Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  "B-b-behind the Station," Talia stuttered nervously, pupils dilated with true fear. "Where the storage shed is."

  Kris rose and tried the door. It wouldn't budge. "Was," he said, and crawled back in beside her.

  She didn't venture to contradict him.

  Twice more they heard trees crashing to the ground, but never again so close. And as if that show of force had finally worn it out, the wind began to slacken and die. By noon or thereabouts, it had gone completely, and all that remained were the faint ticking sounds of the falling snow. Without the wind to keep it off the roof, it soon built up to a point where even that could no longer be heard.

  The Station stopped losing heat. The temperature within rose until it was comfortable again, and the rising warmth lulled them back into their interrupted sleep before they realized it.

  The Companions prodded them awake. How long they'd been asleep they had no idea; the fire was dying, but by no means dead, and the silence gave no clue.

  Rolan impressed Talia with his need to go out. Immediately. Talia could tell by Kris' face that Tantris was doing likewise.

  He looked at her and shrugged. "Might as well find out now as later. We're still here, and under shelter at least," he said, and pulled on fresh clothing while she did the same.

  It was not long till dark. The stacked fodder had kept the door clear of snow or they'd never have gotten it open. Beyond the shelter of the bales was a drift that reached higher than Kris' head.

  The chirras were not at all perturbed by the sight; they plowed right into it, forcing their way almost as if they were swimming, their long necks keeping their heads free of the snow. The Companions followed and the two Heralds followed them. After making their way through drifts that rose from between the level of Talia's waist to the height of the first one, they suddenly broke into an area that had been scoured down to the grass by the wind.

  The forest around them had a quality of age, of power held in check, that was raising the hair on the back of Talia's neck. There was something here ... not quite alive, but not dead either. Something . . . waiting. Watching. Weighing them. Whatever it was, it brooded over them for several long moments. Talia found herself searching the shadows under the trees until her eyes ached, looking for some sign, and found nothing. But something was out there. Something inhuman, almost elemental, and—and at one, in some strange way she couldn't define and could only feel, with the forest itself. As if the forest were providing it with a thousand eyes, a thousand ears....

  "Where's the road?" Talia asked in a small, frightened squeak.

  Kris started at the sound of her voice, looked around, then turned slowly, evidently getting his bearings. The Station from here seemed to be only one taller drift among many. There were new gaps in the circle of trees that surrounded it. "That way—" he finally pointed. "There was a tree just beside the pathway in—"

  "Which is now across the pathway in."

  "Once we get to it, we can have the chirras and Companions haul it clear ... I hope."

  "What about the back of the Station?" She was not certain that she wanted to find out.

  "Let's see if we can get back there."

  Working their way among the drifts in the deepening gloom, they managed to get to a point where they could see what had happened behind the Station, even though they couldn't get to it yet. Kris whistled.

  Not one, but nearly a dozen trees had gone over, each sent crashing by the one behind it, the last landing hard against the side of the Station. The storage shed was gone; splintered.

  "At least we'll have plenty of firewood," Talia said with a strained laugh.

  "Talia—" there was awe in Kris's voice. "I never believed those stories about Sorrows and Vanyel's Curse before—but took at the way the trees fell!"

  Talia subdued her near-hysterical fear and really took a good look. Sure enough, the trees had fallen in a straight line, all in the direction of the force of the wind—except the last. There was no reason why it should have deviated that she could see, and had it fallen as its fellows it would have pulverized the Station—and them. But it had not; it had fallen at an acute angle, missing the Station entirely and destroying only the empty shed. It had almost fallen against the wind.

  "Gods," Kris said, "I—I never would have believed this. I never believed in miracles before." He looked around again. "I ... this sounds stupid but, whatever you are . . . thanks."

  The steady feeling of being watched vanished as he said it. Talia found she could breathe easily again.

  "Look, we'd better get back inside. It's nearly dark," Kris gazed up at the sky, and the snow that still fell from it with no sign of slackening.

  Subdued by their situation and the destruction outside, they made their meal, ate, and cleaned up in silence. Finally Talia broached the subject that was troubling them both.

  "Can we get out of here?"

  "I'd like to be reassuring and optimistic, and say yes—but truthfully I don't know," Kris replied, resting his chin on his knees and staring into the fire. "It's a long way to the road, and as I've told you, it will be worse beyond the trees. It's going to take us a long time to cut a path there, with no certainty that the Guard will have gotten that far when we do make it."

  "Should we try to force our way without cutting a path?"

  He shook his head. "The chirras could do it, unburdened, but not Tantris and Rolan. Even if they could, we'd need the supplies. I just don't know."

  "Maybe we'd better just concentrate on digging our way out."

  "But how can we dig ourselves out with no tools?"

  "There's the tree blocking the way, too."

  Kris stared at the fire without speaking for a long time. "Talia," he said finally, "Holderfolk never buy anything if they can help it—their miserliness is legendary. What do you know about making shovels?"

  "Not much," she replied ruefully, "But I'll try."

  "Let's take an inventory of our materials."

  They had plenty of rawhide for lashings, lots of straight, heavy tree limbs for handles and bracings, but nothing to use for blades. The unused bedboxes were so stoutly built that it would be next to impossible to pull the bottoms out, and the shelves were made of board too thick to be useful. There had been thinner wood used in the shelves of the shed— but they were fragmented now. Finally Talia sighed sadly and said with reluctance, "The only thing we have to use is the harp case."

  "No!" Kris protested.

  "There's nothing else. When we leave here we can detune My Lady and wrap her in blankets and cloaks and she should be all right without the case. The wood is light and strong, and it's been waterproofed. It's nearly even the right size and shape. We haven't got a choice, Kris. Jadus wouldn't thank us for being sentimental fools."

  "Damn!" He was silent for a moment. "You're right. We haven't any choice."

  He got the case from the corner on top of Talia's packs where he'd left it. Wincing a little, he took his handaxe and carefully pried the front and back out of the frame, and handed them to Talia.

  She fished a bit of charcoal out of the fireplace and drew something like the blade of a snow-shovel on each piece. She handed him one while she took up the other.

  "Try and whittle it to that shape while I do the same."

  She shaved delicately at the edges of the wood with the blade of her own axe, with shavings falling in curls next to her. Kris watched her with care until he felt he knew exactly what she was doing, then began on his own piece. There was one blessing; the grain was fine enough that with sharp axes it was relatively easy to shape. When both their pieces approximated the look of a shovel blade, Talia marked holes in the boards for them to drill out with their knives. By the time they'd finished, their wrists and hands were tired and sore.

  Talia flexed her hands trying to get some feeling and movement back into them. "Now I need two pieces about so wide," she said, gesturing with her hands about two fingers' width apart, "And as long as the backs of the blades. I expect you'
ll have to cut them out of the frame."

  While Kris further demolished the harpcase, she rummaged in her packs for her pot of glue. When she found it, she placed it in a pot half-filled with water, and put that container over the fire so the glue would melt. Meanwhile she went through the dozen or so branches that looked to be good handle material and picked out the two best.

  Once the glue was ready, she showed Kris where to drill holes in the branches, and how to taper the end that was going to be fastened to the blade. Her wrists just weren't strong enough for the job. When he finished the first one, she lashed it to the blade with wet rawhide, stretching the thong as tightly as she could so that it would shrink and bind the shovel to blade as firmly as possible when it dried. Then she cross-braced the back of the blade with a smaller branch cut to fit, lashing it the same way to the handle. Lastly she glued the piece of frame to the back of the shovel blade to act as a stop to keep the snow from sliding off. She lashed another piece of branch to the handle behind the stop to act as a brace, then she glued every join on the whole makeshift shovel, saturating even the rawhide with glue. That finished all she knew how to do; she set the whole thing aside to cure overnight, and started in on the second.

  "They're not going to hold up under much rough handling," she sighed wearily when she'd finished. "We're going to have to treat them with a great deal of care."

  "It's better than trying to do it with bare hands," Kris replied, taking her hands in his own and massaging them.

  "I guess so," she tried to force herself to relax. "Kris, just how does the Guard clear the roads off?"

  "They recruit villagers. Then it's teams with shovels; they dig out the worst places, and pack down the rest."

  "I don't imagine that it's a very fast process."

  "No."

  The single word hung in the air between him. Talia was afraid, but didn't want to put more of a burden on Kris than he already had by giving way to her fears.

  The silence between them grew.

  "I hate to say this" he broke it reluctantly "but you're projecting. I can feel it, and I know it isn't me, and Tantris just backed me up."

  Anger flared a little, followed by despair—

  "Dammit Talia, lock it down! You're not helping either of us!"

  She gulped back a sob; bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, then steadied herself by beginning a breathing exercise; it calmed her, calmed her enough that she actually found the leakage, and blocked it. Kris heaved a sigh of relief, and smiled at her, and she felt a tiny stirring of hope and accomplishment.

  Finally he let her hands go and went after the harp; she wasn't in a mood to sing by any means, but he chose nothing that she knew. He seemed more to be drifting from melody to melody, perhaps finding his own release from distress in the music he searched. She listened only; the chirras seemed to have caught the somber mood and did not sing either. She used the harpsong to reinforce her own ritual of calming and did not open her eyes until it stopped.

  Kris had risen and was replacing the harp in its corner of the hearth. He returned to her side and stretched himself next to her without speaking.

  She was the one who broke the silence.

  "Kris, I'm scared. Really afraid. Not just because of what's happening to me, but because of all that—" she waved her hand "—out there."

  "I know." A pause. "I'm scared, too. We ... haven't got a good situation here. You—you could have killed us both the other night. You still could. And out there . .. I've never felt so helpless in my life. Between the two, I just wanted to give up. I just wanted to curl up in a ball and hope it all went away."

  It cost him to admit that, Talia knew. "I wish I wasn't so messed up; I wish I was bigger and stronger. Or a Farspeaker like Kyril," she replied in a very small voice.

  "You can't help what happened. As for being a Farspeaker, I don't think both of us together could reach someone with the Gift to hear us, and if we could, I don't know that it would do any good," he sighed. "We just have to keep on as we have been, and hope we get out of here before the supplies run out. That's the real problem, when it comes down to it—the supplies. Otherwise I wouldn't worry. We've got about enough for a month, but not much more than that. If we run out . . ."

  "Kris—you know, we are in Sorrows—remember the tree? Maybe—maybe we'll be sent game."

  "You could be right," he mused, beginning to brighten. "It would take less magic to send a few rabbits within reach of our bows than it did to divert that tree."

  "And maybe we'll get out before we have to worry about it. And you don't have to worry about me, you know. I'm Borderbred. I can do with a lot less than I've been used to eating."

  "Let's not cut rations down unless we have to. We'll be using a lot of energy keeping warm."

  Gloom settled back over them. Talia decided that it was her turn to dispel it.

  "I wonder what things are like back at Court right now. It's almost Midwinter."

  "Pandemonium; it's never less. Uncle hates Midwinter; there're so many people coming in for the celebrations who 'just incidentally' have petitions that there are Council meetings nearly every day."

  She looked at him unhappily. "I don't get along with your uncle very well. No, that's a lie. I don't get along with him at all. I know he doesn't like me, but there's more to it than that. I keep having the feeling that he's looking for a way to get rid of me."

  Kris looked flatly astonished. "Whoa—wait just a minute here—you'd better start at the very beginning. I can hardly believe my ears—"

  "All right," she replied hesitantly, "but only if you promise to hear me out completely."

  "That's only fair, I guess."

  "All right; when I first got to the Collegium I had a pretty miserable time of it as you know. Dirty tricks, nasty anonymous notes, ambushes—it was the unaffiliated students, the Blues, but they made it seem as if it was other trainees that might be responsible so I wouldn't look inside the Collegium for help. It all came to a head—"

  "When they dumped you in the river just after Midwinter—"

  "And they meant to kill me."

  "What?" he exclaimed.

  "It isn't common knowledge. Elcarth and Kyril know; and Sherrill, Keren, Skif, Teren, and Jeri. Ylsa knew, so did Jadus; I think Alberich knows. Mero guessed. I'm pretty sure one or more of the others told Selenay some time later. One of the Blues told me to 'give their greetings to Talamir' just after they threw me in—I think the meaning there is pretty clear. They expected me to drown, and if it hadn't been that my bond with Rolan was strong enough for him to know what had happened—well. But I was delirious with fever when they were caught and I couldn't tell anyone. They claimed it was all just a joke, that they hadn't thought I'd get worse than a ducking. Your uncle backed them up before the Council. So instead of being charged with trying to kill me, they got their wrists slapped and were sent home to the familial bosoms."

  "That's hardly an indication that—"

  "You promised not to interrupt me."

  "Sorry."

  "The next time we got into it was over Skif. It was right when Skif was helping me unmask Elspeth's nurse Hulda. I needed to find out who had sponsored her into Valdemar besides Selenay and Elspeth's father. Skif went to the Provost-Marshal's office to find the immigration records, and Orthallen caught him there. He dragged him up in front of Selenay, accusing him of trying to alter the Misdemeanor Book. And he demanded that Skif be given the maximum punishment for it—stable duty with the Guard for the next two years on the Border. You know what that could have meant. At worst, he could have been killed; at best, he'd be two years behind the rest of us, and I'd have been without one of my two best friends all that time—as well as being without the only person in the Collegium who could possibly have helped me expose Huida. I got Skif off, but I had to lie to do it; and I can tell you that Orthallen was not pleased."

  Kris looked as if he wanted to interject something, but held his peace.

  "Lastly there's the matte
r of my internship. Orthallen 'in view of my youth and inexperience' was trying to pressure the Council into ruling I should stay out in the field for three years—double the normal time. Fortunately, neither Selenay, Elcarth or Kyril were having any of that—and pointed out that internships are subject only to the will of the Circle, not the Council."

  "Is that all?"

  "Isn't it enough?"

  "Talia, this all has very logical explanations if you know my uncle. Firstly he couldn't possibly have known about the students' malice—I'm certain of it. He's known most of them since they were in swaddling clothes; he even refers to people grown and with babes of their own as 'the youngsters.' And he probably felt obligated to act as their spokesperson. After all, you had two people to speak for you on the Council, Elcarth and Kyril."

  "I suppose that's logical," Talia said reluctandy. "But Skif—"

  "Oh, Skif—my uncle is a prude and a stickler for convention, I know that for a fact. Skif has been a thorn in his side ever since he was Chosen. Before Skif came, there was never any problem with Heraldic students getting involved in trouble down in town—the unaffiliates and the Bardics, and once in a great while the Healers, but never the Grays."

  "Never?" Talia's right eyebrow rose markedly. "I find that rather hard to believe."

  "Well, almost never. But after Skif started his little escapades—Lord and Lady, the Grays are as bad as the Bardics! It's like the younger ones feel they have to top him. Well, uncle is not amused, not at all. He's a great believer in military discipline as a cure for high spirits, and I'm certain he never meant anything worse for Skif than that."

  "What about me? Why does he keep trying to get between me and Selenay?"

  "He's not. You are young; his idea of Queen's Own is someone like Talamir. I have no doubt he truly felt a long internship was appropriate in your case." "I wish I could believe you." "Holding a grudge is rather childish—and unlike you—"

  "I am not holding a grudge!" "Then why are you even refusing to consider what I've told you?"

  Talia drew a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. "There is a third explanation for what he's been doing. It could be that he thinks of me as a threat to his influence with Selenay. And I might point out one other thing to you—and that is I am willing to bet the person who told you all about those 'rumors' is your uncle. And I'd be willing to bet he asked you to investigate them. He knows what my Gift is. He could well know what the effect of hearing that poison would be on me."