Finding the Way and Other Tales of Valdemar

by Mercedes Lackey

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Finding the Way

  In Burning Zones We Build Against the Sun

  Unintended Consequences

  The Education of Evita

  A Charm of Finches

  Healing In White

  Songs of a Certain Sort

  Otherwise Engaged

  Heart’s Choice

  Heart’s Own

  The Time We Have

  A Bard by Any Other Name

  Change of Life

  Lack of Vision

  The Groom’s Price

  About the Authors

  About the Editor

  Raves for the Previous Valdemar Anthologies:

  “Fans of Lackey’s epic Valdemar series will devour this superb anthology. Of the thirteen stories included, there is no weak link—an attribute exceedingly rare in collections of this sort. Highly recommended.”

  —The Barnes and Noble Review

  “This high-quality anthology mixes pieces by experienced authors and enthusiastic fans of editor Lackey’s Valdemar. Valdemar fandom, especially, will revel in this sterling example of what such a mixture of fans’ and pros’ work can be. Engrossing even for newcomers to Valdemar.”—Booklist

  “Josepha Sherman, Tanya Huff, Mickey Zucker Reichert, and Michelle West have quite good stories, and there’s another by Lackey herself. Familiarity with the series helps but is not a prerequisite to enjoying this book.”—Science Fiction Chronicle

  “Each tale adheres to the Lackey laws of the realm yet provides each author’s personal stamp on the story. Well written and fun, Valdemarites will especially appreciate the magic of this book.”—The Midwest Book Review

  NOVELS BY MERCEDES LACKEY available from DAW Books:

  THE NOVELS OF VALDEMAR:THE HERALDS OF

  VALDEMAR

  ARROWS OF THE QUEEN

  ARROW’S FLIGHT

  ARROW’S FALL

  THE LAST HERALD-MAGE

  MAGIC’S PAWN

  MAGIC’S PROMISE

  MAGIC’S PRICE

  THE MAGE WINDS

  WINDS OF FATE

  WINDS OF CHANGE

  WINDS OF FURY

  THE MAGE STORMS

  STORM WARNING

  STORM RISING

  STORM BREAKING

  VOWS AND HONOR

  THE OATHBOUND

  OATHBREAKERS

  OATHBLOOD

  THE COLLEGIUM

  CHRONICLES

  FOUNDATION

  INTRIGUES

  BY THE SWORD

  BRIGHTLY BURNING

  TAKE A THIEF

  EXILE’S HONOR

  EXILE’S VALOR

  VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES:

  SWORD OF ICE

  SUN IN GLORY

  CROSSROADS

  MOVING TARGETS

  CHANGING THE WORLD

  FINDING THE WAY

  Written with LARRY DIXON:THE MAGE WARS

  THE BLACK GRYPHON

  THE WHITE GRYPHON

  THE SILVER GRYPHON

  DARIAN’S TALE

  OWLFLIGHT

  OWLSIGHT

  OWLKNIGHT

  OTHER NOVELS: GWENHWYFAR

  THE BLACK SWAN

  THE DRAGON jOUSTERS

  JOUST

  ALTA

  SANCTUARY

  AERIE

  THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS

  THE SERPENT’S SHADOW

  THE GATES OF SLEEP

  PHOENIX AND ASHES

  THE WIZARD OF LONDON

  RESERVED FOR THE CAT

  AND DON’T MISS:

  THE VALDEMAR COMPANION

  Edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

  Copyright © 2010 by Mercedes Lackey and Tekno Books.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Printing, December 2010

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S.A

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44566-2

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Finding the Way,” copyright © 2010 by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon

  “In Burning Zones We Build Against the Sun,” copyright © 2010 by Rosemary Edghill and Denise McCune.

  “Unintended Consequences,” copyright © 2010 by Elizabeth A. Vaughan

  “The Education of Evita,” copyright © 2010 by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  “A Charm of Finches,” copyright © 2010 by Elisabeth Waters

  “Healing in White,” copyright © 2010 by Kristen Schwengel

  “Songs of a Certain Sort,” copyright © 2010 by Brenda Cooper

  “Otherwise Engaged,” copyright © 2010 by Stephanie Shaver

  “Heart’s Choice,” copyright © 2010 by Kate Paulk

  “Heart’s Own,” copyright © 2010 by Sarah A. Hoyt

  “The Time We Have,” copyright © 2010 by Tanya Huff

  “A Bard by Any Other Name,” copyright © 2010 by Fiona Patton

  “Change of Life,” copyright © 2010 by Judith Tarr

  “Lack of Vision,” copyright © 2010 by Nancy Asire

  “The Groom’s Price,” copyright © 2010 by Michael Z. Williamson and Gail Sanders

  Finding the Way

  Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon

  The air was so still that not even the thinnest reeds were moving. A steady chorus of frogs was interrupted now and again by the splash of one of them jumping into the swamp-water or the dull plop of a fish rising to take a bug. All in all, it was deceptively peaceful. Sherra watched the float on the end of her fishing line and let her nictating membranes rise slowly over her eyes to wash away the pollen. It was spring, so of course the air was thick with pollen here on the edge of the swamp. It hung in the air and left a golden haze on everything. Sherra rather liked the pollen, actually, because with the sun shining on it, the air itself seemed gilded, but it was giving some of the humans over in Singing Stones Vale fits; they were going about with red, watering eyes and running noses, poor things.

  If Sherra were to open her mouth, she would even taste the pollen: soft and a little sweet (which was why bees loved it so), with a faint undertaste that would tell her where it came from. Resinous from the yellow pines, tangy from the swamp oak, perfumed from the mallow. Poor humans, who couldn’t detect any of that. It seemed grossly unfair. If you were going to have to suffer from it, it was too bad you couldn’t at least enjoy the taste of it. This was as unjust as getting a hangover without drinking.

  She sat with her back to the sun, basking as much as fishing. Hertasi were technically cold-blooded, and as a consequence, they loved heat as much as their distant swamp-lizard cousins did. The sun was making her feel lazy; if she’d dared, she’d have settled in for a nap.

  There were no humans waiting here at her little Guide Station now, neither Hawkbrother nor Traveler; Sherra was alone and had no one she needed to take across the swamp. That was all right, it meant she was left in peace as hertasi rarely were, and it was a state she cherished.

  Most hertasi spent their whole lives within a Vale, s
haring tunnels and caves with their extended families; they delighted in the close companionship of others and in their service to the Hawkbrothers. It was the way hertasi were; being idle drove them mad with boredom, and being alone generally made them feel uneasy. And they were scarcely overworked by the Tayledras. In a Vale, there were so very many hertasi that all of them had plenty of leisure time and time to socialize. They spent at least twice as much time on their own pursuits as in serving the Hawkbrothers, and because they were so social, a great deal of that was spent in groups of three or more.

  But Sherra was . . . different. A throwback, perhaps, to when hertasi had been barely intelligent, if large, lizards, and certainly had not been self-aware; from a time when they each staked a claim to a bit of swamp and vigorously defended it against all comers except in mating season. Then they had been solitary; the only time hertasi were together would be a mother and her two or three offspring, until the young lizards were old enough to fend for themselves. Once they were old enough, if they didn’t wander off on their own, the mother would drive them out of her territory.

  That had been before Urtho, of course. The hertasi remembered Urtho with gratitude; he was in many ways, the father of the hertasi species. He had taken lizards with the intelligence of a dog, and made them what they were now—just as he had taken a now-extinct species of grasslands lupine and created kyree, a certain breed of giant songbirds and made tervardi. And, of course, the culmination of his work, the gryphons, which, so far as Sherra could tell, had been made up out of magic, and vanity, and air.

  At any rate, Sherra was that rarity among hertasi; she preferred solitude and swampland to company and the hertasi tunnels and caves in a Vale. And with that preference had come what seemed to be a linked power: she was a Pathfinder.

  No matter what wind and weather and changing seasons did to the swamp, she could find a path through it. In fact, she could find a path virtually anywhere, so long as she had a vague notion of where she should be going. However, it was here in the swamp where her talent was in the most demand; Gripping Mire was one of the most treacherous places in all of the very treacherous Pelagirs, and now, with the Mage Storms over and magic dispersed wildly instead of following neatly in the proper channels and ley lines, it was worse than ever before. There had been plenty of Change-Circles in that nasty expanse, and there was no telling what had been caught in them. Certainly she had encountered plenty of things that not even the Hawkbrothers recognized.

  Sherra’s talent, or Gift, or whatever it was, still served her well. She could, and did, get everyone who hired her services safely to the other side. Yes, she charged a fee, for she was another rarity; since she lived outside a Vale, she had to supply all her own needs, which meant she needed to be paid. No one seemed to begrudge it, however, at least not once they had gotten well inside and had gotten glimpses of the sort of hazards Sherra could get them safely past.

  Today there was no one wanting to be taken across, so today she could sit on the bank of the little fishing hole she had dug and waterscaped with an eye to making it very attractive to the fish she liked best, drop a line in, and sit drowsing in the sun while she waited for dinner to come take her bait. Back in her camouflaged hut there were cattail roots baking in coals in a clay pot, and a jar of sweet mallow tea cooling in the earthen pit dug in the corner for that purpose. If no one turned up in the next two or three days, she rather thought she would make her way across to the Tayledras side of the swamp and trade some of the swamp-herbs she’d gathered for pot-herbs, some of her coins for nice fabric. Not that she was a clothes horse the way the Hawkbrothers seemed to be, but her tunics were getting a bit on the shabby side, and making two or three new ones would be a way to pass the time between clients.

  She yawned, stretching her jaws widely, and watched the float. Even the fish were feeling lazy, it seemed.

  It was a good life out here, if a lean and lonely one.

  The float bobbed a little, and she instantly became alert; and when the float suddenly plunged under the surface of the water, she was ready, and gave the smooth tug that set the hook. A few moments later, she hauled up a nice fat fish. More than enough for dinner. Enough for dinner and a tasty fish stew for tomorrow.

  Perfectly happy with this, she tidied up her pole and line, slipped the fish on a green-twig stringer, and trotted back to her hut with both slung over her shoulder, humming under her breath.

  This part of the swamp was “safe”—provided that you took simple precautions, watched out for snakes, and stayed on the obvious path. To either side of her, swamp plants grew, mostly rushes and cattails that waved high over her head. Hertasi were not exactly tall, and she was short even by hertasi standards. The swamp dwarfed her, but that was good, because it made it easier for her to hide.

  Today was turning out to be a lovely day with nothing to hide from; the only thing that crossed her path on the way home was a little family of a mother coot and her flock of babies. Sherra emerged out of the rushes onto the bank of the sluggish river that fed the swamp, basking in the humidity and heat as she padded toward her hut.

  It wasn’t obviously a hut. In fact, unless you knew what you were looking for, you probably wouldn’t even see it; instead, you would see a rock-studded hillock a little away from the riverbank, covered in grasses, weeds, and a couple of bushes.

  The stone hut was under all that. Faux “rocks” made of pottery-clay fitted into the sockets where the windows were. The door was hidden behind a particularly lush fall of vines and a bush. She hadn’t built the hut herself—her stonework wasn’t that good—but she did keep the vegetation on it thriving. Some of her fellow hertasi had done the work, aided by two Hawkbrothers who used magic to fuse the stone, but it had been for another guide, almost a generation ago, and she had just inherited it.

  She put down her burdens just long enough to take the hollow pottery “rocks” from their sockets, then slid behind the vine curtain to open her door.

  The scent of slow-baking roots filled the single room. Inside, it was almost exactly like a smooth, stone-walled cave. It was oddly shaped—not a straight wall anywhere—with little nooks everywhere. One, right under a window, held her summer bed; her winter bed was actually beneath the floor level, in a stone-lined pit that was in turn lined first with insulating grasses, then sheepskins, then blankets. It had a wooden rim with a lid she could pull over herself and lock down from inside. Only once had anything ever gotten into the hut while she was hibernating, and this feature had saved her. She had woken in the spring to find the interior trashed, and deep gouges scratched into the tough ironwood lid. She never did find out what had come hunting food; whatever it was hadn’t found the dried vegetables and bags of grains in her stores at all to its liking, for it had left them alone. It had torn up her summer bed, thrown the furnishings about, and left the place a wreck. Some sort of big carnivore, bear-sized at least. The scent of her, sleeping just out of reach, must have nearly driven it mad. But if that creature—likely only barely able to squeeze through the door—had not gotten to her, it was unlikely anything else ever would.

  There were two other window-nooks; one held her worktable, the other, a food-preparation area which even had primitive running water from a cistern above. The rest of the hut was full of shelves and chests that held her belongings. There was a fireplace with an oven built into the side, the multiple chimneys arranged cunningly to disperse the smoke so that it wouldn’t be seen. When it came right down to it, she was one small hertasi who was not even particularly good at defending herself, living on the edge of a swamp full of nasty things. Stealth was her best friend.

  She gutted the fish, then wrapped it in wet clay and put it in the oven to bake with the roots. Then she dropped down on her summer bed and picked up the book she had been reading last night.

  It was only the third time she had read this particular book, so she was still enjoying it even though she knew how it would end. As always, human imagination was a wonder to her. How d
id they think of these things? Facts were one thing, but these made-up stories—where did they get their ideas?

  This was a tragedy, as it seemed humans liked to read about sad things. In this case, it was a story about two humans from warring families who lifebonded and tried to run away together. It all ended badly, with the boy being murdered by the girl’s cousin, and the girl taking her own life by leaping off a cliff. But what a story! So many twists and turns before the end, and how did the creator think of all these things?

  She had a new book as well, but she wasn’t going to touch it when she was also cooking dinner; it was too easy to get engrossed in a new story, lose track of time, and only realize that she had gotten lost in the tale when she smelled her dinner burning. And by that point, of course, it was rather too late.

  Better to read an old, familiar friend so that she would remember to check her baking.

  Even so, this was a particularly good story, and she had to wrench herself away to get her dinner out of the oven and ready to eat. But one thing about cooking in clay, it was very forgiving. A couple of taps with a little hammer, and there was her fish, flaky, moist, perfectly cooked and perfectly seasoned with the herbs she had stuffed inside.

  She tipped the cattail roots out of the jar, took portions of fish and roots, sprinkled them with a bit of salt, and went back to her book, reading as she ate slowly. When she was finished, the remaining roots, the rest of the fish, more seasoning, and some vegetables and water went back into the pot and the pot went into the oven. By morning, it would be fish soup, which she dearly loved, and would last her the rest of the day.