Page 16 of Valdemar

Koto and his new “apprentice” appeared for luncheon in the Great Hall the next day, and Restil had no difficulty seeing the new shield surrounding the young man, although it would not be visible except to mage-sight. Rothas looked very subdued, still with that undercurrent of misery, although at least he wasn’t projecting it past the shield. If that’s what a lifebond does to you, I pray I never have one! Restil thought to himself, as he helped himself to bread, cheese, and vegetables and joined them. Koto wore stern expression, quite out of keeping with the way he normally looked, but Restil could tell he was pleased with himself. It looks like Koto is playing my father’s game. He is the stern taskmaster, and I am to be the one to coax Rothas and Lythe into better behavior. We’ll see which tactic works! Restil had never actually had a rebellious phase; he wasn’t sure why, but he was glad it hadn’t happened. Maybe it was because when the world was throwing emergency after emergency at you, rebellion wasn’t very attractive. Life was so much easier when you got along with your parents!

“Rothas needs a rest from his studies with me,” the mage announced as Restil sat down next to him. “Perfectly natural; he’s never properly learned to use his abilities, and doing so is quite tiring! So since your father suggested you also serve as his mentor, Restil, I’ll turn him over to you for the rest of the day. Anything you need to attend to that would prevent you from doing that, lad?”

Restil laughed. “I have learned the art of delegation from Father, although if my memory is correct, you Old Men and mother had to teach him that skill! Turns out that, other than boatbuilding and several kinds of very fancy weaving, there aren’t a lot of crafts that we aren’t already practicing, so we are in no danger of losing them. The weavers are happy to do their own documentation. So there is nothing preventing me from taking Rothas around, now and in the future.”

Rothas’s face was a mixture of relief and apprehension. “We’re not shoveling horse shit, I hope?” he said, his tone implying that yes, he actually expected to share in that duty. Then again, he did come from a very small village, and it looked as if he, at least, had not tried to shirk his mundane chores.

“I’ve already mucked out my horses’ stalls this morning, you’re safe from that particular task,” Restil replied. Koto took this conversation as a cue to go join the other Old Men at the high table. “But you’re going to have to do something useful—or learn something. Father counts learning as important as doing. So I thought what we’d do is I’d find the luthier and you could start actual music lessons, then you can come along and give me a hand with another project.”

“What’s—a luthier?” Rothas asked.

“It’s a fellow that makes musical instruments. Mind you, there’s not a lot of call for those skills right now, so mostly what he does is alternate cabinetmaking with music lessons, both mostly for the highborn.” It took him a moment to register that Rothas still looked baffled. “Haven’t you ever had music lessons?”

“What do you need lessons for?” Rothas asked ingenuously. “I mean . . . birds don’t take lessons—”

Evidently he wasn’t in the Vale long enough to have heard any of the Hawkbrother bards.“Because the gods don’t put the ability to play an instrument into our heads at birth,” Restil replied.

“I can play the drums and the whistle. . . . ”

“And there is oh, so much more than that,” Restil replied firmly. “And it’s a skill you are going to need when you learn to properly handle your Gifts. All that business of Projective Empathy? You’ll ultimately channel that through music, once you can control what you share with others and what you keep behind your shields. Sometimes you’ll need to do that without words.”

Rothas’s face fell. “I just want to sing. . . . ” he said plaintively. “Why can’t I just sing?”

A hundred retorts ran through Restil’s mind, so he ate a carrot to delay his initial response of, “Do you know how many people would kill to have your Gifts?” There were a lot of possible things he could have said, but the one thing that stuck in his mind was the one he eventually said, after he swallowed the last bite.

“You haven’t even tried any of this. Yes, I know Koto can be a difficult teacher, but he’s also the best there is, and you are the equivalent of a little taking his first steps. What if all children decided that walking was too hard and crawled all their lives? Think of all the things they’d miss—running, dancing, even acrobatics!”

Rothas chewed glumly on a stalk of celery. Celery. The vegetable of depression. “I don’t know. . . . ”

“Besides, if you’re honest, you’ll admit that you don’t ‘just sing’ the way a bird does, and you never have,” Restil continued shrewdly. “What about all the practicing you’ve done? Making changes to a song so it suits you better? Learning new songs. And the only instruments you’ve ever explored are the drum and the whistle! There are dozens of instruments out there! Surely you heard at least a few while you were with the Hawkbrothers!”

Rothas’s shoulders slumped. “I didn’t . . . I mean, it didn’t seem worth the bother. Everything was going so wrong.”

Restil gestured with his carrot. “I figure when things feel wrong is when you need your music the most. This is how smart people get smarter. They learn when their feelings have had their say, and don’t drag it out. I was taught that when you’re in conflict inside, learning new things helps the world make more sense. Learning new things helps you discover wonders, while moping only increases your ability to feel bad.”

In other words, he’s never challenged himself because there was never a need to. He could coast on his natural abilities. That’s the obvious. But now, there’s a lot more going on that has him feeling ready to give up on everything.Rothas’s lifebond meant that his enforced separation from Lythe was driving him deeply into depression and making him lose all interest in practically everything. It was probably even physically painful. But Restil had a notion that giving the fellow something equally powerful—working to master his Gifts and his craft—might counter some of that defeatism.

“We’ll just go see the luthier,” he said, making it very clear that “no” was not an option. “Then tell me if it doesn’t seem to be worth the bother.”

Now, it was possible that Rothas was putting on a good face for the Valdemarans in general and Restil in particular, and underneath he might be the arrogant, selfish boor that the short version of his story suggested—but Restil didn’t think so. Probably “young and stupid” sums it all up, and if being young and stupid was a crime, I’d be shoveling horse shit until I died to pay for it, he thought with a touch of amusement. He’s probably no worse than Hakkon, for that matter—momentary thoughtlessness and rudeness, and a bit of unwarranted arrogance. Well, he’s learned that the world is a lot bigger than he thought, and he is a very tiny minnow in a very big ocean. That alone has upended everything he thought he knew, and the fact that he’s not screaming about how unfair this all is probably means there’s a decent person in that morass of woe.

Rothas sighed. “All right. It’s . . . all this has been really hard.”

Restil nodded with sympathy. “Leaving aside what happened to you and Lythe, you’ve both been hauled into the Hawkbrothers’ world, had their language and ours shoved into your head without a by-your-leave, and didn’t even have time to get used to their way of life before they dumped you here, in the middle of more strangers than you could possibly have imagined. In your place, I’d probably be hiding in my bedroll, refusing to take the covers off my head.”

That actually teased a little ghost of a smile out of the young man—which was enough to make female (and probably some male, Restil wasn’t taking a census) heads nearby turn toward him, and dreamy smiles to appear on lips.

Poor things. Wait till they find out he’s lifebonded. The weeping and wailing will be epic.On the one hand, this was amusing. On the other hand, it was very clear that Rothas was in a lot of emotional pain. Restil opted to come down on the side of sympathy.

“I know you don’t much feel like eating, but eat,” he urged, making himself an example. “You’re not going to learn how to help yourself and Lythe if you wither away from starvation.”

Once Rothas had choked down enough food that Restil was satisfied that he’d manage to last out the afternoon, he led the young man out of the Great Hall. And by this time it was obvious that a lot of people, and not just women, were covertly watching him. Some were openly staring. Restil couldn’t blame them. Rothas was certainly worth looking at, worthy of a wonder tale, every single cliche about a golden-haired hero packed into a single person. I am going to be besieged by the curious tonight after he goes insensible. They’re all going to want to know every single detail, and they’re going to be awfully disappointed when I say, “Well, you can ask him yourself when he’s awake.” The more new people Rothas had to meet and talk to, the less he’d be thinking about himself and Lythe. With the Bardic Gift often came the absolute need for an audience, so Rothas would probably actually enjoy the enforced socialization.

Since the luthier mostly worked as a cabinetmaker and didn’t need to be down in Haven itself, he worked out of four rooms he shared with a fellow cabinetmaker. In fact, they often collaborated on large pieces, with the younger man doing the rough work and the luthier doing the finishing. It was in one of the wall sections nearest the manor, so it wasn’t far to walk. Restil cocked an eye at the sky and frowned. The clouds had a familiar look to them. “At least all the untamed magic around here doesn’t affect the weather much.”

“Aye, I noticed that too,” Rothas confirmed. “Rain by tomorrow. Weather in that Hawkbrother city?—that was odd. Could be pounding down everywhere except there, and then it was just a gentle patter of however much they’d decided they wanted.”

“This place used to be a Hawkbrother Vale,” Restil told him as they approached Marin Joiner’s open door; a tap-tap-tapping came from within, so at least they weren’t going to be interrupting a music lesson. “But when they moved on, they took the protections with them. Winters can be hard, but I expect you know exactly how hard winter can be in this part of the world. I’ll tell you more about us later, when you don’t have to cope with twenty new things coming at you at once.”