Brightly Burning by Mercedes Lackey

some much-needed exercise. The Heralds had to take the times when it wasn’t being used by the Trainees, who were, after all, the ones it had been built for. Pol was met at the door of the men’s bathing room by a cloud of steam and the greetings of his fellows.
    â€œGood run out there, Pol!” called Herald Isten, invisible in the steam hanging above his bathtub. “You ran that course like a man half your age!”
    â€œAnd I feel like one who is twice my age,” he replied, with a groan that was only half feigned, stripping off his filthy Whites and dropping them into a laundry hamper. “You haven’t used up all the hot water, I hope?”
    Isten laughed and fanned away the steam, so that his round, red face crowned with curling tendrils of dripping hair, darkened by the damp, appeared like a disembodied spirit in the mist. “I saved you enough, I promise.”
    â€œThat’s good, because if my old bones can’t have a good soak, I’m going to have to thrash you.” Pol eyed his colleague sternly.
    Isten chuckled, knowing the bluff for what it was, and let the fog hide him again as Pol took a free tub and ran water into it from the copper boiler that served this bathing room. He checked the fire beneath the boiler, and added a stick or two of firewood while the tub filled. The boiler’s supply of water was topped off from a reservoir on the roof of their wing, the same reservoir that supplied cold water directly.
    Pol added some herbs and salts to his bathwater and climbed in with a sigh of utter content as the hot water soothed his aches.
    And that is another thing entirely missing on circuit. Give me a hot bath, and I am a happy man.
    :Deprive you of one, and you are intolerable.:
    :That’s because I care if I offend people with my odor,: Pol retorted. :You might not mind smelling like a horse, but I do!:
    He was rewarded by Satiran’s mental snicker.
    There was, after all, another and equally compelling reason for Pol to spend at least half his time here at the Collegium, and her name was Elenor.
    His youngest daughter Elenor.
    He smiled at the thought of her, as he always smiled, as anyone who ever encountered Elenor smiled. She was a child who seemed to have been created to bring happiness to everyone around her. She was neither pretty, nor plain, but her personality sparkled so that no one ever thought her anything but lovely. Her sunny disposition brightened the gloomiest day; no one bent on a quarrel could sustain anger in her presence. As a Mind-Healer she was fulfilling every expectation of her teachers at Healer’s Collegium. Her mother Ilea was every bit as proud of her as her father was.
    Her mother, however, was needed elsewhere at the moment. Like Heralds, Healers had duties that superseded their own personal preferences, and the need for Healers to tend the wounded on the Border with Karse was of prime importance at the moment. Although the conflict between Karse and Valdemar had not erupted into open warfare lately, there was constant skirmishing and a constant stream of wounded. All the Healers of the Collegium took that duty in turn; Ilea had been excused as long as her youngest child was below the age of thirteen, but once Elenor was well into puberty, the duty could be put off no longer.
    Neither Pol nor Ilea wanted to leave Elenor totally without a parent’s presence, so Pol had been very glad when he was called back to Haven.
    He wondered now and again, though, if she really needed him. Elenor at fourteen was as cool and level-headed a girl as many twice her age. She seemed to have another Gift, that of good sense, and never got into the tangles and trials that the Trainees of all three Collegia of Heralds, Healers, and Bards, often found themselves embroiled in. In fact, Elenor was often found in the midst of their trouble, patiently sorting it before any of the adults realized that there was a problem.
    My little girl is not so