Heralds of Valdemar (A Valdemar Omnibus)

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Talia clung with aching legs and arrow-hand while he reared to his full height and smashed in the head of the first one in his path. It was a horrible sound, like a melon splitting open; Talia felt the shock as Rolan’s hooves connected, heard the surprised little grunt the man made. Blood and fear and stale grease-and-sweat smell stank in their nostrils. The last one was too close for arrow shot. Talia felt at her belt for her throwing dagger, pulled it loose, and cast it at short range. This one had worn no chest-armor at all. He stopped short, his eyes surprised; his sword dropped from his hand and his free hand felt at his chest. He looked down stupidly at the dagger protruding from his ribs, then his eyes glazed over, and he fell.

  Talia and Rolan raced for the gate; she glanced behind her for possible foes and saw they were leaving red hoofprints behind them.

  She was met with a chaos of burning buildings and screaming people; they thundered inside, and skidded to a halt, confused for a moment by the fear and smoke. Talia felt, more than saw, a fear-maddened ox charging down the single street; saw out of the corner of her eye a child running straight into its path. Rolan responded to her unspoken signal; whirled with joint-wrenching suddenness and leapt forward; she leaned out of the saddle, clinging to the saddle-bow, and scooped up the child as Rolan shouldered the oncoming animal aside. Then he leapt again, giving Talia the chance to deposit the baby on a doorstep. Kris was nowhere to be seen—but neither were the raiders.

  Talia vaulted off Rolan’s back and began grabbing hysterical townspeople; without stopping to think about it she began forcibly calming them with her Gift, and organizing them into a fire brigade. All the while she fought the urge to flee away, to somewhere dark and quiet, and be sick. She kept seeing those surprised eyes—feeling the fear and pain just outside of her shields.

  But there was no time to think—just to act. And pray that her shields stayed up—or she had no idea of what might happen under such a load.

  * * *

  Kris appeared when the fires were almost out; face smudged with smoke, Whites liberally splashed with blood, eyes dull. Tantris stumbled along beside him. Talia left her fire-brigade to deal with what was left, just as cheering villagers appeared in his wake, waving gore-encrusted scythes and mattocks. She limped to his side; only now was she noticing she’d sprained her left ankle, and wrenched her right shoulder when she’d caught up that child. He lifted his eyes to meet hers and she saw reflected in them her own bleak heart-sickness.

  She took the bloody sword from his unresisting hand, fought down her own revulsion, and touched his hand; hoping to give him the ease she could not yet feel.

  He sighed, and swayed; and leaned against Tantris for support. Tantris was as blood-speckled as Rolan, and had a shallow cut along one shoulder. “They wouldn’t surrender, and wouldn’t run,” he said, voice harsh from the smoke and the shouting. “I don’t know why. The Healer’s dead; that poor mad girl with him. There’s about ten more dead and twice as many wounded. Thank Gods, thank Gods, no children. That couple—burned to death trying to save their damned chickens. Three houses burned out at the other end of the village—” He stared at the townsfolk cheering and laughing and dancing awkwardly In the bloody snow and churned-up mud. “They think the battle’s over. Goddess, it’s just beginning—the ruined foodstores, the burned out houses, and the worst of winter yet to come—”

  “It—it’s not like in the ballads, is it?”

  “No,” he sighed, rubbing his eyes with a filthy hand. “It never is—and we have a job to do.”

  “Then let’s get the chirras back and set about it.”

  * * *

  Their second stopover at Waymeet, by contrast, was almost embarrassing, Kris being hailed as the village’s hero for having remained behind to tend the ill while Talia went for help. It became necessary to remind the grateful people of the rules that governed a Herald’s behavior on circuit, else they would have been feasted at a different house every night, slept in the best beds in the village, and come away with more gifts than the chirras could carry.

  That stop went a long way toward raising their spirits. Both their spirits—for there were no evil-eye talismans on display in Waymeet, and there were no odd sidelong glances at Talia. And her shields were holding—were still holding—

  They stopped with Tedric at Berrybay; he proved to be more than delighted to welcome them, and a two-day rest with him—and a chance to cry out their heart-sickness on the shoulder of someone who would truly understand—completed their cure.

  When they were back to making normal conversation Tedric mentioned, with the pleasure of a child in a new toy, that since their visit, the wandering Bards had taken to stopping overnight with him, and that scarcely a month went by now without at least one arriving on his doorstep.

  Kris thought of his report, and smiled to himself.

  * * *

  Maeven Weatherwitch and her adopted child were thriving. Her ability to Foresee had actually grown. The grateful people of Berrybay allocated a portion of their harvests to her so that she need not take the chance of losing the Gift to hunger or an accident in the fields. Best of all, the local priestess of Astera was training her to become her own successor.

  And Talia’s shields continued to hold.

  * * *

  They rode through the early Spring leaves (scarcely more than buds) on their last few stops for this circuit. Come Vernal Equinox, scarcely more than a month away, they would turn their chirras over to the next Herald assigned to this circuit and would be on their way back to the Collegium.

  It was over—it was almost over. Talia felt her control was back, and more certain than before. Her shields were back, and stronger. Now if only…

  If only she could ease the aching doubt in her mind… the rights and the wrongs…

  The unanswered questions kept her up nights, staring into the darkness long after Kris had fallen asleep at her side. For if she could not find an answer for herself, how could she ever again dare use the Gift she’d been born with, except in utterly circumscribed circumstances?

  * * *

  Birds newly-arrived from the south sang in the budding bushes all around them; trees seemed to be covered with a mist of green. Talia was not expecting trouble, so when Kris asked her to deliberately drop her shields and cast her senses ahead to Westmark, what she encountered caught her completely off-guard. The force of emotion she felt sent her slumping forward as if from a blow to the head. Kris urged Tantris in close beside her and steadied her in the saddle as she shook her head to clear it.

  “What is it?” he asked anxiously. “It can’t be—”

  “It’s not raiders, but it’s bad. There’s death, and there’s going to be more unless I get there fast,” she said. “You bring on the chirras while I go ahead.”

  She sent Rolan into his fastest gallop, leaving Kris and the packbeasts far behind. They flashed through beams of sunlight cutting between the trees like spirits of winter come to invade the spring. She narrowed her eyes against the rush of greening wind in her face, and the whipping of Rolan’s mane, trying to sort out the images she’d gotten. She had touched the terrible, mindless violence of a mob, and two sources of fear—one, the fear of the hunted; the other, the fear of the hopeless. Underneath it, like a thin stream of something vile, had lurked a source of true and gloating evil.

  Even above the pounding of Rolan’s hooves, she heard the mob as she neared the outer wall of Westmark, a sturdy and skilled piece of brick-layer’s work, dull red behind the pale mist of opening leaves. She heard the hair-raising growl long before she saw the mob itself. She had no need to be in trance to feel the turmoil of emotions, though by the grace of the Lady they hadn’t yet found their victim. She could almost taste his fear, but it wasn’t the panic of the caught creature yet.

  As she came within sight of the mob, a single figure burst from under cover of the town gates and ran for his life straight toward her, his feet kicking up yellow road-dust as he ran toward her. At the sight
of him, the people hunting him howled and plunged through the gates after him.

  He seemed determined to cast himself under Rolan’s hooves if it was necessary to do so in order to reach her. With all the skill burned into both of them by Keren, she and Rolan avoided him and wheeled around in a wrenchingly tight circle, putting Rolan’s bulk between the fugitive and his hunters.

  The stranger seized the pommel of her saddle in a white-knuckled death-grip and gasped: “Justice—”

  She remained in the saddle, certain that if all else failed, she could have him up behind her and be away before any of the mob could react. But at the sight of her Companion and her unmistakable uniform, the crowd slowed, began muttering uncertainly, and finally stopped several feet away.

  When she spoke, a silence fell upon them. “Why do you hound this man to his death?” she demanded, pitching her voice to be carrying and trumpet-clear.

  The crowd before her, no longer the mindless mob now that their momentum was broken, stirred uneasily. Finally, one man stepped forward; by his fine dark umber wool and linen clothing, prosperous, and no farmer.

  “That trader’s a murderer, Herald,” he said. “A foreigner and a murderer. We reckon on giving him his due.”

  “Nay—” the man at her saddle panted, olive skin gone yellow-pale, large dark eyes wide with fear. “Trader, yes, and foreign. But no murderer. This I swear.”

  An angry growl arose at his words.

  “Hold!” she shouted, pitching her voice to command before they could regain their mob unity. “It is no crime to be a foreigner, and the Queen’s word grants Herald’s justice to anyone within the bounds of this Kingdom who would claim it. This man has claimed justice of me; I will give it to him. You who call him a murderer—did any of you see him kill?”

  “The body was in his wagon, and still warm!” the spokesman protested, rubbing his mustache uneasily.

  “So? And was the wagon then so secured that none could enter it but he? No? Then how can you be certain that the body was not put there to turn suspicion upon this one—already suspect because of being foreign?”

  The dismay she felt told her that they had not considered the possibility. These were not evil people—that thread of viciousness she had sensed was not coming from one of them—they were only thoughtless, and easily led while in the herd-mentality of the mob. Confronted with someone who made them think, they lost their taste for blood.

  “This will be done by the law, or not at all,” she said firmly. “Let every man, woman and child not bedridden assemble in the square. At this point there is not one of you above suspicion. Let the body be brought to me there.”

  The man clinging to her pommel was slowly regaining his courage and his breath. “I have heard of your kind, Lady Herald,” he said, obviously nervous, by the sweat only now beginning to bead his generous forehead; but equally obviously willing to trust her. “I swear to you that I did not do this evil deed. You may put me to the ordeal, if you will.”

  “There will be no ‘ordeal,’ and nothing to fear if you are truly innocent,” Talia told him quietly. “I do not know what you have heard of us, but I pledge you that you shall have exactly what you asked of me—justice.”

  The trader walked beside her as she rode Rolan into the town gates, past the substantial bulks of the brick houses, and on to the cobblestoned square. Exactly as she had ordered, every ambulatory person in the town that day was assembled there. They had left an empty space for her in the middle, and in this space there lay a long, dark-draped bundle—plainly, the victim.

  Talia picked out two dozen robust-looking, mortar-bespeckled citizens, and ascertained by questioning them under her Gift that they could not have had anything whatsoever to do with the crime, as they had all been engaged in moving the town wall outward. She set these men, armed with cudgels, to guarding the exits to the square, since once the killer realized that he or she was about to be uncovered, he might try for an escape and Talia did not intend that he should succeed.

  Then she removed the blanket. The young woman—girl, almost—had been beaten severely, and her neck was broken. She had been pretty; her clothing was well-made, not badly worn, but had been ripped in many places. Whoever was guilty of this was brutal and violent, and nothing Talia sensed in the trader corresponded to the kind of mind that could batter a young girl to death. The crime did match that thread of evil she’d sensed before she confronted the mob, however.

  “Who was this child?” she asked, after giving her own nerves a moment to steady.

  “My stepdaughter.” A square-jawed, bearded man stepped forward, his face hard, his brown eyes unreadable. Talia noted that he did not address her with the honorific “Herald.” This might mean much, or nothing.

  “When was she found, and by whom?”

  “About an hour ago, Herald,” a thin, graying woman in a floury apron spoke up. “My boy found her. I’d sent him to the trader with the money for some things I’d asked him to set aside for me.” She pushed forward a lanky blond lad of about fifteen with a sick expression and greenish face.

  “Tell me what you found, as exactly as you can remember it,” Talia ordered, pity making her move to shield him from view of the body.

  “Ma,” he gulped, eyes fixed on her face, “Ma, she sent me like she said, with egg money for some fripperies she’d asked the trader to hold for her. When I got to the wagon, the trader weren’t there, but he’s told us to go in and wait for him times afore when he weren’t there, so I did. It were kinda dark inside, and I stumbled over something. I flung the door open to see what I were a-fallin’ over. It were Karli—” He swallowed hard, his face growing greener. “I thought maybe she were sick, maybe drunk even, so I shook her. But her head rolled so funny—” He scrubbed his hand against his tunic in an unconscious effort to rid it of the contamination he’d felt from touching a corpse.

  “Enough,” Talia said gently. The poor child could never have seen violent death before, much less touched it. She remembered how she had felt after the fight at Hevenbeck, and tried to put her sympathy in her eyes. “Have any of you ever seen this girl with the trader before?”

  Several people had, volunteering that she’d had huddled, whispered conferences with him, conferences that broke off if any came near. Feet scuffled uneasily on the cobblestones as she continued her interrogations as thoroughly and patiently as she could, and she could hear little whispers at the edge of the crowd. She wished she could hear them clearly, for they might tell her a great deal.

  The man who claimed to be the murdered girl’s stepfather spat angrily and interrupted. “We’re wasting time! Anyone with eyes and ears knows the scum killed her! He wanted her, no doubt, then killed her when she refused him—or if she did not refuse, for fear she’d make him wed her after.”

  Talia’s eyes narrowed. This hardly sounded like a grief-stricken parent.

  “I am the instrument of the Queen’s Justice, and it is I and no one else who will decide when we are wasting time,” she said coldly. “Thus far I have seen nothing to implicate this man, beyond him speaking with the girl. I am sure she spoke to many. Did she not speak daily even to you? Does this make you a suspect?”

  Was it her imagination, or did he pale a trifle?

  “Trader, what say you?”

  “May I speak all the truth?” he asked.

  Now that was an odd way to answer. “Why need you ask?”

  “Because I would not malign the dead before her kith and kin, but what I would say may not meet with the approval of those here.”

  “Wait but a moment, trader,” she answered, and closed her eyes. She took a moment to pass deeply into trance and invoke once again the “Truth Spell.” There were two stages of this spell. The first stage could be cast by any Herald, even those with only a touch of a Gift. It caused a glow, invisible to the speaker, but quite apparent to anyone else, to form about the speaker’s head and shoulders. The second stage (and one which required not just a Gift, but a powerful “comm
unication” Gift) could, when invoked, force the speaker to tell only the truth, regardless of his intentions. Talia’s Gift was sufficient to enable her to bring both forms of the Truth Spell into play, and she invoked them now. As the blue glow formed about the trader’s head, she could hear a sudden intake of breath, then sighs of relief. These people might never have seen Truth Spell in action in their lives, but they knew what it was, and they trusted in the power of the spell and the honesty of the wielder.

  “Tell all the truth freely. You cannot hurt her in the Havens, and it is your own life you are defending.”

  “She came to me several times, yes,” he said. “She wished me to take her with me when I left here.”

  “Why?” Talia asked.

  “Because she wished to escape—what and why she would not say. She said that no one would believe her if she were to say what it was. She first offered me money, but I dared not risk the damage to my trade if these people were made wroth. Still, she persisted. In the end, she agreed that she would ‘disappear’ a day before I was to leave so that it would seem I had naught to do with it, and as payment she offered herself,” he sighed. “It was wrong, surely, but I am only flesh, and she was comely. It did not seem so evil that I should have pleasure of her in return for an escape she desired so badly. I was to have met her on the road outside of town tomorrow night, after dusk. After I spoke to her this morning, I did not see her again alive.”

  The glow did not falter, nor did Talia feel the drain of energy that would have indicated that the trader was being forced to tell the truth. The crowd, which had been watching the glow intently, sighed again. Now it was obvious to everyone that the trader could not be guilty—but then, who was?

  “Lies! All lies!” The stepfather broke free of his neighbors and plunged forward with the apparent intent of strangling the trader with his bare hands. Rolan reared, ears laid back, and snapped at him, keeping him away, as Talia herself drew her dagger with a hiss of metal—and in the rush of his anger and—and yes, fear—Talia Saw the scene his emotions carried and knew the truth.