Crucible

by Mercedes Lackey

  Yes! It was a new mattock with a whiteoak handle. He was bringing it back from the smith where his father, a stonecutter, had commissioned it. He was thirteen, and this was the most wonderful day of his life.

  He dropped the mattock and turned to look back down the street. He heard the distinctive ringing of a Companion’s hooves on cobbles. The shouting and babbling of the street crowd died down as folk stopped, looked around, pressed back out of the way. Whispers and murmurs built up as the neighborhood folk watched Graya come trotting down the street, shining and beautiful in her blue and silver finery.

  Arvil dashed up and threw his arms around her neck. He felt her startled surprise, then a wave of humor and love.

  :Arvil, I Choose you,: she said in his mind, the first and only time she’d ever spoken to him in that way.

  He pressed his face into her satiny neck, breathing in the rich scent of clean equine. She was comfort and security and home, and he wanted to stay right there.

  His body, acting out the scene while he talked himself into leaving, made an awkward climb into Graya’s saddle.

  Chuckles from the crowd made him duck his head, but it was friendly laughter. He waved to the crowd just as his mum came dashing out of the house, following a neighbor’s daughter who’d gone to fetch her. The look of shock and then pride in his mum’s eyes was the last thing he saw before the fog came.

  That time he expected to find himself trudging up the street with the mattock. He wanted to stay and relive Graya Choosing him, but he had to leave. What could come after this? What could possibly be better?

  Arvil turned around and retraced his steps up the street, turned the corner onto the smith’s lane, and between one step and the other his surroundings shifted and he was in the tavern again.

  And right then, he knew what was happening.

  He had to go through the whole memory. Whatever it was, he had to see it through. Once the fog came, the scene was over and he could go back to the previous one.

  And somehow he knew that he had to go backward, not forward. Forward, into happier and happier memories, was the easy path, and the easy paths were always traps. What better way to bait a trap than with a person’s happiest memories?

  The way out had to be the harder one, backward.

  Arvil let go and walked through meeting Embry again, shared dinner, enjoyed the touch of his hands, the warmth of his smile. And when the fog came, Arvil walked through the door to the rainy road, and Graya, and the ambush.

  The bandits called for him to throw down his pack and give them his “horse” or be killed. Graya trumpeted defiance, and Arvil drew his sword.

  She reared up and lashed out with her hooves while Arvil swung at a bandit trying to pull him from his mount. Graya’s hooves struck a skull and a shoulder, and Arvil’s sword slashed deep into a forearm.

  His heart pounded in his throat. He knew what was coming, tried to knee Graya to one side, but his leg—his good leg—refused to obey him. Just as one of the bandits found his brain and cried, “Herald!” an arrow swished out of the bushes and found Graya’s chest.

  Graya neighed, loud with pain and anger, and snapped at another bandit. Arvil slid off her back and lay about him with his sword, letting his own fury and fear give him strength. The bandits retreated, leaving their injured behind to bleed, those who couldn’t stumble away on their own.

  Arvil removed the arrow as gently as he could, bandaged Graya up, and walked with her, slowly, to the nearest village, letting the rain wash them of blood. Every step was torture, and even knowing she’d live and heal, he felt the agonized fear for her life that he’d felt the first time. It was a long walk, through the night and into the next morning, and Arvil had to live through every trudging pace of it.

  Finally, as they bedded down in a loose box after a wizened stablemaster had done a more professional job of patching Graya up and declared that she would live, the fog came.

  Arvil trotted back up the road and walked into the classroom.

  Accusations, protests, staring, scorn, shame. Arvil wanted to leave. Knowing he could made it harder, but he stiffened his spine and let the horrible class play out. Herald Kevran finally cast the Truth Spell, and the tension in the room broke.

  Not completely—there were still stares and whispers. Kevran sent them back to their desks and their exam. Arvil hunched down and finished the test, handed in the paper, and scurried out the door, into the fog.

  Back on the stairs.

  Arvil stopped, leaned against the wall for a moment, took a few deep breaths. He could do this. He had to do it.

  One. Two. Three. Go.

  Jaw clenched, he barreled down the steps, ignoring Graya’s trumpeting distress behind him, focusing on down, on chasing the fleeing Lord Halrid.

  He watched for the trick step, but he couldn’t force himself to hop over it. His foot landed, and the step rotated underneath him, sending him tumbling down. He bounced off the wall, then again, falling, hitting, and finally landed in a moaning, panting heap.

  His femur was broken, he knew. And two ribs. And he had had more than one knock on the head. All he knew was stomach-clenching pain and fear and a desperate wish to be anywhere else, doing anything else.

  Unconscious would be good.

  He waited, each gasp a jab in the chest, and lay there trying to find a position that would ease his broken leg, knowing there was none.

  Arvil watched the downward curve of the stairs, and soon Halrid approached, first cautious and then gloating.

  Arvil kicked at him with his good leg, but Halrid grabbed his foot and turned to head back down the stairs, dragging Arvil behind him. The knee of Arvil’s broken leg banged against the curved inner wall, his broken ribs thumped on the steps, and his head bounced off both as he flailed and twisted, trying to escape. Halrid had a good grip on his boot, though, and hauled him along.

  By the time they got to the bottom of the stairs, Arvil’s throat was hoarse from screaming. His body was a throbbing mass of pain, and he could only moan when Halrid paused to open a stout wooden door, then dragged him into a small room and heaved him up onto a table in its center.

  Blurred vision barely made out the outlines of maps on the walls, cases of books and implements he couldn’t identify, and a few chairs. Arvil knew he should be taking in as much as he could, searching for a weapon, any opportunity to escape, but he’d been here before and knew there was none.

  “What does the Queen know?” Halrid slammed a fist into Arvil’s broken leg and Arvil found he could scream again after all. “Is the army coming? What do they know?”

  “Bugger yourself!” gasped Arvil around pained sobs.

  “Where’s the other one? Is she fetching the army? Tell me!” The fist slammed into the broken ribs that time, and Arvil gasped out curses.

  Herald Jinnia, Trainee Arvil’s partner and mentor, was at that moment chasing nonexistent rebels through the hills at the edge of Halrid’s land. It would be hours before she realized she’d been lured on a snipe hunt.

  Telling Halrid that his schemes had worked, that nobody was coming, no army, no one but a battered Trainee and a Herald out chasing mist—telling him that would only encourage him to go on with his plans, which had involved murdering everyone in his demesne who might be a threat, under cover of putting down a rebellion. He’d displayed nearly a hundred bodies before he was done—all declared bandits or rebels—before a regiment of soldiers, along with half a dozen Heralds to cast Truth Spells, had been able to clean up the mess and hang Halrid on his own gallows.

  No one could mend the anger and grief of the families who’d lost loved ones, though, honest folk who’d stood up to protest. By the end, Halrid had been executing anyone who mentioned the name of someone he’d hanged.

  Arvil had to do whatever he could to stop it, or at least slow it down.

  He let his younger body t
ake over, glaring up at his tormentor while gasping for breath, then set his jaw and put on a mask of defiance. Exactly how a Herald would behave if he had important information that he absolutely refused to give to an enemy.

  More blows came, and Arvil gasped out insults and curses. He watched through swollen eyes as Halrid’s face twisted into a mask of rage and worry.

  Arvil gathered himself for one more surge, then flung himself at Halrid with the last of his strength. That final, impossible attack convinced Halrid that the young Herald was stronger than he actually was, and Halrid misjudged his retaliation. A beefy fist impacted Arvil’s temple, and with a last moan of pain he lost consciousness.

  The room faded, blackness swirled into fog, which clung to him for a long moment, then melted away.

  Arvil found himself lying on cracked stone strewn with rotted wood and dirt and years of dead leaves. He cried out in pain and jerked into a sitting position, gasping for breath and feeling every one of his old aches and stiffness.

  He stood and looked around. The doorway was a slightly lighter dark than that of the interior, with a twisted lump in front of it.

  Arvil walked slowly over to the lump, straining to make out what it was. Suddenly it resolved into Graya, lying on her side—with a huge serpent attached to her hind end!

  It was devouring her, was big enough to be devouring her. Arvil shouted a wordless cry of anger and drew his sword.

  For all its size, the snake couldn’t easily spit out something it’d begun to eat, and Arvil hacked at the thing, cursing and calling to Graya to wake up. It thrashed with its tail, trying to smack him away, but its movements were awkward. Arvil dodged most of the blows, and the rest were nothing compared with what he’d just relived. Within minutes, he’d hacked the thing’s head off. He dropped his sword, kneeling to carefully extract Graya’s legs from its mouth.

  She had some gashes from the thing’s teeth, but nothing too deep. Snakes didn’t chew up their prey, thank the Lady.

  But even once free, Graya didn’t wake.

  She had to be caught in her own memory trap. The villagers, the ones who made it this far, must have been caught too, and devoured. He felt a twinge of sorrow for them, but his focus was on Graya.

  Before he could even begin to think of what he could do to free her, a voice like a breath of wind called from deep within the tower.

  “Well done, boy. You are worthy to join me. Together, we shall conquer.”

  Arvil jumped to his feet, grabbing his sword once more, but there was no one there.

  “Where are you? Who are you?”

  “Come and meet me, boy,” said the wind. “Up.”

  Arvil glanced at Graya, then turned away and went deeper into the tower. The whole place smelled of dust and rot and bird droppings.

  A gap in the back wall led to a spiral stairway leading up. Arvil shuddered, but he climbed, carefully.

  He passed two landings, something urging him higher. On the fourth floor, the stair ended, and the room opened out into a wide space with crumbling walls and no ceiling. Splintered and rotted beams lay jumbled on the floor, like a child’s game of cast-sticks. Dirt and stones and more bird droppings layered everything.

  By the dim light of the crescent moon, a man-shaped mist floated in the center of the space. “Come here, boy,” the wind whispered.

  Arvil approached slowly and stopped a few paces away.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Tal,” said the wind. “The greatest Mage of this age, now that Ma’ar is gone.”

  “You’ve heard of Ma’ar?” Even after the swirling chaos of the Mage Storms and the defeat just a few months earlier of Falconsbane, or Ma’ar, or whatever he’d called himself at the end, few people had heard of him in any of his guises.

  “I knew him of old. We were allies, but I knew he would turn on me, crush me when he no longer had need of me.” The mist shape shivered, expanded, contracted.

  “I cast a spell to bring allies of my own. Some came, none lasted. I am patient. I waited. Ma’ar’s power grew, changed. I withdrew. But he is gone now. I returned. You are here, and we will rule.”

  Arvil stared, scowling. “You think I’ll help you?”

  “You will.”

  Arvil paced closer, gripping his sword even though he knew it would do him little good against a spirit. “We defeated Ma’ar. You feared him. You should fear us.”

  “You? Who are you?” demanded the wind. The mist trembled and shifted into a mass of waving tendrils, threatening.

  “The people of this land and of this time. We defeated Ma’ar for good, and we’ll defeat you as well if you try to conquer us.”

  “I will rule! I have waited too long!” The tendrils of mist lunged out at Arvil, faster than he’d ever imagined mist could go, and then they were on him, twining around him, penetrating him.

  It was . . . cold. He shivered and tried to twist free, but the mist stayed with him, oozing through him in a way that made his flesh try to creep away wherever it touched.

  But that was all.

  The wind raged and cackled, crying, “I will destroy you! I could have given you a place at my feet, but you are a fool!” It swirled around him, but it didn’t seem to be doing anything except make him wish he had a heavier cloak.

  Did the spirit, Tal, even know he was dead?

  He’d lurked there in the tower for how long? Ages—over two thousand years, if he’d lived in Ma’ar’s time. That was long enough to drive anyone mad.

  Ignoring the foggy ghost, Arvil stepped carefully over to where the spirit had first appeared. There was a heap of wood, and poking through it, he found enough pieces to see that it was a throne.

  What was it about would-be rulers and thrones?

  Underneath the seat, he found a skull rattling around in a muck-caked crown. The wind howled around him, screaming boasts and threats alike, but Arvil ignored it. He set the skull onto the stone floor and brought the pommel of his sword down on it as hard as he could.

  The ancient bone shattered into brittle pieces, and with a last shriek, the spirit vanished.

  Arvil listened, heard nothing but the rustling of leaves, the calling of night birds, and the song of crickets.

  Then through the night air came a whinny.

  “Graya! Coming!” He scrambled back across the debris-strewn floor and started down the stairs. From the position of the moon, he guessed dawn would come soon.

  They’d return to the villagers bearing bad news, but confirmation of deaths was better than never knowing. At least they could mourn and have some peace.

  And their memories. Everyone had their memories.

  The Quiet Gift

  Anthea Sharp

  Shandara Tem let the last chord ring from her harp, the notes filling Master Bard Tangeli’s office with triumphant sound.

  The crackling fire on the hearth was the only sound in the room besides the final notes. Master Tangeli sat in his armchair, fingers steepled beneath his neatly trimmed gray beard. He did not smile, did not move from his pensive pose.

  As the last vibrations faded from the harp, Shandara’s smile faded from her face, too. “Did you . . . like my new composition?”

  She had hoped for more. A nod of approval from her instructor at least, if not warm applause. Anything but this studied silence.

  “Valor” was one of her best compositions. She knew it was—an homage to the bards of yore and their service to Valdemar. Surely it was good enough to convince the Bardic Council to elevate her from Trainee to full Bard. Already several of her friends had donned their Scarlets and left Haven, leaving her increasingly impatient to do the same.

  A flurry of snowflakes danced past the windows, and the golden glow of the lamps warmed the intricately patterned carpet beneath Shandara’s feet. The weight of the harp was comforting against her right shoulder as
she waited. And waited.

  At last, Master Tangeli spoke. “The melodic line is lovely. Very well suited to your soprano voice—and the interweaving chords lend a strong backdrop to your lyrics. Especially the minor to major substitutions. But . . . something is missing. As I’m sure you are aware.”

  Failure settled coldly in the pit of her stomach, as though she’d swallowed a lump of ice.

  “I’m trying, Master,” she said. “Surely you felt some excitement as you listened?”

  “I felt moved by your talent, certainly.” He shook his head. “But not by your Gift.”

  Shandara took a deep breath, swallowing the discouraged lump in her throat. It wasn’t professional to cry in front of one’s instructor, and she refused to do so.

  But it also wasn’t fair. She had done everything in her power to evoke the emotions of her song; she’d tried her utmost to activate her Bardic Gift and let it carry that sense of honor and triumph to her audience.

  “I’d hoped this would be the piece,” she said softly, running her right hand up and down the smooth pine of her harp’s soundbox.

  “It is a strong composition,” Master Tangeli said. “Very complex. And though I know you are disappointed, promise me you’ll perform at the Midwinter Recital next week.”

  She dropped her gaze to the carpet. Could she bear to debut her new song before the Collegium and have it meet with failure?

  “Perhaps the energy of playing before a large audience will unlock your sporadic Gift more fully,” her instructor added.

  That was the maddening part. Shandara had the Bardic Gift, but it was so elusive! Before she’d come to the Collegium, she had made her younger siblings dance and laugh or weep bitterly, depending on the song she played. She’d been so certain that her prodigious talents would earn her full Bard status and her Scarlets at a remarkably early age.

  Instead, she’d seen most of her yearmates depart for positions in noble houses, while she remained behind. Still a Trainee.

  She’d always been a talented musician—one of the best harpers he’d ever seen, Master Tangeli had told her. But the harder she worked, the less reliable her Gift became.