Free Finding the Way and Other Tales of Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey

woke, Gaurane was there with a cup. Sometimes it held willowbark tea. Sometimes it held broth. Sometimes it held watered brandy.
    “You should sleep,” Hedion muttered.
    It was night, but he had no idea of what night. Normally that information would have been available to him from the thoughts of those around him, but though Gaurane was there, it was as if Hedion were utterly alone.
    “If you had my dreams, you wouldn’t say that,” Gaurane answered. “Go back to sleep.”
    “I think I might be finished sleeping, at least for a while,” Hedion said, surprising himself.
    “Well, if you can stand up without falling over, there’s a creek that way—” Gaurane jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the direction. “Go wash up, then come and sit. There’s some roast rabbit.”

    “Can’t expect the pony back for another two days, minimum,” Garaune said, when Hedion came back. “Unfortunately, he always comes back.” He took a long drink.
    Hedion wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Gaurane without a mug in his hand. “I’m going to run out of wine soon,” he said, just for something to say.
    “You did that yesterday,” Gaurane said. “Let’s hope you’re well enough to ride by the time I run out of brandy. I can get supplies at Stone Tower.”
    “I, uh, I never thanked you for saving my life,” Hedion said awkwardly.
    Gaurane fixed him with a piercing look. The firelight turned his brown eyes amber. “Don’t be insulting. I know the sort of man who’d spit in someone’s eye if they saved his life,” he said.
    “Are you one?” Hedion asked boldly. It was odd to only have surface things to judge someone by—face and voice and the movement of the hands. But he had been trained by those who had to rely upon only those things. Mindhealing was the rarest of the Healing Gifts, and the only other Mindhealer Hedion had ever met was of Journeyman rank, and would never go higher. There’d been no one who could truly explain him to himself.
    “If I meant to be dead, I could have cut my throat a hundred times over,” Gaurane said. “You know damned well what happens to the surviving half of a Bonding. No, I’ll just suffer,” he added, with a crooked smile.
    Hedion found himself smiling back. “I don’t understand. Rhoses called you ‘Herald Gaurane.’ He’s your Companion. But you can’t Hear him, can you? And I can’t Hear you.”
    “Eat your dinner,” Gaurane said.
    There was half a rabbit set out on a tin plate, along with several ash-roasted tubers and a mug of hard cider. Hedion discovered he was hungry and began to eat. He didn’t think he was going to get an answer to any of his questions, but after the silence had stretched for a while, Gaurane began to talk.
    “I keep hoping he’ll go off and find himself some bright-eyed young Herald, you know? They have to have some way to . . . to un-Choose someone. I’m not the Herald type. I knew— he knew—when he found me, Chose me, it was for one thing. And we did that. We did that,” Gaurane repeated, as if to himself. Then he fixed Hedion with that knowing gaze once more.
    “I was a drunk. I’m still a drunk, but, well, in those days I was living in the gutters of Haven. Happy to be there. Don’t know how I got there. Don’t know how I got to Valdemar, actually. I’m from the Hardorn side of the Kleimars. Good farming land. Good life.”
    The silence stretched, and Hedion knew better than to break it.
    “My brother, his wife, my wife. Our children. A little farm. One day a Karsite supply party came through. I don’t know what happened. I was mending a fence when I smelled the smoke.” Gaurane looked down at his hands. Strong and blunt-fingered. Farmer’s hands. “You studied at the Collegium. I guess they told you about how it is with Gifts. They show up when you’re a kid, just like you cutting your second teeth. Or you can go your whole life not knowing you have them. Unless something rips you open.”
    “You felt