Finding the Way and Other Tales of Valdemar

by Mercedes Lackey

  Lelia gauged her break nearly over and headed back in. The front door had a direct line of sight to the stage, but she decided to circle the tavern first, finishing off the wine as she went. She even poked her head into the kitchen, where the cook was trying not to burn some sort of sweet bubbling away at the hearth. Like most of the staff, the young cook seemed as fresh as the paint.

  She smiled fondly at the owner, Corgan, strolling over to where he was drawing drinks.

  “Welcome back, milady Bard!” he boomed. “Shall we continue?”

  “Oh, that depends,” she replied. “I’m just not sure they’re ready for me yet.”

  The crowd gave a weak cheer.

  Lelia yawned and leaned against a cask, putting a hand out. Corgan promptly filled it with a mug of something chilly. “Yes, definitely not ready yet.”

  A more vigorous cheer followed that.

  “Hmm?” Lelia walked toward the tavern’s raised stage, mug in hand. “Did someone say something?”

  Now she had all eyes on her, and the cheers made her teeth rattle. Grinning, she took her seat and Bloom, launching into one of Ostrum’s bawdier compositions: “Ode to the Innkeeper’s Daughter (and Her Twin Sister).”

  The crowd loved it. She loved them. They sang along when they could, made noise with feet and hands when they couldn’t, and when the music grew soft they respected the delicate, somber melodies. Despite the pain in her hands, the rush of being on a stage and being surrounded by such sheer delight buoyed her and let her fight the growing agony in her wrists. Her Gift twined through the crowd, enthralling them. She played and sang and felt them all, lively pulses of light in her mind’s eye, enraptured by the songs she wove.

  She didn’t notice the tavern was on fire until the flames were climbing up the walls.

  The shriek of the cook jolted her back to awareness. He screamed a single word: “Fire!”

  For a dazed moment Lelia thought, Ah, he’s gone and burned dessert.

  A beam crashed to the ground, and a wall of fire leaped up to her right. People turned into indistinct, shrieking figures in the heat and smoke. Screams and crackling wood became the tavern’s new song.

  Gripping her gittern, Lelia launched off the stage, knowing the exit lay directly before her. Tears streamed from her eyes as fire clawed at the ceiling. She staggered to the door and into the courtyard. Voices hollered for the fire brigade, for Guards, for water.

  Lelia collapsed, gasping at the stars.

  Pulse.

  Horror rose in her throat. In all that pandemonium, her strange Gift had not shut down. Lives pulsed around her—the ones in the courtyard, and the ones still trapped inside the tavern.

  Her own words haunted her. Duty, sacrifice . . .

  She hauled herself to her feet again, thinking, Why couldn’t I have been born in Rethwellan? The thought drew a hysterical laugh from her lips as she stumbled up to the front door of the inferno, closed her eyes, and did what only she could do.

  “Come here!” She reached out with more than her voice; no one would have heard her over the fire and screaming and moaning. But the Bardic Gift went deeper, and they “heard” that just fine. She touched the pulses within with precision, giving them a sense of where to go and how to escape. “This way! Come here!”

  Figures blundered through the smoke and the fire. Burning forms surged past her, rolling on stones of the cool courtyard. She kept on screaming and tugging at what she felt inside the tavern, even as hands closed on her shoulders and tried to drag her away. She struggled against them, bellowing her Gift at the trapped people until a combination of lack of air and exhaustion overtook her, and she wheeled out into the darkness, smelling the terrible smell of burning things, and wishing it were fresh paint instead.

  Lelia opened her eyes again to a pale green room. Sunlight streamed through a window and onto her bed.

  She felt like she’d been smashed into a wall, soaked in oil, and set on fire. Looking down at her arms, she saw pink, tender skin.

  She bobbed on the surface of awareness for an indeterminable amount of time. The door opened, drawing her fully to consciousness.

  She turned to greet the Healer with a croaked, “Heyla.”

  Grier crouched beside her, looking scruffy and worn. “I was nearly to the tavern when I saw the fire,” he said. “Your hair and clothes were smoking when they dragged you away. You inhaled massive amounts of smoke. What were you doing?”

  It hurt to smile. I should be happy I still have lips, she thought.

  “History,” she said, lungs aching with the effort. “A Bard . . . saved a house full of people. Used his Gift. Called them to . . . the door. He, um, died, though . . . .”

  She wanted to say more, wanted to tell him about the change in her Gift. The explanation hovered on her lips.

  But Grier was studying her with an intensity of concern that silenced her.

  Oh, hellfires, she thought, heart sinking. He knows.

  “I aided Healing you,” he said, “I . . . looked you over.”

  Yes, he definitely knows.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” he asked quietly.

  “Can’t pretend . . . you didn’t ‘look me over’?” she said hopefully. “Pretend I’m okay . . . except for burns? Pretend you don’t know?”

  “No.”

  She sighed. “No fair. I did . . . for you.”

  He touched what remained of her hair. “I’m told it’s called ‘Ostrum’s Sickness’. You’re just starting to show symptoms.” He paused. “And you knew.”

  She closed her eyes. “Since before Sovvan. Before . . . we met.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” She thought he’d be angry, but she heard only sorrow in his voice.

  “Can’t . . . be helped,” she said, opening her eyes. “Still got . . . years . . . ahead of me. Why worry?”

  He shook his head, standing. Her heart contracted as he turned his back on her and walked out.

  Well, she thought, lashes suddenly damp, what did you expect, you mooncalf? Shared his bed three months, and never once mentioned your life-threatening illness to him.

  The door opened again, and Grier came back, toting a chair and a book. He leveled a somber look at her as he sat down.

  “Let it be noted,” he said, “that I am reading history because of you.”

  She laughed, though it hurt. When she finally stopped he started to read her the tale of Herald Berden.

  She fell asleep to his sonorous voice, thinking that as good as Berden’s historical story was, she liked the Bard’s version better.

  Recovery took a long, boring month. Her skin healed quickly, but the internal bits took longer.

  Occasional visits from Maresa alleviated the tedium, and one delightful one from Lyle—who rode halfway across the country to see her—caused Lelia to burst into tears for more reason than one.

  She begged Grier not to tell anyone her secret. He promised, but not before giving her several reasons why she should. She listened patiently, letting him talk himself dry.

  When Lyle left a week later, he remained cheerfully oblivious of her condition.

  “Promise me,” he said before he left, “that you’ll leave the heroics up to me from now on.”

  She had received notes and visits from some of the people she’d “rescued,” and found this flavor of attention not to her liking.

  “I promise,” she told her twin. Not to mention I’d likely die of embarrassment if I made a career of this.

  Grier personally saw to her Healing, making sure she recovered from at least one of the things that threatened her life. She suspected (but could never prove) that he flavored the famously vile Healer tonics to taste even worse than usual. Somehow.

  But he never asked her to marry him again. And that both saddened and relieved her.

  Then Midsummer came, and with it the last Court dinner with Grier. The summons had come two weeks before. Valdemar called.

  At least it was one of the grander
meals, with the Great Hall decked with Maiden’s Hope and ribbons. The dishes were fresh, talk lively. Gossip at Court had shifted in Lelia’s absence, leaning toward the recently Chosen Queen’s Own and her arrival in Haven.

  “Holderkin!” sniffed an ancient baroness seated across from Lelia. “I’m not even sure they eat at tables down there on the Border!”

  Lelia gave Grier a sidelong glance, but he paid the old woman no mind.

  “Seems to me,” Lelia said boldly, catching the biddy’s eye, “that a couple months ago we were all wondering if Elspeth would be shipped off to a place like Sensholding.” She smiled brightly and speared a slice of meat with her knife. “Looks like Rolan brought Sensholding to us, instead.”

  That drew a few chuckles. Grier smiled.

  As they finished, he leaned over and murmured, “I have a confession to make.”

  She eyed him warily.

  He stood and took her hand, leading her from the Great Hall and down corridors into a part of the Palace she hadn’t visited often. They wound up in a study with leather chairs and an enormous number of books. Two people sat reading by the lamplight.

  One was Selenay.

  Lelia tried not to gape. Her queen sipped tea beside Kyril, the Seneschal’s Herald. Grier took a seat and motioned Lelia to a chair.

  “So,” Selenay said. “This is your last night, Lord Grier?”

  “Aye, Majesty.”

  Selenay fixed her gaze on Lelia. “Grier hasn’t told you, I take it?”

  “Told me . . . ?”

  “I’d come here when you were practicing,” Grier said.

  Lelia shot Grier a startled look. The smile he returned was oddly . . . smug.

  “There are certain courtiers,” Kyril explained, “that we keep in confidence. Court lips tend to be . . . looser around people who don’t wear White.”

  “We like to know what’s been said and who’s been saying it,” Selenay said. “Most nights I entrust the debriefing to Kyril and the Queen’s Own. But sometimes I attend.”

  “Of course,” Grier said, touching Lelia’s hand, “finding someone trustworthy to do the job is difficult.” His eyes sparkled. “You need just the right person. Usually someone with rank and a Herald for a sibling.”

  “My—rank?” Lelia blurted when she realized he meant her.

  “You’re the Master Bard of my family’s house.” Grier removed a slip of paper from within his doublet and passed it to her. “You’ll receive a monthly stipend, and since I won’t be in residence any more, I think we’ll bestow unto you my suite here at the Palace and the family’s seat at Court dinner.”

  “Nice way to control the cousins,” Kyril murmured.

  Lelia stared, stunned, at the paper. Before she knew it, Grier knelt before her, squeezing her hand gently.

  “Lelia,” he said. “Will you . . . be my family’s Bard?”

  She held his gaze, tears making him waver before her, and said, “Yes.”

  Then she punched him in the shoulder.

  He swore. “Every time! Same—damn—spot!”

  “Serves you right,” she said. “Keeping secrets from me.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh, like you can talk.”

  Lelia turned to Selenay and sketched a seated bow. “Majesty. I accept this duty and promise to keep it in strictest confidence. What would you like to know?”

  Selenay regarded the Healer and the Bard a moment. Then she chuckled and shook her head.

  “Well, first off,” Valdemar’s monarch said, “what have you heard about my Queen’s Own?”

  Heart’s Choice

  Kate Paulk

  Ree felt a twinge of foreboding long before he knew why the people of Three Rivers had sent for him. The whole village waited in the square—an open area between the two rows of houses built on burn-scarred foundations. Worse, the villagers wore the somber faces that usually meant either a funeral or the loss of crops. But this must be something else—something to do with him—or there wouldn’t be that scent of fear. Distrust slanted eyelids downward, and unease pinched their lips tight.

  Ree walked through the space they’d made, his boots crunching on the uneven packed dirt and gravel, tension growing. He knew he was different from humans: his rat tail tucked in his pants, his cat eyes lowered and his claws retracted didn’t make the villagers forget it. How could they forget when he couldn’t?

  He was doubly an outsider: a stranger and a hobgoblin. Born and raised a street urchin in Jacona—too far for any of the Three Rivers villagers to know of it—much less to have been there. Caught in the Changes, he’d become magically entangled with a rat and a cat.

  If he were normally tolerated, almost welcomed, it was because he’d saved the villagers from a raid a year ago. But it was a tolerance edged about with fear. He hunched his shoulders, looking at his boots and not at the people around him. He didn’t need to look up to know their tolerance was on the edge of breaking.

  He didn’t even want to know why. But then, no one ever seemed to care what he wanted. The middle-aged mayor who’d summoned him led him past the silent people into the rough square where two corpses lay.

  Ree made an inarticulate sound. He should prove his humanity by speaking, but revulsion and shock silenced him.

  He stared down at two dead hobgoblins. They were unclothed, but they’d died holding hands. That didn’t make this easier. Nor did it help that, of all the hobgoblins they could have been, these two seemed to be cat-with-human and looked not unlike Ree himself. One was brown-furred with a tabby pattern and the other ginger, where Ree’s fur was rat-brown, but they had claws and tails. It was close enough.

  He walked around the corpses, looking down, trying to keep his face perfectly impassive, as an interior voice whispered, This could have been you. In many ways, this should have been him. Except for Jem. He hadn’t known when he’d rescued Jem from worse than death on the streets of Jacona that he’d been rescuing his own humanity, his own ability to care for another human being.

  Yet Jem was the other way in which Ree didn’t fit with the village. Young men married young women. Young women married young men. If anyone felt an inclination otherwise, he or she kept it close and hidden. In this hardscrabble country you needed a family to help you farm, children to look after you when you grew old and feeble.

  He’d managed to convince himself—just—that Jem didn’t want to take a human wife and breed a passel of brats in his image. Just. But that didn’t make it the ideal situation. Certainly not in the village’s eyes. Or in the eyes of Jem’s father Lenar.

  Just as well Jem wasn’t here. It was only Ree—and the unwelcome reminder of what he might have become without Jem to keep him human.

  He looked at the hobgoblins’ hands, clasped together. The claws were broken, and one of the wom-the female’s claws had been torn right out. They looked callused and rough too. He wondered if they’d forgotten and run on four feet at times. He’d seen other hobgoblins do that, though he never did.

  Thanking the gods for the face fur that hid his expression, he scratched at his nose. He tried to compose himself before speaking. He couldn’t ask what they were guilty of—they weren’t human. They were hobgoblins, and hobgoblins were killed on sight. As Ree would have been, had he not come into the area with Jem, and had they not taken refuge with Jem’s grandfather at an outlying farm.

  Ree’s throat felt constricted. “Was anyone injured in bringing them down?”

  He was only willing to look as high as the mayor’s hands, twisting his broad-brimmed felt work hat—once black and now a faded gray. It seemed as though the man feared Ree’s response.

  “Begging your pardon,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Begging your pardon, it’s not as if—” He stopped himself short of saying what it was as if, and fell back into the dialect of the region. “It was the cows, them as were in the field pasturing. We heard a cow lowing fit to break your heart, and of course the boys ran to help.”

  Ree looked up to see that
the man was pale, the lines on his face deeper, his hazel eyes reflecting a mixture of nervousness and confusion. He was a wealthy farmer, at least as wealth was reckoned around here, which wasn’t much. His clothes were patched but clean, his face tanned a deep leathery brown by work done outside, his hands callused from plows, shovels, axes and pikes—the brutal work of keeping alive in Three Rivers.

  He wasn’t like the old mayor who’d been educated and almost gentry. But that one had been killed when soldiers raided the village for slaves and burned it. The only reason anyone was here at all was because Ree had saved them. They seemed to remember that, with their removed hats, their meek words. But heaven only knew what was going on in their heads. “And?” he asked.

  The mayor shrugged. “Young Anders got there first. They was eating one of his heifers. They clawed him and run when he started shouting.”

  Young Anders was the mayor’s nephew, if Ree remembered right. No wonder the man looked worried and upset. “Is he—”

  “He’s all right,” the mayor said, too quickly for it to be true. “We sent to the manor for the Healer, and the Healer says as he’ll be all right.”

  So why did you call me? Ree wanted to ask. To show me what might happen if I go bad? He tamped down the thought. They wouldn’t do that. They were just worried for Anders, more than they wanted to admit. He wished he could believe it, believe that if hobgoblins so like him wounded—maybe badly enough to kill, no matter what the mayor said—one of the villagers they wouldn’t turn on him. At least he knew they wouldn’t turn on Jem. He was all human.

  Besides, the Manor Lord was Jem’s father, Lenar. He’d come back to the region last winter with his guards. He’d retired from the Imperial army with enough gold to buy himself a manor house and be a lord. With all the big farms burned out and abandoned, Lenar built a manor house instead. The rest of his gold brought a Healer and a Mage to the valley to work for him. Nothing formal ever happened, but everyone treated Lenar like the lord of this valley. Except, when anything was really bad, they came to the farm up by the forest and asked for Jem or Ree.