”

“What doesn’t seem right, dear?” Hulda asked with artificial sweetness.

“Elspeth isn’t . . . she can’t. . . .”

“Be expected to know these things, I know. Now don’t you worry about a thing. Just drink your medicine like a dear love, and I’ll take care of everything.” Hulda poured a tiny glass of something red and sticky-looking and all but forced it into Melidy’s hand. The old woman gave up the struggle for thought and obediently drank it down. Not long afterward she fell asleep again.

Skif motioned that they should leave, and they backed out of the hedgerow on all fours.

“That’s what I wanted you to see,” he said, as they exited the hedge in a distant part of the garden. “Hold still, you’ve got twigs in your hair.” He began picking them out carefully.

“So’ve you. And leaves. She must be drugging Melidy, and keeping her drugged. Witch! But how did the old woman get into a state where she allowed herself to be drugged in the first place?”

“You’ve got me; I can’t hazard a guess. Ask Jadus, maybe he knows. Want me to keep watching?”

“If you don’t mind. I want to know if she’s doing this on her own or at someone else’s direction. And I want to know what else she’s telling the child.”

“Oh, I don’t mind; this is fun! It’s like being back on the streets again, except that now I’m not in danger of losing a hand or being hungry all the time,” he grinned.

“Oh, Skif—” she stopped, unsure of what to say next. Then, greatly daring, she leaned forward on an impulse and kissed his cheek lightly, blushed, and scampered away.

Skif stared after her in surprise, one hand raised to touch the spot she’d kissed.

Jadus didn’t know anything about the state of Melidy’s health, but he directed her to one of the Healers who would.

“Melidy was ill about two years ago,” she said thoughtfully. “Do you know what a ‘brainstorm’ is?”

“Isn’t that where an old person suddenly can’t move or talk—maybe even falls unconscious for a long time—and then gets better, slowly?”

The Healer nodded. “That’s what happened to Melidy. She seemed to have recovered completely, at least to me. I might have been wrong, though. Lady knows we aren’t infallible.”

“Maybe you weren’t wrong—or maybe she was affected in some way that you wouldn’t have noticed,” Talia replied, sounding much more adult than she appeared, and making the Healer’s eyes widen in surprise. “Keldar’s mother had a brainstorm after she brought her to live at our Hold. She seemed completely all right—except that you had to be very careful what you said to her because she’d believe anything you told her, no matter how absurd it was. That might have been what happened to Melidy.”

And if it was, she thought grimly, she’d have been easy prey for Hulda.

“As for that medicine you saw Hulda giving her, I never prescribed anything like that for her, but it might be a folk remedy, or one of the other Healers might have ordered it for her. I can check if you’d like. . . .”

Talia belatedly realized that this might not be a wise idea. She didn’t want Hulda alerted if the woman was up to something—and she didn’t want her embarrassed if she wasn’t.

“No, that’s all right, thank you. It probably is just a folk remedy. In fact, now that I think of it, it looked a lot like a syrup Keldar used to give her mother for aching joints.”

The Healer smiled, with obvious relief. “Melidy does have arthritis, and unfortunately there isn’t much we can do for her other than try and ease the pain. The potion might very well be one of ours. I’m glad the other nurse seems to be taking care of her, then. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No—thank you,” Talia replied. “You’ve answered everything I needed to ask.”

But, she thought as she walked slowly back to her room, you raised a lot more questions than you answered.