No True Way

by Mercedes Lackey

  Deira closed her own eyes, images flickering into place behind them as they did when she was designing a tapestry.

  “The creature is stronger than we are, and we cannot use fire,” she said slowly. “But nothing stands before a flood. The creature is nesting right where the river bends around the village. If we could gather the waters and then release them, they might sweep it away.”

  “Mill’s a wreck, but there’s nothing wrong with th’ millpond,” said the miller from behind them. “Plenty of broken timbers there to make a dam.”

  “We make it so when one board is knocked loose it gives way—” said the Herald, and Deira remembered that building was one of the things they taught at Herald’s Collegium.

  “Village wall’s down at that corner already!” said someone.

  “Th’ flood’ll carry the creature away!” Now everyone was talking.

  The eggs would go, certainly, thought Deira, but the creature might be able to hold on. Images wove in and out in her brain.

  “If the creature doesn’t drown,” she said at last, “it would be better if we could capture it. My daughter and I—” she nodded at Selaine, “make nets as well as cloth. Bring me rope—all the ropes you can find—and we will show this beast that she is not the only web-weaver in Valdemar!”

  * * *

  That first day, everyone with the strength for the work joined in dismantling the wreckage of the mill. They came back with scrapes and splinters, but they were smiling, even when the rain began to fall. Except for two boys who had ventured too close while trying to observe the creature, there were no more deaths, and the people who remained had crowded into the houses on the eastern side of the village, so they had shelter. The nimble-fingered members of the community worked on the netting, led by Deira and a woman who had grown up in a fishing village on Lake Evendim.

  Even if this doesn’t work, in times to come these people will hold their heads up knowing that at least they tried, thought Deira. And Selaine and I will feel easier because we tried to help them. She laid her fingers over those of the miller’s wife, showing her once more how to make a sheet bend that would securely join a rope that was thick to one that was thin.

  She had run away before. Flight had brought her no peace, and even the safety had been an illusion. Time to see what fighting back would do.

  By the end of the second day, the men had erected a framework for the dam. As the days passed, and they wove planks or ropes together, the lumpy pile of netting grew and the level of the millpond began to rise. Day by day, the volume of water passing beneath the bridge dwindled, despite the rain.

  On the morning of the fifth day, Deira was whipping the end of a rope before tying the final knot on one of the edges of the net when a shadow fell across the work, and she looked up to see Herald Garaval standing there. He had clearly been working hard. His leathers would need a session in the bleaching vats before they were either white or pretty again, while she doubted that even her clever needle could salvage the cloth.

  “How close are you to finishing?” he asked. His voice was hoarse, and beneath the mud on his cheek she glimpsed the flush of fever.

  “By this evening we’ll be done,” she answered, “and so will you, my lad, if you don’t take care. You wouldn’t be the first Herald I’ve had to nurse because he burned himself to a stub trying to save the world. We need you alive and strong! Ask my daughter for some white willow tea, and get some rest, in the Lady’s name!”

  “Soon . . .” Garaval said vaguely, as if even the thought of rest had distracted him. Then his gaze focused again. “I’ve been Foreseeing. The rain will stop soon. For a few hours we’ll have run-off, but only the gods know how long before the eggs hatch and we have a dozen creatures to catch instead of one. Tomorrow we have to break the dam.”

  When he had gone, Deira closed her eyes, seeing in memory the hollow-cheeked features of another man who had thought that the desire to serve could substitute when the body’s strength was gone. How could he have abandoned her?

  He didn’t . . . Certainty blasted through her barriers from somewhere deep within. Heralds are neither invulnerable nor immortal. Something happened to keep him away.

  “Mother, why are you weeping?” Selaine’s voice recalled her to herself again.

  Deira opened her eyes and managed a smile. “Weeping? Why should I weep? No, my love, it’s only the rain.”

  * * *

  The rain had ceased during the night, but the watery sunlight was veiled by thinning clouds, the outlines of wood and field blurred by mist rising from saturated ground. On the bridge, a ripple of tension ran through the waiting crowd. Compulsively, Deira stroked the harsh hemp rope she held. She and Selaine and most of the other women were holding down the ends of the net on each shore while the men used stout branches to suspend the middle from the bridge, ready to drop it over their prey. The Herald and the strongest of the men had gone to free the linchpin holding the dam.

  From upriver came a long horn call. For a moment, the only other sound was the chuckle of water in the stream. Then, senses were assaulted by the shriek of rending wood. A vibration shook the bridge as beyond the village planks and water sprayed into the sky. In the next instant, all gave way to a roar as the pent waters burst free.

  Another burst of spray fountained high as the flood hit the edge of the village, sending everything the creature had not already destroyed hurtling downstream. Logs from the palisade, furniture and beams and thatching surged toward them, and tumbling in the churning mass they glimpsed the egg-sacs’ gelid gleam. An ear-shattering screech pierced the river’s roar.

  “She’s coming!” shouted someone.

  The mass approached with terrifying speed. Deira tightened her grip on the rope as a knobbed claw flailed. As the first debris passed under the bridge she could see the curve of the carapace heaving upward. With a shout the men on the bridge let the net drop and shoved the other edge outward. The bridge shook as the wreckage crashed into it, and the people on the shores braced as the ends they had tied to trees or pegged into the earth took the strain.

  The creature had reached the top of the tangle. The net heaved as she struggled to break free. Someone screamed, knocked aside as a tree was jerked from the soaked ground. Across the river two more ropes gave way. Deira swore as the one she gripped tore from her fingers. Still reaching, she heard Selaine grunt and then, impossibly, saw the rope end curve back toward them, to be grasped by a dozen eager hands. Deira turned to her daughter, saw Selaine’s eyes roll up in her head, and caught her as she fell.

  * * *

  “Mama, I’m sorry . . . I know ye don’t like me t’ move things with my mind.”

  The whisper brought Deira upright from where she had been dozing, leaning against her daughter’s bed. The house was full of people, talking, tending the injured, brewing tea over the fire, but there was only one voice she wanted to hear.

  “Oh, darling—” Deira gave her daughter a quick hug. “I never said—”

  “Your face said,” Selaine replied, “but I had to—”

  “And you saved us,” said a new voice. They looked up to see Herald Garaval, gaunt and muddied, but triumphant. “Without that rope, the net would have given way.” He turned to Deira. “Your daughter has a rare talent, Mistress Deira. She should go to Haven, where she can be trained.”

  “And be snapped up by the Heralds and lost to me?” the response was automatic, a fear born the first time she had seen Selaine call a fallen toy to her hand, but it lost force as she looked at the exhausted Herald standing there.

  “We’ve burned the last of th’ egg-sacs.” Headman Martom came bustling up before Garaval could reply. “We’ve got th’ creature tied down proper t’ wait ’til th’ Hawkbrothers come,” he went on, “thanks t’ you, Mistress Westerbridge, and your girl.”

  “Westerbridge?” Garaval frowned.

  “Sh
e came from a big town called Westerbridge,” the Headman boasted, “a widow with a little lass. She’s th’ best weaver from here t’ Rethwellan!”

  “Then you’re the one Aldren met when he served on the border . . .” breathed the Herald. He looked from her to Selaine and back again. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “The girl has your hair, but his eyes. How proud he would be.”

  “He’s dead, then?” Deira whispered. “He told me that Heralds are not supposed to get involved with local girls, but I loved him, and when we were hiding from the Karsite raiders, I let him love me. And then he rode back to the battles, and there was no way to let him know I was with child.”

  “He meant to come back,” said Garaval. “But he had to go where he was needed. By the time he returned to Westerbridge, the town had been destroyed.”

  Deira nodded. “I was one of the few who escaped when the Karsites came again. I kept running. I thought we could live in peace here.”

  “Why didn’t you bring your child to Haven?” exclaimed Garaval. “The Heralds would have taken care of you!”

  Deira shook her head. “At first I was crazed with fear. I thought Aldren would reject me, or the Heralds would not believe me, or they would punish him for having loved me. And then I saw that Selaine was Gifted, and I thought they would take her away. But there’s no escape, is there?”

  “You can’t run from fear, only fight it,” Garaval said softly. “Haven’t you found that out, these past days? Herald Aldren taught me that. He was my mentor. In a year and a half riding Circuit, he taught me the meaning of all my instructors’ noble words. And later, when he lay dying . . .” he swallowed, “he asked me to keep looking for you.”

  Deira could not pretend, this time, that the tears that left burning trails down her cheeks were rain. He loved me. . . she thought. But it was hard to give up the anger and the fear.

  “And now,” she said, “I suppose you will take my child away . . .”

  “Doesn’t anyone care what I want?” They both looked over as Selaine pushed herself up in the bed, scowling. “If Valdemar needs my help, th’ Companions know where t’ find me. Right now, seems to me the place I’m needed most is here.”

  Behind Selaine, the green and brown blanket with the white band running through it still hung on the loom.

  All these years, I have been weaving, thought Deira. But even the most skillful weaver can only lay down one thread at a time. “With each choice, each action, we set a thread into the cloth,” her mother had once said. “It’s the sum total of all those threads, all those choices, that decide what the weaving will be . . .”

  She reached up to grip her daughter’s hand, then let it go.

  “You will weave your own story, Selaine.”

  A Wake of Vultures

  Elisabeth Waters

  “The vultures are unhappy,” Lena murmured, almost to herself.

  “What vultures?” Herald Samira looked up at the sky.

  “The ones ahead of us,” Lena said absently.

  “Where?”

  “We can’t see them yet . . .” Lena’s voice trailed off as she tried to pick up more detail. The utility of her gift depended on the ability of the animal to focus its thoughts, so what she received often varied a great deal.

  They rounded the bend, and Herald Robin said faintly, “Oh. Those vultures.” He was turning a delicate shade of green, but Lena didn’t hold it against him. He had just gone into Whites and was on his first Circuit, under Samira’s supervision. Samira’s task was first to train and then to supervise him, and she had years more experience—not to mention much more exposure to people with Animal Mindspeech and the strange changes in outlook caused by their gift.

  Lena looked from the bodies on the ground to the vultures ranged about them. One body was a male human—five days dead, the vultures told her—but remarkably undecayed and untouched by the local predators. The second body was that of a vulture who, judging by the mess around it, had eaten something that violently disagreed with it.

  “That’s odd,” Herald Samira remarked. “I didn’t know there was a poison that could kill a vulture.”

  “There isn’t,” Lena replied grimly. “A vulture can digest anthrax, let alone anything more common and less deadly.” She started toward the bodies and stopped abruptly as the protests of the surviving vultures coalesced into a scream inside her head. She realized that she was mind-linked with all of them, and, in some peculiar fashion, the dead body was tied into the link as well. Her knees buckled, Samira stepped forward to support her, and vultures swooped down from the trees to make a physical wall between them and the bodies.

  “What is it?” Samira asked, dragging Lena backward out of the apparent danger area.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  “What do the vultures say?” While all Heralds had at least some magic, Animal Mindspeech was not one of Samira’s gifts. Lena, on the other hand, had it to a high degree. She was a novice at the Temple of Thenoth, Lord of the Beasts, in Haven.

  “They say it’s death,” Lena replied faintly, still feeling odd. She tried to break off the Mindspeech with the vultures so she could concentrate on talking to the humans. She couldn’t; she and the vultures were still firmly linked.

  “Well, of course it’s dead,” Samira said. “It’s a corpse.”

  “No,” Lena corrected, “not dead. They said death.”

  * * *

  The King still had hopes of arranging a suitable marriage for Lena, who was both the last surviving member of her highborn family and the King’s ward, so he required her occasional attendance at Court, and when most highborn families retired to their country estates, he arranged for her to visit those who had been friends of her parents. This meant that all too often she was visiting people she didn’t know well, if at all. She was currently on her way to stay with a friend of her late father’s near the border Valdemar shared with Rethwellan.

  Robin, with visible effort, looked at the body. “You know,” he said, “I think he’s from Rethwellan.”

  “Who is?”

  “The body. I can tell by the clothes.” Robin had been part of a troupe of traveling Players before being Chosen, so he was probably right.

  “How far are we from the border?” Lena asked.

  “Less than two miles,” Robin replied promptly. “I’ve studied maps of this area until I felt as if I would go cross-eyed.”

  “So he could have been dying, staggered across the border, and died on this side,” Samira said.

  “Yes, he did,” Lena said promptly. “At least the vultures think he was already dying when he crossed the border, and they’re probably pretty good judges of that.”

  “But what killed him?” The two Heralds moved closer to study the body—or at least as close as the vultures would allow.

  Lena stayed back with the Companions, thankful that finding out who the young man was and why he was dead was not her responsibility. Not that she wouldn’t help as much as she could, but nobody was going to blame her for not knowing.

  “It’s odd, though,” she said.

  “This whole situation is incredible, so what is it that strikes you as odd?” Samira asked.

  “Why are we the first ones to find him—assuming we are? He’s barely off the road, and the vultures are quite visible.”

  “Possibly more to you than to most people, but that’s a good point.” Samira turned to Robin. “You stay here and watch the body. Don’t try to be clever; just make sure that nobody gets too close to it, especially you and your Companion. I’m going to escort Lena the rest of the way to the estate. Lord Tobias is the local magistrate. And given that we’re almost on his property, he should know if anyone found the body before we came upon it.”

  “Bodies,” Lena pointed out. “There’s a vulture dead, too.”

  “True,
and I’m sorry for it, but I think most people are going to be more upset about the human.” Samira sighed. “And here I was thinking this couldn’t be anywhere near as bad as your last visit to the country.”

  “Well,” Lena said as she studied the body, “I’m pretty sure that he wasn’t shot by the local magistrate in an idiotic hunting accident.”

  “And he’s not dressed like a deer,” Samira agreed. “Really, what sane person wears brown leather to go hunting?”

  “The late Lord Kristion, unfortunately.” Lena sighed. “I really hope that this visit goes better.”

  “If things get worse than they already are,” Samira pointed out, “we have serious trouble.”

  * * *

  At first, things didn’t seem too bad. Lord Tobias, her host, went off with Samira to view the body. He was a widower, and his daughter, Agneta, who was only a few years older than Lena, ran the household. She showed Lena to a guest chamber and suggested that she rest until dinner “to recover from the terrible shock.” Lena refrained from telling her that anyone who lived at the Temple of Thenoth, spent time at the royal court in Haven, and numbered several Heralds among her closest friends was not all that easily shocked. It was nice to be pampered occasionally.

  She lay down and tried to rest but found that she couldn’t do more than nap fitfully. Her mind was still connected to the vultures, and she was as twitchy as they were.

  When she and Agneta went down for dinner, Lord Tobias and the Heralds had returned. Conversation at the table did not dwell on the dead body other than to say that nobody in the area recognized him. The vultures were not mentioned, but Lena was still linked to them, both the ones watching the body and the ones leaving the group to eat. And while she would not have called herself particularly squeamish, Lena did find that this was destroying her appetite. She shoved food around her plate, took small bites and swallowed them quickly, and sipped her wine.

  After dinner, they went to the drawing room, and while Agneta poured tea, Samira took her cup, sat down next to Lena, and asked bluntly, “What’s wrong? I’ve never seen you go off your food like that.”