Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  When they had finished with her they hauled her to her feet by one arm, and threw her into a dirt-floored, stone-walled cell, then tossed what was left of her bloodstained clothing in behind her. It was the cold that finally roused her, cold that chilled her and made her shake uncontrollably, and awoke her lacerated shoulder to new pain. She roused enough then to crawl to where they’d tossed her things and pull them on over her abused flesh.

  Not surprisingly, nothing had been done about the wound in her shoulder, which continued to bleed sluggishly.

  I’ve—got to do something—she thought, through the pain and cold clouding her mind,—got to—get it out.

  She got a firmer grip on reality; thought she remembered that the arrows she’d seen the guards carrying had had leafpoints. Right—She steeled herself against the inevitable, got a good grip on what was left of the slippery, blood-soaked shaft, and pulled.

  It came free—she passed out briefly as it did. When her vision cleared, she bound the wound with one hand using a scrap from her shredded shirt as a bandage, and hoped that this would at least stem the blood loss.

  Selenay. Elspeth. She had to warn the Queen—

  That goad was driving her past the point where she should have collapsed, and continued to drive her. She had to warn the others. For that she must stay aware—and alive, much as she longed to die. She curled in on herself, forcing herself into trance, driving herself regardless of the pain of her brutalized body. With this much pain behind it, even she should be able to reach the Border.

  But she met with the same wall that had protected the Prince from her probe. She battered herself against it like a wild bird against the bars of a cage, and with as much effect. There were no cracks, no weak points in it. Try as she might, she could not reach her Mindcall past it. Weeping with bitter pain and tortured frustration, she gave up, and lay in a hopeless huddle on the floor in the darkness.

  There was no way of telling how long she lay there before an anomalous sound roused her from a nightmare of shock, pain, and confused grief. She listened again. It was the sound of someone whispering.

  “Herald! Lady Herald!” The voice sounded vaguely familiar.

  “Herald!” It was coming from a small opening in the ceiling.

  She crawled on hands and knees across the dirt floor to lie beneath it, for her legs trembled so much she doubted hold her, and coughed several times before she speak.

  “I’m—here.”

  “Lady Herald, it’s me, Evan—Evan, the trader from Westmark in Valdemar. The one you talked to a day ago.”

  As she reached out tentatively with her Gift she wondered briefly if this, too, was a trap.

  Gods—if it is—but what do I have to lose? Please, Lady—

  She nearly fainted with relief when her Gift confirmed that it was the same man.

  “Oh, gods—Evan, Evan, Lady bless you—” she gulped and got control over her babbling. “Where are you?”

  “Outside the walls in the dry moat. Some of my acquaintances have worked in the Palace and Guard and told me of these ventilation holes. I arrived after you, late this evening—I was drinking with some of the Guard when—there were screams. They told me some of what was happening, and warned me to hold my tongue if I wanted to live. They aren’t bad men, but they are afraid, Herald, very much afraid. The Prince is making no secret now that he has evil magicians, and an entire army that answers only to him.”

  —if only I’d overruled Kris—he’d be alive now—

  “Later they told me they’d captured you—I—couldn’t leave you without trying to help. I bribed a guard to learn which cell they had taken for you. Lady—” he seemed to be groping for words. “Lady, your friend is dead.”

  “Yes—I—I know.” She bowed her head as the tears fell anew and she did not try to hold them back.

  He was silent for a long moment. “Lady, you saved my fife; I am still in your life-debt. Is there some way I can help you? The Prince means to keep you living; I am told he has plans for you.”

  Hope rose to faltering life. “Can you help me escape this place?”

  And died. “No, Lady,” he said sadly. “That would require an army. I would gladly try alone—but it would not serve you. You would still be here, and I would be quite dead.”

  Half a dozen ideas flitted through her mind; one stayed.

  “Are these holes straight? Could you lower something to me, or bring something up?”

  “If it were something small, yes, Lady; easily done. My guide told me that they were quite straight, and unobstructed.”

  “Can you find me two arrows—if you can, see that the barbs of the fletching are heavy—and—” She faltered, and forced herself to continue. “—and at least ten drams of argonel.”

  “Have they hurt you, Lady? There are safer ways to ease pain than argonel. And Lady, that much—”

  “Trader, do not argue. I have my reasons, and argonel it must be. Can you do it?”

  “Within the hour, Lady.”

  There was a thin whisper of sound as he left. She propped herself against the wall and tried to use the pain-deadening tricks she’d been taught to ease her shoulder and her throbbing loins. She would not let herself hope that the trader would keep his promise, but strove to remain passive, unfeeling, in a kind of numbness. It was still dark when she heard a scratch and the trader’s voice.

  “Lady, I have all you asked for. It’s coming now.”

  She pulled herself up the wall and reached for the bundle that dangled from the ceiling with her good hand, feeling more of the injured shoulder muscles tear as she reached up.

  “The bottle holds fourteen drams, and it is full.”

  “May the Lord of Lights and the Fair Lady shine on you, friend, and all your kin and trade—” she replied fervently, loosening the stopper enough to catch the distinctive sweet-sour odor of argonel. The bottle was completely full. “Leave the string. You will be taking something up in a moment and doing me another service—one last office that will free you of life-debt entirely.”

  “I am yours to command,” he replied with simple sincerity.

  She snapped the head from the first arrow by holding it under one foot. She let the tears flow freely as she patterned it with Kris’ fletching pattern, grateful that she’d been made to learn to do the task in the dark, and finding it hard to continue with the memory fresh of him teaching her his own pattern. The headless arrow—code for a Herald dead. Now for the most important half of the message—code for herself; and code for the mission in such ruins that no attempt at rescue should be made. She broke the second arrow in half and patterned the fletching as her own. She tore the remains of one sleeve from her shirt, secured the arrows into a compact bundle with it, and fastened the whole to the string dangling down from the hole in the ceiling.

  ‘Trader, pull it up.”

  It gleamed for a moment against the stone, then was gone.

  “Now listen carefully. I want you to leave now, before dawn, before the Prince tries to seal the city. You must get outside the city gates.”

  “There is a guard at the night-gate I know I can bribe.”

  “Good. Just out of sight of the guardpost on the main highway that runs from the Triumph Gate there is a shrine to the god of wayfarers.”

  “I know the place.”

  “My horse will find you there.” The one thing that damned magician couldn’t block was her bond with Rolan! “Tie the bundle around his neck, just as it is, then take whatever plan seems good to you. If I were you, I would make a run for the Border; you’ll be safe enough on the Valdemar side. Know that you have all my thanks and all my blessings.”

  “Lady—a horse?”

  She remembered then that he was Hardornen, and couldn’t know how unlike horses the Companions were.

  “He is more than horse; think of him as a familiar spirit. He will return to my people with my message. Will you do this for me?”

  He was close to weeping himself. “Is there nothing
more I can do?”

  “If you do that, you will have done more than I dared hope. You take with you all my gratitude, and my blessings. Now go, please, and quickly.”

  He did not speak again, and she heard the scrape that signaled his departure.

  She felt for her contact with Rolan. Her bond with him was at too deep a level for the magician even to sense, let alone block. Although alternating waves of pain and faintness threatened to overwhelm her, she managed to remain aware until she knew with total certainty that Rolan had gotten her message-bundle from the trader.

  Rolan did not need any instructions to know what to do. Her contact with him weakened and faded as she weakened with effort and blood loss and he headed for the Border at his fastest pace, until it vanished altogether as he reached the edge of her fast-shrinking range. By then it was almost dawn.

  Now, there were just two more tasks, and she would be able to give way to her anguish, her hurts, her grief.

  First, the bottle. The trader had been right to be nervous about argonel. It was chancy stuff. Sometimes even the normal dose of four drams killed—but the Healers used it now and again to end the suffering of one they could not save. It had the advantage that no matter how great the overdose, there were no painful side effects such as there were with other such drugs—nothing but a peaceful drifting into sleep. If four drams could kill, fourteen should make death very sure.

  Using the broken-off arrowhead, she scraped a hole in the floor beneath the pile of molding straw that was supposed to be her bed, a hole just deep enough to bury the bottle. Alessandar had not been the kind of monarch that often used his dungeons; by the grace of the gods the floors were packed earth rather than stone, with a pit dug in one corner for a privy.

  She would not use the drug yet—not until she was certain that the Queen had received the warning. Soon, Bright Lady—make it soon—

  Then she scraped a second hole, and a third, and hid the arrowhead from the broken arrow and the one she’d pulled from her own shoulder. If by some mischance they should find the bottle, she could still cut her wrists with one of them.

  Her shoulder was aflame with pain and bleeding again, and a little gray light was creeping down the ventilation hole when she’d finished.

  She lay on the straw and let herself mourn at last.

  Tears of sorrow and of pain were still pouring from her eyes when blood loss and exhaustion finally drove her into unconsciousness.

  When she came to herself again, there was a single spot of sunlight on the floor, making the rest of the room seem black by comparison. She blinked in hurt and confusion, as the door clanked once and opened.

  She saw one of her jailors strolling toward her, wearing a sadistic grin and unfastening his breeches as he walked. For the space of a second she was ready to cry out and shrink away from him—but then a cold and deadly anger came over her, and abruptly she could bear no more. She took all her agony and Kris’ (still rawly part of her), all her loss, all her hatred, and hurled them into his unprotected mind in a blinding instant of forced rapport.

  Hatred couldn’t sustain her long—she couldn’t maintain it for more than a single moment—but that moment was enough.

  He screamed soundlessly, and flung himself wildly at the door, nearly knocking himself senseless when he readied it. He slammed it after himself, and threw the bolt home. She could hear him babbling in panic to his comrades on the other side. As she slumped back, she knew that they would not dare to molest her again, not unless the magician was with them. That was very unlikely. That one was too busy protecting his Prince and keeping her from Mindspeaking to have time to spare to protect menials so that they might amuse themselves. They shoved in a pail of water and a plate of some sort of slop later in the day. She ignored the food, but drank the stale, fusty-tasting water avidly. Her terrible thirst woke her to the fact that she was beginning to feel both overheated and chilled. Gingerly she touched the skin next to the arrow-wound. It was hot and dry to the touch, and badly swollen.

  She was taking wound-fever.

  While she was still able, she relieved herself down the privy hole in the corner, telling herself that she should be grateful that there was nothing in her stomach and bowels to make a flux of. It was cold comfort, that. She pulled the bucket within reach of the straw and propped herself against the wall in case someone should try to take her unaware. When the hallucinations and fever-dreams began, she was more or less ready for them.

  There was no pattern to the fever. When she was able to think, she would tend to herself as best she could. When the fever took her, she endured.

  There were horrible visions of the slaughter in the banquet hall, and the victims paraded their death-wounds before her and mutely asked why she hadn’t warned them. In vain she told them that she hadn’t known—they pressed in on her, shoving mutilated limbs and dripping wounds in her face, smothering her—

  Her bestial guards multiplied into a horde, and used her, and used her, and used her—

  Then Kris came.

  At first she thought it was going to be another dream like the first, but it wasn’t. Instead, he was whole, well; even happy—until he saw her. Then, to her distress, he began weeping—and blamed himself for what had happened to her.

  She tried to put on a brave face for him, but when she moved, she hurt so much that her fragile pretense shattered. He shook off his own distress at that, and hurried to kneel at her side.

  He somehow drove away some of the pain, spoke words of comfort, bathed her feverish brow with cool water. When she whimpered involuntarily as movement sent lances of hurt through her shoulder, he wept again with vexation at his own impotence, and berated himself for leaving her alone. When the other, horrible dreams came, he stood them off.

  The next time she came to herself, she found that there was a scrap torn from her sleeve near the bucket, still damp. After trying to puzzle it out, she decided that she’d done it herself, and the dream had been a rationalization of it.

  As delirium began to take her again, she tried to tell herself that it was unlikely that her hallucinations would include Kris a second time. But they did, and Kris continued to guard her from the hideous visions, all the while trying to give her courage.

  Finally she gave up even trying to pretend to hope, and told Kris about the argonel.

  “No, little bird,” he said, shaking his head at her. “It isn’t your time yet.”

  “But—”

  “Trust me. Trust me, dearheart. Everything is going to come out fine. Just try to hold on—” He faded into the stone, then, as she woke once more.

  That puzzled her. Why should a fever-dream of her own making be trying to urge her to live, when she only wanted release?

  But for the most part, she simply suffered, and endured the waiting, watching for some sign that her message had safely reached Selenay. The Queen and her entourage should have reached the Border about two days after she and Kris had ridden through the palace gates. They would have been expecting Kris about three or four days after they arrived—a week after she’d been thrown in here. With luck and the Lady with him, Rolan should reach them about that time. She added the days in her head—that meant he would reach the Queen in six to ten days at his hardest gallop—six if he could take the open roads, ten if he had to backtrack and hide.

  When Hulda first appeared, at the end of the third day, Talia thought initially that she was another hallucination. If it hadn’t been that Hulda’s sharp features and strange gray-violet eyes were unmistakable, Talia wouldn’t have recognized her. She was swathed in a voluptuous gown of burgundy-wine velvet, cut low and daringly across the bosom, and there were jewels on her neck and hands and the net that bound her hair. But most amazing of all, she appeared to be hardly older than Talia herself.

  She stood peering into the darkness, eyes darting this way and that; a cruel smile touched her tips when she finally spotted Talia huddled against the wall. She moved from the center of the room with an odd, glid
ing step to stand above Talia, eyes narrowed in pleasure, and nudged her sharply with one dainty shoe.

  The pain she caused made Talia gasp and pull in on herself—and her heart leapt into her throat when she realized that the woman was still standing there—real, and no hallucination.

  When Talia’s eyes widened with shock and recognition, Hulda smiled. “You remember me? How very touching! I had no hope you’d have any recollection of little Elspeth’s adored nurse.”

  She moved a few steps farther away and stood artfully posing in the light that came through the ventilation bole. “And how low the mighty Herald has fallen! You’d have been pleased to see me brought so low, wouldn’t you? But I am not caught so easily, little Herald. Not half so easily.”

  “What—what are you?” The words were forced out almost against Talia’s will.

  “I? Besides a nurse, you mean?” She laughed. “Well, a magician, I suppose you’d call me. Did you think the Heralds held all the magic there was in the world? Oh, no, little Herald, that is for, for from being the case.”

  She laughed again, and swept out of the cell, the door clanging shut behind her.

  Talia struggled to think; but—Lord and Lady, this meant there was more, much more at stake here than she’d dreamed.

  Hulda—so young-looking, and claiming to be a magician. And she hadn’t any trace of a Gift, Talia knew that for certain. Put that together with the mage who guarded Ancar and kept her from Mindspeaking to other Heralds—gods protect Valdemar! That meant that old magic, real magic, and not just Heraldic Mind-magic, was loose in the world again. And in the hands of Valdemar’s enemies—

  And Hulda had been—must have been—playing a deeper game than anyone ever guessed, and for far longer. But to what purpose?