Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  The musical group consisted of the tervardi, two hertasi playing drums, and four Tayledras who played harp, gittern, flute, and some sort of horn, respectively. It was soon evident, once they struck up a melody, that the tervardi was their vocalist.

  It was also evident why; no human voice could duplicate the haunting sounds that emerged from the tervardi’s fluttering throat as it broke into song.

  Havens! Darian thought, listening with his mouth agape. No wonder they never sing for anyone but Hawkbrothers! They‘d be carried off before you could say “soprano “.’

  “There was a thriving trade in tervardi entertainment-slaves in the distant past, until the survivors managed to gather under the protection of’the Vales,” a voice said softly behind him. He turned, to’find himself gazing into the eyes of a second tervardi, this one drably plumaged in black and red-brown. Well, “drab” compared with the first one’s black and scarlet; her markings were quite lovely, and if he hadn’t already seen the male, he’d have thought her quite striking.

  The enormous eyes, so dark a brown as to seem black, gazed back at him with no expression that he could read. “It was easy for the slavers to get what they wished from us,” the female (the singer’s mate?) continued, her voice a softer version of the singer’s though no less melodious. “After all, what male would not sing, when his captors threatened to torture his mate and female chicks if he refused?”

  She saw that I’m not born Tayledras, and she’s testing me - but what should I say? “What song could sound sweet under those conditions?” he countered, after a moment of blankness. “Whoever would order such an atrocity had no heart. The only songs worth hearing are those sung in happiness and freedom.”

  He had only thought that he could not read the tervardi; now he realized that she had the same feather-language as the bondbirds. When she first spoke, her feathers had been slicked down with tension; now she relaxed, the feathers around her beak puffed up, and her face looked rounder and softer than it had a moment ago.

  “You speak wisely for one so young,” she replied, ith trilling chuckle - or a chuckling trill. “What bird fly you?”

  “Kuari, fledged of Huur and Hweel,” he replied promptly, and held out his arm, with a quick Mindtouch to Kuari himself. He braced himself for the weight as Kuari came in, and ducked his head a little to avoid the impact of those huge, silently powerful wings. The only warning that Kuari was near came when the wind his wingstrokes created made a second storm of all the flower petals scattered about.

  His arm strained as Kuari settled gently on the guard, and the great talons closed carefully about the leather. The tervardi trilled something at Kuari, who cocked his head to listen, then replied in a series of soft hoots like those made to nestlings. Then he closed his eyes and reached out with his beak to preen a strand of Darian’s hair.

  The tervardi chuckled again and relaxed further, her facial feathers puffed up so that her beak nearly disappeared. She held out a four-taloned hand - three long claws and one short and opposed, exactly like a thumb. Darian took it without fear.

  “Rrrillia k’Treva,” she said.

  “Darian Firkin k’Valdemar k’Vala,” he replied.

  “A long name,” she observed. “You have not changed it in Tayledras fashion?”

  He shrugged. “I thought about it, but - Tayledras take new use-names when they change, and I haven’t changed, not really. I’m still Darian, with more knowledge and more memories, and a bit more common sense, I hope. I have more skills now, and I’ve got more friends. But when you come down to it, I’m still myself. I’ve grown, but I haven’t changed.”

  “Then wear the name you are, Darian Firkin k’Valdemar k’Vala,” she told him firmly. Suddenly, with the lightning change of topic he was to come to associate with tervardi, asked, “And what think you of Sarrrsee’s singing?”

  He waved his hands helplessly at that. “Unbelievable!” he finally managed, “Indescribable! I could listen to him all night!”

  “Well, with pauses for refreshment, that opportunity you will have, passager,” she said, clearly very pleased with his reaction. “Indeed, on so romantic an occasion, we are to sing courting ballads, we two. And that, for outsiders to hear, is rare.” .

  He bowed, hoping that also would please her. “Then I hope you will allow me to than you in place of my brother Snowfire and his mate, who will be enchanted - and overwhelmed - by the honor you do them.”

  Now she laughed aloud, a silvery gurgle of sound, and spread her arm pinions. “Oh, you are wasted among the mages, passager,” she crowed. “Such delicate speeches mark you as an Elder afore the time!”

  She didn’t give him a chance to reply to that, turning away instead and taking the platform with the other musicians.

  Somehow, the group of musicians managed to go from the first song straight into the next without pause to consult one another - although it was entirely possible they were using Mindtouch instead. The second melody must have been one of the “courting songs,” for first the male sang, then the female, trading melodies and replies until the two strains joined in unexpected harmonies. Darian gathered Kuari to his chest and absently scratched the owl’s back and neck - much to Kuari’s pleasure - while he listened with his eyes closed to be able to better concentrate on the music.

  This song came to a definite end with a moment of silence followed by applause and cheers. Darian opened his eyes again to see the two tervardi bowing slightly in acknowledgment - and the female looked directly at him and deliberately winked before turning her attention back to the rest.

  The musicians launched into a piece that was purely instrumental, and Darian gave Kuari a boost back into the air so that he could rejoin the other bondbirds in the canopy. Then he wandered off, intending to find something a little more substantial than the tiny savories being handed around by the hertasi. He hadn’t eaten since he woke up; Ayshen had kicked him out of bed far too early, and he’d been running errands since. He’d really felt too keyed up to eat anyway, but now that everything was safely over, and nothing disastrous had occurred, he was starving.

  And a couple of tiny bites of sausage-stuffed pastry weren’t going to take the edge off his hunger either.

  The most logical place to look first was the guest lodge - and going there had the added advantage that he could take off his wedding finery and put on something he wouldn’t have to worry about ruining. Once he made his way to the point where the crowd thinned out a little, he made decent progress to the far side of the Vale - although the temptations to stop were many. Besides the group of musicians from k’Treva Vale that included the two tervardi, there were other musicians from k’Vala scattered here and there, carefully positioned so that no group’s music interfered with the music from another individual or group. Darian passed three individual musicians and two groups on his way to the guest lodges; the groups had set up in spaces big enough to allow for dancing. One group was playing a slow-paced, couples dance, and the second a faster, heavily syncopated group dance.

  As he had suspected, the hot pools were in use, though as it was early in the day, they were not heavily crowded. It was a bit of a surprise to see the number of people swimming, though.

  That isn’t my idea of what you do at a wedding - well, maybe I’m just being provincial.

  Wonderful aromas met his nose before he even reached the door of the guest lodges, and the tempting array of food spread out there made him waver in his resolution to change before he ate. Only the fact that his favorite foods were always the messiest to eat made him stick to it, even though the scents seemed to follow him down the corridors and into his room to taunt him.

  He changed quickly, retaining only the new silver belt from his wedding costume, andssprinted back down the corridors, tracking the scents with his nose in the air like a hungry hound.

  A short time later, blissfully nibbling on a square of pastry wrapped around a filling of finely chopped nuts and honey, he felt ready to join the rest of the
Vale. He strolled out into the open and started back toward the dy-heli meadow.

  Darian stopped long enough to listen to one of the solo musicians, then obtained something to drink from a passing hertasi and went on to his destination. Arriving just in time for the tervardi to begin singing again, he sat himself down near the platform on the soft grass and proceeded to lose himself for some undefined length of time while the music created fantasies in his mind.

  When he emerged from the spell that the music cast on him, he found that he had company. Beside him, with her blue eyes still filled with the dreams that tervardi singing sent into her mind, was Summerdance.

  He had not seen her for the last few days, but that was no great surprise, as they had both been working on the wedding preparations and their errands hadn’t overlapped. In addition, she was apprenticed to Steelmind, the specialist in plants who was the caretaker (among other things) of most of the garden spots in the Vale, including the herb garden. As a consequence, she hadn’t had any free time over the past three or four days.

  He was happy to see her at last, and glad that he had hanged into what had been his “best” outfit until he got the one for the wedding. She certainly looked spectacular, gowned in something silken that flowed over her, a waterfall of luminous fabric in several shades of green. She wore as ornaments a collar of braided gold, silver, and copper wire, with strands of crystal beads and feathers braided into her black hair.

  She smiled at him, and nodded her head at the platform. “What do you think?” she asked. “This is the fourth time I’ve heard this group; they travel among the Vales, and we try to get them to come once every year or so, but this is the first time they’ve come for a pledging.”

  He tried to come up with enough superlatives and failed. “It’s the kind of singing you hear in dreams and know you can’t reproduce when you wake up,” he said finally. “There’s nothing like it.”

  “And nothing more beautiful, except when a tervardi flock sings in chorus, and I’ve only heard that once,” she agreed. “I had to go to k’Treva for that, but it was worth the journey. I got to see them dance, besides singing. Do you dance, at all, in Valdemar?”

  “Every chance we get,” he laughed. “But if you’re asking if I, personally, dance - I do, and I learned a couple of dances from the team while I was with them, too. Is this an invitation?”

  “Well, the group is taking a break, so there isn’t anything going on here for a while,” she pointed out. “And it’s a lot more fun to dance when you have a partner. Round dances are all right for children, but couple dances and group dances are livelier and more interesting.”

  “That’s the truth,” he agreed as he stood up, then extended a hand to her to help her to her feet. He took the lead, since he knew where the dancing circles had been set up, and as luck would have it, the first one they came to was just starting a new set as they arrived.

  He soon saw how she had gotten her use-name; she as quick, graceful, light on her feet, and evidently untiring. He had no intention of quitting before she was ready, and found himself panting and with a raging thirst by the time the musicians paused for a break themselves. He was half afraid that she’d suggest finding one of the other dancing circles, but she took pity on him. Laughing, she led him to the side of the circle and left him for a moment, only to return with cool drinks for both of them.

  He didn’t know any of the people they’d been dancing with, but they all knew who hie was - not so difficult since he was the only outsider in the Clan! With his brown hair and eyes he couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else, not when the only variation on blue eyes, golden skin, and black hair among Tayledras or Kaled’a’in was the blue eyes, golden skin, and white hair of mages who’d worked with Heartstone and node magic.

  Oh, not quite true - some scouts, if they had white hair, dyed it in patterns spring through autumn to camouflage themselves. But none of them had plain brown hair.

  For the most part, his erstwhile dancing partners were just as winded as he was, and the hertasi circulating among them with more of the refreshing mint-flavored drink soon found themselves emptyhanded. Summerdance was the only one who still had breath to talk; she introduced him to the other dancers, but he promptly forgot most of their names. He had just about caught his breath and cooled down when the musicians began again and she drew him back into the circle for another round.

  It wasn’t until after the third round was complete that she professed herself tired, and by that time his legs were getting wobbly. When she suggested a hot soak, he was only too happy to agree.

  But when she led him, not in the direction of the communal pools, but down a tiny, vine-shadowed path that threaded between trees away from the sounds of celebration, he started to wonder if she had something more than a soak in mind.

  Steady on, he told himself. She just might want some privacy rather than the mob.

  But things were certainly promising to be interesting. . . .

  She stopped at a place where the path appeared to end, and parted a curtain of flowering vines. On the other side of the vines lay a bubbling pool, one fed, obviously, by the same hot springs that fed the communal pools. Beside the pool on a small stone bench was a thick pile of towels - well, why not? It wasn’t as if they were going to get rained on in the middle of a Vale!

  “Here, isn’t this better than jostling for a space with everyone else?” she asked, as she slipped unselfconsciously out of her dress and into the pool without making so much as a splash. He lost no time in following her example; the water was deliciously hot, and all of his tired muscles melted under its influence.

  Ah, there is no comparison with Errold’s Grove! he thought blissfully, as he closed his eyes and slumped until his chin touched the surface of the pool. Here I am, entirely alone with Summerdance, no one will care what we do or don’t do - she’s of age, I’m of age, that’s all there is to it. Back home, if anybody found me with a girl like this, her father would be hunting me down with a pack of male relatives and her mother would be making wedding arrangements.

  He took a peek out of one eye at Summerdance; apparently she wasn’t as inexhaustible as she’d been at pains to appear, for she was relaxing in the water with the same expression he’d been wearing. Beads of moisture collected on her forehead, and the hair around her face started to curl in the heat and damp.

  “Where are we, exactly?” he asked, having only a vague notion of how far they had gone.

  “At the farthest end of the Vale. My ekele’s up there.” She pointed straight up, and he followed her pointing finger with his eyes. Squinting upward through the rising team, past vines and foliage obscuring everything, he made out a bit of staircase against a trunk, and what might have been a piece of floor. “I got tired of having to tramp forever to get a hot soak - or to have to tramp forever after I got a hot soak. When we got a reasonable amount of magic back, and I got to pick something I wanted, I picked this.”

  “Good choice,” he said, closing his eyes and leaning back again.

  But not before he’d managed to find a fresh blossom growing within reach.

  Now came the moment for internal debate. So, do I offer her a flower? In Tayledras terms, especially in a situation like this one, offering Summerdance a flower would express without words not just his admiration for her, but that he wanted to share decidedly more than just her platonic company. Chased, rather than chaste, as the saying went. It wasn’t that he was debating whether he wanted to offer her a flower, he was debating the etiquette of it. This was her pool, beneath her ekele; her territory, so to speak. So, did he make the first overture, or would it be polite to wait and see if she did? But what if she was waiting for him to express an interest? What if she would be disappointed and hurt if he didn’t make the offer?

  Of course, all this might be innocent, simply companionable. But among the Tayledras, being offered a flower didn’t imply acceptance, and she could always turn him down.

  I’m thinking too much. He re
ached out and picked the flower without opening his eyes, held it for a moment, then turned toward her. “Ah, Summerdance?”

  He opened his eyes as he spoke.

  Only to stare at her, seeing that she had just turned and was offering him a flower at the same moment.

  They stared at each other for a long breath, then broke nto helpless laughter, leaning into each other’s arms for support.

  Then, when their laughter faded, they found other things to share.

  Sunset, normally all but imperceptible beneath the huge trees, was spectacular from Summerdance’s ekele high in the boughs of a tree on the edge of the clearing - and they were both in a position to appreciate and pay attention to the sight by then. Still, neither Darian nor Summerdance was prepared to end the celebration quite so early, so they collected themselves and their belongings and rejoined the dancing just as dusk fell. Special illuminations had been planned for after dark, effects that required magic, and Darian was happy to see that they appeared on schedule. Even though he wasn’t in charge of the entertainment, he had something of a proprietary interest in it.

  The main event was a display of underwater lighting, with constantly changing colors, beneath the cascades of one of the more elaborate waterfall-arrangements. It had three levels of falling water, with each of the three levels subdivided into additional cascades, all plunging into a small, but deep, pool, frequently used for acrobatic play and roughhousing. No one swam there tonight. Mage-lights glowed behind the falling water from within recesses in the rocks, and one in the bottom of the pool turned the foaming water into a froth of light. The clever mage who’d planned this was at hand to control the changing colors, so that no sequence was ever repeated.

  “You know,” Summerdance remarked, as they spotted Nightwind and Snowfire among those admiring the cascades, “I think it’s just as well that they already got their real pledging over with while all of you were out there - ” she waved her hand vaguely in the direction of Valdemar. “If this had been their real pledging instead of an excuse for an enormous party, they’d have been missing all of his, or else they’d feel as if they had to pretend to enjoy it when all the while they really just wanted to be alone together. As it is now, this is just a celebration that happened to involve them, but it’s more like an anniversary party. So they can relax and enjoy it along with everyone else.”