Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Lan put his hand to his breast and gave her a little formal bow, which seemed to amuse her. Ilea was a stunning woman, although her effect was due as much to force of personality as to her looks. Her eyes were huge, dominating her face; masses of dark brown hair surrounded it. She had thin lips, but Lan had the sense that when she wasn't worried, she smiled often and enthusiastically, as she was smiling now. A nose too long, perhaps, for beauty still suited her face and lent it strength.

  "Never mind us, m'lady," Tuck said, after swallowing a huge mouthful of food. "You just catch up with your family and pretend we aren't here. Right now I'd druther have food than talking."

  That amused her as well, but she took him up on his advice, and turned to her husband and daughter, exchanging tales of what had been going on with them while Lan and Tuck ate.

  Lan couldn't help noticing that, while Pol and Elenor (though mostly Pol; Elenor did more listening that talking) were full of gossip and stories about mutual acquaintances and friends, Ilea's tales concentrated on what life was like for a Healer on the battlefield. Though she often couched her stories in such a way as to get a rueful chuckle at the end, the point of each was clear. Day-to-day life was full of hardship, Healers witnessed terrible things with virtually every passing candlemark, and the consequences of being captured were far worse than merely being hurt or killed by a stray arrow.

  So her mother doesn't want Elenor to go to the front either, Lan thought, his interest piqued. Well, good!

  He didn't much like what he heard, though, even given that Ilea might be exaggerating a trifle. Pol was right; the Karsites must have been planning this for the past couple of years. Valdemaran forces were only just keeping the enemy advance to a crawl, but they were already into Valdemaran territory, and showed no signs of stopping. Their fighters were well trained, not unskilled or half-trained conscripts. And their officers were fanatics.

  That put a distinct chill up Lan's back. He had thought that he would be able to frighten the Karsites with a display of fire; would he really have to actually hurt people? Or even kill them?

  No. I can't, he told himself firmly, as a sick feeling rose in him. I can't do that. I'll find a way around it, or Pol will, or whoever is commanding the army. I can't hurt anyone.

  I've done too much of that already.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ILEA closed the door to the bedchamber behind her and put her back to it, giving Pol one of those looks he had come to recognize over the years as significant and serious. Her hair had fallen charmingly over one eye, with a suggestion of flirtation, but the expression in her eyes was not in the least amatory.

  "Are you aware that Elenor is in love with that boy?" she asked peremptorily.

  Pol sighed. He would have so much preferred not to deal with this until after he'd had Ilea to himself for a while. He took the candles out of their sconces around the room, lit them at the fire, and replaced them to give himself time to think. "I would have said infatuated rather than 'in love,' but yes," he replied with resignation. He knew as well as Ilea that Lan was "that boy" and not Tuck, nor any other boy of their acquaintance; there was no point in prevaricating with questions of which boy she meant.

  He sat on the edge of the canopied bed, the only furniture in the room, and waited for her reply. "At her age, they're the same," Ilea responded, giving vent to her agitation in pacing back and forth in the confines of the little room, but never taking her eyes off her husband. "Well?"

  "Well what?" he asked, reasonably, he thought, but she rolled her eyes upward, as if asking the heavens for help with his denseness.

  "Well, what are you doing about it?"

  "Nothing. She's not likely to confide in any mere male, and especially not her father," he pointed out. "And it wasn't my idea to bring her along, it was the King's, and Jedin's; they only know that she's Lan's friend and they want friends around him to keep him sane. The fact that she's a Mind-Healer was just that much more reason to send her. I'm hoping now that in constant contact with Lavan, she's going to wear out her passion against his indifference. Or failing that, she'll take one look at the battlefield and beg you to take her back home."

  Ilea relaxed a little, as if he'd put at least one of her fears to rest, and stopped pacing. "You're sure he's indifferent?" she asked—begged, rather.

  Pol sighed again, shook his head, and patted the top of the bed beside him. She accepted the silent invitation and sat beside him, pulling her legs up onto the quilted coverlet and curling up against his shoulder. "Lan couldn't be anything but indifferent to Elenor—or any girl, for that matter. He's already life-bonded. To his Companion," he added, to cut through any more questions.

  Ilea squirmed around and looked into his face, her own features a mask of incredulity. "You aren't joking!" she exclaimed, stunned, and even a little shocked. "Oh, no! Poor Elenor!"

  "And poor Lan, and poor Kalira—that's his Companion—" he replied. "Herald-bond and lifebond? They're never out of each other's heads, and if anything happens to Kalira, Lan just goes—crazy—" He shook his head. "When she was hurt, he couldn't think of anything else, and it was no use attempting to get him to try. No one his age should have to cope with a full lifebond. It's not healthy. He doesn't even know who he is, yet, but now he's inextricably bound up with someone who isn't his age, his sex, or even human."

  "But apparently in his case, it's necessary," she brooded, putting her head back on his shoulder with a sigh of her own. "If what I've heard is true. She's the controlling force on his Gift?"

  "Exactly, and I'm not sure she could do that if they weren't lifebonded. But he's never going to be himself, whole and entire, and he's never going to be independent. Is he?" he asked her doubtfully, leaning back against the pillows and making them both more comfortable.

  "Ask Elenor. I'm not the Mind-Healer. Or, rather," she corrected hastily, "don't ask Elenor. I'd rather she didn't take him on as a Cause; there's nothing more certain of cementing misplaced infatuation into permanency than being Needed."

  Pol heard the inflection that turned the word into an icon, and he agreed with her. "I talked with her back when I first saw this happening," he said, hastening to let her know that he hadn't shirked his parental duties. "I tried—I really tried to make her understand that she—she couldn't hope to compete—I tried—"

  Ilea wrapped her arms around him, and he relaxed into her embrace. Gods, it's so good to be with her again—

  "I know you did, and I know you didn't try anything as stupid as flatly opposing her," she said into his ear. "Nothing feeds romance like opposition, and you know it."

  Thank you for that, my love, and for your confidence in my good sense.

  "She'll talk to me about it, sooner rather than later, I think," Ilea continued, as her hair tickled his nose and he tucked it under his chin. "I don't know what else I can do, but at least I can keep track of how she's feeling."

  "Satiran reminds me fairly often that parents can't cushion the blows our children set themselves up for," he murmured into her ear, breathing in the warm scent of herbs that always clung to her.

  "I'm not going to think any more about it until tomorrow," she said firmly.

  He was perfectly willing to go along with her on that score.

  *

  MIDMORNING, and they were less than half a day from the Southern Border and the war, and yet there was no sign of the conflict here other than the wear on the roads. They were no longer on the main roads; this was the way that Ilea had passed coming up here, and they were all returning to report to the main quarters of the Lord Marshal. This was a pine forest, a very old one; the scent was fantastic in here, but the boughs all overhung the road, completely blocking the sun and leaving them in half-light no brighter than twilight.

  Pol led the way, unburdened for once. Ilea was up behind Lan, and Elenor behind Tuck. Ilea was a perfect passenger, actually; she was friendly and made intelligent conversation; Lan much preferred her to Elenor.

  "We moved the Headquarters
to White Foal Pass just before I left," Ilea told him. "That's why this little road hasn't been trampled to bare dirt yet. It looked to the Lord Marshal as if the Karsites were going to make a big push there. It would be the logical place to go with as large a force as they have. White Foal is the only pass where they get big numbers of men through quickly."

  "Not to mention the value of pushing us back at White Foal Pass," Lan replied grimly. "There's an awful lot of symbolic significance there if even I can see that...."

  Ilea nodded. He felt her hair move against his shoulder. Then, before he could continue his thought—

  —something dropped down out of the tree head of them.

  Frozen between shock and total terror, Lan jerked on the reins, and Kalira shied sideways.

  It—no, he—landed on the pillion behind Pol, knocking Satiran sideways with the unexpected weight. Hooves skidding on the icy road, Satiran shrieked as his hind feet slid out from underneath him, but the black-hooded man grabbed Pol around the chest and shoulders and pulled him sideways. They tumbled to the ground together, Pol fighting to get his arms free and shouting, Satiran scrambling to get his feet under him again.

  Elenor screamed, and kept screaming, a high, thin, terror-filled wail; Ilea didn't make a sound, but her hands clutched Lan's upper arms so tightly it hurt. Lan's stomach flipped, but it was the only part of him that could move. He couldn't even breathe—

  The man had a knife, a black-bladed knife that didn't reflect light at all; it drew Lan's eyes and filled his gaze as the man brandished it.

  He'd wrapped his legs around Pol's body, trapping Pol's arms so the Herald couldn't get to his weapons. He shouted something as he and Pol struggled on the ground—it was Karsite, something about demons—

  :Lan!: Kalira shouted at him, but he couldn't shake off his paralysis—

  The attacker grabbed Pol's hair, pulling his head back. Satiran, still shrieking a battle cry, whirled. His hooves pounded the ground a hair away from Pol, but he couldn't trample the man and not get Pol, too.

  Tuck fought with Elenor to keep her from leaping into the fray. Ilea frozen and rigid, only whimpered.

  The dragon within Lan flamed into life with a roar, ready to kill.

  Taste of metal, of blood—the taste of anger—

  The dragon uncoiled in a rush, craving death, fire, destruction. It lunged at the restraints that held it, raged against the bindings, filling Lan's mind and soul with a dreadful lust.

  No! He couldn't. That was a man, not a bundle of straw!

  :Lan: Kalira shouted at him. :Now!:

  This was all happening too fast, he couldn't think!

  Flames washing through him, straining his control—

  Only fire would save his friend. He had to let the dragon kill!

  No! Pol was—Pol was a fighter! He could—surely he would free himself—Lan couldn't kill a man—

  As the man struck at Pol's throat, Pol wrenched his head down and to the side and his hands grabbed the man's feet, twisting in a move Lan had seen Odo demonstrate a dozen times. Lan's heart pounded, his head felt full to bursting—

  Blood fountained, as the man slashed his knife across Pol's eyes instead of his throat, blood gushing everywhere, staining the snow, dyeing the Whites a terrible crimson.

  And something inside Lan parted with a snap.

  Yesyesyesyesyes!

  Pol screamed. Ilea and Tuck screamed. Elenor was still screaming.

  Lan's throat closed, his hands clenched on the reins, and his vision tunneled—but the Karsite exploded into flame.

  Firedeathragehate—

  Ilea scrambled down from the pillion running for Pol. Lan barely noticed. He was bathed in fire, tiny flamelets dancing from the tips of his fingers, floating in the air around him. This was what he had been born for—

  The dragon within him exulted in its freedom, and ravaged the Karsite within and without. Bound to the dragon, one with the dragon, he was the dragon now, and the dragon was rage and flame and hunger. The Karsite died instantly, but death was not enough, not nearly enough! He spun in a circle of fire and danced a volta of revenge as the Karsite burned and burned and burned.

  *

  THE knife fell, as Pol tried to squirm out of the way, and the blackened steel sliced across his face.

  Gods!

  A streak of agony, darkness, the hot gush of his own blood over his cheeks.

  He screamed, the sound tearing from his throat, but kept fighting. The next stroke could be the final one—

  He held to consciousness and twisted the Karsite's ankles until the man himself shouted in pain, then wrenched himself free of the Karsite somehow, still screaming in agony.

  He scrambled away over the snow on hands and knees, horrible pain making him want to curl himself into a ball and just lie there screaming. He heard a strange sound behind him, as if something very large and soft had plummeted out of the sky to land in the snow as he scrambled, blind and still howling with agony, toward the place where he thought the rest of them were—

  Teeth grabbed his collar and hauled him unceremoniously out of harm's way, dropping him literally in Ilea's lap.

  Only then did he fall into blessed unconsciousness.

  *

  :LAN! Lan!:

  Lan ignored the mind-voice—until it resorted to a sort of mind-kick that finally got his attention.

  Shaken out of his entrancement, this time the mind-voice penetrated the wash of fire and the terrible joy.

  :Lan, enough! Pol needs you!:

  Oh, gods— He shook his head and wrenched himself out of the meld with the dragon, fighting to get his eyes open.

  Without his full attention feeding it, the dragon found itself quickly enchanted again by Kalira. Sullenly, it coiled itself deep inside his mind, and dropped into uneasy slumber. Jolted back into the real world, Lan opened his eyes on a black patch in the snow that held nothing, nothing but a bit of melted metal—not a body, not even bones. Nothing but ashes.

  Ilea sat on the bare road, Pol's bloody head in her lap, a frown of fierce concentration in her face. The gash across Pol's eyes closed even as Lan watched, but there was no doubt that the knife had cut right across Pol's eyes, blinding him, perhaps forever.

  Gut-wrenching guilt hit him and nearly knocked him out of the saddle. Oh, gods, what have I done—

  "Don't sit there feeling sorry for yourself," Ilea snarled with a touch of hysteria in her voice, without looking up. "I need hot water and bandages, and I need them now. And a fire, before he goes into shock. And don't wallow in guilt until after you've got it going."

  Elenor was useless; that much was obvious; she knelt in the snow and sobbed into her hands next to her father. That left Lan and Tuck; Lan went for wood while Tuck slid off his Companion and emptied the contents of all the saddlebags onto the ground.

  When Lan returned with the wood, afoot now, with the wood piled onto Kalira's back, Tuck had spread blankets over the snow and Pol lay on them, his face neatly bandaged. There was a strange scent in the air, not of burned meat, but a metallic scent, hot stone and scorched earth. Lan piled the wood near Pol and Ilea and ignited it, turning it into a roaring fire in an instant. As he went back for more wood, Ilea pushed a small pot holding clean snow near the flames to melt for water.

  When he returned the second time, Elenor was finally doing something, cleaning some of the blood off her father's face and clothing and helping her mother, although she was sobbing as she worked. Tuck was off getting more wood himself.

  Ilea was on the verge of hysteria. "I can't stop now!" she shouted at Elenor, in response to a tear-choked entreaty. "I am not going to let your father go blind! I will Heal him, I swear it, if I have to die trying!"

  At that, Elenor took her hands off her mother's and grabbed Ilea's shoulders, shaking her. "And what good will that do?" she shrieked, as Ilea went limp with surprise and her head jerked back and forth from the shaking. "You'll kill him if you die!"

  That seemed to snap Ilea out of
her crazed state. She stared at Elenor in shock, then the two of them fell into each other's arms, weeping. Lan stared at them all, and it was only Kalira who snapped him out of his trance.

  :Drape blankets over all of them and get some more wood!: his Companion said harshly, then actually walked over to her sire and bit him on the neck. Satiran's sagging head flew up. Lan didn't hear what went on between them, but he didn't wait to see anything more. Draping blankets over the sobbing women and over Pol, he escaped to the forest again, and a job he could understand.

  He went back, and back again, until he was stumbling through dusk that obscured everything in his path and was forced to give up. By then, Ilea was sleeping, and Elenor organizing a crude camp. The three Companions arranged themselves in three sides of a square around the blankets spread on the snow, lying down. Pol lay still unconscious, with his eyes bandaged and his head pillowed on Satiran's flank, between Ilea and Kalira. The fire formed the fourth side of the square. Tuck wearily ate a handful of bread, and Elenor looked up at Lan's entrance.

  "Get some sleep," she said shortly, her voice nasal and thick with weeping. "If we can, we'll have to leave in the morning. We've no food and no shelter; we can't stay here."

  Lan didn't say anything; guilt devoured him and killed any appetite he might have had. He lay down obediently and turned his face away from Elenor, sure that he wasn't going to get a wink of sleep all night.

  And he was right. He stared at Dacerie's flank and the firelight flickering on it for candlemarks, stomach knotted with misery while the stars wheeled overhead. He heard Tuck lie down and eventually begin breathing deeply. He heard Elenor gently fall over sideways—

  When he looked, she was asleep, half-propped by Tuck's body, up against Satiran's shoulder.

  He sat up. :I'll take care of the fire,: he told Satiran, Mind-speaking so as not to make a sound.

  Satiran nodded, ever so slightly, but did not reply. Lan found some relief from his guilt by making certain the fire burned evenly and without smoke, feeding it diligently as the stars paraded overhead.