Adept, her calm completely unruffled. :From you, that is high praise indeed.:
Elspeth giggled. Gwena was much easier to live with these days, now that she had given up on steering Elspeth to some âdestiny,â and had resigned herself to the fact that Elspeth was going to make her own way whether or not Gwena liked it. :So, dearheart, have you finished gossiping with Rolan?:
Gwena had been giving Rolanâthe Queenâs Own Companionâdaily reports for the past several weeks now, as winter turned to spring, and matters in kâSheyna Vale were slowly settled. The original plan, made in the euphoria of victory, had been to return to Valdemar immediately, and then, if their enemies gave them a chance, to explore just what, exactly, was going on with the Forest of Sorrows. Several times during their struggle with Mornelithe Falconsbane it seemed as if some power up there was interfering on their behalf. But that plan had to be amended; there were many things she needed to learn from Firesong before he returned to his own Vale, and in the end there seemed to be no real urgency in getting back to Valdemar before winter ended. Ancar had been well confined by the combined armies of Valdemar, Rethwellan, andâmiracle of miraclesâKarse. His mages seemed to be doing nothing, except waiting and watching. And Elspeth really didnât want to go home until the last of winter was overâ
âand until memories had faded of the hideous headache that had hit every Herald and Companion in the capital city of Haven, the day that control of the Heartstoneâs power had been wrested from Mornelithe Falconsbane. The day that same power had come to rest somewhere in the Palace/Collegium complex, giving Haven what appeared to be a small, new and, so far, quiescent Heartstone of its own, as if it were to be a new Tayledras Vale.
Elspeth had not known this until after the fact, but as that power snapped into place, every Herald within a few leaguesâ radius of the capital had been struck down with a blinding, incapacitating headache. So had their Companions. For most, the worst pain had lasted no more than a few hours, but for several others, it had taken days to recover. Elspeth didnât think they were going to blame her for itâafter all, no one knew the power-locus would go there! It had been intended to go to where most of kâSheyna Clan waited, to the prepared node and carefully anchored proto-Heartstone they had waiting for it. KâSheyna had been very gracious about the eft of their power-source, much more gracious than Elspeth had any right to expect, and quite philosophical about it all.
Still, she didnât think that was going to soothe the ruffled feathers of those Heralds who had found themselves facedown in the snowâor the soupâor otherwise collapsed with indignity and without warning. She absolutely dreaded having to answer to Weaponsmaster Alberich and her own teacher, Herald-Captain Kerowyn. And they were both going to demand answers. They might be contemplating retribution. It would be hard to convince them that she had nothing to do with it, and that she had no idea that it was going to happen. It would be even harder to convince them it seemed to be due to some nebulous force living in the Forest of Sorrows. Neither Alberich nor Kerowyn believed in ghosts, not even Herald-Mage ghosts.
Fortunately, Rolan had been mostly immune to what Gwena later said must have been a magical backlash as the great power landed in the middle of the âWebâ that connected all Heralds. He had helped calm the panic, had helped Healers and the rescuers find Heralds who had simply dropped, all over Haven. Talia had been one of the first to recover, and she had organized those who bounced back into caring for the rest until the pain passed. And Gwena passed word to Rolan that this was not some new and insidious attack from Ancar, that it wasâwellâan accident.
Since