Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Then she realized what it was that bothered her; the colors. The city was nothing but a mass of tiny, brightly-colored dots. She could not imagine what could be causing that effect—was every roof in the city painted a different color? And why would anyone do something as odd as that? Why paint roofs at all? What was the point?

  As they neared, the dots resolved themselves into flat conical shapes—which again seemed very strange. Brightly colored, conical roofs? What kind of odd building would have a conical roof?

  Then she realized: they weren't buildings at all, those were tents she was looking at. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tents.

  Now she understood why Quenten had said that Kata'shin'a'in "dried up and blew away" in the winter. Somewhere amidst all that colored canvas there must be a core city, with solid buildings, and presumably inns and caravansaries. But most of the city was made up of the tents of merchants, and when trading season was over, the merchants departed, leaving behind nothing at all.

  She glanced over at Skif, who was eyeing the city with a frown.

  "What's the matter?" she asked.

  "Just how are we ever going to find the Tale'sedrin in there?" he grumbled. "Look at that! There's no kind of organization at all—"

  "That we can see," she interrupted. "Believe me, there's organization in there, and once we find an inn, we'll find someone to explain it to us. If there wasn't any way of organizing things, no one would ever get any business done, they'd be spending all their time running around trying to find each other. And when in your entire life have you ever known a successful disorganized trader?"

  His frown faded. "You have a point," he admitted.

  :I don't like this,: complained Gwena.

  :I am perfectly well aware that you don't like this,: Elspeth replied crisply.

  :I think this is a mistake. A major mistake. It's still not too late to turn back.:

  Elspeth did not reply, prompting Gwena to continue. :If you turned around now, we could be in Lythecare in—:

  Elspeth's patience finally snapped, and so did the temper she had been holding carefully in check. :Dammit, I told you I won't be herded into doing something, like I was the gods' own sheep! I don't believe in Fate or Destiny, and I'm not going to let you lot move me around your own private chessboard! I will do this my way, or I won't do it at all, and you and everyone else can just find yourself another Questing Hero! Do you understand me?:

  Her only answer was a deep, throaty chuckle, and that was absolutely the final insult. She was perfectly ready to jump out of the saddle and walk to Kata'shin'a'in at that point.

  :And. Don't. Laugh. At. Me!: she snarled, biting off each mental word and framing them as single words, instead of an entire thought, so that her anger and her meaning couldn't possibly be misunderstood.

  Absolute mental silence; then Gwena replied—timidly, as Elspeth had never heard her speak in her life with her Companion, :But I wasn't laughing.:

  Her temper cooled immediately. She blinked.

  It hadn't really sounded like Gwena. And she'd never known a Companion to lie. So if it wasn't Gwena—

  :Who was it?: she asked. :If it wasn't you, who was it?:

  :I—: Gwena replied hesitatingly, lagging back a little as Skif rode on ahead, blithely oblivious to what was going on behind him. :I—don't know.:

  A chill crept down Elspeth's spine; she and Gwena immediately snapped up their defensive shields, and from behind their protection, she Searched all around her for someone who could have been eavesdropping on them. It wasn't Skif; that much she knew for certain. The mind-voice had a feminine quality to it that could not have been counterfeited. And it wasn't Cymry, Skif's Companion; other Companions had only spoken to her once, the night of Talia's rescue. She could not believe that if any of them did so again that it would be for something so petty as to laugh at her. That was as unlikely as a Companion lying.

  And besides, if it had been Cymry, Gwena would have recognized her Mind-voice and said something.

  Kata'shin'a'in stood on relatively treeless ground, in the midst of rolling plains. While there were others within Mindhearing distance—there were caravans both in front of and behind them—there was no one near. Certainly not near enough to have provoked the feeling of intimacy that chuckle had.

  In fact, it was incredibly quiet, except for the little buzz of ordinary folk's thoughts, like the drone of insects in a field.

  The chill spread from her spine to the pit of her stomach, and she involuntarily clutched her hand on the hilt of her sword.

  :You—: said a slow, sleepy mind-voice gravelly and dusty with disuse as she and Gwena froze in their places. :Child. You are... very like... my little student Yllyana. Long ago... so very, very long ago.:

  And as the last word died in her mind, Elspeth gulped; her mind churned with a chaotic mix of disbelief, astonishment, awe, and a little fear.

  It had been the sword that had spoken.

  Skif looked back over his shoulder. "Hey!" he shouted, "Aren't you corning? You're the one who wanted to go here in the first place."

  But something about their pose or their expressions caught his attention, and Cymry trotted back toward them. As he neared them, his eyebrows rose in alarm.

  "What's wrong?" he asked urgently. Then, when Elspeth didn't immediately reply, he brought Cymry in knee-to-knee with her and reaching out, took her shoulders to shake her. "Come on, snap out of it! What's wrong? Elspeth!"

  She shook her head, and pushed him away. "Gods," she gulped, her thoughts coming slowly, as if she was thinking through mud. "Dear gods. Skif—the sword—"

  "Kero's sword?" he said, looking into her eyes as if he expected to find signs that she had been Mindblasted. "What about it?"

  "It talked to me. Us, I mean. Gwena heard it, too."

  He stopped peering at her and simply looked at her, mouth agape. "No," he managed.

  "Yes. Gwena heard it, too."

  Her Companion snorted and nodded so hard her hackamore jangled.

  "A sword?" He laughed, but it was nervous, very nervous. "Swords don't talk—except in tales—"

  :But... I am a sword... from a tale. Boy,: The mind-voice still had the quality of humor, a rich, but dry and mordant sense of humor. :And horses don't talk... except in tales, either.:

  Skif sat in his saddle like a bag of potatoes, his mouth still gaping, his eyes big and round. If Elspeth hadn't felt the same way, she'd have laughed at his expression. He looked as if someone had hit him in the back of the head with a board.

  His mouth worked furiously without anything coming out of it. Finally, "It talks!" he yelped.

  :Of course I talk.: It was getting better at Mindspeech by the moment, presumably improving with practice. :I'm as human as you are. Or I was. Once:

  "You were?" Elspeth whispered. "When? How did you end up like that? And why—"

  :A long story,: the sword replied. :And one that can wait a little longer. Get your priorities, child. Get in there, get shelter. Get a place to sit for a while. Then we'll talk, and not before.:

  And not one more word could any of them get from it, although the Companions coaxed and cajoled along with the two Heralds. And so, with all of them wondering if they'd gone quite, quite mad, they entered the trade-city of Kata'shin'a'in.

  The inn was an old one; deep paths had been worn into the stone floors and the courtyard paving, and the walls had been coated so many times with whitewash that it was no longer possible to tell whether they had been plaster, brick or stone. The innkeeper was a weary, incurious little old man, who looked old enough to have been the same age as his inn. The stone floors and the bathhouse indicated that the place had once catered to prosperous merchants, but that was no longer the case. Now it played host to a variety of mercenaries, and the more modest traders, who would form caravans together, or take their chances with themselves, their own steel, and a couple of pack animals.

  Their room was of a piece with the inn; worn floor, faded hangings at the window, s
imple pallet on a wooden frame for a bed, a table—and no other amenities. The room itself gave ample evidence by its narrowness of having been partitioned off of a much larger chamber.

  At least it was clean.

  Elspeth took Need from her sheath, laid the sword reverently on the bed, and sat down beside it—carefully—at the foot. Skif took a similar seat at the head. The Companions, though currently ensconced in the inn's stable, were present in the back of their minds.

  So now is the time to find out if I'm having a crazy-weed nightmare.

  "All right," she said, feeling a little foolish to be addressing an apparently inanimate object, "We've gotten a room at the inn. The door's locked. Are you still in there?"

  :Of course I'm in here,: replied the sword acerbically. Both she and Skif jumped. :Where else would I be?:

  Elspeth recovered first, and produced a wary smile. "A good question, I guess. Well, are you going to talk to us?"

  :I'm talking, aren't I? What do you want to know?:

  Her mind was a blank, and she cast an imploring look at Skif. "What your name is, for one," Skif said. "I mean, we can't keep calling you 'sword.' And 'Hey, you' seems kind of disrespectful."

  :My holiest stars, a respectful young man!: the sword chuckled, though there was a sense of slight annoyance that it had been the male of the two who addressed her. :What a wonder! Perhaps I have lived to see the End of All Things!:

  "I don't think so," Skif replied hesitantly. "But you still haven't told us your name."

  :Trust a man to want that. It's—: There was a long pause, during which they looked at each other and wondered if something was wrong. :Do you know, I've forgotten it? How odd. How very odd. I didn't think that would happen.: Another pause, this time a patently embarrassed one. :Well, if that doesn't sound like senility, forgetting your own name! I suppose you'd just better keep calling me 'Need.' It's been my name longer than the one I was born with anyway.:

  Skif looked at Elspeth, who shrugged. "All right—uh—Need. If that doesn't bother you."

  :When you get to be my age, very little bothers you.: Another dry mental chuckle. :When you're practically indestructible, even less bothers you. There are advantages to being incarnated in a sword.:

  Elspeth saw the opportunity, and pounced on it. "How did you get in there, anyway? You said you used to be human."

  :It's easier to show you than tell you,: the blade replied. :That's why I wanted you locked away from trouble, and sitting down.:

  Abruptly, they were no longer in a shabby old room in an inn that was long past being first quality. They were somewhere else entirely.

  * * *

  A forge; Elspeth knew enough to recognize one for what it was. Brick-walled, dirt-floored. She seemed to be inside someone else's head, a passive passenger, unable to do more than observe.

  She rubbed the sword with an oiled piece of goatskin, and slid it into the wood-and-leather sheath with a feeling of pleasure. Then she laid it with the other eleven blades in the leather pack. Three swords for each season, each with the appropriate spells beaten and forged into them.

  A good year's work, and one that would bring profit to the Sisterhood. Tomorrow she would take them to the Autumn Harvest Fair and return with beasts and provisions.

  Her swords always brought high prices at the Fair, though not as high as they would be sold for elsewhere. Merchants would buy them and carry them to select purchasers, in duchys and baronies and provinces that had nothing like the Sisterhood of Spell and Sword. But before they were sold again, they would be ornamented by jewelers, with fine scabbards fitted to them and belts and baldrics tooled of the rarest leathers.

  She found this amusing. What brought the high price was what she had created; swords that would not rust, would not break, would not lose their edges. Swords with the set-spell for each season; for Spring, the spell of Calm, for Summer, the spell of Warding, for Fall, the spell of Healing, and for Winter, the spell that attracted Luck. Valuable spells, all of them. Daughter to a fighter, and once a fighter herself, though she was now a mage-smith, she knew the value of being able to keep a cool head under the worst of circumstances. Spring swords generally went to young fighters, given to them by their parents. The value of the spell of Warding went without saying; to be able to withstand even some magic was invaluable to—say—a bodyguard. With one of her Summer swords, no guard would ever be caught by a spell of deception or of sleep. Wealthy mercenaries generally bought her Fall swords—or the noble-born, who did not always trust their Healers. And the younger sons of the noble-born invariably chose Winter blades, trusting to Luck to extract them from anything. The ornamentation meant nothing; anyone could buy a worthless Courtsword with a mild-steel blade that bore more ornament than one of hers. But her contact had assured her, over and over again, that no one would believe her blades held power unless they held a trollop's dower in jewels on their hilts. It seemed fairly silly to her; but then, so did the fact that most mages wore outfits that would make a cat laugh. Her forge-leathers were good enough for her, and a nice, divided wool skirt and linen shirt when she wasn't in the forge.

  Once every four years, she made eleven swords instead of twelve, and forged all four of the spells into a single blade. Those she never sold; keeping them until one of the Sisterhood attracted her eye, proved herself as not only a superb fighter, but an intelligent and moral fighter. Those received the year-swords, given in secret, before they departed into the world to earn a living. Never did she tell them what they had received. She simply permitted them to think that it was one of her remarkable, nearly unbreakable, nonrusting blades, with a simple Healing charm built in.

  After all, why allow them to depend on the sword?

  If any of them ever guessed, she had yet to hear about it.

  There was one of those blades waiting beneath the floor of the forge now. She had yet to find someone worthy of it. She would not make another until this one found a home.

  :That's what I was,: whispered the sword in the back of Elspeth's mind.

  The scene changed abruptly. A huge building complex, built entirely of wood, looking much like Quenten's mage-school. There were only two differences that Elspeth noticed; no town, and no stockade around the complex. Only a forest, on all four sides, with trees towering all about the cleared area containing the buildings. Those buildings looked very old—and there was another difference that she suddenly noticed. Flat roofs: they all had flat roofs and square doorways, with a square-knot pattern of some kind carved above them.

  She was tired; she tired often now, in her old age. A lifetime at the forge had not prevented joints from swelling or bones from beginning to ache—nor could the Healers do much to reverse her condition, not while she continued to work. So she tottered out for a rest, now and then, compromising a little. She didn't work as much anymore, and the Healers did their best. While she rested, she watched the youngsters at their practice with a critical eye.

  There wasn't a single one she would have been willing to give a sword to. Not one.

  In fact, the only girl she felt worthy of the blade wasn't a fighter at all, but was an apprentice mage—now working out with the rest of the young mages in the same warm-up exercises the would-be fighters used. All mages in the Sisterhood worked out on a regular basis; it kept them from getting flabby and soft—as mages were all too prone to do—or becoming thin as a reed from using their own internal energies too often. She watched that particular girl with a measuring eye, wondering if she was simply seeing what she wanted to see.

  After all, she had started out a fighter, not a mage. Why shouldn't there be someone else able to master both disciplines? Someone like her own apprentice, Vena, to be precise.

  Vena certainly was the only one who seemed worthy to carry the year-blade. This was something that had never occurred in all the years she'd been forging the swords. She wasn't quite certain what to do about it. She watched the girls stretching and bending in their brown linen trews and tunics, hair all neat
ly bound in knots and braids, and pondered the problem.

  The Sisterhood was a peculiar group; part temple, part militia, part mage-school. Any female was welcome here, provided she was prepared to work and learn some useful life-task at the same time. Worship was given to the Twins; two sets of gods and goddesses, Kerenal and Dina, Karanel and Dara; Healer, Crafter, Fighter, and Hunter. Shirkers were summarily shown the door—and women who had achieved self-sufficiency were encouraged to make their way in the outside world, although they could, of course, remain with the Sisterhood and contribute some or all of their income or skills to the upkeep of the enclave.

  All this information flashed into Elspeth's mind in an eyeblink, as if she had always known it.

  Those girls with Mage-Talent were taught the use of it; those who wished to follow the way of the blade learned all the skills to make them crack mercenaries. Those who learned neither supported the group by learning and practicing a craft or in Healing—either herb and knife Healing, or Healing with their Gifts—or, very rarely, taking their place among the few true Priests of the Twins at the temple within the Sisterhood complex.

  The creations of the crafters in that third group—and those mages who chose to remain with the enclave—supported it, through sales and hire-outs. The Sisters were a diverse group, and that diversity had been allowed for. Only one requirement was absolute. While she was with the Sisterhood, a woman must remain celibate.

  That had never been a problem for the woman whose soul now resided in the blade called "Need."

  Interesting, though—in all her studies, Elspeth had never come across anything about the "Twins" or the "Sisterhood of Sword and Spell." Not that she had covered the lore of every land in the world, but the library in Haven was a good one—there had been information there on many obscure cults.

  On the other hand, there had been nothing in any of those books about the Cold Ones, and Elspeth had pretty direct experience of their existence.