Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar v(-101

by Mercedes Lackey

  “So we’re due for a change of luck,” Kethry replied, with no hint of irony. “She owes us one. Maybe she’s responding to our hunger pangs by finding us a good client.”

  “Maybe you’re living in a dream world,” Tarma growled under her breath. “Not that it matters all that much. We still have to get out of here, and whoever this is, if they have food, we’ll already be ahead of where we were.”

  In answer, Kethry nudged the gray flanks of the warsteed again, moving her into a slightly faster pace. Tarma knew that sign by now; the magical pull on Kethry was getting stronger.

  They rode over the top of a hill and found themselves staring down a long flat slope that went on for leagues, until abruptly, as if at an invisible line that marked a place where sanity ended. The landscape changed abruptly, from the rolling, manicured fields to steep, rock-crowned hills, whose tops rose above a forest of trees so tortured and twisted it looked as if some sadistic giant had been wrenching their limbs about.

  “In the Pelagirs, then,” Tarma sighed, “Oh, hold back my surprise.”

  They were stopped at the border by guards who were immensely suspicious of anyone who wanted to go into the Pelagirs, and from the look of the fortified wall they were going to have to pass under, the Duchy put a lot of time and effort trying to keep things from the Pelagirs out.

  After dealing with their questions for the better part of a candlemark, Tarma finally lost patience. She glared at the guards, and silently summoned Warrl, who rose up from where he had been hidden in the grass of the ditch

  He moved in to stand by her side as the guards became very still. Tarma looked their officer in the eyes.

  “We just want to go home,” she said tonelessly.

  Within moments they were looking back at the closed gate from the Pelagirs side of the wall.

  “You know, they’re never going to let us back in there,” Kethry remarked in a conversational tone.

  “I can live with that,” Tarma replied. “At least there are enough normal animals in here that we can hunt.”

  Her stomach growled agreement.

  At least Kethry didn’t take off across country, following the sometimes-elusive trace that her sword would give her. She allowed Hellsbane to trot sensibly along what passed for a road here, which was a faint track among the trees. Tarma kept a sharp eye out for game, but just as importantly, so did Warrl. Warrl, with his keen nose and sharper eyesight, should be able to pick out what was safe for them to eat.

  But the forest was deserted. She would have said, “strangely deserted,” but these were the Pelagirs, and nothing much was strange there.

  Ever.

  Her stomach growled.

  “Mushrooms?” she suggested to Kethry. “Watercress?”

  Kethry shook her head. “I wouldn’t try it,” she advised. “Very bad idea. You can have no idea what’s been changed in the blasted things. Maybe they wouldn’t be poisonous, but do you really want to find yourself in the middle of hallucinations or intoxicated to the point you can’t stand up?”

  Well, no.

  Silent forest with the silence interrupted only by the faroff drip of water and the dull thudding of the warsteeds’ hooves on the turf.

  And, of course, by the growling of Tarma’s stomach.

  :I believe, mind-mate, I have found Kethry’s goal,: came the familiar voice in Tarma’s mind, at the same time that Kethry said, “By the feel of things, my target is—”

  They rode up over a rise.

  “—there,” Kethry finished.

  It certainly looked that way. In the valley below, in what looked like a temporary camp, was a woman. A particularly ageless-looking woman with a relatively unlined face despite a coiled mass of silver hair fastened in place with pins, a little plump, but otherwise in very good physical shape. There was no way of telling what she was from her costume, a well-made set of brown riding leathers with a split skirt rather than breeches or trews. There were three horses with her, all with saddles. There were two ominous mounds of earth off to the side of the camp.

  She looked up and spotted them at the top of the ridge line, and regarded them thoughtfully.

  Tarma knew what she would see: sitting on a matched pair of ugly gray horses, big-boned and big-headed, were two women. The one in the buff-colored traveling robes (also with a split skirt) or a sorceress of the White Winds school, had a pretty, soft face, a mass of amber-colored hair pulled back into a tail—and the end of a sword sticking up over her right shoulder. The other, in the all-black leather and armor of a Shin’a’in Swordsworn, had the hawklike features, black hair, prominent nose, and golden-tanned skin typical of her race. Her hair had not yet grown out, and only brushed the tops of her shoulders; it was held in place by a leather headband to keep it out of her eyes. A sword hilt also protruded over her right shoulder, there was a quiver hanging from her left hip, a bow in a bow sheath at the saddle, and probably far more knives than the woman even dreamed possible both hidden and openly sheathed on Tarma’s person. Beside Tarma was Warrl, a kyree, a creature who came from this part of the world. About the size of a young calf, with a wolfish head, but a body more like that of one of the big, speedster hunting cats of the Dhorisha Plains, Warrl was a small army in and of himself.

  Whatever was wrong, the woman did not appear to be in immediate danger. That was probably why Need hadn’t been prodding Kethry with the goad of pain into speeding down the road at a breakneck speed.

  She also wasn’t intimidated by them. Which was interesting. Although there were not many female bandits, such things weren’t unknown. Which implied that, whoever or whatever she was, the woman thought she could handle herself against two armed people and a large and dangerous beast.

  They looked down; she looked up. Finally, she spoke.

  “So,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’re for hire?”’

  They rode down the slope slowly. Tarma was all for saying “Yes!” then and there, but Kethry, for once, was more cautious. “What happened here?” she asked.

  The woman sighed. “I’m on my way to keep an appointment with a—colleague. I had two temporary fighters with me. While I was off taking the horses to water them, I left them here to set up camp, and something attacked them, I heard the commotion, but by the time I got back here, it was too late.”

  Tarma did not bother to ask “what,” because clearly if the woman had known, she would have told them.

  “Signs?” she asked instead.

  “Something large with a lot of teeth and claws,” she replied. “Magic; the aura was all over the place. And it didn’t want to face me, so magic probably was its one vulnerability.” She glanced away from them, up the road leading deeper into the Pelagirs. “I’ve been here before. That condition isn’t going to hold for long.”

  Sensible, too. Once again, Tarma almost said. “we’re available” when Keth forestalled her.

  “Conditions of employment?” she asked coolly.

  Well, that was a change. Need’s prodding must be nothing but a little nag in the back of her head. The woman started to answer when Tarma’s stomach announced to the universe just how hungry she was.

  The woman looked startled, then laughed.

  “First condition is that I feed you,” she said, with a shrewd smile. “I’d much rather negotiate with the sleepy and satisfied than the lean and hungry,”

  It was trail food: dried beef, bread you could drive a nail with.

  Tarma didn’t care. At this point she would readily have broken teeth into order to get something to her stomach. Her stomach wasn’t objecting either. Negotiations and meal concluded about the same time; the woman drove a hard, hard bargain. Nothing up front; fee to be paid only at the conclusion of the journey.

  On the other hand, what did they have to spend coin on out here? And finally they got their employer’s name. Nanca Jente. Sorceress who claimed no particular affiliation.

  “How do you feel about riding in the dark?” Nanca asked, as they shook hands o
n the bargain. “Full moon tonight, and I’ve lost most a lot of time here.”

  The two exchanged glances. “I’ve got no objections,” Tarma said, “But I’m not the one that makes the decision on whether or not to move in the dark.” And she cast a significant look at Hellsbane and Ironheart.

  Nanca followed her look, and raised one silver eyebrow. “All right,” she said. “If your horses refuse to move, we stop.”

  And as it happened, the moon rose large and bright, and though the warsteeds slowed their pace to an ambling walk, they were able to see well enough that they didn’t actually object to moving through the night. At least until the moon began to descend. And at that point, both mares snorted and made their objections to going on in pitch dark known.

  For her part Tarma was nodding off in the saddle, and though Nanca groused and grumbled, she didn’t do so for long. The “camp” that they made was sketchy at best; they only unpacked their bedrolls, arranged the horses around them, and crawled into the blankets in the dark

  They were on their way again at dawn. Tarma got the impression of a certain amount of urgency, as if their employer had a deadline she had to meet. So she pushed the warsteeds a little more than she might otherwise have done, and with three mounts to switch off, Nanca was well able to keep up.

  And so it was that they reached their goal on the second day, just as the sun began to set. Which was about at the point where Tarma gave serious thought to walking on their deal.

  Because their goal was a Gate.

  “You didn’t say anything about a Gate,” Kethry said, as the three of them stared down into the little valley. The thing was alive and active, too; the pillars on either side shimmered with energy, and the strange blackness that was the hallmark of any active Gate pulled and tugged on the eyes in a way calculated to make whoever was looking at it feel sick.

  “You didn’t either,” their employer pointed out. “Is it an issue?”

  “You don’t know where those things come out,” Tarma objected, with a glance at her partner.

  “Ah, but I do,” Nanca replied, with the faintest of smiles. “It comes out in the place where I am supposed to meet my colleague.”

  Of course it did. “And then what?” Tarma demanded.

  “Then you continue to do what I contracted to you for. You guard me and fight off anything physical that comes to attack me and I deal with anything of a magical nature, until we reach my colleague, and once we are there, I pay you and he provides the exit point, which will drop you through another Gate relatively near the Dhorisha Plains.” Nanca shrugged. “After that, where you go is your business.”

  That was another thing. Granted, Kethry was probably not the magician that Nanca was—but why forbid her to work magic at all?

  Unless it was because the nature of what lay on the other side of that Gate was of such a strange nature that Nanca didn’t want a sorceress unfamiliar with it meddling with it.. . . .

  Tarma and Kethry exchanged another glance. And finally Tarma fingered the mind-bond that held her to Warrl.

  What do you think? she left lying on the surface of her thoughts.

  :I think that I sense deception in her, but no harm. Whatever is going on here, she intends nothing unfortunate for us, nor does she foresee anything unfortunate.:

  Hmm . . .

  Nanca dug into her saddlebags and passed over journey bread to both of them. Tarma gnawed on it while she thought, looking and not-looking at the Gate. In the end, it was her full stomach that decided her. Nanca was certainly right about that part.

  “Let’s go.”

  Now it was Nanca who hesitated a moment, but before she could say anything, Tarma was already drawing her sword and parrying-dagger, and looping Ironheart’s reins through the pommel hold on the saddle. She felt Ironheart shift under her into full alertness, ready to answer to leg and weight-shift signals rather than rein. She heard the sound of Need clearing her sheath and knew that Kethry was doing the same.

  She turned her attention to their employer. “Shin’a’in proverb,” she said. “It is better to prepare for an ambush and look foolish than not and look dead.”

  Nanca smiled broadly, and gestured. “In that case, after you.”

  Warrl went through first. Gates were probably Tarma’s least favorite way to travel, and thus far she had only had to endure two. This was the third and, as usual, it was horrible. There was a sense of dislocation with the world, the bottom dropping out of everything, a freezing cold that wasn’t really cold, blackness like the inside of the head, and a myriad of other sensations, all awful, that passed too quickly to be identified.

  Then they were on the other side. There was an ambush.

  Warrl had already gone after them; the ambushers must not have counted on anything that wasn’t human because he already had control of the group locked down. With a harsh Shin’a’in war-cry, Tarma waded in.

  And it had to be the strangest bunch she had ever fought.

  Somebody’s retainers, because they were identically dressed. Buff trews, red surcoats, chainmail. Three archers, already down, and a dozen swordsmen.

  But what was strange was the way they fought.

  Exactly alike.

  Every one of them had the same four-move fighting pattern. Overhand slash, shield block, underhand thrust, parry. Absolutely the same and in the same order. Once she realized that, Tarma had them down in no time.

  And realized the second thing. No blood.

  “Automata,” said Kethry. “Constructs.” And she looked directly at Nanca.

  Nanca nodded. “These are the simplest. There will be more. I was about to warn you there might be an ambush, but you were already preparing for one, so I kept my mouth shut.”

  Now Tarma looked out at the land on the other side of the Gate, and found it no different than the part of the Pelagirs they had just passed through. Wooded hills. Plenty of places for more ambushes. The one difference was the nice, clear road that cut through the woods.

  She looked at it and sighed. “I suppose we have to stick to the road?”

  Nanca nodded. “It would be a very, very bad idea to get off the road,” she said. “The landscape itself is not predictable once you get off the road. And at the same time, it’s too predictable.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Tarma asked, frowning.

  “That features can appear and vanish at random, sometimes,” Nanca told her. “But worse than that, landmarks . . . repeat. So that you can’t tell where you are.”

  “Landmarks repeat.” Tarma got a bewildering vision of identical trees, identical rock formations, repeating over and over again like decorative tiles and suddenly—

  “Bloody hell.” She blinked, and looked straight at Nanca as all of the pieces came together. “This is a game. And your colleague is really your opponent. And this—” she waved her hand at the landscape, “—is a giant playing board.”

  “Ha!” Rather than being offended, Nanca seemed delighted. “By the gods, you are smart ones!”

  “And you can’t tell us because that would violate the rules,” Kethry said slowly.

  Nanca nodded.

  “But us figuring it out for ourselves is fine.” Rather than feeling offended, Tarma was actually delighted. “Has anyone done this before?”

  “I’ve never brought fellow players in here before,” Nanca said, her eyes now very bright with interest. “Only the two constructs I’m allowed as helpers. But there was nothing in the rules that said I could not bring fellow players in, and when my constructs met an untimely end before I could enter the game-space—I thought maybe I would try putting out a gentle magical probe for help.” She raised her eyebrow. “My friend and I invented this to keep each other sharp, but I must tell you that I would not have permitted either of you to come to serious harm. Practice is one thing, Being hurt—we both have ways to bring the game to an end. Still.” She pursed her lips. “This game is timed, and we are already late. And it does get a great dea
l tougher, the closer we get to our goal.”

  Tarma felt a wide grin spreading over her face. “Let’s see if we can win this thing, shall we?”

  Now that they knew what to expect, Tarma concentrated on understanding the logic laws by which the constructed opponents they met operated. She sent Warrl out ahead, knowing that whatever he found was all they would have to worry about for the moment. And one of the first laws she determined was that there was a set distance at which the constructs “noticed” them.

  They sat their horses just outside that predetermined distance and watched the constructed ambush party stand there like so many mannequins, while Tarma assessed them, and worked up a strategy. “The usual, I think,” she said finally. “You sweep in from the left flank, Kethry. I’ll come in from the right. Warrl circles around and comes in from behind—”

  “Ah!” Nanca nodded before Tarma could add the last. “And I keep their attention from the front, because I have better ability to strike from a distance. I’d never tried that before, but then, my constructs were never bright enough to operate with a lot of reliable independence.”

  “Heh. That’s encouraging, then,” Tarma said, with a grin. “Let’s see if this works.”

  “Be prepared to retreat if you have to,” Nanca urged. “There’s no shame in that.”

  Kethry sighed and grimaced. “You just told a Shin’a’in Swordsworn that there is no shame in retreat. This is a trifle like telling the village drunk that there is no shame in putting the wine bottle down and walking away from the tavern.”

  Nanca laughed as Tarma made a face of her own. “I’m not that bad,” she protested. Then added, “Am I?”

  Kethry’s silence and significant stare were answer enough. Tarma flushed. “Let’s just do this, shall we?” was all she managed to say.

  It would not be fair to say that they cut across the landscape like a team of experienced mowers across a hayfield. Nanca had been correct; the closer they got to their goal, the more difficult and numerous the foes became. And the closer to their goal, the more magician-constructs also appeared, designed specifically to neutralize or at least occupy Nanca herself.