Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  So many trips up and down that stone had taught her where all the holds were, and now she didn't even need to think about where she was putting her hands and feet. This was the most vulnerable moment in her day—this, and the opposite trip in the morning. There was a staircase up the inside of the tower, but although it looked sound, appearance was very deceptive. It was, in fact, one more of her traps and defenses, and anyone chancing it would find himself taking a two- or three-story drop to the ground, depending on how far he got before the weakened stone gave way beneath him.

  But then, she privately thought that anyone trusting his weight to an unproven stair—in a ruined tower, no less—probably deserved what he found.

  Her mind wandered off on its own, planning lightweight ladders and imagining what she might use to make them, discarding idea after idea. She came to the conclusion that she might be trying to make things a little too elaborate; after all, by virtue of her breeding she was a much better climber than the best of the Tayledras. A simple, knotted rope might serve her better.

  At that point, her hand encountered the open space of her window, and she grasped the sill with both hands, and hauled herself up and over the stone slab. She swung her legs inside and dropped down to the floor, crouching there for a moment. She took the pheasant out of her mouth and grinned, as her teacher and weapon growled in her mind :I hate it when you do that. You look like a cat that's just caught someone's pet bird.:

  "But it is not a pet bird, Need," she replied pertly. "It is my dinner."

  :So is the pet bird for the cat,: the sword said, :But nobody ever asks the bird how it feels about the situation.:

  She sat down cross-legged on the bare stone of the floor, and began industriously plucking her catch. "If it gets caught, it deserves to get eaten," she told the sword.

  :You stole that from the Hawkbrothers.: Need accused.

  She shrugged. "So? That does not make it less true. And like all Hawkbrother sayings, it is double-edged. If it gets caught, it deserves to be eaten—to be appreciated, used entirely and with respect, and not robbed of something stupid, like a tail-feather, and discarded as useless. I honor my kill, and I am grateful that I caught it. If it has a soul, I hope that soul finds a welcome reward."

  Need had nothing to say in reply to that. Nyara smiled, knowing that "no comment" was usually a compliment of sorts.

  She put the best of the feathers aside; the large, well-formed ones she would use to fletch arrows, the rest would go to stuff her carefully-tanned rabbit hides. Need had been teaching her a great deal; she had come to this tower with nothing but a knife she had filched from Skif and the sword. Now she had clothing made from the hides of animals she had caught; a bed of furs from the same source, with pillows of fur stuffed with feathers on a thick pallet of cured grasses. And that was not all; over in the corner were the bow and arrows Need had taught her to make and was teaching her to use. Need had already taught her the skills of the sling she had used to take this pheasant.

  The sword had also unbent enough to conjure—or steal by magic—a few other things for her, things she couldn't make herself. Not many, but they were important possessions; a firestarter, four pots, three waterskins and a bucket, one spoon, a second knife, and a coil of rope. The latter was precious and irreplaceable; she had used it only to haul heavy game and her water up the side of her tower.

  :Are you going to eat that raw?: Need demanded. She licked her lips thoughtfully; she was very hungry and had been considering doing just that. But the way the question had been phrased—and the fact that her teacher had asked the question at all—made her pause.

  "Why?" she asked. "Is there something wrong with that?"

  If the sword could have moved, it would have shrugged. :Not intrinsically,: Need replied. :But it gives the impression that you are more beast than human. That is not the impression we are trying to give.:

  Nyara did not trouble to ask just who would be there to observe her. True, there was no one except herself and her mentor at the moment, but she sensed that Need did not intend either of them to be hidden away in the wilderness forever.

  She doesn't want me to seem more beast than human. Need had been trying to reverse the physical changes Nyara's father had made to her; now she had an inkling of why. Need wanted to make her look....

  Less like an animal. Perhaps she should have been offended when that thought occurred to her, and she was, in a way, but rather than making her angry with Need, it made her angry at her father. He was the one who had made so many changes to her body and mind that Need had been incoherent with rage for days upon discovering them. He was the "father" that had made her into a warped slave, completely in thrall to him, often unable even to act in her own defense.

  Need had done her best to reverse those changes; some she had, but they were all internal. There was no mistaking her origin; the slitted eyes alone shouted "Changechild."

  If the world saw a beast—the world would kill the beast. It was not fair, but very little in Nyara's life had ever been fair. At least this was understandable. Predictable.

  Mornelithe Falconsbane had never been that, ever.

  No one was here to see her now except Need, but when she finished plucking the pheasant, instead of tearing off a limb and devouring it raw as her stomach demanded, she gutted and cleaned it as neatly as any Tayledras hunter or hertasi cook, and set it aside.

  She tried not to think about how loud her stomach was complaining as she uncovered the coals in her firepit and fed them twigs until she had a real flame. Once she had a fire, she spitted her catch, and made a token effort to sear it.

  Once the outer skin had been crisped, she lost all patience; she seized the spit and the bird, and began gnawing.

  Need made an odd little mental sound, and Nyara had the impression that she had winced, but the sword said nothing, and Nyara ignored her in favor of satisfying her hunger.

  But when she had finished, sucking each bone clean and neatly licking her fingers dry, the blade sighed. :Tell me how the hunt went,: she said. :And show me.:

  "I saw the cock-pheasant break cover beside the stream," she said, picturing it clearly, as she had been taught. "I knew that the flock would be somewhere behind him..."

  The stalk had taken some time, but the end of the hunt came as swiftly as even Need could have wanted. She had lost only one of her carefully rounded shot, which splintered on a rock, and took one of the juvenile males with the second. She felt rather proud of herself, actually, for Need was no longer guiding her movements in hunting, or even offering advice. Although the blade could still follow her mentally if she chose, it was no longer necessary for her to be in physical contact with her bearer to remain in mental contact.

  When Nyara had fled from the Tayledras as well as her father, she had no clear notion of where she was going or what she would do. She had only known that too many things were happening at once, and too many people wanted her. Their reasons ran from well-intentioned to darkly sinister, and she had no real way of telling which from which. So she ran, and only after she had slipped out of Darkwind's ken had she discovered herself in possession of Elspeth's sword. She honestly had no memory of taking it; the blade later confessed to having influenced her to bear it off, making her forget she had done so.

  At first she had been angry and afraid, expecting pursuit; the blade was valuable enough that her father had wanted it very badly. But pursuit never came, and she realized that Elspeth was actually going to relinquish the blade to her. Such unexpected generosity left her puzzled. It would not be the last time that she was to be confused over matters in which Need was involved.

  Nyara had found the tower after a great deal of searching for a defensible lair. Need had rebuilt the upper story with her magic, strengthening it and making it habitable. It still looked deserted, and both of them had been very careful to leave no signs of occupancy. Any refuse was taken up to the flat roof and left there; vultures carried off bones and anything else edible, and the rest w
as bleached by the sun and weathered by wind and rain. Eventually the wind would carry it away, and it would be scattered below with the dead leaves.

  :You're doing well,: the sword said, finally. :Even if you do eat like a barbarian. I don't suppose table deportment is going to matter anytime soon, though.:

  Nyara was silent for a moment; now that her stomach was full and the little chamber warmed by the fire, she had leisure to consider the blade's remarks, and feel a bit of resentment. Nyara appreciated all that Need had done for her, attempting to counter the effects of twenty years of twisting and abuse, teaching her what she needed to survive. Still, sometimes the sword's thoughtless comments hurt.

  "I'm not a barbarian," she said aloud, a little resentfully. "I've seen Darkwind bolt his meals just like I did."

  :Darkwind is fully human. You are not. You are clever, intelligent, resourceful, but you are not human. Therefore you must appear to be better than humans.:

  Once again, Nyara was struck by the injustice of the situation, but this time she voiced her protest. "That's not fair," she complained. "There's no reason why I should have to act like some kind of—of trained beast to prove that I'm just as human as anyone else!"

  :You were a trained animal, Nyara,: Need replied evenly. :You aren't any longer. And we both know why.:

  Nyara shuddered, but did not reply. Instead, she cleaned up the remains of her meal, saving a few scraps to use as fishing bait on the morrow, and took everything up to the roof. As Need had mentioned, the vultures had been there already; there was little sign of yesterday's meal.

  Although the wind was cold, Nyara lingered to watch the sunset, huddled inside her crude fur tunic with her feet tucked under her. Need was right. She had been little more than a trained animal. Her father had controlled her completely, by such clever use of mingled mind-magic, pain and pleasure that a hint of punishment would throw her into uncontrollable, mindless lust, a state in which she was incapable of thinking.

  Need had freed her from that; Need had worked on her for hours, days, spending her magic recklessly in that single area, to heal her and release her from that pain-pleasure bondage. Need had watched the nomad Healer working on the Tayledras Starblade from afar, studying all that the woman did and applying the knowledge to Nyara.

  In this much, she was free; she would no longer be subject to animal rut. Although Need had not been able to "cure" her tufted ears, pointed canines, or slit-pupiled eyes, the blade had put her in control of her emotional and physical responses.

  Must I really be more than they are to be accepted as an equal? Nothing less would do, according to Need, and as she watched the stars emerge, she came to the reluctant conclusion that the blade was right. She had to be accepted as at least an equal to claim alliance with the Hawkbrothers. She needed them, and knew it, although they did not yet know how much they needed her. She had information that would be very useful to them, even if some of it was information they might have to get at using Need's mind-probing tactics. She would gladly submit to that, to have their protection.

  But to earn that, did she have to give up what she was, to take on some kind of mask of what they considered civilized? That simply wasn't fair, not after everything she had already been through! What Falconsbane had done—she didn't want to think about. And under Need's tutelage, she had not only undergone the pain that preceded Healing, but nightly—and sometimes daily—vision-quests. She had to admit there was one positive result of that; her real dreams were no longer haunted, and her nightmares had vanished completely. The sword was as hard a teacher as she could have imagined; driving her without allowance for weakness. Not only did she take Nyara through trials in her dreams, and teach her the skills that helped her survive on her own, but she launched Nyara like an arrow against whatever target she deemed suitable, giving her lessons in real combat as well as practice. Nyara had already defeated a wandering bandit and a half-mad hedge-wizard. Both had been left for the vultures when they had seen only a female alone, and attempted to take her. In both cases, Need had ultimately taken command of her body, as soon as she reckoned that Nyara had gone to the very edge of her abilities, and moved her with a skill she did not, herself, possess. There would, doubtless, be more such in the future. So why must she prove that she was something other than she was to be accepted?

  No, she decided as she watched the moon rise above the horizon. It was not fair. Need wanted too much of her.

  She descended to her tower-top chamber only to find the fire burning down to coals and the sword silent. She watched it for a moment, then shrugged philosophically and heated just enough water for a sketchy sort of bath. One advantage of her breeding, besides her owl-keen nightsight, was that the pelt of very short, very fine fur that covered her body made bathing less of a chore than it was for full humans. And one had to be very, very close to her to learn that it was for, and not just smooth skin. She wasn't entirely certain that either Skif or Darkwind had figured it out. Well—perhaps Skif had. He hadn't seemed to mind.

  Morning would arrive far too early. Although she intended to fish and not hunt, it would still be better to do so in the early morning when the fish were hungry. So as soon as she had cleaned herself, she banked the fire, and crawled into her bed of furs.

  Only then did Need speak, just as she was falling asleep.

  :Let's explore that business of "fair,": the sword said, with deceptive mildness. :Shall we?:

  Nyara was no longer Nyara; no longer a Changechild. In fact, she was no longer in the world or the body she knew.

  Except that she was Nyara; she was herself and someone else, too. She relaxed; this was something she had experienced in Need's dream-quests many times, although this was someone she'd never been before. Then she realized that this was different; strange, in a way she could not quite describe. This life—was ancient, heavy with years, and faded. She felt the experience as if through a series of muffling veils, each of which was a century.

  Her name was Vena; she was once a novice of the Sisterhood of Spell and Sword. Now she was alone, except for the sword that had once been her teacher, the Mage-Smith Sister Lashan—and ahead of her was an impossible task.

  A mage that Lashan identified as Wizard Heshain had come to the enclave of the Sisterhood with an army of men and lesser mages, capturing the Sisterhood's mage-novices and slaughtering everyone else. Vena had escaped mostly by luck, and by hiding in the forest surrounding the enclave until they all left. She had thought she was completely alone until Sister Lashan had come riding up, returning from her yearly trip to the trade-markets where she sold her bespelled blades to weapons' brokers to profit the Sisterhood.

  When she saw her teacher, she'd had no thought but to escape with her to somewhere safe. But Lashan had other ideas.

  She had questioned Vena very carefully, probing past the girl's hysteria to extract every possible detail from her. Then she had sat in silence for a long, long time.

  Her decision had not been the one that Vena had expected; to make their way to some other temple of the Twins, and seek shelter there, since it was plainly impossible for anyone to rescue the captured novices from such a powerful mage-lord. Sister Lashan had told her stunned apprentice that they—the two of them—were going to rescue their captive Sisters. She admitted that she did not know what he planned to do with the novices exactly—mostly because there were so many things he could do with a collection of variously mage-talented, untrained, mostly virginal young women. But all of the fates she outlined to her apprentice were horrible. Eventually, even Vena had to agree. They could not leave their Sisters in Heshain's hands.

  Rescue was possible. Especially if rescue could come before the caravan reached Heshain's stronghold. But there was no time to gather another small army to rescue them, assuming that anyone could be found willing to commit themselves and their troops against a mage like Heshain.

  That had left only Vena and Sister Lashan, who had decided, unbeknownst to her bewildered apprentice, that her old, worn
-out human body was just not going to be up to the task. So instead, she had chosen a new one; a body of tempered steel. A sword, to be precise; a bespelled blade, the kind she had been teaching Vena to make.

  Vena was still not certain how Sister Lashan, who had ordered her to forget that name and call her "Need" now, had ensorceled herself into the blade. She wasn't certain that she wanted to know. It had certainly involved the death of the mage herself, for she had found the Sister spitted on her own sword. She had thought that despair had overcome her mentor, and had been overwhelmed with grief—when the sword spoke into her mind.

  Now she was on the trail of Heshain and his minions, armed with a blade she scarcely knew how to use, ill-provisioned, and without the faintest idea of what she was doing. And winter was coming on. In fact, since the trail led northward, she would be walking straight into the very teeth of winter.

  But if she did not try to do something, no one would. She had no choice.

  No choice at all.

  All this, she knew in an instant, as if she had always known it. And then, she was no longer aware of Nyara—only of Vena. Only of a moment that was dim and distant, and yet, Now.

  Vena crouched above the road, belly-down in the snow, and tried to think of nothing. There was no sign that Heshain had any Thought-seekers among his men—but no sign that he didn't, either. Despite her wool and fur-lined clothing, she was aching with cold. It had been a very long time since she'd last dared to light a fire, and she couldn't remember when she'd last been warm.

  She was hungry, too. The handful of nuts and dried berries she'd eaten had only sharpened her appetite. And down below her was everything she craved. Shelter, a roaring fire, hot food—

  Trouble was, it was all in the hands of the enemy.