Free Valdemar Anthology - [Tales of Valdemar 02] - Sun in Glory and Other Tales of Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey Page A

seemed like prison doors, they opened into a room so small. Curled against wall and floor, huddling in the corner, was a man. A stranger.
    In Riverend, strangers were always eyed with suspicion, greeted with hearty hospitality and an implacable distance. She had shed both of those the moment she had heard his terrible cry.
    And she heard it still, although she could see—with wide eyes—that his lips were still. But his eyes were wider than eyes should be, and they stared ahead, to her, sightless, as if he had gone blind.
    :Kayla! Be careful!:
    Darius’ voice.
    She realized then what was so wrong, so cutting, about this man’s cry of terror: it reached her the same way that Darius’ words did, in a silence that spoke of knowledge and intimacy. Without thought, she bent to the man huddled against the floor, and without thought, she tried to lift him.
    Realized that lifting him would strain the muscles she had built in the hold, lifting even the largest of the children; he was not a small man.
    And she was a small woman. But determination had always counted for something. Always.
    She caught him in her arms. Caught his face in her hands as his head sought the cradle of arms and breasts.
    His screaming was terrible.
    But hers was louder, longer, as insistent as his own.
    Look at me!
    He whimpered, but the sound was a real sound, a thing of throat and breath and lips. His eyes, glassy, brown, deep, shifted and jerked, upward now, seeking her face.
    â€œThe darkness,” he whispered. “The darkness. The emptiness. I’ve lost them. I’ve failed them all.” For a large man, his voice was small, tiny. She should have been terrified, then.
    But as he spoke, she felt what he felt, and she knew, knew, that she had passed through it herself.
    Â 
    Her own children were gone.
    And she was young enough that the visiting merchants never realized that she had had a husband—gone, too—and a family; that she had had everything she had desired in her youth.
    And what was the point of that desire, but pain? In the end, what was the point? Her children had not disappeared in the mining accidents that killed the men, when the men did die; they had not gone missing in the terrible snows that could strand a person feet away from the doors of the hold, and bury them there, as a taunt, a winter cruelty.
    No. She had held them.
    She had held them, just as she had held this man, in this dark, cramped room, in this empty place that had no words of comfort to offer her.
    The cabin in which she had lived was hallowed by the terrible silence of their absence; she might walk from room to room—for there were only three—and listen furtively to catch their ghostly voices. This was the way she evoked memory, and memory, in this dark place, this gloom of log and burning wood and little light—for light let in cold—was unkind. It led her into darkness.
    And that darkness might have devoured her, if her mother had not held her, held on to her, filled the emptiness with her words and the blessed sound of her voice. Mother’s pain, always.
    She spoke to this stranger.
    She spoke to this man who understood, who was somehow—at this instant—a part of all the losses she had faced.
    And as she did, she opened her eyes to a dream.
    Heard the voice of the devourer, all his voices, the cries of terror and emptiness.
    Promise me, Kayla. Promise me you will stay and protect Riverend. Promise me.
    I promise. I promise, Mother. I promise.
    She forgot the cathedral, then. Forgot the lines of this stranger’s face. She held him, as if a storm raged just beyond her bent shoulders, her bowed back. She found voice; she sang. She sang to him.
    And the singing did what the words she had spoken—for she was aware that words had left her lips, aware that they were a failure before she had finished speaking them—could not.
    Dark eyes turned to her; dark eyes saw her; the agony written and