Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  "We have to do something!" Dawnfire pleaded. He hesitated a moment, then gave her the bad news.

  "There isn't anything we can do," he said, closing his mental shields against the tide of fear and despair from below. The dyheli were so panicked now that they weren't even capable of thinking. "Maybe the rain tonight will disperse it in time to save them."

  "No!" she shouted, careless of what might overhear her. "No, we can't leave them! I'm a guardian, they're my responsibility, I won't leave them!"

  "Dawnfire—" he took her shoulders and shook them. "There isn't anything we can do, don't you understand that? They're too panicked to get harnesses on and haul them up—even if we had enough people here to try! And I won't call in all the scouts from their patrols. It's bad enough that I left mine! Don't you see, this could easily be a diversion, to clear the way for something else to come in over the border while it's unguarded!"

  She stared at him, aghast, for a long moment. Then, "You coward!" she spat. "You won't even try! You don't care if they die, you don't care what happens to anyone or anything, all you care about is yourself! You won't even use your magic to save them!"

  As the envenomed words flew, Darkwind kept a tenuous grip on his temper by reminding himself of how young Dawnfire was. She's only seventeen, he told himself. She lives and breathes being a guardian, and she doesn't understand how to lose. She was barely assigned her duties when the Heartstone blew. She doesn't mean what she's saying....

  But as her words grew more and more hurtful and heated in response to his cool silence, he finally had enough. His temper snapped like a dry twig, and he stopped the torrent of abuse with a mental "slap."

  And as she stood, silent and stunned, he folded his arms across his chest and stared at her until she dropped her eyes.

  "You say you are a guardian. Well, you pledged an oath to obey me, your commander, and abide by my decisions. Have you suddenly turned into a little child, regressed to the age of ten, when sworn oaths mean only 'until I'm tired of playing'? No?" He studied her a moment more, as she went from red to white and back again. "In that case, I suggest you calm yourself and return to your assigned patrol, if you comport yourself well and if you can keep yourself under control, I will consider leaving you there, rather than reassigning you elsewhere. Is that understood?"

  "Yes, Elder," she replied, in a voice that sounded stifled.

  "Very well," he said. "Go, then."

  Chapter Seven

  ELSPETH

  "Elspeth?"

  Despite the anxious tone of Skif’s voice, Elspeth didn't look up from her book. "What?" she said, absently, more to respond and let Skif know she'd heard him than a real reply. She was deep in what was apparently a firsthand description of the moments before Vanyel's final battle.

  It was then that we saw how the valley walls had been cut away, to widen the passage, and the floor of the vale had been smoothed into a roadway broad enough for a column of four. And all this, said Vanyel, was done by magic. I knew not what to think at that moment.

  "Elspeth, don't you think we should be getting out of here?" Skif persisted. "On the road, I mean." She looked up from her page, and into Skif's anxious brown eyes. There was no one else to overhear them; they were the only ones in the library archives, where the oldest Chronicles were stored.

  Sunlight damaged books, so the archive chamber was a windowless room in the center of the library. Smoke and soot damaged them as well, so all lighting was provided by smokeless lanterns burning the finest of lamp oil, constructed to extinguish immediately if they tipped over. No other form of lighting was permitted—certainly not candles. Elspeth realized, as she looked into Skif's anxiety-shadowed face, that she didn't know what time it was. If any of the Collegium bells had rung, she hadn't noticed them.

  Her stomach growled in answer to the half-formed question, telling her that it was past lunchtime, if nothing else.

  She rubbed her eyes; she'd been so absorbed in her reading that she hadn't noticed the passage of time. "Why?" she asked, simply. "What's your hurry?"

  He grimaced, then shrugged. "I don't like the idea of riding off south with just the two of us, but since you seem so set on it—I keep thinking your getting the Council to agree was too easy. They didn't argue enough."

  "Not argue enough?" she replied, making a sour face. "I beg to differ. You weren't there. They argued plenty, believe me. I thought they'd never stop till they all fell over from old age."

  "But not enough," he persisted. "It should have taken weeks to get them to agree to your plan. Instead—it took less than a day. That doesn't make any sense, at least, not to me. I keep thinking they're going to change their minds at any minute. So I want to know why we aren't getting out of here before they get a chance to."

  "They won't change their minds," she said, briefly, wishing he'd let her get back to her researches. "Gwena says so."

  "What does a Companion have to do with the Council changing its mind?" he demanded.

  That's what I would like to know, she thought. Gwena's playing coy every time I ask. "I don't know, but ask yours. I bet she says the same thing."

  "Huh." His eyes unfocused for a moment as he Mindspoke his little mare; then, "I'll be damned," he replied. "You're right. But I still don't see why we aren't getting on the road; everything we need is packed except for your personal gear. I should think you'd be so impatient to get out of here that I would be the one holding us back."

  She shrugged. "Let's just say that I'm getting ready. What I'm doing in here is as important as the packing you've been doing."

  "Oh?" He shaded the word in a way that kept it from sounding insulting, which it could easily have done.

  "It's no secret," she said, gesturing at the piles of books around her. "I'm researching magic in the old Chronicles; magic, and Herald-Mages, what they could do, and so forth. So I know what to look for and what we need."

  If he noticed that some of those Chronicles were of a later day than Vanyel's time, he didn't mention it. "I suppose that makes sense," he acknowledged. "Just remember, the Council could change their decision any time, no matter what Gwena says."

  "I'll keep that in mind," she replied, turning her attention back to her page. After a moment, Skif took the hint; she heard him slip out of his chair, and leave the room.

  But her mind wasn't on the words in front of her. Instead, she gave thought to how much Skif's observations mirrored her own.

  This was too easy. There was no reason why the Queen should have agreed to this, much less the Circle and Council. The excuse of the magical attack on Bolton, the Skybolts' deeded border town, was just that; an excuse. She had checked back through the Chronicles of the past several years, and she had uncovered at least five other instances of magical attacks on Border villages, all of which looked to her as if they showed a weakening of the Border-protections. The records indicated no such panic reaction as she'd seen in the Council Chamber; rather, that there was a fairly standard way of responding. A team of Heralds and Healers would be sent to the site, the people would be aided and removed to somewhere safer, if that was their choice, then the incident was filed and forgotten.

  Farther back than that had been Talia's encounter with Ancar, that had signaled the beginning of the conflicts with Hardorn. There had been long discussions about what to do, how to handle the attacks of mages; Elspeth remembered that perfectly well. And there had been some progress; the Collegium made a concerted effort, checking the Chronicles following Vanyel's time, to determine how Heralds without the Mage-Gift could counter magical attacks. Some solutions had been found, the appropriate people were briefed and trained—

  And that was all. The knowledge was part of the schooling in Gifts now, but there was no particular emphasis placed on it. Not the way there should have been, especially following Ancar's second attempt at conquest.

  File and forget.

  For that matter, there was even some evidence that Karse had been using magic, under the guise of "priestly pow
ers." No one had ever followed up on that, not even when Kero had made a point of reminding the Council of it.

  There had to be another reason for letting her go on this "quest." Especially since there were overtones in the Council meetings she attended of "the Brat is getting her way." It would have been obvious to anyone with half a mind and one ear that now that the initial excitement was over, they regretted giving her their permission to leave, even to as safe a destination as Bolthaven, deep in the heart of her uncle's peaceful kingdom.

  Even the Heralds on the Council gave her the unmistakable feeling that they were not happy about this little excursion, and they'd gladly use any excuse to take their permission back.

  But they didn't. Gwena had said repeatedly that they wouldn't. There was something going on that they weren't talking about. And it didn't take a genius to figure out that, whatever it was, the Companions, en masse, were hock-deep in it.

  And did it have something to do with her growing resistance to this compulsion to forget magic, to avoid even thinking about it?

  Once her suspicions were aroused, Elspeth had decided that, before she ran off into unknown territory, she was going to do a little research on the Herald-Mages. Not just to find out their strengths and weaknesses, nor to discover just what the limits and gradations of the "Mage-Gift" were, but to see just how extensive the apparent prohibition against magic was; how deeply rooted, and how long it had been going on.

  And what she had learned was quite, quite fascinating. It dated from Vanyel's time, all right—but not exactly. To be precise, it dated from the time that Bard Stefen, then an old and solitary man, vanished without a trace.

  In the Forest of Sorrows.

  At least, that was Elspeth's guess. He was supposed to be in the company of some other young, unspecified Herald, on a kind of pilgrimage to the place where Vanyel died. He never arrived at his destination, yet no one reported his death. Granted, he had not yet achieved the kind of legendary status he had in Elspeth's time, but still, he was a prominent Bard, the author of hundreds of songs, epic rhymed tales and ballads, and the hero of a few of them himself. He was Vanyel's lifebonded lover, the last one to see him alive, and Vanyel did have the status of legend. Someone would have said something if he had died—at the very least, there should have been an impressive Bardic funeral.

  No mention, no funeral. He simply dropped out of sight.

  Nor was that all; even if he had vanished, someone should have noticed that he disappeared; surely searches should have been made for him. But no one did notice, nor did anyone look for him.

  He simply vanished without a trace, and no one paid any notice. And that—possibly even that precise moment—was when it became impossible to talk about magic, except in the historical sense. That was when the Chronicles stopped mentioning it; when songs stopped being written about it.

  When encounters with it outside the borders of Valdemar—or, occasionally, just inside those borders—were forgotten within weeks.

  Fortunately those encounters were usually benign, as when ambassadors from Valdemar would see the mages in the Court of Rethwellan performing feats to amuse, or ambassadors from outside of Valdemar would mention magic, and some of the things their kingdoms' mages could do. The Chronicler of the time would dutifully note it down—then promptly forget about it. So would the members of the Council—and the Heralds.

  Did they attribute all of that to boasting and travelers' tales? Now I wonder if, when other people read the Chronicles over, do their eyes just skip across the relevant words as if they weren't even there?

  It wouldn't surprise her. Elspeth herself had noticed whole pages seeming to blur in front of her eyes, so that she had to make a concerted effort to read every word. She had initially ascribed the effect to fatigue and the labor of reading the archaic script and faded inks, but now she wasn't so sure. It had gotten easier, the more she had read, but she wondered what would happen if she stopped reading for a while, then came back to it.

  She had even found a report from Selenay's grandfather, back when he was plain old "Herald Roald," and the Heir, about his encounter with Kero's grandmother Kethry and her partner.

  Tarma shena Tale'sedrin, a Shin'a'in Kal'enedral, sworn to the service of her Goddess, was plainly some kind of a priest. In fact, much to Roald's surprise, she had achieved a physical manifestation of her Goddess right before his eyes. Never having seen a Goddess, he was rather impressed.

  So would I be!

  He'd described the manifestation; the impossibly lovely young Shin'a'in woman, clothed as one of her own Swordsworn—but with strange eyes with neither pupil nor white; just the impression of an endless field of stars.

  Brrr. I would probably have passed out.

  He and Tarma had become quite firm friends after that; Roald's Companion approved of both the priest and her Goddess, which Roald had found vastly amusing. But if Tarma was a powerful priest, Kethry was just as clearly a talented and powerful mage. Roald had quite a bit to say about her; it was evident that he was quite smitten with her, and if it hadn't been for the fact that she was obviously just as smitten with the Rethwellan archivist they had rescued, he hinted that he might well have considered a try in that direction.

  A superb tactician, however, he knew a hopeless situation when he saw one and wisely did not pursue his interest any further.

  It was Roald's account of Kethry's magical abilities that interested Elspeth. It was in this account that she got a clearer idea of the differences between Journeyman class and Master, of Master and Adept. That alone was useful, since it proved to her that what Valdemar needed was indeed an Adept, more than one, if at all possible. Certainly a teacher. There was no reason why the Mage-Gift should have vanished from the population of Valdemar, when it was clearly present elsewhere.

  Roald did not have a great deal to say about Kethry's magical sword, "Need," other than the fact that it was magical, with unspecified powers, and would only help women. So at that point in time, the song "Threes" had not migrated up to Valdemar, or Roald would have made certain to mention it.

  Interesting about songs....

  As evidence of just how strong that magic-prohibition had been, Elspeth had come across another fascinating bit of information in the Bardic Chronicles, which were also stored here. The song "Kerowyn's Ride" had preceded the arrival of the real Kerowyn by several years—ascribed to "anonymous." Which it wasn't; several times visiting Bards had attempted to set the Valdemaran record straight. Each time the attribution was duly noted, then the very next time the song was listed in a Court performance, it was ascribed to "anonymous."

  It was the habit of Master Bards, particularly the teachers, to write short dissertations on the meaning and derivation of popular songs to be used as teaching materials. Out of curiosity, Elspeth had made a point of looking up the file on "Kerowyn's Ride."

  At that point, it would have strained the credulity of even a dunce to believe that there was nothing working to suppress the knowledge of magic—for even after the arrival of the real Kerowyn, Master Bards were writing essays that claimed it was an allegorical piece wherein the Goddess-as-Crone passed her power to the Goddess-as-Maiden at Spring Solstice. She found several other papers stating that it described an actual event that had taken place hundreds of years ago, as evidenced by this or that style.

  That was quite enough to get Elspeth digging into more of the Bardic Chronicles, and that was when she discovered corroborating evidence for her theory that something was suppressing the very idea of magic.

  Despite the fact that there had been a concerted effort to get the songs about Herald-Mages and magical conflicts back into the common repertory, despite the fact that this was Bardic Collegium's top priority—and despite the fact that perfectly awful, maudlin songs like the unkillable "My Lady's Eyes" stayed popular—the "magic" songs could not be kept in repertory. Audiences grew bored, or wandered away; Bards forgot the lyrics, or found themselves singing lyrics to another song entirely. W
hen given a list of possible songs for various occasions, a Seneschal or Master of the Revels would inexplicably choose any song but the ones describing magic.

  Only those songs that did not specifically mention magic, or those where the powers described could as easily be ascribed to a traditional Gift, stayed in popular repertory. Songs like the "Sun and Shadow" ballads, or the "Windrider" cycle, songs that were hundreds of years older than the Vanyel songs and written in archaic language, were well known—was it because not once was there a reference to a specific spell, only vague terms like "power" and "curses?"

  Furthermore, Elspeth herself had heard the "problem" songs being sung, not once, but fairly often, and with a great deal of acclaim and success. So it wasn't that there was anything wrong with the songs themselves. It had to be because of their content. And was it possible that the reason the songs had been successful was that they were sung in the presence of many Heralds? For that seemed to be the common factor. It was when they had been sung with no Heralds present at all that the worst failures occurred.

  She had learned several other things from the Chronicles of Vanyel's time—things which had no direct bearing on her present mission, but which explained a great deal.

  For instance: there had been something called "The Web," which demanded the energy and attention of four Herald-Mages. Those four apparently had been somehow tied to one-quarter of Valdemar each, and were alerted to anything threatening the Kingdom by the reaction of the spell. The problem was, by the end of Queen Elspeth the Second's reign, there were not enough Herald-Mages to cover the four quarters... not and deal with enemies, too.

  That was when Vanyel altered the spell, tying all Heralds into this "Web," so that when danger threatened, everyone would know. Before that, it was only chance that a ForeSeer would bend his will to a particular time and place to see that something would be a problem. After, it was guaranteed; ForeSeers would see the danger, and would know exactly what Gifts or actions were required to counter it. Heralds with those Gifts would find themselves in the saddle and heading for the spot whether or not they had been summoned. The Chronicles were not clear about how he had done this, only that it definitely worked, and there was a great deal of relief knowing that the Kingdom no longer depended on having four powerful Herald-Mages to act as guardians.