Her heart pounded a little the next day as they approached their first village of their Sector. There was no telling what reception awaited them*or what requests. This far from the capital, a village often didn"t even boast its own priest, but shared one with several other villages; and the only representatives of Kingdom law were the Heralds.

Her shields were so very thin; she"d discovered that last night. She couldn"t fathom why; shielding had always been second-nature, nearly instinctive*and now they seemed to be eroding, slowly, inexorably. She was frightened by the loss of control and was afraid to tell Kris, afraid her confession would simply reinforce his own doubts about her, and create more stress than she already had.

As they rode in, it appeared as though the entire population of the area had a.s.ssembled to meet them. Talia thought they must have had lookouts posted, perhaps for the last week or so, waiting for the Heralds they knew were replacing the injured one. The emotional atmosphere*which she felt in spite of her best efforts to shield*was tense, with no hint of why. The village was a small one, single-storied houses of gray wood and darker gray stone, topped with tile roofs, all cl.u.s.tered about a central square. There were no bright-painted shutters here; the wind-driven ice of winter storms would have etched the paint off in a single season. The inn was so small it obviously had no guest-rooms; those overnighting would have to sleep in the common room on the benches when the inn closed for the night. There was no sign of damage to any of the buildings, no hint of disorder; whatever had these folk anxious had nothing to do with their material life. The village folk, though*they were dressed in gaudy colors, as if for a festival. So why the feeling of apprehension so thick she could almost smell it?

"Thanks be to the Lady, you"ve finally come!"

A plump woman who reminded Talia for all the world of a hen bustled forward, pushing before her a young couple of about sixteen or so until they stood less than a foot from Kris" stirrup. Both were dressed in heavily embroidered finery, and the girl was roundly pregnant. They clutched each other"s hands as if they were afraid, and neither of them would look at the Heralds. Talia was puzzled beyond her own worries. What was it that could be wrong*that she hadn"t sensed?

"The priest took sick and hasn"t been able to make his rounds since eight weeks ago," continued the plump woman, tucking a stray strand of hair behind the girl"s ear, "and in any case, he hasn"t been here since before Midsummer. There hasn"t been anyone to marry these two in all that time!"

"Were they properly year-and-day handfasted?" Talia asked, knowing the Border custom, meant to ensure fertility before a permanent bond was made.

"Bright Stars, yes*the priest did it himself last Midwinter!" the woman exclaimed impatiently, while the other villagers nodded in agreement.

Enlightenment dawned on Talia, though Kris was obviously still perplexed about the reason for their obvious apprehension.

"You"re both still willing?" he asked. Both gave a very shy a.s.sent, but one obviously unforced.

"They"re just victims of very bad timing," Talia whispered to him. "And they"re afraid we"ll disapprove*maybe even refuse to wed them*because they left the formal ceremony so long. They should have wedded as soon as they knew she was with child, but I"ll bet a pretty they were so busy with planting that they put it off until after Midsummer, a.s.suming the priest would get here in plenty of time*except that they hadn"t counted on him falling ill. Poor babies! They"re terribly in awe of us, and they"re afraid we"ll make difficulties for them because they didn"t take care of it right away. We"d be within our right to do so ... by the letter of the law."

"But not by the spirit," Kris whispered back, relieved that it was so simple. "Well, since everyone"s agreed," he said loudly enough for everyone to hear, smiling broadly, "what"s holding up the celebration?"

There was a general sigh of tension vanishing, and trestle tables and food began appearing as if conjured by a spell. Before very long the square had been transformed and a proper wedding celebration was in full swing. To save them any further embarra.s.sment, Kris took the young couple off to one side and witnessed their vows, signing their wedding contract as officiating Herald in lieu of a priest.

The young couple returned to enjoy their feast, their shyness nearly gone. They were obviously comforted on two counts: that the Heralds had made no difficulty over the lateness of their vows, and that now their firstborn would have no taint of illegitimacy about it.

The remainder of that day they spent in relative idleness, since there was no use whatsoever in trying to get any official business conducted. The press of people was putting a considerable strain on Talia, but she thought she was succeeding in keeping the strain from showing, even to Kris. She sat mostly on the edge of things, speaking pleasantly when spoken to, but letting Kris take the lion"s share of the attention.

And she was even more worried than when they"d first entered this village; her shields hadn"t been this fragile since before she"d learned the full use of her Gift. Virtually anything would bring them down, and she had to expend ridiculous amounts of energy to put them back up again.

If only she"d never heard those filthy rumors....

The thought of the rumors brought her back full circle to her self-doubt and fear, and the press of emotions became almost painful, until she finally resorted to an old expedient; drinking enough wine to blur the edges of her sensing, and make it all bearable. It was rather too bad that it left her sober enough to negotiate the dark path back to the Waystation with no trouble at all*for that meant she was still sober enough to think.

They returned the next day, ready for business. The people of the village had no grievances that needed settling, but they were eager to hear the news from the capital and the other towns of the Sector. The common room of the inn, dark and smokey as it was, was the only "public" room in the whole village, so that was where they conducted their business. The village storyteller*who doubled as the clerk*sat drinking in every word they spoke, and making copious notes, for it would be his duty to repeat all that the Heralds related for those who were absent from the village, or for those small holders who seldom came to town.

They gave the morning to the decisions of the Queen and Council, how and why those decisions had been reached, and what, if any, laws had been pa.s.sed to uphold and enforce those decisions; and the afternoon they spent relating the news of the Court and events of major importance to the entire Kingdom*all of which took them until darkness fell, and they returned to the Station again.

This day had lain easier on Talia"s wire-taunt nerves, for there was nothing to excite anyone"s emotions in the dry news they recited, and even if there had been, the storyteller/clerk was too intent on memorizing every word to allow his feelings to intrude. When the two of them returned to the Waystation, Talia made herself a cup of double-strength shamile tea, a strong soporific. She was determined to get to sleep, and to sleep deeply, thinking perhaps weariness was part of the cause of her troubles.

But her dreams were uneasy, and she woke feeling more drained than she had been when she"d gone to sleep.

They spent the third day on the reports of the headman and clerk, and taking the verbal news of the village to be pa.s.sed on up the line. Kris would carry the headman"s written reports until they came to a center of population large enough to boast a messsenger, or until they arrived at a Resupply Station, at which point he could send what he had collected south to the capital, together with his own observations on the probable truth or falsehood of the information contained in them.

That was Kris" job. Talia remained in the background the entire time, hoping to be noticed as little as possible, for it seemed that the strain was worst when she was interacting with someone.

But that evening at the Waystation, Kris insisted on hearing Talia"s opinion on the reports they"d been given, and the reliability of the headman and clerk who had given them.

"They seemed honest to me," she told him, hoping he had no notion of how much she had sensed, against her will. "I didn"t have any feeling they were trying to mislead us, hide anything, or hold anything back. As far as I can judge, the only mistakes in their records are honest errors. They were quick enough to correct them, in any event, when you pointed them out."

"Good," Kris said with satisfaction. "That tallies with what I saw. I"m just as glad; I hate calling people out*even when it"s blatantly obvious that they"re lying to me." He noted both their observations on the cover page of the reports, and sealed them in a waterproof wrapper.

To Talia"s relief, he had not seemed to note how much strain she was under.

"I didn"t realize we took tax records, too," she said, attempting to distract herself*and him*with questions about routine.

"Always, in Border Sectors; almost never in the interior. We take a duplicate of what they"re supposed to give the taxmen when they come next spring. This way, if some disaster should destroy their records, they have at least a partial reckoning on file. It"s to their advantage, since if there"s a disaster of that magnitude, the village may have lost quite a bit more than the records, and the Queen will be able to judge what aid to give them based on what would have been taxed."

She did not make the same mistake with the tea this night, but instead lay in the darkness of the Station, staring up at the blackness above her head, listening to Kris" quiet breathing and going back to her earliest lessons in shield-discipline. She thought, when she finally was weary enough to sleep, that she might have reinforced her shields enough to carry her through the final day.

The fourth day they went over the clerk-storyteller"s accounts of what they"d told him, making corrections or elaborations as required. When the fifth day dawned (much to Talia"s relief), they were back on the road again; headed through the village on their way out, but not to do more than pick up their laundry and visit the village bathhouse.

By the time they were well past the village and out into the wilds, it was growing noticeably colder, and both of them were wearing their heavier winter cloaks. The trees were now totally barren of leaves, and the warm, friendly scents of autumn were gone from the wind. Although it seldom rained anymore, the skies continued to be overcast*a featureless slate-gray. They crunched their way through a carpet of dead, brown leaves that had collected on the roadway. Most of the birds and beasts were gone, hibernating, or in hiding now; the loss of foliage and cover made them cautious and quiet, those that were left. The Heralds seldom saw more than the occasional rabbit or squirrel, and never heard much besides the wind in the naked boughs of the trees and the scream of a crow or two. The Companions" bridle bells made a lonely chime against the silence of the sleeping forest.

So far as Talia was concerned, that was all to the good; at least she wasn"t having to be continually on guard against her shields failing. But her nerves continued to fray; and as they traveled onward through the bleak woods, she wasn"t sure which was worse, being alone in this gloom-ridden wilderness, where the gray and empty forest only fed her depression, or being surrounded by people, with shields slowly going to pieces.

Kris wasn"t much happier; he kept wondering if*and how much*of his general feelings of approval toward Talia were manufactured. Was she consciously or unconsciously augmenting them? He was beginning to examine every nuance of feeling, trying to detect if she had had a hand in it.

He liked her*Bright Havens, he wanted to like her, she was so much like him in so many ways. She was a good partner, taking on tasks without complaining, without needing to be prompted, striving to be a full equal and pull her own weight ... and yet, and yet ...

Yet there were those rumors, and his own feelings that he could well have been tampered with without his ever noticing it. "No smoke without fire?" Perhaps. It was so d.a.m.ned hard to tell ... and the way she was withdrawing wasn"t helping.

The next stop was two days distant, which meant an overnight stay in a Waystation midway between the two villages. Kris was no longer even thinking of his partner in terms of being female; now the strain on his nerves was because of his suspicions. They repeated their routine of the first night; Talia readying the shelter while Kris took care of the four-footed members of the party. His night-vision was much better than hers; it only seemed logical. And it gave him a chance to consult with Tantris without her around.

Tantris was puzzled, and worried. :I haven"t felt anything, little brother, but ...: "But?" Kris asked aloud.

:I am not certain that I would. Rolan is disturbed, and refuses to discuss it.: "Great."

:He is senior to me, as you are senior to Talia. If he does not wish to discuss the private affairs of his Chosen, that is his business, and his right.: "I know, I know. Look, at least tell me if you pick up anything, all right?"

:You have my word.: his Companion replied, :but I think perhaps ...: "Perhaps what?"

:You need more expert aid,: came the reluctant reply.

"Tell me from where, and I"ll get it! There isn"t anybody in the Circle with a Gift like hers*and I rather doubt that Healer"s Empathy is identical."

:True,: came the sigh in his mind, and after that, he could coax nothing more out of Tantris on the subject.

It troubled him deeply. If a Companion didn"t feel up to the problem ...

And they did not even have time to reach the gate of the next village before they were met on the road by two different parties demanding justice.

They saw it coming easily enough. "Steady," Kris said as they rode into a press of farmers in heavy brown homespun, who crowded up against the sides of the Companions with their pet.i.tions. Talia went pale and strained, and sat Rolan"s back absolutely motionless and with lips tightly compressed. Kris did his best to sort out the arguments, then finally lost patience and sharply ordered them all to hold their tongues.

When the clamor died down, he finally managed to ascertain that there were two aggrieved parties, both as alike to his eyes as a pair of crows*brown hair, thick brown beards, nearly identical clothing of brown homespun. After listening to both sides, and putting up with each one interrupting the other until he was ready to take a stick to both of them, he decreed that the argument was moot until third parties could be questioned.

The dispute was a trivial one by his lights, over a cow and her calf. The facts were that a bull had somehow made its way into a field containing a cow in season; not surprisingly, the calf resulted. The calf was quite plainly the offspring of the bull in question, nor did the cow"s owner deny this. What was under dispute was how the bull had gotten at the cow in the first place.

The cow"s owner claimed angrily that the owner of the bull had allowed it to stray, and that it had found its own way there, and thus he had incurred no stud fee. He pointed to the damage done to his hedges, and inquired with self-righteous wrath if anyone thought he"d ruin his own enclosure to save himself the fee.

The bull"s owner claimed just as vociferously that the owner of the cow had enticed the bull into the pasture with the express purpose of saving himself the stud fee.

Kris felt absolutely helpless; this was not an area in which he had any expertise at all. He glanced entreatingly at his internee, who was farmbred, after all, and should have some notion of how to sort it out. Talia was looking a bit white around the lips and eyes, but otherwise seemed in control. He nudged Tantris up beside her, and whispered, "All right, trainee*you know more about this sort of thing than I do. Got any ideas?"

She started just a little; possibly only someone watching for reactions would have noticed it. "I ... I think so," she said, slowly. "It"s like a dispute we had once back at Sensholding."

"Then take over. I"m out of my depth."

She asked a few questions of the disputants, then went among the rest of the villagers, making inquiries into the habits of each of the parties in question. It was generally agreed that, while the owner of the cow was parsimonious, he was far too stingy to have ruined his own fences just to save a stud fee. And the bull"s owner had a habit of allowing it to stray, being too lazy to fix breaks in his own enclosures until after the beast had escaped yet another time.

But then she surprised Kris by asking a source he never would have considered*some of the children gathered at the edge of the crowd. After sidelong glances to be certain that no one was likely to tell them to hold their tongues, they told Talia that this particular cow was never kept in the field where the bull had supposedly found her. She was quite valuable, and her owner always kept her where he could keep an eye on her.

Talia returned to the disputants.

"This is my first judgment;" she said, slowly, and with an oddly expressionless tone. "There is no doubt that your bull did stray, and since it is quite probable that it did the damage claimed to the fences, you owe this man for the repairs he had to make."

The owner of the bull looked extremely disgruntled; the cow"s owner gloated. Talia did not allow him to gloat for long.

"You, on the other hand," she told him*not quite looking at him, "have never kept your cow in that particular field. You must have seen that the bull had broken in, and decided that since the damage was already done, you might as well save yourself the stud fee. So you moved your cow to the field where the bull was. Because of this, my second judgment is that you owe him half the stud fee he would normally have charged you."

Now both of them looked chagrined.

"All things considered, I should think that you are probably even."

They grudgingly agreed that this was the case.

"Don"t you leave yet!" she said, turning to the owner of the bull, and showing a little more animation. "You have been letting a potentially dangerous animal roam loose. My third judgment is that anyone who finds your bull roaming and confines it in a safe place for you to take home is ent.i.tled to have his cows serviced for nothing to pay him for his trouble. That should induce you to take better care of your stock in the future."

The grins creasing the faces of the rest of the villagers made it clear that they considered Talia"s rulings to have been equitable and appropriate*and they were certainly popular. Kris smiled and gave her a little nod of approval; she smiled back, tentatively, some of the strain gone from around her eyes.

With children ranging along before and behind them, they continued down to the village itself, which was a slightly larger version of the first village they had served, and actually boasted a "town hall" of sorts. It was there that they set up shop in the single large room that served as a meeting hall, behind an ancient and battered marble-topped table that might well be the oldest object in the village. It was an improvement on the common room of the inn in that it wasn"t as smoky or cramped; but the fireplace did little to heat it, and Kris found himself hoping that they would be able to deal with their business and be on their way before he got frostbitten feet and fingers.

But another dispute for arbitration landed on them almost immediately; a problem of the location of the boundary between two neighboring farms. The farmers themselves were not overly concerned about the matter, as they were old friends and had settled the problem over the years by sharing equally both the work and the fruits of the fields in question. They confided to Kris, however, that they feared this could not continue for very much longer; both had more than one son to be provided for, and they feared that tempers were already growing heated on the subject among their offspring. Kris, after a glance at Talia showed him she had no opinion in this matter, agreed that the matter should be settled now, before it developed into a full-blown feud. He promised that they would attend to it as soon as they had discharged their other duties.

The disputants were obliged to be content with that. Kris called for the village records, and while each of them took a turn at relaying the news and the laws, the other searched the records provided by the village clerk for clues to the ownership of the properties in question.

Regrettably, the clues were few, and contradictory. It seemed that both claims were equally valid.

Talia was increasingly reluctant to take any part in the affairs at hand. Her shielding was disintegrating, slowly, but steadily; she was positive of that now. What was worse, she was no longer certain that she was able to keep her own feelings from intruding and influencing those around her, for her instinct-level control over projection was going, too. Kris was trying to put her at ease, but she could sense his own doubts as clearly as if he were shouting them aloud.

And when, the night before they were due to leave, they discussed the problem of the disputed fields at length in the privacy of the Waystation, she was keeping herself under such tight control that she knew she was going to have a reaction-headache from the strain.

"The problem is that the stream they used as the original dividing line has changed its bed so many times that I can"t see any way of reconstructing what it was originally," Kris sighed. "And you can"t cast a Truth Spell on a stream!"

She hesitated a long moment, drawing invisible patterns on the hearthstone of the Station with a twig. "Do you suppose they"d settle for dividing it equally? You"ve talked with them more than I have."

"Not a chance," Kris replied flatly, firelight casting ever-changing shadows across his face. "I"ve talked with the eldest sons, and they"re just about ready to come to blows over it. The fathers would be perfectly willing, but the children would never stand for it, and it"s the children who will make trouble if they"re not satisfied."

"I can"t see making this an all-or-nothing proposition," she sighed, after a long pause.

"Neither can I," Kris stared into the flames, thinking. "Among the highborn the way to settle this would be to marry two of the younger children, then deed the land in question to them."

"There"s not enough land there to support even one person, much less a family," Talia felt impelled to point out, "even if we could find two of the children willing to marry."

Kris played absently with one of the arrows from his quiver*then looked down at it suddenly, and smiled in inspiration. "What about the hand of Fate?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Suppose we each took a stand on the opposite sides of the area and shot arrows straight up*then drew a line between where they landed for the new border. If there"s no wind tomorrow, where they fall is going to be pretty much at the whim of the Lady. Do you think that would satisfy everyone?"

"That ... that"s no bad notion," she said, thinking hard. "Especially if we have the priest bless the arrows, pray over the fields, that sort of thing. It wouldn"t be human decision anymore; it would be in the hands of the G.o.ds*and who"s going to dispute the will of the G.o.ds? I think both families will be willing to abide by it. Kris, that"s a wonderful idea!" She sighed, rather sadly. "I wouldn"t have thought of that."

"You did fine yourself, earlier," he said, more forcefully than he had intended. "I was totally out of my depth."

"Well, I don"t like the idea of anyone allowing livestock to roam at will. Out here on the Border if cattle or hogs get into the forested areas, they"re likely to go feral, and then you"ve got a real problem on your hands."

"Hmn. I knew dogs gone wild could be a problem, but I never knew livestock could." Kris filed that piece of information away for future reference.

"It"s a fairly serious problem," she replied absently. "When domestic animals go feral, they have no fear of man the way wild animals do, and what"s more, they"re familiar with how people act. There was more than one person among Holderkin killed or maimed by feral stock."

"Well, I repeat, you did fine. You shouldn"t be afraid to put your say in. That"s what this internship is all about."

"I*" she started, then shrank back into herself.

"What?"

"Nothing," she replied, moving back into the shadows where he couldn"t read her expression. "I"m just tired, that"s all. We should get some rest."

That withdrawal troubled him badly ... but there didn"t seem to be anything he could do about it.

On their way out of town the next day, they stopped to acquire the clerk and the priest; when they presented their solution to the two families in question, both sides were heartily in favor of it. The farmers themselves were willing to agree to any solution to the problem that would defuse the potentially explosive situation between their children. The children of both families were equally certain that the G.o.ds would be with them when the arrows flew.

For something that had been under dispute for so long, the end came almost as an anticlimax. The priest blessed arrows, bows, Heralds, fields, families*anything that could possibly pertain to or be interested in the problem. ("If it moves, I"m blessing it," he told the Heralds with a twinkle in his eyes. "And if it doesn"t move, I"m praying over it!") Talia and Kris each took a stand on the exact midpoint of the northern and southern boundaries of the disputed plot and launched their arrows; the priest marked the anding point of one, the clerk of the other. The landing places were permanently designated with stone cairns and newly-planted trees, the new border was made and drawn on the maps and deeds. Both sides professed themselves satisfied. The Heralds went on their way.

But by now Talia was so withdrawn that Kris could not read her at all; she might as well have been a statue of a Herald. She seemed to have wrapped herself in a coc.o.o.n of self-imposed isolation, and nothing he could do or say seemed to be able to break her out of it.

And as for himself, he found himself wondering if both those disputes hadn"t been solved a little too easily. It would have been child"s play for her to have nudged the disputants ever so slightly into a more friendly*or at least less antagonistic*att.i.tude toward one another. And once she was gone, if that was indeed what she had done, the quarrels would break out all over again.

Had he been overly impressed with the way she had handled the first case? Had she been adjusting his att.i.tude?

There was simply no way of being sure ... no way at all.

Talia was coming to realize that all her control had been on a purely instinctive level; that she really didn"t understand how her own Gift worked. The training Ylsa had given her was the sort given to Mindspeakers, and in the face of this disintegration of control, very little of Ylsa"s teaching seemed directly applicable to her current problem. The Healers she"d worked with had never said anything to her ... perhaps because they"d seen the control and a.s.sumed it was conscious rather than instinctive.

For that matter, her Gift might not be much like theirs except in effect. They certainly didn"t use their Empathy as primary Gift; it was used mostly as an adjunct to Healing.

They certainly weren"t confronted with the ethical considerations she found herself facing. When they weren"t Healing, they simply shielded. And they didn"t work with law and politics.