Under the Vale and Other Tales of Valdemar (5 page)

I held her safe all the way back to the Waystation. It took some coaxing to get her to let go of me, but between us, Millissa and I managed, and we—well, I—got her filthy rags stripped off her, gave her a wash, put her into one of my shirts (which was certainly big enough on her to be a dress) fed her, and put her to bed.

Over the next day, Millissa got her story out of her. The man had been some distant relative. When her parents died, he’d come and taken everything portable, and her. He’d beaten her and starved her, made her do work that was far past her strength and then beat her when she couldn’t manage it. She had whatever it was that made a Herald, and Ardred had heard her crying for him, but he had known he was never going to be able to get her away on his own, so he’d recruited Millissa to help.

Her name was Rose, and she stayed glued to me like a day-old chick to its mother. I did what I always do for a female who is hurt and frightened and mourning. I soothed her, I listened to her, I held her and let her cry, I promised her that Ardred would always take care of her, and I let her cry some more.

The next day, that help finally came. Another Herald and a Healer, who would stay with Millissa until she was fit to travel while the new Herald escorted Rose and Ardred to wherever these Heralds lived.

Then came the hitch. Rose refused to leave me. She clung to me and wailed, and I couldn’t persuade her to stop. Finally Ardred solved it.
:I can carry two,:
he said firmly.

So that was how I arrived in Haven, about a candlemark after sunset, with a weary little girl in my arms who, after a good two weeks of solid work from me, had finally decided that she didn’t have to be afraid any more and could start to leave the terror and learn to live.

I handed her over to the Collegium people, Ardred was led away, and—

And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I turned around, saw one of those blasted white busybodies, looked into her eyes and—

Nope. Didn’t happen. No interfering know-it-all with hooves. Just a tired but cheerful fellow in green robes who had come to see to Rose and now was standing next to me.

“Well,” he said. “I suppose you’ve figured it out?” My bewildered expression told him otherwise. He laughed. “Ah, right. You aren’t used to the Mind-Gifts where you come from, are you? All right. I’ll just tell you straight out. The reason the Companions could talk to you is that you’re Gifted. Like a Herald, but different.”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. “I am?” I said, feeling stupid.

He nodded. “I felt you at work from half a day away, and let me tell you, my lad, we are going to be right glad to have you if you care to stay and learn to use what you’ve got properly. You’re a Mindhealer, son. That’s what you’ve been doing all your life—using your Gift.”

“I thought—” Things I’d never put together began tumbling into place. Things Millissa had told me. The things I’d been doing. How I’d worked with little Rose . . . “Huh.”

Well, it wasn’t as if I had anything
better
to do. And there was nothing saying I couldn’t keep, well . . .

The Healer raised an eyebrow at me. “Oh, yes. You’re still going to be very popular with the women.”

I found myself grinning. He grinned back and clapped me on the back.

“Come along then, Healer Trainee Don. We’re just in time for supper.”

Catch Fire, Draw Flame

Rosemary Edghill and Denise McCune

South of the Yvedan Hills, in the places where constant border clashes between Karse’s army and Valdemar’s defenders were merely worrisome news and not terrifying reality, the land softened, spreading itself into rolling hills and lush fields. North of the Jaysong Hills, the farmsteads were built more of wood than stone; the farmstead walls were built to stop wandering chickens and not armed raiders, and shutters were not barred with iron. Here no man or woman slept with a sword beneath the pillow to arm against danger that comes in the night.

North and east of the Jaysong Hills, near—but not too near—the Hardorn border, where the East Trade Road ran straight and smooth toward Haven, the tents of Summerfair sprouted each Midsummer. From full moon to full moon a city of tents and pavilions appeared in the cup of the Goldendale, a city to which all the north came to sell and to buy.

“Why are we here?” Elade grumbled.

Despite the fact that the Summerfair Peace hadn’t been broken within living memory—and despite the fact that her sword had been peacebound, as had every other weapon at the fair—her gaze roved over the fairgoers as though any might rise to menace them.

“Why is anyone anywhere?” Meran answered. His teeth flashed white as he smiled at her, and he hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. Seeing the fair in Elade’s company was a bit like taking a leopard for a walk. The other fairgoers gave them a wide berth, despite the knot of yellow ribbons that bound her sword to its sheath.

“You look like a—a—a—”

“Bard?” Meran asked, his eyes round with feigned innocence. “But I
am
a Bard, sweet Elade.”

Elade slanted a sideways look at Meran’s crimson tunic. “You don’t have to look like one,” she huffed.

It was true that no one would take Elade for anything but what she was. Short cloak, high boots, studded leather bracers, and chain mail tunic all proclaimed her identity as a mercenary soldier. Elade had no reason ever to conceal herself . . . unlike the rest of them. In the places they travelled—and with the work they did—it was far better he and the others not travel garbed in Bard’s scarlet or Healer’s green or . . .
Not that we could ever get Gaurane into Whites without knocking him unconscious first,
Meran thought.

“Why not?” he asked (it was fun to tease Elade). “It would be very wrong of me to do otherwise. Only think—I might enter all the competitions and carry off every prize.”

Elade snorted. “You’d have to be better than everyone else to do that, Meran,” she pointed out.

“Hey, Bard here,” he protested.

“
Journeyman
Bard,” Elade corrected, just as if she could tell the difference between the playing of a Journeyman and a Master. Elade insisted all music was nothing more than cat-squalling.

“Elade, it’s Summerfair.” Meran dropped the teasing and set out to convince her in earnest. “We have a whole fortnight where nobody’s trying to kill us. You should enjoy yourself. We’ll be back on the Border soon enough.”

“I like the Border,” Elade said. “You know who your friends are there.
And
your enemies.”

Only Elade
, Meran thought,
could say something like that and mean it, when our work is finding those whose minds had been warped by Karsite demons and working to save them, minds and lives alike
. The Touched hid their damage from themselves, and the demons that overshadowed them were clever at concealing themselves. Often, the only clue was in the way people or animals nearby had died. It was a pattern they’d all become adept at following in the moonturns since Gaurane had gathered them together.

“We need supplies,” Meran said, changing the subject to one less likely to produce an unwinnable argument. “Bowstrings—
harp
strings—medicines.” The soldiers who held the Border and the holders who farmed it were seldom willing to part with what stocks they had, not even for gold and silver. It would be different if Gaurane were willing to ask—all doors opened to a Herald—but Meran knew better than to raise the topic with him.

“Gaurane’s out of brandy, you mean,” Elade said, but the gibe was without real malice behind it.

“Do you really want to listen to him complain about his hangover?”

The question startled a laugh from Elade. “No. But it doesn’t take two full sennights to pick up a few supplies.”

“It does not,” Meran agreed. “But if you can think of a better way to get Hedion to rest, I’m sure we’d all like to hear it.”

“Ah, I see,” Elade said. “It’s a trick.”

“All the best things in life are,” Meran said. “But not on us, this time. So we might as well enjoy ourselves while we’re here.” He took Elade’s arm and tugged her gently toward the merchants’ street. “And that means you should come and look at the pretty things, instead of trying to terrify some poor horse trader into giving you an honest price on a new pack mule.”

“We wouldn’t need a new pack mule if the last one hadn’t been
eviscerated
,” Elade grumbled, but she came.

When Meran had been a child singing for coppers on the streets of Haven, he’d dreamed of being able to walk into the shops and purchase anything he chose. His Gift had gained him entrance to the Collegium, and there he’d dreamed of a rich patron,whose fortune he might share. Most Bards entered a noble household upon achieving Journeyman status, for it could be the work of years to produce the song or poem that elevated a Bard from Journeyman to Master. Meran had been as surprised as anyone when he found himself choosing—upon taking the Scarlet—to travel. True, a Bard could hope for a meal and a bed at any inn he stopped at, but it was hardly as certain as it would be for a Herald. Traveling Bards slept rough and cold in a hayrick or outbuilding more often than not, and they paid for their bread and beer like everyone else. Even as he chose that path, Meran castigated himself for a fool. And yet year followed year, and the store of songs he’d made grew, and still he did not turn his steps back toward Haven.

He’d never realized what he was looking for until the shaggy man in the tattered, threadbare clothes came to the inn where he was singing and told him there was a patient who needed his attention.

“Beg pardon, my good fellow,” Meran said. “But as you see, I am not the one you seek. I wear the Scarlet, not the Green.”

The shaggy man gave a sharp bark of laughter. “We already have a Healer,” he answered. “That’s why we need you.”

He’d been curious, so he followed. He played the Healer to sleep that night and the next, and he played to soothe the Healer’s patient on the third. And as the days passed, Meran had come to realize this was what he’d been seeking, all unknowing, all along. It was unheard of, of course. Bards sang of great deeds; they didn’t do them. And the street urchin he’d been would have mocked the idea that his heart’s desire was to serve anything but himself—or even his Gift, once it woke.

Were he making a song of this, it would be Healer Hedion who held them all together and gave them their purpose. But in fact it was Gaurane who was their leader—Gaurane who would not be called “Herald Gaurane,” whom Meran had never seen entirely sober, who refused to acknowledge the Companion who followed him everywhere like an exceptionally large and very white dog. Gaurane’s story would make such a song as would be any Bard’s Master work.

Except Meran didn’t know the tale and had never asked. Elade, who had joined them a moonturn later,
had
asked (Elade had a knack for asking inconvenient questions, which had gotten her turned out of her Free Company), but if she’d received an answer, Meran didn’t know it. How Gaurane and Hedion had met, why Gaurane could not Hear his own Companion, why Rhoses was content to follow his Chosen along the Border rather than seeking help for him, why, if there was Healing to be done, Hedion didn’t do it—all were mysteries Meran was content to leave unplumbed.

It was only at times like this, when the Summerfair merchants’ bright and glittering wares lay spread for display like the fabled treasure-cave of the legendary Queen Lilyant of Bai, that Meran spared a thought for the life he’d once thought to live. Even Elade was drawn to the splendor along the street of merchants, though her eye was caught by the table of blades, while Meran lingered before the scentseller’s booth. He wondered if he could persuade Elade that oil of violets was a necessity vital enough to expend some of their scant resources upon.

A woman stepped up to the table, and Meran drew back courteously. He did not truly intend to buy, after all, and it was only polite to leave room for those who did.

As the two women, buyer and seller, dickered over the price and kind and quality of the wares, Meran let his gaze and his attention wander. The street of merchants was only a very small part of Summerfair. For the truly exotic and the truly costly, one must seek out Haven’s Harvestfair or the shops of her High Street. Summerfair was for the farmers and holders of the south. It sold horses and mules, pigs and chickens, cows and goats, and it was also a hiring fair, for harvest was coming, when every hand would be needed. Meran had known nothing about the farmer’s year when he’d left Haven; since then he’d come to know it ran opposite to the year the townfolk kept. Spring was for planting and autumn was for harvesting. Winter was for doing all the tasks of making and mending there was no other time for. But summer was a time of near leisure.

With a practiced ear, he followed the sound of the bargaining, paying no real attention. Its cadence told him the transaction was drawing to a close when a new note was added to the song.

“Here, mistress, let me hold that for you.”

Meran turned toward the speaker. Young, dressed in clothing that was plain but of good quality, with something of the look of Iftel to him--no odd thing, when Valdemar lay open to any who wished to live in peace. He smiled as he held out his hand, and the farmwife placed a plump sack of coins into it.

Meran was about to turn away again—so the woman had a manservant; there was nothing odd in that—when he saw the young man step smoothly away from the table, tucking the money pouch into his tunic as he did. Meran would have raised the hue and cry, or even moved to stop him, were it not that the woman gave no indication anything was amiss. In a moment, the young man had disappeared into the crowd.

“My purse! Where is it?”

The indignant cry behind him summoned Meran’s attention again.

“Help! Thief! I’ve been robbed!”

“It didn’t make any sense,” Meran said, a candlemark later. “I watched her hand him her purse. And a moment later, it was as though she’d forgotten she had.”