Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Before Amberdrake made her like them, and Zhaneel made her respect them.

  Tears rose again, but there was no time now to wipe them away; she held on, grief-blinded, unable to see—

  Until a Gift so much greater than hers that it dazzled her touched her, and used her as the conduit to bring the Healing to Feliss that she had not been able to give. Emerald-green Healing energy poured through her, and beneath her hands the gaping wounds closed, the flesh knit up, the bleeding stopped.

  Winterhart closed her eyes and concentrated only on being that conduit, on keeping Feliss' heartbeat strong, until the energy faded, blood no longer flowed through her fingers, and the heartbeat strengthened of itself. Only then did she open her eyes again.

  Lady Cinnabar removed her long, aristocratic hands from where they rested atop Winterhart's and looked deeply into the Trondi'irn's eyes. Winterhart was paralyzed, frozen in place like a terrified rabbit. She had been trying for weeks to avoid the Lady's presence, ever since the moment she'd thought she'd seen a flicker of recognition in Cinnabar's face.

  Who would ever have thought that a song would give me away? She'd been humming, on her way back from a session with Amberdrake; her back felt normal for the first time in ages, Conn was still in the field and not in her bed, and she'd actually been cheerful enough to hum under her breath.

  But she hadn't thought about what she was humming, until she passed Lady Cinnabar (hurriedly, and with her face a little averted), and the Lady turned to give her a penetrating stare.

  Only then did she realize that she had been humming a song that had been all the rage at High King Leodhan's Court—for the single week just before Ma'ar had challenged the King to defend his land. Like the nobles who had fled the challenge in terror, or simply melted away in abject fear, the song had vanished into obscurity. Only someone like Lady Cinnabar, who had been at the High King's Court at that time, would recognize it.

  Only someone else who had been part of the Court for that brief period of time would have known it well enough to hum it.

  Winterhart had seen Cinnabar's eyes narrow in speculation, just before she hurried away, hoping against hope that Cinnabar would decide that she was mistaken in what she thought she had heard.

  But the Lady was more persistent than that. More than once, Winterhart had caught Cinnabar studying her at a distance. And she knew, because this was the one thing she had dreaded, that Cinnabar was the kind of person who knew enough about the woman she had once been, that the Lady would uncover her secret simply by catching her in habitual things no amount of control could change or eliminate.

  And now—here the Lady was, staring into Winterhart's eyes, with the look on her face of one who has finally solved a perplexing little puzzle.

  "You are a good channel, and you worked today to better effect than I have ever seen you work before," Cinnabar said mildly. "And your ability and encouragement kept this feathered one clinging to life. You are a better Trondi'irn and Healer than you were a few weeks ago."

  "Thank you," Winterhart said faintly, trying to look away from Cinnabar's strange reddish-brown eyes, and failing.

  "Altogether you are much improved; get rid of that Conn Levas creature, and stand upon your own worth, and you will be outstanding." Cinnabar's crisp words came to Winterhart as from a great distance. "He is not worthy of you, and you do not need him, Reanna."

  And with that, she turned and moved on to the next patient, leaving Winterhart standing there, stunned. Not just by the blunt advice, but by Cinnabar's last word.

  Reanna.

  Winterhart went on to her next patient in a daze; fortunately her hands knew what to do without needing any direction from her mind. Her mind ran in circles, like a mouse in a barrel.

  Lady Cinnabar knew. Winterhart had been unmasked.

  How long before the Lady told her kinsman Urtho that Reanna Laury—missing and presumed fled—was working in the ranks as a simple Trondi'irn? How long before everyone knew? How long before her shame was revealed to the entire army?

  But before Winterhart could free herself from her paralysis, Cinnabar was back. "You and the rest can handle everything else from here on," the Healer said quietly. "I'm needed back up on the Hill. The gryphons are not the only injured. And Reanna—"

  Winterhart started at the sound of her old name.

  Cinnabar laid one cool hand on Winterhart's arm. "No one will know what I have just spoken, if you do not tell," the Healer said quietly. "If you choose to be only Winterhart, then Winterhart is all anyone will know. But I believe you should tell Amberdrake. He has some information that you should hear."

  The Lady smiled her famous, dazzling smile.

  "Sometimes being in the middle of a situation gives one a very skewed notion of what is actually going on. If I were a minnow in the middle of a school, I would not know why the school moved this way and that. I would only see that the rest of the school was in flight, and not what they fled. I would never know when they ran from a pike, or a shadow."

  And with that rather obscure bit of observation, the Lady turned and was gone.

  Winterhart sat in her own austere tent, braiding and rebraiding a bit of leather; her nerves had completely eroded. In another few moments, she was scheduled for a treatment for her back—treatments she had come to look forward to. The kestra'chern Amberdrake was the easiest person to talk to that she had ever known, although the changes he had caused in her were not so easy to deal with.

  But now—Cinnabar knew. And although she had said that she would not reveal Winterhart's secret, she had also said something else.

  "I believe you should tell Amberdrake." Cinnabar's words haunted her. Who and what was this man, that she should tell him what she had not told anyone, the secret of her past that she would rather remained buried? Why would Cinnabar say anything so outrageous?

  And most of all, why did she want to follow the Lady's advice?

  Oh, gods—what am I going to do? What am I going to say?

  She could say nothing, of course, but Amberdrake was skilled at reading all the nuances of the body, and he would know she was upset about something. He had a way of getting whatever he wanted to know out of a person, as easily as she could extract a thorn from the claw of one of her charges.

  I could stop going to him. I could find someone else to handle the rest of the treatments.

  But she was not just seeing him for her back, and she knew it. Not anymore. Amberdrake was the closest thing she had to a real friend in this place, and what was more, he was the only person she would ever consider telling her secrets to. So why not do it?

  Because she didn't want to lose that friendship. If he heard what she was, how could he have any respect for her, ever again?

  Then there was the rest of what Lady Cinnabar had said. "Get rid of that Conn Lev as creature and stand on your own." Oh, Cinnabar was right about that; she and Conn were no more suited for each other than a bird and a fish. And dealing with Conn took more out of her than anyone ever guessed.

  She had always known, whether or not Conn was aware of it, that her liaison with the mage was temporary. She had thought when she first accepted his invitation to "be his woman" that it would only last until Ma'ar overran them all, and killed them. A matter of weeks, months at the most. But Urtho was a better leader than anyone had thought, and she found herself living long past the time when she had thought she would be dead.

  Then she had decided that sooner or later Conn would grow tired of her, and get rid of her. But it seemed that either most women around the Sixth knew the mage for the kind of man he was—an overgrown child in many ways, with a child's tantrums and possessiveness—or else he perversely prized her. He made no move to be rid of her, for all his complaints of her coldness.

  Then again, he was a master of manipulation, and one of the people he manipulated as easily as breathing was her. She didn't like unpleasantness; she hated a scene. She was easily embarrassed. He knew how to threaten, what to threaten her wit
h, and when to turn from threats to charming cajolery.

  On her part the relationship originally had been as cool and prearranged as any marriage of state. He supplied her with an identity, and she gave him what he wanted. They maintained their own separate gear and sleeping quarters; they shared nothing except company.

  But you don't allow someone into your bed without getting some emotional baggage out of it. She was wise enough to admit that. And even though she would have been glad enough to be rid of him, as long as he claimed he had some feelings for her, and he needed her, she knew she would stay. Not until he walked away would she feel free of him.

  Amberdrake had skillfully pried that out of her already—and in so doing, had made her face squarely what she had not been willing to admit until that moment. She didn't want Conn anymore, she heartily wished him out of her life, and the most he would ever be able to evoke in her was a mild pity. There was no passion there anymore, not even physical passion. Amberdrake gave her more pleasure than he did, without ever once venturing into the amorous or erotic. And now Cinnabar, saying she should be rid of him—

  Cinnabar must think he's a drain on me, on my resources. I suppose he is. Every time he comes back from the front lines, there's a scene. I spend half the night trying to make him feel better, and I end up feeling worse. I find myself wishing that he would die out there, and then I'm torn up with guilt for ill-wishing him....

  Oh, it was all too tangled. Amberdrake could help her sort it all out—but if she kept her appointment, Amberdrake would learn her secrets.

  Her stomach hurt. Her stomach always hurt when she was like this. Amberdrake knew everything that there was to know about herbal remedies, maybe he would have something for her stomach as well as her back, and if she just kept the subject on that she could avoid telling him anything important.

  She put the bit of leather aside, and got up off her bedroll, pushing aside the tent flaps to emerge into the blue-gray of twilight.

  Time to go. There was no place to run from it now. And no point in running.

  Amberdrake knew the moment that Winterhart slipped through the tent door that there was something wrong. Even if he hadn't been an Empath, even if he were still an apprentice in the various arts of the kestra'chern, he'd have known it. She moved stiffly, her muscles taut with tension, and the little frown-line between her brows was much deeper than usual. Her eyes looked red and irritated, and she held her shoulders as if she expected a blow to come down out of the sky at any moment.

  "Is Conn Levas back yet?" he asked casually, assuming that the mage was the reason for her tension.

  But the startled look of surprise, as if that was the very last thing she had expected him to say, told him that the shot had gone far wide of the mark. Whatever was troubling her, it was not her erstwhile lover.

  "No," she replied, and turned her back to him, modest as always, to disrobe so that he could work on her back. "No, the foot-troops are still out. They aren't doing well, though. I suppose you know that Ma'ar is pushing them out of the Pass again. The Sixth got hit badly, and the Fourth and Third sent in gryphons with carry-nets to evacuate the wounded. It was bad on the landing field."

  "So I'd heard." Skan was out there now; as the only gryphon who could keep up with Zhaneel, Urtho had assigned him to fly protective cover on her. No standard scouting raids for them; they only flew at Urtho's express orders, usually bearing one or more of his magic weapons or protections. The Black Gryphon had already given Amberdrake a terse account of the damage, before going out on a second sortie. "After a day like today, I'm not surprised that you're tense."

  "And my stomach's in a knot," she said, wrapping herself in a loose robe, before she turned back to face him. Her expression mingled wry hope with resignation, as if she hated to admit that her body had failed her. "I don't suppose you have anything for that, do you?"

  "Assuming you trust my intentions," he countered, trying to make a joke of it. "I'd prescribe an infusion of vero-grass, alem-lily root, and mallow. All of which I do have on hand. You aren't the only person who's come to me today with your muscles and stomach all in knots."

  Her eyes widened a little, for all three herbs were very powerful, and had a deserved reputation for loosening the tongue and giving it free rein—and for loosening inhibitions as well. "I don't know," she replied hesitantly. "Then again, between the state of my back and my stomach, maybe I'd better."

  He had made the same concoction often enough for himself that he could nod sympathetically as he went to his chest of herbs. He put measured amounts of each into a cup, poured in hot water, and left the medicine to steep. "Believe me, I know how you feel. As I said, I've had to resort to my own herbs more than once since this war started. I've been with Urtho's forces since—let me think—right after the High King collapsed, and Urtho more-or-less took over as leader."

  She accepted the cup of bitter tea carefully, made a face as she tasted it, and drank it down all at once. "That's longer than I have," she remarked. "If you've been with Urtho that long, I suppose you must have seen quite a bit of the Court, then."

  "Me? Hardly." He laughed and could have sworn that she relaxed a little. "No, I was just one kestra'chern with the Kaled'a'in; all the Clans came as fast as they could when Urtho called us in, and he didn't sort us out for several months after that. He just gave the Clan Chiefs his orders and let them decide how to carry them out, while he tried to organize what was left of the defenses. At that point, no one knew what ranking I was qualified for. Kestra'chern aren't given a rank among the Clans the way they are in the outside world. My rank and all that came later, as things got organized." She arranged herself on the massage table, facedown.

  "The way that the Clans stood by him, though—you must have been disgusted by the way the nobles just panicked and deserted him."

  He paused, a bottle of warm oil in his hand, at the odd tone in her voice. She surely knew that he knew she was no Kaled'a'in, but there was something about the way she had phrased that last that was sending little half-understood signals to him. And the direction the conversation had been going in—

  Go slowly, go carefully with this, he thought. There is more going on here than there appears to be. I think, if I am very careful, all my questions about her are about to be answered.

  "We stood by him because we were protected and never felt the fear," he replied, pouring a little oil in the palm of his hand and spreading it on her back. "We have our own mages, you know. Granted, we don't go about making much of the fact, and they only serve Kaled'a'in, but between the mages and the shaman, Ma'ar couldn't touch us—and there was no way that he could insinuate agents into our midst to bring us down. Not the way he did the High King and his Court."

  The muscles under his hand jumped. "What do you mean by that?" she demanded, her voice sharp and anxious.

  He soothed her back with his hands, and deliberately injected a soothing tone into his voice. "Well, Ma'ar has always been a master of opportunity, and he's never used a direct attack when an indirect one would work as well. Treachery, betrayal, manipulation—those are his favorite weapons. That was how he got control in his own land in the first place, and that is how he prefers to weaken other lands before he moves in to take them with his troops. He may be ruthless and heartless, but he never spends more than he has to in order to get what he wants."

  "But what does that have to do with us?" she demanded, harshly. "What does that have to do with the way those cowards simply deserted the High King, fled and left the Court and their own holdings in complete chaos?"

  "Why, everything," he told her in mild surprise. "Ma'ar had a dozen agents in the Court, didn't you know that? Their job was to spread rumors, create dissension, make things as difficult as possible for the High King to get anything accomplished. I don't know their names, but Cinnabar does; she was instrumental in winkling them out and dealing with them after the King collapsed. But the major thing was that once Ma'ar believed that his agents had done everything they
could to get the Court just below the boiling point, he sent one of them into the Palace with a little 'present' for the King and his supporters." His mouth twisted in distaste. "Treachery of the worst sort. Have you ever heard of something called a dyrstaf?"

  "No," she said, blankly.

  "Skan could tell you more about it. He was there at the time, in Urtho's Tower, and he found out about everything pretty much as it happened. For that matter, so was Lady Cinnabar, but she's not a mage, and Skan is." He tried to recall everything that Cinnabar and Skan had told him. "It's a rather nasty little thing. It's an object, usually a rod or a staff of some kind, that holds a very insidious version of a fear-spell. It looks perfectly ordinary until it's been triggered, and even then it doesn't show to anything but Magesight. It starts out just creating low-level anxiety, and works up to a full panic over the course of a day and a night. And since it isn't precisely attacking anyone or anything, most protective spells won't shield from it. And of course, since it wasn't active when the agent brought it into the Palace, no one knew it was there, and it didn't trip any of the protections laid around the King."

  "A fear spell?" she asked softly. "But why didn't the Palace shields—oh. Never mind, it was inside the shields when it started to work. So of course the shields wouldn't keep anything out."

  "And by the time anyone realized what was going on, it was too late to do anything about it," Amberdrake replied. "In fact, it did most of its worst work after dark, at a time when people are most subject to their fears anyway. The mages always slept under all kinds of personal shielding, so of course they weren't affected. Anyone with Healer training would also sleep under shields; remember, most Healers have some degree of Empathy, and this was an emotion. They would also have been protected against it."

  "But anyone else—" She shuddered.

  "And what most people did was simply to run away." Amberdrake sighed. "By morning, the Palace was deserted, and it wasn't only the nobles who ran, no matter what you might have heard to the contrary. It was everyone. Cinnabar said that the only ones left were the mages and Healers; there wasn't a horse, donkey, or mule fit to ride left in the stables, the servants and the Palace guards had deserted their posts, and the King was in a virtual state of collapse. She and the others called Urtho from his Tower. By the time that Urtho found the dyrstaf, it was too late; the worst damage had been done."